Tracers

TWENTY-SEVEN

A car started with a tinny rattle, and a woman’s laughter floated up from the street, a rising trill ending on a high note. It was followed by a volley of goodbyes and the slamming of car doors. From further away came a brief squeal of car tyres and a man shouting an obscenity. A car horn, voices, a burst of music growing louder, then fading as it went by, a roller shutter slamming down. Normal street sounds.

Harry pulled his attention away from Joanne Archer and what she had just said. He cocked his head and eyed Rik, then stood up and left the room, ignoring the gun. He went through to the front window and checked the outside. Half the pavement was visible beyond the overhanging roof above the shops, the kerb lined with cars. Vehicle and shop lights splashed the faces of the few pedestrians still going about their business. He walked down the hallway and peered through the back door at the metal stairs and the yard below. All clear. Yet he felt a prickle of anxiety. Staying here made them vulnerable. Exposed.

He returned to the bedroom, where Archer and Rik were waiting in silence.

‘We have to go,’ he announced. ‘Now.’

They both looked round at the urgency in his voice.

‘Trouble?’ Rik asked.

‘Not sure. But staying here can’t be good.’ Harry looked at Joanne, who was still holding the gun. ‘Did you say your friend was just passing through?’

‘Yes. She rang my mobile yesterday. She needed a place to crash for a night. She was on her way up north to see her family. I couldn’t exactly turn her away, so I said she could stay. I gave her directions and she arrived yesterday evening.’ She gave a bitter smile. ‘She brought some wine and we gave it a hammering, talking over old times. We hadn’t seen each other for over a year.’

‘And you were the first to leave this morning?’

‘She said she wanted to be on her way by ten, but she was feeling hungover, so I went out; I had things to do which took me longer than I expected. She must have decided to wait for me to come back and. .’ Her voice trailed off as she thought about what had happened.

‘She was unlucky,’ said Harry. ‘Wrong place, wrong time.’

Joanne flinched at the harshness in his voice. ‘What do you mean?’

‘Whoever killed her got the wrong person. The killer came in, saw her and did what he was hired to do. You and she were about the same height, weight and colouring. If she was in the bathroom when he kicked the door in, and holding the towel to her face, he wouldn’t have noticed the difference until it was too late. He probably didn’t expect to find anyone else here but you. Then he sanitized the place to delay identification of the body.’

She stared at him as the implication sank in. ‘He’s been watching me.’ For some reason, she didn’t sound surprised.

‘Bet on it. And he’ll probably be back when he finds out he got the wrong woman.’ Harry pointed at the gun. ‘Put that thing out of sight but keep it handy. We have to go.’

‘What about my things?’ she protested. ‘And the photo — I’m not leaving it.’

He pushed it at her. ‘Take this, leave the rest. You can always buy more clothes.’

He made for the back door, leaving the other two to follow. They passed a pink gym bag in the hallway.

‘Leave it,’ said Harry, as she bent to pick it up. ‘A colour like that is a beacon. It got you noticed once already.’ He softened his tone. ‘Your gym buddy, Hughie, spotted you with it the other day.’

As she stepped outside, Rik hung back and asked quietly, ‘What’s the rush?’

‘Jennings is sending another team. After Matuq and Param, do you want to be here when they arrive?’

Rik pulled a face and followed Joanne outside without another word.

They walked back to the car with Joanne sandwiched between them, each checking vehicles parked at the kerb and eyeing pedestrians nearby. The clatter of a motorbike made Harry jumpy, the familiar sound too fresh from the night before. They climbed in and Rik headed north, while Harry kept an eye on the surrounding traffic.

He felt pretty sure they weren’t being followed, but his instincts had been wrong before and he didn’t want to take chances. Ever since the prickly feeling he’d had on the way to South Acres, he’d been fighting a rising sense of paranoia, and now found himself constantly checking their tail.

It took them an hour to reach Rik’s flat. Harry got Rik to change direction twice and double back on their route to throw off any possible pursuers. Joanne said little, even when addressed directly, but stared listlessly out at the traffic. Whatever vitality she had possessed on first entering her flat had drained away, and Harry guessed she was settling into a state of shock.

