Zero kill, p.6
Zero Kill, page 6
‘It’s the middle of the night.’ When Elsa moved slowly around the kitchen table, Miriam made sure to keep on the other side. When Elsa turned in the opposite direction, Miriam went the other way, so that the table was always between them. ‘Who calls their auntie at 2 a.m.?’
‘She’s got insomnia,’ stammered Miriam. Elsa got bored of circling the table and headed to the door.
‘Wait,’ said Miriam. ‘Where are you going?’
She climbed the stairs, taking three at a time, and Miriam followed her, frantically calling, ‘You can’t go up there, that’s private.’
Elsa went into the front bedroom, which looked across to her own house opposite. It was a completely normal bedroom – with a double bed, a wardrobe, a dresser – except for the trestle table at the bay window laden with state-of-the-art surveillance equipment. A video camera on a tripod was pointed at her house; a laptop, digital cameras, headphones and lenses, leads and power adaptors were stashed neatly in boxes beneath the table.
‘You a keen birdwatcher, Miriam?’ Elsa asked.
‘That equipment isn’t mine,’ said Miriam at the door. ‘I’m keeping it for someone.’
‘Miriam!’ Elsa’s bark made her flinch. ‘I’ve had a shitty night already, please don’t make things worse.’
‘I don’t have a proper income and my mum needs care,’ Miriam blurted out. Elsa spun a finger in irritation, hurry up. ‘They came to me and told me they needed to watch your house.’
‘Who came to you?’
‘I don’t know, the police, or the spy people, they never said. They told me I had a duty to my country. A pair of them come every few weeks to watch your house, it’s different people every time. And they listen, too. They have microphones in your house, I think, maybe cameras.’ As Elsa moved closer, Miriam spoke faster and faster. ‘I have to let them know if you do anything out of the ordinary.’
‘You’ve been spying on me.’
‘Not me, no – I would never!’ Miriam swallowed. ‘But they – the spy people – they ask me questions about who you’re with, and who comes to the house.’
‘Nobody,’ said Elsa, outraged. ‘Nobody comes to see me.’
‘That’s what I said, it’s not like you have a different man here every week, not now you have a boyfriend, and I told them you don’t have friends. I’m so sorry, Elsa, but they paid me.’ Tears bulged in Miriam’s eyes. ‘Mum’s care is so expensive. I had no choice.’
‘How long?’
‘A year or two… or maybe more. Time flies, doesn’t it?’
‘Who did you phone downstairs?’
‘They gave me a number for emergencies. I told them you were here – and that you were leaving. I didn’t do it earlier because I was torn, confused. I like you, Elsa.’
Elsa nodded at the phone. ‘How long do I have?’
‘They told me to lock myself in the bathroom and ring them back.’
‘Oh, Miriam,’ said Elsa, with genuine sadness. Her neighbour had been sweet to her. Running errands, baking brownies, babysitting Harley and India. She was a kind soul, really, if you turned a blind eye to the snooping spies in her house. It was all very disappointing.
‘Give me the phone.’
Miriam took it from her pocket and handed it over. Then Elsa’s arm lashed out and Miriam fell unconscious to the floor.
‘Hey, kids.’ Elsa ran downstairs into the living room. ‘Time to go!’
‘But the film isn’t finished,’ said India, her eyes snapping open.
Elsa looked through the curtains. The street was seemingly deserted.
‘You’ve seen that movie a billion times,’ she said, switching it off. ‘Let it go.’
Her daughter, who always wanted the last word, told her, ‘You always say to never be a quitter.’
‘Last one to the car gets nits.’ Elsa pulled the kids off the sofa and picked up their bags. She didn’t have to tell them twice, they both raced to the front door. ‘Not that way, it’s too easy. Out the back!’
Together, they ran up the garden in the dark. At the end of the alley behind Miriam’s house, Elsa held Harley and India in the shadows while she peeked back at her street. She saw a parked van with its lights off; men in Kevlar with automatic weapons kneeled in position behind it.
‘Come on.’ She lifted the kids and carried them to Miriam’s car two streets away. ‘It’s a dead heat!’
