Jason was in the kitchen, making tea. He eyed the empty whisky bottles on the counter and then glanced at Lydia.
‘Don’t say a word,’ Lydia said. ‘I’m not in the mood.’
Jason held up his hands. ‘No judgement. You’re missing Fleet. I get it. It’s grief.’
‘He’s not dead,’ Lydia said and then regretted it. ‘Sorry.’
‘That’s all right,’ Jason said. ‘You’re grieving for the loss of the relationship. There are five stages-’
‘Feathers, don’t tell me that,’ Lydia tried to smile. ‘I can do one. Maybe two stages of this. No more.’
‘Seriously,’ Jason said. ‘If you need to talk…’
‘I’m fine,’ Lydia lied.
‘Drowning your sorrows isn’t a long-term solution.’
‘Really, I’m fine,’ Lydia lied again. ‘Let’s talk work. If I stay busy, I’ll be even better. Honestly.’
‘All right,’ Jason held up his hands. ‘Talk to me about your cases.’
Lydia felt her shoulders sag. ‘Not much to say. I’m on my last cheater and I’m not in the mood to take any more. Charlie has got me running over town at his beck and call and now he’s added training into the mix.’
‘Training?’
‘Don’t be pleased, I can’t bear it. Be on my side.’
‘I am on your side. What training? Like kick-boxing? Circuits?’
Lydia picked up the tea that Jason had made and wrapped her hands around the mug, warming them. ‘Crow power stuff.’
Jason’s eyes widened. ‘Holy shit.’
‘Yep.’
Jason stretched past Lydia in the small space and picked up the kettle, refilling it at the sink and hitting the switch. Then he got a stack of bowls from the cupboard and began pouring cereal. He compulsively made breakfast food and hot drinks when he was thinking, or upset or concerned which meant, in practice, that they went through a lot of cornflakes and teabags. ‘It’s okay,’ Lydia tried. She put a hand on his arm. ‘Jason.’
When he looked at her, his eyes were shining. ‘Aren’t you a bit excited? To see what you will be able to do? To find out more?’
Jason had always been curious about Lydia’s Crow power, but Lydia had been brought up to hide it, minimise it, stay normal and stay safe. It was a tough habit to shake. Plus, she had never felt powerful. Her Crow whammy amounted to sensing power in others which had only increased her sense of inadequacy. All of these magical Family members strolling around London and Lydia just able to know they were there. It wasn’t exactly the stuff of legend.
‘I mean, you power me up, right? What if you could access that ability to power yourself? Or do other things? You must have wondered about it.’
‘Maybe,’ Lydia said. ‘I don’t like being forced into it, though. I don’t trust Charlie.’ Saying the words out loud made everything seem worse. Lydia took a sip of her tea and swiped a bowl of cereal. To change the subject, she updated Jason on her surveillance of the florist. ‘The website looks slick, but there’s no way to know if it’s actually doing good business.’
‘Oh, there definitely is,’ Jason said.
‘What?’
‘Hack into their site, look around and see if there’s a way to access their customer management database. They probably use a separate secure payment system, but the emails with order confirmations should be pretty easy to get into. You want me to try?’
‘Could you look without anybody knowing?’
‘Yeah,’ Jason said. ‘I wouldn’t change anything and I wouldn’t do anything bad. Just look.’
It wasn’t ethical, but if it put them in the clear with Charlie it would definitely be in Jayne Davies’ best interests. And if it didn’t put her in the clear? Well, Lydia would worry about that when it happened. One problem at a time. She gave Jason the go-ahead to try and he instantly abandoned the cereal in favour of his laptop. Small mercies.
Jason was sitting on the sofa, tapping away, and Lydia made some buttered toast. By the time she carried it through and joined Jason, he was scrolling through an email account. ‘This is the email account which handles the customer orders,’ he angled the laptop to show Lydia. ‘There are lots.’ He clicked into one message and Lydia scanned the order confirmation. It was for a hand-tied winter bouquet, delivered to an address in Camberwell, and the customer had apparently paid almost £200. ‘Feathers, that must be quite the bouquet.’
