Zero kill, p.2
Zero Kill, page 2
A kick to her shoulder sent her flying. She hardly heard the screams of the fleeing customers. She rolled across the floor and came up as Joel flew at her with a skewer, a greasy cuttlefish still impaled on it. Elsa ducked low, grabbing his outstretched arm and twisting, using his momentum to spin him over her shoulders. He landed like a starfish on a table. China, glass, stainless steel crashed everywhere.
‘Enough!’ Elsa held up a warning hand, but Joel sucked a pair of serving knives from a joint of fatty meat and leaped.
She lifted a chopping board in front of her face. The knives embedded deep. She threw the board aside as he lunged again.
‘The police are coming!’ someone screeched as Elsa and Joel crashed together through the swing doors to the kitchen in a deadly dance. Shards of glass embedded in her soles, the tiled floor slid beneath her bloodied feet. Later – if she managed to survive this – they’d hurt like hell. But right now, adrenaline and a single, instinctive focus, stay the fuck alive, kept her moving, kept her fighting.
She ducked when Joel swung a frying pan that sizzled with fat – it flew above her head in a whistling arc – and dodged when it returned backhanded. Droplets of hot oil scalded her cheeks.
Reaching a hob, she picked up a pan of boiling water and threw it at Joel, who turned away just in time. His back arched when it hit his suit jacket, neck and shoulders. His fists clenched in agony, his lips curled over grinding teeth, and it gave her time to lash out with a leg. Her heel smashed into his lower back, sending him crashing across a counter.
When he leaped back over, pink skin was peeling down his neck. Swinging low, he scooped a kitchen knife off the floor with a metallic scrape, and came at her.
The blade danced inches from her eyes. Stabbing high and low, swooping backwards and forwards. Joel dropped suddenly to slash at her stomach. But tiring now, his movements imprecise, grimacing face a mess of blood and sweat, the final lunge was clumsy. Elsa grabbed his wrist and pulled. But she didn’t see the shattered stem of a wine glass in his other hand, which he plunged into her collarbone and twisted. It sank into the flesh like a knife into soft butter.
She roared, harnessing all her pain and fury – her kids! – to lift him across her body, grabbing the back of his neck to push his face onto a griddle. He shrieked in a plume of smoke and sparks. The air filled with the smell of burning flesh as his left cheek sizzled greedily on the red-hot plate.
Panting, Elsa stepped back, her buttocks bumping up against a work surface, blood blooming around the flimsy shoulder strap of her dress. Joel staggered to a window and leaned wearily against the pane, fingers lifted to his molten, bubbling cheek.
She pointed at the broken glass in his hand. ‘That’s enough.’
He dropped it and laughed.
Incredulous, she asked, ‘What’s so funny?’
‘I still love you.’
People were edging back into the kitchen – staff and customers – armed with various kitchen implements, but Elsa ignored them.
She needed to know. ‘Why?’
‘You know how it works.’ She realized he was speaking in an American accent. ‘I just do as I’m told.’
‘I trusted you,’ she spat. ‘I let you into my life.’
She and Joel had been together for a year. She had convinced herself that he was the man who would finally allow her to leave the past behind, that she could heal with him – she’d believed they had a future together. They’d be a family.
Truth was, she never knew him at all.
‘Admit it.’ The curdling flesh on his face gave his rueful smile a hideous aspect. ‘I know how to show you a good time.’
The last few minutes had been a surreal nightmare: obscene, cruel. But Elsa sensed her troubles were only just beginning.
Her heart leaped when she thought of Harley and India at home.
‘Guess what, Joel,’ she told him. ‘The engagement’s off!’
Then she jumped up to grab with both hands the steel rail above her head that held all the kitchen’s pots and pans, and swung her legs to hit him square in the chest.
Joel crashed backwards out of the window. Elsa dropped to the floor and grabbed the biggest knife she could find, and because they were in a professional kitchen there were some very big knives. At the window, she saw broken glass in the alley outside – but no sign of Joel.
