I Spy

by Claire Kendal

  ‘So you admit what you are?’

  ‘Helen …’

  ‘Admit it.’

  ‘I can’t …’

  ‘Admit it now. Last chance.’

  ‘Please …’

  ‘None of this is real, and you know it.’ I blink away tears. ‘Not even my name.’

  I am clear about why I am so furious. It is because he is habituated to lying, even when his cover has been broken. The intelligence officer in him – even if it is a force for good – will always trump everything else. It has become a part of his DNA, so that it is impossible to disentangle the role from any true feelings he may have. That line of Maxine’s is too blurry to see – you can’t even tell when you’re crossing it.

  I shake my head so wildly my hair flies and slaps me in the face. ‘I’m done with men who spy on me. And lie about it.’ I open the door and walk through it without looking back.

  Then April Fool

  Two years earlier

  * * *

  Cornwall, 1 April 2017

  Eight days after I met Maxine in the park, two things appeared in the canister in the gorse. Both were the very opposite of what I’d hoped to find.

  The first thing was a typed report outlining what the hotel’s CCTV revealed. It was the first classified document Maxine had ever shared with me, the sort of thing I used to dream about being trusted with, but it left me feeling sick rather than triumphant.

  Upon entering the hotel, the pregnant woman went straight into the bar. She arrived at the same time as Zac, and they were then escorted to a table. They kissed on the cheek when they greeted each other and when they parted. No other physical contact between them was observed. Their hands were visible at all times during these interactions. Informant A – me, presumably – came briefly into the frame. The woman exited the bar and hotel directly, after spending one hour and fifty-five minutes with Zac. She didn’t stop or touch anything on her way in or out, and was not deemed to be a person of interest.

  After the woman left the hotel, Zac walked through the lobby. There, he bumped into an unidentified man in what had a high probability of being a brush pass, though this was clumsily executed by Zac, who appeared not to be experienced at tradecraft. They were not able to trace or identify this man, and the facial recognition software did not produce a match. The possibility that the man had used heavy make-up could not be discounted. After a brief visit to his room at 9 p.m., Zac ate dinner alone in the hotel’s Michelin-starred restaurant, looking at his phone and reading a book before returning to the room shortly before 2 a.m. He didn’t leave the hotel at all that evening.

  I considered the fact that Zac had lied to me about how long he spent in the bar with the woman. He said an hour, but the CCTV said it was twice that. The report juddered in my hand, because I was trembling at the hard evidence that Zac had given someone that micro SD card, probably with his home-made pornography on it.

  The second thing in the canister resembled a micro memory stick. It was wrapped in a note from Maxine that she’d secured with an ordinary elastic band. Plug this portable drive into his laptop for half an hour. It needn’t be turned on. V important. Do it ASAP. M.

  Absolutely no word about getting me out of there. I shook my head in a kind of fury as I tore up the report and Maxine’s note, then dropped them into the sea. I’d hoped to find preparations for my escape in the canister, rather than Maxine’s never-ending to-do list. I sucked at being a spy, and I hated it. It wasn’t lost on me that the thing I’d always wanted to do and be had become a burden, even in this diminished version that had somehow swallowed me up and seemed ready to spit me out in small and bloody pieces.

  Zac phoned to say he was going to have a drink with Omar after work tonight, and he would be late because Omar’s wife was not pregnant and Omar was feeling extremely low. This presented me with an unexpected opportunity, so I decided to spend some time in the garden, a place where I wouldn’t be filmed or recorded.

  I made myself comfortable on a white-painted iron chair, putting a cushion down before I sat and trying not to be sidetracked by the curses against Maxine that had been going round and round in my head since opening the canister that morning.

  The new moon was barely visible in the early evening light. I wanted to follow up on a detail that had been prickling at me since I read the newspaper article in the British Library, though I was prepared to abandon my plan if Zac made one of his surprise early returns. In my lap was a burner phone which I would stash beneath a nearby rose bush if I heard his car.

  My first step was to phone the Blackwater Hotel – with my own number blocked, of course. I asked to speak to the manager, Mr Murphy, but the receptionist told me he’d since left. That was welcome news, though I’d known there was a good chance of it, given how many years had passed since Zac and Jane’s visit to Ireland. She connected me instead to the new manager, Mr Byrne.

