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

Come on, Sophie, get in. I’ll take you home.”
    “Who says I want to go home? Maybe I’ll go and find Harvey and get a room.” I started walking and he cruised along beside me.
    “Because that worked out so well last time. Look, you need sleep.”
    “I’ll make my own way.”
    “I have a CD changer.”
    I almost smiled at that.
    “What’s on it?”
    “Led Zeppelin—”
    I held up my hands. “I’ll walk.”
    “Nickelback. Avril Lavigne. Madonna. S Club Juniors. Dolly Parton. Pavarotti. Use the radio. Just get in the bloody car, will you?”
    I hesitated. On the one hand, giving in to Luke, which I really, really hated to do. On the other, spending hour upon hour trudging around in someone else’s deadly shoes, alone, unarmed, in London—all right, Kensington, but it was still dark and cold and lonely.
    I let out a big sigh as if it was the biggest chore in the world and got in. The car was warm and quiet, a cocoon against the outside world. We slid out onto the road again.
    “You don’t really have S Club Juniors in here, do you?”
    He grinned sheepishly. “I don’t even have a CD changer.”
    See? I knew he was a liar.
     
    I must have dozed off some time before we hit the M11, because the next thing I remembered was Luke shaking me by the shoulder and saying we were home. I looked at the clock on the dash. It was well after midnight.
    “Thanks,” I said as I got out of the car. “For the lift and everything.”
    “No problem. You want me to see you in?”
    “I think I can manage,” I said with as much sarcasm as my tired mind could gather. According to my roster, I should be on an early shift today. Starting in about four hours. I stifled a yawn.
    “I’ll call in sick for you,” Luke offered. “You already had today off.”
    “They’ll love me,” I said.
    He got out of the car and walked me to my door without me asking. It was very sweet of him, but if he was expecting anything more than me passing out as soon as I got horizontal he was going to be very disappointed.
    “You’ll be okay?” he said as I unlocked the door, and he looked kind of adorable in the light from the security lamp.
    “I’ll be fine,” I said, opening the door and shoving inside. A wave of hot smell hit me. “Jesus, Tammy, what have you brought in?”
    “Need to turn that heating down,” Luke said, making a face. “Something’s rotten.”
    “It’s Tammy. When she’s feeling unloved, she brings dead things in…” I trailed off. Tammy was still at my parents’ house. So unless something had crawled through the cat flap and died…
    I kicked off the torturous shoes and rushed over to the post I’d discarded yesterday, scooping up today’s on the way. No manila envelopes, but one fat Jiffy bag, and the free charity pen…
    I got my rubber gloves out and tore into the charity envelope. There was no pen. I opened the Jiffy bag. Nothing pleasant there either.
    Luke and I stared at the two festering fingers. Bile rose in my throat.
    “Okay, this is gross,” I said. “Get me a, get me a sandwich bag for them or something. This is disgusting.”
    I didn’t know where to put them—I sure as hell wasn’t messing with the sleepy village policemen at this time of night—so I ended up shoving them in the freezer, well away from anything I might ever want to eat again.
    In fact, I was thinking I might clean out the whole freezer when something caught my attention. Luke had been studying the printed “charity” envelope as it lay on the counter. I picked up the Jiffy bag.
    “This wasn’t postmarked,” I said. “There’s no stamp. This was put through my door. Someone came to my house and put this through my door.”
    I started to shudder. I was past fear now. I was tired and, weirdly, I was hungry, and I was damn annoyed that on top of Luke and Harvey and Wright and the Brownie twins, someone was sending me the severed fingers of someone whose murder we were miles away from solving.
    I jammed my feet into trainers, strode over to the door and glared into the yard, as if I thought I might see something there.
    Then I did see something there.
    At least, I saw something moving beyond the fence. Not thinking, I ran straight out there, Luke yelling after me, and saw someone—not a cat or a fox or anything small, an actual person—disappear into the semi-abandoned building site across the car park.
    “Sophie, what the hell are you—” Luke began, but then he stopped. “Soph,” he said