Killing Eva

by Alex Blackmore

  Eventually, the man calmed down and was quiet. He lay still and, again, attempted to open one eye.

  ‘It is you isn’t it? Jackson?’

  It seemed as if the man was trying to speak but the flesh of his mouth was burned shut. Eva stared again at that one open eye; years of pain and frustration began to well up inside her. She felt an urgency overtake her. ‘Please. Just tell me if it is you.’

  Teresa had to admit the date had not gone particularly well. She had been hesitant to go in the first place and, frankly, the whole experience left her wishing she was of pensionable age so she could stop trying. ‘Oops!’ Teresa laughed out loud as she stumbled on her heels, climbing up the steep concrete steps to her Berlin apartment. She was tipsy, there was no doubt about that – but how else did one survive a bad date?

  ‘Exactly!’ she laughed to herself.

  She had been single for several years and had never felt an urgency to start searching for someone. At least, until all her friends turned 30 and started marrying the first pair of trousers which came along. She knew at least half of them were miserable, and made more so on a daily basis by staying with their partners, but they never left. They just bitched and moaned, put on weight, silently resented their husbands’ freedom ordained by biology, dreaded the day the kids left, and drank too much wine.

  However, the pressure to at least start dating had affected Teresa, despite the long hours she worked and the fact she already had more than enough money to keep herself in the lifestyle to which she had become accustomed.

  She had no financial need for a man, no desire for security. But she did miss the sex – it was so variable and inconsistent outside the confines of a relationship.

  As she pushed her key into the front door, Teresa suddenly stopped dead. There were tiny scratches around the keyhole. Had they been there before?

  She looked closely.

  A shiver travelled down her spine.

  She turned and glanced back down the dark hallway of her apartment block. The light flicked off its timer switch and, for several seconds, she stood in the dark as the hairs rose on the back of her neck.

  ‘Shit,’ she muttered to herself, turned the key and opened the door. Don’t be ridiculous, she thought. As if anyone had broken in.

  Nevertheless, she checked the entire flat before pouring a glass of wine and retreating to the bedroom to record her evening for posterity on her various social media accounts.

  She scrolled through the feeds, chuckling delightedly to herself at several notifications which informed her a man she had been flirting with quite carelessly was responding in exactly the way she wanted. How easily manipulated they are, she smiled to herself.

  She pushed off her heels – handmade, four-inch stiletto courts from a British designer with a burgeoning reputation – and began to undress. Despite the cold outside, the room was warm, so she left her robe where she had draped it over the chair and walked to her dressing table in her underwear.

  Maybe a selfie, she thought to herself, as she sat down at the table – her make-up was so good it would be a shame for no one to have seen it other than the bad date and the taxi driver.

  So she stood up, pushed her hair to give it volume and held her smart phone so that the screen was facing her. Her face filled the screen. She smiled at her ‘reflection’. She pulled the phone away slightly, turned it diagonally, tilted her head to one side and tried out two or three different poses before settling on the one which conveyed exactly the right message and looked the least like she had taken it herself.

  She snapped two or three images. She moved the camera back slightly, widening the frame.

  She froze.

  Captured in the last photo she had taken was the image of a man standing behind her.

  TWENTY TWO

  Joseph Smith swore repeatedly to himself as he ran down the street from the woman’s apartment. With her damn camera phone she had glimpsed him just before he had been about to wrap a pair of stockings around her neck. Although he had hit her hard, he had lost his advantage and she had been able to grab at her wine glass, which had been smashed to a single lethal shard. Now he had a gash running bright red with blood down one side of his cheek.

  As usual, the pain had sharpened his senses; instantly cut through red mist. And he had looked down at the woman lying on the floor, almost as if he wasn’t sure how he had arrived in her apartment or why she was looking up at him, a combination of terror and defiance in her eyes.

  He had found, over the years, that, periodically, he had to do this. It was the same every time but he could not break the pattern. He was always carrying out the same revenge. A hurt from so many years ago. There is nothing more powerful than rejection, he thought, as he ran – it never leaves you. If it catches you at the wrong time in your life, it’s like a wrecking ball sweeping the foundations from under you – that burn, the feeling of being out in the cold.

  He had not known his father. Other than by way of cuts, bruises and beatings. And his mother had been weak, cowed by years of inflicted violence, yes, but ultimately focused only on protecting her own skin.

  In the end, he had watched his father kill her. Crush the life from her neck as if he were screwing up a paper bag.

  Her eyes locked on to Joseph’s, held his gaze before slowly draining of life.

  She hadn’t made a sound. It hardly took any time at all. Almost as if she was glad to go, to escape.

  In fact, the last look he had seen in her eyes had been pity although, at the time, eleven-year-old Joseph had not understood why. With his mother’s same instinct for self-protection, he had hidden and watched as she had died, had not intervened. And he cried in loneliness and fear after his father removed her corpse.

  But soon that had turned to anger, when he became the front line for the assault his relentlessly wounded father waged on anyone he shared a house with.

