Ugley Business Page 2

“My friend,” I muttered. “From the airport. She’s…” I waved a hand, “…around somewhere.” I cleared my throat. “So Harvey, what are you doing here?”

  He shrugged and looked a little embarrassed. “I’m here with a girl.”

  We both looked around, Evie with an expression of disappointment. “Where is she?”

  “She went to the bathroom.”

  “Must be some girl to get you to come shopping.”

  “She didn’t tell me it was shopping. I thought Lakeside was like a country club or something.”

  I laughed in delight. “Harvey, you’re adorable.”

  “Yeah, that’s what she said.” He glanced over at the ladies. “There she is. I’d better go.”

  Evie and I zoomed in on the girl in question. Blonde hair, black roots. Dark lip liner with too much gloss. Heavy makeup. Tight white tracksuit and platform trainers.

  “Oh, Harvey,” I giggled, “she’s such a Shazzer!”

  “A what?”

  “An Essex girl.”

  “You’re an Essex girl,” he replied, confused.

  “No, I just live in Essex. I don’t have shares in lip liner.” I shook my head. “Go and have fun with her, looking at white knee-high boots.”

  Harvey gave me a mock-glare, but he was smiling as he walked away. He’s just too sweet to be offended by anything.

  We attacked the shops again, Evie’s theory being that you shop better on a full stomach. If this was true then I was going to shop incredibly, because I’d eaten rather more noodles than I’d thought and needed to walk at quite a speed to burn them all off. I bought some teeny tiny little skirts and shorts, to make the most of the unexpectedly hot weather (it was the end of June, but still Britain. I began every day in the expectation of clouds and rain, just so I wasn’t disappointed) and got changed in the ladies. When I came out Angel was wincing.

  “What? Are my legs too fat for this skirt?”

  She shook her head. “They look great, except for that big scar and all the bruising.”

  I checked in the mirror. Actually I thought it made me look pretty cool, a talking point. Scars are sexy.

  Besides, it wasn’t that big. Only a few stitches where the splintered wood had rammed in.

  “I didn’t realise it’d been that bad,” Evie said, coming out and washing her hands. “You never said there were stitches.”

  Hadn’t I? Surely not. I’d told everyone about the stitches and all the painkillers I was on. I’m a glutton for attention, okay?

  But not this much attention. I didn’t want to have to tell them all the details. I couldn’t remember them all: after all, they’d been totally made up. I averted my eyes and they fell on a newspaper lying on the counter. The headline read “Top-up fees too much? Tenth prof found murdered.” Tenth? What about the other nine?

  Oh, well. There are too many professors in the world anyway, right?

  We made our way home, dropped Evie off and started back to my village, but on the way Angel casually asked, “Do you want to come back to mine? We could have some wine and watch DVDs all night.”

  “You mean stay over?” What about Luke? My body panicked, but my mind said, Take a damn day off. You can survive one night without him.

  Ah, but could I? Time to find out.

  “You’re not working, tomorrow, are you?” Angel asked, and I shook my head.

  “No. I’ll stay. Sounds fun.”

  We went back to my house to pick up my things and feed Tammy, my tiny baby tabby cat, who was sitting by her food bowl, looking plaintive, doing her best to convince me that, contrary to my memory, I hadn’t fed her in at least a week, so could I give her about three pounds of food to make up for it?

  “Nice try, Tam,” I said, dropping Go-Cat into her bowl, “but you’re too glossy for the waif look.”

  Tammy gave me a dirty look and inhaled her food. I poured out some milk for her as compensation for being left on her own (not that she’d even notice), and she demolished that, too, before disappearing through the cat flap to go and find a nice juicy mouse for dessert.

  I pressed the play button on my answer phone and my mother’s voice rang out. “Hello, love, it’s me. Just wondered if you were going to put in an appearance this week. We haven’t seen you in ages. We’re having tuna for tea tomorrow. And it’s always nicest the way you cook it.”

  This was true, but also rather blatant. I made a mental note to call her back later, before I got too smashed, and carried my sleeping bag out to Angel’s car.

