I, Spy? (9 page)

“Hey, don’t insult my girlfriend. Is okay, baby, I’m here now,” Luke said, and to my astonishment, kissed me.

I think it might have started out as a little closed-mouth kiss, but it very, very soon turned into a full-blown snog. Christ, he was a good kisser. Or maybe Pete-the-philanderer had been really bad. But I’d never kissed anyone and had sparks before. Not actual sparks. I swear, if it had gone any longer we’d have blown up the satellite. We’d have been arrested for terrorist action. Standing there in the blackened rubble of the building, still making out.

And there were hands too. Actual hands. Doing rather naughty things under my jacket. Under my shirt, too. I forgot how to breathe when Luke’s fingers brushed my bare skin, but that wasn’t a particular problem at the time, since my mouth was glued to his and I’d given up on oxygen.

My God. His mouth should be illegal.

Probably is, in some Southern states.

“Jesus,” I said when he let me go. I was shaking. An American family were applauding us.

Luke had his arms around me—just as well, since my bones had all turned to the consistency of custard. “We could get fired for this,” he murmured.

“I’m the one with the payslip, remember?” I glanced around and my gaze alighted on Gavin. He looked mightily pissed off.

“I’m calling Ace,” he said, and we both shrugged. He’d only get through to the checkin office, and Luke had said Paola was on today. She’d think it was hilarious.

“We’d better go,” I said, grabbing Luke’s hand—yes, just his hand, although other ideas did flash through my mind—and pulling him away from the gate.

In the lift on the way back down to the terminal transit, I couldn’t look at Luke. My face was burning. I had to be professional about this. Yeah. We could be professional. I glanced at Luke.

“That was hot,” he said, and I felt like dying.

“Ih,” I said, trying to sound indifferent, “it was okay.”

Luke lifted my chin so I had to look at him.

“Liar,” he said, and I nearly stopped breathing.

The lift doors opened and I stumbled out into the cool air of the transit platform. It was full of passengers and I pushed through them to the front, Luke following me.

“Sophie,” he said, catching my arm, “are you embarrassed?”

“No.”

“You are.” He grinned. “That’s very cute.”

I blushed even further and thought about throwing myself under the transit tracks, but they were bloody sealed off by hydraulic doors.

“I’m not embarrassed,” I told him. “I’m professional. That was a professional action.”

Luke got very close and said, so no one else could hear, “You wanted me.”

Maybe I could go out onto the tarmac and get myself sucked into an aircraft engine. I heard that was a great way to die.

The transit train arrived and I hurtled into the furthest corner, tailed by Luke.

“Don’t you even want to hear my news?” he said.

“No.” Then, “What news?”

“About Ana?”

“Oh. Yes.” I tried to settle myself. “What about her?”

Luke winked. “I can’t tell you here.”

The journey back was torture. I made sure I was in the middle of a crowd all the time so Luke couldn’t tell me how much I wanted him again. Because I really did want him. He was sexy as hell and he kissed like it was life support.

But I was determined not to let him see. I knew his type. He knew he was gorgeous and he was just trying to get a rise out of me. Well, fuck him.

Not literally, obviously.

We got back to the terminal and I eventually had to turn and face him. But his face was blank. “Where now?”

“Home, James?”

I shrugged. “If we’re done here. My car’s at the office.”

We walked back down to the car park in silence. Maybe Luke had forgotten about it. Why was he being so quiet?

“So, how’d you get on with the thug?”

I nearly tripped down the stairs. “What?”

“Did you get anything?”

I stared.

Luke laughed. “About the murder. Did you find out where he was?”

“Oh.” I tried to recover myself, and failed. “He was at home. In bed. He came on at six, spent the whole day on checkin.”

“Right.” Luke nodded. “Well, he was just a fail-safe anyway. We found out he had a juvenile record. He wasn’t on camera.”

I glared at him. “So I got the dummy?”

