Alias

by Cari Hunter

  “Hey.” Pryce waits until I look up at her. “It’s not your fault. You’ve had a lot going on.”

  “Even before all this, I can’t have been a good aunt to them. I can’t have seen them for a year at least.”

  “Maybe you didn’t like them,” she says, and laughs as my eyes widen. “What? Kids aren’t for everyone. You’re not obliged to dote on the little buggers.”

  “I suppose not,” I say, slightly mollified. “I don’t think I’m very maternal.”

  “Me neither. Esther and I talked about having children, she was quite keen, but it never happened, and then—” She breaks off and coughs, clearing her throat. “Anyway, it never happened.”

  “Sorry,” I say, tongue-tied and awkward. “I didn’t mean to make…I know this is weird.”

  The headlight beam of a passing car flits across her face. She looks saddened and confused and tired. “It is,” she says. “Because I think you and I would be friends, were the circumstances not quite so—”

  “Fucked up?” I suggest.

  “Yes, that.”

  I open a Twix and offer her half. “When in doubt, fall back on chocolate.”

  “Hear, hear.” She toasts the notion with her bottle of water, and the car suddenly seems to have more air in it.

  “Should’ve planned ahead and brought a flask,” I say. “Chocolate without a brew is like Mel without Sue.”

  She nods. “Everything I know about rough puff pastry, I learned from those two.”

  The buzz of my phone prevents any further lamentations regarding the untimely demise of The Great British Bake Off. The caller ID shows Rob Reid, and I hold up an apologetic hand as I answer the call.

  “I hope you don’t mind, but I came over to yours this morning and pushed that paperwork through,” he says after a general exchange of pleasantries. “I actually knocked on, but there was no answer. Did you get it okay?”

  “Uh, no.” I stumble over my response, not comfortable with the idea of an unannounced visit. “No, I’ve been out all day.”

  “You must be an early bird. I was there at eight.” He sounds jocular, but there’s curiosity simmering beneath the surface, and I push further into the darkness of the back seat as if he might be able to see what I’m up to.

  “I had…I had a few things to do,” I say and then almost hit the roof when Pryce touches my knee.

  “You okay?” she mouths.

  I nod in pathetic little jerks, and she mimes taking a deep breath and chilling the fuck out. I follow her example, managing to steady my voice as I continue. “I can complete the paperwork this evening. When do you want to meet?”

  “Sooner rather than later. I’ve got SMIU pecking my head for preliminaries.”

  “Tomorrow?” I suggest. I don’t want him round at my flat again, so I come up with an alternative. “If it’s easier for you, we can meet near Belle Vue. There’s a sandwich shop on Corby Street with a couple of tables. I can be there for ten.”

  “Ten it is, then. Any problems with the forms, give me a bell.”

  “I will. Thanks.”

  He ends the call, and I slowly unpeel myself from the leather. “Fed rep,” I say to Pryce. “He made a surprise house call this morning.”

  She raises an eyebrow. “And you’re meeting him tomorrow?”

  “In public. I’m sure it’ll be fine.”

  “Did someone recommend him?”

  “Yes. Jez, my old partner.” I become more logical as I calm down. “Rob was probably just being thorough. He would’ve missed the post by the time we spoke last night, and he wants to move things along.”

  “Sounds reasonable,” she says, but I can tell by her hesitancy that she still harbours reservations, and I want to put her mind at rest.

  “How’s about I text you when we’re done? We could start going through the companies and names I found in my files.”

  “The colour-coded ones?”

  “Yes. I’ve not had a chance to do anything with them, but I’ve got all the copies at home. I could bring them—oh, aye up.” I nod toward number twenty-eight, where a teenage girl is dancing from foot to foot in the cold as she rings the bell. She’s just come out of the house two doors down. Pryce turns the key in the ignition, not enough to start the engine but enough to lower the passenger side window. A minute passes, and the girl rings again and then raps the letter box for good measure. When the door opens, she’s all smiles, making a show of admiring the woman’s dress, wolf-whistling and demanding a twirl. The woman complies under duress, distracted by the wailing of a child somewhere behind her. She ushers the girl inside, glancing up and down the street before shutting the door.

