TimeSplash (21 page)

Drawing his gun and flipping off the safety, he ducked low and moved away from the doorway, where the light from the entrance hall made him a perfect target. He was in a short hallway that opened onto bedrooms to his right and left and a large sitting room with a kitchenette at the end. His heart was racing, but he made himself wait while his eyes got used to the dark. If there was somebody in there, he didn’t want them to have all the advantages. Steadying his breathing, he moved slowly up the hallway toward the sitting room. From a crouch, he peered around the corner into the room.

“Lights,” a woman’s voice said, and for a moment he was half-blinded as all the lights came on at once.

“Don’t move,” the voice said again. “I have a gun.”

Jay froze, then turned his head carefully toward the voice. Sitting in his armchair, pointing a large 9mm Enfield at him, was Sandra Malone. Apart from astonishment, his main emotion at seeing her was relief.

“Drop the gun,” she told him.

He rose slowly to a standing position, careful to keep his own gun pointing downwards. “Or what?” he asked. “You’ll shoot me?”

The girl’s face set. “If I have to.”

Jay smiled. “I’ve seen the way you shoot, Sandra. I don’t think I have anything to worry about.”

“Very funny. Well, for your information, I’ve been taking lessons. Lots of them. Next time I use this, I won’t miss. So just put the gun down. I want to talk to you.”

Jay relaxed a little more. “Okay. If you want to talk, put your gun down first. I only talk to people who aren’t trying to kill me. It’s one of those rules I try to live by.”

Sandra scowled at him. “You’d probably live longer if you had different rules.” The gun did not waver.

Jay felt a surge of irritation. Being ambushed by beautiful young women was all well and good, but he’d had a difficult day and there wasn’t a lot of fun left to be squeezed out of this situation. Enough was enough.

“Look,” he said, turning his back on her and walking to the kitchenette. “I’m bloody freezing and I’m going to get myself a hot drink. You might have turned the heating on when you came in.”

He put his gun down on the kitchen worktop and picked up the kettle. As he filled it, he looked at her again. “Do you want something? Tea? Coffee?”

She stood up, looking cross. “I don’t know what you think you’re—”

“Sandra,” he interrupted her. “I’m making a cup of tea.” The kettle sorted, he crossed the room to turn on the heating. “My mum warned me about teenage house guests just this afternoon.”

He took off his coat and threw it over a chair, then went back to preparing the tea. Sandra glared at him for a moment longer, plainly feeling like a complete idiot and not liking it one bit. Reluctantly, she lowered her gun and put it away in a bulky underarm holster. Jay watched her and shook his head. “You know, that gun is way too big for you. You’d be better off with a nice little Walther PPK or a Heckler-Koch HK45C. You can still get them both.”

Sandra went back to the armchair and sat down. “It was a present from a friend.”

“Nice friends you have.”

“He’s dead now. How’s your friend? The guy Sniper shot.”

“His name is Joe. The bullet missed his heart by two centimetres, but took out his left lung. He’s got a desk job back in Barcelona now while they grow him a new one.” Jay had been to see him once since the shooting. Joe had been recuperating at home at the time, trying to pretend he’d soon be back on active duty and back in the field.

Sandra interrupted his reverie. “You saved his life.”

“What?”

“If you hadn’t charged at Sniper like a madman, he’d have hit your friend bang on target. You were very brave.”

Jay was unexpectedly embarrassed. “Yeah? Tell it to my boss.” He busied himself with pouring the tea, thinking he’d rather tackle Sniper again any day than face another bollocking like the ones he got from Kappelhoff, Bauchet, and the Bundespolizei once he got out of hospital. He brought two drinks over in mugs and gave one to Sandra. “I put sugar in it,” he told her and took a seat opposite her. She put her hands around the cup to warm them and he noticed how pinched and cold she looked. “The heating’ll kick in in a few minutes,” he said. “You didn’t have to sit here in the cold.”

She shook her head. “All the electrical systems are tied to your netID. They only work when you’re around.”

“Ah. Right. Do you mind telling me how you got in?”

She took a sip of tea, steam curling into the air around her eyes. “Bedroom window. I had to break it.” He must have looked as confused as he felt because she added, “I came down on a rope from the roof.”

“Jesus!”

She smiled for the first time since he came in. “I couldn’t exactly call for an appointment, could I?”

“No, not really.” She was wanted by every police force in Europe, and Interpol was looking for her worldwide. He suddenly remembered Bauchet saying, “I needed to talk to you somewhere private, where there would be no bugs. You understand?” He jumped out of his chair, holding a finger to his lips. If his apartment were bugged, he could expect his colleagues to come and kick down his door any minute now. Sandra set down her drink, got up and followed him as he ran to the bedroom and dragged a small electronic device out of a box in the wardrobe. He ran from room to room, waving the device around, watching its display. It was a full five minutes later before he stopped and relaxed. The scan revealed no bugs—none that were transmitting anyway. There might still be ones passively recording, and there were other ways to eavesdrop—a laser targeted at one of his windows, for instance, sensitive to the tiny vibrations that voices would make in the glass—but his moment of paranoia was over and he settled back into his chair with a sheepish grin.

“You never know,” he said.

Sandra remained standing, blinking at him. It had clearly just dawned on her what he had been doing. “Shit,” she said.

He smiled up at her. “Not this time.”

“I should have been more careful.”

“So, am I ever going to find out why you’ve risked your freedom and my career?”

She sat down again and picked up her drink. “I need your help,” she said. He nodded. It made sense that she would want to turn herself in. All those months on the run must have been hell. It was good that she had come to him. It was better she went straight to Five than that she wandered into a local police station.

