by Kate Johnson
“No secret compartments anywhere?” I asked.
“If they were secret, I wouldn’t know.”
“Priest holes or anything?”
“In a church?” Luke said, looking at me patronisingly. “That sort of defeats the object.”
I scowled. “I’m tired, okay?”
Angel closed her hand over the key. “I’m tired, too. I vote we all go back to bed.”
Luke opened his mouth and I jumped in quickly with, “To our own beds.”
He looked moody. “You don’t want to share with either of us?”
“No,” I said, too tired to argue.
He sighed. “Sophie, can I talk to you?”
“In the morning.”
“No, now.” He took my wrist and pulled me through into his room. It smelled of him and his aftershave and I needed to get out, or I’d agree to whatever he wanted, so long as it involved both of us being naked.
“Look,” he said, “about last night…”
Was it really only last night? It seemed weeks away. And yet, in emotional terms, only seconds away.
“It was a misunderstanding,” I said wearily. “I was under the somewhat mistaken impression that you gave a damn about me—”
“I do give a damn about you,” Luke said.
“Anything else? Or just a damn?”
“Sophie—look—we were both kind of stupid last night and—”
Kind of? I should get an award for it. “I get it,” I said. “Really, I do. It was a misunderstanding. I’m sorry I bugged that conversation—which was actually Maria’s idea, in case you’re interested—”
“I know. She told me.”
So why had he still yelled at me?
“So really it was just me being stupid and not listening properly. Newsflash, Luke: the only thing I’m really good at is fucking things up.”
“You’re good at other things, too,” Luke said, smiling faintly, and I was too tired even to blush.
“I’m going to go to bed,” I said, “I’m dead on my feet.”
He walked over and reached out a hand to me, and I found myself arching towards it—sod my principles—and then he paused, not quite touching me, his eyes fixed on the window.
Then he walked over to the window, leaving me standing there, all cold and empty. I wrapped my arms about myself and turned to look at him. “What is it?”
“I thought I saw—shit.”
He dashed to his bag and started pulling clothes on.
“What? What did you see?”
“Someone down on the quay.”
“So?”
“By the car.”
“So?”
“They were aiming something at it.”
I froze. “I’m going—” I said, but Luke shook his head.
“You stay here with Angel. Get your gun—any one of them you like—and your phone and don’t go anywhere until I call you, okay?”
I nodded, somewhat reluctantly. I really wanted to go and check the car was okay.
Luke pulled me to him and kissed my forehead, and then he was gone, and I stood there, frustrated.
Then I went back through Angel’s room, where she was sitting up in bed, looking confused.
“What did you say to him?”
“Nothing. He saw someone by the car. It’s probably nothing, but he just went to check it out.”
I looked at the sky outside, getting lighter and lighter, and then at the clock on Angel’s dressing table, and sighed. I might as well get dressed.
It was colder in the house than I’d expected, but then early mornings always are. I remember sitting on the sofa at home in my Ace uniform, inhaling coffee, trying to get myself in a fit state to drive to work, and I’d be so cold I’d have a sweater and fleece on over my work shirt.
I pulled on the jeans and T-shirt I’d driven down in, added my fleece and the DMs, and strapped on a thigh holster for one of Docherty’s guns. I emptied the clip from the other gun and slipped it into one pocket, put my phone in the other, and waited.
And then, five minutes later, the castle shook with a huge explosion.
I sat there, paralysed for a few seconds, and then I realised that Luke had been out there. The next thing I remember I was standing on the quay, staring at a blackened hole in the ground and the bits of car that were bobbing around in the sea.
Villagers came out of their houses, the punky band poured out of their van, party guests came streaming down the hill from the house, and I stood there and stared, my body apparently finding some liquid from somewhere and squeezing it out through my smoked-up eyes.
And then my phone started ringing. I pulled it numbly out of my pocket and stared at the display, but it didn’t have Luke’s number there so I hardly paid any attention as I lifted it to my ear and said, “Hello?”
“Sophie Green?” said a voice, a gravely, accented voice.
“Yes?”
“Tvuj druh Docherty is bez citu.”
I was still staring at the blackened, warped quay, not thinking at all. “What?”
“Já explodovat jemu.”
It took a few seconds for what he was saying to get to my brain. And then I felt very cold, all over.
“Janulevic?”
“Ano.”
I didn’t know what that meant, so I started looking round and said, rather hopelessly, “Does anyone here speak Czech?”
No one listened, so I repeated it louder. And then I did a Bridget Jones and yelled, “Oi!”
And then everyone turned to look at me, and I asked quietly, “Does anyone here speak Czech?”
A girl raised her hand, and she looked vaguely familiar. One of those tennis starlets. I’d seen her earlier, dressed up as Barbie. She was very brown and toned.
“Can you please speak to this man and ask him what the hell he’s talking about?”
She frowned and took the phone, and gabbled a bit of Czech, and looked faintly alarmed.
“What? What is he saying?”
“Are you Sophie Green?”
“Yes.”
“Do you know someone called…” she stumbled over the name, “Docherty?”
“Yes.”
