Текст книги "The Surrogate"

Автор книги: Tania Carver

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3

Marina Esposito stepped slowly into the room, looked around. She was nervous. Not because of what she was about to do particularly, but because of the public admission. Because once she had taken that step, her life would be changed, redefined for ever.

The room was large, the walls painted in light pastels, the floor wood. It had that warm yet simultaneously cool feel that so many fitness centres had. She had tried to slip quietly into the changing room, not engage anyone with eye contact and certainly not in conversation, get changed as quickly as possible, hoping her body wouldn’t mark her out as one of them. She had heard them and seen them, though, talking and laughing together, and knew instinctively she would never be part of that. Never be one of them. No matter what circumstances dictated. Now she saw the same women in here and her heart sank. Hair piled up or tied back, trainers or bare feet. All wearing brightly coloured, almost dayglo leotards and co-ordinated joggers. Full make-up. Marina was wearing grey jogging bottoms, a black T-shirt, old trainers. She felt dowdy and dull.

Someone stopped behind her. ‘You lost?’

‘Yes,’ she said, turning. She tried to speak, but the words wouldn’t emerge.

‘Pre-natal yoga?’ the woman said, seeing the mat under Marina’s arm.

Marina nodded.

The woman smiled. ‘That’s us, then.’ She patted her stomach. It was much bigger than Marina’s. Taut and hard, the bright orange leotard stretched tight across it. It protruded proudly over the waistline of her rolled-down joggers. Marina could see the distended navel through the material, like the knot of a balloon. The woman smiled like being that size and shape was the most natural thing in the world. She looked at Marina’s stomach.

Oh God, Marina thought. Looking at stomachs. That’s how I have to greet people from now on.

‘How far gone?’

‘Just . . . three months. Four.’

The woman looked into the room. ‘Starting early, that’s good.’

Marina felt she had to reciprocate. ‘What . . . what about you?’

The woman laughed. ‘Any day now, from the size of it. Eight months. I’m Caroline, by the way.’

‘Marina.’

‘Nice to meet you. Well, come on in. We don’t bite.’

Caroline walked into the room, Marina following. Marina sized the other woman up, looking at her face rather than her stomach for the first time. Mid-thirties, perky, cheerful. Probably a housewife from somewhere like Lexden. Kept herself in good shape, filled her days by lunching with friends, going to the gym, the hairdresser’s and the nail salon, shopping. Not Marina’s type of person at all. Caroline stopped to talk to other women, greeting them like old friends. All of them scooped from the same mould as her. Brightly coloured and round. Giggling and laughing. Marina felt she had walked into a Teletubbies convention.

She wanted to turn round, walk out.

But at that moment the instructor arrived and closed the door behind her, cutting off her escape route.

‘See we have a new member . . .’ The instructor beckoned Marina into the room.

Caroline waved her over and Marina, trying to disguise her reluctance, crossed the room, unfurled her mat and waited for the session to start.

There. She had done it. Admitted it in public.

She was pregnant.

4

Phil couldn’t speak.

He looked at his two junior officers. They seemed similarly dumbstruck as the enormity of the statement sank in.

There’s every chance that this baby is still alive . . .

‘Shit . . .’ Phil found his voice.

‘Quite,’ said Nick Lines. He looked back at the bed. ‘Now if you’ll excuse me?’

Phil nodded and ushered his team away from the bedroom, leaving the pathologist to carry on with his job. The three of them still didn’t speak.

He felt his chest tightening, his pulse quickening. He could hear the blood pumping round his body, feel the throb of his heart like a huge metronome, marking off the seconds, a ticking clock telling him to get moving, get this baby found . . .

He called over one of the uniformed officers in the living room. ‘Right, I want this whole—’ He stopped. ‘Liz, is it?’

She nodded.

‘Right. Liz.’ He spoke fast but clearly. Urgent but not panicking. ‘I want this whole block of flats searched. Everyone questioned, don’t take no for an answer, draft in as many as you can on door-to-door work.You know what I mean: did anyone hear anything, see anyone suspicious. Someone must have done. Use your instincts, be guided by what they say. I noticed the flats have all got video entry-phones. If someone got in, they must have been buzzed in. And seen. And I want the area combed. Do it thoroughly but do it quickly.’ He dropped his voice. ‘You know what we’re looking for.’

The officer nodded, went away to begin the search.

‘Boss . . .’

