The Stephanie Fitzpatrick series

Later, I told myself that this was the moment I chose to stop being Petra Reuter. But the truth is, my body had already made that decision for me. Two and a half years of Petra had poisoned me.

She didn’t recognize the room, which now belonged to the Thurman Mining Company. Through the window, she saw the monumental Adelphi Building on the other side of Robert Street. One wall of the office was covered by two huge maps, one of Brazil, the other of Mongolia. Small areas on each had been staked out in blue, black and red ink. Lists of hectares had been pinned next to selected areas. On the desk, a paper Brazilian flag sat in a mug that had Ordem e Progresso stencilled around it. There were framed photographs on the wall beside the window; miners in hard hats at the mouth of a mine, men in short-sleeved shirts in front of a wasteland of felled forest, the horizon smudged brown by smoke.

The door opened. A skinny man in khaki combat trousers and a blue Nike T-shirt entered. His light brown hair was clipped short. He wore glasses, the grey frames with a matt finish, the lenses with a tint.

‘Hey, Steph. Sorry to keep you waiting.’ Stephanie stiffened; the familiarity of strangers had always had that effect upon her. His accent sounded mildly Lancastrian. He offered a hand. ‘Martin Palmer.’

She didn’t think he looked any older than she did, which – with the exception of Rosie Chaudhuri – made him the youngest person she had seen at Magenta House. Palmer had a grey nylon satchel slung over his left shoulder. He took it off and sat in the swivel chair behind the desk, relegating her to the plastic seat opposite. He produced a pad of paper and a pencil, and then apologized for not being able to offer her coffee.

She said, ‘I’ve never seen you before.’

He looked coy. ‘I’m new.’ He offered her a conspiratorial smile that she didn’t reciprocate. ‘I’ve got a few questions I need to ask you. It’s just routine.’

‘What kind of questions?’

‘Personal, mostly. If that’s all right?’

‘What are you, a psychologist?’

‘Something like that.’

‘You look nervous.’

‘Well, I’m not.’

‘I didn’t say you were nervous. I said you looked it.’

Now, he looked embarrassed. ‘Do you mind if we start?’

The balance shifted, Stephanie shrugged. ‘Sure. What do you want to ask me?’

‘Well … let’s see. You’ve been coming in here for … what is it? Three weeks?’

‘And two days.’

‘For debriefing?’

‘That’s not what I’d call it.’

A soldier had once told Stephanie that debriefing was therapy. That it helped him to come to terms with the things he’d had to do – and the things he’d had to see – during active undercover service. Each mission had always been followed by intense analysis; what went wrong, what went right, the lessons for the future. Some of the scrutiny was technical, some of it personal. By the end of the process, he’d always felt mentally exhausted but, crucially, he’d also felt that no element had been overlooked, that every aspect had been examined and rationalized in the minutest detail. And that no matter how draining the experience, it had left him better equipped to cope with his memories.

Stephanie understood what he’d meant but did not feel the same way. As the soldier had pointed out, to succeed as therapy, it was important to place one’s trust in those conducting the sessions. Over three weeks, the more Alexander probed, the more violated she’d felt, and the more she’d reacted against it. From sullen silence to outright hostility, she’d felt unable to stop herself.

Palmer jotted something onto the pad. ‘What are you doing away from here?’

‘How do you mean?’

‘In the evenings, for instance.’

‘I just stay in the flat. I buy something to eat on the way home, cook it, watch TV, read a book.’

‘You haven’t gone out at all?’

Only once, during the second week, after a long day lying to Alexander about a contract she’d taken in New York. She’d felt she needed a drink so she’d stopped at a bar on St Martin’s Lane. She’d picked a small table by the door and watched the pavement traffic for half an hour, letting alcohol soften the ache. The place had been busy, the after-work crowd unwinding; groups at tables and around the bar, laughter, gossip, cigarette smoke.

He wore a cheap pin-stripe, she remembered. Thick around the waist, growing a second chin. Pink cheeks and ginger stubble. He emerged from a crowd at the far end of the glass bar, a pint in one hand. He offered to buy her another drink. She smiled and declined but he sat down opposite her.

She said, ‘I’m waiting for someone.’

He grinned, revealing smoker’s teeth. ‘Me?’

