by Alex Walters
Now, she slid the bolt back, and as silently as she could, opened the door. She hadn’t been asleep for long. Across the hallway, a light was still burning in the sitting room.
She took a noiseless step along the hall and peered through the doorway. Salter was still sitting on the sofa, side on to her, head down. Her handbag was open on his knee, and he was systematically sorting through the contents.
She considered walking into the room and challenging him. Instead, she continued silently past the sitting room and into the kitchen. There, she turned on the cold water tap and began searching, deliberately noisy, through the cupboards in search of a glass.
‘You OK?’
She turned. Salter was standing in the doorway. ‘Just getting some water. Somebody filled my mouth with sawdust while I was asleep.’
‘Glasses in there.’ Salter gestured towards a cupboard in the corner. ‘There’s juice in the fridge if you want it.’
‘Water’s fine.’ She busied herself locating a glass, filling it with cold water. ‘Don’t suppose there’re any painkillers around?’
‘That drawer, I think. There’s a load of first-aid stuff.’
She pulled open the drawer. Sticking plasters. Rolls of bandages. A thermometer. An antiseptic spray. Boxes of paracetamol, ibuprofen, aspirin. She tore open a box of paracetamol and popped out two tablets.
Sipping the water, she made her way back into the sitting room, curling herself up in the corner of the sofa. Salter stood by the door, watching her.
‘How are you feeling?’
‘Oh, I’ll be OK. Just too much of that stuff on an empty stomach.’ She gestured towards the Scotch bottle on the table. Its contents hadn’t noticeably reduced while she’d been in bed, which was interesting in itself. Salter had a nearly full glass in his hand, but it could have been the same one he’d been drinking when she’d retired. She held up her own glass of water. ‘Prevention’s better than cure, and all that. If I deal with it now, hope I’ll feel less crap in the morning.’
She was still feeling pretty awful. Not just the dry mouth, the headache, the incipient nausea, but something more. An odd light-headedness, a sense that she wasn’t fully in control of her thoughts and movements. The feeling that she’d been sedated.
Was it possible? Maybe. Salter could have slipped something into the tea he’d given her earlier. Perhaps he’d hoped that it would combine with the whisky to knock her cold. Get her out of the way so he could check through her things, as he’d apparently been doing with her handbag. Or maybe his aim had just been to relax her, get her disinhibited. Encourage her to talk.
‘Jesus, I must have been out of it,’ she said.
‘How d’ you mean?’ He was still standing motionless in the doorway.
‘When I went to bed. Left my handbag out here.’
‘Did you? Well, safe enough, I should think.’
‘Yeah, but I’m a woman, Hugh, in case you hadn’t noticed. Never like to be more than two feet from my handbag. Makes me feel insecure.’ She pushed herself to her feet and picked up the bag. ‘I’d better turn in again. What time do you want me up in the morning?’
‘Up to you. I’ve some business first thing.’
‘What sort of business?’
‘Shaking the cage. I reckon Kerridge is getting a bit rattled. He thought he’d got Boyle out of the way, but Boyle’s been more resourceful than he expected. Now Boyle’s slipping out of our net, and Morton might’ve had something up his sleeve that puts Kerridge in the frame. Squeaky bum time.’
‘So what are you going to do?’
‘Just have a chat with a couple of people. Set some hares running. Increase Kerridge’s jitters a bit. If he’s rattled, he might start to make mistakes. He might also put a bit of pressure on Welsby to help him out. Maybe they’ll get careless and give us some of the harder evidence we need.’
‘Sounds a long shot.’
‘You know the game, sis. It’s all long shots. But you keep going, and once in a while something comes good.’
‘If you say so, Hugh. OK, I’ll see you when I see you in the morning. Then we can talk.’
