"That"s OK," said Fitz. "It"s just... Well, it was quite noisy here a little while ago." He studied her lined face closely. "Seemed you were having quite a party."
"Goodness, no, not at my age. It"s the quiet life I enjoy." She smiled a little uncertainly. "I"m sorry to have disturbed you."
Fitz couldn"t understand it. Was she being got at? "Your twin sister wasn"t round just now, was she?"
"Twin sister?" the woman echoed incredulously. "I don"t have a twin sister."
Fitz looked into her eyes and felt sure she was telling the truth. "Look, love, nothing"s wrong, is it? Only "
"Of course not." Her eyes glistened. "Everything"s fine. Wonderful, in fact." She looked away, slightly abashed. "I"m moving away, actually. Tomorrow."
"That"s a bit of a sudden step, isn"t it?" Fitz asked. "I didn"t see the signs go up."
"Private sale," she said with a smile. "I"m moving up north to be with my husband, Charles. He"s... he has to work there."
"Suppose someone"s got to," said Fitz, making her tinkle with polite laughter. "Well, goodbye. It"s been fun, but..."
"Oh, it has, yes," the woman a.s.sured him. "But one has to move on, doesn"t one? From time to time."
"It"s amazing what some people move on from." He gave her a weak wave. "Bye, then."
He could hear her clanking about trying to get the door closed halfway back to his car. Fitz recalled the old dears down his mum"s old hospital, how speedy they were at getting themselves about. This woman had never used a wheelchair before in her life, he was sure of it. And judging by her reaction to her "neighbour" he"d give odds she had set neither foot nor wheel in that house prior to this evening.
It felt uncommonly cold as Fitz made his way back to the car, and from there the long drive up to London.
Fifteen.
Which came first, egg or chicken?
Anji and Guy lay slumped together against a tree in Battersea Park, panting for breath. The thin blue of the sky was turning grey as the afternoon dragged on towards the end of office hours. Kids were kicking footb.a.l.l.s, dogs were being walked, ducks were being overfed. And Guy"s mum was close by, roaming the park with a zombie expression and a wicked looking machete.
"I knew it was a mistake to get in touch with her," Anji grumbled.
"OK, OK." Guy shot her a disgruntled look. "You"ve made it very clear that all I"ve done all day is make mistakes."
"Well, I hope you"re learning from them," said Anji curtly. "I"ve had enough of beating people up on your behalf."
Once they"d made it away from the scene outside the hospital, Guy had woken with a shock to the fact he must now be fast becoming a candidate for London"s Most Wanted. And when the world"s falling down, when no one else understands you and you can"t trust your friends, what do you do?
You skulk off with your tail between your legs and tell your mum and dad. Or, in this case, just your mum Guy"s dad had died when he was small.
Anji had advised against it, but Guy was shaken and upset, and rather than risk him skipping off again by himself and her have to go after him, she"d caved in.
Mistake.
Everything had been going great until Guy got within twenty feet of his mother. Then out came the machete and the mad eyes, and off they"d run.
"We"ll be all right if we stay out of sight," Guy said. "Silly old dear"ll get arrested waving that thing about like a maniac."
"What did you do to upset her?" Anji asked.
"I guess I owe her some money," Guy confessed. "But I thought she was cool about it."
"Anything else?"
Guy thought for a time. "She"s got a long memory. Could be anything."
"Great."
"I just thought..." He bit his lip, clearly until he trusted himself to carry on. "I can accept someone could make the people who maybe don"t know me so well turn against me, but..."
"I know," said Anji softly. "When it"s your own mum..." She shook her head sadly. She"d given her parents reason enough in her youth to chase after her (or one or two young men) with a machete, but the look on Guy"s face when he realised what his mum must have in mind... "That"s got to hurt," she muttered.
Guy looked at her, clicked his tongue nervously. "Can"t trust a soul, can I? How long before you go all wacko on me again?"
Anji forced a smile. "Better treat me good, boy."
"Ha, ha."
"Look, I don"t know what came over me this morning," she said awkwardly. "But since... Since then I"ve been fine."
