Run Rabbit Run

by Kate Johnson

  Docherty had been in the army, and he’d been in private security. Luke wasn’t entirely sure if he might have also been in the IRA. He was shady as the night, he had access to people and technology and cars Luke could only dream of, and he wasn’t above putting a bullet in someone’s head just to keep them quiet.

  And he seemed to have taken a shine to Sophie.

  Luke opened the door, put his finger to his lips and mimed, ‘Bugged.’

  Docherty nodded. Luke wouldn’t put it past him to have disabled the bugs with a radioflash and shot the surveillance team. The guy had more secrets than Batman.

  He held out a DVD case.

  ‘Busty Babes Go Wild,’ Luke said, regarding it. ‘How well you know me.’

  ‘Thought you might get lonely,’ Docherty said. ‘What with your girlfriend missing and all. Reckon she’s a real ride.’

  Luke narrowed his eyes. ‘You’d better not be speaking from experience.’

  Docherty grinned. It made him look like a piranha. ‘A bit of busty company, since you’ll be missing your busty girlfriend,’ he said. With a flicker in his eyes, he added, ‘Take a look inside. There are more pictures.’

  Luke opened the case. Inside was a DVD and a little red booklet. A British passport. Casually, keeping it between his face and the case, he flipped it open. The information page was at the back, as in an older passport, which was good. No biometric details. A picture that couldn’t be used by facial recognition software. Taped to the back of it was a matching driving licence.

  He memorised the details, filing away the passport number in his mind, not that it was any real use to him. He could only trace it through official channels and that would be by way of a colossal giveaway to whoever was watching him. Alice Maud Robinson. Made her sound like a pensioner. Her place of birth was given as Harlow, which would drive her mad since she hated being considered an Essex girl. Docherty had kept the right year for her birth, but changed the date.

  ‘There’s no way in hell she’s a Scorpio,’ Luke muttered.

  ‘What’s that?’ Docherty asked, warning in his tone.

  ‘I said hell, these girls are scorching,’ Luke said. He studied the picture of Sophie Docherty had manipulated. ‘Whoa, look at that one!’

  It didn’t look a lot like her. Eyes dark and hooded, complexion heightened, hair a dull mousy brown and hacked brutally short. His Sophie was all lush curves and long, soft hair, her skin pink and white, her eyes a warm blue. The woman in this picture looked dull somehow, her cheeks gaunt, her mouth unsmiling.

  ‘I know how you like blondes,’ Docherty said.

  ‘Maybe I could get a taste for brunettes,’ Luke said.

  ‘Don’t keep it too long,’ Docherty said. ‘When you’re done with it, I’ve another friend to send it to.’

  ‘Oh? Anyone I know?’

  Docherty’s dark gaze was steady. ‘Maybe. But it might take me a while to find the address.’

  ‘Maybe I could help you with that.’

  Docherty was still a long moment. He could have discovered Sophie’s whereabouts already, Luke knew. And he could be keeping them to himself. Trying to work out why would drive him mad.

  ‘I don’t think so,’ Docherty said.

  Luke closed the case with a snap. ‘Thanks, mate,’ he said, handing it back, ‘but I’m not in the mood for skin flicks. Besides, I’m not sure I could enjoy it properly with an audience.’

  Across the road, a shadow moved inside the car.

  ‘Thanks for showing me though,’ he added as Docherty tucked the DVD case inside his jacket. ‘Cheered me right up.’

  As Docherty left, Luke gave the unmarked car a wave.

  The farmhouse was a big crumbling affair with vines crawling all over it. A woman stood in the doorway, watching me rumble up the drive.

  She came to the door as I parked, and when I sat there trying to will myself to move out of the car, she came over. An attractive woman in the Faye Dunaway mould, with soft-styled hair and quite a bit of eyeliner, she looked me over warily through the open window.

  ‘Madame Bouchard?’ I asked, giving the name Docherty had told me.

  ‘Oui?’

  ‘Je suis Alice. Une copine de Maria. Elle – elle vous dit j’arrive?’

  She took pity on my terrible French. ‘Anglaise?’

  ‘Oui.’

  Cécile Bouchard looked me over – my flat, ugly hair, my un-made-up face, my pyjamas. And my handcuffs.

  ‘What is zees?’

  ‘Oh.’ I looked down at them. ‘I don’t suppose you’d have a hacksaw?’