Stephanie said nothing.

‘Seriously, love, sure you won’t have another?’

She glanced at his group. ‘Am I part of a bet?’

‘Don’t worry about them.’

He was slightly drunk. She could smell the beer on his breath.

‘I’m not worried about them.’

‘I’m Charlie.’

‘I’m not interested.’

When he offered his hand, she took it, rolled the fingers into the palm and crushed the fist against the table-top. He sucked air through his teeth, his eyes widened and perspiration sprouted instantly across his pale forehead. Stephanie felt as though she was watching someone else hurt him. But when she thought of how she’d turned on Olivier, she was filled with self-disgust. She let go of him and he sprang up from the chair, backing away from her, bumping into other customers, muttering something she couldn’t hear.

Martin Palmer was waiting for an answer.

Stephanie said, ‘I’m not much in the mood for partying at the moment.’

‘Are you drinking?’

‘What?’

He kept his eyes on his notes. ‘Are you drinking alcohol?’ Now, he looked up. ‘At night, when you go home?’

Beneath the anger ran a current of sadness. ‘Not enough.’

She was aware of her defences rising, which made her aware of how quickly they’d been lowered. Not by Palmer’s crafty questions – she was surprised by his clumsiness – but by something within her. She recognized the feeling. It was the desire to unburden herself. But Palmer wasn’t the right confessor. For two hours, they talked. There were many questions she wanted to answer honestly but couldn’t, not to him. To have done so would have been to cheapen the truth.

She was disappointed, then frustrated and eventually bitter.

‘Let me see,’ Palmer murmured. ‘This Turkish arms dealer, Salman Rifat. According to Mr Alexander, you told him that you had to sleep with Rifat in order to gain his trust and earn yourself access to files he kept at his villa.’

‘Sleep with?’

Palmer looked annoyed by the semantic distinction. ‘Have sex with.’

‘What about it?’

‘Well, how did you feel about that?’

‘How did I feel?’

‘Yes.’

‘Sore.’

He blushed. ‘That’s not what I meant.’

‘I know what you meant,’ Stephanie snapped. ‘But sore is what I felt. And do you know why? Because Rifat had a dick as thick as your wrist and there wasn’t a part of me he didn’t like to force it into. And I let him do that to me because that was part of the job.’

Palmer tried to convey control and began to scribble notes. ‘Fine. I see. Okay …’

‘Okay?’

He winced. ‘Sorry. I didn’t mean it to sound like that.’

‘What did you mean it to sound like? Compassion? Comprehension?’

‘Look, I’m trying to help here …’

‘Let me tell you about Salman Rifat. He’s an arms dealer. A charmer. A monster. And he has his pleasures.’ She hesitated, then looked at her feet. ‘His favourite thing was to make me strip for him, usually in a living room, never in a bedroom. While I stripped, he’d tell me to do things and I’d do them. But the end was always the same. He has this estate in Greece. It produces olive oil. And wherever he is in the world, he has these small bottles of home-made olive oil with him. Dark blue glass, a miniature cork in the top. What he liked to do most was to make me bend over something – the back of a sofa, a table – and he’d pour a little of this oil onto the centre of my spine. He liked to watch it run over skin. That was his thing. He’d tell me to move this way or that. And the more turned on he became, the more aggressive he became. Finally, when the oil ran over my backside, he’d fuck me. One way or the other.’

She looked up. Palmer was staring at her and appeared to have stopped breathing.

‘So when you ask me what I felt and I say I felt sore, you can bloody well write that down. Along with all the other shit that’s going to tell Alexander what he wants to know.’

‘Look, Steph …’

She snorted contemptuously. ‘Steph? You make it sound as though we’ve known each other for years.’

‘I’m only trying to be friendly.’

‘Don’t waste your time. Or mine.’

‘There’s no need to be so hostile.’

‘Why are you asking me these questions? What do you think my answers are going to tell you?’

He averted his gaze. ‘It’s just a routine evaluation.’

Stephanie smiled and it was enough for both of them to understand the lie. ‘Have you ever wondered what it feels like to kill somebody? I mean, as a psychologist – or whatever you are – I imagine you must have considered it. From a professional point of view.’

Palmer couldn’t find anything to say.

