innocence then send Helen Norton packing.
Tom had to move quickly and he had to move now. He left his seat and moved to Annie’s desk, glancing towards the door to make sure no one was about to walk through it. Outside, the desks were all manned but nobody looked towards him as he bent to slide out the ledger. He ducked back down into his chair and quickly began to leaf through the ledger from the back to the front. There were a series of columns denoting the manufacturer and model, followed by the car’s registration number then a time out and a time in to indicate when the car had been taken and returned. Finally, there was a column for the driver’s signature, so he couldn’t wriggle out of responsibility for an accident or a speeding fine if one landed on Annie’s desk weeks later.
Tom knew Annie would be back at any moment. If she had given Helen an unsympathetic hearing, which was likely, she might already be on her way. He thumbed the ledger’s pages while he speed-read the dates at the top of each page and drew closer to the date he was looking for.
All too soon he saw the door at the other end of the outer office open. Annie was back already. ‘Bollocks.’ This was nowhere near enough time. He couldn’t afford to be caught leafing through the ledger, but knew he would never get another chance to check it alone.
She was halfway across the room when his eyes settled on the correct page. Three cars were listed there. Tom scanned the notices for the entire week, including the date of Rebecca Holt’s murder, but when he reached it he noticed only two had been signed out. The third car must have been the one she took that day, but Annie Bell was almost back at her office door now and Tom had no more time to make a note of it.
Then Annie stopped, right outside the door. At first he thought she had somehow spotted what he was doing and was about to burst in and confront him. Then he heard a voice, but it wasn’t Annie’s. Instead there was the low murmur of a male employee asking a question. Someone had left his desk and intercepted the boss before she could vanish back into her office. This was Tom’s chance. He grabbed a pen and notebook from his jacket pocket and, balancing them against the ledger, hastily noted down the make, model and registration number of the third car.
Tom slapped his notebook shut and stuffed it into his jacket pocket, along with the pen. He could hear Annie Bell giving her employee instructions right outside her door and launched himself out of his seat, pushing the ledger back into its original spot on Annie’s desk. He virtually jumped back into his chair and landed on it just as she came through the door. He had to make a show of adjusting his posture and crossing his legs, as if he had grown uncomfortable in his seat.
‘Everything alright?’ he asked brightly.
‘I can see why you don’t like her,’ was Annie Bell’s sole pronouncement on Helen Norton.
When they were done, Annie walked Tom out to the car park. Like Helen before him, she evidently wanted to make sure he was safely off the premises.
‘What do you want, Mr Carney?’ Annie Bell asked him as they walked towards his brother-in-law’s car.
‘How do you mean?’
‘I’m asking you what you really want out of life.’
‘Why are you asking me that?’
‘I’m curious,’ she said. ‘Not this, surely: living hand to mouth, scratching a living from freelance journalism, hoping to land a big story from time to time so you can pay the bills and topping up your income with some investigative work, which must be piecemeal at best. Wouldn’t you like something a little more solid?’ she asked him.
‘Maybe,’ he admitted.
‘I don’t suppose this is what you dreamed of doing when you were a child.’
‘No,’ he admitted, ‘I wanted to be a train driver, an astronaut or a footballer but, like most people, I had to settle for something else. This isn’t so bad. I get to choose my own hours, I’m my own boss and occasionally I help to catch some bad guys and put them in prison.’
‘Yes, but where is the future in that? Wouldn’t you prefer something more stable, a job with prospects and a nicer lifestyle?
‘And where would I get that kind of opportunity,’ Tom