by Tom Wood
He said, ‘Lie down, please.’
She lowered herself with awkward movements, arms shaking. The table was icy cold against her back. He stepped away, out of sight. She tried to roll her head to keep him in view, but couldn’t. She heard him open a drawer. She heard noises. Metallic.
He returned into view, pushing a wheeled trolley over to the table. She saw what was on the trolley: bone saw, scalpels, and other instruments of dissection. He saw her look, but misunderstood the calculation in her eyes for fear. She was afraid, but that was buried down because she couldn’t afford to be scared.
He selected one of two scalpels and moved to the head of the table. When he looked down over her, he seemed upside down.
‘I’ll pierce the carotid,’ he explained. ‘An insignificant cut. You’ll barely feel it. You’re slim, so it doesn’t need to be deep. Just a few millimetres. Over in a second. It won’t hurt.’
‘How do you know it won’t hurt unless you’ve had your own throat cut? Maybe you should try it on yourself first to check.’
‘Funny,’ he said. ‘There are very few nerves, and I’ll keep the incision small. It’ll be like a paper cut.’
‘Paper cuts hurt.’
‘Give me a break, okay? I’m trying to make this as easy as possible, as painless as possible. But I can’t work miracles. And please remember I’m going out of my way to do you a favour here. Meet me halfway. You know as well as I do that you’ll be unconscious in seconds. Are you ready?’
She swallowed. Nodded.
‘Do you want to close your eyes?’
She didn’t blink.
‘Your choice.’
He brought the blade closer. It gleamed.
Now, she told herself.
She rolled to her right, using her left hand to push off with against the table and twisting with her hips. She dropped to the floor, crashing into the trolley, knocking it over. Instruments scattered across the tiles.
The fall hurt, bad, because she didn’t have the reflexes or space to roll with it, to disperse some of the hurtful energy. She took the full force of the impact and the shocking pain that made her cry out.
He didn’t get mad. He didn’t yell.
He laughed. ‘What the hell was that?’
She lay there, on her front, now as weak and immobile as she had pretended before. The pain in her face was as real as it had ever been.
He said, ‘What happened to helping me help you?’
She didn’t answer. She didn’t look at him. Her eyes scanned her surroundings.
‘I only have so much patience,’ he said as he set the trolley upright again and collected up the instruments on to the tray and set it back in place. He frowned and looked around at the floor for a moment, then turned his attention back to Raven.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said, eyes pinched shut and her cheeks wet. ‘I got scared. It won’t happen again. I’ll close my eyes this time. I think that will make it easier.’
He squatted down in front of her, ready to help her to her feet. ‘Don’t worry about it. It’s hurt you more than it has me.’
Her eyes snapped open – ‘I don’t know about that’ – and she drove the missing scalpel into his nearest foot.
There was no tough leather shoe for protection, to resist her meagre strength, just a pair of comfortable canvas pumps. She couldn’t create a whole lot of force, but the scalpel couldn’t get any sharper. It pierced straight through the canvas and the thin layer of skin and sliced through the metatarsal beneath and plenty of blood vessels beyond that. She had stabbed with the blade at a right angle to the foot, to do more damage to the bone and ligaments, making sure they were hit instead of the slim blade slipping between them.
He roared.
Pain and shock made him retreat. She managed to recoil the blade free before his movement ripped it from her grip. A brief geyser of blood followed it. The injury made him stumble. He had to go down to one knee. He looked confused. Everything he had believed about the situation – especially his control of it – had been shown to be false.
His eyes were red, bloodshot with rage.
‘I was going to make it quick,’ he spat. ‘I was going to make it painless.’
She pushed herself to her knees with her left hand while keeping the scalpel ready in her right in case he lunged at her, but the weapon, coated in his own blood, was enough to dispel any such impulse. He reached out to the counters behind him to help him stand.
Raven used the dissecting table to do the same. She grunted, limbs shaking with the effort. She kept one hand braced against the table to keep herself upright, legs uncertain beneath her.
He snatched the other scalpel from the tray and held it out before him. ‘Now we’re even.’
‘You said you weren’t much of a fighter.’
‘I was being humble. There’s not much I can’t do.’
‘Except kill a half-paralysed girl.’
He smirked. ‘There’s still plenty of time for that.’
‘Tell that to your foot.’
He tried to resist the taunt, but he glanced down anyway.
Blood was pumping from the neat hole in his shoe.
‘That’s arterial,’ she said. ‘You’re going to start feeling really cold and tired really soon.’
‘This won’t take long.’
He stalked towards her, shuffling because of the wounded foot, unable or unwilling to place his full weight on it. Blood soaked the shoe and left a smeared trail on the floor tiles. His face was creased and red in a combination of rage and pain.
‘Big talk for a man who can barely walk.’
He gestured to her hand on the dissecting table, arm braced to keep her upright. ‘Says the girl who can’t stand by herself.’
‘Oh,’ she said, looking too. ‘I’m not quite as much of an invalid as I’ve been making out.’
Raven moved her hand away. She stood without support, without needing support. ‘Guess you’re not the only one who’s good at acting.’
