Hanging Hill - Mo Hayder [108]
She turned on the phone and scrunched back in the seat, holding it in front of her like a shield. Steve wound down the window. Jake came forward, glowering at him. He snatched the money and sauntered back to the jeep. He slammed his door and sat for a moment, lit by the interior light, bent over as he counted the blocks of cash. When he had finished, he didn’t look at them, just reached up to switch off the light, started the jeep and roared away, narrowly missing taking their front bumper with him.
‘Did you get his number?’
Sally nodded. She stopped the video and sank back in the seat, breathing hard. ‘God,’ she muttered. ‘Is this the end of it now? Is this really the end?’
‘Shit. I hope so.’ Steve readjusted the mirror and started the engine. ‘I really, really hope so.’
18
Captain Charlie Zhang was based temporarily in an old Victorian red-brick villa, set, incongruously, in a garrison to the east of Salisbury Plain. It might have been a military base, but when Zhang led her along the cool, carpeted corridors, Zoë decided the Military Police definitely had it better than the common-or-garden cops. There were fitted carpets and panelled walls, and the doors all closed with a reassuring shush as if they were on the Starship Enterprise.
Zhang’s commanding officer was a cool-looking woman in late middle age, Lieutenant Colonel Teresa Watling – the army equivalent of a chief superintendent and fairly heavy hitting in the grand scheme of things. With her blow-dried grey hair, the gold pendant over her black turtle-neck and her black reptile-skin heels, she looked like a Manhattan businesswoman. In fact, she explained to Zoë, as they went along the passageways, it was far more pedestrian than that. She had been born and brought up in the home counties.
‘Cool.’ Zoë swung the ID they’d issued her at the control gate. ‘Can I ask you something?’
‘Anything.’
‘When I get tied to the chair, are you going to be the bad cop or the good cop?’
Lieutenant Colonel Watling ignored that. She stopped at a door and pushed it open. The room inside resembled a boardroom at an oil company, with a polished walnut table and twelve hand-carved teak chairs. There were water glasses and leather notepads at each place setting, so clearly the cutbacks that were axing thousands of backroom staff in the civilian police hadn’t reached here yet. The three of them filed in. Zoë chose the seat at the head of the table, furthest from the door, and Captain Zhang sat next to her, his long, delicate hands folded one on top of the other. Six large files were placed down the centre of the table. It would have taken a long time to amass that lot, Zoë thought. A long time.
Lieutenant Colonel Watling opened a sleek black box and offered it to Zoë. At first she thought it was a humidor – it seemed somehow appropriate to light up a stogie in a place like this, kick back a little and watch the sky out of the window go indigo. She wasn’t going to say no if that was the way the evening was going to work. Maybe a little snifter of Talisker on the side. But it wasn’t cigars in the box: it was coffee capsules, in rainbow colours. She looked at the key and chose the strongest.
‘Black, please. Two sugars.’
Watling began to make the coffee. Zoë watched her, wondering how she’d got this job. It would be cool to wear Jimmy Choos to work, she thought. Maybe swap them now and again for combats and a quick, safe investigation at one of the bases in Iraq or Afghanistan. She’d heard they had a Piacetto café in Camp Bastion that did the best cakes. ‘I know your boss,’ Watling said. ‘I worked with him on a couple of operations in Wiltshire.’
‘Was he into psychological profiling in those days?’
‘I’m sorry?’
‘Nothing. He’s a nice guy. What do you want to talk about?’
‘Oh, just this and that.’
‘This and that?’
Watling gave Zoë her coffee and lined up her own cup next to the leather writing pad. She sat down and clasped her elegant hands on the pad. ‘Zoë,’ she said. ‘Do you remember those good old days when the Crime Squad and the Intelligence Service