Page 18 of Fire Must Burn

‘Who told you?’ asked Sparks.

‘The Brigadier, of course.’

‘I have no idea what you’re talking about,’ said Sparks.

Lowle looked confused for a moment, then her face fell.

‘Gosh, I’m doing it all wrong,’ she said. ‘I’m supposed to give you the password. Shandy.’

‘Much better,’ said Sparks. ‘Let’s talk.’

THREE

‘What’s your name?’ asked Sparks.

‘It’s Evelyn Lowle as far as the two of you are concerned,’ she replied. ‘And the address on the application is where they’ve put me for this assignment. I don’t have my own telephone there, so you’ll have to use the landlady’s number to reach me. A girl just out of university coming to London for an entry-level desk job can’t afford her own telephone.’

Her accent is much less pronounced now, noticed Mrs Bainbridge.

‘What is your ostensible desk job?’ she asked.

‘Oh, it’s real enough,’ Lowle said with a bitter laugh. ‘I’m supposed to be some kind of a resources analyst, but I’m really just a glorified clerk for the Ministry of Food, if you can believe that. And I actually have to do the work! It’s exactly the sort of thing I was hoping to avoid when I signed up to be an operative. I sit behind a stack of reports, pounding away at my typewriter, all the while thinking, “Is this how Mata Hari got started?”’

‘She was an exotic dancer and a courtesan,’ said Sparks. ‘How’s your exotic dancing?’

‘Not my forte, sorry to say,’ said Lowle. ‘How’s yours?’

‘Passable when I was at Cambridge,’ said Sparks. ‘But the lads there were just happy to see any woman wiggling about on a pub table.’

‘Ah, he told me you’d bring up Cambridge early in the conversation,’ said Lowle.

‘It’s relevant to your assignment,’ said Sparks, bristling.

‘Not particularly,’ said Lowle. ‘But go ahead and brag about it all you like. At least I got a real degree from Manchester, not the BA tit. they saddle the Cambridge girls with.’

‘You’re really from Manchester?’ Mrs Bainbridge asked quickly, forestalling any retort from her partner.

‘I am,’ said Lowle. ‘And I really went to Victoria Universityof Manchester, so I can rattle away about that if called upon. They’re adding records there showing me under this name. All part of my new cover. Oh, speaking of which …’

She opened her bag and pulled out five pounds.

‘I’ve now signed up for your service,’ she said, putting it on Sparks’s desk. ‘Is there a contract for me to sign?’

‘Is that necessary, given you’re not really a client?’ asked Mrs Bainbridge.

‘No, she’s right,’ said Sparks, handing over the paperwork. ‘In case someone is suspicious enough to break in here and look her up in our files.’

‘Let me skim this for a moment,’ said Lowle. ‘Yes. That’s fine. I like the paragraph where you promise not to date the clients. Was it like that from the beginning, or was that in response to some incident?’

‘From the beginning,’ said Sparks tersely. ‘Nor has there been any difficulty adhering to it. Do you need a pen?’

‘Got one,’ said Lowle, pulling one from her bag and signing the contracts. ‘Here you are.’

Sparks and Mrs Bainbridge countersigned, then Sparks handed Lowle her copy which she folded neatly and tucked into her bag.

‘Right,’ she said. ‘So who’s my first date?’

‘Excuse me?’ said Mrs Bainbridge in surprise.