“This man says he is dead. He put explosives in his mobile phone. He just blew him up.”
I stared at her. “Are you sure?”
She said something else to the phone, listened and nodded.
“He says you’re next.”
She handed the phone back and I took it, totally numb. Janulevic wasn’t on Docherty’s side. Did that mean Docherty was innocent?
Oh, shit.
“Is this all a joke?” the starlet asked. “Like your murdery mystery things? Agatha Christie?”
“No,” I said. “No joke. Not funny.” I was starting to shake. “Everyone go back up to the castle and get dressed and get in the helicopters and go home. Party’s over. Go on, go. Go!”
They drifted away, shooting me puzzled looks, quite a few of them muttering about taking a joke too far, and I was left standing there, feeling cold with horror, staring at the bobbing waves and splintered boats. A few residents were poking about, saying angry things about the state of their property, but I wasn’t listening.
“Sophie?” someone said from behind me, and I turned to see Penny standing there, huddled into little jersey shorts and a huge sweater with Team Masters printed on it. “Are you okay?”
I shrugged and nodded.
“What happened?”
“A mistake.”
“Did something get blown up? ‘Cos that’s what it sounded like.”
“Yes,” I said distantly. “My car.”
“Seriously? Was it a nice car?”
“James Bond had one.”
“Jesus.” She lifted up my face. “Why would someone blow up your car?”
“They were after someone else.”
“Who?”
And then a voice came from behind me. “Not me, I hope,” and I turned and saw Luke standing there, soaked through completely, looking
utterly frozen and really pissed off, and I flew over and threw myself at him, sobbing with relief at the feel of him in my arms.
He closed his arms around me, wincing.
“Oh God, are you hurt? Did I hurt you?”
“No,” he unclawed my fingers from his arm, “a bullet hurt me. You’re just a reminder. Hey, Soph, if I didn’t know better I’d say you were worried about me.”
I slammed a fist against his chest. “Don’t be so bloody flippant. I thought you were dead.”
“Jumped in the water. Got pushed out a bit by the swell.” He rubbed his forehead, which was bleeding where the stitches had opened up. “And I have bad news about the car.”
“Really?”
“I think there’s water in the carburettor.”
I looked up at him, and he was smiling gently, and I smiled too.
“Okay,” he said. “I think we need to get off this island and go talk to Docherty—”
“Erm,” I said, and he looked at me. “About Docherty?”
“Yes?”
“The bomb was meant for him. Janulevic wired his mobile.”
Luke stared at me. “And you know this how?”
“He just called me.”
We walked back up to the house and I told him about the call. “He says I’m next. Maybe I ought to get a new phone.”
Luke took the little Nokia out of my pocket and looked at it. “Did you get his number?”
“ID withheld.”
“Any numbers in here you want to keep?”
“None that you don’t have.”
“Good.” He tossed the phone up in the air over the cliff, borrowed my gun and shot the phone into a lot of small pieces. They fell through the early morning like little bits of confetti.
“Thanks,” I said, taking the gun back. “Are you sure you’re okay?”
“As soon as I get some dry clothes on I will be.” He looked at me sideways. “You really were worried, weren’t you?”
“Yes,” I said, annoyed that he was right. “If you get killed I’ll have to find a new partner. Or work with Maria, and that’s just too Cagney and Lacey for me.”
We went back up to our rooms and found Angel sitting on her bed, clawing at the sheets anxiously.
“Oh my God! Are you all right?”
We shrugged and nodded. “You didn’t follow the rest of the household down to see?” Luke asked.
“Sophie told me to stay here.”
“Did I?”
“Yes. You went really white, then you got your gun out and told me to stay here and ran off looking murderous.”
Oh. Yes, now I thought about it, I might have done that.
Luke was looking very amused. “I’m going to take a shower,” he said. “Want to join me?”
“No.” Liar.
He went off, grinning, and I just caught a glimpse of him removing his shirt before he shut the door.
“Sophie,” Angel said, “you’re drooling.”
I licked my lips. “God, Angel, I’m in trouble.”
“Why? What happened?”
“I thought he was dead and it was like the world had ended. I have a serious thing for him.”
Angel smiled. “Oh, that,” she said. “We all know about that. I thought you meant that explosion. Was it an explosion?”
I nodded miserably. “The Vanquish has vanished.”
She clapped her hand to her mouth. “What happened?”
There was a knock on the door, and I opened it to see Penny looking in. “Is Angel there?”
I pulled back the door and let her in.
“Angel, are you all right?”
She nodded. “Why wouldn’t I be?”
“Well, you had the party moved down here because you were getting stalked, and then someone blew up Sophie’s car…”
“They blew it up?”
I nodded. “Actually, it was Docherty’s car. And it was his phone that exploded. The car just sort of went along with it.” I shuddered. Imagine if I’d brought the phone into the house with me? It could have been in my bag, by my bed. I could have been dead by now.
I closed my eyes tight, and when I opened them my gaze fell on the guitar. The key. The key had something to do with this all.
“Angel, that key,” I said, “can I see it again?”
She fetched it from her bedside. “I’ve been looking at it, but it isn’t familiar.”