When she had clicked their seat belts into place in the back, she closed the door and crouch-ran to a parked car from behind which she could watch her own street. She called the number on Miriam’s phone, and as soon as it connected, whispered, ‘I’m safe.’
Moments later, the van’s headlights flashed on, the engine roared into life. It accelerated up the road, with the armed unit running behind it. She heard other vehicles coming from the opposite direction, converging on Miriam’s house. She heard shouts and a bang as the front door was kicked in. Elsa crunched Miriam’s phone under her heel and ran back to the car.
‘Let the adventure begin,’ she said, climbing into the car. When neither Harley nor India replied, she saw they were both slumped in the back, asleep.
She lifted the Nokia from the rucksack pocket and thought again about Saint. They had been team members on the ill-fated mission nine years previous that somehow held the key to what was happening to her now. Which meant, if she was looking for him, others would be, too. If that was the case, Saint – an experienced ghost – may already have vanished off-grid.
Elsa had to decide where to go next. It wouldn’t take long for whoever was after her to discover she was using Miriam’s car. London was the most heavily surveilled city in the world, with hundreds of thousands of CCTV cameras, and countless face-recognition and ANPR systems. The first thing she needed to do was find another vehicle. She knew where to get one.
And then what?
She had to take her kids to safety somewhere. Had to make a quick decision. There was only one place she could think to take them.
Her last resort.
She turned the ignition.
8
Elsa cursed herself for not having some sort of safe house for just this kind of emergency. An empty flat or lock-up, a secret lair where she stored equipment and supplies: food, tech, a chunky bag of automatic weapons she could fling over her shoulder. But how was she meant to afford it on her income? So she drove to a house, owned by one of her personal training clients, that she knew was currently empty.
She was running for her life, so she wasn’t going to feel guilty about a little bit of breaking and entering. Besides, it wasn’t like she was going to be taking anything from the house. Except the car – sure, she was going to take that, but she intended to bring it back, or leave it where it could be found, so in a way it didn’t count – and technically speaking, it wasn’t even like she was doing much in the way of breaking in.
The seven-bedroom house, in an expensive neighbourhood in Chiswick, was owned by an overweight investment banker called Douglas Heston. Dougie had been given an ultimatum by his wife, Roberta, lose the pounds or lose me, and so he’d installed gleaming new gym apparatus in the basement – because it was that kind of house.
Elsa went there twice a week to put Dougie through his paces, although he spent most of the sessions bragging to Elsa about all the money he’d made, his holiday home in Portugal and time-share in Ibiza, his financial portfolio, cellar of expensive wines, and his cars; and sneaking glances at Elsa’s body when he thought she wasn’t looking. With his bulging belly and impressive collection of chins, Dougie made heavy weather of the very basic exercises Elsa made him do. At the end of each hour, sweat pouring off him, he punched the air, as if he had survived fifteen rounds in the ring with Rocky Balboa.
Dougie and Roberta’s home was palatial compared to Elsa’s small terraced house. As well as the gym, there was a home cinema, a games room, a hot tub in the garden, and a double garage big enough to hide Miriam’s car. At the end of their most recent session, Dougie had explained to Elsa’s tits that he and his wife were off to Portugal for a couple of weeks.
But Dougie wasn’t the only person with a wandering eye. Elsa saw where he kept a spare key to the rear sliding doors – in a fake stone in the Zen rockery – and memorized the alarm security code Dougie keyed in. Because: old habits.
Leaving the kids asleep in Miriam’s car, she climbed over the fence into the garden under cover of darkness, and found the fake stone. She unlocked the sliding doors, slipped into the vast white kitchen and disarmed the alarm.
Another noise momentarily confused her until she realized it was coming from her pocket. The old Nokia was ringing. She took it out and hit the green button. ‘Saint?’
‘Uh.’ The voice on the other end was uncertain. ‘Who is this?’
‘It’s Elsa Zero.’ She heard him grunt. ‘You gave me a phone, Saint, and told me to call you.’
‘Did I? When was this?’
‘Nine years ago.’
‘Woah, okay.’
‘I need to see you, I need your help.’