“In more ways than one. Whereas I found out something extremely useful.”

“I’ll bet you did.”

Luke grinned and held the door for me. “Ana wasn’t on the desk when I got there. They said she was off sick. I said I needed to get hold of her on a personal matter and they told me to wait. I told her I couldn’t wait, I was her boyfriend.”

“Lot of that going around.”

“And they said, you can’t be, her boyfriend was killed in an accident yesterday.”

I stared at Luke.

“Ana Rodriguez was Chris Mansfield’s girlfriend?”

“Yep.”

I shook my head. Pretty little Ana? God, she must be devastated.

“So why’d she go down there in the middle of the night?”

“Four a.m. Why’d you think?”

I shrugged, then it occurred to me. “No!” Luke nodded, and I whistled. “That is kinky.”

“Yep. It’d have been kinkier still if they’d pulled it off, but the tapes only have her going down there, not him.”

“So to speak.”

Luke laughed. “Yeah.”

“So what do we do now? Go and speak to her?”

“Bingo.”

We walked out to the car in silence. It was cold and the wind blew straight across the runway at us. I shivered, and Luke put his arm around me.

“Hey, cut that out.”

He looked amused. “You didn’t seem to mind at the gate.”

“I was acting at the gate.”

“Ah.” We’d reached the car now, and Luke dropped his arm to get his keys. “Acting.”

We got in, and I fastened my seat belt. My fingers were shaking.

“So, if I told you the thug was walking this way right now, what would you do?”

I started to turn my head, but Luke grabbed me. “Don’t look.” He kissed me again.

I have to tell you, I am fully prepared to back Jeremy Clarkson in his hatred of the Vectra, based on my own experiences. Those seats are bloody uncomfortable when you’re trying to make out.

But then equally, I have to hand it to Luke. After about thirty seconds I no longer cared about the seats. Or the gear lever. Or the hand brake. Or
any
of it. Luke’s hands were on me again, and it was magic. His mouth was hot, and he kissed me like he was in charge. I ought to have been bothered about that, but the Scarlett in me just swooned and let herself be dominated.

The only thought that entered my brain was how attractive my underwear was. Once I’d remembered it was perfectly presentable, I happily shut down all cognitive functions and concentrated on the heat of Luke’s body under my hands, the sweep of his tongue against mine, the hot, sweet taste of him. I felt drugged. It was marvellous.

Eventually Luke pulled back into his own seat and extracted his hand from my shirt. “Your place?” he said, and I nodded. I knew there’d been no thug.

I swear, the journey home had never seemed so long. It was about five miles but it felt like fifty. Luke’s fingers brushed my leg whenever he changed gear and I got so hot I had to stick my head out the window. Note to self: don’t do this when there are trees by the side of the road. Having my head attached to my body could only be a good thing.

It took me bloody years to find my keys when we got to the flat, and Luke didn’t help by running his hands over me and murmuring in my ear what he wanted to do to me. My hands were shaking at the mention of those things. I liked those things—okay, I liked the idea of those things. If he actually did them to me, I'd probably die.

But what a way to go.

We fell inside, still kissing, and I tripped over the mail.

“Dammit,” I said, grabbing the bunch of bills. “Just let me—euw!”

“What?” said Luke, as I held up an envelope that was dripping all over me. It was dripping something red. It was dripping blood.

Suddenly all sexy thoughts vanished from my mind, and I could see they were vanishing from Luke’s too. He raced over to the kitchen and grabbed my rubber gloves, took the bloody envelope from me and carefully opened it.

And withdrew a severed finger.

We both stared at it. Luke was standing there in my hallway holding a severed finger that was dripping blood all over the carpet. Thirty seconds ago I’d been about to have sex with him. Now he was holding a severed finger.

“Oh God,” I said, clutching the wall for support. I reached out for the envelope but Luke held it away.

“Fingerprints,” he said, and peeled off a glove for me.

