‘What happened?’
Sorrow ruffled Astrid’s brows, and the sensation irritated her. A week ago, she wouldn’t have been like this. Death had been a constant for most of her life; it didn’t bother her. But now mixed emotions and memories irritated her.
‘That’s why we’re here.’ Director Davis placed her hands on the table while Lincoln tapped on his screens. Lee was unmoving, but Astrid saw something working behind her eyes.
‘You believe I had something to do with it?’
They’re keeping something from me.
‘That’s what we’re here to discover.’
‘How did she die?’ Astrid remembered the last conversation they’d had on the bridge in Berlin, the tears in Cara’s eyes when she recognised it was over between them. It would have been difficult for her not to understand, considering Astrid told her in direct enough terms.
‘I never loved you, Cara. I’m incapable of loving anyone.’
Had she pretended all the time they were together, or perhaps she’d misled herself? If that was so, then maybe these feeling she had for Olivia were just the same, and they’d vanish as well in time.
Would that be good or bad? Was my father right all along?
She pictured Cara’s face on that bridge in Berlin. It had been a shock to see a grown woman collapse into a shuddering pool of helplessness. Her tears came in great waves, threatening to burst the river below them. Astrid walked away guiltless then, but the news of Cara’s death upset her now. It surprised her.
Agent Lee spoke next, the details flowing out of her without her having to refer to a computer screen or any notes.
‘Even though they discovered her floating in the river, she’d been asphyxiated somewhere else. The plastic bag still was tied around her neck.’
It was a terrible way to die. A method Astrid had used many times on assignments; all of them in the Agency files and her memories.
‘What sexual relationship did you have with Agent Delaney?’ Director Davis peered into Agent Lincoln’s digital screen, her eyes focused on the photos from the crime scene.
‘What?’ Astrid replied, her brain assuming hostile intent in the questions, glancing at the image of a body being pulled from the river.
‘Did you engage in perverted or dangerous sexual practices?’
Astrid held back the laughter, the words coming from the director’s mouth triggering an intrusive recollection of her parents asking something similar to her fifteen-year-old self. She remembered the lock of horror on her mother’s face and the anger on his. Courtney stood in the corner and laughed. It was her sister who had told them what Astrid got up to at night, away from the house and his hard fists.
‘You assume she died after we fooled around in my hotel?’
‘It is possible, yes?’
‘No.’ She stared deep into Agent Lee’s cold eyes.
‘We’ll return to this. What did you do after leaving Berlin?’ Davis oozed professionalism, her piggish brown eyes reminding Astrid of crushed hazelnuts.
Why are you moving on so quickly? Why not focus on Cara’s murder?
She knew why, recognising the technique of bombarding the suspect with rapid information to disorientate them. There it was; she was a suspect.
‘I got a train from Berlin to Prague. It was packed until it stopped in Dresden. It took four hours to get there, and then I took a taxi to my hotel.’ The driver was a miserable sod who tried to overcharge her, only handing over the correct change when Astrid said what would happen if he didn’t.
‘You’d visited Prague before?’
Davis flicked things away on the screen with her hand. Astrid assumed she was staring at the files of her earlier visits to the Czech capital: three successful assignments, with only one causality.
‘Yes, years ago and not for relaxation.’
The last time she’d killed a man by forcing his head into the river until his legs stopped kicking. The comparison to Cara’s death worried her. Were they trying to create a link between the two?
‘What else did you do on your visit?’
Davis sounded like stones rolling down a hill, starting quietly before building up speed for a violent ending. Astrid reached into her recent past, dredging up images which swam in a blurred mist before her eyes.
‘I had drinks in the Old Town, before visiting an Absinthe bar to finish the night. The next few days were typical tourist stuff: a river cruise; a trip to the castle; afternoon around the Kafka Museum.’
‘Which agent did you work with on your last assignment in Prague?’
She didn’t need to think twice. ‘Michelle Dark.’
A different agent but another lousy memory. Dark’s mistake in letting their target escape led to Astrid drowning somebody on that mission.
‘Was that a successful assignment?’ Davis returned to being coy, running her fingers through hair nobody else would touch.
‘Hardly.’ She didn’t provide the details they already had.
‘When did you last see Agent Dark?’
‘When that mission finished, and I requested not to work with her again.’
A request was putting it mildly; she’d told George in no uncertain times she’d strangle Dark if they worked together again.
I said I’d strangle her.
Astrid stared at their digital screens and wondered if they had a recording of that meeting. George had guaranteed her confidentiality, and she trusted him with her life, but she wouldn’t put anything past the Agency.
‘Indeed. She’s been on sick leave ever since,’ the director said.
Astrid grimaced. Sick leave was a polite way of saying Dark received a dishonourable discharge from the service; not that they were in the military. She couldn’t work for the Agency again, but they’d keep tabs on her at all times. One word or step out of line, such as spilling Agency secrets, and she’d be buried underground for the rest of her life. And it would be a waking burial.
‘Are you going to stop messing around and tell me what this has to do with Agent Delaney’s death?’ Astrid puffed out her cheeks and formed her hands into fists.
‘How long did your river cruise last?’
As soon as Davis asked, Astrid recognised where the conversation would end.
‘Somebody murdered Dark, choked her to death with a plastic bag, and then dumped her in the river?’ Astrid visualised it all before the words came back to haunt her.
