Until Death

by Knight, Ali

  When Uncle Ed squeezed into the kitchen she rounded on him, even though deep down she knew he was not to blame. ‘Your connections in Southampton sure turned up some toxic shit that’s landed me in huge trouble.’

  ‘Georgie’s worried she’s lost her job,’ Dad said to him.

  ‘Don’t, Dad, please.’

  ‘Just because you talked to someone?’ said Uncle Ed.

  ‘The guy I interviewed about Southampton is part of some other police case.’

  Uncle Ed frowned. ‘How is that your problem?’

  ‘It doesn’t matter, Ed. I’m so tired, please.’

  He became defensive, which immediately put him on the offensive. ‘You hear that, Matt? Your sis’s tired. Don’t put your white-collar stress on me. Brawn or brains, work is work, one job no better than another.’

  She closed her eyes, trying to think through her shame. She phoned Kelly, but there was still no answer. She was beginning to be seriously worried about the woman’s safety.

  ‘Look at you, your little mind whirring, whirring … Trying to save your skin? I’ll tell you something for nothing. You’re not one of them.’ Ed turned to her dad, nodding as if he expected him to agree. ‘Human nature will out, Georgie. The looks you give your dad and me, and your brothers …’ He let the accusation tail off.

  ‘What are you on about?’

  ‘Your first big case, your first time working with size, and you see how they make you pay.’

  ‘Your conspiracy theories are boring and tedious.’

  Uncle Ed narrowed his eyes, pointed a fat finger at her. ‘The top is bent, G, never forget that.’ It was his turn to get angry now. ‘You can climb, but you can’t escape. You can get educated, you can move away from your roots, marry a Hugh, but this is who you are, Georgie, this is who you are! And you should be proud.’

  ‘Just leave me alone.’

  ‘And remember, Georgie, all I’ve ever done is try to help you.’

  ‘Help me? You’re the one who got me in all this trouble in the first place!’ She swore at him and marched through into the living room but he was hard on her tail, her family helpless bystanders.

  He wasn’t giving up. ‘You’ll be sorry you said that. You treat your family with respect, because you’ve got no one else. Debts have to be repaid. You don’t get something for nothing. No one ever gets that!’

  She grabbed her bag and ran from the house, slamming the door behind her.

  74

  Sylvie cut off Kelly’s hair. Chopped it bluntly and quickly, in to the nape of her neck, short round the ears. Kelly watched the long strands of dark hair fall to the tiled floor. Then Sylvie swept it up and put it in a bin bag, opened a packet of hair dye and began to apply it to Kelly’s head. The smell of ammonia invaded her nostrils. After fifteen minutes Sylvie pulled Kelly’s handcuffs along the rails to the sink and used the movable arm of the catering kitchen’s tap to wash the dye down the drain. She pulled a towel out of her bag and began to dry Kelly’s hair. Kelly felt the new sensation of air on the back of her neck. Sylvie dumped the towel and the dye remnants in the bag, and got out a comb. Kelly could feel Sylvie running the comb in a sharp line through her hair, creating a parting where there had been none.

  Now Sylvie began to undress, throwing her clothes in an untidy jumble on the floor.

  ‘Is this how you get off? Seeing who you can fool by playing the actual wife? By switching between being two people? Is this how he wants you to be – looking like his wife but acting like a mistress? Was it your idea or his?’

  ‘We have a connection. We came up with the idea together.’ Sylvie glanced towards the door. ‘Though it doesn’t hurt to make a man think he was the driver.’ She bent down and began to pull her own tights over Kelly’s feet. ‘Don’t struggle.’

  Kelly started to laugh. ‘You’re really doing all this for him? That operation you had on your nose, that wasn’t for polyps, was it? It was to give you a profile like mine. You had surgery to look like me, studied me for hours and hours, imitated my every gesture, crept round my house for how many lost nights, and all for him? He’s not worth it!’ She was shouting now. ‘In a few years you’ll be as desperate as me to get away. Love has made you blind, you can’t change him, Sylvie, you never will.’

