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

one knows who. We knew he had links with the Brown twins—he served a few months inside with one of them once.”
    I stared. “David Wright was in prison? What for?”
    “Petty theft,” Luke said. “A long time ago. His cellmate was one Neil Wilkes—the man you followed down the baggage belt.”
    “Brown Two.”
    “Yes. His brother is Thomas Wilkes. They’re known counterfeiters. They can forge anything—money, credit cards, passports…”
    “Hence their fake names.”
    “Yes. Now they’re both safely behind bars, but neither will say a word about who they're working for.”
    “They could be working alone,” I said. “Who says they have to work for someone?”
    “They’ve never done it before.”
    “I’ve never pretended to be an air hostess before,” I replied sharply, “but I did yesterday. First time for everything.”
    One smiled. “The crew was quite disturbed. One of them filed a report when she returned. The police brought it to us.”
    Aw, crap.
    Luke was laughing. “She said she was never convinced you were a trainee and she was sure your warrant card was fake.”
    “Which one was she?”
    “Her name was Kerry something…”
    Ha! Kerry was the least helpful of the lot. And the stupidest. She’d told me she’d been on the crew for “seven months, since December”.
    It’s April now.
    “She was just jealous of my natural ability,” I said loftily.
    “Ace also had a record number of complaints about you from passengers,” Luke said, grinning.
    “Oh, well, passengers,” I dismissed. But hey, at least they’d noticed me.
    “Anyway,” One said. “David Wright is booked on the afternoon flight back from Rome. He should be landing at 1745. Luke, will you see him off the plane?” Luke nodded. “And Sophie?”
    I looked up helpfully.
    “Go home and get some sleep. You look wretched.”
    Cheers.
    Luke followed me out. “Guess you must be tired,” he said, “all that travelling and shopping and socialising.”
    “I wasn’t socialising.”
    “So you went back to your passenger’s room on business?”
    I couldn’t help a smile. I wondered what Harvey had thought when he came back out and I wasn’t there. Or if he’d noticed. Or if he was still on his bloody “cell phone”.
    “No, that was personal.”
    Luke scowled at me, and I turned away, grinning. I was just getting out my keys when another car pulled up, one of those special disabled cars, and Alexa opened her door.
    “Hey, the traveller returns.” She smiled. “Nice trip?”
    “Not bad.” I shot a look at Luke, who was still scowling. “You want a hand with that?” I gestured to the wheelchair she was reaching for.
    “No, I’m good.” I watched in amazement as she lifted the wheelchair over from a well where the passenger seat should be, set it on the ground by her door and opened it up. Then she moved a lever that rotated her seat outside of the car and tipped herself into the wheelchair.
    “Very impressive,” I said.
    “Had a lot of practice.” She grabbed her handbag from the footwell and pushed the seat back inside, locked the door and started wheeling herself up the ramp into the office. I marvelled at her upper arm strength.
    As she disappeared inside, One appeared in the doorway. “Luke, Sophie,” he said. “I’m glad you’re still here. I just took a look at those photos you sent.” He nodded at me. “You got one of his diary. I’m glad to see someone else uses a good old fashioned paper diary and not a bloody PalmPilot.”
    I had to hide a smile. He sounded like my dad, the world’s biggest technophobe. He wills his laptop to break down all the time so he can complain about how unreliable it is.
    “He has the Buckman Ball written in for tonight,” One went on.
    Luke sighed.
    “So you two are going to go. I’ll get you some tickets and e-mail you the aliases.”
    Luke nodded and they both looked at me.
    “What is the Buckman Ball?” I asked meekly.
    “In London,” Luke said. “A charity ball. Big celeb presence. Very boring. So far I’ve been every year for the last three years tailing someone. Why do they all go to the Buckman Ball?”
    One did a palms-up. “Beats me. But you two are going. Get your tux out. Get—” he looked at me, “—your ballgown out. Luke, wear a wire. Sophie, this way.”
    Luke got in his car and drove off. I followed One back through into his office where he opened a filing cabinet and took out a collection of small, high-tech