I, Spy? (10 page)

Luke knocked on the door. Ana didn’t answer right away, and I turned to him and said, “What if she’s out?”

“She’ll be in. She’s got family coming in this evening.”

“Who are we going to be?”

“Plainclothes. CID. Whoever you want. A warrant card’s a warrant card.”

I supposed it was.

Ana looked awful when she opened the door. Her clothes had chocolate stains on them, her face was puffy and spotty and her hair was greasy. She looked nothing like the gorgeous girl who gave people information in her sexy Spanish accent.

“Ms. Rodriguez?” Luke said, and his voice was kind of soft. He showed her his warrant card and I started searching for mine, but she’d already opened the door to let us in.

“You want to know about Chris?”

“Actually, we want to know about you.”

She looked up tearfully. “What, you think I did it?”

“No!” I said before Luke had even opened his mouth. “We don’t think that at all. We just need to talk to you.”

She nodded and led the way through to the living room, where the curtains were closed and the carpet was covered with tissues and a film was frozen on the screen. The box for it—
Abre Los Ojos
—was sprawled open on the floor. Ana zapped the TV off and looked up at us. “Would you like some coffee?”

Luke shook his head and I, reluctantly because I did want some, shook mine too.

“We don’t want to put you to any trouble. You’re probably aware, Ms. Rodriguez, that the BAA cameras saw you making your way down to the undercroft early on Tuesday morning.”

Ana started blinking and sniffing, but she nodded. She sat down and we followed. I was horribly aware of how close to Luke I was sitting.

“Could you please tell us what time?” Luke was asking Ana.

She shrugged. “About four a.m.?”

“You don’t know precisely?”

She shook her head.

Luke nodded and asked gently, “Could you tell me why?”

She started crying again. It was awful.

“It’s okay,” I said, and I sounded pretty professional. “Take your time.”

Luke glanced at me, and I couldn’t read his expression.

“I know we shouldn’t,” Ana said, “but we were going for…we were going for…”

It was too painful. “Was it a romantic liaison?” I asked.

She looked slightly puzzled over “liaison”, but she nodded. “Romantic, yes. It was my idea. Is all my fault!”

She started sobbing and she looked so miserable I got up and went over to her and put my arm around her. She clutched at me and wailed into my shoulder, “There is reasons why you not supposed to go down there. I kill him, is all my fault!”

I looked up at Luke. He looked uncomfortable.

“Could you maybe go and get her a glass of water?” I said, and he leapt up.

“Look, Ana,” I said, no Ms. Rodriguez for me, “it’s not your fault. You just wanted to do something exciting with your boyfriend.” She was still crying, but not as hard. I went on, “Was it all secret?”

She raised her face to me. “You mean me and Chris? No one at the airport knew we were together. We were just…” she waved her hand, “flatmates. No,
house
mates. You know.”

“How long have you been living here?” I asked as Luke came back in with the water. I gave it to Ana.

“Two years. Since I came here.”

“How long have you and Chris been together?”

She started sniffing again. “A year. No one knows. His family don’t like me…”

I nodded. Racism in Britain is alive and well. And it wasn’t like Ana comes from somewhere far off, with strange customs and strict ideals. She was Spanish. They were only an hour ahead of us. But you still see it a lot at the airport, this sort of generalisation. A lot of the foreign nationals have trouble finding places to stay. People think they’re untrustworthy.

“I’m sorry,” Ana apologised, brushing at the wet patch on my leather coat. “I can’t stop crying. All day, I cry. Everything makes me cry.”

“It’s okay,” I said, stroking her back. “Cry all you want. You’ve been through a lot.”

I felt so awful for her, I really did. I mean, the closest I’ve come to personal loss is when my grandmother died, but I never really was what you might call close to her. She was just this distant old lady, and it sure as hell hadn’t affected me like this.

“Ms. Rodriguez,” Luke interrupted. “I’m sorry to go on, but we have to know a few facts. Did you see Chris when you got to the undercroft?”

She shook her head. “I thought I was in the wrong place. I never been down there before. I waited maybe ten minutes and I try to call him, but he didn’t come.”

“So did you leave?”

She nodded. “I heard someone coming. I know sometimes they start early. So I left.”

This concurred with the video footage. Ana had stepped out of the lift at 0356 and got back in at 0411. It was hard to see exactly where she was, because not every part of the undercroft was aspected perfectly, but she explained that she’d gone round to the back of one of the Ace belts, where she and Chris had arranged to meet.

Except Chris never turned up. Because Chris was dead.

