As she drove home, Charlie was full of doubts. Mark wasn’t the type to do anything stupid, was he? She thought not, but who could tell? He was obviously devastated. No wife or kid at home, no job to go to, a tendency to drink... Suddenly all these thoughts crowded in on Charlie. Her head ached; her stomach was churning. A wave of nausea hit her, so she swung the car into the shoulder, just about opening the door in time to vomit her lunch onto the pavement. She retched heavily once, twice—then it was over.
Later, at home, snuggling in the warm embrace of her boyfriend, Steve, she was assailed by doubts of a different kind. Slipping quietly out of their sleepy cuddle, she tiptoed into the bathroom and opened the bathroom cabinet. Expectation mingled with trepidation as she opened the small cardboard tube.
Five minutes later, she had her answer. She was pregnant. They’d been trying for ages without any joy, but there it was. A little blue cross. A second test gave the same answer. Such small things that change your life in such big ways. Steve slumbered on unaware as Charlie remained perched on the toilet, still a little in shock. Not for the first time today her eyes welled up with tears. But these weren’t tears of sadness. They were tears of joy.
75
For a moment, she was staring at his eyeball. And then it was gone. Helen had tracked down Simon Ashworth’s city center apartment and respectfully rang the doorbell—which showed some restraint, given her desire to hammer on the door. A long pause, no sign of movement. So she rang the doorbell again. And again. She paused, listened. Was that the squeak of a floorboard, the tiniest hint of footsteps? And then the eyeball appeared at the peephole. Helen had been expecting—hoping—for this, so was staring down the peephole herself. The eyeball immediately took fright and vanished from view. The telltale signs of footsteps padding away made Helen smile—he was busted, so why tiptoe?
A copper faces a number of choices in this kind of situation. You can go the official route, apply for a warrant, etc., but when you’re working alone this almost always means that your quarry escapes while you’re busy elsewhere filling in forms. You can go the patient route, feigning a departure only to take up a viewing post on the street. This usually works, as the fugitive is desperate to leave the flat having been rumbled and is often on the street within the hour. But Helen had never been very good at patience. Which was why she marched into the caretaker’s office—startling him during his elevenses—and demanded he open flat 21.
He would have been well within his rights to ask for—demand—a search warrant, but it’s funny how many people’s brains stop working when they see a badge. Fearing censure, or excited by the drama of the moment, they usually comply. And so it was now, the flustered caretaker opening up flat 21 without hesitation. He seemed somewhat surprised and disappointed when Helen shut the door in his face—a brief smile of gratitude was all he got for his pains.
Ashworth was preparing to flee. The packed bags, the car keys—he was a man on the move. But he stood stock-still now as Helen crossed the room toward him. He looked scared, blustering about the illegality of what Helen was doing—but not in a convincing or threatening way. Putting her badge away, Helen pointed to an empty metal chair. After a brief pause as Ashworth seemed to size up both Helen and the situation, he complied.
“Why did you do it, Simon?”
Helen had never been very good at pussyfooting, so opted for a full-frontal assault. She laid out the charges—illegally downloading confidential information, compromising an active investigation for financial gain—quickly and crisply, intending to afford Ashworth no time to invent excuses or evasions. To her surprise, he offered a spirited defense of his actions.
“It couldn’t have been me.”
“Why not?”
“Because every technical consultant involved in something like this has their own unique access code. It’s the only way in or out for us and you can always tell when we’ve accessed the system and how we’ve used it.”
“There must be ways round that.”
“Not for us. Tech support staff move around a lot, sometimes within the police service, sometimes outside it. In order not to compromise an investigation and to deal with the turnover of technical staff, the access system was created. If you check—”
“So why did you lie?” Helen butted in. She wasn’t prepared to be lectured.
“How do you mean, lie?”
“I asked every person who had access to the investigation to account for their movements that day and you, along with all the other technical staff, claimed to have been on strike. But you weren’t. You broke the strike.”
“So what? I didn’t agree with the strike, so I went into work briefly. I wasn’t there for long, and when asked about it, I thought it better to tell a little fib so the others didn’t find out.”
“Didn’t work very well, did it? Who told them?”
For the first time Ashworth looked rattled.Finally, we’re making progress,Helen thought to herself.
“I don’t know how they found out,” he muttered, staring at his shoes.
“Are you ambitious, Simon?”
“I guess so.”
“You guess so? You’re very young to be at your pay grade, you’ve got great appraisals. You could really go somewhere. In fact, your move to Hampshire police was a big promotion, wasn’t it?”
Ashworth nodded.
“And yet, after only four months in your swanky new job, you are returning to your old job. A job which, if your application for the Hampshire posting is to be believed, you felt you had mastered and were bored with.”
“We all say stuff like that in job interviews.”He remained staring at his shoes.
“What happened?”
A long silence. Then:
