Girl Seven

by Hanna Jameson

  ‘I like you,’ he said.

  It was too easy. He was going to kill me when they were done. He wasn’t even bothering to be discreet about it; his tone was dripping with glee at the prospect.

  ‘I like you too,’ I replied in my sweetest voice. ‘Oh no, wait, I hope you die in a fire.’

  ‘Not before I pay you, you don’t.’ He chuckled to himself. ‘Goodnight, Miss Seven Ishida. I’ll be thinking about you tonight.’

  The line went dead.

  I refilled my glass of water and downed it, trembling all over. My body was slick with perspiration and not because of the humidity.

  Sliding my feet across the tiles, I opened the kitchen door again to listen for Noel, but he was still passed out from what I could hear. I shut the door and lit a cigarette to compose myself, going through the small amount of information I’d gleaned from the discussion in my head.

  I thought it had gone well. It had gone according to plan. I’d just thought I’d feel better about it afterwards if that had really been the case.

  After finishing the cigarette I went back through to the bedroom and lay back down. Noel found me without even waking up, pulling me back against his chest where I’d been before. I was still shaking a little, but not too long after I was wrapped in his arms the shaking stopped.

  It was fine, I kept telling myself. It was fine, as long as I never thought too long and hard about my betrayal or its many worst-case scenarios. It was fine. Plus, the more I did what Alexei wanted the more likely it was that I would come across an opportunity to stick a knife in him. At least, that was what I hoped.

  16

  Mark called me not long after I’d fallen asleep, at eight in the morning, talking fast and high-pitched like he was wired on caffeine.

  ‘Do you ever sleep?’ I asked, yawning and still seeing my room in double vision.

  ‘Yes, just not the normal hours. They’re so restrictive. Did you know that the natural human sleep pattern is four hours asleep, two hours awake and then four hours asleep again? Makes so much more sense... Anyway, I’m calling because I found the Williams kid’s file. Nate Williams. I know the name of the boy who shot him and where he is. Want to come visit with me? It’s one of those mental right-wing places that would rather offenders rot than “reconnect with their community” and all that touchy-feely liberal bullshit... as they’d call it. We’ll have no trouble gaining access if we have some ID. I’ll make a few calls. You still there?’

  ‘... Yeah! Um... tell me where to meet you. I can be out in twenty.’

  Noel was waking up, looking mortally offended as he did every time he was forced into consciousness before nine, so I got out of bed and dressed in the living room.

  I threw on some shorts with a cropped top that Daisy had lent me and left Noel to sleep a while longer. I wasn’t a tender-kiss-goodbye kind of person, but I felt confident that the next time we saw each other things would be back to normal. No matter what happened or how much we pissed each other off, slammed doors, threw coffee, rolled eyes... we would always come back to each other. We couldn’t find anyone else as interesting.

  ‘Hey, sexy!’ some guy yelled at me through the window of a café as I was looking for Mark’s car, banging on the window. He had tramlines shaved through his eyebrows.

  I stopped and slammed my middle finger against the glass just as hard.

  He jumped, as did his group of mates.

  ‘Fucking lesbian!’ he shouted after me.

  Pushing up my sunglasses I scanned the roadside and spotted Mark waving at me from across the road. He was sitting in the front of a navy Porsche, with the roof down. There was a suit jacket slung across the back seats and he was wearing a smart white shirt and trousers, tattoos in plain view.

  I crossed the road and got into the car beside him, matching his smug grin with one of my own. ‘Now I can see why people pay you to blend in.’

  ‘You’re not paying me.’

  I held up my hands as he reversed out of his space. ‘Why can’t we just take the underground?’

  ‘Feltham. Easier by car. You look lovely, by the way.’

  ‘Huh, thanks. So, what’s going on here?’

  Mark had Nate Williams’s case file in the back of the car and two fake police IDs in his bag. He had also brought a tiny suit for me to change into.

  ‘It was the only way I could arrange a visit at this short notice,’ he explained, looking again at my hands and shouting over the sound of the wind in our faces. ‘Do you have a really bitchy cat or something?’

  ‘Oh...’ I automatically hid them under my thighs; I’d been unaware that the grazes from my fall were still visible. ‘No, I’m just clumsy. I fall over a lot.’

  ‘But aren’t you a martial artist?’

  I glared at him. ‘How do you know that?’

  ‘You told me the first time I met you, and you’re built like one. You’re small but I bet you could floor a man my size. Am I correct?’

  We stopped at some lights.

  ‘Yeah, yeah I could. Probably not you specifically but someone untrained who wasn’t expecting me to fight back, yeah. My dad was obsessed with self-defence when I was growing up. He was making me take lessons in Ninpo when I was four and I took all these classes on how to throw big guys off you and...’ There was a silence. ‘Maybe he had good reason. Crap, I’ve never thought of it like that before. You think he made me learn all that stuff because he knew something bad was going to happen?’

  Mark shrugged. ‘I didn’t know your father. It might have just been the way he was.’

  The idea had unnerved me. ‘Did you ever find their case file?’

  ‘No.’ He looked troubled behind the sunglasses. ‘No, not yet.’

  ‘Exactly how weird is that?’

  A gritting of the teeth. ‘Weird. I don’t really know how to tell you but the last time it was this hard for me to find a simple case file it was... an inside job. That’s what all this has been reminding me of. The... job... The, er... man I was tracking down turned out to be a police officer, deep undercover. Sorry, it’s hard to explain when it’s all confidential. I shouldn’t really be discussing past jobs with you.’

  I rubbed at my forehead, trying to take the idea in. ‘Did you ever find the file?’

  ‘Yes, I did. But it was in his house.’

  ‘So my parents’ file is probably in comb-over’s house? That makes him... fuck, a police officer?’

  ‘Maybe. That’s a lot of assumptions, but... maybe.’ Mark jabbed his thumb at the back seat. ‘Come on, Inspector Mishima, get changed. We’re almost there. I promise I won’t look.’

  I undid my seatbelt and climbed into the back, snorting. ‘What? You just pick the most famous Japanese name you could think of?’

  ‘Be thankful I’m Oxford-educated. You could have been DCI Jackie Chan.’

  Oxford-educated. I was surprised. I hadn’t expected that either.

  Feltham Young Offenders’ Institution was surrounded by high red walls, plastered with official seals and caged off from the world with a heavy iron gate that looked as though it belonged in medieval times.

  Inside it was mostly tile and brick. The rooms were all small with barred windows and every so often we passed a desk. The atmosphere was clouded, thick with testosterone and sterility. No one smiled.

  Mark and I waited for over an hour in a makeshift interrogation room for the kid to come out, chatting about music and artists. He liked Mike Kelley and I was impressed enough to carry on talking. Most people who said they were interested in art could name-drop Georgia O’Keeffe and have Hokusai’s wave on a poster at home, but as soon as you started on the history of the nude or Frank Auerbach they just stared.

  I wished that Mark was straight, and I was certain I wasn’t the first girl to wish that. He’d give hope to us all if he were able to fly the flag for heterosexual masculinity. I wondered if he’d ever had sex with a woman, or whether he still did. He didn’t seem the type to place any kind of rigid label
on sexuality.

  The kid’s name was Leo Ambreen-King.

  I’d never worn a suit before but I was sure I looked fucking fantastic. Even without the fake IDs I was willing to bet the wardens would have let us in just for an excuse to stand there gawping, which they were, albeit at a distance.

  We were both playing Angry Birds on our phones when one of the wardens walked over to us and asked sheepishly, ‘He wants to know what this line of questioning is about?’

  ‘Nathan Williams.’

  The warden nodded and disappeared again.

  I glanced at Mark, who pulled a face. We both looked around us at blank walls and dirty floor.

  Leo Ambreen-King appeared in the doorway at the far end of the room and walked over to us slowly. He was tiny. I’d forgotten how small some teenagers actually were. He looked as though he had one Indian parent, and he had mid-length curly dark hair framing his baby face.

