Killing Eva

by Alex Blackmore

  Eva froze. Should she gather up the contents of the wallet and attract attention to it, or should she leave it where it was and hope it went unnoticed? If it was Irene, it would have been pointless trying to hide anything but this was her assistant.

  She stood up and turned round.

  Grey, penetrating eyes met hers. He was holding a tray with food on it, a bowl that was steaming and a plate with bread and butter.

  ‘Soup,’ he said.

  She hated soup.

  ‘Thanks.’ She almost smiled then stopped herself. There was no need to make him suspicious by suddenly turning on the charm.

  ‘Here,’ she said, reaching out her arms, ‘I’ll take it.’

  He stepped forward and shoved it at her so the soup slopped over the edge of the bowl, then turned without a word, for the door.

  Eva watched the door as it slammed.

  A prime example of passive aggression. Or was it just aggression?

  She disposed of the soup on the nearest flat surface and returned to kneel by the bed. She picked up the business card again; shivers travelled down her spine. It was Sam’s business card.

  Or, at least, it was Sam’s name, but the branding was nothing like the organisation they had both worked for. It was minimal, black and slick. She flicked the card over. On the back, a single word ‘Veritas’.

  She said it out loud and heard her voice echo back at her, slightly gravelly from the recently retreating adrenaline. Truth?

  There was a second, similar card, although this one carried no name.

  She put the cards on the bed and began looking through the receipts in the wallet. There was a cash point receipt for earlier that day for 200 euros from a machine near her hotel, as well as a receipt from what looked like a banking organisation.

  The last receipt was for a train ticket to Perpignan in France. On the back of it were some numbers – which seemed to be tomorrow’s date and a note of a time using the 24 hour clock. Presumably, the time and date of the tickets he had purchased. But where were the tickets?

  Eva searched through the wallet but there was nothing else of interest.

  She flicked on the bedside light for the second time in an hour. Eva absolutely hated sleeping in a room where the door didn’t lock. Particularly in her current situation. She pulled back the covers and walked across the overheated room to check the chair she had propped up under the door handle to warn her of intruders.

  She pushed and pulled it gently. Ok, still there.

  She turned back to the bed. And that was when she saw him. Just a glimpse in the mirror. A talk, dark man standing in between the wardrobe and the wall.

  He raised his hand.

  She stared.

  The room exploded around her.

  ‘Is she alive?’

  Through the ringing in her ears, Eva could just make out concerned voices she recognised as Irene and her assistant.

  She felt herself being gently lifted and placed on a softer surface. She opened her eyes, coughing. She tried to sit up. Someone pushed her back down.

  ‘Don’t try to move.’

  ‘I’m fine,’ she said, angrily pushing their arms away as adrenaline and panic began to surge through her body. She sat up. Apparently, the explosion she had experienced had been real. It had not destroyed the building but it had blown the right hand side away.

  She looked warily at Irene, who was covered in dust and had a large, bloody gash across the top of her right arm which had torn right through the fabric of her suit. ‘What happened?’

  ‘Most likely a letter bomb. Old school. Only partially detonated. Otherwise, we’d all be dead.’

  Eva looked back towards her bedroom, which was now above where she sat in the rubble. ‘Is that fire?’ she said suddenly, noticing smoke and a red glow emanating from the glass.

  The two others turned quickly and saw the same thing.

  ‘We need to get out of here now,’ said Irene, quickly, starting to pull Eva to her feet. ‘Your room was undamaged. All your possessions are being retrieved. Take them and wait in that car over there.’ She indicated a large black people carrier, perhaps the same vehicle Eva had been in before.

  ‘Don’t we need to wait for the police?’

  Irene gave Eva a long look.

  ‘Wait, Irene,’ Eva said, as thoughts suddenly rushed into her head. ‘There was a man in my room, I’m sure there was. I saw him just before the explosion happened.’

  ‘What?’ Irene was shocked.

  ‘A man, by the wardrobe.’

  Then the second explosion happened.

  It had taken her several days to form her conclusions on the single document that had arrived on that sunny evening. In her Hollywood Hills home, the analyst once again read over what she had prepared as her response to what had been revealed to her. It was audacious, in fact it was almost ridiculously simple – and that, she suspected, was what would give it the element of surprise. There was such power to be found in being underestimated.

  The document had recorded a network of transactions that had taken place – and continued to take place silently and without note. These transactions were all focused on the economy of a single country: the UK. Not too big and not too small.

  They had been designed to take advantage of the economic progress of that state over the past 50 years, everything from privatisation of utilities such as water and gas to the principles of free market capitalism that had reduced state intervention and sought to let the market define its own winners and losers. The reality was that this approach had created a market where wealth was concentrated in the hands of the few. And that was what had allowed this – she hesitated at what to call it in her mind – … this ‘plan’ to be put into action.

  You offer everything for sale. You risk it ending up in the hands of an undesirable owner.

