The Year 11 schooltrip had been Jay’s first visit to London. It was a dense itinerary, strictly scheduled: the Globe, the Charles Dickens museum, the West End, and as many other sites of “cultural significance” as could be crammed into a three-day visit. It seemed like every other school in the country had booked a trip that exact same week; everywhere they went was packed with students. Among them, Jay was just a young face in uniform among a sea of other young faces in uniforms.
For the first time in his life, he was truly invisible. He liked it.
The coach ride back to Newcastle was a subdued affair; they’d headed out early in the morning, and most of the class was still half-asleep. Jay was startled out of his own doze when a hand grabbed his, clutching tight.
Paige was next to him, in the window seat. They’d barely said two words to each other since they boarded the coach, but now she held his hand in a vice grip, staring in stark terror at something further up the aisle.
Mr. Schofield sat a few rows ahead; he’d turned sideways in his aisle seat to chat with one of the other teachers, but every so often he glanced their way.
At Paige.
Most of Jay’s classmates had picked their roommates for the trip in advance. Jay hadn’t, and neither had Paige, so they’d been paired up. And on the second night of the trip, as Jay was lying in the creaky hotel bed and struggling to fall asleep, Paige had told him what Schofield was doing to her.
They weren’t even friends. She’d just needed someone to tell.
Paige was squeezing Jay’s hand so tightly it had started to hurt. Jay wove his fingers through hers and squeezed back, trying to offer what reassurance he could.
He didn’t take his eyes off Schofield.
Paige’s mum was dead. Her dad was never in the picture. She said she lived with her nan, but Jay had never seen anyone pick Paige up from school or show up to any parent-teacher conferences on her behalf. There was nobody looking out for her, and Schofield knew it.
He wasn’t going to stop. He wasn’t going to suddenly realise he was doing something horrible and leave her alone. So long as there were people who could be hurt without consequences, there would be people who hurt them—and who wouldn’t stop until they were stopped.
And there it was: the perfect solution.
There was a defunct iron factory in Shoreditch that had, in recent years, been converted into a bar and event venue. Tonight, it was hosting a cocktail party; according to Jason Collier’s phone calendar, this was where he’d be spending most of the evening.
Jay was wearing one of the few suits he owned, the better to blend in with the guests. Dressing for an event like this had been a trial without Moran there to give Jay advice—but he couldn’t ask for Moran’s help and not tell him where he was going, so he’d muddled through on his own.
Security was checking invitations at the front door of the venue; Jay instead circled around to the alley behind the building.
“I’ve got eyes on Collier’s house,” Clay reported through Jay’s earpiece. “Just waiting for the nanny to put the baby to bed.”
“Keep me updated,” Jay instructed him.
“Of course,” Clay replied. “And keep your eye on Collier, would you? If he comes home early, I’ll have quite a bit of explaining to do.”
Jay grunted a confirmation.
The bar’s back door was propped open with a brick, heat from the kitchens venting into the alley and frosting in the cool autumn air. Kitty Winter leaned against a wall across from the open door, smoking a slim white cigarette; she wore a little black dress and pumps, with her hair done up in a simple yet elegant bun. Acknowledging Jay’s approach with a nod, she finished off the cigarette and ground it out on the pavement.
“Come on, then,” she said impatiently.
Kitty led the way through the kitchens, past staff who weren’t paid enough to care who came and went. A corrugated metal staircase brought them up to the first floor, decorated in unfinished wood, wrought iron, and exposed brick. Low, subdued music filled the room, carefully selected not to drown out conversation between the party’s guests.
Once they were far enough in that Jay’s presence wouldn’t be questioned any further, Kitty peeled off and returned to her client. Jay lurked at the edge of the room, scanning faces until he spotted the one he was looking for.
Jason Collier was in the waning years of his thirties, clean-cut in a well-tailored suit, sporting a gentleman’s haircut with a distinguished hint of grey at the temples. He was every inch the bright young politician—one who had ridden the prestige of a Harvard MBA and an established business career neatly into a barely-contested seat in Parliament.
