Murder By Umbrella: (Passion) (The Nikki Sinclair Quartet Book 1)

by Jaye Rothman

  Daylight woke me. I looked at the clock. It was 6.30 a.m. and I was still in Eva’s arms. Even more miraculous, I had slept through the night and, for the first time in three months, felt rested. I reached for my clothes. My movement must have woken her. She looked surprised that I was still in her bedroom and then her face lit up with delight.

  “Nikki, you’re still here.”

  I was momentarily nonplussed.

  “Yes. I thought you wanted me to stay.”

  Eva spoke in English, excitedly. “Darling, yes, yes, yes. I didn’t think you would. It’s never happened to me before.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You’re the first woman who has. Stayed all night with me,” she clarified. “My lover never could. She always had to go home. It would’ve been dangerous for her to stay with me.” She leapt out of bed and embraced me, and her fingers began unbuckling my belt. “Nikki, please stay a little longer. Come back to bed, darling, for ten more minutes. I’ve never had morning sex before.” Eva giggled. “Have you?”

  And I didn’t need any further persuasion. At that precise moment my heart had wings. There was of course, the added complication that Eva could be working for the KGB, but I didn’t want to – and couldn’t contemplate – that possibility.

  CHAPTER 6

  DAY FOUR

  I was ravenous and eagerly devoured the scrambled eggs and toast Eva had made for breakfast. I had expected her to be bashful around me, but to my relief she wasn’t.

  “Does sex always make you hungry?” Eva enquired.

  I laughed. “Yes, usually.”

  “Does your girlfriend cook for you?” It wasn’t a very subtle question, and I grinned.

  “I don’t have a girlfriend.” Well, it was true. I had a lover, probably now an ex-lover, but definitely did not have a girlfriend in my life.

  “That is interesting.” Eva lit a cigarette and fiddled with the ashtray.

  “Why interesting?” I teased her.

  “You are clever, intelligent, beautiful and a good lover. Why do you not have a girlfriend?”

  I shrugged. “I suppose I haven’t met the right person.”

  “Now you have met me, and…” She moved with lightning speed, and in a few seconds she was sitting on my lap. My breathing hitched as Eva gently traced her index finger down my cheek.

  “What about your work?”

  Eva breathed in my ear. “I don’t care about it. All I care about is you.”

  She kissed me, tenderly at first, and then the desire ignited between us once more and I could feel her hands on my back, sliding under my shirt, moving up, undoing my bra and….

  Inevitably and inescapably we adjourned to Eva’s bedroom, where she undressed me with excruciating slowness until I stood naked. Her eyes glittered with longing and yearning, roaming over my body, lingering on my breasts.

  “You’re so beautiful. I can’t believe you’re mine.”

  She bit down on her lip, sighed, and at an infuriatingly leisurely pace slipped out of her jeans. Turning seductively, she added her t-shirt and then her underwear to the growing pile of clothes.

  Eva was stripping for me! The realisation confounded me, as I had thought of her as inexperienced. My mouth was dry, and my heart was ricocheting out of my chest; goose bumps had erupted over my skin. Eva took a step toward me, but I didn’t touch her, didn’t move, couldn’t move, but I kept looking because I couldn’t turn away. What would she do? I didn’t know, but I did know my heart rate had tripled. Eva wrapped her arms around my neck and pressed against me. I could feel her warm breath on my neck as she whispered in my ear in English. “Nikki, make love to me again. I can’t get enough of you.”

  Afterwards, we lay entwined in the sweat-soaked sheets, cooling down, catching our breath. Her head was lying on my chest, and a tear had escaped from her eye and lay glittering on my skin.

  “Are you OK?”

  “Oh yes, yes. You, Nikki, are exactly what I’ve been craving, for the longest time,” Eva said softly.

  Neither one of us wanted to break the moment. My eyes travelled lazily over her body and again I noticed that she had a round, white ridged scar on her left shoulder, identical to the one I carried on my right upper arm. A bullet had caused mine, fired by an over-zealous conscript during an escape with Carla over the border from Bulgaria to Greece twelve months previously. Carla why had I thought about her? I shivered, but Eva didn’t appear to notice. I ran my tongue over Eva’s scar. “How did you get shot?”