She thought of the little girl "Jamais will keep trying to keep the mists away," Chloe had told her. "And I will watch over you until my eyes run out" but didn"t want to mention her to Guy. He was weirded out enough as it was.
"I know what came over you. That mist stuff."
"Yeah, but it"s not real mist, is it? It"s something in our sight, or in our heads or something..." Anji sighed. "We need to start finding some answers to all this stuff."
"Why was Mike still going on about what I might"ve seen on his stupid desk?" Guy tapped a finger against his lips. "All this stuff kicked off when he came back from his holiday."
"You think that could be a link?" asked Anji.
Guy shrugged. "It"s about the only lead we"ve got, right?"
"Then let"s check it out tonight."
They waited until 6.30 p.m. before going back to Smith Square; not so early that the place would be swarming still with people, but not so late that they"d stand out a mile. Guy signed her in without drawing any undue attention; the man at the desk, judging by his knowing smile, clearly remembered her from the day before and didn"t seem to realise that Guy was a man on the run from practically everyone.
As Guy had guessed, Mike was not at his desk. The office was deserted.
"Always goes home at five-fifteen on the dot," he grumbled, looking through the post that had appeared in his in-tray. "Whatever happens, you can depend on that. It"s his bowels." He managed a fair impersonation of Mike"s irritating tones: "Can"t abide public facilities, Guy. My b.u.m kisses my own toilet or none at all."
"You so didn"t have to tell me that." Anji attacked a pile of paperwork on Mike"s desk. "Now, what are we looking for here?"
"Careful," Guy chastised her. "He keeps everything in order, he"ll know if it"s not there." He stared at the desk like he had X-ray vision. "But if he was up to something dodgy... why leave a file on public display?"
"Maybe he"d misfiled it." Anji clicked her fingers. "Or it came in while he was away. When did he leave?"
"He was gone all last week."
"Then that"s the period we"ll check." Anji started up Mike"s computer. "You take his files. I"ll go through his computer."
"No good. I don"t have his log-in pa.s.sword."
"I do," said Anji. She crossed to the desk she"d sat at the day before. "Or rather, the PA does. Everyone in the department"s got theirs in the card index." She raised and rattled it. "Kept under E for Emergencies."
"Jesus, you really were bored yesterday, weren"t you?" Guy grinned. "But what"s the point of checking his computer? The thing I must"ve disturbed was hard copy."
"That doesn"t mean he wasn"t sent an electronic version, does it?" said Anji. "I"ll just scoot through files and e-mails created during the window he was away." She looked up at him. "Unless you have any better ideas?"
"I"ll check the files," said Guy, "and yes, all right, you"re very b.l.o.o.d.y clever."
"Thank you," said Anji primly, and she got to work.
Anji was feeling less clever 45 minutes later when she"d unearthed absolutely nothing of interest, and neither had Guy. In terms of suspect e-mail correspondence there was a tiny MPEG attachment of a man being gored by a bull sent by some bloke in accounts and a number of "hilarious" jokes about blondes, but nothing more sinister than that.
His electronic doc.u.ments were diligently filed. After a long, boring trawl through them, the only apparent anomaly was a file named CARGO DELIVERIES, all alone in an unt.i.tled folder within a folder full of form letters marked FEPA. It was an apparently unfinished spreadsheet detailing a schedule for a delivery of some kind of freight to the docks at Newhaven. From there, however, no destination for the cargo was listed.
She looked over at Guy, but all she could see of him was his tufty brown hair protruding from a pile of box files. "What"s FEPA?" she asked.
"Food and Environment Protection Act," he said. "Why?"
Just hearing the words made Anji want to yawn. "No reason," she sighed, and moved on.
"What a total waste of time," said Anji ruefully, plonking down the third cup of Irish coffee in front of Guy back at her place.
"Not entirely." Guy shrugged. "After all, Mike"s bound to notice someone"s gone through all his stuff. He"ll check with the front desk and find I was there last night, and probably get on to the police. Then they can arrest me for corporate sabotage on top of a.s.sault and battery, attempted murder and molesting a minor." He lifted the mug. "Cheers!"
