When The Devil Drives

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Book: Read When The Devil Drives for Free Online
Authors: Christopher Brookmyre
‘the resolution of outstanding contracts’. She had assumed this meant the formalities associated with whatever loose ends would be left hanging at Galt Linklater by Sharp Investigations ceasing to operate. Instead, Harry laid out an offer to keep the firm on a retainer, which would pay a minimum even on months that she wasn’t sub-contracted. He added that he expected this would prove moot, stating blankly that if Jasmine could clone herself he could keep both versions busy most months. This was for precisely the reasons Jim had laid out when he recruited her: they could always use somebody who didn’t look like an ex-cop, somebody their subjects would never see coming.
    Jasmine asked if it mattered whether this somebody actually knew what she was doing, a corrosive little voice in her head seizing upon a sense of déjà vu. She recalled her scepticism when she had heard the same rationalisation from Jim, whom she had believed simply to be acting out of duty towards a relative recently deceased.
    Harry had responded by acknowledging that he knew she still had plenty to learn, and that Galt Linklater’s guys would help her out, as Jim had, with on-the-job training. She was about to ask – with pronounced dubiety – whether Jim had ever mentioned how that on-the-job training had been going, when it hit her with some surprise that he must have, and that his accounts may not have comprised what she assumed.
    This guy owed Jasmine nothing, even if he had been close to Jim both personally and professionally. This offer wasn’t charity, and what was really a jolt was that it proved Jim’s hadn’t been either. It struck her that not only did Harry’s offer indicate that he believed she could do the job, but that Jim must indeed have spoken to him about how she was shaping up – and the implication was that Jim hadn’t beenlying out of kindness all those times he’d reassured her she was doing better than she thought.
    Some of those times, undoubtedly, but not all.
    ‘Didn’t Jim tell you about my screw-ups?’ she asked uncertainly.
    ‘Aye. But you should hear other people’s screw-ups.’
    Jasmine forced herself to admit she’d never been handed so much on a plate before, between what Jim’s family and Galt Linklater were laying in front of her. Her discomfort at door-stepping people under false pretences, or covertly following them around, not to mention her discomfort at catastrophically screwing up the basic fundamentals of both, died hard in the memory, and she knew that, soon enough, she’d be tasting both flavours again if she signed up for more. However, she had to acknowledge that it also felt pretty good when she got something right, especially when bringing her acting abilities to bear had been beneficial. Actors talked about live performance being high-stakes, but for all it could feel like life and death when you were out on that stage, in reality the most they were risking was embarrassment. Jasmine knew what it felt like to be acting at gunpoint, and while she was in no hurry to play those odds again, it had all but erased her trepidation about ringing some personal-injury fraudster’s doorbell and pretending to be someone she was not.
    She told Angela her decision, which seemed to mean a lot more to Jim’s daughter than Jasmine could have anticipated. She said it was a comfort to know that an important part of her father’s life was enduring, acknowledging the irony that while he was alive his over-dedication to his work had been the cause of much hurt to all of them.
    Thus Sharp Investigations re-opened for business, under new management.
    Galt Linklater kept her in the back seat for the first couple of weeks, often literally, but when she was finally deployed into the field she quickly began to understand why Harry, like Jim before him, was prepared to be so patient and encouraging. With a little bit of confidence in her armoury, she really was the secret weapon. She was their ninja, the one

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