Payday Read online

  Known for her wide-ranging articles, opinions and commentaries on everything from current affairs to health, fashion and motoring, Daily Telegraph columnist Celia Walden has written for Glamour, GQ, Elle, Porter Magazine, Harper’s Bazaar, Net-a-Porter’s The Edit, Grazia, Stylist, Standpoint, The Spectator and Russian Vogue. Born and raised in Paris, Celia studied at the University of Cambridge. She and her husband now divide their time between London and LA. Payday is her first thriller.

  Copyright

  Published by Sphere

  ISBN: 978-0-7515-8314-4

  All characters and events in this publication, other than those clearly in the public domain, are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Copyright © Tacles Ltd 2021

  The moral right of the author has been asserted.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.

  The publisher is not responsible for websites (or their content) that are not owned by the publisher.

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  Carmelite House

  50 Victoria Embankment

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  www.littlebrown.co.uk

  www.hachette.co.uk

  Contents

  About the Author

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Acknowledgements

  For Ed Victor

  PROLOGUE

  ‘You forgot the brown sauce again.’ Terry inspected his bacon roll, sighed and took a bite. ‘These have to be done by the end of the day.’ Indicating the adjacent pallet of concrete blocks, he eyed his crew without much hope. ‘Hey.’

  But they were assembled around an iPhone, watching one of their YouTube clips.

  ‘Come on. Where’s the mixer? Let’s get going.’

  Picking his way around the piles of bricks and timber, Terry trudged to the back of the site. There in the corner, in the shadow of the vast disused building the site backed on to, lay his mixer.

  ‘Useless wankers,’ he muttered. Then he saw the man.

  Terry took in his suit – ‘poncy’, his wife would have called it – his shoes – the kind of suede loafers those braying Chelsea lads wore, but distinctive for the gold chain links across the tops – and the iron railings that he was impaled upon. Bread and bacon paste flew from his mouth. ‘Steve,’ he heard himself say, registering the flower of flesh pushed out by the railing running through the man’s abdomen. And then in a holler that sounded shrill, feminine: ‘Steve!’

  By the time his foreman reached him, Terry was patting down the pockets of his hoodie. ‘Your phone, mate,’ he managed, without taking his eyes off the body.

  And when all Steve could do was repeat ‘Fuck me. Fuck me,’ Terry took it from him and dialled 999.

  Only after telling the impassive voice on the phone, ‘There’s a dead guy on our building site’, after running his eyes from the corpse on the spikes up the full height of the blank façade behind, after realising and telling the operator, ‘He must’ve fallen’ – only then did Terry see the man’s foot twitch.

  CHAPTER 1

  JILL

  THURSDAY 5 AUGUST

  Pick up, pick up, pick up.

  Sitting in her driveway in a blouse, work skirt and fleece-lined slippers, Jill stared at the single letter on her iPhone screen. ‘A’. The initial felt like an admission of guilt. As her employee it would have been natural for Alex to figure in her scroll of contacts, professional and personal. Only nothing about Jill’s connection to ‘A’ was legitimate, let alone justifiable – and as of half an hour ago, she had everything to hide.

  Welcome to the O2 messaging service. The person you are calling is unable to take your call.

  People don’t tell you that chaos has a sound: a churning, crashing, intravenous beat. And it’s deafening. They don’t tell you that once you’ve invited that white noise into your life, there’s no way of turning it off.

  Terminating the call – leaving a message was too risky, and with the four previous attempts to reach Alex, Jill had already taken the precaution to hide her caller ID – she slumped forward to rest her forehead on the steering wheel, forcing herself to breathe. In, out; in, out – slowly now, slowly. Each exhalation misted up the winged chrome logo at the centre of the wheel, and she watched it dissipate in hazy patches before breathing out once more.

  The police said they’d be in touch. That was what Paul had said. It could be hours. Or it could be minutes. And she couldn’t have that conversation without having spoken to Alex.

  ‘Where are you?’ Out loud, the words were startling. Imperious. And she wondered what the neighbours would think if they saw her sitting in her car, talking to herself. She wondered whether Stan, inside, had noticed her absence yet, and how much a human being could withstand before, like an overloaded electrical system, they cut out.

  The buzz of her phone brought her to, but it was only another message from Paul. It’s on the news. With fumbling fingers she slotted the key into the ignition, switched on the radio and sat numbly through an amped-up exchange between an LBC presenter and a vegan campaigner before, finally, they cut to the news. Jamie was third on the bill. Only he was no longer Jamie, but ‘a forty-six-year-old man, found impaled on railings on a north-west London building site’.

  It was only a matter of time before the office found out that the dead man was their boss, and as a reporter ‘at the scene’ delivered details she could never unhear, Jill pictured the news spreading in startled cries and wild, unpunctuated emails from desk to desk. She saw hands clamped across mouths, tears of disbelief: mayhem. As Jamie’s partners, it was up to her and Paul to make an announcement; ‘manage’ the fallout. But going into work was also unthinkable – until she’d spoken to Alex. Then there was Nicole.

