‘Lovely thought, isn’t it?’
‘So, the Begovich’s have a man on your team. Wow,’ he took another swig of beer. ‘Looks like they are a bit more of a problem than you thought.’
‘Than any of us thought.’
He shook his head. ‘I already knew. I was the one got my skull cracked courtesy of Miss Begovich’s instructions, remember?’
‘Thing is, why would they go to the trouble of trying to shoot you in broad daylight, and then covering up the unsuccessful attempt using a bent copper? That’s serious stuff. More than just trying to warn you off their business.’
‘Especially when they are the ones who started all this. I mean, I didn’t know of their existence before the attack in Manchester.’ He paused, weighing up exactly how he felt about the details that he needed to share with the DI. ‘This is going to sound crazy,’ he said, ‘but, when I really think about what happened after the Tae Kwan Do tournament, the thing that bothers me the most is that they seemed to be more interested in Emily than me.’
Deborah looked at him then. Even in the low light he could see her expression was serious. No, he decided, more than that, she was scared. For him. Or for Emily. And Debs Chowdhury did not scare easily.
‘What?’ he asked.
‘While we’re doing crazy, I did see something on that cctv footage. Something I can’t explain, but it made my skin creep.’ She paused. He waited. She continued. ‘I studied that film over and over. Played it backwardsand forwards. Frame by frame. It was only on about the tenth time of studying it that I saw… a face,’ she trailed off and then tried again. ‘I saw Dragana Begovich staring out of the front window of the restaurant.’
‘So? The camera caught her standing there.’
‘Except that she wasn’t there the first nine times. Only the tenth. And she wasn’t just looking out, she was looking atme.It felt like she wasseeingme. Like she was there in real time, watching me watching her.’
‘On a piece of video?’
‘I told you we were in crazy territory. And it gets freakier. I took a screen grab. Wanted you to see the scary lady.’ She set her beer down on the counter, slipped her bag off her shoulder and rummaged in it. Even off duty in jeans and a tee-shirt, she kept her serious bag with her. She pulled out a file, opened it and selected a printed screenshot from the footage. ‘Look,’ she said, handing it to him and using her phone to light it. ‘Look at the window.’
He looked, squinting at the fuzzy image, searching for Dragana’s unmistakeable features. ‘I can’t see her,’ he said, shaking his head slowly. ‘I can’t see anybody.’
‘Exactly!’ Deborah tapped at the page with a finger to underline her point. ‘Nothing. Nada. Zip. She was there and now she isn’t. First nothing, then she appears, thenshe’s gone again. And no, I hadn’t overindulged in Merlot. And no, I wasn’t dreaming, imagining things, hormonal or anything else you can come up with to explain it away. That crazy woman appeared on my screen while I was reviewing the film, but the screenshot didn’t pick her up. I’m not trying to be dramatic, Tudor, but you’ve got yourself mixed up in something seriously weird.’ She picked up her beer and drank deeply.
But Tudor hadn’t heard half of what she had said. He was staring at the print out, his attention completely taken by the door of the restaurant. Or, more specifically, the door frame. Taking hold of Debs’ hand he angled the phone light to see better, but he already knew what he was looking at. All around the entrance, there were deep carvings, intricate and arcane, painstakingly chiselled into the wooden frame on all sides and over the top. Whether they had been there when he went to the place and he had blindly walked past them, or they had somehow only become visible since, he had no idea. What he did know, without an iota of doubt, was that those carvings, those shapes, those symbols, were identical to the ones above the Richards’ shrine, and in the grand foyer of the apartment building. However unlikely it seemed, that small,scruffy restaurant and the impossibly glamorous Aurora building were sisters under the skin.
