Lydia didn’t know how to respond to that.
Maddie’s laugh made her skin prickle. ‘Not really. The old me was perfect.’
* * *
‘I know a way for you to resign permanently. To make it stick.’
‘Do tell.’ Maddie was smiling so widely her mouth was like a red slash across her face.
‘I can get you access to Mr Smith.’
‘I can get to him any time I like.’
‘Fair enough,’ Lydia said and made to leave.
‘Just like that? Finish your drink at least.’
‘Look, I want him gone,’ Lydia said. ‘He is running a personal mission and has the Families in his sights. It’s unacceptable.’
‘I don’t disagree,’ Maddie said. ‘He’s overstepped. I could teach you to shoot. Get him from a distance with a sniper rifle, it’s the safest way. Especially for a beginner.’
‘I don’t need a gun,’ Lydia said, trying to distract Maddie.
‘What are you going to do?’ Maddie didn’t change position. ‘Investigate him to death? Sooner or later you’re going to have to toughen up. I didn’t like Charlie, but he had that bit right at least.’
‘You don’t know what I’m capable of,’ Lydia said. ‘I don’t need a gun, because he’s already a dead man.’
That made Maddie cheer up. ‘He looked pretty perky last time I saw him.’
‘I was thinking we could work together. For a common purpose.’ Lydia outlined her plan while Maddie finished her drink.
The waiter appeared and Maddie ordered champagne which Lydia hoped was a good sign.
Once the business with the ice bucket and the glasses and the popping of the cork had been dealt with, Maddie picked up the long-stemmed glass and raised it in a toast. ‘To us.’
‘To us,’ Lydia echoed, hoping that she hadn’t just made a huge mistake.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Lydia pulled up in Emma’s suburban street. She had chocolates for the kids and a bottle of wine and was feeling strangely calm. She had weighed up the possibilities and decided that Emma was the most vulnerable. Fleet was prepared and she had warned her parents. They had left London for an impromptu package holiday and hadn’t told anybody, not even Lydia, where they had gone. And, as she reminded herself repeatedly, Henry Crow was no longer helpless.
The car door shut with a reassuring thunk and she could hear birds in the trees which lined the road. Children were playing in a nearby garden and their young voices tugged something painful inside Lydia. She wasn’t going to worry Emma, she reminded herself. She would just sit and have dinner and make conversation and play with Archie and Maisie. Be a good friend.
In Emma’s warm kitchen-diner, the evening sun pouring through the large windows, Lydia tried to breathe normally. She had thought she would feel better once she was here, but instead she felt like a bad omen. She had brought the darkness with her. She wondered what Fleet was doing and whether he had sensed anything when she had said goodbye. It was good that she was with Emma. If she spent her last night with him, she wouldn’t trust herself to walk to her fate in the morning.
Emma had poured three large glasses of wine and Tom was stirring something on the stove. He had a tea towel draped over one shoulder and was telling Lydia about his recipe for… something. She realised that she had zoned out and took a large sip of wine to avoid answering his question about coriander. She couldn’t summon an opinion.
Emma had clearly noticed her distraction. ‘Shall we sit outside?’ She put a hand on Tom’s arm. ‘Is that okay, babe?’
* * *
They sat on the small patio in foldable deck chairs which Emma had hauled out of the shed. The garden was filled with plastic ride-on toys, a small climbing frame and slide, and a couple of abandoned bikes, one of which didn’t have any pedals. It looked like an entire football team had been playing, not just two small children.
Although they weren’t quite as small as they had been. Dispensing hugs and chocolate when she arrived, Lydia had been hit with the changes. Maisie was taller and her vocabulary had doubled. Archie had lost a tooth and it gave him a rakish look. Like a tiny pirate.
‘I can’t believe how big Maisie has got,’ Lydia said. It was the kind of thing she had heard other people saying, proper grown-up people. Finding the words leaving her own mouth was odd, but not unpleasant. It made her feel responsible and capable. Which made a nice change.
