by Faye Brann
‘I can hardly keep it in the knife drawer,’ she said to Mike, when he called to find out why she hadn’t signed it out. ‘Although maybe it would solve the issue of whose turn it is to load the dishwasher.’
Mike chuckled. ‘We’ll install you a safe to keep it in,’ he suggested. ‘That way you have it if you need it.’
‘Thanks … but what good would a gun do, locked in a safe? And it’s just another thing to have to lie about. I really don’t think it’s necessary, Mike. It’s not like I’m on the takedown team; I’m hardly likely to encounter a shootout on Wimbledon Common. Besides, I’m trained to improvise. I’ve become quite the entrepreneur; you should see the handbag I’m packing.’
She was rummaging in a drawer for a plaster when a ping on her phone interrupted her thoughts. She read the message and smiled.
Becky and Simon are having a Halloween Party! Saturday 30th October, from 8 p.m. Theme: Crime fighters.
Well, that couldn’t be any more appropriate.
‘Did you get the invite to Becky and Simon’s Halloween party?’ Kate said, later that afternoon at the school gates.
Vicky nodded. ‘I’ve not been to a party on Halloween in years. Chris always insists we dress up and go out trick or treating with the kids, but Ollie’s getting too old, Evie’s too embarrassed, and James is better off without the sugar rush. This party gets me off the hook very nicely.’
‘I have never been to a fancy-dress party in England before,’ Matisse said, joining their conversation. Kate looked a little surprised.
‘Oh, er, hi, Matisse. We were just …’
‘It’s okay, I have been invited by Becky to her party,’ she said, putting Kate out of her misery. ‘I think she invited the whole PTA. It’s husbands too, yes? Sacha loves to dress up.’
Vicky very much doubted that, but maybe she was doing Sacha a disservice; after all, even Russian gunlords were allowed to let their hair down occasionally. Becky was a saint. A party meant Sacha and Matisse would both be out of the house, meaning there would be a perfect opportunity for JOPS to get in.
‘What are you going as?’ Kate asked, her eyes darting from one person to the next. Vicky grinned. Kate was as competitive as hell and probably figured a little due diligence would give her a head start on procuring a suitable costume.
‘I leave that sort of thing to Chris,’ she said. ‘You know what he’s like with stuff like this: wind him up and watch him go. He’ll come up with something. I’ll probably end up as Scooby-Doo.’
‘I think Sacha and I will go as James Bond and a Bond girl,’ Matisse said.
‘You’d make an amazing Bond girl.’ Kate looked sick with jealousy.
‘Thank you, Kate, you are very kind.’
‘Although it might be a bit cold for a white bikini and a hunting knife,’ Vicky added. Kate laughed.
‘Do you think so?’ Matisse said. ‘Hmmm. Well, in that case, maybe I will go as a Bond baddie. A PTA assassin.’
Vicky squirmed. Was Matisse trying to tell her something?
‘A PTA assassin,’ Kate said, ‘that’s hilarious. Although we’ve already got our own personal assassin right here, don’t we, Vicky?’
She swallowed uncomfortably and tried to sound light-hearted. ‘I can’t believe you’re still bringing that paintballing party up.’
‘My husband is still wondering how you were so good,’ Matisse said. ‘He says that—’
‘Mum! Guess what? I got made captain!’
‘What?’ Evie was pointing at a small enamel badge on her PE kit.
‘I’m captain of the netball team!’
‘That’s brilliant, Evie!’ Vicky gave her a huge hug, delighted for her daughter. She didn’t waste too much time wondering what Sasha had been saying about her. Some things in life were more important. ‘Seems we’ve got some celebrating to do,’ she said. ‘Come on, we can stop at the shop on the way home and you can choose a choco-late bar as a treat. My superstar!’
‘Muuum!’
‘Whoops!’ Vicky rolled her eyes knowingly at Kate and Matisse, who were smiling. ‘I’m being embarrassing. Sorry.’