The pain remained in his expression, but the rage became uncertainty, which led to a mistake because he tried to rush her. With the inability to get proper purchase with his right foot, he had to sacrifice balance for speed.
He whipped out the scalpel in a fast lunge aimed at her head, but it was a clumsy attack.
Raven backed out of the way, countering with her own scalpel and catching the outstretched hand. The blade split through the skin on the back of his palm.
The hit made him drop the weapon and it clanged on the floor. Blood pattered on the tiles a moment later.
He grabbed at her, and though his injured foot slowed him, she was also slow and failed to slip away from his reach. He fell forward into her because he had overextended, and though she sliced him again with the scalpel she couldn’t stop him dragging her down to the floor, where she didn’t want to be. His foot wouldn’t hamper his groundwork and she couldn’t match his strength and size.
Raven didn’t need to, because that strength was fading fast as the blood drained out of his foot. He had her wrist tight in one fist, controlling her scalpel-holding hand, but he was slow and awkward in his attempts to wrest it from her grasp.
She tried to slip out from under him while his focus was on the weapon in her grasp, but he was too heavy and she too weak. As she thrashed beneath him, her foot nudged the second scalpel – the one he had dropped.
With his free hand he began prising back her fingers, one by one.
Raven contorted her leg and managed to kick the scalpel along the tiles towards her waiting hand.
He prised back the last finger and took her scalpel as his own.
His eyes glimmered.
She snatched the second scalpel up from the floor and drove it deep into the back of his closest knee.
He screeched.
She scrambled out from under him as he twisted to reach for the scalpel buried in his leg. She stumbled as she rose and slipped on the blood-slick tiles. Seeing her escaping, he tri
ed to stand too, not knowing all kinds of tendons and ligaments in his knee were sliced in two, and his leg folded under him. He was going nowhere.
She fell into a dissecting table, but caught hold of it to stop herself falling all the way back to the floor.
She gasped as a hand grabbed the back of her gown.
She tried to pull away, but his grip remained strong.
‘We’re not done yet.’
Raven tried to anchor herself on the table to fight being pulled back to the floor, but this only gave him a secure base with which to drag himself towards her. He still had a scalpel in his hand, ready to cut her with just as soon as he was close enough.
She saw the wheeled trolley nearby. The tray of instruments sat on top.
She shot out a hand to the tray for another scalpel, but with no time to choose she made do with the first thing her fingers touched.
A bone saw.
With only one hand gripping the table, she couldn’t hold on any longer.
As he dragged her to the floor, she twisted to face him and swung the bone saw down from the trolley and cleaved him on the top of his head.
The bone saw sliced his scalp in two and buried into his skull. Not deep, because the serrated teeth created friction and jammed in place, so when Raven tried she couldn’t pull it free for another blow.
One was enough, however, to stun him in place as a single rivulet of blood ran down over his face. He trembled and his eyes watered, pupils dilating until no irises remained. The hand gripping her didn’t weaken – strengthened even in the paralysis of shock – but the one holding the scalpel was just as paralysed.
She grabbed the bone saw’s handle in both her hands to use all of her strength to pull it free from his skull. His grip on her gown kept her from flailing backwards with the force she generated.
She swung the saw down again.
The first blow caused him to drop the scalpel, the second was enough for his fingers to fall free from her gown.
She scrambled away, slipping on the tiles that became slick with spewing blood, falling to her ass and staying there, watching his face whiten and his mouth open, but instead of some final words escaping his lips, there was only more blood.
TEN
The English confessor; the Russian john; the American martial artist; the Swiss musician; now played himself – at least a version of himself; one of many masks that were interchangeable within a word or blink. All were variations and all incomplete because there was no whole. He had ceased to be himself long ago because the need to be someone else was always greater.
Victor was content in this moment to behave as a man of indeterminate origin. Caucasian, tall, with dark eyes and black hair he could have been from lots of different places. That hair was long for him, which at about two inches in length was at the upper limit of what he allowed. His skin was pale now, but was quick to tan given a little exposure to sun. He had a beard, as he often had, but he was often clean shaven as well. Under his overcoat he wore a good suit that was charcoal in colour, and which was perhaps the only consistency in appearance he adhered to when working, having long ago found the benefits of a suit outweighed the liability inherent in maintaining any pattern.
For the last three months he had been living off the grid – Ireland, Bulgaria, the Netherlands and Portugal – keeping on the move; a few days here, a week there. No phone. No electronic communications. No credit card. Only cash. He travelled across borders by train or ferry. His credentials were never logged into any system. His ID was rarely checked.
He had begun the sojourn with just shy of one hundred thousand euros in jewellery in the form of his Tag Heuer, neck chains, a bracelet and a couple of rings. He had also started with ten thousand in cash, which was a lot to carry but compressed could fit into a jacket pocket. The money and jewellery was just enough to last him the duration at the rate he burned through it. Hotels, even cheap hotels, were not cheap. Neither was a new wardrobe of clothes every week. Trains, cabs, buses and coaches all drained his coffers on a daily basis. When he was over the next border he found a jeweller’s or pawnshop and sold an item, providing him with a top-up of cash that would last until he reached another country. No need for banks, no electronic transactions. No traces. Victor sold the watch last because he had something of an affinity for Tags. The first one he’d stolen had fed him and his crew for two months when he had lived on the streets before he had stolen it back to much mirth and acclaim.