  I gushed breathlessly, barely allowing Mr Byrne to cut in as I explained that our stay back in 2013 had been spoiled by an assault on the woman in the room next door. I wove in every detail that wasn’t in the public domain. Zac and Jane’s names, the date of the incident on 5 April, the fact that my husband and I had alerted the police ourselves and gone to Mrs Hunter’s aid. I told him that Mr Murphy had promised us two free nights at the hotel to compensate for the upset and inconvenience, but that the written confirmation of this had never arrived. Finally, I said I’d had a life-threatening disease the last few years, which was why we hadn’t followed it up, but we wanted to plan a new trip to Ireland to celebrate my recovery.

  ‘I’m very sorry about our error, Mrs Hopwell,’ Mr Byrne said, ‘and especially sorry to hear about your trials, but I’m glad to know you are looking forward to better times.’

  Hopwell. I scribbled the name.

  He continued. ‘I have our incident log open for the fifth and sixth of April 2013, and I can see Mr Murphy’s detailed notes of what occurred. You will remember, I’m sure, that you weren’t charged for your stay, in light of the sad incident. Mr Murphy made no remark in the log regarding two additional free nights, but we are happy to honour that. We pride ourselves on our customer care, and we want to ensure you have a stay with us you can enjoy. You were clearly deprived of that the last time by circumstances beyond our control.’

  ‘I appreciate that, Mr Byrne. I wonder – Maybe you don’t have our correct address and that’s why Mr Murphy’s written confirmation never arrived. Can you read back what you have on file, so I can check? We don’t want the letter to get lost again.’

  ‘Of course.’ He recited an address in Austin, Texas, and I jotted it down nearly as fast as he spoke, hoping that my English accent hadn’t set off any alarm bells. But I reassured myself that it wasn’t unheard of for people to move countries.

  ‘That’s right,’ I said. ‘Can you also confirm that you’ve got the right spelling of Hopwell, and our full names?’

  ‘Norman and Belinda Hopwell. H-O-P-W-E-L-L.’

  ‘Perfect.’ I felt like the Wolf tricking Little Red Riding Hood – the version where she fell into every trap he laid and didn’t get rescued. ‘Can you read back our phone number too, just to be extra-safe that you have everything exactly right?’

  ‘Good idea.’

  I scribbled that down as well. He apologised once more for what happened, and I promised to keep his letter in a safe place once it arrived, and make our reservation early next year.

  The instant Mr Byrne and I disconnected, I phoned the number he read out to me.

  A woman answered.

  ‘Is this Mrs Belinda Hopwell?’

  ‘Yes.’ She drew out the word in a way that I found charming. It was a proper Texas accent. I nearly sighed with relief that it was her, and the number was still current.

  ‘I’m Sergeant Lynch, from the Garda.’ I was doing the best I could to sound Irish. I’d never have fooled someone who genuinely was.

  ‘Garda?’

  ‘The police in Ireland.’
/>
  ‘Oh yes. I love Ireland. How can I help?’

  ‘I’m closing some old cases.’ I reached for the whiteboard I’d written her name and number on. Peggy had given it to me for kitchen notes, and it normally lived on the fridge with the wipe-able pen that came with it, stuck there by magnets. Zac hated that whiteboard. His revenge, which did often make me laugh, was to use it to leave me messages about what he wanted to do in bed. ‘I need to double-check a few details you and your husband provided us in April, 2013. If that’s okay?’

  ‘My husband’s gone to Jesus.’

  ‘I’m sorry to hear that, Mrs Hopwell.’ I picked up the erasable pen, holding it like a cigarette.

  ‘I miss him every day.’

  ‘It must be very difficult.’ I drew a simple circle with dots for eyes and a frown.

  ‘It is, but he’s in a better place.’

  I drew a daisy beside her name. ‘I wanted to talk about your stay at the Blackwater Hotel in County Cork. You may remember. A woman was assaulted.’

  ‘That poor girl. We were horrified.’ I heard the clink of what sounded like ice in a glass. ‘You don’t mind if I take some refreshment while we speak?’

