The Shadow Artist

by James Grayson

  Alex was at a loss on that one. “Cruisers?”

  “Boozers,” Jack said.

  She shook her head.

  They drank in silence until the game entered halftime and the Sky News broadcast came on. The announcer, a well-spoken woman, dived into a report about a murder-suicide in the Isle of Man.

  A murder-suicide that involved the Treasury minister.

  Alex sat forward.

  Jack whispered, “The passport you saw in your father’s briefcase.”

  She nodded, still staring at the screen. “Isle of Man.”

  The Isle of Man, otherwise known as just Mann, was a self-governing British Crown dependency located in the Irish Sea between Great Britain and Ireland. Populated by only about eighty thousand people, Mann was famous for motorcycle racing, its tailless Manx cats, and that was about it. Alex wondered what business her father could possibly have in Mann.

  The picture switched to a reporter interviewing a Metropolitan Police inspector in what looked to be Scotland Yard’s press office. “At this point, we are focusing on the lengthy relationship between the two men. If anyone has seen them together recently or would like to assist with knowledge, we ask you to call this number.”

  A UK telephone number flashed on the screen below her, all fives and ones, before the picture returned to the anchor, who said, “No clues at this time, at least none that the police are willing to share publicly, however inside sources have suggested that one of the bodies was mutilated, perhaps missing a limb.”

  “Son of a—” Alex fished the newly bought disposable cell phone from her pocket and began dialing fives and ones.

  Someone picked up on the second ring. “Good evening, Metropolitan Police. How may I direct your call?”

  Matching the man’s British accent, Alex said, “Yes, I’m looking for Inspector Valerie Wainscott. She’s lead on the Mann murders.”

  “Please hold the line.”

  A few seconds later, Alex was directed to another line that began to ring with the deep buzzing sound of old English phones. A man answered this time, “Special Investigation. How may I be of assist?”

  “I’m looking for Inspector Wainscott. Can you please transfer me?”

  “She’s a bit tied up at the moment. Can I be of assist?”

  “Tell her it’s a friend from Legoland.” Legoland was the current nickname for 85 Vauxhall Cross, the new building that housed the bulk of MI6. Off the Thames and stacked with multiple levels, cylindrical bay towers, and green glass, it looked like it was made of giant plastic bricks.

  “Right, then. I’ll advise.”

  Jack gave her a skeptical look. “Your accent sounds off.”

  She placed a hand over the microphone. “How so?”

  “It’s a little like a Brit trying to be an American.”

  “Very helpful, thank you.”

  A woman came on the line. “Inspector Wainscott. Who’s speaking?”

  “As your colleague informed you, I’m a friend.” She raised her eyebrows to Jack. Better?

  He wobbled a flat palm in the air. Not really.

  “And are you going to tell me your name?”

  “I’m afraid I can’t on this one.”

  “Then how do I know you’re authentic?”

  “Call Director Grant’s secretary, Anne. She’s just moved across the hall to a new half-oval desk made of sleek white composite. On it, she has a photo of her sons, Cameron and Charles, both dressed in their Oxford Day School uniforms. If I’m correct, call me back at this number.” I gave her the cell number and hung up.

  Jack looked at Alex with his eyebrows raised.

  She shrugged. “I met Grant last month through a client.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  Less than a minute later, the disposable cell phone buzzed on the table. Alex answered.

  Wainscott said, “So she does. Now, what can you tell me?”

  “Not here. We’ll have to meet.” And as Alex considered options for a meeting place, a schedule of upcoming games flashed on the TV. It gave her an idea.

  “First tell me what it’s all about.”

  Damn inspectors didn’t get the cloak-and-dagger workbook. They had no patience. Alex said, “It’s about the murder-suicide in Isle of Man, the investigation I believe you are heading up.”

  She stayed silent for a bit, then said, “Unless you can give me more, I’m sorry.”

  On a hunch, but with confidence, Alex said, “I can connect this to your other case.”

  “What other—”

  “The bombing at Café Martin.”

  Silence, then, “How?”

