by Kate Johnson
‘Of Maria?’ I wondered if he knew. ‘I don’t see her as a threat.’
He shook his head. ‘You don’t see my sister as a threat. You must be damn sure of this guy, then.’
I nodded. ‘I am.’
‘Been together long?’
What was this, twenty questions? Since when did he get so nice?
‘A year,’ I said. ‘Well – we broke up for four months last year and then got back together at Christmas. And then he was working abroad for three months so …’
‘Really it’s only been five months.’
‘But since last April. Which makes a year.’
‘Why’d you break up?’
Because I was an idiot. ‘Why’d you want to know?’
He shrugged. ‘Curious. You’re all immovable now, but you can’t have been that sure before Christmas.’
I sighed. ‘Lots of things. Work …’
‘And?’
I scowled. ‘It’s none of your business.’
‘Fine, okay.’
‘Do you have a girlfriend?’
‘Me? Nah.’
‘Why not?’ Cruel, I know, but I was single for bloody years before Luke and I’ve had my share of Bridget Jones inquisitions.
‘No time.’
Right. I guess bounty hunters don’t get a lot of time.
‘Where did you go this morning?’
‘Village. Made a phone call.’
‘To?’
‘Aren’t you a curious bunny?’
‘Curious, yes. Bunny … Do you see a tail?’
‘No,’ Jack said, but in tones that told me he’d been looking.
I wondered how he’d got to the village. There’d been no car out in the yard except for mine. I hadn’t seen anything that might belong to Cécile. The only village I’d passed on my way in was at least five miles away.
‘So how do you –’ I began, but Jack was already halfway out of the door.
‘See you at lunch?’
I blinked suspiciously. ‘Er, yes …’
He nodded, and was gone.
What a strange man.
I plugged my phone into its charger, realised I was short on credit, and went downstairs, car keys in hand.
‘I’m going to the village,’ I said, waving my phone, ‘to get some credit?’
Cécile blinked at me.
‘For my mobile? Uh, les petites cartes, avec l’argent, pour le téléphone?’
‘Ah, oui,’ she nodded, ‘go to ze supermarché, le bureau de tabac ’as none.’
Rightiho.
He knew something was wrong as soon as he walked in. Not a single person made eye contact with him, not even the ones who ought to have been better actors.
He made straight for Sheila’s office, intercepted briefly by Evelyn. Her lovely face was marred with concern.
‘She wants to –’
‘– see me,’ Luke interrupted. ‘I guessed.’
Evelyn chewed her lip. It was pink and plump, Luke noticed dispassionately, and probably kissably soft, but he had absolutely zero desire to go anywhere near it.
Very occasionally, he wondered if Sophie had done some sort of hypnotism on him. Or a spell of some kind. For a man who had stopped counting lovers a long time ago, monogamy was something of a shock.
‘Is it anything in particular I’ve done?’
She winced. ‘Begins with “Sophie”. Ends with “Green”.’
‘I haven’t done her in a week,’ he said, just to see if that would shock her. Evelyn’s beautiful eyes went wide, but she didn’t say anything. Luke pushed open the door to his boss’s office and folded his arms.
She looked up, apparently not surprised he’d barged in, and said, ‘Close the door.’
Luke left it open. ‘What do you want?’
Sheila regarded the open door for a moment, then said, ‘Well, if you’re going to be childish, Sharpe, that actually makes this easier. I’m standing you down.’
He stared at her. Part of him had expected this, but the rest of him was outraged she was being so petty.
‘What have I done?’
A merciless smile flashed over her features. ‘Sophie, although I do hear it’s been a while.’
‘She’s in another country,’ Luke said evenly.
‘Which one?’ Sheila asked almost pleasantly.
Fury ballooned inside him, making him lightheaded. ‘Don’t know, but she’s always wanted to go to Iraq. And I hear Afghanistan is nice this time of year. Perhaps you should go look for her there.’
‘That’s not where you’ve been looking for her.’
