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Twenty-four hours later, he finally received new instructions. Head south, back to London, and maintain observation. More to follow.

The mission was moving into unplanned territory. There was no time for him even to carry out his usual research. He would have to wing it. He was good enough to do that, but it was far from ideal. And ‘more to follow' worried him. This felt like operating on the hoof.

But the instruction was there so, for the moment, he felt obliged to follow it. It would be a big step to abort his involvement so late in the day. He'd been paid for his earlier work, but he'd get the full payoff on completion. Whatever that meant. The goalposts were shifting all the time now. But it would be expensive to pull out. And not his style. He was a pro. He'd carry on unless he felt that the risks were too great.

So he'd head south. Find a bed and breakfast somewhere in South London. Gather as much intelligence as he could, and try to be prepared for whatever was coming.

More to follow, he thought. But how much more?

Walking up Merton High Street, Marie felt the same gnawing paranoia as she had on the previous evening. It was beginning to rain slightly, and there were few pedestrians out in the early evening. At one point, she stopped and peered into the window of the Cypriot greengrocer, as if contemplating buying one of the more exotic vegetables displayed inside. She looked back along the street. There were a couple of figures, hidden under umbrellas, who might conceivably be suspicious, but no one had paused with her. One of the figures disappeared into an off-licence, shaking his umbrella out into the street. The other continued walking, maintaining a brisk pace.

When she reached the house, she found it silent, empty-feeling. Liam was already in bed in the former dining room, sleeping soundly. There was a note from Sue on the kitchen table saying that he'd seemed very tired so they'd helped him to bed early.

Was this her life from here on? Dull days at work followed by solitary evenings, Liam sleeping in the next room?

She'd stopped on the way back from the hospital to buy another pay-as-you-go mobile. The brief optimism she'd felt on leaving Welsby had melted away during the journey back. Whatever she thought of Welsby, even in his current state he somehow still displayed an enthusiastic pragmatism that remained infectious. There'd been a moment, as she said goodbye to him, when she'd really felt they had a chance of bringing Salter down. Now, the whole idea seemed faintly absurd.

She texted the new number to Brennan and Lizzie and then, wrestling with her willpower for no more than a few seconds, she dug out another bottle of wine from the diminishing store in the kitchen cupboard. She was aware that she was beginning to drink more than was good for her. Just tonight, she thought. Christ knows I've deserved it. I'll pour a glass, run a bath, wash out all the crap of the day.

She'd completed the first part of this task when the new mobile rang. Number withheld. But it had to be one of two people.

‘Hello?'

‘Marie. It's me, Jack. See you got a new phone.'

‘Hang on a sec,' she said. As on the previous night, she opened the back door and stepped out into the garden. The rain was still coming down, though little more than a thin mist blurring the street lights beyond the small back yard. She stood in the shelter of the porch. ‘Sorry. Just wanted to get out of the house. I'm paranoid that Salter might have planted some intercept devices in the house.'

There was a moment's silence. ‘I'd put nothing past that bastard,' Brennan said. ‘I'm sure my phone's been bugged. Don't know about the house. But it's possible. Jesus.' She could hear him take a breath, as if he were finding the stress of the situation almost too much. ‘Just wanted to check you'd got the parcel.'

‘Safely received,' she said. ‘Copied and hidden.'

‘What did you think?'

‘It's good, Jack. Better than I expected, to be honest. I still don't think it's cut and dried by any means, but it's good start. Where the hell did you get it?'

Another brief silence. ‘You're not seriously asking me to tell you that? Let's just say that Salter probably has more enemies than friends.'

‘I don't doubt that,' she said. ‘And, no, I'm not asking you to reveal your sources. But if we're going to make this stick, we have to be confident of its provenance.'

‘I'm confident,' he said. ‘And there may be more where that came from.'

‘That would be good.'

‘Do you think you can do something with it?'

