The Rain-Soaked Bride (16 page)

‘I see you’ve made yourself quite at home,’ said Shining.

‘Well, I didn’t have a great deal of choice did I? After that poor Lucy girl—’

‘Which is exactly what we’d like to talk to you about,’ said Shining, taking her arm. ‘A walk in the fresh air, perhaps?’

The three of them stepped outside with April scrabbling in her handbag for her cigarettes. ‘I’m gasping,’ she admitted. ‘Never have I talked for so long without the aid of minty death.’ She put a menthol cigarette in her mouth and began hunting for a lighter. ‘I’m glad they fetched you,’ she said. ‘I rather feared they wouldn’t.’

‘Fetched us?’

‘Oh, the buggers,’ she said, having lit her cigarette. ‘I would have kept schtum until I could have told you myself, but I had to leap into the breach and thought it was a bit off to just leave her up there. Ranesh sent me to fetch her, you see – have either of you seen poor Ranesh? He was terribly cut up about it.’

‘No,’ Toby said. ‘I’m sure he’s around somewhere.’

‘I do hope he’s all right … Anyway, she was late so he sent me to find her. I went up to her room and, well, you know.’

‘Was the light on when you went in?’ asked Shining.

‘No, pitch black, I nearly went base over apex trying to get the curtains open. Why?’

Shining looked at Toby.

‘Oh, boys,’ said April, puffing away on her cigarette, ‘now you’re being annoying. What’s so important about the light that has you throwing chilly looks around the place like a knackered ice-maker?’

‘The light must have been on when she died,’ said Toby. ‘She was fully dressed, sat up in her room. So, if it had been an accident …’

‘Which none of us thinks it was for one moment,’ she added.

‘You’d think not,’ said her brother, ‘but Box aren’t quite so convinced.’

‘Box are stupid, then.’

‘More to the point,’ continued Toby, ‘for the light to have been turned off between Lucy Baxter dying and you discovering her, then either she was discovered by somebody else earlier—’

‘Who turned off the light but chose not to mention it,’ she said.

‘Or, more likely, the killer turned it off once they had checked all was well.’

‘A clue!’ April giggled. ‘How wonderfully Agatha Christie!’

‘I managed to get a reasonable print off the switch, though I’ve no way of checking it without internet access,’ said Shining. ‘I could get it scanned and send it to one of our friends at the Met.’

‘I might actually be able to help there,’ said Toby. ‘I know someone with quick access to IDENT1.’

‘Toby’s got an agent!’ April clapped. ‘He’ll be a real spy yet! Shame he works at an opticians.’

‘I’ve got plenty of contacts, thank you, they’re just not flaky loons who specialise in potions.’

‘If Herbert, my chief potion specialist, ever heard you call him a loon, he’d be livid,’ said Shining. ‘In fact, he’d probably poison you.’

‘Anyway,’ Toby continued, ‘IDENT1 is the central database for biometric information. As well you know.’

‘Oh, if it was set up after ’89, darling,’ said April, ‘it’s all news to me. I get lost with the new departments.’

‘It’s not a department, it’s a …’ He sighed. ‘Never mind. Give me the print and I’ll take the car into town. See what I can do.’

‘Perfect.’ Shining handed over a piece of card. ‘It’s terribly old school, I’m afraid,’ he said. ‘Graphite dust and sellotape.’

‘Old school is what we do best!’ said April, grinding her cigarette out in the gravel.

Shining handed Toby the keys to the car and the young officer descended the steps and walked around the house towards the stables.

‘You seem to be getting on well in your diplomatic duties,’ Shining said to his sister.

‘But of course I am,’ she smiled. ‘Actually, Tae-young is lovely. She’s got her head screwed on.’

‘How envious you must be.’

‘Hush your face, you horrid man.’

They climbed back up the steps and walked into the entrance hall. There was nobody else there now, and it was with some relief that they settled down into an armchair each and stared up at the decorative plastering.

‘Poor Lucy,’ April said, ‘bumped off just because she pulled the wrong shift.’

‘Story of our lives,’ said Shining. ‘How many people have we seen die just because they happened to be in the wrong place at the worst possible time?’

‘True, I never did get used to it, though. Dying for a principle is one thing, being a random statistic …’

‘Which is all we are at the end of the day.’

‘Speak for yourself. I intend to go out in a blaze of glory.’

