by Kate Johnson
I got home and put Buffy on again and watched her and the Scoobies dance and sing their way around Sunnydale. I ate a whole load of junk food (told you I was showing off about the healthy stuff. None of it counts when I’m depressed) and thought about calling my parents to say I was staying with them again.
And then I felt pathetic, defeated. Wasn’t I supposed to be a secret agent? Did I have to go and stay with my parents whenever I get scared?
When I first moved in here on my own, I hardly spent a night alone for weeks. Angel or someone, Ella and Evie who I went to school with, would come over and watch videos with me until the small hours, and then like as not fall asleep on the sofa. It wasn’t until my very first night when I had to cook my own tea, clear up (that habit didn’t last long), lock the door and switch the lights out all by myself, then get into my very big, cold bed and lie there listening to all the homicidal rapists right outside my front door, that I realised quite how alone I was.
But it passed. Now I liked my solitude. Now I loved the fact that I live alone and take care of myself.
Or at least I did until someone started sending me bits of a corpse.
I got all my new secret agent paraphernalia out on the floor and looked at it. The stun gun I was starting to like. It didn’t look like a weapon, it looked like the sort of thing my mother uses to curl her fringe, but maybe that was the cool thing about it. It was in disguise. But there was still a niggling doubt in the back of my mind. If it was illegal to have a knife in my bag, surely this would be illegal also?
I had handcuffs. But they were legal, right, because they sold them in Ann Summers. The defence spray—it wasn’t anything damaging, it just sprayed a green foamy stuff on the attacker so he’d be stained for a while. Not very exciting. I also had the rape alarm my mum had got me when I was fifteen and went on a school trip to London. I set it off once by mistake and Norma Jean nearly left home.
Then there was the Kevlar. But it was huge—I’d tried it on in the privacy of my bathroom where no one could possibly see me, and there was no way I was wearing it undetected. I looked like I was wearing a fat suit.
So, really, if the finger-sender turned up at my house, I was pretty helpless. I didn’t even have Tammy to defend me.
I thought about calling Luke and asking him again if I could have a gun, but right now I wasn’t in the mood to see him. This morning I’d been about to have sex with him, and then…
Then the finger. Then the footage. Then Ana. Then the realisation that I just really couldn’t get involved with someone I had to work with that closely. If it was Sven that’d be different. Loads of people at the airport are going out or sleeping together or even married. There aren’t any anti-fraternisation rules. The hours and the stress generally do a good enough job of killing romance.
But SO17 consisted of six people, and I had a feeling I was going to be working very closely with all of them. I couldn’t get involved with Luke. I couldn’t.
I stared at my new phone, at the phone book which listed One, Two, Three, Four and Five as my work contacts, and called Two.
She answered straight away. “Sophie, hi!”
“Hey, Maria,” I said, feeling a little uneasy. This woman was awe-inspiring. “Um, am I interrupting you?”
“I’m painting my nails,” she said. “So, no. Are you all right? I heard about the finger…”
I wondered how she’d heard about the finger. Did she get bulletins from One or Alexa? Or did Luke call her a lot? After all, they’d been partners before.
Maybe they were still “partners” now.
Oh, God. Now I felt sick.
“Um,” I said eventually, “yeah, I’m fine. I just, I needed to talk to someone and…”
“And you’ve had enough of Luke for now,” she laughed. “Understandable. He’s a lot to take. Look, you don’t live far, right? You want to come over?”
Did I? Better than sitting around in my flat, feeling scared. “Sure,” I said, and wrote down directions.
She lived in town, not far from the shops, and if I’d got it right in my head then it was a road full of very large, old, gorgeous houses.
I’d got it right.
Maria’s house was a buttery yellow, maybe Georgian, maybe earlier. Most of the places around had been taken over by smart solicitors and their offices. All the houses had window boxes full of bright flowers. The cars were all expensive.
I patted Ted’s flank nervously and crossed to Maria’s house, hoping I’d got it right and she wasn’t playing a prank on me.
