The House of Killers

by Samantha Lee Howe

  ‘So, you’re saying … you weren’t having regular sex after that? Is that what added to your suspicions that she was having an affair?’ Beth says.

  ‘Like I said, she didn’t seem that interested once she had the baby.’

  ‘You broke up some … ten years ago. Why did you leave the law firm you worked for at the same time?’ I ask. His eyes widen a little. He looks like the proverbial rabbit caught in very bright headlights.

  ‘Look, that has nothing—’

  ‘Please just answer the question.’ I’m blunt. My patience is running thinner the longer this takes and there’s something so weak about Devlin that I find him annoying.

  ‘I wanted to set up alone.’

  ‘It had nothing to do with the affair you had with a senior male partner?’ Beth asks.

  Devlin blinks. ‘I don’t have to discuss this with you. It has nothing to do with this. Look … what you’ve told me … it’s not possible. Lily didn’t know anyone odd. She was just so ordinary. She was the kind of person people just don’t really take offence at. You know?’

  I’ve pushed as hard as I can without bringing the man in for interrogation. I realise he can’t tell us anything more.

  ‘You’ve been very helpful,’ I say.

  As I open the door to leave, Beth turns. She walks back to Devlin and places her card on his desk. Devlin doesn’t reach for it, but he stares down at the plain white card with bold black writing.

  ‘If you think of anything that might help us find Lily’s killer, please do get in touch.’

  We don’t speak again until we’re in the car and driving back to the office.

  ‘What do you make of that?’ Beth asks.

  ‘He was definitely stunned. And it was obvious he didn’t know anything. He really believes that Lily had nothing interesting in her life. It was what we suspected though; she was his beard.’

  ‘Yeah. But why in this day and age would anyone want to pretend otherwise when they’re gay? I mean, who cares?’ Beth says.

  ‘Devlin cared enough to keep it secret. Even now he can’t admit it.’

  ‘That’s a shame. Life’s hard enough without not being yourself as well.’

  We drive in silence for a while and then Beth says. ‘Do you believe you can live with someone for ten years and they can keep secrets from you? Especially that?’

  I glance at her. ‘Isn’t that what we do? Not the sexuality part.’

  ‘I suppose. But it’s different for us. My husband knows I work for MI5 and he isn’t to ask me anything. It’s not a secret where I work, just what I do.’

  ‘And you’re in the habit of not talking about it,’ I say. ‘So, it doesn’t count as secrets or lies, because you don’t have to tell any?’

  ‘Pretty much.’

  ‘Hmm. Lily Devlin was keeping a secret from Anton, and we know he kept one from her. The phone he described sounds like a burner.’

  ‘Yes. Why would an ordinary secretary need a burner?’ Beth says.

  ‘Whatever it was, it probably led to her execution.’

  Chapter Six

  NEVA

  In her dream she sees a playground and a swing on which she sits. Someone pushes her and the swing goes higher and higher, until the unimaginable happens and she falls, face first, onto the tarmac. The swing hits her head as she tries to get up. There’s shouting, sounds of a woman panicking, and then she’s picked up off the ground. Sincere arms envelop her. She’s dazed and shaken. Her face is wet with tears and blood.

  ‘We’ll get you home and wash this right away,’ says the woman holding her.

  Neva buries herself in loving arms. A feeling of warmth and safety lulls her and she dozes as she’s carried from the playground.

  Later, the woman kisses her head, and sings a lullaby. ‘No more swings for you,’ she says.

  But she doesn’t fear the swing. Instead, she experiences the lulling movement, as though she’s still on it, moving back and forth, and it soothes her, along with the woman’s sweet voice, until she slips into a dreamless sleep.

  When she wakes, she keeps her eyes closed. She doesn’t want to see the reflection in the skylight. She doesn’t want to let go of that feeling of being held, of being loved. Eventually, the echo of the dream fades, despite how hard she tries to hold on. Then, and only then, does Neva pull herself up from the bed.