We left Ana with her small collection of Spanish films and a lot of chocolate, and walked back into the sunshine. It was one of those clear, lovely spring days when you just know that as soon as you take your jacket off and put your sunglasses on, it’s going to start tipping it down.

“What do you think?” Luke asked as we got back into the car.

“About Ana?” I shrugged. “I think she was genuine. I don’t think she’s guilty. Besides, it would have taken more than ten minutes to open up the belts and get the body inside.”

Calling it “the body” was easier than calling it Chris. If I looked at things objectively, it wasn’t quite so hard.

Hey, look at me! I was coming over all Dana Scully. Maybe I should learn about pathology and stuff.

No. That was just too gross. Besides, Alexa could do that stuff.

“Unless she was the one who messed with the CCTV footage and spliced in more than we thought,” Luke said idly, starting the engine. “She could have covered up loads and just added in a bit of her coming and going.”

I gave him a sideways look. “I thought no one did that stuff any more?”

“An amateur might,” Luke said, and I rolled my eyes.

We went back to the office and Luke asked me where I was planning on staying tonight.

I paused. Was this a veiled proposition? Was he asking if I wanted to stay with him? Did I?

Hell, yes.

But there was something very smug in those dark, contact-lensed eyes of his, something that said he knew he’d got me.

So I said I was staying with my parents and regretted it all the way home.

When I was a little girl, I was the most stubborn creature on earth. I never did anything I was told and the only way my mother could get me to cooperate was by reverse-psyching me into what she wanted. But pretty soon I got wise to that, too, and no one could ever get me to do anything.

I didn’t go to the school my parents wanted me to go to. I didn’t go to the university they thought was best, even when I was supposed to be transferring. I was quite surprised when they condoned my choice of career (such as it was) but now I have the feeling they were hoping I’d give up a lot sooner than I did.

So I’m perverse. I’m a woman.

I got home and put
Buffy
on again and watched her and the Scoobies dance and sing their way around Sunnydale. I ate a whole load of junk food (told you I was showing off about the healthy stuff. None of it counts when I’m depressed) and thought about calling my parents to say I was staying with them again.

And then I felt pathetic, defeated. Wasn’t I supposed to be a secret agent? Did I have to go and stay with my parents whenever I get scared?

When I first moved in here on my own, I hardly spent a night alone for weeks. Angel or someone, Ella and Evie who I went to school with, would come over and watch videos with me until the small hours, and then like as not fall asleep on the sofa. It wasn’t until my very first night when I had to cook my own tea, clear up (that habit didn’t last long), lock the door and switch the lights out all by myself, then get into my very big, cold bed and lie there listening to all the homicidal rapists right outside my front door, that I realised quite how alone I was.

But it passed. Now I liked my solitude. Now I loved the fact that I live alone and take care of myself.

Or at least I did until someone started sending me bits of a corpse.

I got all my new secret agent paraphernalia out on the floor and looked at it. The stun gun I was starting to like. It didn’t look like a weapon, it looked like the sort of thing my mother uses to curl her fringe, but maybe that was the cool thing about it. It was in disguise. But there was still a niggling doubt in the back of my mind. If it was illegal to have a knife in my bag, surely this would be illegal also?

I had handcuffs. But they were legal, right, because they sold them in Ann Summers. The defence spray—it wasn’t anything damaging, it just sprayed a green foamy stuff on the attacker so he’d be stained for a while. Not very exciting. I also had the rape alarm my mum had got me when I was fifteen and went on a school trip to London. I set it off once by mistake and Norma Jean nearly left home.

Then there was the Kevlar. But it was huge—I’d tried it on in the privacy of my bathroom where no one could possibly see me, and there was no way I was wearing it undetected. I looked like I was wearing a fat suit.

So, really, if the finger-sender turned up at my house, I was pretty helpless. I didn’t even have Tammy to defend me.

I thought about calling Luke and asking him again if I could have a gun, but right now I wasn’t in the mood to see him. This morning I’d been about to have sex with him, and then…

Then the finger. Then the footage. Then Ana. Then the realisation that I just really couldn’t get involved with someone I had to work with that closely. If it was Sven that’d be different. Loads of people at the airport are going out or sleeping together or even married. There aren’t any anti-fraternisation rules. The hours and the stress generally do a good enough job of killing romance.

But SO17 consisted of six people, and I had a feeling I was going to be working very closely with all of them. I couldn’t get involved with Luke. I couldn’t.

I stared at my new phone, at the phone book which listed One, Two, Three, Four and Five as my work contacts, and called Two.

She answered straight away. “Sophie, hi!”

“Hey, Maria,” I said, feeling a little uneasy. This woman was awe-inspiring. “Um, am I interrupting you?”

