Free Hunted by James Patterson Page B

smiled the other man. ‘Problem is, you’ve been rumbled, and that makes you less than useless. There’s not a thing you can do now.’
    ‘I should be silenced then. What are you waiting for?’
    Tremain sighed. ‘Look, wet-work is by its definition messy. But even more than that, we don’t want to terminate you, Simon; we’d rather have you as an asset. We want to bring you into the fold. You accept our money, you become implicated – we’re all happy.’
    Claridge shook his head. ‘I can’t sit by and let you continue. I can’t. I couldn’t live with myself.’
    Tremain rolled his eyes, but the gesture was too theatrical to convince Claridge. He’s got something up his sleeve, he thought. Something to do with that laptop. ‘Oh, come on. Don’t make this difficult, for God’s sake. Take the money, tell me what I want to know, and we can tie off this whole sorry business and look forward to a future of giving each other little knowing winks in the lift.’
    ‘What do you mean? What do you want to know?’
    Tremain leaned forward. He put one hand on Claridge’s desk, close to the laptop.
    ‘I’ll be honest. I was telling a fib when I said I wasn’t going to ask you what you knew. In fact, I want to know exactly what you know.’
    ‘Very little, is the answer,’ replied Claridge cautiously.
    ‘Okay. Enough pretending. I know that’s not the case. I know because I checked. I checked your requisitions. CCTV of Chancery Lane, close to a lawyer’s office. That was interesting. But perhaps even more revealing than that was the CCTV of Commercial Street that you asked to review, close to a certain pub I frequent.’ Tremain paused to pin Claridge with a look. ‘You were looking for me, weren’t you?’
    A pause.
    ‘Yeah, I know you were. So of course I had to ask myself why you were looking for me. Why me? Why there? So I studied the same CCTV, and guess what I saw?’
    ‘Go on . . .’
    ‘I saw Captain Steve Hodges paying a great deal of attention to what was going on inside the pub. Which led me to the conclusionthat it was Captain Steve Hodges who tipped you off about me. I think it was, wasn’t it? I think you’ve got a man on the inside, and it’s him.’
    Claridge felt his palms sweat, but he tried to bluff it out. ‘I wish I did. This conversation might make sense. But I’m afraid your thinking isn’t as joined-up as you’d like to believe. I don’t know any Captain Steve Hodges.’
    ‘No, of course you don’t. Captain Hodges is dead. I’m surprised you didn’t ascertain that on your visits to Records. Obviously you didn’t log the real reason as your “purpose for visit”, but it’s not too difficult to pull the wool over old Sparkles’ eyes, is it? I’m guessing you were there to doctor Hodges’ records in order that your man on the inside could plausibly assume his identity. Am I right?’
    Claridge felt himself go cold. Dread rose inside him.
    ‘I need to know the real identity of your man. I need to know now.’
    ‘You can go fuck yourself,’ replied Claridge.
    ‘I thought you might say that. Which is why . . .’
    Tremain reached to open the laptop.

CHAPTER 21
    THERE WAS A handful of staff still working in the open-plan area outside Claridge’s office, but none could see what was on the laptop screen. The two images that greeted Claridge were for his eyes only.
    Tremain had sized two windows so that both views were visible. The image on the left showed the outside of Claridge’s house. His front-room curtains were open and his wife and younger daughter were playing Scrabble inside. Everything about the scene was normal and serene – apart from the fact that he was viewing it through a telescopic sight, complete with a duplex cross hair.
    The image on the right was fuzzier, but more colourful. This one was taken from a phone placed on the table in a bar. It showed Claridge his eldest daughter and her friend. They’d gone out together to celebrate the friend