  “Babysitter?” Pryce says.

  “Looks like. Either that or she’s very dolled up for a night in front of the telly.”

  Pryce checks her watch. It’s almost half seven. “I wonder who her date is.”

  “I wonder who she is,” I counter. “I’m pretty sure I don’t know her, and Jo only tended to hang around with me and Krzys.”

  “Colleague? Someone Jo was moved to work alongside?”

  “Sounds feasible. Shall we see where she goes and then call it a night?”

  Pryce nods and closes her window against the freezing air. Condensation is forming, along with a frost, but we can’t clear it without running the engine. My toes and fingers are starting to go numb, and I can see her shivering, puffs of white marking every exhalation.

  “Not like this in the films, is it?” I shove my uncasted hand under my bum to try to warm it. “They always have hot drinks and burgers and witty repartee.”

  She hugs her arms across her chest. “No mention of frostbite, DVTs, or needing a wee.”

  I laugh. “Do you need a wee?”

  “I’m getting there.”

  “Yeah, me too.”

  She catches my eye in the rearview mirror. “I’m not proud. I’d nip behind a bush if there was one.”

  I’m not proud either—I grew up running wild on a farm—but there’s a distinct lack of suitable vegetation on Newbury Road. “Stakeouts in Snowdonia must be so much simpler,” I say.

  “Unless I’m with Hughes. He’s far too easy to embarrass.”

  “You need to choose your mate wisely. I worked with Jez for four years, and we didn’t have any secrets left by the end.”

  “That’s the best kind of partner. I miss working response sometimes. Things change when you get to DS. People tend to be more on edge around you. They mind their Ps and Qs, y’know?”

  I rerun the conversation we’ve just had and realise my Ps and Qs deserted me some time ago. She’s still watching me in the mirror, reading me like a book.

  “Technically, I’m off duty,” she says.

  I smile at her. “And I’m well on the way to being sacked.”

  “Well, let’s see what we can do about that.” She settles into her seat again, notching it back so she can stretch out her legs. In the spirit of solidarity, I co-opt the whole of the rear, kicking off my boots and crossing my ankles. We’re sitting quietly, losing the feeling in our extremities, when a car pulls up outside twenty-eight. I drop my legs down and lean forward, all thoughts of full bladders and hypothermia abandoned. The woman comes out to meet it before anyone knocks on or beeps the horn. I can’t see the driver, but Pryce makes a rapid note of the reg, make, and model as the woman goes round to the passenger side. We start the engine and follow the car at a surreptitious distance, our heated windscreen making short work of the frost.

  It’s almost eight p.m., so the roads are quiet and it’s easy to keep the car in sight. Its driver treats the speed limit as optional, pushing forty down Hyde Road and forcing Pryce to do likewise. I can tell he’s pissing her off, and she slams on the brakes, swearing beneath her breath, as he jumps a red light.

  “Keep an eye on him,” she snarls, showing me why her team mind their manners around her.

  “He’s turning right after the bus depot,” I tell her, but she’s already on it, z
ipping round a Yaris and decelerating in the nick of time as she spots the camera in the bus lane. She makes the turn three cars behind him and visibly relaxes, lowering her speed and paying more attention to such niceties as changing gear without rattling my teeth.

  “Straight through these and then left at the next,” I say, and she glances sharply at me. I don’t understand why at first—the directions come so naturally—but the car we’re supposed to be following is still stationary at the red light. “Oh. Shit.”

  “Do you remember coming here?”

  I shake my head. I don’t remember. Not consciously, at any rate.

  The left turn has taken us off the main road, and we’re passing stretches of wasteland cleared for development that’s never happened. Warehouses and factories sit alongside the few remaining residential terraces, the oversized buildings darkening the streets and looming over their far smaller neighbours.

  “We’re taking a right onto Copthorne just past the next warehouse,” I say, a second before the car indicates. “But leave a good gap. He’ll be stopping.”

