Ugley Business Page 3

“I intend to,” Luke said, and took the mug of hot chocolate Angel offered and followed us into the bedroom with a wolf-like grin.

  I woke alone, wondering why my arm was numb and my bed was empty. And then I remembered that under the quilt and the carpet was a stone floor, and that when I’d drifted off to sleep Luke had been there with his arms around me.

  I sat up. Angel’s bed was rumpled but empty, and I could hear voices through the carved screen. When I peered through the gaps, I saw Luke lounging at the big oak table, and Angel clattering around in the kitchen.

  “Nice of you to join us,” Luke said when I shuffled out in my shorts and camisole. “Coffee?”

  I took the cup from him and inhaled the contents. “More.”

  Angel refilled it, smiling, and I drained it in seconds. Now I felt I could speak.

  “Better,” I said.

  “Two syllables,” Luke said admiringly, peeling an orange. “That must be strong coffee.”

  “Shift-strength coffee,” I said. “You get up at three-thirty in the morning and see how many cups you need to stay coherent.”

  “So this is what passes for coherency?”

  I glared at him and picked up one of the hot croissants Angel had just put on the table. “Don’t you need to be going?”

  “Ouch,” Luke said. “I don’t need to be there until ten.”

  “It’s half nine now.”

  “Yes, and it’ll take me fifteen minutes to get there.”

  I stared. He was wearing yesterday’s black T-shirt and jeans. He looked edible, but not very professional.

  “You’re not going like that?”

  “Why not?”

  “Don’t you want to look…” I searched for a word. “Smarter?”

  “I’m smart enough, thanks,” Luke said, popping a piece of orange into his luscious mouth.

  “Do you have a big day at work?” Angel asked politely.

  “New boss,” I said quickly.

  “And what is it that you do?” Angel asked, and Luke narrowed his eyes at me.

  “I’m a roofer,” he said, because he lives above a roofer’s yard. And it might explain the muscles. “Long hours. All weathers. Very strenuous.” He stood up. “And now I’m going to go. Make myself look smarter.”

  “Don’t you be late now,” I said.

  “Or you,” Luke replied, eyebrows raised. Oh, bollocks, yes, Maria.

  I saluted him. “Sir, no, sir!”

  “See, that’s the kind of obedience I like.” He grinned, running sticky orange-juiced fingers through my hair and kissing me. “I’ll see you later?”

  “I’ll call you,” I agreed.

  “Just not in the middle of the night this time.” He thanked Angel for breakfast and loped out, looking sexy, while I stared longingly after him. Our first platonic night together. It’s all downhill from here.

  Angel was watching him go, too. “God, you’re a lucky cow,” she sighed. “Not sure whether I should offer you a pain-au-chocolat or not, now.”

  “What did I do?”

  “Got a sexy boyfriend.”

  “He’s not my boyfriend.”

  “Could have fooled me,” Angel said, and I thought, yeah, me too.

  I washed the orange juice from my face, despaired of my hair and got dressed, leaving on the pretence of an unspecified family obligation, and Angel drove me home.

  “If you hear any more funny noises…” I said as I got out of the car, and she smiled.

  “I’ll call you. Or maybe I’ll just bypass you completely and call Luke,” she winked.

  “Careful.”

  “Thought he wasn’t your boyfriend.”

  “He’s not…”

  “So what is he, Soph?”

  I sighed. Beats me. My partner. My mentor. My lover. But not, for some indefinable reason, my boyfriend.

  “He’s just Luke,” I said, and even to my ears it sounded stupid. “See you, Ange.”

  “See you.”

  I let myself into my lovely little flat where Tammy was wailing, looking hungry, despite the lacerated squirrel that lay, headless, by the washing machine.

  “Did you bring me a present?” I said, and she gave me a suspicious look. “Or is it a private trophy? Well done, baby.”

  She looked pleased with herself. I know I shouldn’t encourage her, but a) squirrels are noisy buggers, b) they’re about twice her size so that’s quite an impressive feat, c) they’re going to get squashed by a lorry even if they’re spared by Tammy, and d) she’s a cat, and doesn’t understand me anyway.

