48.

As with Cardiff, so with Birmingham. Jessica flits through corporate offices. Steals passwords. Sabotages systems.

Her crimes are more or less blatant now. Every two days, I’m in a new office. The first day I steal passwords. The second day I plant software. Then move on. Henderson, or whoever, must be bribing my bosses to put me on this kind of shift pattern. Cleaners are never moved around like this unless there’s a one-off absence that needs to be filled.

But I don’t care, nor does Jessica. I’m a thief and a saboteur, but the reckoning for my thievery – for Tinker’s thefts and murders – won’t come here, but in a farmhouse somewhere in South Wales. On the Thursday of my second week in Birmingham, I plant my last keystroke recorder. A big manufacturing firm. Employs forty thousand workers in the UK. An old-fashioned firm. Avoids outsourcing. Protects jobs and skills. Invests locally. Is regularly picked as one of Britain’s top employers.

On Friday morning, I find a note from Adrian Brattenbury tucked into my cleaning stuff.

Fiona,

Well done! Just get yourself to the farmhouse. We will follow you there. We can track your ankle monitor. We will have multiple vehicles, plus air support. Real-time access to CCTV. We will not lose you. Once you’re there, don’t do anything. Don’t look for Roy Williams. Don’t seek to help us. SCO19 are going to be there in force and they’re trained for this. You’ve done your stuff. Now we’ll do ours.

Stay safe!

Adrian

It’s not quite ‘We shall fight them on the beaches’, but it works for me. I rip the note up and add it to my bags of rubbish.

And Jessica performs her last duties too. She gathers the harvest from her recorder. Username, passwords. Enters the firm’s computer system and plants the software which will let Ian Shoesmith sabotage it from within. Thefts of the scale we’re contemplating could, in theory, bankrupt the firm. Jeopardize jobs, investment, everything.

When I catch sight of Jessica in a mirror, her face looks angrily determined. Vengeful. If I were her target, I’d be scared.

At midday, my working day is done. I go outside. Smoke a cigarette with just a sprinkle of resin.

At quarter past, a black BMW glides up the road towards me. Window down. Henderson at the wheel smiling.

‘Ready?’ he asks.

I am, I say. I truly am.