'Well, he doesn't know me well enough to call me Will.' He grinned at her, and Eve smiled back. He did have a nice grin. 'Smoke?'
He held a battered packet of cigarettes out to her. Eve shook her head. 'No? Well, your loss.'
He lit up and loped across the courtyard, which was busy with troops marching about. Holding open a door for her, he said, 'Now. We have to go up two flights. Reckon you can manage it?'
'Is there any alternative?'
'I could carry you.'
His eyes sparkled a bit as he said it, and Eve couldn't help letting her gaze run over his broad shoulders, remembering the muscular frame she'd seen last night in the hospital bay.
'I think I'll manage,' she said, her voice coming out a little higher than she'd intended.
Will winked and stood by to let her pass, and Eve was sure she was blushing.
'Right,' he said, as she hopped up the steps ahead of him. 'Harker's going to want to know why you were flying over the river last night.'
'I told you,' Eve said. 'TV.'
'Are you sure? You can tell me.'
She looked back at him over her shoulder. He lifted his eyes from her backside in its tight denim, and grinned at her.
'Pervert,' she said, without malice.
'You were clocking me outside.'
'I was trying to assess if you were strong enough to carry me,' Eve said, as loftily as she could manage, and started hopping again.
'I have to warn you,' he said from behind her, 'the office'll be full of men who only get to see women in baggy khaki. Hope you don't mind being stared at.'
Eve looked down at her t-shirt, which was tight and pink, and said, 'I've appeared on stage in hot pants and feathers in front of ten thousand people. I can deal with a couple of soldiers.'
'Hot pants?'
'Yeah. They were lime green.' She shuddered. 'Goodness knows who thought that one up.' And she didn't know how she'd had the nerve to wear things like that. The last time Eve had seen her thighs they'd been in no condition to mince around at the end of a pair of hot pants.
Of course, as she recalled it the hot pants had been Louisa Butcher's idea. Louisa, who'd always had photogenically perfect legs. Eve had always suspected she did it on purpose.
'What stage was this?' Will asked, as she reached the top of the flight, and he pointed round the corner to the next one.
'Uh. I can't actually remember. I think it was the European tour.'
'Recent?'
'No, Grrl Power broke up five years ago. You really don't listen to pop music, do you?'
'Nope,' Will said. 'Was this the tour that took in the not-capital-of-Denmark?'
'Copenhagen is the capital,' Eve said, rolling her eyes and smiling to herself.
'It is not!'
'Look, have you been there?'
'No, but'
'Well, I have.' She turned and stuck her tongue out at him. 'So ner.'
'That's mature,' Will said, but he was smiling.
Eve reached the top of the stairs and he stepped around her to open the door there, into a large, busy room full of people poring over large maps or reading thick sheaves of paper. It reminded Eve of a lot of the offices she'd temped in, only in this one, everyone was in khaki, and there were no computers. Maybe that wasn't 'military'.
Several people, men and women, nodded to Will as he entered the room and made for a desk piled excruciatingly high with paperwork, and plenty of the men did, indeed, give Eve a thorough up-and-down that made Will grin.
Then something caught his eye, and his grin faded.
A man was making his way over to them, and Eve hoped like hell this wasn't Major Harker, because he had a smile that made her feel vaguely queasy. His eyes had an odd flat look to them, and they darted around like those of a lizard.
'Sir,' he said, and his voice had the cakey, whining quality of someone who has spent too long trying to ingratiate themselves. He smiled a sickly smile, a lizard smile, and Will's face grew grimmer.
Thank goodness he was subordinate to Will. If this guy had turned out to be Harker, Eve would have jumped out of the window.
'Sholt,' Will said shortly. 'Heard you were back.'
'Indeed, sir,' Sholt said, and Eve half-expected him to start twisting his hands and declaring that he was 'ever so 'umble', like Dickens' two-faced character, Uriah Heep. 'Transferred to the 75th this week, sir.'
'Heard that, too,' Will said.
'Put a special request in, sir. Wheeler saw to it, sir. Heard C Company is in need of a captain, sir, now old Captain Smith has gone to Basic Training.'
Will's gaze travelled slowly to the pips on Sholt's shoulder. There were three. Deliberately, he took off his greatcoat, and Eve could see the rank insignia on his jacket. One crown. She didn't know what that meant, but it was still a higher rank than Sholt, it had to be, or else why was Sholt calling Will 'sir'?
'I will take a captain from Lieutenant-Colonel Green's command, or Major Dennison's,' Will said in a low voice that was so full of anger and menace that Eve had a sudden yen to hide behind something heavy. The man who'd looked strong and capable five minutes ago looked big and downright frightening now. 'I will promote from within the ranks. I will take a rat off the street, Lieutenant, before I allow you in my company.'
Sholt's obsequious smile only widened and became more hideous. 'Begging pardon, sir, but I've already put in for the transfer, sir. None of the other companies need a captain, sir. Only C company, sir. And it's Captain now, sir,' he pointed to his pips. 'Promoted in the field, sir.'
Will's face turned to granite, and he leaned in close. Eve couldn't help but notice that all the other officers had gone quite silent.
'Oh no, Lieutenant,' Will said deliberately, 'you won't beg my pardon on this. You've a list a mile long of things to beg my pardon on, and they all come higher than this. And one day, Lieutenant Sholt, you will beg indeed.'
Sholt's horrible smile grew a fraction more horrible before he said, 'It's up to the good Colonel now, isn't it, sir? Newly promoted too, sir. Colonel Harker oh no, sir,' his smile turned, if possible, a little more sly, 'that's not her name any more, is it, sir? Changed back to her maiden name, I couldn't help but notice. No longer using your name, is she, sir?'