  “The victim in Mann, he was missing a hand.”

  She cleared her throat. “Tell me where you are. I can come to you.”

  “Not now.” Glancing up at the television, Alex said, “Tomorrow, noon, at Ashburton Grove, Emirates. There will be a ticket in your name at the Match Day window.”

  “A football game?” She snorted. “Anything else?”

  “Yes.” Alex nodded at Jack as she said, “I’ll need a mobile number for you.”

  After memorizing the number, Alex told her she’d call with instructions and hung up.

  Jack said, “Good luck finding tickets to that match, it’s been sold out for weeks I’m sure.”

  “We’ll see about that.” Alex stood and walked to the bar. “Bart?”

  “Aye, yeah? Can I do for you?” He kept wiping glasses with a dirty rag and never looked up.

  “I hear you can get tickets to football games.”

  He stopped. Still didn’t look up. “Mona tell you that?”

  “She did.”

  He sucked something from his top tooth and said, “Not any game, just Arsenal. And home only.” Then he turned and started placing glasses on the long shelf behind him. “It’ll cost you, though. What game you hoping for?”

  “Liverpool.”

  “Tomorrow? You’re right crazy, love.”

  Alex took out her wallet and unfolded five hundred-pound notes out of view of the other patrons. “I’ll pay a premium.”

  “Don’t care what you’re willing. The match is tomorrow, you’re bloody bonkers if you—”

  Jack walked up next to her and leaned against the bar, nodded to the man’s cell phone near the bottles. “That your mobile?” He asked.

  Bart eyed him, and said, “Aye, what’s it to ya?”

  Jack reached into his pocket and drew out what looked to be the latest model Samsung Ultra-Whatever phone. It was still covered with a thick wrap of cellophane. He placed it on the bar.

  Alex tried to give him a look that told him she was doing just fine without Jack and his sexy boy toys, but it seemed that Jack and Bart were having a moment.

  Bart said, “That the latest model?”

  “Hasn’t even hit the market.”

  “That right?” Bart reached over and picked it up, turned it with a look of amazement and wonder. “Stolen?”

  “Not like that. I work for Samsung, yeah?” Jack showed him a card. “That there’s set to retail at over four-hundred pound next month. I’m hearing pre-orders have the first lot sold out already.”

  “How do I—”

  And Jack cut him off. “No problem, see? Just put the SIM card from your current phone into the Samsung, it won’t know the difference.”

  Bart looked back and forth between Jack and the cash in Alex’s hand. Then he glanced around, slipped the new Samsung into his pocket, and sucked the tooth again. “How many tickets you need?”

  Okay, so maybe Jack sped things up a bit.

  “Four,” Alex said, “but only two together.”

  Thirteen

  By the time Alex showered back at Hanna’s, Jack had crashed in the second bedroom. Exhausted and with no interest in relationship noise at the moment, she slipped into the den and onto a nailhead leather sofa. She curled under a grey, soft wool blanket and slept like a slab of granite.

  Almost.

  She’s nine, and playi
ng barefoot soccer with her best friend Roberto. She does this when she stays out in Fairfax with Ginger, her grandmother, whenever her mom goes to spend time with her dad in Europe somewhere. They usually spend a solid two weeks together and then apart again for months. Other people ask how she does it, but it’s her normal, so she never thinks about it.

  As for that day, Robbie and Alex had met up after school, kicked off their shoes, and popped the ball around the street all afternoon as usual. The first time Robbie had goaded her into playing barefoot with him, she’d ended up with blisters from her heels to her toes. Now she had a thick pad of callus on each foot, same as Robbie, along with some Argentinian style soccer skills.

  The two of them are lying on the sidewalk, oblivious to the passing cars and everyone else in the world, and debating the best soccer player in history. Alex insists it’s Pelé, and he counters with Maradona. A baloney argument, and he knows it, but who else can he pick against Pelé?

  The day hasn’t been perfect, just typical. School. Robbie. Dinner soon. Then homework. An average spring day in Northern Virginia, where the sun peeks at you with hints but no promises. Nothing special. So when Alex hears Ginger swing open that screen door and call her name, she’s not surprised. Dinnertime, is all.