  “I’m sorry, Ted,” I said as I passed him, “I’ll take you out tomorrow, I promise.”

  I swear he gave me a reproachful look.

  “You really talk to your car that much?” Angel asked doubtfully, putting my bag on the backseat.

  “He gets cranky if he’s ignored,” I said, patting Ted’s khaki flank reassuringly.

  “That’d be the battery,” Angel cracked, and I wondered where she’d learnt so much about cars. She had to ask me for advice when she bought the Mini, and I was tremendously flattered that she bought what I recommended. Well, what my brother Chalker helped me to recommend.

  We drove up to her house playing No Doubt at top volume, but I had to switch it off out of respect when we pulled up in her driveway. Because, appropriately for someone with such a name, Angel lives in a converted church; well, more of a chapel, really, with a small spire and everything. Her bedroom is in the semicircular apse, her bed on the dais where the altar used to be. Her guest room is in the Baron’s Gallery, a relic from when the village still had a baron back in the sixteen hundreds. She’s not entirely sure how old the church is; presumably it says so somewhere on the deeds, but Angel has never seen the deeds, because she just inherited the place from her mother who renovated it as a charming little getaway.

  My mother won’t go near the place. She thinks it’s creepy, and I suppose sometimes at nights it can be. She says it’s like a set in a horror film, but she never listens when I point out to her that, really, a church is likely to be extremely safe from the unholy creatures of the night. When you think about it.

  I chucked my sleeping bag on the floor where the choir used to be and went out to the kitchen, which is in the north transept and has the original font as a sink. Angel was unpacking all the crap we’d bought at Tesco on our way home—ice cream, doughnuts, Pringles and dip, large packs of Smirnoff Ice which I’d have to mostly decline, because I wasn’t allowed to get drunk in case there was an SO17 emergency.

  I got a text message from Harvey just as I put the Pretty Woman DVD in the player. Who was that girl you were with? The blonde, he’d written, no preamble, so he must have been serious. I glanced over at Angel, who was beheading Jelly Babies, and wondered when Harvey had seen us together.

  But before I could send a reply, my phone rang and Angel looked up. “Miss Popular,” she teased.

  “It’s Luke,” I apologised. “You watch the film, I’ll only be a second.”

  I slipped through the intricately carved screen that separated Angel’s bedroom from the rest of the church, and sat down on her four-poster bed. Her mother did several hammy horror films, and Angel loves the theatricality of her house. She has velvet drapes and everything.

  “What’s up?” I said into the phone.

  “Where are you?”

  Nice to hear your voice, too, I thought, but said, “Angel’s. I’m staying over.”

  “Oh,” said Luke. “Right.” Then there was a little silence. “How come?”

  I frowned. “Because she’s my friend and she asked me, and because I haven’t had a girlie night in for months.”

  “Oh,” Luke said again. “You’re not going to get drunk, are you?”

  I sighed heavily. Ever since I got really drunk this one time ages ago, and nearly gave the game away to Harvey (before I knew he was CIA), Luke has had a thing about me drinking. He says we should have one unit a day so we don’t turn into complete lightweights, but can still operate a car totally legally.
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  “Yes,” I said. “I’m going to get really, leglessly, tearfully, stupidly drunk. And I’m going to throw up.”

  “Ha ha.” He paused again, and when he came back sounded persuasive. “Are you sure you wouldn’t rather have a night in with me?”

  “Yeah, ‘cos that’d be a change,” I said.

  “Come on. We can watch films and eat ice cream and stuff.”

  “Can we do face masks and talk about orgasms?”

  “We can do better than talk about them,” Luke said silkily.

  “Yes, well, so can me and Angel. We’re going to have pillow fights,” I said airily. “In our underwear.”

  “Where does Angel live?” Luke wanted to know, and I smiled.

  “I’m not telling you.”

  “I could find out.”

  “No doubt, but you’re not coming over. She has very secure locks on her doors and she’d be really pissed off if you broke one of her stained glass windows.”

  “Heartbreaker,” Luke said.

