If Looks Could Kill

by Gary Kittle

  The rainfall became heavy. Dan stared at the women hurrying to escape the weather, black umbrellas bobbing above mainly grey and beige burqas. Colour was making its presence felt, however. The winter collection he had researched was characterised by fiery autumnal shades, as if the anger of its consumers was starting to show through the material. As he watched, a couple of red and orange outfits broke up the grey uniformity, and there was even a bright gold burqa that really turned heads. Underneath the material, he knew, everything would be red and purple and, in the worst cases, a pussy yellow.

  Jenkins was right about that, too: this was already the biggest propaganda coup the terrorists could have wished for. Without a cure, this was a perpetual act of God that sucked Western governments into a revenge mentality whilst inspiring a new wave of fundamentalist recruits.

  All Dan had to do to save the civilised world was find and rescue the only immune woman in Britain, armed only with a hand gun and his instincts.

  Dan thought back to his last question to Jenkins: ‘Where the hell do I look?’

  Jenkins had smiled, but not unkindly. ‘I know you’ll think of something.’

  Thinking was all he’d been doing ever since. Dan headed into the town centre and found a quiet café. He ordered a Panini and Americano from a teenage boy with a neat beard and shoulder length black hair. Navigating adolescence had never been so tricky. Even the odd whitehead sent parents rushing to the emergency room. And this despite the fact there was no evidence the disease affected males. The great fear, however, was that the disease might mutate. That was why you never saw a woman working with food – indeed, that was why you seldom saw women working anywhere.

  He sat by the window, staring out into what passed as a normal street scene. Even the men’s clothing had changed over the preceding months. No one bothered with their appearance anymore unless they were gay. Homophobic attacks had proliferated tenfold that year, another tick on the Jihadists’ agenda. But then so had male rape. Britain had become as frustrated as it was bitter, an endless Carry On film that got less funny by the day.

  Where the hell did he start to look for this girl? Surely Jenkins must realise it was hopeless. And the clock was ticking, too, especially if her health was compromised. It was only her condition that was precious. Jenkins was using him for sure; but how? If it was, as he suspected, just a box ticking exercise, why all the subterfuge?

  Dan closed his eyes and as he did so the girl’s face swam into focus. His heartbeat quickened at the memory of her slightly browned skin and wide emerald eyes. Though she looked a little tired, and more than a little sad, there was still the faintest trace of a smile perched in the corners of her mouth. Dan’s track record with the opposite sex was pretty unspectacular, and since the outbreak, like everyone else’s, nonexistent. At least he had the perfect excuse now when his mother asked him about bringing home ‘a nice girl’. Those emerald eyes held a secret, too; but as with Jenkins, Dan was being kept firmly in the dark as to what it might be. But that made him more determined, he realised.

  Looking around the café to make sure no one was sitting too close to him, Dan opened his mobile’s picture file and there she was. He touched the screen with his fingertips and enlarged the image, filling it with those eyes, those nearly smiling lips and that Mediterranean complexion. Had there ever been a more beautiful face? Of all the faces to spare from disfigurement God had chosen this one. Did that make her an angel?

  Dan closed his eyes and waited for his heart rate to decelerate. ‘Easy, tiger,’ he muttered.

  When he opened his eyes again the image had returned to its original size. He saw the figure in the background wearing her distinctive yellow burqa with orange flashes. ‘Like she’s on fire.’ Dan frowned, again using his fingers to enlarge the faceless woman’s image. Yes, on fire with rage. He focused on the gloved fists clutching the newspaper and noticed how the paper was compressed by her grip. Her shoulders, too, was racked up with tension, and though the eyes were covered by a fine mesh, the angle of the head and neck suggested this woman was not just looking into the camera but glaring into it.

  Whoever she was, Dan decided, she was absolutely furious.

