Zero kill, p.16
Zero Kill, page 16
‘Not helping!’ Elsa shouted.
She saw the darker hue of a pipe in the side of the tunnel and slipped into it, pressed herself into the slim channel, crawling on her front to fit inside, fingers sliding on the slimy ground. The space narrowed and the ceiling sloped, until she had to hunch her shoulders in and pull herself along in an inch of freezing water, which rode over her chin and splashed into her mouth. She gagged at the foul, bitter taste.
Elsa was terrified she was going to get trapped. But then the pipe widened again and came out three feet above the floor. She fell to the ground in a wide, domed brick tunnel. She had no time to let her eyes adjust to the blackness, and ran on.
Elsa could hear the barks of the men, but with the weapons they carried, and the bulky armour they wore, they’d not be able to follow through the pipe; she had an opportunity to put some distance between them.
‘W – c n’t – hel – you,’ Camille said, her voice cutting out.
‘No shit,’ muttered Elsa.
‘Goo – luc—’
A faint patina of ambient light came from one end of the tunnel, but the echoing shouts of the men, and their clattering footsteps, came from every direction. Looking down, Elsa saw rail tracks on the floor, perilously close to her feet. She was standing in a Tube tunnel. She couldn’t remember which of the four rails was electrified, whether it was one or two, and didn’t fancy finding out.
‘Camille,’ she said. ‘Are you there?’
But she’d lost contact. Elsa ran down the middle of the track, careful to avoid the undulating lines of dark metal. And then from far off came a muffled rumble, a Tube train cascading along a track. She froze, trying to place where the noise was coming from.
From somewhere close, she heard the squawk of a radio, and a thin beam of green light swept along the tunnel in the black depths behind her.
Shots reverberated again, and she zigzagged as best she could across the width of the tunnel, jumping left and right across the shiny tracks.
The vague metal lines in the gloom whined. A deep, guttural rumble bounced off the curved tunnel walls. The Tube train she’d heard in the distance was approaching, she just didn’t know if she was running away from it or towards it.
The men were getting closer. The green beams jerked along the walls and ceiling. The rumble of the train became a threatening roar. Light climbed one sooty side of the tunnel behind her. The best thing she could do was fling herself against a wall and let it pass, just as her pursuers were doing now, but she wouldn’t be able to put distance between herself and the SIS men.
So she ran as fast as she could on the uneven surface between the tracks. Arms pumping, sucking down the damp, foetid air. One touch of the electrified rail and she was toast.
Over her shoulder, Elsa saw the Tube train hurtle into view. Heard the angry cacophony of it, the rhythmic cascade of its wheels on the rails. Its two hundred tonnes would smash her to bits.
Fifty yards ahead was a bright light, and she saw a platform. The roar of the train was deafening; it boomed and echoed in the tunnel, furiously bearing down on her like an enraged monster.
Elsa sprinted hard, trying to ignore her fatigue; thinking of all those early morning runs across the Common, all those punishing hours on the treadmill, all the strength training. But she almost lost her balance in a hole between the tracks and had to readjust her stride in mid-air, only just managing not to land on the live rail.
Twenty yards now.
She kept up her pace, her long arms and legs moving like pistons as she raced towards the station, the tracks at her feet singing their song of electrified death.
It had been a long, exhausting day; she was running on empty.
Ten yards.
The driver of the train must have seen her silhouetted on the tracks just ahead, in the sallow, muted light of the station. She heard a deafening horn, and the brakes screech.
Seven yards.
People on the platform watched in shock as Elsa raced from the tunnel, the current rails lifting up on either side of her legs on blocks set into concrete. Someone screamed.
And with one last effort, she launched herself, twisting like a high jumper over the raised tracks and onto the four-foot-high platform, rolling clear of the train as it flew into the station in a howling shriek of noise and brakes.
Elsa lay on the platform, trying to stop her heart crashing out of her ribcage.
26
Elsa ran through the station and onto the escalator going up, leaning over the divide to whip a baseball cap off the head of someone on the way down. Rushing onto the concourse, keeping her head low, she vaulted the ticket barrier.
