Monday morning was hectic, Sally was out the habit of getting ready for work, she had her story ready for why they had to come home early from their holiday, it was the same one as she had used for anyone else who had asked. Someone Dave knew and was close to, had been taken ill and was very poorly.
He had made breakfast for her, although she had sorted out her clothes, she was still rushing about. She left with fifteen minutes to get to the University, park and be ready behind reception.
Dave sat eating breakfast quietly before he dressed and started work. There was an email which had been forwarded from Greater Manchester Police, it was the report regarding Frank Pell. The first part listed his personal details, address and convictions, Dave skimmed past them, he wanted to read what they had found. The answer was nothing, he lived in a rented flat, others had been there before the police, the report said the flat had been cleared, there was nothing of any interest. His fingerprints had been found but nothing else, his clothes and any possessions were gone. Neighbours had seen nothing, or if they had, they were keeping quiet. Scrolling down, he spent some time looking at his bank statements, the outgoings were for his rent, council tax and utility bills, he didn’t use his bank card to buy food or clothing, enough cash was paid in to cover the bills. He didn’t own a car, he hadn’t paid tax or National Insurance for years. Frank Pell worked below the radar, in recent years, he had kept his head down and his nose clean. Someone was paying him, if Dave could find out who it was, solving the case might move forward.
Dave wrote down what he knew to be fact.
- Piet Houtkooper was hired to kill Jane Goodley.
- Frank Pell lived in Manchester.
- Piet Houtkooper had made frequent trips to Manchester.
- The theatre tickets and mobile phone used by whoever wanted Jane Goodley killed were purchased by Piet Houtkooper.
- The three others shot were hired locally.
- The operation, cost a lot of money.
- The planning was done professionally.
On a separate sheet, he wrote down what he guessed might be true.
- The person behind the plot, lived or worked in Manchester.
- Had Jane Goodley been killed, the three local people would have joined her.
The third sheet he wrote out had only one word at the top. Why? There were no bullet points, he wrote a large question mark on the paper. Below it he wrote ‘Jane Goodley on one side of the page, ‘MI5’ on the other. He sat looking at the paper, Dave hoped the answer would suddenly appear. It didn’t and it wouldn’t, he was going to have to work on this one.
In the kitchen, he made a coffee, he stayed downstairs to drink it, there was a reluctance to go up to the office. Making a second cup, he took it upstairs. He started where he had left off, he had to make sure there was nothing on each page, it was time consuming and drained him. He wondered if this had been done as a distraction to throw whoever was looking, in the wrong direction. The more he looked the more the idea grew in his mind. He had to concentrate hard, it was boring work. He was pleased when he heard Sally come through the door, she came running up the stairs to see if he had made any progress. The look on his face told her all she needed to know. “Dave, time you took a break, stop now.” He closed the laptop, Sally was in the bedroom undressing, Dave asked if she wanted to go for a run. She had started to run with him, he would go out for an hour at a time, Sally could manage half of that, they would start off together, turning for home after about fifteen minutes, Dave would then carry on. “Yes, it might help clear my head, I’m struggling at the moment.” Instead of having a shower, Sally put on her running gear, Dave quickly changed into his shorts and vest. They had a regular route through the university campus, Sally slapped Dave’s bum after she had gone far enough, he saw her turn and head back. He carried on as far as the motorway, before running back along the pavements until he was home. Sally was out the shower and dressed, she was drinking coffee sitting on the sofa. Waiting until she heard him finish in the shower, she made another cup. He sat on the easy chair opposite her. “Is it not going well?” “No, I can’t make any headway, there are no leads. Whoever did this was well organised and covered their tracks. I don’t even know why, when I know that, hopefully we will make progress.” Dave phoned Howard at MI5, “has she logged on today?” “08:15, she phoned to request new login credentials, she spent the morning going through emails, she stopped for lunch and carried on until 16:30.” “Have you spoken to her?” “She sounded her normal self, I had a couple of calls from her during the day, it was like she was in the office across from me.” “Phone me if she doesn’t log in tomorrow.” He had put the phone on speaker mode, Sally had heard the conversation. “It sounds like she is back to her normal self.” Dave said he would cook, he went into the kitchen to start, Sally sat at the kitchen table while he was preparing the meal. “I want to ask you about being a woman,” Sally looked at him, a curious expression on her face. “I want you to answer as a woman,” “I can hardly answer as anything else.” “If I had been kidnapped and almost killed, how would you, as a woman react?” “There would be tears, a lot of swearing and I would be holding on to you, never wanting to let you go. I’d fuss around, looking after you. I don’t think I would let you out my sight.” “That’s what I thought, I’m sure most women would be the same.” “Why are you asking?” “After the initial shock, and a genuine show of emotion, Alison, although caring, didn’t appear all that concerned. Maybe I’m wrong, different people react in different ways.” Sally sat thinking, it was some time before she spoke, “It’s my time to ask you a question from a man’s point of view. “You’ve seen her naked and vulnerable, do you see her in a different way now, she is after all, your boss?” “You’ve seen your boss naked many times.” “You’re not my boss, you just think you are.” “I think she has a hard outer shell, there will be no mention of it between us, as for me, I was doing my job, I wasn’t looking at her thinking, ‘nice tits’, I had a job to do. I reacted to the situation, examining her in the hotel was all part of what had to be done. I’d much rather examine your body.” “Not until we have eaten, and then I want to cuddle up to you on the sofa.”