  If his career to date had taught him anything it was that angry people made mistakes. Would the female gang member wear that extravagant burqa out and about? No. That would never happen. But it was still her anger that would trip her up somehow, Dan knew. The dilemma was predicting the location of the fall without knowing the woman’s age, occupation - even her ethnicity, for God’s sake.

  Dan zoomed in on the woman’s neck. Hanging by a thin black thread was what looked like a ring. It wasn’t her wedding ring. This was a thin, silver item. He zoomed in as far as his pixel count allowed, but found no other clues. However, he couldn’t dismiss the possibility that the ring was inscribed.

  He made a call to technical support and asked them to take a close look on their screen, tell him what they saw. As he swallowed the last of his meal they called back.

  ‘Jesus, I trust in you,’ the caller told him. ‘It’s a rosary ring.’

  ‘A what?’

  The caller gave him a Wikipedia description.

  ‘I know you’ll think of something,’ Jenkins had told him.

  Dan frowned and stared again at the woman in her yellow and orange burqa, zooming in close to examine the image again in detail. Perhaps there was more, something the woman’s anger had forced her to overlook. He searched slowly and methodically; and, yes, there it was, right in the centre of the yellow front at about waist height. He zoomed in closer still, just to be certain. His colleagues at the office could confirm it but he knew already what he was looking at.

  The mark was faint, maybe hurriedly washed out with a clothe until the garment found its way into a washing machine, and it was impossible to discern what colour paint had caused it. But that was not important, because it was the shape of the mark that gave Dan his lead: the tiny handprint of someone who had been painting with Mummy, maybe earlier that same day, and tried to give her a hug without washing his hands first.

  ‘She’s got kids,’ Dan told his empty plate.

  He looked up at the wall clock. Just gone three o’clock. The school run. But which school? Colchester must have dozens if you included playschools and nurseries. It was still a long shot, but the rosary ring helped shorten the odds. Citizens Advice was just around the corner. Then, if necessary, he could jump into a cab and make his way to the nearest Catholic school before its gates opened for home time.

  Dan was in such a hurry to get outside he nearly knocked his chair over.

  For a second the bearded teenager at the till could have sworn the fleeing customer shouted back at him: ‘Thank you, Jesus.’

  Chapter Ten

  The room they kept her in had originally been a storeroom. It looked like the kind of room the A-team would find enough parts to make a tank with and break out. Devina had one ankle tied by a rope to an old wooden cabinet, but showed no signs of trying to escape. With a gleam in his eye Gareth had described her as a ‘model prisoner’.

  She looked up at the sound of a key turning in the lock. Her bed was two single mattresses stacked one upon the other. At least the bedding was fresh. She sat up, swung her feet onto the floor. The door opened and in swept a slightly hunched figure dressed in a black burqa. She stood staring for a moment and quietly closed the door behind her. Neither of them said a word. The visitor slipped the key back into the lock and turned it.

  ‘You’ll be leaving us soon.’ The voice echoed with glee and triumph. ‘One way or another.’

  Devina continued to stare at the back of the woman’s head.

  ‘But in the meantime I think it’s time you and I had a little chat.’ Finally, she turned. ‘Woman to woman.’

  Devina stayed silent. Her visitor began to slowly pace the floor immediately next to the bed; but for nearly a minute she said nothing else.

  ‘I’ve seen the way he looks at you.’

&n
bsp; Still the measured pacing: ten steps and turn, ten more and turn again.

  ‘It’s been a long time since he’s set eyes on the opposite sex.’ The woman stopped, and turning her back on Devina, started doing something to her hands. ‘It’s not his fault. It’s nobody’s fault,’ she spat from behind her veil.

  The visitor turned back sharply and stepped towards Devina with her hands extended. Her thin black gloves had been removed. No two fingers looked the same. All were swollen and discoloured; some twisted and bent at the joints. The palms were not too bad, relatively speaking, but the backs were a ruin of scabs and sores, lumps and fissures; some scabbed over, others oozing puss. And there was a smell, too, subtle yet unmistakable, like something that had been frozen mid-decomposition and was now slowly thawing out. ‘This is me on a good day.’