‘A pleasure in store.’ For a moment, he remained unmoving in the doorway, and she thought that he might block her way. Then he eased himself back and gestured her past, with the air of someone holding open an imaginary door. But he remained half across the doorway, close enough to cause her some unease as she passed. Game-playing, she thought. Macho fucking game-playing.
‘Sleep well, sis.’
‘I plan to.’ She didn’t look back. ‘You do the same, Hugh.’ She closed and bolted the bedroom door behind her, then took the hard-backed chair from the dressing table and wedged it under the door handle. Hardly Fort Knox, but the best she could do.
She climbed back under the duvet and switched off the bedside lamp. The curtains on the bedroom window were cheap and flimsy, but there were no street lights on this side of the house and the darkness was complete. She lay listening to the tiny noises of the night – the click of a contracting radiator, settling woodwork, the faint skittering and cry of some animal outside. She had a sense, probably unfounded, that Salter was still out in the hallway, perhaps even listening at her door.
A word had lodged in her mind during her last exchange with Salter, and now it refused to be dispelled. Bait, she thought. That’s what I feel like. Bait in a fucking trap.
She lay staring blankly into the darkness, and it was a long time before sleep finally overtook her.
In the end, she slept fitfully, disturbed by fragments of dreams that melted into one another without ever gaining coherence – somebody pursuing her, something she had to do, something she’d left undone. Jake in the background, never quite glimpsed. She stirred two or three times in the darkness, each time half-convinced that someone else was in the room. She woke finally as the first grey light began to filter through the thin curtains.
She felt better than she had the previous night, but her body was still telling her it had consumed something more potent than a few glasses of Scotch. There was a dull ache behind her eyes, a sense of dislocation from the world.
She checked the plastic alarm clock on the bedside table. Seven twenty. Outside, there was a flurry of birdsong, somewhere the burr of a passing car. She pulled herself upright and listened.
There was movement inside the house, easily audible through the flimsy internal walls. Someone moving about in the kitchen. The thump of a cupboard door, the rumble of a boiling kettle, the metallic twang of a pop-up toaster. Salter preparing for the day, getting ready for whatever business he had planned.
She considered whether to go out and speak to him, but thought it best to wait. She wasn’t clear whether he was intending to conduct his business, whatever it might be, from the house or whether he’d be going out. If he went out, she’d have the opportunity to look round the place, look for any clues as to what his game might be. Try to get some idea what the hell was going on.
Her first question was soon answered. She heard the sounds of Salter rinsing a plate in the kitchen sink, footsteps padding along the hallway. She moved quietly across the room and slipped back beneath the duvet.
Salter had paused outside her door, and she heard him gently pressing down on the door handle. She held her breath, wondering if he would try to force his way in but, having silently tried the door, he released the handle. She heard his footsteps retreating down the hall, a brief pause, and then the dull thud as the front door closed. Some distance away, she heard the gentle roar of a car engine starting.
Grabbing a selection of the clothes Salter had provided, she removed the chair and unbolted the bedroom door. As she stepped into the hallway she froze, startled by a murmur of voices from the living room. It took her a moment to realize that it was nothing more than the television news. Did that mean Salter would be returning soon?
There was no way of knowing, and she was pretty much past caring. She took a rapid and tepid shower in the poky bathroom
and dressed quickly. The clothes were not a bad fit – testament either to Salter’s precision or his over-intent observation of her figure. She ended up in a pair of jeans and a baggy T-shirt that were hardly flattering, but suitably functional.
There was instant coffee in the kitchen cupboard and milk in the fridge. She prepared herself a drink to help clear her head and then, with the steaming mug in her hands, began to explore the bungalow more thoroughly.
It didn’t take long. The bungalow comprised nothing more than the five rooms she’d noted the previous evening. The place looked as if it had been recently but cheaply redecorated and refurnished. There was a free-standing cupboard in the sitting room, but it contained only a pile of old newspapers – from about six months before, she noted – and a couple of board games. There was a second cupboard under the television containing a handful of DVDs, most of them freebies from some Sunday newspaper or other.