They said their goodbyes and began walking to the car, Evie attempting to maintain her sulky disposition but failing miserably. At eight years old, she was already halfway to womanhood, but Vicky was glad she wasn’t a tweenager just yet. While she liked having her nails painted and knew the words to all the One Direction songs, her room was resplendent in pink, and her favourite soft toys still lurked on her bed.
Vicky was in no hurry to change that. She was never one to look back and wish her kids younger again; she believed in enjoying the journey and had done just that with Ollie. But with her daughter, it was different. More and more, she felt herself trying to hold on to Evie’s youth, to have as many years as possible without caring about what other girls were wearing, or doing, or thinking, or whether she was too thin, or too fat, or too tall, or too short; without worrying about bras or when her period would start, or boyfriends or marriage or whether children would ruin her career, or if she should go back to work or stay at home with the kids … she wanted to stave off the whole thing so Evie could just be free of it for a little longer.
Girls were so difficult in comparison to boys. Ollie had just got bigger, eaten more, and at thirteen, almost to the day, he had become mute. He was still her son: a polite, intelligent and happy boy with an intense love of football and computer games who didn’t want to talk to her very much right now. She was fine with that; she knew eventually – around about seventeen or eighteen she supposed – he’d come out the other side.
But Evie … Vicky knew it wouldn’t be the same. She was doing her best to make sure she was an ally to her daughter, paving the way already with shopping trips and crafting sessions, saying yes to sleepovers, and keeping an eye on bad influences. Her own teenage years had been difficult; her parents strict and uncommunicative. After her dad died of a heart attack, her mother had been so depressed and angry; by the time Vicky had left for university, she’d felt nothing but relief. She often wondered, had she known then that neither of them would be around to see her grow older, would she have been more tolerant, more generous, more forgiving? She doubted it. Teenage girls tended not to view the world in that way and Evie would be no different. Vicky sighed. Just as she was embracing the idea of working again, she needed to turn her attention back to parenting. She wondered if there would ever come a time when her loyalties wouldn’t be so divided.
Chapter Ten
The next day, after drop-off, she headed to a small park in the depths of West London to meet Jonathan for an update.
‘New coat? Looks nice,’ he said, as she walked up and kissed him on both cheeks. Vicky bent down to pet Jonathan’s dog, in a bid to stop the pooch from jumping on her with muddy paws.
‘Thanks.’ She’d bought it last week, with her first pay cheque – a sensible quilted navy number from John Lewis that cost a fortune but went through the wash and was a lot like wearing a duvet. Not what you’d call cutting edge. But between Jonathan’s comments and her own realisation that she’d been hanging onto some things for far too long – mainly her youth – it was with much reluctance that she had finally proffered the red coat to the charity donation pile.
Jonathan and Vicky started off along a path together, like any normal friends, breathing clouds of white as they spoke into the cold morning air. The dog galloped around them and Jonathan played fetch with him as they walked.
‘Your little visit to the Kozlovsky house gave us solid intel, Turnbull. You can consider your maiden voyage a great success.’
‘Well, the cakes certainly turned out well.’
‘Victoria,’ he chastised. ‘Report. How have things been since then?’
‘Sorry. Matisse is warming up, but I’m still not sure how much she knows. They don’t like each other; there’s tension – a lot of it. Sacha has no respect for her. But they seem to be on the same page when it comes to their privacy. Maybe she knows s
ome of what’s going on, but not all of it. Or maybe she’s just scared of him and does what he says. He’s obviously a violent and volatile man.’
‘Keep digging. She could be useful – and less suspicious than her husband. Might give something away without even realising, if we’re lucky.’
Vicky wasn’t so sure. Matisse seemed wilier than Sacha, in her opinion. But Jonathan was stubborn and she knew him well enough not to question the order.
‘What about Sacha?’
‘He tolerated my presence in the house, just about. He took a call while I was there, arranged a meet. I couldn’t tell who, but figured you were listening in.’
‘We couldn’t trace the call. But we’re sending surveillance to the golf club on Monday just in case.’
