Trust No One

by Alex Walters

  She’d planned to go back into work today, but that increasingly seemed like a bad idea. Everyone expected her to take the day off, anyway. All she wanted to do was head home and crawl into bed. Liam would be pleased, at least.

  From somewhere close by, she heard the roar of an engine. That bloody van. It had reached the end of her row and was turning left, down towards where she was standing, its speed undiminished.

  Instinctively, she stepped back, pulling her case with her, positioning herself between two parked cars. Joyriders, maybe, or some drunk. Either way, best avoided.

  She moved back into the shadows, expecting the van to roar by. But just before it reached her, the driver braked hard. For a second, she thought the vehicle would skid, but the control was perfect. The van slammed to a halt just a few feet from her.

  The driver’s door opened slowly and a figure, little more than a silhouette, leaned out. ‘In the back,’ the man said quietly. It was a command, and the object in his hand suggested he had the means of enforcing it.

  What the fuck? She looked frantically around her. Moments before, as she’d watched the van careering round the edge of the car park, there’d seemed to be numerous other people making their way back to their cars. Now, suddenly, the place was deserted. Somewhere, across at the far edge of the car park, she could hear the churning of a car ignition, but that was no help to her.

  ‘In the back,’ the voice said again.

  She stepped forwards, as though to obey, leaving her case and handbag on the ground behind her. Then, as she drew close to the van, she raised her right foot and kicked the driver’s door as hard as she could. It slammed shut, trapping the arm of the half-emerging figure.

  ‘Shit—’

  She was already running, her head down, expecting gunfire at any moment. Instead, she heard the revving of the van’s engine and a squeak of tyres as it U-turned.

  Where the hell was her car? In the half-light, all the vehicles looked similar, indistinguishable colours and shapes.

  And then a further thought struck her.

  Her keys. Her fucking keys. They were in her handbag.

  She was running headlong now, with no idea what she was going to do. There was no point in trying to reach her car. Her only hope was that someone else would appear, someone who could help her.

  She could hear the van’s engine coming up behind her. No longer speeding, but moving slowly, taunting her, knowing she couldn’t escape. There was nowhere to go. A high metal fence lined the car park perimeter. The entrance was half a mile away across the vast expanse of tarmac.

  She stopped and turned, blinking in the van’s headlights until it pulled in alongside her. A head peered out from the passenger seat, the face invisible. A different voice.

  ‘Christ’s sake. You’re going nowhere. Just get in the back.’

  She heard the sound of the driver’s door being opened, footsteps. She stood silently, gasping for breath, as a silhouetted figure emerged from behind the vehicle. He gestured her to step forwards, a pistol steady in his other hand.

  ‘Nice try. Hurt my bloody hand, though. Now don’t open your mouth; just get in the back.’

  After only a moment’s hesitation, she obeyed both ins tructions.

  ‘And you’re sure you still want to go ahead?’ Winsor had asked, two months before.

  ‘Yes,’ Marie had replied confidently. Then, after a pause, ‘I think so, anyway. As best I can judge.’

  He’d nodded approvingly and inscribed an ostentatious tick on the sheet in front of him. ‘Exactly the right answer,’ he said, a proud teacher commending a promising pupil. ‘Confident, but realistic. Just what we need.’

  Patronizing git, she thought. Par for the course down here. She could live with it from the operational types. They might have been promoted to pen-pushing and desk-jockeying, but most had been through it. They had some idea of the front line.

  Winsor was a different matter. He was a sodding psychologist, for Christ’s sake. Most of what he said was either blindingly obvious or plain wrong. Quite often both at once, remarkably. He was here on sufferance because they were supposed to give due consideration to the psychological well-being of officers. Winsor ticked a few boxes and showed that the Agency cared.

  And yet here he was, passing judgement about her suitability for a job he probably couldn’t even imagine. Assessing her psychological equilibrium, she’d been told. Seeing whether she was really up to it, whether she could handle the unique pressures. In truth, though she doubted Winsor’s ability to assess her mental state, she knew the assessment was needed. This was a big deal. She wasn’t sure, even now, whether she really appreciated quite how big.