Anji found herself trying to stifle a smile. There he was, crashed out glumly on her couch, with tousled hair and clothes all crumpled. She did feel genuinely sorry for the man. There was something innocent and appealing about him behind the careworn manner he put on for her benefit. Or maybe it was just the warm glow the liqueur coffee was giving her.
"I have to say you"re taking all this amazingly well," she said, burning her mouth as she took too big a mouthful of the syrupy drink. "Almost calmly, in fact."
"Well, I kind of hit rock bottom last night, and did most of my panicking this morning," Guy reflected, taking another sip himself. "And that got me precisely nowhere. Except now I know both my boss and my mum can"t set eyes on me without wanting me dead."
"So who"s next? Should I expect an army of ex-girlfriends knocking on my door hoping to succeed where Julie failed?" Anji listened to herself say the words and blushed; had she meant to steer the subject round to his romantic history so obviously?
"Hardly an army," said Guy, a touch wistfully. "Mind you, there was that egg marketing inspector last year..."
"What?"
"Ca.s.sandra, the egg marketing inspector. Met her through work."
Anji spluttered. "You"re kidding me. They pay people to inspect eggs?"
"It"s true!" Guy said defensively. "How else does the little red lion get on the sh.e.l.l?"
"Osmosis," suggested Anji, and they both laughed.
"It"s a stressful job, egg inspecting," Guy argued. "You visit wholesalers, auctions, egg processors... You have to report to the regional egg marketing inspector..."
"Regional? Do all the regional inspectors get together and compare egg stories?" Anji was hooting with laughter now, quite astonished by the noises she was making. This so wasn"t her.
"You might find something amusing about the EU"s Hatching Eggs and Chicks regulations, Anji, but frankly..." He gave her a hurt look. "That girl worked really hard, and it wasn"t easy."
Anji wondered if she"d gone too far. "Hey... I"m sorry, I didn"t mean to... I mean, I guess there has to be someone... keeping an eye on eggs in case..." She snorted, bit her lip to fight back her giggles.
"I had to leave her in the end," Guy said, staring into the distance. "She was a sensitive girl and all that pressure, all those eggs..." The corners of his mouth twitched in a smile. "In the end, she cracked."
She stared at him in amused disbelief as he burst out laughing himself. "All that build-up... for that punchline?"
"It"s no yolk!" he protested feebly, before convulsing with silent laughter.
She chucked a cushion at him. "That came out of a Christmas cracker!"
"I"ve really come out of my sh.e.l.l since meeting you. Anji."
"STOP IT!" She chucked another cushion at him, and knocked over the mug of coffee. It splashed over Guy"s sofa and the cream carpet.
Anji swore and rushed off to get a cloth. Her head felt thick and flushed. She came back and found Guy dabbing at the wet patch with a Kleenex.
"Leave it," she grumped, nudging him aside. "Bits of tissue are coming off everywhere." She picked up the mug and checked it for damage.
"Don"t be so uptight, Anji," Guy said lightly. "I feel like I"m walking on eggsh.e.l.ls..."
But the mood, if not the mug, was broken. "I"ve had too much to drink," she muttered crossly.
"I haven"t." Guy stalked off to the kitchen, left her to her miserable mopping. She realised with some surprise that tonight she"d just been sitting here with a bloke, relaxing and chatting and joking around... And it had felt good. Too good, maybe. Too normal. She wasn"t great at normal these days.
Guy came back in to the living room. She could hear ice tinkling in his gla.s.s, could feel his eyes on her back. He crouched behind her. She held her breath as he traced a finger along the back of her neck, and scrubbed at the carpet so hard the pile practically smouldered.
"I had a boyfriend called Dave," Anji blurted out angrily, "and he died."
There was a long silence, broken finally by the inevitable click of Guy"s tongue.
"Yeah, well," he said quietly. "Sorry."
Anji bit her lip, shoulders hunched, staring down at the stain. Looked like it wasn"t going to shift.