Chapter 56
LAUREN
Lauren enters the secure log-in on her laptop, granting her access to DI Stratman’s interview with Carrie Finder.
In the interview room, a light on the machine will illuminate to indicate the interview is being monitored.
Lauren feels a pinch of resentment at not being there in person, even though this is about far more than departmental jurisdiction now.
Lauren can no longer be objective about this case, not now Fraser’s involved.
He had come to morning briefing, casually knotting his tie as he’d sat down, and triggering in Lauren a peculiar mix of fear and longing.
She hadn’t been able to make eye contact with him, and she’d rattled at breakneck speed through the sanitized update she’d agreed with counter-terrorism, before excusing herself to catch up with emails.
Fraser had caught her at the door. ‘Everything okay?’
‘Fine. Fine. I’d better . . .’ Lauren had gestured vaguely towards her office, her heart hammering. She has no talent for deception, unlike Fraser. How long has he been lying to her? A year? Two? Since the beginning?
On Lauren’s laptop screen, Carrie Finder looks pale and anxious. She sits with her hands pressed under her knees like a child, her eyes fixed on the scratched Formica table.
She had been arrested as she’d arrived at work this morning, two plain-clothes officers swooping in and redirecting her to their car. In her jade-green silk blouse and wide trousers, she looks more like a solicitor than a criminal.
‘How long have you known Alan Ellis?’ DI Stratman asks her.
‘No comment.’ Carrie’s so quiet Lauren has to turn up the volume on her headphones.
‘How about Chris Morley?’
‘No comment.’
‘Mike Bishop?’
‘No comment.’
DI Stratman leans in. ‘Does the name Fraser Hogan mean anything to you?’
The door to Lauren’s office opens. She startles. She’s already on edge, and when she sees Fraser standing in the doorway it takes everything she has not to cry out.
He holds up a mug. ‘Thought you could use a coffee.’
In Lauren’s ear, Stratman repeats his question.
‘No comment.’
‘You sure about that?’ Stratman says, and now Fraser’s at her desk, putting down the coffee and leaning down to see what Lauren’s watching, and her face floods with heat. Fraser Hogan, she hears through her headphones, and he’s so close – can he hear it too? Can he read Stratman’s lips?
‘No comment,’ Carrie says.
Fraser rests a hand on Lauren’s back. Her hair is swept up in a clip, exposing the skin at the nape of her neck, and as his thumb strokes the base of her skull Lauren freezes.
Her terrified face appears, ghostlike, in her laptop screen, and for a sickening moment she catches Fraser’s reflection too and thinks he’s seen her fear.
He leans forward. ‘Isn’t that Carrie Finder?’
Lauren breathes out. He’s looking at Carrie, not her. Still, she forces her face to relax. Fraser’s thumb presses harder, working at the tension either side of her spine. Pressure climbs in Lauren’s chest.
‘How come she’s been brought in?’ he asks.
‘DI Stratman wasn’t happy with the account she gave you.
’ She stands, because Fraser suddenly seems so much taller than her, so much stronger.
He looks rattled, an ugly flush creeping from beneath his collar.
He’s still staring at Carrie, and Lauren reaches to close the laptop.
Her pulse surges, loud and insistent. Say something, Lauren!
He’ll know something’s up if you don’t speak .
. . ‘CTU think she’s a member of New Dawn. ’
‘No way.’ A vein flickers at the corner of Fraser’s left eye. ‘She seemed so normal.’
‘They walk among us.’ Lauren’s voice sounds weak.
‘I’d love to listen in.’ Fraser reaches towards her laptop, but Lauren puts a hand on the lid.
‘Sorry. Strict orders from CTU.’
‘Oh, come on – who’s going to know?’
‘It’s against regulations.’
‘It’s against regulations . . .’ Fraser grins to take the sting out of his mimicry, but there’s a hardness beneath it that sends a shiver down Lauren’s spine.
She takes a step back. ‘Could you take a look at a job that shift have flagged? Currently a GBH with intent, but the victim’s taken a turn for the worse and it might be coming our way.’
‘Sure.’ He doesn’t move. Just watches her with such intensity she’s convinced he’s trying to see inside her head. ‘Although . . .’ He sighs. ‘I didn’t want to tell you this until it was sorted, but Foxleigh Manor just called.’
For a second, Lauren’s stress levels soar – can nothing go right with this bloody wedding? – then she realizes with an almost laughable lurch that there isn’t going to be a wedding. She rearranges her face into a plausible mask of concern. ‘What’s happened now?’
‘The couple they double-booked are kicking off. They’ve got an email chain that shows they made the reservation first. But I’m sorting it,’ Fraser adds quickly, as if Lauren cares, as if any of this matters.
‘This is precisely why I checked out a back-up venue. I’m going there now to confirm timings.
’ He presses a kiss to Lauren’s forehead, and her fingernails carve crescents in the pads of her palms. ‘Don’t worry. ’
It takes a full minute after he’s gone for Lauren to stop shaking.
Her mobile rings and she looks at the screen.
Nadeeka Prasanna.
‘Hi.’ Lauren’s voice is wobbly, as though she hasn’t used it for a while.
‘I had a call from DI Stratman,’ Nadeeka says. ‘He said I’m getting a new family liaison officer.’
‘Yes. I’m sorry. I’ve been . . .’ Lauren hesitates. ‘Reallocated.’
‘I wanted to check it was all above board. You know – that he was . . . real.’ She gives a sheepish laugh.
‘He’s real.’ Lauren feels suddenly overwhelmed by the devastation of discovering who Fraser really is.
It must have been like this for Nadeeka, she thinks, when she discovered DI Burton wasn’t a police officer; and when Lauren told her Jamie had been working with New Dawn.
‘I’m sorry,’ she says again. So insignificant, after everything that’s happened.
‘Not long till your wedding, is it?’
Lauren closes her eyes. The irony of Nadeeka’s attempts to change the subject to territory she imagines is more comfortable . . . ‘No.’ She swallows. ‘Not long.’
‘If you need any last-minute alterations on your dress . . . I’m not a bad seamstress, as long as you want to be a drone or a library book.’ Nadeeka laughs.
‘When’s the big performance?’ Lauren feels more in control now, the anodyne small talk oddly soothing.
‘Tomorrow afternoon. Kath’s getting there early to bag us seats in the front row. I’ve got something on at work in the morning.’
A burst of music drowns out Nadeeka’s words for a couple of seconds, until someone turns it down. A Christmas carol, Lauren thinks, although she can’t place which one. ‘Do you usually work on a Saturday?’
‘I’m running a recruitment fair at work. Setting up now and we open the doors this afternoon. Back tomorrow morning. The CEO wants to push our family credentials, so we’ve got music, a magician, even a Santa.’
‘Sounds great.’ Something hovers at the edge of Lauren’s thoughts, unease building slowly but forcefully. On the phone, Nadeeka is calling to someone, her voice muffled as she moves the phone from her ear. No, the tree can’t go there, there’s no socket for the fairy lights . . .
Lauren’s thoughts snap into focus. ‘Nadeeka—’ she starts, but the music has started again and now someone is talking to Nadeeka in insistent, broken English.
‘Sorry,’ Nadeeka says. ‘I have to go.’
‘Wait!’ Lauren needs more information; needs to confirm what she thinks is right. But Nadeeka has gone, and when Lauren rings back, the call goes unanswered.
Lauren steadies herself on her desk.
It’s going to be a fucking bloodbath, Whitty had said.
And now Lauren knows where.