AllFreeNovel
Share Us
‘No,’ Leo barks, closing the door. Life feels good when you’re in Leo’s sunlight, terrible if you’re in his shadow, like so many people in charge.
‘On our last job,’ Leo says thoughtfully, as though this exchange has not taken place, ‘the guy at the top was so unassuming. So normal. Just normal. Stayed under the radar. You know, didn’t have a proper job – was self-employed. Stayed under the tax threshold. Didn’t travel.’
‘Seems impossible,’ Ryan says.
‘Right, anyway, look at this, please,’ he says. ‘We have been creating a legend.’ He sits down creakily on the chair as Ryan unpins the various foot soldiers and moves them across. ‘Maybe we should get you a better office,’ he says through a laugh.
‘That’d be nice …’
‘Okay, so, legends. Ready for a lesson?’
‘Ready.’
‘When officers go undercover, they step into a persona that we have already created, long ago, right?’
‘Okay.’
‘So if someone was buying gear, the crims always suspect the DS. Drugs squad. So we create a legend in advance. He lives here, he drives this car, he works here, he does this. We have history, right? It goes anywhere we can get it – online, wherever. Then he steps into it. And so we are working on one now.’
He rubs at his jowls, then sips Ryan’s tea, which offends Ryan, but he doesn’t say anything. Leo does things like this when he’s thinking. And Leo is brilliant when he’s thinking, so everybody puts up with it.
‘Leo,’ Jamie says, pushing the door open. He looks harassed, his hair standing on end. ‘Got an issue.’
‘What?’ Leo is fiddling with one of Ryan’s pins, which he shoves back into the board. ‘Can people stop fucking interrup—’
‘Last night two of the foot soldiers stole a car on one of the posh estates in Wallasey,’ Jamie says. ‘We’ve had a report in.’
‘Okay …’
‘Rumour has it they thought it was one of the unoccupied houses they targeted, but it wasn’t …’
Ryan swivels his head to look at Jamie.
‘There was a baby in the back of the car. They took it. The car is headed for the port – with the baby in the back.’
Day Minus Twenty-two, 18:30
Jen is in her sanctuary, the office. She wanted to be here, at work, in this calm, organized environment she is fully in control of, or at least can pretend that she is. The knowledge that Kelly is involved keeps repeating on her. She feels like she’s on a boat, the ground underfoot uncertain and slippery. Kelly. Her Kelly. The man she can tell anything to. But, evidently, that doesn’t work both ways. How could he have pretended to work this through with her on that night that he believed her?
The street down below is dotted with people shopping, enjoying the last of the summer warmth. Early October looks different to late. Gingerbread light outside. Honey-coloured leaves. The last gasp of summer. She opens the window. Only the tiniest bite of cold laces the air: like a single drop of dye in water that will soon spread.
She sighs and wanders down the corridor. She renovated the premises after her father died last spring. What was once his office – the plaque said Managing Partner, like he wanted – is now the kitchenette, a decision she made so she didn’t have to look at his old door or, worse, work in there herself.
Her father had been a good lawyer. Incisive, cautious, able to accept and confront bad news without kidding himself. Tough, she’d describe him as, with the hindsight of grief. Stoic, too. At the end of a working week, once, she’d found out that he had slept there two nights, to get the job done, and had never said.
She is now much further back than she anticipated. Jen thinks her biggest fear is that she is going to pass the inception of the crime. She wishes she could ask her father what to do. Kenneth Charles Eagles. He’d gone by the name KC. If Jen and Kelly had had a daughter, they would have called her Kacie. KC. He’d have liked that.
He’d died alone, eighteen months ago. An aneurysm, sometime in the evening. He’d sat in his armchair, a bag of peanuts and a bottle of half-drunk beer by his side. Jen, in the early days, had to turn her mind away from his last moments, like trying to steer a ship with a preference for one way only. She is more able to look at it, now, to stand here in the spot where he once did. But, today more than ever, she misses him. He’d have no sympathy for time-travel theories – she’d have been too afraid to tell him, she thinks, fearing judgement – but she still misses him in the way that children will always miss their parents’ guiding hands, the way they can hold your problems away from you, if only temporarily.
She makes a cup of tea then leaves the kitchenette. Rakesh walks by her office with another lawyer, Sara.
‘The husband asked us to halve her maintenance budget to account for the fact that she only ever wears sweatpants. He’s crossed off any allowance for clothing. Plus haircuts, and bras. He’s annotated it to say she wears old, greying underwear,’ Sara is saying.
Rakesh’s disbelieving laughter rings out like a church bell.
Jen smiles wanly. She’s always felt so at home here with the workaholics and the gallows humour.
She sends a few emails, happily passing on pieces of information, giving advice. The stuff she could do with her eyes closed, the things she’s done for two decades.
