by Alex Walters
‘If you can remember a word like psychometrics, you can’t be doing too badly.’ Her mind went back to Winsor, his batteries of psychological instruments, his relentless game-playing.
‘It’s not a joke, Marie.’
‘No, I know it isn’t. I’m not making light of it. It’s just – well, it doesn’t help just to look on the black side, does it? Not before we know there’s anything to worry about.’
‘I should just cheer up, then? That what you’re saying? Jesus, Marie, you weren’t here. You didn’t see what happened.’
It sounded like a reproach now, she thought. And she couldn’t argue with him. He was right. At the moment he’d really needed her, she hadn’t been there. She hadn’t even been able to come as soon as she’d known. It had taken her three or four days to get everything sorted. They hadn’t allowed her to leave, to come back here. They’d wanted her on the spot, while they went through everything. Endlessly, repetitively, exhaustingly. After all, as they’d pointed out, she was still a suspect in a murder enquiry.
She’d been phoning Liam’s mobile incessantly over those days, wondering where he was, but it was turned off. She’d left messages at the house, but there was no response. On top of all her own troubles, she’d been climbing the walls with worry about Liam – when push came to shove, her thoughts always went back to Liam. It was only on the fourth day, when they’d finally allowed her to return to her own flat, that she was able to dig out Jean’s number and been able to phone the old woman.
‘He was rushed into hospital,’ Jean had said, in a voice that remained only just this side of condemnatory. She had always made it clear that she neither understood nor approved of the younger couple’s long-distance relationship. ‘You need to come down.’
Marie had had to clear it with the powers that be in the Agency. In the end, that hadn’t proved too difficult, though the inevitable bureaucracy ensured that it wasn’t a swift process. No one believed now that she was responsible for Jones’ death. The evidence had only ever been circumstantial, and as she’d expected, wasn’t supported by the forensics. They had DNA evidence linking Jones to Morton’s death, with traces of Morton’s blood found on Jones’ clothing. The assumption was that Jones had had some secondary involvement in Morton’s death, and that he’d been eliminated as a potential weak link in an otherwise highly professional killing.
The line they were now pursuing, largely at Salter’s instigation, was that the whole sequence had been designed to remove potential witnesses against Boyle. Morton, as the key prosecution figure, had been killed directly. The murder of Jones and the attempted murder of Marie were attempts to tie up two remaining loose ends. If that was the intention, it hadn’t worked perfectly, but it had worked well enough for Boyle’s purposes. The exposure of Welsby’s corruption and links to Kerridge had been the last straw. What little evidence they had was tainted, and the prosecution case had been dropped. Boyle was a free man, contemplating the possibility of suing for wrongful arrest.
And the worst thing, for Marie, was that she hadn’t felt able to share any of this with Liam. The Agency hadn’t managed to contact him about Marie’s disappearance, just because he’d been in no state to answer the phone. They’d asked the local police to check up on him in case he’d absconded with Marie, but that had been overtaken by events.
So he knew nothing. When she’d discovered how serious things were, how much his condition had deteriorated in the short time since she’d last seen him, she decided that she couldn’t burden him with everything she’d been through. She couldn’t tell him about Jones, about her near arrest. About what had happened with Joe or at the bungalow. None of it.
‘Jesus, Liam. I’m sorry I wasn’t there. It’s the job. You know that.’
‘Yeah,’ he said, turning away from her on the bed. ‘Yeah, it’s always the fucking job. But you could change the job, you know? We’ve been through this.’
They had, countless times. And that was another thing. She really could change the job. She had the perfect opportunity. She just didn’t know what to do about it.
She was on back-room duties for the moment. They’d pulled her out of the field. They’d even offered her counselling, for all the good that that was likely to do. As she’d expected, the business had just been closed down – no warning, no reason given. Not even to Darren. She could imagine the poor little bugger turning up, day after day, wondering why the doors were locked, why the mail was piling up below the letterbox. Only gradually realizing that the place was finished, that she and Joe must have done a runner. They’d got an accountant sorting out the liquidation of the assets. She checked with him to make sure that Darren would at least get the pay that was owed to him, and she’d lobbied hard for him to be given a bit more besides. But she’d no confidence that it would happen. That wasn’t the way bureaucracies worked.
So she was back at HQ, doing desk-based intelligence work. For the moment, she was living in what she was relearning to call home, commuting daily into the office in central London. It was a routine. It was calming. It meant she could be close to Liam while he was in hospital. But she knew that the job itself would drive her slowly crazy.
Nobody intended to keep her there, of course. It was a short-term measure, to allow her to regain her equilibrium. They’d want her in an operational role again before long. And that was the thing.
She’d been sitting at her desk that morning, working her way painstakingly through a pile of largely uninformative files, when she’d grown aware of someone standing a few feet away, watching her.
‘How you doing, sis?’
‘Not so bad, Hugh. Considering. You?’
