Killing Eva

by Alex Blackmore

  Then, suddenly, the woman stuck her hand out. ‘I’m Anya.’

  Eva looked at the hand. It was a comedic gesture in light of the preceding series of events.

  Eva pulled together her mental resources and tried to control the trembling tone in her voice.

  ‘What do you want, Anya?’

  ‘You.’

  The last meeting had been incredibly difficult and the man with the Mediterranean tan was beginning to feel the pressure. Years of work and an extraordinary amount of resource had gone into this and it was unthinkable that three people might jeopardise it. Three people who should all have been dead by now. He glanced pointedly over at his younger colleague, who was tapping into a silver laptop on a different row of the tiny private jet.

  There was more to Paul than he let on, that much was obvious. He was not a career criminal, he did not belong. It was still not clear why he was even here. He was obviously intelligent but he was emotional. Overly emotional, and inconsistent. Like an addict or a vengeful child. Money was the only motivation that made any sense.

  Then there was the extreme anger that occasionally flickered across the man’s face, which spoke of something buried deep inside him. That was the part of him that was truly frightening.

  ‘What are you working on?’

  ‘Moving the corporate identities.’ The response was clipped and terse, as if Paul had realised his game was almost up.

  ‘Are we close to meeting the next milestone?’

  ‘Why don’t you look at the spreadsheets?

  The man with the Mediterranean tan was not surprised by this sudden rudeness. This is what Paul did, he suddenly flipped. Nevertheless, the older man could hold his temper no longer. ‘You don’t speak to me like that.’

  The reply was a long, cold look.

  ‘Who exactly do you think I am?’ continued the older man.

  ‘The past,’ Paul said, without blinking.

  Apparently, he had run out of patience for pleasantries, too.

  There was silence in the cabin as his remark seemed to bounce off the cushioned walls. Whatever his agenda was, he clearly felt that the current arrangement was slowing him down. He was revealing himself, whether he meant to or not, and that could mean only one thing. He’d had enough.

  But he wasn’t the only one.

  ‘Your failed technology is the reason we are in this position.’

  ‘It is groundbreaking innovation, there must be room for failure, that’s how it works.’

  ‘And how would you know, you’re not even a scientist?’

  ‘It is my project, it is mine, I own it.’ The younger man sounded petulant, instantly defensive.

  The older man suddenly realised why.

  ‘You stole it.’

  Paul looked up. He stared but did not respond. How much of a threat was this, he wondered.

  A hostess appeared with a tray of two squat tumblers of liquid, one clear, one amber. They said nothing as she walked across the thickly carpeted cabin and placed one in front of each of them. The older man smiled his thanks, the younger simply ignored her.

  When she had gone, they began speaking again.

  ‘You didn’t develop this at all, you stole it. And that’s why you can’t complete the testing. You don’t know how to.’

  Paul slowly closed the laptop and looked at his colleague.

  In that instant, the man with the Mediterranean tan realised that, for the first time in decades, he felt afraid. Paul was reckless, cruel and he apparently had far less to lose.

  The older man began to feel the odds were stacked against him, as if Paul had actually been brought into the project to remind him he was aged, out of date. Perhaps he had.

  That was a precarious position to be in.

  Slowly, the younger man leaned towards his colleague.

  ‘Are you threatening me?’

  ‘No.’ Despite the pulsating anxiety running through him, the older man refused to be intimidated into apologising. ‘It’s an observation.’

  The younger man continued to look at him as he drank the straight vodka.

  ‘Good.’

  Eva regarded Anya suspiciously.

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘You need to come with me.’

  Eva realised her legs were shaking. She sat on the bed. Why me? Why this, again? I’m exhausted.

  ‘If you were in my position and someone had appeared in your hotel room and physically assaulted you, would you?’

  ‘No.’

  Eva raised her hands in an ‘I told you so’ gesture.

  ‘I’m not going to kill you, Eva.’

  ‘Well, I’ve only got your word for that. Which is completely meaningless, seeing as I have absolutely no idea who you are.’

  Eva rubbed the spot on her shoulders where she had been pinned. Thankfully, it was the opposite side from where she had bounced off the train. ‘You have a hard grip for a woman.’

  Anya didn’t acknowledge the statement as either a compliment or an insult. One positive was that at least Eva knew she had no serious internal injuries after what had happened at the S-Bahn station. When Anya had pushed her onto the bed, the only pain had been in her shoulder.

  ‘It’s important that you come with me.’

  ‘You said. Why don’t you tell me why?’

  Eva was aware she was being rude but she had few filters left.

  ‘I can help you.’

  ‘I thought you were going to say something along the lines of “don’t leave Berlin, all the answers are here”.’

  ‘So, you got the note.’

  Eva looked up, surprised. ‘That was you?’

  Anya nodded. She had an athletic figure, stronger and broader at the top and slimmer from the waist down. Layered blonde hair hung either side of an oval face bearing a tense but firm expression. She had large brown eyes and strong cheek bones, with unfeasibly smooth skin for someone who apparently used her body in her line of work. Overall, from the way she stood to her unnerving gaze, she didn’t look like a woman used to being messed with.