“I’m painting my nails,” she said. “So, no. Are you all right? I heard about the finger…”

I wondered how she’d heard about the finger. Did she get bulletins from One or Alexa? Or did Luke call her a lot? After all, they’d been partners before.

Maybe they were still “partners” now.

Oh, God. Now I felt sick.

“Um,” I said eventually, “yeah, I’m fine. I just, I needed to talk to someone and…”

“And you’ve had enough of Luke for now,” she laughed. “Understandable. He’s a lot to take. Look, you don’t live far, right? You want to come over?”

Did I? Better than sitting around in my flat, feeling scared. “Sure,” I said, and wrote down directions.

She lived in town, not far from the shops, and if I’d got it right in my head then it was a road full of very large, old, gorgeous houses.

I’d got it right.

Maria’s house was a buttery yellow, maybe Georgian, maybe earlier. Most of the places around had been taken over by smart solicitors and their offices. All the houses had window boxes full of bright flowers. The cars were all expensive.

I patted Ted’s flank nervously and crossed to Maria’s house, hoping I’d got it right and she wasn’t playing a prank on me.

She answered the door with a cordless phone clamped between shoulder and ear, foam separators between her toes, and a bright green face.

She gestured for me to follow her in, saying, “…you know he’s a wanker anyway, though, right? No, he always was. Well, look—no, I have to go, I’ve got company—
no
, fuck him. No, he has no rights. Put marigold seeds on his lawn. What?” She paused, and laughed. “No, just a friend. No one you know. I’ll—I’ll see you later, ‘kay? Bye.”

She clicked the phone off and gave me a tiny smile, feeling at the green face mask. “Sorry,” she said, “that was my sister, she’s having neighbour problems.”

“Ah,” I said wisely. I’d lived in my flat for two years and still didn’t know my neighbours’ names.

“Come on up.” She started up the beautiful staircase. “I have to take this stuff off before it tints me permanently green.”

Wouldn’t that be a shame?

No, stop it, Sophie. Maria is nice. She’s been nothing but nice to you. She’s on your side. Just because she’s completely flawless and she’s allowed a gun doesn’t mean you have any licence to be nasty to her.

Dammit.

She left the bathroom door open as she scrubbed off the face mask. “So, how’re you doing? Settling in okay?”

I shrugged, looking around the landing, which was as beautiful as a landing could be. “Okay. Maria, did you ever…” How to put this? Did you ever get off with Luke? Ever want to? “Did you ever get a finger sent through your door?”

She appeared in the doorway, towelling her face. “No,” she said, “although I once found a stiff in my bunk. But that was accidental.”

“Accidental?”

“Yeah. Got the wrong bed.”

I blanched at this. What was I letting myself in for?

“But that was before SO17,” she added, going through into a bedroom that was perfectly, beautifully furnished in shades of blue. She picked up a hooded sweater, pulled it on, and started down the stairs again.

“What did you do before SO17?”

She shrugged. “Two years in the Navy, three in the SBS.”

“The…?”

“SBS. Special Boat Service? The less famous and much wetter version of the SAS. Then I got hauled out to do this. But SO17 was a lot bigger then.”

“What happened?”

“Lots of things. Not so much work to do—security got a lot tighter and left us twiddling our thumbs. A few people retired, a few sort of had retirement thrust upon them.” She raised her eyebrows at me. “The government withdrew funds, we got sort of stranded.”

Withdrew funds? “I will still get paid, right?” I blurted, and Maria laughed.

“Of course you will. And aren’t you still getting something from Ace? You’ll be fine.”

As fine as Maria in her beautiful house? Boy, the SBS must pay damn well.

I followed her into a big, messy lovely kitchen, with a conservatory and a big squashy sofa and a couple of huge lazy ginger cats, who I ran over to immediately. “What are their names?”

“Laurel and Hardy. When I got them Laurel was all thin and weedy but now they’re both so fat they hardly get off the sofa except to eat more.”

I grinned, sitting there stroking both of them. Laurel got up, stretched luxuriously and settled in my lap.

“I think you’ve made a friend,” Maria said, and I knew she wasn’t talking about the cats. I loved anyone who was kind to Tammy. “So,” she started opening cupboards and getting out crisps and chocolate and Jelly Babies, “what did you want to talk about?”

I played with Laurel’s tail. “It’s not really that important.”

“Spit it out. Is it a work thing?”

I shrugged. “Sort of.”

Maria put down the junk food she was carrying and gave me a shrewd look. “Is it about Luke?”

I gulped nervously, and Maria laughed.