Elsa padded through the kitchen, people backing away warily as she passed. Through the swing doors back into the restaurant, past the chaos of upturned tables, broken glass and smashed china. The room looked like a bomb had hit it.
Most customers had fled, but a small number huddled together, watching her fearfully. When Elsa glanced in a full-length mirror, she saw her dress was slashed, her abs visible through the torn fabric, her limbs red and bruised. Shiny sweat mingled with the blood smeared across her face, obliterating the make-up she’d spent so long trying to get right for Joel.
She looked on the floor. ‘I can’t find my bag.’
A waitress picked up a small clutch. ‘Is it this one?’
Elsa snatched it and went through it with trembling fingers, looking for her phone, but remembered she hadn’t brought it. Dropping the bag, she eyed the customers, who pressed back against the wall as if she were a dangerous animal.
They had no idea.
She pointed at the fat guy who had ogled her, and he gulped like a toad. ‘Give me your phone.’
He fumbled in his jacket and handed her his mobile. She suddenly grabbed him by the back of his neck and pulled him close, making him whimper. Holding the phone to his face, activating the facial recognition security, and unlocking the device.
‘Enjoy the rest of your evening,’ she told everyone.
3
When she ran outside, an ambulance was already parked at the kerb. Two green-uniformed paramedics rushed towards her.
‘Miss,’ said the woman paramedic urgently. ‘You need treatment.’
With blood streaming down her shoulder, and all the other angry cuts and abrasions on her arms and legs, it was probably a good idea, but Elsa wasn’t going to spend hours waiting in a hospital A & E. She had to get home to her children. Sirens wailed in the distance.
‘Not now.’ She waved them off. ‘Not tonight.’
‘This way.’ The woman tried to pull her towards the ambulance, its back doors gaping wide. ‘Let’s get you fixed up.’
Elsa backed away, still getting her breath back after the life-and-death struggle with her devoted fiancé.
‘That wound looks nasty,’ insisted the paramedic. ‘You need to come with us.’
The sirens were getting closer. In Elsa’s shock and bewilderment, it hadn’t occurred to her that this ambulance was already parked outside the restaurant.
Shit, where was the other paramedic?
Arms grabbed her from behind, clamping around her chest, pinning her left arm to her side. The woman paramedic rushed at her with a mask attached to a canister. Elsa heard its sinister gaseous hiss.
‘Hold her tight!’
Elsa instinctively lifted her free arm, which still held the phone, to stop the whispering mask being placed over her mouth and nose. If that happened, she knew, she would quickly become unconscious – or even dead. She knocked it away, and the mask skittered to the floor.
Elsa scraped her bare feet into the pavement, bloody heels stinging on the concrete, and heaved herself against the man holding her, pushing him backwards. Picking up momentum, they crunched hard onto the bonnet of a parked sports car. The man grunted as his spine slammed against the metal. The shrill alarm of the car erupted; its security lights flashed crazily.
‘Hold her,’ shouted the woman, and she scooped up the mask, scurrying forward. But Elsa elbowed the man behind her in the face three times, and when he finally let go with a groan, she kicked out a long leg, bringing the top of her foot up into the woman’s throat, sending her flying.
And then she was running.
Blood flying off her, her ruined dress bunched high up her legs so she could sprint barefoot along the King’s Road, oblivious of the looks and stares of startled passers-by. Behind her, she glimpsed a flurry of flashing blue lights, as patrol cars and vans skidded to a stop outside the restaurant.
‘That’s her!’ someone shouted. ‘She’s the one!’
Arms and legs pumping, Elsa ran into oncoming traffic, leaping across the bonnet of one moving car to jump to the pavement on the other side and get off the busy road, with its crowds and brightly lit shopfronts, into a neat square of tall Edwardian homes.
Racing along a connecting street, she became conscious of excruciating pain in her feet and legs. She had no idea what Stacey’s mobile number was, so she called her own home number, thinking it hopeless – nobody in their right mind answered a landline gone midnight.
To her astonishment, a voice answered. ‘Hello?’
‘Stacey!’ Flying around a corner, Elsa nearly collided with a startled man and his barking dog.