She held up a tiny device, and his stomach flipped over. He thought he’d been careful, dammit.
He almost laughed at his own stupidity. Sheila had been in the Service since he’d been learning how to talk.
‘You’ve been spying on me.’
‘I rather think espionage is my job, Sharpe.’
‘On your own officers?’
Her eyes hardened. ‘You’ve been using our equipment to investigate your girlfriend’s guilt.’
‘She’s not guilty,’ Luke fired back.
‘No, I’m sure it was an accident. Or that she was framed.’
Her eyes glittered. Damn her, she bloody knew. Had she overheard his conversations? Were 5 passing her their intel? Had she bugged his phone? Dammit, how was he supposed to hide from a veteran spy?
‘You’ve been hacking into French surveillance to trace her face or car. You’ve been calling Interpol. And you’ve been doing it on my time.’
Luke said nothing. All he had to track Sophie was a passport number, which she hadn’t even used yet.
‘You’ve made only cursory contact with our agent in Kyrgyzstan. He has high-level access to the security services. His information suggests that they may soon become a political power in their own right. You don’t think this is information we need?’
He stayed silent.
‘And you haven’t even found her,’ Sheila added, a faint trace of scorn in her voice.
He glared at a spot above her left shoulder.
Her gaze was cool. ‘Take some time off, Sharpe. That’s an order. Full pay,’ she added.
‘Great. I’ll make a start on my Christmas shopping.’
‘It’s April.’
‘What the hell else is there to do?’
They eyeballed each other for a long moment, then Luke said, ‘Anything else?’
Sheila turned back to her paperwork. ‘Yes. I wouldn’t buy much for Sophie. You probably won’t see much of her come Christmas.’
Years of training and a lifetime of self-discipline meant that Sheila avoided being beaten to a bloody pulp right then, but Luke considered later that she had no idea how close she’d come.
He stormed out of the office. No one asked for his security pass – well, hell, they’d just disable it anyway – which was almost a shame, because he longed to throw it at someone.
Outside, the spring day was irritatingly mild and pleasant. Luke stormed down to the riverfront and threw himself at the bench under the rotunda, glaring at the sparkle of sunshine on the Thames.
Ten minutes up the road was Thames House. Were it not for the trees on the far bank he’d be able to see it across the water. He could barge in there and demand to know what they had on Sophie, but he didn’t expect it’d get him much more than a swift kick in the kidneys.
‘Goddammit,’ he said out loud. ‘God bloody damn it.’
He was effectively cut off from all his official contacts. He had no access to security systems, to databases, to surveillance. Rubbing his eyes with the heels of his hands, he considered his assets. A phone-line to Sophie, which he daren’t use somewhere so obvious. A passport number he was unable to track. A flat he had an escape hatch from. A small tabby cat.
Oh yeah. James Bond had nothing on this.
On the road behind the SIS Building was a convenience store with a small coffee concession. Luke ordered a double espresso and a lar
ge chocolate muffin and tried not to look at the cigarettes on sale behind the counter. He’d beaten that beast years ago, and when he’d relapsed at Christmas it had been Sophie’s disapproval that had him flushing half a pack of Golden Virginia down the toilet.
The coffee and muffin were surprisingly expensive. Luke paid with a twenty and got hardly any change. Frowning, he wandered back to his bench, set the coffee down and stared in amazement at the packet of Dunhill Internationals in his other hand.
‘Okay,’ he said. ‘Okay.’
‘Didn’t know you smoked,’ came a voice from behind him.
‘I don’t,’ he replied, not looking round. The box glowed red and gold in the sunlight.
‘So they’re a good luck charm, are they? Something to match your lighter?’
Evelyn sat down beside him. Of all the support staff, she was one of the more intelligent, perceptive and friendly. She was also impossibly beautiful. She was, in fact, exactly the sort of woman Luke would have had in bed within twenty-four hours of meeting, if not for Sophie.
He’d been frightened that committing to a relationship with Sophie would mean he wasn’t allowed to sleep with other women. What was even more terrifying was the realisation that he didn’t want to.
