24.

May. Wet and cold. The year began with warnings of drought, but already flooding has affected thousands of homes. Power lines have been down. Rivers gurgle through living rooms. In Somerset, a pub landlord shows a TV reporter the dead fish he found floating behind his bar.

I don’t mind the weather. It suits me, suits Fiona Grey. The two of us settle further into our odd life, making our home here.

I buy more boots from a charity shop, hoping these ones are more waterproof.

I’ve expanded my repertoire of one-pot cooking until I’m almost competent. Jason and I take turns to cook for each other. He’s better than I am, but we enjoy the company.

Meantime, my Saturdays at the hostel go on being beautiful things, all the better because Brattenbury does indeed cancel his weekly visits as a security precaution. I use the extra time to start my Anger and Anxiety Management course, which is surprisingly useful. Our tutor gives us a handout with Ten Things to Remember printed out on bright yellow paper and I stick it up on my fridge. I look at it most nights.

Clementina and I are knocked out of the table football tournament in the first round, because she had been out drinking the night before and couldn’t focus very well. I was useless, as always, but it was nice being part of a team.

And I am now for the first time, guilty of criminal fraud.

I start to manage my portfolio as Henderson and Quintrell instruct me. Sometimes I’m told to go to Quintrell’s house and I sit there in her kitchen, at her fancy Scandinavian table, showing her copies of pay slips and HMRC input forms. She gives me a glass of water, but never offers me anything else to eat or drink. She doesn’t use my name ever. Never says please or thank you. Just checks my work. Says, ‘OK,’ if it’s all right and, ‘No, this is wrong,’ or ‘You’ve made an error,’ if there’s something she wants me to change.

If the phone rings or there’s something she needs to do on the computer, I just sit and wait till she’s finished or ask to go out in the garden and have a smoke. Because she doesn’t like me leaving ash in her garden, I carry plastic bags in my coat pocket and make sure that I put any ash, matches and cigarette butts in there when I’m finished.

Other times I meet Henderson. He’s nicer to me. We had our first ‘portfolio review’ meeting at The Grape and The Grain, and he kept trying to get me something to eat and drink. I had another orange juice and ate some of his olives. At the end of that session, he said, ‘I don’t think you like it here, do you?’

I said, ‘It’s OK.’

He said, ‘We could do it somewhere else if you liked. We could do it at your place?’

I said OK, but he wasn’t to let himself in. He had to come when I was there. So far, he’s come, good as gold, at the appointed time and waited outside for me to let him in. I quite like him, is the truth of it. I often like the bad guys.

Brattenbury I’ve seen just the once. It was five in the morning. I entered one of my corporate washrooms, ready to clean it, and found him sitting on the row of basins. He gave me a bollocking for my stunt with Anna Quintrell, but his performance wasn’t up to Dennis Jackson’s standards, not remotely. Too English and too polite, somehow. All Oxbridgey cricket whites, where Jackson is a mud-spattered rugby red.

I said, ‘Yes sir,’ when I needed to, and kept glancing sideways to inspect the state of the bathroom.

When Brattenbury was finished, we shared a moment’s silence.

I said, ‘You’ve been surveilling Henderson, of course …’

‘Yes. And got nothing. We can’t push it too hard, because we can’t let him identify us. He burns off any vehicle-based pursuit. So we followed him with a chopper. He pulled into a filling station, one of the sort with a big overhead canopy. Left in a different vehicle. Same thing with his phone. He uses disposable phones and encrypted lines. It’s rare, that level of care. Unusual.’

‘That’s bad luck, that is.’

‘Yes.’

‘I mean, a careful criminal and a reckless undercover officer. What are the chances?’

He laughs at that and the mood changes.

I say, ‘Look, you won’t want to know this, but I’ve got an iPad.’

‘What?’

I tell him. That I’ve got an iPad. That’s it’s fully secured with a sixteen digit alphanumeric password. That I get network access via a neighbor.

‘You asked a neighbor for his password?’ Brattenbury is incredulous.

So am I. ‘No. I stole it. I’ll work better if I’m kept in the loop.’

I can see Brattenbury wondering whether to fire off another lecture at me, but it’s too early in the morning for all of that. He asks where I keep the tablet – behind the radiator in the shared bathroom is the answer – and tells me he’ll sort out a better hiding place.

I say, ‘They found Quintrell by looking around for a not-too-scrupulous accountant. A simple Google search, quite likely. When Kureishi went walkabout, they’d have needed an IT guy in a hurry. They might have found one the same way.’

Brattenbury considers that. The ANPR systems – Automatic Number Plate Recognition – are nationwide and hold data for years. In principle, if Henderson and Quintrell drove to recruit a none-too-clean IT guy, a combination of careful computer searches and ANPR tracking could provide a big clue as to who they took on board.

‘Good thought. We’ll look into it.’

He eases himself off the basin unit with a grimace. He’s wearing suede shoes, chinos, a pale blue herringbone shirt and a dark jacket. No tie. I start to unload cleaning bottles from my trolley, ready to start on the mirrors.

He says, ‘You’re nuts, taking this cleaning job. Any time you want to quit …’

I shake my head. ‘You’re wrong, actually. I’m just nuts, full stop.’

‘I’ve got a present for you, by the way. I wasn’t sure how to deliver it, but you seem to have solved that problem.’

A present? I stare at Brattenbury, suddenly hungry.

He nods. ‘Mr. Griffiths and Mr. Glyn. There’s a lot of material. On your dad mostly, but … I’ll beam it over to you.’

His words have an odd effect on me. Palms wettening. Pulse increasing. I recognize the tickle of fear, but there’s something else here as well.

I say, ‘You know when you’re excited? That’s quite like being scared, isn’t it? I mean, it’s like they’re next-door feelings, almost the same thing.’

Brattenbury stares at me, as though I’ve said something strange. He doesn’t say anything, but his face tells me yes. He looks at me a moment longer then drops his eyes. Picks up a bottle of glass cleaner, as though studying the ingredients.

‘Take care, Fiona. These cases do get to people. Even when they think they’re immune.’

I say whatever it is I think I’m meant to say. Then watch him leave. Brown brogues and ironed chinos. A mirror person walking in a mirror world. I pick up my cloths and start to clean.