by Tom Wood
The clock on the wall showed her the day in that little plastic window next to the three. We’ll come back in a couple of weeks… She had to be gone by then. She couldn’t risk another conversation with the police. Each day she was better than the last and looked it. They wouldn’t relent so easily next time. There would be proper questions. A proper statement required. That would put her on their system.
That was her fear. That’s what she needed to avoid.
Those who wanted to find her would see that entry on their own systems, because their electronic tentacles reached everywhere. Their search algorithms would flag the telling details. Someone would notice. Messages would be sent. A decision would be made fast and acted upon without delay because the mysterious woman without a name or memory bore an uncanny resemblance to one Constance Stone, aka Raven, former government operative, rogue agent, assassin…
Kill on sight.
THREE
Her client stood by the window. He kept the curtains closed, but peered out into the night through the thin gap between curtain and wall. He was dressed in his grey suit – he was always dressed so fast – but had not showered. He never showered, and she had stopped offering him its use. It was strange as he always seemed so clean, but he didn’t want to be undressed around her any longer than required. Ashamed of his nakedness, she had guessed, although he had no reason to be. She had never been with a man in better shape. His skin seemed shrink-wrapped over muscles so dense they hurt if he pressed himself against her with too much force. It was the scars he was ashamed of, she reasoned. He had so many scars – far more than she’d seen on a single person – and some were horrible to look at, but she didn’t find them ugly. Quite the opposite, in fact. She saw them as a multitude of unknown stories – each scar the page of a book she longed to read.
He was a Russian, tall and dark. He never said where he was from, but she recognised the accent. She had known many of his countrymen. She observed him at the window whilst she found a robe and collected up her own clothes from the foot of the bed. It took her longer to recover and get herself together again.
‘She’s not out there,’ she said.
The dark-haired Russian didn’t look at her. ‘Who isn’t?’
‘Your wife.’
He had given her a name that she didn’t believe was his own – she was well used to being lied to by clients – but she didn’t let on. She always played the part she was paid to play.
‘I’m not married,’ he said.
‘Sure,’ she replied, ‘which is why you always have to check who’s outside, before and after. You think I don’t notice, but I do. You think your wife is going to catch you. That’s why you never really enjoy yourself.’
‘I assure you I enjoy my time with you.’
‘That’s not what I meant and you know it. If you didn’t have to worry about her catching you in the act then you could truly relax more and make the most of our time together.’
‘I don’t worry,’ he felt the need to state.
It was a strange thing to say, or at least it would be, coming from another person. From him, who was more than a little strange, it was almost normal. She had spent enough time with men to understand how they worked; to know what made them tick; to interpret their actions and decipher their subtext. This one remained an enigma. She had worked out the window thing. That was easy enough. Men cheated on their wives and their wives weren’t dumb. It didn’t take paranoia for a man to be concerned his wife might follow him to his hired mistress. On the other end of the scale was the bed. It had taken her a couple of his visits before she noticed he had dragged it a little way from the wall. She noticed the absence of the headboard thumping. Her home was a two-storey house and the bed was positioned against an exterior wall, so she had never had to fear angry neighbours banging at her door. That’s why it was set there, after all. And men, she had learned, liked to hear that thump. They liked to feel powerful. Not this one, though.
She yawned. It was getting late and she was sore. ‘Same time tomorrow?’
She dropped the clothes into a laundry basket and checked her hair in the vanity table mirror. She kept the room simple, but tasteful. It was her second bedroom. She didn’t entertain clients where she slept. She was okay with how she made her living, but she was not that okay. She wanted her own space. She wanted separation between work and her personal life, and she wasn’t comfortable being personal by choice with anyone in the same room where she was personal for money.
She was well educated, with two degrees and a master’s, had travelled and volunteered, but she made more money doing this than she could ever hope to in the real world. Her father was a drunk and her mother had died in childbirth. She’d had no advantages in life except her looks and the charm to go with it. The degrees were achieved through hard work and the desire to better herself, but the world judged her on how she looked over what she thought, so it was only logical to play along. If she couldn’t be who she wanted, then she would do whatever she could to exploit who she was expected to be.
The dark-haired man hadn’t answered her, but he didn’t talk a lot. He spoke only when spoken to. She wondered if there would be only silence otherwise, if he would be happy with no communication beyond the physical.
‘What should I wear? The white dress again? You liked that one, didn’t you?’
She smiled to herself, remembering his reaction when she had first worn it.
He said, ‘I’m leaving Sofia first thing in the morning.’
‘Then you really should have had more sleep, shouldn’t you?’ She winked at him. ‘When are you coming back to me then?’
‘I won’t be.’
Her smile faltered. ‘What do you mean, you won’t be?’
He faced her. ‘I’m moving on. I’m not coming back.’
‘You know you are. You’ve seen me every night this week.’
‘It was a mistake to keep returning,’ he said without a hint of emotion. ‘I don’t usually do that kind of thing. I know better. I should know better.’