  In the bathroom, she washes her hands over and over again. Then she splashes water over her face. The stinging cold makes her feel more awake. She recalls the splash of warmer water once, and the gentle pat of a soft towel that dried away the tears.

  She pulls on a robe and goes downstairs to the kitchen. There she puts on the kettle; the habit of making morning tea she has got into means that she craves this as her first drink of the day. Afterwards she resorts to the purer liquid – water.

  Water to cleanse in, water to drink, water to sweat from her pores as she does her usual morning workout. And then the cleansing and drinking start up again. It’s nightfall before she realises she has fasted all day again. Another habit, two days a week, and all part of her conditioning. All necessary for her personal health. All to keep her at maximum fitness.

  After a light supper, she looks at her new burner phone. There are no messages, no assignments. Without them, she almost has no purpose. It’s rare that she considers her kills, but Ansell and Devlin are forefront in her mind. She sees them now, hand in hand on their journey to oblivion. No heaven for their sins. Neva’s denied them that. Now only a cold, dark grave awaits.

  She sits in the dark in the small snug. A television lurks in the corner but she doesn’t seek that escapism tonight. Instead, she closes her eyes and tries to recapture the dream from the morning that gave her such profound comfort.

  But the feeling doesn’t return. After a while she gives up. The vision of innocence and childhood is gone, lost in the ether that has become her life.

  She recites her mantra.

  Follow orders. Curiosity kills. Fear nothing: you are death. No distractions. Fitness is key.

  Her mind glitches. Follow orders. Curiosity kills. Fear nothing, fear nothing, fear…

  Fear nothing: you are death.

  She repeats this nine times.

  There is no ego. No pride. She merely knows it is the truth. For now. She is death to anyone marked by her employers. Follow orders.

  Neva feels the energy drain from her as though she is an automaton that needs winding.

  Sleep, my little one.

  Where had she heard those words? How she craves that soft whisper once more.

  She goes to bed and lies in the dark, looking up at the skylight. The night is pure and she can see the stars, but her mind isn’t clear. There is an impenetrable fog that comes over her whenever she isn’t working, as though she’s on standby, waiting to be activated, waiting for a directive. Inactivity weakens her.

  She thinks again about her dream. The little girl who wanted to go higher and then fell is somehow connected to her. It is a memory of before. She feels this. She picks at the layers of recollection. Who was the woman whose loving arms held her? Where was the playground? Her mind tries to fill in the blanks of the hazy dream, but fails. There is a blackness surrounding the details. Part of her knows she was once this child. She must have been. But who that child was she has no idea.

  Curiosity kills.

  Neva closes her eyes; behind her lids she sees the stars framed in the lantern-roof skylight. She follows them on the flow to infinity. And still the mantra pushes at the edges of her mind, but its power over her is breaking down until only one fragment feels important.

  You are death.

  Sleep, my little one.

  Death is sleep and sleep is death in her half-dreaming mind. And sleep becomes an eternal rest she almost craves. But no. The morbidity of it haunts her, down, down, into the darkest parts of her mind, where so often she’s afraid to look. It shapes an unfathomable anxiety and a sure knowledge that something is crumbling the wall
they built inside her head.

  She cannot look, she cannot pass, yet the barrier continues to fail and Neva stumbles onwards towards an imagined precipice, where she stands, holding on to the fragile branch of her existence.

  Days pass and Neva stops worrying about the lack of work. Her energy returns and she begins to imagine life without the texts, and deaths, and payments. Perhaps she no longer needs to be the bringer of some mysterious justice that her employers demand.

  Sometimes she has experienced normality. Once they sent her on a long assignment. She lived as a regular person for six months before she had full access to her target. She worked in a bar which the mark frequented. She had to build trust, appear innocuous. And even after the deed was done, she remained there, continuing the lie, even when she didn’t need to.

  She’d enjoyed the routine. She’d built friendships, even though they were all based on the lie of her persona. As the barmaid, she could pretend to be something she wasn’t. She immersed herself in it until she started to believe she could have this simple life. It was freeing.

