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  ‘I never injected. Smoked, yes. I could control that.’

  ‘I know. But you’ve taken a pounding, and two years undercover is enough for now. Try something new. There’s plenty to get your teeth into.’ She leaned into Jackie and said in a tempting, sing-song voice, ‘Mobile phone cash transaction fraud.’

  Jackie wrinkled her nose.

  ‘Hey, don’t diss it. International transactions, links to terrorism. Could be a scoop.’

  Jackie tossed the paper towel into the bin.

  Miranda studied her. ‘I could arrange a secondment, if you like. Five expressed an interest.’

  ‘Five?’ MI5, the Security Service. ‘Agent running?’

  ‘No. But casework. You’d be good. They’ve asked for you to design some training for their rookies, too.’

  ‘What about Six?’

  ‘You don’t want to work for those wankers,’ Miranda said. ‘They all think they’re James Bond, comparing willies all day long.’ She paused. ‘You’d have a bigger willy than any of them. They wouldn’t like it.’

  ‘I’ll think about it.’

  ‘You coming back in? Watch the rest of the trial?’

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘Shame you missed the first day,’ Miranda said. ‘James Little gave evidence while you were holed up in the witness room.’

  ‘Little Jimmy?’ Jackie cast her mind to the skinny Scot with his love of puzzle books. ‘I heard he pleaded guilty.’

  He’d already been sentenced; was already serving time in some Victorian monstrosity that retained its hanging shed.

  ‘He did. He also testified against the gang.’

  ‘Hell.’ Her guts crunched at the thought of how much courage that must’ve taken.

  ‘Spilled the beans about it all. What the gang was up to, where the guns were headed, the whole lot.’ Miranda scrutinised herself in the mirror and smoothed her fingertip along a wrinkle beside her eye. ‘And how he sneaked out of that warehouse and called the police. Told them what Hammond had planned for you. Even gave them the number plate. It’s down to him they found you so quickly.’

  ‘What?’ Jackie felt a stone in her stomach.

  Miranda turned to face her. ‘Little Jimmy saved your life.’

  Jackie couldn’t face the courtroom again that day. She wandered the London streets, dazed, barely aware of the hustle on the pavements and stink of hot bodies on the Tube. The Thames flowed by, brown and unperturbed, deprived of her corpse but sated with others. She turned her back on it and headed into the city, and lost herself in the litter and lights and crocodiles of European school kids sporting identical backpacks.

  She lurked at the back of the court to hear the summing up, and was there when the jury returned guilty verdicts against both defendants. Dave the Nutter was sentenced to twelve years. He jabbed his arms through the bars of the dock and swore at the judge, threatening to kill him. The judge didn’t bat an eyelid, just intoned, ‘Take him down,’ with a yawn.

  Dave the Nutter’s invective echoed behind him as the prison guards yanked him down the steps to the cells.

  John Hammond was expressionless as the judge sentenced him to life imprisonment. He lifted his head and his gaze scoured the packed courtroom as Nutter’s footsteps receded. Jackie cowered down in her seat. Hammond’s eyes locked on hers, and he drew his finger across his throat.

  Then they led him away and she started to breathe again.

  CHAPTER

  ONE

  Monday, 23 February 2015

  08:16 hours

  The target house was on the opposite side of the street. A red-brick semi, in a part of Cheltenham where all the roads were named after poets. Wide, tree-studded pavements surged with mothers, kids and pushchairs on the school run.

  Eden Grey lowered the car window. Chill air gusted into the car, carrying the children’s babble on its wings. She waited for a cohort to rumble past, then lifted the camera to the open window, adjusted the focus, and rattled off a series of shots. A white van was parked outside the target house, the logo of its former owner a spectre looming over its new identity: Wilde About Gardens. A website and mobile phone number were written in green swirling text underneath a drawing of a tree and flower. Eden closed in on the website and mobile number, and the shutter snapped.

  A woman came into view, herding along three children on scooters. Eden shoved her camera under a newspaper and adjusted the car’s heater until they were out of sight.

  ‘Come on,’ she muttered. ‘Time for work.’

