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.’
TWENTY-EIGHT
The words dropped into the room with the impact of a grenade, and Harry struggled to keep his expression blank. If she was telling the truth, it explained a great deal about her behaviour, lifestyle and obvious air of resilience. ‘Private or army?’
‘I started in the army. Northern Ireland, Germany, Iraq — even Afghanistan for a while — and all the boring places in between. I did all the courses and a few more, got good reports and they asked me to go on the Regimental Provost course. I came out of that second in my class, which pissed off a few of the blokes, but that didn’t bother me. Then six months ago, in a pub in Germany, I was approached by a man and we got talking. I was single and bored and he looked like he wanted company. We talked, he told me almost nothing about himself but asked lots of questions. After a while I realized I was being interviewed.’ She shook her head, ‘Right there in the middle of a pub, surrounded by other squaddies. Not that they could hear what we were talking about, but it was surreal.’
‘He’d followed you.’
‘Yes.’
‘What did he ask?’
‘Background stuff to begin with — where I came from, whether I had any family, friends and so on. Like he was interested in me. Then he began asking weird stuff, like whether I enjoyed live firing, what sort of security training I’d done, if I’d ever considered joining Special Forces. It was then I decided he must be recruiting for something a bit unusual, like 14 Company or maybe undercover with the RMP. I thought it was odd doing it like that, but for all I knew then, that’s how it always works.’
‘What did you say?’
She shrugged. ‘To be honest, I was intrigued and flattered. After years of doing shit jobs and slogging about at everyone’s beck and call, I wanted something better. Why not? I had no family or responsibilities, nothing to tie me down — it sounded exciting. I said yes.’
‘Who was he?’ Harry asked, ‘this recruiter?’
‘He called himself Douglas, but I doubt it was his real name. It’s not, is it, with people like that?’ She stood up. ‘Excuse me — I need to. .’ She disappeared into the bathroom, passing Rik standing by the door. He shook his head to indicate all was quiet outside.
‘You hear any of that?’ Harry asked.
‘A bit. Sounds like someone was talent spotting.’ He picked up his brandy and retreated to the back of the room. ‘I’ll listen in.’
Joanne returned and resumed her seat, ignoring Rik’s presence. She looked pale but composed. Harry wondered if talking was helping her relax. ‘What made you think his name was false?’
‘It didn’t suit him. I don’t know why. Not that it mattered, because at the end of the evening, he gave me a card with a number on it and passed me up the line. This time it was on base, and I was interviewed formally by two men in suits. One was obviously military — he had that look, you know? Like the clothes weren’t his usual kit. The following week, I signed a batch of papers, handed in my gear to the stores and returned to England, where I spent four weeks being put through a meat grinder.’
‘Go on.’
‘It was CP work, mostly — lots of it. Hours of live firing, defensive driving, unarmed combat, knife work. . basically learning more ways to overcome an attacker than I knew existed. There were night exercises, computer and comms classes, more close-quarter weapons training, covert surveillance and bugging techniques, anti-device training, emergency evacuation exercises. . it felt endless.’ She almost smiled. ‘They even threw in a basic medic’s course. I nearly fainted when they shot a pig for us to practise on. But it was a hell of a buzz after all the boring