  ‘The main thing,’ Winsor said, unexpectedly echoing her thoughts, ‘is that you appreciate the magnitude of the challenge.’

  Maybe he was better at this than she’d thought. ‘I’ve spoken to people who’ve done the job,’ she said. ‘Hugh Salter, for example.’

  ‘Ah, yes. Hugh.’ He spoke the name as if experimenting with an unfamiliar word. ‘Well, yes, Hugh was a great success in the role. For a long time.’ He left the phrase hanging, suggesting that he could say more.

  She knew that Hugh had been withdrawn from the field eventually, but that was standard. No one did this forever. There’d been rumours about Hugh, but there were rumours about everyone. It was that kind of place. Whatever the truth, Hugh was still around, still apparently trusted. If she got through this, he was likely to end up as her contact. Her buddy, in his words, though that wasn’t how she’d ever describe him.

  ‘What did Hugh tell you?’ Winsor asked.

  ‘He said it was a challenge. Hard work. That it required certain qualities.’ She tried to recall exactly what Hugh had said. Nothing very coherent. She’d sought him out one evening when a group of them had been in the pub after work. Show willing, prepare for the selection process. But Hugh was already two or three pints ahead of her, and had mainly been interested in boosting his own ego. He was keen to let her know how difficult the job had been, how ill-suited she was likely to be to its rigours. Not because she was a woman, he’d been at pains to emphasize. That wasn’t the problem. The problem, she’d gathered, was that, like almost everyone else in the world, she just wasn’t Hugh Salter. Her loss.

  ‘What sort of qualities?’

  ‘Resilience,’ she said, though Hugh had offered nothing so succinct. ‘Attention to detail. Alertness.’ She paused, recognizing that she was trotting out clichés. ‘He said the main problem was the balancing act.’ She paused, trying to translate her memory of Salter’s semi-drunken ramble into something coherent. ‘Not just the obvious tension between the under-cover work and your home life. But the balance between the day-to-day stuff and the real focus of the work.’

  Winsor looked up, showing some interest for the first time. ‘Go on.’

  She paused, unsure how to render the phrase ‘fucking balls-ache’ in terminology acceptable to an occupational psychologist.

  ‘Well, it strikes me that it’s almost as if you’re leading a triple life. You spend a lot of the time building up the legend, making yourself credible in the right environments. Just getting on with the fictitious job. The real stuff – the intelligence gathering, the surveillance, all that – is only a small part of the picture, time-wise. So you end up doing a lot of stuff which is very mundane, but you can’t allow yourself to switch off, even for a moment.’ It wasn’t exactly – or even remotely – what Salter had actually said, but it was what she’d inferred from his beer-fuelled diatribe.

  Winsor was nodding. ‘Absolutely,’ he said. ‘That’s what most applicants fail to appreciate.’ He leaned forwards, as though sharing a treasured secret. ‘That’s one reason it’s so difficult to find suitable candidates. It’s not a question of ability. It’s a question of temperament.’ He waved his hand towards the open-plan office outside their small meeting room. ‘Not surprising, really. It’s a rare mix that we’re looking for, and probably even rarer in a
place like this. You lot want excitement, the adrenaline rush. That’s why you all hate the form-filling.’

  Winsor was wrong about that, she thought. It might be what attracted some of them in the first place, but the ones who stayed, the ones who progressed, were those who paid attention to the detail. That was what the job was about. Gathering data, analyzing the intelligence. The fucking balls-ache. Most likely, Winsor was the one hankering after excitement.

  ‘So what do you think the job needs?’ she said.

  He riffled aimlessly through her file, as if that might provide the answer to her question. ‘As you say, a lot of it’s very mundane. We set it up, provide the background. But it’s up to the individual officer to make it work. And all the time you’re waiting for the opportunities, the chances to gather intelligence.’ He paused. ‘Most good officers can handle the pressure. It’s the boredom that does for them.’