For a few minutes they just stared at the plasterwork, moving from one detail to the next. It made Shining think of his career, weird, baroque and ancient.

‘I do hope you have a bit of a plan,’ said April eventually. ‘I’ve rather become a target, haven’t I?’

‘Aren’t we all? As for a plan … That’s rather difficult in that the whole situation has us on the back foot. All we can do is take every precaution possible and hope we’re clever enough to catch and stop whoever it is that’s so good at killing people from a distance.’

‘Oh good, I did so want to hear something deeply reassuring.’

Shining shrugged. ‘What can I say? We have so little to go on. I’ve placed some protection on the walls of the place, hopefully that will give us some pre-warning before something else happens.’

‘Hopefully.’

‘Your basic rule should be never to accept anything from anyone.’

‘What a perfect recipe for a boring week.’

‘One that you might survive.’

April sighed and nodded. ‘I suppose that makes up for it.’

‘And when something else happens,’ Shining continued, ‘as it surely will, we’ll just have to hope that it leads us closer to whoever it is that’s behind this.’

‘How morbid. Now you have us looking forward to something awful.’

‘Well, not “looking forward” exactly, but you know what I mean. The more evidence we have …’

‘The closer we’ll be to finding them, I know. Fine.’

She got to her feet. ‘I’m going to go and find Tae-young, see if she can get me a room upstairs. I’m damned if I’m going in the servants’ quarters.’

She nearly fell back into her chair as the sound of an explosion rocked through the building.

Shining was immediately on his feet, running out of the main door.

April came after him, looking around in confusion until they both saw a plume of smoke curling around the corner of the building from the direction of the stable block.

‘Toby?’ April asked but Shining didn’t answer, just ran in the direction of the explosion.

As the parking area by the stable block came into view, the source of the explosion was immediately obvious. It was Shining’s car. Now a blackened hulk, its interior filled with flame that roared and flowed from the blown-out windows.

In the driver’s seat there was the shape of a man, his entire body consumed by fire.

a) Lufford Hall, Alcester, Warwickshire

Toby was heading towards the stables when he bumped into Fratfield again.

‘Popping out?’ Fratfield asked.

‘Just to town, I need to get online.’

‘Stratford’s your best bet,’ Fratfield said. ‘If you don’t mind waiting a couple of shakes, I need to head out myself. Or would you rather go alone?’

‘Not at all.’ Toby liked Fratfield and couldn’t see the problem in his tagging along.

‘Are you OK with us taking my car? I need to get some petrol.’

‘Fine, I’ve spent too long relying on the Tube, I’m hopeless behind the wheel these days.’ This was only partly true, but Toby didn’t mind being the passenger.

‘I’ll be right with you.’ Fratfield threw a set of car keys to Toby. ‘Saab parked at the front.’

‘Righto.’

Toby strolled over to Fratfield’s car, opening it with the electronic key that hung from the man’s fob.

He climbed into the passenger seat, guiltily having a poke around while he waited. He tried to tell himself nosiness was his job rather than just an unpleasant character trait. Not that there was a great deal to see: the glove compartment held only the car manual, a pair of gloves and some windscreen de-icer. It was with some disappointment that Toby found nothing in the little storage box between the seats either. Fratfield didn’t even own any embarrassing CDs. Or any CDs at all. He was a perfect Secret Service officer – you could have gone over the entire car and not had the first idea about the man who was driving it. Toby was utterly bored by the time Fratfield returned.

‘Sorry about keeping you waiting,’ said Fratfield. ‘I was caught by Mark.’

‘No doubt wanting you to shoot me and dump the body in a ditch between here and Stratford.’

‘Nah, he would never approve the expenditure of a bullet. I’m to garrotte you instead.’

‘Look forward to that.’

Fratfield reversed the car out of its parking space and headed out on the drive towards the guardhouse. He rummaged in his coat pocket for his pass. ‘Still haven’t sorted one of these for you, have they?’ he asked as he held it up towards the security man at the gate.

‘No point in wasting government resources if I’m going to be dead within the hour.’

‘True, true. I’ll see if I can get someone to get a wiggle on, though, just in case you escape. Be nice if you had your own ID before the conference is over.’

‘It would make a delightful leaving present.’

They drove away from Lufford Hall.

‘Been in service long?’ Toby asked.

‘Haven’t you read my file?’ Fratfield smiled.

