not – just a keen amateur, which was a shame because we could have done with the money.’
Nick stared at her and then reddened as comprehension dawned. ‘God, I’m so sorry – I thought – sorry –’ he stammered.
Maggie waved the remark away. ‘What? It’s not your fault, is it? I’m assuming you’ve just got his name and not his moral outlook? What is it you know about food?’
‘Food? Oh, right, well I used to run a restaurant, before –’ said Nick, struggling to regain his composure. ‘Before all this happened.’
‘There, see, now we’re getting somewhere. It wasn’t all that painful, was it? And how about now?’
‘Now? Now I’m – I’m on holiday,’ he stalled.
Maggie snorted. ‘Don’t be silly. You can’t be on the run and be on holiday.’
‘I’m not exactly on the run, I’m…’ Nick squirmed. He couldn’t see how the hell he could go on with this and so he raised his arms in surrender. ‘Okay – the things I’m about to tell you are secret but under the circumstances I don’t see what else I can do. My real name is Nick Lucas and I’m in a witness protection and relocation programme. Bernie Fielding is, was, supposed to be my new name, my new assumed identity. The thing is there has to have been some sort of mix up, because I’m certain that I’m supposed to have a ficticious identity, not take over the tail end of somebody else’s life. The only problem is I’m not sure what I can do to sort out any of this at the moment. I genuinely haven’t got anywhere else to go – at least not straight away. I thought I’d ring the number they gave me –’
Maggie grinned, slapping the lid on the pan with a flourish.
‘You don’t hold up very well under pressure, do you?’ she said, pouring them both a glass of wine.
There had to have been some kind of mistake, except of course that that was impossible. Stiltskin didn’t make mistakes. In the neat, well-ordered, air-conditioned government offices deep in the bowels of Colmore Road the clerk tapped at the keyboard of the computer keeping one eye on the door.
‘RUN STILTSKIN…?’ flashed up on the screen again. She had already run it twice and something strange had happened. Very strange. It was her responsibility to do the back-up files on those people her department took under its protective wing. Normally it only took a few minutes, but she had been working on this one for the best part of half an hour.
First of all she’d needed to check up on the client’s new name and address. Except when she’d fed his name in, the computer kept coming up with two new names. Two sets of fictitious details scrolling merrily down the screen, side by side. Now, having repeated the process, the same unlikely combination of information rolled out again and again, like digital schizophrenia.
According to the notes that went with the case, Nick Lucas should have become James Cook. That was what was supposed to have happened, that was what she had expected to have happened, except that somewhere in the wiry underbelly of the computer on Colmore Road a third name had entered the equation: Bernie Fielding. It was all very odd. She had never come across anything like it before, even on the trouble-shooting training course she’d been on at Cheltenham.
Somehow, Bernie Fielding had become James Cook, and Nick Lucas had become Bernie Fielding.
The girl sniffed and glanced up at the office door, licked her lips and then stared at the screen. She’d only come in as a favour because the girl who usually worked on Stiltskin had shingles and no one else had the right security clearance.
Who would ever know? Surely one imaginary new life was much the same as any other? The girl looked over her shoulder to see if anyone else was looking. If her boss found out he’d make them stay behind to unravel what had happened and she’d booked up for ballroom-dancing lessons after work. An intensive five-night course, ‘Learn to Rhumba with Marj Cuthbertson’, accompanied by Barry Telling on his electric organ. She’d been looking forward to it for weeks.
One keystroke, that was all it would take. The girl took another look through the information. They’d printed up a whole new set of documents in the name of Bernie Fielding so that had to be the right one, didn’t it? There was even the docket to say he had been delivered to his new safe house. So why was it that James Cook’s bank account kept coming up as being active. She scrolled down. Very active by the look of it. Here was a computer error that loved shoes apparently. Bugger.
The girl hesitated, weighing up the options – one pearly-pink nail-polished finger hovering above the delete key as she wrestled with her thoughts. The tea lady opening the office door made her jump and before she had time to really consider what she was doing the girl pushed delete, and James Cook’s name vanished forever from Nick Lucas’s file.
Just like that. She hadn’t planned it exactly but it seemed that by an act of God, Nick Lucas was officially Bernie Fielding. She remembered him now – sexy-looking guy with dark wavy hair and big blue eyes. She bit her lip – he didn’t really look like a Bernie, but then again it was too late to change things now. Wasn’t it?
‘I thought you told me that you’d got a BMW?’ complained Stella tartly as she squeezed herself past Bernie’s guiding arm and into the passenger seat of a battered sunshine-yellow 2CV.
Bernie had reasoned that Ms Hargreaves was hardly likely to need her car for a few days, having just been whisked off in an ambulance to deliver her new infant. He’d found the keys in her desk drawer and cheerfully arranged – via Stiltskin – for the car to be re-registered in his name. His new name. As he whiled away the hours until he had to pick Stella up from the post office, Bernie had given the absence of the fictional BMW some thought – not that it normally took him much effort to come up with a plausible-sounding excuse.
He slipped in beside her and looked down, feigning grief.
‘I’m sorry, I suppose I should have told you earlier. My wife died last year.’ He spoke in a gruff monotone. ‘This was her runabout. I didn’t like to get rid of it – at least not yet. This car was like a pet to her. I try to give it a run out now and again. She would have wanted me to use it and it seemed – well – I wanted to take you out in it. She would want me to start over – and it felt right. “Bernie,” she used to say,’ he said, staring unseeing into the middle distance, ‘“I don’t want you moping around once I’m gone – I want you to get out and on with your life.”’ He looked at Stella to see how he was doing and then smiled bravely. ‘She was a good woman.’
Stella touched his hand. ‘Oh God, I’m so sorry, you poor, poor thing, you,’ she said softly. ‘You must think I’m ever so tactless, but why did she call you Bernie?’
He stiffened. Bugger, he was going to have to watch that. ‘Um – um – pet name,’ Bernie said after a bit of struggle. ‘She always reckoned I looked like that bloke out of Boys From the Black Stuff, you know – he reached around inside his memory discarding all manner of Bernards till he got to the right one. ‘Bernard Hill; the dark bloke with the moustache.’
Stella looked him up and down and nodded. ‘So you do, now that you come to mention it.’
Bernie sighed with relief. ‘God I miss her,’ he added as an afterthought, wiping away a phantom