  She wondered whether he was talking about Salter. ‘So what do you reckon?’ she said, deciding she might as well cut to the chase. ‘Have I got the temperament?’

  He didn’t answer immediately, but flicked again through the file, this time apparently searching for a particular document. She had no idea what was in the thick, buff-coloured folder. Her original application form. Annual performance appraisals. Results of her promotion boards. Perhaps other, more interesting material.

  ‘I think you just might,’ he said finally.

  ‘Have a look at this.’ He pushed the file across the desk towards her, holding it open. It was a printed form, incomprehensible to her, covered with Winsor’s own scrawlings.

  ‘It’s the results of the personality questionnaire you completed,’ he explained. ‘Each of these lines shows a continuum between the extremes of various personality traits. So, for example, whether you’re inclined to follow prescribed rules or do your own thing.’

  ‘Wouldn’t that depend on the rules?’

  ‘Yes, of course. And the context. But we’ve all got our preferences and inclinations. At the extremes, you get people who feel hidebound by any rules or direction, however reasonable, or people who feel uncomfortable breaking or bending a rule even when they recognize that it’s necessary.’

  ‘And where do I sit?’

  He pointed at a pencil mark on one of the scales. ‘In that respect – as in most aspects, actually – you’re pretty well-balanced. Close to the middle of the scale, with just a small bias towards rule-breaking.’ He smiled, suggesting that this was some kind of psychologist’s in-joke.

  ‘And is that good?’

  He shrugged. ‘As you say, it depends. But in this case, yes. That’s the balance we’re looking for. We don’t want someone who’s constantly in danger of going off-piste. But equally there’d be times when you’d need to improvise. We don’t want someone who’ll fall apart if they can’t apply the rule book.’

  She nodded, her eyes scanning down the sheet in front of her. She could see broadly how the scales worked, but the terminology was opaque to her. ‘What about the rest of it?’

  ‘We’ve got a full debrief scheduled for this afternoon,’ he said. Marie decided that Winsor himself was probably rather closer to the compliant end of the spectrum. ‘I’ll go through it all in detail then. But on the whole it looks very satisfactory. You’re a pretty balanced individual.’ He picked up his pen and gestured down the column of scales. ‘Here, for example. You’re fairly affiliative, enjoy working with others. But equally you’re comfortable operating on your own when you need to. This is a role that depends on effective networking, building relationships, but you will also really have to work in isolation. Not many people are comfortable with both.’

  ‘No, I can see that.’ She squinted more closely at the paper. ‘What about these ones? Those look more extreme.’

  Winsor leaned forwards, reading the form upside down. ‘Ah, now, that’s quite interesting. Those traits show how you deal with your emotions. Would you consider yourself an emotional person?’

  She found herself slightly taken aback by the direct question. ‘I don’t know. Not particularly, I suppose. I suppose I’d see myself as – I don’t know – pragmatic. I just get on with things.’

  It was difficult for her to answer the question. None of her colleagues would see her as emotional, she thought. But that was a point of principle. Whatever they might say publicly, some of her colleagues still held largely unreconstructed views of female officers. When she’d first joined, she’d been determined not to allow her femininity to be perceived, however unfairly, as a weakness. Whatever crap had been thrown at her – and there’d been plenty in those early days – she’d been determined just to take it. If she had a bad day she never let it show. That was nothing more than simple professionalism. It was what you did. Whatever might be going on outside of work, you didn’t bring it through the office door. It was a philosophy that many of her colleagues, male and female, failed to apply. She’d had a bellyful of supposedly macho senior officers who came in and simply unloaded the garbage that happened to be filling their own domestic lives.

  But Marie found it hard to distinguish between this work persona and whatever reality might lie beneath. She never showed any strong emotions and, to be frank, she rarely seemed to feel them. Of course, like anyone else, she went through cycles of joy or gloom, she had good days and bad days. But these were variations around a relatively placid norm. When real adversity came around – when she and Liam had being going through a tough time, or when her parents had died, not entirely unexpectedly, within a few months of one another – she simply buckled down and got on with life. In other circumstances, she reflected, a psychologist like Winsor might see that as unhealthy. Now, he seemed positively enthused by the assessment.

