Ugley Business

by Kate Johnson

  I rolled my eyes. “That’s the news?”

  “No, that’s an extra. The news is I got access to the files on IC and Greg.”

  “Excellent. Hard copy or disk?”

  “Both. With threats of death if I let any details leak…”

  “Yada yada yada. What does it say? The Greg one. How did he die?”

  “Cause of death—why did you ask me about this yesterday?”

  “I had a hunch. Tell me!”

  “Cause of death was a broken neck. But,” Maria paused dramatically, and I drummed my fingers on the picture of IC and Angel, “he was also found to have finger marks on the neck, as though someone had helped his neck to break. No prints, the killer was wearing gloves. Also he had a bullet in his shoulder, a .22, not bad enough to kill him but enough to get him off his bike.”

  “Ha!” I said, and told her about the photos.

  “Luke mentioned them,” she said. “He said it was clear it wasn’t an accident.”

  “Not at all.” I paused, a horrible thought having occurred to me. “Maria, what about IC? How did she die?”

  “Brain tumour,” Maria said, as if it was obvious. “Didn’t you know?”

  “Yes, but then I also knew Greg fell off his bike.”

  “Good point, well made. No, it was definitely a tumour. There’re medical records I’m assuming our supreme commander will understand. They mean bollock-all to me.”

  It was gratifying to know that there was something Maria didn’t excel at.

  “So what about Luke?” she said, and I sighed, because for five minutes there my mind had been diverted.

  “I suppose I’ll have to end it,” I said.

  “It’s for the best.”

  “Umm. Don’t suppose you fancy calling him up to tell him he’s dumped?” I asked hopefully.

  “You’re not twelve any more.”

  “I thought you’d say that. Wish me luck.”

  “Good luck. And no goodbye shags.”

  “Meanie.”

  I ended the call and stared at the books, but they gave me nothing. Greg and IC had met at an awards ceremony, dated, got engaged then married and had a baby, all in the public eye, all sweet and romantic and lovely. Not sordid and emotionless.

  I’d call Luke after tea. It was nearly time to eat anyway. I’d think better on a full stomach.

  I went downstairs, trying to think of some way to tell him it was over without creating a huge incriminating void that would taint our working lives, or worse, letting him think he’d won. Of course I knew we had no relationship, I’d always known that, the word slipped out. I just thought it’d be best if we kept our relationship professional. It wouldn’t do to get clouded by personal concerns.

  Yeah.

  The football was just ending and I sat down with a big glass of water, glancing at the wine bottle on the table longingly. No. I had to stay sober. If I had a drink then I’d probably end up chickening out.

  Unless I had one for Dutch courage.

  No. That would not be smart.

  The worst part, I thought as I chewed a carrot and let my parents argue about what to put on telly, was that I’d known this would happen all along. I knew Luke wasn’t going to turn to me and say he loved me. I knew there was nothing in it that wasn’t work- or sex-related. But I still wanted more. I think. Maybe not with Luke specifically, but I wanted some sort of future with some sort of nice man.

  By the time Chalker handed me the tub of ice cream that was as sophisticated as dessert ever got in our house, I had persuaded myself that Luke didn’t deserve me, that I should be with a great man who was sweet and kind as well as sexy, and would think about the future of our relationship, instead of just telling me we didn’t have one.

  In fact, by the time the doorbell rang, I was fully convinced that Luke was a complete rat bag and what he really deserved was a kick up the arse for taking me for granted.

  “You look like you’re planning to murder someone,” Chalker said, as my dad went to answer the door.

  “I always look like this,” I said, swallowing my ice cream forcefully, and it was a good job, because otherwise I might have choked when my dad walked back in and said in a puzzled voice, “Sophie, do you know anyone called Luke?”

  I nearly dropped the ice cream. “Luke?”

  “Says he’s a friend of yours.”

  “Oh, no, he’s bloody not,” I growled, getting up and stomping out of the room as my mother’s voice floated after me, “Is he the really cute one who brought you home that time?”