As soon as she reached the pavement, Camille’s van pulled up beside her and she climbed in, the vehicle accelerating as the door slid shut. Flex and Jo were still arguing.
‘Your way was wrong.’ Flex lifted his laptop screen to his colleague’s face to show her something. ‘The authentication process could have been compromised.’
Jo pushed the laptop away. ‘As usual, you’re not seeing the whole picture.’
‘We could have saved time—’
‘Leave it now, please,’ Camille commanded. She took the camera from Elsa and handed it to Jo, and the two techs argued quietly about the best way to analyse the information on the photos Elsa had taken.
‘We have a secure building we can get you to,’ Camille told her.
Elsa shook her head. ‘Saint is holed up in the home of one of my clients. I need to make sure he’s okay.’
‘Tell me where, and we’ll bring him in.’
‘I’m guessing by now he’ll be drunk and paranoid. If your people turn up unexpectedly, there’ll be carnage. Take me back there and pick us up at dawn.’
When Elsa told Camille Dougie’s address, she realized she could barely look her in the eye. The guilt of her affair with Carragher – the biological father of her children – had gnawed away at her for years. She could just about handle the regret because she’d expected never to see Camille again. But they had been thrown together unexpectedly, and if they were going to work together to find out what the hell was going on, Elsa had to tell her the truth.
Stuck in the back of a van with a couple of bickering techs wasn’t the best place to do it, but there was never a good time to make such a confession, and Elsa didn’t know if she would even get another opportunity.
She took a deep breath. ‘Camille, there’s something you should—’
‘Don’t,’ said Camille fiercely. ‘Not now.’
‘You know?’
Camille leaned close to look her in the eye. ‘After all these years, you still think I didn’t know what was going on?’
Elsa was bewildered. ‘But how?’
Arguing on the seats in front, Flex and Jo were oblivious to the intense conversation going on behind them.
‘Do it that way and you will corrupt the data.’ Flex grabbed the camera from Jo. ‘Give it here.’
‘When we were in that apartment in Buenos Aires, I could feel the tension every time the pair of you were near each other. I finally knew for sure when Steve took you to find Saint that afternoon. I saw how he looked at you, Elsa, and it was obvious.’ Camille’s eyes glinted brightly in the gloom of the van. ‘So I followed you both.’ Camille had seen them on the street, holding and kissing each other. ‘That night we… argued.’
Elsa felt wretched. She was tired, stiff with cold, and now finally forced to confront her own terrible betrayal of one of the few people she had ever known as a friend.
‘I was furious, I wanted to kill you there and then,’ Camille told her in an intense whisper. ‘And I think I would have done if he hadn’t stopped me. He told me…’ Camille took a deep breath. ‘He said he was leaving me, to be with you.’
Elsa forced herself not to look away from Camille’s intense gaze.
‘I was convinced he wouldn’t do it, because we’d been there before. There’d been other women before you. Steve lived in the moment, he approached everything he did – work, sex and love – with the same burning intensity, with no thought to the future. Because every moment could be his last.’ Elsa sensed the simmering fury behind her words. ‘But what I didn’t know then was that you were having his children.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Elsa said quietly. It wasn’t much, but she meant it.
‘Would you have been as sorry if he was alive, Elsa, and you had stolen him from me?’ The anger in Camille’s eyes faded and she leaned back against the seat. ‘I just wanted to complete the mission, and when it was over and we all got back home, then I’d kill you. But things didn’t work out that way.’
The minivan came to a stop. When Elsa looked up, they were outside a building in Soho’s Berwick Street. Laptop tucked under his arm, Flex pulled open the side door and said, ‘This is me.’
When Jo climbed out with him, Camille said, ‘I want to know whatever it is you find on those photos, asap.’
‘Got it.’ Sliding the door shut, he and Jo walked to a door between one of the many coffee shops shuttered for the night.
The van started moving again, and Elsa told her, ‘It was just a stupid fling.’
