Ugley Business Page 13

  And, okay, it’s shameful, but whenever I thought about falling asleep with Luke yesterday, just curled under his arm so comfortably, watching Buffy while my eyelids succumbed to gravity, I felt all warm and glowy inside. It had felt good, really good. Companionable. And I didn’t know where it was going, but I liked it.

  Angel perked up a bit in the car—her car, since mine had no CD player and was looking like Homer Simpson had just driven it in a demolition derby. “Those photos,” she said, “they just freaked me out.”

  “Well, photos of us sleeping are scary.”

  “No, you know what I mean.”

  I did, and whenever I thought about it my warm glow dimmed a little.

  “But you have Docherty now,” I said, and watched her carefully. But there was no reaction.

  “It’s very comforting to have someone like that around,” she said carefully. “But he’s a little scary.”

  “He is?”

  “Well, yes. He never seems to even sleep. Or eat. Or anything. Sophie, I’m not sure I’ve even seen him outside in the daylight. Maybe he is a vampire.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Angel, you live in a church.”

  “A religious vampire. I don’t know.”

  We parked up and headed for coffee. Angel started making lists of all the pointless things she wanted to buy—something sweet for the bath, candles, yellow shoes since she didn’t have any that colour, new underwear…

  “Angel,” I put down my Americano, “are you aware you’re buying fuck-me things?”

  She looked offended, or at least tried to. “Coincidence.”

  “Candles, scented bath oil, pretty underwear? Are you going to try it on for Docherty?”

  “Don’t be ridiculous.”

  I didn’t think I was being ridiculous. “You don’t find him the littlest bit sexy?”

  “No,” she said. “Not at all.”

  I sighed and shook my head. “Angel, Angel, Angel,” I said. “You should have admitted to a little bit. Even Tammy would find him a little bit sexy. Now I know you’ve got the hots for him.”

  “Does anyone even say ‘got the hots’ any more?” Angel side-tracked. “It’s kind of an Eighties thing…”

  I raised my eyebrows and shook my head. “Admit it.”

  “No.”

  “That’s practically an admission anyway. You fancy Docherty.”

  Angel sniffed and licked up some of the cream on her white chocolate mocha (How does she stay so thin? How?). “Well, you said yourself, he’s very sexy.”

  I was pretty sure I hadn’t said that, but I let it go.

  “Have you been in his car yet?”

  “No…”

  “Ask him for a ride. Go on, ask him.”

  “Just like that? Those words?”

  I had a blinding flash of asking Luke the same thing, and shuddered. “It’ll work,” I promised her, and she smiled a little feline smile.

  Feline? Oh, shit, Tammy! I hadn’t been back to feed her. She’d be starving!

  “Oh, my poor baby,” I said, grabbing my phone and dialling Luke while Angel looked on, mystified. “Where are you?” I asked when he picked up.

  “Office. Why?”

  “I need you to do me a favour. I didn’t feed Tammy this morning and she’ll be absolutely starving. Can you just go over and—”

  “Sophie,” Luke cut me off, “were you not present yesterday? Arm in sling. Knee in splint. I can hardly bloody walk, let alone drive.”

  I made a face. “But she’ll be really hungry…”

  “And I really can’t drive with one arm and one leg. Can’t you ask your mum to do it?”

  “No, ‘cos then she’ll want to know why I wasn’t there this morning.”

  “Tell her you were working.”

  “I always feed Tammy before I go.” I drummed my fingers on the table. Angel sipped her drink.

  “What’s up?” she mouthed.

  “I didn’t feed Tammy this morning,” I said, “and Luke can’t do it because he can’t drive.”

  “Ask Docherty,” Angel said, and I beamed at her.

  “Genius.”

  “Me?” Luke asked.

  “No. Not you. Bye,” I said, and called up Docherty’s number.

  He answered on the first ring. “Sophie?”

  “I need a favour.”

  “What kind of favour?”

  “I need you to feed my cat.”

  There was a long pause. I glanced at Angel, and she suddenly started laughing. I was about to ask her why, when I realised.