  Sylvie picked up Kelly’s black dress and pulled it over her head. She did up the buttons, then picked up her own colourful dress and drew it up over Kelly’s thighs. She traced a finger round the waistband of the tights, checking for bulges. ‘Impressive, after two babies.’

  ‘It won’t work, Sylvie. The children will never be fooled. They know who their mother is, you can’t begin to deceive them.’

  Sylvie undid one handcuff and then the other, pulling the dress into position and doing up the zip. ‘That’s our last hope, isn’t it? That the ties to our children are unbreakable. But you’re wrong, and I think you know you’re wrong. They’re heading off to boarding school. They’ll hardly ever see their mother. Women change when they have babies, don’t they, Kelly? You know all about that. They are not who they were, or who they thought they’d be. When a woman has a baby, all anyone sees is the baby. The woman who carried it and cares for it is invisible.’ She put on Kelly’s flat black pumps and looked down her front, awe and excitement on her face. ‘I never used to wear black. I look kooky!’ She bent down and grabbed Kelly’s foot, forcing her high heels on to Kelly’s feet and doing up the straps. Then she pulled a case out of her bag and flipped open a small mirror. She put contact lenses in, then rummaged in the bag, turning away from Kelly and bending over. When she turned round a wig of long dark hair cascaded down her back and round her chin. She stood and looked fully at her. ‘My name’s not Sylvie. It’s Kelly.’

  Kelly stared, stupefied. Looks are not fixed. At that moment, staring into eyes that were exactly like her own, Kelly understood what Sylvie was doing, and why it would work. It was like looking at herself in the mirror. With the clothes, the accent, the haircut and the eye colour, the two women were indistinguishable. Sylvie had become her, had stolen her identity entirely.

  Sylvie reached out, grabbed the fourth finger of Kelly’s left hand and pulled off the rings. ‘All mistresses want to be a little bit like wives, like the women their lovers fell for all those years ago.’

  And after all, how many close friends did Kelly have, how many people who dropped round unannounced, who called her a friend, family she could rely on? There was no one, no one bar the children. Christos had isolated her so effectively it was as if she didn’t exist.

  ‘We are fascinated by our rivals. What’s so strange about what I’m doing? I simply had the audacity and the desire to go further.’ Sylvie bent down and pulled one last thing from the bag. A beret.

  Kelly pulled and strained against the handcuffs, hollering to be freed by someone, anyone. Sylvie watched her, fascinated. ‘You know, you look better like that. Think of this as the ultimate makeover. It’s the favourite game of little girls, isn’t it? Trying to change into those you want to be. Let me show you.’

  She unclipped the handcuffs and after a brief struggle locked Kelly’s hands behind her back with one pair and pushed her through the other door, away from the corridor. They entered a dining area, with a collection of bare tables and chairs. One of the walls was lined with mirrors and as Kelly turned she could see her reflection for the first time. She screamed. She didn’t just look like Sylvie, with the short choppy haircut that was now blonde, she didn’t just dress like Sylvie, with the distinctive bright colours and high heels, she wasn’t only the same age, weight and height – she was Sylvie.

  ‘The thing is, Kelly, I do you better than you do.’

  And that’s when Kelly understood what Christos and Sylvie were really doing, and that it would work. They were actually going to replace her. Permanently.

  Kelly strained against the cuffs holding her hands. She began to shout for help.

  ‘There’s no one to hear you. Except your husband.’

&nbs
p; Christos appeared in the doorway to the dining area with a rope in his hand.

  75

  Georgie phoned Kelly from the pavement outside the house. Her home phone and her mobile. When she got the answerphone she got on her bike and cycled back to the port. She coasted silently down the ramp to the car park and tied her bike to the railing. The night shift was in action further down the dock. Her leaving, her disgrace, would not cause even a ripple.

  The wind had dropped and the night was cold. She walked along the dock towards the Saracen and stared up at the vast ship, thinking about Kelly, formerly Kelsey, about how she had done the right thing as a young woman, about her situation with Christos, about her fear for herself and her children.