“You’re going to have to work on your acting if you’re going to be a spy,” she said. “What’s he done? Did he make a move on you?”

I bit my lip.

“Oh, Jesus. Well, look. He does that a lot. It’s sort of like habit to him. I wouldn’t expect a whole lot to come of it.”

Should I tell her a whole lot nearly had come of it? That if it hadn’t been for the dead finger, a whole lot really would have come?

No. Perhaps better not.

“Luke’s a really good bloke,” Maria went on. “He’s good at what he does.”

Hoo boy. I knew that.

“But he’s not exactly stable when it comes to relationships.”

How did she know that?

“It’s hard to have a normal relationship when you have so many secrets to keep,” Maria explained, shaking Doritos into a bowl and handing me some cheese and chive dip. “I can hardly remember the last one I had. You want my advice, avoid relationships. Stick to casual sex.”

I blinked at her.

“Luke has it down to a fine art,” Maria said wryly, scooping a Dorito into the dip. “Don’t think he’s been emotionally attached to anything since he got his SIG.”

Marvellous.

Maria had an excellent sound system and she slotted a DVD of the Cranberries into the player. We watched for a while on the wide screen TV, eating lots of crisps and dip (saving the sweet course for later), and then Maria looked over at me and laughed.

“What?”

“You, eating junk. Luke said you were all holier-than-thou about additives.”

“Only between the hours of three and five on the third Tuesday of every month.” I scooped up a fat blob of dip. “And only in public.”

“Amen to that. I did wonder why you had crisps in your house if you only ate pure things.”

“Everyone has their vices.”

I suppose they do. Looking at Maria, it was hard to figure out what hers were. Doritos, maybe? She had eaten about three.

She got up and went into the kitchen, and when she returned had a bottle of wine and two glasses.

“I’m driving,” I said reluctantly, and she shook her head.

“Hasn’t Luke told you the rule?”

I narrowed my eyes. I had a feeling there were a lot of things Luke hadn’t told me.

“One unit a day. Stops you from becoming a complete lightweight and means you can still get in a car and drive if you need to.” She poured some out and I was instantly seduced by the thick glug, glug from the bottle.

Just one, then.

“And you know how to spit-back, don't you?”

“With a shot and a bottle of beer? Like in
Coyote Ugly
?”

She grinned and nodded. “Exactly.” She put her head on one side and looked at me. “I think we’ll make a secret agent of you yet, Sophie,” she said, and I wasn’t sure if I was flattered or insulted.

She jumped up and ran into the immaculate dining room. “I almost forgot,” she said. “I have something for you. Went and raided Boots today.” She handed me a large carrier bag and I peeked cautiously inside.

It was full of hair dyes. What was I expecting, that Boots the Chemist had opened up a hand gun section?

“Great,” I said, trying and failing to sound enthusiastic. Maria reached out and fingered a wisp of hair that had fallen out from my scrunchie.

“Is this real?”

“No, it’s all a wig.”

She rolled her eyes. “The colour. Are you a natural blonde?”

Not since I was about twelve. “Mostly.”

“But you can still dye it, right? It won’t go green or anything.”

“No. I’ve dyed it before.” I picked out the bottles. Mostly they were shades of brown, a few reds thrown in for variety. No Sydney Bristow pinks or blues, then. Damn. “What’s this?” I lifted out a smaller box.

“Coloured contacts. Very useful. If someone describes you as a green-eyed redhead and you turn up with blonde hair and blue eyes, you’ll walk straight by.”

Clever. I made a mental note to keep some in my bag.

Maria showed me how to use the contact lenses. It took hours, and I nearly blinded myself several times, but I still drove home with newly violet eyes. I could get used to having violet eyes. They were cool.

My mobile rang as I walked in. “Why don’t you ever answer your house phone?” my mother wanted to know.

“I was out.”

“Hmm. Are you staying here tonight?”

I looked down at the bag full of hair dye, at my slightly illegal stun gun (Maria said you needed a firearms licence to carry one, so I’d better keep it hidden), my defence spray and my drawer full of kitchen knives, and told myself I was a highly dangerous secret agent. Tomorrow I was going to go out and enroll in a self-defence course.

“Sure,” I said. “What’s for tea?”

Everyone poured out glasses of wine at dinner. This was one of those things that was supposed to be all sophisticated, oh, we always have wine at the table, but it didn’t quite work when it was the coffee table. We eat breakfast at the kitchen table, but never all at the same time. We eat lunch and tea in front of the TV. We always have done. If we ate in the dining room, there’d be two problems. One, we’d have no TV to argue over, and two, my dad took the dining room over as his office about five years ago. The dining table is covered with files and printer cables now.