Killing Eva (8 page)

Then the woman did something odd. She turned over the hand linked through her partner's arm so that the palm was facing up. But she didn't open her fingers, they remained closed as if she was gripping something very small.

They continued to walk towards Eva, only paces away now. She took a step towards them and then tripped on a jagged piece of pavement and began to fall forward. As she fell, she noticed the couple had unlinked arms and the woman had raised her flat hand to her mouth. Eva fell to the floor as she heard the woman exhale. She looked behind her to see a white veil of powder had fallen where she had been standing. She looked up at the woman, whose hand was now empty. The couple stared at her for several seconds, as if waiting for something to happen. Eva stood up and looked at them. No one spoke. She walked away.

ELEVEN

A black hood
had been placed over his head some hours earlier. This was now removed, allowing daylight to flood his retina. He squinted into the sun; stared straight ahead.

The first emotion: shock.

Opposite him, stood a man he had long thought lost.

Behind him, the sound of a car engine revving and wheels turning in the dust as a vehicle made its way into the distance at high speed.

He didn't turn his head left or right. He didn't acknowledge his surroundings. He just stared at the face opposite.

When he had taken the job that had brought him here he had known it was a risk. Eva
affected
him. She left him, if not defenceless, then seriously compromised. And they had history. Then there was the oddly vague job brief, one he clearly should have refused. But this, he had not expected.

Perhaps deep down he had known that watching Eva would mean opening a channel to the man opposite, her brother. Maybe a subconscious desire for redemption had led him here.

The other man was blinking into the evening half light, as his own hood had also been removed. He started touching points on his head and face – the same six spots, repeatedly. Was he checking for injuries? He stopped suddenly, when he sensed himself being watched.

Slowly, he lowered his hands to his sides, knuckles clenched. Leon did not see any recognition in his eyes.

They stared at one another and he wondered whether neither could make out if the staring contest they were gripped in was hostile or conspiratorial. Was there still that shared bond between them or had events since shattered it completely?

He continued to stare at the dark-haired man in front of him who shifted on his feet. A movement of discomfort, perhaps he had been sitting for some time, maybe he had been injured, or he could be nervous. Leon's mind jarred; it seemed out of character.

He glanced around and tried to make sense of his surroundings. It was hot, which meant that he was no longer in the UK. A quick look down revealed army fatigues. He had no weapon. And he had no shoes.

She opened her eyes. A dingy light, the kind that shines in a basement. The air was damp and smelt musty. For several seconds, she felt calm. She looked around her as if it was the most natural thing in the world to open your eyes to a scene like this. But then Eva began to feel uneasy. She couldn't move her arms and she realised they were stuck, spreadeagled on either side of her. Groggily, she noticed that she was sitting up, each wrist tied to the edges of a bed.

She looked down at her legs, jutting out in front of her at right angles. She was wearing a pair of long black socks and stiletto heels she didn't recognise as her own. She bent her knees to make sure she could move her legs. Several seconds after she sent the command from her brain, her legs moved.

Funny, she thought to herself, and then her mind went blank again.

They had shadowed each other for what seemed like several hours. Leon had tried to start a conversation with the other man but there had been no response. He kept an almost calculated distance from Leon – when Leon stopped, so did he, if Leon jogged towards him he moved so as to maintain the space. Under normal circumstances Leon would have simply lunged but two things had made him want to wait it out: he trusted that face and he knew how lethal Jackson could be. Nevertheless, he urgently wanted to talk to the man who shadowed him. They had known each other for so long that, surely, there must be the same desire on both sides. And yet, they had not exchanged a single word in the last couple of hours and the other man kept his distance. Perhaps he, too, was unsure of the familiar face he saw in front of him.

Although the timing of the situation had caught him off guard, Leon wasn't surprised to find himself where he was – he had made a lot of enemies during his ‘career'. However, he could not have anticipated this particular opponent. And it was now clear that's what Jackson was.

In the fading light of the day, the face of the other man puzzled him. So very familiar, so long lost. And yet he felt so little affection for it. Was that purely self protection on his part? His failure had resulted in Jackson's death after all. Or at least that's what he had thought – until now.