  She does as I advise, creeping around the corner and tucking in behind a van well shy of the houses the car parks outside. We’re farther away than we were on Newbury, but a single street lamp illuminates the woman as she walks to the middle house in a row of three. Its front door opens before she can knock, and the car pulls away the instant the door shuts behind her.

  “What the hell?” My skin is crawling, and I’m too hot. I tug on the zip of my coat, yanking at it when it catches on the material.

  “Hey, easy,” Pryce says. Then, sharper, “Alis, you’ll break it.”

  The zip jerks loose, and I tear my arms from the sleeves, shaking my cast free and balling the coat in my lap. She says nothing. She just passes me a fresh bottle of water and waits as I gulp half of it down.

  “Now you’re really going to need a wee,” she says, and I cough a laugh across the lip of the bottle. “Are you all right?”

  My ear is whistling like a kettle on the hob, but I nod and manage to tear my gaze from the house.

  “Yes. Sort of.”

  “Definitely a hit on this one, then?”

  “Definitely.” I shuffle across the seat until I can see the other side of the road. Two warehouses dominate the immediate view, with a third set back down a shared access road. They vary in size, but all look derelict. Most of the visible windows have been smashed or boarded, and signs warning off trespassers are nailed to the brickwork. One of the three houses opposite is similarly secured, but there are lights on in the other two.

  “That car wasn’t a taxi,” I say.

  “No, it didn’t have any ID plates on it.”

  “Friend giving her a lift?” I suggest, trying to err on the bright side.

  “Do you really believe that?” Pryce asks quietly.

  “No,” I say as a Range Rover stops in front of the address. The driver gets out, his raised coat collar covering half of his face. The car’s indicators flash as he clicks the central locking over his shoulder, and he heads straight for the end house. He raps twice on the door, sparking a flurry of movement behind the curtains of the middle house.

  “They’ve knocked those two through,” I say. “One entrance for the goods, one for the customers. If Jolanta came here with this woman, if she worked here, it might explain her being able to pay the medical bills.” I stare at the first door, putting myself on its front step. Is this why I’ve been here before? To do this? To be used like this? “Fucking hell,” I whisper.

  “Alis, it doesn’t necessarily mean—” Pryce chokes off and starts again. “It doesn’t have to mean what you’re thinking.”

  I’m not having it, not this time. I don’t need my hand patting. I want to storm in there, grab that man by the throat, and slam the answers out of him. I want to make someone pay for what they did to Jolanta and to me, and it may as well be him.

  “What else could it fucking mean?” I snap.

  Pryce doesn’t have a comeback, a safe, sensible explanation to account for my familiarity with this area.

  “I’m not sure,” she admits, and the sorrow in her reply feels like the worst kind of sucker punch. It also reminds me that none of this is her fault and I’ve no right to act like a twat.

  “I shouldn’t have bitten your head off. I’m sorry.”

  She nods in acknowledgement, but she’s distracted and obviously uncomfortable. She sips from her water and takes her time screwing the cap back.

  “Just say it,” I urge from the safety of the shadows.

  A couple more seconds pass, and then she says, “Was there anything in your files to suggest a promotion?”

  “What, like moving onto the other shift line? That implies I’d gained their trust, and my wage slips show a couple of hundred quid increase, so yeah, it was a promotion of sorts. Why do you ask?”

  The look she gives me holds a distinct element of pleading, as if she’s willing me to work it out myself. I shake my head, unable to help her.

  “Because there’s a chance you came here as management,” she says.

  “No! I wouldn’t do that! There’s no way I’d be involved in running this shit.” I feel the heat in my cheeks as I protest. It was bad enough picturing myself as one of the women in there, but to think I had a role in organising it is even worse. “No, no, definitely not,” I say as if that somehow closes the case—not guilty, Your Honour—despite the Swiss cheese holes in my memory and the evidence stacked to the contrary.

  Pryce is kind enough or astute enough not to argue. “We might be barking up the wrong tree anyway,” she says. “This is all supposition on our part.”