It had been addressed to me in the most ordinary of writing, plain blue biro on a manilla envelope. There was a torn plastic bag inside which I guess had been to stop the blood leaking all over the place. Somehow it had failed.

“That’s a finger,” I said, staring at it. “That’s a real live finger.”

“Actually, it’s a real dead finger,” Luke said, going into the kitchen again and looking for something to put the finger on. He ended up with a plate, which I resolved to smash immediately.

I watched him get out his phone and speed-dial. “Lexy? Can you access the autopsy of that body? The Mansfield one.”

How many bodies did they have on the go?

“Was it, by any chance, missing a finger?”

There was a pause. My heart was hammering. Someone sent me a severed finger in the post.

Someone sent me a fucking
severed finger
in the post.

“Several. And toes too? Marvellous. Did they check in the mechanism? Okay. Thanks.”

He switched the phone off and looked at me.

“There are more to come?” I said, and my voice was rather shaky.

Luke sighed and stared at the finger. “He was missing all his toes and all but the last two fingers of his left hand. The police assumed they’d been ripped off by the mechanism but the autopsy says they were cleanly cut.”

“But why only leave two?” I sat down as casually as I could, trying to sound like I wasn’t about to pass out. I took some deep breaths. It wasn’t that gross. It was just… Well, okay, it
was
that gross, but Tammy left dead things all over the place for me to find. Sometimes I didn’t find them until they were mouldy. That was way grosser, right?

Someone sent me a finger. That was just… I mean, what kind of weird lunatic did that? It was gross, and I was officially offended.

Luke shrugged. “Maybe he got interrupted.”

I love the way when people are talking about murders and stuff they always call the murderer a “he”. Like a woman would never do such a thing.

Ha!

“Sophie,” Luke was looking at me closely, “are you okay?”

I thought about it. I mean, I’ve never been sent a finger in the post before. I didn’t really know how to react. Was I shocked? Was I scared? Was I mostly disgusted?

“I think I am,” I said eventually, having pinpointed my uppermost emotion as dismay that I’d have to wait to sleep with Luke. “I don’t suppose…?”

He already had his phone out. He didn’t look like sex was the first thing on his mind, for once. “What?”

“Nothing.”

Luke took charge, and not for the first time I wondered if he’d ever let me do the cool stuff. When would I get to ask Alexa about autopsy things? When would I call the police about severed fingers? When would I get a damned gun?

At the back of my mind, I started to form a plan.

“Okay,” said Luke eventually, “we’re going to take this up to the station and then…” He looked at me again. “Sophie?”

“Yes?”

“Are you sure you’re okay? You don’t want me to take you up to your parents’ or anything?”

I made a face. I was a bloody secret agent now. I did not need to run to my parents every time something gruesome happened.

“I’m fine,” I snapped. “Can you drop me at the office so I can get my car?”

We were silent in the car. I started to look around and notice things…things like the hands-free phone kit and the police radio that was currently switched off. I never understood how police kept up-to-date with those things. I mean, we had them at the airport, and occasionally if I got the supervisor’s board or I was closing flights, I got the radio. And I found it impossible to concentrate on what I was supposed to be doing and listen out for the radio at the same time. People always had to call me twice and then usually phone me as well, and I could never clearly pick up what they were saying.

And I’m a woman, and we’re supposed to be able to do several things at once. God knows how your average copper deals with it.

We pulled into the optimistically named airport business park and swung around the back to the SO17 office. Luke stopped the car and put a hand over mine as I started to unfasten my seat belt.

“Wait,” he said.

“What? Why?”

“About what happened earlier…”

I felt my face start to get hot again. “Hmm?”

He gave me a tiny grin. “Maybe we should forget about it. At least until this is over?”

Forget about a kiss like that? Well, several kisses like that. I’ve never felt anything like that before in my life. I thought only Rhett and Scarlett kissed like that.

Those kisses would keep me going for a damn long time.