‘Lighter’s a practical thing to carry,’ he said, taking his from a pocket and flicking the lid open and shut a few times.
‘Of course, but most people carry disposable Bics. Not –’ she held her hand out, and Luke passed it to her – ‘not eighteen-carat gold Dunhill Rollagas lighters worth more than my first car.’
‘What was your first car?’ Luke asked, because Evelyn was obviously not the sort of girl who bought a clapped-out Nova for a few hundred quid and drove it until the gearbox fell out.
‘A Mini,’ she said, and Luke snorted.
‘Cooper?’ She nodded. ‘Worth considerably more than my lighter.’
‘Why do you assume it was a brand new Mini?’
Luke just looked at her.
‘All right, but it’s a considerably better investment than a ten-grand lighter.’
Luke took back the lighter and stared at it. It had a nice heft to it, the flick of the Rollagas catch was satisfying and the flame it produced was clean and strong. But it was just a lighter. He could smoke his head off just as well with the help of a packet of Swan Vestas.
‘It was a gift,’ he said distantly.
‘From who?’
‘My grandmother.’ He looked at her sideways. ‘And you had to stop yourself from saying “whom” there, didn’t you?’
Evelyn’s perfect brow furrowed. ‘It’s not my fault I had a privileged background,’ she said.
‘Nope,’ said Luke, who rarely mentioned his own if he could help it.
‘I mean, what the bloody hell is it good for? An Oxbridge degree and then a useless job as a PR girl for a publisher. A complete inability to relate to anyone not called Bunty or Camilla. The emotional ability of a fruit fly.’
‘Yeah, and all that money gets really boring,’ Luke said.
Evelyn flashed him a look, apparently trying to work out if he was joking.
‘Plus, you’re not a useless PR for a publisher,’ he added, flicking the lighter open and closed, open and closed.
‘No. Well, the Service was the only way I could think of to … to have some sort of life. To break out. To not be like everyone I grew up with.’
‘You don’t have to be rich to feel like that,’ Luke said, because she’d just echoed what Sophie said when he had recruited her to SO17. And Sophie’s idea of posh was Tesco Finest.
‘And it solves the problem of being unable to have a proper relationship with anybody,’ Evelyn went on. ‘Intelligence officers don’t get to have relationships.’
Luke snapped the lighter shut. ‘Yeah, well I do,’ he said.
‘Luke,’ Evelyn began, then faltered. ‘Look, when you first came here, you had a bit of a … reputation.’
He slouched back against the bench, arms folded. ‘This should be good.’
‘All those years with your little agency –’
‘Though she be but little, she is fierce,’ Luke growled, because he was damn proud of SO17 and the work they’d done.
‘Well – yes,’ said Evelyn uncertainly. Clearly not a Shakespeare fan. Mind, neither was he: Sophie was the one forever quoting. ‘You were known as a bit of a … er …’
Luke waited politely.
‘Well, if this was the nineteenth century, I’d have said “rake”,’ she said.
Luke blew out a sigh. ‘A rake is indiscriminate, a wastrel, a womaniser.’
This time it was Evelyn who waited politely.
‘Oh, for God’s sake, do you think I was a monk? I had affairs, Evelyn, with women who knew what they were getting into. I never tricked anyone into thinking we were going to have a relationship when it was patently impossible.’
And he hadn’t. He’d truly believed so at the time. He’d had discreet affairs with elegant, sophisticated women who weren’t looking for a wedding ring, or even someone to wake up with in the morning. It suited him just fine. No emotional attachments, just mutual pleasure, no one got hurt. Life had taught him perfectly well to keep his emotions in check.
Maria had once said to him that the only thing he had an emotional attachment to was his SIG-Sauer. Luke figured it was a sign of his emotional maturity at the time that he thought this was a good thing.