  Immediately Eva froze. “Why do you say that?” Her voice had turned to ice.

  I thought it strange that she hadn’t remarked on my scar, as most of my lovers did. My story was always that a strand of barbed wire had torn my skin while I was hiking on the Yorkshire moors. But this time I couldn’t bring myself to lie. “Because I’ve got one that matches yours, and mine came out of the barrel of a gun.”

  At this revelation she abruptly pulled away. “I have to go to work. Please excuse me.”

  She could barely conceal her anger: her voice was bleak and hard, her eyes like flints. She was unrecognisable from the woman she’d been only five minutes ago. Eva threw the bedclothes to one side, rose from the bed, and without another look in my direction, left the room. Moments later the door to the cottage slammed shut and silence descended once more.

  Still stunned at the transformation in her, I dressed swiftly and began a search of her cottage. At first glance, it seemed clean: there was nothing incriminating here. I needed to look deeper. Where would I hide something? The favoured place with women was always the bathroom, so I checked the cabinet, and as I ran my fingers along the sides of the mirror, I found a small gap. Opening Eva’s cosmetic bag, I found her tweezers and, inserting them deftly into the gap behind the mirror, carefully removed a sheet of paper that was folded in half.

  It was written in Czech, and what Eva had confided to me appeared to be true. The writer had obviously been deeply in love with Eva, and expressed profound and everlasting regret that their love could never be fulfilled. It wasn’t surprising that Eva was heartbroken, as this woman clearly was torn between convention and the risk of openly loving her. Perhaps Eva had been shot because they had been discovered? I replaced the letter as I found it, my heart strangely heavy. Would I ever find a woman who loved me like that?

  I felt a pang of guilt – CJ. She meant more to me than a casual lover; she had become a friend and someone whose opinion I valued. Was I feeling guilty about having slept with Eva? No, but why should I? It wasn’t as though CJ and I were in a relationship. Certainly, we had slept together for twelve consecutive nights in Hammamet, but would this have continued if we had ordinary, mundane jobs in civvy street? I didn’t have an answer.

  I did know that I was counting down the hours until I was back in Eva’s bed. The passion and desire flowed between us like molten lava, and I, like Eva, craved sex like that. What did that leave CJ? The sex we had shared in Hammamet had been … I searched for a word … fantastic. Yes, that summed it up. Fantastic. The problem, though, was that CJ wanted our relationship to be exclusive, and I wanted what? Hot sex from both CJ and Eva? Who the hell did I think I was? A female version of James Bond?

  I could hear the phone ringing shrilly when I opened the back door to Squirrel Cottage and ran to answer it. It was Manning.

  “Where the hell have you been? This is the third time I’ve tried to phone you this morning.”

  “I’m sorry, Sir. I went out for a walk.”

  “Are you mad? You’ve been targeted twice in the last twenty-four hours – someone wants you out of the picture. Lonnie is doing well, though. He was drugged with some kind of sedative. He’s been discharged from hospital, so he’ll be back on duty later today. I’d thought about sending for Jack Butler, to watch your back, but that was declined.”

  “Really, Sir?” This was unusual: backup was always provided in the field, except when a situation was very sensitive.

  “You must be gettin
g close Sinclair, and you need to keep alert. Clear?” he barked.

  “Yes, Sir.”

  There was a rustle of papers. “Right, I’ve got some updates for you. First Bryant. He was approached by MI5 while he was at Cambridge and fast-tracked. He had an undistinguished career until three years ago, when Professor Watkins personally requested that he be appointed to head of security at the facility. I spoke informally to Braithwaite and he raised a number of concerns during a review three months ago. That included the lack of security, and the worryingly large number of defectors that were employed. Bryant’s job was to oversee the background checks.

  “Braithwaite is undertaking rigorous double-checking on all the employees as we speak, but it will take probably another three or four days before he can clear them all.”

  So perhaps Pat Varley’s suspicions were valid.

