Exposure

by Jane Harvey-Berrick

  “Scotland,” he finally said with some reluctance.

  “Okay.” She pursed her lips. “Scotland’s a big place.”

  After an even longer pause, he relented.

  “I’ve got a base there. I need to go somewhere I can think, somewhere we’ll be safe – for a while, at least.”

  His lips pressed together in a thin line. He obviously wasn’t prepared to give her any more detail; she had no choice but to accept it.

  He reached behind and passed her an old tartan blanket.

  “Try to get some sleep,” he said roughly. “We’ll be flying through the night.”

  Helene didn’t think there was much chance of that, but the throb of the engines was oddly soothing and with the blanket draped around her, her eyes began to close as tiredness washed over her.

  She was nearly asleep when she heard his voice drifting through the headphones:

  “By the way,” he said. “You look pretty damn good for an almost-pensioner.”

  Chapter 6

  It must have been several hours after dawn when Helene’s battered body struggled into consciousness. She felt as if every joint had been welded together by the work experience lad. Her neck creaked ominously as she moved her head.

  She opened one eye, squinting into the bright sunshine. She really hoped she hadn’t dribbled.

  “Good morning!”

  His blue eyes, amused and unsympathetic were turned towards her.

  “Are we there yet?” she croaked.

  She regretted the words as soon as they tumbled from her mouth: she sounded like a petulant child.

  “Just beginning to make the descent,” he replied.

  Helene didn’t think it would be much of a descent. They were already so low they were practically mowing the grass.

  “Just making sure I keep us out of radar sight,” he said, answering the unspoken question.

  “Oh.”

  He lifted the nose of the plane slightly and they rose up over a low range of hills, plunging down the other side into a wide U-shaped valley sculpted by ancient glaciers.

  Helene felt as if she’d slipped out of time. It wouldn’t have surprised her to see giant, Jurassic ferns, or a herd of brontosaurus drinking from the lake.

  But the valley was lifeless: there wasn’t a single building, stone wall or even a lost sheep: just miles of short grass, fringed by pink heather.

  The lake glimmered in the morning light, a natural reservoir, banked in by a terminal moraine that also hid the valley and made it inaccessible by road. Which, she reasoned, was probably why he’d chosen it.

  The plane sank lower until the wheels were skimming over the ground and they landed with a soft thump. They bumped along the rough turf and Charlie throttled back. At last the plane came to a rest and he turned off the engine.

  The sudden silence was overwhelming.

  Helene pulled off her headphones and drank in the deep peace. She peered out of the Perspex screen, gazing around at the scenery until her eyes came to rest on his.

  “It’s beautiful,” she said.

  “Thank you.”

  She felt the colour begin to rise in her cheeks again so she was grateful when he opened his door and jumped out.

  Stiff-legged, Helene followed him, half falling out of the plane. Even so, her body was grateful for the change of position. She stretched awkwardly, trying to ignore the myriad aches and pains.

  Not bad for an old gal, she told herself.

  He threw her grab bag at her feet and pulled his own backpack out of the plane. Then he went to the storage panel in the side of the craft and fished out a heavy piece of camouflage netting.

  Without being told, Helene helped him spread it over the fuselage and wings, so it would appear hidden should anyone be searching for them by air.

  How paranoid does that sound? she wondered.

  No matter how bizarre the situation might seem to her, he clearly wasn’t taking any chances.

  Disconsolately, she heaved up her grab bag and looked around for any sort of shelter. Charlie had headed off down the valley so Helene stumbled after him, keeping one eye on his retreating back, and one on the uneven carpet of heather beneath her feet. Just when she felt miserable enough to ask him where they were going, an old crofter’s cottage separated itself from the piles of rocks that littered the valley floor. It looked derelict and any hopes she’d begun to hold of having a hot shower seemed dashed. On the other hand, she’d settle for a bed of bracken and a tin of beans on a camp fire right now. The only food she’d had in the last 24 hours had been the sausage and mash at the Trevarrian pub.

  My God! Was that really only 20 hours ago?

  But the croft was merely the set dressing for something extraordinary.

  Charlie moved a piece of old sacking in the gloom of the croft’s interior, and from behind it Helene could see the soft blue light of an electronic keypad.

  Charlie tapped in some numbers and a thick steel door slid open. He disappeared downwards as if into a well, footsteps producing a hollow ringing from the metal ladder.

  She followed him, a sense of wonder overwhelming her. He flicked on a light switch and a compact, modern, well-fitted suite was revealed inside something that looked and felt like a submarine.

  “Good grief! I didn’t think places like this really existed. Did you build it?”

  He shook his head, pleased by her reaction.

  “No. It was built by some millennium end-timer; you know, one of those nuts who thought the world was going to fall apart on New Year’s Eve 1999.”

  “How did you end up with it?”

  His reply was brief.

  “Luck.”

  She decided to stick to more neutral territory.

  “What do you do for water? How do you heat it? Can you heat it?”

  He smiled at her mournful expression.

  “There’s a ground source heat pump, plus it’s pretty well insulated. And there’s a grey water tank that’s got a filtration system. It’s got its own generator, too, so pretty much all you need to bring in here is fresh food.”

