by Andy Maslen
As she strode towards the wooden door, she pumped the lupara’s fore end to chamber another shell. The ker-chack sound it made was audible even though her ears were ringing. She kept the weapon pulled in tight to her hip and pointed slightly upwards. Then the office door burst open and a second gunman appeared, arm already extending, fist curled round the butt of a pistol.
She fired and his head exploded, splattering the walls and door behind him with red. Now she broke into a run. She leapt over the body, pumping the action a second time to load the third and final shell from the magazine into the breech.
Inside the office, Ferenczy was nowhere to be seen.
“Shit!” she shouted, as she quickly scanned the fifteen-foot-square room.
The room was wallpapered with an intricate red, black and grey geometric design, and beside the oversized glass-topped desk she saw a rectangle incised into the paper. A second door.
She skirted round the perimeter of the room until she arrived at the door. There was no obvious knob or handle. Crouching, she pushed at the place where she imagined the latch would be. The door gave a fraction: it was held closed by a spring or a pneumatic closer, but not locked.
Figuring Ferenczy might simply be waiting for her to burst through and present him with an easy shot, Stella got down onto all fours and then onto her belly. She squirmed close to the door and then, slowly, pushed it open with the lupara’s stunted barrel, ready to fire and feeling the tension in her stomach spreading outwards in a cold wave.
Nothing.
The gap was wide enough for her to place an eye against it and peer through. The door led to a bare, concrete passageway that ended in a set of steel steps ascending towards a square hatch in the ceiling. Getting to her feet again, she loaded two more shells into the lupara and then pushed through the door.
She ran down the corridor, then stumbled to a stop as Other Stella blocked her way.
Her eyes were glittering and her hands were braced on her hips.
“Hand them over, Stel.”
“What?”
“You heard, dummy,” she said, advancing and pushing Stella hard against the wall. “Hand over the guns.”
“No. You’re not in charge. You’re not even real.”
Other Stella’s hand flew to her open mouth in mock outrage.
“Not real? Then how do you explain this?”
She grabbed Stella’s right hand, which was still curled round the pistol grip of the lupara, and the fore end, and slammed what remained of the heavy steel barrel into Stella’s forehead, right between the eyes.
Stella felt her weapons being removed from her hands, then everything turned black.
The steel steps led to the flat roof of the club, which was scattered with pipework, air-conditioning units and, incongruously, what appeared to be aviaries: flimsy-looking wooden frames supporting pale-grey wire mesh walls and roofs. Stella felt nauseous, as if she were simultaneously leaning over at forty-five degrees and also upright within the same body. As that body roamed across the space, she floated free and was sucked backwards against a large industrial fan protected by a mesh guard, from where she watched the proceedings unfolding before her eyes.
In the corner of her eye, she caught a sudden movement. It was Ferenczy, she was sure of it. With his guards taken apart by shotgun blasts, he had fled to the roof. He’d ducked behind a metal-walled vent of some kind and was now peering round it as his would-be assassin stalked him across the roof space.
Stella wanted to shout, to warn her other self of the threat, but her stretched lips wouldn’t, or couldn’t, emit a sound.
Other Stella was now walking directly away from the vent, and Ferenczy took his chance. He stepped out from behind the structure and levelled a black pistol at her back. His feet scraped against the rough surface of the roof, and Other Stella spun round to face her attacker. As Stella gazed on, horrified, he fired. Three shots, in quick succession.
Bang-bang.
Bang.
Other Stella stumbled backwards, then sank to her knees before falling forward onto her face.
Stella felt her grip on reality, already tenuous, start to slip. The colours of the night took on a washed-out quality, as if an artist had spilled liquid over a fresh watercolour.
Ferenczy yelled in triumph and, gun hanging loosely at his side, walked clear of the vent and began closing the gap between him and Other Stella’s prostrate form.
