by Kate Johnson
Groggily, he raised himself on his elbows, or at least tried to. His right arm was still bound up in the stupid sodding sling. He levered himself upright and looked around the room.
He recognised the wallpaper, because it was the same hand-painted stuff his Great-Aunt Matilda had in the bedroom where he used to sleep whenever he visited her as a child. But he didn’t recognise the furniture, which mostly looked antique, or the pargetted ceiling, or the foot-wide floorboards, or the silken quilt sliding down to his waist.
He began to get a bad feeling.
He wore a t-shirt and underwear. Also not good, although better than nothing. A quick glance around the room revealed no hint of where his trousers might be. His head pounded. Usually, his morning recall was a hell of a lot better than this. He felt as if someone had drugged him.
Oh hell. Had someone drugged him?
… and then put him to bed in a room so luxurious it made the Ritz look like a Travelodge?
He frowned and looked around again. There was no TV, no kettle, and only one door out of the room. It failed to bear fire-safety information. He wasn’t in a hotel. He was in someone’s bedroom.
Luke ran his hand through his hair and figured he might as well work out whose bedroom he was in. He stepped out of the bed, his bare feet hitting a soft, undoubtedly expensive rug, and crossed to the door.
A living room every bit as luxurious as the bedroom greeted him. More huge floorboards. More draping and swagging at the windows. A mixture of antique and designer furniture. A photograph on the wall, glossy and enlarged. An older couple and two girls in their twenties. Dark-haired. Good-looking.
One of them was Evelyn.
Chapter Fifteen
I called the airport from my mobile in the early morning as I stuffed things into my bag, and gave them the number of the credit card I’d stolen from the drunk woman in the bar in payment for a flight to Bradley International airport in Connecticut. My hands felt like Edward Scissorhands’ and they ached, everything ached, from the cold. I piled on another sweater and a flannel shirt, extra socks and a pair of tights under my jeans, added gloves and hat, the lot. I was so cold. I’d never be warm again.
I felt hunted the whole time: waiting for the taxi, checking in, defrosting myself with strong coffee. I didn’t feel remotely safe until I was through security, and even then it was as if everyone was watching me. I practised my fake signature and bought a lot of Euros, just to confuse whoever tried to trace the credit card. And then I got on the plane, checked the faces of everyone around me, and finally let myself relax. I’d been awake all night. I didn’t feel remotely drunk any more. I was exhausted, but my mind was too nervous to sleep.
Jack didn’t trust me. He was only working with me to keep tabs on me. Matter of fact, he could have been lying the whole time about everything, Irene, Maria, everything. How the hell would I know? He could have been working for Harvey.
Harvey, who still hated me.
I felt like I was in a car chase, or on a runaway train. Sooner or later someone would catch me, but how soon? And did I want them to?
Recollection hit Luke like a train. Evelyn, her hands and her mouth and her sweet-scented skin. Her warm, slim body against his. Her husky laugh.
‘I think you’ve had a little too much to drink,’ she’d purred, and Luke’s head pounded in agreement.
Steadying himself, he ran a hand over his face. He desperately needed a shave and his mouth felt like it was lined with old carpet, but more importantly he’d just woken up in his secretary’s bed.
He staggered through a pair of tall double doors into a kitchen that seemed to be mostly made of chrome, wincing at the brightness, and stuck his head directly under the tap. Cold water flushed his face, filled his mouth, and he stood up, reeling.
Sophie is going to kill me. She’s going to actually dismember me.
Loathing himself, he made it back into the living room and collapsed on the immaculate sofa. Maybe he should call Harrington and confess to the murders himself. MI5 would be a picnic compared to what Sophie would do if she found out he’d cheated on her.
His eyes roamed the beautiful apartment. Evelyn clearly wasn’t shy about accepting family money – she sure as hell couldn’t furnish a place like this on her salary. The high ceilings, tall windows overlooking a beautifully maintained garden square, two bedrooms –
Wait. Two bedrooms? He counted doors. The room he’d just come out of, the kitchen, and two more. He opened one to find an expensive-looking bathroom.
