by Penny Grubb
‘When?’
‘Monday.’
Dean took a piece of paper from his pocket and began to sketch on it. Annie saw a plan of the office materialize with desks, camera sweeps and timing, shaded blindspots. With mixed feelings, she watched the blueprint emerge of her breaking and entry to Margot’s offices.
On Monday morning, Annie sat with Mike in the kitchen. Her day was mapped out in intensive practice runs. The length of the flat from the front door to the back of the bedroom just gave her the requisite distance, and by tonight she must be stopwatch perfect and sure of sprinting it in a few seconds.
‘Did I say I’d be late tonight?’ she said, as Mike stood up and reached for his briefcase. ‘Not sure what time.’
‘D’you want a lift in?’
‘No, I’m not going in till later.’ She looked at the piece of toast in her hand and thought about Casey Lane, burnt to ash, and the body on the hill the same. ‘Mike? What do you know about crematoria?’
‘Not a lot, other than it’s where they burn people.’
‘Did you know that even a crematorium oven doesn’t burn people to ash? They have machines to crush up what comes out of the furnace.’
‘No, I didn’t. How do you know?’
‘I worked a case once where someone accused someone … this woman … well, the details don’t matter. It was all to do with the guy being cremated with a ring on his finger. But the point is I’m sure you could get forensics off what comes out of a crematorium oven. I’ll check it out.’
‘What’s this to do with anything?’
‘Casey. You don’t burn someone to ash in an ordinary fire. Nowhere near.’
And, she added to herself, you don’t burn two people to ash in two ordinary fires at opposite ends of the country.
Chapter 21
‘Annie? Hello. What can I do for you today?’ Annie heard the hint of exasperation under the smooth professionalism of Janice’s voice at the end of the phone.
‘It’s my ear-ring, Janice. I must have dropped it the other day when I was in your office. I’ve looked everywhere else and I know I was wearing it.’
‘I’ll ask the cleaners and if they’ve found it I’ll let you know.’
‘Uh … could you have a quick look now? I was in that end seat talking to your security guy. I’m sure it must have slipped off then. Could you just have a quick look down the side of the seat?’
Annie heard Janice draw in a breath as she put the handset on the desk. After a moment, her voice was back in Annie’s ear sounding surprised.
‘Yes, it’s there. A gold loop thing. I’ll put it in the post for you.’
‘No, I’ll call round. I need it tonight.’
‘I’m about to leave, Annie.’
‘I’ll be ten minutes, Janice. Less. I’m on my way.’
With that, she clicked off the phone and sat back watching the entrance to Margot’s building. She would give it another five minutes, wanting as many as possible of Margot’s crew to have left without Janice giving up on her and shutting up shop. Crammed in one of her pockets was a long, flimsy shirt that would cover her from neck to knee and hide the clothes Janice would see her wearing. In the other was a balaclava with bank-robber style slits for eyes, nose and mouth. If she’d been sure of access, she’d have slipped in after they’d all left, but it would be too much to hope that lax security went as far as leaving the fourth floor open to anyone who wandered up there.
The ground floor lobby was a press of people waiting for the evening courses to start. Annie threaded her way through to the lifts, but a uniformed woman stopped her.
‘No access to the higher floors.’
‘I’m here to see Janice Craig. She’s expecting me.’
The woman spoke into a walkie-talkie giving Annie an anxious moment that Janice might choose to come down. But she was escorted to the lifts which she noted had been switched to key access. She didn’t like the feel of this heightened security.
Margot’s floor was in semi-darkness but Annie could hear the muted conversations of the few people still around. Please God they were all packing up to leave. Surely Margot didn’t run a night shift.
She stood in the full glare of the camera in the corridor as it swung to face her and looked one way then the other as though not sure where to go as she counted its sweep. She must be aware of its exact position from now on whether she could see it or not.
She marched round the corner. Janice sat at her PC typing furiously.
‘Ah, Annie. It’s here.’ Janice lifted an envelope from her desk, her tone undisguised irritation.
‘Thanks, great.’ Annie grabbed it and turned to go, but there were voices outside. People heading for the lift. She needed to be alone out there. She stopped and turned back.
‘Uh … Janice? Did that guy have a word with Margot about my idea?’
‘I don’t think so, Annie. He didn’t see any mileage in it, I’m afraid.’
Sounds of the lift door clanking open.
‘Oh well, never mind. Maybe I should have another word with Margot sometime.’
‘Hmm, maybe.’ Janice didn’t look up from her screen but was now clearly closing things down.
The whine of the lift receded down the building.
‘OK, well, thanks. See you. Bye.’
Annie raced into the corridor and jabbed the lift call button. The camera was full on her now. Hurry up, lift, before anyone else comes along.
The lift arrived. She stepped inside, jammed her foot to the door to hold it open and counted the camera round. Three seconds to its next blind spot, then she hit the ground floor button and leapt back out.
Quick glance either way and she dodged round the side of the lift housing to cram herself into a tiny space between a tall pot plant and the wall.