  ‘Please do.’

  ‘We did everything we could.’ I could hear the tinkle of liquid. ‘I like my iced tea in the afternoon.’

  ‘Me too,’ I said, though I had never even tried iced tea. ‘If you’re happy to assist, I want to make sure all the details we have on your statement are correct, before we archive the file. Can you remind me of exactly what you saw?’

  ‘As I said when we gave our statement, we were in the room next door. Those walls were thin, for such a nice hotel.’ She sniffled.

  ‘I know it must have been upsetting for you. Can you tell me what you heard?’

  ‘A woman, screaming in terror. A man, shouting. His language wasn’t Christian. You’ll forgive me if I don’t repeat it?’

  ‘Perhaps you can paraphrase?’ I tapped the pen on the iron table.

  ‘He called her stupid and evil and selfish. He said she’d ruined their lives, and what was she thinking, meeting him.’

  ‘Him?’ I sat up straighter. ‘Did you hear anything to indicate who this was? A name?’

  ‘Sorry, but no.’

  Tap tap tap went the pen, leaving black pinpricks on the whiteboard like a photographic negative of stars in the night.

  ‘We called the police then and there,’ she said.

  ‘It could have been much worse if you hadn’t alerted us so quickly.’ Round and round the pen went, swirling and swirling. What looked like a snail emerged, though I hadn’t meant it to.

  ‘Norman went and fetched the hotel manager. I can’t recall the man’s name.’

  ‘Patrick Murphy.’ I was pleased that the letter from the steamer chest had allowed me to use this detail twice in the last hour.

  ‘That was it. Mr Murphy. Well, Mr Murphy used the master key to unlock the door. I could see the woman on the bed, wearing nothing but a slip. The shoulder strap was torn and the man was holding her down. My husband and Mr Murphy went right in there and pulled him off her. She was sobbing. There were red marks on her arms and her mouth was bleeding. Her eye was swollen.’

  ‘Can you describe this couple?’ I drew a heart. A tiny gift for Zac.

  ‘Oh yes. She was pretty, even though she was very distressed. Red hair, pale, skinny little thing. The husband was bald, with a strange eye. I can’t say he was handsome, but ugly is as ugly does.’

  ‘I find that to be true, in my line of work.’ Inside the heart, I sketched two stick figures, a man and a woman in bed together.

  ‘I told the man, I said to him, “You’re a monster for taking a hand to your wife. Even if she did meet another man, that’s no excuse.” Don’t you agree?’

  ‘I do.’ I pulled a tissue from the pocket of my cardigan.

  ‘The wife wanted her husband out of her sight, so Mr Murphy and Norman marched him out into the corridor. The husband wasn’t a large man, but he was strong and angry. It wasn’t easy, holding him until the police arrived and took him away. I did my best to comfort his wife while we waited for the ambulance.’

  ‘She must have been glad to have such caring people near her.’ I scrubbed away Mrs Hopwell’s name.

  ‘I hope so. Does that confirm everything you need for your records?’

  ‘It does, Mrs Hopwell. Thank you. And again, I’m very sorry for your loss.’

  I rubbed out her telephone number. The only doodle I left on the whiteboard was Zac’s heart, and the stick figures inside it.

  It was two in the morning when Zac returned from his drink with Omar. I heard his car engine revving while he parked, the bumper scraping against a bush, then the house door slamming and his grunts as he made his way upstairs. He clearly shouldn’t have been driving. He staggered into the bedroom, bringing the reek of whisky with him as soon as he opened the door. He dropped something heavy before he stepped into the room, swore loudly, and let the door slam behind him.

  I thought about the fact that it was Milly’s birthday, and couldn’t help but feel a pang. The first day of April always used to be so happy.

  ‘Holly?’ Zac said. ‘You awake, Holly?’

  I murmured in pretend sleep. In truth, I’d been in a state of high alert since he texted that he’d be home late. I’d even turned off the Internet router in readiness. This was not a trick I could play often, but it was worth risking again that night to ensure the bedroom was a camera-free zone, and I wanted to get Maxine’s task out of the way.