She hadn’t needed to ask. Salter was thriving. His star was definitely in the ascendant. There’d been a formal enquiry into the whole affair, in the light of Kerridge’s shooting. But Salter had emerged as a hero – the man who’d single-handedly taken on corruption in the Agency and brought down a major villain in the process. Although Kerridge’s wife had tried to kick up a stink about the circumstances of her husband’s death, her lawyers could make nothing stick. Everyone had witnessed Salter’s injuries, and once Marie had handed over the data stick, the emerging evidence against Kerridge was enough to torpedo any defence. Salter’s position was further eased by the fact that, in vainly trying to save some portion of his own backside, Welsby had sought to shift as much blame as possible in Kerridge’s direction. No one had challenged Salter’s claim that he’d pursued Welsby solo because he hadn’t known who else to trust, and Marie had confirmed Salter’s version of what had happened over those last few days. All this just made Salter appear more heroic. He’d exposed the bad apple in their midst. Set things right. Because no one wanted to believe that Welsby might not be the only one.
‘Yeah, I’m doing all right,’ he said. ‘You heard about Welsby?’
She shook her head. For all his wriggling, Welsby had been charged with corruption. Bail had been refused and he was being held in custody in Wakefield prison, pending his trial.
‘They found him this morning.’
‘Jesus.’
‘Makes you wonder, doesn’t it? Shouldn’t happen in prison. Supposed to be on suicide watch. What do you reckon? They just turn a blind eye? Or is it more than that?’
‘I don’t know, Hugh,’ she said coldly. ‘Christ, you’re a heartless bastard, aren’t you?’
He shrugged. ‘Didn’t notice the fat bastard showing much compassion when he was kicking seven shades of shit out of me.’ He paused. ‘Just got what was coming, if you ask me.’
There was something about the way he said it that chilled her. It felt, just for a moment, like a threat.
She didn’t trust him. She still didn’t fucking trust him. She thought back to what Welsby had said in the bungalow, and realized that she didn’t know the answer. She didn’t know whether Salter was just a ruthless careerist bastard. Or whether there was something more than that.
He’d been the first to urge them to co
nsider what Boyle had gained from Morton’s and Jones’ deaths. He argued that the case against Boyle shouldn’t be dropped, that the CPS should try to gain them more time. He’d insisted that they could still succeed in building a case against Boyle. He’d stormed out in righteous anger when it was confirmed that the case was being dropped.
And the result was that the case was neatly passed into his hands. If you’re so smart, they’d said in not quite so many words, you land Boyle.
And maybe that was the way he’d wanted it all along. Maybe he’d wanted to take control of the case. So that, over time, he could quietly bury it. She thought back to what Kerridge had said in the bungalow. Someone had told Boyle who she was. Not Welsby, obviously. So who else?
‘Got some good news, sis,’ he’d said that morning. There were times when he had the air of an overenthusiastic teenager. Someone not quite house-trained.
‘That so, Hugh?’
‘Got my promotion. Finally got my own section.’
‘Chasing Boyle?’
He’d looked at her for a long time. A few seconds too long. ‘Yeah, among other things. I’ve put in a good word for you.’
‘For me?’
‘Yeah, sis. Rate you highly. You’ve got real talent. Want you on board. Part of my team. You could work down here. Be close to that boyfriend of yours. What do you reckon?’
What did she reckon?
That was the question. Salter didn’t trust her, that much was clear to her. He wanted to keep her close. For her part, the thought of working alongside Salter repulsed her. Whether or not he was bent, he was an odious bastard. But if he was bent, he was something else as well. If he really was bent, if he really was on Boyle’s payroll, then that meant he was the one who’d betrayed Jake Morton. He was the one who, in the end, was responsible for Jake’s death.
Shit. She knew then that she couldn’t let this go. That she had to stick close to Salter. She had to finish this off.
She told herself that it was about justice. But she knew that, really, it was about revenge.
She told herself that it was about Liam. That, if she took this job, she could carry on living with Liam, looking after him, making sure he was all right. That was what she told herself.
But she knew that, really, it wasn’t about Liam.
It was about Jake.
So now, here she sat, in this sterile, depressing ward, with Liam in front of her, his body surrounded by drips, monitoring equipment, piles of paperwork and dressings. Not knowing what the future held. Not knowing what she wanted. Not even knowing what was driving her. Trying to decide.
She reached out and took Liam’s quivering hand and held it tightly for a moment. ‘You’re right,’ she said finally. ‘I can change the job. I can do that.’
Read on for an exclusive interview from a new star in the crime and thriller arena, Alex Walters
An Interview with Alex Walters
When did you start writing?
I’ve written fiction for as long as I can remember. I started writing mainly because I’ve always been an enthusiastic reader – of anything and everything. As a child, my parents thought it was a good thing for me to be reading anything at all – Enid Blyton, comics, science fiction, horror stories, the backs of cereal packets – just so long as I was reading. The result was that I developed a passion for books, and then tried to produce my own versions of the stuff that I most enjoyed. So, as a teenager, I used to fill notebooks with short stories in virtually every genre – all of them awful (I’ve been back and looked, but only once!). I read English at university, and always carried on writing mainly for my own pleasure, although I did have some non-fiction books and the odd story and poem published. I kept starting novels that never got beyond the first two or three chapters, partly because it took me a long while to find the stories that I really wanted to tell.