Phil turned, looked at Anni. She was the highest-ranking woman on his team and he had requested for her to be there. She was trained to deal with rape cases, abused children, any situation where a male presence might be a barrier to uncovering the truth. But that wasn’t why Phil wanted her. She had an intelligence and intuition that he had rarely encountered. And despite the ever-changing hair and the impish smile, she could be tougher than the best when needed to be. Even tougher than him. For all of that, he could forgive the affected way she spelled her first name.

‘Yes, Anni?’

‘What about Julie Simpson?’

Phil looked around, mentally trying to think through what must have happened. ‘If it’s all about . . .’ he gestured towards the bedroom, ‘then I’m afraid she was just wrong place, wrong time.’

Anni nodded, as if he had confirmed her thoughts. Then frowned. ‘Shouldn’t we keep an open mind?’

‘Course.’ He felt the blood pumping once more, his internal clock telling him time was running out. ‘But . . .’

‘So was this party a baby shower, then?’ said Clayton.

Anni looked at him. ‘You’d know about them, would you?’

Clayton reddened. ‘My sister. She had one . . .’

Despite the situation, Anni smiled.

Phil cut their repartee short. ‘Right. Let’s think. So Claire Fielding was having a baby shower. If she, or her baby, was the one deliberately targeted, then whoever did this must have thought she was alone. Maybe they miscounted or something.’ He sighed, trying to control his heart rate. ‘But just in case it’s anything to do with Julie Simpson, get the Birdies to follow up on her. Talk to the husband. See if he knows who else was here.’

The Birdies. DC Adrian Wren and DS Jane Gosling. Inevitable they got paired together. But no one was laughing about their names at the moment.

‘You think it’s about the baby, boss?’ Anni again. ‘He’s taken it, hasn’t he? Whoever did this.’

‘Like I said, not jumping to conclusions, it seems the likeliest explanation.’

Anni looked into the bedroom once more. ‘D’you think it’s still alive?’

Phil sighed. ‘Nick reckons it is, so we have to assume the same; bear that in mind.’

‘Until we find out otherwise,’ said Clayton.

‘Yeah, thanks, Dr Doom.’ Clayton had the potential to be an exceptional police detective, Phil knew. He had made no secret of his ambition, but despite what he thought and told people, he wasn’t the finished article yet. And sometimes his comments, as well as irritating Phil, betrayed the fact. ‘I’m aware of that.’

‘Putting aside how fucked up this is,’ said Anni, stepping between them, ‘I think there’s another possibility we should consider.’

‘That it’s him, you mean?’ said Clayton.

Phil knew what they were both talking about, glanced round to see who was in earshot, bent in close to them. ‘Not here. You know what walls have got, and it’s not ice cream.’ He sighed, ordering his thoughts, willing his training to kick in, take over. He could still hear his heart beating, each beat signalling inactivity that took him further away from catching the perpetrator.

‘Right. A plan. Anni, chain of evidence. Accompany the bodies through the post-mortems. See what you can find there. Get Nick to prioritise. Don’t let him fob you off. I’m sure the budget for this one’ll get upgraded.’

She nodded.

‘Now. Claire Fielding’s background. Who loved her, who hated her. Friends, family, work colleagues, the lot. Her boyfriend, Clayton, what was it? Brian . . .’

‘Ryan. Ryan Brotherton.’

‘Right. Let’s see what we can get on him, then you and me will pay him a visit. See what he has to say, where he was when he should have been here.’

Clayton nodded.

‘Now—’

Whatever Phil was about to say was cut short by the sharp ringing of a phone. Everyone stopped what they were doing, looked around at each other. An eerie stillness fell, disturbed only by the insistent sound. Like someone had just broken through at a seance. The living trying to contact the dead.

Phil saw the phone in the living room and motioned to Anni. Whoever it was would be expecting a female voice. Anni crossed the room, picked it up. She hesitated, put it to her ear.

‘H-hello.’

The whole room waited, watching Anni. She felt their stares, turned away from them.

‘Can I help you?’ She kept her voice calm and courteous.

They waited. Anni listened. ‘Afraid not,’ she said eventually. ‘Who is this, please? . . . I see. Could I ask you to stay on the line, please?’

She held the receiver to her chest, cupping it with her hand. She called Phil over. ‘All Saints Primary. Where Claire Fielding worked. They’re wondering why she hasn’t turned up for work.’ She mouthed the next words. ‘What should I tell them?’