  Her mom is coming back tomorrow, so she’s a little disappointed to have to say good-bye to Robbie early. Though he lives right across the street from Ginger, she never knows when she’ll be back to see him.

  He says, “I wish you could stay with Ginger all the time.”

  “Yeah, but then I’d have to school you in soccer every day.”

  “Whatever, Allejandra.” He kicks the ball at her and misses, and his mom tells him to come on in, let Alex go home now.

  Alex walks up to the porch where Ginger is waiting alongside a tall man in a dark suit. She hadn’t noticed him arrive. And as she strolls that length of grass, she slowly gets a funny feeling deep in her stomach, a flutter, a tightening. Then she notices that Ginger’s face looks sad, her eyes are swollen and red. The man stands tall and silent, hat in his hand.

  She smiles, but it’s a lie.

  “Hey there, darling. Having fun with Roberto?”

  “Yeah.” Alex’s heart is in her stomach, and she has no idea why.

  “That’s good.” She holds out her arms.

  Alex looks back at Robbie, who has just collected the ball in his yard. He shrugs and waves, then dribbles the ball in a zigzag toward his own mom, who stands at their front door.

  Ginger looks out that way and gives Robbie’s mom a modest wave.

  Robbie’s mom waves back, then puts her hand to her mouth, hustles Robbie to her, and holds him. Tight.

  “What’s going on?” Alex asks.

  The man glances away.

  Ginger gets down on one knee, taking Alex’s hands in hers. She smiles again. But this time it wavers and spills. “Honey, there was accident last night. An explosion at a restaurant in Spain…”

  And there it was. The stomach never lies.

  Alex swallows. Hard. “Where Mom went to see Dad?”

  Ginger nods as the tears begin to fill her eyes, but she blinks hard, as though she’s willing them away. “Yes. They were there. A lot of people from the government were there.”

  Alex stares at her as her knees buckle. She swallows, and Ginger holds her up.

  A solid lump forms in Alex’s throat, like a peach pit, and she fights it down to say, “How bad of an explosion?”

  Ginger stares right into her eyes, the strongest woman in the world, and says, “As bad as it could be.” With a long blink, she nods.

  Alex stares past her into the living room, at the funny little clock shaped like a crystal heart. It’s never worked, but Ginger refuses to fix it or throw it away. Alex lets Ginger hold her so she doesn’t have to stand on her own, and Ginger whispers again, “As bad as it could be.”

  Numb and scared and confused and suddenly so wobbly that she can fall back into the threadbare grass, Alex looks back across the street at Robbie’s house. Poor Robbie, with his tangled curly hair and crooked smile. Robbie has gotten his wish. But he’s crying, too.

  Because Robbie would have never wished for this.

  “Been awake for long?”

  Alex startled when Jack entered the room. He wore a long, black robe that accented his broad shoulders, but hid the sculpted body that she knew was beneath. She didn’t know how he did it, but he was always attuned to her biorhythms. When she woke, when she slept. She remembered she couldn’t turn over in bed without at least one of his limbs snaking out to find her in his twilight sleep.

  Sitting up straight at one end of the sofa, she said, “A few minutes.”

  “How’s your shoulder?”

  “Sore.” Alex stretched it a bit. “Like a bad bruise.”

  “It’s a hole from a bullet.”

  “Right. Today it feels like a bruise.”

  “Right.” He walked to the windows, pulled aside the sheers, and looked out at London’s version of a hazy sunrise. Keeping his back to her, he said, “I’m curious. Why didn’t you…join me last night?”

  Alex imagined the powerful legs underneath that robe and asked herself the same question. “Didn’t want to wake you.”

  He looked at her. “Would’ve been nice to be woken by you again.”

  Alex answered with a nearly audible gulp.

  He peered at her for a moment and said, “Have you had a look outside?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Eerie with the cloud cover low as it is.”

  “May be a white Christmas after all,” she said. “History in the making.”

  He turned, eyes flicking to her sketchbook on the coffee table. “You should draw it.”

