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

as a landing could be. “Okay. Maria, did you ever…” How to put this? Did you ever get off with Luke? Ever want to? “Did you ever get a finger sent through your door?”
    She appeared in the doorway, towelling her face. “No,” she said, “although I once found a stiff in my bunk. But that was accidental.”
    “Accidental?”
    “Yeah. Got the wrong bed.”
    I blanched at this. What was I letting myself in for?
    “But that was before SO17,” she added, going through into a bedroom that was perfectly, beautifully furnished in shades of blue. She picked up a hooded sweater, pulled it on, and started down the stairs again.
    “What did you do before SO17?”
    She shrugged. “Two years in the Navy, three in the SBS.”
    “The…?”
    “SBS. Special Boat Service? The less famous and much wetter version of the SAS. Then I got hauled out to do this. But SO17 was a lot bigger then.”
    “What happened?”
    “Lots of things. Not so much work to do—security got a lot tighter and left us twiddling our thumbs. A few people retired, a few sort of had retirement thrust upon them.” She raised her eyebrows at me. “The government withdrew funds, we got sort of stranded.”
    Withdrew funds? “I will still get paid, right?” I blurted, and Maria laughed.
    “Of course you will. And aren’t you still getting something from Ace? You’ll be fine.”
    As fine as Maria in her beautiful house? Boy, the SBS must pay damn well.
    I followed her into a big, messy lovely kitchen, with a conservatory and a big squashy sofa and a couple of huge lazy ginger cats, who I ran over to immediately. “What are their names?”
    “Laurel and Hardy. When I got them Laurel was all thin and weedy but now they’re both so fat they hardly get off the sofa except to eat more.”
    I grinned, sitting there stroking both of them. Laurel got up, stretched luxuriously and settled in my lap.
    “I think you’ve made a friend,” Maria said, and I knew she wasn’t talking about the cats. I loved anyone who was kind to Tammy. “So—” she started opening cupboards and getting out crisps and chocolate and Jelly Babies, “—what did you want to talk about?”
    I played with Laurel’s tail. “It’s not really that important.”
    “Spit it out. Is it a work thing?”
    I shrugged. “Sort of.”
    Maria put down the junk food she was carrying and gave me a shrewd look. “Is it about Luke?”
    I gulped nervously, and Maria laughed.
    “You’re going to have to work on your acting if you’re going to be a spy,” she said. “What’s he done? Did he make a move on you?”
    I bit my lip.
    “Oh, Jesus. Well, look. He does that a lot. It’s sort of like habit to him. I wouldn’t expect a whole lot to come of it.”
    Should I tell her a whole lot nearly had come of it? That if it hadn’t been for the dead finger, a whole lot really would have come?
    No. Perhaps better not.
    “Luke’s a really good bloke,” Maria went on. “He’s good at what he does.”
    Hoo boy. I knew that.
    “But he’s not exactly stable when it comes to relationships.”
    How did she know that?
    “It’s hard to have a normal relationship when you have so many secrets to keep,” Maria explained, shaking Doritos into a bowl and handing me some cheese and chive dip. “I can hardly remember the last one I had. You want my advice, avoid relationships. Stick to casual sex.”
    I blinked at her.
    “Luke has it down to a fine art,” Maria said wryly, scooping a Dorito into the dip. “Don’t think he’s been emotionally attached to anything since he got his SIG.”
    Marvellous.
    Maria had an excellent sound system and she slotted a DVD of the Cranberries into the player. We watched for a while on the wide screen TV, eating lots of crisps and dip (saving the sweet course for later), and then Maria looked over at me and laughed.
    “What?”
    “You, eating junk. Luke said you were all holier-than-thou about additives.”
    “Only between the hours of three and five on the third Tuesday of every month.” I scooped up a fat blob of dip. “And only in public.”
    “Amen to that. I did wonder why you had crisps in your house if you only ate pure things.”
    “Everyone has their vices.”
    I suppose they do. Looking at Maria, it was hard to figure out what hers were. Doritos, maybe? She had eaten about three.
    She got up and went into the kitchen, and when she returned had a bottle of wine and two glasses.
    “I’m driving,” I said reluctantly, and she