  She smiled. Then she laughed, a hacking smoker’s laugh. Jesus. That was a sixty-a-day laugh.

  ‘Come wiz me,’ she said, and I got out of the car, locked it clumsily, and followed her around to the back of the house where there was a woodpile and an axe.

  ‘Put your ’ands there.’ She gestured to the block with the axe, and my eyes widened.

  ‘Um, are you sure?’

  ‘I have the good, eh, quel est le mot? Wiz zis hache.’

  I really hoped that meant she was a good aim.

  I spread my wrists as wide apart as I could, like Leonardo DiCaprio in Titanic, and closed my eyes. There was a great whoosh, a sudden thud, and then I opened my eyes to find my wrists separated from each other, and mercifully still attached to my arms.

  I waved them around and grinned at Cécile, who plonked the axe back down and grinned back at me.

  ‘Are you ’ungry?’

  ‘God, yes.’

  ‘Excellente. I ’ave lots of chicken.’

  ‘Er, I don’t eat meat.’

  She stopped and stared at me. So handcuffs didn’t faze her, but vegetarianism did?

  France. Different planet.

  ‘Do you drink?’ she asked suspiciously.

  I sized her up. Old wellies and a pretty red dress, hair in her eyes, the scent of Chanel and cigarettes.

  ‘Yes,’ I said, and she looked relieved.

  ‘I ’ave lots of wine. Last year’s vintage.’

  This might have been an impressive thing, perhaps to someone like Luke who knew all about fine wines and vintages. But to someone like me, whose favourite kind of wine was whatever had a Buy One Get One Free sticker on it, it meant zip.

  ‘What kind of wine do you make?’ I asked politely, and Cécile laughed.

  ‘Bourgogne.’

  Of course.

  She found some kind of vegetable stew in the huge pantry of her cavernous old kitchen (stone sink, bare floors, crumbling staircase winding up to a studded oak door, the lot) and poured me out a lot of red burgundy. Then she lit up a cigarette and proceeded to regale me with stories told in Franglais of when she was a little girl during the war, and her mother had been in the Resistance, and used to lead all the German soldiers on, and there was a lot of controversy over who her father was but Cécile didn’t care. She had inherited this vast decrepit house and the vineyard and made pots and pots of money selling bad wine to tourists. She kept the good stuff and sold it in the village. She was an eccentric, and as a Brit, shouldn’t I understand eccentricity?

  I was so tired and hungry the wine went straight to my head. I nearly fell asleep with my face in my stew. Cécile was rambling to herself about a man called Pierre (at least, I think that’s what it was, only about every third word was in English now), the table was fogged with smoke and there were empty bottles all over the place, candles guttering in the draft from under the wobbly door, when my phone shrilled and woke me up.

  It was Luke. He’d got himself a new phone, assured me the line was secure – he’d probably scrambled it using a hairpin, a gold earring and a spider web – and talked to me about nothing for ten minutes.

  ‘So did you have any particular reason for calling me?’ I asked during a lull after several minutes spent discussing what Tammy would and wouldn’t eat.

  ‘Maybe I just like talking to you,’ Luke said, and I went all gooey inside.

  We spoke a while longe
r, or rather Luke spoke and I yawned, and eventually he told me to get some sleep, and he’d get back to investigating who killed Sir Theodore tomorrow.

  I hung up and tried blearily to remember my schoolgirl French. ‘Cécile,’ I said, then louder, ‘Cécile?’

  She woke with a snort and looked up at me blearily. ‘Cherie?’

  ‘Is there somewhere I can sleep?’ Right now I’d take the fireplace, so long as it was warm. ‘Er, ou est … je … dormir?’ I pantomimed it.

  ‘Oui.’ She creaked to her feet and stubbed her fag out on the bare table. ‘Allons-y.’

  She stumbled up the crumbly stairs and pushed open the studded oak door. There was a hallway, slightly smarter, with a rug and furniture, and a proper staircase with oak rails that might have looked quite grand had it not been so dusty. Cécile led me up it for one flight, turned down a corridor, opened another door, went up a stone flight … and then I lost track. Eventually she pushed open a door and I looked into a room with a bed.

  ‘Ici,’ she said. ‘Couchez-vous ici.’

  That was pretty much all I comprehended before I fell into a deep, deep sleep.

  I’d hardly slept the night before, having been awoken by the man with the gun who stole my weapons and my ring.