The kitchen was no more fruitful. There were plenty of cupboards in the kitchen units, but they contained nothing more interesting than the usual range of kitchen utensils, crockery and glasses. Everything bought as a job lot from some discount homeware store. The fridge, freezer and cupboards were well-stocked with food. As Salter had implied, it was all instant meals and staples, most of it tinned, dried or frozen. Stuff designed to have a long shelf life.
Salter had left her a scribbled note on the kitchen table. Help yourself to whatever you want. Back mid-morning. Stay in the house.
She soon discovered that the last instruction was un necessary. She tried the back door, hoping for a breath of air. It was firmly deadlocked, with no sign of a key. She made her way through the hall and tried the front door. Deadlocked too.
It had already begun to occur to her that the building was remarkably secure. Heavy-duty deadlocks on the front and back doors, all the windows similarly secured. As far as she could judge, the windows themselves were toughened glass.
Not so much a safe house, then. More a sodding prison. Superficially, the bungalow resembled a badly appointed holiday home. Below the surface, it was something odder. It wasn’t just the locks that were seriously solid. The front and back doors themselves had apparently been reinforced, with metal plating and strengthened hinges.
The Agency’s safe houses were anonymous places, normally tucked quietly away in some suburban estate. They had a degree of electronic protection – high quality but discreet alarms, CCTV, links to local police – and reasonable domestic-style security. But not stuff like this – industrial locks, reinforced panels. Nothing that would attract attention.
This felt more like private enterprise. The centre of operations for a big-time dealer, maybe. The sort of place you might need to keep safe, not just from the police, but from your immediate competitors. She couldn’t imagine this house being run by the officious busies who populated Professional Standards. Was Salter telling the truth about Welsby? Could she trust Salter at all? The truth was that there was no one she could rely on. Not down here. Not away from Liam.
God. Liam. True to form, she’d managed again to forget all about him. He’d still be wondering what the hell had happened to her. She glanced around, but there was no phone in the bungalow. Her own mobiles were inoperable after she’d destroyed the SIM cards. She couldn’t imagine that Salter would have left a mobile handily hanging around for her use.
Shit. There was nothing she could do right now. All she could do was get in touch with him as soon as she got out of this – whatever that might mean. She’d have a lifetime of apologies ahead of her.
Her frustration growing, she returned to the front door, wondering if there was any possibility that the key might be concealed somewhere in its vicinity. Her eyes wandered upwards and she noticed, for the first time, a small trapdoor set into the ceiling, positioned to provide access to the loft space above.
What would be up there? Probably not much. Some dust and a few spiders. The usual detritus that accumulates in an old house over the years. Bits of discarded junk, old papers, forgotten toys.
There was no rational reason for her to explore it. Except that she had nothing else to do and was being driven slowly crazy by the well-secured walls around her. She hesitated for only a moment longer, and then fetched one of the high-backed chairs from the kitchen.
Standing on the chair, she was able to pull open the trap-door. Like the rest of the bungalow, its initial appearance was deceptive. It was a much more sophisticated affair than it looked, the trapdoor counter-weighted so that it opened smoothly, an aluminium folding ladder tucked neatly behind it. She pulled down the ladder, noting that it seemed well-maintained and lubricated. This was a space that had been used relatively recently.
Intrigued now, she returned the chair to the kitchen and made her way cautiously up the ladder until she was able to peer into the space above. At first sight, it looked unremarkable – just a small area of unused space below the pitch of the roof. Given the quality of the trapdoor, she had half-expected that the loft would have been adapted for regular use. But there was no real floor – just the usual joists with the plasterboard ceiling nailed beneath them. She would have to be careful. If she slipped off the joists, she would most likely just crash through the plasterboard.
She noticed that, although there was no floor, a number of doubled planks had been positioned across the joists to provide a safer route across the loft. Not just a temporary measure, either. The planks were neatly nailed into place.
