by Angela Misri
“Wait, who?”
“Alisha Collins, daughter to Colonel Collins,” Michaels answered with a frown.
“Who is related to Major Collins?” I said, stepping forward to look at the sheet of paper.
“Not sure, who is Major Collins?” Michaels asked.
“Husband to Heddy Collins and somehow connected to Lancaster,” I replied.
“Could be. Military service is common in families as you know,” Heather pointed out, leaning over the paper as well now. “Why is Major Collins significant? Could he be the bomber?”
“No, according to Lancaster, he was killed sometime after the war,” I replied, trying to fit the pieces together and coming up with a very strange solution. “I need to speak to Heddy Collins and I need to do it with Annie and Lancaster.”
“Fine, we can arrange that through Downing Street. You said she works there,” Michaels said, raising a hand when Heather protested. “We can’t stop her, pet, you know Portia Adams is like one of those bloody Mounties. She always gets her man.”
“Actually, that’s a common misconception. The RCMP slogan is ‘Uphold the Right,’ but I’m happy to accept the comparison and agree to that arrangement, especially if you could set it up somewhere private where the Secret Intelligence Service can’t find me …”
“Ah, not exactly.”
I looked at Heather, because surely I was hearing things, but she just shrugged.
“I’ll get the widow Collins, but you have to talk to Colonel Kell. Convince him of your innocence,” Michaels said, removing the cigar from his mouth so I had no doubt as to what he was saying. “I can’t lie to the Secret Intelligence Service and do my job. You agree to meet with Heddy Collins and Kell together or I have to arrest you here and now.”
I closed my eyes against my dread and agreed.
CHAPTER 35
“WHAT DO YOU MEAN you’re going to meet with Kell?” Lancaster repeated, his arms folded over his chest. He had shaved and was wearing a leather jacket over a white button-up with dark blue jeans. Suffice to say, I was both happy and unhappy that we were the first to arrive at the fabric store.
“I had to give Michaels my word that I would go directly from this meeting to Kell,” I said, standing on the other side of the window and watching for the rest of our party where two days earlier I had waited with Brian hidden behind boxes while he retched and suffered.
“You can’t do it,” Lancaster said. “The man has ways of making people disappear.”
“He can’t make me disappear; we’ll be with Scotland Yard’s finest,” I said. “Now, you promised to tell me about Heddy Collins as soon as I could describe her connection. I think you knew it all along. Her father-in-law is the same Colonel Collins who misplaced the bombs, isn’t it?”
“You mean to take your constable with you?”
I nodded. “Answer the question, Lancaster. I need to know.”
“Does he know about us?”
My heart thudding so hard I believed I might hear it, I said, “There is no us. There is a shared goal of clearing our names …”
“There is a deep attraction that we’ve given in to on one or two occasions,” he interrupted, sliding a hand around my waist.
“Mistakenly,” I corrected, pressing away from him.
“I prefer to call it irresistibly,” he said, leaning down to kiss my neck.
“Did you kill Major Collins?”
That was a guaranteed way to kill a mood and it did the trick. Lancaster stiffened, raising disbelieving eyes to mine. “What did you say?”
“It’s my hearing that’s damaged, Lancaster, not yours,” I pointed out. “Enough dancing around this. You and Major Collins were on assignment at some point and he was killed. You were blamed. Were they wrong to blame you?”
Lancaster dropped his hands from my waist, applying them to his hair instead, rubbing at it before answering. “They weren’t wrong. It was my fault.”
“Explain.”
He sat down on a box, his head in his hands. When he finally looked up he said, “You were right. I had an affair with my best mate’s wife. Heddy Collins and I were lovers. Is that what you wanted to hear?”
“Not specifically, no,” I admitted. “But it’s a start. You were lovers. Did you kill Major Collins in self-defence when he attacked you for cuckolding him?”
“You don’t understand, he never knew. He trusted us both implicitly,” Lancaster said. “Look, Collins was a good man. He fell for Heddy while we were on assignment in Lisburn. She was a social pariah in that little North Ireland town — she’s German and it was after the war. But her parents were killed by the Prussian secret police, so she’s no friend to the Nazis or Hitler. Poor girl changed her name twice, but the accent lingered. It’s actually how they became close — Collins would help her practise her English and Gaelic.”
I nodded. The war had divided Europe in many ways, but everyone blamed the Germans equally, regardless of their personal beliefs.
“I’m surprised you had time to engage in an affair,” I said.
“The Lisburn assignment came up dry,” Lancaster admitted. “The families were so powerfully established that after several months we were making no progress.
“She was there the night he was killed,” he continued, closing his eyes as if the scene was replaying behind his eyelids. “She was a waitress at a seedy pub. Collins was the talker, the front man. I was his back-up. It was much harder to blend in as a Black man in that small a town, but I was travelling as a singer in a band. That way the tour would bring me round the area and I could check in with Collins on the sly. Heddy helped us with that.”
“She knew you were spies?”
Lancaster shrugged, opening his eyes. “She was a bright woman. Put it together on her own. Truth is she was bound to find out with all the time she and Collins were spending together.”
