Killing It Page 5

  I felt movement next to me. It was Jake, reaching for my hand. My first thought was hope. He had a plan. He was slipping me something, anything that could be used as a weapon.

  But there was nothing there. Just his hand, holding mine. He squeezed it once. There was no code, no message about what we could do next. Simply an attempt to calm me down. A goodbye.

  It was the most intimate moment we had ever had.

  There was more shouting and we were pulled further apart as we were lined up for the firing squad. I kept holding on to Jake’s hand and tried to focus everything on that, the feeling of warmth, the fact I wasn’t alone.

  There were a series of clicks as they readied their rifles. Then the ‘Ready, aim, fire,’ in clipped Mandarin. I squeezed my eyes shut and held my breath. My body stiffened. Death was coming. And all I could do to prepare was brace myself for the onslaught of bullets. I could feel the tension through Jake’s hand as he did the same. A burst of gunfire sounded. I hoped for a fast end.

  But nothing hit. I dared to exhale. What the hell was happening? Footsteps came towards us and the black of my blindfold was replaced with the sweet familiar sight of armed SAS. Sandy had called in the cavalry. We were rushed past the bodies of the fallen firing squad and out to a waiting helicopter.

  It was a lucky escape. It stayed with me for a long time afterwards. It was the closest I had ever come to facing death and in that moment when I was waiting for the bullets to hit, thoughts flew into my head. And one shouted the loudest.

  I never got to have a baby.

  You convince yourself you have everything you’ve ever wanted and right down to that last breath you realise you’ve been kidding yourself. Despite everything I had achieved, everything I had done to prove everyone’s preconceptions of me wrong, I was sad I had never had a baby.

  I hadn’t even known I wanted one, but how could I deny the truth of what came into my mind as I knelt there preparing to die?

  Down at the Platform all the veteran agents, having had more than their fair share of near-death experiences, spoke reverently of the ‘absolute truth’. That moment when faced with the end, your mind empties and you are granted a moment of total clarity that can never be ignored.

  But ignore it I did.

  I had tried to get on with life as normal. Pretend it had never happened. Yet it was always there nagging in the back of my mind.

  I never got to have a baby.

  *

  I looked back at the nappy bag. It had chased me down and got me in the end.

  I went to the dresser and picked up the silver framed photo on it. In it, my head was down, my mouth curled up in a small smile. My hair was loose and I was wearing a simple white silk dress. My brand-new husband, Will, was whispering into my ear or kissing the side of my cheek. It was hard to tell from the angle, and I couldn’t remember. It had been a day full of whispers and kisses. A few solitary red rose petals dotted the photo, one in my hair, two on his suit, confetti showered over us by merry friends and proud family.

  Was he ‘the one’ or just ‘the one at the right time’? The seed of a baby already planted in my mind and the need to have one nudging me forward into his arms. I looked down at the photo and the face I knew so well. His boy-next-door-all-grown-up good looks. Brown hair always that little bit too long and curling over the back of his white shirt. Slight stubble even though he’d only shaved that morning. His suit, only worn for a couple of hours, already rumpled. I could nearly hear his deep laugh that was more like a roar, the feel of his hands as he picked me up and spun me round.

  No, it was real. That day I had smiled so much my cheeks ached. This new teeth-filled grin was in nearly all of the photos from our small wedding. Unguarded, face contorting joy. Honest, all-consuming happiness captured on film.

  Those photos are hidden in a drawer somewhere.

  The Doc down at the Platform would perhaps pounce on this as evidence I could not bear to look at my true self. That I must be ashamed of who I really was.

  But it was purely vanity.

  I look prettier with a small, contained smile. Like in this photo in the silver frame.

  I put it back on the dresser. William Marshall had changed everything. We met in a packed bar in the City, me drunk on vodka and the adrenaline of a completed mission, him drunk on red wine and the high of winning a case. One lingering look across the room was all it took. He was the one-night stand that never went. He wouldn’t leave me alone. Until one day he did. And to my surprise, I missed him. I told him. And that was it. I was a convert. Variety packs to bulk buys.