  What’s on the Saracen is something that will destroy my family. Her team hadn’t found anything, but that didn’t mean there was nothing to find. When they had met at the sauna, Kelly had said something else. He’s going to take me out on one of his ships and put me in the world’s biggest grave – the ocean. She walked up the gangway.

  The ship was silent, the giant engines quiet. She was a city child, urban in her make-up. Ships – even Christos’s – were as beautiful to her as a walk in virgin forest.

  She stepped inside the first door and stood for a moment, listening. The ship was huge, but its main space was for carrying cargo, the parts for the crew and any passengers smaller, compacted into a relatively cramped area. She walked across the hall to the river side of the ship and heard a faint scream from below. It came again. She walked towards the noise on silent feet.

  76

  ‘I’ve got the note.’ Sylvie pulled out a crumpled piece of paper from her bag and kissed it. ‘Just for added effect,’ she said.

  ‘Christos, you can’t do this, it’s mad – it will never work—’

  ‘The last message you ever wrote,’ continued Sylvie. ‘I – I mean you – spent a long time getting it just right. You composed it in a moment of deep grief and despair, scribbled it down when you couldn’t take it any more. When you heard that your lover and his wife were having a surrogate child, you knew he would never leave her for you, that your great love story was a lie. That the mistress trap had swallowed you – that you had waited and worked those long years for nothing. It turns out in this case it’s the strong ones who are brittle, who make the dramatic gestures for unrequited love. Firing your lover’s gun at his wife at the play centre, your jealousy unbounded, your pictures of Christos’s wife in your flat – Christos, I think I might leave some there after we clear out the other stuff – showed how frayed your mind had become. Your heartache and remorse were too great to bear after the event.’ She paused. ‘You came aboard your lover’s greatest ship, into the belly of his business, and took your life. It’s the strong ones who, when they try, succeed in destroying themselves. I’m sure that will be mentioned at the inquest.’

  Kelly watched Christos throw the length of rope over the light fitting in the ceiling, watched him tug on it, lift his body weight off the carpet. The ceiling didn’t pull away. His ship was well made, after all. He placed a chair under the light fitting and together Sylvie and Christos carried her towards it.

  77

  From a turning on the stairs, Georgie heard Kelly shouting to be saved, the sound of a struggle. She began to run down the stairs towards the galley, a disordered room with pans on the floor. She came through the swing door from the kitchen to the dining room and stopped dead, not understanding what she was seeing. Kelly and Christos held Sylvie by the feet and shoulders, in an untidy bundle, like a carpet they were trying to move. A rope hung from the light fitting, a chair underneath it.

  Sylvie saw her and began shouting at her, but she had Kelly’s voice, she was shouting that they’d been in a sauna together, that there’d been a switch. Before she could understand more, Christos dropped Sylvie, grabbed a gun from a table and fired.

  Georgie fell back into the kitchen through the swing door, complete surprise rendering her unable to move for what seemed like minutes but was probably less than a second. She scrabbled to her feet as Kelly’s screams reverberated round the ship. She dived for the far end of the room as Christos plunged through the swing door, gun swivelling to find its target. He skidded on baking trays and fired again as she flew through the door to the corridor, the noise tremendous in the metal-encased room.

  Georgie was fit and young. Climbing had honed her muscles, strengthened her sinews, given her explosive speed over short distances. But at that moment, in a ship’s narrow corridor, her extreme climbing gave her something more than physical advantage, it gave her mental strength. High up a rock face, wind tearing your feet from their holds, muscles burning, fear is turned into focus, complete attention on the task at hand. Look down and take a moment to consider and you’re paralysed, and then you’re dead. As Georgie sprinted down the corridor to the stairs, she experienced complete involvement, a transcendental feeling of calm, the same feeling as at the most critical moment of a free climb, where the tiniest mistake leads to death.

  She took the stairs three at a time, hearing the clatter of his shoes behind her, her mind jumping ahead to where she would be three moves from now. She couldn’t get down the gangway without him getting a clear shot at her. She needed to stay on the ship, get distance between them, then hide and phone the police. She’d take her chances among the miles of containers.