Jason resumed scrolling through the messages while Lydia ate her toast.
‘Looks like they took around twenty grand in orders last month. I will have to go further, take a look at their accounts to see profit and loss to get a net figure.’
‘That’s all right,’ Lydia said. ‘That’s enough to let Charlie know they haven’t been entirely honest with him.’
Before she could second guess herself, she rang Charlie and gave him an update. She had been commissioned to do a job, just like any other, and she had to see it through. Besides, if she didn’t, he would find out another way. There was little that got past Charlie Crow and, for all Lydia knew, this job might have been a test of her loyalty. She was on thin ice in that area already and couldn’t afford to fail it.
A couple of days later and Lydia hadn’t heard anything else from Charlie. She allowed herself to hope that he was getting bored of using her as his pet project. Perhaps her lack of enthusiasm for either the Crow Family business or the training had paid off and he was going to back off. Leave her to run her investigative firm. It wasn’t likely, but a few minutes of hope with her morning whisky was the closest thing to happiness she had felt in a while.
The relaxation was short lived as it was Thursday again. Lydia kept a sharp lookout for a tail on her way to her meeting with Mr Smith. She didn’t like having a pattern of behaviour and she especially didn’t like having one she hadn’t chosen. All it would take was for one suspicious Crow, Aiden perhaps, to catch wind of her connection to Mr Smith and all hell would break loose.
Lydia was trying to be just enough of a disappointment for Uncle Charlie to lose interest. She knew that clinging to the hope that everything could go back to the way it was before was probably not realistic, but she wasn’t ready to let it go, just yet. If she worked hard enough at being ordinary, perhaps she could make it so. It was like childhood all over again.
That thought reminded her that she hadn’t spoken to Emma for a few weeks. She pulled out her phone and pressed the call button. Emma had coped extremely well with the discovery that Lydia lived with a ghost and Lydia had intended, as always, to be a more consistent friend, but her job and her life conspired against her. And, of course, Emma had her own busy life. Two small children, a husband, family of her own, and a job. While Lydia no longer had to pretend to be normal around her best friend, which was a relief, it was also another thing that had changed, another new world order to navigate. After a few minutes of catching up on Emma’s news, Emma asked how work was going for Lydia. ‘Fine,’ Lydia said, approaching the safe-house building. She walked past it, toward the park, doing a loop back to flush out anybody following.
‘I know what that means,’ Emma said. ‘You sound stressed.’
Lydia rolled her shoulders. She was a Crow. Crows didn’t feel stress. ‘Nah, I’m all right. Just got a few things going on, you know how it is?’
‘I know how you are,’ Emma said. ‘You don’t have to pretend with me.’
‘Honestly,’ Lydia said. ‘I’m not loving working with Charlie, but it’s a necessary evil. It won’t last forever.’
‘You think?’ Emma wasn’t being unkind. She was honest and straightforward, just two of her excellent qualities.
‘It better bloody not,’ Lydia said lightly. ‘Or we’ll end up killing each other.’
‘Don’t even joke,’ Emma said.
As always, Lydia had arrived early for her meeting. She swept the flat each time, looking for surveillance equipment but also for anything that might have been left carelessly around, any clue as to the activi
ties of Mr Smith’s department. Lydia didn’t expect to find anything, but it felt like a small measure of control. Besides, that was par for the course in investigative work. You sifted through a whole lot of nothing in return for the occasional win. It wasn’t a profession for the impatient.
Mr Smith, for example, wouldn’t have made a good P.I. Not based on his current demeanour. They had spent twenty minutes playing ‘Mr Smith asks Lydia a question and Lydia side-steps it’, when a tell-tale muscle began jumping in his smooth jawline.
‘You don’t seem to understand the terms of our deal.’ Frustration finally broke through. ‘I did you a favour and now you are returning it by giving me updates from your life.’
‘You’re not asking me about my life,’ Lydia said. ‘You’re asking about my uncle and my father and they are both off limits.’
