by Kate Johnson
She shook her head. ‘He went in through the window. Climbed up the trellis.’
I turned to look at the house. The roses did look a little dishevelled. ‘How did he know which window was her study?’
She shrugged. ‘He had an appointment with her that afternoon,’ she said, and I looked over at Jack. Of course.
‘Why did he come to visit? Did you see him?’
‘No, I already go home.’
‘So he came here quite late?’
She shrugged in an affirmative sort of way.
‘Do you know what he wanted?’
‘Is that important?’ Jack snapped, and I smiled at him.
‘Of course. In my department we take time to investigate things like that,’ I said sweetly, and Jack glowered. ‘Did anyone else come visiting?’ I asked. ‘Anyone unusual?’
‘People are always coming,’ Sanchez said. ‘Clients and colleagues, the governor was a friend …’
‘Anyone you didn’t know,’ I said.
‘Well, there were a few. Charity collectors. Ms Shepherd always saw them. It was good for her image.’
Charity collectors. Well, I guess they could have been casing the joint. ‘Which charities?’ I asked.
‘There was a cancer one and a blind one and a deformity one –’
‘Deformity?’
‘Yes. The woman had her own deformity. She keep her gloves on but I could tell. She couldn’t use her right hand properly.’ Consuela shook her own for emphasis. ‘And she didn’t have all her fingers.’
A cold shock ran through me.
‘Which fingers?’
Consuela frowned at me. ‘Why do you need to –’
‘Which fingers?’
The maid looked taken aback, but she pointed to the last two fingers of her hand.
‘Would you excuse me a second?’ I said, and stumbled away to another part of the garden, hauling out my phone as I did. I stabbed in Luke’s number and waited. And waited. And got voicemail.
‘You … Have … Reached … The … Voicemail … Service … For …’
Dear Christ, did it have to be so slow?
‘Zero … Seven … Seven … Four …’
Stop any time you fancy, I thought, and when I eventually got to leave a message, gabbled, ‘Luke. Alexa Martin. Are you sure she’s still in jail? Not wandering around in America, shooting people?’ I tried to calm down. ‘I just need to know, okay? Call me back. And bloody start answering your phone, okay?’
Jack and Mrs Sanchez were heading back up to the house and I ran after them on unsuitable heels that kept sinking into the ground. I caught up as they went back into the house.
‘One more thing,’ Jack was saying. ‘In the interests of interdepartmental co-operation,’ what a mouthful, ‘could you tell me who else you’ve spoken to about this matter?’
Sanchez looked blank.
‘The other cops,’ I explained, and she nodded.
‘The local department,’ she said. ‘Detectives. And a man from the CIA …’
CIA? That was … unusual. They didn’t usually deal with domestic matters, and to be involved in what, on the surface at least, was a straightforward murder investigation, was odd. ‘Do you have his name?’ I asked.
‘I have a card,’ she volunteered, and trotted off to get it.
‘Why are they involved?’ Jack wondered out loud. He glanced at me, and I shrugged.
‘You know anyone in the CIA?’ I asked, and he shook his head.
‘You?’
‘Well, sort of,’ I said, as Sanchez came back with a little card.
‘Here you go,’ she said, and Jack took it. He read it, shrugged, and handed it to me.
And then I nearly died.
The name on the card was James Harvard.
Harvey.
Oh, fuck.
His entire flat reeked of other people.
Angry beyond belief, Luke stormed around the place, swiping piles of CDs and books to the floor, tearing his clothes from the wardrobe, knocking all his toiletries into the bath. Destroying the neat, perfect order MI5 had created. They’d re-plastered and even repainted the wall where he’d punched it. Luke smashed his cricket bat at it to create a new dent, just to spite them.
But no matter how he tried to replace his belongings where they should be, nothing looked right.
His shoulder throbbed. His eyelids felt like lead. He shoved books back onto the shelves until he could barely stand. The surgeon hadn’t wanted him to go home yet, but Luke had very little tolerance for hospitals.