There was some light up here – lines of sunlight creeping through gaps below the roofline – but it remained gloomy. She looked around and found a light switch. As she pressed it, the space was flooded with light from two large spots set in the corners of the roof. Again, she thought, not what you’d expect from your average loft. Looking around, she saw that, otherwise, her earlier expectations had been largely fulfilled. There were various items scattered about the attic, most of them nothing more than discarded junk. A rusting child’s tricycle, a discarded toaster, an old television. Beyond that, there were a number of cardboard shoe boxes filled with papers. She made her way carefully along the planks towards these, hoping that their contents might be of interest.
But they were simply more rubbish, sheet after sheet of old domestic bank statements, all at least ten years old. She scanned a handful briefly, but the name of the account holder meant nothing to her and the amounts in the account were small. She flicked quickly through the rest of the boxes, but the papers were of a similar type and vintage – old utilities bills, tax returns, bits and pieces of formal correspondence. All of it unremarkable, the kind of thing you might find in any household. Stored up here by some previous occupant in the hope that it might come in useful someday. It clearly never had.
She straightened up, careful to keep her balance on the narrow planks. There didn’t seem to be much else. This was another wild goose chase, of no value except to waste another half-hour of the endless morning. If nothing else, she’d enjoy Salter’s reaction to the mess she’d made of these new clothes in the small time he’d been out of the house.
There remained one interesting question, though. Why had someone installed that expensive-looking entrance and then taken the trouble to put the planks down? Her eyes followed the path of the planks across the attic. They led to an area at the far gable end, lost in the gloom. Her immediate guess was that the planks led to the house’s water tank, although she couldn’t see it in the dim light. Still, while she was here, there was no harm in looking.
As she drew closer, she realized that the arrangement was more professionally constructed than was at first apparent. The planks broadened to a reinforced platform. What she had taken to be the gable wall was a neatly made plasterboard screen, painted a dark colour so as to be invisible to anyone taking a casual look into the attic.
Examining the panelling more closely, she saw it was designed to slide back on stainless-steel runners set at ground level and head height. Like the loft entrance, the structure had been well mai
ntained and drew back easily. She opened it to its full extent, and peered to see what lay behind.
At first, she was disappointed. Immediately behind the panel was a steel water tank, pipes leading off to the bungalow’s plumbing and central heating. She craned her head to look further around the panel. Behind the tank was something much more interesting.
It was a large industrial safe, a squat cast-iron monstrosity that lurked almost threateningly in the semi-darkness. The platform beneath it had been reinforced to ensure that it would take the weight. Christ knew how it had been brought up there. She could imagine only that it had been lifted by crane and brought in through the roof. Hardly an inconspicuous activity, although maybe the kind of thing you could disguise as part of a rebuilding or renovation exercise.
Why in God’s name was it here? Whatever else it might be, it clearly wasn’t a repository for superannuated utilities bills and bank statements. She climbed past the screen and examined the safe more closely. It was the kind of object you might find in a large retail store. Somewhere to keep the day’s cash takings.
She tried the handle, with no expectation that it would move. Sure enough, the safe was firmly locked, requiring both keys and a combination number to open. Not much else was likely to provide access, short of maybe a piledriver. So what was in there? It could be anything. Cash. Drugs. Arms. Perhaps all three. Certainly nothing that you’d expect to find in a domestic setting. Or, for that matter, in one of the Agency’s safe houses. Which raised the question of what this place really was. And what Salter was up to.
She spent a few more minutes searching the area around the safe for any clues to its contents, but found nothing. But then, her eyes now accustomed to the darkness, she noticed something else. There were wires running alongside the safe, just below the bottom of the roof. In itself, there was nothing remarkable about that. The attic space was strewn with domestic wiring, grey cables snaking across the plasterboard, tacked to the rafters, powering the ceiling lights and electrical points in the rooms below.