  ‘Hi, Leo,’ Mark said, standing. ‘I’m Stephen Abbott and this is Naoko Mishima. We’d like to ask you some questions, if that’s OK?’

  He remained standing, hands in pockets, even though we sat back down. ‘About what?’

  ‘Nathan Williams. Nate.’

  A shrug. ‘Ain’t nothing left to tell. I’m here.’

  ‘We’d like to talk about who paid you to do it.’

  The boy’s entire demeanour changed. His hands came out of his pockets and the wardens watching us tensed and took a few steps forward.

  ‘I’m not talking to you,’ he said, backing away.

  Mark stood up. ‘Leo—’

  My heart started racing.

  ‘No comment!’ he screamed back at us, storming away. ‘No fucking comment!’

  I went to follow him without thinking and Mark grabbed my arm.

  The wardens came forwards to seize him but Mark said, ‘No, it’s OK. Let him go. We’ll come back.’

  He let go of me and I rounded on him, hissing, ‘What? You’re just going to let him go?’

  ‘We’ll come back. Next time we won’t have shocked him. He’ll have had time to think about it and come up with a story that we can pick apart.’

  I watched the doorway through which Leo had vanished, willing him to reappear. But he didn’t, and he probably never would.

  Mark took my arm, more gently this time, and said under his breath as he walked me back to reception, ‘Don’t worry. I’ve done this before. Trust me, I’ve got this.’

  17

  When I’d returned home, I spent the earlier part of the afternoon silently ordering weapons on the internet. Nothing completely illegal and traceable. But enough to make me feel better. The ones I chose had handles that were a dark and seductive green, with dragon carvings twisting around them. They looked as if they would be easy to hold, with blades that rippled and curved and were short enough to hide but long enough to kill.

  I had started carrying a small kitchen knife taped into a makeshift holder in the small of my back. The tape irritated my skin and it was going to be an annoyance having to wear a jacket in such hot weather, but it would be worth it, I thought. It would be worth it if I needed to defend myself.

  I phoned the club to take the night off work at about three, and the Russians took me on a drive-by past Issa Taggart’s house. It was in a relatively nice area. There was a people carrier in the driveway with a ‘Baby on Board’ sticker in the back window.

  I leaned forwards from my infantile position in the back seat and peered past Isaak. ‘How many kids does he have?’

  ‘Just the one, a few months old,’ Alexei said, exhaling cigarette smoke out of the window.

  ‘So a wife?’

  He nodded. ‘It is of no concern to us if you need to kill her.’

  ‘Well, for that I’d actually need to have a weapon, wouldn’t I?’ I replied, hoping that I’d been able to hide my disgusted reaction.

  ‘You will be given a weapon when you need it.’ Isaak looked me up and down. ‘I assume you know how to use a gun?’

  Truth be told I had never fired one. The only time I’d ever come across a gun was when Noel sent me on a house call to shag some arms dealer, who had taken a perverse pleasure in seeing me handle a firearm while he jerked himself off. I knew how one worked. I knew how to tell if the safety was on. I knew how to check how many bullets there were. I knew how to aim. I just didn’t know what it would feel like to shoot something, someone, for real.

  ‘Obviously,’ I said.

  I told myself that it couldn’t be that difficult if men like this could do it, and kids who weren’t even old enough to drink. How different could it be from a movie, really? It had to be easy. Worryingly easy.

  ‘So, if you are so confident that he will let you into his house willingly,’ Alexei said, squinting over the top of his sunglasses, ‘how do you plan to do it?’

  ‘I don’t think you have to know.’

  The driver shifted in his seat and I could tell he was watching me, but he said nothing.

  I looked at them all. ‘Well, you don’t. Either I come back with what you’re looking for, or I don’t come back at all. Surely that’s a pretty failsafe way to work out whether my plans have worked or not. Why should you have to know any other details?’

  Isaak rolled his eyes.

  ‘She’s right,’ the driver said. ‘If she dies, we have no need to know what she did or did not do. If she comes back, then we have little need to worry about her methods.’

