The Girl Who Stole the Apple

Maggie shook her head. ‘Not today.’

Zoe chattered away through the process. Maggie would have liked to shut her eyes and just think, but Zoe wasn’t going to allow that, so she gave up.

It was at the end, when Maggie was paying, that Zoe reappeared by her side. ‘Almost forgot, darling. Another letter came for you.’ She handed her an envelope.

Maggie knew who it was from, and she had no need to look at it. She stuffed it into her handbag. “Another letter.” Zoe made it sound like a common occurrence, when in fact it had happened only twice before.

‘Fancy lunch on Monday, Maggs?’ Zoe helped her on with her coat. ‘There’s a couple of good films on in George Street too.’ They moved outside and let the door shut before Zoe took her by the arm. ‘Are you OK, Maggs? You’ve been so silent today.’

‘The police questioned me.’

‘About the explosion? Why?’

‘About why I wasn’t in the shop at the time. They think it was suspicious that I wasn’t there. They thought I knew what was going to happen.’

‘Are you serious?’

‘They won’t question you. I didn’t tell them about you. I don’t want to drag you into anything.’

‘Drag me into what?’ Zoe gripped her friend’s arm tighter. ‘What are you talking about, Maggs?’

‘I told them I was seeing my sugar daddy, who has dementia. Probably they’ll find out that it’s my dad. I hope they do really, because when they find out I’ve been playing silly buggers with them, they’ll stop looking any further. It won’t occur to them that was I actually seeing you.’

They were both silent for several seconds.

Then Maggie gave her friend a quick hug. ‘I must go.’

‘Would you like to talk about it? I could ring tonight. Or we could meet up.’

‘No!’ Maggie whispered, but with such urgency that Zoe stepped back a pace. ‘It’s not safe. To meet or communicate at all.’

Then she walked briskly away, across the pedestrian crossing and down the side street where she had parked her car, unaware of the fact that a red-haired woman in the café next to the hair studio was watching her progress with great interest.

* * *

Maggie didn’t open the letter for some time. It lay undisturbed in her handbag as she drove her Vauxhall Astra back to East Oxford, parking near her flat by Florence Park. Then she made her way to the Magic Café. Even though time was tight, she walked unhurriedly, putting off the moment of truth. Nico wouldn’t mind if she was a few minutes late for work. Her reliability was something he was always commenting on. Inside the café, she treated herself to a cup of peppermint tea and a piece of organic carrot cake. There were two mothers with toddlers sitting on the sofas at the front, but otherwise it was quiet. She bit into the cake and only then did she remove the envelope from her bag.

For half a minute she studied the address on the envelope. It was Ellie’s writing alright, neat and extremely legible and written in aquamarine ink. She had always experimented with her colours, and she had only ever used a biro when that was the only option. Had? Maggie pulled herself up. Why was she thinking in those terms, as if Ellie no longer existed? She shivered. She wasn’t a person who felt the cold — she had too much insulation on her body as Ellie had once quipped in one of her rare unkind moments — but nevertheless Maggie shivered.

She picked up the knife she had collected from the cutlery tray and, like a surgeon making a first decisive incision, slit the envelope open. She removed a single sheet of white A4 paper. She glanced around the room. Only one pair of eyes was watching her, and they belonged to the male toddler, who was sucking on a red plastic beaker. She dismissed him and began to read. Unlike Sam, who dealt only in cryptic messages, Ellie had written a proper letter of sorts. Dear Maggie, it began. I am being watched. Haven’t said anything. Sam is paranoid enough without me adding to it. But I thought you should know. Love from me.

Maggie folded it up, slipped it back in the envelope and put it into her bag. She sipped at her tea but barely registered the taste. She pushed the carrot cake, a single bite gone, to the centre of the table.

I am being watched. Of the four words it was ‘am’ that scared her the most. Not ‘may be,’ but ‘am.’ Coming from Ellie and given the past, the words had to be taken extremely seriously. Maggie pulled the envelope out of her bag again and studied the stamp and postmark. It had been posted nearly three weeks ago. And she hadn’t wished Maggie a happy birthday.

* * *

Elgar wished he was working alone. Then he could be making all the decisions himself. Of course, in the service you were ultimately always responsible to someone else higher up the food chain, but when making tactical decisions it was up to you and you alone. Only afterwards, when you had screwed up, did you have to either explain yourself to Him Upstairs or cover your tracks. Elgar was good at that. When it came to concocting a story, J.K. Rowling had nothing on him.

But on this mission he wasn’t working alone. He had been ordered to work with Bridget Malone, aka Bridget the Midget. Not that he ever called her that to her face. Even though she only came up to his shoulder, he had seen enough of her in action to know that it would be very dangerous to cross her. Or try to exclude her from any operational decision. He had no doubt that if it suited her she’d drop him in the shit from the top of the highest tower block, or (if there were no tower blocks available) stick a stiletto between his third and fourth rib without the slightest increase in her heart rate. All of which meant that cutting corners, flying by the seat of his pants or trying to pull rank on her were risky options. A memory bobbed to the surface: it was the first time he had been allowed to help light the fireworks on bonfire night. ‘Always light the touch paper at arm’s length,’ his father had insisted time and time again. ‘Then retreat to a safe distance.’ It had seemed trite and boring at the time, and yet he now looked back on it as being the best advice his father had ever given. He glanced across at Bridget. He thought of her as a firework, only a thousand times more dangerous, and sadly not a rocket that could be dispatched into the stratosphere, never to return. She was something more insidious — a highly explosive Mine of Serpents maybe, pretty as a picture when first activated before suddenly bursting violently and noisily into life (and maybe death).

‘God, this is tedious!’ he muttered, unable to bear his own thoughts or the silence any longer. The only sign that Bridget had heard him was a look of disgust that floated across her face like a passing cloud. She was holding a pair of binoculars to her eyes and scanning methodically and unhurriedly from left to right and back again, like someone watching a game of tennis played with a balloon.

‘Be not afraid of going slowly,’ Bridget said.

‘Be only afraid of standing still,’ he replied in a bored voice. Bridget had an unending supply of Chinese proverbs, but this was the one she always trotted out whenever he got restive.

‘If you’ve got any better ideas rattling round inside that tin head of yours, maybe you should share them.’ Bridget was up for a fight, it was clear. But when wasn’t she?