Phil didn’t like handing out death messages to work colleagues before close relatives had been informed.

‘Have they spoken to Julie Simpson’s husband yet?’

‘Don’t think so. He would have told them what was going on.’

‘Good. Tell them we’ll send someone round to talk to them this morning. But don’t say anything more.’

‘Why not?’

‘I think next of kin should know first.’

Anni nodded, went back on the phone.

Phil turned to Clayton, his voice lowered so it wouldn’t carry down the phone line. ‘Okay. Like I said, the Birdies can follow up on Julie Simpson. Now, the media’ll be here soon. Before we go, I’ll call Ben Fenwick. Get him down here to deal with them.’

‘King Cliché rides again,’ said Clayton.

‘Indeed,’ agreed Phil, not irritated by this comment of Clayton’s, ‘but he’s good at that kind of stuff and they seem to like him. Plays well on screen. They’re going to be on our side with this one – at least for now – so we’ll sort out our approach in the meantime. And find out if Claire Fielding’s parents live in the area. Get someone over to talk to them.’

‘Shouldn’t we get the DCI to deliver the death message, boss? All PR to him.’

‘Yeah, but he might want to take along a camera crew. See who’s at the station. Get someone with a suitable rank to do it. Draw straws if you have to.’

‘Yes, boss.’ Clayton was writing everything down.

Anni came off the phone. ‘We’d better get someone round there soon as. They’re not going to keep a lid on this for long. And it was a baby shower.’

‘How d’you know?’

‘Lizzie, that’s Lizzie Stone who just phoned, knew Claire was having a get-together with friends last night. Mostly other teachers, I think.’

‘Right,’ said Phil, thinking on the spot. ‘Can’t remember who said this, but it’s true. My mind will change when the facts change. So. Anni, get the Birdies sorted. Adrian chain of evidence, Jane still sticks with what she was doing. You get yourself round to All Saints, take as many spare units as you can. Statements, the works. Separate them, don’t give them a chance to collude. I want to know exactly what happened at that party last night. Get Millhouse up and running as gatekeeper for the investigation back at base. And get him to give the computer system a pounding. We’re going to need extra bodies. DCI Fenwick’ll sanction that, I’m sure, because I want the Susie Evans and Lisa King cases re-examined with a fine-toothed comb. Any similarities, no matter how small, they get flagged and logged. And get uniforms to check CCTV for the whole area, inside these flats and out, registration plates, the lot. Everything referenced and cross-referenced. Right?’

The other two nodded.

‘Any questions?’

Neither had any. He looked at them both. They dealt in murder and violent crime and he had hand-picked them himself. There was mutual trust between them and he hoped that look he had caught earlier wasn’t going to undermine that. He examined their faces, saw only determination in their eyes. The need to catch a double killer and a possibly living child. None of them would be going home any time soon. Or going out. He felt a pang of guilt, wondered how that would go down. Could guess.

He pushed the thought out of his mind. Deal with it later.

‘Right,’ he said. ‘Let’s go. We’ve got work to do.’

He strode out of the apartment as quickly as possible.

5

Phil stood outside the apartment block, ripping apart the Velcro fastenings of his paper suit, hunting for his phone. He thought of Anni’s words once more: I mean, this is Colchester . . .

Colchester. Last outpost of Essex before it became Suffolk. If heaven, as David Byrne once sang, was a place where nothing ever happened, then heaven and Colchester had a lot in common. But as Phil knew only too well, something, like nothing, could happen anywhere.

He looked round. Claire Fielding’s flat was in Parkside Quarter, sandwiched between the river, the Dutch Quarter and Castle Park. The Dutch Quarter: all winding streets and alleyways of sixteenth-century and Edwardian houses stuck between the high street and the river. An urban village, the town’s self-appointed boho area, complete with cobblestones, corner pubs and even its own gay club. Parkside Quarter was a modern development of townhouses and apartment blocks, all faux wooden towers and shuttered windows, designed to fit sympathetically alongside the older buildings but just looking like a cheap toytown version of them.

He was on a footpath by the river, where weeping willows shaded out the sun, leaving dappled shadows all around. It took joggers and baby-carriage-pushing mothers to and from Castle Park. On the opposite bank was a row of quaint old terraced cottages. Up the steps and beyond was North Station Road, the main link for commuters from the rail station to the town centre. It seemed so mundane, so normal. Safe. Happy.

