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‘Not my favourite people,' he said. ‘Present company maybe not even excepted.

I didn't know what the hell was going on. All kinds of thoughts were going through my head. Not least the coincidence that you'd started working for us the very fucking day this happens. I didn't go home. I went off to a – well, a girlfriend, let's say. Someone who'd give me an alibi for the night if needed it.'

‘In case someone didn't believe your story about being jumped from behind. In case someone thought maybe you'd been the one doing the jumping. That you might have a reason for torching your own office.' She was conscious of the anger in her voice. She was getting tired of being jerked around.

‘You know the way police minds work,' McGrath said. He paused and smiled. ‘Yeah, you know exactly how their minds work. Just wanted to make sure I'd got the bases covered, in case it was needed.'

‘And what about Lizzie? You didn't bother to let her know you hadn't been incinerated?‘ She remembered how distraught Lizzie had been after the fire. Surely that hadn't been just an act?

‘Yeah, you're right. It was shitty of me. I wasn't thinking. Or maybe I was.' He glanced across at the younger woman. ‘Poor Lizzie left me message after message trying to track me down. She said she was with you at the office. And – well, like I say, I didn't know who the fuck you were or what you were up to. I knew Lizzie was straight, but I thought maybe you were stringing her along somehow. So I decided to lie low for a bit. Work out what was going on. Not that I got very far. In the end, I called Lizzie yesterday and asked about you.'

‘Scared the bloody life out of me,' Lizzie said. ‘Thought it was some sick bastard playing games.'

‘Thing was,' McGrath said, ‘once Lizzie calmed down, it was clear we'd both come to the same conclusion about you. That it was all a bit of a bloody coincidence that you'd turned up just when all this happened.

‘Life and soul of the party, that's me,' Marie said. ‘So you decided to find out who I was?'

‘Yeah, exactly.' McGrath glanced across at Lizzie. ‘Think you took us both my surprise, though. Undercover cop. Infiltrating my business. I almost feel honoured.'

‘Just doing my job,' Marie said, unsmiling. ‘Whatever you might think of it.'

McGrath shrugged. ‘It's all a fucking game, isn't it? You lot have it harder than we do. You play by the rules, mostly. Real question is why you were bothered with a tinpot operation like mine. Must be bigger fish out there.'

‘But maybe not bigger fish with links to Jeff Kerridge? Maybe you're selling yourself a bit short. I don't think you're as small-time as you'd like people to believe.'

McGrath laughed. ‘I like people to underestimate me. I'm not the best money-man in the world – I leave all that to Lizzie these days – but I've done all right. It's like any other business. It's who you know. And I know the right people. Me and Jeff went way back. I was never one of his real inner circle – not like Pete Boyle, which is a laugh, seeing how that turned out. But I was close enough. He put business my way, and I put a few opportunities in his direction.'

‘What about his widow?' Marie asked. ‘You close to her?'

McGrath gave another laugh. ‘Not the way that sounds. Don't think anyone got close to Helen Kerridge in that way, other than Jeff. Not even sure that Jeff did, come to think of it. Not that often, anyway. But, yeah, after Jeff went, I kept up contact with Helen. Got a few opportunities out of it. She was even more ambitious than Jeff, but she was less paranoid. She was happy to work with me to build up business in this neck of the woods, without worrying that I was stealing it from under her nose. Jeff was a control freak. Always assumed the worst of everyone. Rightly, in Pete Boyle's case, but there you go.' For a moment, he looked almost wistful. ‘Could have been good with Helen. She knew what she was doing, and with me and a few others she was starting to build an operation. Could have been running the whole fucking north west, given a year or two.'

‘But she wasn't given a year or two,' Marie said. ‘Someone took her out.'

‘Not someone,' McGrath said. ‘Pete fucking Boyle took her out. No fucking question.'

‘And what about your office? Was that Boyle as well?'