Collier stood in a relatively quiet corner, phone to his ear. “No, I don’t care how high Harford goes,” he barked to whoever was on the other end of the line. “Bid whatever you need to. I have to go.”
He ended the call and tucked his phone back into his pocket, moving to rejoin a small knot of conversation near the centre of the room. A woman shuffled aside slightly to allow Collier into the circle, and he placed a hand at the small of her back.
That had to be Collier’s wife, Kara Blanchard. They’d met in the States; while he’d been climbing the consultancy ladder, she’d worked her way up to COO of Sibyl Technologies, a data analytics firm that worked closely with several world governments. The woman was a billionaire, at least on paper—which, Jay supposed, made her the breadwinner of the family.
“All right, baby’s in bed,” Clay reported through the earpiece. “Nanny’s downstairs watching telly. I’m going in.”
The Blanchard-Collier residence in London was a terraced Georgian townhouse in Knightsbridge—pricier than the average MP could afford, although the average MP wasn’t married to a wealthy tech executive.
The brick wall surrounding the house’s back garden presented no obstacle; Clay scaled it easily, dropping silently down among carefully-maintained shrubbery. A pair of wide glass doors led from the garden terrace into the dining room, the lock of which could be picked easily enough. The nanny, however, was sitting in the adjoining family room. Sneaking past her would be a pain in the arse.
Better to start from a higher vantage point. And as luck would have it, there was a balcony off the master bedroom on the first floor.
Treading quietly across the manicured lawn, Clay got a running start and leapt up the brick wall, hooking his fingers onto the edge of the balcony and levering himself up over the banister. The latch holding the balcony doors shut slipped open after a moment’s work.
As he eased into the bedroom, closing the doors behind him, Clay asked, “What exactly am I looking for, here?”
“Anything Collier’s trying to keep secret,” Moriarty replied.
The master bedroom was blandly contemporary, decorated in shades of grey and beige. A quick riffle through the wardrobe and bedside tables didn’t turn up much; there was a self-help book on “radical candour” sitting atop the nightstand on Collier’s side of the bed, and a second copy of the same book in the drawer on Blanchard’s side.
With the bedroom a bust, Clay stepped out into the hall. The noise of the television filtered up through the winding staircase at the centre of the house—not quite loud enough to wake the baby, but allowing Clay some cover as he moved. He poked his head into the other bedroom just to confirm it was, in fact, the nursery; he doubted he’d find anything of interest there, and would rather not risk provoking the kid into a screaming fit.
The room at the end of the hall turned out to be a study. Here, at least, was a bit more character: old oak furnishings and art on the walls, hung in gilded frames. Clay spotted a Rembrandt sketch and a couple of Turners, although at least one of the latter was a print.
Clay nudged open the door to the liquor cabinet. You could tell a lot about a man by what he drank.
“Anything yet?” Moriarty nagged in his ear.
“Just that Collier has expensive taste,” Clay remarked, “if not good taste. There’s a twelve-year-old Ralston here that’s nearly empty, and a full one right next to it. Must be his favourite.”
“I was hoping for a bit more to work with than ‘shit taste in liquor.’”
Collier’s closed laptop was resting on the desk. Clay flipped it open, only to be confronted with a login screen. “I don’t suppose you know Collier’s password.”
“Collier has multiple passwords,” Moriarty replied, “which would be smart if he weren’t keeping all of them in the same document on his phone.”
“Do I want to know how you got into an MP’s phone?”
“No.”
Moriarty read off the password, which was a nonsensical combination of letters and numbers; no wonder Collier needed a list to remember it. Clay painstakingly typed it all in and was rewarded by the sight of Collier’s desktop. The background was a picture of Collier, his wife, and their baby.
“What makes you think Collier has any incriminating secrets to find?” Clay began clicking through Collier’s files. “From what I’ve heard, the man’s a saint—development projects in Africa and all that.”
“He isn’t.”
“You sure? He doesn’t even have any porn stashed on here.”
There was a long pause. “What, really?”