  Neva remembers this time and how Tracey had pulled her back, absorbing her into the Network as though she’d never been away, as though she’d never tasted independence. And Neva had railed inside against those invisible bars that Tracey represented.

  Everything always comes back to Tracey; she will never let Neva go.

  You’re my protégée. I made you what you are! Oh, Tracey loves to say this to her. But there is no soothing hand stroking her hair, or loving arms that hold her with pride. No, all of that is gone. A distant memory. A dream.

  At night, when she’s drifting to sleep, she thinks about Lily Devlin and Ansell. She wants to know why they had to die. Behind her eyes she sees the sincere face of Tracey; she has the answers Neva seeks.

  To ask though…

  The questions bubble up inside her and must be uttered. No matter what trouble it causes.

  Chapter Seven

  TRACEY

  Tracey Herod looks up from her latte and meets the eyes of a beautiful young woman with long strawberry blonde hair and pale translucent skin that appears never to have seen daylight. For a moment she doesn’t recognise Neva. Then, Tracey glances around the coffee bar checking if she and the girl are being observed.

  ‘Come in the back,’ she says.

  Tracey stands, leaving the undrunk coffee on the table, and takes Neva through a door marked ‘Staff Only’. Behind the door is a small staff area. Tracey locks the door and turns around facing into the room away from Neva. She presses her hand against the wall opposite the staff room door and a panel slides aside revealing the entrance to another room. This room is full of equipment that no coffee bar would ever have. Two computers stand on a broad wooden workstation next to two landline telephones. Neva knows these will be encrypted. Behind the desk is a cabinet big enough to store weapons in.

  ‘You’re not supposed to be here. How did you find me?’ Tracey asks as she closes the inner door behind them.

  ‘I’ve always known where to find you,’ Neva says.

  Tracey is rarely short of words and, even caught by surprise, she attempts to defuse the moment. Neva is behaving out of character. She usually works firmly in the realms of professionalism and never deviates from her tasks. It’s why the Network uses her so often. It’s why she is so very valuable to them. This is a bad sign. Something Tracey hasn’t seen coming. Neva might be breaking down. She studies her, looking hard for signs of instability. Neva is natural today. No wig, no make-up. Herself. It’s a look she rarely wears in public.

  ‘New look?’ she asks.

  Neva smiles. ‘Every day is a new look.’

  ‘Why are you here?’ Tracey asks.

  ‘Aren’t you even going to offer me a coffee?’ Neva says.

  ‘Do you want a coffee?’ Tracey says.

  ‘No, thank you. I need a new assignment,’ Neva says. ‘It’s been a long time since the last one.’

  ‘Nothing in, or I’d have contacted you. We’re having a quiet time right now. Enjoy the rest while you can. You know sometimes they come one after another.’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘So, I’ll be in touch in the usual way—’

  ‘It’s very clean in here.’ Neva runs a finger over the table top.

  ‘What are you really doing here, Neva?’ Tracey asks. Her voice is sharp. There’s a tiny blush spreading over her cheeks that gives away the discomfort she’s feeling. She doesn’t like this intrusion. She glances at the weapons cabinet, wondering if she can make it in time.

  ‘I wanted to see where you worked.’

  ‘Curiosity is not usually your thing. Have you been practising your mantra?’ The schoolmistress tone is there now. That voice of authority, designed to quell Neva.

  Neva ignores the question. ‘I wanted to ask you something.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Why what?’

  ‘Why Ansell? Why Devlin?’

  ‘You know the answer to that already.’

  ‘Because you told me to kill them?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But what did they do?’

  ‘Curiosity kills,’ says Tracey, her voice still firm. ‘Stand by for your next assignment. Don’t come back here again.’

  Tracey’s face is stern now. Neva hasn’t seen this expression before.

  Tracey’s cover is this place. Sometimes Neva watches her while she opens the coffee shop, unobserved. Again, it’s an average life. One that Tracey is permitted to maintain. Neva doesn’t think Tracey sees it just as a cover, but as her world. She probably has a family too, but Neva has avoided finding out. She knows such knowledge might change everything she plans to do.