Where do you write? And what’s your routine?
I have what I rather grandly call a study at the top of the house – a really nice airy room which on a good day (we get a few in Manchester) has the sun streaming in through the skylight. It’s an ideal mix because I can see the blue skies and the tops of the trees, but I can’t see the glorious views of the Pennines properly unless I stand up, so most of the time I can avoid being distracted. I do most of my writing there, and I fit it in around the other work that I still do as a management consultant. I’ve discovered from experience that I’m not very productive at writing in the mornings, so I tend to deal with less interesting work then. But once I get into a rhythm, I tend to lose contact with the world around me and can work as late into the night as I need to.
I’m always slightly astonished by writers who still work in longhand – possibly because my own handwriting is so awful. I love writing on the computer because it means I can make changes as I go – changing wording or dialogue, or moving scenes around to accommodate new ideas or developments. Once I’ve got an outline plan in place, I tend to just start at the beginning and write till I reach the end of the first draft, but I’ll also juggle the content as I go so that I can try to give the story the best shape.
The other advantage of writing on a computer is that I can do it more or less anywhere. I’ve discovered that, oddly, I can be very productive writing on trains (I spend far too much of my life commuting between Manchester and London), as long as I can shut out the rest of the world with my laptop and iPod. That seems to work well, though I’ve occasionally noticed other passengers peering worriedly over my shoulder as I tap out a murder scene . . .
What are the pros and cons of being a writer?
When it’s going well, it’s the best job in the world. And even when it’s going badly, it’s better than most other things. I really enjoy losing myself in the world I’m creating, and I particularly love it when that world and its characters start to take over. It’s a strange but exhilarating feeling when the life that you’re creating starts to seem more real than the life outside. That means that you’ve got to be comfortable spending a good proportion of your day working on your own, living largely inside your own head. I’ve occasionally suspected that you have to be at least slightly mad to want to write, but I hope it’s an entertaining form of madness.
And of course the writing doesn’t always go well. Sometimes you just feel that a story or a scene isn’t working, or that you’ve reached a dead-end or lost your way with the plot. That can be nerve-racking, particularly if you’ve already invested a lot of time and emotion in what you’ve produced – but so far, I’m relieved to say, it’s generally come good in the end. Usually the dead-end turns out not to be that at all, but just a sign that it’s time to change direction and that something even more interesting is waiting up ahead. The worst thing is that, when you hit those difficult patches, it’s very difficult to put the work aside, so it ends up dominating your mind for days until it sorts itself out. I suspect I’m probably not the easiest person to live with at those times.
Which writers have inspired you?
Countless writers have inspired me in various different ways. I grew up in Eastwood in Nottinghamshire which is famously D H Lawrence’s birthplace, and I went to the same primary and secondary schools that he did. So his work was an indirect inspiration in the sense that it proved that it was possible for someone from a very similar background to my own to become a writer.
As a teenager, my first inspiration was for science fiction – not so much because I wanted to write it myself, but because writers like Samuel R Delany and Philip K Dick showed me just what the imagination was capable of. I came to crime fiction at around the same time, managing somehow to get mildly addicted to both Agatha Christie and Raymond Chandler! I remember also discovering ‘literary’ writers who happened to be terrific story-tellers, like Stevenson, Dickens and Wilkie Collins. That gradually led me to discover the wealth of great crime writing that’s out there. My enthusiasm for crime fiction is now very diverse – including ‘golden age’ English writers like the extraordinary Marg
ery Allingham, Americans like Donald Westlake and Ross Macdonald, the best British writers such as Reginald Hill and John Harvey, and newer writers like Jo Nesbo.
How important is a sense of place in your writing?
Very important. I almost always have a particular place in mind when I’m describing a scene, even when I might have fictionalized it to suit my needs. My earlier books had exotic settings – even more exotic than Manchester – so I had to work hard to supplement my own direct experience with research to make sure I got the details right. It’s been a pleasure writing about Manchester and its surroundings because I can use the books to explore places that I know and love (or, in a very few cases, know and dislike!). It’s also brought home to me the remarkable diversity of the environment and landscape in the area – and I’ve only just begun to explore some of the more unexpected locations.
Do you spend a lot of time researching your novels?
One way or another, yes. But it’s a very varied mixture of activities. My non-writing life as a consultant means that I end up working in countless different types of organizations, both in the UK and overseas, so I often gain very direct experience of how things work. As it happens, I’ve spent a large part of the last decade working in various parts of the criminal justice sector – police, prisons, probation – so that’s given me a very solid grounding in the realities of that world (even where I’ve chosen to apply some fictional licence). Beyond that, I’ll go and talk to specific individuals about their particular fields of expertise and a lot of that will feed into the books, though often anonymously. And of course I spend a lot of time reading relevant background material and hunting about on the internet for information. One of the great advantages of the web as a research tool is that it’s now possible to obtain fairly easily the kind of trivial information (what’s the exact road layout in that particular part of the Lancashire coast?) that is irrelevant to most people, but is often critical to getting a fictional setting right.