He opened the other to find a huge bed, massive wardrobe, and exquisite chaise longue. At least, he assumed it was exquisite. He couldn’t see any of it for the piles of clothes and cosmetics heaped upon every surface.
Relief shot through him. This was Evelyn’s room. He could even smell her perfume here, and there had been none when he woke up. None on his clothes. And come to think of it, he was still wearing something, which he wouldn’t be if he’d been having rampant sex with Evelyn all night.
Luke laughed out loud, which made his shoulder throb, which made him laugh even more. He wasn’t sure he was even capable of rampant sex at the moment. He could barely feed himself, thanks to shovelling manure for days.
He went back into the room where he’d woken up, and from the door he could see behind the painted screen to a chair where the remainder of his clothes had been placed. Relieved beyond measure, he went through his pockets for painkillers and his phone, and called Evelyn.
It went straight to message service. ‘Evelyn, it’s Luke. Listen, thanks for putting me up last night. Appreciate it. Give me a call back if you can.’
He went in search of coffee, spent about half-an-hour trying to get her ridiculously complicated coffee maker to just give him some of the damn stuff, and a further ten minutes searching for a cup to drink it out of.
His phone rang, and Evelyn’s name flashed up.
‘And how are you feeling this morning?’ she asked, her tone a little acidic.
‘Like hell,’ he replied. ‘How much did I drink last night?’
‘More than you should have, given the painkillers I found in your pocket.’
He winced. ‘Right. Yes. Sorry. Didn’t do anything embarrassing, did I?’
‘Repeated loudly how much you loved your girlfriend,’ Evelyn said, ‘but we were in the cab by that point so no one else heard you. Except the driver, and I don’t think he was Service so we should be safe.’ She paused, while Luke mentally beat himself up. ‘Look, you really ought to be gone by the time I get back. And try to be discreet. I don’t think I’m under any surveillance but it was rather a risk bringing you back home last night anyway.’
‘So why did you?’
Evelyn paused. Then she said, ‘You wouldn’t tell me where you were staying and you were in no state to be left alone. Why on Earth do you live so far away?’
She said it as if Essex was Outer Mongolia. To a city girl like Evelyn, it probably was.
‘I moved there when I started at SO17. It’s convenient for the airport,’ he said, which was a direct lie. It was convenient for Sophie.
‘Look, do you remember what I told you last night? The information about this Sarah Wilde woman?’
He closed his eyes. Good job he only had one hand free or he’d be using the other to punch himself in the face. ‘No.’
‘No, I didn’t think you would. There’s a USB stick in my laptop bag. Take it, for God’s sake don’t leave it there. I don’t want to be in the same trouble you are.’
He found it, and plugged it into the laptop. ‘Evelyn, I can’t express my gratitude enough.’
Another pause. ‘Yes, well,’ she said. ‘I’m sure we can come up with a way.’
Landing in Connecticut not long after dawn, I shoved away memories of being there with Jack, and took a taxi to Irene Shepherd’s house. On the way, my phone rang, and the display showed Jack’s number.
I cancelled the call.
Then, feeling horribly low, I call
ed up Luke’s number, but I couldn’t bring myself to ring it. What if he was still angry with me? What if I was still angry with him? Could we even have a conversation these days without erupting into arguments?
I sent him a text. ‘Had Wilde been to Hartford before?’
The reply came back a few minutes later. ‘Two years ago in June.’ That was all. Another bare text.
‘Where did she stay?’
No reply. The cab pulled up at Shepherd’s house and I paid the driver with the dollars I’d got in exchange for my Euros when I landed at Bradley Airport. Smart, yes? I’d got changed into heels and a skirt, but I still felt really cold. I was shivering all the time.
I pressed the buzzer at the gate and when Consuela Sanchez’s voice answered, tried to remember how we’d got in before.
‘Alice Robinson,’ I said eventually. ‘I was here last week. Department of …’ Oh hell, what had I said?
She buzzed open the gate, and I walked in. She was waiting at the door for me.
‘Your friend is not with you?’