McGrath frowned. ‘Well, that's it, isn't it? I mean, it must be fucking Boyle. But it doesn't feel right. Boyle's been throwing his weight about for months. But it's been professional. Real pro hit jobs. Enough carnage to make his point, without getting to the point where the police felt obliged to do much about it. All targeted to scare the shit out of the likes of me. Working a treat, I should think. Even killing Helen Kerridge – well, it was tastefully done, if you get my drift, and I don't think the police were going to lose much sleep over the Kerridge family.'

‘But torching your office was different?'

‘There've been one or two other arson attacks, but handled with more finesse. The guy who jumped me was a fucking clown. The whole thing was fucking amateurish. What sort of pillock ends up incinerated in his own fire? And the whole thing was over the top. Everyone knows I'm not the bravest fucking soldier. If someone warns me off, I stay warned off. Helen's death was enough for me. I was treading fucking warily. I didn't need anyone to come and set fire to me.'

‘What about last night?' Marie asked. ‘Was there really an intruder, or was that just a story to get me over here?'

‘There was an intruder.' This time it was Lizzie who answered. She'd been sitting in silence, listening to Marie and McGrath, her face suggesting she had plenty of thoughts of her own. ‘Andy stayed the night here, in the spare room. I wasn't sure that was wise, in case the police came looking, but, well,' she glanced across at McGrath and smiled, this time with genuine warmth, ‘the old bugger was genuinely worried about me. And just as well he was, as it turns out. The story was a bit different from what I told you. I was woken by someone trying to get in the front door. Again, not exactly subtle. Someone with a bloody great crowbar. I woke Andy. He went into the hallway and banged like hell on the inside of the front door. Must have frightened the shit out of whoever was out there.'

McGrath shrugged apologetically. ‘Didn't know what else to do, to be honest,' he said. ‘I mean I couldn't exactly call the police, could I? And I wasn't going to open the door. Like I say, courage isn't my strongest point. But I was banking on it being another fuckwit. By the time I opened the door, he'd buggered off down the stairs. I went after him, but he'd legged it to a car waiting outside. I was happy to let it go at that.'

‘And you were attacked as well?' Lizzie asked.

Marie nodded. ‘Yesterday evening.' She briefly described what had happened. ‘Jesus,' McGrath said. ‘You're a tough one, aren't you?'

‘You don't know what you're capable of till the adrenaline kicks in.'

‘I know what I'd have done,' McGrath said. ‘And it wouldn't have been that.'

Lizzie was watching them both, her expression increasingly impatient. ‘Yeah. well. So you're fucking brave. But in the space of twenty-four hours, someone's had a go at each of us. Maybe Pete Boyle. Maybe someone else. Maybe half-arsed, but that doesn't mean they won't have another go and get luckier next time. And Andy's in the shit, anyway, because there was a cremated fucking body in his burnt out office and he's done a runner—'

‘I've got an alibi,' McGrath said. ‘I got all that sorted.'

Lizzie turned to McGrath, her face that of a despairing teacher faced with another feeble excuse for missing homework. ‘Andy, you got an alibi from a girlfriend who's got convictions for shoplifting and benefit fraud. How long do you think it's going to take the police to pull that one apart?'

McGrath opened his mouth as if to speak. But he could clearly think of nothing worthwhile to say and, after a moment, he closed it again and shook his head.

Lizzie turned to Marie. ‘What are your plans now? I presume this means the end of your assignment.' She placed the lightest ironic emphasis on the final word.

‘I'd say so, wouldn't you?' Marie agreed. ‘My orders were to stay put for a day or two. My bosses were going to square things with the local police, but they didn't want me to disappear before that was sorted.' It was a précis of the truth, she thought, but close enough for the moment. ‘But last night put an end to that as well, as far as I'm concerned. I don't want to stay up here and let someone have another shot at me.'

‘So you're heading back to London?' Lizzie was looking thoughtful.

‘As soon as I can bloody well manage it.'

Lizzie nodded, as if Marie had just confirmed some idea that had been gestating in her own mind. ‘That's great,' she said. ‘That's perfect. Because my dad says you're just the person he wants to talk to.'

‘Inappropriate?' she said, finally. ‘What was inappropriate, exactly?' She felt, for a moment, as if all the breath had been knocked from her. As if someone had physically kicked her in the stomach. She wasn't sure what she'd been expecting exactly, but it wasn't this.