  And there he was, standing in the porch because it was raining, looking dishevelled and sexy. Not cute. Luke would have had cute for breakfast.

  “Cute, am I?” he said, looking amused.

  “No,” I said. “What are you doing here?”

  “You weren’t answering your phone.”

  “So you followed me?”

  “I need to talk to you.”

  I sighed. “Okay, but not here.”

  He made to come inside but I blocked him. “What? Thought you wanted me to meet your parents.”

  “I changed my mind.” I glanced out into the rain. It was really chucking it down. Had I been so self-absorbed that I hadn’t even noticed that?

  I grabbed my bag from the newel post and brandished Ted’s keys. “Out here.”

  Luke looked amazed, but he followed me to the car and, when we got in, leaned over to kiss me.

  “Luke, don’t.”

  He pulled back sharply, looking hurt and confused. “You—”

  “I didn’t want to argue in the house. It’s—” how to say it? “—it’s over.”

  He stared at me, and I repeated myself to fill the silence.

  Luke tore his gaze away, staring hard at the dash. Not at me. “Over?” he said eventually.

  I nodded. “This can’t work. You and me,” I said, aware I was echoing what he’d said only the night before when we’d made out in the domestic satellite. “I—it’s been great,” yeah, give him something, “but it can’t go on.”

  “Are you breaking up with me?” Luke said incredulously, and I could well believe it had never happened before.

  “Don’t you have to have a relationship to break up?”

  “Is this because I said—”

  “It’s not because you said that, but it made me realise that you don’t want a relationship and I do,” I said, feeling very adult. “I can’t separate sex from emotion like you and I don’t think it would be very smart to get involved in any kind of relationship outside of our work together,” I finished, pleased with myself.

  There was a silence, then Luke said flatly, “Sex and emotion.”

  “Yes.”

  “I don’t tangle one up with the other.”

  “Good for you,” I said, offering a small smile which wasn’t returned.

  There was another silence. Luke stared at the rainy windscreen.

  “No more sex,” he said, and something inside me twisted.

  “No,” I said, meaning to say more but suddenly floored by a double attack of lust and tears. See? Sex and emotion. All together, now.

  “So I’ll go,” Luke said, and I croaked, “Probably best if you do.”

  He was still a second longer, then he looked at me, then he was gone. I heard his car bumping away over the ruts in the drive, and I put my head on the steering wheel and felt hot tears trickling down my cheeks.

  I don’t know how long I sat there like that, but it was long enough that I eventually stopped crying and lifted my head, sniffing. It could have been worse. I could have cried in front of him.

  I wiped my eyes and put my hand on the door, but as I did the passenger door opened and I turned to tell Luke to go away.

  But it wasn’t Luke. It was a man with a balaclava and a gun, and he said in a gravely voice, “Drive.”

  I stared at him for a second, utterly shocked. Through the blurry windscreen I could see the TV in the sitting room. Chalker was sitting there flickin
g through the music channels. I was sitting here with a gun pointed at my head.

  “I don’t drive so well with a gun aimed at me,” I said, and he shook his head.

  “Drive.”

  I opened my bag, and he waved the gun at me. “No,” he said, and his voice was heavily accented, and I realised he probably didn’t speak much English. He grabbed my hand. “No. Drive.”

  I rolled my eyes, trying not to shake. “My keys are in the bag,” I said, making what I hoped looked like key motions with my hands, but what were probably filthy things in sign language. “Keys, to start the car?” I pointed at the ignition, and the man grunted.

  I took that as assent, fished around in my bag and found my gun.

  No. Didn’t want to have to clean blood out of the car again.

  Illegal stun gun. Excellent.

  I manoeuvred the prongs to the outside edge of my bag, letting it fall against his leg, my heart thumping, hoping this would work, and pressed the button.

  Nothing.

  Damn bloody thing was out of charge. Phones, cameras, tasers, they all run out of juice when you need them.

  Balaclava Guy was getting anxious now, waving the gun and going, “Drive! You! Drive! Yes!” He sounded kind of stupid, and there’s nothing like a language barrier to get you really pissed off with someone. I pulled out my SIG and aimed it at him.