  The woman thrust her left hand under Devina’s nose. Buried deep within two swollen folds of flesh Devina caught a glint of silver: a wedding band.

  ‘You see this, Jezebel?’ the woman snarled through clenched teeth. ‘This means he’s mine.’

  The hand was only centimetres from her face. The subtle odour wafted across the divide and lodged in the back of her throat.

  ‘I can never take it off,’ the woman hissed.

  Devina slowly edged away from the flawed hands.

  ‘And neither can anyone else. Not without losing the finger.’

  She brought her hands up to Devina’s retreating face. ‘So there’s no point in trying.’

  Devina’s eyes were locked on the woman’s hidden face.

  With a grunt the woman began to pull at the silver band with her other hand, trying to dig it free with her fingernails. Immediately a thin trickle of blood made its way up between the surrounding edges of flesh and started to drip onto the floor. But still the woman continued to tug.

  Her voice changed to a tone of pleasant conversation. ‘It’s well and truly stuck. Be a dear, will you?’

  Devina shook her head, powerless to avoid lowering herself back onto the mattresses.

  ‘If you can get it off me, you can have him,’ she whispered. ‘Go on! No? Why? Because you think you’re going to have him anyway? I don’t think so.’

  Suddenly the woman straightened back up and resumed her pacing of the room. The blood continued to drip as she walked.

  ‘The boys tell me that in all the time you’ve been here you haven’t uttered a single word. Is that true?’ the woman laughed wildly. ‘Have you taken a vow of silence?’

  She turned to point at Devina, drops of blood flicking left and right.

  ‘Well, let’s see whose faith is stronger, shall we?’

  And before Devina had time to react, the woman slowly undressed.

  It wasn’t until her breasts and abdomen were exposed that Devina finally relented and let out her first scream.

  Chapter Eleven

  The road outside the town’s only catholic school was a mass of faceless bobbing figures searching for their children through the twin impediments of each other and that fine mesh obscuring their view of the outside world. And on top of that it was still raining.

  Dan stood at the edge of the public car park, watching. Luckily the tourist information centre had been empty and he hadn’t needed the aid of a cab. His breathing remained laboured from the short sprint from the town centre, however. A couple of newly arriving mothers looked him up and down suspiciously. He realised he was the only ‘father’ present. This was woman’s work: yet another propaganda coup for the extremists.

  Even if the woman he was looking for were here, how could he know which one she was? Most of the crowd wore black burqas, a lesser number greys; and although there were a few light blue and tangerine outfits, there was no sign of that striking yellow and orange flame design from the photograph. But that really would have been too easy.

  ‘Think! Think! Think!’ he muttered, drawing a few more looks.

  His only hope was to believe he had hit the jackpot first time; assuming, as he did, that someone who took such pains to display a rosary ring would definitely be a practicing catholic. The thought crossed his mind that maybe the owner of that tiny hand print was too young to be at primary school, but if that were true he was scuppered anyway. He took a deep breath and waited for the school bell to sound. More mothers joined the throng as the end of the school day approached. There might be as many as fifty, all covered from head to foot with their backs to him.

  At last the children emerged from the main building. They approached the anonymous maternal group with confusion and trepidation. Then a gloved hand would wave and a child’s face would light up in pretend recognition. At least the disease had spared prepubescent girls; but the reprieve was only temporary. Their skin would be consumed, just as their mothers’ had, as they entered their teens.

  Several mothers were leaving with their children already. All of them scrutinized him. He must stick out like a sore thumb, he decided. ‘So why try to be so discreet?’ he asked himself.

  With an urgent stride Dan launched himself into the crowd and began acting as if he were looking for someone. His plan, if he could call it that, was to make his target notice him, rather than vice versa. He had to panic her into a mistake. ‘If she’s even here,’ he reminded himself. But the longer he’d been waiting, the more certain he felt that she was there.

  Then he saw her.

