41
E ssie is, it turns out, right. Police Scotland are wildly overstretched.
Tris is already in custody, being interviewed by the lead detective, and finding, for possibly the first time in his life, someone he cannot charm with his money, good looks and connections; in fact, quite the opposite.
Detective Sergeant Nisha Malik has met a few people like Tris in her time, and she doesn’t care how expensive the jacket is that he’s wearing; her world is divided into radges, neds and bawbags, and this one is a bawbag.
Tris’s expensive lawyer, who looks exactly like him except a lot fuller and redder in the face, keeps trying to get him to shut up while also feeling distinctly queasy, partly because of the amount of port he drank at the Malt Whisky Society last night, and partly because he recommended more than a few people to Tris’s incredibly successful wealth fund himself, and they are all going to be out for blood.
There is a uniform on the front door of the office, stopping people from going in, but the other police on the job are still at Moray Place, trying to get Connor to stop crying for long enough to put his shoes on.
There is nobody on the back door.
*
Inside, the office is deserted and there is yellow tape on the office door.
Yellow tape stating in absolutely no uncertain terms that this is a crime scene.
That, by entering it, Essie will be entering said crime scene.
She wonders if there is CCTV anywhere. Then she remembers that Tris has been committing massive fraud for years.
The absolute last thing he would want is CCTV around the place.
Okay. She doesn’t have long. They’ll be back, or she’ll make a noise. Or she’ll just lose her nerve.
She squats under the tape, and dashes towards the first pile of papers.
*
‘What the hell??’
Stupid bloody open-plan house. There is nowhere to go to have a proper argument without Verity being able to lip-read or even tell from their backs that they are having a massive argument. Janey orders him into the laundry, where the dogs go mental.
‘She might go to prison!’
‘I think there’s plausible deniability,’ Lowell says as gently as he can. ‘Janey, she was going to go anyway. I couldn’t have dissuaded her.’
‘You should have locked her in this laundry until I could get here! She’s out of her mind.’
‘I don’t . . . she won’t get into big trouble!’
‘You don’t know that!’
‘It happens all the time. Look at all those American presidents who take papers home. They won’t waste police time on her.’
‘YOU DON’T KNOW THAT.’
‘Janey, she’s an adult. She was going to do it anyway. I just told her what she was looking for.’
Janey bites her lip and folds her arms, breathing heavily. Her face is pink. Lowell suddenly, unexpectedly, finds he is incredibly turned on. He squashes the feeling down. This won’t do at all.
‘What is she looking for?’
And he tells her, and she takes out her phone.
*
There are piles and piles of paperwork, printouts spread everywhere. Essie scans a couple. They look like profit and loss accounts, with adjustments, presumably. He must have been paying some people out of fake accounts and . . .
She’s pretty sure this must be what Connor was doing: being the sweet, innocent front man, showing off the pretty P how could she have been so stupid?
She’s clearly not cut out for a life of crime.
She pulls it out – OMG, her bloody mother, again.
She presses no and tries to turn the phone off, but now her hands are shaking far too much to manage it.
Downstairs, she hears a noise. It’s the crackle of a radio.
She freezes. There’s a muttering, but behind the windows she can’t tell what the police officer is saying.
She glances around. Everything else is just sheets of paper, investment brochures, marketing leaflets.
Nothing that makes any sense. The radio crackles again.
Her blood is throbbing in her veins. She grabs the envelope, jumps over the tape as quietly as she is able, dives down the stairs, tiptoes down to the back door and out into the mews as quietly as she can, shutting the door millimetre by millimetre.
She wants to run but doesn’t dare. She is terrified of hearing, ‘Stop! What the hell are you doing?’ And at the far end of the mews is where the CCTV will start, if they do suspect someone of being in the building.
She has one chance. She texts Lowell.
And then, once again very quietly, she turns, heart pounding in her chest, to the old black wooden door, which doesn’t look as if it has anything to do with the glossy office, which is indeed a relic of a different time . . . and gently slips inside.
*
Janey puts the phone down.
‘She’s still not answering. She’s probably in police custody.’
‘I didn’t know she hadn’t told you.’
Janey is teary with rage. ‘Well, she hadn’t. You didn’t think I’d be worried out of my wits?’
‘She seemed . . . resolute. Organised. Janey, she’s a grown-up.’
‘She’s my grown-up.’
‘I’m sorry,’ says Lowell. ‘I thought it was best. Janey . . . she’s a wonderful girl. She’s just . . . she’s so amazing with Verity and . . . I mean, it’s been lovely having her come in here.’
Janey is speechless. ‘Thank you,’ she says finally. ‘Thanks.’
And then, finally, the phone rings. Not her phone. Lowell’s.