Solo

was topless, her arm held demurely across her breasts; and there were others of her in full make-up, hair blown awry by a wind machine, her cleavage plungingly on display. There was one set of her sitting up in a rumpled bed, naked, her back to the camera, the cleft of her buttocks visible, her hair tousled, her eyes half closed and invitingly come-hither. The name at the foot of each photograph was ‘Astrid Ostergard’. So, Bryce Fitzjohn was Astrid Ostergard in another life. The name seemed familiar to Bond – where had he seen it before? He leafed through the photos – an actress, a dancer, a model? A high-class prostitute? Bond was tempted to take a photo as a souvenir.
    He quickly went through the other drawers of the desk and found nothing out of the ordinary. Her passport confirmed her name was indeed Bryce Connor Fitzjohn (aged thirty-seven) born in Kilkenny, Ireland. It was time to go upstairs. Bond drained his glass of Haig and left it on the desk.
    On the first floor there were two bedrooms, one with a bathroom en suite and clearly Bryce’s. Bond opened cupboards and drawers and the medicine cabinet in the bathroom – he noticed there seemed no trace of a male presence anywhere. In the guest bedroom the bottom drawer of the bedside table revealed an ancient, desiccated half-pack of Gauloises cigarettes and a well-thumbed copy of Frank Harris’s
My Life and Loves
. Scant evidence of a man in her life. No, there was really nothing to go on apart from the pseudonymous photographs—
    The sound of a motor – diesel – and a tyre-scatter of gravel made Bond freeze for a second before he strode to the window, peering out cautiously. A breakdown van towing a Triumph Herald 13/60 convertible pulled up outside. Bryce Fitzjohn stepped out of the cab of the van and, from the other door, an overalled mechanic emerged, who unhitched the Herald. Bond watched Bryce write a cheque for the driver and see him and his van off with a cursory wave, and then Bond drew back as she unlocked the front door to her house.
    Bond moved quickly to the top of the stairs, the better to overhear the series of calls she proceeded to make from the telephone on the small table in the hallway. ‘Yes,’ he heard her say, ‘me again. Nightmare . . . After the breakdown in Kingston . . . It got worse – completely dead . . .’, ‘Hello, darling,
so
sorry . . . No we’ll do it another time . . .’, ‘I might have been in Siberia, nobody offered to help . . . Took me three hours after I called you to find a garage . . .’, ‘And then the man said the car was fixed but it still wouldn’t fucking start . . . Exactly, so I had to find another garage . . . Day from hell . . . Yes, I’m going to have a hot bath and an enormous gin and tonic . . .’, ‘Bye, my dear . . . Yes, it is a shame . . . everything was ready . . . No, we’ll do it again. Promise . . .’ and so on for another few minutes as she rang around apologising to the friends who were meant to have come to her party, Bond assumed.
    As he stood there listening he began to wonder what his best course of action would be. Reveal himself? Or try to slip out unnoticed? He heard her go into the kitchen and then a minute later head back across the hall for the stairs. He ducked into the spare bedroom. He heard her kick off her shoes on the landing and the chime of ice in a glass, then, moments after, the sound of water tumbling into a bath. Bond peered out, carefully. She had left the door to her bedroom open and he was able to watch her undress, partially, in a kind of jump-cut striptease, as she crossed and recrossed her room, shedding clothes. He moved cautiously out into the corridor and saw her reflected in the mirror of her dressing table. She was wearing a red brassiere and red panties, and her skin was very white. He noted the furrow of her spine deepen as she arched her arms back to unclip the fastener of her brassiere. And then she slipped out of vision.
    Bond stepped back into the spare bedroom – he was both excited and, at the same time, made vaguely uneasy by this unsought-for act of voyeurism. Everything seemed unexceptionable and explicable: there had indeed been a party planned – that was then cancelled when her car broke down in Kingston on the way back from London. No honey trap after all; sheer coincidence being the explanation behind everything – yet again. Still, he thought, better to be secure in