the back. She had no cheekbones to speak of and her face, I noticed, had just started to show some rather obvious lines. I thought of my mother, who had looked as wrinkled as a walnut by the time she was forty-five. I shuddered, placed the mirror back in the drawer and took out a faded and slightly dog-eared photograph. It was a photo of myself with a group of friends taken in the Crimea when I had been simply Corporal T.E.Next, 33550336, Driver: APC, Light Armoured Brigade. I had served my country diligently, been involved in a military disaster and then honourably discharged with a gong to prove it. They had expected me to give talks about recruitment and valour but I had disappointed them. I attended one regimental reunion but that was it; I had found myself looking for the faces that I knew weren’t there.
In the photo Landen was standing on my left, his arm around me and another soldier, my brother, his best mate. Landen lost a leg, but he came home. My brother was still out there.
‘Who’s that?’ asked Paige, who had been looking over my shoulder.
‘Whoa!’ I yelped. ‘You just scared the crap out of me!’
‘Sorry! Crimea?’
I handed her the photo and she looked at it intently. ‘That must be your brother—you have the same nose.’
‘I know, we used to share it on a rota. I had it Mondays, Wednesd—‘
‘—then the other man must be Landen.’
I frowned and turned to face her. I
‘How do you know about Landen?’
She sensed the anger in my voice, smiled and raised an eyebrow.
‘I did?’
‘Sure. The speech was slurred and for the most part it was garbage, but he was certainly on your mind.’
I winced. ‘Last year’s Christmas bash?’
‘Or the year before. You weren’t the only one talking garbage with slurred speech.’
I looked at the photo again. ‘We were engaged.’
Paige suddenly looked uneasy. Crimean fiances could be
‘Did he—ah—come back?’
‘Most of him. He left a leg behind. We don’t speak too much these days.’
‘What’s his full name?’ asked Paige, interested in finally getting something out of my past.
‘It’s Parke-Laine. Landen Parke-Laine.’ It was the first time I had said his name out loud for almost longer than I could remember.
‘Parke-Laine the writer?’
I nodded.
‘Good-looking bloke.’
‘Thank you,’ I replied, not quite knowing what I was thanking her for. I put the photograph back in my drawer and Paige clicked her fingers.
‘Boswell wants to see you,’ she announced, finally remembering what she had come over to say.
Boswell was not alone. A man in his forties was waiting for me and rose as I entered. He didn’t blink very much and had a large scar down one side of his face. Boswell hummed and hawed for a moment, coughed, looked at his watch and then said something about leaving us to it.
‘Police?’ I asked as soon as we were alone. ‘Has a relative died or something?’
The man closed the Venetian blinds to give us more privacy.
‘Not that I heard about.’
‘SO-1?’ I asked, expecting a possible reprimand.
‘Me?’ replied the man with genuine surprise. ‘No.’
‘LiteraTec?’
‘Why don’t you sit down?’
He offered me a seat and then sat down in Boswell’s large oak swivel chair. He had a buff file with my name on the cover which he flopped on the desk in front of him. I was amazed by how thick the file was.
‘Is that all about me?’
He ignored me. Instead of opening my file, he leaned forward and gazed at me with his unblinking eyes.
‘How do you rate the
I found myself staring at his scar. It ran from his forehead down to his chin and had all the size and subtlety of a ship-builder’s weld. It pulled his lip up, but apart from that his face was pleasant enough; without the scar he might have been handsome. I was being unsubtle. He instinctively brought up a hand to cover it.
‘Finest Cossack,’ he murmured, making light of it.
‘I’m sorry.’
‘Don’t be. It’s hard not to gawp.’ He paused for a moment.
‘I work for SpecOps 5,’ he announced slowly, showing me a shiny badge.
‘SO-5?’ I gasped, failing to hide the surprise in my voice. ‘What do you lot do?’
‘That’s restricted, Miss Next. I showed you the badge so you could talk to me without worrying about security clearances. I can okay that with Boswell if you’d prefer—?’
My heart was beating faster. Interviews with SpecOps operatives farther up the ladder sometimes led to transfers—
‘So, Miss Next, what do you think about
‘You want my opinion or the official version?’
‘Your opinion. Official versions I get from Boswell.’
‘I think it’s too early to tell. If ransom is the motive then we can assume the manuscript is still in one piece. If it’s stolen to sell or barter we can also consider it in one piece. If terrorism is the game then we might have to be worried. In scenarios one and three the LiteraTecs have sod all to do with it. SO-9 get involved and we’re kind of out of the picture.’
The man looked at me intently and nodded his head. ‘You don’t like it here, do you?’
‘I’ve had enough, put it that way,’ I responded, slightly less guardedly than I should. ‘Who are you, anyway?’
The man laughed. ‘Sorry. Very bad manners; I didn’t mean all the cloak-and-dagger stuff. The name’s Tamworth, head field operative at SO-5. Actually,’ he added, ‘that doesn’t mean so much. At present there are just me and two others.’
I shook his outstretched hand.
‘Three people in a SpecOps division?’ I asked curiously. ‘Isn’t that kind of mean?’
‘I lost some guys yesterday.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘Not that way. We just made a bit of headway and that’s not always good news. Some people research well in SO-5 but don’t like the fieldwork. They have kids. I don’t. But I understand.’
I nodded. I understood too.
‘Why are you talking to me?’ I asked almost casually. ‘I’m SO-2y; as the SpecOps transfer board so kindly keep telling me, my talents lie either in front of a LiteraTec desk or a kitchen stove.’
Tamworth smiled. He patted the file in front of him.
‘I know all about that. SpecOps Central Recruiting don’t really have a good word for “No”, they just fob. It’s what they’re best at. On the contrary, they are fully aware of your potential. I spoke to Boswell just now and he thinks he can just about let you go if you want to help us over at SO-5.’
‘If you’re SO-5 he doesn’t have much choice, does he?’
Tamworth laughed.
‘That’s true. But