  “For Christ’s sake, I’ll see you tomorrow,” I said, but secretly I was pleased, really pleased, that he missed me that much.

  “No,” he said, “you won’t. You’re rehabilitating Maria and I’m fetching coffee for Karen Hanson.”

  Bollocks. “Well, I’ll see you tomorrow night, then,” I said, and he sighed disconsolately. “If it helps, I’ll talk about you all night,” I offered, and he laughed.

  “Nothing classified.”

  “Is our sex life classified?”

  “No, in fact I’m rather proud of it. Tell Angel every detail.”

  I hung up smiling. It was hard not to feel smug when I thought about a god like Luke actually wanting me in return.

  I came back into the nave, where Angel has a sitting room set up, but she was kneeling in the window of the south transept, peering hard through the wobbly glass. She has secondary glazing set up inside, but on the outside the windows are hundreds of years old. Preservation orders and all that.

  “Angel?” I said, and she jumped. “Are you all right?”

  She nodded, but she looked white. “I just…I thought I saw someone out there.”

  “Not another misplaced Christian?” She’s always getting people wanting to come and pray in her house.

  “No.” She didn’t smile. “No, I…” She sighed. “Sophie, if I tell you, will you promise not to laugh?”

  I nodded. “Of course not,” I said, and then got confused with myself.

  “I think I have a stalker,” Angel said, and I didn’t laugh, because Angel is prime stalker material. She’s always getting wacko fan mail from people who see her and think IC is still alive, and occasionally some mad fan tracks her down and knocks on her door. Angel usually hides until they go away, occasionally calls the police. She’s never had any big problems before. But that doesn’t mean she’ll never have any.

  “Have you seen him before?” I asked, because the fans are nearly always male.

  She nodded. “Well, I think so. I’m not sure. It’s just that sometimes when I leave the house, I just get this feeling that someone’s watching me. And last week I came home and,” she dropped her eyes, “it sounds ridiculous, but a pair of my knickers had gone missing from the washing line. I looked in the bushes and things in case they’d got blown away, but I couldn’t find them.”

  “You think someone took them?”

  She shrugged. “I don’t know. I don’t want to be paranoid. It’s probably nothing. I’m just getting jumpy, what with the Trust Ball coming up and everything. It always attracts some nutcases.” She shook herself. “Let’s watch the film.”

  I followed her into the sitting room, but I wasn’t convinced.

  Chapter Two

  It was later, much later, after we’d lounged around talking about the crappiness of work and the unreliability of men and how impossible it is to get a date these days—somehow managing to avoid telling her how Luke and I met, and that we’ve never actually been on a date—after the lights had gone out and I eventually settled into sleep, lying on a spare quilt with the sleeping bag open over me like a blanket, because it was too hot to snuggle down inside a ten tog…it was as late as this when I was nearly asleep, that I thought I heard a noise and ignored it.

  I know, I know, bad spy behaviour. But I live with Tammy, who’s a noisy bugger when she wants to be, and my flat backs onto the car park, and the boiler makes odd noises in the middle of the night, and I thought it was probably a tree tapping against the window.

  But then I heard Angel calling my name in a panicked whisper.

  “Did you hear that?”

  “Hear what?”

  “Tapping on the window.”

  “Thought it was a tree.”

  “There aren’t any trees at this end.”

  “A bird?” I suggested hopefully.

  “I think there’s someone out there,” Angel whispered, frightened, and it suddenly struck me how lonely it must be to live out here, totally alone, no neighbours for a mile in either direction, not even any parents to run to when you got scared, like I always did.

  I had my gun in my bag, and the thought crossed my mind that I could go out there and shoot the bugger if I wanted to. I was allowed.

  And then I thought, it’s probably just some drunk who’d got lost. Or some kids out for a smoke.

  “It’s probably nothing,” I said, “but do you want me to go and check?”

  Angel shook her head rapidly, sitting up in bed surrounded by a halo of blonde curls. “You can’t! All on your own? Sophie, he could be dangerous.”

  Well, so could I. In the right circumstances.

