You Think You Know Someone

by J B Holman

  ‘That’s good,’ she said, as Foxx left the room.

  ‘Charlie, I am so sorry,’ said Julie, once they were alone.

  ‘What? That I’ve only slept with three men?’

  ‘No, that my colleague is an idiot.’

  ‘He’s not an idiot, he’s just a boy.’

  ‘I think you’ll find he’s both.’

  ‘But he likes you.’

  ‘No. We’re just work colleagues.’

  ‘Maybe. But he still likes you. A lot. But you’re not sure about him?’

  ‘He’s OK.’

  ‘He’s more than OK: he’s hot,’ said Charlie with teenage dorm-room excitement.

  ‘Yes,’ said Julie giving away an unintended smile. ‘He is hot. But men and me haven’t really been working out, so I’m taking a break.’ And it became Julie’s turn to be loose-lipped and alarmingly honest. She told herself it was part of the plan, part of getting close to a source, but the words flowed too naturally for that. The story unfolded, from Terry to Duncan, and ended badly as it always did. Charlie laid a reassuring hand on Julie’s arm. A bond had started to form.

  Foxx had scoped the house and spent time on the high target rooms, the study, the den and the master bedroom. He searched through drawers and convenient places for hiding notes or memory sticks. He tried to log on to computers, but the SSS firewall was too big even for him to climb, in the time available. Wiping his HR files had been easy because he was inside SSS, but logging into the Head of Planning’s home PC proved impossible. He searched fast, carefully and to leave no trace. But the only thing he found was a list of names on the top of the desk. He took a picture of it and carried on his search.

  By the time he got back to the drawing room, the girls had gone. The French doors were open and the garden was lit with a hundred hidden light bulbs. The girls sat deep in conversation on a bench by a fountain at the far end of the Rose Garden.

  ‘And what about you?’ asked Julie, feeling it was time to stop pouring her own heart out. ‘Did you like Guildford? And living with a man twice your age?’

  ‘Yes, he was my brother, or half-brother. He had a different dad . . . obviously! He was fun, but he made me study! I was in Guildford for three or four years, then moved to St Ives for three years, then lived in America for a year, near Boston.’

  ‘Wow, how exciting. Were you working there?’ Charlie nodded. ‘What did you do?’

  ‘Waitressing. Then I came back to London. I was only here for a couple of months when I met Nicki.’

  ‘Where did you meet him?’

  ‘I was at a big gala dinner at the Dorchester.’

  ‘How posh! What were you doing there?’

  ‘Waitressing.’

  There was a certain predictability to Charlie’s career history. ‘He was all flirty and handsy, then didn’t leave at the end. Long story short, I woke up here in the morning and have been here ever since.’

  ‘What’s it like being with Nicki?’

  ‘It’s good. He’s a real control merchant, but he’s only here a few nights a week and some weekends. I’m only with him for about twenty hours a week, so I do my best to make him happy. I always make myself look my best, wear the clothes he likes, let him ogle my bum, wave goodbye when he goes and meet him at the door when he comes home. He’s a very simple man, a bit ass-phixiated, but it’s not hard to make him feel good.’

  ‘It doesn’t bother you that he is a lot older than you?’

  ‘No, he was a lot older than me when I married him. He gets a bit tense sometimes, that’s all. Lately there was some report about something and he got totally uptight about it. The Antelope-Beaver report I called it. I can’t remember what it was really called. But then I just gave him a . . . what can I say . . . special attention.’

  They chatted for twenty minutes or more, until Charlie said,

  ‘Your friend is waiting at the doors. I think he wants to go.’ They’d enjoyed their unexpected deep dive into each other’s lives, but Julie had not learned much of anything. Two minutes later they were all standing at the front door.

  ‘Thank you, Mrs Tenby. You’ve been very kind,’ said Foxx. Then as he left, he turned to Julie. ‘I’ll see you in a minute. I’ll be in the car.’ Julie was facing Charlie, not sure whether to kiss her or shake hands and settled on neither.

  ‘Yes, thank you Charlie. It was very nice to meet you.’

  ‘No, it was my pleasure. It was nice talking to you. I guess I don’t have many . . .’ She paused for a moment.

  ‘Friends?’ suggested Julie helpfully.

