She slipped both files under her shirt and folded her arms over them as she walked to the stairs that led to the ladies. Instead of following the drunk girl with the chunky calves and mud-dipped stiletto heels up to the next floor, Charlie carried on to the end of the passageway. Beside the door of the gents’ there was another one marked ‘emergency exit’. She pushed the silver bar and it opened on to a yard full of empty crates and recycling skips.

She ran round the side of the pub, through the car park at the front and on to the road. Her Audi was parked half on the pavement, under a street light. Pulling the files out from under her shirt, Charlie pointed her key-fob at the car and pressed the unlock button. Nothing happened. ‘Come on,’ she breathed through gritted teeth. She pressed again. Nothing. And again. And again. Shit. She looked over her shoulder. No sign of Kerry. Yet.

She unlocked the car manually and set off the alarm. The noise, an ee-aw-ee-aw screech, sounded like an amplified saw cutting through metal. People on the street were giving her dirty looks, mouthing things at her that she couldn’t hear and wasn’t sorry to miss.

Sweating in spite of the cold, Charlie jabbed the unlock button several more times with her thumb. Useless. She tried the lock button, also to no effect. The battery was beyond resuscitation. Without a new one, she assumed there was no way of turning off the alarm.

She looked behind her again and this time she saw Kerry. He was in the car park, looking left and right. She ducked down behind the wall that separated the pub from the street, then raised her head in time to see him run round the back of the Swan. She knew he’d be back soon, having failed to find her there.

With no time to think, Charlie abandoned her wailing car and ran across the car park, up the front steps of the pub and back inside, clutching the files tight so that nothing fell out. He wouldn’t look inside. Knowing what she’d done, he wouldn’t think she’d be stupid enough to come back.

Charlie ran up the stairs to the ladies’, pushed a couple of indignant drunk teenagers out of her way, and locked herself in a cubicle.

She didn’t open the files straight away. She was too busy breathing, which felt like something she hadn’t done for a while. She could still hear the sodding car. Once her head had stopped throbbing and she could see an immobile, much-graffitied toilet cubicle rather than one that pulsated and warped in front of her eyes, she was ready to read what she’d taken from Kerry’s briefcase.