by Kate Johnson
I closed my eyes and slept.
When I woke again the sun had changed its angle and the air was scented with coffee. I groggily checked my watch. It was mid-afternoon.
Rolling over, I found Jack sitting up in bed, fully dressed, laptop on his knees.
‘Morning,’ he said, not looking at me.
‘Afternoon,’ I corrected.
‘Whatever.’ He frowned at the screen.
I sat up. ‘Good read?’
‘Very. Irene Shepherd worked at an English law firm for five years before she went back to America.’
‘I know,’ I yawned. ‘Luke told me.’
‘Did he tell you the firm she worked for was Barton, Barton, Chesshyre and Holt?’
I blinked at him. ‘When you say Chesshyre you’re not spelling it like the county, are you?’
‘Nope. Your Sir Theodore was a partner, before he jacked it in to do something shadowy for the Home Office. He gave her glowing references. Apparently they were good friends.’
‘That’s nice. They can share a table in heaven. I don’t get this connection. Why should two people who worked together ten years ago be killed now? Have they seen each other since?’
‘I don’t know.’ He looked at me. ‘We’d have to find out.’
I didn’t like that look. That look said something bad was following.
‘And how are we going to find out?’ I asked.
‘Firstly we check airline records.’ I relaxed. I could do that standing on my head. ‘Then we go and ask the people at Barton, Barton and Holt. I’m guessing they’ll have taken the Chesshyre out by now.’
I started to feel a little ill. ‘And where are their offices?’
‘In the grand old city of London.’
Figured.
‘Um, I don’t know how you feel about this,’ I said, ‘but I sort of left the country for a reason. Like, people are after me. People in London.’
‘People who think you’re in France,’ Jack said. ‘Unless your boyfriend has told anyone your alias?’
‘No,’ I said firmly. Luke would never do that.
Although Docherty knew it, too …
‘Look, London is the most surveillanced city in the world,’ I said. ‘They have facial recog software everywhere. Don’t you watch Spooks?’
Jack gave me an incredulous look.
‘I’m just saying, there’s a huge amount of surveillance there. The odds of the two of us – both wanted for murders which I’m pretty sure MI5 will have worked out by now are connected – just wandering around without being found? Come on, Jack.’
‘Wear a hoodie,’ was his advice.
‘I never wear hoodies,’ I began, ‘they make me look so chavvy –’
Then I paused. I never wore hoodies for the same reason I never wore hoop earrings or scraped my hair back. You can take the girl out of Essex but you can’t take the Essex out of the girl.
‘I don’t like that look,’ Jack said. ‘That’s a calculating look.’
‘Do you think Vallie would mind if I borrowed a bit of make-up?’ I asked distantly.
‘Don’t reckon it’d suit you. She’s Italian and you look like you’re made out of milk.’
‘Yes,’ I said, ‘exactly.’ My gaze snapped back to him. ‘How long would it take you to grow a beard?’
He raised his eyebrows. ‘Does this mean we’re going to London?’
I chewed my lip. Part of me just wanted to see if I could get away with it. Part of me knew it was the only logical place to go. The rest of me screamed that it was a really bad idea.
‘Right,’ Jack said, taking my hesitation as agreement. ‘We can get a flight out of Milan in a couple of hours –’
‘Wait, what about the car?’
‘The car will have to stay here.’
‘What about the guns?’
Jack paused. ‘Shit,’ he said, and I smiled a little triumphantly. Not too triumphantly, however – I didn’t want to leave my guns behind. We couldn’t just chuck them in our luggage – that was what scanners were for. Nor could we check them in as licensed firearms. I had one gun registered as destroyed, and one not registered at all. I didn’t know what Jack’s arrangements were, but I had a feeling they were along the same lines.
‘Then we drive,’ he said. ‘Get a ferry. It’ll take longer.’
‘You think?’
‘But they hardly ever check private cargo. You have a British passport and mine is French. We’ll be fine.’
Yeah, right.