“Oh, that?” I said, as airily as I could. “I’ve already forgotten.”

Luke opened the door, grinning. “Liar.”

Alexa’s office was empty, but Luke just walked straight through into One’s office instead. I followed, slightly nervous. I didn’t know why I should be in trouble for receiving a severed finger in the post, but it felt like being a receiver of stolen goods—really not your fault, but still a sure-fire way of getting police attention.

“Well, well, Miss Green,” said One, straightening up from where he’d been looking over some paperwork with Alexa. “Second day on the job and already you’ve had one body and a severed finger.”

“Call it beginner’s luck,” I said.

They stared at me. Okay, not funny.

“Um,” I said, “technically, I think they’re all part of the same body.” Either that, or someone completely unrelated to this thing was sending me body parts. What a charming thought. “I can’t see why it would be anyone else’s finger. If it is, then that’s a whole other mess of crap to be dealt with.”

Probably I shouldn’t have said “mess of crap” there. Why doesn’t my brain intervene with my mouth?

“Also, if he was killed because he was involved in the Brown apprehension, then this is probably a threat to stop me becoming involved. I mean, more involved. It’s probably from someone who knows I’m involved with SO17.”

I sort of trailed off towards the end, because they were all staring at me. Or maybe because I used the word “involved” four times there in three sentences.

“I mean, maybe,” I said, and Luke shook his head.

“Told you,” he said to One.

“What?” I said.

“Smarter than she looks.”

I preened a little at that.

“Okay,” One said, “so who do you think it is?”

It was my turn to stare.

“I have no idea! I mean, I guess… Someone inv-er, connected to the Brown brothers?”

Alexa nodded. “We have a list of contacts.”

Of course we do.

“Alexa,” I said, sensing a day ahead of looking through meaningless names and guessing at things randomly—at least, on my part—“do you have a copy of the BAA footage from Monday night? I mean, Tuesday morning—you know what I mean.”

“When Chris was killed?”

“Yes.”

She nodded and pulled One’s keyboard over to her. She hit a few buttons, pulled up a window blind, and there on a large pull-down screen in front of me was a grainy shot of the undercroft. So that was what the projector was for.

“This is 0155,” she pointed to the time in the corner, “we have the death narrowed down to somewhere between two and four in the morning.”

“But you have the rest of the footage?”

She nodded. “Basically I’ve got access to all the BAA cameras and all their archived footage. Here,” she tapped the computer screen, “I’ll show you how it works.”

The way it works is this—I don’t have a problem with computers, but they have a problem with me. A brand new machine will happily go into nervous meltdown the second I touch the keyboard. Most of the system-wide computer failures at the airport have been on my watch. I can barely check an e-mail at home without the screen suddenly going blank and error messages appearing all over the place.

I have, therefore, become something of an expert at rebooting a computer in less than the time it takes for someone to notice it’s all gone wrong. I can find and dismiss a Help file in seconds and I know just where to go online for PC dilemmas. I’m on first name terms with quite a few of the forum hosts at www.helpmycomputerisdead.com.

So it didn’t take me long to find my way around Alexa’s computer system. I discovered, to my utter delight, that she hadn’t just downloaded the BAA files, she had complete live access to them.

And—yippee!—she had Broadband.

For the rest of the afternoon I was, if not a happy little bunny, then at least a busy one. Luke watched about ten minutes of footage with me, then shook his head, waved the repackaged finger and said he was going to speak to the police who’d been at the crime scene.

I barely noticed he was gone.

I watched hour after hour of footage. I watched it live. It watched it from different angles. I replayed bits over and over. I felt like my dad watching
Ford Super Sunday
. I totally understand how men can watch the same goal over and over again. Every time you see something different.

Or in this case, I saw something the same.

By the time Luke came back mid-afternoon, I was sure of it.

