Ugley Business (9 page)

Luke went over to Angel and Karen, and Docherty touched my shoulder, holding me back.

“What’s going on?”

“Someone tried to kidnap me last night and he’s working for a Czech guy who’s been killing academics because he doesn’t want anyone to know he’s after some Mongol artefact which he thinks Angel has. I think.”

Docherty nodded. “I didn’t mean that.”

“What did you—?”

“You. Luke. Last night you were messing with the suspension on my car, and today you’re not looking at each other.”

I didn’t have to look at him. My Luke radar told me exactly where he was.

“Change of plan,” I said. “Your car is safe.”

Docherty gave me an indecipherable look, his eyes dark. “Is that so?”

“Absolutely. And it will be safe for a long time.”

“Right,” Docherty said softly. He glanced at Harvey. “Who’s he?”

“CIA. He’s after the Czech guy who’s after the Mongol thing.”

“What’s the Mongol thing called?”

“The Xe La.”

“Spell it.”

I did, and Docherty frowned. “Never heard of it.”

I wasn’t going to ask how many Mongol artefacts he’d heard of. I wouldn’t really be surprised at all if it turned out that he was an authority on ancient Mongol artefacts.

“He’s not the reason my car is safe?”

“Harvey? No,” I smiled. “He’s got a thing for Angel. Only he’s never met her.”

“Did it occur to you that he could be her stalker?”

Why does everyone have it in for Harvey? “No. You sound just like Luke.”

“Do I now?” Docherty said, sounding amused, watching Angel as she detached herself from the group and came over to us.

“You’re involved with the CIA now?”

“We’re helping each other out,” I said. “Angel, do you possess a Mongol artefact called the Xe La?”

She shrugged and shook her head. “I don’t possess any Mongol artefacts.”

“Have you had any more letters or e-mails lately?”

She shook her head again. “Nothing. I think Docherty scared them off.”

Docherty raised an eyebrow, but said nothing. Angel took my arm and tugged me away towards the bedroom. When the door was shut, she lowered her voice and said, “What’s going on with you and Luke?”

Argh, did I have a beacon up or something?
Talk to me about my boyfriend problems!

I threw myself at the bed. “You know how I said he’s not my boyfriend?”

“Yes…”

“Well, he’s not.”

The best thing about a best friend is her ability to be endlessly changeable and utterly supportive when it comes to your love life. When you’re going out with someone she’s happy for you, jealous of you, thinks he’s fab, wants one just like him. When you break up she’s right there to tell you he’s a bastard, she never liked him anyway, you can do so much better.

She even got me some chocolate. Bless.

Eventually Luke knocked on the screen and opened the door.

“We need to talk to this Petr guy,” he said, while Angel glowered loyally at him. “See if we can get a handle on who he’s working for.”

“It’s Janulevic,” I said. “Harvey—”

“I need to hear it myself,” Luke said evenly. “Are you coming?”

I looked at Angel. She bit her lip. “I think you should go and find out what you can,” she said, and I nodded reluctantly and heaved myself off the bed.

Karen drove us all back up to the airport business park and went back into her pot-planted office while Harvey, Luke and I went down to the lab. I was standing between them and I felt like the Christians in the Colosseum must have done when the lions came out for lunch.

Luke rolled back the shutters and switched on the intercom to talk to Petr, who was huddled in a corner, sweating and shaking. Luke said a few things to him, and he sweated and shook even more.

“Are you terrorising him?” I said.

“I’m confirming things.” He rolled off another question and the answer came back, a miserable “Dmitri Janulevic”.

“See?” Harvey muttered under his breath, and Luke ignored him. He asked Petr another question, but Petr shrugged nervously.

“What?” I asked.

“He doesn’t know why Janulevic wanted you.”

“Because I’m friends with Angel?”

“Don’t feed him anything,” Luke said. “Let him answer.” He asked Petr again what Janulevic wanted, but got no reply.

I sighed. I’d seen enough films to know how this worked.

“Luke, will you open the door, please?” I said.

“The cell door? Why?”

“I want to show him something.”

Luke and Harvey exchanged glances, then Luke swiped the cell door open and I got out my gun and pressed it against Petr’s temple.

“Sophie, what the hell—” Luke started, but I cut him off.

“Ask him again.”

Luke paused, then repeated the question. Petr trembled up at me, then he mumbled something very quietly.