  I fed her properly, marvelled at how much food a tiny little body like that can hold, wished I had the same metabolism and stripped off to take a shower and get the damn orange juice out of my hair.

  And when I was halfway through washing my hair, got the fright of my life (well, one of them) when something slammed against my bathroom window.

  I switched off the shower and, mildewed curtain pressed against me, peered cautiously at the window. Nothing.

  Heart hammering, I reached out and opened the window.

  There was a stunned pigeon wandering around on the ground.

  “Stupid bird,” I muttered, then looked up to see one of the guys who I think lives upstairs, watching me, and hurriedly shut the window. What was this, a free show?

  Hair washed, as clean and fresh as the weather would allow, I got dressed, collected my keys, locked the million different locks on my doors and windows, including the metal shutters that turn the flat into a furnace, and left. Paranoid? No. Someone threw a firebomb through my window a couple of months ago.

  I drove up to the hospital and went straight to Maria’s ward. SO17 doesn’t stretch as far as private healthcare, so she was in a room with a teenager who had appendicitis, a woman swathed in bandages who had crashed her car while talking on a mobile phone, and an old lady who had something indefinable and distinctly smelly wrong with her.

  “Thank God you’re here,” Maria said loudly when I turned up. She hates hospitals and had got more and more belligerent since she woke up in ICU. She was dressed, lounging on her high bed, reading a magazine and looking horribly bored. “They wouldn’t let me go until someone came to collect me.”

  “Well, here I am.” I picked up her bag. “Ready?”

  “I’ve been ready for about a month,” she grumbled, swinging to her feet and only wincing slightly. She was hit with a bullet in the abdomen and had to have her wrecked appendix yanked out. She also had to have a patch of hair at the back of her head shaved off so they could sew up the bloody wounds she got when her head slammed into a wall.

  I, of course, have felt almost Catholic guilt ever since it happened, despite that I’m officially C of E. I still feel like it’s all my fault, even though Maria and Macbeth, the other agent involved, have repeatedly told me that they knew the risks when they took on the job.

  Sometimes I wonder who told them about these risks, because they didn’t tell me. The nearest I got was Luke telling me he’d have to kill me if I ever breathed a word of SO17’s existence to anyone.

  We wandered out of the hospital and Maria gratefully breathed in lungfuls of fresh air. “God, I hate hospital air,” she said. “It makes me feel ill, and I didn’t need to be ill on top of everything else.”

  Trying hard not to grovel, I put her bag in the back and asked if she needed a hand up to the high cab.

  “No,” she said with slight scorn, “I’ve been working out while they weren’t looking. I’m as fit as I was before. Well,” she amended, wincing, “nearly.”

  Ted is a rather basic model of car with no stereo, electric windows or alarm, but he has a ghetto blaster under the passenger seat, and Maria managed to get it tuned to something decent as we chugged on home. She lives in town in a huge old house that she bought before starting on her crippling SO17 salary. Maria used to be in the SBS and is as tough as they come.

  She is also really annoyingly beautiful. She has dark hair so glossy you can see your own, less gl
amorous reflection in it, huge dark eyes and skin that would make a makeup artist redundant. She has a perfect figure that must have prompted the invention of the word “svelte”, perfect teeth, hands, legs, everything.

  I glanced at her hands. Messy cuticles. Hah!

  Then I tried to hide my own nails. We can’t all be perfect, can we?

  “So,” Maria asked, after she’d settled on the beach towel that protected her from getting stuck to Ted’s vinyl seat in the summer heat, “what have I missed?”

  I shrugged. “Got a postage stamp? I’ll write it down for you.”

  “That quiet?”

  “Pretty much. I went to stay with my friend Angel last night and we thought there was an intruder, but Luke couldn’t find anyone.”

  The camera flash bugged me, though. I’d swear it wasn’t lightning.

  “Speaking of Luke…” Maria glanced sideways at me, and I refused to bite. “Sophie, what’s going on between you?”

  When did everyone get so nosy? When did my love life become so interesting?

  Oh, yes. When I finally got one.