‘Hi, Mrs Zee,’ said Stacey brightly. ‘How was Date Night? Give me all the gory details!’
She shouted, ‘Where are the kids?’
‘They’re in bed.’ The girl stuttered, maybe because the notoriously terse Elsa Zero was being even more brusque than usual and panting into the phone. ‘Is anything wrong?’
Elsa couldn’t explain, what the hell could she tell the girl, the whole situation was mad.
‘Listen to me and don’t interrupt,’ Elsa gasped, trying to keep up her breakneck speed while she spoke.
Shooting pains crackled up and down her body; her shoulder felt numb. Her only priority was to get home fast and grab the kids. They’d go abroad. Somewhere far away – a remote beach, a mountain hideaway – where they would never be found. She’d stashed a bunch of passports using different identities for just this kind of eventuality, but had never in a million years believed it would ever happen. Not after all this time.
‘Hang on, Stacey.’ A BMW was coming down the street towards her and she ran in front of it – it screeched to a halt – to smash her fists hard on the bonnet. Inside, a middle-aged couple stared at her in shock. It didn’t even occur to Elsa what she must look like. A six-foot-something madwoman: barefoot; hair a towering, swaying mess; her dress bloodied and tattered. She rapped her knuckles on the driver’s side window.
‘Are you okay, miss?’ asked the man, as the window lowered.
‘Out!’ she told him.
‘What are you doi—’
Elsa opened the door and dragged him out, so that he fell in a heap on the road. When she climbed into his warm seat, the woman beside her gaped in horror.
‘What did I just tell you?’ Elsa snarled, in no mood to argue, and the woman scrambled out. Elsa dropped the phone onto the passenger seat and hit the speaker. She floored the accelerator and the car surged. ‘Stacey, are you still there?’
‘Yes,’ said the girl, confused. ‘I’m here.’
‘Lock all the doors and windows, and turn out all the lights. Don’t answer the door to anyone.’
The girl sounded scared. ‘Shall I call the police?’
‘No!’ Elsa shot a red light. ‘I’m on my way!’
‘You’re frightening me.’
‘I’ll be back soon,’ Elsa shouted above the roar of the engine. She took a corner hard. The car skidded, wheels bumping onto the kerb. Trying to get her bearings, calculate the quickest route, she was desperate to shave critical seconds from her journey, but couldn’t afford to become embroiled in a high-speed police chase. ‘Just don’t answer the door to anybody but me.’
‘When will you and Joel be home?’ asked Stacey.
At the mention of his name, Elsa sucked down a breath.
‘Make sure you put the latch on.’ As if that would do any good. ‘And if Joel turns up, don’t let him in.’
‘I think I should probably go home,’ said Stacey anxiously.
‘I’m only a few minutes away. Don’t leave the kids,’ Elsa said, and tossed the phone out the window.
She gunned the BMW through the streets of South London as fast as she dared. Speeding across junctions, ignoring speed limits, jumping a central reservation to make a U-turn. The accelerator pedal was slick with blood by the time she swung the car to the kerb a block from her house in Clapham.
She banged on the front door, yelling to be let in, carefully watching the row of small terraced houses. Elsa had lived here for years, but always had mixed feelings about it. She was never a good fit for a life in the suburbs, where the neighbours knew each other’s business, took in each other’s parcels, baked each other cakes, and held a street party every year that Elsa felt compelled to attend. Her attempt at living such a life had ended in disaster, as deep down she had always suspected it would. That so-called normal life, that fantasy, was dead in the water.
Stacey unlocked the door. She gawped when she saw the state of Elsa. The way her hair flew every which way on her head, the bloody mess of the dress bunched up to her knickers.
‘Mrs Zee, what’s happening?’
She slipped inside.
‘Go.’ The girl stared, and Elsa realized she wanted to get paid. But Elsa didn’t have money on her, and no time to find any, so she took Stacey’s coat from the banister and shoved it at her, pushed her out the door. ‘Get out.’