In the end, his funds lasted better than expected and he spent his final night in a fine hotel. By then he had travelled thousands of miles, crossed seas and borders, and stayed in dozens of hotels and guesthouses. He had started the journey without knowing his destination, using the randomness of the world around him to select his routes, to determine his choices. If he didn’t know where he would be tomorrow then no enemy could either. He had not spent his time idly. Every waking moment was spent with counter surveillance on his mind. He had maintained his fitness in gyms, dojos and hotel rooms. He practised his shooting in gun clubs and on ranges. Every day he spoke in a different language.
He went off the grid whenever he could. He was running from no one in particular, but everyone at once. His last job had created new, powerful enemies and put his shadowy existence under more scrutiny than perhaps it had ever endured. Even with the extensive precautions he took he could still be found. There was no way in the modern world to avoid every CCTV camera, every watchful cop’s gaze or street informant. If someone came after him they always had the advantage because they knew who they were looking for. He had to spot them before they were ready to strike. Better they not find him at all. Going off the grid ensured however close his enemies were, he would lose them. He’d once been told that no one could outrun a bullet, and he had never forgotten that, but it took time to aim the gun that fired it.
Tonight was different. Tonight he was back at work.
Life on the move, on the run, was a huge drain on his finances. Every contract earned him a small fortune, but the money never lasted long. Had he felt a compelling reason to retire – he didn’t – and even if retirement didn’t mean the inevitable erosion of his skills – it did – he had nowhere near the means. He had too many enemies to ever contemplate making himself a stationary target. If he retired, those he had angered or threatened, explicitly or implicitly, would not.
Besides, the only thing he really feared was boredom.
He approached an isolated cottage on the spur of County Cork in Ireland. A clear night sky bathed the cottage in silver moonlight. It was a one-storey house made of stone and topped in slate. It was a handsome building in Victor’s opinion. Simple, yet elegant, and climbing ivy on one wall gave it a charmed appeal. The sort of place he could envision himself living in if it were possible to envision a time when he might live somewhere instead of everywhere. Even in that impossible future it would require extensive upgrades to make it more a fortress than a home. There were no cameras or motion sensors or other security apparatus because the occupant was a civilian, and that man partook in no security procedures beyond that which the average civilian took. He might look over his shoulder in reaction to a sudden noise if walking alone at night, but if he believed himself under threat he made no attempt to mitigate it.
Victor knocked on the front door – a heavy slab of riveted oak – because there was no reason not to do so and every reason to.
The occupant took a minute to open it. There was no spy hole and he didn’t ask who was there first. A trusting man, living in a safe little world.
‘Yes?’ he said, when he saw Victor, examining him with a careful, but unworried gaze.
The priest was used to visits from his flock, if not so late at night, and there was nothing in Victor’s appearance or demeanour to give him cause for concern. Victor’s suit and overcoat gave him a respectable, civilised air. The priest didn’t recognise him from their previous conversation.
‘You’ll need your coat,’ Victor said. ‘It�
�s cold out here.’
His tone was neutral, if pointed. The priest frowned in a moment of confusion as he sought to pick apart Victor’s words for meaning, for subtext; to deduce what he meant and what that meant because what people did not say was as important as what they did. Victor knew enough about him to know that there was no need to be explicit, and he didn’t like to be rude. If he could do his job with good manners, he would.
The priest’s confusion became understanding that settled on acceptance.
He managed to crack a small smile as he said, ‘You know, I used to live in fear of this day. But I thought that was all behind me. All in the past. I haven’t really worried for twenty years.’
‘Worrying wouldn’t have helped.’
‘No, I suppose it wouldn’t have.’
The priest broke eye contact, and Victor could read his thoughts as if they were printed on the man’s face. He had seen such faces many times. It was the look of calculation. It was the expression of someone trying to work out the odds of success in a gamble they knew nothing about. The priest was thinking of slamming the door shut, hurrying for the phone, grabbing an improvised weapon along the way. He was trying to figure out if it could work; if it was worth trying.
Victor said, ‘It’s up to you, but whatever you try isn’t going to work, and I’m offering you the chance to come with me freely.’
There was no aggression in his voice or manner because he needed no show of dominance here. The priest was a small man, thin and weak even without the frailty of age. Victor wasn’t going to hurt him any more than necessary.
‘The end result is the same, right?’
‘There’s nothing you can do to change that now.’
The priest sighed and nodded. ‘I guess I would prefer to come freely, wouldn’t I?’
‘You would.’
The priest collected his winter coat from a hook by the door. He fastened the buttons with hands that only shook a little. He was brave. Victor respected that.
‘Okay,’ the priest said when he was finished. ‘Let’s get this done.’
Victor moved to allow him to step outside. The priest locked the door behind him.
