Natalia arrives back at one o’clock, over two hours after Jen dispatched her. She is holding a blue legal pad and an Eagles pen bearing the logo that Jen’s dad designed years ago. Her hair is still absolutely, completely immaculate. ‘I bought a Coke, I hope that’s okay?’ Natalia says.
Jen feels a dart of guilt. God, this is a sordid task to give to a trainee on her first day, and she didn’t even brief her on expenses. ‘Oh my God, of course,’ Jen says. She gets a ten-pound note out of her purse and hands it to Natalia.
‘Shouldn’t I put it in the – the system?’
‘I am the system,’ Jen says crisply. ‘Don’t worry.’
‘All right,’ Natalia says, and Jen suddenly feels like some kind of psycho, dispatching a completely new trainee to spy on her husband. The kind of desperate behaviour of somebody unhinged, somebody abusing their power. She pushes the thoughts away. It’s for the greater good.
‘Okay,’ Natalia goes on. ‘He – Kelly – met a woman. He calls her Nic. I don’t think they are having an affair, though.’
Nicola Williams. Again and again and again. Even though she knows what she looks like, she still cannot find her online.
‘No?’
‘It didn’t look that way. It was a business meeting.’
Jen swallows. ‘Right,’ she says. ‘Shoot.’
‘They seemed to be starting up some sort of arrangement again? It’s hard to say what. Possibly working for someone called Joe – I don’t know. Kelly doesn’t want to do it. Nic wants him to, she seems to … maybe think he owes her something. It sounded very loaded. I don’t know …’
‘Okay. And Joe wasn’t there?’
‘No – they kept saying he was inside. But I didn’t really understand because they were inside?’ Natalia stops speaking, her pen poised above the pad, leafing through it, flicking through pages and pages of immaculate notes. Fucking hell, Jen thinks, Natalia went to Oxford University, Marlborough College before that. And yet. Inside. She doesn’t know what that means. These kids. These na?ve kids.
‘I think that’s it. There was a lot of talk around what work they’d do for Joe, but no specifics mentioned,’ Natalia finishes.
Inside.
Jen holds a finger up and googles Joseph Jones prison. The information about him was there all along, hidden away among the common names. He was released last week from HMP Altcourse and was convicted twenty years ago in one of the largest trials of its type.
Possession with Intent to Supply Class A Drugs, Conspiracy to Rob, Conspiracy to Produce Counterfeit Currency, Section 18 Grievous Bodily Harm with Intent. The offences go on and on. Drugs, money laundering, robbing, stealing cars, burgling people’s houses, violence. As many as there are droplets of mist outside when Todd murders him. Jen reads each while Natalia stands there in silence. She gradually becomes numb to them, to what this could possibly mean about her husband, and for her son.
‘Thanks,’ she says softly to Natalia after a second. ‘Great job.’
‘Shame he’s not cheating,’ Natalia says. ‘If it would’ve helped. He actually mentioned how much he loved his wife.’
Jen turns away from her computer, and from Natalia, too, staring out the window, down at the street, her eyes wet. ‘Did he?’ she whispers.
‘Yeah. Just said he loved his wife. No context really, in among all the Joe stuff.’
Jen nods, turning back to Natalia, wondering what would happen if she imparted some wisdom here, knowing, as she does, what faces Natalia in the future.
But knowing the future is worse than not knowing. Isn’t it?
Day Minus Sixty-Five, 17:05
Jen has been finding comfort in heading into the office on weekdays. Undertaking – piecemeal – whatever tasks await her on that specific day. In September, she was doing financial investigations before a trial with Natalia. And into August she has been drafting an advice on child protection – something slightly outside her remit, but enjoyable nevertheless, even though it disappears more with each day that passes. She has a trainee called Chance, who leaves in September for a rival firm, which Jen does her best to forget now.
At five past five, her desk phone rings.
‘It’s me,’ Valerie, their receptionist, says. ‘There’s someone in reception. I know, I know, I know you’re harassed.’
Jen blinks. ‘Am I?’ She doesn’t feel remotely harassed. The child protection advice is half written, a hot cup of tea sits on her desk. She’s looking forward to going home and seeing Todd, who’s been baking cookies, sending her photographs of each flavour. She remembers that they are delicious, so she’s extra-excited. A little haven in her fucked-up, backwards world.
‘Rakesh said you’re on the child protection advice yesterday and today – I know …’
‘Yes,’ Jen says faintly. She remembers this. The advice had taken her an embarrassing amount of time to get to. Weeks. The client had chased her twice, the second time asking if a simple note was beyond her. It was so hard, in law, to make the time to do large pieces of work. Phone calls, emails, unexpected and horrifying Outlook calendar appointments. Eventually, she’d blocked all calls to get to it. She’d even locked her office door! God, what a diva.
‘Who?’ Jen says. ‘Who’s in reception?’
‘Says he’s called Mr Jones?’
Jen’s mouth goes dry. She wets her lips with her tongue. Look. Look what she missed.
It’s the twenty-fifth of August. And Joseph Jones is out, and looking for her.
Joseph turns in the pale-carpeted foyer when he sees her. EAGLES is written behind the reception desk in blocky lettering. The lights – on timers – have gone off, save for a single one, illuminating just him.
‘Looking for Kelly,’ he says.
Jen pauses, her footsteps slowing as she crosses the foyer towards him.
‘Kelly Brotherhood?’ she says.
Something seems to break across his features as he meets her eyes, but Jen isn’t sure what. He’s older than she first thought, that first night, and the night she saw him at Eshe Road North. He’s probably older than fifty. Tattoos across the knuckles. Eyes flinty. Body language poised somehow, like a cat about to strike. He’s light on his feet with it.
‘Yes.’ He holds both hands up. ‘He was an old friend.’ The knowledge is a physical feeling that shivers across her torso. Joseph’s sentence was twenty years. So he must have known Kelly before it.
‘What kind of friend?’ Jen can’t resist saying. But, inside, she is thinking that Joseph, too, knows her. He knew to come to the law firm to find Kelly.
Joseph smiles back at her, so fast as not to be genuine. ‘An important one.’
‘Surprised you’d look here?’ she says.
‘I’ve been away. No matter. Wanted to re-start something.’ He turns away from her. He’s in a white T-shirt, the material thin and cheap, and, underneath it, Jen can make out a tattoo that spans the entire width of his back: an angel’s wings, right across his shoulder blades.
‘Re-start what?’ she says, but he ignores her, leaving, the foyer door shutting softly behind him. Jen leans her hands on the reception desk, trying to breathe, trying to think.