  “Are we talking four legs and a tail here?” Docherty asked. “Or something kinkier?”

  “Four legs,” I said, colouring, and Angel laughed even harder. “My actual cat,” I said. “In my flat. I didn’t feed her this morning and she’ll be starving and you’re the only person I can think of who could get in and feed her without scaring the shit out of her.” Macbeth could have broken in, but Tammy wouldn’t have accepted so much as a compliment from him. She didn’t like men, especially big men.

  Apart from Luke. Traitor.

  “Okay,” Docherty sighed. “I might have to call in the favour from you another time, though.”

  Whatever. I couldn’t believe I’d neglected my baby that much. I was a bad mother. Poor Tammy had been a rescue kitten. She’d think I didn’t love her.

  “Okay,” I said to Angel when I put the phone down. “I’m traumatised now. I need to go and buy something to take the guilt away.”

  “She’s a cat, Soph,” Angel said. “The most vicious little cat since Jerry’s Tom. She’ll have eaten something.”

  “Something very un-nutritious,” I grumbled, draining my coffee and standing up. “Come on.”

  I went to a pet shop and bought Tammy one of those automated feeders so I wouldn’t have to go through this again. Then I bought her a wind-up mouse to apologise. And a tin of fancy, hideously expensive cat food.

  “Better now?” Angel asked, as we were leaving the shop.

  “Slightly,” I said, and picked up my phone, which was ringing. Docherty. “Is she okay?”

  “The cat? I can’t see her.”

  “She’ll be outside. Shake the biscuit tin and call her name—”

  “Is she a vicious cat?” Docherty interrupted, and I smiled.

  “You’re not scared of her? Docherty, she’s smaller than your foot.”

  “Does she kill a lot?” he wanted to know.

  “Well, only recreationally.”

  “Big things?”

  I knew what was coming. “What has she left on the floor?” She’d brought down squirrels twice her size before. Pigeons. Giant rats. She’d even had a go at the neighbour’s small yappy dog but I’d called her off, fearing the worst from said neighbour.

  “It’s not on the floor. It’s on the sofa.”

  Ew. “What is it?”

  “Petr Staszic.”

  Luke was already there when I pulled up, having left Angel in Docherty’s custody back at her own place.

  “So now you can get a lift here?” I said, slightly shakily.

  “Docherty picked me up. Sophie, I’m not sure you’ll want to go in there.”

  “Is he really dead?”

  “Pretty much, yeah.”

  “How dead? I mean, how long?”

  He shrugged. “Can’t have been that long because he was alive two hours ago. But he’s cold.”

  I started to shudder and Luke put his good arm around me. “You want to come back to mine?”

  Probably that would not be a good idea. “I need to see,” I said, and pushed the door open. Petr Staszic was lying on the sofa, his eyes open, a small bullet wound in his temple. There was a knife stuck in his chest, pinning a note there. I stood and stared for quite a while before getting the courage to go closer and read the note.

  There were letters, and they were grouped together in a way which suggested words. Other than that, it could have been in Martian for all the sense it made.

 
; “What does it mean?”

  “I don’t know,” Luke said. “I think it’s in Czech. You got a notepad?”

  I crossed to the desk and gave him the pad of paper there. Luke gave me a heavy look and waggled the fingers coming out of his sling. “Could you possibly write it down?”

  Numbly, I did, hoping I’d got all the accents right, not wanting to get too close to check.

  “I’ve called Karen,” Luke said. “She’s going to come and pick him up, do an autopsy. But I guess the cause of death is pretty obvious…”

  I nodded.

  “Sophie, are you all right?”

  Jesus, stupid question time.

  “I’m okay,” I said. “I need a new sofa.”

  “Yep.”

  “I’ll get my things,” I said, and walked past the body into my bedroom, pushing the door to so Luke couldn’t see how much I was shaking when I let my guard down.

  A couple of months ago someone started sending me the fingers of someone who’d been killed for helping me. I’d pick up the post and there would be a fat envelope with a smelly, decaying finger inside. The first one had been bleeding, all over the doormat.