‘Er, no. No. We’re making, uh, independent enquiries. Okay, Mrs Sanchez –’
‘Ms Sanchez,’ she said threateningly, and gestured to the sofa in the living room like it was an electric chair.
‘Ms Sanchez. I do beg your pardon. I need to know if you ever met a woman by the name of Sarah Wilde.’
Her forehead wrinkled and she sat down opposite me. ‘Sarah Wilde? I don’t remember …’
‘It would have been a while ago. A couple of years. June, in fact, two years ago. She came to Hartford to see Judge Shepherd.’
Consuela shook her head, still frowning. ‘What did she look like?’
Damned if I knew. ‘She was about your height, white, English accent.’
‘English? Oh no, wait. There was someone. I remember, she came on a really hot day and ordered drinks from me. Like I was a servant or something.’
I can’t understand how she made that mistake. Possibly the apron and the sensible shoes and the fact that she answered the door for her mistress?
‘Do you remember what she looked like?’
‘She had sunglasses and a, uh …’ she mimed a big brim around her head, ‘a hat. Like she was going to a wedding or something.’
‘And she didn’t take them off?’
‘Not that I saw.’
‘Do you know what she wanted?’
‘No, but Ms Shepherd was not too happy to see her. Told me if she came by again, to not let her in.’
Interesting.
‘Did she leave an address or a phone number?’
‘Not so I know.’
‘Did Judge Shepherd have an address book or an appointment book?’
‘They have it at the police station.’
Bugger.
‘Did she only come that one time?’
‘Yes.’
‘Do you have any security camera footage of her?’
‘No. Ms Shepherd only keep the tapes for six months. And the police have them anyway.’
Of course they did.
‘Right,’ I said, standing, too weary to think of anything else to say, ‘well, if you think of anything else, then give me a call.’ I took a sheet of paper from my notebook and wrote down my mobile number. ‘Anything at all you can think of to do with this woman.’
‘Why she so important to you?’
‘She’s just a lead,’ I snapped, and went towards the front door. Sanchez saw me out, and I stood outside the gates, trying to think where I should go next.
My phone buzzed with a message just as I was deciding to go into town and look for a tourist information site, if there was one. It was Luke.
‘Twain House Hotel.’
I could look up the details on my phone. I sent a swift, non-committal thanks, and found a bench on which to sit while I figured out where to go.
The Twain House Hotel was a big, modern building with an underground car park that looked to me like the sort of place where someone dodgy like Sarah Wilde could have struck a few deals. Or whatever it was she did.
Damn, I wish I knew who she was.
I booked a room, delayed asking about Wilde until I had recovered some brain cells, and lugged my bag up to a characterless, modern room. Taking a bath would have been a swell idea, except that I was likely to fall asleep in it. So I splashed some water on my face, hung a Do Not Disturb sign on the door, and curled up in bed, wearing as many clothes as I could, an extra blanket over the duvet, still feeling cold.
Luke leaned back against Evelyn’s sofa and looked at his phone for a moment. Sophie hadn’t called him. Hadn’t added any endearments to her text. Hadn’t given any indication she wanted anything more from him than information.
You’d never drown if someone pushed you in. He’d always thought that about Sophie, too, always known right from the start that she was a fighter. You could shoot her and drown her and collapse buildings on her head, and she’d survive. Sometimes he wondered if she was secretly a cartoon character. If he hit her round the head with a frying pan, she wouldn’t collapse, she’d just see tweety birds.
But now … had it all finally become too much for her? Was she … was she drowning?
The urge to go to her, to metaphorically swim out and rescue her from the tidal wave, was absolutely overwhelming. Without being able to stop himself, he reached for Evelyn’s laptop.
He’d Googled for Sophie’s name, of course he had. But there was still nothing. 5 were still flattening the story. He’d checked Jack’s name a fair few times too, because 5 seemed less interested in him and the CIA weren’t quite as good at keeping quiet, but he’d got nothing useful. The Americans hadn’t found the tabloid sob story from Maura Lanley about her Kidnapping Ordeal. ‘I was robbed at gunpoint! I thought I was going to die!’
