Ian Rankin - Witch Hunt

She slipped the gun out of her satchel and into her jacket. She’d stitched a special pocket into it, hanging loose from the jacket by two straps. It was funny how often the authorities would want to search your baggage, but not your clothes. She had a feeling this might be one of those days at the DTI.

She closed the satchel again and got out of the car, this time taking satchel and carrier bag with her. She had a little time to kill. She noticed as she passed that there were men hanging around outside some of the buildings on Victoria Street itself, and especially outside the DTI Headquarters. It was only to be expected. She walked to a small supermarket and bought two large fresh chickens, two packs of fresh sandwiches, and a catering-sized tin of cheap instant coffee, then retreated to Victoria Station and locked herself in a toilet cubicle, where she did what she had to do. An attendant knocked eventually and asked if everything was all right.

“Everything’s fine,” Witch called back. “Bad curry last night, that’s all.”

The attendant chuckled and moved away. Witch flushed the toilet and came out. The attendant, a small brown-skinned woman, was waiting.

“Sorry,” the woman said, “it’s just that you’ve got to be careful. We get all kinds coming in... injecting themselves, that sort of thing.”

“I understand,” said Witch, washing her hands. “Like you say, you’ve got to be careful.”

She walked around the back of Victoria Street, to where her car was, and from there to the back entrance of 45 Victoria Street. There was a guard with a dog outside the door. The dog barked as she approached, rearing up on hind legs, causing the guard to rein it in on its leash.

“It’s all right,” he told her.

“I’ve some chickens here,” she said.

“That’ll be it then, not that he doesn’t get fed enough.”

She walked past him. She wasn’t concerned, there was nothing for her to be concerned about. She was a government employee, she made this trip every day. Nothing to worry about. She entered the building and showed her security pass to the guard who stood in front of his desk. He looked at it a bit more carefully than usual, and thanked her.

“I don’t often forget a pretty face,” he said.

“I usually come in the front way,” she explained, “but it’s pandemonium out there.”

“I’ll bet.”

Witch slipped the pass back into her handbag. She had altered the name on Christine Jones’s card to Caroline James, knowing they would be on the lookout for poor starving Christine. She made to move past him.

“Sorry, miss, I need to check all bags today.”

“Yes, of course.”

“It’s pandemonium in here, too.” He looked through her handbag first, then her official bag. “I’m on my own. They’ve sent my partner up the road to Number One.”

“Really?” She allowed herself a small smile.

He was looking at her shopping.

“Chicken’s on special offer at Safeway,” she said.

“Really? I like a bit of leg myself.” And he gave her a wink, to which she responded with her most winning smile. He glanced towards the other items: it was obviously her turn to provide the office coffee, and lunch today consisted of nothing more than a sandwich.

In her Harrods bag were some clothes, a pair of shoes.

“Partying tonight, eh?”

“That’s the plan,” said Witch.

“Thank you, miss,” the guard said.

“You’re welcome.”

She walked to the lifts, pressed the button and waited.

The lift arrived. She got in and pressed the button for the third floor. On the way up, she did not blink. She just stared ahead, even when the lift stopped at the ground floor and some people got in. There were guards pacing the space outside the lifts. They did not look at her. She looked through them. Then the lift was ascending again. She got out at the third floor and made for the Conference Room. God, wouldn’t it just be her luck to bump into that slimeball from yesterday, Blishen, Mr. Folded-arms? But she didn’t. She looked up and down the corridor, saw that no one was paying her any attention, and opened the door of the Conference Room.

Inside, she worked quickly. She took out both chickens and reached inside them, where the plastic bags of giblets had been until she’d flushed them down the toilet in Victoria Station. Now the hollow chickens housed small soft packages wrapped in gray polyethylene and black tape. She dumped the chickens in the wastepaper bin, and reopened the packs of sandwiches, which she had closed herself using tiny strips of clear tape. Inside were thin coils of copper wire and small connectors, plus a tiny screwdriver. She joined the two packages by runs of wire, working quickly and calmly. She held one foot wedged up against the door, preventing anyone from opening it while she worked.

At last she was satisfied. Time for a break, she thought. She lifted out the large tin of coffee and pried off its lid. The toilet at Victoria had taken a lot of punishment: giblets, sandwich fillings, and an awful lot of instant granules. The blond wig inside the tin still smelled of bitter coffee. She shook it free of brown specks, then dumped the tin in the basket beside the chickens.

She lifted the clothes and shoes from her bag, stripped and changed. With lipstick and the aid of a hand mirror she turned her lips vermilion. Makeup is the beginning of disguise. She’d learned that early in life at the fairground: she could be virgin or whore to order, twelve or sixteen, above or below the age of consent. She could smile and be unhappy; or weep while she was overjoyed. She’d been playing a game of dressing-up with her life until the Irishman had come...

She looked at herself now and blinked. A question had framed itself in her mind. Who am I? She shook it away as she brushed out her wig. She knew who she was. She knew what she was. And she knew why she was here.

Wasn’t that more than most people knew?

When she turned the Harrods bag inside out, it was just a plain white cloth bag with green handles. She placed her cassette recorder on the floor near the door, unplugging the headphones. The recorder came with its own built-in speaker, and, more unusually, included automatic rewind and repeat functions. Witch swapped her Ohm and Heartbeat cassette for another tape and switched the machine on.

In the lower ground floor of the building, the guard was tuning his radio to something musical when there were steps on the stairwell. A man appeared. The guard knew him. He was from the police. The police were all over the place, on window ledges and in corridors, patrolling the foyer and the main entrance. He half-expected to see one of them hiding beneath his desk. The policeman was waving something, a notice or leaflet.

“Here, George,” the policeman said, “has anyone given you one of these?”

The guard slipped his spectacles back on. “What is it? No, nobody’s given me nothing.”

“Typical,” said the policeman. “If you want a job doing, do it yourself. Well, you can keep that one anyway.”

A bell sounded once as the lift doors opened. A couple got out, a man in a pinstripe suit and a tall, big-boned woman.

“Back in ten minutes,” the man said.

“Right you are, sir,” said the guard. The policeman watched the couple leave.

“Dirty sods couldn’t wait till knocking-off time, eh?”

The guard was laughing as he turned his attention to the sheet of paper. He recognized the name, he’d been told to look out for it. But now there was a photo, too.

“I don’t know,” he said.

“What’s up, George?”

The guard tapped the photo with a finger yellow from cigarettes smoked to the nub. “I think I’ve seen her this morning, about twenty minutes ago.”