Then Hurricane Sophie had blown into his life, the levees had cracked, and a lifetime of emotion had unleashed itself. He’d always known it wasn’t a good idea to let himself care about anyone, and then Sophie had chipped away until he couldn’t help it, until he not only liked her and respected her but loved her, and now the strength of his feelings terrified him.
‘You think it’s better to behave like that, do you?’ he asked Evelyn. ‘To never form attachments to anything or anyone, to get so detached from humanity that you can’t even empathise with anyone?’
‘You’re a spy, Luke,’ Evelyn said quietly. ‘You don’t need to empathise with anyone.’
Luke stared at the river for a long time. Then he stood up, and silently walked away.
The next two days passed without much incidence. I read more French newspapers, my grasp of the language slightly improving. I ate lots of Cécile’s rather erratic but very generous vegetarian meals. I had sporadic, short conversations with Jack, who at least didn’t seem to be trying to kill me any more, but hardly appeared interested in my life either. He wasn’t around much, taking long walks or helping out in the vineyard. I occasionally caught him looking at me oddly, but he always glanced away when he saw me watching. I’d tried talking to him about Irene Shepherd, but he’d started to get a murderous look in his eye. I figured I’d let him get to see what a sweet, kind, non-murderous person I was before I probed any further.
At least I figured out how he was getting to the village. There was an old motorbike parked up next to the Vectra one morning, and as I watched, Jack started it up and revved noisily away.
I’d look good on that bike.
I spoke to Luke every day and it got easier in some ways, harder in others. Putting the phone down was torture. He was my only link to the real world and I missed him like hell. I missed looking at him – my wallet photo was getting a little ragged – touching his skin, breathing in his scent. I missed his arms around me when I slept, his kiss when I awoke. And yes, I missed the sex, too. We tried phone sex but I got the giggles and spoiled the mood somewhat. Luke told me I’d better get my arse in gear and track down the real killer, because he wanted to get laid.
He can be so sweet sometimes.
‘I went to see your parents today.’
‘Why?’
‘Because I like them. To see how they’re doing.’
‘Why – what’s wrong?’
‘Er, you’re wanted for murder? They’re worried about you, Soph.’ He paused. ‘I told them I’d spoken to you.’
I closed my
eyes. If I thought about my parents too much I’d start crying. ‘And?’
‘And … they’re glad you’re okay. Want to talk to you.’
‘You didn’t give them my number?’ If anyone was looking for me they’d have taps on the phone lines of everyone I knew. My parents would have been their first port of call. The only reason I wasn’t worried about Luke was that he knew the system inside and out – and how to circumnavigate it. He was an MI6 officer. He had connections.
‘No. I told them it was dangerous.’
‘Did you use that word?’ I asked, knowing it would scare them to hear the word ‘danger’ and their only daughter included in the same phrase.
At least, I damn well hoped so.
‘No. I used words like “extreme caution” and stuff.’
‘Stuff, huh?’
‘Yeah. Your mum wants me to tell you she loves you.’
I closed my eyes, tears starting. ‘Tell her I love her, too.’
‘I already did.’
‘Thanks.’
I sniffed as quietly as I could.
‘Sophie?’
‘Mmm?’
‘Are you crying?’
Another sniff. Damn. I hadn’t meant that one.
‘No. Why would you think I’m crying?’
‘Because your voice has gone all wobbly and you’re sniffing and I know you always miss your mum when you’re away from home.’
God, my mum. It was one thing to want Luke there to hold me and joke with me and kiss me and make love to me, but … I just wanted the security of having my mum there. Someone in charge. Someone to hug and make it better. Luke’s parents died when he was quite small and he’s never really understood how close I am to my family. They live in the same village and I see them all the time. And even when I don’t, they’re just there and if I need them they always want me around.
I sniffed again and this time my voice broke. ‘I wish I was home.’
‘I wish you were, too,’ Luke said gently. ‘Sophie, I’m doing what I can. We’ll get this sorted out and then you can come home. We can watch Buffy for hours and hours.’
I watch Buffy as a kind of therapy. That’s something Luke does understand about me.