‘Not a problem. Saint’s always happy to help.’ He coughed violently for nearly a minute. ‘Who did you say you were again?’
This wasn’t the way she’d expected the conversation to go. ‘It’s Elsa, Saint. Elsa Zero.’
‘Sure.’ There was a thick silence. She could practically hear the cogs grinding in Saint’s head, and then he barked, ‘Elsie, it’s you! Jeez, long time no see! Yeah, whatever you need, luv. Although if it’s money you’re after, you’re bang out of luck.’
‘When can we meet?’
His laugh disintegrated into another phlegmy cough. ‘You must be in trouble if you need my help. Hold on, what time is it? It’s dark out.’
‘It can’t wait,’ she told him.
‘Been a long night, Elsie, and I’m cream-crackered.’ He yawned. ‘Let’s catch up tomorrow afternoon. I’ll call you, I promise.’
‘Saint, it’s urgent.’
‘Yeah, sure, we’ll meet later.’
‘Where?’
‘Here,’ he said.
‘Where’s here?’ she asked impatiently.
‘Uh. I’m at…’ He mumbled to himself, trying to recall, and then said in a slur, ‘I’m at the shelter in Somers Town.’
‘A shelter?’ She was confused, but didn’t have time to think about that. ‘I’ll be there at eight.’
‘Sure thing.’ He didn’t sound keen. ‘Make it nine, yeah? I’m a bit shitfaced, and need some kip. Be nice to catch up, Elsie. Bring a bottle, we can celebrate.’
‘Saint—’ She wanted to impress on him to be careful, particularly if what was happening was connected to the ill-fated Buenos Aires mission code-named Pilot Fish, but he’d hung up. When she tried to ring him back, his phone was switched off.
Elsa went into the spacious garage connected to the house, where Dougie’s flash Audi was parked, and hit the switch to open the door. She drove Miriam’s car inside. It would be a massive mistake to presume she could stay indefinitely at this house. Spooks would more than likely already have access to the contacts on her phone, her diary in the cloud, and would be poring over the data; identifying contacts, making connections. Dougie’s details would come to their attention soon enough. However, the place would be a useful sanctuary for maybe another twenty-four hours.
She found the keys to Dougie’s car in a Faraday packet in a kitchen drawer, transferred her sleeping children from Miriam’s car to his, and drove out of the garage.
Out of the city.
9
She drove up the M4 to Burnham Beeches in Buckinghamshire. Her exhausted kids sleeping in the back, she kept to a steady speed, careful not to go over the limit. Elsa felt herself becoming more tense – if that was even possible after the events of the night – the nearer she got to her destination.
Finally, she pulled off a country lane and down a rutted dirt road. Past all the Keep Out! Private Property! Turn Around! This Is Your Last Chance! signs, one every couple of yards, just in case anyone unfortunate enough to find their suspension bouncing violently on the narrow, potholed track didn’t get the message.
The car crunched over churned ridges of mud between scrubby bushes that scratched at the doors, and finally emerged into open space, a large field where cows and horses grazed. Elsa felt a familiar disgust when she saw the dilapidated farmhouse ahead – it looked almost derelict – the skeletal chassis of an ancient John Deere tractor, and the piles of scrap metal and junk that filled the yard. Beyond the farmhouse and a disintegrating barn were more fields and woods.
Standing waiting with shotguns raised, and with two large Alsatian dogs sitting alert on either side of them, were her parents.
The car crashed into a last pothole. One of the many chickens that clucked around the muddy yard took flight over the bonnet. As Elsa pulled up, Howard Zero rapped his knuckles on the driver’s side window.
‘Can’t you read, this is private property?’
Elsa lowered the window. ‘It’s me, Dad.’
Howard was joined at the window by his wife, Greta, and together they stared grimly at their daughter. Greta pointed at a space beside a heap of scrap in front of the barn, as if Elsa was a visiting tradesman. ‘Park over there.’
Elsa hadn’t even got out of the car and already regretted coming. She should have just kept travelling north, as far from the city as possible; tried to catch a ferry somewhere, or stolen a boat to get to the continent. She certainly shouldn’t have come back to this unhappy place, where her parents hid from the human race.