When they had tired of trying to get their heads around what any of this new information meant, Tudor and Deborah set to the task of putting the houseboat back together. It was slow work, not least because there was broken glass everywhere. Everything had to be picked up, turned over, brushed off, and set down in a carefully cleared space. Tedious as the task was, Tudor was glad of it. It gave his mind time to freewheel while he worked, letting the confusion he felt at not being able to make sense of the puzzle gradually lessen. Ordinarily, in his professional capacity, such unanswered questions would gnaw away at him. In this case, with his own family at the centre of what was going on, he experienced a sense of being unmoored, and a queasiness to go with it. This was no time to come up short. The connection between the buildings was the key to understanding what was going on. It was the piece of the puzzle that should explain why he, and more strangely Emily, were being targeted. It should make everything fall into place. And yet it did not. He was still as much in the dark as he had been before. And now he had Debs’ experience to scramble his headfurther. From anyone else such a story would not have cut much ice. DI Chowdhury was not anyone. She was feet-on-the-ground, show-me-evidence, born-with-extra-common-sense reasonable. If she was seeing ghosts, they were all in real trouble.
It took them the better part of two hours, working steadily, to restore something approaching order to the boat. Anything beyond repair they stacked in a sorry heap in one corner. Anything salvageable they put more or less in place. The bedrooms had not escaped ransacking, but there was less to break in either of them. It was gone eleven when he and Debs finished remaking the bed. They stood either side of it.
‘Let’s call it a day. Time to turn in,’ Tudor said without thinking about where they were when he said it.
An awkwardness joined them in the little room. The freshly made bed sat between them, cool, soft and inviting, suddenly a big, fat possibility.
‘I didn’t mean…’ he began.
‘No?’ she asked.
Just that. A single word. But it carried so much with it. It wasn’t,No, of course you didn’t mean…. Nor was it,No, I should bloody well hope not!It was a question. A clear invitation, in fact.
Tudor looked across at her. Her suggestion that they might just fall into that bed together and pick up where they left off four years ago was as unexpected as it was flattering. The lack of preamble, the total absence of anything they had shared since meeting up again that could be described as flirting, somehow made it all the more appealing. Erotic, even. He tried to think of a sensible response. Think of what he should say that would move them back into the safety of the friends zone. But no words came. Instead, the more he looked at her, the more he thought about the lovemaking they had enjoyed -reallyenjoyed - all that time ago, the more turned on he became. She could have read his hesitation as a rebuttal, but DI Chowdhury was a woman capable of taking hold of a situation and steering it in the direction she wanted. She kicked off her shoes and undid her jeans. Tudor found himself watching her. Not because he was too surprised to do anything himself, but because the thought of seeing her naked again, the thought of her beautiful skin being on view beneath the soft glow of the one working lamp in the room, made him thirst for her. So he watched, and she stripped. And when she stood there, naked and glorious, he wanted her more than he had ever wanted her before.
Deborah folded her arms, tilting her head as she looked at him. ‘OK, soldier,’ she said, slipping back into her role as his army superior as if the intervening years and new lives had never been, ‘strip. That’s an order.’
‘Yes, ma’am,’ he replied smartly. He felt her intense gaze upon him as he unbuttoned his shirt and tugged it free of his jeans. She continued to watch, her own nakedness somehow not making her vulnerable any more. She was in charge, and they both knew it. At last, he stood there, his excitement making itself abundantly obvious. She smiled, clearly happy to see that abundance again. He waited. She stopped smiling, eager to play the game. ‘Kneel,’ she said.
He did as he was told.
Deborah climbed onto the bed, sliding across it until she was in front of him. She knelt up, reaching out to slip her hands around his neck, gently but firmly pulling him forwards so that his lips met the soft curve of her belly.
Tudor breathed her in, memory and anticipation working together to heighten his arousal. It had been a while, and after the difficult and weird events of recent weeks, the thought of good, uncomplicated sex was suddenly overwhelmingly attractive. He kissed herstomach, tasting her sweet skin, his mouth lingering on it. His palms found her buttocks.
‘Woah, easy soldier,’ she told him, batting away his hands. ‘Not so fast.’ She ran her finger down his neck, tracing the strong arc of his shoulder. She shifted her position on the bed slightly so that she was kneeling with her legs apart. She kissed him, deeply and slowly. Then, breathlessly, she looked into his eyes as she spoke. ‘Let’s see if you remember how to please your commanding officer,’ she murmured. When he went to touch her again she stopped him. ‘Hands free, Sergeant Tudor. Hands free.’
