Sherlock
I don't eavesdrop on the conversation Darcy has with Danielle. More I'm in the room and the conversation is happening and I can't just choose to be deaf all of a sudden. That's not my fault. Blame my exceptionally keen senses. Blame the genes that gave them to me. Blame incipient craving and the need to listen to something or go mad.
In brief, at the first sound of his voice, she panics, and he spends maybe a minute allaying any fears. At this, she then spends another minute berating him for calling if there's nothing wrong, until he convinces her that the line is secure.
You could be forgiven for thinking he's another one of her rides. He refers to her only by terms of endearment. Sweetheart, darling, pigeon. Pet, which would mark him as more of a northerner than his faded accent would have one believe. Princess. But it's just because she's made him paranoid about the line; he's avoiding real names. No, really, his speech, his syntax, the tone he takes with her, it's the way of a brother. Affectionate. Pure, without desire.
The whole time, he's going about, leaning on the dresser, the bedside cabinet, the windowsill, and there's something about the way he moves that I can't help but watch. Something strange. Something I should be paying more attention to than the talking, but it's harder to concentrate on an unknown quantity. I try forcing it and my head swims.
But no, I have to do this, have to make this work, so I focus, isolate the elements of his movement, the shift of weight just before every step, the centre of gravity travelling just slightly behind, and it would be so much bloody easier to do if he would just stop wandering about the place.
Which is when it hits me.
Jon Darcy has perfect posture. Soldiers don't. Soldiers overshoot when they stand to attention and they tend to arch backward. And Jon Darcy hasn't settled himself which, given his inferred history, you'd expect him to. In a corner of the room where the windows and main door are in front of him and the bathroom door would shield him were someone to force it open. Find a vantage point and keep it. And now that I look at the bed there is one perfect long dent down the middle, and nothing else. Sleeping out straight and flat as the dead.
I know where the drawings are.
This is the thing about paintings. Everybody always thinks they're looking for The Wedding at Cana, great huge boards or canvases you need a whole wall to hang. Easy to forget La Gioconda is only A4. And these Gilès, they're just sketches. Drawings, colour tests. Scraps the artist probably only kept because he forgot to throw them out. Sketchbook pages.
He's got them wrapped about him. It's bloody brilliant too. Hidden, not in plain sight, but under the crusty t-shirt where you'd never want to look. And if anything happens, he's got everything he needs already there. Darcy can run while they tear the place apart looking.
It's brilliant. It's absolutely brilliant. Unless he gets shot, I suppose…
Anyway, in all this inspiration and subsequent appreciation, I've rather lost track of the conversation.
What I do know is that Darcy really shouldn't be looking at me in that curious, almost-barely-raging way. I should not be hearing the words, "Sparrow, I'll call you back."
He shouldn't be hanging up just yet.
He's waiting for me to speak.
"Something wrong?"
"No. Nothing. Dani's on fine form. Matter-fact, last thing she says to me there, before I hung up, is, 'Jon, there's a gentleman here who might just be about to solve all our problems.' Now, if he's there-"
"Who-"
"Don't know, haven't had a chance to ask. I wanted to deal with this first. Because if she's got him, who the hell are you?"
"I have no idea who this other-"
"That's not what I asked you." I'm getting that metal sort of taste between my teeth again. I can act now, or this isn't going to end my way. I'm not sure I'm going to get away with it again. "Who the hell are you?"
"People keep bloody asking me that…"
"Well, you'll answer me, mate."
No. Probably not. What I might do is, as he approaches to put that fucking gun against my head, oh, one more time, I might put a fist beneath his ribs, and feel a slight crackle of paper to confirm my suspicions. While Darcy is thus incapacitated I will remove the gun from his grip and send it into the bathroom rather sharply, before incapacitating him further by pulling his head down past me into the arm of the chair. Ideally he'll be unconscious at this stage, but it's not happening for me. He is, however, dazed enough for me to find the Velcro edge of the muslin wrap around his middle and pull it off.
Yeah, let's go with that plan.
And then? Well, he's a big gentleman, looks like he'll get up quick enough. So after the initial plan, we'll go with running. Lots of it. Far. Not stopping much. Mostly just running.
Jim
"Well, I don't know about all your problems, love… I mean, you're deeply disturbed, Danielle, I just don't think I'm qualified."
"All of our immediate problems, I meant… He's hung up on me."
Probably she'd be more worried about that if I hadn't just solved all of her immediate problems. She was on the phone when it occurred to me. Looking down at Mr Steele, lying on my floor with a sheet under his head since his hyperpressurized brain started threatening to leak out his ears. It's okay though; it's the sheet I already used for Danielle the other night, so it's not getting wrecked.
Sudden flash of inspiration. I'm actually quite proud of myself. I'm a planner, see, I like to do things with everything figured out, from far above. All this improv, this is a bit sexy and new.
I wrote it down and put it in front of her. Didn't want to interrupt. She talks to her partner-in-crime like a fawning, worried aunt, and it was too funny to watch.
I wrote down:
Yanks want you dead.