  Joseph then suffered for four years at his father’s hands because his mother had not fought for her life – and, by association, for his. If she had lived until he left, he might have escaped with only broken bones but the wounds inflicted after her death never healed.

  Instead, he became obsessed with taking life – copying his father in his own childish way by squeezing the breath out of living creatures he had power over, be they a bird, or a frog. Watching the light die in their eyes in the same way as his mother’s had gave him a feeling of safety. If he was the one inflicting the damage, it could not be done to him.

  The first time he had taken a human life he hadn’t even intended to. But the woman had reminded him so much of his mother he had flown into a rage, which only subsided when he found himself still holding her by the neck, which he had almost snapped in two.

  After that, he realised he needed the release, periodically, to keep his anger under control, to remain focused. It was almost like medication.

  He usually chose women he thought would not be missed – people who existed on the fringes of the world, without social security numbers and families, work colleagues and savings accounts. But this time he had stepped outside his usual pattern and picked a different type of woman. And he knew that somehow Eva was to blame. He had wanted power over the woman tonight in a way he knew he could never have without forcing her. Just like Eva. It had been a mistake. Not only had she spotted him but she had not cowered from him. She had attacked him with the wine glass and, even though the blow should have been hard enough to knock her out, she had recovered, picked up a chair and swung it at him, screaming. Her reaction had frightened him. In his experience, women rarely fought back – those he had chosen before wouldn’t dare. But this one did. And so he had followed his instincts and run. Now he would have to leave Berlin – slightly sooner than he had intended, but only by a day.

  She was still screaming the same words over and over again when she was dragged backwards from the room by two tall
men in dark bomber jackets. They were not wearing scrubs. There wasn’t even a pretence at hospital garb. As Eva watched the neon hospital lights pass by, one after the other, above her head, she acknowledged this was not like any hospital she knew, she was not safe. But the fog was descending between her thoughts and her reactions, isolating her brain from the harm that could be caused by what she had just seen only increased her confusion. She could feel the skin on her heels burning, blistering against the rough floor as she was pulled across it and she felt the sting of the blow to her right cheek as she fought being pushed back into the room she had occupied. Her body registered the pain as, again, her head hit the metal furniture by the bed but her reaction was non-existent. As the boot made contact with her stomach, she finally stopped screaming, lying in a foetal position parallel to the bed. She stared ahead into the middle distance and didn’t flinch as the boot came towards her abdomen once again. Finally, when the boot made contact with Eva’s skull, she let go.

  ‘I don’t understand why we can’t find her, she can’t just have dropped off the face of the earth.’

  ‘There is a strong possibility she didn’t disappear on her own.’

  ‘I know that,’ snapped Irene. She was angry, very angry. It burned at her insides and she was barely able to control it. Or was that fear.

  Eva must be found; it was not possible to proceed without her.

  ‘Locate her.’ Irene turned to her assistant and stared at him.

  ‘I have tried.’ He was patient but he thought he was being the voice of reason. ‘She is most likely dead by now.’ He had no idea what was at stake.

  Irene felt a jolt against her insides. She’d had no tenderness for Eva before this had happened and now – well, now she disliked her even more. In the past she had become representative of everything that Irene had failed at. And now she was doing it again.

  But Eva was complex. She survived. Like a cockroach.

  ‘I think you underestimate her.’

  The man laughed. It was a short, sharp sound with a distinctly patronising undertone.

  Irene swung around. ‘Why are you laughing?’

  ‘I…’

  ‘Shut up.’

  He stopped immediately.

  ‘Don’t you realise,’ continued Irene, ‘what will happen if we don’t find her? If she is dead?’

  The man looked at her, held her gaze, but only just. He didn’t know. That much was clear. Irene looked away. She had already revealed far too much of her own inner turmoil for one interaction.

  She could not show weakness.

  ‘Just go,’ she said, shooing him from the room with her voice.

  After he left, Irene shut the door, locked it and then slowly lowered herself into one of the metal chairs in yet another Berlin safe house. ‘Safe’ house she thought, bitterly, to herself; it had not proven to be particularly safe for any of them in the past 24 hours.

  Anya and Sassan were gone, Sassan killed in the second explosion, Anya barely alive, and Irene was left with a team of unknowns. It was unnerving enough when she’d had help, now she was on her own.

  She flipped open a slim, silver laptop and flicked the on button.

  The screen jumped to life and she launched an application, then watched as the screen filled with her own face in one box and the moving image of someone else’s in another.

  ‘You’re late.’

  ‘There have been issues.’

  ‘Unless everyone – including you – is dead, I don’t want to know.’ The tone was haughty and superior. Irene wanted to point out the ridiculous nature of what had just been said. But she didn’t.

  She abhorred being a subordinate. But this was the path she had chosen.

  ‘Where is Eva Scott?’

  ‘We don’t know.’ The admission was hard to make. Irene waited for an explosion.

  ‘Do you, at least, have her possessions, the phone?’