The camera wouldn’t see her here, but a late leaver might if they happened to glance the right way. In the six seconds the camera was trained on the other end of the corridor, Annie pulled out the flimsy shirt and slipped it on. Seventh second and she stood tight against the wall. Footsteps down the corridor. The lift whined. The last of the main lights were extinguished.
She stayed still, knowing she must wait long enough to be sure. But not too long. The count inside her head would slip out of phase with the camera.
At last, there was just the quiet hum of the building at night and the muted sound of traffic from far below.
Time to move. From here, on the forward sweep of the lens, she could outrun the camera and give herself from one to three seconds leeway once inside the big office space.
She pulled the dark balaclava down over her head and neck. If the camera caught a glimpse, it would show a masked intruder who looked nothing like the Annie Raymond it had filmed earlier.
Deep breath, a push off from the wall and she sprinted down the short stretch to the big office. Round the corner of the wall, she threw herself to the ground and slid under the nearest of the desks.
A moment now to get her breath and peer out to check how well the count in her head had kept pace with the camera in the room.
Not great. She ducked back down. Damn. Not sure now if the corridor camera had caught her or not. Keeping low, she moved between the desks to the far corner of the office where the cover was better.
She headed for the computer nearest the archway that led into Janice’s office, a back way out should she need it.
Once in position, she reached up and pressed the on switch, making the PC above her hum into life. She kept her head low, all the time keeping up a mental count and checking the angle of the camera every now and then. The memory stick Dean had given her slotted smoothly into the USB port and she watched it fire up as a rapidly flashing pinpoint of blue light.
The office remained quiet but for the low hum of the building’s life support – air conditioning, water systems, echoes through the wiring ducts. On the next camera cycle, she risked clicking on the monitor. It showed a standard login screen dead centre, and down i
n the corner Dean’s rogue program played out below the software’s security radar and showed her its progress.
It was at 53 seconds of an estimated total of 3 minutes and 20 seconds. Longer than Dean had predicted, but just two and a bit minutes to go. She clicked off the monitor and crouched low to wait. Two counts in her head now, the camera sweep and the program countdown to zero.
The second count had decreased by less than half a minute when something jarred her to full alert.
A noise that didn’t fit with the mechanical breeze of the building at night. She strained to listen.
Pad … pad … pad …
Soft footsteps coming down the corridor outside the office.
She sank into herself, till her head was down beneath the desk, her cheek on the cool surface of the floor.
A mass of desk and chair legs spread out in front of her. A pseudo forest, not so neat as forestry planted pine. She could see the length of the room, right to the main entranceway at the far end.
Pad … pad … pad …
Routine patrol by the security guard. It had to be. He’d walk down the corridor and go on his way.
A sudden burst of static. A crackly voice over a two-way radio. ‘… not clear … access violation … less than a minute … tagged record …’
Pad … pad … pad…
Her insides turned to ice. They had electronic alarms on the files. Dean had underestimated them. She had to get out, but that soft padding of footsteps was in the main corridor barring her way.
She kept low, watching the short stretch of corridor visible through the entrance. If whoever-was-there went past, she’d creep out behind him and get away. If he stopped at the doorway, she would slide backwards towards the other entrance and slip through into Janice’s office.
A pair of feet stepped into view and paused in the entranceway. She felt her eyes widen with the shock; the breath catch in her throat, as her stare glued itself to the muted red and black leather of the newcomer’s shoes. They were familiar. She’d seen them before. But where? Who? They stayed still for a few seconds then advanced a couple of paces into the room.
She saw one leg step in front of the other. The bent knee came into view.
For a moment, she froze; lost the counts in her head. No idea where the cameras were or how close to finished Dean’s program was.
Whoever was there was kneeling down to check the office the quickest way possible, along the floor under the forest of desk legs.
There was no way not to be seen. She snatched the memory stick from the machine and hurled herself towards the rear entrance.
She heard a gasp behind her, the scrambling of someone fighting to get to their feet and then pounding footsteps, crashing the desks out of the way, coming after her.
The hammering of feet obliterated everything from her consciousness as she swung round the corner to Janice’s office. He was close. Too close. She fought through treacle; he flew behind her on speed.
A sudden vision flooded her mind. Car headlights, full beam, coming at her … a crash barrier … a handbrake turn. It was the same chase. The same pursuer.
The adrenalin of terror propelled her on. In a suicidal leap, she hurdled Janice’s desk in an explosion of papers and wire trays. She was aware only of gaining the fraction of a second that was enough to evade the arm that reached out to grab her.
She skidded round into the corridor and dived for the staircase she’d never seen, could only sprint to where fire regulations said it had to be.
A red sign with an arrow. Fire exit. She threw every effort into reaching the top step. Seeing no further. Every sense felt her pursuer within a breath behind her.
With a heart-lurching brush of something at her shoulder, she leapt, five steps, six. Grabbing at the rail. Swinging herself into the corner. She hurled herself down the next flight almost taking the dozen or so steps in one desperate leap. Everything focused now on the task. Land softly, crumple legs and ankles, spring forward from the first limb that felt solid surface beneath it, relying on hands and arms to grab the rail, to take the strain when there was nothing solid beneath her feet.
