Page 24 of Between the Lies

She swallowed. She’d tried, truly tried to forget the man she’d been drinking with. But somewhere in those hours they’d spent together, his face had imprinted itself on the back of her eyelids, and he’d become a recurring character in her dreams.

Nina knew she’d landed in deep trouble, particularly when in her dreams, he’d asked her to leap off a roof in an attempt to get away from Shah and she had – without hesitation.

What spooked her the most was the knowledge that her misplaced trust in him extended to the real world, too.

How? She barely knew the man.

Nina gritted her teeth at her own stupidity. With her life hanging on by a strand of a thread, she had no business tripping over herself for a man. She’d been there and done that. And she was no longer the blind twenty-year-old who thought marriage was a union where love always blossomed.

Nina turned her attention back to her destination. Work, investigation. Right.

The last thing she’d done, before she’d got the call to meet up at that dilapidated building, was visit a law office. Malcolm and Associates were immigration lawyers specialising in spousal visas, and her investigation into sham marriages had led her directly to them.

Last time, she’d left their offices with questions but hadn’t had a chance to follow up. Today, she’d do just that.

Nina cut across George Square, skirting the fencing, vehicles and props all assembled for the Christmas market. In Glasgow, the Christmas markets opened around the end of November.

Nina dodged a few tourists, powered past the glass entrance of the subway station with its orange-and-grey logo and halted at the entrance of an old Victorian building.

To an outsider, the entire structure might look abandoned, just an accessory dotting Buchanan Street, one of the main shopping thoroughfares. But the buzzers with numbers next to the wooden doors said otherwise.

Nina found the buzzer and the number of the office she wanted and pressed down on it. Silence. She tried the wooden door, but it didn’t budge.

She pressed the buzzer down longer, almost demanding they pay attention to her, until the intercom crackled. ‘Yes?’

‘Hiya! I’m here to meet?—’

‘Come in.’ The buzzer sounded, and the lock clicked open.

Nina pushed through and shivered. The stairwell lacked any heating. How the hell was it colder in here than outside?

The corridor boasted chipped yellowed tiles and peeling paint, and her booted feet thudded on the stairs, the sound echoing back at her in a way that reminded her of schools once the pupils went home… creepy.

She made her way to the first-floor landing then to the right where the law office was. Before she could knock on the door, it swung open to reveal a smiling woman.

Her eyes shone a bright blue, framed with dark-rimmed glasses. Her hair hung loose and straight around her round face.

She waved her hands around. ‘Oh hello! Come in, come in.’

Unsure why the woman was so… smiley and nice, Nina followed, holding herself back a little. It wasn’t the sort of greeting you’d expect in a law office. Or the sort of greeting she’d received the first time she’d visited.

‘The door has a security system, so you can use fobs for employees.’

Er… why would Nina need to know how they let their employees into the office? She smiled back, playing along. Perhaps the woman was trying to be friendly?

They stepped through the door, and the woman gestured to the room. ‘The previous tenants used it as a waiting and reception area.’

Nina followed her and was met with an empty room. There were no chairs, no desks and certainly no receptionists smiling at her. Before, there’d been a team of them behind a semi-circular desk, under a large banner announcing ‘Malcolm and Associates: Solicitors’.

That banner was now gone, and so was the desk.

‘I’m sorry.’ Nina halted the woman’s ramblings. ‘Sorry – what happened to the lawyers?’

The woman blinked at her. ‘Er, the lawyers?’

‘Aye, the immigration lawyers who had an office here. I was here a few months ago,’ Nina clarified, pointing to where the banner had been. Of course, that only confused the woman.

‘Aren’t you here to see the place? To rent it?’

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