Killing Eva

by Alex Blackmore

  She stood up, shakily, and took a step. Then sat down quickly on the bed. She had been in that bed for some time, clearly, as her legs felt as if they had forgotten the natural human action of walking. A second wave of fear gripped her. What has happened to me? This time it was not misted over so quickly by the drug cloud.

  Made determined by the fearful thoughts, she forced herself to get up and then stood on her toes, bent her knees and began moving her body around as if warming up for exercise. Gradually she began to feel more like she was inside her own skin.

  She walked over to the window. The scene outside was remote, hilly and quite beautiful. Mist-shrouded mountains were all around, it was warm and not damp enough to be English. But there was nothing about the scene that gave her any lasting pleasure. All she felt was a sense of rapidly growing unease.

  Irene gazed out of the window as the car sped through the open countryside; the sun was rising. They had taken a flight from Berlin to Barcelona Girona, arriving early and collecting the car left for them at the airport. They had already passed the Spanish border and were now heading at speed towards the tiny Pyrenees town of Céret, where Eva – whatever state she might be in – was located.

  Irene was anxious, very anxious. This had to happen. And yet she felt a tiny nagging doubt over Eva and her own role in the girl’s fate.

  On a personal level, for Irene, Eva represented the second time in her life where emotions had clouded judgement. The first had been Eva’s father.

  Since Evan Scott there had been many times when Irene had looked back to that point and wondered what had overtaken her. She was living in a war zone, her world was chaos, and a love affair was a warm and wonderful place to escape to. Somehow it felt real, solid, when everything else was fleeting. But in a way her heart had tricked her because it was not real. If it had been real love then the two of them would have stayed together – got married, had children, remained together for decades. Then, although the situation was admittedly not perfect, any rational human could see that it was just life, that there was no need to do anything other than accept, forgive and move on. Because it would have been something real.

  But that was not the case. Evan had returned to his family.

  As she took in the breathtaking beauty of the French countryside Irene realised that was the point at which she had changed. After that, emotional isolation appealed. She simply shut her feelings away, no longer fought with herself over the ethics of right and wrong. Life became a series of goals, doing what she needed to do to move from one to the next and get what she wanted. And she felt nothing. Lines that had once seemed solid were crossed – the more of them she crossed, the less the crossing mattered.

  Which is why she was where she was now. It was the inevitable final step along a path she knew she had always been on. Self-destruction disguised as ambition and success. She was no longer walking in the light.

  Irene realised her assistant was looking at her in the mirror and wondered, for a second, whether she had given anything away. It was unlikely.

  The metallic voice of the satnav directed them off the major motorway and they began to drive along smaller, more residential avenues. Céret was a picturesque town, with traditional steep cobbled streets, as well as some new-build houses – one of which they pulled into just as the sun began to climb in the sky.

  They unloaded several suitcases; just another of the numerous ex-pat couples in the area – albeit with a slight age difference. Then they crunched over the gravel of the two-storey building which would be their home until… well, until it was done.

  ‘You’re awake.’

  Eva was walking down the stairs of what appeared to be a grand château, with an opulently decorated set of doors opening onto expansive lawns.

  The comment came from a small man in what looked like a butler’s suit who had emerged from a door as Eva creaked her way down the stairs.

  How ridiculous, she thought, looking at his crisply pressed shirt.

  ‘I’m sorry, I don’t know who you are.’

  She still felt relaxed, as if no action was required. Something told her that, in some way, she was sedated still. Otherwise, she would surely be in panic mode. Fight or flight.

  ‘Would you like a drink – some coffee perhaps?’

  She registered that the man had not tried to provide identification.

  ‘I would love some coffee,’ she said, as she realised she really would.

  ‘Go and sit outside and I will bring it to you.’

  Eva did as she was told, drifted through the front doors of the château, onto a large stone area overlooking broad, green lawns dotted with whirring sprinklers, a tennis court visible in the near distance. Her bare feet felt cold on the stone and she was instantly aware she had very little on.

  She found a table and chairs and sat on the wood, which was warmer than the stone, lifted up her feet and placed them on a chair opposite.

  The man returned, looking vaguely displeased, so she took her feet down.

  He had with him a tray, but he didn’t carry it as if it was natural, in fact he almost let the silver coffee pot slide off.

  Eva recoiled, realising she wasn’t entirely sure what she would have done if the pot had left the tray. Would the natural reaction have been to try and catch it? She didn’t know.

  With the coffee in front of her, the man began to depart.

  ‘Where am I?’ she suddenly thought to ask at his retreating back. He turned as he walked and looked at her, but he didn’t reply.

  A smudge of anger clouded Eva’s mind. And then disappeared.

  She sat back in the chair, uneasily, and took several sips of the hot coffee. And then she downed the entire cup. She poured another cup and downed that too. And then a third.

  She sat still, very still. She looked around at the scenery and realised this pretty place was vibrating with unease.

