Sure Fire

“Hang on,” Chance said. “I need to set this up.” He fiddled with the plastic box attached to the phone wire.

“What’s that for?” Rich asked.

“Oh, it’s… It’s a security thing. Like a phone lock.”

“There’s only you here,” Jade said. “Or was.”

“The company insists. I deal with a lot of sensitive stuff in my job.”

“Like what?” Jade asked.

“Like I can’t tell you.” He finished working on the box. “That should work now. I’ll leave you to it.”

Rich followed him out. “Why did you throw your letters away?” he asked. “Junk mail?”

“Probably,” Chance said. “Why do you ask?”

“Just curious.”

“They were for the previous tenant of the flat. He didn’t leave a forwarding address.”

Rich nodded. “And no one writes to you?”

Chance smiled. “That’s me – Johnny No-Mates.”

The phone worked fine now, but Jade just got the answer phone at Charmaine’s house, so she rang Mrs Gilpin instead.

Mrs Gilpin seemed pleased to hear from her. “How is everything?” she asked.

“Oh, fine,” Jade lied. “There’s some shops nearby and a little park. And… Dad is sorting out school for us. We’ll be OK.”

“You must come back and visit us.”

“Thank you. We’d like that.” There was something funny with the phone – probably something to do with the plastic box. Jade could hear a clicking every now and again. But she thought nothing of it.

Three streets away from where Jade was making her phone call, an unmarked black van was parked in a side road.

Inside the van, a man wearing dark-framed glasses and a long grey raincoat was sitting in front of a sophisticated audio monitoring system. He wore headphones, listening intently to every word Jade said.

4 (#uce0d6ac3-0244-5c0c-ab32-ac2fda8807cb)

At Heathrow, Stabb was meeting a woman who had just arrived on a scheduled flight. As they walked to the short-term car park, Stabb told the woman how things were going.

“So you’ve achieved nothing,” the woman said with a smile. She was beautiful, with long, straight, jet black hair.

“It is difficult until we can get back the sample,” Stabb said. “We can’t risk losing that, and Chance could have hidden it anywhere. The only way to be sure is to get to Chance as he hands it over. He must still have it or there would have been some fallout by now.”

“I agree. And so does Viktor.”

Stabb scowled. “Glad to hear you both approve.”

“Oh, don’t misunderstand me,” she said, smiling. She brushed her hair away from her face as she got into the car. “You are in charge here.”

Stabb looked at her, then started the engine and pulled out of the parking space.

“So what do you want me to do?” she asked.

“Nothing for now. We’re watching Chance, and so far he’s not made contact with anyone. But the children may provide an opportunity.”

The woman smiled, watching out of the car window as a huge 747 took off into the cloudy sky. “I like children,” she said.

“Jade won’t like that,” Rich warned Chance.

Chance lit the cigarette anyway. He put the packet and his silver lighter down on the coffee table beside his mobile phone. Rich could see there was a heart engraved on the lighter.

Chance blew out a long breath of smoke and Rich winced, trying not to cough. He hated the smell of cigarettes, hated the way the smoke got into your mouth and the stale smell of it lingering on your clothes.

“I’ve had a really long day,” Chance said.

At that moment, Jade appeared in the doorway to the living room. Rich recognised the expression on Jade’s face and from experience he knew it was not good news.

She walked over to Chance and plucked the cigarette from his mouth. Then she ground it out in the ashtray.

“What are you doing?” Chance asked.

“You’re not smoking that,” Jade told him.

“You can’t order me about in my own flat.”

“It might be your flat,” Jade said, “but we all have to live here.”

“Sometimes I just have to have one.” He opened the cigarette packet again.

“You’re killing us as well as yourself,” Jade told him. “Killing your own children.”

Chance was on his feet. He pushed the lighter into the space inside the cigarette packet, then closed the packet and tossed it down on to the table beside his mobile phone. “I’m sorry, but I can’t deal with this right now. I’ll phone schools and you should be somewhere more pleasant by the weekend. Things are not easy for me at the moment – not easy at all.”

He turned and walked quickly from the room.

As soon as the study door slammed shut, Jade scooped up the cigarettes from the coffee table. “Confiscated,” she said. “Since we’re all treating each other like school kids. And that,” she added, picking up Chance’s mobile phone. “That’s confiscated too.”

“What are you going to do with them?” Rich asked. “Ciggies, fine. But you can’t chuck away his phone. And he put his lighter inside the cigarette packet.”

“Then I’ll put them somewhere he won’t find them,” she said.

“He’ll go ape,” Rich said.

Jade grinned. “I know.” She headed for the bedroom.