I Spy

by Claire Kendal

  ‘It’s also fair to say that Veliko played on Hunter’s vanity – he’d have made him think they shared the same cause, that he had a unique role to play with his medical background, his understanding of data, his concern with the human condition and bettering it. Hunter’s a real believer, a zealot. Veliko would have seen that. And there are the personal links, the family links with Jane and her brother – we never underestimate those.’

  ‘So what do they think Jane and Zac did, exactly? Transported data for Frederick, the way Zac did with the micro SD card? Helped him to flee?’

  ‘Probably both.’

  I think some more about Zac’s interest in all this. It is certainly true that he’s so good at surveillance culture he could write his own book on it, but I’d assumed that talent of his for tracking me was an entirely personal one. Something else occurs to me. ‘Could it have been Zac who encouraged the relationship between Jane and her brother? Could he have been the driving force behind whatever help they gave Frederick?’

  ‘That’s something we were trying to establish, but we’ve struggled to find conclusive evidence. Our hope was that Hunter might lead us to Veliko, probably through Jane, possibly directly.’

  ‘That’s why Maxine recruited me, isn’t it? It’s why you were sent to target me after I moved to Bath.’

  He nods. ‘Yes, but you should understand I wasn’t sent to target you – I sent myself. I’ve been involved in hunting Veliko since he first stole that data and ran. There was a possibility your ex-partner would find you, and do something to give himself and Veliko away. I needed to be in position in case that happened.’

  ‘Why didn’t Maxine tell me all this at the start? I might have made a better job of things.’

  ‘You didn’t do too badly.’

  ‘Yes I did.’

  ‘The thinking was you’d be more effective the less you knew. That a genuinely innocent girlfriend working on intuition was far less likely to arouse the suspicion of her target than someone more knowing and self-conscious. And it isn’t information we’re fond of sharing.’

  ‘I’ve heard that before.’

  ‘No doubt.’

  ‘So many decisions I’ve made. The reasons why I made them were all wrong.’ My voice trails off, choked. ‘The consequences of those decisions, they’re hard to live with.’

  He puts a hand on mine. ‘New information doesn’t necessarily mean what you knew before was untrue or irrelevant. Your reasons could have been sound, even if the picture you had was incomplete.’

  He knows enough about me to guess how lonely and alone I’ve been. Is he exploiting this deliberately? Doing exactly what Maxine rejected me for? Maybe he’s genuinely attracted to me, but in some sick way, because of what happened in St Ives.

  ‘You’re not just a job for me,’ he says. ‘At first you were. You’re certainly not now.’

  I hesitate, but lightly, quickly, I curl my fingers round his, then let go and stand up. ‘I need to think. I have to be alone.’

  He nods. ‘Okay. But call if you need anything. Don’t hesitate. And Helen?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Do you still want me to call you Helen?’

  ‘It doesn’t matter any more, does it?’

  ‘Maybe not. But I need to tell you something that does.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘That I know the meaning of no.’

  Then The Studio

  One year and eleven months earlier

  * * *

  Cornwall, Early May 2017

  I had to get through a full week of bed rest before I was able to leave the house to visit Milly. Her bedsit was in a soulless development ten miles inland. Like so many people in St Ives, she’d been driven away by the rising house prices, unable to afford anything close to the sea on her nurse’s salary.

  The first four times I rang the bell Milly ignored me. Between rings, I phoned her mobile and left a series of voicemails.

  ‘I know you’re in there.’

  ‘I’m not going away, Milly.’

  ‘I need the loo and if I have an accident on your street it will be your fault.’

  ‘I’m calling your mother if you don’t let me in now.’

  It was the last one that did it. There was a hiss as she buzzed me in, but I was too slow and I missed my chance and had to press the bell again.

  By the time I’d climbed both flights of stairs, dragging myself up by the handrail and huffing and puffing, pausing every few seconds to catch my breath, Milly was standing on the landing, one hand on a hip. ‘Tell me you haven’t gone into labour. Because you’re breathing as if you have.’

  ‘I’m twenty-nine weeks – I breathe like this all the time these days.’