  As if he’d heard her, a man came out of the target house. He was in his early fifties and had a flat bottom and saggy jeans like the back end of an elephant. A Christmas pudding bobble hat was tugged down over thick grey hair. A woman in a quilted dressing gown appeared in the doorway behind him, planted a standard eight-pound pressure kiss on his lips, then waved as he clambered into the van and drove away.

  Eden gave him a few seconds’ headstart, then slipped in the clutch and followed.

  She almost lost him at the junction. He hurtled out in front of a bus coming from the right, and a BMW from the left. The BMW driver made the international hand signal for ‘wanker’ and flashed his lights. The van tore up the road with a belch of blue smoke from the exhaust.

  Eden waited at the junction, tracking the van with her eyes, drumming her fingers on the steering wheel. She’d lose him at this rate. If only one of these cars would let her out. She sighed with a pang for the glory days, hurtling round the streets with the lights flashing and the siren blaring, the comforting heft of a gun tucked in her side.

  Someone let her out and she hit the accelerator. The van had turned left into a housing estate, a maze of identical houses. Damn! She could waste the morning trawling round trying to hunt him down in there. Her heart sank at the prospect of another morning lurking outside the target’s house; all the windows in the street had Neighbourhood Watch stickers.

  Her luck was in. Rounding a corner, she caught sight of the van. Surging ahead, she followed it through the warren until it drew up outside a large detached house. She slowed and drove past, parked up at the end of the street, slung her camera round her neck, and walked back, keeping the target in view.

  Christmas pudding man had the back of the van open and was lugging out bags of compost.

  ‘Bad back, is it, sunshine?’ Eden said to herself. Ducking behind a car, she raised the camera and took thirty shots of him hauling out compost. Inching closer, she scouted round for a good viewpoint, somewhere she wouldn’t be seen. There was a house ahead, curtains and blinds closed, no cars in the driveway. A good bet the owners were out. Perfect. She clipped up the street and ducked behind the gate. From there, she had an excellent view of the van and the target.

  She kept the camera trained on him as he heaved ceramic pots and paving slabs from the back of the van, recording every move. He wasn’t the sort of scumbag that used to be her prey – the pimps, drug dealers, gun runners and general forgers of misery – that was over now. Now it was insurance frauds and cheating husbands. Eden sighed. You can’t go back, she reminded herself. Jackie’s dead, remember? But the weight of Jackie’s ghost pressed on her shoulders.

  A woman with a toddler turned the corner ahead of her, their voices high on the fresh February air. The little girl had on a red duffel coat and pink shoes, and was clutching her mother’s hand, chattering.

  ‘That’s right, Molly,’ the woman said.

  Molly. Eden’s head snapped round. Molly. Her heart clenched. The girl was too young to be her, and she had blond hair. She’d always imagined Molly with dark hair, but the name snagged her, and familiar grief started to simmer deep in her mind.

  She shrank back as the woman and child drew level. Her eyes met the girl’s; she smiled, and Molly smiled back.

  It happened in an instant. A cry of ‘pussy cat!’, a flash of a red coat, brakes squealing. ‘Molly!’

  Then Eden was across the road, her arms snatching up the girl, and the two of them la
nded heavily on the pavement.

  Eden sat up, wincing. ‘You all right, sweetheart?’

  ‘I’ve bumped my head!’ Molly cried.

  ‘Let me see. Oh dear, you have got a bump. I’m sorry, sweetie.’

  ‘There was a cat,’ Molly said, tears brimming in her eyes. Eden glanced round. An ugly orange cat perched on a wall nearby, licking its tail.

  ‘Molly! Are you hurt?’ Molly’s mother ran across the road and gathered her into her arms. She stroked the blond locks back from her head, examining the bump. She turned to Eden, ‘Are you OK? How did you … thank God … thank you.’

  Eden scrambled to her feet, testing herself for injuries. Luckily the camera was on a neck strap and had been shielded by her body as she landed. She unwound it from her neck and inspected it, relieved to find it wasn’t broken. She couldn’t afford a new camera. The car was due its MOT soon and she was already praying it would pass, knowing in her heart it wouldn’t.