‘You can’t answer every question with a question of your own,’ Mr Smith said. He was visibly trying to restrain himself and Lydia felt a click of understanding. He wasn’t really angry. He was playing it as another gambit. Pretending to lose a little bit of control in order to make Lydia feel powerful. If she felt powerful, she might make a mistake. She couldn’t help but admire the man. And maybe she could learn a technique or two. Free training from the spy guy.
‘Are you MI5 or MI6? You never clarified.’
Mr Smith flashed a smile, all traces of frustration and tension instantly gone. ‘I told you, that’s not how this works.’
‘We didn’t really hammer out the details,’ Lydia said. ‘You never expressly forbade questions. Anyway, I’m just making conversation. If I’ve got to be here, we may as well be friendly.’
‘You want to be friends?’ His expression was suddenly serious. ‘I would like that very much. But I don’t think you mean it.’
‘What if I did?’ Lydia pushed the box of pastries across the table toward Mr Smith. ‘You know I’ve lost my police connection. I need another one.’
‘I’m not police.’
‘Not exactly, but that doesn’t make you useless.’
His lips twitched. ‘Thanks. My department works with both security services, but isn’t a formal part of either.’
Lydia suppressed a shiver. A department that was too secret to be a formal part of MI5 or MI6. That sounded dangerous. ‘So, it would help me to help you if I knew the kind of thing you are interested in. What is your department investigating? Is it the organised crime angle or the weird stuff?’
‘Both,’ he said, picking up his cardboard coffee cup. ‘Which you already know.’
Lydia nodded, trying to hide her discomfort. ‘And do they know about you?’
A slight hesitation. ‘No. They don’t have your ability.’
‘My ability?’
‘You sense it, right? Power in others?’
It was Lydia’s turn to hesitate.
‘Don’t bother denying it,’ Mr Smith said. ‘Can we keep the lies between us to a bare minimum. I know you’re a Crow. Why quibble on the details.’
He was being disingenuous, details were everything. Still, Lydia made herself smile and made it look easy and relaxed. She forced the tension from her muscles. ‘Fine, let’s not quibble. What’s the end game? What are you hoping to achieve?’
Mr Smith shrugged. ‘I’m on a task force. It’s very new and very quiet. The stated objective is information only. Observation. Like documentary makers, we’re not supposed to interact or affect our subjects. That will change, but I don’t know when. Higher ups probably don’t even know. It gets political at the top.’
‘And you’re all right with that?’
‘Information is power. And I have a personal interest.’
‘Because of your-’ Lydia waved her hand. ‘Stuff. Have you always been able to heal people?’
‘Yes.’
‘Tell me about your first time.’
He shook his head. ‘I don’t think so. We’re not friendly enough for that.’
‘Okay, tell me about your department. What do they think is going on with the Families? Do they believe the stories?’
‘They’re not big on belief,’ Mr Smith said. ‘They’re into facts. Science.’
It was interesting that he referred to his department as ‘them’. Either he wasn’t strongly affiliated, which might work to Lydia’s advantage, or he was pretending not to be in order to ingratiate himself. ‘I’m not going to be a lab rat,’ Lydia said.
Mr Smith shook his head. ‘They don’t cart people away and do illegal tests. This isn’t the seventies.’
‘How do they do their science, then?’
‘Volunteers.’
‘I find that very hard to believe.’
‘Aren’t you curious? Don’t you want to know if there is something in your DNA or a new enzyme or a part of your brain that you are using in a different way to normal people?’
‘I am normal,’ Lydia lied. ‘I grew up in Beckenham. I had a guinea pig. I watched TV on a Saturday morning and had swimming lessons in the afternoon.’
He shook his head. ‘You know what I mean.’
‘I hope you’re not looking for a new volunteer, because that’s never going to happen.’ She had no intention of becoming somebody’s experiment.
Mr Smith held up his hands. ‘I want to be your friend, that’s all.’
‘And for me to inform on the Families,’ Lydia said baldly.
He winced delicately as if she had made a faux pas at a tea party. ‘I wouldn’t put it quite like that.’
‘I would,’ Lydia said. She stood up. ‘And now I’m leaving.’
‘You’ll come round.’