  Her colleague’s name wasn’t disguised by an initial, although it should have been, and the sight of it on her phone screen made Jill feel no less toxic. Her own name would have a similar effect on these two women, she realised. They were bound by that, now.

  You’ve reached Nicole Harper. I can’t come to the phone right now, but you know what to do …

  That both women were going to voicemail, despite repeated attempts, wasn’t right. But then none of this was right, and what could Jill do, but try, try, try again?

  ‘Hello?’

  Nicole’s voice sounded artificially bright, as though put on for her benefit. Then Jill remembered her withheld number. ‘It’s …’ She cleared her throat. ‘It’s Jill.’

  ‘One sec.’ A party blower blared in the background, followed by a discordant jumble of childish joy. ‘Sorry, who?’ She heard the
jingle of a door swinging shut, all jollity sealed off behind it.

  ‘It’s Jill.’ She closed her eyes.

  ‘Sorry, I’m at a kids’ party with my daughter – they’re about to bring the cake out. Can I call you back?’

  ‘No.’ She had to stop Nicole talking and make her listen. ‘Jamie’s dead. They found him this morning. The police want to talk to me. They’ll want to talk to you, too.’ The words came out in a rush. ‘And Nicole –’ she heard her own voice dip down ‘– I can’t get hold of Alex.’

  There was a muffled clunk at the other end of the line, followed by silence. Then another clunk, and a whisper: ‘How?’

  ‘They don’t know yet. He was found by the Vale Theatre early this morning. There’s a building site behind—’

  ‘He was at the theatre?’

  The change of tone made Jill sit up straight. It wasn’t just alarm, but recognition.

  ‘If you know something …’

  At the end of the line Nicole let out a faint moan. Then there was a choking noise. And as Jill waited she saw her own slippered foot tapping impatiently by the pedals. There wasn’t time for this.

  ‘We’ve got to find Alex.’

  Silence.

  ‘Nicole, are you there?’

  ‘The theatre … there’s this little glass hut on the roof …’

  The rap of knuckles against glass made Jill jump, every synapse now on high alert, every word Nicole was saying drowned out, and she looked up to see Stan’s face peering in at her.

  CHAPTER 2

  ALEX

  THREE MONTHS EARLIER

  The pink onesie had been a mistake. So had taking the bus. When she’d left the flat half an hour ago, Katie strapped to her chest, Alex had felt passable: soft dough of stomach and thighs reined in by the maternity jeans she could no longer envisage living without; engorged breasts disguised by a floaty blue top bought especially. Katie had looked pretty and pristine in her striped onesie too – until they’d reached Hammersmith Broadway, where she’d thrown up over them both.

  By the time Alex had found the public toilets, scoured her bag for a 50p coin she didn’t have and waited in line behind two Italian teenagers counting out their change in Tesco Metro, much of the excitement she’d woken up with had evaporated.

  It had been building for over a week, that excitement, ever since Jamie’s email had come in. Because although her boss had kept it brief – ‘You thinking of popping by with the new addition? Good to catch up sooner rather than later’ – Alex had always been able to read between his lines.

  The maternity cover wasn’t working out. She’d guessed Ashley wouldn’t last the course by the end of their handover session. It wasn’t so much that she was too young and had started a couple of their email exchanges with ‘Hey!’, as the pre-emptive corner-cutting. Alex had never understood that ‘what’s the least amount of work I can get away with?’ mentality. And before you were even in the job! Where was the pride? The quiet satisfaction of knowing that you had every eventuality covered, so that when your boss forgot the file or figure, you could produce it. When, ever anxious to please the client, he double-booked himself in a meeting – ‘Thursday morning it is!’ – you were the one to correct him: ‘Actually, Jamie, Thursday a.m. won’t work, but we could find a window that afternoon?’ There was power in that moment: in being the gatekeeper of Jamie’s calendar and anticipating his needs so efficiently that he would be lost without her.

  Not that Ashley would have understood any of that. And on the day of that handover meeting, after a few too many questions like ‘Do I really have to answer every email within an hour, like you said in your handover file?’ (Answer: ‘Yes – every email needs to be acknowledged within the hour, even if a full response can’t be given until a later date.’) And: ‘When are we actually off? You know, no longer expected to be reachable on the phone after work?’ (Answer: ‘Never – even when Jamie was on a two-week break in the Maldives I was answering his calls past ten at night, scanning and sending documents and retrieving his wife’s online shopping from their local Parcelforce depot.’) Alex had swivelled her chair around to face her cover and asked a question of her own.

  ‘Do you want this job?’

  The girl retracted her chin into her neck, taken aback by the tone of this woman she’d assumed would be complicit in her skimping.