It had taken Clay very little time to get through Collier’s computer. “It’s all just emails and paperwork.”
“He’s careful,” Moriarty noted. “Might be keeping all his personal files on a separate drive. See what else you can find.”
“A ‘please’ or two would be nice,” Clay groused, turning his attention to the desk drawers. “Moran might get off on you ordering him around, but—”
“Stop talking,” Moriarty snapped—then added, in a saccharine tone, “Please.”
The top drawer on the left side of the desk was locked. The lock was cheap and flimsy, mostly a deterrent against nosey cleaners and small, curious children. Picking it open was a trivial effort, and Clay slid the drawer open to reveal a smartphone in a plain black case.
“Collier brought his mobile with him, didn’t he?”
“He did,” Moriarty confirmed. “He’s been on the phone for half this party.”
“All right.” Clay picked up the phone. “So Collier has a second phone he was keeping in a locked drawer.”
“Told you,” Moriarty said, with grim satisfaction. “There’s a phone PIN in his password list. Probably uses the same one for both.”
Clay tapped the phone’s power button and swiped at the screen—then frowned as the expected keypad failed to appear.
“Oh, Christ,” he said. “Collier’s using a voice lock.”
Kitty had found it necessary to drop a lot of clients since her injury, but she’d made an effort to keep Grant. He was in his sixties, with a comfortably sexless marriage that didn’t introduce any complications to his business relationship with Kitty; she had no doubt his wife knew exactly who he was bringing to the party tonight, and didn’t much care. Grant, for his part, mostly seemed to enjoy the companionship.
Which wasn’t to say there was no sex involved—just that the sex required very little effort on her part. A relief, considering the condition her neck and back were in these days.
Grant was regaling her with some story about his latest trip to Dubai when his phone pinged with a text. He checked it one-handed—then froze, eyes wide.
“Grant?” Kitty asked, cautiously. It would be just her luck if he stroked out on her here and now.
“Excuse me,” Grant said, voice shaking. “I need to make a few calls.”
He hurried from the room; it was the fastest she’d ever seen him move. No sooner had he gone than Kitty spotted Moriarty weaving through the crowd toward her.
She glared at him. “Did you do that?”
Moriarty shrugged. “I needed to talk to you.”
“Do I come down to where you work and slap the cock out of your mouth?”
Moriarty ignored the remark and angled his head toward the bar. “See that man over there?”
Kitty rolled her eyes and glanced over. A polished-looking man a few years older than she was leaned against the bar, trying to get the barman’s attention.
“His name’s Jason Collier.” Moriarty held out his phone, upon which he’d pulled up a recording app. “I need at least ten seconds of his voice. Ideally, closer to twenty.”
Kitty eyed the phone, dubious. “Don’t you usually have Sebastian for this sort of thing?”
“Moran’s not available,” Moriarty replied sharply. Clearly, this was not a topic for discussion.
Grant had paid in advance, and Kitty owed Moriarty a bit for the whole Romayne Bellamy thing. “Fine.” She took the phone, tucking it into an outside pocket of her handbag. “I don’t suppose you know what he likes to drink.”
“Something called a Ralston. The twelve-year-old kind.”
Kitty faintly recognised the brand. “All right then.”
As she turned toward the bar, Moriarty added, “Don’t go anywhere with him.”
The warning sent a faint chill down Kitty’s fractured spine.
She approached the bar, arching her back as far as the pins would allow as she leaned against it. “I’ll have the Ralston Twelve,” she ordered briskly. “A double, please.”
That got Collier’s attention; he sat up a little turning toward her. “Good choice.”
As the barman fetched a bottle from the shelf behind him, Kitty watched Collier watching her. He was sizing her up—trying to figure out if she were somebody he should know.
“I’m sorry,” he said, a little sheepish, “have we already been introduced? I’ve met so many people at these things, it’s hard to keep track.”
“We haven’t.” Kitty offered him a reserved smile. “I’m here with a friend.”
It was her stock response when she was out with a client; while men of a certain class and position could get away with bringing an escort to an event like this, it generally didn’t do for said escort to go advertising herself as such.