  She wrinkled her nose in disgust. ‘You’re on your own?’ She narrowed her eyes as if expecting to see Zac pop out from behind me.

  ‘I made a steak sandwich for Zac’s lunch and surprised him with it at work before I came here. He’s definitely at the hospital.’

  ‘Cunning.’

  ‘Yes. That Girlfriend of the Year award is sure to be mine. He was deeply touched, given the fact that I’ve barely spoken to him lately, but way too busy to stop and eat it.’

  ‘Did you get lots of attention from all the nurses?’ She looked as if she wanted to smile as she pictured this, but wouldn’t let herself.

  ‘They were lovely, and happy for me, and probably extremely relieved that I’m no longer working there and messing things up. Scarlett made me sit down and put my feet up and she fed me chocolates – can I come in, Milly? I need a glass of water. I’ve been on bed rest the last week and this is my first day out.’

  She appeared to think about it, then she turned her back on me and walked through her door, leaving it open so I could follow her in.

  The floor was protected by a plaster-powdered and paint-spattered tarpaulin. There was a ramshackle collection of tables and carts of different shapes and sizes, covered in works in progress and tools of varying degrees of sharpness. Beneath the tables were tubes of acrylic, jars of brushes, buckets of sand, tubs of glue, and plastic boxes overflowing with fluffy pom-poms and wires. A blob of grey clay on a pottery wheel matched the smear on Milly’s cheek.

  The one comfortable piece of furniture was a single bed. It was covered in a bright patchwork quilt that I’d made for Milly on her sixteenth birthday. Along the side of the bed that was pushed against the wall she’d arranged cushions to form a kind of makeshift sofa. The cushions were taken from her childhood room.

  ‘Can I sit down?’

  ‘I thought you needed to pee.’

  ‘I lied so you’d let me in.’

  She shot me a glare and flipped her hand towards the bed, presenting it. At the foot was a three-tiered trolley with a hot plate and kettle on top, and a hodgepodge assortment of mismatched crockery and cutlery and tea bags and biscuits on the shelves below – the entirety of her kitchen. She disappeared into what I guessed was the bathroom before she returned with a glass of water and put it in my hand.

  She crossed her arms. ‘What?’

  ‘I haven’t said anything.’

  ‘I know it’s a dump. I want a proper artist’s studio but this is what I can afford.’

  ‘I think it’s wonderful. I think you’re wonderful.’

  ‘Don’t patronise me, Holly.’

  ‘I’m not. You know I never would. This is me, Milly. I wish you’d let me come before.’

  ‘It’s not as if Lord Voldemort would have let you out of the dungeon.’

  ‘Probably true.’

  One of the tables was covered in her finished work. Tiny humanoid creatures with strange bulges and psychedelic protrusions were dribbled with neon violet. There was a primitively beautiful model of entwined lovers, hewn from a block of black stone. I put the glass on the floor by the bed and started to heave myself up to look more closely. Milly extended an arm to pull me, and I took it.

  Interspersed with her sculptures were numerous abandoned mugs of w
eak black tea, most of them half-finished. She carried them away so my view of her creations was unimpeded.

  ‘When do you do all this?’

  ‘Nights. Weekends. Whenever I can between shifts.’

  I pointed to a sculpture whose head was topped with the greased lavender tail she’d cut from a My Little Pony and tied with a pink ribbon. It had a cotton ball she’d dyed fuchsia for a bottom. The shoulders and chest were absurdly large compared to the rest. ‘Gaston?’

  ‘Glad to know that much is clear.’

  It had been stabbed in the stomach with a miniature dart, which was surrounded by a red target to highlight the bullseye. ‘Is it a voodoo doll?’

  ‘I hate his fucking guts. I hope he dies. And that it’s painful.’

  ‘Me too.’

  ‘Even more than I used to. And his fucking ugly new girlfriend too.’

  ‘Me too.’

  ‘I don’t want a penis near me ever again,’ she said.