  And that’s when the clouds began to lift. Stimulated by the caffeine, her mind began to turn once again – fast. She stood up.

  I’m in danger.

  She wondered whether she had any possessions with her, perhaps a phone, but they would surely be upstairs. And besides, she thought as she looked around, this was too good an opportunity to miss. The land around was open, there was no one here. She should just go.

  Draining the last drops of the coffee, she began to walk, first across the stone and then the wet grass. Then she began to run. No one stopped her, there were no panicked shouts, nothing happened.

  The muscles in her legs complained but her heart was beating healthily and the blood pumping through her veins felt good.

  Perhaps it was too early for anyone to notice, she thought, and began to pick up her pace. When she reached what looked like the edge of the property, there was a small stream running clear over pebbles with concrete banks on either side. She could jump it, easily.

  She took a couple of steps back.

  Her right arm began to throb.

  She started a run up.

  Both arms felt as if they were pulsating.

  Eva continued to move. And then, suddenly, her body jerked forward and back; she howled and fell to the floor.

  Joseph Smith watched as Eva lay on the wet grass, writhing.

  She was clearly in agony although, from his position, he could not hear her – which was a shame.

  He took a sip of the watery coffee he had made for himself before spitting it out in disgust. He missed the thick, dark coffee of his homeland.

  He put down his binoculars, stood up and walked over to the sink of the small cottage he was occupying in the grounds of the extensive château.

  The château in which he was not allowed to set foot.

  He had wondered if his exclusion was simply because he’d had contact with Eva, whether she would recognise him, or whether it was something else.

&nb
sp; Joseph, over the years, had worked with gangs and groups of all shapes and sizes – he was not particularly fussy about those for whom he killed, as long as someone had deep pockets to pay for it. In that time, he had noticed one thing – that racism (if you could call it that) went all ways. The human condition was so evident when it came to this fundamental issue of trust – you trust someone who is like you. You instinctively don’t trust what you don’t understand. No matter how advanced the human race became this would never change. No matter how civilsed we consider ourselves, he thought, it all boils down to the fact that we trust people who look like us – we assume that they are like us. And even if we make an effort to overcome those doubts it’s still not the same as implicit trust.

  Such implicit trust had often worked in his favour, which is why he took the time to think about it.

  Yet others like him – whether from the same country, or of similar skin colour – would choose to trust him over another with a different heritage or a white face. That weakness was one of the easiest ways to gain an advantage. For he trusted no one – at all.

  Joseph stopped. He realised he had become distracted. A surge of anger travelled through his body and he felt like banging his head against the wall.

  He stood for several seconds until his pulse-rate began to normalise.

  Abandoning the idea of making more coffee, he returned to the table. He looked through the binoculars.

  Eva was no longer there.

  He wondered why she had been so underdressed out on the lawn. He briefly considered what was being done to her, and why. But unless it affected his interests he didn’t really care.

  He put his hand in the pocket of his trousers and pulled out a key. A tiny metal key – the one he had stolen from the genetics scientist.

  He turned it over and over in his hands, watching as it caught the light. It was small, but solid, hollow at one end and curved into a small circle at the other. And it was light, much lighter than it looked.

  He tested its resistance by squeezing it between a powerful thumb and middle finger but it did not give.

  He looked at it close up but there did not seem to be a single mark on it. There was apparently no indication as to what lock this key would fit. And then he saw it – lettering. It was only visible when the sunlight caught the edge of the key and only after he had pressed his thumb onto the metal.

  Heat activated?

  Must be.

  Joseph looked at the blank key. He pressed his thumb hard on the metal, before turning it quickly to the light.

  Three letters appeared, ‘…tas’.

  The word he had seen before had been longer.

  He tried again, attempting this time to place his thumb slightly further to the left, where the rest of the letters had appeared.

  He turned the key to the sun, ‘…itas’.

  He was becoming frustrated now, he wanted to see the word. He laid the key against his palm and pressed hard on the side on which he had seen the letters for several seconds.

  Then, he quickly turned the key back towards the sunlight and there was the word.

  ‘Veritas’.

  TWENTY FIVE

  Irene looked around the room at the mass of electronic equipment. She missed the time when a covert operation would have required cunning and courage rather than tech. Which meant she was getting old. However, these devices were useful. Or, at least, the data they provided was. They had so far collated enough information from thermal imaging, satellite pictures and visual and audio surveillance provided by local eyes on the ground to establish Eva was not in the village itself but somewhere within a two or three mile radius.

  Given Eva’s reckless streak, as well as her apparent Houdini-like ability to escape the metaphorical (or physical) chains and water tank, Irene was surprised she had not freed herself. There was a dogged persistence about the girl, something her brother possessed also and, unless she was already dead or incapacitated, she probably had a good chance of engineering her own freedom.