But today the Dutch Quarter would be silent. There would be no joggers or mothers along the footpath. Already white-suited officers were on their hands and knees beginning a search of the area. He looked down at the ground. He hoped their gloves were strong. Discarded Special Brew cans, plastic cider bottles were dotted around on the ground like abstract sculptures. The odd used condom. Fewer needles than there used to be but, he knew, no less drug-taking.

He looked up to the bridge, saw others peering from their safe, happy world into his. Commuters carrying cappuccinos, mobiles and newspapers on their way up the hill were stopping to stare down, the blue and white crime-scene tape attracting their attention like ghoulish magpies dazzled by silver.

He ignored them, concentrated on getting out of his paper suit. As he did so, he caught a glimpse of himself in the window of the downstairs flat. Tall, just over six foot, and his body didn’t look too bad, no beer gut or man boobs, but then he kept himself in shape. Not because he was particularly narcissistic, but his job entailed long hours, takeaway food and, if he wasn’t careful, too much alcohol. And it would be all too easy to succumb, as so many of his colleagues had done, so he forced himself to keep up the gym membership, go running, cycling. Someone had suggested five-a-side, get fit, make new friends, have a laugh and a few beers afterwards. He’d turned it down. It wasn’t for him. Not that he was unsociable. He was just more used to his own company.

He tried not to conform to the stereotypical image of a police detective, believing that suits, crewcuts and shiny black shoes were just another police uniform. He didn’t even own a tie, and more often than not wore a T-shirt instead of a formal shirt. His dark brown hair was spiky and quiffed, and he wore anything on his feet rather than black shoes. Today he had teamed the jacket and waistcoat of a pin-striped suit with dark blue Levis, a striped shirt and brown boots.

But his eyes showed the strain he was under. A poet’s eyes, an ex-girlfriend had once said. Soulful and melancholic. He just thought they made him look miserable. Now they had black rings under them.

He breathed deep, rubbing his chest as he did so. Luckily the panic attack he had felt in the flat hadn’t progressed. That was something. Usually when they hit it felt like a series of metal bands wrapping themselves round his chest, constricting him, pulling in tighter, making it harder and harder for him to breathe. His arms and legs would shake and spasm.

It was something he had suffered since he was a child. He had put it down to his upbringing. Given up for adoption by a woman he never knew, he was bounced from pillar to post in various children’s homes and foster homes as he grew up. Never fitting in, never settling. He didn’t like to dwell on those times.

Eventually he was sent to the Brennan household and the panic attacks tailed off. Don and Eileen Brennan. He wasn’t one for melodrama, but he really did believe that couple had saved his life. Given him a sense of purpose.

Given him a home.

And they loved him as much as he loved them. So much so that they eventually adopted him.

But the panic attacks were still there. Every time he thought he had them beat, had his past worked out, another one would hit and remind him how little progress he had made.

Don Brennan had been a policeman. He believed in fairness and justice. Qualities he tried to instil in the children he fostered. So Don couldn’t have been more pleased than when his adopted son followed him into the force.

And Phil loved it. Because he believed that alongside justice and fairness should be order. Not rules and regulations, but order. Understanding. Life, he believed, was random enough and police work helped him define it, gave it shape, form and meaning. Solving crimes, ascribing reasons for behaviour, finding the ‘why’ behind the deed was the fuel that kept his professional engine running. He was fairly confident he could bring order to any kind of chaos.

He turned away from the window. Do it now, he told himself. Put yourself in order.

He would start with the two previous murders.

6

Lisa King and Susie Evans. The two previous murder victims. Phil pulled those two names from his mental Rolodex, focused on them. He had seen their faces so many times. Staring out at him from the incident room whiteboard, imprinted on his memory.

Lisa King was a twenty-six-year-old married estate agent. She had arranged a viewing of a vacant property on the edge of the Greenstead area of town. She had never made it out of that house. She was discovered later that day by one of her colleagues. Laid out on the floor of the house, drugged, brutally knifed. Her stomach ripped to pieces. Her unborn child mutilated, killed along with her.

There had been a huge media circus and Phil and his team had doggedly followed every line of inquiry, no matter how tenuous or tedious. The appointment had been made over the phone, from a cheap, unregistered pay-as-you-go mobile bought from a branch of Asda with cash. Lisa had taken all the details herself; the client was hers. A woman’s name had been given, according to the file in the office. No such woman existed.

