‘Yeah, I’m doing all right,’ he said. ‘You heard about Welsby?’
She shook her head. For all his wriggling, Welsby had been charged with corruption. Bail had been refused and he was being held in custody in Wakefield prison, pending his trial.
‘They found him this morning.’
‘Jesus.’
‘Makes you wonder, doesn’t it? Shouldn’t happen in prison. Supposed to be on suicide watch. What do you reckon? They just turn a blind eye? Or is it more than that?’
‘I don’t know, Hugh,’ she said coldly. ‘Christ, you’re a heartless bastard, aren’t you?’
He shrugged. ‘Didn’t notice the fat bastard showing much compassion when he was kicking seven shades of shit out of me.’ He paused. ‘Just got what was coming, if you ask me.’
There was something about the way he said it that chilled her. It felt, just for a moment, like a threat.
She didn’t trust him. She still didn’t fucking trust him. She thought back to what Welsby had said in the bungalow, and realized that she didn’t know the answer. She didn’t know whether Salter was just a ruthless careerist bastard. Or whether there was something more than that.
He’d been the first to urge them to consider what Boyle had gained from Morton’s and Jones’ deaths. He argued that the case against Boyle shouldn’t be dropped, that the CPS should try to gain them more time. He’d insisted that they could still succeed in building a case against Boyle. He’d stormed out in righteous anger when it was confirmed that the case was being dropped.
And the result was that the case was neatly passed into his hands. If you’re so smart, they’d said in not quite so many words, you land Boyle.
And maybe that was the way he’d wanted it all along. Maybe he’d wanted to take control of the case. So that, over time, he could quietly bury it. She thought back to what Kerridge had said in the bungalow. Someone had told Boyle who she was. Not Welsby, obviously. So who else?
‘Got some good news, sis,’ he’d said that morning. There were times when he had the air of an overenthusiastic teenager. Someone not quite house-trained.
‘That so, Hugh?’
‘Got my promotion. Finally got my own section.’
‘Chasing Boyle?’
He’d looked at her for a long time. A few seconds too long. ‘Yeah, among other things. I’ve put in a good word for you.’
‘For me?’
‘Yeah, sis. Rate you highly. You’ve got real talent. Want you on board. Part of my team. You could work down here. Be close to that boyfriend of yours. What do you reckon?’
What did she reckon?
That was the question. Salter didn’t trust her, that much was clear to her. He wanted to keep her close. For her part, the thought of working alongside Salter repulsed her. Whether or not he was bent, he was an odious bastard. But if he was bent, he was something else as well. If he really was bent, if he really was on Boyle’s payroll, then that meant he was the one who’d betrayed Jake Morton. He was the one who, in the end, was responsible for Jake’s death.
Shit. She knew then that she couldn’t let this go. That she had to stick close to Salter. She had to finish this off.
She told herself that it was about justice. But she knew that, really, it was about revenge.
She told herself that it was about Liam. That, if she took this job, she could carry on living with Liam, looking after him, making sure he was all right. That was what she told herself.
But she knew that, really, it wasn’t about Liam.
It was about Jake.
So now, here she sat, in this sterile, depressing ward, with Liam in front of her, his body surrounded by drips, monitoring equipment, piles of paperwork and dressings. Not knowing what the future held. Not knowing what she wanted. Not even knowing what was driving her. Trying to decide.
She reached out and took Liam’s quivering hand and held it tightly for a moment. ‘You’re right,’ she said finally. ‘I can change the job. I can do that.’
Read on for an exclusive interview from a new star in the crime and thriller arena, Alex Walters
An Interview with Alex Walters
When did you start writing?
I’ve written fiction for as long as I can remember. I started writing mainly because I’ve always been an enthusiastic reader – of anything and everything. As a child, my parents thought it was a good thing for me to be reading anything at all – Enid Blyton, comics, science fiction, horror stories, the backs of cereal packets – just so long as I was reading. The result was that I developed a passion for books, and then tried to produce my own versions of the stuff that I most enjoyed. So, as a teenager, I used to fill notebooks with short stories in virtually every genre – all of them awful (I’ve been back and looked, but only once!). I read English at university, and always carried on writing mainly for my own pleasure, although I did have some non-fiction books and the odd story and poem published. I kept starting novels that never got beyond the first two or three chapters, partly because it took me a long while to find the stories that I really wanted to tell.
Where do you write? And what’s your routine?
I have what I rather grandly call a study at the top of the house – a really nice airy room which on a good day (we get a few in Manchester) has the sun streaming in through the skylight. It’s an ideal mix because I can see the blue skies and the tops of the trees, but I can’t see the glorious views of the Pennines properly unless I stand up, so most of the time I can avoid being distracted. I do most of my writing there, and I fit it in around the other work that I still do as a management consultant. I’ve discovered from experience that I’m not very productive at writing in the mornings, so I tend to deal with less interesting work then. But once I get into a rhythm, I tend to lose contact with the world around me and can work as late into the night as I need to.
I’m always slightly astonished by writers who still work in longhand – possibly because my own handwriting is so awful. I love writing on the computer because it means I can make changes as I go – changing wording or dialogue, or moving scenes around to accommodate new ideas or developments. Once I’ve got an outline plan in place, I tend to just start at the beginning and write till I reach the end of the first draft, but I’ll also juggle the content as I go so that I can try to give the story the best shape.
The other advantage of writing on a computer is that I can do it more or less anywhere. I’ve discovered that, oddly, I can be very productive writing on trains (I spend far too much of my life commuting between Manchester and London), as long as I can shut out the rest of the world with my laptop and iPod. That seems to work well, though I’ve occasionally noticed other passengers peering worriedly over my shoulder as I tap out a murder scene . . .
What are the pros and cons of being a writer?
When it’s going well, it’s the best job in the world. And even when it’s going badly, it’s better than most other things. I really enjoy losing myself in the world I’m creating, and I particularly love it when that world and its characters start to take over. It’s a strange but exhilarating feeling when the life that you’re creating starts to seem more real than the life outside. That means that you’ve got to be comfortable spending a good proportion of your day working on your own, living largely inside your own head. I’ve occasionally suspected that you have to be at least slightly mad to want to write, but I hope it’s an entertaining form of madness.