  I was beginning to get some sense that the driver had the most authority of the three. They all acted as though they deferred to Alexei, but I wasn’t so sure about that now. When Alexei changed his mind I found it hard to believe it was simply because he was responding to a reasoned argument.

  ‘So when do you want me to go in?’ I asked.

  ‘Tonight.’ Alexei turned to face me, looking eager to see my reaction. ‘Any problems with that?’

  ‘No,’ I lied. ‘Are you going to tell me what I’m looking for?’

  ‘We’ll tell you when you leave. The less time you have to think, the better.’

  Bullshit. He was going to wrangle as much control away from me as he was able.

  The best I could do was act as though this didn’t bother me at all, and pack for every eventuality. It struck me that I wasn’t even entirely sure what Issa Taggart looked like.

  ‘Meet us outside tonight at half past eight.’ He looked at his watch. ‘Four hours enough time for you? You can wash your hair, paint your nails, whatever it is girls do.’

  I looked back out at the house and didn’t think the small knife taped to my back was going to be enough after all.

  ‘Better take me home then,’ I said.

  In a state of frenzy I emptied out a small travel bag and packed a couple of kitchen knives in addition to the one on my person, some strong tape, some socks that I could use as gags, some hairspray, cigarettes...

  I realized too late that they hadn’t given me time to find a way to disguise myself. As I sat in the back of their car on the way back to Issa’s house, I realized that maybe that had been their plan all along. They knew I couldn’t take the risk that Issa might identify me later, so this was a test of loyalty. They expected me to kill him.

  ‘How do you feel?’ Alexei asked, grinning at me.

  I am sitting on a mountaintop.

  I didn’t reply, doing my best to clear my mind and meditate. I was sure there had to be a way. There had to be a way of getting in and out of the house without any death. But if there was, I couldn’t think of one.

  My teeth hurt and I realized I was clenching my jaw.

  ‘We are expecting you to find up to sixty thousand in cash and some cocaine. Though we do not know how much of that.’ Isaak turned to me. ‘Nervous?’

  I might have predicted that amount of money, but hearing it said out loud seemed ridiculous. I’d never touched even a fraction of that sort of wealth before. ‘Do you have any idea where it’s gonna be?’

  ‘That is for you to find
out. You are the one who can find out anything?’

  Every time Alexei spoke I wanted to kill him. It was going to take every shred of self-control I had not to shoot him as soon as I was given a gun.

  ‘Right,’ I said. ‘Do I get a weapon?’

  Isaak smirked, and handed me something that looked as though it should have become obsolete a century ago. It was barely bigger than my palm, despite being oddly heavy.

  ‘What the fucking fuck is this?’ I snapped, holding it up. ‘I’m going to want him to tell me where the money is. If I shove this in his face he’ll just laugh and offer me some fucking Lego to play with!’

  ‘It’s a Derringer,’ the driver said. He was still wearing sunglasses even in the low evening light. ‘You only get one shot. You’ll only need one. We have been watching the house and his wife is out.’

  ‘Pilates,’ Isaak added helpfully.

  I scowled at the tiny weapon.

  ‘We couldn’t give you enough shots for all three of us, could we?’ Alexei smiled. ‘But then, you said you could use a gun so you will have no trouble with that, I am sure.’

  They wanted me to fail, just to save them the effort of killing me themselves. They didn’t think for a second that I would come back with the money.

  I looked out of the window for the rest of the journey until the driver pulled over and I got out of the car without a word.

  The people carrier in the driveway was gone.

  Sitting on a mountaintop...

  ‘I won’t be more than an hour.’

  Alexei might have said something but I’d already swung my bag over my shoulder and slammed the door.

  I’d chosen to wear my black jeans, sexy black high-heeled Dr Martens, lace vest, leather gloves and no jacket. I’d moved the knife from my back to the inside of my boot, as a jacket would have been too restrictive. I paused to apply some dark red lipstick in my hand-mirror, took a deep breath and carried on walking.

  I could feel them all watching me from the car, wondering what on earth I was going to do.