She took the call and put the phone to her ear. “Hello?” she said quietly as she stepped out of the bedroom and into the kitchen diner of her flat.
“I’ve been calling you for the last thirty minutes,” he said.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “The phone was on silent.”
“Where are you?”
“At home. What’s happening?”
“I need you to get to Southwold as quickly as you can.”
“Southwold?” She wrinkled her brow as she tried to remember where that was. “Norfolk?”
“Suffolk. I’m sending a car to pick you up. There’ll be a briefing in the back—you need to be up to speed by the time you get there.”
She looked down at the dirty dressing gown and then at her reflection in the window. Her hair was a disaster and she was still wearing last night’s make-up. She was a mess. “Give me half an hour,” she said.
“Can’t do that. The car will be with you in five minutes. Don’t fuck about, Jessie. This has the potential to be very serious.”
Jessie thought about her son; Lucas was with her parents, and she was supposed to be going over to pick him up later. She was going to have to call them to see if they could keep him for a little longer. She went back into the bedroom and opened the wardrobe, hoping against hope that she had something suitable to wear.
“Jessie?” Shah said curtly.
“Yes, sir,” she said, taking down a skirt that would just about do the trick. “It’s fine. Can you give me an idea what this is about?”
“Pyotr Aleksandrov is dead. He’s been shot. I don’t need to tell you what that means.”
“Hey,” said the man on the bed.
“Shot?” Jessie hissed. “By who?”
“Get in the car. I’ll see you there.”
Shah ended the call.
“Hey,” the man on the bed repeated.
Jessie turned around. She could see his face now. He was blandly handsome, in the sort of emaciated indie musician fashion that she found annoyingly attractive. Last night was the first time that they had met; Izzy had set it up as a blind date and Jessie had decided that he was someone it might be useful to know.
“Hey,” he said for the third time. “Come back to bed.”
“You have to go,” she said, taking off the dressing gown and pulling on the only clean underwear that she could find.
“Don’t be mean,” he said.
She found his jeans and t-shirt on the floor and tossed them at him. “I’m serious. Get dressed. I have to go to work.”
He must have heard the determination in her voice and, grunting, he sat up and started to work his legs into his trousers. Jessie picked up her blouse, saw it was dirty, found a clean white shirt and teamed it with the skirt.
“I had fun,” the man said.
“Great,” she said, going through into the bathroom and quickly sorting out her hair and make-up.
“So can I see you again?”
She wanted to say no, but she was ambitious and you never could tell how people might prove to be helpful down the road. No point in burning bridges when they didn’t need to be burned.
“I’ll call you,” she said. She reapplied her make-up, then took a bottle of aspirin out of the cabinet and swallowed down two tablets with a double-handful of water.
“You’re not just saying that?”
Jesus. Why were men all so insecure these days?
“Maybe we can get lunch next week. When are you in the River House again?”
“Thursday.”
“So give me a call.”
She was just checking herself in the mirror—better, not great, just about presentable—when she heard two short blasts of a car horn from outside. She couldn’t wait around any longer.
“I’ve got to go,” she said. “Let yourself out.”
She grabbed her jacket, keys and phone and left the flat.
A black BMW was idling at the side of the road. She hurried over to it, opened the back door, and slid inside. There was a man sitting there already. He looked to be of average height—five eleven or six foot—and looked as if he might be muscular without it being obvious. His eyes were on the grey side of blue, his mouth had a cruel kink to it and, as he turned to look at her, she saw that he had a faint scar that ran from his cheek to the start of his nose. His hair was long and unkempt, with an unruly frond that curled across his forehead like a comma.
“Hello,” he said.
“I’m sorry,” Jessie replied. “I don’t think we’ve met.”
The man put out his hand. “John Smith,” he said. “Nice to meet you.”
14
They raced south under blue lights, the Sunday evening traffic parting before them. Smith was wearing a pair of jeans, a black polo-neck shirt and a scuffed leather jacket. Jessie looked down at her own clothes—the skirt was creased and she spotted, to her horror, a small red wine stain on her shirt—and felt a fresh surge of irritation.
She took out her phone and typed a quick message to her mother, telling her that she had been called away on urgent business and asking whether she would be able to look after Lucas for another couple of days. Her parents lived in Southampton, and ever since Lucas’ father had betrayed her, they had taken her son on alternate weekends so that he could maintain something of a life. They were besotted with the boy, as Lucas was with them, and the arrangement had proven to be invaluable. Jessie argued with her parents often, usually prompted by their unsubtle suggestions that she had been single for too long and shouldn’t a young and attractive woman like her have found someone suitable to settle down with rather than going out with her friends… but, despite their disagreements, Jessie knew that they worried about her for all the right reasons and that, without them, her life would be so much more difficult.
She fidgeted, unable to settle. She looked over at Smith: he was skimming through a sheaf of papers and, perhaps aware that she was looking at him, gestured to the seat back in front of her.
“One for you, too,” he said, pointing to a bundle of papers in the seat back pocket.
“Thank you,” she said.
Smith looked back down at his papers.
“How long will it take to drive there?” Jessie asked.
Smith looked up again and smiled at her with forced patience. “Where?”
“Southwold.”
“Who told you we were driving?”
“We’re not?”
“The plan changed.”
Jessie looked out of the window and noticed, for the first time, that they were heading south.
“Southwold’s east.”
“It is,” Smith said as the driver carved through a gap on the Old Street roundabout.
“But—”
“We’re flying there. Helicopter.”
“Oh.”
“You flown before?”
“Not in a helicopter.”
“We’ll be there in forty minutes. It’ll take two hours if we drive. Apparently, this”—he tapped a finger on the dossier—“is fast moving and they need everyone there yesterday.”
He looked down at the papers again.
“I’m sorry,” Jessie said. “I don’t think you told me what you have to do with this.”
“I didn’t,” Smith said. And then, when he realised that she was still staring at him, he added, “I’m your military liaison.”
“Why on earth do I need that?”
“You might not,” he said. “But it’s better to have something and find you don’t need it, than not have something and find that you do. Read the briefing.”
Smith looked back down at his own briefing document. She had exhausted his patience; it was clear that he had no wish to continue the conversation. She looked at him a little more carefully. He looked a little rough around the edges: his face was stubbled with five o’clock shadow and there were dark pouches beneath his eyes. He looked like she felt.