  Helene nodded slowly.

  “What about the outside world?”

  He frowned.

  “I mean: how do you keep in touch with people: I didn’t notice an Internet cafe around here?”

  “There’s a satcomms if I need it,” he said evenly. “I can hook up to the internet with a laptop but it’s totally secure. Anyone trying to find me would be routed through Singapore, Istanbul and a dozen other places.”

  “I wouldn’t have thought anyone would ever even know this place existed.”

  He looked at her steadily. “Someone always knows.”

  Silence.

  Helene stood awkwardly in the middle of the space, her grab bag still in her hands. Without further words, he sat down at the kitchen bar-top and for a moment rested his head on his hands. When he looked up she could see the tiredness in his eyes.

  “Look,” she said, suddenly feeling some small concern for him, “why don’t you get some sleep? You look exhausted.”

  “I didn’t know you cared.”

  “Don’t flatter yourself,” she said firmly. “But we need to figure out what’s going on – you’re no use like this. Get some sleep.”

  He nodded slowly.

  “What are you going to do?”

  “Type up my notes. I still have a story to write. At least, I think I do. Do I?”

  He shrugged.

  “Just make me look good.”

  “I’m a journalist not a novelist,” she said testily.

  He laughed out loud and she couldn’t help smiling with him.

  “You’re right,” he said, rubbing his eyes wearily. “I’m not going to win any verbal fencing with you right now, Ms Journalist.”

  “Sleep won’t change that,” she said, raising one eyebrow.

  He smiled again, saluted smartly and headed toward a small cubbyhole that stood in for a bedroom.

  “By the
way...” he said turning towards her.

  “I’m not tucking you in,” she said quickly.

  He smiled again.

  “Nice idea, but I was going to say that there’s some coffee in the fridge and sugar and tinned milk in the cupboard – if you want it.”

  She shook her head.

  “I like mine black.”

  “What a surprise,” he muttered under his breath as he closed the bedroom door.

  Helene made herself some strong coffee and unearthed a couple of cereal bars that weren’t too far past their sell-by date.

  She surveyed the rest of the den. It was clean, almost comfortable, but above all safe. Surely it was safe?

  Unable to order her thoughts, she unpacked her grab bag and dug out the unused laptop. She plugged it in, watching the screen flicker into life. Her fingers hovered over the keys for several seconds before she began to type.

  Starting with a timetable of everything that had happened, she then brainstormed some possible theories as to who the men in her cottage had been: theories that became weirder and wilder as she wrote. Then she re-read them several times, deleted a few lines, before concluding with a list of questions to ask Charlie when he woke up. It helped her dazed equilibrium to find a routine she understood in this bizarre and disturbing situation.

  When she was reasonably satisfied with what she’d written, she dragged out a wrinkled Tee and some clean underwear from her bag. Her jeans were covered in green moss stains, but unless she was going to wear her evening dress, dirty jeans would have to do for now. Even if there had been a washing machine in the den, which there wasn’t, she would have felt too vulnerable, too exposed, to sit around in her underwear. It was just too intimate.

  The tiny shower cubicle was functional and very clean. She had no idea if there was any hot water but decided a cold shower would do the job almost as well. She’d undertaken ablutions in far seamier surroundings.

  But the water was deliciously hot and Helene basked in the steady, massaging stream, luxuriating as the water poured down her face and sore, stiff back. After many minutes, she turned off the shower reluctantly and dressed slowly; she was relieved her grab bag had supplied a small pot of face cream as well. Without its daily dose of moisturiser, she rather suspected her face would succumb to gravity rather more than it already did.

  She was reminded of the day when she’d bought the travel-sized moisturiser with its trumpeted anti-wrinkle properties.

  “Have you used this product before?” the sales woman had asked.

  “Yes,” Helene had replied, rather sourly.

  The memory depressed her.

  She left the shower cubicle in a cloud of steam. It took her a couple of seconds to realise that Charlie was sitting at the table reading the file on her laptop. He was looking considerably more alert, a thoughtful expression on his face.

  She was annoyed.

  “Interesting reading?” she said waspishly.

  He wasn’t the least abashed at having been caught reading her files. She even suspected that it was deliberate.

  “You’ve got some pretty far out theories,” he said, looking up at her. “That doesn’t mean they’re wrong, of course.”

  “Perhaps you’ll share your ideas then,” she said thinly.

  “Yah. It’s possible.”

  She couldn’t tell if he meant that his ideas were possible, or that sharing them was possible. His cryptic replies were aggravating.

  “I hope you didn’t use all the hot water,” he said at last.

  “Probably,” she said, spitefully.

  He shrugged his shoulders. “I’ll risk it.”

  His equanimity seemed designed to rub her up the wrong way, too.

  He was gone for some time and Helene was so absorbed in her work and the steady stream of her thoughts, that she was barely aware of him until she felt him peering over her shoulder.

  He was wearing just a towel and she could smell his warm, damp skin and the spicy scent of the same shower gel that she’d used earlier.