He reached her and kicked her in the ribs with the toe of his right shoe. Stella felt the impacts. Not hard. Just enough to check she was dead. She didn’t move.
“This is for Ervin, bitch!” he shouted, bringing the pistol up in a two-handed grip.
Stella wanted to scream, to shriek her defiance over the insistent throb of the bass notes permeating the fabric of the building. But she was pinned down and helpless, unable to utter so much as a whimper.
Ferenczy fired.
Stella watched as, in slow motion, the bullet emerged from the muzzle amidst a cloud of smoke, flame and unburnt particles of propellant, spinning through the air as it began the short downwards journey to Other Stella’s skull.
She watched as the bullet embedded itself in the gritty bitumen surfacing the roof.
As she puzzled over the absence of the skull it had been destined to smash apart, the lupara roared in Other Stella’s hands.
She had rolled sideways at the split second Ferenczy had pulled the trigger of his pistol, bringing the sawn-off shotgun up at a steep angle and firing in a single movement.
Through luck or judgement, Other Stella’s shot took Ferenczy full in the face. At such close range, the damage was horrific. The kinetic energy discharged into his skull blew back towards Other Stella, bringing half of his face with it. The rest of his head was blown into small fragments that showered the roof in all directions with a wet red mist.
The headless body toppled sideways, bright red arterial blood fountaining out of the exposed carotid arteries in the neck.
Groaning, Other Stella got to her feet, using the lupara as a makeshift support to lever herself onto her knees. She was clutching her chest with her left hand, as the gun dangled from her right. She made it to an upturned wooden crate and sat heavily, dropping the gun and unzipping her jacket. She dropped it to the ground and then, seeing Stella, called over in a hoarse voice.
“A little help here?”
Stella felt herself being sucked away from the fan’s grip and was back in her body.
She pulled her T-shirt up over her head and dropped it to the ground on top of the jacket.
Underneath, she wore a black bulletproof vest, Freddie’s final present. Three black holes were grouped tightly on the left side. She undid the first strap with a rasp from the Velcro, then the others, shrugging the awkward garment off and letting it fall beside her clothes. Peering down she saw a spreading purple bruise just above the edge of her bra cup. She touched the discoloured skin gingerly and winced as pain flared beneath her fingertip.
With her T-shirt and jacket back on, she made her way across to the edge of the roof where the rails of a ladder curled over the low retaining wall and started the climb down.
Hoping that Orla and her friends had managed to extricate themselves from the fight before the police arrived, Stella walked away from the club, through the darkness, heading north. A couple of chancers on Pitfield Street held up knives and demanded her phone and purse but ran like rabbits when she nonchalantly swung the lupara up and asked them if they were ready to die. She reached the Regent’s Canal and swung the gun out into the centre of the channel where it disappeared with a splash.
She texted Freddie McTiernan.
Job done. Hope girls got home safely. Dropped your gift in canal. Sorry.
Almost immediately he replied.
Good. Yes, O just texted. No probs. Thanks.
68
Five Down, One to Go
Three days after despatching Ferenczy and his minders at Tirana, Stella was preparing to i
nterview Hester Ragib. She’d called Stella late on the night of the party, enquiring about her interview.
“I hope you don’t think I’m being pushy, but we women have to stick together, you know? I mean, the law’s still a man’s world, isn’t it?”
“Oh, absolutely,” Stella had said, before suggesting Ragib come to her hotel room. “It’s a suite, so we’ll have lots of space and plenty of privacy.” It wasn’t, but they would have enough space for what Stella had planned, and more than enough privacy.
With her hair and makeup in place, and a less-revealing outfit – jeans and a loose, grey marl sweatshirt – Stella was ready and waiting. It was 10.50 in the morning, and Ragib was due at 11.00. Two crisp knocks on the door announced that her guest had arrived. She crossed the room and opened the door.
“Hester, please come in,” she said standing aside.
Ragib entered and Stella closed the door behind her, before twisting the knob to lock it and sliding the security bar across for good measure.