That damn photo. He could barely look at the bed, at the sheets he’d deliberately rumpled to destroy 5’s order, but which now looked as if someone had just tumbled from bed, sleepy and naked, and was about to pad barefoot into his arms.
Sophie. Bloody Sophie. He knew she’d be trouble the first time he saw her. Smart, sexy Sophie, who genuinely had no idea how incredible she was. A brain that raced off in a million directions at once, zigzagging all over the place and always coming up with something mad but brilliant. Unable to see a sane solution to anything, some days barely even able to tell her left from her right. A lush, curvy body and a swing in her hips that made grown men drool. She didn’t even seem to notice them staring. Bright, laughing eyes and that mouth – oh Jesus Christ, that mouth. Faster than a runaway train and twice as dangerous, pink and full and addictive. The first time he kissed her he’d seen fireworks.
‘It’s ridiculous,’ he said out loud. ‘She’s ridiculous.’
There was simply no sense in it. She drove him round the bend, but he couldn’t stop thinking about her, had never been able to stop thinking about her. She was everything he’d spent his life avoiding, and now he knew why.
Because of Sophie, he was under suspicion from MI5 and 6. Because of Sophie, he was damn close to losing his job. His family hated him even more than ever. His flat, his sacred personal space, had been violated. He’d been shot, for God’s sake.
He’d known her a year, and his life was in tatters. If she kept this up he’d be dead by forty.
The picture of her on the coffee table mocked him. Sap, it said. Sucker. You’ve spent your life knowing it’s a really bad idea to give your heart to anyone, and then what do you do? You let Sophie push and shove and bully you into falling for her. You let her wriggle and worm under your skin, get inside you, spread everywhere. Love is a cancer, and it’ll kill you.
He wiped his hand over his face. The sensible thing to do would be to end it. Call her up and tell her it was over. No good for either of them. Hell, Sophie herself had said the same thing to him not six months ago. People like them didn’t get to have personal relationships.
People like him didn’t, at any rate. Sophie could career off into a brand new life without him, do anything, be anyone, and some poor other mad sap could spend the rest of his life being driven mad by her.
He should give up the idea of a life with her and concentrate on doing what he knew best, what he understood.
He knew that, and yet he’d been the one pushing to get back together with her.
‘You really are a fucking idiot, Sharpe,’ he said to himself, and stood up.
The packet of cigarettes was where he’d left it in the cupboard. His lighter – oh Jesus bloody Christ, they’d even refilled his lighter.
He stuck the cigarette between his teeth, flicked the lighter open with his left hand and lit up. The first breath of smoke swirled around his lungs and back out again. Glorious.
Now at least the flat smelled different, although in his heart of hearts he wasn’t sure if it smelled any better.
He opened a kitchen drawer and took out the Yellow Pages. Flipped to Hotels. Called one at random and made a reservation. Called an airport hire-car firm and ordered a car.
Thought for a moment. He’d reorganised the cupboard by the front door this morning, and while he’d noted with fury that his secret trapdoor had been neatly sealed, that the dusty hiking boots at the back of the cup
board had been polished and that even his skis had been waxed and sharpened, he’d also seen that the nondescript, medium-weight black jacket he rarely wore still had its lining intact.
Luke held the jacket for a long moment.
Then he took a shower.
Dressed in plain black trousers and a blue shirt, he got in Sophie’s car and drove to the supermarket.
Airports were easy. Full of CCTV. Anyone with any level of government access and half-an-ounce of intelligence could hack in and trace a person, especially if they had a human tail to pinpoint the quarry.
But a supermarket? No one would watch him in a supermarket. And by the time they figured out he wasn’t just there to buy food, by the time they persuaded the supermarket security people to let them look at the CCTV, he’d be long gone.
He picked up a few t-shirts and jeans, clean underwear, some cheap trainers. He loitered around the toiletries section, staring with acknowledged irony at the condom selection, waiting for a member of staff to wheel one of those huge cages full of empty boxes by. Followed in their lee. Shoved his jacket in his shopping basket and jammed a baseball cap on his head, all of it done fast enough to seriously annoy his injured shoulder. Just enough time to take off the sling before the cage wheeled in another direction, and by the time the security cameras caught him again he was a man in dark trousers and a blue shirt – probably their cameras weren’t in colour, but who would take the risk? – following another staffer through the employee-only doors.
