The Society Karen Guyler (best books to read .TXT) 📖

“Wow, my uncle lives here?”

“Terry, it’s Charles.” His call for Lily’s sake, she hadn’t realised he couldn’t have locked the door on the outside from the inside. They listened to the silence. “He’s not home.”

She pulled her hat off. “Can I paddle my feet? I’m so hot.”

“Tell you what, you help me find what we came for and we can both swim. How about that?” Lily nodded, watching the hypnotic water. “You need a swimming costume first, so the quicker we find it, the quicker we can get one, before the shops shut.” The way he’d get her out of there.

“Suppose so.” she sighed.

He left her searching on the ground floor while he climbed up to what he assumed must be the bedroom level. Terry was still a slob. The number of arguments it had caused when they’d shared a bedroom, the perennial trail of his dirty clothes, crumpled and screwed-up pieces of paper on which he sketched his world, bits of stubby pencils Charles was forever standing on, piles of pencil sharpenings that breezed all over Charles’ things. Terry had learnt nothing. His bedroom wouldn’t have been out of place in a look at my wonderful house magazine if he bothered to put things away. The reality was more like a crime scene photo after a vicious burglary.

It sped up Charles’ search, not having to be careful.

Lily’s scream reached for him, echoing up through the courtyard. He flew down the steep curving stairs two at a time, tripping on the mosaic tiles, lunging for the banister to stop himself falling.

“Lily, what is it?”

37

The Covent Garden entrance of the Royal Opera House was still how Luke hoped: no body scanners, and, now the evening’s performance had started, just the odd member of staff to check latecomer’s handbags. Sloppy, long may it last.

Who would he choose?

Now he was in his mid-thirties, the youngsters looked like they were still at school so approaching them to help was just creepy. He breezed past the young girl drifting near him, aiming for the older woman cleaning her glasses on a corner of her blouse. A tall guy with spiked hair walking up to her looked him up and down. Luke looked good in a tux, but it was nice to be reminded. He stopped, looked around him, I’m lost, help me. The guy was over to him in a nanosecond.

“Can I help you, Sir?”

“I’m a little late, any chance you could let me in before the intermission? I’d be very grateful.”

“Well, it’s policy—”

“I’d be this grateful.” Luke held his hand out and, surprised, the guy grasped it. His eyes widened as he felt the folded note in Luke’s palm. “Opera’s not my thing, but it’ll be the end of my promotion hopes if I don’t show. My puppy didn’t want me to leave her, so here I am, having left her and now I’m late.” Was the puppy thing too much? Not judging by the usher’s sympathetic face and nodding. Luke tipped the balance of his indecision. “If I can slip in behind my boss, I can pretend I was there all along. You know how it is, us little people against the big guys.”

He nodded. “What seat do you have?”

“It’s so embarrassing, her PA couldn’t find my ticket, but I don’t want to get her in trouble either. My boss has the box closest to the stage.”

The usher looked up and down the still corridor. Strains of the performance reached them as he dithered. “Oh, come on then. You have to live dangerously every once in a while.”

Luke laughed, if only he knew.

The usher paused outside the first door in a row of many. Unguarded, better than Luke had hoped. “Wait for one of the longer notes before you go in.”

Luke smiled again. “Thanks so much.”

He waited for the usher to drift away, two backward glances Luke pretended to not notice, then out of sight before he withdrew his Glock.

As the notes on stage soared, he opened the door the tiniest amount, waited long enough for anyone who’d caught the sound of the lock disengaging to look behind them and discount it. He slipped inside the box and stood in the shadows, appraising.

Only two people, that was surprising. Husband or bodyguard?

In one motion Luke was down on his knee on the left side of the Director General of MI5, furthest from the companion, hiding the gun pressed against her shoulder from everyone in the neighbouring box, stooping to whisper in Anna Bailey’s ear. “You and I are going to have a chat. You co-operate, I don’t pull this trigger. It’s that simple, understand?” She nodded, waved a hand at the companion’s interest, everything is okay, this is expected.

Luke handed her an earpiece, a twin of the one he was wearing, which she put in her left ear. He dragged a chair close to her. The chorus was winding up now, the noise level rising.

“What do you want?” Straight to business

“Why is MI5 killing people?”

She whipped round; he reminded her with pressure on the Glock that she needed to keep her place. Not them, as far as she knew. The problem with a many-headed beast was that the one holding them in check didn’t always see what each part was up to. Until it was too late.

“It’s an outfit called The Society.”

What he thought she might say, but she appeared to believe it. “Who told you that?”

“It’s on the news.”

“Who’s pulling their strings?” A slight shrug halted by the pressure of the barrel against her. “You think I have the inclination to play twenty questions?”

“We know nothing concrete.”

Luke pulled a photocopy out of his tux pocket. “Look at it.”

The row of faces, the matches to the names he’d found in Banks’ little black book, looked out of the page, a low-tech identity parade. Red crosses over Tony Banks, Duncan Leadbetter, Hunter Malone, Nancy Seymour. A young Charles Buchanan, Aleksandr Oblov, Jed Carson and two other men were