MI5 still need you alive.
MI5 won't like the Yanks.
Dead Yank on the floor.
I probably could have made it clearer if I'd had time to think about it. But she seems to have gotten the point. In the new silence she's standing looking at me, glancing down at Steele. She crouches to shut his eyes and I follow her. "I'm still sorry I had to kill him in your flat, but do you really think this'll work?"
"Yes."
"Okay then, I'm not actually that sorry. How do we do this?"
I'll explain it to you the way I explain it to her. Obviously you and I, dear and constant reader, aren't carrying a body in a sheet between us, swinging out onto the landing and round the corner to the roof exit, so it loses some of the urgency. You can imagine, I'm sure.
Firstly, what we do is take Mr Steele to the roof. We go to the edge and lift him up between us as though he were standing by himself. And then we push him off, feet first. As though he jumped.
"It won't work," she says, even while she watches him fall. "Autopsy," she says. The thunk of him landing below underscores her point. "Look! We didn't even crack his head. They'll know in a half-second."
"That's the point." I explain, leading off back to the stairs before anybody can chase us up. "They spot he was killed beforehand, coolly, professionally, in a practically invisible way-"
"Are you flirting with me?"
"Credit where credit's due, angel. – And then that it was made to look like suicide. They'll question who would do such a thing. They'll look into Mr Steele, find out what he does for a living, question why he's even in the country. At which point, the James Bond Fan Club For Men will step in and put a stop to the investigation."
"MI5 will know the Americans are after us. They need us alive to torture to find out where the drawings are-"
"Therefore, they will remove the Americans from your path that you might not be killed before revealing, yes. I have solved your Yankee Doodle problem. We'll burn Vauxhall Bridge when we get to it." The first concerned neighbours are bolting for the roof, and I am pouring the first glass of wine for her and me. Danielle is sitting at the breakfast bar, and accepts it graciously. Looking up at me. Very strange look in her eyes. "No," I tell her.
She balks, "What?"
"You're having… bad thoughts."
"I am eternally grateful to you. I would usually deal with feelings of eternal gratitude by making myself physically available to the object of said-gratitude-"
"Nicely put, very delicate, but just don't even actually start to get the drift of maybe beginning to think about it, dear."
"-Which option is, naturally, completely denied to me in this case given you find me repulsive, and so now I am confused. That's all it is. I just don't know what to do with all the feelings. I'm trying very, very hard not to kiss you right now."
"And I appreciate the effort."
And that's that. No more of that. We'll have none of that here, thank you very much, Danielle. But God, Jesus Christ, that woman and her filthy fecking mind, I swear you can still hear her thinking it. Honestly. I'll never do anything nice for her again if this is where we end up. Fuck, it itches and she hasn't even touched me, itches everywhere because there's nothing to centre it and nowhere to scratch it off. I'm starting to twitch, fuck's sake, and the wine's not making it any better. Just getting wound up.
I don't think it shows, though.
"Are you alright?" I didn't think it was showing.
"I'm fine."
"Oh, really, ignore me. Look. Over. Look at me, I'm chaste. Pure as the driven snow. I'm a nun, Jim-"
"Don't bring them into this…"
Danielle takes her glass, quickly and discreetly walks away. She finds Treadstone in the living room, stays with him. It's a couple of minutes before I'm able to join her. It takes a concerted effort, but I have to; she can't help the way she thinks. And if she's grateful then I owe it to her to be gracious.
"Have you ever thought of doing this for a living?" she calls. Changing the subject. Making herself neutral again.
"Killing Americans? For about three years as a teenager."
"Solving problems."
"That's already what I do."
"No. You set things up. If you solve problems it's just to tighten the plan. But if people were fucked, or they didn't know how to go about it, would you-"
"I'll stop you there, love. Magic word, there."
"Ah. People. You wouldn't want a client-based business. That's a real pity, y'know. You're good at it."
I don't quite know what to say to that. I just sit down, and the living room is dim and warm. She lets Treadstone go and he curls at my feet. And everything, for a second, is comforting, and… really nice, actually. Almost like she fits.
Her phone rings and the whole thing shatters.
She answers, that same concerned den-mother voice, "Jon, what the fuck happened? What? No. No, but-" And the rest, as Hamlet didn't say, is profanity. Not the usual kind. Not just Danielle swearing like she does, the way she deals with things she doesn't like. This is her scared. She hangs up and is halfway out the door before I can call her back. And when she turns her eyes are wet and she bites her lip.
"I thought we were saved," she mutters. "We're still fucked. We're so fucked…"
"What's happened?"
"The drawings. The only thing we still had. The fucking bloody bastard drawings are gone."
[A/N – Listen, ladies and gents, this is the last chapter I had prepared. I'll be honest and say I'm not getting a lot of hits on this story. If, however, there's anybody out there who's interested in seeing it finished, I'll continue. Please, please let me know. I really want to see the tale through to the tail, but I don't want to commit if nobody's there. Please help decide. Hearts, to all who are still about, Sal.]