“What did he say?” I asked.

“He said it’s because of who you’re friends with.”

“Does he have a name?”

The answer came back. “No, but he’s seen her. A little blonde girl.”

Angel. “What was he trying to do? Threaten her by taking me? Ransom me? Did he want information?”

Luke asked, and Petr shook his head, looking terrified.

“He doesn’t know, Soph. He’s just a henchman.”

“He knows,” I said, pressing the gun harder against Petr’s temple, and he started genuflecting.

“Sophie,” Luke said quietly, but his tone was firm. “He doesn’t know. Put the gun away.”

I felt patronised, and I hated that. But more than anything I knew Luke was right, and I hated that too.

I lowered the gun, and Petr started breathing again. He mumbled something that made Luke scowl and Harvey laugh.

“What?” I said, stepping out of the cage.

“He said Luke’s boss is scary.” Harvey pointed at me. “I think that might have been a compliment.”

“Just a statement of fact,” Luke said, swiping the door shut again and stepping away as Harvey took over the intercom. He and Petr spoke rapidly in Russian for a few minutes, and then he and Luke nodded at each other.

“Sophie’s car,” Luke said. “It’s best off-road.”

“Damn straight,” I said. “Where are we going?”

“Where Petr was supposed to have taken you yesterday.”

We locked Petr away in the dark again and went back upstairs. Karen was browsing through some files in the outer office. “I’m trying to find what Greg Winter was working on when he died,” she said. “The record says he was off duty, but I’m not sure I believe that. Did you get anything?”

“An address,” Luke said.

“For Janulevic? Do you all have body armour?”

Luke and Harvey nodded and looked at me.

“In my wardrobe,” I said meekly, and they both rolled their eyes. Harvey went back to his B&B to shower and change from yesterday’s clothes, and Luke followed me back to my flat and stood there looking moody while I tried to remember what I’d done with my Kevlar vest. He inspected the scooter Harvey and I had brought inside last night, but apparently found nothing of interest on it, so went back to watching me as I got hotter and more flustered trying to find my damned vest.

Tammy appeared through the electronic cat flap Luke insisted I had put in for security, and rubbed up against his legs. Poor Tammy was just like me—saw the face and not what was inside.

No, that was mean. Luke was a good guy. He just wasn’t someone I needed to be personally involved with.

I finally found the Kevlar, loaded up my gun and we went off to pick Harvey up. His little hotel was on the road where I used to live with my parents. I lived there for ten years. Now I hardly recognised it.

“Okay, where’re we going?”

Harvey frowned. “Well, he said something about an ugly place…”

“He said ‘Go to Ugley’.” Luke rolled his eyes, and I put the car in gear, smiling.

“What’s Ugley?” Harvey asked, confused.

“Next village over. Where Angel lives— Well, officially. She’s right on the outskirts.”

“She lives in a place called
Ugley
?”

“Yep.”

“Jesus. You English are insane.”

Luke flicked his eyes at me, and I knew he was going to start an argument.

“Don’t.”

“What, I was just going to say that last time I went to America I drove through the towns of Eighty-Eight, Kentucky; Nameless, Tennessee; and Scratch Ankle, Alabama.”

“Now I know you’re making that up,” I told him.

“No, it’s true,” he protested.

“I once met a girl from a town called Maggie’s Nipples in Wyoming,” Harvey volunteered, and I gave in.

“There’s a village not far from here called Matching Tye,” I said. “I always wanted to have a house there called ‘Shirt’.”

“All the villages around here have names like PG Wodehouse characters,” Luke said. “Chipping Ongar, Biggleswade, Wendens Ambo.”

“Saffron Walden, Wimblington, Trumpington,” I said. “I think there’s a place up by Peterborough called Eye.”

“Just north of Cambridge there’s a place called Waterbeach,” Luke volunteered.

“What’s funny about that?” Harvey asked.

“It’s a hundred miles inland.”

By the time we pulled up the farm track Petr had described, Luke and Harvey had my road atlas out and were picking up on stupid names. Blo Norton, Hellions Bumpstead, Devil’s Dyke, Shellow Bowells. Hatfield Peverell. Stocking Pelham. We wondered if there was a castle at Castle Acre in Norfolk, or what kind of calendar confusion they had in March. Harvey wanted to know what made Great Chesterford quite so great and for the life of me, I couldn’t remember.