‘To look into someone’s eyes – both of you fully aware of what’s coming – and then to pull the trigger. Or to stick the blade in, to feel the hot blood on your fingers and around your wrist. Because I could tell you, if you like. I could describe these things in as much detail as you could take. But it wouldn’t mean anything. Not by me telling you. My answers to your questions won’t tell you anything about me. You’re theory, I’m reality, and the difference between us is something you will never understand.’

Stephanie rose to her feet and began to circle the table, drawing closer to him.

‘Look at you, all dressed up in your street-cred gear, trying to be someone I can relate to, not someone remote. You read my file and picked this as a look, didn’t you? Did you get your hair cut like that especially?’

There was an affirming silence. She rested against the edge of the table, her leg almost touching his. Now, she felt the icy calm that came with full control. Palmer was pale.

‘You’re in a conflict zone,’ she whispered. ‘You’re hiding among a pile of dead bodies. You see conscript soldiers rape a young girl, then decapitate her. From start to finish, they’re laughing, these bakers, teachers, farmers. Once seen, never forgotten, it’s tattooed onto your memory. The only question that remains is this: how do you cope with it?’

His eyes were grey, she noticed. And unblinking.

‘You’re the psychologist. Do you know?’

He shook his head.

‘Exactly. I don’t know, either. You just do. Most of the time. Until there comes a time when you don’t. And that time does come.’ She turned her back on him. ‘Don’t take it personally – it’s not your fault – but I won’t answer any more of your pathetic questions. As for Alexander, tell him what you like. I don’t care.’

5

You can make a home for yourself, you can make a life for yourself, but don’t make anything for yourself that you can’t walk away from in a second.

The man who’d taught her that was Iain Boyd, a reclusive figure cut from Sutherland granite. Boyd’s past lay with the military. The details of that past were consigned to files that had been conveniently lost so that his career was now a matter of sinister silence. More than any other individual, he’d been responsible for turning Stephanie Patrick into Petra Reuter. He’d taught her how to survive in the harshest conditions, how to kill, how to feel nothing. Under his supervision, she had become stronger, faster and fitter than she’d ever imagined she could be. As teachers went, Boyd had been harsh, sometimes cruel. As curricula went, the lessons had been distasteful, sometimes brutal. As pupils went, Stephanie had never been less than exceptional.

She saw him through the carriage window as the ScotRail train slowed to a halt at Lairg Station. Big-boned but lean, with weather-beaten skin, he was leaning against a Land-Rover, arms crossed, a stiff wind raking thick blond hair. He wore old jeans, hiking boots and an olive T-shirt.

Stephanie was the only passenger to disembark. Boyd opened the Land-Rover door for her but made no attempt to help her with her rucksack. They pulled away from the station, passed through Lairg and travelled along the east flank of Loch Shin. Boyd drove fast, squeezing past other vehicles in the narrow passing spaces, occasionally allowing two wheels to chew the sodden verges. Stephanie clutched the door handle tightly and hoped he wouldn’t notice.

The clouds raced them north, allowing occasional patches of brilliant sunlight. For a moment, there would be a shimmer of gold, purple, emerald green and rust, then the reversion to slate grey. The wind made the white grass a turbulent sea. They drove past the crumbling shells of stone houses left derelict since the early nineteenth century, past the boarded windows of houses more recently abandoned. The scars of progress. Intermittently, near the road’s edge, they passed stacks of peat, cut in rectangles, piled high, awaiting collection and a slow burn in some local grate.

As they overtook a yellow lorry – the local mobile public library – Boyd said, ‘Alexander tells me you’ve been living in the south of France.’

‘Yes.’

‘Under the surname Schneider.’

‘That’s right.’

‘Your mother’s maiden name.’

‘Yes.’

He shook his head. ‘That’s very disappointing. You of all people, Stephanie.’

At the Laxford Bridge, they turned right, then right again, onto a rough track. It twisted and turned, compromising to the demands of the terrain. Over jagged ground, around vast boulders of granite sheathed in soggy moss, through pools of peaty water, across uneven bridges constructed from old railway sleepers.

