Chapter 3
Amy Wheeler is never really sure what people talk about.
She sees them right now, in this oppressively cute bookshop.
Little groups of three or four people, tipping their wine glasses towards each other, and all nattering away about something.
But what? Opinions? God save Amy from opinions.
In Amy’s view, human beings should only be allowed, say, four opinions a year.
Then they’d have to save them up for something really important.
If she were to sidle up to one of the groups, these laughing, nodding little units, what on earth would she say?
They’re probably talking about books, aren’t they?
What would Amy have to add? Very little.
She once shot someone in the library of a Syrian dictator’s palace, but that’s about it for Amy and books.
Scanning the room, she sees that each group has its own Amy.
The shy one hanging back, taking twice as many sips of their drink as the others.
Smiling at what has just been said, but scared to add anything of their own.
Each group could handle one of these silent partners, welcomed them probably, giving the principals the time to outline their opinions at more length, but no group could handle two of them. It would implode.
Amy has never been to a book launch before – I mean, who on earth has?
– so she walks around for a bit, trying to look like she belongs here.
Steve is late because someone tried to mug him in the Brockenhurst Station car park.
As Brockenhurst Police Station is closed – ‘due to cuts, Amy, don’t get me started’ – Steve has instead marched his mugger round to the local snooker club, where they’ve promised to keep him locked in a store cupboard until an arresting officer can arrive from Lymington.
Anyway, the short version of the whole thing is that Steve has missed his train and will be meeting them at The Graham Norton Show instead.
The long version involved a detailed rundown of the Brockenhurst-to-London-Waterloo rail timetable, and a lengthy discursion about the ex-wife of the man who runs the snooker club, who is apparently now an unlicensed beauty therapist in Portsmouth.
Ordinarily Amy would have hurried him along, but with a choice between wandering alone through a book launch and an anecdote from her father-in-law beginning ‘And here’s another thing people don’t realize about Portsmouth’, she had chosen Steve.
But all good anecdotes come to an end, and now Amy is back to pretending to belong in this room.
Fitting in is the sort of thing she’s normally very good at.
Stick Amy in a fish market in Tbilisi or a petrochemical conference in Nairobi and she can blend right in.
Worlds she knows and understands. But here?
In this book-stuffed hell, full of gesticulating men and women with haircuts they haven’t done themselves in a mirror?
Rosie had told her the dress code was ‘informal’, but Amy realized too late that she shouldn’t have worn trainers.
Or a tracksuit. If this is what these people understand by ‘informal’, where would they have left to go if it was ‘formal’? Suits of armour?
Amy attempts to float across the room, looking as if she is heading somewhere.
She has picked up two glasses of champagne from a side table.
An old trick from her dating days. Walk through a room with a glass of champagne in your hand and men will speak to you.
Walk through a room with two glasses and they hold back.
You’ve got somewhere to be. Someone to meet.
Easier to do, of course, when the champagne is free.
And now she really looks around her, there are only about five men in the whole room, and all of them are pushing seventy.
Steve could have made out like an absolute bandit here if he had shown up.
Even if he was dressed in an old Iron Maiden T-shirt, which he almost certainly is.
It would be nice to see Steve find a bit of romance again.
That’s what Debbie would have wanted for her husband, surely?
She should speak to Steve about it, but he won’t want to listen.
Perhaps one day. Maybe she could tell Adam to talk to him about it?
But Adam doesn’t really like to talk about Debbie either.
Too much pain for them both, her death so sudden and brutal.
Amy supposes Adam and Steve worry that talking about it might only multiply that pain.
Amy reaches the far end of the room and thus has no option other than to roll her eyes and shake her head as if she has forgotten something, then walk back across the room again.
She needn’t have bothered with the charade, nobody seems to notice.
No one here knows who Amy is, as Rosie neglected to introduce her. What would she even have said?
‘And this is Amy. She was my close-protection officer, but then she was accused of murder. All sorted though, and now we run a detective agency with her father-in-law, who I have a terrible crush on.’
As she weaves her way back through the groups, elbows high to protect her drinks, Amy listens in.
‘And I said, well, it’s Dan Brown meets Salman Rushdie, and it sold in the room.’
‘I’m telling you, books written by celebrities’ dogs. We’ve just signed …’
‘Well, I’m just passing it on, but she did say that Ian McEwan is surprisingly buff.’
Amy spies the largest of the groups joined in happy conversation and places herself at the very edge.
That’ll do. She’s close enough to look part of the group, but not close enough that anyone is going to ask her opinion on whoever Ian McEwan might be.
She can wait it out here until Rosie reappears.
Amy knows she isn’t stupid, but nobody wanted to hear what she had to say when she was growing up, and she hasn’t managed to pick the skill up since.
Then again Amy knows how to punch, and perhaps these people don’t? It takes a village.
‘And what are you reading?’
To Amy’s horror, she realizes the man is talking to her.
She should have seen it coming. It was inevitable eventually.
You stand on the edge of a group for long enough, nodding and smiling and sipping your drink, with a symmetrical-enough face and blonde-enough hair, and someone will eventually feel the need to include you. To ask you a question.
‘I’m not reading anything,’ says Amy. ‘I’m standing here talking to you.’
This gets a polite laugh. ‘Touché,’ says the man and resumes speaking to a woman who Amy will assume is a poet until she receives any information to the contrary.