  “If they cancel the soccer match, I’ll have nothing better to do.”

  “They’ll only cancel on account of a blizzard.” He walked over to the sofa and stood above Alex. Looked at the sketchbook in her hands. “How about you draw me?”

  “Now?”

  He looked her over and said, “We have the time.”

  Keeping her gaze on his, Alex said, “You’re overdressed.”

  “Am I?” Jack took hold of a length of the robe’s belt, gave her a mischievous look, but didn’t pull it. “Perhaps you could use your imagination.”

  Biting her lip, Alex said, “Perhaps.”

  He smiled and turned to the sofa as she gathered her sketchbook and pencils and walked over to the desk. She chose a few harder leads suitable for detailed work. Then she wheeled the chair to the front of the desk and balanced the sketchbook on her thighs.

  Jack had already stretched the length of the sofa, hands locked behind his head. Alex had drawn plenty of live models in her study, but this time she’d have to improvise a bit.

  Alex sat back, closed her eyes for a few moments and took in the image she would create. Then, using long, slow strokes, she outlined Jack’s figure. His legs and chest and neck and head.

  He had the form and physical balance of a swimmer or a triathlete, muscular but not bulging. The drawing came easy, lines formed shapes and shapes became defined. Each stroke brought certainty and strength to the image. A sensual exercise of perception meeting veracity. An artist’s essence of pleasure.

  “What is it?” Jack asked.

  He’d caught Alex smiling as she worked. “Nothing.”

  He gave her a crooked, almost evil little smirk.

  Alex let her mind wander until her subconscious took over and created from within its own vault. She caught the muted sunlight stretching through the glass French doors, reaching across the striped sofa and up the wall to add contrast and depth. She modulated the light and shadows of his body, the strength of his arms and the surety of his hands. Then she continued with his neckline. The muscles there were defined but not overwhelming, and at that moment he’d held them just taut enough.

  As she moved to his face and searching eyes, Jack drew Alex from her trance, asking, “I believe you were dr
eaming this morning.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “I heard you make … a noise.”

  Alex kept her hand moving without making any defining marks.

  “You know, it’s really alright to talk about yourself.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Alex,” he said quietly. “Tell me more about what happened to your parents.”

  She stopped for a moment, but kept her gaze on the page. “The bombing in Spain. I told you before. It happened in a restaurant outside Madrid. Eighty-two people died, eleven…well, ten were Americans. They were said to be the targets.”

  “And now you’re thinking maybe it was only nine people?”

  “No.” She looked up at him, blinked once. “My mother was selfless. She would have never left me.”

  “That doesn’t necessarily mean—”

  “I know exactly what it means.” Alex turned back to the drawing, where she started detailing Jack’s eyes, keeping them pure and not inquisitive, like they were now.

  “Sorry, I should never have implied…”

  She shrugged the conversation away.

  They stayed quiet for a long time. Long enough for Alex to finish the first layer of details, the ones that made the scene, and finish a second. Then she started that third layer of work, filling in the smallest and most intimate of details, and Jack’s next question almost knocked her from the chair.

  “Are you happy you followed the same path as your father?”

  Alex had to work to steady her hand while she continued with the details the eyes that now looked challenging. “What do you mean?”

  “The CIA.”

  Alex stopped drawing.

  Upon receiving her assignment into Clandestine Service, she’d signed a standard CIA nondisclosure agreement that precluded Alex from sharing her position—much less assignment details, classified or not—with anyone other than her husband, of which she had none, and direct family members, also nil. So, during her seven years as an agent, Alex had told exactly no one. She’d been meticulous with her cover and always gave simple explanations for every move she made around Jack.

  Then Alex realized it. When he had found her lying in the street, she was wearing the suit her father had left for her. When she awoke at Hanna’s, she was wearing different clothes. Jack must have seen the passport, the one with Alex’s photo and the name Amanda Carr. She was so groggy, she hadn’t noticed. Still, Alex could easily explain it away, saying it was given to her by her contractor to gain entry to some facility or something.