After her debrief with Salter and Welsby, Marie arrived back at the print shop to find the place in a familiar mild chaos. Joe was berating Darren about some new technical faux pas. Darren was giving every sign of paying full attention short of actually listening. She thought Joe was warming to Darren. It wasn’t that Darren’s performance had improved to any significant – or, for that matter, insignificant – extent. It was more that Joe, recognizing that Marie wasn’t planning to dismiss Darren in the immediate future, had adjusted his expectations. Probably to somewhere below ground level.
There were times when Marie suspected that Joe Maybury – a tall, genial, undemonstrative man in his early thirties – might have a crush on her. There were other times when she was convinced that he was gay. Both, she supposed, might possibly be true. Or neither. Joe seemed disinclined to give anything away. She got on with him well, trusted him implicitly in deputizing for her on business matters, even went for a pint with him from time to time, but she had discovered nothing of any significance about his private life. Not that she had particularly tried. She was keen to protect her own privacy, and Joe’s taciturnity suited them both fine.
He glanced up as she entered, allowing Darren the opportunity to scuttle away. ‘Useful morning?’
She shrugged. ‘Bread on the waters stuff. We’ll get an order eventually, but not today.’
‘Never is, though, is it?’ Joe said. ‘Don’t know how you do it. Keep plugging away. Works in the end, I suppose.’
‘One of my virtues,’ she said. ‘Patience.’
Joe looked meaningfully across at Darren. ‘So I’ve noticed,’ he said, ‘though I don’t know if “virtue” is quite the word.’
She laughed. ‘What excitement did I miss this morning, then?’
‘Nothing much. Post on your desk. Took a few messages. Nothing urgent. Darren printed off a thousand copies when I’d asked for a hundred. Usual stuff.’
She stopped at the door to her office. ‘Anything interesting in the post?’
‘Mostly crap,’ Joe said. ‘Couple of confirmation orders, but only what we knew about. There’s a parcel of some sort – marked Personal and Confidential so I didn’t touch it.’
She smiled at him. She had no problems with Joe handling the incoming mail. Most of it was, as he said, crap. Most of the rest was just dull. A very small proportion – bank statements, stuff about the business finances – was theoretically sensitive, but she had nothing to hide from Joe. Nothing about the business, anyway. The operation was well capitalized, because the Agency had ensured it would be. And it was doing pretty well so far. Even if the business had been struggling, Joe would have a right to know. Funny, she thought. She felt she trusted Joe more than most people – more than Salter, certainly, probably more than Liam, probably even more than she’d trusted Jake – even though she knew next to nothing about him.
She sat down behind her desk and began to flick through the stack of mail. It was mostly advertising bumf, glossy nonsense that poured in by the bucket load. Some uninformative VAT leaflet from the Revenue. And, as Joe had said, something else. A neatly sealed Jiffy bag, with her name and address handwritten in block capitals on the front.
She remained still for a moment, staring at the writing. Then she glanced up, for some reason half-expecting that Joe would be staring at her through the glass partition. But he was busy on the far side of the room, his attention fixed on one of the machines.
Jake.
It was Jake’s handwriting. There was no question. She hadn’t seen it often, but she’d seen it enough. Now, it was like seeing a ghost.
She picked up the envelope and peered at it, as if she might be able to discern its contents through the brown wrapping. Then, with a further glance towards Joe, she tore open the package and gazed inside.
She wasn’t sure what she’d been hoping for. A letter? Some informal last will and testament? A word of goodbye? But the bag was empty, except for a small plastic data stick. She tipped it into her palm.
An insurance policy, maybe. Something that Jake had arranged to be sent if anything should happen to him. But why her? Or, more to the point, why now? If Jake had wanted her to have it, why hadn’t he given it to her before?
She felt a chill run along her spine. The obvious answer was that he’d already known or guessed who she was. He hadn’t given it to her before because he’d assumed, probably rightly, that she’d feel obliged to hand it over to her colleagues. And, as Welsby and Salter had intimated, Jake didn’t trust her colleagues, not completely. But if anything happened to him, he might well see her as the only person he could trust.
