Lethal Profit

by Alex Blackmore

  The tall man continued to stare at her and then suddenly he spoke, his voice wound tight like a spring. ‘Why are you here?’

  He walked over to her, his dark eyes never once leaving hers. As he grew closer Eva could see a scar running down his left cheek along pockmarked, lumpy skin.

  ‘I said…’ He leaned in towards her until she could smell the gum on his breath. She tried not to flinch and stared back at him, waiting for him to finish his sentence.

  She blinked and then suddenly a block of hot pain flashed across her right cheek and she was momentarily in the air. She cried out as the chair she was tied to landed roughly on the uneven floor, leaving her stranded on her back. He had hit her so hard that the force of the punch had thrown her into the air. Eva’s breathing was coming hard and fast now. The metallic taste of blood filled her mouth and the right side of her face was throbbing painfully. She struggled to try and loosen the ties around her wrists, felt the rope fixing her to the chair loosen, and then suddenly she was upright again. The wiry man had retreated to the other side of the room and it was his stocky second-in-command who now stood behind her, his hands on the back of the chair, having brought her back to an upright position.

  Eva was hyperventilating; she couldn’t stop herself. The attack had come out of the blue – he hadn’t even given her the chance to answer his question.

  As the scarred man seemed to take time to compose himself, Eva desperately tried to calm herself down. She tried to think of anyone who might be in a position to help her but the only person who might know what had happened was Valerie and by now it was clear she had some involvement in all this.

  She looked up suddenly to see the wiry man coming at her across the room again at an unexpected pace. Eva didn’t notice the glass in his right hand until he threw the contents in her face. She screamed; it burned her skin like acid. Overcome by an unexpected burst of rage, Eva kicked out with her feet trying to get to him, uncontrollable anger suddenly coursing through her body. She bucked and kicked until suddenly she felt the rope around her chest give way and she was free from the chair. Standing precariously, ankles and hands still bound, she shook off the chair and launched herself at the man, trying to loop her bound wrists over his head so she could choke him with her bonds. As she hit his shoulder with her head, she could hear him laughing and even as she felt him fall underneath her weight and the force of gravity behind her, Eva knew that this was a small victory. Her arms and legs were still tied and these two men were unbound, stronger than her and probably armed. She had no chance.

  ‘You are angry,’ he said as he pushed her aside, dusted himself off and got back to his feet. ‘Good.’

  His sidekick pulled Eva upright by her hair and the pain made her scream as she struggled to keep her body close enough to her head to stop him pulling her hair out in clumps. He pushed her back into the chair by shoving it violently into the backs of her knees then re-tied the rope, making it so tight this time that it cut into the bare skin over her collarbone. She blinked through still-wet lashes. She was shaking violently. Whatever had been in the glass was not corrosive. He had succeeded in unsettling her and making her lose control, which had no doubt been his intention all along, but she wasn’t in pain and, as far as she could tell, he hadn’t injured her. The skin on her face had settled to a grim throb as she felt the liquid start to dry. She forced her breathing back to a regular rise and fall, but her nerve endings flared with alertness.

  ‘Why are you here?’

  The man was opposite her again, closer this time.

  ‘I don’t understand what you mean.’

  Her mouth was thick with blood where he had punched her.

  ‘Don’t play games with us, Eva.’

  ‘I’m not.’

  ‘Do you think we are playing games with you, Eva?’ He laughed. ‘Do you think we are wasting your time? We have planned and executed everything to the letter.’

  There was something about the way he pronounced ‘executed’ that made Eva stop breathing for several seconds. She tried to imagine how it would feel to be shot, stabbed or suffocated but she couldn’t. Every time she tried to picture it her mind went blank.

  ‘I came to find out what happened to my brother.’

  ‘Ah yes, Jackson.’

  Eva inhaled quickly. ‘You know him.’

  ‘It was a very short acquaintance.’ He laughed.

  ‘You killed him.’

  The man smiled. ‘Perhaps.’

  Eva clenched her fists and dug her fingernails into the soft palms of her hands.