“Watch this,” I said as he walked in, having shown it to One about five minutes earlier. One, I might add, had done little all day but read the papers, check my horoscope for me, make a phone call or two to people called Bunty and Monty and Toffee (I think, although it may have been Tuffy) and ask me if I understood any of this computer crap. Alexa had long since wandered back to her own desk.

Luke stood behind me as I found the time segment I wanted and played it on the big screen. The time index said 0236, and I played it through to 0237.

“Did you get that?” I asked, rewinding, and Luke gave me a quizzical look.

“Help me out here.”

“There,” I pointed to a shadow skidding across the floor. “A mouse, maybe a rat.”

“So? Could have got in anywhere, the undercroft is open all across the back. There are mice in the Ace staff room, Sophie.”

“I know,” I said. “I found one in the kettle once.” I opened another clip, this one from three months ago. It had taken me bloody hours to find, hours of endless downloads and Please Waits from the computer, time I had utilised trying to explain to One why texting was a valid form of communication. He hadn’t got it.

The three month old footage was the same footage, the same mouse, the same route across the deserted concrete floor. Even the time index was the same, 0236 to 0237.

“You see?” I said excitedly. “It’s just been spliced in! Someone has copied and pasted this bit of footage into the archives.”

Luke was silent, just as One had been a few minutes ago. I expect they were trying to think of suitable words of awe for my achievement. Maybe I’d get a medal or something. An OBE. Maybe I’d be a dame.

No, they always sound really old. Or transsexual.

“Sophie,” Luke said eventually, pinching the bridge of his nose, “it’s live footage.”

“No, this is archived—”

“I mean, it’s transmitted live. There’s a big room under the terminal where people sit and watch these monitors all day long. It can’t have been spliced.”

“Well, then, it was looped in or something! Like on
Speed
. This is the same footage. Someone has played this over what we were supposed to see. They’re trying to cover up the actual time-frame when Chris was killed.”

Come on. I thought I’d been pretty clever. But Luke and One didn’t look convinced.

“It could just be coincidence,” One said. “I mean, looping footage? No one does that any more.”

“Which is precisely why someone might have done it this time,” I said. “You know, like on
The Sting
, where they use the wire because it’s so old fashioned no one will suspect it?”

Another silence.

“Seriously, Sophie,” Luke said, “do you really sit around watching films all day?”

I made a face and saved the files. “No, I get up at three-thirty in the morning because the TV’s really good,” I said, standing up. “Come on. At least admit it’s a possibility?”

Luke and One exchanged glances.

“It’s a possibility,” Luke said eventually. “Now come on. We have to go and see Ana Rodriguez.”

“Now?”

“Yes. Now.”

I ripped off a salute, which Luke seemed to think was funny, and stomped out to my car.

“We’re taking mine,” Luke said.

“No.”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Because yours sticks out like an ostrich in an aquarium. Time you thought about changing that car.”

“No!” I wailed, throwing my arms over Ted’s scabby green bonnet. “Ted’s family.”

For a few seconds Luke just stared. “You named your car?”

“Of course. You don’t name yours?”

We both looked at the Vectra. You could never get attached to a car like that.

“I don’t keep my cars that long,” Luke said as I gave in and opened the Vectra’s silver door.

“Get bored easily?”

“No, they’re just…sort of expendable.”

I didn’t ask what he meant by that. I had a feeling I didn’t really want to know.

Ana Rodriguez, like a lot of airport workers, especially the foreign nationals who didn’t have cars or UK driving licences, lived in town where there was a semi-regular train and bus service to the airport. We parked on a busy road outside the little house she apparently used to share with Chris, and stood on the pavement for a while, looking at it.

There was a To Let sign outside. I almost welled up at the sight of it. God, poor Ana. Stuck in a foreign country, boyfriend murdered, and now getting evicted ‘cos she couldn’t pay the rent by herself.

Then sense kicked in. He died less than forty-eight hours ago. Not many landlords are that… Well, I was going to say cruel, but what I’m really looking for is
efficient
.