Her eight-year-old twins, Harley and India, stood sleepily in their PJs at the top of the stairs, and she bounded up towards them. Took them in her arms and held them tight, inhaled the smell of shampoo and sleep on the top of their heads. Her relief was overwhelming. Before she was a mother, Elsa had no idea her love for two other human beings could be so total, so complete. So perfect.
But there was no time.
‘Get dressed, it’s night-time so make sure you wrap up warm, and get your rucksacks.’ She led them towards their room. ‘Fill them with clothes, a toothbrush and anything else you need.’
‘A toy?’ asked India.
‘Whatever.’
Wide-eyed, Harley looked his mum up and down. ‘Have you been in an accident?’
Elsa hoped the dim landing light would obscure most of the blood. ‘A tiny one.’
‘Are you hurt?’
‘No – yes – a bit.’
India poked her finger into one of the slashes in her dress. ‘You have holes.’
‘I fell into a hedge.’ Elsa opened the wardrobe in their room. ‘Get your stuff together.’
‘Is Joel here?’ asked Harley.
‘Not tonight.’ Elsa kneeled, pulling her kids closer to her. ‘I’ll explain later. We’re leaving asap.’
‘What’s asap?’
‘As soon as possible.’
‘It’s very late,’ India informed her gravely.
‘Yeah, it is.’ She was a great mum, her kids were everything to her, but she had never been the most imaginative of parents, never very good at those creative flights of fancy with which people were meant to indulge their kids. Playing dress-up, writing to Santa, making shit up on the spot. Reading books at bedtime, night after night, bored her. She’d hurry through make-believe stories about wizards, talking animals, an endless parade of naughty children who saved the world or learned an important life lesson. Elsa found it all dull and patronizing.
Back in her former life, the only lesson she had ever needed to learn was how to stay alive from one day to the next; and that wasn’t something she ever wanted to have to teach her own kids.
‘Slow down, you’re spoiling it!’ they’d whine when she turned the pages too quickly, or tell her she wasn’t doing the voices properly.
But they’d ask to hear the very same story again the following night, and then the next and next, and it drove Elsa crazy. When Joel came over, Harley and India insisted he read instead, and he really got into it; he took his time with the story and did all the silly voices and sound effects. But now… now Joel was gone.
And she had to try to make something up.
‘We’re going on a trip, far away,’ she told them. ‘It’s going to be an adventure.’
‘Where?’ asked Harley.
‘That would spoil the surprise, right?’
India made a face. ‘I’m tired, can we go in the morning?’
Elsa was getting impatient with all the questions. ‘We’ll play a game. Let’s see who can get dressed the quickest!’
‘What do we win?’ asked Harley, excited.
‘Just do as I tell you,’ she snapped, and shoved rucksacks at them. ‘Chop chop!’
Then Elsa ran into her bedroom, where she had spent many exciting nights with Joel, and where he hadn’t tried to smash her brains out. They’d been together for a year, which meant she had broken the record for her longest relationship by about eleven months. She’d been totally taken in by him, and cursed herself again for being so foolish, so naïve, to think she could have escaped the past. To believe she could just leave her old life behind, all the bad things she had done – even after all these years.
She used scissors to slice off the dress, careful not to irritate the throbbing wound below her collarbone, or any of the many other cuts and lesions, and tossed it; stripped off her bra and knickers. She snatched up her phone, which she’d left beside the bed, and went into the bathroom.
There, beneath the harsh light, she studied her own naked body, letting her fingers roam up and down her arms and legs, checking her ribs and stomach, feeling carefully for fractures, breaks and other internal injuries. One livid purple bruise bloomed down the left side of her body like the map of Chile, but considering the ferocity of Joel’s attack, she’d had a lucky escape.
Tipping gauze and bandages and creams and painkillers from the cabinet into the sink, she went to work on the bloody gouge in her shoulder. Checking for fragments of glass; sponging the wound with wet cotton wool; grimacing as she dabbed it with rubbing alcohol and petroleum jelly; dressing and bandaging it. She cleaned the worst of the other cuts and abrasions as quickly as she could. Swinging her gashed feet beneath the cold tap in the bath to wash off the blood, she called a number on her phone.