“I thought you said you had a suite,” Ragib said, surveying the room. It was a double, and perfectly adequate for a single woman travelling light, but hardly the space she’d no doubt assumed from the breezy tone “Jessica Schubert” had affected during their call.
“I know, and I must apologise, but I thought you might not come otherwise. I’m freelancing at the moment and I’m afraid my budget doesn’t stretch to anything so grand. What would you like to drink? Tea, coffee, a water?”
“Water’s fine, thanks,” Ragib said, looking for somewhere to sit, and eventually choosing the single armchair by the net-curtained window.
After retrieving a bottle of mineral water from a small, wood-effect fridge, Stella sat on the bed facing Ragib. The two women were no more than a foot apart and she could sense Ragib’s confidence diminishing in tiny little steps.
Ragib accepted the bottle, twisted the cap off and took a sip. Her eyes were watchful, and Stella could see the taut skin around them where the muscles were beginning to tense under the influence of adrenaline.
Maybe interviews with journalists always make you nervous. Or maybe your spider senses are telling you all is not as it should be. Well, too late.
“So, Hester,” Stella said, brightly, “tell me a little about yourself. Why did you go into the law?”
Ragib smiled, clearly happy to be on familiar territory.
“Well, ever since I was a little girl, I wanted to serve my country. And the law—”
“Yes, and how did you decide to join a criminal organisation that murdered little girls?”
Ragib’s eyes popped so wide they showed a clear band of white all the way round their deep-brown irises.
“I, I beg your pardon,” she spluttered, rearing back in her chair.
“You heard me, you bitch,” Other Stella said. “Answer the question.”
Stella had a nagging feeling in the pit of her stomach. All of a sudden, she wanted to stop this. Other Stella had hurt her the other night, and had been lecturing her ever since on the need to stay focused. The need to stay strong.
She tried to speak to her, to say something to stop her, but Other Stella turned her head towards her and shook it, eyes blazing, lips compressed into a razor-thin line. Then she pushed her hand out, palm outwards and Stella found herself flying backwards,
away from the bed, along the narrow space between the bathroom and the wardrobe, out through the closed door and then up,
sliding straight through the air-conditioning ducts sandwiched between the ceiling and the concrete and steel of the next floor, the next room, and the next five
until she emerged onto the flat roof of the hotel among cooing pigeons and a few scrappy-looking sparrows
to sail uninterrupted up into the air above London and then,
like a soap bubble grown too thin,
she simply disappeared.
Back in the hotel room, Other Stella was firmly in control. From beneath her sweatshirt she had produced the pistol and had levelled it at Ragib’s midsection.
“I’ll ask you again. And if you don’t answer, you’re going to suffer the pain, the indignity and the slow, agonising death of a hollow-point round to your stomach. Why did you join Pro Patria Mori?”
Ragib’s kohl-rimmed eyes were wet with tears now. Haltingly, she spoke.
“They were all so successful. So powerful. They told me they could help me. In my career, I mean. And they were only killing people who deserved it. This country’s overrun, you know. Immigrants from Eastern Europe trafficking women. Africans bringing drugs in. Those bloody terrorists from the Middle East with their insane views. Somebody needs to stop them and the government clearly can’t. PPM is doing good!” she finished, breathlessly, before snatching a paper tissue from her jacket pocket and swiping it across her eyes, smearing her makeup.
Other Stella held up her free hand.
“That’s enough,” she barked.
Then she reached up and wrenched the blonde wig free and threw it in Ragib’s face. She plucked the green contact lenses from her corneas and flicked them away. As she shed her disguise, she watched Ragib closely, waiting for the penny to drop. There it is, she thought, as Ragib’s expression changed to one of dawning realisation.
“It’s you,” she finally whispered. “You’re Cole.”
“Yes. It’s me. And if even half of what you claim for PPM was true, I might have some sympathy for you, but who are they killing, really? Her husband was a human-rights lawyer. Her daughter was just a baby. You murdered them both.”