Phil and his team had tried their hardest but failed to make any headway. No forensic evidence, no DNA, no eyewitnesses coming forward, no CCTV pictures. Nothing. It was as if the killer had materialised, murdered, then vanished into thin air.

Appeals had been made to the woman who had called the estate agent to come forward. She was promised protection, confidentiality, anything. Lisa’s husband had been brought in, questioned, and released. The usual informants, paid or otherwise, came up with nothing. Everyone was talking about it; no one was saying anything.

Then, two months later, Susie Evans was murdered.

A single parent living in a council flat in New Town. Pregnant with her third child and, as she had laughingly said to her friends in the pub, between boyfriends. A part-time prostitute and barmaid, she hadn’t made such a sympathetic victim as Lisa King, but Phil and his team treated her exactly the same. He didn’t hold with the view that one life was somehow worth more than another. They were all equal, he thought, when they were dead.

Her body was found in a friend’s flat. She had asked the friend if she could borrow it as she had a client who was going to pay her handsomely. Her eviscerated, broken body had been dumped in the bath, the walls, floor and ceiling covered in arterial blood sprays, the baby cut out, left on the floor beside her dead mother.

A door-to-door had been mounted, but it was an area that was traditionally unsympathetic to the police. A mobile station had been set up on the estate but no one had volunteered any information. Again there was no DNA, no forensic evidence and certainly no CCTV.They had speculated on many things: that it might have been a particularly twisted punter with a pregnant woman fetish. Even that it had been an abortion gone horribly wrong. And, most worryingly, that it was the same person who had killed Lisa King and his crimes were escalating. But the investigation went nowhere. And they were left with just a dead mother and child.

Then nothing for another two months. Until now.

Phil took out his mobile. Eileen Brennan, worried that he was in his thirties and unmarried, had been trying to fix him up with Deanna, a friend’s daughter, a divorcee the same age. They had never met, and weren’t particularly keen to, but had agreed on a date to keep the two older women happy. This evening. He had to phone her and, with not too much reluctance, call it off.

He had the number dialled, was ready to put the call through, when his phone rang. Grateful for the diversion, he answered it.

‘DI Brennan.’

DCI Ben Fenwick. His superior officer. ‘Sir,’ said Phil.

‘On my way over now. Just wanted a quick chat beforehand. ’The voice strong and authoritative, equally at home in front of the cameras at a news conference or telling a joke to an appreciative audience in an exclusive golf clubhouse.

‘Good, sir. Let me tell you what we’ve found.’ Phil gave him the details, aware all the time of the missing baby, the clock still ticking inside him. He was pleased the rubberneckers on the bridge couldn’t hear him. He hoped there were no lip-readers in the crowd. Hid his mouth just in case.

‘Oh God,’ said Ben Fenwick, then offered to deal with the media as Phil knew he would. It wasn’t just that he never missed an opportunity to get his face on TV; he had so many media contacts he ensured the story would be presented in a way that would benefit the investigation.

‘Sounds to me like we’ve got a serial. What do you think? Am I right?’ Fenwick’s voice was tight, grim.

‘Well, we’ve still got the party aspect to pursue, the boyfriend to question . . .’

‘Gut feeling?’

‘Yeah. A serial and a baby kidnapper.’

‘Wonderful. Bad to worse.’ He sighed. It came down the phone as a ragged electronic bark. ‘I mean, a serial killer. In Colchester. These things just don’t happen. Not here.’

‘That has been mentioned, sir. A few times. I’m sure they said something similar up the road in Ipswich a couple of years ago.’

A serial killer had targeted prostitutes in the red-light area of the Suffolk town. He had been caught, but not before he had murdered five women.

Another sigh. ‘True. But why? And why here?’

‘I’m sure they said that too.’

‘Quite. Look. This is a priority case. God knows how long we’ve got to catch this bastard and get that baby, but we’ve got to step up.You’re going to need a bit of help.’

‘How d’you mean, sir?’

‘Different perspective, that kind of thing. Psychological input. Profile.’

‘I thought you didn’t go for that sort of thing.’

‘I don’t. Not personally. But the Detective Super’s been on the phone from Chelmsford. Thinks it would be helpful. Sanctioned the money too. So there we are. Another weapon in the arsenal and all that.’

‘Who did you have in mind?’ A shiver ran through Phil, as if he had just plugged his fingers into a wall socket. He had an idea of what Fenwick was about to say next. Hoped he was wrong.