“And you spending time with her as well.”
“Yes, though she instigated that, I swear,” he said. “And I wasn’t the one who confirmed her suspicions. That was Collins.”
“Go back to the night Collins was killed.”
Lancaster winced, but continued his tale. “He was sitting at the bar, flirting with Heddy as usual, and I was watching from a booth near the back. One of our informants comes in and Collins gives me the signal to cover their chat.”
Lancaster stood up and grabbed his hat off the box next to us, adjusted the brim and then put it back down to demonstrate this signal. “So, I call Heddy over to take my order, acting more drunk than I am, causing her to get the bartender and a few of the barflies involved in escorting me out of the pub.”
“This has worked in the past?”
“No one wants the likes of me in the pub in the first place, so it’s not hard to convince them to make me leave,” he answered dryly.
“The barman and his helpers give me some advice as to where I should take my sorry self and go back inside the way they came. The thing was, it was up to me how I gave Collins space to have his talk. And I chose this one. Heddy was helping me off the street, when we heard the shots,” Lancaster said.
“Collins.”
“Collins and our informant,” Lancaster answered. “Shot up like … I can’t describe it.” He shuddered. “No one saw anything because most of the bar was outside with me and Heddy. The hit man had been hiding in the shadows like me, waiting for the opportunity. I had missed him. That was my job. To back up Collins. I failed because I was watching Collins and Heddy at the bar like a jealous lover — which I was.”
“You know who it was?”
“Absolutely, they arrested her two days later. She’d discovered our little operation and took matters into her own hands for the good of the community. Never saw a day in jail. We had to hightail it out of there.”
“You and Heddy?”
“Me a
nd Heddy.”
“And then what?”
“Heddy was distraught,” Lancaster explained. “She’d lost her hard-won employment — something that wasn’t easy to recover from, being a German woman — and she’d lost the man she loved. I had, or thought I had, the service to go back to, but she had nothing.”
“So, you procured her a marriage certificate.”
Lancaster looked slightly surprised, but a smile started to drift across his face. “Best thing I ever did. I could at least give her the safety of a good English family and a pension, and I believe Collins would have married her if he had lived.”
“And you brought her back to London and introduced her to the Collins family.”
“I did and Kell helped me get her a job at the mayor’s office,” Lancaster said, sitting back down. “She parlayed that into the job at Downing Street herself. Told you she was bright.”
“And Box 850?”
“Blamed me for losing Collins that way and ruining a three-month operation,” Lancaster answered, pulling out a cigarette and lighting it.
“Heddy testified against you,” I guessed.
Lancaster nodded, taking a long drag. “I don’t blame her. She loved Collins and I left him alone. And she had to come out on the right side of this or risk being extradited or something worse. So, Box 850 disavowed me. Said I stood out too much to be a useful spy anyway. Turns out Collins had been putting in good words for me for years. Without him, I had lost … everything. And I guess Kell was right about me, because a month after I was thrown out, the Service started to make real progress in Northern Ireland.”
“But with the bombs going missing from the Collins residence, surely you suspected Heddy?” I said.
“I know our relationship will colour your impression of my objectivity, but I’m telling you, Heddy Collins is no terrorist. She has no reason to draw attention to herself that way — imagine!” he said, standing again to look out the window. “She is a master at laying low. She’s been doing it her whole life. If bombs started going off all over London that could connect back to her in-laws, it would be her absolute nightmare.”
“Her absolute nightmare,” I repeated, standing up to pace in front of the window.
“You believe me?” Lancaster asked, pulling me close again.
“I believe you have been taken in by a smart woman and that we’ve been misled by another,” I answered. “But I believe you to be honest, if that’s what you’re asking.”
“Taken in by … Portia haven’t you been listening?”
“Amélie,” I said, pushing harder against Lancaster and pointing at the woman’s figure stealing between the buildings. “Why isn’t she coming here? Didn’t you tell her to make sure she wasn’t being …”
“Followed,” muttered Lancaster pointing at the two shadowy bodies that were right behind her. She noticed them too and started to run, darting into The Wool and Weaver.
Lancaster took off ahead of me and he was down the stairs and around the fabric store by the time I caught sight of him again, lying prostrate halfway across the street. A quick check revealed that his pulse was strong and he was breathing on his own, he must have just been knocked out. Which meant we weren’t alone. I pretended to be oblivious to any other presence and began to pull Lancaster behind some trash bins. Then I smelled alcohol and felt a hand I expected grip my shoulder. I grabbed the arm and pulled, flipping the man over my crouched body. What I couldn’t fight was the two other men and the hand that pressed a sickly smelling cloth over my nose and mouth. I curled forward and then smacked my head back fast, hitting my second assailant in the jaw. He released me and I dropped to my knees, my head swimming. I crawled back to Lancaster and collapsed on his chest.
CHAPTER 36
“YOU NEARLY BROKE THAT thug’s jaw,” said a voice out of the darkness.
I groaned and tried to sit up.
“Gently now, Portia, that form of chloroform packs a punch almost as strong as you.”