  Manning continued. “Leonid Yerzov – now he’s an interesting character. He comes from one of the satellite states, as the Soviets are fond of calling them. He was born in Latvia of Russian parentage, and was a child prodigy in math and science. He attended Moscow University, and studied – yes, you guessed it – chemical and biological weaponry. He was sent to Holland on some kind of exchange programme for exceptional students for a month. But while he was there he blotted his copybook and was charged with raping and assaulting a woman. Apparently she was working as a prostitute and Yerzov was being, ah, forceful. The police were called, and surprise, surprise, he had diplomatic immunity and was packed off back to Russia. His masters never trusted him after that, however, and his career stagnated. Yerzov used one of our dead drop locations in Moscow to leave a letter asking for political asylum. We accepted, of course, but one of our conditions was that he bring out a formula that was about to be developed by the Soviets, which he did. That was four years ago.”

  There was a further rustling of papers. “Braithwaite told me in confidence that there was an incident at the facility about eight months ago that was hushed up. A female cook made an allegation that Yerzov raped her. Apparently they had spent the evening drinking vodka, and things got out of hand. The next day she reported it to the Prof, and guess what?” Manning didn’t wait for me to reply. “The cook was transferred to the Army base on Salisbury Plain. The Professor deposited the sum of five thousand pounds in her bank account. She withdrew her allegation the next day.”

  Five thousand pounds would be a small fortune to a cook. Why was the Professor so keen to buy her silence? “I think you might have found one of my assailants, Sir.”

  “I’m sending Stella Mitchell from Special Branch to interview her. If Yerzov was drinking he might have let something slip.”

  I said nothing, and Manning continued.

  “We’ve done some digging around in the good Professor’s background. He’s another one of these bloody Cambridge graduates, and he knows the DG. And guess what else?”

  “He’s been using the old boys’ network?”

  “Exactly. Yesterday, after you ‘interrogated’ him … his words, not mine … he was on the blower to the DG requesting that you be replaced.”

  “Interesting. The Professor didn’t like the heat being turned up, did he?”

  “No. So let’s keep on rattling his cage. He was a member of the Communist Party while he was at Cambridge in the late forties. He also subscribes to the Morning Star.”

  “Why hadn’t this been picked up before in routine checks?”

  “Well, you would hope that someone in a top secret facility who subscribed to a Communist newspaper would be flagged by MI5, but apparently not. He also studied Russian at Cambridge and – this is fascinating – spent a year in Russia.”

  “Russia? A year?” This was unheard of. Visas were usually granted for a month. “What the hell was he doing?”

  “He was in a place called Kandalaksha. Do you know where that is?”

  “No. Siberia?”

  “It’s in Murmansk, which is near Finland, on the gulf of the White Sea. In July 1941 it was the site of an unsuccessful Finnish/German offensive against the Russians. Many died on both sides. The main industries are aluminium and vodka production, but here it gets even more interesting. It’s also a secret site for the testing of chemical and biological weapons.”

  I shook my head. “How on earth was he allowed to head this facility? There’s a strong possibility he’s still working for the Soviets.”

  “Exactly. So I dug around, called up some old contacts and cashed some favours in, and it seems that the DG was on the panel that approved his appointment.”

  I digested this information.

  “Doctor Buchanan served in the Blues.”

  “Did he, by Jove? Does he know…?”

  I heard a faint click on the phone line.

  “Well, that’s all for now.”

  “Sir.”

  He hung up. Reflexively I took my gun out of my holster, stripped it down and cleaned it.

  My line was being tapped and possibly so was Manning’s.

  I knocked on the door to Miss Reynolds’ office. There was no answer. I turned the handle and entered warily. Although it was after ten in the morning, there was no sign of Miss Reynolds; her typewriter still had a cover on it. There was a stack of letters with yesterday’s post-mark on them, which hadn’t been opened, and the kettle was cold to the touch. I knocked loudly on the Professor’s door. There was no answer there either, and when I tried the handle the door was locked.

  Where were they? With two scientists dead and one missing, I would have thought that both the Professor and Miss Reynolds should have been here fielding phone calls. Instead, both were absent from work.

  I went to look for Bryant and found him in his office, absorbed in The Times crossword. He was oblivious to my presence until I spoke. He looked up sheepishly and attempted to push the paper under the blotting paper pad.