  ‘No, we searched the rubble and there was nothing. I think they must have been destroyed in the second explosion.’

  Another silence hung in the air.

  Irene again waited for expletives, the screaming she had experienced previously, even a mild telling-off but there was nothing. Which was much worse.

  ‘Find her,’ said the face on the other end of the video call, then the connection was dropped.

  Irene continued to stare at the screen, which was now filled only by her own worried-looking expression. She looked at herself in the image of the laptop’s camera. It was not flattering. She had lined skin, her hair had lost its lustre and she was slightly thicker set than she had been at Eva’s age.

  What struck her most about her appearance were the enormous bags underneath her eyes, making her features look hollow and haunted. When had that happened?

  Briefly, she thought of Henry and the children at home in London. He was presumably tucking them into bed right now. Once again, they would ask where was mummy and (if he wasn’t feeling too resentful) Henry would perhaps say how much she loved them before reading a story and singing them to sleep.

  Irene suddenly felt very alone.

  For several days, Eva drifted in and out of consciousness and sleep, never really able to differentiate between the two. Her mind wandered aimlessly from memories to dreams – the flaming man at the door of her room, the charred body in the bed, Jackson as a child, the phone calls from her dead brother’s phone and that word ‘kolychak’. Every thought was soundtracked by the moaning of the man in the bed. The sound ran like a pulse linking every other wild and baseless thought that she had. It was the only constant.

  Outside her mental confusion, Eva had little awareness of what was going on. She had been dosed with drugs that topped up what was already in her system to the point where her mind willingly submitted. The series of shock events she had experienced since the dying man at Waterloo had threatened to overwhelm her when she was conscious and these, combined with chemical encouragement, now sent her deep into the recesses of her mind. She was being subdued, rather than treated, and she was also being prepared. As she was never conscious long enough to complain, she remained suspended in a nightmarish animation, reliving all the most frightening moments of her life as well as each and every one of her fears.

  She didn’t notice when they finally changed her blood-stained clothing or when they moved her to a different bed. She had no reaction when she was wheeled from one room to another, this one full of machines and computers. And she had no idea when they began to cut into her skin.

  The man with the Mediterranean tan closed his laptop and turned to face Paul, who was smoking self consciously. Or, at least, it appeared to be self consciousness but the older man was learning Paul had many talents and one of them was a Janus-like ability to be two-faced. What Paul felt and what one saw were often two very different things. Nevertheless, it was time Paul was made aware of the scale of the issues his complacency had caused.

  ‘This is a mess.’

  The words hung in the air as the two failed to make eye contact.

  The man with the Mediterranean tan waited, watching his younger associate who, he hoped, would hold his hands up to what had gone wrong. Not only was Paul responsible for the technology that had backfired so disastrously but he had also made a bad call on what should have been a very straightforward execution. Paul would not learn from these mistakes unless he was forced to, unless someone highlighted them for him. Otherwise, he would continue to play his cruel games, inflicting pain for entertainment, torture to amuse. The older man knew pain was a weapon and should be used as such, it was not for fun or gratification. Pleasure gleaned from others’ suffering…it was like playing God. That seemed to be asking for trouble.

  ‘I suppose it is not entirely a mess.’ Paul looked over at the older man. His expression was sly, clearly he thought he could get out of this situation as he had others befor
e.

  There was a moment of uncomfortable eye contact. Neither looked away. The older man recalled their spats recently in which he had begun to feel that Paul was dangerous and no longer within his control. Psychotic, even. He felt a small nudge of regret at raising the topic.

  ‘I mean,’ Paul continued, like a wily teenager making excuses, ‘everything else is entirely operational, correct?’

  The tone felt patronising. That was aggravating. Especially now he knew Paul was just a common thief who had gained a place at this table through deception. The only question remaining was why had he done it. Looking at the expression on Paul’s face, the man with the Mediterranean tan knew he now had to do something to uncover the rest of Paul’s story. Not knowing it had become too much of a disadvantage. It was a risk but he had to push the other man to anger, to that point where caution was destroyed by emotion. He could not think of another way to get Paul to reveal himself – soon it would be too late.

  Paul continued talking.

  ‘We have achieved the milestones that we were set, yes?’

  No reply.

  ‘I mean, there’s very little that can stop it… is there?’ Was that a slight note of uncertainty in that oh-so-confident tone?

  A flicker of a smile crossed Paul’s face. As if he had some plan of his own and everything was going according to it. Which is what the other man suspected to be the case.

  That was the trigger.

  He lunged across the old mahogany desk and grabbed Paul by the front of his shirt. The movement was so sudden there was no time for the other to react and he was taken by surprise. Particularly so by the sinewy strength that saw Paul dragged across the desk and pushed up against the wall.

  Paul did not have a fighter’s instincts. He was a desk criminal, a delegator. He spluttered, his mouth working as he felt the hand crushing his windpipe, tighter and tighter. He didn’t know how to defend himself or counter attack.