  ‘Do you want to know how we may have killed him?’

  All the breath left Eva’s body. She waited in silence. Was he just playing a game with her or was this real information?

  ‘We may have tortured him for a couple of days before he died. Or maybe we killed him straight away. Or maybe he is still alive and looking for you. How will you ever know?’ He laughed and began to walk in the other direction. ‘If he was anything like you I would say if we killed him then he would have taken a while to die,’ he said as he turned back towards Eva. ‘Stubborn and resourceful, both of you.’

  The man went over to the table and picked up something heavy that made a metallic noise as he dragged it towards him. ‘But in the end, there are some forces that are unstoppable.’

  He took several paces towards her. ‘No matter how strong you think you might be, how much you have suffered, or how hard you have fought for your life and how much you think you deserve for that effort, none of us gets what we are due in the end.’

  He stopped in front of her. ‘Death is a great leveller, Eva.’

  A slight incline of the head from the wiry man and suddenly strong hands came from behind and wrapped themselves around Eva’s throat. Slowly they began to tighten their grip. The wiry man continued to talk as if nothing was happening. ‘You should know that I am merely a conduit. Under normal circumstances I would wish you no harm.’

  Eva stared at him incredulously as she was choked on his orders. He stood motionless in front of her, a huge metal crowbar in his hands. Eva was gasping now, vainly sucking in tiny draughts of air through the vice-like grip slowly closing around her windpipe. If he didn’t watch his henchman strangle her, he was going to beat her to death with the crowbar, she thought. This is what it feels like.

  ‘Like everyone else, I’m just trying to make my way.’ He looked thoughtfully at the crowbar as Eva started to suffocate. ‘We all just run parallel to each other, Eva, alongside all these millions of other people and yet completely separate – until our paths cross.’

  His eyes drifted back to her reddening face. ‘Unfortunately, now our paths have crossed. Yours and mine; mine and your brother’s; your friend Leon’s and my brother’s; your brother’s and Sophie’s.’ He seemed almost philosophical.

  Eva could hardly breathe and there was an excruciating pressure building up behind her eyes and around her ears. ‘Did… ’ she spluttered.

  The man made a sign and suddenly all the pressure was gone as the hands released her and her airways expanded. Eva opened her throat and took in great, hungry gasps of air. ‘Did… did… ’ She struggled to pull enough breath into her lungs to be able to speak but she was determined now. ‘D-did you shoot Sophie?’

  ‘Of course!’

  Eva shook her head and took some more deep breaths. It hadn’t been Leon. She waited for those hands to close back around her throat but nothing happened.

  ‘We have been searching for her since your brother. For three months we had to stay in this godforsaken city looking for her. Then we found her and still we had to stay, watching to see if she had made contact with anyone else. And then there was you.’

  ‘I don’t understand,’ said Eva coughing as she spoke.

  ‘No. Why would you? As I said, all that has happened is that our paths have crossed. But only one of us gets to walk away.’

  He looked at her and smiled.

  ‘That is such a load of shit,�
�� she said still gasping for air.

  Suddenly the philosophical expression on the man’s face broke. He leaned in towards her and propped the crowbar under her chin. ‘And. What. The. Fuck. Would. You. Know.’

  ‘You’re trying to make out like this is a situation over which you don’t have any control. You could walk out of that door right now and leave me here unharmed.’

  ‘I couldn’t.’

  ‘You could.’

  ‘There is no choice here.’

  ‘Bullshit.’

  Eva watched his eyes flare at her and she thought he was about to lash out with the crowbar. Then the flame died.

  ‘I come from the Sudan, Eva. You come from England. You could have no idea how different life is outside of your democracy.’

  The reference to the Sudan confused Eva. Did all this have something to do with Jackson’s work there? It didn’t make sense. ‘Jackson was trying to help you. Why did you kill him?’

  Unexpectedly, the man hesitated, an expression of confusion spreading across his savaged face. ‘How could he have helped us? He didn’t even know who we were or what we are trying to do.’