  She shifted her chair away from him so he could read what she’d written more easily. She couldn’t help noticing that his chest was taut and well muscled with a pale scar across his left shoulder. She couldn’t tell if it was from injury or operation but it added rather than detracted from the overall picture.

  He looked up and Helene held his gaze, forcing her thoughts in a more profitable direction.

  “We need to talk, Charlie.”

  He smiled suddenly. Helene was forcibly reminded of the cocksure arrogance she’d witnessed on the train, so very long ago.

  “Usually when women say that to me they mean, ‘where is this relationship going’?”

  “That’s exactly what I was going to ask,” replied Helene, also relaxing into a smile. “But as I’m nearly old enough to be your mother, I think it’s going to be a quite different sort of conversation.”

  “You don’t look anything like my mother,” he said.

  Helene turned back to her computer, irritated.

  “I’ll make some lunch – or possibly breakfast – while you get dressed,” she muttered.

  “Okay, Helene,” he said easily.

  She was relieved when he left the room again, a handful of clothes in his arms.

  “Get a grip,” she told herself severely.

  She rummaged through the freezer and found a couple of microwaveable ready-meals. Suddenly she felt very hungry; cereal bars were a poor substitute for real food. Or as real as a microwave meal could be.

  A set of plain, white plates were stacked neatly in another cupboard and some handsome cutlery was located in a drawer underneath the hob.

  Everything in the den was carefully designed to maximise the minute space. It reminded her of a yacht, but happily without the unpleasant rolling sensation of being below deck.

  She laid the table and then decided it looked too prim. Instead, she pushed the cutlery into a pile and when the microwave pinged, gratefully heaped the steaming food onto the plates.

  He reappeared fully dressed in a long-sleeved grey T-shirt and jeans.

  They ate quickly and in silence, their hunger taking them by surprise. When they’d finished, he leaned back comfortably and she carried the plates to the sink, dunking them in a bowl of soapy water.

  She turned round and looked at him. He stared back, gaze even, if slightly guarded.

  “Cards on the table, Charlie,” she said. “What’s going on? Why are we here?”

  He gazed at her thoughtfully, blue eyes unblinking.

  “Cards on the table: I don’t know.”

  Helene was taken aback.

  “What do you mean, you don’t know? You must know!”

  She sounded far more shrill than she would have liked.

  He shook his head.

  “I’ve been trying to work it out, but it doesn’t make much sense.”

  Helene refused to believe him. Because if he didn’t know...

  “There must be a reason why men have been to my house – twice,” she stuttered. “And there must be a reason why we’re here – why you came to get me.”

  She rubbed her temples, hoping to push some order into her thoughts. “So, let’s start at the beginning.”

  “Shoot,” he said, leaning back in the chair. “I was living pretty much trouble-free until I met you.”

  He looked aggravated enough to mean it. If that were true...

  It was against every impulse and training that Helene forced herself to speak first, to explain to him what had brought her to his door. As a journalist she was far more comfortable being the one who asked the questions: the one who was in control. But this situation was far from usual. And she did owe him an explanation.

  She took a deep breath.

  “You were right about me being a journalist. I used to be a pretty good one. For over 20 years I covered every major conflict from Kosovo to the First Gulf War. I’ve broken stories on five continents... but... I just stopped getting th
at buzz from it. Or rather... I was getting too much buzz from it, from the adrenalin, rushing from one conflict to another. Nothing else felt real but I’d got… I don’t know, complacent, bored even, and I started taking risks. They say when you stop caring, it’s time to get out. So I did: I worked on the dailies for a while then went freelance: did some work in Angola and a few other places but I couldn’t go on like that. It was becoming… harder. I haven’t worked for a while and then...”

  She paused, embarrassed by the admission she was about to make.

  “And then I overheard you talking on the train. I was sitting a couple of seats in front of you when you got the Paddington service two days ago. Do you remember? You were talking on your mobile about an incident somewhere – police and guns were involved – and it gave me an idea for a story. One last story, I suppose.”

  She looked up, feeling like she’d been in a confessional. He was watching her closely. Then he smiled.

  “I knew I recognised you when I saw you in the pub yesterday. I wasn’t sure if it was coincidence or if you’d been following me. I decided to find out. But later that afternoon I spotted a couple of spooks checking out Susan’s place. I knew it had to be connected to you; I just wasn’t sure how.”

  “Why did you assume it was to do with me?”

  “Because I don’t believe in two coincidences in one day,” he said, leaning towards her.

  She automatically leaned away from him.

  Fair enough: his logic was inarguable.

  “And how did you find me?” she asked, frowning. “The business card I gave you only had my mobile and email on it: I’m ex-directory.”

  He rolled his eyes.

  “That’s pretty straightforward, actually. Most people are clueless about how vulnerable they are: we’re watched, heard, listed, catalogued, checked on a thousand times a day.”

  He shrugged.

  “But before I even got near you, I heard the report about your break-in on the police frequency. I knew then we didn’t have much time. I was almost too late.”

  Helene felt a strangled scream building up in her throat at the emphasis he put on ‘too late’.

  “But I still don’t get it: who were those people?” she managed to choke out.

  He shook his head slowly.