  ‘I was going to say people to chat to, but I suppose you’re right. I chat to the people at work, but not so much, and the only other people I see are Nicki’s friends and he always wants me to be on my best behaviour, so it was nice chatting to you.’

  ‘Who knows, maybe we will meet again,’ said Julie as she leant in an inch to kiss a cheek and thought better of it. ‘Look after yourself.’ She bent to pick up her bag. She bent, she picked and then it happened. Julie felt it, Charlie heard it. They caught each other’s eyes and laughed. But to Julie it was a disaster.

  Two minutes later they were upstairs, in a spare bedroom, Julie with her back to the mirror.

  ‘Oh! My! God!’ she exclaimed as her eyes were drawn to the non-existent seat of her trousers. They had not so much split as disintegrated. Her bottom was clearly visible, both cheeks covered in nothing but fresh air and a few loose strands of black thread.

  ‘These are my favourite trousers,’ she said, with palpable sorrow in her voice. She wasn’t so much embarrassed by her predicament as distraught at the loss of an old friend. ‘They were Duncan’s first ever present to me.’ She made little attempt to hide her distress. She looked, she stared, she scrabbled with her fingertips.

  Charlie slipped out to return moments later holding a well-chosen skirt on a hanger.

  ‘Try this,’ she said. ‘It should go with the top you’re wearing.’

  ‘Don’t be silly,’ said Julie, forgetting her manners for a moment. ‘Nothing of yours will fit me. We’re hardly the same shape.’

  ‘Yes, you’re right. Your waist is much slimmer than mine; this might be a bit loose on you.’

  Julie took the skirt and slipped it on. Charlie took the defeated, de-seated trousers and lay them neatly on the bed. ‘It suits you. You look good in it.’ Charlie had chosen well. The waist was a comfortable fit and the flowing style of the material slipped gracefully over Julie’s rounder form. It hung well, like an £1800 haute-couture garment should. Julie would have died if she had known the price. ‘Take it,’ said Charlie. ‘It’ll never replace your trousers, but it’ll get you home.’

  ‘Thank you. I will. You saved me. I will send it back to you.’

  ‘You needn’t. If you like it, you can keep it.’

  ‘You’re an angel,’ she said, feeling a sudden closeness, and kissed Charlie lightly on the cheek. ‘I don’t know what to say.’

  ‘Say nothing, go and join your friend. He’ll be missing you.’ She handed Julie her dilapidated trousers.

  ‘No, can I leave them here, can you . . .? I can’t bear to throw them away.’ And she scurried off to join Foxx.

  ‘Oh,’ said Charlie, as Julie was leaving, ‘I remember now. It wasn’t Antelope-Beaver. It was Anderson-Bevan. He got quite agitated about it. What are men like?’

  ‘Children,’ replied Julie, knowing an answer wasn’t really required. ‘And thanks again.’

  She skipped out of the front door and over to the car.

  Under any other circumstances, Julie would have just made a new friend.

  Commander Storrington quizzed his Head of Investigations at the Sunday evening security meeting.

  ‘Serafina Pekkala? At GCHQ-2?’

  ‘Affirmative,’ said Hoy.

  ‘That adds a different dimension,’ muttered Brekkenfield.

  ‘Yes. She’s got the highest GCHQ-2 clearance; access to everything,’ confirmed Storrington. She can
read my mails, forwards my mails, trace my actions, he thought to himself. ‘She’s a real danger.’

  ‘I’m going to remove her clearance and wipe her pass key. I’ll tell Security at GCHQ to detain her on sight,’ said Hoy.

  ‘No,’ said the Commander. ‘Don’t do that. Leave it as it is. If the bird comes back to the nest. . .’ the sentence was left unfinished. ‘Do nothing and tell nobody; not for now anyway.’

  ‘She’s in on it,’ added Morgan-Tenby. ‘It’s Bonnie and Clyde.’

  Storrington shook his head and explained. ‘He kicked the door open and tied her to the bed, so no, she was not in on it - not at first. But he’s a real persuader, could talk black into white. And she left with him, presumably willingly or she’d be dead, so my guess is . . .’ Another sentence was left un-concluded. This was out of character for the Commander, but Hoy didn’t push it. Desperate times. The silence hung for a moment or two. ‘Two birds flown,’ added the Commander, thinking out loud. ‘Two birds, one Stone.’ He gathered his thoughts and continued.