  The driver of the car and Chris Wilde hurried across.

  ‘She all right?’ the driver asked. ‘I nearly died when she ran out like that.’ He turned to Eden. ‘Where the hell did you come from?’

  ‘She was hiding,’ Molly said. ‘She’s taking photos.’

  Chris Wilde rounded on her. ‘What are you doing here?’

  ‘I’m a private detective,’ she said, trying to remain calm. ‘I’m collecting evidence for a client.’

  ‘What sort of evidence?’

  ‘It’s confidential.’

  ‘We’ll see about that.’ Wilde snatched the camera from her hands and flicked through the photos she’d taken. Shit, she was outed now. The camera had days’ worth of evidence.

  Chris Wilde’s face blossomed red. ‘They’re all of me,’ he said. ‘Hundreds of photos of me.’

  ‘Give it back.’

  ‘That’s my house, and my van,’ he said. Furious, he barked, ‘What the fuck are you up to?’

  ‘Give it back. I won’t tell you again.’ Each word was a rattle of bullets.

  He snorted in her face and held the camera above his head. ‘I could smash this right now.’

  Eden took a step back and sized him up. He had four inches and maybe five stone in weight on her. Then again, she had twenty years on him, and she ran six miles three times a week. Wilde was still sweating and puffing from the effort of unloading his van.

  In one movement she leapt and grabbed his wrist, twisting and ducking as she brought his arm round and high up behind his back, his hand bent backwards. She bent it back an inch further, feeling the tension flex. One tap on his elbow and his arm would snap.

  Wilde screamed, ‘Let go of me, bitch!’

  She prised the camera from his hand and let him go. He stumbled back, rubbing his arm. ‘Fucking lunatic.’

  She looked down at Molly. ‘You OK now, sweetheart? You’re a brave girl.’

  Eden turned and stalked back to her car, clutching the camera to her chest, aware they were watching her every step. She slid into the driver’s seat and started the engine, thumping the steering wheel as she drove away. The operation was blown.

  08:57 hours

  Christ knew what she’d tell the client. There was no way she could report to him in this state. Her jeans were torn, her head thumped and her wrist was swelling up. She headed home: an art deco flat in a block near the centre of Cheltenham. The block was dun coloured with curving balconies; a swathe of lawn puddled round the block, guarded by stately cedars. She’d lived there for two years and loved its wide windows and aura of more sophisticated times, half expecting a glimpse of a flapper sipping a cocktail and twirling a rope of pearls each time she let herself in. Her flat was on the second floor. She trudged up the stairs, aching as though she’d been beaten up. She’d fallen hard on her shoulder when she dived across the road.

  She paused outside her door, listening. There was no one in the corridor, the only sound the distant thrum of a radio on the floor below. She checked the door before inserting her key. The hair was still in place across the doorway. Slowly she cracked open the door and inched inside, scenting the air. Nothing. The apartment nursed an air of dejection that told her she’d been the last person to leave. Crossing to the window, she checked the thread in the frame was untouched. In her bedroom, the bottom drawer of her chest of drawers was slightly open, the top drawer firmly closed, just as she’d left them. She let out a long breath.

  The bathroom mirror presented a sorry sight. She’d banged her cheekbone when she hit the pavement, and it was already blooming. Her hair was matted with blood and grit. She parted her hair at the temple. Another scrape there, not too serious, but it had bled profusely. Her left wrist hurt when she moved it but there was no crunch of broken bones. Probably just a sprain, she thought; she’d had worse on the job, and went into the kitchen to get an icepack from the freezer. Twenty minutes later, her wrist was numb with cold and the swelling was receding.

  A shower dealt with the blood and grime ground into her hands and hair. Her scalp stung when she shampooed, and the cut on her temple reopened, leaving a smear of blood on the towel when she dried herself. She dabbed it with antiseptic, biting her tongue at the smart. Baby, she chided herself. It’s only a scrape, not like when … She shoved when aside. Jackie was dead, remember? No need to dwell on the past. Hammond was banged up for a good long time, and now she was Eden Grey, private detective and saver of small children, scourge of scumbags across Cheltenham.

