But I wasn’t going to do that. It was time to stop running. Because what I’d been running from had died with Hexter. I didn’t feel as relieved as I knew I would eventually. I was still numb with shock. But the certainty that it was over had lodged in my mind. I was going to be all right. Everything was going to be all right.
We stood by Hexter’s car and waited. Joe smoked one of his roll-ups and I smoked one too. He didn’t seem to be in any hurry to explain the deal he’d done with Marianne Vogler. So, in the end, I just asked him straight out what it was.
Joe, it soon became clear, had never quite been the innocent he presented himself as.
‘Truth is, Nicole, I’d known for a long time Conrad was a big-time money launderer for an international crime consortium. Hacking into files he thought I didn’t have access to was easy peasy. So, I knew all about the Clearing House. But I enjoyed what I did for him and he paid me well for working pretty much on my own terms, so … I turned a blind eye.’
‘I imagine there was quite a lot to turn a blind eye to.’
‘More than you know, actually. Con’s boss, Andreas Kremer, was skimming money off Clearing House funds and Con was stashing it away for both of them.’
‘You mean you were stashing it away.’
Joe shrugged. ‘If you want to be picky, yeah. Anyway, when Ursula Kendall turned up at Tideways, asking way too many questions about Con, I hacked into her files as well and discovered HMRC were seriously on his case. So, I reckoned it was time to move on, in my own best interests.’
‘That must have made my offer of a job with Venstrom look more appealing than you let on.’
‘Yeah. But I had no idea how far Con was prepared to go to hold on to me, did I? Things got way out of control after what he did to Mum. I pinned my hopes on your boss Carl coming to some arrangement with him, but that didn’t exactly work out, did it?’
‘And after you were arrested, Hexter made you an offer you couldn’t refuse?’
‘To work for him at GCHQ, yeah. I didn’t have any choice really. I actually started to enjoy some of the problems they threw at me. But then … well, you know what happened then. Hexter hired the Clearing House, through Marianne, to arrange his – our – removal to China. Plus he wanted you and Duncan … rubbed out. Obviously, I couldn’t let that happen.’
He couldn’t let that happen. It was strange how, through everything, Joe had always thought he was in control, even when he wasn’t. Or maybe, on some level, he actually was. ‘So … what did you do?’
‘I had to think fast when Duncan and I were taken. I knew Con’s share of the skimmed Clearing House funds was held jointly in his name and Marianne’s. And I assumed she knew that as well. But I was wrong. He’d kept the whole thing from her. Anyway, I told her the details of the skimming operation would be automatically emailed to the Clearing House within forty-eight hours by a program only I had access to unless she let Duncan live and cut me free from Hexter. I’d set the program up as a precaution when I first realized what was going on. But I’d never initialized it, so, technically … it was an empty threat.’
‘But she believed it?’
‘Yeah. It seems a reputation for being a genius can be useful sometimes. She was furious with Kremer, reckoning stealing from the Clearing House was suicide. She used my threat to force him into agreeing to filter the money back in, so nobody would ever know it had left. And they both agreed to my terms.’ Joe smiled at me. ‘Result, you could say.’
‘Marianne’s claim that the Clearing House had decided to hold on to you was just a cover story, then?’
‘She and Kremer calculated Hexter wouldn’t want to admit to his new masters in Beijing that he’d left me in the hands of an international criminal organization, so he’d have to come up with some version of events that didn’t involve the Clearing House. In that case, there’d be no danger of the Chinese coming after her and Kremer because they’d never know anything about them. But Hexter wouldn’t take no for an answer, would he? And Marianne had to do whatever kept me alive in the short term. So, she let him take me.’
‘But she sent Duncan after us?’
‘Seems like it. She must’ve let him use one of their cars. Otherwise, he’d never have got here in time. And she must’ve given him a gun as well.’
‘How did he talk her into that, do you suppose?’
Joe let the question go unanswered. Eventually, I tried to answer it myself. ‘Maybe she just trusted him to get the job done.’
Joe nodded. ‘Yeah. Maybe that was it.’
‘And he did, didn’t he?’
Joe nodded again. ‘Oh yeah.’
‘What will you do, Joe? Now there’s no threat from Hexter or the Clearing House?’
He shrugged. ‘Not sure.’ And he wasn’t, of course. But the world isn’t going to leave someone like him alone. He must have known that. Me, yes. But not him. ‘What about you?’
I was still trying to come up with a reply when I heard a sound in the distance. Joe heard it too. The wail of a police siren. All I said in the end was, ‘Here they come.’
I knew there were going to be lots of questions for me to answer in the hours and days ahead. But I also knew, even then, that the hardest one to answer was going to be the one Joe had just asked.
***
I’m not going back to work for Venstrom Computers, with or without Billy Swarther at the helm. Which would be without, from what I hear. So … what, then? I still owe Lewis Martinek £500. And I promised I’d take him to Las Vegas if I made it through. God, I might actually have to deliver on that!
I don’t know. A few days ago, I didn’t seem to have a future. Now I’ve got one. And it’s empty. A few weeks ago, that would have terrified me. Now it feels good. In fact, it feels … fantastic.
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First published in Great Britain in 2019 by Bantam Press
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One False Move Page 31
