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Damn. Damn. I should have gone with my first instinct and tried to blag my way out behind her. I’d done it often enough on jobs—claimed my pass wasn’t working, or simply rushed through like someone in a hurry. Nine times out of ten you got away with it. But the stakes were higher now, and that ten percent chance of getting challenged was the reason I’d lost my nerve.
Letting out a shaky breath, I looked around the little copier room, trying to see something, anything of use. An abandoned pass was too much to hope for—but a fire plan of the floor wasn’t unreasonable, and it might show another exit.
There was no plan. But instead my eye lit on something almost as good: a marker—a thick, sturdy Sharpie.
Picking it up, I went back into the corridor, looked up and down to make sure no one was watching, and then stood the pen upright at the bottom of the door, its tip leaning against the corner between the door jamb and the door itself. Thank God I was on the inside of the door. Doing this trick from the outside was much harder to pull off.
Then I retreated back into the copier room, folded a piece of paper into the size and shape of a credit card, and waited. And waited.
It had been probably no more than three or four minutes since I’d left the interview room, but I was painfully conscious of the fact that Miles would be returning very soon, if he hadn’t already done so. Say a couple of minutes to boil the kettle. Another sixty seconds to stir the tea, find the milk. If he’d bothered to hunt around for decaf tea I might have another couple of minutes, but I couldn’t bank on that. And if he did return to find the room empty, then how long would it take him to raise the alarm? Sixty seconds? No, I’d dealt with people like Miles before, and they weren’t that decisive. Malik now, if she found the suite empty, she would have everyone on red alert before you could say knife. But Miles… no. He wasn’t that kind—he was the self-doubting, chain-of-command type. Which meant he’d probably try to locate Malik first, make sure that she hadn’t taken me down to custody. And then? Well, if I was lucky he’d give me the benefit of the doubt and search the toilets, but there were no guarantees on that front, and once he found Malik, I was pretty sure the game would be up. Malik looked the kind to act fast and ask questions later.
I was still pondering when I heard footsteps again, a man’s this time, coming purposefully down the corridor. Not Miles. Someone in heavier shoes, with a more assertive tread. An officer in uniform passed the door of the copier room, and I heard the tap of the card reader, and the door swinging open. But when it swung back, I didn’t hear the clunk of the lock clicking back into place. The sound as the door swung shut was rather different—a plasticky crunch.
I waited for the police officer to notice the sound, stoop, examine the floor…
In through the nose, three, two, one…
Nothing. Just the noise of footsteps receding.
I let out my breath and walked as fast as I dared out of the copier room and up the corridor, and this time, sure enough, the door was open, just a crack. The Sharpie had toppled unnoticed into the gap and prevented it from closing.
Just in case anyone was watching I touched the folded piece of paper to the reader, miming someone tapping their pass, and then I pushed open the door, kicking the Sharpie aside as I went through. The door closed behind me, and I was out.
The next part would be the hardest. I was so close—but I had to pass the front desk. Would the officer on duty remember me? Would he wonder why I wasn’t accompanied by either Malik or Miles?
I had been holding my jacket when I went in, and now I put it on, winding my scarf around my throat to hide as much of my distinctive red hair as I could. Why, oh why hadn’t I listened to Gabe when he’d said, “Well, they’ll certainly remember you on CCTV.”
But it was too late for that. I just had to walk fast and hope that no one had registered me.
The door to the car park was coming up—and so was the front desk. The officer on duty was shielded from me by the foyer wall, but I could see someone talking to him, complaining about something, judging by the body language.
“Sir, please don’t take that tone,” I heard from the officer, his voice pitched somewhere between weary and threatening.
I quickened my pace, right to the edge of what could be considered normal, and almost without thinking about it moved to the right-hand side of the waiting area, into the CCTV blind spot that I’d noticed earlier. Breathe in through the nose, three… two… one… Out through the mouth, three… two… one…
I was almost at the door.
“Excuse me,” I heard coming indignantly from behind me, and I had to fight every instinct in my body to stop myself from turning, checking whether it was me the officer was addressing. “Excuse me, but I’ll have to ask you to leave if you—”
It wasn’t me. He wasn’t talking to me. My hand was actually on the main door, I pushed it open—and then I was out, into the car park, my knees trembling, my muscles weak with relief.
The urge to call Hel was overwhelming, but I knew I couldn’t spare the time to do that; I needed to get away. I could call her from the cab if I had to. Half jogging now, I crossed the little car park towards the road, running through my options in my head. Not Uber. I hadn’t set it up on the borrowed phone and besides, it was too traceable. A black cab, then. I could only pray that one stopped. Did I have any money? A memory came back, Hel shoving two notes into my hand, me slipping them into the phone case… Hel is always right. Bloody hell, she was. If I got out of this I would never ignore her advice again.
A cab was coming towards me, yellow light on. I waved my hand, trying not to look too much like someone about to go on the run. Somehow articulating the words in my head for the first time brought the reality of the situation home to me. Oh God, what had I done?
“Hi,” I said, a little breathlessly, as the taxi pulled up next to me. “Hi, thanks, could I go to…” I stopped. Shit. Where? I had to get out of London, but before that I needed clothes, food, and most importantly, money. Hel’s was the obvious answer—but the police would expect me to go there, and I had no idea how much time I had. What I really wanted was to get my go bag from my own house, but that would be suicide.
Or… would it?
“Come on, love,” the driver said, a bit impatiently. “You coming or going?”
“To, um… Salisbury Lane,” I said, making up my mind and getting in the taxi. Was I mad? “SE10. Do you know it?”
“Yeah, I know it,” the driver said, and swung into the traffic. I found myself looking back, towards the station, as he pulled away, holding my breath as if at any moment blue-light cars might start pouring out of the compound, but nothing happened.
I sat back in the seat and tried to decide whether I could really risk what I wanted to do.
But the more I considered it, the more I convinced myself that it wasn’t a crazy idea. Yes, it was a risk—but it wasn’t as big a risk as all that. There would probably be an officer on the door, but for that very reason it was the last place the police would expect me to go. Their first port of call would almost certainly be Hel—who would tell them, truthfully, that she’d dropped me at the station. Then… well, then, I guessed they would start to look other places. Maybe even track my borrowed phone. But hopefully by that point I would have been in and out.