  Yearning for the old days, her old job, her old life, felled her for a moment, and she wondered what her old teammates were up to while she was chasing insurance scams. Drag-netting paedo rings, kicking in doors, hanging out in dives and running agents, probably. Necking pints and scoffing curry to celebrate the end of an operation. She wondered if they ever mentioned her. Remember Jackie? She could nail a scrote.

  Enough wallowing. She made a pot of strong coffee, and, still swaddled in her fleecy dressing gown, fired up her laptop, perching it on her knees on the settee while she downloaded the photos from the morning, copied them on to a thumb drive, and wrote her report. It was one of the perks of working for herself: doing her admin at home, in her dressing gown, with daytime TV chuntering in the background. It was something to offset the cashflow crises and the breathless weeks when she feared she might never get a client ever again.

  When her report was finished, she checked it through and made out an invoice, then set it to print while she dressed in a navy plaid short kilt, opaque black tights, black silk blouse and biker boots. She covered the bruise on her cheek with makeup, and as an afterthought, she painted her nails dark blue. Blue nails might just distract from her pulped cheekbone.

  Once dressed, she checked through the report a final time and slotted the copy into a folder with the thumb drive of photos and her invoice. She wrote the client’s name on the front: PAUL NELSON.

  Snatching up her keys, she hoiked her messenger bag over her shoulder and baited her flat: thread across the window: some drawers left a fraction open, others closed tight. Another resident passed her in the corridor as she came out of her flat. She nodded hello and faffed about with her keys until he passed, then set up the hair across the doorway. Breathing a deep sigh, she set off to walk to her appointment with Paul.

  Good old Paul, he’d put a bit of work her way in the two years she’d been a PI: insurance scams mostly, plus some intelligence gathering on his competitors. She liked working for him: he was courteous and dignified and always paid her invoices on time.

  His headquarters were in Eagle Tower, a huge block that dominated the Cheltenham skyline. Regency houses, like a line of grubby wedding cakes, cowered at its base. Many of them had been converted from residential dwellings, their once elegant front gardens concreted over and clotted with executive cars.

  At the reception desk, she asked for Paul Nelson’s PA, and was told to wait. A man in a suit strolled past her, clutching a coffee carton. As he drew level, he nodded hello, then his gaze dropped to her legs,
and her short kilt riding on her thighs. She uncrossed and recrossed her legs, smirking when he spilled hot coffee over his fingers.

  ‘Eden?’ Janice, Paul’s PA, stood before her: short and sturdy, in an immaculate trouser suit and with a wayward lilac streak in her white hair that indicated she had a wild side, you just weren’t going to witness it during working hours. ‘Sorry to keep you waiting.’

  ‘Only just got here,’ Eden said, and followed Janice to the lift up to Paul’s office. Janice swung the door wide and ushered Eden inside. As always, Eden was struck by the size of the room. She could fit most of her flat in its square footage. It was tricked out in beige and cream with flashes of cinnamon, so tasteful she imagined he’d seen a picture in a magazine and had simply said, ‘I’ll have that.’

  Despite the modern décor, Paul’s desk was antique mahogany – huge, dark and imposing – the sort of desk where peace treaties are signed. His laptop lay open on the desk, alongside a silver pen tray that held a fountain pen and a silver propelling pencil.

  Paul, in grey suit trousers and red braces, rose as she entered and came round from behind his desk to shake her hand. He had an athletic build, and sandy hair that was just starting to recede in two scoops from his forehead. In his early fifties, he was still a good-looking man, with an air of authority about him that wasn’t entirely down to the massive desk and executive chair.

  ‘Eden, great to see you again. Take a seat.’ He motioned her to a seat opposite him then turned to his PA. ‘Could we have some coffee, please, Janice?’

  Paul was the president of a development firm that specialised in converting historic buildings to new uses. The shell would be retained, in some cases just the façade held up by hydraulics while the remainder was demolished and rebuilt. It preserved the ambience of an area, kept the beauty of the old and installed the convenience of the new, he had explained to her when she first met him. The best of both worlds. She’d seen one of his projects: a wall, the face of a building, like a film set, with nothing behind it.