  The Wolf was at that moment by the stairwell on the Saracen. He had left the docks earlier to dump the rucksack in a left luggage office and had come back, wondering if there was some way he could help Kelly, but the police had cordoned off a large part of the dock and he couldn’t approach the ship. When they finally removed the exclusion zone it was several hours later and dark. He heard the shots, faint but unmistakable in the night silence. Two, execution-style. He cursed, he was too late. He moved fast along the deck to a porthole that gave on to the central stairs and saw the customs officer coming up at a sprint, the clang of heavy feet behind her.

  Georgie hit the top of the stairs where the exit was and turned left towards the Thames instead of right towards the dock. She began to pick up speed on the long passageway of the deck. Behind her came the sound of something heavy falling. Christos was skidding, palms splayed, face in the floor, another figure jumping on top of him.

  Georgie changed direction and ran back, hunting with her eyes for the gun. The two men were tussling back and forth on the deck, slamming into the bulwark and railings. She saw the gun in a corner and ran for it at the same time as the Wolf lunged and got there before her. He turned it in Christos’s face and everyone froze. Christos sat back against the railing of the ship, winded, and clutching his chest.

  Georgie pulled out her phone and began to dial, but the Wolf got to his feet, snatched it from her and threw it over the side of the ship. ‘Not so fast.’

  ‘I need to phone the police—’

  The Wolf gestured to Georgie. ‘You too. Over there.’ He was pointing the gun at both of them. Christos tried to get to his feet. ‘Stay on the floor.’

  Christos’s eyes never left the Wolf’s face. ‘Now you’ve got the money you want to play the hero? Only a few hours ago you’d left her in the shit – again.’

  ‘People change. And it’s never just about the money.’

  ‘We need to get downstairs,’ Georgie said, increasingly desperate.

  The Wolf glanced at Georgie and at that moment Christos lunged, head down, knocking the Wolf’s gun arm skywards, driving him back against the wall of the ship. The Wolf was taken by surprise but he didn’t drop the gun, he was stronger than that, and tried to whirl Christos and his bulk round in a circle. The two men clattered into the railing, locked together, one arm each straining high to get hold of the gun. Georgie tensed, trying to anticipate a moment where she could grab the gun and dodge a bullet.

  Christos’s low centre of gravity caused the taller man to bend backward at the waist over the railing. Christos landed a couple of vicious blows to his face,
the Wolf bucking and writhing. The Wolf jerked his legs to try to pull Christos off him, and his raised legs caused his balance to shift. A moment later the Wolf was sliding backward over the railing, pulling Christos with him and they both disappeared over the side in a tangle of limbs.

  Georgie rushed to the side and looked over to see the two bodies falling not into water but hard floor – the deck below extended out further than the one she was on. Christos landed first, smashing his neck on the railing below in his plummet downwards. The gun flew out of the Wolf’s hand on impact and skittered away across the deck. Georgie hit the stairs.

  When she ran out on to the level below, Christos was lying face down, unmoving, the Wolf staggering to his feet. She came to an abrupt halt. He’d got the gun. She put her hands up, went slowly over to Christos and felt for a pulse.

  ‘I landed on top of him. Fitting, don’t you think?’ The Wolf spat out a mouthful of blood and staggered a bit more.

  ‘There’s no love lost, I see.’

  He gave a tight smile. ‘No.’

  ‘What’s come between you?’

  ‘Money, women, kids.’

  ‘The big stuff, huh?’ Georgie needed to keep him calm; he was moving uncertainly, probably injured from the fall.

  ‘You, you’ve got balls, I’ll give you that. Why was he chasing you?’

  ‘I interrupted him trying to murder his wife.’

  ‘My wife, you mean.’

  ‘My God – you’re Michael?’

  He raised the gun at her and she froze. ‘Pleased to meet you. I’m glad she mentioned me.’

  ‘So you and Christos go way back?’