But she did as she was told. Killed the engine and got out. It had been nearly twenty years since she’d last seen them, and with the both of them in their early eighties, their faces were etched with deep creases. Howard had let his thick, snowy white hair grow madly to his shoulders, but Greta had the same severe short back and sides she had always worn, now flecked with grey. Despite their age, they stood ramrod straight in Barbour jackets and Hunters, radiating the same stubborn, indestructible energy they always had. Elsa felt a sense of angry failure at having to come back to this godforsaken place.
It was the unbending military bearing, the cold, harsh attitude of Howard and Greta that had made Elsa submerge her emotions as a child. They had taught her to distrust everything and everyone, and the intense paranoia that had made the Zeros reject the rest of the world and become reclusive on this farm had inevitably left them estranged from their own daughter.
Howard Zero was a former Royal Marine, and Greta – God knows what she had got up to as a young woman; Elsa was forbidden to ask about it. No wonder Elsa had been unable to say ‘I love you’ to anybody, because she never once heard those words as a child.
In the end, after endless conflict, she had washed her hands of them, and they of her. But as is often the case with antagonistic relationships, she had followed in their footsteps, forging a military career; and then a shadowy life where her own secretive, paranoid nature had kept her alive – up until the present moment, at least.
Greta and Howard came over, the dogs trotting beside them, to look in the back of the car.
‘We’ve converted your bedroom into a workshop,’ Greta said.
‘Don’t worry.’ Elsa slammed the car door. ‘I’m not staying.’
‘Well, then.’ When Greta Zero scowled, the deep lines in her face almost obliterated her brown eyes. She wore glasses now, Elsa was surprised to see. At least her parents were still alive; she had half expected to arrive to discover them both gone and the farmland developed into four hundred homes. When one of them keeled over, the other was sure to follow soon after, she was convinced of that. ‘I suppose you had better come in.’
Elsa hesitated – the kids were still asleep in the back.
‘Leave them there,’ said Howard. At a click of his fingers, the Alsatians curled up by the car.
Elsa followed her parents into the dingy farmhouse. Howard replaced the shotguns with the other guns in a cabinet in the cluttered, musty-smelling living room, and locked it. The kitchen was the same squalid room she remembered, full of salvaged furniture and boxes of junk – if anything, there was much more of it – a cracked porcelain sink, leaking pipes, a boiler as loud as a jackhammer, and the same grimy net curtains. Her parents stood together, as cold and hostile as the last time they had spoken, two decades ago.
‘What?’ she asked sarcastically. ‘Aren’t you going to offer me tea?’
‘No,’ Greta told her.
‘I’ll come straight to the point, then. I need you to look after my kids.’
‘The ones in the back of the car,’ said Howard.
‘No,’ snapped Elsa. ‘There are some more in the boot.’
Greta nodded. ‘You turn up here, after twenty years, and ask us to babysit children we have never met, nor even been told about.’
Elsa blinked. ‘It’s complicated.’
‘You’re in trouble,’ said Howard.
‘Yes.’ Exhausted and desperate, Elsa forced down a surge of angry emotion. Now wasn’t the time to reopen old wounds; her children’s safety was everything. ‘You understand I wouldn’t have come here if I had any other choice.’
Howard glanced at his wife. ‘That’s perfectly clear, isn’t it, Greta?’
‘What is happening?’ Peering at the cuts and bruises on Elsa’s face, her mother spoke in that curious, uninflected way of hers. ‘What is going on?’
‘I don’t know. I’m trying to find out, and when I do, and when the problem is solved, I’ll come back.’
‘And if someone comes for the children?’ said Greta, who perfectly understood the situation. ‘What do we do?’
‘You don’t let them take them,’ Elsa told her.
Greta and Howard shared a look, coming to silent agreement. Her parents spent every waking minute together, had done so for decades, and knew instinctively what the other was thinking.
‘And if you don’t come back, what happens then?’ asked Greta.
Elsa didn’t want to think about the consequences, said instead, ‘They’re your grandchildren, don’t you want to know their names?’
