‘So what’s your expert analysis, Commander Kane?’ Ben snapped.
‘You and she met up in Portugal. What happened between you? Lovers’ tiff? That’s why you got so boozed up. Next thing, picking fights with the local lads.’
Ben looked away. He gazed at a farm that was rolling by in the distance. The fields and orchards looked peaceful. He suddenly felt a great yearning to be there, strolling in the long, waving grass under the late summer sun.
‘I’m sorry,’ Darcey said, noticing his expression. ‘I didn’t mean to upset you.’
‘She has a place there,’ Ben said quietly after a long pause. ‘Isolated, quiet. Somewhere to lie low, hide out. I didn’t know she’d be there.’
Darcey watched him closely, reading his thoughts. ‘She wasn’t alone, was she? That’s what this is about.’
Ben frowned. ‘Can we stop talking about this now, please?’ He leaned his head back and shut his eyes.
The train rumbled on. Darcey sat and watched Ben’s body relax slowly and in stages, as if it was a struggle for him to give in to sleep. After a while he was completely still, breathing slowly, his head nestled against the patterned cloth of the seat, rolling gently with the movement of the train. She studied his face, the faint lines around the eyes, the way his thick fair hair fell across his brow. There was a serenity about him as he slept that almost made her want to reach out to him and stroke his cheek.
‘Darcey, Darcey,’ she muttered under her breath. She looked at her watch. They were still an hour out from Milan. She got up from her seat and wandered down the length of the train to stretch her legs and fetch a coffee from the buffet car. None of the carriages were packed. On the way back, she spotted a newspaper lying discarded on an empty seat. A British paper, she noticed – a copy of that day’s
Ben was still fast asleep when Darcey returned to her seat. She sipped her coffee and spread the paper out on the table. ‘Tassoni killer still on the loose’ was becoming old news now in the UK media, as they sought to divert their readers’ attention to a breaking scandal of some ageing former pop idol who’d been caught allegedly grooming twelve-year-old girls for sex via the Internet. Darcey flipped overleaf.
And stopped, staring at the photo of the young man smiling up at her from the page.
It was Jamie Lister. The headline shouted: ‘Civil Servant Slain in Paris Shooting’. Darcey’s heartbeat picked up a step as she dived into the text.
‘Junior civil servant,’ she muttered. She read on.
‘Huh,’ she said. ‘Right.’
Darcey thought about Paolo Buitoni and her throat tightened. She shifted her gaze to an adjoining article with the heading ‘Tennis Club Mourns Loss’.
Darcey looked up from the paper. ‘Borg,’ she muttered.
He hadn’t chosen the name at random. Poor Jamie.
Darcey’s brow furrowed as her mind went into overdrive. Then a second realisation hit her. ‘Queen’s,’ she said out loud.
‘What?’ Ben said, waking up.
‘The coin,’ she told him. ‘The Queen’s head on the coin.’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘In the car. In Paris. It wasn’t money he was talking about. He was trying to tell me the name of his tennis club.’
Ben looked confused. She ignored him, biting her lip, thinking hard.
As she racked her brains, she found herself staring at Ben’s green army bag on the seat next to him.
‘Oh my God,’ she said. ‘That’s it. The locker. Every locker has a number, right?’
Ben was beginning to catch up. He’d flipped the newspaper round and was scanning quickly through the text. ‘Lister. The MI6 guy.’
‘Just before he died, he was trying to tell me a number. On his fingers, like this. A number you can make on one hand.’ Darcey struggled to remember, visualising the scene in her head. ‘One-five-three,’ she said. ‘I’m sure of it.’
Ben pushed the newspaper back across the table. ‘The man was dying,’ he said. ‘His brain was shutting down, neurons firing randomly all over the place. I’ve seen people do strange things in those last moments. You can’t always take them at face value.’
Darcey shook her head adamantly. ‘This wasn’t just a brainstorm, some kind of neural meltdown. He looked right at me. He was trying to communicate, and he had a specific reason.’
‘What reason?’
‘I reckon Jamie Lister wanted me to see whatever it is that’s inside locker 153 at the Queen’s Club in West Kensington,’ she said. ‘And I know someone who can help us get to it.’
Arriving in Milan, they bought a prepaid mobile phone at a stall in the crowded railway station. Darcey started keying in a number from memory.
‘You’d better be able to trust this guy,’ Ben said. His shoulder was hurting and he was feeling irritable. He set down the holdall at his feet.
‘I’d trust Mick Walker with my life,’ she retorted.
‘That’s very touching. But not with mine,’ Ben warned her. ‘Don’t tell him where we are or where we’re going.’
He hovered unhappily in the background as Darcey’s contact answered the call. She spoke fast and clearly. From the way Walker kept interrupting her with questions, it sounded to Ben as if he was concerned.
‘I’m all right,’ Darcey assured him. ‘Everything’s under control. But I need a favour, Mick.’ She ran quickly through the details.
Picking up the holdall, Ben moved a few steps away and leaned against a railing nearby where he could still listen to Darcey’s call over the echoing noise of the station. According to the arrivals and departures noticeboard, their train to Monaco was dead on time and should be rolling into the station any minute. A cigarette would be nice around now, he thought. He missed his old Zippo lighter. It had taken a bullet for him once, saving his life. Now it was probably buried in a box in an Italian prison service storeroom.
Darcey finished her call and looked pleased as she joined Ben at the railing. ‘Sorted. He’ll do it.’
‘There’s every chance they’ll have already opened up the locker to pass Lister’s stuff on to his next of kin,’ Ben said. ‘Could be a waste of time.’
‘Mick knows he needs to move fast,’ she said.
‘Even if it’s still there, you think this Mick of yours can just stroll into the place and ask them to open up a