‘Nah, I leave that sort of careful preparation to the old man, I get by on small talk.’

‘Always fun in the intelligence service, we do so love to chinwag.’

In Toby’s experience, most intelligence officers did when in the company of another. After all, they didn’t get to talk much outside the office, at least not about work. And, for an intelligence officer, work tended to be pretty all-consuming. Toby had known a couple of officers who had lost marriages over the fact. People tended to become absent both literally and figuratively and that was something nobody enjoyed living with.

‘I was recruited from college,’ Fratfield continued. ‘This will be my fifteenth year of being a professional liar for Queen and Country.’

‘How lovely,’ said Toby. ‘You must be proud.’

‘I am actually,’ Fratfield admitted. ‘I know it seems unfashionable these days but I do like to think we do some good in the work we do. I’m certainly not in it for the money.’

‘Just as well,’ Toby laughed, ‘or your career would be a disappointment.’

‘What about you?’

‘Same, I came in as a post-grad, sifting data and wanting to be James Bond.’

‘How did that work out for you?’ Fratfield smiled.

‘I now spend most of my days dealing with subjects that would make Ian Fleming’s dead toes curl.’

‘Fair enough.’

‘As I said before, though, it’s good. I actually feel I’m making a difference these days. That alone makes it worthwhile.’

‘What about outside the office? You married?’

The fact that Toby didn’t wear a wedding ring didn’t mean much, he knew; a lot of married intelligence officers didn’t.

‘No, terminally single.’ He paused and then added, ‘There’s someone but, frankly, I think the feelings are a bit one-sided.’

Fratfield sighed. ‘I know all about that. It’s hard. You can’t really give anything of yourself, can you? Who’d be stupid enough to fall for someone who does our job? What about family?’

‘My mother died a few years ago.’

‘Ah … shit, sorry.’

‘Don’t worry about it. Father’s still alive. Unfortunately.’

Fratfield laughed. ‘I can tell you’re close.’

‘Our relationship is a bit complicated. He’s a funny old bugger. We don’t really get on.’

‘Sorry to hear that. He cleared?’

‘No, he thinks I work for the Department of Works and Pensions.’

‘Oh.’

‘Which he finds surprising. He never thought I’d get a job in the first place.’

‘Supportive. Nice.’

Toby shrugged. ‘He can’t help it, really, it’s just the way he is.’ He didn’t like discussing his parents so tried to shift the attention away. ‘You?’

‘Both retired to Spain. They spend their days playing bowls with pensioners and going on coach trips to old potteries.’

‘Thrilling stuff.’

‘Absolutely. And they think I work for the DTI.’

‘We’re just a pair of boring civil servants out for a drive,’ said Toby.

‘Indeed we are.’

b) Sheep Street, Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire

Fratfield parked the car on a hill leading down to the canal basin. They were surrounded by timber-framed buildings and old shop fronts.

‘I need to find an internet café,’ said Toby.

‘There’s a newsagents at the end of the road, they’ll put you on the right track. I need to grab a few things, how long do you need?’

‘Give me forty-five minutes, that OK?’

‘Perfect, meet you back here.’

Fratfield walked off up the street and Toby went into the newsagents to ask for directions. After finally accepting that Toby was unlikely to buy the knocked-off smartphone he kept under the counter, the shopkeeper pointed him in the direction of a small café a few minutes’ walk away.

Toby stopped off at a payphone en route and put through a call to Ben Topham, his friend at the South Hampshire Fingerprint Bureau.

Unlike a lot of agents, Ben knew exactly who Toby was (though was at least vague as to what he did). They had gone to school together. On graduation, Ben had gone into forensics and the Met whereas Toby had vanished into the elusive world of the Security Service.

‘If it isn’t yourself!’ came a shouted reply through the handset. ‘How long since you last got in touch, eh?’

‘Sorry Ben, been a busy old time,’ said Toby. ‘You know what it’s like.’

‘Not really. I just sit in the same old office day after day and try not to go out of my mind with the boredom. I stare at people’s fingerprints. I am an expert of stains. You know, the highlight of my day is a hot chocolate from the vending machine mid-afternoon? It’s good. Thick and creamy and full of the sugary promise of home time. I’ve got another couple of hours to go before I can even think of walking down the corridor and ordering that bad boy. Never work in an office, it kills the soul.’