Gunpoint.
Exactly where was she getting her firearms from?
He thought back, carefully. The gun safe in her flat had been empty when he’d last checked. Her SIG hadn’t been found at the crime scene.
She’d taken it with her. She was travelling with it.
How was she travelling with it? Driving to France was one thing, but getting on a plane? It was hardly the sort of thing she could hide in her handbag.
He got out his phone and scrolled through the contacts to D. Dialled.
‘What can I do for you?’ Docherty asked.
‘You can tell me how the hell Sophie has kept her gun with her,’ Luke said.
The horrible, shrill bleep of my phone woke me, and I wished I’d been bright enough to turn it off while I slept. But I rolled over, picked it up and frowned at the display. I didn’t recognise the number.
‘’Lo?’
‘Ms Robinson?’
An unfamiliar voice. Male, American, gravelly, a smoker’s voice.
‘Yes?’
‘You came to Judge Shepherd’s house this morning.’
‘Who is this?’
‘I’m her gardener. Name of Tommy Canolti. You were asking about a visitor the judge had, an English woman?’
‘Sarah Wilde.’
‘Yeah. I remember her. Can you come up to the house and we’ll talk about it?’
I peered at my watch.
‘It’s eleven-thirty at night.’
‘Is it so late? Oh. Well. I guess maybe you could come in the morning. Are you staying in town?’
‘Yes –’
‘I could come to your hotel –’
‘No,’ I panicked, ‘it’s okay. I’ll come to the house. Shall we say, ten tomorrow? Okay. Good. See you then. Bye.’
I switched off my phone, feeling a little shaky, but definitely wide awake. That guy had freaked me out. Coming to my hotel? Meeting up so late at night? Like that wasn’t suspicious.
Dammit. Why had I given the maid my number? What if the damn CIA had got hold of it?
I was too tired for this.
I drummed my fingers on the bedside table for a bit. Then I picked up the room phone and ca
lled Reception and asked them not to put any calls through, and to tell anyone who asked for me that I wasn’t there.
I tried to sleep, but it didn’t come easily. Frustrated, still cold, I gave up on sleep and ran a hot bath. In the middle of the night. Definitely cracking up here.
I was just getting dressed again when the phone rang.
Jesus. You give a receptionist one simple instruction …
I snatched up the phone. ‘It’s the middle of the bloody night.’
‘Ms Robinson, I’m sorry, I know you didn’t want to be disturbed, but a man just came to Reception, he wanted to see you and when I told him he couldn’t go up, he showed me a CIA badge and just walked straight to the elevator.’
God bloody dammit! ‘You didn’t try to stop him?’
‘He was CIA,’ she said, as if this was the same as Dark Lord of the Sith.
I put the phone down and glanced at the window. Far too high to escape from. If I left the room now he’d probably see me.
Crap. Only one option left then.
I got dressed as quickly as I could, threw everything into my bag, and took a seat at the back of the room, one foot resting on the chair, arm across my knee, holding my gun steady. I had my thumb on the safety catch and my finger on the trigger. The room was dark and silent.
About thirty seconds later, someone knocked at the door. Then they knocked again.
‘Ms Robinson? Open up. This is the CIA.’
I stayed right where I was.
‘Ms Robinson?’
There was a clicky noise, I saw the light on the electric lock go green, and the handle turned.
A large shape blocked the doorway. ‘Ms Robinson, my name is Agent Harvard of the – Sophie?’
I was so shaken my finger squeezed the trigger and it was a damn good job I had the safety catch on, or I might have shot one of my best friends. Well. Erstwhile best friends, at any rate.
‘Harvey?’
He pushed the door shut and switched the light on.
‘You’re Alice Robinson?’
I bit my lip.
‘Jesus. I thought –’
‘Why are you here?’
Harvey chucked his gun on the bed in a gesture of goodwill and I hesitated about doing the same. He’s saved my life in the past. And I’ve saved his. But that was before I turned up on his professional radar in the ‘enemy’ capacity, and, oh yes, before I endangered his daughter.