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She opened her mouth to respond, but then stopped. As always with Salter, the question was how much he knew. ‘You put Brennan in contact with me,' she said. ‘If you remember, I wasn't all that keen to meet him.'

‘You were keen enough to meet him again.'

So that answered that question, she thought. Partly, at least. Salter knew she'd been in contact with Brennan after that first, officially sanctioned meeting. ‘He wanted my input,' she said, conscious how feeble her explanation sounded.

‘You said it yourself, Marie.' The use of her name was always a bad sign. ‘If you're undercover, you can't come in and out of role when you feel like it. It's not just that you risk compromising yourself. You put the whole bloody assignment at risk.'

She could feel her anger stirring. ‘What bloody assignment, Hugh? I still don't even know what I was doing working in that cowboy outfit. What was McGrath involved in that's of interest to us?' Even as she spoke, she felt she was saying too much. The only way to play Salter was to let him make all the running. Say nothing that will give him more ammunition.

‘It was your job to find that out, Marie, wasn't it? Now maybe we'll never know.' He spoke as if it had been her fault that McGrath's office had been torched, as if she'd somehow been responsible for terminating the assignment. Which, of course, technically she had, since she'd aborted the mission before Salter had formally issued the order. She could see the way his mind was working.

She took a deep breath and made the effort to contain her annoyance. There was no point in expecting Salter to be reasonable. Salter's way was to twist and turn everything till it shone the best light on Hugh Salter. ‘We're going round in circles. Okay, so maybe I should have made more of an effort to get hold of you before I came back. I'm sorry. But it's changed nothing–'

‘Jack Brennan,' Salter said. ‘Your relationship with Jack Brennan.'

She opened her mouth but, for a moment, nothing came out. Relationship? What the hell was this all about? ‘What are you talking about, Hugh? I barely know Jack Brennan.'

Salter was flicking slowly through the papers on the desk as if he'd forgotten he was in the middle of a conversation. After a few seconds he stopped and stared at one of the sheets. ‘And yet,' he said, without looking up, ‘you spent the night at his flat.' He looked up and met her eyes. ‘Do you often do that with men you barely know?'

She stared back at him, her mind taking too long to come to grips with what he'd said. ‘What the fuck is this, Hugh? Am I under surveillance? Can't be the best use of your resources.'

The faint, almost imperceptible smile was back. Like catching an occasional glimpse of a basking shark beneath still waters. ‘Not you under surveillance, sis. Jack Brennan.'

‘Brennan? I thought he was one of yours.'

The smile became more definite. She could almost see the shark's teeth. ‘Not one of mine, sis,' he said, as if with regret. ‘Never one of mine. Tell you the truth, I'm not sure what to make of Mr Jack Brennan. I was hoping you might be able to enlighten me.'

She hesitated for a second, trying to work out where Salter was taking this. ‘Let's get this straight. Like I say, I barely know Jack Brennan. In any sense. I went to his flat because, as I keep reminding you, someone broke into my house and tried to kill me. It was late at night. I was probably in a state of shock. I didn't know what to do or where to go. So I went to Brennan's. And maybe that wasn't the smartest thing to do, but I'm not quite sure what the alternatives were. I was in no state to drive back down here.' She paused, conscious again that she was saying too much. She could feel Salter's blank eyes staring at her from behind his steel-rimmed spectacles and, as so often with him, she felt he was peering into her head. ‘Anyway, that's what I did. And Brennan was very helpful. He calmed me down and gave me somewhere to stay. And, not that it's any of your business, that somewhere was his spare room. Okay?'

The smile was still there, unconnected to any warmth of feeling. ‘If you say so, sis. Like you say, none of my business.' His tone implied that it was she who'd dragged the conversation into over-intimate territory. ‘I'm just interested in Jack Brennan and what he's up to.'

‘And what do you think he's up to, Hugh?'

‘You know he joined us with something of a tarnished reputation?'

‘I think everyone's aware of that. More sinned against than sinning was my impression.'