‘It’s half term next week. I’m not sure I’ll be able to—’
Jonathan cleared his throat. ‘Actually, we’re sending someone else. A woman at a golf club would stick out like a sore thumb and there’s no way he’d buy you casually bumping into him there. We need someone unknown to him, who can blend in better.’
Vicky rolled her eyes. She agreed that it would be better to send someone Sacha wouldn’t recognise, but didn’t really understand why, in the twenty-first century, they had to have a penis. She moved on. It wasn’t worth the fight. ‘What about the laptop?’
‘Search browser seems to be used primarily to download porn. Pretty average porn at that – nothing deviant. All the saved files were his onshore financial statements, property documentation and so on, and clean as a whistle. If he was keeping anything on there, he’s not any more. But we suspect there’s an external drive or server somewhere that has more on it. Mike is searching the laptop to see if he can find a back door.’
‘So, what do you need from me?’
‘Mike took a look at that page of the notepad you brought back, and we managed to determine imprints saying “Jebel A.” and “21DEC”. We believe this might be the missing link between MI6 intel and HMRC’s. According to the paperwork, the guns are due to dock in China at the beginning of December. MI6 report that Kozlovsky has a small ship waiting there but the trail goes cold after that. We think he has plans to pay off the third party and take possession of the cargo, then move the weapons to the Middle East and meet the new buyer there. The imprint from the notepad gives us the place – Jebel Ali Port in Dubai – and, better still, the date they are due to dock.’
‘That makes sense. So, what now?’
‘We need you to get us access to the rest of the house. Easier said than done, I know, but—’
‘Anything specific? We already have the phone and the laptop tapped.’
‘We need eyes and ears. I want the place bugged from top to bottom in case one of them talks. And I want a tracker on Sacha. I want to know where he’s going at all times. And I want to find whatever it is that he’s using to communicate this deal.’
‘I’ll see what I can do.’ Vicky paused. ‘What about the courier?’
‘The courier?’
‘The guy who picked up the package from the service lift entrance. I’m sure I’ve seen him before; he was tailing me after I left JOPS.’
Jonathan looked down, pursing his lips. ‘Ah.’
‘Jonathan?’
‘His name is Jacob Zimmerman. He’s a courier, twenty-eight years old, arrested for petty theft and carjacking as a minor but no major priors.’ He paused. ‘Well, that’s his cover story, anyway.’
‘He’s one of ours? What was he doing tailing me?’
Jonathan scratched his head. ‘The thing is, Victoria, we didn’t know how – how proficient you’d be, after all this time. Jacob, well, let’s just say he’s been looking after your best interests.’
Vicky felt the fury rise up inside her. ‘You mean your best interests.’
Jonathan didn’t say anything.
‘You’ve been spying on me, to make sure I can do my job properly?’
‘It’s not like that exactly; we just wanted to make sure you didn’t run into any trouble you couldn’t get yourself out of.’
‘You were testing me. When he tailed me, to see if I could shake him off. And when he was at Sacha’s house, what was that?’
‘You’d made contact so quickly, we were concerned you weren’t ready—’
‘I don’t need a babysitter, Jonathan.’ She thought about how she’d nearly blown up the whole op by leaving the thumb drive in Sacha’s laptop, and pushed the memory aside. ‘You can tell your little spy pup to stand down.’
Jonathan sighed. ‘Look, I know you think you have something to prove, but you really don’t. You made one mistake, and it was such a long time ago … Jesus, most of the people who were there are retired, or dead, or don’t even remember you. You were a good spy. One of the best. But you’re rusty, Victoria. You haven’t done this in years. And you’ve got a family you care about now, and that will naturally make you feel more cautious and vulnerable. It’s not that we can’t trust you—’
‘Well it feels an awful lot like you don’t.’
Jonathan glanced at his watch and called the dog to heel. ‘You’ve done a brilliant job so far, Turnbull. Take Jacob’s lack of interference as a good sign and maybe start considering him as an asset. You’re part of a team. Start acting like it.’