  Which could be a problem for Irene. It was essential that Eva continued to trust her – even if only because there was no one else. Irene had presented herself as the best of a bad bunch, Eva’s only face from the past – friendly or not. Never mind that Irene had been involved in setting up events that had been designed to skew Eva’s perception of reality, to doubt her ability to cope.

  Leon’s arrival had been a worry, particularly as he might appeal to Eva more than Irene did, especially given their history.

  She had relied on the chemicals in Eva’s blood stream doing their destabilising work and hoped that Leon’s appearances could be used to further force Eva to question what was real and what was not, rather than to present him as an alternative to Irene. He was not an alternative. He could not be. She did not know what was driving him now but she doubted whether it was Eva’s best interests he had at heart.

  Irene sat forward in her chair and widened her eyes, forcing her eyelids open.

  There was a low hum in the room, emitted by the equipment and, after several days without sleep, she was being lulled into the threat of a doze by it. She stood up, straightened her tailored trousers and picked up the large yellow pottery mug she had found in the kitchen of the house. When she reached the coffee pot, she flicked the switch and waited for the liquid to filter through before pouring herself a large measure and drinking it straight, without milk or sugar.

  It was now dark outside and they would be forced to move soon. The information had been gathered, the operation had been hastily planned, soon they would have the exact details and the additional personnel would arrive. Once that happened, they couldn’t stay there any longer as their presence would be noted by some curious farmer or nosy local resident. Irene wasn’t sure she liked the French.

  He ducked down behind a large hedge, from where he could see the bright lights of the château but where he would not cast a shadow from the moon behind. It was a harvest moon, large and yellow, and it was lighting up the entire, enormous lawn between the spot where he crouched and the house beyond, as if the area were floodlit. He had been watching since lunchtime and knew she was in a room at the front. But he had received no other information. And that worried him. Everything could change so quickly in this game. The set-up, in particular, confused him. It was not what he had been led to expect. He suspected there must be underground tunnels and exits as some people went into the house and never emerged and others appeared from nowhere. He could only hope she was still in there – in a position he could reach her quickly. Or, if she was moved, he would have to react straight away.

  Instinctively, in the dark, he crouched down and checked the small arsenal of weapons strapped to him. He knew he could use all of them if he had to, he was entirely confident of his ability to win a physical fight in most situations. And he would have no hesitation defending his prize through violence.

  He checked his watch again, low lit and kept under the palm of his other hand. Not long to go. In an hour, he would be on the move.

  An explosion of light and noise marked the moment in which Eva became conscious again of her surroundings. Her eyes flew open, she inhaled an enormous gasp of air and tried to sit up, before her brain processed that she was confined by her wrists.

  And then came the realisation she was moving. Not her body but the surface to which she was pinned.

  Above her, the night sky, velvety and black, studded with pinpricks of light.

  She gazed at it for several seconds.

  She was outside.

  And she was fastened to a moving object.

  She pulled her wrists upwards but the binding prevented any movement. She felt sharp stabs of pain in her forearms as she tried to flex the muscles. Turning her head right and left, she tried to work out what was going on but her vision kept blurring, making the back of her eyeballs hurt.

 
After several seconds with her eyes shut, she tried again to free herself but was tied fast. She lay motionless, eyes still shut, then she turned her head sideways, opened her eyes and fought to focus. She could see the lawns of the huge building in which she had been confined. Slowly tipping her head backwards, she could see two men behind her, facing away and powering forward, their hands pulling whatever she was strapped to. A gurney, it rattled like a gurney. Eva raised her head slightly, looking at her toes, and saw two more figures in black, one looked female. Both stared straight ahead and said nothing. Neither of them looked at her. She noticed her ankles were unbound. Eva’s heart was palpitating madly, she could hear a low hum in her ears; it soon became apparent that it was her own voice, a muted scream. What is going on?

  She lay back down, allowed herself to be carried along while waves of alarm washed through her confused brain. Was this even real? All she knew was that there had been pain. She had been hurt. Recently. But that was all she had. The lack of information was almost as terrifying as the unexplained actions of those around her. She had no control over her body and no understanding as to why that was happening.

  As the gurney made its jolting way across the huge lawn, Eva gradually became aware of a roaring sound. She tipped her head backwards, painfully stretching her neck, and saw the source of the noise. A helicopter. It looked like an emergency medical helicopter – was she dying? But she was hooked up to nothing and no one was paying particular attention to her other than to move the gurney across the grass. If she was dying, nobody cared.

  She struggled again with the strapping and one of the figures at her feet glanced down at her.

  ‘Where are you taking me?’ she shouted, over the noise of the helicopter blades starting to turn.

  His eyes registered nothing and he quickly looked ahead.

  ‘HEY! I said where are you taking me?’ She heard the tremble in her voice as she shouted. This time no one reacted. She started to struggle more on the gurney. Pain burned again in her forearms and the back of her skull. Why? What was that pain?