She answered the door with a cordless phone clamped between shoulder and ear, foam separators between her toes, and a bright green face.
She gestured for me to follow her in, saying, “…you know he’s a wanker anyway, though, right? No, he always was. Well, look—no, I have to go, I’ve got company—no, fuck him. No, he has no rights. Put marigold seeds on his lawn. What?” She paused, and laughed. “No, just a friend. No one you know. I’ll—I’ll see you later, ’kay? Bye.”
She clicked the phone off and gave me a tiny smile, feeling at the green face mask. “Sorry,” she said, “that was my sister, she’s having neighbour problems.”
“Ah,” I said wisely. I’d lived in my flat for two years and still didn’t know my neighbours’ names.
“Come on up.” She started up the beautiful staircase. “I have to take this stuff off before it tints me permanently green.”
Wouldn’t that be a shame?
No, stop it, Sophie. Maria is nice. She’s been nothing but nice to you. She’s on your side. Just because she’s completely flawless and she’s allowed a gun doesn’t mean you have any license to be nasty to her.
Dammit.
She left the bathroom door open as she scrubbed off the face mask. “So, how’re you doing? Settling in okay?”
I shrugged, looking around the landing, which was as beautiful as a landing could be. “Okay. Maria, did you ever…” How to put this? Did you ever get off with Luke? Ever want to? “Did you ever get a finger sent through your door?”
She appeared in the doorway, towelling her face. “No,” she said, “although I once found a stiff in my bunk. But that was accidental.”
“Accidental?”
“Yeah. Got the wrong bed.”
I blanched at this. What was I letting myself in for?
“But that was before SO17,” she added, going through into a bedroom that was perfectly, beautifully furnished in shades of blue. She picked up a hooded sweater, pulled it on, and started down the stairs again.
“What did you do before SO17?”
She shrugged. “Two years in the Navy, three in the SBS.”
“The…?”
“SBS. Special Boat Service? The less famous and much wetter version of the SAS. Then I got hauled out to do this. But SO17 was a lot bigger then.”
“What happened?”
“Lots of things. Not so much work to do—security got a lot tighter and left us twiddling our thumbs. A few people retired, a few sort of had retirement thrust upon them.” She raised her eyebrows at me. “The government withdrew funds, we got sort of stranded.”
Withdrew funds? “I will still get paid, right?” I blurted, and Maria laughed.
“Of course you will. And aren’t you still getting something from Ace? You’ll be fine.”
As fine as Maria in her beautiful house? Boy, the SBS must pay damn well.
I followed her into a big, messy lovely kitchen, with a conservatory and a big squashy sofa and a couple of huge lazy ginger cats, who I ran over to immediately. “What are their names?”
“Laurel and Hardy. When I got them Laurel was all thin and weedy but now they’re both so fat they hardly get off the sofa except to eat more.”
I grinned, sitting there stroking both of them. Laurel got up, stretched luxuriously and settled in my lap.
“I think you’ve made a friend,” Maria said, and I knew she wasn’t talking about the cats. I loved anyone who was kind to Tamm
y. “So—” she started opening cupboards and getting out crisps and chocolate and Jelly Babies, “—what did you want to talk about?”
I played with Laurel’s tail. “It’s not really that important.”
“Spit it out. Is it a work thing?”
I shrugged. “Sort of.”
Maria put down the junk food she was carrying and gave me a shrewd look. “Is it about Luke?”
I gulped nervously, and Maria laughed.
“You’re going to have to work on your acting if you’re going to be a spy,” she said. “What’s he done? Did he make a move on you?”
I bit my lip.
“Oh, Jesus. Well, look. He does that a lot. It’s sort of like habit to him. I wouldn’t expect a whole lot to come of it.”
Should I tell her a whole lot nearly had come of it? That if it hadn’t been for the dead finger, a whole lot really would have come?
No. Perhaps better not.
“Luke’s a really good bloke,” Maria went on. “He’s good at what he does.”