  He woke me again when the sun had dropped low in the sky, almost a day after I had arrived at Cécile’s, gun pressed to my head.

  ‘Cécile,’ he yelled.

  I opened my eyes, aching with tiredness and hangover, and groaned.

  ‘Not you again.’

  ‘Me again,’ he said. ‘Cécile!’

  She answered in distant French, and he yelled something back in the same tongue that I think was along the lines of Get your arse up here.

  ‘What are you doing – hey, that’s my gun!’ I yelped.

  ‘Shut up.’

  ‘Did you follow me?’

  He nudged the safety off with his thumb. I shut up.

  There were footsteps outside and Cécile pushed the door open, fag drooping from her lips. ‘Jacques,’ she said, ‘que faites-tu?’

  ‘Elle est une criminelle dangereuse,’ he replied, gun still pressed to my temple.

  ‘What? No, I’m not,’ I said.

  ‘Shut up.’

  ‘Hey, if you’re going to go around telling people I’m a dangerous criminal, I think I should be allowed to defend myself.’ He gave me an incredulous look. ‘Oh, come on, like that bit was hard to translate.’

  ‘Oui,’ Cécile said. ‘Take away ze pistolet, Jacques.’

  Jacques? He didn’t look like a Jacques. He looked like a – well, I don’t know. A headache in a suitcase. Dark hair hung in long strands around his face, dark eyes that were narrowed at me, a shadowed jaw, broad shoulders. Oh yes, and my gun, which wasn’t moving.

  ‘Jacques,’ Cécile persisted, and he lowered it, but still kept it ready.

  ‘That’s mine,’ I said. ‘He stole it from me.’

  ‘I commandeered it,’ he told Cécile.

  ‘You stole it! And you knocked me out and handcuffed me to the tent pole – which, by the way, was a really stupid – hey!’

  He’d delved under the duvet and grabbed my hands. The cuff bracelets with their little clinking chains were still there.

  ‘You broke them!’

  ‘Well, duh.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘C’était moi,’ Cécile said proudly, her voice still husky and slightly slurred, more than her accent should have allowed for. Cécile was an old soak. ‘Wiz the … quel est le mot, l’hache …’

  ‘Axe,’ I supplied helpfully, and she beamed at me.

  Jacques turned angrily on her. ‘What the hell for?’

  ‘Because she was chained,’ Cécile waved her hands. ‘Jacques, what ’ave you been doing wiz her?’

  ‘She,’ Jacques waved the gun furiously at me, ‘framed me.’

  My mouth dropped open. ‘I did bloody not. I don’t even know who you are!’

  ‘So why are you on the run in a foreign country under a fake name? Sophie Green,’ he said accusingly.

  Damn. Damn and buggery. I sat up in bed under the watchful gaze of my own gun and looked down at myself. I was still wearing the pyjamas I’d had on when Jacques knocked me out and handcuffed me, having been both unable and disinclined to change since. My short ugly hair was greasy and messy and my face must have looked appalling.

  ‘What makes you think I’m Sophie Green?’ I asked as calmly as I could.

  ‘Well, let me see. Under that terrible haircut you still look like her, you have her driving licence in your wallet –’ too late I looked round and saw it open on the table by the bed – ‘and you have her SIG-Sauer P-239. Or should I say, had. And,’ he pulled down the front of my top, prompting another cry of outrage from me, ‘you even have her scars.’

  All three of us looked down at the marks on my chest, two long pink scars made by someone who had tried to stab me with a carving knife at Christmas. Jacques tilted up my face, the better to make out the old cut there, and then my arms where I’d been slashed on one forearm, one elbow.

  We glared at each other for a bit. Actually, he was quite cute. Not the first cute maniac I’ve come across, though, and probably not the last.

  ‘Why are you here?’ he asked.

  ‘None of your business.’

  ‘It damn well is.’ The gun was raised again. He’d taken off the silencer and I hoped it wasn’t lost. That had been a present from Luke.

  Which reminded me …

  ‘I want my ring back,’ I said.

  ‘Tough shit.’

  ‘I want it back,’ I said as threateningly as I could despite the tears that had sprung up from nowhere at the prospect of it being lost forever. ‘Give it to me.’

  ‘Jacques,’ Cécile said, and asked him something in rapid French. He replied, their conversation got more heated, and then Cécile repeated firmly, ‘Donne-le moi, Jacques. Donne-le moi.’