I’ll strangle her if I see her again.
And she’d meant every single syllable. Her interrogators stared at each other as if Christmas had arrived early.
‘And how do you know this?’
Astrid imagined the noose tightening around her neck.
‘It’s an educated guess. You must realise that me being in the same cities as two murders, even if they’re of people I used to work with, is pure coincidence.’
‘We considered that until more agents you’d worked with were murdered in Vienna and Budapest. Killed when you were in those cities, both suffocated. Would you call that a coincidence?’
Astrid sighed at the ridiculousness of it all. She moved forward and poured herself a glass of water.
‘No, I wouldn’t.’ This wasn’t a trial; if the Agency confirmed her guilt, she’d never see the light of day again. ‘Who are the others?’ The drink chilled her lips, as refreshing as sandpaper in her mouth. Davis dispensed with the digital screen and went straight from memory.
‘Your first overseas assignment with the Agency was in Vienna ten years ago, assisting Agent Andrews with data salvage. Do you remember that?’
‘Vividly.’
Astrid couldn’t forget it. Sensitive government financial information was being hawked for sale by a former employee, and it took three days of punching their way through criminals to retrieve it. Plus, she broke Harry Andrews’s arm. The successful recovery was all down to her since he was in the hospital, getting patched up. The mission made Astrid an instant star in the Agency. The rumours about her partner’s injury flew like wildfire on their return, but only the two of them knew the truth. Or so she thought.
‘Agent Andrews tried to assault you in his room.’
Davis spoke as if reading out a train timetable, with about as much emotion as a talking clock. Astrid said nothing.
‘Other allegations have been made against him.’ Agent Lee touched the silver crucifix around her neck. Astrid hadn’t noticed the jewellery earlier. ‘Twelve women over a period of two years, in Britain and abroad, all while on Agency assignments. When an agent made the first accusation against him, the others followed quickly. We have details of dates, times and locations.’
‘Do you have all that stored in your head, Agent Lee?’
She nodded. ‘I interviewed every one of them and listened to all their pain.’
Astrid realised why Lee didn’t need a digital screen in front of her. The general name for it was a photographic memory, but that wasn’t right. The person who had it, correctly called eidetic memory, remembered more than images: they had complete recall over sounds, smells, touch and taste. It was a useful thing to have in the clandestine world Astrid and Lee moved in.
‘Is Andrews dead?’
Astrid didn’t care. Since the incident, she’d avoided him at work, their careers heading in different directions after the assignment in Vienna.
‘Just like the others, clear plastic bag over the head and floating in the river.’
Astrid noticed a glint in Agent Lee’s eyes at the sound of justice delivered to Andrews.
‘He continued working for the Agency?’
‘He was under investigation, on permanent leave.’
‘Were the other two on active assignments?’
Astrid was curious to know if they were under Agency observation while they were in Europe. Agent Lincoln cleared his voice, his throat full of a lifetime’s consumption of nicotine and moonshine.
‘That’s classified.’ That gruff Geordie twang sounded like a collection of syllables fighting to get away from each other.
‘What did you do in Budapest?’ Davis asked.
‘Crossed the river, visited the citadel at the top of the hill, the usual tourist stuff.’ Astrid recalled her assignments in the city as she told them about her latest visit. She guessed who it would be. ‘You found Jack Chill in the water.’
It had to be him. The three of them exchanged those same looks again, confident they had their perpetrator.
‘Is that a confession?’
‘IQs must have dropped while I was away. Either that or your stumbling ignorance is seeking the road to wisdom.’ Astrid regained her composure. ‘Considering what happened between us, if there’s another body following me around, it could only have been him.’
‘Why?’ Davis’s eyes shrank into her face.
‘He sold secrets to the Russians, even believed he was clever enough to do it underneath my nose while we were in Budapest. Shouldn’t he be in prison?’
‘He got an early release two months ago,’ Lee said.
‘Let me guess: he remembered he had dirt to sell as long as you released him?’ Astrid didn’t understand why they couldn’t recognise she’d been framed. So she told them. ‘You realise this is a set-up?’
‘Why?’ Davis liked her direct but straightforward questions. ‘Why go to this trouble for you? What makes you so special?’
‘You mean apart from my wit, intelligence and good looks?’ Astrid’s insides squeezed together as if ready to explode.
‘And four murders connected to you by place and victim?’ Davis said.
‘It’s all a coincidence.’ Astrid knew how impossible that sounded. ‘Don’t you have CCTV footage of them?’
Director Davis’s lopsided mouth highlighted her big nose.
‘We have no CCTV footage of Cara Delaney in Berlin. It’s as if whoever she was with knew how to avoid electronic surveillance.’ Davis stared at Astrid, waiting for a response but getting nothing. ‘She probably travelled under an assumed name, so we’ve had no luck there.’
‘What about flights to Berlin?’ Astrid said.
‘There’s no record of her taking a direct flight from Manchester or any other UK airport. She may have gone by train.’
‘What about the others?’
Astrid didn’t hold out too much hope. One of the many notable things about Agency training was how agents avoided locations with cameras or were skilled at hiding themselves from electronic eyes.
‘Enough of your questions, Snow; you’re the one under investigation.’ Davis moved closer to Astrid. A fever of enthusiasm consumed the director’s features. ‘So tell us: what did you do with their fingers?’