  Within a year we were living together, within two we were engaged. I was on the fast track to normality seemingly no longer fearful of the monotony of coupledom. Because being with Will was fun. He was clever but not patronising. Ambitious but not aggressive. Sexy but not shallow. Kind but not a pushover. He never felt like a fling. He never even felt like a boyfriend. He felt like family.

  I never took the time to think about what I was giving up. I got on with the present and forgot about my past life of long nights and no last names.

  Just three years after meeting him, I was living in the suburbs, married to a lawyer and proud mother to a baby girl.

  Thank God I still had a horribly violent job or I would start to bore myself.

  *

  I tried not to imagine exactly what Will, dear husband, father of my child, would do if he had any idea that I had undertaken my very own ‘bring your daughter to work’ day. That being if he had known what my actual ‘work’ was, rather than the safe data analysing he thought I was doing for ‘Government Data Co.’ – his easier-to-remember nickname for ‘Government Communication and Data Specialisation Branch’.

  The grit and grime of my working life felt a million miles away when I stood here, in the master bedroom of a nice three-storey terraced house in Chiswick; a place that was a beautiful warm bubble of wholesome family life. Here, if you sidestepped sick on the pavement, it would be good, middle-class, kale-speckled vomit, thrown up by a morning-sickness-suffering yummy mummy. None of that post-pub kebab-flecked puke you would get in lesser areas.

  *

  I took the gun to the bathroom and opened the cupboard under the sink. I moved several boxes of Tampax until I got to the hidden panel at the back and replaced the gun behind it. It was unlikely Will would ever venture under there, but I figured they were the best line of defence. Nothing could make a man recoil faster than the words ‘heavy flow’.

  Chapter Five

  MY FIRST DEBRIEF OF the mission was starting in three minutes, yet I was standing in Platform Eight’s canteen trying to decide between an apple or a brownie. By the time I had arrived at Holborn and swiped through the steel reinforced doors of our grey office building adjoining the underground station my tummy was rumbling. Normally I loved the kick of walking into the waiting lift as an everyday commuter, pressing a combination of buttons that took me deep down to the hallowed halls of Platform Eight, and walking out an underground secret agent. But today I was just desperate to get to this happy place that was always kept well stocked with a wide array of food and energy drinks. Fully-fuelled agents were more effective weapons.

  I was interrupted by an unfamiliar face approaching me. A very young unfamiliar face.

  ‘You must be Lex. Easy to work that out.’ He sounded as if he was speaking through a pinched nose – he either had a serious problem with his nasal cavity or it was an accent borne of a particularly exclusive private school. He grinned at me. ‘Not many of you girlies here.’

  ‘And you are?’ I stared at him unsmiling. Trained killers do not get called ‘girlies’.

  ‘I’m Bennie McGinn.’ He leant up against the counter. ‘I was the one covering for you when you were off in babyland.’

  I couldn’t believe it. He looked like a twenty-year-old estate agent. And ‘Bennie’? It sounded like a nickname a doting mother gave him as a toddler and he hadn’t yet outgrown.

  ‘I was hoping
you’d like the kid enough to stay home. I enjoyed working with Jake and I know Sandy would love to have me back. He said I’d been a real asset.’ He puffed out his chest like a schoolboy who’d just been praised by the headmaster.

  ‘Sorry, little guy, I’m not going anywhere. I’m sure you’ll get another chance to come back and play with the big boys.’

  He laughed. It wasn’t as high-pitched as I’d expected.

  ‘I already am one of the big boys. I’ve spent the last few years at Six honing my superior skillset. The Committee transferred me to Eight for a little playtime to indulge my darker side.’

  In case I couldn’t hate him any more than I already did he made air quotes with his fingers when he said ‘darker side’.

  ‘I’m over in Jagger now. The Committee just gave us the green light for popping the Head of URDaBomb.com.’ I cringed at the street accent he attempted while pronouncing the name of the Birmingham-based youth terrorist recruitment agency. ‘It’ll be fun but I’m sure it won’t be long before I get back to Unicorn. This is no work for a woman. Let alone a mother.’ He reached over and grabbed the apple I had been eyeing up. ‘You’ll see.’ He stared at me as he took a large bite.