  Then, after we’d found out who the bad guys were, I went after them. Well, we all went after them, but it was me and Macbeth who fired the shots that killed two of them. The other is in jail for a very long time.

  I’ve killed a man. I’ve seen one mangled by the baggage belt system. I’ve picked up dead fingers. But I’ve never had a dead body just turn up in my apartment. Not the body of someone I was talking to a couple of hours ago.

  I packed my bag and went back out to Luke. He was talking on his phone.

  “…pretty cut and dried. Bullet in his head caused by someone who thought he’d been betrayed, maybe? Someone who wanted to warn Sophie off? Well, it didn’t work last time.” He glanced over at me. “Yeah, I think she’ll be okay. Kinda shocked. She’s going to come over to mine. Okay. See you in five.”

  He ended the call. “Karen. She’s nearly here.”

  “Talking while driving?”

  He smiled. “Hands free. We’d better wait ‘til she gets here.”

  I nodded and looked around for somewhere to sit. Apart from the sofa there was my beanbag, which was right next to the sofa. And there was the floor. Which had blood on it.

  “I need air,” I said, and stumbled outside. I couldn’t look at Petr’s bloody face and staring eyes anymore.

  Karen turned up a few minutes later in a 3-Series Coupe. “Do you mind if I take your car?” she asked me. “Can’t really fit a body in this one.”

  I nodded vaguely and handed her the keys.

  “Sophie, are you all right?”

  Why were people asking me that? Did I look all right? Did they think I’d be fine after finding a body in my flat?

  “I’ll be okay,” I said, as Luke came out. “The keys,” I showed her which one worked which lock. “For the flat. Lock up. Luke, how did he get in?”

  Luke shrugged. “Docherty said he found the door open.”

  “I thought those locks were secure.”

  “Yep, me too. Come on,” he took my arm, “my car’s still here. Unless you’d rather walk? The air’ll do you good.”

  We started down the drive. “Has that ever, ever been true?”

  He smiled. “They told you that at school, too?”

  “Yeah, the fresh air’ll do you good. When of course all it did was give me a cold. And once a black eye, too.”

  He raised his eyebrows as we got into his car.

  “At a party. I was really drunk so they told me to go outside and get some air, and this girl came up and started accusing me of…” I frowned. I was never quite sure. Something to do with her boyfriend. “We got into a bitch fight. I got a black eye.”

  “Bet that made you popular.”

  I checked for sarcasm, found none, then remembered that to a bloke, black eyes were cool. “Pariah would be a more accurate word,” I said. “I think people were scared of me.”

  “Still are.”

  “Well, that’s what I want to hear.” I rubbed my arms. “Janulevic wasn’t scared of me.”

  “Yeah,” Luke said, “he was.”

  “How’d you figure that?”

  “If he wasn’t scared of you, he’d have come after you. He wouldn’t have warned you. I think he’s been re-evaluating ever since you chased after him yesterday.”

  It was very sweet of him, but I wasn’t sure I believed a word. If he was scared of me, he wouldn’t have warned me. He’d have run away. I run away from things I’m scared of.

  But then I’m not a psycho obsessed with a billion-year-old Mongol artefact.

  Luke’s flat wasn’t far, about half a mile maybe, on the road out towards my parents’. I thought longingly for a second about going home for the night, but I was all out of excuses. It’d have to be Luke’s. And I’d have to be strong. I was feeling pathetic, and despite the limp and the sling and the stitches, he was still looking really sexy.

  Damn him.

  He let me in and I paused for a second before dumping my bag by the sofa. I shook out my sleeping bag, just to make things really clear. I wasn’t going to sleep with him.

  “You hungry?” Luke went into the kitchen and started flipping lights on. “I have food, but you might have to help me.” He gestured to the sling.

  “I’m not hungry.”

  “Let me put it another way: I am and I can’t cook with one hand.”

  I stared at him.

  “Okay,” Luke unfastened the sling and rolled his shoulders. “It was annoying me anyway.” He flexed his arm and winced. “Remind me not to use that too much.”

  I nodded vaguely.

  “Sophie?”