Vallie and Giovanni were out at some party in the afternoon, so the flat was empty as Jack put our things in the car and I did a little light pilfering of Vallie’s cosmetics. Jack was right, and none of her make-up suited me, but after I’d given myself a tide-mark around the jaw from her foundation, put on too much blusher and so much mascara my eyelids started to ache, I was on my way to looking like a different person.
I added the biggest hoop earrings I could find from Vallie’s extensive collection and slicked back my hair into a very short ponytail. Chav central.
‘You look like crap,’ Jack said.
‘Aha,’ I replied, ‘but do I usually look like crap?’
He opened his mouth, then thought better of his reply and just shrugged.
‘Wise answer,’ I said, and went into the kitchenette to assemble what food I could. It had taken nearly a whole day for me to drive the length of France last week, and that was without the journey over the Alps that we had to take now. In my estimate, it would take at least a day and a half, maybe more.
I stepped out of the kitchen to find Jack going through his cousin’s handbag. He extracted a cash card and continued looking for something else.
‘What are you doing?’
‘PIN number.’
‘What? She’s not going to have –’ I broke off as he pulled out a bit of paper with numbers written all over it.
‘Vallie’s as sweet as she is pretty,’ he said, ‘but she’s not the brightest crayon in the box.’
‘Are you going to steal her money?’
‘No. I’m just going to borrow it.’
‘Won’t she miss it?’
Jack looked at me as if I was simple. ‘She’s a PR and part-time model. She exists on freebies. She won’t even look for her purse for days. It’s fine.’ I frowned, but picked up the pen resting by the whiteboard in Vallie’s little kitchen. ‘Ciao e grazie,’ I wrote, ‘J&A x.’
Then we got in the car, and drove.
I woke, for the second time, in Jack’s arms. At least we weren’t kissing this time, though. I don’t know, maybe there’s some sort of natural instinct that makes you cuddle up to someone else in your sleep. It felt nice to be held, even if I did wish that the holder was someone else.
Jack was solid and warm, but he didn’t feel like Luke. He smelled nice, or at least as nice as you can after a day-and-a-half of driving, but he didn’t smell like Luke.
We were at a motorway services motel, about thirty miles south of London. Luke lived thirty miles north of the city. Every now and then he made vague, non-committal noises about moving somewhere closer to the SIS building, noises which I usually responded to by telling him he’d see a lot less of me if he did. I could be there in a couple of hours, be there in his arms, kissing him, touching him …
I gave my head a mental shake. This wasn’t good. I couldn’t just go back to Luke’s, that was insane. Someone would see. There’d be people watching his flat.
I moved to get out of bed, but Jack held me tighter. It was nice, but not right.
‘Jack,’ I said quietly, then louder, ‘Jack. Let me go. I need to get up.’
His eyes fluttered open. ‘No kissing this morning?’ he asked, his voice soft and sleepy.
‘No. No kissing. Can I get up?’
He released me and I scrambled out of bed, trying not to flash my underwear and failing somewhat. Jack was watching me, smiling.
‘What?’
‘You were never a natural blonde, then?’
/> I scowled at him and locked myself in the bathroom. The shower water was hot and I stood under it for hours, brushing away any guilt at the thought of depriving Jack of hot water with the memory of him perving at me. A gentleman wouldn’t look, and he certainly wouldn’t comment.
Luke would, but then he is a bit of a bastard.
Hair washed, legs and underarms and then bikini line, too, shaved, I wrapped one big white towel around my head and the other around my body. Jack would just have to whistle for a towel.
He wasn’t there when I came out, and I gratefully pulled on clean clothes in privacy, put on my chav make-up, and dragged my wet hair back into its Croydon facelift style.
Jack wandered back in as I stood poking out my tongue at my ugly reflection.
‘If the wind changes,’ he began.
‘The wind already has,’ I said glumly. I glanced at the papers he’d thrown on the bed. ‘What’s occurring in the real world?’
‘Footballer scandals, trouble in the Middle East, politicians lying through their teeth,’ Jack said.