  She hurried away with a boy of about six years old and every few meters glanced back over her shoulder. Dan stared at the hunched shoulders and the way she tugged at the young boy’s arm. Was that the resentment he had first intuited from the email attachment, the anger that sent her gloved fingers digging into the newspaper? He looked away quickly.

  Tomorrow he would wait for her to bring the boy back into school and follow her back home. But for now he had to allay her suspicions. The last thing he wanted was for her to keep her son at home tomorrow.

  ‘Excuse me,’ he said to the nearest mother. ‘I’m a bit lost. Which way is the High Street?’

  The woman started to tell him, but he feigned incomprehension, and so she told him she was going that way anyway. Behind her back Dan pretended to be part of the family, silently mouthing questions, laughing even. If the target was looking back at him now, would she be convinced that her fears were unfounded?

  Dan hoped so. This might be his one and only lead; and the clock was running down.

  Chapter Twelve

  In the first few months of the outbreak the suicide rate threatened to become an epidemic in its own right. The Government hastily announced important breakthroughs in the search for a cure, and with the rest of the nation Fiona clung to the hope that science would hit back against the religious fanatics. But still there were days when it was only her faith that stopped her putting an end to it all.

  Today was such a day. Many of the raised lumps had split open and issued a thick yellow discharge. This could go on for several days or stop within the next hour. The disease existed by its own peculiar rules. At least her sight was unaffected. Some women had growths on their eyelids or just around the eye sockets that made seeing difficult and sometimes impossible. The best thing she could do on a day like this was sit with the skin exposed and take painkillers.

  There was a knock at the door. ‘Fiona?’

  ‘Give me a couple of minutes, Richard,’ she called back.

  She’d been married to Richard for a decade when the terrorists slipped their first attempt at biological warfare into Birmingham’s water supply. Or at least that was the official version of what happened. The rumour mill circulated ever more fanciful alternatives, but the most important fact was the one reflected in a million mirrors from Southampton to Shetland.

  The knock came again and with a sigh Fiona finished covering herself. ‘Come in.’

  Richard looked worried. He might convince his two sidekicks he was in control but Fiona had known him too long to be fooled so easily. She could see he was way out of his depth.

  ‘Devina�
�s not well,’ he announced, as if their captive might be an elder daughter.

  Richard had always fancied himself as a Mr. Big. From the first moment they met he was at least open about his dishonesty. Back then it was all strictly Del Boy level wheeling and dealing. This was Richard Simmons’ first appearance in the world of ‘proper crime’.

  ‘What’s wrong with her?’ Fiona grinned beneath her burqa.

  ‘It might be stress, I suppose,’ Richard frowned. ‘She’s stopped eating and she just lies in bed all the time, even though I know she’s not sleeping.’

  ‘So what do you want me to do about it?’ Fiona huffed. ‘She’ll been gone in a day or so, right? Even if we have to take her out on a stretcher.’

  She could have said more but Fiona had other things on her mind. Like the way that man had behaved outside Ben’s school earlier in the day. Had he been watching her? It felt like it. But he had left with another woman and child, chatting and laughing as he went. Still, the fact that she had never seen him at the school played on her mind. Her gut feeling during the whole incident was that she was being watched.

  ‘I’m not doing this for me,’ Richard broke into her reverie. ‘That money could help you. There’s a Swiss clinic doing wonders with laser surgery, apparently.’

  ‘On the hands and the face, I know. So I can walk about pretending to be normal again. But you still won’t be able to touch me anywhere else. Unlike her.’

  Richard stiffened. ‘Like you said, she’ll been gone soon.’

  ‘When, Richard?’ The question was asked coldly.

  ‘Tomorrow, around noon.’

  ‘And what if it’s a trap?

  Richard moved closer to his wife and lifted his hand, as if he were about to touch her, before dropping it back to his side. ‘They’ll find a cure, Fiona. Soon.’

  She stepped closer to him, that faint but unmistakable odour wafting up into his face.