“How do these places get their names?” he asked in bewilderment.

“Corruptions of Old English, Celtic and Norman words,” I said.

“I’m impressed,” Luke said.

“Stansted Mountfitchet is Anglo Saxon and Norman,” I said. “The ground is full of stones, we’re at the edge of where the Ice Age glacier came to, so Stansted means ‘stony ground’, and Mountfitchet is a corruption of the Norman Baron de Montfichet who was awarded the land by William the Conqueror.”

There was a silence (well, as much silence as you can get with a diesel engine wobbling over dried ruts of mud) from the back of the car.

Then, “I’m very impressed,” Luke said.

“Not just a pretty face,” Harvey agreed, and I blushed.

We came to a gate in the hedge at the edge of the field and I backed up a few feet, put Ted into first and patted the dash. “This will only hurt for a second,” I said, and rammed him at the gate.

Harvey and Luke ducked, but Ted rolled on majestically, bits of wood falling gracefully back to earth. I patted the dash again. “Good boy.”

“You talk to your car a lot?” Harvey asked.

“She talks to it more than me,” Luke said.

“That’s because I like it more than you,” I replied, and instantly felt horrible for being so mean.

Luke was silent the rest of the journey.

Harvey pointed out a crumbling concrete pillbox in the corner of the barley field, half-hidden by the trees of a small wood, and we decided to park up out of sight and make our way through the trees. I personally doubted that Janulevic would still be there—Ted’s a wonderful car but he’s not what you’d call subtle—but I drew my SIG and checked the fastenings on my Kevlar and crept after Harvey, Luke following behind me.

I’m not afraid. That is to say, I’m not afraid to say that I was absolutely bloody terrified. My hands were shaking and I knew if I had to shoot anything I’d be more likely to hit my foot than any target. I jumped every time a tree branch brushed my shoulder or my ankle. I was wearing chunky DMs and shorts and a sleeveless top under the Kevlar, and figured the Lara Croft look ought to make me feel braver. But it just made me feel really conspicuous.

We gathered ten feet from the pillbox, behind a fat oak tree, and Luke and Harvey made motions with their hands, nodded at each other and started to move.

“Wait,” I mouthed, grabbing Luke. “What about me?”

“Stay here,” he mouthed, pointing firmly at the ground, and I wanted to protest, but the coward in me—i.e., all of me—nodded and stayed very still, or at least as still as my shaking body would let me.

Harvey peeled off to the left and Luke to the right, moving so there was the least amount of field between them and the pillbox, before starting forwards through the barley.

I watched the synchronised ripples converging on the crumbling concrete shelter, and was pretty sure there was no one in it. I was hot, the Kevlar was heavy and there was something tickling my ankle. I could feel the sweat trickling down my back and pooling behind my knees. Time ticked on, the boys were moving very slowly. I was bored.

And then a shot rang out, and I froze, seeing the barley ripples end abruptly. I stared through sweat-prickled eyes at the pillbox, blinking furiously, trying to see what was going on. Another shot, and then the Harvey ripple darted towards the pillbox, but slightly too late, because someone emerged from the far side, into the other field, and shot across the packed earth.

Harvey launched after him, and I raised my gun, but I couldn’t see and my hands were shaking and if I fired a round I’d probably shoot Harvey instead. Or Luke.

Where the hell was Luke?

Horrible fear gripped me, freezing the sweat all over my body, and I pulled myself to my feet, my knees creaking so loudly I was amazed no one shot at me. But it appeared that Janulevic had been alone, because the coast was clear as I stumbled out through the barley to where I’d last seen Luke moving around.

And there he was, sprawled gracelessly on the ground, blood on his body and his head, his eyes closed, lying very still.

I dropped my gun and stared trying to pull his Kevlar off. “Luke! Luke, you bastard arsewipe, say something.”

He said nothing.

“Don’t you
dare
be dead. I’m not over you yet. Don’t—”

And then his fingers closed over mine, and I looked down to see his eyes open and his mouth smiling, and he said, “Not over me?”

I was relieved for about half a second, and then rage took over and I thumped him. “Don’t make me bloody worry like that!”

“You were worried?”

“Thought I’d have to get a new partner,” I said, and that shut him up. I looked around. “Someone came out of that pillbox and Harvey went after him, but I can’t see anything from here.” I kneeled up and cautiously raised my head above the waving barley stems. I still couldn’t see anything.