Page 20 of Fire Must Burn

‘What makes you think Mr Danforth will like you?’ asked Sparks.

‘I’m pretty, blonde and young,’ she said matter-of-factly. ‘Older men coming back from the war like girls like me.’

‘He’s not old,’ protested Sparks. ‘He’s thirty-one.’

‘Yeah, well, that’s old for me, isn’t it?’ said Lowle with a sharp laugh.

Oh, now I truly dislike her, thought Mrs Bainbridge.

‘You do realise that won’t be enough for a man like him,’ said Sparks.

‘And that’s where the two of you come in,’ said Lowle. ‘Once you get him here, you interview him, right?’

‘We do,’ said Mrs Bainbridge. ‘We do that with all our clients.’

‘Of course,’ said Lowle. ‘Only you’ll be a little more thorough with him, won’t you? Then you report back to me, and I will become that woman for our first date. Sound good?’

‘Fine,’ said Sparks. ‘One suggestion, if you don’t mind, from someone with prior experience in this sort of thing.’

‘Sure.’

‘Don’t be a hundred per cent of what he’s looking for. Too much of a good thing will raise hackles as well.’

‘Good point,’ said Lowle. ‘Thanks.’

‘And be careful,’ added Mrs Bainbridge. ‘You may want to be Mata Hari, but it didn’t end well for her. I believe they still have her head in the Museum of Anatomy in Paris.’

She smiled sweetly, and Lowle blanched for a moment. Then she brightened.

‘You’re having me on now,’ she said, getting to her feet. ‘All right, got to get back to the desk job.’

‘Tell the Minister to allow pineapples back again while you’re there,’ said Sparks.

‘Will do,’ said Lowle.

She left. Iris walked out to the landing and peered down the staircase to make certain that she had exited the building. Then she came back into the office, shut the door and sat down heavily in her chair.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said to Gwen. ‘That was worse than I had thought it was going to be.’

‘Was it like this for you?’ asked Gwen.

‘I had to do things during the war that went even further than this,’ said Iris.

‘You used the term “honeytrap” when we met with the Brigadier,’ said Gwen. ‘Does that mean what I think it does? A sexual seduction?’

‘Yes,’ said Iris.

‘And you did that?’

‘Yes.’

‘Did it work?’

‘For a while,’ said Iris. ‘It’s also what cost me my engagement to Mike Kinsey.’

‘Oh,’ said Gwen. ‘I’m so sorry, Iris.’

‘The worst part is that to this day, I don’t know if it contributed anything of real value to the war effort,’ said Iris. ‘Information was gathered, false information was leaked to the enemy. In the grand scheme of things, who knows? One destroyed relationship amid hundreds of thousands dead didn’t mean much to anyone.’