  Anya herself didn’t interest Eva as much as the note – specifically the acorn on the back.

  ‘Why did you send me the note – what does it mean?’

  ‘We can’t talk here.’

  ‘I’m not leaving this room with you without more information,’ said Eva, more definitely this time.

  A muscle flickered to the side of Anya’s right eye.

  ‘I can’t give you more information here.’

  ‘Well, I guess we’re stuck.’

  A stand-off.

  Then, Anya reached inside her slim fitting jacket. Eva expected a weapon but, instead, there was just a card.

  Anya flipped the card over and Eva saw it held just a single number. She handed it to Eva, who took it and turned it over in her hands. On the other side, a graphic representation of a cube in line drawing. Not an acorn.

  ‘Call if you change your mind,’ said Anya and she turned and walked towards the door.

  She stopped in front of the door and turned to Eva again. ‘Call,’ she said forcefully.

  And then she left.

  SIXTEEN

  After Anya left, Eva fell into a fitful sleep but, around 2am, her eyes flicked open. She took a couple of deep breaths and orientated herself. A familiar feeling of unease kept her still for several seconds. She hated waking suddenly in the night; she could never escape the feeling that there was a reason for it – a noise, a movement, an instinct of some sort. She lay there in the dark and listened; all she could hear was the sound of her pulse thudding in her ears.

  She sat up and quickly pressed one of the metallic pads that controlled the lights in the hotel room. The room was immediately illuminated by a set of cold, awkward spotlights. She looked around. Noth
ing. From her position on the bed, she stared at the dividing wall, the one blocking her view of the door – and of anyone who might have done what Anya did and simply let themselves in.

  She sat and listened. If someone was in the room would they not have reacted as she turned on the lights?

  Eva took a deep breath and cautiously started to peel back the bed sheets. The air was cold and immediately her skin puckered into goose bumps.

  She slid down the side of the high bed, so plumped with mattresses that it would have suited the fairytale Princess and the Pea, and she began to take small, silent steps across the thick carpet towards the edge of the jutting wardrobe.

  The carpet was soft but to Eva’s ears it sounded as if she was crushing autumn leaves. The more seconds she spent not being able to see the other side of the room, the more her imagination created alarming pictures of what might be there.

  One more step and she was standing at the edge of the small partition.

  She hesitated. Perhaps waiting for a face to appear on the other side, perhaps just tempted to go back to bed and pretend there was no danger.

  Oh, for God’s sake. She took a large step around the partition, fists clenched, body rigid and ready for a fight. Her heart was now singing in her ears, a high-pitched staccato of fear that was making it difficult for her already fatigued body to respond as she might have wanted.

  But there was no one there.

  Joseph Smith stood outside the bland, wooden door and waited. He had spent 15 minutes in Eva’s hotel room and the whole time he had been itching to wrap his hands around her neck. But that was not why he was there, not this time. He had made the decision to leave as soon as he heard her waking up. He had negotiated the chair by the door and the various obstacles she had left on the floor – on purpose? – and then had trodden on something that cracked under his weight. Instantly he heard her breathing become more shallow and quicken and realised she was waking up. He had seen the light go on underneath the door, as he waited outside, but she had not opened the door to her room. If she had done, they would have come face to face. She may not have noticed him as her taxi driver several days earlier, but up close she would certainly have recognised him from their encounters in Paris and South America. In neither location had their interactions been anything but unpleasant – for her.

  But, although he had been quick to dismiss Eva Scott first time around, particularly as she was female, she remained alive and that gave him pause. For no one else who had been involved in events in Paris was still alive.

  He had yet to establish how she had escaped death at the very last moment. The mercenary had been charged with making her demise look like an accident – shooting her, then pushing her over the edge of the Iguaçu Falls in one of the Land Rovers. And yet, here she was. The mercenary had disappeared for months after the incident and rumours were that Eva had killed him, not the other way around. But from what he could make out, only one body had been found strapped into the Land Rover, the bloated corpse of Daniel Marchment, and mystery had remained over what happened to the other two.

  Finally, Joseph had found police records showing Eva had been rescued by a busload of tourists but of the mercenary there had been no mention. He had failed to appear at his Paris flat, his usual post office box remained unchecked and he had not responded to any of the aliases Joseph had been ordered to set up to tempt him out of wherever he was hiding. And then, suddenly, he had surfaced – in the UK, close to Eva.

  When she woke the next day, Eva felt heavy, exhausted and spent. She looked around her hotel room and contemplated that this was the day she was meant to check out. The thought of leaving made her instantly anxious. The anxiety was not helped by the fact that the room was a complete mess. Although she had suffered from obsessive compulsive disorder for many years – the kind that requires lots of objects to be constantly straightened and items placed in orderly clean lines – sometimes this simply disappeared and, instead, she just created chaos. It made her wonder if she could really call it obsessive compulsive disorder at all, or whether it was simply a habit. She pushed herself up in the bed and checked her mobile – always the first thing she did on waking. A couple of texts from friends and a message from her dad. Interestingly, nothing from Sam. She wondered if, after their encounter, he had done something reactive, gone out on a drinking spree, ended up in the arms of another woman. She might find him more interesting if he had.

