I, Spy? (Sophie Green Mysteries, No. 1) (Sophie Green Mystery)

go on, but we have to know a few facts. Did you see Chris when you got to the undercroft?”
    She shook her head. “I thought I was in the wrong place. I never been down there before. I waited maybe ten minutes and I try to call him, but he didn’t come.”
    “So did you leave?”
    She nodded. “I heard someone coming. I know sometimes they start early. So I left.”
    This concurred with the video footage. Ana had stepped out of the lift at 0356 and got back in at 0411. It was hard to see exactly where she was, because not every part of the undercroft was aspected perfectly, but she explained that she’d gone round to the back of one of the Ace belts, where she and Chris had arranged to meet.
    Except Chris never turned up. Because Chris was dead.
    We left Ana with her small collection of Spanish films and a lot of chocolate, and walked back into the sunshine. It was one of those clear, lovely spring days when you just know that as soon as you take your jacket off and put your sunglasses on, it’s going to start tipping it down.
    “What do you think?” Luke asked as we got back into the car.
    “About Ana?” I shrugged. “I think she was genuine. I don’t think she’s guilty. Besides, it would have taken more than ten minutes to open up the belts and get the body inside.”
    Calling it “the body” was easier than calling it Chris. If I looked at things objectively, it wasn’t quite so hard.
    Hey, look at me! I was coming over all Dana Scully. Maybe I should learn about pathology and stuff.
    No. That was just too gross. Besides, Alexa could do that stuff.
    “Unless she was the one who messed with the CCTV footage and spliced in more than we thought,” Luke said idly, starting the engine. “She could have covered up loads and just added in a bit of her coming and going.”
    I gave him a sideways look. “I thought no one did that stuff any more?”
    “An amateur might,” Luke said, and I rolled my eyes.

Chapter Eight
     
    We went back to the office and Luke asked me where I was planning on staying tonight.
    I paused. Was this a veiled proposition? Was he asking if I wanted to stay with him? Did I?
    Hell, yes.
    But there was something very smug in those dark, contact-lensed eyes of his, something that said he knew he’d got me.
    So I said I was staying with my parents and regretted it all the way home.
    When I was a little girl, I was the most stubborn creature on earth. I never did anything I was told and the only way my mother could get me to cooperate was by reverse-psyching me into what she wanted. But pretty soon I got wise to that, too, and no one could ever get me to do anything.
    I didn’t go to the school my parents wanted me to go to. I didn’t go to the university they thought was best, even when I was supposed to be transferring. I was quite surprised when they condoned my choice of career (such as it was) but now I have the feeling they were hoping I’d give up a lot sooner than I did.
    So I’m perverse. I’m a woman.
    I got home and put Buffy on again and watched her and the Scoobies dance and sing their way around Sunnydale. I ate a whole load of junk food (told you I was showing off about the healthy stuff. None of it counts when I’m depressed) and thought about calling my parents to say I was staying with them again.
    And then I felt pathetic, defeated. Wasn’t I supposed to be a secret agent? Did I have to go and stay with my parents whenever I get scared?
    When I first moved in here on my own, I hardly spent a night alone for weeks. Angel or someone, Ella and Evie who I went to school with, would come over and watch videos with me until the small hours, and then like as not fall asleep on the sofa. It wasn’t until my very first night when I had to cook my own tea, clear up (that habit didn’t last long), lock the door and switch the lights out all by myself, then get into my very big, cold bed and lie there listening to all the homicidal rapists right outside my front door, that I realised quite how alone I was.
    But it passed. Now I liked my solitude. Now I loved the fact that I live alone and take care of myself.
    Or at least I did until someone started sending me bits of a corpse.
    I got all my new secret agent paraphernalia out on the floor and looked at it. The stun gun I was starting to like. It didn’t look like a weapon, it looked like the sort of thing my mother uses to curl her fringe, but maybe that was the cool thing about it. It was in disguise. But there