‘Shouldn’t we tell the police?’ she muttered at one point, as a patrol car sped by in the opposite direction. But the question lacked conviction. When nobody replied, she shrugged and huddled deeper into the corner. The gun, they noticed, never strayed from her hand.

Back at the flat, Rik made coffee and poured three brandies, while Joanne excused herself and went to the bathroom. She walked as if she was at the very limit of her resources, shoulders slumped in an attitude of defeat.

‘She needs some kip,’ Rik commented. ‘Or a shot of something.’

Harry agreed. But the practical side of his nature told him they needed to get her to talk first. If they left it too long, they might never find out what was going on and why somebody was trying to kill her. ‘I’d like to hear what she has to say first.’

Rik gestured towards the outside. ‘I’ll just run a check outside. You OK to talk to her?’

‘Of course.’

Rik hesitated. ‘The friend staying overnight bit; did you buy that? It sounded a bit convenient to me.’

‘Who for? The friend’s dead.’

‘Yeah, but. .’ Rik pulled a face. ‘It sounds a bit. . I don’t know — unreal. If she’s so good at hiding, how come she let some ex-army buddy track her down and get so close?’

Harry had no answer to that. People made mistakes all the time, no matter how careful they were. He shrugged and Rik left to go on his scouting tour.

Harry turned to face Joanne as she entered the room, indicating the coffee and brandy. ‘We’ll eat when Rik gets back. He’s gone to check the bushes.’

She nodded in understanding, and Harry reflected that she was a very unusual young woman. So far she appeared to be going along with what they were trying to do without argument, and the fact that she hadn’t gone to pieces after finding her friend’s body spoke volumes about her strength of character. Being ex-army might have been part of the answer, but he felt certain there was more to it. He had known female MI5 officers like her, and one from MI6, and they had all possessed a similar steely quality of self-control.

As if to confirm it, she took her gun from the rucksack and began to strip it down and clean it using a small tube of oil and a cloth pad. She seemed to relax slightly as she worked, as if the routine offered some solace or distraction.

Harry watched her for a few moments, then said, ‘Tell me about him — the dead man.’

She put down the cloth and sipped at her brandy, grimacing as it went down. ‘You haven’t told me who you are, yet. How do I know I can really trust you?’

‘You don’t. But if we’re right about what happened to your friend, I’d say we’re the only people you can rely on. Besides, if we’d wanted to hurt you, don’t you think we’d have done it by now?’

The look she gave him was full of scorn, but she didn’t argue. Instead, she reassembled the gun with expert economy, her eyes on him all the time as she snapped each component back into place. As a display of expertise, he’d never seen better. Then she said, ‘You haven’t said anything about your backgrounds. But I can see you’re professionals. Where’s that from?’

‘MI5,’ he replied, adding, ‘Not any longer, though. We resigned. Went private.’

She nodded. For a moment there had been a flicker of something in her face. It might have been scepticism or disapproval, but it was gone just as quickly. ‘Did you do Iraq?’

‘For a while. I got bored with being a target and decided to go into a quieter line of work. It pays better and people shoot less. Did do, anyway.’

She looked at him over her coffee. ‘Did you go to Baghdad?’

‘Flew in but didn’t stay long.’

‘Lucky you. You’ll have seen enough bodies, then.’

He nodded. ‘There and Kosovo. Different conflict, same mess.’

‘Was that with the army?’

‘Yes.’ He sipped his brandy sparingly, aware that he had to keep a clear head. ‘Now we specialize in finding people. People who’ve disappeared.’

‘I thought the police and the Sally Army did that.’

‘Not the kind we look for.’

‘Oh?’

‘The criminal, the confused, the desperate. . you name it.’

Joanne’s lip curled slightly. ‘You’re bounty hunters. Who do you work for?’

‘Whoever pays us.’ Harry ignored the disdain. ‘Everybody works for someone; it doesn’t lessen the value just because we chase runaways.’ She didn’t say anything so he switched tack. ‘What about your background? What exactly do you do? Only, don’t tell me what you told McCulloch; you don’t look like any PA I ever came across.’

She thought about it for several seconds, then said, ‘I work in deep-cover Close Protection.’