Hoo boy. I knew that.
“But he’s not exactly stable when it comes to relationships.”
How did she know that?
“It’s hard to have a normal relationship when you have so many secrets to keep,” Maria explained, shaking Doritos into a bowl and handing me some cheese and chive dip. “I can hardly remember the last one I had. You want my advice, avoid relationships. Stick to casual sex.”
I blinked at her.
“Luke has it down to a fine art,” Maria said wryly, scooping a Dorito into the dip. “Don’t think he’s been emotionally attached to anything since he got his SIG.”
Marvellous.
Maria had an excellent sound system and she slotted a DVD of the Cranberries into the player. We watched for a while on the wide screen TV, eating lots of crisps and dip (saving the sweet course for later), and then Maria looked over at me and laughed.
“What?”
“You, eating junk. Luke said you were all holier-than-thou about additives.”
“Only between the hours of three and five on the third Tuesday of every month.” I scooped up a fat blob of dip. “And only in public.”
“Amen to that. I did wonder why you had crisps in your house if you only ate pure things.”
“Everyone has their vices.”
I suppose they do. Looking at Maria, it was hard to figure out what hers were. Doritos, maybe? She had eaten about three.
She got up and went into the kitchen, and when she returned had a bottle of wine and two glasses.
“I’m driving,” I said reluctantly, and she shook her head.
“Hasn’t Luke told you the rule?”
I narrowed my eyes. I had a feeling there were a lot of things Luke hadn’t told me.
“One unit a day. Stops you from becoming a complete lightweight and means you can still get in a car and drive if you need to.” She poured some out and I was instantly seduced by the thick glug, glug from the bottle.
Just one, then.
“And you know how to spit-back, don't you?”
“With a shot and a bottle of beer? Like in Coyote Ugly?”
She grinned and nodded. “Exactly.” She put her head on one side and looked at me. “I think we’ll make a secret agent of you yet, Sophie,” she said, and I wasn’t sure if I was flattered or insulted.
She jumped up and ran into the immaculate dining room. “I almost forgot,” she said. “I have something for you. Went and raided Boots today.” She handed me a large carrier bag and I peeked cautiously inside.
It was full of hair dyes. What was I expecting, that Boots the Chemist had opened up a hand gun section?
“Great,” I said, trying and failing to sound enthusiastic. Maria reached out and fingered a wisp of hair that had fallen out from my scrunchie.
“Is this real?”
“No, it’s all a wig.”
She rolled her eyes. “The colour. Are you a natural blonde?”
Not since I was about twelve. “Mostly.”
“But you can still dye it, right? It won’t go green or anything.”
“No. I’ve dyed it before.” I picked out the bottles. Mostly they were shades of brown, a few reds thrown in for variety. No Sydney Bristow pinks or blues, then. Damn. “What’s this?” I lifted out a smaller box.
“Coloured contacts. Very useful. If someone describes you as a green-eyed redhead and you turn up with blonde hair and blue eyes, you’ll walk straight by.”
Clever. I made a mental note to keep some in my bag.
Maria showed me how to use the contact lenses. It took hours, and I nearly blinded myself several times, but I still drove home with newly violet eyes. I could get used to having violet eyes. They were cool.
My mobile rang as I walked in. “Why don’t you ever answer your house phone?” my mother wanted to know.
“I was out.”
“Hmm. Are you staying here tonight?”
I looked down at the bag full of hair dye, at my slightly illegal stun gun (Maria said you needed a firearms license to carry one, so I’d better keep it hidden), my defence spray and my drawer full of kitchen knives, and told myself I was a highly dangerous secret agent. Tomorrow I was going to go out and enroll in a self-defence course.
“Sure,” I said. “What’s for tea?”
Everyone poured out glasses of wine at dinner. This was one of those things that was supposed to be all sophisticated, oh, we always have wine at the table, but it didn’t quite work when it was the coffee table. We eat breakfast at the kitchen table, but never all at the same time. We eat lunch and tea in front of the TV. We always have done. If we ate in the dining room, there’d be two problems. One, we’d have no TV to argue over, and two, my dad took the dining room over as his office about five years ago. The dining table is covered with files and printer cables now.