‘Plus ça change,’ I said. ‘There’s nothing about Sir Theodore?’
‘Nope. You can check if you want.’
‘No, ta.’
My stomach let out a loud growl, and I recalled that all I’d really consumed in the last twenty-four hours was a bit of service-station food and a lot of coffee. Jack raised his eyebrows at me.
‘Well, seeing as you’ve slept with me twice,’ I said, ‘I think it’s only decent of you to buy me breakfast.’
He gave me a glimmer of a smile. ‘I don’t have any sterling.’
‘Me, neither.’
‘There’s a bureau de change on the concourse.’
‘Excellent. You can change some of Vallie’s money.’
But when we came out of the café where we had breakfast and crossed back to the motel, an interesting thing happened.
Luke’s car exploded.
It really just blew up. Flames and everything. The car next to it erupted, but thankfully we’d parked at the end of the row, next to a grass bank, so nothing else caught fire. Just Luke’s Vectra, and an Audi with a whooping, bleeping alarm.
Jack and I stood and stared.
‘That was our car,’ he said.
‘That was Luke’s car,’ I said.
‘This is not good.’
‘He’s going to kill me.’
‘It was only a Vectra.’
‘He’s going to murder me.’ Then a more pressing concern nudged through the fog inside my head. ‘Jack, someone followed us!’
Jack glanced at me. ‘You have your gun?’
I nodded. I was wearing a seldom-used brace under my fleece. Highly illegal, but not high on my list of worries.
‘We need to go and get our stuff from the room and get out of here.’
‘We need stuff?’ I asked, thinking of the old advice they used to give about not stopping to collect your belongings in an emergency.
‘Passport, money? Stuff like that?’
‘Oh. Yeah. Right.’ Thank God I’d been too tired to be sensible last night and had neglected to lock it in the car.
Jack shook his head at me and walked across the car park, ignoring all the people pouring out of the motel and service station, staring at the two burning cars. Someone raced past us, screaming, ‘My car! What happened to my car?’
‘That is one unhappy Audi driver,’ I observed.
‘Ex-Audi driver,’ Jack corrected, as we went inside and turned down the corridor to our room. I wondered if he was going to go all American cop show on me and hold his gun ready before bursting into the room, yelling ‘Freeze!’, but all he did was put the key card in the door with one hand and reach under his jacket with the other, ready to bring out his gun.
He nodded at me, and I nervously reached for my SIG. My gun still scared me. Mostly because I’d seen what it could do.
Jack pushed the door open, keeping well out of range of anything that could come from within.
Nothing came.
He pointed to my handbag and gestured for me to hold it out in front of the door. I did, wincing in advance, but again nothing happened.
Jack stepped into the room and I heard him moving around. Then he said, ‘It’s clear,’ and I began breathing again. I went in and looked around. Everything was the same.
‘Anything missing?’ he asked.
I shook my head, looking through my case. ‘Anything extra?’ I asked, and Jack started scanning under the bed, the desk, the sink in the bathroom.
‘I don’t think so. We need to get out of here anyway,’ he said, and I nodded and tipped my few remaining belongings back into my case. Seems wherever I go, I’m taking less with me. I’d brought all my essentials in with me, now that I was staying in a secure, locked-up place. In safe old England.
Outside, fire engines had arrived and were tackling the blaze. We went past, me silently apologising to Luke, and slipped onto the concourse where Jack called for a taxi to take us to the nearest train station.
In the back of the car, he took my phone from me and examined it from the inside out.
‘What are you looking for?’
He glanced at the driver, who was listening to Bhangra music at earsplitting levels. ‘Bug.’
‘You think someone was tracing us?’
‘Could be.’ He frowned at the phone. ‘I don’t know.’
‘Bottom line is, we need to lose these.’ He got out his own. ‘Fast.’
Without another word, he opened the back window and chucked both mobiles out onto the hard shoulder, where they smashed into lots of little pieces.
‘Are you mad?’ I twisted round in my seat and stared at the rapidly disappearing wreckage. The blast of a car horn behind us roused the cabbie long enough to glance back at the bits of plastic littering the road.