The distance between them increased, but that was only because her pursuer thought her trapped in a dead end, and had slowed, not wanting to risk a broken bone.
And he’d thought he had her on the downward bend, the treacherous hairpin off the summit. She focused only on speed and balance.
Now she was at street level and there should be a corridor.
There was. She let her feet and ankles take the load and sprinted. The footsteps behind her skidded round the corner. She heard panting breath coming closer now they were back on the flat.
Her eyes fought to make sense of the darkness up ahead. It couldn’t be a dead-end. The fire-door had to be here.
The gleam of a bar. She threw herself at it, wrenching the metal, feeling a tremendous rush flood through her as it gave way. She burst out into a mass of people, a bright glare. Balaclava ripped off, head ducked to avoid the inevitable camera. A vicious slam backwards to close the door.
‘Sorry … sorry … beg your pardon … excuse me …’ In the first couple of seconds of her zigzag scuttle through the mass of bodies, the shirt was shrugged off her shoulders and back in her pocket.
In the density of the crowd, as she shoved through, head down, on a fast track to the exit, she took one quick glance backwards at the far wall. The top of the fire door remained shut. No one on the desk took any notice of her as she strolled past and out into the night.
Her heart thumped in her throat but her fist clenched in triumph. The memory stick was in her pocket. She’d made it.
Why hadn’t her pursuer come through the fire-door or radioed the front desk to stop her? If it had been just a security guard doing his job, what stopped him at the edge of the crowd?
Chapter 22
Annie pushed open the door to her flat and marched inside with a feeling of relief, of refuge found.
Mike looked up surprised. ‘I thought you were going to be late,’ and Annie realized that robbing an old schoolfriend might have been a huge deal in her head, but hadn’t made a blip on anyone else’s radar.
‘It didn’t take as long as I’d thought.’
She emptied her pockets on to the table. The bundled old shirt went straight into the bin to be safely in a landfill site before there was the remotest chance of Margot seeing it in any context that connected it to Annie. With a smile, she clasped the memory stick in her hand and rubbed its casing as though for luck.
‘What’s that?’
‘Just something I got for Dean.’
A part of her wanted to rush out now to find Dean and pass it on. Let him get started, work out as soon as possible whether she had what she needed or if she’d ripped it free of the machine too soon. This would get him back into the swing of things, or so she hoped, because the business needed him at full throttle. It needed both of them full time. It was early days but Pieternel had got them round a corner. The business finances might yet stay afloat.
She looked across the table at Mike. If she allowed him to bail her out for just a few months, she could face her debts head on, go and talk to people, offer them deals the way you were supposed to when you found yourself in too deep. Maybe she should consult one of these debt counsellor outfits. Maybe she could pull herself and Aunt Marian back from the edge.
Had she let Mike into her life solely for his ability to drag her personal finances out of the shit? Would she have let him in anyway? She knew she wouldn’t cut her aunt’s lifeline by shoving him back out, but she wished she could be clearer about her motives.
The next morning, when she handed the memory stick to Dean, she told him, ‘Don’t neglect anything else to work on this. Whatever you find, I’m not touching it till the weekend.’
‘No worries. It won’t take a minute to decode anyway.’
‘How’s the Buenos Aires case going?’ she asked Pieternel, who gave her a wide grin.
&n
bsp; ‘Unravelling beautifully. The sister, like you said. They’re twins, and crossing continents made the swap all the easier. It looks like the biker was down to get a cut. We’re coming up really smelling of roses on this one.’
‘Poor Mrs BA.’
Annie threw herself into helping clear up the routine paperwork as penance for her recent absences. Dean too, she was pleased to see, took up the reins again, although several times during the day, she saw him frowning over his PC with an intensity that could only mean he was working on Margot’s records. In a quiet moment she caught up with him.
‘It’s a hell of a mess, Annie. A kid in primary school could have hacked together a better database than they’re using.’
‘But can you get the information off it?’
‘Probably. Thing is, it’ll be riddled with errors. Theirs, not ours. Whoever put this together couldn’t normalize a database to save their lives. I’ll bet this software costs more to maintain than their whole hardware budget.’
‘I doubt Margot cares. As long as the outfit looks good and keeps the money flowing, she’s more interested in up-to-date carpets than backroom machines.’
‘I’ll have whatever’s there to find by the end of the week, Annie.’
‘That’s great, thanks.’
Annie struggled to take on Casey’s workload. Mike living in the flat didn’t seem so much of a change. Their only bumpy patch was on Thursday morning when a crash from outside rushed them both to the kitchen window to see a heavy pickup truck sitting across Mike’s car in an embrace that looked terminal for both vehicles. Annie had to leave him remonstrating with the other driver as she hurried in to work.
Mid-morning the same day provided her own heart-stopping moment when she picked up the phone and heard Janice’s voice. ‘Janice … hello. Uh … what can I do for you?’
‘Sorry to bother you, Annie. I just wanted to check something.’
Annie worked her tongue round her mouth to ease the dryness.
‘When you were here on Monday did you see anyone in the office?’