She knew what lay ahead: bruises, strains, cold, exhaustion. Despite that, she felt at home. Or rather, she felt a connection. The further north she’d travelled, the clearer her mind had become. It was three days since Martin Palmer’s failed assessment of her. She’d seen the resignation in Alexander’s eyes; Boyd had been the only option. She was under no illusion about the regime but she was glad to be back.

The lodge was close to the loch, on a gentle grass incline, high enough to be safe from floodwater. Fifty yards away were three long cabins with new tarpaper roofs. Between them and the lodge, a large garage doubled as a workshop. Behind the lodge, there was a general outhouse and a second, smaller outhouse containing a diesel generator.

When she’d been here before it had been winter and she and Boyd had been alone, but during the summer months he ran corporate outward-bound courses, designed to foster teamwork among jaded office workers. Sometimes, the company client asked him to identify specific qualities among individuals in each group. Who’s a natural leader but doesn’t know it? Who thinks they’re a leader but won’t carry the others? Who’s the subversive troublemaker?

The courses ran from May to the end of September. The men and women Boyd hired as help were all former colleagues from the armed services. During the winter, when the place was closed, Boyd remained open to friends. That category included special requests from the military. Or from climbers looking for tough physical conditioning. Or from Alexander.

Boyd brought the Land-Rover to a sharp halt outside the lodge.

‘We’ve got a group in just now so you’ll be staying with me. You might see them from time to time, but you’re not to speak to them. Understood?’

‘Yes.’

‘Same goes for the staff. Not a word.’

‘Whatever you say.’

His look was withering. ‘That’s exactly bloody right, Stephanie. Whatever I say.’

The first fortnight was a routine that didn’t vary; the bedroom door banging open in the darkness, the cold dawn run, the medicinal heat of the shower, breakfast at a scrubbed wooden kitchen table. Boyd tended not to eat with Stephanie. Between breakfast and lunch, they sparred, self-defence or attack, mostly with hands, sometimes with blades. He reminded her how to transform a household implement into a weapon, how to kill with a credit card, how to incapacitate with a paper clip. They studied points of vulnerability: joints, arteries, eyes.

These sessions usually occurred in the garage, a space large enough to take three trucks. There were kayaks stacked on racks along two walls. At the far end, there was a wooden bench, a heavy vice, trays of oily tools. A punchbag was suspended from the ceiling. He began to instruct her on elements of Thai boxing. He had no interest in the sport itself but admired it for the flexibility and speed of its best practitioners.

Lunch tended to be meagre, a little vegetable soup, some bread, water. Too much food and Stephanie knew she’d throw up during the afternoon. Which most often happened anyway. Boyd didn’t feel he’d worked her hard enough unless she was on the ground, retching. They ran through coarse thigh-high grass that hid the treacherous ruts beneath, up and down scree slopes where even the surest footing failed constantly. Each tumble was marked by a new graze. They ran shin-deep through peat hags of liquid black earth. Stephanie remembered now what she had discovered then: nothing saps energy faster than a peat hag.

They ran in howling winds, through horizontal rain, under crisping summer suns. Even when cold, a northern Scottish sun tanned a skin as quickly and painfully as any other she’d experienced. Mist was the only exception, confining them to areas close to the lodge and loch. There were no patterns in the weather. It was not uncommon to experience all four seasons before lunch and another full year in the afternoon.

Knowing what to expect made it no less painful. The muscles she had allowed to soften burned in protest. Aches matured into cramps. Grazes and cuts were constantly aggravated and so never healed. Boyd kept her on the edge of exhaustion and she understood why; he wanted to provoke a reaction. Physical or emotional, either or both.

Four years before, Boyd had bullied her. That had been his task – to make her quit. The regime had been executed to a score of abuse. This time, it was different. Too much had passed between them the first time. From RSM and raw recruit, to mentor and understudy. Behind the granite façade, Boyd had been proud of her then. And she had felt some pride, too. In the end, he’d treated her with respect. There’d been equality. And with that, there had been something else. A subversive sexual undercurrent.

Neither had acknowledged it. Neither had wanted to.

Now, Boyd retained the power to intimidate but not indiscriminately. He’d tried to break her once and failed. They understood something of each other. They were not so different. The element of hostility upon which Boyd’s training regime relied felt contrived. He knew that Stephanie would never do anything less than he ordered. She would always try to do more to show that her spirit had always been beyond his reach and, by proxy, beyond Alexander’s.