By the time he exited the locker room and left the building through the staff entrance, he was a man wearing jeans and a plain t-shirt under a nondescript jacket, waiting for the bus opposite the petrol station. No one stopped him. If anyone saw him ripping out security tags they didn’t seem to care. Dozens, hundreds of people went through those staff doors every day – and most of them, he guessed, weren’t paid enough to care about a stranger wandering through.
By the time the bus dropped him off in town he’d taken the tiny printed strips from the lining of his jacket and pressed them carefully into place in his passport and driving licence. Well. A spare copy of each, at any rate.
The first coach leaving town was for London. Luke got on, leaned against the window and closed his eyes for a second. Either he was getting too old for this, or it really was inadvisable to carry on these shenanigans two days after getting shot.
He opened his eyes, and called the Home Office.
‘So let me get this straight,’ Jack said with worrying calm. Outside the car, the traffic lights blared red for danger. ‘You have been staying with the mother-in-law and daughter of a CIA officer who is investigating this case, who is quite possibly stalking me, and now he’s mad at you?’
‘That’s about the size of it,’ I said meekly. The lights changed and Jack rammed his foot down. The car shot forward, far too fast, just as it had at every junction since he’d hauled me, white-faced, from Irene Shepherd’s house.
‘And you didn’t mention this to me because …?’
‘I didn’t know he was on the case.’
‘But you knew he’d speak to his daughter at some point! Didn’t you think she might tip him off about what you were investigating and where you were going?’ He was yelling now. Fair enough. I’d probably be yelling, too.
He’d seen my face when I read Harvey’s name and dragged me out to the car, where he’d seemed genuinely concerned. I think he thought Harvey was like Harrington. A pitbull out to get us. ‘No,’ I said. ‘He’s my friend. But he’s, um …’
‘He’s um what?’ Jack said.
‘Well, sort of mad at me. Sort of really mad.’
At that, Jack’s concern evaporated. Quickly. And now we were in the car, going way too fast, and he hadn’t stopped yelling at me.
‘I didn’t tell her where I was going. I didn’t tell anyone.’
‘And you had to go and piss him off! Why did you go there? Why? What the hell’s in Ohio?’
I said nothing. There wasn’t much I could say.
He carried on in much the same vein all the way back to the hotel, snapping at me as he wrestled with the door card, ‘It could have been him who found us in France –’
‘Why would he try to drown you? And anyway, didn’t you say it was a woman?’
‘Fucking women,’ Jack snapped, and stalked into the bathroom. He locked the door and I heard the shower drumming.
Great.
I sat down on the bed, shaking slightly. God. As a person I trusted Harvey implicitly: I absolutely adored him. But on a professional level I was never surprised to find he was keeping secrets from me. He’d been seconded to SO17 for a while, working in co-operation with us. The idea was we helped each other out, but more than once I found out he hadn’t told me the whole story. Not that I ever told him anything, either, but it was still annoying.
And now he was really angry with me. He was chasing Jack professionally, and he was angry with me personally. I’d put his child in danger. Harvey the Labrador puppy had just turned into a Doberman.
I wiped my hands over my face, exhausted and frightened. I shouldn’t have come here. I could just leave. Grab my things now while Jack was in the shower, and sneak out.
I slumped back on the bed. I had no money and no friends. Sneaking out would just be another stupid thing to do.
Wearily, I got out my phone and called Luke again. This time he answered.
‘I was just about to ring you. Why are you so interested in Alexa all of a sudden?’
‘I shot her in the hand.’
‘Yes. Good marksmanship. For once. But …’
‘Irene Shepherd’s housekeeper said a woman came to the house the day before she was killed and she had a deformed hand.’
‘So?’
‘So, I …’ I realised that there must be millions of people with deformed hands. And that the one I was thinking of was in a maximum security prison five thousand miles away.