  ‘No, he was trying to help your country.’

  She studied the man’s obvious incomprehension. Apparently, he had no idea who Jackson really was or what he did for a living. Perhaps he had just murdered an anonymous man. Or maybe he had never even met him.

  ‘Jackson worked to raise awareness of the problems in the Sudan, that was his job. He was trying to raise money for your people,’ she said. ‘He had information – he could have helped you.’

  The man opposite continued to glare at her. Eva stared back at him. He was just a paid thug. He knew even less than her. He wouldn’t be able to tell her anything about what really happened; maybe he hadn’t even been there.

  ‘You’re a liar.’ As he spoke, Eva noticed the hesitation on the man’s face had gone. Where before she had seen questions triggered by what she had said, now only seconds later, he seemed to have made up his mind. ‘Joseph Smith said you would tell lies.’

  So there was someone next up the chain of command.

  ‘I’m not lying.’

  ‘You are,’ he said, hefting the huge crowbar between his hands, ‘and now I don’t want to listen to your lies any more.’

  Eva looked around her; the wiry man was reaching the end of his capacity for talking.

  The man opened his mouth to speak again but got no further. With an enormous crash, the door flew open and Eva recoiled as a series of high-pitched shots filled the room. She stared up at the wiry man as his face suddenly slackened and his body briefly danced before he fell to the floor, blood oozing from the bullet holes in his back. Several more shots were fired and Eva heard a small exhalation and a loud thump behind her.

  Then she was alone in the room.

  With Leon.

  EIGHTEEN

  ‘DID YOU HAVE TO KILL HIM?’

  Eva realised her teeth were still gritted as she spoke, clamped together to stop her screaming when the shooting began. Her nerve endings were on fire; the gunshots were still echoing around inside her head. She felt Leon’s incredulous stare as she remained sitting on the battered wooden chair, in between the bodies of the two men.

  ‘Is that a serious question?’ He walked quickly across the room and began shifting the two bodies to one side before methodically searching them. She could hear that he was breathing heavily, through nerves or exertion.

  ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘Searching them.’

  ‘I… ’

  ‘Can we talk about this later?’ Leon indicated the bodies on the floor. ‘We need to get out of here.’

  Eva looked down at the man with the scar who was now lying mute, eyes wide, fingers gripping the uneven floor in the position he had died.

  Leon seemed to have found what he was looking for; he pulled Eva’s phone from the man’s pocket. Eva looked it at, surprised.

  ‘Come on.’ Having cut the rope around her shoulders and the bonds at her hands and ankles, Leon pulled her to her feet, handed her the phone and began propelling her out of the door. Eva resisted slightly, but for the first time she let him lead. She was exhausted.

  They half-walked, half-ran back along the corridor lined with cells, passed through a large metal door that looked like it had been kicked off its hinges, then stepped into a more inhabited building that appeared to Eva to be basement office space. It was empty, eerily so. Leon led Eva along through the dank darkness of the basement and then suddenly took a right and burst through a fire door.

  ‘Up there,’ he said, indicating a small doorway. She looked up. They were at the bottom of a long metal spiral staircase that covered at least eight flights. Her legs felt weak, she was still shaking and her head was throbbing, but there was no way out other than up. When they finally reached the top, Leon broke through the outer fire escape door and suddenly they were in the street. A Parisian street – alive with cars, barking dogs and the smell of fresh bread. Eva looked around her in surprise.

  ‘I thought I was outside Paris.’

  Leon simply shook his head. ‘Come.’

  He led her around the corner to where the Citroen was parked, and opened the door. Eva got in, sinking gratefully into the soft seat. She was surprised to see the rear windscreen, that had been in pieces the last time she had seen the car, had already been replaced.

  Leon started up the engine and pulled out into a flow of traffic whilst Eva glanced in the mirrors. Once they were under way, she looked expectantly over at him, assuming that some kind of explanation would be forthcoming.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said in what was probably a fairly underwhelming expression of gratitude for what he had just done.

