Longbright squelched her way back to the tube. Now she sat in the warm carriage dripping. Her clothes and hair felt sticky with chemicals. Everyone was staring at her.
She tried to understand what had just happened. Anna Marquand had taken to using the locker presumably because she wasn’t happy leaving things at home. Which meant that her mugging had not been a spontaneous act of violence. Someone had stolen her bag in order to search it, knowing that she had the habit of putting more than just her shopping inside. Perhaps her attacker had been specifically after her key ring. But what had she kept in the locker? And what had he been looking for?
The answer was far from comforting. Anna Marquand had come by the lido on her way home. And the one item that was missing from her belongings apart from the cell phone and keys was Bryant’s disc containing the documents in breach of national security.
It was bloody inconvenient. Gregory Baine had been enjoying an excellent chateaubriand and a frankly sensational bottle of Rioja with Susan at The Square when the waiter stopped by and apologised for interrupting the meal, but sir had received an urgent message, just a few words but they were enough to send him hurtling toward a taxi—with Susan scowling furiously and asking what was wrong, and how dare he leave her in the middle of dinner? Did he expect her to get home by herself?
But what else could he do? And how the hell could anyone have found out? Cannon Street station—entirely in the wrong direction, but it couldn’t be helped. As he sat back in the cab, he tried to think who might know about the problem. His accounts files were password-protected, but the sound was so strange in that bloody theatre that sometimes people came into the office without knocking and nearly gave him a heart attack. He supposed someone could have seen him, but it seemed a bit unlikely. Even so, Robert Kramer would murder him if he thought that anyone knew what they were up to. Cruikshank Holdings was their private nest egg if anything went wrong in Adams Street.
An even more alarming thought crossed his mind as the cab headed for Fleet Street. What if somebody knew about the debts? What if somebody knew that he had been robbing Peter to pay Paul, shifting cash from the pension fund to cover their expenditure? But no, he and Robert were the only account holders. How could anyone else know? Cruikshank Holdings had been kept well hidden, or so he had thought.
But it only took one person to overhear an unguarded conversation, and there had been a few of those lately.
Jaundiced reflections of the streetlights splintered across the windscreen of the cab as they passed St Paul’s and cut down toward Cannon Street. The sky had veiled itself once more and it was starting to rain again. The city seemed desolate after the madness of the West End, all those crowds standing around on the street corners by Leicester Square, trying to decide which awful tourist-trap pub or steakhouse to throw their money at. But the Square Mile out of office hours was like a morgue, despite the vulgar new mall they had chucked up at One New Change.
No-one about—why pick such an odd place for a meeting? And what was the point of it? A rebuke? A request for a piece of the action? Please God no, not that—it would be difficult enough once Robert discovered the funding shortfall, and discover it he would because Robert had a way of sniffing out financial trouble and making his life hell. As if they didn’t have enough problems with a murder investigation, of all things, Judith on the edge of a total breakdown and now a leak, a spy in the camp. He was an accountant, not a producer. He should never have agreed to the new position. It came with too much bloody responsibility.
The cab stopped in the narrow street that used to be called Waterman’s Walk, only now it was covered in platforms and scaffolding poles where the bridge was being rebuilt. He could hear the river below, and wondered why he had ever agreed to meet in such a godforsaken place.
He paid the cab driver and alighted outside the station. More construction works, blue nylon sheeting and hoardings everywhere, it looked like a third-world bloody country and never seemed to get any better—so where the hell was his contact? It didn’t look as if there was anyone here. Whoever had summoned him clearly wanted money. Why else would they send a message saying they knew about the Cruikshank account?
He tipped his Rolex to the light, turned about, ducked under the cover of the scaffolding as the rain fell harder.
And realised that someone was standing in the shadows beside him, a slender figure silently watching and waiting.
‘Oh, it’s you. I don’t know what you think you’re playing at, sending me silly messages through the restaurant when you could have called my mobile.’