  It was really as simple as that. Everything that the UK had turned over to a profit motive, everything it had sold off, privatised or set up as a private enterprise in the first place was essentially for sale to anyone with the resources, no matter where those resources came from or what the motivation for purchase was. Despite the fact that the infrastructure of the country still relied on those entities, they had still been offered for sale to private buyers. And if the powers that be thought they could stop the buyers being a single entity by setting up regulators, committees and ombudsmen then they were sadly mistaken. Anonymity and disguise could be acquired for any entity. And they were essential for surreptitious control.

  Although this particular entity was one that she doubted the powers that be were even aware of. It was faceless, it was nameless – and its reach was unchecked.

  TWENTY ONE

  Eva couldn’t hear, other than a high-pitched ringing noise. She realised she was shouting when she felt the pressure of her voice in her throat but she couldn’t hear anything. She was lying on a stretcher inside a moving vehicle. There was nothing she recognised, she didn’t even have any belongings and she couldn’t see a single face she knew. She was being attended to by a middle-aged man with a narrow, lined face and a shock of grey hair which made him look as if he had been electrocuted. Although she couldn’t hear him, he seemed to be very concerned to stop her shouting. He pointed across the interior of what was, apparently, an ambulance and, on the other side, Eva saw a body. So badly burned it was almost black. But, apparently, still alive.

  She closed her mouth.

  The grey-haired man looked relieved.

  Eva continued to stare at the body opposite.

  Her heart was pounding. She realised the body was too tall – and far too male – to be Irene. What was left of the hair was not the right colour to be Irene’s assistant. And nor was it Anya.

  Eva’s fragile flow of consciousness was interrupted by each jolting movement of the ambulance. Her thoughts were travelling too
fast, she couldn’t pin anything down. All she could think about was the body on the stretcher.

  She tried to push herself up on her elbows but the movement of the vehicle in motion – and the arms of the paramedic – stopped her. It had to be the man she had seen in her room before the explosion. It had to be. She had to find out who he was.

  Eva continued to stare across at the prone figure.

  With a start, she realised its head was on one side. Her vision was blurring, her head was thumping. But she could have sworn there were eyes looking directly at her.

  The vehicle began to slow down and Eva realised they were about to reach their destination. Where they would no doubt be separated and she might never be able to locate him because he had no face. She had to find out who he was, why he had been in her room.

  She turned to the paramedic and tried to speak but her words sounded as if she was shouting into a balloon. He winced as she tried again; she realised it was futile.

  She shut her eyes.

  What the hell was happening?

  The next time she opened her eyes, she was in a hospital room, dressed in a gown and tucked underneath several blankets, almost secured to the bed by them. The paramedic must have sedated her. Cold fingers of fear scratched at her consciousness. What was going on?

  It was dark outside but there was a soft light coming from a lamp near the bed. There was no one else in the room, although she could hear voices from the corridor.

  Hear. She could hear.

  Eva lay still and realised she no longer had a harsh ringing in her ears. It had dropped to a low hum. However, now that the adrenaline had worn off, her body felt broken. She was sore in a way she had never been before – her skin burned; she knew that, if she tried to move, it would disturb every bruise and cut. But shouldn’t she try?

  Small lights danced in front of Eva’s eyes as she tried to follow the thought through. Her body felt heavily medicated, she could barely keep her eyes open and the edges of her consciousness were blurred, unclear and lacking focus. She gave in to the heaviness and began to close her eyes.

  Almost as soon as her eyes were shut, she began to dream. She was in the hospital bed in the same room, feeling the same pain. Her dream self looked across at the door and there was something there, silhouetted against the light. Her eyes focused and she saw it was the other body from the ambulance, tall, dark-haired and horrifically burned, but standing – in exactly the same position as the person she had seen in her room just before the explosion.

  He stared from the other side of the room. He said nothing. He just stood half facing her, the rest of his body turned towards the door, completely still as if he was an actor waiting for a cue. She felt as if his head might rotate 360 degrees on his neck. Then, in the dream, he turned and walked out of the door to the private room and, as he did so, went up in flames.

  Eva awoke with a sharp intake of breath.

  Briefly, her heart fluttered into arrhythmia as she tried to place where she was and why.

  It was just a dream.

  She looked around but experienced no post-nightmare relief.

  The image from the dream continued to run through her head, as if on replay. The turn of the man’s head, the walk out of the door and then the hellish rush of flames as the body was consumed.

  Eva looked at the door. Nothing.

  She continued to stare at it, as if she would miss something if she looked away, but nothing happened.

  The dream was unnerving. It did not help that she had nothing from her world to comfort herself with, to reassure herself that she was real and that the vision was just a dream – because at that moment she wasn’t sure she could tell.

  Eva felt immensely vulnerable.

  She moved and found that sitting up was painful but not impossible. Her body hurt, but she could move.

  She pushed back the sheets and disconnected herself from the wires delivering rehydration and monitoring her bodily functions. Despite what she had been through, it was clear that she wasn’t seriously injured or she wouldn’t have been left alone like this. And there would have been more tubes.

  She swung her legs over the edge of the bed and felt for the floor with her feet. It was cold and rough and her skin was tender and feverish.