He checked his watch. ‘Time to go.’ He leant in and gave her a peck on the cheek as if to say a fond farewell. Vicky played her part and kissed him back, even though it was the last thing she felt like doing.
‘Signal when you have something for us.’
‘Yes, sir.’
That evening, after they’d finished dinner and the kids were in bed, she got her phone out and tapped in a message to Matisse.
Would Dmitri like to come for a playdate during half term next week? Monday? Bring him over after lunch, I can drop him home again later. Vxx
She knew what she was doing was totally hypocritical, even as she hit Send. Her whole justification for taking this assignment was to make sure the kids were kept out of it. But she was still smarting over her meeting with Jonathan and desperately wanted to prove she could do what he needed. And, really, Dmitri coming to their house wasn’t putting any of them in danger. She’d thought about it from every angle: there was literally nothing about having this playdate that could be construed as suspicious by anyone; it was just a playdate, and, in any case, given the lack of attention Sacha paid to his son, it was unlikely he’d even register it was happening. Vicky ignored the nagging guilt gnawing away in the pit of her stomach telling her she was wrong. It was fine, it was perfectly safe and it would get her what she needed: access to the house.
She waited impatiently for the reply, though she suspected Matisse wasn’t the sort of person whose fingers hovered over her smartphone. Even if she’d seen the message, she’d most likely wait before she answered. Vicky would just have to be patient. She tucked her phone into her jeans pocket just as Chris sneaked up on her from behind to nuzzle her neck. Vicky spun around, elbows flying, and just about managed to stop herself from drop-kicking him in the face.
‘Whoa! Calm down, tiger.’ Chris backed off a few feet and fell onto the sofa, hands up in front of him. ‘What was that?’
‘You surprised me.’
‘I don’t usually get karate chopped. Where did you even learn how to do it, anyway?’
‘Sorry.’ Vicky kissed him apologetically. The last thing she needed was for him to get suspicious. ‘I think I’ve been watching too many action movies.’
She sat down next to him on the sofa.
‘Maybe we should stick to a bit of Location, Location, Location tonight instead of all that blood and guts you usually like watching.’
‘It’s not all blood and guts, but, yes, I’m fine with a bit of Kirstie and Phil for a change.’ She snuggled into her husband and put her hand on his thigh.
‘This is nice,’ Chris said. ‘It feels like we’ve been a bit busy for each other lately.’
‘What do you mea
n?’
‘Well, me with work, and you with the kids, and the PTA – you seem to be rushing about a bit these days – and we just don’t seem to have had much time for us.’
Vicky held her voice steady. ‘I don’t think it’s been any different to usual.’
‘You’ve just been a bit … preoccupied, I suppose. And tired, maybe. We haven’t talked as much as we usually do. I feel like I don’t know what’s going on with you at the moment.’
The last thing she needed was Chris getting suspicious. ‘I’m just a bit busy with the PTA. No wonder Becky says it’s a full-time job for her.’
‘I supposed we’d better get used to it if you end up going back to a full-time job of your own,’ Chris said. He put his arm around her shoulder. ‘How will you ever find time for Kirstie and Phil?’
‘I’ll always have time for Phil. And you.’ She gave him a peck on his cheek. He kissed the top of her head in reply and a rush of affection came over her. She was so lucky to have found Chris. He’d given her balance and taught her compassion, two things she never even realised she was missing until they met. She was loyal and full of tenacity and grit, but the measure of what made a good or bad human had been dramatically skewed by what she did and the people she worked for. Looking back, Vicky would admit that she really hadn’t been a nice person a lot of the time. She lacked patience or empathy and was often very selfish thanks to an extreme survival instinct. But Chris saw her differently; and, over time, that made her see herself differently, too.
She slumped down a little further on the sofa and pulled out her phone from her back pocket to get comfortable. She put the phone on the little wooden nest of tables next to the sofa and focused on the young couple on the TV who were waiting tentatively by the phone while Phil and Kirstie made their offer on property number two. Work – and Matisse – could wait. Tonight, she would enjoy some quality time with her husband.