“Okay,” he said. “You should stay here tonight. In the morning we’ll go to my office together and I’ll take you to the right people.”

“What?”

“The SIS Building. It’s where I work. It’s best we go there first.”

“I mean, what the hell are you talking about? I’m not handing myself in to the spooks. Are you a total moron?”

Jay was completely at a loss. “Well, what then? What are you doing here? I mean—shit!—

what was I supposed to think?”

Sandra got up and paced across the room. She stood with her back to him. “Maybe this was all a mistake. I didn’t know you were a spook. I thought you were just, you know, a cop.” She turned to look at him, concern all over her lovely face. “It’s because you’re young too. I thought…”

He walked toward her. “You thought I’d understand?” She nodded. “Understand what, Sandra?”

She looked up to the heavens, looking for the words, then back at Jay. “Me, I suppose.”

He took a step closer. Suddenly, she looked like she might cry at any moment. Her eyes glistened, her lips pressed together and her nostrils narrowed. He could have reached out and touched her troubled face, if he dared, if he didn’t dread her flying away like a startled bird.

“Look, I’ll try,” he said. “Don’t worry. I won’t tell anyone you’re here unless you want me to.” His own words frightened him. They took him over a line he shouldn’t have crossed, putting him where his heart had already gone.

With a sob of relief she closed the distance between them, wrapping her arms around him, and burying her head in his shoulder. “Oh God,” she gasped. “Oh God, thank you!”

* * * *

Jay woke early, easing himself into a sitting position on the sofa so as not to aggravate the crick in his neck.

“Oh good, you’re awake.”

Sandra’s voice behind him sounded cheerful and bright, nothing like it had sounded last night. He grabbed a blanket and wrapped it round himself before turning to say good morning. She was in the kitchenette, looking through cupboards and throwing packets on the worktop.

“You don’t seem to have much actual food in the house,” she said.

“No. Not really. I’m not quite organised yet. I only moved in a few days ago.”

“I know,” she said, smiling at him. “I’ve been following you.”

“I meant to ask how you knew where to find me.”

“I was lucky. I started with the Berlin police and tracked you to Europol in Brussels. The day I decided to talk to you, I called your office and someone told me I’d just missed you. You were catching a train home that very day. So I checked the times and went to the Eurostar terminal at St. Pancras and—eventually—there you were.”

“So you’ve been trailing me ever since I got off the train?”

She grinned. “That’s right, spy boy.” She looked at a packet she had in one hand and a tin she had in the other. “I could do you cream crackers and sardines for breakfast. How does that sound?”

“It sounds disgusting. Give me five minutes to get showered and we’ll go somewhere to eat.”

Nothing much was open at that time and they ended up in a small café near the river which was doing a brisk trade in heavy breakfasts for heavy-eyed workmen. They ordered bacon, eggs, sausages, mushrooms and mugs of tea and took them to a corner table where they could talk with some privacy. The morning was bright and clear and the traffic outside had already started to clog the roads. They both ate as though they were starving and all conversation stopped until they were well into the meal.

“So what’s it all about?” Jay asked. “You’ve had a bed for the night, the pleasure of my company, and a free meal so far. Now you can tell me what you’re really after.”

Sandra set down her knife and fork but kept looking at her plate for some time. When she looked up into Jay’s eyes, her own were troubled and dark again. The light mood of the morning had disappeared completely.

“I want you to help me take down Sniper and his team.”

Jay almost burst out laughing. “To help you? What do you think Europol’s been doing since last year? What do you think we’ve all been doing since Ommen? There are hundreds of people out there looking for Sniper! Hundreds!” He saw the anger building in her expression and changed his tone. “Look, if you have any information that might help us find Sniper, I’ll be happy to listen—and I’ll pass it on as an anonymous tip-off if that’s what you want.”

She regarded him with her lips pursed. “Are they all such pompous little pricks where you work?” she asked.

Now that he was over his surprise, Jay studied his strange companion and tried to understand what she was so angry about. She talked as if she had appointed herself Sniper’s personal nemesis. The thought flashed through his mind that she was an escapee from a mental institution but he tried to ignore it. It also occurred to him that she had once been Sniper’s girlfriend. He put that aside too.

“I tried to help you, you know,” he said. “Back in Ommen, at the splashparty. I arrived late and I saw you all in the cage. At first all I could see was how incredibly hot you looked in that catsuit.” She scowled at him and he hurried on. “But then I realised you were upset. You were trying to get free. I tried to reach you but I was too far back and the crowd was too dense. I was nowhere near when the countdown reached zero.” Sandra watched him with wide eyes, her expression blank. “By the time you were all back, I’d had to leave. My friend…”

Suddenly Sandra was on her feet and walking fast out of the café. Jay caught up with her in the street. He had to hurry to keep up with her.

“What’s the matter?”

“I don’t want to talk about Ommen.”

“I was just saying…”

“I don’t want to talk about it! All right?”

“I didn’t mean to…”

She stopped and glared at him, eyes full of fury. “Just shut the fuck up about it!” She was shouting now and people turned to look at them.

Angry at this rough treatment, Jay nevertheless managed to stay calm. He could see how close Sandra was to completely losing it and he didn’t want her running off. If she got away from him, he might never see her again.

“All right,” he said. “Not another word. Okay?” She kept her eyes on him but he could see she was starting to calm down. “Let’s go for a walk,” he suggested. “Work off some of that lard we just ate.” He ventured a small smile. “And you can tell me how the police forces of twenty-nine countries can help the great Sherlock Malone capture the world’s most wanted man.”

Her lips twitched a reluctant smile in return. “God, you’re a prat,” she said, but then she linked her arm into his and set off with him toward the river.