  “Nothing,” I said, but I’m a terrible actress, I’ll never ever make a good spy, and Maria was shaking her head at me.

  “I’ve seen you two when you come to visit. All those little glances, can’t stop touching each other… You wouldn’t fool my grandmother, and she’s deaf and blind.”

  “It’s not serious,” I tried, and Maria snorted.

  “We’re talking about Luke, right? The only serious relationship he’s ever had is with his SIG.”

  This is true. The gun goes everywhere with Luke, and you do not touch the gun. My baby is Tammy. His is his SIG.

  “Exactly,” I said. “We’re just having fun.”

  “You’re sure that’s all?”

  “I’m not made of metal and I don’t have a slide latch, so I’ll never capture his heart,” I said lightly, although I wasn’t joking. Luke is fantastic and we have an incredible time together, but I’m not sure if I could cope with being loved by him. I think my head might explode or something.

  We pulled up at Maria’s house and I took her bag inside. The place was light and airy—or would have been had it not been locked up for two months. Luke and I had been round once or twice to check up on the place, stack her mail so that the front door could be opened, make sure nothing was leaking, but it was still mostly hot and airless inside. Maria went around opening windows and brushing dust away with her fingers. Her house, like mine, has lots of secure shutters and locks, but all of them on the inside so as not to look weird. Or spoil the period detailing, as the case is for Maria’s house. I’m not sure a twelve-year-old flat can have period detailing. I have socks older than that.

  She was just debating whether to walk to the shop or drive to Tesco for something cold and sinful to drink, when my phone rang.

  “Why didn’t you answer before?”

  It was Luke.

  “I switched it off in the hospital, like a good girl. And then I was driving.”

  “You’re a paragon,” Luke said drily. “Where are you now?”

  “Maria’s. We’ve just got back.”

  “Can you come up to the office?”

  Eek. “Both of us?”

  “Yes. And—” he lowered his voice, —”try to look respectable.”

  “Is she scary?”

  “That doesn’t begin to cover it.”

  Marvellous. I ended the call and turned to Maria. “All work, no play. We have to go and present ourselves to the new boss.”

  “Fantastic.” Maria was wandering upstairs. “Just let me get changed. My clothes smell of hospital.”

  She came back down in low-slung jeans and a tight black top that rode up to show the new scar on her stomach. Not respectable entirely, but a clever reminder of why she’d been off work. “Let’s go.”

  It only took her about half an hour to lock everything up, and then we were off, rattling up to the nondescript airport business park, where SO17 has its office. The sign by the door reads “Flight Services Inc.”, and once you get past the swipe card entry there’s a normal-looking inner and outer office inside.

  Luke was waiting in the outer office, fiddling with the leaves of a pot plant. “I said respectable,” he said, looking me over with an expression of despair.

  “This is as respectable as I get,” I said. “Anyway, isn’t Macbeth coming?”

  “Yes, but—”

  “Next to him I’ll look like a paragon of virtue.”

  Macbeth was Maria’s protégé, a huge black man who looked as if he’d be more at home at the door of an exclusive club. He could break through pretty much any lock and, he said, disable a car alarm in two seconds. I fully believed him.

  However, Luke did not obviously fully believe me. I didn’t see why. In my mind, denim shorts, a cotton camisole and sandals are very respectable in late June. I glanced over myself. Maybe the chipped polish on my toenails wasn’t too fetching. Or the biro’d shopping list sweating off the back of my hand. Or the cheap sunglasses pushed up into my hair, which was starting to revert back to its usual scruffy blonde.

  Luke, of course, was looking immaculate in chinos and a white shirt. Bastard.

  “Shall we go through?” he said, gesturing to the closed door that led to the director’s office.

  “I feel like I’m on detention,” I said.

  “Not yet,” Luke replied ominously, opening the door for us to go through.

  Karen Hanson sat at her desk, dressed in an expensive grey suit, her dark hair in a perfect chignon, her manicured hands holding a heavy Parker pen. Her age was hard to tell; she looked like one of those women who was very careful with herself and therefore could be anywhere from thirty-five to fifty-five.