Leon briefly glanced up at the darkening sky. He knew he was exhausted; he had been exhausted when they arrived.

He had considered running, escaping, but he knew that turning away would be a rookie mistake. He began to wonder if there were other options besides to fight. There was never just one choice. If only he had time to think. But he didn't. Leon realised that, for the first time, he was facing an enemy who had a mental advantage – and so the power to take from him the one thing he had ever really owned; his life.

‘She's compliant enough.'

‘Don't you think we should give her more, just in case?'

‘No. Combined with the drugs they gave us to use on her it could be too much.'

‘But I don't want to take any risks with her. We don't know anything about her, the fixer was vague.'

‘She was wandering around drunk, on her own, in the early hours of the morning; what more do we need to know?'

Eva sat completely still, watching two people she thought she recognised having a conversation in a language she didn't. She felt almost apart from her body. She could see what was going on and perhaps didn't like it, but there was no connection to any emotional response.

She watched as the woman turned away from the man, frowning and shaking her head. She caught Eva's eye and, instantly, Eva realised where she had seen her. It was the couple who had been walking towards her when she left somewhere earlier that – day? night? – she smiled at the woman in recognition. The woman looked pained and glanced the other way.

‘Look, she's too conscious for this, you can see it in her face. She will
remember
.'

‘We can't stop this now.'

‘I'm not saying we should stop, I just think maybe she needs more.'

‘Why?'

‘Because she looked at me like she recognised me. She might be able to identify us.'

‘She won't remember, that's the whole point.'

‘I don't see why they can't make do with hookers. And why all these additional drugs?'

‘This way is more dangerous, it's a thrill for them. I don't know about those,' he indicated several clear plastic bags of liquid, ‘that's not up to us.'

The woman turned towards her partner. ‘But it's dangerous for us, you know that – especially if we don't know the whole story. We have to protect ourselves.'

The man hesitated. He was tall and thin and smelled of clothes that hadn't been aired properly. Or, perhaps, his damp aroma was simply because he spent so much time in a basement.

‘I'm not sure.'

‘Come on,' his partner urged, ‘it's our interests that matter, not hers.'

‘Ok, fine, if you want to then give her another dose.'

Eva watched, quite comfortably, as the woman reached for a small plastic bag and made to tip a white powder into the palm of her hands.

‘Don't blow it in her face this time!' said the man suddenly. ‘It will go all over her.'

The woman – small and blonde – slowly nodded in agreement. She found a curved tumbler and poured a small amount of water from a tap situated on a white basin fitted into the corner of the room. Then, she dropped the white powder into it.

He hadn't seen him coming. Perhaps it was the hunger, the disorientation, or the fact he had taken his eye off the ball, for just a second, to consider his options. But he had not seen it coming. That was not like him and there were few other men who could take him unawares, not with his training. He was now fielding blow after blow. A punch to the side of the head made his ears burn and ring. A low stab with a clenched fist to the solar plexus forced him to bend double in agony. For some reason, he felt unable to defend himself, he couldn't even stand up. When it came down to it, he realised this was the one person he couldn't – wouldn't – fight. And, of course, that had been intentional. That was why Jackson was here.

As the blows rained down on him, Leon felt this was the moment he had spent so much of his life trying to escape. Disconnection of body and soul. Perhaps it had been over as soon as he saw the man's face and recognised, in those features, the anger over his betrayal all those years ago. Inevitable.

And now that it was over it was almost a relief. He would no longer have to deal with the constant struggle between right and wrong that had recently become his daily internal monologue. He deserved this. Maybe it was even what he wanted.

As acceptance descended, he felt his body relax and the air around him seemed to tense, to vibrate at a slower pace. He was waiting for the final blow, the one to extinguish the light and leave him in the comfort of darkness.

And then, in the pale light of a fingernail moon, he suddenly saw something change in the face of the man opposite. It flickered, almost imperceptibly, but it was there – almost as if a mask was being lifted to reveal the real face underneath. And that stirred something in Leon. He began to fight back.