  “No,” I said. “I will not drive. I don’t know how much you know about guns but this here is a nine millimetre and it will kill you if I pull the trigger. And I’ve just split up with the best sex I’ve ever had and am ever likely to have, so I am not in a good mood. And I hate to sound like a man but,” I ran my eyes over his revolver, “mine’s bigger than yours.”

  For a second we stared at each other while I willed my hands to stop shaking. He didn’t lower his gun, so I sucked in a breath and shot his gun arm.

  It probably wasn’t the cleverest thing to do, and I was pretty sure someone would have heard, but no one came rushing out of my house because, I suspect, they’re all too damn lazy. This was the country: it was an old house and there were game shooters and farmers around. If you heard a loud noise, generally you ignored it. Balaclava Guy was shrieking and clutching his arm, where there was a lot of blood that I’d have to clean up later. His gun had fallen into his lap and I picked it up, opened the barrel like Luke had shown me, and emptied the bullets into my hand.

  Now what to do? Balaclava Guy was still whinging and mumbling in whatever language he spoke. I couldn’t leave him there and go back inside. I didn’t want to call Luke.

  I fished around for my handcuffs, and when I couldn’t find them, flipped open the cubby box between the seats.

  Balaclava Guy tried to make an escape, but I waved my gun at him. “I can shoot you again if you want?”

  He looked at me with fear in his eyes, and shook his head.

  “Good. Glad we understand each other.” There was a length of rope in the box, useful when pulling things out of the mud. Ted was very good at pulling things out of the mud. I used the rope to tie Balaclava Guy to the seat, binding his wrists together, ignoring his foreign protests, and sent a text to Chalker.

  Going to see Angel. Not back tonight. Then I drove off, out of the village and up towards the office, feeling very pleased with myself.

  When I got there, I realised I was probably going to need some kind of help getting Balaclava Guy out of the car. And possibly he might need some medical attention, too. I wanted to find out who he was before he bled to death.

  I sat there for a while, Balaclava Guy whimpering annoyingly, and thought. First off, I wasn’t going to call Luke. Not only did I need to take a break from him for now, I also didn’t want to have to run to him every time I needed help with something. My warrant card said I was a special agent. I could damn well look after myself.

  I checked my watch. Half past nine. Maria.

  “I need your help,” I said when she answered.

  “What kind of help?” she asked cautiously. “If this is about Luke, I’m not—”

  “It’s not about Luke. I have a…a situation here. I need you to help me out.”

  “What kind of situation?”

  “One that requires assistance,” I said through gritted teeth, not sure how much Balaclava Guy understood.

  She asked where I was, sounding intrigued when I told her, and said she’d be there in fifteen minutes. She turned up in twelve.

  “Impressive,” I said, running my eyes over her little red 205, which was panting and shuddering.

  “Felt like breaking the limit,” she said. “Who’s this guy?”

  “Dunno. He turned up and told me to drive. Not sure how much English he speaks.”

  “He’s injured…”

  “Yes.” I twirled my gun and nearly dropped it. “He drew on me so I drew on him. And then I shot him.”

  “Anywhere fatal?”

  “Lower arm.”

  “Oh.” She looked disappointed. “You want to put him downstairs?”

  “Yep.”

  “Okay.” She went to her car and got a mucky rag out of the door bucket, the sort you use to wipe condensation off windows. “He needs blindfolding.”

  Good plan. Why hadn’t I thought of that?

  Balaclava Guy could walk okay, so Maria guided him up the ramp into the office, her own ten millimetre Glock pressed to his head as a reminder. I swiped my red pass on the control panel and unlocked the door, and when we were in, went to the bookshelf on the right hand wall and took off a file. There was another control panel there, and I swiped my card again, keyed in a code and glanced at Maria.

  “Can you block his ears? I really should have chosen another thing for my voice recognition.”

  She grinned and pressed the gun against one balaclava’d ear, and her hand against the other. “Go ahead.”