‘There was a spider on it,’ I said impatiently, and rounded on Jack. ‘How am I supposed to –’
‘Talk to your boyfriend? You’ll have to do without,’ Jack said, and I sulked. It made sense – someone had found us in France, and then again this morning. They could have been tracking the car, but even so …
‘Do you think someone was watching us?’ Jack said.
‘No,’ I said, more to reassure myself than him. ‘How could they know where we were? It must have been set … before …’ I trailed off as I tried to work out where and when. Shit, it was more likely someone had been following us. ‘Must have been on a timer,’ I said firmly. ‘If we hadn’t got up so late we could be dead by now.’
‘Thought you were used to near-death experiences.’
‘You never get used to near-death experiences.’
Jack gave me a little smile, and it occurred to me that it had been only four days since he nearly drowned, and since then we’d driven practically non-stop, hardly eaten properly, little chance to rest. When I nearly drowned I hardly got out of bed for three days.
‘Are you okay?’ I asked. ‘You know, since Friday night and all.’
He shrugged. ‘I’m okay.’
Macho.
‘How do you stop a man from drowning?’ I asked, and Jack frowned.
‘Get him out of the water and do mouth-to-mouth?’
‘Take your foot off his head.’
He stared at me for a minute, then he looked away. But I could tell he was smiling.
The shock of crowds and noise that was London hit me hard. So many people, so many cars, the constant rattle and prattle wearing on my nerves. Every accidental touch made me jump, every unexpected noise. The Underground train, all those hundreds of people pretending there was no one else there, seemed like an oasis of peace and quiet despite the shriek of the train on its tracks.
We left South Kensington station and followed the directions Jack had found to BBC&H. I watched him trot up the well-kept steps and hung back, staring appalled at the shiny brass, the discreet door plaque, the heavy velvet drapes I could see inside.
‘Aren’t yo
u coming?’ Jack said.
‘Have you seen me lately?’ I said, peering at my reflection in a window. Suddenly my chav plan didn’t seem like such a good idea.
‘Yeah, you’re being a chav.’
‘Exactly. Do you think this place looks like it deals with chavs?’
He came back down. ‘Well, it was your idea.’
I looked at Jack, who hadn’t shaved in days and looked in desperate need of a haircut. I looked down at myself in jeans and trainers.
‘How far is Oxford Street?’ I asked.
An hour later, courtesy of the cosmetics counter in Selfridges, I was de-chavved and looking more groomed than I ever have in my life. I know I’m old enough to have realised this by now, but it’s amazing what make-up can do for you. There was a stand selling reading glasses, and I bought a pair with the lowest prescription: any sort of furniture to make my face look different. I bought a trilby to cover my flat hair and vowed to find a new way of styling it soon. Then I let myself loose in the clothes department.
Luke was right: I was far more dangerous armed with money than with a gun. It was a damn good job Vallie didn’t pay close attention to her bank account. And, hey, at least I was putting the money back into the fashion industry whence it came, yes?
Outside, only a few minutes late, I looked for Jack. I’d told him to make himself look respectable, so I wasn’t sure I’d recognise him and –
Whoa.
I was beginning to wonder if Jack really was a threat. He might not have designs on my life, but he sure seemed bent on becoming the good-looking man in my life.
He wore glasses too, and a three-piece suit that might have been made for him. His hair had been slicked back and although he hadn’t shaved, he looked so glossy in every other respect that his stubble looked utterly designer. Every woman, and quite a few men, ogled him.
I tapped him on the shoulder and he turned with a look of surprise on that very pretty face of his.
‘You look …’ His eyes travelled over me, and I raised an eyebrow, waiting for his comment on my sharply tailored suit and vertiginously beautiful heels. ‘Different. Come on.’
Annoyed that he hadn’t been more complimentary, I told him to make himself useful and flag down a taxi. Good-looking man, indeed. I wasn’t feeling even slightly warm towards him now.