  Maria and I exchanged glances. Now I sort of wished I wasn’t wearing five-year-old denim shorts and five quid sandals.

  “Maria de Valera and Sophie Green,” she said, looking up at us in the right order. How did she know that?

  Oh, yeah. File photos. Right.

  “I’m the new director of SO17. My name is Karen Hanson, you can call me Karen if you want or One if you’re more comfortable with that.”

  One was our old director. His name was Albert, but we figured One had a more Bond-ish sound to it. Plus it was easier to store him as One in my mobile, with everyone else as numbers according to seniority. He was shot and killed not long after I started working for SO17.

  “I’ve been in Saudi for six months working undercover for a sheikh suspected of connections with Osama Bin Laden. In case you’re wondering, he was cleared. I’ve trained with the SAS and been with MI6 for ten years. I am married with two grown-up children who have no idea that I’m not the oil company executive I have always told them I am. The existence of SO17 came as a surprise to me, and it must continue to be a surprise to everyone else. I expect total complicity in keeping this organisation top secret, as well as your full loyalty and cooperation. Do you have any questions?”

  I barely had any brain functions left. This woman was my own personal nightmare.

  Maria raised her hand, a clever move that showed off her scar. “Will SO17 be getting any additional funding?”

  Karen Hanson shrugged. “I will try to secure some extra funds, especially in the light of your recent activities, but MI6 has plenty more things to worry about than your pay packets.”

  “I didn’t mean pay packets,” Maria said with a cut-glass smile, and I took a very small step back, “I meant funding. For equipment. Weapons. Surveillance. Perhaps someone to man the lab?”

  “I will do that,” Karen Hanson said. “I am a qualified doctor.”

  What a surprise.

  “Miss Green,” Karen Hanson clipped, and I jumped. “You have nothing to say?”

  “Not right now,” I said cautiously.

  “Nothing wrong with keeping quiet.” She shuffled some papers, and I wondered what they actually were. Did everyone in a high-powered position have papers to shuff
le when they want to change the subject? Was it one of those things you learn in management school? “Now, a new job just came in. Surveillance and possible personal protection.”

  “You mean bodyguarding?” Maria frowned. “With all due respect, Mrs. Hanson, SO17 doesn’t take on contract work.”

  “Does SO17 want to be paid?” Hanson asked waspishly. “Then SO17 takes on contract work. It’s not a breach of security, the client already knows of our existence. Her parents were agents.”

  Even though her own kids didn’t know of the agency? I glanced at Maria and saw she was thinking the same thing.

  “When do we meet the client?” Luke asked. He’d been standing to one side, evidently having exhausted all other questions and arguments this morning.

  “Agent Five is escorting her in. They should be here any minute now.”

  “I thought I was Agent Five,” I said in a small voice.

  “No, you are Agent Four,” Karen Hanson said dismissively.

  Ooh, a promotion. Probably because the old Four is currently serving a life sentence, having shot the old One, as well as several other people. I started hoping the number wasn’t jinxed.

  We stood there in silence for a bit. Then, “Did you show her the lab, Luke?” Maria asked.

  “First thing,” Hanson said, before Luke could speak. “I’m impressed.”

  “Shame it was ordered to the spec of the person who shot your predecessor,” I said idly.

  “And why should that be a problem?” Karen Hanson’s eyes, which I hadn’t noticed before, were pale blue and horribly penetrating. She swung her gaze on me, and I took another step back.

  “Well, because she was a psycho,” I mumbled.

  “You think that usage of the lab will turn me into a psycho?”

  I looked helplessly up at Luke, but he was trying not to laugh. No help from him, or from Maria, who was avoiding eye contact with everybody.

  “I think that someone as unbalanced as Alexa clearly was, was not likely to have installed a lab that could have been used for wholly sane purposes,” I said. “The cattle prods alone are a sadistic and rather unnecessary addition.”

  I caught Luke’s eye and he gave me a mock-serious nod, as if he agreed completely.

  “And the manacles,” I added, looking straight at Luke to see if he’d bite. And apparently he’s not perfect, because he did bite.