  ‘Me too.’ I touched a tiny vase, so perfect in scale it would hold only a pinch of the most delicate wild flowers. It was in waves of grey and blue, shades of the sea, sandy and rough outside and smooth inside. ‘I prefer your non-Gaston period.’

  It was her turn to say, ‘Me too.’ She waved at the vase. ‘Would you like it?’

  ‘I love it so much. But I can’t take it. You can sell it – you need the money.’

  ‘There’s something – I have something – you must promise not to refuse it,’ she said. ‘I think – I can’t help but feel – I want you to have a small piece of me, something portable. A talisman, to protect you.’

  I swallowed hard. She knew. Even without my saying a word she knew I would soon be gone. I was exactly one week away from vanishing. She was crying, and trying harder to cover it up than I was not to notice. I’d never told her about the contents of the bag in the garage, but it would only confirm what she already knew in her bones about Zac.

  I tried to speak lightly. ‘Talisman, Milly? Are you catching your mum’s superstition?’

  ‘Maybe I am.’ She reached into the pocket of her dusty cardigan and pulled out a stone.

  I blinked, and saw the stone as it was twenty years ago when I found it in the tide pools Milly and I had been exploring.

  Then, it was shark-grey and prehistoric as a dinosaur, with a collection of small pits, the tiniest as if pricked by a pin, the largest as if by a pen’s nib. It was flat and smooth on the bottom, so it sat like a perfect paperweight, though several chalky scratches ran across it. The top was rounded gently. I pressed it against Milly’s palm and curved her fingers around it. ‘Paint this,’ I’d said.

  She repeated my own gesture of all those years ago, putting the stone against my palm, curving my own fingers around it. ‘You remember it,’ she said. ‘I can see that you do.’

  She’d enamelled it in a shimmering paint the colour of lapis lazuli. The flaws no longer showed. In her delicate strokes, as exact as the tiny brush of a portrait artist who specialises in miniatures, was a mother holding her baby. Their skin was bare, and seemed lit from within. The mother’s hair was a coating of amber, like mine, and matched her child’s.

  ‘Keep it with you,’ Milly said.

  I kissed the stone. ‘Have you forgiven me for last week?’

  ‘Having a baby emergency is just about acceptable as an excuse. But sending my mother …’

  I gulped. She retrieved the water and I drank the rest.

  ‘I might forgive you someday,’ she said.

  ‘At least I have something to aim for.’ I rested my head on her shoulder.

  ‘I’m sorry I didn’t answer your calls,’ she said. ‘I couldn’t talk to anyone. I’d been crying and crying. People caring made it worse. I hate how pathetic I’ve been about that total prick. I should have picked up when I saw it was you.’

  ‘That’s okay. I know you. I know that’s how you work.’

  She stroked my hair. ‘Baby girl is okay?’

  I nodded. My eyes filled with tears. ‘I saw the midwife yesterday. I’d read that my bump measurement should match the number of weeks, so I had a bit of a freak-out that the number was 27.5 centimetres and not 29.’

  ‘There must be a range of error.’

  I nod. ‘She said give or take a couple of centimetres either side was fine.’

  ‘You see? You’re in range, then. Plus you’re slight to begin with. Are you resting enough?’

  ‘All the time. I’m going straight to bed when I get home.’

  ‘Good. Is Lord Voldemort behaving?’

  I told her the truth. ‘No. He isn’t.’

  ‘What can I do?’

  ‘You can move into my house. It’s empty and it’s going to stay empty. You can live there and look after it for me and save up for your studio by not having to pay for this place. You can eradicate everything brown.’

  ‘May she rest in peace, but everything your grandmother chose was a different shade of shit.’

  ‘True.’ I hated lying to Milly about my grandmother’s death, but I still didn’t confess the truth. ‘So treat the walls as your canvas.’

  ‘I’m not a charity case, Holly.’

  ‘No. You’re my sister. You’re the only one I’ll ever have.’ I pressed an envelope into Milly’s hand. The papers inside were prepared by one of Maxine’s people, another of Maxine’s many proofs that doing this calmly and methodically, that taking enough time to set everything up before fleeing, was the right course of action. ‘This makes the arrangement legal. In case I’m not here. Any eventualities – it’s all you need.’

