Trust No One. Alex Walters

he’d already got what he paid for.’

      ‘Jesus, you like to think the worst of people, don’t you?’

      ‘Goes with the territory.’ The SOCO was losing interest, recognizing that Salter had no intention of sharing any information. ‘Anyway, we’ve plenty of stuff, but it’ll take some work to sort it all out.’ He paused, before making one last effort. ‘Strikes me as a professional job.’

      Salter was peering at the pool of blood. ‘Messy one if so,’ he said, non-committal.

      ‘That’s your trouble,’ the SOCO said. ‘Once you start talking, there’s no stopping you.’

      Salter smiled and then raised his eyebrows as the shrill note of the front doorbell sounded through the flat. ‘Saved by the bell,’ he said. ‘Sounds like the big guns have arrived to take over from us minions.’ His tone suggested that he included himself in the last group only as a matter of courtesy.

      The two SOCOs took the hint and picked up their cases. Salter followed them out into the hallway. Hodder was already opening the front door.

      ‘Gentlemen.’ The man on the doorstep was a squat, rumpled-looking figure, probably in his early fifties, his grey hair swept back in an ineffectual attempt to hide an increasing baldness. Despite his dishevelled appearance, he carried an air of confident authority.

      ‘Guv,’ Salter acknowledged. By contrast, his own brand of cocky superiority suddenly appeared slightly gauche.

      The older man peered at the two SOCOs, his expression suggesting that, though he hadn’t met them before, he would remember them in future.

      ‘Keith Welsby,’ he said. He gestured towards Salter. ‘From the Agency, like my colleague here.’ Somehow he succeeded in conveying the relative seniority of his own role compared with Salter’s. ‘All done?’

      The lead SOCO nodded. ‘On our side, sir.’

      ‘Thanks very much, then. We’ll be in touch in due course.’ He was still holding open the front door, and the tone of dismissal was unmistakable. The SOCOs needed no further prompting.

      Welsby closed the front door behind them, and then turned slowly back to Salter and Hodder. ‘Right, lads,’ he said, his face expressionless. ‘So what the fucking fuck’s been going on here, then?’

       Chapter 3

      Her head aching, her mind still in some other place, Marie Donovan sat at her large wooden desk, trying to smile at the young man opposite. She hadn’t chosen the office furniture herself and it was all too imposing for her taste. Perched in the leather swivel chair, the young man looked like a mouse caught in a boxing glove.

      ‘It’s still not right, is it, Darren?’ she said at last, knowing that she had to go on with all this, despite everything. She glanced down again at the document. She was trying to find the right words. With Darren, she was always trying to find the right words. Simple ones, that he could follow.

      ‘Darren?’ she prompted.

      He blinked. ‘Miss?’

      ‘It’s Marie,’ she said. ‘You can call me Marie.’ Christ, she thought, it’s as if he’s never left school. She imagined he’d been the same there – meek, compliant, fundamentally useless. ‘I was saying that we still haven’t got the printing right here, have we?’

      ‘I did my best, miss.’

      ‘Marie,’ she repeated. ‘I’m sure you did, Darren. But you need to concentrate. Let’s have a look at this, shall we?’ She held up the printed document. ‘What’s wrong with it?’

      Darren gazed at the handful of sheets, a brief shadow of panic crossing his face in response to the direct question. He leaned forwards and squinted. ‘It’s a bit blurred,’ he offered finally.

      She nodded. ‘It’s very blurred. You let the original move while it was printing. OK, what else?’

      Darren looked dismayed that the inquisition was not yet finished. ‘Um. It’s a bit, well, wonky.’

      ‘It’s very wonky,’ she agreed. ‘You didn’t square up the originals. Anything else?’

      He gazed silently at the document, then back up at her. The look of panic had returned. ‘Miss?’

      She leaned forwards and picked up the paper again. ‘It’s printed on both sides of an A3 sheet, right?’ She paused. ‘A big sheet.’ She stretched it out to show him exactly what a big sheet looked like when it was stretched out. ‘And each side is divided into two halves?’

      Darren was staring at her now with an expression of abject misery. She’d lost him at the first mention of paper size.

      ‘OK,’ she went on, ‘so it’s a big sheet that’s supposed to be folded in half to make a four-page A4 – that’s a littler sheet – booklet.’ She carefully folded the sheet to demonstrate. ‘Like that, see?’

      Darren made no response. Knackered as she was, she was momentarily tempted to lean over the desk and give him a violent shake. She had a fear that she might actually hear what passed for a brain rattling around in his skull.

      ‘So that means,’ she persisted, ‘that both sides need to be printed the same way up. Right?’ She was determined not to be deflected now. ‘Otherwise some of the pages will be printed upside down. Right?’

      A glimmer of light shone in Darren’s eyes. ‘Right,’ he said. ‘You don’t want pages to be upside down.’

      She unfolded the sheet and spread it carefully in front of him. ‘OK,’ she said slowly, ‘so, now turn that sheet over and tell me what’s wrong with it.’

      She had expected him to turn the sheet over left to right, or possibly right to left. Instead, he grasped the sheet carefully between his finger and thumb and turned it over top to bottom. He stared at the upright print in front of him, and then looked up at her, his eyes bright with welling tears. ‘I’m sorry, miss,’ he said at last. ‘I can’t see anything wrong with it.’

      She could think of nothing to say. She peered over Darren’s shoulder through the glass partition that separated her office from the rest of the print room. Her assistant Joe was busily working at the large reprographic machine, his eyes determinedly fixed away from their direction.

      ‘Tell you what, Darren,’ she said. ‘Why don’t you speak to Joe? Get him to show you how it should be done.’

      Darren nodded, his face brightening at the prospect of escape. ‘Thanks, miss. I will.’ He rose, almost falling over the chair in his eagerness to leave the office.

      ‘Marie,’ she said through gritted teeth, as the office door closed behind him. ‘It’s Marie. Fucking Marie.’

      She shouldn’t drag it out. She should sack him now before it was too late, before he’d been working there long enough to have employment protection. She should sack him before she was tempted to kill him. She wasn’t a social worker. She was a businesswoman.

      Except, of course, that she wasn’t. That was the whole trouble. She was only pretending to be a businesswoman. Doing a pretty good job of it, some would say, managing to expand the business in the face of a recession. But still only playing.

      And if she was only playing, she might as well help out someone like Darren along the way. She knew Darren’s type from her early days as a policewoman. Disadvantaged. In Darren’s case, disadvantaged in virtually every possible way – socially, parentally, intellectually, physically. Without even the gumption to get himself into trouble. But that wouldn’t stop someone else getting him into it. Someone a bit smarter, more confident, more streetwise. Which narrowed it down to almost anyone else in the world. Someone would take advantage of Darren, exploit him for their own purposes, set him up, and leave him swinging gently in the wind when things went wrong.