‘Someone with a bit of specialist knowledge, Phil. And I know you’ve worked with her before.’

Her. Phil knew exactly who he was talking about. His chest tightened again, but this wasn’t a panic attack. Not exactly.

‘Marina Esposito,’ said Fenwick. ‘Remember her?’

Of course Phil remembered her.

‘I know it all ended rather unfortunately last time—’ Fenwick didn’t get to finish his sentence.

Phil gave a bitter laugh. ‘Bit of an understatement.’

‘Yes,’ said Fenwick, undaunted. ‘But by all accounts a cracking forensic psychologist, don’t you think? Or at least as far as they go. And, you know, what happened aside, she got us a result.’

‘She did,’ said Phil. ‘She was good.’ And an even better lover, he thought.

He felt his chest tightening again at his own words, tried to ignore it. He sighed. He remembered the case well. How could he not?

Gemma Hardy was in her mid-twenties, a dentist’s receptionist who lived in a shared flat in the Dutch Quarter. She had friends and a regular boyfriend. Life was good for Gemma Hardy, she was happy. But that was all about to change. Because Gemma had also attracted a stalker.

At first it was just texts, then letters. Love letters, dark and twisted, the writer telling her that she was the only girl, his true love.That he would kill anyone who got in their way.That he would kill her rather than let her go with someone else.

Scared, she contacted the police. Phil was handed the case. He and his team went through Gemma’s life intimately. They found no one, nothing that could possibly point to the perpetrator. They arranged for her flat to be watched. Saw no one apart from her friends and boyfriend. They were getting nowhere, she was still terrified. Then someone suggested bringing in a psychologist.

Marina Esposito, a lecturer in psychology at nearby Essex University, was called in to consult. She specialised in deviant sexuality. The case was tailor-made for her. Along with Phil she examined every aspect of Gemma’s life, and they found their stalker: Martin Fletcher. Her flatmate’s boyfriend. He was arrested and confessed.

And that should have been the end of it. But it wasn’t. Not for Marina.

‘I doubt she’d do it, to tell you the truth, sir.’

‘I thought a bit of persuading, perhaps.’ Fenwick sounded surprised.

Phil couldn’t believe what he was hearing. ‘Persuading? Last time she worked with us she nearly died. Severed all links.You sure you want her?’

‘Super mentioned her personally. Good a place as any to start with. And if ever a case was right up her alley it’s this one.’ Fenwick’s voice changed gear then, moved from politician to friend, counsellor. Phil didn’t trust him when he did that. ‘Leave it to me, Phil. I’ll talk to her, see what I can do.’

Phil closed his eyes. Marina was there. He shook his head. Marina was always there. He sighed. Fenwick was right. Whatever else had happened, she was the best. And he needed the best on this case. ‘Well, good luck with that.’

‘Thank you.’ Phil couldn’t tell if Fenwick was being sarcastic or not.

There was a silence on the other end of the line. Then: ‘Are you sure you can handle this, Phil?’

Phil was jolted back. ‘Don’t see why not. I’ve been CIO on high-profile cases before.’

‘That’s not what I meant.’ Fenwick’s voice was quiet. Solicitous.

Phil couldn’t speak for a few seconds as he absorbed the impact of Fenwick’s words. He knows.The bastard knows.

His heart started to beat faster again. It’s the case, he told himself, the baby, the seconds ticking away. That’s all it is, not . . . ‘Yes, sir, I can handle it.’

‘Good. Then I’ll talk to her. Because we’re going to need all the help we can get on this one. There’s a budget for this; it’s been upgraded as high priority so we don’t need to worry about that aspect. Extra manpower too. Personpower I should say. Let us not speak the language of dinosaurs in this department.’ He gave a snort.

Phil wasn’t listening. He had butterflies in his stomach.

‘Right. Well, we’d better get going. The clock’s ticking and all that. ’

‘Right you are, sir.’

Phil broke the connection. Stood staring at the phone, stunned at Fenwick’s words. But he didn’t have time to think about them now. He had another call to make.

Somehow it didn’t seem to matter too much.

Clayton emerged from the block of flats, joined him.

‘Ready, boss?’

‘Nearly,’ said Phil. He looked at Clayton, looked at his handset. Do it now. Get it over with.

‘Just got a call to make. Won’t be a moment.’

He walked away for privacy, dialled the number. Hoped Clayton was out of earshot.

It wasn’t good for morale to hear your boss get told off by his mum.