Even if Collier couldn’t tell exactly what Kitty did for a living, he quickly came to the conclusion she wasn’t among the important people in the room. That she was, in fact, nobody of any consequence at all. It always amazed her, how quickly it could change—the way people looked at her. It was like flipping a switch: one moment she was a human being, the next she wasn’t.
The barman placed a glass in front of Kitty. She kept a careful eye out as she picked it up, making sure Collier’s hands hadn’t gone anywhere near the contents. Taking a sip, she immediately had to suppress her reaction; it was scotch, but sweet, the thick flavour clinging to her tongue and nudging her gag reflex. Kitty immediately regretted ordering it.
Collier had sidled closer, encroaching on Kitty’s space. There was a solicitous tone in his voice as he asked, “Have you been in London long, then?”
It was, in all possibility, nothing but innocent small talk. It could also be an attempt to find out if she had friends or family in the city—people who’d notice if she came home in a bad way, or didn’t come home at all.
“Oh, ages,” Kitty replied in an airy tone. “I’m boring, though—what do you do?”
It was another of Kitty’s stock responses; she had yet to meet a man who wouldn’t seize on the opportunity to talk about himself. Sure enough, Collier said, “Oh, I’m in Parliament,” with feigned nonchalance.
Kitty put on a show of being impressed. “I thought I recognised you,” she said. “Were you on the news?”
“I did a few interviews,” Collier replied. “I’ve been pushing for the government to collaborate more closely with the tech and finance sectors. Really reinvent the way this country is run.”
Kitty smiled and nodded. “So you’re a minister or something?”
Frustration flickered across Collier’s face. “No,” he said, “Not yet, anyway.”
That had to be enough of his voice. “Excuse me,” Kitty said, stepping away from the bar. “I just need to go powder my nose.”
She brushed against one of the plants dotting the room and surreptitiously dumped the contents of her glass into it.
Moriarty was waiting in a quiet corner; he wordlessly took the phone back from Kitty, ending the recording. Kitty watched over his shoulder, curiosity piqued, as he opened the resulting file in an audio editing app and quickly cut out sections of Kitty’s voice to isolate Collier’s. Then he fired up what Kitty quickly gathered was an AI voice cloning tool.
“Clay,” Moriarty said, clearly not addressing Kitty. For the first time, she noticed the small, covert earpiece in his ear. “I’m sending you an audio clip that should unlock Collier’s phone.”
A few seconds passed, Moriarty’s head cocked slightly to the side as he listened to whoever was on the other side of the earpiece. Then he blinked. “What?”
An answer came through that Kitty couldn’t hear, and Moriarty went very still.
Moriarty had asked to meet, so Clay directed him to the nearest pub; after what he’d seen on Collier’s phone, he needed a drink.
He was a few rounds in by the time Moriarty arrived. There was a woman with him, wearing a big wool peacoat over a small black dress.
Clay tipped his nearly-empty pint glass in the woman’s direction. “Who’s this?”
“Kitty,” the woman replied, without waiting for Moriarty to introduce her.
“She’s helping,” Moriarty added, by way of explanation. From the sounds of it, he hadn’t had much say in the matter.
Moriarty slid into the booth first, letting Kitty take the outside seat. As she lowered herself onto the bench, Clay couldn’t help noting her neck didn’t move or turn at all.
Kitty said, “How many women does Collier have videos of?”
Clay shrugged. “There were three folders,” he said; he hadn’t taken copies. Finding the videos had felt like enough of a violation already. “Three names: Sarah, Helena, and Camille.”
Moriarty’s brow furrowed. “Collier had a nanny named Camille.”
The three pints-and-change Clay had drunk churned a little in his belly. “The one I saw tonight?”
Moriarty shook his head. “That’s Isabel. Camille was the one before her.”
“Let me guess,” Kitty said, a dry weariness in her voice. “They dismissed her.”
“Just a few weeks ago,” Moriarty confirmed. “They were sponsoring her work visa. She had to leave the country.”