‘But I’m a special case, aren’t I?’ she asked, knowing the answer. ‘I’m the one who makes you break the rules. I know you like me. You can’t help yourself. I have that effect on men. They can’t resist me. They always come back.’
‘Not me. Not again.’
‘Why?’ she demanded rather than asked.
‘I don’t stay in the same place for long. A few days, a week at the very most. This is the seventh night in the same town. I’ve been pushing it as it is.’
She couldn’t keep the confusion from her face, nor the rejection.
He said, ‘If I’ve somehow misled you then I’ll pay you now for tomorrow night, but I won’t be back.’
She turned away. ‘No, I don’t want any more money from you. I could take a month off with what you’ve paid already.’
‘Then what is the problem?’
‘Who said it’s a problem that you can just end things without warning?’
‘I didn’t know I needed to provide any forewarning. I thought we had established the terms of this transaction.’
‘I know, we did. But you said yourself you don’t usually do this.’
‘Which is exactly why I can’t do it again.’
‘You didn’t deny it when I said you like me.’
‘I don’t understand,’ he said, and it was infuriating that he didn’t. He was so naïve, so simple. No, he was stupid. His stupidity was ridiculous.
‘Of course you don’t get it, why would you?’
‘I never said this would be a long-term arrangement. Maybe I was unclear about that. I can only apologise if I’ve inconvenienced you or if you were relying on my continued custom.’
She laughed; a hollow, ironic sound. ‘Are you trying to be an asshole? Look at me. Do you think I’m struggling for clients? I pick and choose. I thought I made that quite clear. Ten years from now I’ll still be able to pick and choose. And you dare to say “relying…”? You couldn�
�t be any more insulting if you tried. Jesus.’
He frowned. ‘I really don’t like blasphemy.’
‘Oh, do forgive me. I thought that, given you’ve been screwing the holy hell out of a call girl every night for a week, blasphemy would be pretty low on your list of moral concerns.’
He waited a moment – it seemed out of politeness only – and said, ‘I’m going to go now.’
He walked across the room and she let him, furious at him for going and more so at herself for letting him. She didn’t turn around until she heard the door click shut and she listened to his footsteps on the landing, then on the stairs, then gone for good. Then she noticed he had left another night’s payment on the dresser by the door. She grabbed the pile of crisp notes and tore them to shreds before her back slid down the bedroom door and she sat on the carpet with her knees to her chest and her hair over her face.
FOUR
‘The messages from your brain to your muscles are delayed,’ yet another doctor told Raven. ‘The synapses are firing. The messages are sent on time, but they’re not getting where they need to be. Your nervous system has so many routes, so many pathways, it’s like a maze. The messages your brain is sending have forgotten which way they’re supposed to go. They’re getting there eventually, but they’re getting lost on the journey. They’re taking the scenic route, if you like. It’s going to take time and patience to help them relearn the maze.’
‘Time and patience are two things I don’t have.’
‘It would really help if we knew what you had been poisoned with.’
‘No traces at all?’
He shook his head. ‘Bizarre, isn’t it?’
Not really, she didn’t say. She was no stranger to toxins herself. Raven had killed many people with poisons that couldn’t be detected. Potassium chloride – one of her favourites – a classic poison that induced heart failure, because it was so hard to detect due to the fact it broke down into its component elements after death, both of which were present in the body already. The neurotoxin that had paralysed her and stopped her heart could be long gone from her system or still present, but they didn’t know what to look for.
‘Are you okay?’
She smiled through the agony. ‘Never better.’
The pain kept Raven awake at night. It kept her awake in the daytime. There was no escape from it. She hid the full extent of it whenever she could.
A consultant from the UK tried to explain it to Raven in her weird, posh accent: ‘You’re in constant pain because your nervous system has been overstimulated and now it’s responding to a stimulus that isn’t real. The nerves are sending messages to your brain informing it of injuries that don’t exist.’
‘You’re saying it’s all in my mind?’
‘In a way, I suppose I am. The pain you’re experiencing is very real, I assure you of that. But your central nervous system is confused. It’s had a factory reset, only the firmware isn’t up to date.’
‘Now I’m as confused as my nervous system.’
‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘I’m trying to explain it in the simplest way and I’m not doing a very good job. Basically, your CNS has gone arse over tit.’
‘What?’
‘Never mind,’ she said. ‘Just be patient.’
‘I’m getting really tired of people telling me that.’
Raven was always tired, so tired. But she couldn’t sleep for long when the pain seemed to subside. Her muscles would cramp and she would wake up fighting back the screams, else she would dream of spreading paralysis and the madness of being trapped inside a body she could no longer control.
The specialists came and went. There was a revolving door of doctors and consultants, nurses and therapists. They had their own ideas. Contradictions were common.
‘Hold on, are you saying my central nervous system needs to rebuild itself?’