Then Amy remembers that she actually is reading something at the moment. She’s reading Rosie’s new book, And the Devil Blinked First. The very reason they are all here.
‘I’m reading And the Devil Blinked First,’ says Amy.
The man looks over at the pile of books.
‘Any good? I’ve never read any of hers.’
Why is he even here, then? To drink champagne and hit on poets? Ughh.
‘Yes,’ says Amy. ‘It’s very good.’
It is very good. Rosie had shown her an early copy, and, while Amy had to correct a laughable mistake Rosie had made about the calibre of a former Russian service weapon, it had a sweeping love story, some very satisfactory murders and a note-perfect explanation of how to shoot down a helicopter with an assault rifle.
Amy will give Rosie a hug when she finishes it and tell her she’s proud of her.
‘Each to their own,’ says the man, and smirks at the poet, who, Amy notes, does not smirk back.
Amy feels an intense rush of protectiveness towards Rosie.
She leans in to the poet and gestures towards the man. ‘Left trouser pocket, wedding ring, just to let you know.’
Amy turns heel and leaves the group. So she does know how to make conversation sometimes.
Where has Rosie got to though? Seriously?
Not Amy’s professional responsibility any more, but she continues to take a keen amateur interest. This afternoon, for example, Rosie was adamant that she wanted to travel down to a housing estate in South London to buy weed, and Amy felt duty-bound to accompany her.
But these days Amy does such things as a friend, rather than an employee.
As it turned out, the local dealers could not have been more charmed by Rosie, and Amy had been able to keep her military-issue taser in her handbag throughout.
Amy spies a fire door left ajar. Beyond the fire door Amy sees there is an alley, and she knows Rosie well enough by now to know that if there is an alley nearby, Rosie will make a beeline for it.
Pressing down on the metal bar, Amy scrapes the door open a few more inches and squeezes through into the cooling air of a Soho evening. The thick fog of high-grade skunk tells her she has found her friend. Rosie is mid-conversation. But when is she not?
‘You must know someone who’s been murdered?’ says Rosie. ‘For goodness’ sake, Lionel. Hello, Amy.’
‘Rosie,’ Amy nods. ‘I’ve missed you.’
In the tight and damp little alley behind the bookshop, Rosie D’Antonio is smoking a fairly giant spliff through an elegant silver cigarette holder. Her elbow rests on a large purple recycling bin, as if it’s a grand piano in a country-house drawing room.
Rosie hands the spliff to the man named Lionel. He must be in his mid-sixties, nice suit. Just Rosie’s type. Amy recognizes him, but can’t remember from where. He takes a drag and stifles a cough.
‘Jesus,’ says Lionel. ‘This stuff is lethal.’
‘The best,’ agrees Rosie.
Lionel takes another drag, more prepared this time, then passes the spliff back to Rosie. ‘And why would I know anyone who’s been murdered?’
‘Because you’re the Foreign Secretary,’ says Rosie. ‘You hear about all sorts of things. Russian billionaires bumping people off.’
That’s where Amy recognizes him from. She tries to avoid the news when she can, but, even so, some of it gets through, doesn’t it? One minute you’re looking at a video of a dog playing the piano on TikTok, the next minute, Ukraine.
‘I mean, I have the entirety of the security forces at my disposal,’ says Lionel. ‘Protocol says I let them deal with murders.’
‘We only need the one,’ says Rosie. ‘Be a pal. Otherwise Amy will get bored and leave me.’
Rosie is quite right. It’s been fun, these last few months.
Quietly escorting Rosie around the world to book launches, from Rio to Reykjavík, waiting for somebody to need them.
But Amy is beginning to think that nobody needs them.
Even Rosie doesn’t really need her. She suspects that the visit to South London was for her benefit.
A bit of jeopardy to make Amy feel useful.
But even on the South London estate, everybody loved Rosie.
At least it means she can see more of Adam.
He’s been in the Middle East for the past few months, and she thinks she might head out and join him for a couple of days.
Their wedding anniversary is coming up, and she’d like to surprise him.
They don’t need to be in each other’s pockets, but it does get to the point when they miss each other.
Or she misses him, at least. Does he miss her?
‘Don’t smoke too much of that,’ says Amy. ‘You’re on Graham Norton tonight.’
‘Okay, Mum,’ says Rosie, and rolls her eyes at Lionel. However, she does stub the spliff out. She motions for Amy and Lionel to follow her back inside.
Lionel indicates that she should go first and Amy nods her thanks, then stops.
‘Where are your close-protection officers?’ Amy asks.
‘Gave them the slip,’ says Lionel.
Amy doubts that very much. Sometimes you let your principal think they’ve given you the slip. Everyone needs privacy. But you’re always there somewhere.
She looks over to the large purple recycling bin and sees the lid rise by an inch.
A pair of eyes meets hers. She nods, and the eyes blink in response.
Amy has hidden in many recycling bins over the years.
Recycling bins, storm drains, portable toilets, air vents.
She once spent four hours dug into a mound of manure while a rock star she was protecting was having sex with a weather presenter in an abandoned barn.
You had to admire their stamina, but really.
Amy walks back into the party with a smile. What she wouldn’t give to be in that recycling bin right now, instead of in this bookshop.
All she needs is for someone to get murdered. Otherwise she is in danger of having to live a normal life.
‘Normal.’ Is there any more depressing word in the English language?