‘I don't know, Jack. Like I say, it's good stuff. But I'm not convinced that Salter wouldn't still be able to wriggle out of it. Even the taped conversations aren't definitive. He's still pretty circumspect on those tapes.'

‘Because he's a man who's constantly watching his own back.'

‘I don't doubt it. But that doesn't help us. I think our biggest hope with the material as it stands is that it might force Standards into conducting a proper investigation.'

‘But?' Brennan said.

‘But I don't even know if that will work. Salter might be getting twitchy but as far as the Agency's concerned he's still a rising star. Welsby was a big embarrassment for them. My guess is that they'll be reluctant to lift up any more stones unless they're forced into it.'

‘You mean they'd rather turn a blind eye than risk another public humiliation?'

‘Jesus, Jack, I don't know. But it's all political, isn't it? Some politicians have already got the Agency on their hit list because we're supposedly not cost effective or we're not delivering the goods or whatever the hell other stick they decide to beat us with. The other Forces don't like us because we challenge their authority. The powers-that-be won't be rushing to provide any of those parties with more ammunition.'

‘It'll be far more embarrassing if Salter gets exposed and they've done nothing.'

‘That's a big if at the moment.'

‘So what do you suggest?'

She was silent for a moment, wondering how much more to say. ‘I went to visit Keith Welsby today,' she said, finally.

‘Welsby?' Brennan said. ‘That must have been interesting.'

‘You might say that. Not as painful as I'd feared in the end.'

‘How is he?'

‘Improving, but not great. He's expecting to stand trial, but he reckons he won't last that long. One way or another.'

‘Jesus.'

‘Whatever happens, he wants to make sure Salter goes down with him.'

‘Everybody's gunning for Salter, then.'

‘So it seems. And according to Welsby there might be one more.'

‘Oh yes?'

‘He reckons Pete Boyle might be after him, too.'

‘I thought Salter was on Boyle's team.'

‘More like the other way round, according to Welsby. But he thinks that all might not be well between them. Salter's getting rattled, doesn't trust Boyle entirely. And Boyle's tired of playing second fiddle.'

‘Well, it's a theory,' Brennan said. ‘Does Welsby have anything to back this up?'

‘Not much, as far as I can tell. Just the old Welsby intuition. Mind you, the old Welsby intuition was a powerful beast in its day.'

‘Probably was, when he was being tipped off by Jeff Kerridge. But presumably that's not the case now, unless Welsby's already secured his hotline to heaven.'

‘More likely the other place, I'd have thought. But, yes, fair point.'

‘So what do we do then? Are you going to take the disc to Standards?'

‘I think we need leverage on this. With the best will in the world, I'm not convinced that evidence will cut much ice on its own. Just like I'm not convinced that it'll do much good if Welsby stands up in court and denounces Salter. Salter's as slippery as they come and Welsby's hardly a credible witness.'

‘So what then?' She could sense the disappointment in Brennan's voice. It was familiar to her – the sense that you'd almost pinned Salter down, and then he was off and running again.

‘Look, Jack,' she said, ‘I'm not letting go of this. This is the closest we've come to nailing Salter. We can't afford for it to go off half-cocked. If we don't get him this time, we'll never get another chance.'

‘So what then?' Brennan repeated, his voice more insistent.

‘I think we need Welsby,' she said. ‘He's got nothing to lose. He's got a grudge against Salter the size of Manchester. And, from what I saw today, he's just about desperate and determined enough to make sure we get a result.'

She ended the call to Brennan and stood for a moment in the steady drizzle. It was only now she realised quite how cold she was. Even in the shelter of the porch, she'd been dampened by the drifting misty rain, her hair clinging to her face. And, for the first time since she'd returned home, she was beginning to feel scared.

Up there, out in the field, she'd expected to feel threatened, anxious. It wasn't just because you might have to face something like her mysterious intruder. It was because, day in, day out, you were operating on alien territory, working out the rules, pretending to be something you weren't.