  She turns away, concentrating her attention on the house, and we sit without speaking, the air cooling around us. The man in the Range Rover leaves forty-five minutes later, his parking space taken by a younger Asian man in a BMW who strides back and forth on the pavement, smoking a cigarette and chattering into his phone. We instinctively shrink down in our seats, but he’s oblivious to our presence and unconcerned about his anonymity. A chunk of bling glints in his earlobe every time he changes direction beneath the streetlight, and he has a habit of sticking his hand down the front of his Superdry jogging bottoms. Pryce nudges her window open, but all we can hear is an excitable stream of Urdu peppered with English swearing. He finishes his fag and flicks the glowing butt into the gutter. He’s still on his phone as he enters the house, and his silhouette continues to pace at the upstairs window until someone turns out the light.

  “I think I get the general idea,” I say, bone-weary and heartsick. I want to go home and drink something strong while lying in the hottest bath I can run.

  Pryce, as usual, has no problem reading between the lines, but someone has to be the sensible one in this partnership.

  “We should stay until they shut up shop. You might see someone you recognise.”

  “I know,” I say, trying not to shiver too noticeably. “That’s what I’m afraid of.”

  * * *

  We never make it to the supper I’d promised. The fifth and final male to arrive at the Copthorne house doesn’t leave until eleven p.m., and our woman and another, younger woman are picked up shortly afterward. The lights in the houses stay on, but we decide to tail the car again to see where the second woman lives. When we get there, I scribble her address into Pryce’s notepad and reread our list of “Things Besides Prostitution That Might Be Happening at Copthorne.” It’s a very short list, and I wasn’t really being serious when I suggested the adult colouring book club.

  “Anywhere here will do,” I tell Pryce, dropping the pad into her bag. We’ve reached a compromise between my insistence on getting a bus home and her insistence on giving me a lift, by agreeing to a not-quite-doorstep service. If someone is keeping an eye on my flat, I’m not letting them see her car.

  “How far is it?” she asks, scanning the empty streets for ne’er-do-wells.

  “About two hundred metres around that corner.”
I brandish my cast. “If anyone tries anything, I’ll clock ’em with this.”

  She smiles, perhaps remembering that I spent four-plus years patrolling areas far less salubrious than Chorlton’s leafy suburbs.

  “Armed and moderately dangerous,” she says. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  “Smashing. I should be at yours for about twelve.”

  She drives away at a snail’s pace, monitoring my progress in her wing mirror until she turns in one direction and I head off in the other. I make it home without incident, collecting a large envelope from Reid en route to the loo. After a quick shower, I whack the central heating on full and get into bed, where I arrange the paperwork on a lap tray and scorch my mouth on a red-hot mug of coffee.

  Tapping out an irritated beat with my pen, I scowl at Reid’s questions. It’s far too late to be doing homework, but I won’t be able to tell him I spent most of the night on an illicit stakeout with a Welsh DS, so I start with the easy ones: career to date and undercover assignment brief. The rest are less straightforward, delving into the nitty-gritty of my relationship with Jo—“include specific dates and times”—and the events leading to and immediately following the crash. I stick to my pre-established party line, providing a sketchy overview of an unintentional romance, linking my deception of Wallace to my impropriety, and falling back on the amnesia where necessary. It makes for frustrating reading, but it’s the best I can do at short notice, and I’m burying my head into the right dip on my pillow when I spot the message light blinking on my home phone.

  “Crap.”

  I drag myself back into the cold and slap a hand on “play.” It’s Wallace, who’s caught the FWIN for the second break-in and wants to know all about it. I text him a rough synopsis, assuring him that I’m fine, it was probably kids, and there was no harm done. Then I lie awake brooding over how he found out about it, because hundreds of FWINs are issued by MMP each day, and I didn’t highlight on mine the fact that I worked for them. Common sense tells me that Wallace can’t be involved, that I would never have been transferred onto the drug-packaging shift line had anyone at Hamer’s known I was undercover there, but I’m so skittish that I can’t discount him entirely. Keep your friends close but your enemies closer. My brain trots out the cliché unbidden and adds insult by repeating it on a loop as I try to sleep. I squash the pillow over my ears and listen to my tinnitus instead. The warning is bollocks anyway. How the hell am I supposed to heed it when I can’t tell which side anyone is on?