Steve Jackson - The Mentor

‘If you’ve got anything you think might be useful,’ Mac added in a voice heavy with sarcasm, ‘bung it in a report.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘And if it’s not too much trouble I’d like that on my desk first thing in the morning. And it’d better fucking well be there.’ With that the line went dead.

‘Cunt,’ Aston whispered at the mobile.

Miraculously the bike was where he’d left it; any other day it would have been nicked in two seconds. He cycled back to Vauxhall Cross through near-deserted streets, the wind pushing past him a welcome relief after the suffocating tunnels. It was almost midnight and still humid; the night was a thunderstorm waiting to happen.

He banged away at the keyboard for almost an hour, taking no notice of what he was typing. His hands were sore, fingers weary. The injuries were superficial – minor scratches and cuts, an abrasion on his left palm – certainly nothing requiring hospital treatment. Some antiseptic and an Elastoplast … job done. All he could think about was the dead baby. He typed faster … if he could somehow get his brain to work quicker then maybe he could outrun those nightmarish images. Fine in theory, but all that happened was he made more typos. He didn’t bother reading the report through when he finished. If it read like it was written in Chinese he didn’t give a shit. He e-mailed the report to Mac’s secure account and headed for home.

His mother had warned him he’d end up in the poor house, and for once she’d been right. The poor house in question was a three-storey red brick building in Pimlico that had been constructed in the late 1800s by a philanthropic mill owner. It had lain derelict until 1995, when it had been restored and converted into ‘studios and apartments’ … estate agent doublespeak for ‘bed-sits and rabbit hutches’. Aston had bought a one-bedroom hutch on the first floor, which the estate agent had assured him was money well spent. The area was up and coming, he was investing in the future, in ten years’ time the apartment would be worth double. Whatever. All he knew was that a large chunk of his paycheque disappeared each month just to keep his toes from slipping off the first rung of the property ladder.

It was pushing two by the time Aston got home. He was physically and mentally exhausted. Laura was crashed out on the black leather sofa, as innocent as an angel. She was wearing grey jogging bottoms and a tiny tight red T-shirt with BABE written in spangly pink letters on the front. She was snoring lightly, even though she swore blind she never snored. Aston had considered recording her so he could present her with irrefutable evidence of her crime, but she’d find some way to wriggle out of it. When it came to arguing she was as slippery as a Southern lawyer.

The fallout from her evening lay across the laminated floor. Aston knew the danger signs. Used tissues were scattered like so many crushed lilies; a box of Milk Tray was within reaching distance; she’d demolished half a tub of Häagen-Dazs. An empty DVD case sat open on the floor in front of a hi-tech stack containing all the latest gizmos. Mission Control was his one indulgence. He always had to have the latest toys. It was a boy thing. He picked up the DVD case. Breakfast at Tiffany’s. Not good. She only watched that when she was on a serious downer. The TV was on and tuned in to BBC News 24, the sound a low mumble.

Aston perched on the edge of the sofa, carefully so it wouldn’t squeak. He brushed her fringe from her face, gently pushing the black strands away with his fingertips. God, she was beautiful. He wanted to wake her; didn’t want to wake her. After the day he’d had he needed to feel her arms around him, an affirmation of life to get rid of the stench of death that still clung to him even though he’d scrubbed himself raw in the shower back at Vauxhall Cross. Right now he needed that more than anything. But she looked so peaceful sleeping there, it didn’t seem right. He leant in close, kissed her forehead. She stirred but didn’t wake. Aston went to the bedroom, got a duvet, draped it across her, then fixed a drink – a JD and coke. He settled into the TV chair, the bottle close to hand, leant back and the footrest came up. He took a sip, ice cubes rattling, and stared at the box, too wired to sleep.

They’d been living together for almost six months, seeing each other for about a year. Laura was the first woman he’d lived with and looking back he wondered how long she’d been planning her assault. First the electric toothbrush appeared. It turned up in the bathroom cabinet one day and sort of stayed there. Next a change of clothes turned up. Made sense. If she was staying over, which she was doing more often than not, then she needed fresh clothes. Before he knew it there was a battered old teddy living at the bottom of the bed, a box of Tampax on the bedroom windowsill, and he was having to fight for wardrobe space.

Laura still didn’t know what he did for a living. She thought he worked for the Foreign Office over on King Charles Street in Whitehall; a lie he’d told so often to so many people there were days he almost believed it. It was one of the first things they taught you on the IONEC. You don’t work for us, you work for the Foreign Office. The I’m-A-Spy conversation was one he’d been meaning to have. It was on his mañana list. He felt he owed her the truth, but how did you start a conversation like that? Hi honey, hope you had a good day; by the way, I’m a spy. Then there was the fact that he’d have to apply to personnel for written permission. Probably in triplicate. It was much easier to live in denial. He hadn’t planned on becoming a spy. When he was little he wanted to be an astronaut; at secondary school he told the career’s officer he was going to be a movie star. By the time he got to the sixth form common sense had kicked in. He got four grade As in his A levels and ended up studying business at Oxford.

Growing up, the subject of his real father was a big no-no. Whenever Aston asked, his mother would get twitchy and quickly move the conversation elsewhere. In the end he gave up asking. He’d overheard her talking with his stepfather once. They’d thought he was asleep but he’d got up to ask for a glass of water and heard them on the other side of the lounge door. When he realised what they were talking about, he’d pressed his ear against the wood, not daring to make a sound. All he learnt was that his father was a lying son of a bitch who should be strung up. Strong words from a woman who considered ‘damn’ a dirty word. His mother was birdlike and anxious, a professional housewife who always worried what other people thought. If the Browns got a new car then she wanted one, too. But it had to be bigger, and better, and newer.

His stepfather wasn’t a bad person, just terminally boring. He was a financial analyst, which, as far as Aston was concerned, said it all. His mother had married Brian when Aston was four. Brian owned a big house in the sleepy little village of Great Bedwyn in Wiltshire and commuted to London each day, which meant that Aston hadn’t seen him much, and that was fine. There were no stepbrothers or stepsisters and that was fine, too. Brian had tried. He’d brought him up as his own, done all the usual Dad things, like taking him to football matches and teaching him to shave. But no matter how hard he tried, Brian wasn’t his father.

Brian and Aston’s mother had split up a couple of years ago and this had shocked Aston. For a woman so sensitive to other people’s opinions, this was totally out of character. Aston had thought Brian and his mother would go to the grave together. He certainly hadn’t expected her to run off with Roy, the small, balding lead tenor from the church choir. The gossip must have spread around the village like wildfire. His mother still lived in Great Bedwyn – in sin – and seemed happier than he’d ever seen her.