I, Spy?

by Kate Johnson

  And I’m a woman, and we’re supposed to be able to do several things at once. God knows how your average copper deals with it.

  We pulled into the optimistically named airport business park and swung around the back to the SO17 office. Luke stopped the car and put a hand over mine as I started to unfasten my seat belt.

  “Wait,” he said.

  “What? Why?”

  “About what happened earlier…”

  I felt my face start to get hot again. “Hmm?”

  He gave me a tiny grin. “Maybe we should forget about it. At least until this is over?”

  Forget about a kiss like that? Well, several kisses like that. I’ve never felt anything like that before in my life. I thought only Rhett and Scarlett kissed like that.

  Those kisses would keep me going for a damn long time.

  “Oh, that?” I said, as airily as I could. “I’ve already forgotten.”

  Luke opened the door, grinning. “Liar.”

  Alexa’s office was empty, but Luke just walked straight through into One’s office instead. I followed, slightly nervous. I didn’t know why I should be in trouble for receiving a severed finger in the post, but it felt like being a receiver of stolen goods—really not your fault, but still a sure-fire way of getting police attention.

  “Well, well, Miss Green,” said One, straightening up from where he’d been looking over some paperwork with Alexa. “Second day on the job and already you’ve had one body and a severed finger.”

  “Call it beginner’s luck,” I said.

  They stared at me. Okay, not funny.

  “Um,” I said, “technically, I think they’re all part of the same body.” Either that, or someone completely unrelated to this thing was sending me body parts. What a charming thought. “I can’t see why it would be anyone else’s finger. If it is, then that’s a whole other mess of crap to be dealt with.”

  Probably I shouldn’t have said “mess of crap” there. Why doesn’t my brain intervene with my mouth?

  “Also, if he was killed because he was involved in the Brown apprehension, then this is probably a threat to stop me becoming involved. I mean, more involved. It’s probably from someone who knows I’m involved with SO17.”

  I sort of trailed off towards the end, because they were all staring at me. Or maybe because I used the word “involved” four times there in three sentences.

  “I mean, maybe,” I said, and Luke shook his head.

  “Told you,” he said to One.

  “What?” I said.

  “Smarter than she looks.”

  I preened a little at that.

  “Okay,” One said, “so who do you think it is?”

  It was my turn to stare.

  “I have no idea! I mean, I guess… Someone inv-—er, connected to the Brown brothers?”

  Alexa nodded. “We have a list of contacts.”

  Of course we do.

  “Alexa,” I said, sensing a day ahead of looking through meaningless names and guessing at things randomly—at least, on my part—“do you have a copy of the BAA footage from Monday night? I mean, Tuesday morning—you know what I mean.”

  “When Chris was killed?”

  “Yes.”

  She nodded and pulled One’s keyboard over to her. She hit a few buttons, pulled up a window blind, and there on a large pull-down screen in front of me was a grainy shot of the undercroft. So that was what the projector was for.

  “This is 0155,” she pointed to the time in the corner, “we have the death narrowed down to somewhere between two and four in the morning.”

  “But you have the rest of the footage?”

  She nodded. “Basically I’ve got access to all the BAA cameras and all their archived footage. Here—” she tapped the computer screen, “—I’ll show you how it works.”

  The way it works is this—I don’t have a problem with computers, but they have a problem with me. A brand new machine will happily go into nervous meltdown the second I touch the keyboard. Most of the system-wide computer failures at the airport have been on my watch. I can barely check an e-mail at home without the screen suddenly going blank and error messages appearing all over the place.

  I have, therefore, become something of an expert at rebooting a computer in less than the time it takes for someone to notice it’s all gone wrong. I can find and dismiss a Help file in seconds and I know just where to go online for PC dilemmas. I’m on first name terms with quite a few of the forum hosts at www.helpmycomputerisdead.com.

  So it didn’t take me long to find my way around Alexa’s computer system. I discovered, to my utter delight, that she hadn’t just downloaded the BAA files, she had complete live access to them.

  And—yippee!—she had Broadband.

  For the rest of the afternoon I was, if not a happy little bunny, then at least a busy one. Luke watched about ten minutes of footage with me, then shook his head, waved the repackaged finger and said he was going to speak to the police who’d been at the crime scene.

  I barely noticed he was gone.

  I watched hour after hour of footage. I watched it live. I watched it from different angles. I replayed bits over and over. I felt like my dad watching Ford Super Sunday. I totally understand how men can watch the same goal over and over again. Every time you see something different.

  Or in this case, I saw something the same.

  By the time Luke came back mid-afternoon, I was sure of it.

  “Watch this,” I said as he walked in, having shown it to One about five minutes earlier. One, I might add, had done little all day but read the papers, check my horoscope for me, make a phone call or two to people called Bunty and Monty and Toffee (I think, although it may have been Tuffy) and ask me if I understood any of this computer crap. Alexa had long since wandered back to her own desk.

  Luke stood behind me as I found the time segment I wanted and played it on the big screen. The time index said 0236, and I played it through to 0237.