Salter shrugged. ‘Depends who you talk to. That's the way that Brennan tells it. Just doing his honest job. No choice but to blow the whistle. All that crap. Not, of course, the way that former Chief Superintendent Craddock tells the tale. You pays your money and you takes your choice.'

‘But Craddock was bent.'

‘Not as clean as the proverbial whistle,' Salter agreed. ‘But you could say that of a lot of people.' Salter paused, as if mentally compiling a list of individuals who might fall into this category. ‘Maybe even Brennan himself.'

‘A bent whistleblower?'

‘People do things for all kinds of reasons, sis. You must have realised that by now.' His tone had changed. He was coaxing, gently inveigling her into some kind of complicity with him. ‘There's more to Brennan than meets the eye. I brought him over in good faith. Always happy to give someone a second chance. Brennan had a good reputation as a detective. He knows the lay of the land up in that neck of the woods.' Salter spoke as though the north west were some kind of uncharted territory. ‘I thought he might be just what we needed to pin down Pete Boyle and his cronies.'

Like hell you did, she thought. You thought that a copper with Brennan's reputation would be just what was needed to destroy any lingering credibility the case retained in the eyes of the CPS. ‘And you're saying that he wasn't?'

‘I made him Evidence Officer for the case,' Salter went on. ‘I wanted someone who would properly coordinate all the material we had. Assess its strengths and weaknesses. Work out where the gaps were, and advise on what was needed to fill the gaps.'

‘And he's not done that?'

‘Up to a point. He's spent a lot of time researching the background.' Salter gave the last word a heavy overtone of irony, as if the notion of background research was absurd in the context of detective work. ‘One reason why he was so keen to meet you. But not much seems to have emerged from all this. In fact, quite the opposite.' He stopped and again flicked slowly through the pile of papers. She couldn't work out whether the papers were genuinely pertinent to their discussion, or whether this was simply another of Salter's theatrics. ‘He seems to have rejected most of the evidence as irrelevant or unhelpful, leaving us with more gaps than substance.' He pulled two sheets of paper out from the larger pile and spent a few seconds carefully arranging them side by side on the desk in front of him. ‘More worryingly, there seem to be signs that evidence has actually been destroyed or amended. And that the records have been changed in an attempt to conceal the fact.' He best forward to study the two sheets for a moment, and then picked them up and slid them back into the remaining papers. Theatrics, she decided. Nothing but bloody theatrics.

‘You're saying that Brennan has destroyed evidence?'

‘That's what we want to know, sis. You know how these things are. It's so easy for things to be misunderstood or misinterpreted. Maybe Brennan's been trying to do an honest job to the best of his abilities. Maybe he wasn't up to it. I think we sometimes underestimate how difficult our job can be compared with traditional policing.'

She could feel her rage bubbling up again. It was easy to imagine Salter deploying this ‘more in sorrow than in anger' voice at some future disciplinary hearing while he gently skewered Brennan's career. It was clear now where this was heading. And it was equally clear how Salter had typically muddied the waters.

She could believe that Brennan had been assiduous at rejecting any supposed evidence against Boyle that he'd felt to be unconvincing or unhelpful. He thought that Salter was setting him up to fail, and he wouldn't have wanted to present anything to the CPS that was less than watertight. She could imagine that Salter himself would have been happy to include material that would fall at the first hurdle.

The second part of the accusation was much more serious. If Brennan had been destroying or amending evidence, that would imply he was corrupt. That would imply that he was on Boyle's payroll. She didn't believe it for a moment. But others might be only too pleased to do so. Brennan had made enough enemies who'd use any weapon against him. This would play right into their hands.

‘You can't believe that, Hugh,' she said. ‘You can't seriously think that Brennan's been destroying evidence.'

Salter leaned back in his chair and looked at her appraisingly. ‘Look. sis, I know we don't always see eye-to-eye. I know you don't think much of me. Which is a pity, as it happens, because I've rather a high regard for you. And you don't trust me all that much. Which is fair enough, I guess. I've never denied being ambitious. And I've never hidden the fact that I prefer to look out for number one–'

‘Is this going somewhere, Hugh?' This was Salter shifting gear yet again, into the ‘cards on the table' mode he used mostly when just about to pull the wool over your eyes. He was bloody good at it, she knew. What better way to get someone to trust you than by acknowledging that they didn't?

