Everything was exactly as it had been, and yet completely changed, as she made the journey from the tube station to KCS the following day.
Having failed to reach Madeleine on the phone, she wasn’t sure whether to expect her at the office. But when she arrived, Madeleine was already there, her demeanour undented, her lips perfectly accentuated in her signature red lipstick.
‘What the hell? I couldn’t reach you,’ Gabriela said, moving over to her desk, looking around for confirmation that they were alone.
Madeleine paused before standing, leading the way outside, away from the eyes and ears that she seemed to believe might follow them despite the absence of bodies in the room.
‘There’s nothing we can do about it,’ she said flatly. ‘They don’t need two senior leads in London, they can’t justify it, and they don’t want me back in Hanoi. So this is where we are.’
Gabriela looked at her, awaiting further explanation. For a moment, Madeleine looked like she might say something more, or as if she thought Gabriela might, but then she took a drag of her cigarette and shifted her gaze away again.
‘What the fuck, they’re firing us?’ Gabriela probed.
‘No,’ Madeleine inhaled sharply. ‘They’re smarter than that. They’ll be planning to push us out, one way or another, but I’m not hanging around for that.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Last night I went to see a friend who works at the NCA. They’ve been trying to tap me up for a while. And, you know, you should be happy; if I leave they’ll have no excuse not to keep you on.’
‘You’re leaving? Jesus, Mads. The National Crime Agency? I thought you laughed at those bastards.’
‘No more than they laugh at us.’ She shrugged. ‘What does it matter? You know I hate it here, but I love the work, when I’m allowed to do it properly, and I’ll essentially be working on the same things but from another side.’
‘What am I going to do without you?’
‘Well, for a start you could look into why the fuck Emsworth was so keen to get rid of us.’
Gabriela felt her chest lift at the words and she narrowed her eyes.
‘You think he’s …’
‘Oh come on, we can both stop dancing around it now. You know as well as I do that there is something going on in this place, and that man has something to do with it. With my new contacts and resources at the NCA, I can do a bit of digging from my end. You’ll be here, in the thick of it. It’s perfect. Perhaps it’s for the best, what’s happened.’
Madeleine looked at Gabriela and she grinned.
‘OK.’
Madeleine crushed the rest of her cigarette against the wall.
‘OK. Let’s get that fucker and stick his head on a spike.’