‘I will not,’ Lydia said, as she grabbed her jacket from the back of the chair. She was at the door, grabbing the handle when Mr Smith spoke again. She didn’t break stride, didn’t look around, but the words landed nonetheless.
‘You’re as curious as I am.’
Chapter Ten
Lydia had gone to bed early. She felt tired in a way that wasn’t related to exertion. Tired in her soul. She had dozed for an hour and, around midnight, woken stark awake and lay there, looking at the familiar shapes and shadows of her room, lit by the dim glow of streetlights seeping through her curtains. She heard Jason walk down the hall and assumed he was heading for his bedroom, but then he knocked on her door, lightly.
‘Come in,’ she said, sitting up. The air was cool and she pulled the duvet up, knowing it was about to get even colder.
‘You need to see something,’ Jason said, hurrying over with his laptop.
‘You’re glued to that thing,’ Lydia said. ‘Don’t work too hard.’
‘I love it,’ Jason said, instinctively hugging the computer close. ‘But look.’ He sat on the bed next to Lydia and opened the screen. ‘After I catalogued the order emails, I had a poke around. This is a business email, so not much personal stuff, but I found messages from the online bookkeeping site they use which led me into their accounts.’
‘Led you into?’ Lydia said, raising an eyebrow,
‘Well,’ Jason shrugged. ‘I went looking. But in there I found a strange pattern of payments. Look.’
Lydia peered at the screen. It showed a list of incoming and outgoing transactions, labelled neatly for the end of year accounts. Lydia used a similar system for her own business. She was just about to ask Jason what was unusual when she saw it. A payment for three thousand pounds from JRB Inc two days ago.
‘I couldn’t find a corresponding order,’ Jason said. ‘And there’s no payment reference, no invoice in the accounts or the sent folder of the email address.’
‘What the hell has a florist in Camberwell got to do with JRB?’
‘Yeah,’ Jason said. ‘I mean, first I thought that an order was made in person and somebody forgot to put all the details into the system. But it’s odd they forgot. I mean, that’s a lot of flowers.’
‘Or the payment was for something else entirely.’
‘Several somethings, actually,’ Jason said. ‘There are matc
hing payments made on same day for the last four months. The first has a note in the ‘reference’ section, which says ‘address withheld as per customer instruction’, so I’m guessing it’s a recurring payment for a regular order to an address that has been recorded somewhere else.’
‘Who on earth are JRB sending three grand’s worth of flowers to every month? And why wouldn’t they want the address put into a database? That’s pretty paranoid behaviour…’ Lydia trailed off as she realised that they were, at that moment, mining the florist’s private accounts for information. ‘Can you get more on JRB from these transactions? Is there the digital equivalent of a paper trail?’
‘I don’t know,’ Jason said. ‘I will ask the collective and see what they advise.’
‘The collective?’ Lydia couldn’t help but ask.
Jason was tapping away, but he nodded. ‘They might need payment. Is that okay?’
‘Sure,’ Lydia said. ‘We can pay them for their time. That’s fair. I wonder what the going rate is for hacking. I guess it’s too much to hope that they’re all ghosts, too.’
Watching the florist on the following Saturday, Lydia observed the same lack of visible commerce. Again, she waited for Jayne to take her lunch break and paid Dylan a return visit. Once again, he was engrossed in his phone, and he didn’t look up as she browsed the shop.
Stepping up to the counter, he dragged his gaze from the screen. Lydia didn’t see any recognition in his eyes. ‘Do you do deliveries?’
‘Sure,’ Dylan said. He pulled a hardback notebook from underneath the counter and flipped it open. The page was marked with a tatty ribbon and Lydia saw some scrawled writing and a few doodles of robots. ‘What do you want?’
‘I’m not sure, yet,’ Lydia said. ‘I just wanted to check the charges.’
‘Free delivery with orders over fifty quid. Within London.’
‘Okay,’ Lydia nodded. She could see an open door behind Dylan which, she assumed led to the stock room and the place where the bouquets were made. If she knew more about flowers, she might be able to get him to go out there for a moment.
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