  ‘I shouldn’t have left you alone at the Sacré Coeur.’ He nodded in the rear view mirror at her. ‘You look terrible.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘Who did they work for?’

  ‘That’s what I was about to find out.’

  ‘Did they say anything at all?’

  ‘There was a name – Joseph Smith.’

  Leon nodded slowly.

  ‘What did they do to you?’ he asked, his voice hard.

  ‘Just what you can see,’ Eva replied. And then in a low voice, with a lump in her throat, ‘I think they killed Jackson.’

  Leon remained stony-faced. He seemed heavy, depressed. They sat in silence for several minutes.

  ‘Look, don’t ask me how but I know of this man Joseph Smith,’ he said finally. ‘If they are working for him then we won’t have long before they discover you have escaped and come after us.’

  ‘Who is he?’ asked Eva, ignoring Leon’s instruction.

  He gazed at her in the rear view mirror for several seconds. ‘It doesn’t matter right now.’

  Eva locked into his gaze and held it. They stared at each other and then, fearing Leon’s pig-headedness would see them end up in a traffic accident, Eva looked away.

  ‘We need to find the memory stick Sophie gave me.’

  ‘Yes.’

  Eva thought about how convinced she had been that Leon had been Sophie’s murderer. ‘How do you know she gave me that? Every time I looked for you at the Sacré Coeur you weren’t there.’

  ‘There was someone watching you – it was the larger man back there,’ he said, indicating the direction of the cellar he had released her from. ‘I left my position because I followed him. I lost him and that’s when I saw the gun being aimed at you through the curtain of a confessional near the exit. I couldn’t get there in time… ’ He finished, disappointment heavy in his voice. ‘I guessed it must be some kind of device.’

  Eva nodded silently.

  ‘What was on the stick?’

  She looked over at him. ‘I don’t know. I mean, I did know… but… ’

  ‘I think you were drugged.’

  ‘I guessed as much.’ Eva rubbed her aching head. ‘How did you know where I was?’

  Leon glan
ced sideways at her and then back at the road. ‘I fitted you with a tracking device when you were at my apartment. That’s how I knew you had been at Valerie’s flat.’

  That was why he hadn’t bothered to follow her when she ran off after the Sacré Coeur, she realised. ‘Where is it?’

  ‘It looks just like skin. It’s on your lower back.’

  Eva reached round and felt all across the skin of her back with one hand until, after several minutes, she finally found a tiny patch that was too smooth. She used her fingertips to find the point at which the too smooth area became real skin then gouged with her nails until she made a ridge. With some considerable effort she ripped the feather-light strip off, pulled it out from under her top and held it up.

  ‘It was for safety.’

  ‘Right. You know if you tried communicating with me in a normal way we might not keep ending up in these situations.’

  ‘It worked, didn’t it?’ he said, ignoring the comment.

  She stared at him, annoyed, and then sighed. She was too tired.

  ‘I went to Valerie’s yesterday but she wasn’t there,’ he continued, apparently keen to gloss over the issue. ‘I spoke to her neighbour and he saw her leave several hours after you. He said he noticed blood in her hair.’

  ‘Seriously?’ That was a surprise. ‘Do you think maybe she didn’t hand me over to those people?’

  ‘I considered that, but then why drug you?’

  ‘True.’

  ‘I’m still certain she’s caught up in this.’

  Whilst she wouldn’t admit it, deep down, Eva couldn’t help feeling stupid. She had walked right into Valerie’s hands, despite Leon having warned her, and she hadn’t been smart enough to avoid getting herself drugged, despite the fact that all her instincts had told her something was wrong from the moment she had arrived at Valerie’s. She wasn’t about to admit that to anyone though.

  ‘Where does she fit in all of this?’

  ‘I don’t know. But we need to find that out.’

  Eva glanced at the clock on the dashboard: 11.53am. She had been there all night.

  ‘Look Leon, this might be crazy, but I don’t have the memory stick and I know that I had it before I lost consciousness. I think I might have hidden it at Valerie’s somewhere.’