The Assassin King

Anna shook her head as she got out. ‘I could be hours, for all I know,’ she said, grabbing her laptop bag. ‘And I’ll be picking up my uncle’s van afterwards, if all goes well. But I can’t be lugging my books and all this other stuff around in there, so if I could leave it with you, then swing by later…?’

‘Of course. Just text me when you’re setting off. I’ll make sure I’m there to meet you.’ He jotted down his address for her on a scrap of paper. ‘And call with any problems, okay? I’m literally five minutes away.’

She went inside, gave her name. A Detective Sergeant Yvette Coombs came down to meet her. She had spiky short fair hair and arched eyebrows that gave her a permanent expression of startled affront, as though someone unexpected had just insulted her. But she couldn’t have been more helpful. She arranged a visitor’s pass then led Anna up to her unit, stopping at a machine along the way to get them each some scalding tea-coloured water in plastic cups so flimsy that she burned her fingers and slopped it over her hand.

Coombs dragged over a spare chair from an empty desk for her to sit on, then expressed sympathy for her loss before fetching a grey plastic tub of the effects taken from her uncle’s van or person that were no longer needed for the investigation, each in its own transparent evidence bag. Anna went slowly through them as she packed them away, experiencing bittersweet pangs of memory and loss. There were his gold-rimmed driving glasses, its left arm held on by a snip of fuse wire. There was his ancient Timex watch, its cheap strap in dire need of replacing for the umpteenth time. His old black leather wallet was in there too, its contents bagged separately but clipped together: his bankcards, driving licence, library card, a pair of ten-pound notes and even his old wedding ring, kept in his wallet rather than on his finger, perhaps to avoid painful questions about his wife. Most poignant of all, two passport-booth photographs of him and Anna with their cheeks pressed together, taken years ago on the Skegness seafront on one of their rare days out, the other two of which she kept in a desk drawer in York.

‘Elias said I should take you to see Jay Patterson,’ said Coombs, once Anna had packed it all away in her laptop bag, and signed the receipt.

There was a woman-to-woman note in her voice that caught Anna’s ear. ‘Is there something I should know?’

Coombs hesitated. ‘He’s a bit of an acquired taste, is all. They do tend to be, over there, if I’m honest. Too much time spent undercover, watching villains living it large on the Costas. It messes with your mind.’

Serious and Organised Crime lay at the far end of a long corridor with a beige carpet worn through in places to the underlay. Jay Patterson looked to be in his mid to late fifties, with unkempt long hair, narrow shoulders and a paunch that lay upon his lap like a dozing pet. He saw them making their way towards him and hurriedly did up his zip, trouser button and belt before standing up to greet them. Then he waited for Coombs to leave again before directing Anna to a pair of moulded black plastic chairs set against the wall. He told her he’d only be a moment, but five minutes passed before he turned round again. ‘You have ID?’ he asked.

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘This is confidential intelligence we’re about to show you. We need to know you’re who you say you are.’

She offered him her driving licence. He held the photograph up beside her face, then handed it back without a word and set off along the passage without telling her whether to follow him or not. She chose to follow. A cleaning lady pulled her cart out of their way and dropped her eyes, as women the world over did with pests and bullies. He showed her to an interview room with more of the same moulded black plastic chairs on either side of an old pine table in which names and dates and other graffiti had been gouged. ‘Wait here,’ he said, then left.