He sighed. ‘All I'm trying to say, sis, is that, though you probably don't think so, I've got your best interests at heart. I don't know or care what kind of relationship you might have had with Brennan–'

‘I've told you, Hugh–'

He held up his hand. ‘None of my business, sis. But you need to know that Jack Brennan's bad news. I can understand why you feel a need to protect him, but I'm telling you it's not a good idea. Not for you. Not for me. The powers-that-be are taking a long hard look at him. He's already been suspended, and the expectation is that he'll be disciplined. Or worse.'

It took a moment for this to sink in. ‘Suspended? When?'

‘Yesterday. Not so long after he said his fond farewells to you, I should imagine. When he got into the office, he was called in by the Chief up there and given the news. Sent home on full pay while the investigation's carried out.'

She sat for a moment in silence, trying to come to grips with this news. She felt, unreasonably, that someone should have told her before now. But why would they? Brennan was nothing to her, other than the focus of whatever salacious rumours their surveillance efforts had prompted. Perhaps she was disappointed that Brennan himself hadn't called her. But he wouldn't have wanted to risk implicating her in whatever he was being accused of.

‘The long and short of it, sis, is that you'd do well to steer clear of him. The investigation will take a few weeks, I imagine. Professional Standards are starting to look at the material.' He shrugged. ‘A lot of it may be circumstantial. He can probably come up with a good story as to why he disregarded evidence, but the tampering will be harder to explain. My bet is that, at the very least, Brennan's on his way out. But of course, if he was destroying evidence, the real question is why.'

She felt treacherous for not protesting Brennan's innocence. But there was no point. She wasn't going to persuade Salter, for Christ's sake, and all she'd do was reinforce the impression that she was close to Brennan. ‘So what's this got to do with me, Hugh?' she asked, determined that he should spell it out.

‘You're on thin ice, sis. Like I say, you've disobeyed orders. You've broken cover without authorisation. You got rather closer than was wise to Brennan. However innocently. The people upstairs have their eyes on you.'

That was one of the many things she despised about Salter. The way he always shifted responsibility onto some unnamed authority. If senior management really did have their eyes on her, it would be because he'd made damn sure she was in their sights. ‘I've done nothing, Hugh. You know that.'

‘And for the moment,' he said, his voice oozing magnanimity, ‘I'm accepting that and taking no action. I'm just warning you that Professional Standards are watching. They know you were in contact with Brennan. They know you spent the night at his flat. They probably know every step you've taken since then.' He sat back, the cold smile once again spread across his face. An insincere TV quiz host who'd just given away the star prize.

She felt the cold finger on her spine again. Every step she'd taken since then. Which would include her meeting with Lizzie and McGrath. If they'd had Brennan's flat under surveillance, it was possible they'd followed her when she left. But if that were the case, why was no one asking her about her movements? She supposed that there was nothing intrinsically suspicious about her visiting Lizzie – the two women had been through a traumatic night together, after all. There was no reason for anyone to know that McGrath was there. Unless they'd subsequently seen him leave . . .

Stop it, she thought. This is exactly what Salter wants. He's a master at putting you on the back foot. Saying enough to sow a seed of doubt and then letting you squirm until you inadvertently tell him what he wants to know.

‘I've got nothing to hide,' she said, as calmly as she could manage.

‘Never thought for a minute you had, sis. But you know those bastards in Professional Standards. If they decide you're worth looking at, they'll trawl through every last detail of your private life. Anything that's going on at home. Anyone you might once have had a relationship with . . .' Again, he stopped and left the words hanging in the air.

She felt another momentary chill, but knew he was just throwing out bait in the hope of getting her to bite. He might have suspicions about her past relationship with the informant, Jake Morton. But there was no way that he could know for sure that she'd allowed herself to be compromised. That bit of dirty linen had been safely packed away with Morton's murder. All Salter was doing was stirring the shit, and hoping that something juicy would float to the surface.