  And there, she thought to herself, lies the reason that I am nearly 30 and still single.

  She opened the news app on her phone as a distraction and browsed through all the sensationalised goings-on. There were, she knew, elements of ‘real’ within every story but the truth? No. Reporting was never truly impartial. Maybe other than the weather. And that seemed to be woefully off the mark most of the time.

  There were a couple of articles about politics that vaguely held her attention and one investigative piece on financial cartels that she read with interest. The way cartels operated fascinated her, whether it was a business cartel or a drug cartel. An agreement to cooperate – often between opposing sides – for the sake of reaping cash rewards. In every walk of life principles always seemed to have a purchasable price.

  Eva had often thought how closely the behaviour of governments resembled organisations such as these – when very occasionally there was a glimpse behind the curtain. Collusion to supply weapons, suppress research, ignore emissions targets to ensure that profit came first. All legitimised simply because the people doing it wore suits instead of carrying guns.

  Fifteen minutes later and the room looked as if it had been made up by the hotel cleaning staff. Eva was looking at her neatly packed suitcase with a puzzled expression. On the desk next to the case lay a lipstick, its shell in several pieces. She was trying to work out how the shell had become so cracked, as she didn’t remember the pain of treading on it or hearing it break at any point when Anya had been in the room.

  It was one of those puzzling anomalies, so often dismissed – unless it turned out later to have meant something more, in which case ignoring it became a cause for regret. At that moment it meant nothing to Eva. And it would not be the first time in the past 48 hours that her memory had let her down. The thought of that blank space where the memories should have been caused a surge of panic. Eva took several slow, deep breaths. She stared at the lipstick for another few minutes, then picked up her keycard, walked out and shut the hotel room door behind her, leaving the lipstick and her suitcase on the desk.

  She was going to have to get her confidence back, she couldn’t continue to be controlled by fear. As she was currently motivated by being incredibly hungry, this seemed as good a time as any to start rebuilding it. In daylight, the idea of the streets held far less menace than they had the night before and she had Anya’s card shoved deep into the pocket of her jeans, which somehow made her feel comforted. Nevertheless her spine was rigid with tension.

  She pushed through the hotel’s front doors and was met with a sunny morning, skies blue, the air crisp and fresh and the sunshine bright. She was trembling slightly as she stepped outside the safety of the building. Ignoring her shaking knees she walked north, away from the hotel, for several minutes. To drown out the fearful voices in her head, she repeated the chorus lyrics of one of her favourite songs. Over and over again.

  When she found the café she was looking for, she ordered an enormous coffee, then bread and eggs, which she ate slowly by a window overlooking a quiet street. She felt something like contentedness after she had finished, the food was numbing. It was the first decent meal she had eaten since the Russian restaurant and that had not been particularly satisfying.

  After another ten minutes browsing the news app on her phone, Eva began her walk back to the hotel.

  ‘Eva.’

  She had been too wrapped up in her own thoughts to notice she had a shadow. The voice registered in her mind
even before she saw the face and, as a result, when she raised her eyes to his they were already wide with shock. She instinctively took a step back from him, without realising she was stepping into the road. He locked a hand around the top of her arm, pulling her back towards the pavement, as a car sped past, sounding its horn.

  ‘Leon.’

  She said his name in a flat voice. But, inside, she felt an odd mix of excitement and fear. He looked much the same, although more tanned. But he was also bruised and she could see the marks on his face where stitches had recently been removed. He still had the same animalistic quality, the burning blue eyes, a contrast against the thick, dark hair and that large frame almost blocking out the sun from where he was standing. She couldn’t ignore the fact that half of her initial reaction appeared to be pleasure at seeing him. Of course, there were other things she couldn’t ignore, either.

  ‘What do you want?’

  His face showed no surprise at the lack of friendly greeting. He had, after all, tried to kill her the last time they met.

  ‘I need your phone.’

  As usual, he ignored social conventions such as small talk.

  Eva took a step away from him – sideways this time – and instinctively touched the point in her bag at which her phone sat, subconsciously giving away its location. Then, she moved to walk away from him, intending to run at speed back to the hotel. But she didn’t get far. Leon grabbed her arm and forced her to stop, almost lifting her from the ground.

  ‘Give me your phone.’ The piercing blue of those eyes.

  ‘Why don’t you go and fuck yourself?’ She was angry now. Bizarrely, she felt it was the lack of manners that caused this fury to burn so strongly inside her. He hadn’t even asked how she was. They stared at each other and then she aimed a kick at his leg, her foot landing on his left ankle. It seemed to be a weak point, as he cringed and loosened his grip. Eva pulled herself free, turned and began running. But Leon was faster. Once again, he took hold of her, this time hustling her into a small park, empty at that early hour, where he pushed her towards a climbing frame and wedged her between the cold metal poles and his own body. His favourite tactic, she thought angrily, when she realised she couldn’t move.