  ‘The weak link: Julie Connor. She’ll make a mistake and then we’ll have her.’

  15

  Shine on

  Julie Connor followed Eduard Foxx through Commander Storrington’s front door and closed it quietly behind her. She felt acutely aware, as she gazed around his most private of residences, that she had not only broken into his home, she had invaded his life.

  Commander Storrington did not have a house, other than the basic bothy he owned in deepest rural Scotland; he had a flat in Westminster, on the third floor. A credit card and a master key made light of gaining access. The alarm bleeped quietly indicating its intention of notifying Scotland Yard in thirty seconds of the intruder’s presence. Foxx unzipped a small hand sized case, took out a pair of wires with tiny crocodile clips, an electrical screwdriver and an electronic device the size of a mobile phone. Five seconds later, the alarm stopped bleeping.

  ‘How did you do that?’ asked Julie, clearly impressed.

  ‘Does it matter?’ he asked dismissively. She shook her head. Conversation closed.

  Julie took the kitchen and the bathroom, but found nothing other than evidence of an austere life, hard lived: wholefood, vegetables, fruit, salad, no sweets, crisps or indulgences. He drank Mongolian White Tea. There was a picture of his wife on the work surface next to an unopened box of Whittard’s English Breakfast Special Mix. He had left his personal mobile phone bill on the side. She noted the number. On the table was a pen, which had been used to alter and edit a document that lay next to it. She picked up the document, read it and took it with her.

  In the bathroom, she found cold tiles, coal-tar soap and a toothbrush. There was a hard-edged loofah, a hot tap so seldom used it had visibly seized up, and soap of a variety that had been unperfumed and unchanged for the last hundred years. She entered the barely furnished hall: no secrets, no surplus, no decoration and no frivolity, just function.

  Foxx had dismissed the third bedroom. It may contain a thousand secrets, but they would take too long to find. It housed boxes, skis, scuba equipment, more boxes, unused blankets wrapped in plastic, boots, rock-climbing kit, dumbbells, old jackets, twenty empty snuff boxes, more boots and a dozen unhung wall pictures.

  In contrast, the spare room had a bed and a wardrobe, nothing else. Foxx closed the door and focused on the living room. He searched through the small piles of neatly ordered papers that lay on the table. Julie wandered in after him.

  ‘This is motive, right?’ The document was a draft speech opposing the PM’s Brexit Defence deal. It was erudite and well-written, but clear in its vilification of the deal and the dramatic impact it would have on the security of every UK citizen. Handwritten notes in the margins added even more venom to the invective.

  ‘Meh.’

  She dug through drawers, under cupboards and through the two piles of paper left on the floor next to the sofa, all current. And there, halfway down was the proof they needed. She read the first page. She had seen it before. There in black and white were the detailed instructions for the assassination at the back of the hotel.

  ‘Look proof. Storrington is our man.’ She passed him the pages from the Risk Assessment.

  ‘Really?’ he said, examining it carefully. ‘This is a photocopy, it’s from the evidence file, not a print out from his computer. Proves nothing other than he’s investigating the shooting. His gaze fell onto another sheet of paper. His eyes betrayed his interest.

  ‘What’s that?’ asked Julie.

  ‘Oh nothing. Nothing relevant.’ He put the sheet on the sofa out of her reach.

  She continued scanning the room, her eyes drawn to the floor-to-ceiling vinyl collection: jazz, classical, Bob Dylan, Progressive Rock from the ‘60s, more from the ‘70s and a few military bands. She walked past the sofa. A sneak glance told her that the paper that caught Foxx’s eye was the latest revisions to the PM’s timetable. He didn’t want to share it.

  She examined the turntable. It had been playing Pink Floyd’s album, Wish You Were Here - the needle still resting on the end of the first track, Shine on you Crazy Diamond. Next to the turntable were the lyrics written out by hand with almost calligraphic precision.

  She turned. Foxx had already gone into the bedroom and pocketed the revised timetable.

  She followed. He searched the wardrobe, she searched the bedside cabinets. In the top drawer on his wife’s side was a piece of A4 paper and a leather-bound notebook. It was a diary. He wrote in it every day, to his wife, to tell her about his day. It was his last remaining connection to what they once had. She carefully turned to last Thursday and read.