  Jacques looked very sullen, but he eventually dug in his jeans pocket and handed something over. My heart swelled.

  ‘My ring!’

  Cécile inspected it, squinted at the hallmark, then looked up at me. ‘Yours?’

  I nodded eagerly.

  ‘She ees very precious.’

  ‘It is to me.’

  Jacques shot me a look of pure disgust. I lobbed it right back.

  ‘She has the gold most excellent, eighteen of the carats, oui?’ I nodded. ‘And ze émeraude, she has per’aps one of the carats?’

  I squirmed happily. Luke said he’d bought it off some Arab sheikh’s wife. I’d thought he was exaggerating, but he must have spent some money on it.

  Because, in addition to being gorgeous, clever and funny, Luke is also loaded. I figure there must be a dozen ugly, stupid, boring, poor men who are pretty annoyed that he got their shares.

  Cécile handed it over and I slipped it back on my finger where it nestled happily. Jacques looked mightily pissed off.

  ‘’Oo gives you ze ring?’ Cécile asked. ‘Ze man who telephoned yesterday?’

  ‘Ask Jacques,’ I said, ‘I’m sure he’ll know. He seems to know everything else about me, even the made-up bits.’

  Jacques glowered at me. ‘It’s Jack, not Jacques,’ he spat, ‘and I’ll bet any money you swindled the ring from your MI6 boyfriend.’

  So he knew about Luke. Wonderful.

  ‘’Ee is a man most in love,’ Cécile told Jack. ‘’Ee telephone her last night for many of the hours.’

  Well, about twenty minutes actually, but I wasn’t going to correct her.

  ‘Does he know where you are?’ Jack asked.

  ‘No. How do you know?’

  ‘I stuck a tracer on your phone.’

  I went cold.

  ‘You see, that first night it was just happenstance I ended up in your tent. I was looking for somewhere to hide out. Somewhere people don’t ask questions or check ID. But there was something about you, Miss Alice M. Robinson, that was disturbingly
familiar. Wasn’t till I started hacking into some government files that the name Sophie Green came up. An APB on you. Complete with picture. You’re wanted for murder, Sophie Green.’

  There wasn’t much I could say to that.

  ‘Why doesn’t your boyfriend know where you are?’

  ‘Is that any of your business?’

  ‘Boy,’ he snorted, ‘you must really love him.’

  I glowered at him but, mindful of the gun, said nothing.

  ‘Aleece is a guest –’ Cécile began, and Jack laughed loudly.

  ‘Her name is not Alice. Her name is Sophie and she’s wanted for murder. Wanted by the police and MI5 and by me,’ he snarled, his face close to mine, ‘because she killed Irene Shepherd and pinned it on me.’

  ‘I didn’t kill anyone,’ I croaked, and then honesty forced me to add, ‘well, not this year.’

  Jack gnashed his teeth and stormed out of the room.

  Great, just what I needed. A delusional psychopath – why did he think I’d killed this Shepherd woman? – with a gun. Oh, and some mysterious access to confidential files. Annoyingly, that might come in handy. If only he didn’t hate me.

  I looked up helplessly at Cécile.

  ‘Your name is Sophie?’ she asked.

  I nodded.

  ‘But your friend send the passport for Aleece.’

  ‘You have it?’

  She nodded.

  ‘Can I have it?’

  ‘It is true? You keel zem?’

  I shook my head vigorously. ‘No. The police think I did but I didn’t, I just found him, and as for that woman … I’ve never heard of her. Please,’ I tried to make myself as appealing as possible, ‘would Maria send a murderer to you?’

  Cécile looked thoughtful.

  ‘Why does Jacques sink you have killed zat woman?’

  I ran my hands over my face. ‘I don’t know,’ I said wearily, as the man himself stomped back into the room, looking like thunder.

  ‘Get up,’ he said, waving my gun at me.

  ‘Only if you ask nicely.’

  He narrowed his eyes. ‘I’ve got a .45 here that’s asking very nicely.’

  ‘It’s a nine mil,’ I said smugly.

  ‘It’ll still kill you.’

  Belligerently, I pushed back the covers and got out of bed, holding my hands high so he could see them. Jack had a coil of rope around his shoulder and he let it slide down to his hand in one fluid movement, like Fred Astaire with a top hat.