‘No, that’s not really what I’m saying. Relearn would be a better way of describing the process.’
Process. She heard that a lot. Such a clinical, soulless term for what she was going through. Like she was a project or experiment for them – and in a way, she was.
Every day there was improvement, the pain easing as her mobility increased. After a week she could hide the cramps and spasms from the doctors, pretending to be better than she felt so they would speed up the process of rehabilitation. They weren’t taking any risks with her recovery, they kept telling her. They wanted their money’s worth, more like. They still didn’t know what had caused her complete neurological shutdown.
‘You want to write a paper on me,’ she couldn’t help but retort to some smug consultant who flew in every few days to check her progress and ask stupid questions. ‘You want to solve the mystery and then brag to your peers.’
‘I assure you that’s not the case.’
‘Then leave me the hell alone.’
When they believed her to have been painless for forty-eight hours she was allowed outside, supervised, of course. The afternoon sun felt so good on her face she almost felt free of pain for the first time she could remember.
The nurse who accompanied her said, ‘Let’s take a nice slow stroll around the garden.’
He was cute, with dimples and blond hair tucked behind his ears. He was pretty young too, but strong. There was an innocence in his smile. She couldn’t help but like him. Typical that she was holed up in a hospital, in an awful gown, pretty much the worst she’d ever looked. Not that it mattered. She didn’t remember the last time she had asked a guy for his number. There wasn’t much time for dating in her chosen career – ex-career – path.
‘I want to go this way,’ she said, trying to steer him.
‘There’s nothing to see over there.’
There was. Windows and exits and cameras and vehicles. She analysed the perimeter while the cute, well-meaning nurse offered his arm for support.
‘That’s probably enough for today,’ he said.
‘One more lap.’
He started to shake his head.
‘Please,’ she said.
She didn’t know the hospital, and it was too big and she too immobile to learn, even if they would let her explore on her own. So she did what she could. She made do. Raven could hobble from her room and around the ward without too much interference. She could ignore the shaking heads and dismiss the offers to help her back to her room with a smile. She had a nice smile and she made it work for her. Not on the women, though. They knew those tricks. To the women she acted brave, so she had their respect. To the men she acted vulnerable, so she had their veneration.
She received flowers. A beautiful bouquet of lilies arrived one afternoon. The cute nurse brought them into her room. She was drowsy, having just awoken.
‘Oh, Lionel, you shouldn’t have,’ she said to the cute nurse.
He set them down on the bedside table. ‘Aren’t lilies what you give at funerals?’
‘It’s a joke,’ Raven said. ‘What does the card say?’
‘We’ll always have Coney Island,’ he read. ‘What does that mean?’
‘It’s a play on what Humphrey Bogart said to Ingrid Bergman at the end of Casablanca. It’s another joke.’
Lionel didn’t get it. ‘Who sent them?’
‘A man who doesn’t make jokes,’ she explained without explaining. ‘Are there any details on the card for the florist? Address? Logo?’
He checked the card. ‘Fast Flowers. There’s a local address.’
‘Do me a favour and slip the card into a drawer? I don’t want to lose it.’
The hands on the clock kept up their relentless motion. The date continued to advance. Two weeks was not a long time to recover from dying, but she had to make it enough. She wasn’t prepared to live again only for it to get her killed again. That would be the worst luck, even for her.
The next killer wouldn’t give her a lifeline. She wouldn’t be able to bargain a reprieve.
Raven found she had little malice for the man who was
her potential murderer and now tormentor. He had acted in self-defence, if pre-empted self-defence. But she was alive because he had changed his mind. She had convinced him she deserved a second chance. That second chance was proving an insurmountable challenge. This new life of hers was no life she wanted to live. It had to get better. It had to improve. She fought on because she wasn’t one to give up. If there was the slightest chance she could improve, she would endure any agony, any setback to see it happen.
‘You’re pushing yourself too hard,’ Lionel told her as he helped her back into bed.
‘I don’t care. I’ll do whatever it takes.’
‘You’re making the pain worse by trying to run before you can walk.’
‘I can’t run, that’s the problem.’
The two weeks were almost up. Once the cops had questioned her a second time, once she was fed into a database, she figured she would have maybe a day’s head start. Her enemies would react fast and move faster. They wouldn’t want to waste this golden opportunity. They would never have a better chance to end the problem that was once one of their own.
A day’s head start. Not long. She had avoided her enemies with half that time, but at full health. She wasn’t going to get far in her current state. Fatigued, weak, distracted by pain… She had to mitigate those factors by making sure no one found her in the first place. So, she had to get well enough to slip out of the hospital unnoticed, before those questions were asked, before she could be fed into the system. She had to escape. She had three days before those two weeks were up.
She figured one day further for exercising and recovery. Plan and prepare on the second. Escape on the third.
It was going to be tight, but she could make it work. She had to.
She was awoken from her nap by a knock on her door and the cute nurse appeared and said, ‘The police are here.’