“Gavin?”
“That’s right. How’s your head?”
“I can hear you,” I said, allowing him to help me into a sitting position. “I must be dreaming about you again.”
“Dreaming about me again? I’m flattered.”
“That’s what you said last time,” I answered, my eyes growing used to the dark. We were in a train car again, but it wasn’t moving. Thank God.
“Last time?” he asked, crouching at my legs that I could now feel were bound in handcuffs, along with my wrists. “Pray, what were we doing the last time you dreamed of me?”
Gavin wasn’t the lecherous type. I knew I had been his very first lover, but his smile was a little suggestive. Something was wrong with this dream. This train car smelled like fish. And he smelled wrong too. Like spice and flowers.
“When did you start wearing cologne?” I asked, noticing that the doors were on the short side, not sliding along the long side, and revising my jail to a shipping container, not a train car.
“Ah, my fiancée insists on it,” he said ruefully, gently moving my bangs so they didn’t hang in my face. “She’s been experimenting with various smells. Speaking of experimenting, I like this new hair.”
“Mouchoir de Monsieur,” I whispered. This wasn’t a dream. It was a nightmare.
“Why yes,” he answered. “Made by the same master perfumers as the scent you’re wearing I believe.”
“But that isn’t why you wear it,” I said, staring at him, trying to see the man I had loved. “You wear it for her.”
“I do,” he admitted. “And I’m doing this for her as well.”
“You’re doing this for yourself,” I corrected, grasping his chin with my bound hands. “At least admit that to me if not to anyone else. I am a thorn in your side. It’s why you took my speech from me.”
“Temporarily, my dear, and only when your chosen career had already put you in danger. I took advantage of the situation, I did not cause it,” he said, not fighting my hands. “I needed your mind otherwise engaged. I always intended to wean you off the pills and I knew that your hearing would return, and look, it has. Patience was all that was required. But now? Well, you’ve forced my hand. I really can’t have you solving this bomb case. Not now. I am too close to my next conquest.”
“Selling arms to the British government?” I asked with a shake of my head. “What are you doing, Gavin?”
“There’s a war coming, or hadn’t you picked up on the signs? I’m helping our side, Portia, or whichever side pays the most, to be frank. Right now, that’s the Brits.”
“But you’re representing the Austrians while dealing under the table with the Brits?”
Gavin shrugged. “Sides change all the time. And the people who are supplying me with weapons aren’t very dear to the Brits, so the Austrian diplomat thing allows for me to launder the arms through my position with very little fuss. Honestly, it works out well for king and country. Surely you can’t complain.”
“What did you do with Lancaster?” I asked.
“Lancaster?” he answered, edging a little closer. “What about the redoubtable constable?”
“Brian is safe from your manipulations,” I said with more confidence than I actually felt. Surely between him and my grandfather, they would have avoided Gavin and his lackeys. “Lancaster was lying on the street last I saw him, another victim of your special brand of chemistry.”
“I’ll tell you what, I’ll let you choose,” Gavin said. “Which one of your suitors would you like to spend your last moments with?”
“I choose you,” I said, putting my bound arms around his neck and kissing him soundly on the mouth. He didn’t fight me, leaning into my embrace, tasting exactly as I remembered, that combination of peppermint and scotch. I pulled him further into the cushioned chair I was bound in and he pulled away first, looking at me with astonishment.
“Portia, you know why we can’t be together,” he said, inches from my mouth.
“I do,” I admitted. “But I wouldn’t condemn anyone else to die with me here.”
“I meant your last moments of freedom — I could never kill you,” he said. “But I can leave you here to be retrieved by Kell’s local agents. I’ll even leave your favourite satchel there by the door with one of those Russian bombs you’ve been searching for. Now, don’t give me that look. I guarantee that even though it looks bad, it will, in fact, exonerate you. Eventually.”
He leaned in and then thought better of it and kissed me on the forehead. “Give Annie my regards. I’m very glad you managed to save her father from the noose. Now you’ll have to do your best to save her from the peer she’s playing house with.”
CHAPTER 37
I SQUINTED AGAINST THE artificial light that poured in as Gavin climbed out of the shipping container, confirming my suspicions, and then listened to him leave with at least one other person. From the smell and the slight feeling of movement beneath me, I suspected that I was in a shipping container on a ship in port. Brian and Lancaster might both be here too if Gavin could be believed. I opened my hand where I had palmed the trident pin from Gavin’s suit jacket while kissing him.
I applied the pin to the handcuffs at my wrist first and I had one hand free when I felt the vibrations. I pressed my cheek to the metal wall and felt the hum of a machine I didn’t recognize. I had my ankles free now and I clipped Gavin’s pin to the inside of my tweed vest. By the time I managed to break one of the legs off the chair I had been sitting in, I could faintly hear men’s voices outside. Unless Gavin was coming back, the agents had arrived to pick up their hobbled prize. I needed to get out of here, but until I did, I could at least confound someone trying to get in. I used one of the handcuffs to hook around the bars that slid in place between the barn doors at the short end of the container.