Will looked like he was going to punch Sholt, and Eve couldn't blame him. Then what the horrible little man had said penetrated her brain.
She stared at the crown on Will's shoulder.
'Don't you have something else to do, Sholt?' he said, making the man's name sound like a bad word.
'Yes sir, Major Harker, sir,' said Sholt, saluting greasily and oiling away, and Will turned back to her with a face like thunder.
Conversation suddenly resumed around them.
'Well, he was a horrible little man,' Eve said brightly to Will. 'Not one of your friends?'
'If there was a way to blast him off the face of the planet I'd do it,' he said, and the look on his face frightened Eve.
'Can't you just order him to take a long walk off a short bridge?' she said. 'I mean, you are a higher rank than him, aren't you? Major Harker.'
He scowled and threw himself into the chair by the overburdened desk, lighting up a new cigarette and pulling on it furiously.
'Why did you lie to me?' Eve said, lowering herself into the chair opposite him.
Harker ran his hands through his already dishevelled hair. 'I didn't lie,' he said.
'You said your name was Will' Eve began.
'It is.' He gave her an unconvincing smile and poked gingerly at the debris on the desk. 'There's a sign around here somewhere.'
Wordlessly, the man at the next desk reached to the floor and picked up a desk sign. Into the slot at the front a piece of card had been inserted with a typed name on it. He handed it to Eve, who read Maj. Wm. Harker. It had a slightly temporary look about it.
'You let me think you were a rank-and-file soldier,' she said, edging the sign on to the desk, from which it promptly fell off again.
'Would you have made friends with a major? Would you have told him what you were really doing with that glider...' he waved his hand, 'thingy?'
Eve scowled. 'Yes,' she said, and honesty forced her to add, 'maybe.'
There was silence between them. Eve waved away some of Harker's smoke. 'Thank you for saving my life,' she said, unable to inject much gratitude into it.
Harker dragged on his cigarette. 'Weren't going to let you drown, was I?'
'Well, I don't know.' He didn't talk like a major, Eve thought. Matter of fact, he didn't look like one, either. Majors ought to be stout, hearty fellows with greying handlebar moustaches, who said things like, 'What ho!' and called everyone Old Stick.
A major shouldn't be a man in his thirties who looked like a vagrant, talked like a steelworker and smoked as if it was the only thing keeping him alive.
Harker looked up as a woman approached, her frizzy hair battled into a plait, her face bare of make-up. Eve itched to tell her to get some decent conditioner, but judging by the stuff she'd found in the hospital showers, that sort of thing wasn't military at all.
'Sir,' said the woman, 'I've just been speaking to Major Dennison. They're already clearing people from No Man's Land. They're sending in the fire throwers before it gets dark.'
Harker nodded, rocked his feet off the desk and stood up. 'Right. I'm going to need a driver, Charlie, and some handcuffs.'
Charlie didn't blink, but she did glance at the bandaged ankle Eve had managed to fit her unlaced trainer over.
'How far do you think she's going to get, sir?'
'She could be faking it.'
'I am not!' Eve said. 'The doctor Captain whoever he is, he said my ankle is sprained. It bloody hurts!'
They both ignored her. Harker glanced at something on the far wall. Charlie continued to watch him, like a dog awaiting instruction.
'Fine,' Harker sighed. 'Get me a driver though. I'm not letting her out of my custody. Wheeler'll have my head. Get Lu. I'm sure she can drive. Do her good to see No Man's Land.'
'Hold on,' Eve said. 'Custody? Handcuffs?'
Again, she was ignored.
'Byward Tower, ten minutes,' Harker said.
'Sir.' Charlie nodded and left, but she didn't salute, and Harker wheeled round to face Eve.
'So!' he said, voice like a gunshot and a glint in his eye Eve didn't like one bit. 'Mitcham. Mitcham, Mitcham. I don't know much about it, I wasn't born in London.'
'Neither was I,' Eve said, warily.
'No, of course not. Still, you'll have to point it out to me.'
He gestured to a large map covering the far wall, and Eve got clumsily to her feet. 'Am I in some sort of trouble?' she said.
'What makes you think that?'
'The handcuffs conversation? Just because you ignored me doesn't mean I couldn't hear you.'
'Military rules,' Harker said vaguely, and led her to the map. A few people watched her go by maybe they recognised her. Well, that was humiliating.
But when Eve got up close to the map, she rolled her eyes. 'Very funny.'
'What is?'
'The map. What is this, Elizabethan?'
Harker stared at her a minute, then said without turning around, 'Ensign Bowhurst, how old is this map?'
A fairly young male voice replied, 'Er, about a month, sir.'
'All right, smart arse,' Eve said. 'What map is it based on? 'Cos I'm expecting to see the Globe on here. The old one.'
'The theatre?' Harker pointed to a blob south of the river. 'That one?'
She peered at it. Yes, it was labelled Globe Theatre, but she didn't see any of the stuff that ought to be near it. Where was the Tate Modern? The Millennium Bridge? Where was freaking Waterloo Station?
Why was there a long, uninterrupted ribbon of river, running all the way from the Tower, whose lopsided pentagon she could make out, off past Westminster and into the countryside? Where were all the bridges? Where were all the landmarks?
Where, in point of fact, was London?
'Found it yet?' Harker said. 'Your house?'
'It's not on here,' Eve said, because south of the river there was virtually nothing. A couple of circular theatres by the river and that was it.