  ‘Beat it, kid. Mummy needs some quiet time and you’re late. The rest of Jagger left ten minutes ago and the last guy who held up departure got a watch stapled to his wrist.’

  He threw the apple in the bin. ‘You’re full of it. But I’m bored. Goodbye, Lex, and fuck off back home soon, please.’ He gave me a little wave as he left the room. I watched him all the way down the corridor alternating his speed of walk as he wrestled with which was worse: losing face or losing feeling in his wrist.

  He was going to be a problem.

  I looked on the bright side.

  At least he had left the brownie.

  *

  One decadent intake of calories later I headed to the meeting room. Jake, Geraint, Nicola and Robin were already sitting round the table; Sandy hovered in front of the large whiteboard.

  ‘There you are. Come on, then, Lex. Talk us through it.’

  ‘All went to plan. I made contact with Dasha, her bodyguards didn’t give me a second glance and the flier is now in the scooter.’ I looked at my watch. ‘Dasha would’ve picked up her daughter by now. We should check the chatroom.’

  Sandy looked at Geraint. ‘Are you sure this chatroom is secure?’

  I could understand Sandy’s paranoia. Even before the dawn of the VirtuWorld software the risk of electronic correspondence being compromised had driven us to rely on more simple forms of communication.

  Sometimes the easiest way to hide is in plain sight. It was a mantra the Platform held very dear, which is how one of our analysts came up with the idea of using the Underground’s buskers as our very own carrier pigeons. Anyone following one of our assets on their journey to work would be on the lookout for physical interactions, anything changing hands. Like most commuters they wouldn’t notice what music the buskers were serenading everyone with that morning. It was just background noise. Yet every asset knew what song was a warning they had been compromised.

  It was a tactic we employed all over London. From the homeless man always outside the station holding a different coloured sign to key words hidden within the tacky graffiti scrawled along the walls. Everything ignored and invisible we used to our advantage.

  For day-to-day communications we had a team of analysts with fake profiles on social media who would befriend online our assets all over the UK. Those constant streams of innocuous Instagram and Facebook posts were not as mind-numbingly dull as they seemed. A toddler wearing a red jumper cuddling a doll meant an urgent face-to-face meeting was needed. A dog wearing sunglasses: going dark on all communications. Smashed avocado on toast: watch out, it’s all gone to shit. Our analysts’ comments on these photos told their own story. ‘OMG I need to squidge those cheeks right now!’ Get to the rendezvous location immediately. ‘YUM. You can come round and cook for me anytime!’ Come into the Platform as soon as you can. Eight had recently implemented a new rule banning analysts from having their own social-media accounts ever since one recent hire accidentally confused her work Facebook account with her personal one and a ‘You okay, hun?’ on the wrong photo led to an asset prematurely breaking cover from an organised crime syndicate.

  Using so many different communication techniques meant that when we did revert back to simply talking online everyone was a little more nervous.

  Geraint looked round at us all. ‘You don’t need to worry – I’ve followed protocol and it’s one hundred per cent secure.’

  ‘Okay G-Force.’ Sandy drummed his fingers on the table. ‘Let’s give it a go.’

  Geraint pressed a few buttons on his laptop and the chatroom was projected on to the whiteboard. There was a new chat topic titled, Sharing is caring. He clicked on it. There was one posting.

  I.O. made a list of boys who DH doesn’t like at their play date last Friday. His nanny records everything and the tapes are kept safe at home in the study.

  Clearly Dasha shared our concerns about the chatroom’s security and had decided it was safest to keep to a loose code just in case.

  ‘I’ve run a keyword search and I.O. has to be Isaac Onegin. Surveillance have been following him for the last few months as he was flagged as a close confidante of Dimitri’s. They grew up together and it’s widely rumoured Dimitri will bring him on to the board of the company once he takes over.’ Nicola’s eyes did not leave the screen she was scanning. ‘Lives in London. Maida Vale.’

