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E ssie is absolutely terrified to see them but does her best to look insouciant as she passes the two police officers at the front door on her way out.
She heads away from the flat, slower now, out of puff, the adrenaline still pumping, slowly crossing past the beautiful round park, where nannies rock babies still in beautiful, expensive, high Silver Cross prams; up round Ainslie Place, with a quieter, smaller park, where the less well-behaved dogs are taken to be exercised, the green metal circles on their collars proclaiming that they have the right to enter the private parks in the way most humans do not; and up and across the busy Queensferry Road.
The investment firm is low-key, barely noted outside, except now, because it has a couple of photographers and journalists outside it, and a police officer on the door.
Essie’s heart beats faster. This is happening.
It’s terrifying. This is a big, notorious criminal Ponzi scheme imploding and the world is interested.
What would they do if they caught her? she wonders. She could pretend she was looking for a toilet, got lost, say nothing. She’s white, middle-class, they would probably just tell her to piss off.
Worth it.
*
She sneaks round the back of the street, to the tiny hidden mews behind.
Goes to the little door she knows from back in their wild early days.
The door to the next-door house, which also leads to his office, in the maze of old Edinburgh terraces, the little corridors, that hot night . . . she sighs, remembering.
She can’t think about that now. She has one shot at this, the very worst thing she has ever done. But the alternative is worse still.