  Neva turns and opens the panel doorway that leads back into the regular staff area of the coffee shop.

  ‘See you soon,’ she says.

  Tracey opens the top drawer on her desk. Next to a mobile phone is a loaded gun. She pushes it aside and picks up the phone. Something is wrong with Neva. She has to get clear of the coffee shop and then consider what action to take. The fact that she is asking questions is worrying enough but the girl’s comment about seeing her ‘soon’ feels like a veiled threat. Tracey’s hand is shaking as she selects a number.

  ‘Tracey?’

  ‘The coffee shop is compromised. Can you send in an extraction crew or should I just burn the place?’

  ‘Leave it to me,’ says the male voice on the other end. ‘Protocol Two action. Then get out and make sure you aren’t followed. What happened? Where is the breach?’

  ‘I’ll explain in person.’

  ‘Come in immediately.’

  ‘On my way.’

  Tracey hangs up. The decision to hold back on her concerns for Neva has been made. She has to think about what she will say; she doesn’t want to be blamed for Neva’s behaviour as the girl’s handler. They might say she has given her too much freedom of late and it would be true. She’s never been concerned before about Neva because she is so predictable. When she wasn’t on an assignment, she lived a solitary existence in her country cottage. Unlike some of the other operatives, she never looked to have a permanent relationship with anyone. Avoiding, for the most part, all human contact. Yes, there were the occasional sexual blowouts, accompanied by large amounts of vodka consumption. Tracey was aware of those times. They were necessary for the girl to let off steam. But she’s never had any doubt that they were in control of Neva. Until now.

  For the first time since she was recruited, Tracey feels an intense paranoia. She’s always felt safe with the Network, as though her connection protected her somehow from other, less savoury, elements. Like other handlers, she believes in what they do. She considers her role to be important. She also earned a great deal of untraceable money from it. But now Neva, one of their own, has been watching her. How much does she know about Tracey’s life? The intrusion upsets and worries her more than it would a person without her connections. Partly becaus
e it will concern her superiors, who may feel that Tracey has not been doing her job properly; she’s become complacent.

  Tracey unscrews the base unit of each of the computers and pulls out the hard drives. Behind the desk, she opens the weapons cabinet and takes out a pistol and some bullets. Ensuring the safety is on, she loads the pistol, then places it in her coat pocket. She pulls on the coat. Then she opens another panel at the back of the weapons cabinet. She slips through and comes out into the disabled toilet cubicle in the coffee shop. Another opening leads her into the kitchen. Ignoring the staff, she places the two hard drives in the microwave, switches it on, and then hurries from the coffee shop via the back door.

  In the alley she hears the microwave fritz. Protocol Two achieved; the hard drives are now unreadable. Anything else left behind doesn’t matter. When the extraction team arrives, they’ll remove what they have to and destroy the rest.

  Tracey looks up and down the alley. Both sides are clear, but at which end will Neva be waiting? She makes a decision and hurries left, heading towards the main road and Kings Cross Station. At the end of the alley, Tracey looks around. The road is busy; tourists pour up and down both sides of the street. She looks back down the alley and sees Neva at the other end, staring at her. Tracey pats the pocket of her coat as a warning. Then she rushes across the road and out in front of oncoming traffic. Horns blare; brakes screech. Tracey reaches the other side of the road unscathed. In a few seconds, she arrives at the front of Kings Cross Station and heads towards the steps that lead down to the tube. It doesn’t matter which train she catches. She just has to lose Neva.

  At the bottom of the steps she turns right towards the Piccadilly and Victoria lines; both will be busy. Either will do. She can lose her tail in any of the labyrinthine tunnels below. Glancing behind her, she presses her Oyster card against the turnstile. The barrier opens and she hurries through. Neva is nowhere to be seen.

  Feeling more confident, Tracey takes the tunnels towards the Piccadilly line then, on the spur of the moment, cuts through a tunnel marked ‘No Entry’. She is now on the opposite side. A train comes in, she glances around, then boards and takes the nearest available seat.