Ragib shook her head, furrowing her smooth brow as she took in the other woman’s words.
“What do you mean, ‘her husband’? And ‘her baby’? I thought they were yours?”
“She’s weak. I’m strong. And I’m in charge now. Take your clothes off. You need a bath.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“You heard me, now get undressed and go run yourself a bath.”
Other Stella watched as the Indian lawyer disrobed and then walked on unsteady legs into the bathroom. With the taps turned fully on, she turned.
“What are you going to do to me?”
“Did you ever study physics at school, Hester?” she asked.
“What? Yes. I think so. What are you talking about school for?”
Other Stella waved the pistol at her head, making her flinch.
“You can get in now,” she said.
Ragib lifted one foot and stepped into the bath. The water barely covered her ankles.
“Please. Tell me what I can do to stop this? Anything. I’ll go public. Confess. Give you the names of the others.”
“Oh, it’s far too late for confessions, I’m afraid. And the others are all dead. Well, apart from dear Detective Chief Superintendent Collier. I’m saving him for last. Now lie down.”
Ragib complied.
“So, anyway, physics,” Other Stella continued. “Why don’t you complete this sentence: Water and what don’t mix.”
“I don’t know, oil?” Ragib sobbed. Then she turned her head to the sink unit, the top of which was level with her head. Her eyes widened as she saw what Other Stella had placed there. Her mouth opened in a silent O.
“No, silly! Electricity,” Other Stella said.
Then in a single rapid movement, she leant forwards, switched on the hair dryer and dropped it into the water.
Ragib convulsed as the current raced through her skin, nerves, muscles and viscera. To the smell of burning hair and a brittle, crackling sound, Other Stella turned her back and left the bathroom, closing the door softly behind her.
69
Me and My Shadow
The smell emanating from the bathroom was unpleasant, a combination of burnt hair and ozone. Stella wrinkled her nose as she packed her bags.
Other Stella lay back on the bed, a pillow propped behind her head.
“I could get used to this, you know,” she said.
Stella ignored her and carried on stu
ffing underwear and socks into the holdall.
“I said—”
“I heard what you said,” Stella snapped.
“Then why didn’t you say something?”
Stella looked up at her increasingly violent alter ego.
“Er, because you’re not real?”
Other Stella pouted.
“That’s a bit harsh. You know, I spent some time on the internet last night. Researching our condition. It has a name. It’s called,” she placed the tip of one index finger on her chin and gazed at the ceiling, like a child at a spelling bee embarking on a particularly troublesome word, “Dissociative Subtype Personality Disorder.”
“Oh, really? And what exactly, the fuck, does that mean?”
“It means the stress of losing Richard and Lola produced feelings of depersonalisation and derealisation.” She paused, smiling. “I’m quoting from the website, here. But in a nutshell, out-of-body-experiences, feelings that reality is just a dream and, in extreme cases, a splitting of the personality. We’re like sisters! I’m in charge, obviously, but sisters nonetheless.”
Stella zipped the holdall closed.
“Sisters don’t hurt each other.”
“What, you mean that business with the shotgun in the club?”
“Yes. And the punching? The scratching?”
“Sometimes you’re weak. I need to remind you of our mission.”
“What do you mean, ‘our’ mission? It’s mine. This is my fight. Not yours. You want to turn it into a massacre.”
“Yes, I do!” Other Stella shouted. “And I won’t stop till they’re all dead.” She lunged towards Stella and slapped her face. “All of them!”
Outside the room, a member of the housekeeping staff had just arrived at Stella’s door with her trolley of cleaning materials and refills for the free toiletries in the bathroom. There was no Do Not Disturb sign so she stretched out her hand towards the door handle. Then drew it back. She could hear women’s voices on the other side of the door. One pleading, the other, hard, angry. She shook her head and decided to come back later.