Maisie and Archie were upstairs having something which Emma called ‘special time’. She pulled a face. ‘We decided that they could have a slightly later bedtime on weekends, but we’ve dressed it up as special time. If they have earned all their stars during the week, they can have an extra twenty minutes playing in their rooms before bedtime.’
‘Cunning,’ Lydia said. The secret service had nothing on parents for making loaded deals.
‘So,’ Emma regarded Lydia over the rim of her wine glass. ‘What’s going on?’
‘I’m visiting. For dinner.’
‘And you’re staying the night?’
‘If that’s still all right?’ Lydia raised her glass. ‘Then I can have a couple of these.’
‘Bollocks.’
‘I’d prefer wine.’
Emma ignored the pathetic attempt at humour. She gave Lydia a serious look. ‘You know what I mean. Tell me what’s going on.’
Lydia briefly thought about playing the ‘can’t a girl visit her best mate’ card, but she could see that Emma wasn’t in the mood. ‘You know my MI6 guy?’
‘The one who wanted information on your family?’
‘Yeah. I told him to take a hike, that I wasn’t going to work for him anymore.’
‘Hadn’t you made an agreement?’
Emma wasn’t accusing Lydia of anything, but she felt it like a blow, anyway. Her word should be her bond. That was the kind of code she had been raised to hold. ‘He forced one on me. And I considered it fulfilled.’
‘But he had other ideas?’
‘He wanted me to join his department. Doing what, I’m not exactly sure. Using my Crow abilities in some way.’ Lydia looked away as she spoke, finding it hard to look squarely at Emma when she referred to magic. The ways in which she was so different. So weird. ‘He took it poorly when I refused.’
Emma was sitting very still. She was no dummy and knew something bad was coming. Lydia was glad they were outside as it wasn’t the sort of thing that belonged in Emma’s safe and normal house. She said it quickly, like that would make it easier.
Emma didn’t react for a moment. She had always been calmer than Lydia, more able to take a breath and process things before acting. When boys started pinging their bra straps in class, Lydia had turned around and smacked the perpetrator without hesitating. Which meant she had ended up in front of the headteacher for violence. Emma had taken a moment to think, then bawled the guy out, and then been to see the head of year to demand immediate action. In short, Emma was smart. And had been a proper grown-up ever since Lydia had known her.
‘Isn’t that illegal?’ She said now, calm and collected, like Lydia had just told her that Mr Smith had had her car towed, not sent an assassin to murder her.
‘Very much so,’ Lydia said. ‘But I think the secret service get special dispensation from the police. Or they do it without getting caught. Honestly, I’m a bit hazy on how it all works.’
‘I’m guessing the secret service don’t advertise their methods. They probably don’t produce handy pamphlets, either.’
Lydia slugged her wine, relaxing a notch. She was relieved that Emma was still able to make jokes, but more relieved still that she hadn’t immediately sent her packing.
‘You’re worried about me, aren’t you?’
‘Maddie got me on the roof by threatening you,’ Lydia said. ‘And it worked. Which means you’re perfectly safe.’
‘How so?’
‘Because the threat of hurting you worked to control me. No one would throw away that kind of weapon. You’re t
oo useful.’
‘Well, that’s good to know.’ Emma drained half her glass in one long swallow. After a few moments of thought, she asked the question Lydia really didn’t want to answer. ‘So, why are you worried enough for a sleepover tonight?’
Lydia had rehearsed this. She wasn’t going to tell Emma the truth. Not all of it, anyway. It was too much to tell her friend that this was, most likely, her last night and that she wanted to spend it in her normal, happy house, with Maisie and Archie and all their life and promise and energy. That she wanted to laugh with her best friend and go to sleep hearing the faint murmur of her voice, the timbre of it so familiar and comforting. So she went with the other part of the reason. ‘I’m teaming up with Maddie to take Mr Smith out. It turns out he is a rogue element in the service and if he disappears, my problems with MI6 should disappear.’
‘Just like that?’
‘Well, hopefully disappear. There’s no guarantee, but he’s definitely the one with the Crow obsession.’