  She put the envelope down without opening it. She was wrapping the tiny vase in bubble wrap. ‘Only if you take this too,’ she said. So I did.

  Now Further Intelligence

  One year and eleven months later

  * * *

  Bath, Tuesday, 9 April 2019

  The night has fully set in by the time George leaves the basement courtyard where we have been talking for the last hour. I enter my flat and sit in the dark, thinking about how intimate his knowledge of my past life is. Did he see what happened that night? Did Zac film it? The specifics of this make my chest go tight and my head pound. My heart starts to thump so hard I can barely catch my breath.

  What I make myself think about instead is Jane’s missing brother, a whistle-blower like Snowden, but one who managed to stay in the shadows. There is absolutely nothing in the public domain about Frederick Veliko. I have no idea what he even looks like. Somebody cleaned away every trace. Was it GCHQ and the NSA, to try to limit the damage by making him invisible? Or did he erase himself, to make it easier to hide, to keep himself safe?

  On one of the few occasions that I lulled Zac into talking about Jane, he said it would have been pointless for him to search for her. She loved travelling, he said. China was among the many places she visited in the years before she left him. He sometimes went with her, if he could get away from work. He certainly travelled a lot during the time we lived together. Doing this reduced his ability to watch me, so the incentive must have been high. Fleeing via China would be perfect for somebody who wanted a route that flew over countries without extradition to the US or the UK. George said that after he escaped the US, Frederick met Zac and Jane. China seems to me to be a likely place for that.

  I can understand why Jane would want to help Frederick. No real family apart from Zac. As an only child myself, with no living parent, I know how eagerly I would have seized on the sudden and unexpected gift of a brother, and how seriously I would have taken my loyalty to him. Maxine said when she found me on the cliffs all that time ago that Jane hadn’t known about Frederick’s existence until after their father died. They must have started to get close soon after that, but before Frederick released those secrets and ran. And Zac must have got close to Frederick along with her.

  I try to imagine more about how it all looked to the intelligence agencies. Presumably they reasoned that Jane couldn’t have stayed under the radar as pe
rfectly as she did without exceptional help. And Frederick had the ability to provide that help. He makes Snowden look like an amateur. That was what George had said. They wanted to find Jane – and put pressure on Zac – because they thought that was their best route to Frederick.

  But why did things become so intolerable for Jane that she had to flee, while Zac was able to stay and live a relatively normal life after she left? Perhaps they had more evidence against Jane than they did Zac? Then again, not everything is about international surveillance. I know better than anyone what living with Zac entailed. That, on its own, would be enough to explain why she ran.

  I consider again Maxine’s desperation to copy the contents of Zac’s laptop. She must have thought there was evidence of what Zac was doing on it, and perhaps of where Jane and Frederick were. I think also about the micro SD card he dropped in London. I know now that I’d been wrong to assume it contained the films he’d taken of me and other women. It is more likely he was using it to pass on some of Frederick’s data, or at least a code for locating or unlocking it. That would also explain why he was more tense than usual in that London hotel, and why he exploded into drunken violence.

  What would have happened if I’d somehow managed to get that micro SD card to Maxine? Would they have arrested Zac then and there? This question hurts so much I can’t swallow. The answer hurts even more. If they had, then everything would have been different. I sniffle. I work hard to make my throat move. What If is too unbearable.

  There is a huge What If for Jane, too. What If she hadn’t come out of hiding? The answer is that she would probably still be alive. So why did she risk it? And why now, after six years of perfect invisibility? These are the questions I still can’t answer, but I know it is crucial that I do.

  Albert E. Mathieson’s beautiful blonde personal assistant is so shiny smooth and professional I am convinced that she is an aspiring actress playing the role of beautiful blonde personal assistant. She bends over an executive table, adjusting a glass tumbler, a bottle of mineral water, and pens and paper. Behind her is a huge expanse of window. Through it, I can see sparkling blue sea dotted with boats, as if the room extended over the Pacific Ocean.