  He pulled a large leather photograph album out from the bottom of the wardrobe. Letters and cards fell out as he pulled the ramshackle collection onto the bed. He studied them, piece by piece. This changed the game.

  ‘What?’ asked Julie. ‘What have you got?’

  ‘Colin Lewis, the innocent boy, who was with the PM, and got shot in the crossfire.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘He was Storrington’s boyfriend.’

  ‘Boyfriend?’

  ‘Yes. They were lovers: deep, sincere, heartfelt, intimate lovers. They used pet names: he called him Pookey. There are photos, cards, letters, poems - the whole declaration of undying devotion. No wonder he’s rampaging like a mad bull. He wants revenge.’ Foxx paused for thought. ‘And he thinks it was me.’

  ‘And me,’ added Julie. She raised the leather-bound notebook. ‘I’ve got a diary. On Thursday, he wrote pages and pages. He was devastated. Didn’t mention Colin by name, but you can feel the grief in every line.’ She showed Foxx and continued, ‘And I found this next to it. It’s a print-out of an email. This proves his innocence. It’s his resignation to the PM apologising for failing in his duties to keep him safe.’

  ‘Resigning doesn’t prove he’s innocent.’

  ‘Yes it does. If it’s written on his GCHQ-2 top secret email account. It’s got his secret code name on it. Commander Storrington is not Dominion1431.’

  Foxx should have been delighted, but he looked uneasy. Julie watched him. Was it guilt? Did he need to prove it was Storrington just to give himself an alibi? Why did he need the PM’s revised schedule and why be sneaky about it? Why, yesterday evening, had he tried to get them thrown out of the Tenby’s house by asking Charlie such ridiculously personal questions?

  ‘You know the good news though,’ said Foxx. ‘That means the number of suspects is down to four.’

  She nodded, as if she agreed; but she didn’t. In her mind, the number of suspects was not four. It was one.

  It was Foxx.

  And this is the lunchtime news.

  After the furore at the weekend about the leaked Housing Benefit Document, a spokesman from the Social Services Reform Group said that the document had been taken out of context and blown out of proportion by the extreme left. There is a need to increase the efficiency and equity of housing benefit and the new graduated scales of
benefit would give more to those who merited it and less to those who didn’t. The system has been the subject of abuse for years and the Tory party is now getting a grip of the situation and creating a fairer system for all.

  The Labour left still said that it disadvantaged recent arrivals into the country and was not based on personal need but on Tory greed.

  The Labour Party had other troubles today as a team of back benchers wrote an open letter to Sturgiss, the leader of the Party saying the Party had lost its values, its balance and its way forwards. In a statement, they said Sturgiss is unelectable and is moving Labour too far to the left. A revolt in the Party would weaken Labour’s Opposition still further. His defenders came out in force to say that his brand of ‘honest politics’ is exactly what this country needs.

  Bettie never looked happy. It was a waste of emotion, but this was the closest to happy the DPM had ever seen her.

  ‘The political landscape in the UK is in a mess,’ she began, drama in her voice as she fired up the PowerPoint. ‘It’s time for a shake-up and that’s what we’re going to give it.

  Look at the last election. The votes were split almost down the middle: an equal and unhelpful divide between right and left. Look at Brexit: the vote to Leave won by a whisker, almost nothing in it. The Scottish Referendum was a close-run result. Even across the Atlantic, Trump and Clinton, there was only a handful of votes between them. It looks like the world is polarised and paralysed by two equal and opposing forces. Look at the UK Parliament, it’s split and powerless because it’s polarised on the right and the left. That’s the way it looks; but it’s not so.’

  ‘I know that,’ said the DPM, a little impatiently. ‘There’s a minority on the far right and an even smaller minority on the left. Most people are somewhere in the middle.’

  ‘Yes, exactly. And there are a few fringe parties, like yours, for example. Your whole Liberal Party is not seen as a moderate party, just an alternative to the mainstream, like the Greens or the Welsh party.’ He winced at having his party marginalised. She continued. ‘Most voters are pretty centre-ist, neither socialists nor fascists; they want a tranquil, prosperous, harmonious life and fall just one side or the other of the centre, so choose to vote Tory or Labour to reflect their minimal bias. Let’s be honest, so many of the Tory and Labour policies are the same – different wrapping, same content. Voters want a sane, stable, prosperous middle way.’