In the evenings, Boyd allowed her to have a bath instead of a shower, to cleanse and soothe her collage of cuts and bruises. While she was soaking, he prepared supper. Some nights he ate with her, most nights he didn’t. Afterwards, he read by the peat fire in the sitting room, or went to his small office, shutting the door on her. She was free to do as she pleased. That meant going to bed as early as possible because she knew that in the morning the routine would resume and that there weren’t enough hours in the night for her to recuperate fully.

I’m sitting on a stone beside a cluster of mountain ash trees. Slender branches sag under the weight of dense clusters of brilliant red berries. According to Boyd, this is the sign of a harsh winter ahead. He might be right, but I predict some severe frost far sooner than that.

The weeks roll past as the tension between us grows daily. I know that I’m not helping matters because I react badly to his continual provocation. But that’s the way I am. I use aggravation as a spur.

I can feel the metamorphosis. The body I had is reducing, hardening, changing shape. I preferred myself as I was – happy, healthy, feminine – but there is another part of me that celebrates the new condition. It toughens me mentally to see the physical change. It’s difficult to rationalize. Perhaps it’s the sense that Boyd is only making his task harder. The more I improve, the less his jibes matter. And the more distracted that seems to make him.

Within the parameters of our narrow existence, this should give me some pleasure. But it doesn’t. I would like to ask what the matter is but I can’t. Just as when he asks me about my time as Petra, I refuse to give him an answer. Not because I don’t want him to know but because I don’t want Alexander to know. Perhaps part of the reason for my discomfort lies there; I don’t like to see a fiercely strong and independent man like Boyd acting as a mouthpiece for a snake like Alexander.

I’m watching from afar. He’s by the cabins, flanked by three assistants, two men and a woman, all ex-Army. By the edge of the loch, the latest batch of guests have congregated around half a dozen kayaks. They’ve come from Slough. They work in telesales, peddling advertising space in magazines specializing in second-hand cars, DIY, computing, kitchens and bathrooms. I wait until Boyd steps forward to address the group before retreating to the lodge.

Inside, it’s cool, dark and still. I hear the murmur of the Rayburn in the kitchen. Nothing else. I step into Boyd’s office, the only room in his home from which I am expressly forbidden. It’s a small cube with a single window onto the loch. A sturdy seasoned oak desk occupies much of the floor-space. Along one wall, there are four filing cabinets, all locked, which seems strange considering Boyd rarely bothers to lock his front door unless he’s away for a matter of days.

I sift through the papers on the desk; a phone bill with no numbers I recognize, some correspondence from Sutherland Council, a receipt for a Caledonian MacBrayne ferry ticket to Islay, several letters from companies booked with Boyd over the summer. I ignore the computer, suspecting he’ll know if I’ve tampered with it. Instead, I dial 1471 on the phone to see who his last caller was but they haven’t allowed their number to be passed on.

Some of the shelves are occupied by books, mostly history, no fiction. There are two dozen CDs above a mini-system. They’re all classical. Above the CDs, there are two rows of box files, each with headings down the spine. Most of them appear to be business accounts stretching back over a decade. On one shelf there are two small silver samovars. On the shelf beneath, there are framed photographs; Boyd in combat gear, hot scrub for a background, three other soldiers in the foreground, machine guns clutched as casually as friends; Boyd looking younger and with longer hair, Manhattan behind him – a snap from the top of the Empire State Building, I think; a head-and-shoulders portrait of a woman with light brown, shoulder-length hair, grey eyes, a petite nose and thin straight lips. I pick it up. Rachel.

There are other photographs of her, some with Boyd, some alone. In the ones that feature him, I see an entirely different man to the one I know. A man who used to smile, a man without emptiness for eyes. He looks warmly happy in every one. He hardly looks like Boyd.

All I’m aware of is the ticking of the carriage-clock on his desk.

I’m still holding Rachel. Something seeps out of the frame, through my fingertips and heads for my chest. Shame. Boyd has his reasons for banning me from this room and now I have my own. I watch him through the window. He’s still talking. I wonder what it was that Rachel possessed to make Boyd fall in love with her. And then I wonder what kind of woman would fall in love with a man like Boyd.