Salter leaned back in his chair, his face giving nothing away. He's been reading one of those crap management books, she thought. Leadership secrets of Adolf Hitler. He allowed the silence to build for a few moments, the way he might have done when conducting an interrogation. That was what it felt like. As if he were trying to worm the guilt out of her.

At last, he sat forward, his face assuming an expression she presumed was supposed to look businesslike. ‘Well,' he said, ‘since you take the trouble to ask, pretty much everything.' The expression looked more smug than anything else, though she suspected that wasn't the look he was aiming for. But maybe she'd done him more of a favour than she knew.

There was no point in arguing with him just yet. He was going to have his say and she might as well let him have it. ‘Everything,' she repeated, trying to inject some scepticism into the word.

‘Let's start at the beginning, shall we? Disobeying a direct order to stay put. How's that for inappropriate?'

‘Oh, for Christ's sake, Hugh. Someone broke into my house and tried to kill me. What was I supposed to do?'

‘You were supposed to obey instructions. Or at least let me know what you were doing. Rather than just buggering off.'

That at least was a fair point, she conceded. She couldn't see what else she could have done, but she hadn't handled it well. She'd been pissed off with Salter for landing her in this mess, and she hadn't felt inclined to go chasing him up. ‘I didn't just bugger off,' she pointed out. ‘I tried to get hold of you. I left you a message telling you what I was going to do.'

‘Which I received when it was too late for me to do anything about it.'

As if it was my fault you were avoiding my calls, she thought. Out loud, she said: ‘Aren't you listening, Hugh? Someone broke into my house and tried to kill me. I was bloody lucky to get out alive. Should I have just sat there and waited for it to happen again?'

‘You should have got in touch and asked for support,' Salter said. ‘We'd have made sure you were safe. We should have followed up the attack. We might have found out something useful.'

‘Like who tried to kill me?'

‘Or why. Christ, it's all fucked up now. I had to come clean with the local cops about what you were doing up there. That created the mother of all shit-storms.'

‘You'd have had to tell them anyway,' she said. ‘It's a murder investigation now. They'd have wanted to know who the hell Maggie Yates was.'

‘Maybe,' Salter conceded. ‘Though they're much more interested in tracking down Andy McGrath. The guy in the office was some small-time punk who did bits of dirty business for all and sundry. Not the brightest bulb on the chandelier, apparently, and quite capable of setting himself on fire. But McGrath's gone to ground, so they want to talk to him.'

She could feel him watching her intently as he spoke. Not for the first time, she had the uneasy sense that Salter knew what she was thinking. She'd last seen McGrath the previous morning in Lizzie's kitchen. She'd tried to persuade him to go to the police himself. McGrath had pointed out that the police were never going to cut any slack for the likes of him. ‘Even if they can't pin the arson or the killing on me, they'll find some reason to bang me up. My inclination's to make myself scarce, maybe start over somewhere else. If I don't make it too easy for them, they won't worry themselves too much over me or the bastard who tried to kill me.' She'd said nothing, though he might well be right. Small war between two lowlifes. One dead. Who was going to care?

‘Not sure I see McGrath as a killer,' she said. ‘But then I can hardly claim to have got to know him.'

‘One of our shorter undercover assignments,' he said, in a tone that implied the fault was hers. ‘Still, the way things were going, it's probably as well you got out before you did any more damage.'

‘What's this about, Hugh? I was expecting sympathy and support, not a bloody dressing down.'

‘That right?' Salter was flicking through a sheaf of papers in front of him. From her side of the desk, she couldn't make out any of the content. ‘We've already talked about disobeying a direct instruction. Coming out of the field without permission. Do you know how serious it is to disregard procedure like that?'

‘For God's sake, Hugh, it didn't make any difference. You'd have had to recall me anyway.'

‘Then there's Jack Brennan,' Salter went on, as if he hadn't heard her.

‘Jack Brennan? What's he got to do with anything?'

‘That's what I was going to ask you. You seem to have spent a fair bit of time in his company.'