  “Bryant.” I found it hard to contain my irritability. “Have you seen Miss Reynolds or the Professor?”

  He ignored my question, feigning casual politeness. “Good morning, Nikki. How are you feeling? Bit of a rum do yesterday. It’s hard to believe that the guards tried to kill you. They had been so reliable, but that’s the nature of our work, I suppose. We can never trust anyone, and of course, we’re all susceptible to blackmail – you more than most, I think?” He fiddled with his blotter. “How’s your head?” he enquired as an afterthought.

  I could barely contain my anger. “What the fuck does that mean?”

  “Well, Nikki, I think you know exactly what I mean. I’ve observed your, ah, attraction – yes, let’s call it that shall we? – to your own sex. Do your immediate superiors know?” He paused and gave a small, cruel smile. “No, I rather thought not, otherwise you would be confined to a desk job, or perhaps a posting to Outer Mongolia where there wouldn’t be any temptation.”

  I struggled to retain my composure. How had Bryant found out? Was he the other assailant? Who had told him? With my left hand I swept his blotting pad and The Times off the desk, and grabbed his jacket lapels with both hands, pulled him up from his chair so he was eight inches from my face. His face had turned a mottled purple and his eyes were nervously flickering.

  “Listen up, you fucking bastard,” I hissed. “I swore to serve queen and country, and you did too. Who has your allegiance now, Bryant? Moscow?” I didn’t give him an opportunity to answer. “The guards that tried to kill me were employed by you and the Professor. So Bryant, just who the fuck are you working for?”

  “Steady on, Faber,” he gasped. “There’s no need to make those kinds of accusations.” He licked his lips nervously. “I’m completely loyal to my queen and country.”

  I threw him backwards and he fell heavily onto the chair. Automatically he straightened his old Etonian tie; his courage was returning. His eyes were sharp and malicious. He spat.

  “You fucking dyke.”

  Without warning I raised my hand and slapped his face, putting my body weight behind the blow. His shock
ed expression was priceless.

  “Let’s have some better manners, Bryant,” I growled. “Now, where are the Professor and Miss Reynolds?”

  He stammered with fear. “The Prof’s in the lab, rallying the troops as we speak. Miss Reynolds’ mother is indisposed this morning. The shock of Polakoff, you know.” His voice was hoarse and he had started to sweat.

  “No, I don’t know.” I was aware that my voice was rising. “The man is a traitor and has stolen British secrets.”

  I grabbed his tie again and twisted it. His eyes bulged. “He was the Reynolds’ next-door neighbour for three years,” he croaked.

  I had a flash of inspiration. Three years! It was something about three years… Yes, that was it! Bryant’s career had been going nowhere until three years ago, when he was given the job as Head of Security. Three years ago the Professor had taken charge of the facility and Mrs Reynolds had been given permission to reside at the village. Polakoff and Maksimov had defected from the USSR three years ago.

  Another light bulb flicked on in my brain. Something had been bothering me since I’d heard that Maksimov was a fervent Zionist. I threw Bryant back into his chair.

  “Give me the keys to Maksimov’s cottage.”

  Bryant pulled open his desk drawer and fumbled for the keys.

  “Here. You’re a vicious bitch, Faber.”

  “Yeah, I am. That’s what you get for attacking me.”

  His eyes widened with shock and surprise.

  “I didn’t attack you – are you mad? Do you think I’d throw away my career by attacking an M16 agent?”

  I realised at that moment that he probably wouldn’t.

  The door of Maksimov’s cottage opened into a tiny hallway. The place was a simple structure, a two-up and two-down house of the type that was built for workers in towns and villages all over England from the Medieval Age to the Victorian era. There was a sitting room in the front and a dining room-cum-kitchen at the rear. A narrow staircase in the corner of the hall led to two bedrooms – a double and a single – and a small bathroom. It was identical to my own accommodation at Squirrel Cottage. It was less than two weeks since Maksimov had been murdered, but already the cottage had an unlived in air about it. I wondered briefly if Maksimov had found sanctuary here, or if he had found village life claustrophobic.