Steve Jackson - The Mentor

George was waiting at the ticket machine. As soon as she saw Aston she walked over and hugged him. And this wasn’t a fleeting kissy-kissy hug, either. She grabbed him and held him close and tight, so close he could feel her heartbeat. ‘How was it?’ she whispered in his ear.

‘Could have been worse.’

She let go and held him at arm’s length, gave him a quick once over. ‘Well, you’re a bit pale – but apart from that …’ She linked her arm through his and led him towards the exit.

George’s most striking feature was the mop of black frizzy hair she constantly bitched about. At the moment it was cut to shoulder length and tied back with a red scrunchy; she’d had it long, had it short, but hated it whatever length it was. At university she’d had a crew cut, a number 1, sandpaper instead of hair. Her mother had been mortified, said it made her look like a lesbian and she hadn’t brought her little girl up to wear Dr Martens and dungarees. More than once she’d told Aston she was the ugly duckling who never quite made it into a swan. Aston told her she was talking shit, but she wasn’t listening. George wasn’t supermodel gorgeous, but she was a long way from scaring the kiddies. She had the most beautiful brown almond shaped eyes, olive skin, and she scrubbed up quite nicely when she could be bothered, which wasn’t very often. Most of the time she dressed down: plain clothes, sober colours, nothing too revealing, nothing that would get her noticed. Perfect for a spy. George didn’t have any trouble attracting men but keeping hold of them was a different matter. They were either too old, too young, or too married. Her love life was a soap opera Aston long ago stopped trying to keep up with.

The address was written in a careful copperplate script: 23 Farley Road, Crouch End. Underneath was a mobile number. They shared an umbrella that was too small to cover both of them, George jiggling it about to keep them dry. A young couple heading home after a long day. It was an act they’d got down to a fine art. They could do everything from the young lovers cruising through a hormone OD and desperately in need of a room to the long-married couple who wanted to stab each other. It wasn’t hard. From the word go they’d been comfortable with one another, so comfortable that every now and then the MI6 rumour mill would crank out a story. Officially their relationship was strictly platonic; unofficially there’d been one blip.

The incident was never talked about. To celebrate the end of the IONEC they’d gone out with the intention of getting annihilated, and reached their objective in style; even by their standards it had been a big night. Next morning Aston had woken up in bed with a mega hangover, and George lying next to him. They were both naked, and from the hazy flashbacks Aston kept getting, the state of the bed, and the fact his dick felt like it had been pounded with a mallet, it was apparent they had done more than sleep. Aston couldn’t put his finger on why it felt wrong. It just did. Like sleeping with your sister or something. When he closed his eyes all he could see was an albino boy with bad teeth playing the banjo. George felt the same. After an awkward discussion they decided the best way to deal with the situation was through denial.

While they walked, Aston told George about his meeting with Kinclave. ‘You know,’ he said in conclusion, ‘I’ve been working for Mac for – what? Almost three years? Not only did I not know he was married, until tonight I didn’t know where he lived. Shit, I don’t know anything about him.’

‘Not true,’ George said. ‘You know what he wants you to know.’

It took fifteen minutes to get from Highgate station to Farley Road. The rain was hammering down now, slick on the pavements, rivers raging along the gutter. Number 23 was a red-bricked Edwardian semi-detached with bay windows on both floors. The front garden had been concreted over and a brand new X-type Jag was parked there. All the curtains were closed.

‘I don’t like this,’ George said as they walked up the narrow path.

‘Join the club,’ Aston replied.

Underneath the porch, he shook the loose raindrops away while George collapsed the umbrella and brushed the rain from her frizzy hair.

‘Why do I let you talk me into shit like this, Paul? Answer me that, eh?’

‘I didn’t exactly twist your arm.’

‘Just open the bloody door, Paul, before I bottle it and go home.’

Aston slipped the key into the lock and turned it. The door opened easily on well-oiled hinges.

‘If it’s all the same with you,’ George said, ‘let’s stick together. None of this “let’s split up so we can get the place searched twice as quickly” crap.’

‘Fine by me.’ Aston wondered if he looked as wired as George. Probably. His stomach flip-flopped as he entered the house, his heart felt too big for his chest. He pushed the door shut, locking them in, flicked on the hall light. This wasn’t the first time he’d broken into a house, but that didn’t make it any easier. He swallowed involuntarily.

‘What exactly are we looking for?’ George asked.

‘Search me. The Chief was a bit vague on that score. “I just want you to have a quick look around, check everything’s in order, that sort of thing”.’ Aston gave a reasonable impression of Kinclave’s Etonian drawl.

There were three closed doors leading off the hallway. Aston pointed to the door at the end of the hall. ‘Right, we’ll start there.’

The door led to a cosy, tidy farmhouse kitchen. There was slate on the floor and lots of oak: dining table and chairs, a large Welsh dresser filled with knick-knacks and crockery. A sign above the Aga proclaimed that the kitchen was the heart of the house. Maybe once it had been, Aston thought. It was easy to imagine this kitchen full of life and laughter and sunshine. The big window overlooking the tangled, overgrown garden faced east and would have caught the rising sun, holding onto it until well past midday. Yes, once this had been the heart of the house. Not anymore, though. Whatever life had breezed through these four walls was long gone.

‘Notice anything strange?’ George asked.

‘Like what?’

‘You know, Paul, for a spy you can be pretty unobservant at times.’ She pointed out the bowl of furry, moist fruit sitting on one of the work surfaces, the flowers decomposing in a vase on the kitchen table.

‘No one’s currently living here,’ she said. ‘This kitchen hasn’t been used for Christ knows how long.’ George marched over to the fridge and yanked the door open. The smell of rancid milk floated heavily through the kitchen. She lifted out the carton and read the sell-by date on top. ‘My guess is that he hasn’t been here for the best part of a month.’

‘That’d be around the time Sophia died.’

‘So where’s he staying?’

‘More to the point, why isn’t he staying here?’

‘Too many memories, perhaps,’ George suggested.

‘Perhaps,’ Aston agreed, unconvinced. And now that George had mentioned it, he could sense the emptiness that filled the kitchen. There was an air of neglect, a whispering sense of things lost never to be found again. And it wasn’t just the kitchen. He’d noticed it when he’d stepped into the house; noticed subconsciously but it hadn’t registered because he didn’t have a name for it. And now he did: abandonment. Like a sunken ship, this house had settled into the silent dark loneliness.

The next door along the hall led to a small study. This was obviously Mac’s domain. There were no pictures on the walls, no personal touches whatsoever. The room was as anonymous as its owner. A thin layer of dust had settled across the room, coating the top of the filing cabinet and clinging to the screen of the monitor. Aston went over to the filing cabinet and pulled open the top drawer. Empty.