  I spoke my name into the microphone, the control panel lit up, and the bookshelf broke in half and slid apart to reveal a little steel elevator.

  “Remind me,” Maria said, “to change mine as well. Giving your name is not a smart thing to do.”

  The lift went down one storey—at least I think it’s only one storey—and swooshed open onto a small but very expensively decked out lab. At the end of the lab was a small cage, its bars set into thick glass that could be hidden behind steel shutters if we wanted. We pulled Balaclava Guy over and Maria lifted her gun and cracked him on the head with it.

  “I should have a heavier gun,” she said as he went down. “That took more effort than it used to with my Browning.”

  “Won’t have killed him, will it?”

  “Nah. Just keep him quiet.” She took off the window rag and pulled the balaclava away with it, and it occurred to me that she could easily have just turned the balaclava around to block his eyes. But then that wouldn’t have been as much fun, would it?

  He was reasonably good-looking, I was surprised to see, with high, Slavic cheekbones and messy dark hair. Yeah. He could easily have been quite cute, if he hadn’t tried to kill me.

  You know, I never thought I’d have to say that more than once.

  Maria pushed up his shirt sleeve and checked the bullet wound. “Nice job,” she said, going over to one of the cupboards, which all required swipe-card entry, and getting a pair of large tweezers out. She extracted my bullet, put it in a metal bowl in the one of the refrigerated cupboards, then cleaned and wrapped a bandage around the wound. While she did this I checked his pockets for ID, and found a Czech passport.

  “Interesting,” Maria said. “And also incredibly stupid. Who carries their passport around with them?”

  I hoped she wouldn’t be going through my bag any time soon.

  “Staszic, Petr,” I read. “Twenty-eight. Occupation: civil servant.”

  “Doesn’t look very civil to me,” Maria said. “You want to leave him here?”

  “Last time I did that someone escaped.”

  “That was because of insider treachery,” Maria said. “Te
xt everyone there’s someone down here. That’ll do.”

  I drove back home with Shawn Colvin on the ghetto blaster to calm me down. It’d been a hell of a day. This time yesterday I was greeting sunburnt holidaymakers with Angel. This time yesterday I knew I’d have Luke to go back to.

  He called me a couple of hours after I got in, and he sounded pissed off.

  “What did you do this time?”

  I felt myself prickle. “I didn’t do anything,” I sniffed, then added suspiciously, “Why are you asking?”

  “The unconscious and bleeding Czech in the lab.”

  Oh, him. “That wasn’t my fault. He got in my car.”

  “When?”

  “Just after you left.”

  “Christ.” He paused. “You okay?”

  I picked at a thread on my pyjamas and reached for another Pringle. “I’m fine. He pulled a gun on me but I shot him.”

  “You’re sure he was armed? You didn’t shoot an unarmed man?”

  I glared at the phone. “I have his gun if you want to see it.”

  “Any good?”

  “How the hell should I know?”

  Luke sighed. “Did you knock him out?”

  “Maria did.”

  He sighed again. “Why was Maria there?”

  “Because I called her.” Idiot.

  “Why didn’t you call me?”

  I was silent for a bit but he didn’t seem to be working it out. “Do I really need to answer that?”

  “I thought we were having a professional relationship.”

  “Yes, but not tonight.”

  Luke sighed a third time. “I’ll see you tomorrow?”

  “I guess,” I said, thinking, Not if I see you first.

  And then I couldn’t sleep.

  The first thing that kept me awake was Petr Staszic. Why was he there? Where did he want me to go? Who sent him? I was having trouble believing anyone that incompetent would be acting on their own directions.

  Although, look at me.

  Why did he want me? He must have been following me to know I was at my parents’— Oh God, the car in my rear mirror!

  In the grip of curiosity and insomnia, I pulled a flannel shirt on over the shorts and bra top I slept in, shoved my feet into my trainers and took Ted out for a midnight run. I parked up on the lane outside my parents’ house and got out my flashlight, hoping the neighbours wouldn’t think I was a burglar.