‘No it wasn’t,’ Camille said acidly. ‘You were different from the others, I could tell, and that’s what hurt. He loved you.’
‘How do you know that?’
Camille’s gaze met Elsa’s. ‘Because he told me.’
Elsa turned away, trying to get her head together. The empty city streets flew past. She thought back to the morning of the mission, but couldn’t remember any particular tension between Carragher and Camille. All her memories of that day concerned the catastrophic events in Apartment 7b.
She wasn’t in the country for Steve Carragher’s funeral, and in the weeks and months following the mission, Elsa made several attempts to contact Camille, maybe with the vague intention of confessing her relationship with him, and to tell her about Harley and India. But Camille didn’t respond. She was grieving, Elsa presumed, and up to her neck in espionage matters on a daily basis. In the end Elsa gave up and Camille, like so many of her former associates, and the small handful of friends, drifted from her life.
‘Whatever happened between you both,’ said Camille, ‘I loved him, and I still do.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Elsa told her.
‘So you keep saying.’ Camille sighed. ‘It was all a long time ago.’
‘You saved my life that day,’ Elsa said.
‘Because I’m a professional,’ Camille said. ‘And you never leave a colleague behind.’
Camille had held Elsa’s hand in the helicopter as she bled out, shouting at her to stay awake, not to fall into unconsciousness; only hours earlier, Camille had apparently vowed to kill her.
Camille lifted a bag off the seat beside her. ‘Here I am, trying to keep you alive all over again. Funny how things turn out.’
She took a syringe from the bag and tore a needle out of its packaging.
‘What’s that for?’ said Elsa warily.
‘Don’t worry, I’m not going to poison you.’ Camille held it high so she could see the syringe was empty. ‘I need a blood sample.’
‘What for?’
‘When I’m told to do something, Elsa, I don’t ask why. You know what RedQueen is like, it monitors everything. They’ll do tests, probably, to make sure you’re in good shape for the trials ahead.’
Elsa took off her damp hoodie and let Camille carefully draw blood from her arm. The filled syringe was placed carefully into a Ziploc bag, which was locked in a small box. Seeing the contents stirred memories in Elsa of her hand sliding through the slick of her own blood in the helicopter above Buenos Aires. Whatever bitter feelings she’d harboured against Elsa, Camille had done everything in her power to keep Elsa alive that night.
They sat in silence for the rest of the journey to Dougie’s house. The van pulled up at the top of the street.
‘Get some sleep and I’ll collect you at six.’ Camille gave Elsa a burner phone. ‘Don’t use it for Deliveroo.’
Elsa slid the door open and climbed out. ‘I’m worried about my children, Cam.’
‘Where are they?’
‘With my parents in Buckinghamshire,’ Elsa said.
Camille knew enough about her complicated relationship with Howard and Greta to appreciate how difficult a decision it must have been for Elsa to send them there.
‘I’ll make sure they’re safe.’
As the van accelerated away, Elsa made her way to Dougie’s house.
Halfway up the path, she heard raised voices coming from inside.
Something was wrong.
27
Too tired to clamber over the tall wooden gate, Elsa kicked it open and ran into the garden.
Standing close to the sliding doors, looking in the thin strip between the lowered blinds, she saw Dougie and his wife, Roberta, gagged and bound to dining table chairs in the living room. Saint paced furiously in his underpants, heating the tip of a bread knife with the flame from a lighter.
Too busy ranting and raving and waving the knife, Saint didn’t hear Elsa bang her hand against the pane. But Dougie saw her and wriggled furiously on the chair in a silent plea to be saved from the mad intruder.
Neighbours might already have heard Saint’s shouts and Dougie and Roberta’s dismal cries; the police could arrive at any moment. Elsa lifted both fists to the glass and smashed as hard as she could.
‘Saint!’ she called as loud as she dared. Finally, he lumbered to the glass and shifted one of the blinds to look out. His eyes took time to focus on her, he was so drunk.
When he unlocked the door, Elsa slipped inside.
‘What the fuck, Saint?’