  “I’ll be okay,” I reassured her, pushing back the sleeping bag and looking for my sweater as we heard another tap.

  “I won’t let you go outside,” Angel said, and then there was a flash, like from lightning, from the window nearest me, and I jumped. It wasn’t lightning weather. That had been a camera flash.

  “How about we call Luke?” I suggested.

  Angel’s church was on the outskirts of a tiny little village, a couple of miles up the road from where I lived. Luke’s flat was not half a mile from my own, he could be here in ten minutes. Less if he ignored the speed limit, which he usually did.

  But, “Soph, it’s the middle of the bloody night,” he mumbled when he picked up.

  “This is important.”

  “Are you okay?”

  “Yes—”

  “Is Angel okay?”

  “Yes—”

  “Then it can’t be that important.”

  “It bloody can be, you stupid fuck,” I hissed, just to get his attention. Also because we’d been watching Heathers and the language always rubs off on me. “There’s someone outside.”

  “Is that illegal?”

  “It is if we can hear them. Angel owns the acre around her house. We keep hearing taps at the window and it’s not a tree or a bird and she won’t let me go out to see. So can you come over to see? Please?”

  Luke sighed. “What do I get for this?”

  I glared at the phone. “Oh, for God’s sake,” and I cut him off.

  “Is he coming?” Angel asked meekly.

  “No,” I said. “Not now or for the conceivable future.”

  “Oh,” Angel said, as my phone started ringing again. Luke.

  “Where are you?” he asked, and I smiled, and ten minutes later saw him creeping round the outside of the church. He’d parked at the end of the drive so the intruder wouldn’t hear the car, he was dressed all in black, and he was stealthy and incredibly sexy.

  “So, what,” Angel asked as we watched him disappear round the north transept and we crept up to the pulpit to watch, “does he do this often? SAS training or something?”

  “Mmm,” I agreed, “something,” because Luke had SAS training. Eton, RAF, SAS and now secret services. Actually, that much on its own is a turn-on.

  “So how do you—” Angel began, and then my phone started to vibrate.
I’d been clever enough to switch the volume off, so as not to alert the intruder.

  “There’s no one here,” Luke said, “except me. And I’m fucking freezing. Let me in.”

  “He says it’s clear,” I told Angel. “Can he come in?”

  She nodded and fetched the keys from the entry hall to let Luke in. He raised his eyes warily to the gargoyles and ancient stone, and stepped over the threshold.

  “Seriously,” he said to Angel, “a church?”

  She nodded. “With a name like mine it’s sort of a given.”

  He smiled, spied me and came over. “Was there really someone out there, or was that just an excuse to see me?”

  I rolled my eyes at Angel. “It’s a good job you have vaulted ceilings, or his ego wouldn’t fit in here. Yes,” I said to Luke, “we definitely heard someone. And I think I saw someone, too. Out on the south side. In the bushes where the crypt is.”

  “The what?” Luke said.

  “The baron’s crypt,” Angel said, unconcerned, going over to the kitchen and switching the kettle on. “Don’t worry, it’s been empty for centuries. Ever since the church stopped being used and they relocated all the bodies to the cemetery in the village.”

  Luke looked doubtful, but he nodded anyway. “You get a lot of people wandering around your garden?”

  “Yes, but not usually at night,” Angel said. “Tourists and hikers. People taking pictures.”

  “Speaking of which,” I said, and told Luke about the camera flash.

  He sighed. “Police,” he said. “You need to tell them. Write down everything that happens as it happens, anything unusual, but don’t confront anyone, even if you think you’ll be okay.” He paused. “You want me to stay?”

  Angel nodded shyly. “I don’t want to trouble you…”

  “Hey, I’m already here. And Sophie owes me anyway.”

  Sophie did not owe him anything. I frowned distrustfully. “We’re sleeping in Angel’s room,” I told him. “She’s the one who needs protecting.”

  Luke looked mardy, but he nodded anyway. “You are going to owe me big time when we get back to yours,” he said, and I nodded tiredly.

  “In the morning.” I yawned. “Save it for the morning.”