Tuesday was the same as Monday, only this time Sally was helping him. He explained what he wanted her to look at. It was a long unproductive day, a couple of times Sally had called Dave to look at a particular file, but it turned out to be nothing. Many were pages long, all of which had to be read. By 16:00 Dave had a headache, as she had done the previous day, she told him to stop. Just before 17:00 his phone rang, Howard said she had been online from 09:00 until 16:30, “she may be in tomorrow, but definitely on Thursday, she has booked diary appointments for meetings.” “Book me in for sometime around lunch, I want an hour with her.” He could hear Howard typing, “13:30 for an hour.” Dave said he would be there around 11:30, “can you find me an office near her?” “I’ll sort something out, see you on Thursday.”
“Will you come down on Thursday after work, we can stay for one or two nights, it’s up to you.” Sally said she was playing tennis on Saturday morning. Dave rang Flemings Hotel and booked a room for Thursday night. “I think I will go Ubering tomorrow, it will give me a break, I’ve had enough of getting nowhere.”
They both left the house at the same time on Wednesday morning, he took the Uber magnetic signs out from the boot and put them on the side of his car, he switched on the app, there was nothing for him, he had missed the rush hour. In the greasy spoon café on an industrial estate, he sat with other drivers, Dave wasn’t bothered about picking up a job, he was happy to sit with them talking about football, money, politics, the state of the roads, the subject changed every few minutes. Drivers came and went, but Dave stayed, it was 11:15 before he picked up a job going to Leicester, once dropped off, he waited to see if there was anything going towards Loughborough. He quickly had another job taking him half way towards home. More jobs came in, taking him round the villages in north Leicestershire. At 19:00 he switched off the app, his meal was in the oven, Sally was upstairs packing. She came down just as he was taking a lager out the fridge. “Did you have a good day?” “It was good to have a break, I talked rubbish with the other drivers, it was refreshing, I enjoyed it.” He cleared up in the kitchen, had a shower then lay on the bed, when Sally looked in the bedroom later, he was sleeping. She covered him with the duvet, undressed and joined him.
In the morning, they kissed as he climbed out the car, “I’ll see you tonight,” Sally waited to see him walk into the station before she drove off to work. He was pulling their suitcase, he carried his briefcase and laptop. He checked in at the hotel, he was too early to go to his room, the suitcase was left with the porters, they would take it up when the room was ready. The doorman hailed a taxi, twenty minutes later, he was in the lift inside MI5. He went to see Howard to find out where his office was. He was given a key and directions. Dave set up the laptop, connected to the network and closed it again, he wanted to have his meeting first. He went down to the staff restaurant, he had a hot lunch followed by coffee. It was 13:20 when he went back up to his office, picking up his briefcase he left for his meeting. It was the same frosty Jane Goodley he was used to. She asked why he was here and what he wanted. “You know why I am here, it’s because of you, we need to talk, I’m getting nowhere, do you know why you were taken?” She shook her head, “whoever did this spent a lot of money, there was almost a year of planning. You were meant to die.” He said nothing for a moment, her face had lost some of the colour it had, the hard façade was going. “If it hadn’t been for a lot of quick thinking, not just by me but other people as well, you wouldn’t be sitting there now. These are facts, you have to face them.” She stood up and walked to the door he had come in, she turned the key to lock them in. Sitting back down she took a tissue from her bag and dabbed her eyes. “Can I continue, or would you like me to stop?” “Carry on,” “Since I have started looking, I have been asking myself why, was it you, or was it MI5, or was it you as head of MI5, when I find out, I will be half way to solving this. You have to have a bloody good reason to plan this. We need to find out why. The Dutchman was the organiser, but who was paying him? Do you have any ideas?” “I have been trying to work it out since I went home, I can’t think of anything. Yes, I make decisions, and as the head, I am responsible for everything. The buck stops with me, but I don’t usually have to make life or death decisions.” Dave explained what he had been doing, “going through the logs is soul destroying, my eyes and head ache when I have finished, I don’t think the answer is there, it is another red herring, similar to the two animal rights activists, designed to throw