‘And Maddie wants him gone, too?’
‘Our goals temporarily align, so we’re going to work together.’
‘What aren’t you telling me?’
Lydia widened her eyes. ‘Nothing. Just that I don’t trust her and I wanted to be here tonight on the off-chance she decided to pay you a visit.’
Emma frowned. ‘Why would she…? Oh.’
‘I don’t think she will,’ Lydia said quickly. ‘She’s got no reason to threaten you, now, I’m doing what she wants.’ She had stumbled over the words ‘hurt you’ when she had practised, so had changed it to ‘threaten’.
‘We’ve been in danger for weeks,’ Emma said, cutting to the truth of the matter with her usual clear-eyed efficiency. ‘Why are you here tonight?’
Lydia couldn’t look her square in the face. ‘I just wanted to see you.’
* * *
Thankfully, Emma let it drop. They had dinner and Tom made them laugh with his descriptions of his new line manager. The food was good and the conversation flowed. Emma played along that it was a normal evening and Lydia was grateful.
Lydia was rearranging the sofa cushions when Emma walked in with an armful of duvet and pillows. ‘Are you still with Fleet?’
‘We’re all good.’
‘Aren’t you worried about him, too?’
Lydia didn’t want to admit that she had deliberately played up her relationship with Fleet to further distract Maddie from Emma. It was the truth, but it sounded cold. ‘Fleet’s got police protection.’ It wasn’t entirely a lie. Fleet was police. And he was protecting himself. It felt rude to tell Emma that Fleet could look after himself, like she was accusing Emma of being weak for just being a normal human being, for not being trained for violence and threat.
Lydia didn’t expect to sleep, but she had brought a book to read. She dozed a little in the early hours, but started drinking coffee at five. Maisie and Archie were up just after six and Emma sent them downstairs to play with ‘Auntie Lydia’.
Lydia was engrossed in building a complicated vehicle from random Lego bricks when Emma told her to check her phone. ‘Local news.’
In the Camberwell and Peckham section of the BBC news site, there was a report of a fire in a flat. The building had been evacuated and fire fighters were on the scene. The amateur photo illustrating the article showed Fleet’s block. There was a red block headline which said ‘breaking news’ and a video alongside the article. Lydia clicked it.
A reporter was standing in the street along from Fleet’s flat. The carpark for the building was, presumably, filled with fire engines and police, but his position still gave a clear view of the smoke-filled sky and the damaged building. Lydia didn’t need time to work out that the source was on Fleet’s floor and side of the building. She could see it instantly.
The reporter was speaking to camera, his face serious. ‘London Ambulance Service treated three people on the scene and one has been taken to hospital for smoke inhalation. There is one confirmed fatality. The identity of this individual is not being revealed at this time, although their next of kin have been contacted. We have information that it is believed to be a Metropolitan police officer and there is an appeal for witnesses to what may not be a tragic accident, but a targeted attack.’
Chapter Twenty-Five
‘Oh my god,’ Emma had been watching over Lydia’s shoulder and she wrapped her arms around her. ‘Lydia…’
‘It’s okay,’ Lydia said, her voice muffled by Emma’s arms. ‘It’s not Fleet.’
‘What?’
Lydia extricated herself from Emma’s embrace and turned to face her. ‘It’s okay. I promise, he’s fine. He wasn’t in his flat.’ She showed Emma the text message on her burner phone that had just pinged through. ‘See. He’s all good.’
‘What’s wrong?’ Archie’s little face was crumpled with concern.
‘Nothing’s wrong,’ Lydia said quickly. ‘There was a fire but nobody was hurt.’
‘Fire?’ Maisie said. ‘Get engine.’ She disappeared below the edge of the coffee table and reappeared carrying a Lego fire engine.
‘Why don’t you two go and make sure Daddy’s up. You can tickle his feet if he isn’t out of bed.’ She waited until the small people had thundered out of the room and up the stairs, before turning back to Lydia.
‘Sorry… I hope I didn’t worry Archie.’
‘Was that-?’