  “Did you get that?” I asked, rewinding, and Luke gave me a quizzical look.

  “Help me out here.”

  “There,” I pointed to a shadow skidding across the floor. “A mouse, maybe a rat.”

  “So? Could have got in anywhere, the undercroft is open all across the back. There are mice in the Ace staff room, Sophie.”

  “I know,” I said. “I found one in the kettle once.” I opened another clip, this one from three months ago. It had taken me bloody hours to find, hours of endless downloads and Please Waits from the computer, time I had utilised trying to explain to One why texting was a valid form of communication. He hadn’t got it.

  The three-month-old footage was the same footage, the same mouse, the same route across the deserted concrete floor. Even the time index was the same, 0236 to 0237.

  “You see?” I said excitedly. “It’s just been spliced in! Someone has copied and pasted this bit of footage into the archives.”

  Luke was silent, just as One had been a few minutes ago. I expect they were trying to think of suitable words of awe for my achievement. Maybe I’d get a medal or something. An OBE. Maybe I’d be a dame.

  No, they always sound really old. Or transsexual.

  “Sophie,” Luke said eventually, pinching the bridge of his nose, “it’s live footage.”

  “No, this is archived—”

  “I mean, it’s transmitted live. There’s a big room under the terminal where people sit and watch these monitors all day long. It can’t have been spliced.”

  “Well, then, it was looped in or something! Like on Speed. This is the same footage. Someone has played this over what we were supposed to see. They’re trying to cover up the actual time-frame when Chris was killed.”

  Come on. I thought I’d been pretty clever. But Luke and One didn’t look convinced.

  “It could just be coincidence,” One said. “I mean, looping footage? No one does that any more.”

  “Which is precisely why someone might have done it this
time,” I said. “You know, like on The Sting, where they use the wire because it’s so old fashioned no one will suspect it?”

  Another silence.

  “Seriously, Sophie,” Luke said, “do you really sit around watching films all day?”

  I made a face and saved the files. “No, I get up at three-thirty in the morning because the TV’s really good,” I said, standing up. “Come on. At least admit it’s a possibility?”

  Luke and One exchanged glances.

  “It’s a possibility,” Luke said eventually. “Now come on. We have to go and see Ana Rodriguez.”

  “Now?”

  “Yes. Now.”

  I ripped off a salute, which Luke seemed to think was funny, and stomped out to my car.

  “We’re taking mine,” Luke said.

  “No.”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  “Because yours sticks out like an ostrich in an aquarium. Time you thought about changing that car.”

  “No!” I wailed, throwing my arms over Ted’s scabby green bonnet. “Ted’s family.”

  For a few seconds Luke just stared. “You named your car?”

  “Of course. You don’t name yours?”

  We both looked at the Vectra. You could never get attached to a car like that.

  “I don’t keep my cars that long,” Luke said as I gave in and opened the Vectra’s silver door.

  “Get bored easily?”

  “No, they’re just…sort of expendable.”

  I didn’t ask what he meant by that. I had a feeling I didn’t really want to know.

  Ana Rodriguez, like a lot of airport workers, especially the foreign nationals who didn’t have cars or UK driving licences, lived in town where there was a semi-regular train and bus service to the airport. We parked on a busy road outside the little house she apparently used to share with Chris, and stood on the pavement for a while, looking at it.

  There was a To Let sign outside. I almost welled up at the sight of it. God, poor Ana. Stuck in a foreign country, boyfriend murdered, and now getting evicted ’cos she couldn’t pay the rent by herself.

  Then sense kicked in. He died less than forty-eight hours ago. Not many landlords are that… Well, I was going to say cruel, but what I’m really looking for is efficient.

  Luke knocked on the door. Ana didn’t answer right away, and I turned to him and said, “What if she’s out?”

  “She’ll be in. She’s got family coming in this evening.”

  “Who are we going to be?”

  “Plainclothes. CID. Whoever you want. A warrant card’s a warrant card.”

  I supposed it was.

  Ana looked awful when she opened the door. Her clothes had chocolate stains on them, her face was puffy and spotty and her hair was greasy. She looked nothing like the gorgeous girl who gave people information in her sexy Spanish accent.

  “Ms. Rodriguez?” Luke said, and his voice was kind of soft. He showed her his warrant card and I started searching for mine, but she’d already opened the door to let us in.

  “You want to know about Chris?”

  “Actually, we want to know about you.”

  She looked up tearfully. “What, you think I did it?”

  “No!” I said before Luke had even opened his mouth. “We don’t think that at all. We just need to talk to you.”

  She nodded and led the way through to the living room, where the curtains were closed and the carpet was covered with tissues and a film was frozen on the screen. The box for it—Abre Los Ojos—was sprawled open on the floor. Ana zapped the TV off and looked up at us. “Would you like some coffee?”

  Luke shook his head and I, reluctantly because I did want some, shook mine too.

  “We don’t want to put you to any trouble. You’re probably aware, Ms. Rodriguez, that the BAA cameras saw you making your way down to the undercroft early on Tuesday morning.”