Kitty glanced back at Clay. “Was Isabel in there?”
“Not that I could tell,” Clay said. “I didn’t look through the files all that closely.” He’d closed out of the first video and nearly thrown the phone across the room when he realised what he was watching.
“Isabel just started,” Moriarty pointed out. “Maybe he hasn’t tried anything with her yet.”
With fool’s hope, Clay said, “Maybe he won’t?”
“Three victims means it’s a habit,” Kitty said. “And that’s just three we know of—there’s bound to be more.”
An expression of incandescent fury passed briefly across Moriarty’s face.
“So … we have to do something about this,” Clay said, uncertain. “Don’t we?”
“Like what?” Kitty said sharply.
“Well, Collier’s married to Kara fucking Blanchard,” Clay said, thinking. “Big-time feminist, wrote a book, does all these talks about women supporting other women. She’d want to know what her husband’s up to, wouldn’t she?”
Kitty didn’t look convinced, and Moriarty had noticed. “You don’t think it’ll work,” he said.
“It’s worth a try,” Kitty replied, rubbing her fingertips carefully around her eyes so her makeup wouldn’t smear. “Just … keep the names out of it. Please.”
The COO job at Sibyl couldn’t possibly be that much work, considering how much time Kara Blanchard spent not doing it. She’d booked out three hours in the middle of the day to host a lunch at an upscale steakhouse in Covent Garden; it was supposedly a “networking opportunity” for up-and-coming women in tech, although from where Jay was sitting at the bar it seemed like they all knew each other pretty well already. Blanchard herself was the centre of attention, which had made it difficult to approach her thus far. Jay was left waiting for an opportunity, tapping his phone irritably against his thigh.
Sebastian hadn’t texted since he left Jay’s flat a few days ago. The man was admittedly not a prolific texter, but he and Jay usually exchanged a few messages throughout the day—if only to make plans for later.
Conventional wisdom held that they were supposed to talk about this. Jay’s exes had certainly believed that was the case; they’d all taken one look at him and immediately known there was something wrong with him, even if they couldn’t figure out what. And god, did they want to figure it out.
At first it was gentle, but insistent: “You can tell me anything,” or “I’m here to listen, if you want to talk.” Then came the guilt: “I’m worried about you,” and “It hurts that you don’t trust me.” Then the fights, and the crying, and the demands—because they were owed his vulnerability, his pain, and not getting it made them so angry.
Jay wasn’t going to put Sebastian through that. If Sebastian wanted to be alone right now, that was his choice to make.
Blanchard finally stood, excusing herself from the table for a quick trip to the toilets. A few minutes later, she re-emerged; she passed the bar on her way out, finally giving Jay his chance.
“Ms. Blanchard,” he called out.
Blanchard turned to face him. She was young, for a woman in her position—forty at the oldest, immaculately styled and made up by someone who’d been instructed to make her look powerful, yet approachably feminine. She didn’t have the bone-weary air that Jay had come to associate with parents of young children; then again, she and Collier had Isabel around to handle the most unpleasant aspects of parenthood.
And from what Jay could glean from her emails, the couple had hired a surrogate to carry their baby—a woman named Helena.
“Can I help you?” Blanchard asked with polite interest, looking Jay up and down.
“I was hoping to speak with you,” Jay said, keeping his voice low. “My name’s Liam. I work at the South London Victims’ Crisis Centre. A young woman came to us a few days ago for help—she’d been assaulted.” He paused, pretending at uncertainty. “She claims the perpetrator was your husband.”
Blanchard barely reacted. “All right,” she said, with a dismissive wave. “How much does this one want?”
Jay blinked. “Excuse me?”
“We both know how this works.” Blanchard gave him a patronising smile. “Some girl starts throwing allegations around until we make an offer. She signs an NDA, and the whole thing goes away.”
Every element of the cover Jay had prepared flew from his head. He’d been prepared for Blanchard not to believe him. He hadn’t been prepared for this.