I thought about the dead finger, which Alexa had told me she had got back so she could analyse it herself, and desperately wanted to pour out a lot of wine. But I’d had my one glass. I might have to leap in Ted and go screaming off to another crime scene at a moment’s notice.
But that was kind of cool.
My mother can drink for Britain, but she’s the self-denying sort when it comes to things like crisps and chocolate. So she’d bought a tub of Ben & Jerry’s for dessert and sat there smugly with an apple while we all tucked in.
“Sure you don’t want some?” Chalker waved the pot under her nose. “Cookie dough, mmm…”
My mother made a face. “Raw cookie dough? I can’t think of anything more disgusting.”
But she never took her eyes off my spoon.
My parents were happily bickering over football versus Jamie Oliver when my Nokia rang. Chalker gave me an envious glance, having no such excuse to escape, as I legged it and tried to figure out how to answer the damn thing.
“Couldn’t find the ‘answer’ button?” came Luke’s voice when I eventually did.
“Oh, piss off.”
He laughed. “Thought you might like to know we have another suspect for you to come on to.”
“Marvellous.”
“Name of David Wright. Businessman with some rather dodgy connections.”
I sat down on the stairs. “What’s he got to do with Chris’s murder?”
There was a pause, and it occurred to me that it could be absolutely nothing.
“It’s complicated.”
“And I’m not important enough to know.”
“No, it’s…” Luke sighed. “Okay. He’s a big businessman. New York, Sydney, Hong Kong, London, Frankfurt. Owns Wrightbank…?”
“I think I’ve heard of him,” I lied.
“People have speculated for a while that not all of his rather vast fortune was earned by entirely legal or morally correct means. He has been known to buy up ailing banks, sack everyone and merge the money into his own account.”
“Nice.”
“It is for him. He’s also really stingy. Never
travels first class, loves to use low-cost where he can.”
I had sneaking suspicion I knew where this was going and laid my head down on the stair above. “He’s flying Ace tomorrow, isn’t he?”
“Oh, you’re so smart. Yes. The 348 to Rome. And the reason he’s flying out there, we think, is that he’s going to buy up a huge stake in Ace Airlines.”
I waited, but Luke didn’t say anything else. “I don’t get it,” I said. “Why am I following him?”
“Following who?” Chalker asked, sneaking up behind me. “Hey, Soph, new phone?”
I glared at him. “Fuck off.”
“Since when did you get a picture phone? I thought you had that cheapo thing.”
“It’s not cheap,” I said, and I could hear Luke laughing down the phone. “I spend a fortune on texting…”
“Who are you talking to?” Chalker and Luke asked at the same time, and I paused deliciously.
“My boyfriend,” I said to both, and legged it outside.
Luke was silent for a while. “You have a boyfriend?”
“Didn’t I tell you?”
“No. It wasn’t in your file.”
“My file?”
“Your Ace file. How do you think I knew where you lived or what your school results were? I’d never have hired someone who failed all her GCSEs.”
I took in a deep breath and let it out. Of course he’d investigated me. There wasn’t anything to get mad about. Especially since it was his job. And now mine, too.
“I don’t think they keep notes on people’s romantic lives,” I said.
Luke made a small noise that seemed to mean, “Well, they should.”
“Are you jealous?” I asked slowly, with great glee.
“Jealous? Hell, no. You’re a nutcase. People send you dead fingers.”
I grinned and hugged myself. This was great.
“I didn’t think you’d be jealous of the finger.”
Luke was silent. Through the window, Chalker started making faces at me. I ignored him and turned to the windy garden instead.
“Look, can you just keep an eye out for this guy tomorrow?” Luke said eventually, sounding annoyed. “I’ll send you a photo of him. No baggage belt stuff this time.”
And with that he was gone, and I felt very pleased with myself.