‘She’s not going anywhere,’ Luke said. He sounded tired. ‘She’s really not. I can go up there and see, if you really want, but the Home Office are adamant that she’s still locked up. It was just a coincidence, Sophie.’
I flopped back on the bed and ran my hand over my eyes. ‘Luke, did you know Harvey is after Jack?’
There was a pause. ‘No,’ Luke said. ‘Angel’s Harvey? What – how do you know? Have you seen him?’ He paused. ‘Does this mean you’ve partnered up with Jack again?’
‘Yeah. I know, I know, he threatened me with a gun and all, but, well, I need some help with this whole thing. Grieves me to admit it, but I can’t do it alone.’
‘Hmm,’ was all Luke said. ‘Have you seen Harvey?’
‘No. He left a card with the maid. Who will probably go and call him now,’ I said, so frustrated I felt like crying, ‘and tell him we’ve been there …’
‘You’re in Connecticut?’
I winced. ‘For now,’ I hedged.
‘Find out anything interesting?’
‘I’m being stalked by the man whose wedding I was maid of honour at.’ And he currently hates me.
‘Anything else?’
‘Luke, you’re not taking this very seriously.’ Oh hell, maybe he already knew. Maybe he was going to tell Harvey. ‘Does Harvey know I’m with Jack?’
‘Shouldn’t think so.’
‘Does Angel know?’
‘I haven’t said anything.’
Yes, but did I believe him?
‘Did you get anything on Sarah Wilde?’ I asked.
‘Yeah, I got that she has a fake passport.’
‘How’d you figure?’
‘According to my good friend Lucie at the Home Office –’
‘How good a friend?’ I asked, trying not to let my jealousy show, and failing.
I could hear the smile in Luke’s voice as he replied. ‘Oh, I’ve only seen her naked half-a-dozen times. Well, a dozen. Ish.’
Thing was, there was a distinct possibility he wasn’t joking.
‘You’re really funny,’ I told him anyway. ‘And what did the naked Lucie have to tell you?’
‘There are seventy-eight Sarah Wildes in the UK.’
Needle in a haystack. Crap. ‘Really?’
‘Lucie wouldn’t lie to me. But listen, seven don’t have passports, and fifteen are under eighteen. That leaves fifty-six, of which only thirty-three have used their passports in the last three years, and eighteen who’ve gone outside the EU.’
‘And eighty-seven percent of statistics are made up. What does any of this mean, Luke?’
‘None of them match the passport number of the Sarah Wilde who travelled to Hartford that week.’
I slumped. ‘So … what? She wasn’t British?’ Maybe I’d been jumping to conclusions. Sarah Wilde could be American, Australian –
‘According to records the woman who got on that plane was travelling on a British passport. British citizen. Old-style passport, not biometric. Issued by the passport office in Liverpool. Ostensibly, at any rate.’
‘So it’s a fake? A good fake, if no one caught it.’
‘Yes. Docherty probably fixed it,’ Luke said sourly.
‘Now who’s jealous?’
Luke made a grumpy noise in the back of his throat. ‘The point is,’ he said, ‘that someone was travelling with this passport who wasn’t entitled to it. People don’t do that for honest reasons.’
‘Unless they’ve been accused of murder and are trying to clear their name.’
‘Unless they’ve been accused of murder and are trying to clear their name,’ Luke repeated dutifully.
‘So whoever she is, she’s probably our killer.’
‘Well, she’s probably Irene’s killer. Sophie, shouldn’t you be spending a bit more time trying to work out who framed you?’
‘It’s the same person.’
‘How do you know?’
‘I just know.’
‘But –’
‘I just do,’ I said irritably, as the bathroom door opened and Jack came out, wearing a towel and a scowl. I closed my eyes and thought of Luke in the same get-up.
I’d seen him naked four days ago. It felt like four months.
When I pictured Luke I was beginning to see Jack.
‘Look, you can’t just rest on your instincts, Soph, you need evidence. This is dangerous.’