us off their trail. The lead I need is somewhere in your past, you have made an enemy of someone, I have to find out who it is. We will have to go through all your case files, decisions you have made, from when you were section leader up until a year ago. The only clue I have is a connection to Manchester.” “That is a lot to go through, it could take weeks, everything from when I took charge is digital, before that it is paper records, we are in the process of making the old files digital, but it takes time.” The colour was back in her face, but it was the vulnerable Jane he was looking at. “I’ve read the report you gave to the Prime Minister, thank you for missing out some of the more embarrassing parts.” “There was no need to put them in, no one needs to know.” “What do you want to do next?” “I have to have access to your files, can you give me access?” “Some of them are above your clearance level, I will have to seek advice.” “Add Sally’s name as well.” The meeting was almost over, she was back to her normal self, they arranged to meet tomorrow and providing he had clearance they would start looking. As he was leaving, he thought she was about to ask him something, but hesitated. In his office, he opened up the laptop, there was someone he wanted to check on. Dave typed in Alison Brookes, the file came up, but he couldn’t access it. He had a decision to make, should he carry on now or try later in the hotel when he could use a VPN to disguise where he was looking from. He opted for the hotel. There was nothing more he could do that day, he packed up, said to Howard he would be at the hotel if he was wanted. Sally had sent him a message to say she was on the train, he sat in the lounge, watching each person as they came through the door. Eventually it was Sally, he went over to greet her, he took her backpack from her, it contained her work clothes, she had changed before leaving. He ordered afternoon tea to be sent up to the room, she asked how his day had gone, “I think I made her cry, I told her a few home truths.” Sally wanted to know what he had said to her, “I told her if it wasn’t for us, she would probably be dead. There’s something she’s not telling me, we have another meeting planned for tomorrow. I want to look at her files, but I don’t have the necessary authorisation. I asked her to see if we can be allowed to look. I’ll find out tomorrow, I’m not sure who she has to check with.” Over dinner, he asked what she would be doing tomorrow, “I’m not sure what order it is happening, more shooting, self defence, field craft and psychology. I will be worn out by the end of the day.” “Come up and find me when you are done, my temporary office is near Jane’s.” Lying in bed later, he thought how different Sally was to when he had first met her, she was insecure, fretful and scared of guns, now she was more confident, she enjoyed working with Dave, both in the office and more recently out of the house, by his side. He thought they worked well together, she could express on paper the thoughts he had in his head, she made sense of his scribbles. But most of all, he thought how much he loved her.
The taxi dropped them both off outside MI5, through security, they went their separate ways, Dave going up, Sally going down. He hadn’t looked at Alison Brookes file the previous evening, if he was given higher clearance then he would look later. There was an email advising him of a meeting with Jane Goodley at 11:00, he went off to see Howard, “which of your assistants has been doing the research for me?” He pointed through a glass wall to one of the desks, “Simon, do you want him for something?” “If you wouldn’t mind, it will only take him about an hour.” Howard opened the door to the office, “Simon, can you help David for an hour?” He pulled up a chair to be sitting opposite Simon, “the false number plates on the car used in the kidnap, I remember they came off a similar car, but blue in colour. There should have been ‘pings’ on other ANPR cameras that weekend if it was out on the road anywhere in the country, can you check if it has been seen anywhere. If there are no hits, can you check with the DVLA if it is still on the road. Whilst you are waiting for results, see if Manchester Police have any updates on Frank Pell. I’m in an office along the corridor, or you can email me. Thanks for that.” In his office, he leaned back on his chair and closed his eyes. He was going over all the facts he knew, there had to be something, somewhere, but he couldn’t see it. Opening his eyes when he heard a knock on his door, he saw Jane Goodley standing there, “Are we paying you to sleep?” She was laughing as she said it. “Thinking on the job.” “You can come in earlier if you want, I’m up to date.” “I will do, I’ve lost my train of thought now.”
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