It was all too possible. Jake was no fool. He’d been approached and recruited as an informant after meeting Marie. They’d allowed a decent interval to pass before any approach was made, and taken every precaution to ensure that there was no traceable link. But that might not have prevented Jake from having his own suspicions.
She looked up to see Joe gazing at her through the glass wall of the office. For a moment, she thought he was watching her, but then she realized that he was just standing over one of the machines, engrossed in the smooth action of the printing. His eyes were turned towards her, but his gaze was fixed blankly in the middle distance, watching nothing more than his own reflection in the glass.
Christ, she thought. She was really beginning to lose it.
‘Fancy a beer?’
Her mind was still elsewhere, her expression that of a diver surfacing back into fresh air.
‘Sorry, Joe. Miles away. What did you say?’
The company accounts were open on her computer screen, but all her thoughts had been on Jake. Jake and the data stick. Jake and those last few minutes of his life.
Joe was leaning at the open door, glancing at his watch. ‘I’m just about through. Wondered if you fancied a beer.’
It was Wednesday, she realized. In her first months in this job, that had been the dead point of the week. The furthest from her weekends back with Liam. The point in the week that she’d felt most alone, most exposed.
Looking back, her relationship with Jake had been a midweek affair, one more way of filling those lonely nights. It had made her realize that she couldn’t allow herself to get too close to anyone. Even ordinary friendships were risky. It was too easy to make a slip, reveal some detail that didn’t quite square with the woman she was supposed to be.
But she felt an unexpected ease in Joe’s presence, a sense that neither expected anything of the other beyond companionable small talk. If Joe had a private life, he’d shown no signs of sharing it with her, and he seemed to have no interest in enquiring about hers. Their conversation remained resolutely superficial, and they had similar taste in films, undemanding crime novels, music. Marie had half-expected that Joe might eventually invite her out to a film or a concert – plenty of other men had done so on a much less secure foundation of shared interests – but the idea never seemed to occur to him.
She glanced at her watch. ‘Jesus, that the time?’
‘Seems to be,’ Joe said. ‘You OK? You look a bit tired.’
Typical of Joe, she thought. He gave little away, but he didn’t miss much. He’d already detected that she was distracted, and he was giving her a ready-made excuse.
‘Yeah, a bit. Didn’t sleep too well last night for some reason.’ She tapped aimlessly at her keyboard. ‘Do you mind if we give it a miss tonight, Joe? I ought to get the VAT sorted, and then all I’ll be fit for’s falling asleep.’
‘Your call, boss,’ he said. ‘Long as you don’t get out of the habit completely.’
‘This is alcohol we’re talking about, right?’
‘You’re OK, though?’ This time there was a note of real concern in his voice.
Christ, did she really look that bad? ‘Why’d you ask?’
‘Dunno. Didn’t seem quite yourself this afternoon. Wondered if there was some problem.’
‘No more than usual.’ She gestured vaguely towards the computer screen. ‘Just the standard balls-ache. Tax. VAT. Chasing up the customers who think it’s a bit abrupt of us to demand payment in less than six months.’
He smiled. ‘Definitely your territory, not mine. Even Darren’s easier than that. OK, but you won’t wriggle out of a beer next week.’
‘Drag me there kicking and screaming,’ she said.
‘If you insist.’ He pushed himself away from the doorframe and turned to walk away. Then he looked back. ‘By the way, did you find that package?’
She looked up, her throat suddenly dry. ‘Package?’
‘Thing in today’s post. Jiffy bag. Personal and Confidential. Didn’t want it to get lost under the other bumf.’ He waved his hand towards her paper-strewn desk.
He’d stepped back from the doorway into the darkened workshop. She couldn’t read his expression.
‘Thanks,’ she said. ‘Yes, I found it. Nothing important.’ She wondered whether to offer more explanation, but anything would sound forced. ‘But thanks anyway.’
‘No problem,’ he said. ‘See you in the morning, then.’
He turned and walked away across the workshop. A moment later, she heard the slamming of the main door.
She sat for a moment, watching the doorway, acutely conscious now of the data stick sitting in her handbag beside her.
Typical Joe. Giving little away. Missing nothing.