  Carefully, she stood and tightened the ties on the hospital robe, closing the gap at the back. She began taking slow, steady steps towards the door, until she realised she could walk without difficulty and then she stepped out into the corridor.

  The hospital ward seemed to be a collection of private rooms and it was quiet. All the doors were shut. There were no windows looking into the rooms, which seemed a little odd. At the end of the corridor, Eva saw a nurse’s station with one occupant reading in the light of a muted desk lamp.

  The woman looked up.

  Eva walked towards her.

  It was impossible to read the expression on the woman’s face. Eva began to feel nervous. Her feet were cold against the hard floor and she shivered.

  ‘I wonder if you can help me,’ she said, smiling as she reached the nurse.

  The nurse continued to look at her. ‘If I can, I will.’

  She was English.

  Strange. Wasn’t it?

  ‘Can you tell me where I am?’

  ‘You’re in a hospital.’

  ‘I know, but which one?’

  ‘We’re on the outskirts of Berlin.’

  The answer was evasive. Why avoid giving a straight answer to a sick patient? Eva noticed that her own skin was alive with goosebumps she couldn’t attribute solely to the cold.

  ‘There was a man. Or a person. They arrived with me in the same ambulance. Do you know what happened to them?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Is there any way that you could find out?’

  ‘Unlikely.’

  For several seconds, all that passed between the two women was a look. Eva felt as if she were trying to engage a brick wall. She considered demanding that the nurse help her, she was sure she could find a convincing reason – or at least make enough noise – to force a response. But she needed to conserve her energy. Besides, there was more than one way to get what she wanted.

  ‘Thanks,’ she said and turned and began walking in the other direction. Eva heard a phone ring as she reached her room and looked back. The nurse was now on the phone. She glanced at Eva and looked down at something on the desk in front of her, apparently not interested in what Eva did next. Which was not very nurse-like behaviour. Eva stopped and stared at the top of the woman’s head. Was she even a nurse?

  After several seconds, Eva collected herself. Whatever medication she had been given was making her slow. She veered left away from the door to her room and ducked down the corridor opposite, moving silently along the hard floor in her bare feet.

  As she walked away from her room, the hospital became colder and darker. Eva didn’t know if it was her drugged imagination but the place seemed to chill the further she walked from the nurse’s station; she wished she had thought to bring a jumper. Or shoes.

  She stumbled and swore as she stubbed her toe on a concrete block next to the wall on the left. She stopped walking, looked at it, puzzled. It looked like debris. Then she scanned the rest of her surroundings before glancing back in the direction she had come. It was almost as if the room she had been in was a film set and this was backstage.

  She felt compelled to keep walking, so she turned away from the warmth and light and pushed open a door into the darkness of the corridor beyond.

  At the end of the corridor, she could see a single room illuminated by a bright fluorescent bulb. Unlike the other rooms, this one had glass on all sides and in the bed, propped up into a sitting position, was the charred figure of the man she had seen in the ambulance. As she drew closer to the room, she could see he had no wires, drips or monitors att
ached to his body, and no one was attending to him. The only movement was the jagged rise and fall of his chest, as if he too had been drugged, this time into an uncomfortable sleep. She couldn’t take her eyes off him as she walked down the corridor. He cut a shocking figure.

  It was as if he had simply been left to die.

  When she reached the room, she pushed open the door. No one stopped her, no alarm sounded.

  The man in the bed continued his ragged breathing and then, as she looked closer, she noticed an eye peeling open.

  It was a deep brown eye. So similar to one she knew from many years ago. She shook her head to try and clear it. The room was cold. The man was shivering. Eva pulled her arms around her. She looked at what was left of his hair, thick and dark, like… like…

  No, surely not.

  Her stomach dropped like a stone.

  ‘Jackson?’ she took a step towards the bed.

  The burned figure was still. And then, slowly, he began trying to turn his head. There was a sucking noise as the melted skin on one side of his neck began to tear, as he turned towards her. His moan made the hair on the back of Eva’s neck stand on end.

  He could only open one eye. Nevertheless…

  Eva felt her heartbeat spiral. The room started to spin. She stared hard at his face but her vision kept shifting.

  ‘Jackson? Is that you?’

  The one open eye was all she could focus on.

  Was she going mad?

  But she was sure she recognised that eye. It had to be… it was…

  ‘Jackson!’ she ran at the bed, losing her balance as her body failed to cope with the sudden movement and falling as the man in the bed began to emit a low moan.

  She hit her head on the bed frame, which was rusted, but pushed herself back up into a kneeling position. She struggled to stand again. The body in the bed was making an inhuman noise now, keening, rocking from side to side.

  Eva’s nostrils were suddenly filled with the smell of charred flesh, she hadn’t noticed it before. She retched; put her hand to her mouth; retched again.

  ‘Please,’ she said to the man, ‘please stop making that noise.’ She tried to look for somewhere to put a hand on his chest or arms, to try and comfort him, but the flesh was completely raw. Why is no one taking care of him, she thought unsteadily, those must be first degree burns. He will die!