  Ana started blinking and sniffing, but she nodded. She sat down and we followed. I was horribly aware of how close to Luke I was sitting.

  “Could you please tell us what time?” Luke was asking Ana.

  She shrugged. “About four a.m.?”

  “You don’t know precisely?”

  She shook her head.

  Luke nodded and asked gently, “Could you tell me why?”

  She started crying again. It was awful.

  “It’s okay,” I said, and I sounded pretty professional. “Take your time.”

  Luke glanced at me, and I couldn’t read his expression.

  “I know we shouldn’t,” Ana said, “but we were going for…we were going for…”

  It was too painful. “Was it a romantic liaison?” I asked.

  She looked slightly puzzled over “liaison”, but she nodded. “Romantic, yes. It was my idea. Is all my fault!”

  She started sobbing and she looked so miserable I got up and went over to her and put my arm around her. She clutched at me and wailed into my shoulder, “There is reasons why you not supposed to go down there. I kill him, is all my fault!”

  I looked up at Luke. He looked uncomfortable.

  “Could you maybe go and get her a glass of water?” I said, and he leapt up.

  “Look, Ana,” I said, no Ms. Rodriguez for me, “it’s not your fault. You just wanted to do something exciting with your boyfriend.” She was still crying, but not as hard. I went on, “Was it all secret?”

  She raised her face to me. “You mean me and Chris? No one at the airport knew we were together. We were just—” she waved her hand, “—flatmates. No, housemates. You know.”

  “How long have you been living here?” I asked as Luke came back in with the water. I gave it to Ana.

  “Two years. Since I came here.”

  “How long have you and Chris been together?”

  She started sniffing again. “A year. No one knows. His family don’t like me…”

  I nodded. Racism in Britain is alive and well. And it wasn’t like Ana comes from somewhere far off, with strange customs and strict ideals. She was Spanish. They were only an hour ahead of us. But you still see it a lot at the airport, this sort of generalisation. A lot of the foreign nationals have trouble finding places to stay. People think they’re untrustworthy.

  “I’m sorry,” Ana apologised, brushing at the wet patch on my leather coat. “I can’t stop crying. All day, I cry. Everything makes me cry.”

  “It’s okay,” I said, stroking her back. “Cry all you want. You’ve been through a lot.”

  I felt so awful for her, I really did. I mean, the closest I’ve come to personal loss is when my grandmother died, but I never really was what you might call close to her. She was just this distant old lady, and it sure as hell hadn’t affected me like this.

  “Ms. Rodriguez,” Luke interrupted. “I’m sorry to go on, but we have to know a few facts. Did you see Chris when you got to the undercroft?”

  She shook her head. “I thought I was in the wrong place. I never been down there before. I waited maybe ten minutes and I try to call him, but he didn’t come.”

  “So did you leave?”

  She nodded. “I heard someone coming. I know sometimes they start early. So I left.”

  This concurred with the video footage. Ana had stepped out of the lift at 0356 and got back in at 0411. It was hard to see exactly where she was, because not every part of the undercroft was aspected perfectly, but she explained that she’d gone round to the back of one of the Ace belts, where she and Chris had arranged to meet.

  Except Chris never turned up. Because Chris was dead.

  We left Ana with her small collection of Spanish films and a lot of chocolate, and walked back into the sunshine. It was one of those clear, lovely spring days when you just know that as soon as you take your jacket off and put your sunglasses on, it’s going to start tipping it down.

  “What do you think?” Luke asked as we got back into the car.

  “About Ana?” I shrugged. “I think she was genuine.
I don’t think she’s guilty. Besides, it would have taken more than ten minutes to open up the belts and get the body inside.”

  Calling it “the body” was easier than calling it Chris. If I looked at things objectively, it wasn’t quite so hard.

  Hey, look at me! I was coming over all Dana Scully. Maybe I should learn about pathology and stuff.

  No. That was just too gross. Besides, Alexa could do that stuff.

  “Unless she was the one who messed with the CCTV footage and spliced in more than we thought,” Luke said idly, starting the engine. “She could have covered up loads and just added in a bit of her coming and going.”

  I gave him a sideways look. “I thought no one did that stuff any more?”

  “An amateur might,” Luke said, and I rolled my eyes.

  Chapter Eight

  We went back to the office and Luke asked me where I was planning on staying tonight.

  I paused. Was this a veiled proposition? Was he asking if I wanted to stay with him? Did I?

  Hell, yes.

  But there was something very smug in those dark, contact-lensed eyes of his, something that said he knew he’d got me.

  So I said I was staying with my parents and regretted it all the way home.

  When I was a little girl, I was the most stubborn creature on earth. I never did anything I was told and the only way my mother could get me to cooperate was by reverse-psyching me into what she wanted. But pretty soon I got wise to that, too, and no one could ever get me to do anything.

  I didn’t go to the school my parents wanted me to go to. I didn’t go to the university they thought was best, even when I was supposed to be transferring. I was quite surprised when they condoned my choice of career (such as it was) but now I have the feeling they were hoping I’d give up a lot sooner than I did.

  So I’m perverse. I’m a woman.