  He tossed himself onto the bed, shoes and suit still on, as if he had jumped down onto it from a great height. ‘Holly? Want you, Holly.’ He grabbed my deliberately limp hand, put it between his legs. I let it fall away. I sighed as if I were having a lovely dream.

  ‘Never mind.’ This was a slurred ramble. ‘In the morning.’ More slurred ramble. He kissed me wetly on the lips, then threw himself onto his pillow so heavily the whole bed shook. He squirmed his hand beneath my nightdress and cupped my breast. He was snoring a few seconds later. His arm was a great weight, though thankfully his fingers had lost their grip on my nipple.

  As gently as I could, I manoeuvred his hand off my chest and rested his arm straight by his side. I opened my eyes. The moon had cast the faintest light through the filmy curtains, which were patterned in more of the shabby chic florals the owners of the house were mad about. There was a sickly mix of rose and baby powder wafting from Zac’s shirt, and I recognised Joanne’s overwhelmingly sweet scent. Despite everything, a shock of hurt and jealousy speared through me.

  And rage. There was a lot of that, too. In London, he accused me of meeting someone else. In Ireland, according to Mrs Hopwell, he accused Jane. The way he behaved, I wouldn’t blame Jane if she’d fucked another man’s brains out. In fact, I hoped she had. What I hoped even more was that I could figure out who the man was.

  By the bedroom door was Zac’s laptop case. It was pretty much always in whatever room he was in. I listened as his snoring deepened. My heart was beating fast, counting time. He was so floppy he couldn’t be faking. Could he? Softly, mindful of the fact that my body occupied space differently, I slipped out of bed, wiggled my fingers beneath the mattress on my side, and retrieved the portable drive from where I’d stowed it. This would have been a terrible long-term hiding place, but it was useful for immediate access.

  Padding across the carpet as lightly as I could, I swept up the laptop case, glided into the bathroom, turned the knob so it didn’t click when I shut the door, then released it with care, all the time listening to Zac snoring away on the other side of the wood. Quickly, I plugged the drive into the laptop without even removing the machine from the case. I let the towel drop from the rail so it draped over the whole of it.

  Something new occurred to me. In all of my anxiety about the films Zac made, I hadn’t considered the likelihood that his laptop contained scanned copies of my incriminating hospital journal. For others
to get access to the secret world that existed in my own head, for Maxine to know that my compulsion to write was bigger than my discretion, for MI5 to learn that I’d broken countless data protection and privacy laws with my stories – all of these things together made me feel faint with panic and humiliation.

  There will be no adverse consequences to you from anything we discover as a result of your assistance. That was what Maxine said. I had no choice but to trust that she would protect me, and any other women, from whatever was on Zac’s machine.

  Twenty minutes had passed since I plugged the memory stick into the laptop. I was still in the bathroom, sitting on the loo even though for once I didn’t need it. All I wanted was to drag my six-months-pregnant self back into bed to sleep. The door was halfway open before I could stop it – I hadn’t turned the lock because no amount of oil stopped it from making a grinding noise that would have woken Zac. ‘I’m peeing, Zac.’ I stretched out a leg to try to kick the door closed, but he pushed it open anyway. ‘Honestly.’ My voice was a high-pitched squeak. ‘Get out.’

  But he staggered in. Within seconds of my managing to heave myself up, he moved in front of me and lifted the seat. His peeing seemed to go on and on and on, as I stood with my back to the sink, my hands on my bump, feeling a series of rhythmic little punches that I thought might be hiccoughs, as if she had just woken and been shocked into them, fired by the adrenaline that must have been pumping through my veins and into hers. My nightdress was hitched up, falling crookedly, halfway to my thighs. Zac moved towards me, faced me straight on, a hand on each side of the sink, his mouth on mine. ‘Want you,’ he said.

  ‘Me too.’ I let my arms come up until one hand rested on the back of his head, the other on his neck. What I really wanted was to keep his attention on me and not the laptop case on the floor beneath the towel, to the right of his feet.

  ‘You know what they say.’ He was still slurring his words.

  ‘What do they say?’ I whispered.

  ‘They say sex is better for a woman when she’s pregnant.’