Blanchard, meanwhile, reached into her pocket and withdrew a simple, brushed steel card case. “I’d prefer to handle everything through my attorney.” She flipped the case open and handed Jay one of the business cards inside. “Or, I suppose that’s ‘solicitor,’ on this side of the pond.” She gave a little chuckle, as if that had been a joke. “Anyway, that’s his number. If you’ll excuse me.”
She strolled to the lunch table, settling into her seat with a smile as the other women at the table immediately drew her back into the conversation. Blanchard leaned over to say something inaudible to the woman next to her, and they both laughed, bright and easy.
The women at the table were of a type: thin, pretty, feminine. Comfortable, if not wealthy, and overwhelmingly white. Theirs was a separate and distant world to the one occupied by women like Isabel, and Camille, and Helena—worlds that only touched, briefly, when people like Blanchard and Collier needed a subservient body to clean their house, or raise their child, or gestate their baby.
If one of these women surrounding Blanchard were the victim—if they came to her in tears, begging to be heard—would Blanchard be so dismissive then? Were even these women nothing but tools to her?
Maybe that’s what it took, to get the wealth and power Blanchard had: you needed to treat everyone else like things to be used up and thrown away.
Jay barely perceived the restaurant around him as he paid for his drink and shoved his way to the door. It was only once he was outside, in the fresh air, that he felt like he could breathe again.
Moriarty had called Kitty in for another meeting, at the same pub where they’d gathered that first night. He was already there, waiting, when she arrived; Clay walked in a few minutes later.
Kitty wasn’t exactly surprised to hear how the meeting with Blanchard went. The new government had practically invited Sibyl and other tech companies like it to run the country for them; Collier’s Parliament seat put Blanchard in a very convenient position. She wouldn’t throw that away over what she probably saw as the occasional indiscretion.
Clay was having a harder time of it. “She didn’t believe you?”
Moriarty shrugged. “I don’t think she cared much one way or the other.”
“All right,” Clay said, disheartened but insistent. “Blanchard’s no use, but there has to be somebody else—”
Kitty had to physically force herself to stop clenching her teeth. “Like who?”
“I don’t know—Blanchard’s boss? The prime minister, even?”
Kitty’s patience ran out. “Don’t you fucking get it?” she snarled. “This is what power is. This is what it does. They’re all guilty of something and they all know it and that’s what they have instead of loyalty, or—or trust. Hurting people is how you prove you belong up there with all the others. And if you don’t at least turn a blind eye, you’re the enemy. Or worse: nobody who matters at all.”
Clay recoiled as if she’d slapped him across the face. “What, you think everyone is just going to—to accept this? What about the public? The press?”
“The press cares about selling papers,” Kitty shot back. “Oh, they’ll be happy to expose a sex pest MP—and the victims along with him. And those women won’t be protected like he will.”
Clay groaned and buried his face in his arms, folded on the table. “So what do we do?”
Moriarty had watched this entire exchange in silence, tucked up into the corner of the booth. The fingers of one hand tapped against the knuckles of the other. “Collier was already rich when he moved back here,” he said, quiet and methodical, “and there’s no way he’s making more as an MP than he did as a consultant. Money wasn’t enough—he wanted power.”
Clay sighed and raised his head. “I suppose that’s why he moved back,” he said. “Can’t be easy to get elected in America with an English accent.”
“Collier mentioned a name,” Moriarty went on, thinking aloud. “Harford.”
“Joe Harford, maybe?” Clay suggested. “He’s in the cabinet. Health minister.”
Moriarty glanced toward Clay. “You know him?”
“Only by name,” Clay replied. “I think he was actually in the same year as Collier at Cambridge—working-class background, though.”
“And Harford’s a cabinet minister, while Collier’s just a backbencher,” Kitty observed. “For someone like Collier, that’s got to sting.”
The look of cold satisfaction that crept across Moriarty’s face made her feel distinctly uneasy.
Chapter 3 of “A Reckoning in Whitehall” will be published on March 9. To get it delivered directly to your inbox, subscribe here:
… And if that’s too long to wait, you can also get the completed story as an ebook.
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