  ‘Course I do. I mean it’s a stopgap for me, you know? What with you only planning to take six months’ maternity – least that’s what Jamie told me. But maybe he was—’

  Alex had cut her off there. Yes, she was only planning to take six months. Why was everyone so convinced that women would change their minds and either take the full year or not come back at all? And there had been judgement in that twenty-three-year-old girl’s eyes, she was sure of it. Based on what? The kind of smug schoolgirl certainties you could still hold on to at that age. That when you met someone you liked, which you would, he would like you back. That you’d both be ready for marriage and children at the same time, and that when you had those children, you’d feel the way a new mum should.

  After the turmoil of the past few months Alex didn’t have many certainties left. But she was sure of one thing: when Jamie asked her to come back to work early (and he wouldn’t ask, she knew, so much as ‘suggest’ it, with a contrite expression and a little speech about him ‘fully appreciating what a special time this is, but …’) she would say yes. Yes to having a reason to get dressed in the morning. Yes to structured days. Yes to being needed for something she knew she excelled at, being back on full pay, and having the weight of her mum’s loan lifted sooner than it had to be. Not that she was going to say as much to Jamie, who would appreciate the sacrifice that little bit more if she told him she needed a few days to think it over. And as Alex turned on to Black’s Road and saw BWL’s blue mirrored façade rising up before her, she felt some of her earlier excitement return.

  ‘Ready to see where Mummy works?’ she murmured into the silken muss of her daughter’s hair. ‘I think you’re going to like it. And I know you’re going to love Mummy’s boss.’

  Five days a week for just under a year she’d pushed through the revolving doors of BWL’s bright white atrium, latte in hand. And the memory of that one free hand – a hand with which she could open doors, wave hello to Lydia at reception, brush the hair out of her face, reach for a travel card, hitch up trousers or scratch an itch – highlighted everything Alex had lost in motherhood. She would never be carefree or just plain free again, and the thought of that made her want to do another half lap in the revolving doors and go straight home. But Alex had watched enough new mums parade through BWL – look what I made! – to know what she was supposed to do, and although most waited until the baby was at least four or five months, she was aware that today wasn’t really about Katie. In any case, Lydia had already seen her.

  ‘Oh, oh, oh …’ Ignoring the ringing phones, her colleague ducked out from behind the curved walnut reception desk inscribed with BWL’s ubiquitous motto – ‘History. Heritage. Preserved’ – one hand clamped to her mouth. ‘I can’t bear it.’ A clicking of heels on marble as she trotted over. ‘Is this … little Katie? Yes it is! It is!’

  Before having her, Alex had found the wide eyes, baby voices and constant repetition funny. Now she just found it annoying. But she was pleased to see a friendly face and anxious to show her daughter off the way the others had.

  ‘Course she puked on the way here. It’s the excitement of seeing where Mummy works, isn’t it, Katie?’

  ‘I just want to eat her,’ Lydia threaded a finger through her daughter’s curled fist. ‘And you, lovely, how are you doing?’

  ‘Well I’m not getting much sleep. This one’s got her mum’s appetite, that’s for sure. And quite the pair of lungs. But we’re doing OK, aren’t we?’

  Lydia’s head was slanted to one side now: a mix of pity and curiosity in her eyes.

  ‘Still, hard doing it all on your own? Although I bet your
mum and dad are all over her.’

  ‘All over her.’

  Alex was used to the jolts of sadness these casual assumptions prompted, and had long ago decided that it was easier to play along than try to explain why her parents were not like other people’s.

  ‘Maya came in with little Elsa the other day, who must be what … almost exactly the same age? Two months?’

  ‘Three.’

  Alex had yet to meet her boss’s wife, but on a couple of occasions during the course of their simultaneous pregnancies the two women had commiserated over morning sickness and swollen ankles on the phone.

  ‘Thought it was close. Anyway, Maya said little Elsa’s been good as gold, and already sleeping six hour stretches at night.’

  ‘Great.’

  ‘Sorry! If it makes you feel any better, she also said she’d forgotten how hard it all was. And with Jamie doing such long hours here …’

  ‘No change there. He must be thrilled, though?’

  As she said it, Alex remember how ardently her boss had wanted a boy.

  ‘To be honest I think he was a bit …’

  ‘Disappointed? He’ll get over it. We girls aren’t so bad.’

  ‘Too right! And if I know Jamie, he’ll already be planning a third.’

  Lydia rolled her eyes but couldn’t suppress the small smile that often accompanied the mention of Jamie’s name by a certain kind of woman. ‘You should’ve seen him and Hayden down at the Firkin last week. They were three pints in and …’

  Lydia stopped short, wincing at her own tactlessness.

  ‘Sorry Alex, I didn’t mean to make you feel … I didn’t want to sound disloyal.’ With a shake of the head, she moved on. ‘Hayden knows, does he, that you’re coming in today?’

  ‘He does and he’s conveniently “out at a meeting”.’ Alex was trying her best to keep the bitterness out of her voice. ‘So today won’t be the day Katie gets to meet her dad.’

  Lydia stared.

  ‘Hayden hasn’t met her yet?’

  ‘Nope.’ Alex kissed her daughter’s head in reassurance. You’re never going to be made to feel like I did. ‘He’s made it pretty clear he doesn’t want to be involved.’