But this wasn’t Doyle’s men, he knew. This was worse. This was Juliet Norton’s people.

And that was much, much worse.

Chapter 46

CHAPTER 46

With an afternoon appointment on her schedule, Tess had left the office and was on her way to her car, which was parked beneath her building. She’d been thinking how she might engineer it so that however long the appointment ended up being, it would take her to the end of the working day. She fancied an early one tonight. Perhaps get home sooner than 8pm for once, maybe even have dinner with Phil and the kids. The thought buoyed her as she came down the grey-painted steps at the back of the building to the car park entrance, where she plugged in the code and pushed open the door.

Just as she opened the door, a man appeared. She didn’t recognise him, but that wasn’t unusual; it was a big building, plenty of people used the car park.

He thanked her for opening the door with a quick nod of his head and held it for her, letting her pass before hopping inside himself.

And she knew, of course, that the correct protocol was to challenge him, ask to see his building pass or perhaps even establish that he knew the door code, but correct protocol was hardly ever followed, and after all, he was courteous, seemed businesslike and in a hurry, so she let him go and began to make her way across the concrete apron towards her Mercedes, parked on the other side of the low-ceilinged car park.

The air was thin and warm, but worse than that was the feeling down here, the tomblike sense of somehow being encased in concrete. She didn’t like it at the best of times and today, for some reason she couldn’t quite put her finger on, she felt more than usually nervous. Just a feeling she had, but an insistent one. A sense of something having changed. As though that thin, warm air had been displaced, its chemistry altered.

Something not right.

Or was it just her mind playing tricks on her? After all, having told Alex of her fears regarding the crime organisation run by Raymond Doyle in Derby, Tess had learned that Doyle had links to the recently deceased Sir Charles Norton. There had always been rumours about the Nortons and the level of their influence, so she’d asked a friend at GCHQ to investigate it for her.

‘I can’t help you,’ he’d told her at first.

‘Oh? Why’s that?’

‘I’mnotsure. Something to do with the security classification.’

‘Is that it, then?’

‘All I can suggest is that I have a friend who works at RAF Chicksands.’

‘What’s RAF Chicksands?’