  ‘If we look at these scales, you see, you come across as someone who keeps their emotions carefully in check. You’re very conscious of the image you project to others. Your inclination is to subordinate your own feelings to the job at hand.’

  He was beginning to sound like a tabloid horoscope, she thought. ‘Those don’t necessarily sound like positive qualities.’

  ‘Well, again, it depends on the context. And if your responses were at the very extreme end of the scale, I’d have a concern. It might suggest an inability to cope with emotional issues. But this indicates simply a preference for control. Which in this role is important. It’s a very isolating job. If you’re faced with emotional issues, you have to be able to cope with them yourself. Of course, we keep an eye on agents out in the field, assess their well-being periodically. But we can’t provide too much support from the centre without risking compromising the operation.’

  ‘And you think I’d be up to it?’ She gestured towards the assessment form. ‘On the basis of that, I mean?’

  ‘Well, it’s impossible to be sure.’ He reached across and picked up the file. ‘It’s a fairly blunt instrument, this. And it can’t give us a definitive insight into the “real” Marie Donovan, whoever that might be. What it really tells us is how you see yourself and how you think others see you. But, for all that, I think, yes, that overall it does indicate that you’re likely to be suited to the job.’

  Well, that was something, she thought. A fairly lukewarm endorsement, but an endorsement nonetheless. One hurdle climbed.

  Winsor was still leafing aimlessly through her file. Finally, he paused and ran his finger carefully down one of the documents.

  ‘You’re unmarried?’

  She nodded. ‘So far.’ This had been typical of Winsor’s style. Off-the-cuff, apparently random questions, but each one with a little hidden barb.

  ‘But you have a partner?’

  She knew he already had the answer. When she’d joined the Agency, Liam’s background had been checked out as thoroughly as hers. A clause in her employment contract obliged her to inform her superiors if her domestic circumstances were to change. The way things were going with Liam, that clause might become relevant before long.

  ‘I live with my boy
friend,’ she said, ‘if that’s what you mean.’

  ‘And how does he feel about you applying for this role?’

  That was the question, of course. How did Liam feel?

  ‘Well, he’s got concerns, of course. But he’s fully behind my career. If it’s what I want to do, he’ll support it.’ Which was all true as far as it went.

  ‘And your boyfriend,’ Winsor said conversationally, ‘what does he do? His job, I mean.’

  ‘He paints. He’s an artist.’

  ‘Ah.’ Winsor managed to invest a wealth of meaning into the single syllable. ‘Would I recognize his name?’

  She smiled. ‘I don’t think so. Not yet.’

  ‘Well, perhaps one day.’ Winsor looked at his watch, as if he were already losing interest. ‘And what about you?’

  ‘Me?’ She wondered momentarily whether he was enquiring about her own artistic prospects.

  ‘Yes.’ Winsor was beginning to pack up his papers. ‘Why do you want the job? What made you apply for it?’

  Another good question. She’d had an answer all prepared – opportunity for career development, new challenges, a desire to step outside her own comfort zone, all that kind of nonsense. But Winsor’s nonchalant query had, presumably as intended, caught her off guard and she found herself blurting out something closer to the truth.

  ‘I don’t know. I suppose I feel in a bit of a rut. A bit passive. Time’s getting on. The big three-oh next year. I just want something new. I want to take more control.’

  He was barely looking at her, struggling to fit the stack of files into his briefcase. ‘At work or at home? The rut, I mean?’

  She paused, aware now that she was saying more than she’d intended. ‘Work, I suppose. I’ve spent the last year doing intelligence analysis. Crunching data. Spotting patterns. It’s important work and I’m pretty good at it, though I say so myself. But I don’t think it’s making the most of my talents. I want a bit more control over what’s going on. I want to make things happen.’

  He finally snapped shut his briefcase and looked up, his expression suggesting that he’d taken in nothing of what she’d been saying.