‘Maddie. Yes. I told her I was moving into his flat. I thought it would keep her focused on Fleet and away from you.’
‘Oh God,’ Emma sat down. ‘She’s properly psychotic.’
Lydia wondered which part of ‘contract killer’ hadn’t given her the tip off, but she restrained herself from saying so. Her world had always been hard to comprehend. Especially in the cosy and comforting living room with cushions and lovingly tended pot plants and toys in the corner. It was completely fair that Emma was leaning forward, head between her knees and dragging in lungfuls of air like she was trying not to hurl. Lydia patted her shoulder and murmured comforting words. After a while, Emma straightened up and managed a watery smile. ‘Sorry. I think I just hadn’t taken you seriously before. About her, I mean. Your cousin.’
‘That’s okay. Best way to function.’
‘How do you do it?’
Emma looked sympathetic and Lydia couldn’t stand it. ‘Practise. And denial.’
‘And alcohol?’
Lydia grabbed her for a quick hug and then Emma left to hustle the kids to get ready for school.
* * *
Lydia took the opportunity to wash her face and brush her teeth, then she called Fleet, needing the reassurance of his voice more than she cared to admit. As arranged, he had rung his gaffer and had a false report fed to the press. Male police officer found dead at the scene.
‘Sinclair came through on that one,’ Fleet said. ‘The gaffer wasn’t going to say no with her backing me.’
‘I’m sorry about your flat.’
‘Nobody was badly hurt, that’s the main thing. And hopefully it will sell the deal to Maddie.’
‘She’ll believe me,’ Lydia said, injecting certainty into her voice. Now that she knew Fleet was safe, she couldn’t let herself speak to him for too long.
‘Call me as soon as you can.’
She was grateful that he didn’t question her further. She felt like glass, as if the slightest thing could make her resolve falter. And if that happened, she would fall and shatter on the floor.
* * *
Lydia went to the safe house in Vauxhall, the place where she had met with Mr Smith when he had blackmailed her into sharing information. She waved at the cameras she knew were hidden in the reception area and held up a piece of paper with some handwriting in block capitals, then sat on the pavement outside to wait. She could have used the phone number that she still had for him, but she wanted to speak to him in person and she was pretty sure he wouldn’t be able to resist.
The black car pulled up, tinted wind
ows obscuring the interior. The back door nearest Lydia swung open and Mr Smith, sharp suit and patrician smile in place, inclined his head.
She hesitated. This was probably a very bad idea. The man wanted her dead.
‘In or out?’
She got in.
* * *
The car pulled away and soon they were passing the hulking geometric mess of MI6 and crossing Vauxhall Bridge. ‘Fleet knows I’m here,’ Lydia said. ‘As does your boss.’
‘Which boss would that be?’
‘Sinclair,’ Lydia said, watching his face carefully.
He didn’t so much as twitch. ‘You’re getting more cautious. That’s undoubtedly wise.’
Swallowing down the urge to tell Mr Smith she didn’t need his advice or his approval, she looked at the man in the front passenger seat. He was large and wearing a suit. The man driving looked identical except his haircut was, if anything, even shorter and neater.
She had been prepared for Mr Smith’s signature but, having not seen him for a while, it still made her feel nauseous. She could hear planks of wood creaking, hear the slap of sails in the wind, and taste gold on her tongue. Salt air and brine and sunlight catching the surface of the waves, shattering the water into a thousand painful white diamonds. She had been practising on accessing her well of Crow power without having to move physically and she used it, now. Imagining turning down the volume on his signature until it was barely detectable.
Mr Smith was watching her carefully. ‘I take it you want to trade?’
‘I wanted to warn you,’ Lydia said, pausing before she used his real name, ‘Gale.’
His lips stretched into a thin smile. ‘Sinclair?’
She nodded. ‘I still think of you as Mr Smith, though. For old times’ sake.’
‘Warn me?’
‘Maddie is very unhappy.’
‘I am aware.’
‘Yes, poor Sergio Bastos.’
The Shadow Wing Page 18