  ‘Okay, so Isaac and Dimitri had a meeting last Friday and they made a list of his enemies. Isaac’s “nanny” – his PA? – records everything and the tapes are stored in a safe at Isaac’s home office.’ Jake paused. ‘DH. That doesn’t make sense. He’s Dimitri Tupolev. Why didn’t she write D.T.?’

  I looked at the message again.

  I knew this one.

  ‘Dear husband,’ I announced. ‘DH is mums’ chatroom slang for “husband”.’

  Just after Gigi was born, during the lonely 3 a.m. feeds, I found myself scouring the internet for all the questions I had that were too mundane to bore Will with or too stupid to ask the health visitor about. This was how I discovered Mumsnet, a popular website for mothers with a chat forum where everyone seemed very knowledgeable, incredibly forthright and talked in acronyms outsiders could not decipher.

  My initial analysis: they were Parenting Terrorists.

  Blowing up on anyone who went against their principles of how to raise well-balanced, over-achieving children. I would watch transfixed and wait for someone to drop an ‘I can’t be bothered to breastfeed’ bomb and bear witness to the outrage that streamed in.

  But in time I saw it wasn’t all ferocious attempts to convert the non-believers to the best way to parent. There may have been the odd pocket cell of aggression but on the whole it was a place of support and camaraderie. A safe place for information to be shared, questions to be answered and mother-in-laws to be complained about. It was, however, not for the faint-hearted. The phrase egg-white cervical mucus was used enough that EWCM was in their acronym glossary.

  Sandy frowned at me. ‘DH means “Dear husband”? Seriously? Thank God we have our resident in-house translator. Right, let’s get to it. We need that list.’

  Anyone Dimitri considered an enemy could be a potential candidate for one of the three Russian allies we needed to join Rok-Tech’s Board and help Sergei both take over the company and push through the sale of the VirtuWorld software.

  The whiteboard screen updated to exterior shots of Isaac Onegin’s five-storey house.

  ‘I’ve got the architect’s plans from their recent revamp. The study is on the ground floor.’ Nicola’s fingers were flying across her keyboard. ‘Looking at the plans of the room’s inbuilt joinery, there’s one floor-to-ceiling cupboard that’s reinforced and fire-proofed. That must be where the recordings are stored.’ Like most of those paranoid about how anything that le
ft a digital imprint could be hacked it wasn’t surprising that Isaac relied on old-school tapes to record his meetings.

  Sandy looked round the table. ‘This type of intel is exactly why Dasha is essential to this mission. The break-in to Isaac’s house needs to happen tomorrow night. The sooner we get the company takeover plan in place the sooner we can move to popping the Weasel.’ He waved us away with a flourish. ‘So get to it.’ We all stood up, the plastic chairs scraping on the concrete floor.

  I reached for my mobile and looked down at the screen. Three missed calls from Will. I tried to ignore the fact my heart was now beating twice as fast. Gigi would now be with Gillian, my mother-in-law. She looked after her three afternoons a week as Will and I had thought as a lonely widow she would relish quality time with her granddaughter. And then there was also the fact she was free childcare.

  If something was wrong she surely would have rung me first.

  Unless she hadn’t been able to get through.

  Even with the special signal boosters the reception down here could still sometimes be patchy.

  I walked out of the meeting room into the corridor and rang him back. Five long rings before he answered.

  ‘Hello, darling.’ It sounded like he was eating. ‘I was in Sainsbury’s, just wanted to know if we needed anything and if you’ll be in for dinner tonight?’

  I exhaled a long breath. Why was my reflex reaction to panic? New-mother paranoia? Or because I knew too much about how bad things happened?

  I thought back to the question my nice, normal husband was asking his nice, normal wife. I sighed. We had just over twenty-four hours to work out how to break into a fortified mansion.

  ‘I’ll probably be working late, so sadly not.’ Now that I was back at work Will and I would undoubtedly see even less of each other. While my job was never going to be a normal nine-to-five, Will’s involved just as many late nights. He was often dragged out to client dinners or stuck in the office until it was far past Gigi’s bedtime and nearing mine.