He jabbed the knife at Dougie and Roberta. Staring up at him in terror, they made panicked noises behind the makeshift gags stuffed in their mouths. ‘They just walked in, bold as brass.’
In the hours since she’d left him here – God, it seemed like weeks ago – the pristine home had been reduced to a bomb site. Every surface, the kitchen counter and the coffee table, the sofas and floor, were covered in empty bottles, plates and spilled food. Saint’s clothes were all over the floor. He must have been drinking solidly since she left him. It was a wonder he could even stand. At least he had his pants on.
‘Because they live here. It’s their house!’
‘That’s what they want you to think.’ Saint tried to tap a forefinger to the side of his nose, but it missed his face completely. ‘But they could be anybody. Killers, Elsie.’
Chubby Dougie, with his belly spilling over his crotch, and Roberta in her flip-flops, didn’t look much like elite assassins.
‘I know them.’ Elsa went around the back of Dougie’s chair to untie him. ‘Dougie is a client of mine.’
‘He’s going to kill us!’ spluttered Dougie when she pulled the cloth from his mouth.
‘Please, take anything you want and go,’ wailed Roberta. ‘We won’t say a word to anybody.’
‘Put the knife down,’ Elsa commanded Saint. ‘These people aren’t a threat. And for God’s sake, put some clothes on.’
‘Then how come I found them sneaking in the door in the middle of the night?’
‘Dougie,’ Elsa asked as she plucked at the knots behind his back. ‘What the hell did you come back for?’
‘Someone called us… this morning…’ Face purple, eyes rolling up in his head, he gasped for air.
‘Breathe, take deep breaths.’ Elsa tried to calm him down before he had a heart attack, and when Saint came close, she snapped, ‘Back off!’
‘Don’t die, Dougie,’ wept Roberta. ‘Don’t leave me with these people!’
‘They saw… they saw…’ Dougie gulped down another breath. ‘Strangers.’
‘They know our names.’ Saint paced manically. ‘We’re going to have to kill them right now!’
Roberta let out a piercing scream.
‘You’re not helping!’ Picking up his clothes, Elsa shoved them in his chest. ‘Go and get dressed.’
‘Said they saw someone…’ Dougie spluttered. ‘Park a car… in a garage.’
Elsa winced. A neighbour had seen her arrive last night. She’d been out of the game for so long that she’d gotten sloppy, and it was going to get her killed.
‘Why are you doing this?’ Roberta whimpered. ‘What do you want?’
‘I just needed a place to stay for a night, and knew you were away.’
Freed from the chair, Dougie pointed at Saint, who was hopping about trying to push one leg into his trousers and then the other. ‘And that insane person?’
‘I ain’t insane, I’ve got issues!’
Elsa gestured at him, stop. Elsa was of a mind to cut him loose as soon as she could; he was proving a liability.
‘He’s an associate,’ she told Dougie. ‘It’s… complicated.’ She and Saint needed to leave straight away, but she also didn’t want them to report her to the police. Putting the fear of God into the couple may be the easiest option. ‘Dougie, listen to me, you can’t tell anyone we were here. Saint’s dangerous, unpredictable, and if you do, he may come back.’
Roberta sobbed. ‘He’s a criminal?’
‘Worse than that, Roberta.’ Elsa looked over to where Saint was still fighting with his trousers. ‘He’s a psychopath with a vengeful personality disorder, and if he believes you’ve betrayed him, he’ll come back and kill you both. Do you understand?’
Eyes bulging in terror, Dougie nodded.
‘Tell you what, to make things better…’ She’d add a bit of sugar to the pill. ‘I’m in a bit of a fix right now, but what about we pick up the personal training sessions again soon? I’ll throw in a couple of free workouts, a diet programme, how does that sound?’ When Dougie and Roberta stared, she added, ‘And I’ll help you clear up.’
‘Please,’ Roberta said in a stricken whisper. ‘Just go.’
Elsa didn’t need telling twice, and said to Saint, who was still half dressed, ‘Come on.’
But when they got to the front door, she stopped. A blue light flashed behind the stained glass; she heard the burble of a police radio.