Coming back here, even with all the problems she was having to face, she'd initially felt comforted. Whatever she might have to deal with, she was at least home. She'd felt safe.

But that sense of security had melted away. She was afraid the house had already been invaded, infiltrated. She had no idea whether Salter really had placed surveillance equipment here. Maybe it was a far-fetched idea. Liam had been in the house since his return from hospital, and Sue and the other carers had been coming and going. But maybe Salter had taken advantage of Liam's absence, or maybe, even after his return, Liam hadn't been in a state to recognise that someone was in the house. She knew full well how skilled the technical support team could be. They could be in and out in the blink of an eye and, short of tearing the place apart to find whatever they might have concealed, there was no sure way to confirm whether they'd ever been.

More than that, though, she was afraid of Salter. She'd seen how ruthlessly he'd treated Brennan. And, if Welsby was even half right, that was only a fraction of what he was capable of. She hadn't believed it before, not entirely. Even when he'd killed Jeff Kerridge, she'd half-accepted his claim of self-defence. For all her suspicions, she still hadn't fully believed he'd gunned down Kerridge in cold blood, just to further his own ambitions. At worst, she'd thought, it must have just been Salter's usual mixture of opportunism and blind luck.

Now she had begun to believe that Salter was capable of anything. If he really was the driving force, the brains, behind Boyle's operations, that implied that he was behind all the killings that had taken place in recent weeks. That he'd been systematically, callously picking off the competition. That he'd actively commissioned one murder after another.

She drew the curtains in the small living room and poured the glass of wine she'd been promising herself. She ought to be hungry. She'd eaten nothing since a sandwich she'd grabbed at the office before leaving for the hospital.

But somehow the prospect of food seemed less attractive than the prospect of wine. Not a good sign. Apart from anything else, she needed to keep her wits about her if she was going to have any chance of dealing with Salter. She paused for a moment, considering what dealing with Salter might entail, then swallowed half of the glass in a mouthful.

She re-entered the kitchen and forced herself to make and eat a sandwich, her head already dizzy from the effects of the wine on her previously empty stomach. She felt restless, caught in limbo. She wanted this to end, but knew that any way out was bound to be painful. Pouring more wine, she prowled the house with the air of a caged animal. Twice, she stopped in the living room, tempted to start scouring the walls, the skirting board, the carpets, for any sign that surveillance equipment had been placed in the room. But that would be a sure route to madness. If it had been done by tech support, she'd never find any definitive evidence and would be reduced to examining every last scratch or mark as evidence of infiltration.

Finally, she opened the door to the dining room where Liam lay sleeping. The electric bed had already turned up, less than twenty-four hours after the social worker had ordered it. Marie didn't know whether this was evidence of local authority efficiency, or a sign that they recognised how quickly Liam's condition was deteriorating.

His former mobility, the ability at least to do what the social worker called ‘furniture walking' – progressing around the house finding support as he went – already seemed like a distant memory. On a good day, he could just about stand for a minute or two unaided. On a worse day, like today, he'd almost had to be carried between bed and chair by the carers. The last couple of days he'd spent slumped in the armchair, eyes fixed on the flickering glare of the television screen, with no sign that he was taking anything much in. He woke in the morning, ate breakfast with help from the carers, dozed off mid-morning, had lunch, watched more television in the afternoon, and was helped to bed in the early evening. Already, it was no kind of life.

Now, in the late evening, he was sleeping soundly. She pulled up a chair and sat by the bedside, watching the rise and fall of his chest under the single duvet. Even the sight of the duvet brought a catch to her throat. When she'd first set up the sofa bed down here, she'd dug out some old bedding he'd had when they'd first met, while he was still at art college and she was at university. Those days seemed like little more than a dream now, a set of vibrant images fading against the relentless glare of real life.

His breathing sounded slightly rough. Sue had thought he had a cold and had suggested calling out the GP. But they'd agreed that, in the circumstances, a cold was the last of Liam's problems, and they couldn't face the thought that he might get taken into hospital yet again.