‘I have no idea how he got the knife.'

‘
Well, he clearly didn't buy the face.'

Silence.

‘I don't understand,' said Paul finally, ‘our man must have been carrying it – against the order I gave him.'

‘I think your problem is that you underestimate people,' replied the man with the Mediterranean tan, ‘the technology doesn't work, we should report it.'

‘No!' the younger man was indignant. ‘You don't understand, this should be foolproof. It was just because we couldn't put the implants into him.'

‘It is faulty – or unfinished.'

Paul lit a cigarette and turned away. ‘Do you think he really saw beneath?' he asked, childlike. ‘The drugs and mapping alone should have been enough for such short exposure.'

At first, the older man didn't respond. Then, finally, ‘he must have, what other reason could there be?'

Angrily, the young man threw his cigarette on to the floor and ground it down with his heel. He lit another.

‘He should have been the one to die.'

‘The risk you took was too great. We should have executed him when we had the chance.'

The older man was right, Paul knew that. But he had been so sure that such a painful, humiliating and emotionally draining revenge was the satisfaction he needed. To watch Leon unable to fight, paralsyed by his own guilt. Guilt that he had seemingly never felt for the death he had visited on others – others who had once meant so much to Paul.

But it had not worked. The technology had failed – or rather he had left it incomplete, made a mistake.

Silence hung in the room as Paul lit another cigarette and the older man continued gazing at the screen of a wafer-thin laptop.

‘What are you doing?' asked the younger man, finally. He felt as if the ground was shifting beneath him and he needed the balm of normal conversation.

‘Checking the grid.'

Paul continued to smoke in silence.

‘Where are we with the corporate identities?'

The question was posed in a completely different tone to the way the man had spoken to Paul earlier. A point had been made and they were moving on. This, Paul liked about his new colleague. What he didn't like was that, at some point, what happened today would be used against him. In the short time he had been here, Paul had realised the other man stored up events as weapons against others. Against anyone who could do him damage. He had a harmless, Gentleman Criminal, exterior but he was, in reality, ruthless, efficient and deadly.

Paul set aside the plans formulating in his mind concerning the escaped man. He would still be able to deal with the situation, it would just take more time and imagination. He had not lost. It was not over. He began to compose himself. For now, he had to keep a neutral front.

Quickly, he put out the cigarette and took a chair at his position at the table, accessing his own laptop. He spent several seconds working his way through electronic files.

‘Most are already registered and running.'

‘Most?'

‘Ninety-five per cent.'

‘And the rest?'

‘Within days.'

‘Are they proofed?'

‘I…'

‘As in, will they stand up to full scrutiny?'

‘They are based on the exact model developed.'

‘So they are impenetrable?'

‘Yes, they should be. Completely disassociated corporate entities. No connections can be made by sector or location.'

‘All of them?'

Paul looked at the grid. The lines splayed out from each name on the page but went nowhere. There were no connections made between them, no links.

‘According to the grid, not a single one.' Paul was careful to choose his words properly – he must answer based on what was in front of him and not his own opinion or the responsibility for getting it wrong would land on his shoulders. He was learning.

‘And where do we stand in terms of ownership?'

‘We are on target.'

‘No alerts?'

‘No.'

‘Any interest from the FCA?'

‘None.'

‘Authorities abroad?'

‘No.'

‘So the activity has gone unnoticed.'

‘It would seem so.'

Paul nodded silently. He marvelled at the preparation that had gone into this – the foresight of paying off a myriad of insiders for ten years before they might be required to do anything. And he wondered, most of all, where the money for this had come from. He understood vaguely what was happening – to the extent he had been told before he had even begun this journey – but there was obviously more.

Paul knew he needed additional information to piggyback on the situation. He also knew that he was walking a relatively precarious line. Soon, his own contribution would really be tested – the reason they had taken him on. And, if he was going to achieve the results he needed to, that contribution would have to live up to expectations. Which, so far, it hadn't. So far, he had failed. And, in this company, that was a dangerous position to be in.