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It is Kelly to whom the burner phone belongs. It is Kelly who texted Nicola.
‘You were just on the phone to Todd,’ Jen says the second she storms through the front door. Todd isn’t home yet. Perhaps he caught up with Clio again. And Jen can’t wait. Who cares? She has no tomorrow. She’s got to ask him now.
Kelly is wearing faded jeans and a white T-shirt. He is sitting on their velvet sofa. They put it in the bay window in their living room. It fits exactly, not even a centimetre of wiggle room. They had laughed so much as they tried to thump it into place. Kelly had suggested they use lube and Jen hadn’t been able to stop giggling.
She drops her handbag on to the wooden floor. The house is quiet, the lamps on low.
Kelly apparently needs a moment to think. Those three seconds break Jen’s fucking heart.
‘I know he’s involved in something dodgy – and so do you,’ she says.
Evidently, Kelly decides to go for an outright denial. ‘He’s having women trouble.’ Kelly’s eyes don’t change at all as he speaks these words, these lies. ‘Jen?’ He reaches for her.
‘I heard you,’ she says.
‘We talked about Clio.’
‘Who’s Nicola?’
‘What? I don’t know a Nicola.’
‘Kelly,’ she says, the word exploding out of her. ‘I know you know them. Who is Joseph Jones?’
‘No idea,’ Kelly says quickly, not missing a beat. He busies himself, standing and turning on the overhead light, her enigmatic husband. Mysterious – or a liar? ‘Sorry – I don’t know what you mean?’ he says, turning to her.
As he does, she sees the glimmer of sweat around his hairline catching the light for just a second. ‘I know you’re lying,’ she says to his back as he begins to retreat again. Now he’s putting shoes on, a coat.
‘This is not up for discussion,’ he says. He opens the front door and leaves the house, the frame shaking as he slams it behind him.
Ryan
Ryan is in his element. Ryan is finally good at something.
He has in front of him, just like in the movies, a bigger corkboard that he ordered from Supplies three days ago. It’s four feet long by three feet tall (he doesn’t yet have authority to put it up). It’s resting against the wall and Ryan is sitting, cross-legged, in front of it.
He’s been gathering his surveillance information for two months. He began by wheeling a TV into his cupboard. For hours, through bleary eyes, he reviewed the CCTV of the port. Tape after tape after tape, evenings and weekends. He watched carefully, jotting down anybody who visited more than once, anybody who talked to Ezra, or who disappeared with him. Ryan made notes on Post-its and then pinned them to the board.
By the end of the month, he had a list of regulars.
‘Can you match these faces to any on the system?’ he asked a passing analyst one Friday night. He pointed at the faces he’d freeze-framed and printed.
‘On it,’ the analyst said, just like that.
And now he’s got them: his foot soldiers.
The undercover team have provided him with the names of the drugs suppliers now, too. An undercover officer has infiltrated the gang. He went in as a test purchaser. Dressed up scruffy, as Leo put it, asked for gear. The transaction went ahead, observed by Leo’s team, and he reported back with the name of the dealer, who goes now on to Ryan’s board.
He did it five more times. Five more test purchases. And then he said he’d moved house, he knew a few people who’d buy, wanted to trial supplying a patch. The dealer introduced him to the supplier, whose name also went on to Ryan’s board.
‘Ryan,’ Leo says, striding into his cupboard. ‘You’re a certified genius.’
This is the best job Ryan’s ever had. The most fun. The most satisfying. And the most autonomous, too. He feels a bubble of pride rise up through him, for him and his corkboard.
‘This is just the start,’ he says to Leo. ‘It’s just part of the picture. The top guy has about ten different ops running.’
They look at the corkboard together in silence.
Leo says nothing for a minute, maybe more. One of the other officers walks past the cupboard. ‘Got a sec?’ he says to Leo, poking his head around the door.