I turned it over in my hands. It was big and heavy, a proper old fashioned Victorian kind of key.
“Maybe it’s for a lock that doesn’t exist any more,” Penny suggested. “Like your front door. Didn’t your mum have all the locks updated?”
My shoulders slumped. That could be it.
“But why would your dad put it inside his guitar?” I said. “Do you play that often?”
“No. It makes me too sad. I just brought it with me because I couldn’t stand the idea of leaving it to—to whoever’s stalking me.”
I nodded. A security blanket. A very musical and not too comfy security blanket, but still.
“And he never mentioned anything about it to you? Or your mum? They never said anything?”
She shrugged. “Not that I remember.”
The bathroom door opened, and Luke came out, wearing a towel and some water and not much else. I licked my lips without even realising it, and he looked the three of us over.
“Please tell me you were having a pillow fight,” he said.
“Enough with the pillow fights,” I said. “Do you ever think of anything else?”
His eyes met mine, and I guess I knew the answer to that.
He disappeared back into his bedroom, and Penny shook her head at me.
“What?”
“You. Eyes like saucers. Not that I can blame you. That man looks good half-naked.”
“You should see the real deal,” I said mistily, and they exchanged glances.
“So you are sleeping with him?” Penny asked uncertainly.
“Not at present.” But give me ten seconds to get in that room and things might change.
“So you were, but now you’re not?”
I nodded.
“Why not?”
I tried to remember, but right now it was damn hard.
Luke came back out, and I made myself look at something else. But I was still aware of him, still knew he was wearing the tight black T-shirt and leather jeans of his costume. Not a lot of men can pull off leather trousers, but Luke could.
Don’t think about pulling off leather trousers, don’t…
“That key,” he nodded at it, “you think it’s important?”
“Well, it’s a secret. It could be important.”
He nodded. “We need to go back. Get Docherty out and apologise to him—” I felt my face flush, “—and see if he knows anything about it.”
“How are we going to get back?” I asked. “My car is rubble and yours will take until tomorrow.”
“No, it won’t,” Luke began, but Penny suddenly leapt up.
“I have an idea,” she said, and ran from the room.
We all stared after her.
“She’s a model,” Angel said eventually, and we nodded slowly.
“It’s big, old key,” I said. “Big, old lock.” And then it came to me. How thick am I? “Angel,” I said, “do you have a key to the crypt?”
Chapter Sixteen
Angel hailed me as a genius and even Luke looked pretty impressed. But as I was collecting my belongings, ready for a long trip in Luke’s Vectra, I grumbled that it’d be quicker to walk back, and he quickly stopped looking impressed.
“Look, without referring to Jeremy Clarkson, tell me why you hate my car?”
“It’s ugly and slow—”
“It’s not slow.”
“What’s its top speed, then?”
“A hundred and fourteen.”
“The Vanquish could do nearly two hundred.”
Luke narrowed his eyes at me, and I remembered him whisper
ing the same fact in my ear not so very long ago.
“It’s a 1.6,” I said, because I’d looked up these facts to use them against Luke. “It takes thirteen seconds to get to sixty—”
“Sixty-two,” Luke said, and Angel watched us like a tennis spectator.
“What the hell are you talking about?” she said.
“Nothing,” Luke said. “Go and get your stuff, Soph.”
I made a face, but went off anyway. My dad had a Vectra for a couple of weeks once when his car got smashed up in an ice accident. It was the most uncomfortable thing I’ve ever been in, and I drive a Defender.
I packed up my bag and slung it over my shoulder and went back out into Angel’s room, and was just about to ask if she was coming with us when the door came open again and Penny rushed in, towing a sleepy-eyed Daniel behind her. She was brandishing a set of keys.
“Daniel,” she said, “has very kindly agreed to lend you his helicopter for the ride home.”
I gaped. “You have a helicopter?”
“Three,” he said, yawning. “Luke, I’m sure my dad said you were RAF.”
“Used to be.”
“Can you fly a helicopter?”
“I can fly anything.”
Bully for him.
Daniel handed the keys over. “Silver and blue Bell with Masters F1 written on the side.”
And then it clicked. “Daniel Masters, as in Mastercars?”
“Yep.”
Bloody hell. This guy’s dad makes cars that make the Vanquish look like Eastern Bloc dinky toys.
“What happened to your car?” he asked me. “Didn’t I see you with an Aston?”
I nodded. “It got blown up.”
“How very Stephanie Plum.”
I turned to Luke. “See, he knows who Stephanie Plum is.”
Luke raised his hands. “If I get out of this with both eyes intact, I’ll read the damn books, okay?”
I nodded, satisfied.
Well, not really satisfied, not even by a long shot, but you know what I mean.
“Are you ready to go?” Luke asked, and I nodded.
We thanked Daniel and Penny and I called Macbeth to come and look after Angel for us. I couldn’t see him objecting. Then we went outside and stood looking across the lawn, past the border of rosebushes, to the sea far below.
“Tide’s not out yet,” I said. “How are we going to get across?”
“We could swim,” Luke said, “but I’ve had enough of that for one day. Can you row?”