  I blinked. “Do you have a dictionary?”

  Luke frowned and crossed to the bookshelves lining one wall of the loft. “I have lots.”

  “A Czech one.”

  “Ah. That would be no. But,” he switched on the computer, “I have something even better.”

  I went and stood behind him as he dialled up and searched for a translation website. He found one, and after a lot of swearing over the stupid accented letters, typed in the message Janulevic had left. The translation came up.

  Do not try to trick me.

  Oh, Jesus.

  I started to feel lightheaded. He’d known it was a trap so he killed Petr to warn me?

  “Sophie,” Luke said, jumping up and catching me as my knees buckled.

  “Still think he’s scared of me?” I mumbled, as Luke pulled me over to the sofa, pushed my head between my knees, and then left.

  He left. I needed him there and he left. I sucked in a couple of deep breaths, telling myself Janulevic was obviously a few pennies short of a pound, he’d have killed Petr anyway, it wasn’t my fault. But I didn’t believe me.

  Eventually Luke said something, my name I think, and I looked up, and he turned my head to the TV where Spike was standing there all naked and lovely, being sarcastic to Buffy. I focused on the screen for a few minutes until the scene played out and the other Scoobies came on screen, and then I looked up at Luke.

  “Better?”

  And then I smiled, because he knew nothing cheered me up than seeing James Marsters with his shirt off. Well, Luke with his shirt off cheered me up too, but this wasn’t really the time.

  “Better,” I said. “Thank you.”

  “When in doubt, turn to Buffy and the woefully underrated sixth season.” He sat down beside me. “Want to watch some more?”

  I shook my head. “I’m kinda Buffied out.”

  He stared. He felt my forehead. “Now I know you’re in shock.”

  “Cut that out. I’m okay. It just got me for a second.”

  Okay, so I’m the worst spy ever. I get scared by a dead body in my flat. But can you honestly tell me you could take all this and not get freaked? Well, can you?

  There you go.

  Luke was looking at me with hot eyes.
“I can think of something else that might make you feel better…”

  I rolled my eyes. “What part of ‘traumatised’ don’t you understand? Or maybe it’s ‘bullet wound’ you’re having trouble with,” I punched his bandaged arm, and he flinched. “If that’s the case, I could give you another, refresh your memory?”

  Luke sighed. “You know, this might be easier if I knew why you keep blowing me off.”

  “You know why.”

  “No, Sophie, I don’t. You just changed your mind—”

  “I didn’t change anything,” I said, getting up and moving away from his heat because it was distracting me. “I just realised a few things.”

  “Such as…?”

  “We want different things.”

  “I want Buffy, you want…?”

  I closed my eyes. This was wasn’t going to get me anywhere. “Back To The Future trilogy?”

  Luke smiled. “We can do that.”

  We watched all three films, all six and half hours, and then went on to the DVD special features. It was way past dark when Luke switched the DVD player off, kissed my forehead and went to bed, leaving me there on the chesterfield, curled up in my sleeping bag, wondering why he hadn’t pushed it any further, why I’d got such a platonic kiss goodnight, why he hadn’t asked me to share his bed and why I wanted it so damn much.

  Well, obviously, I wanted it so damn much because I knew what it was like. But that wasn’t the point.

  My phone rang, and it was Docherty.

  “You okay?”

  “I’m fine,” I said. “Karen took the body away for an autopsy.”

  “Bet you a hundred it was the bullet that killed him.”

  “Aw, and there was me going for Tammy scaring him to death.”

  Dammit, Tammy! I resolved to set my alarm, get up super-early and drive up to Tesco for a massive tin of tuna for her. No, smoked salmon. And some cream. Guilt food.

  “Where are you?”

  “Luke’s. On the sofa,” I added, and Docherty laughed gently.

  “Where’s he?”

  “Not on the sofa,” I said miserably.

  “How come?”

  Fucking principles. “Was there something you wanted?”

  “This Xe La thing. I think I might know someone who could tell us about it.”

  “Someone who’s still alive?”

  “Well, I spoke to him ten minutes ago. I’m guessing he’s still alive.”