“Christ.” I wriggled my foot and this time it let go. It flopped, lifeless, to the floor. I looked down at it, thinking fast. I couldn’t leave it here, it was obvious evidence, but what was I going to do about the blood pooling onto the cement floor? And what about the blood coating the animal’s teeth – my blood?
I was going to have to take it with me.
I looked around, flashing the penlight, and caught sight of a carrier bag against one wall. My sleeves over my hands again – now I really needed the gloves – I emptied the bag of car oil and anti-freeze, then stuffed the dog’s body inside. There wasn’t much I could do about the bloodstain, though. Using the knife, I trimmed off a section of my shirt and used that to wipe it up, then I smeared some of the car oil over the top, hoping the black stain would disguise it. It was messy, and it was glaringly obvious, but there wasn’t an awful lot else I could do.
I was so panicked and harassed I almost forgot to turn the torch off before I dragged myself back under the door, the carrier bag in my hand scraping noisily against the gravel of the driveway. I looked out towards the house as I got up into a low crouch. Lights were on, but no one was staring out of any of the windows and there were no doors open. Where the hell had the little bugger come from?
I recited Samuel’s pathway to myself as I ghosted across the garden, ducking and weaving out of sight of the CCTV cameras. Getting over the wall was tricky; the roses planted along the base scratched at my clothes and the weight of the little dog threw me off balance. My ankle was throbbing, too. I hoped I wasn’t leaving a little trail of blood across the garden. When I sank down to give myself a good push upwards, my leg twinged savagely and my one scrabbling hand almost missed the top of the wall. I got there, though, heaving and straining the muscles of one arm, pulling the bloodied bundle along with the other. The next second I was over, dropping down into the narrow back lane. I limped along at an awkward jog until the car came into view. The door was open.
“What’s that?” Samuel asked sharply as I collapsed inside, tossing the carrier bag onto the backseat.
He didn’t wait for my answer, but engaged the central locking and hit the gas, taking us away from the scene of my botched crime.
“The dog,” I gasped, wincing and reaching down for my ankle. Now that I was a little more comfortable, in the warmth of the car, it was really starting to hurt.
“You killed the dog? Why the hell did you do that? What went wrong, Lizzie?”
“I didn’t mean to,” I stammered, alarmed by the tone of his voice and the fierce set of his brow. “It bit me!”
“Jesus!” Samuel rubbed at his forehead. “Tell me what happened. Exactly.”
So I did. I went over how I got into the garden, laid the bomb, and how I’d met the dog on my way out.
“You left the garage open?” he asked, raising an eyebrow and shooting me a look.
“Inches,” I said defensively.
“Inches were enough,” he barked back. “Then what?”
“It came at me and the damned thing wouldn’t let go. I reached down to try to pull it off, but the putty knife was in my hand and it must have stabbed it in the neck. It killed the thing instantly. I would have left it, but, well, it would have been pretty obvious that I was there, and my blood was all over its teeth! I’m sorry, Samuel.”
I lifted my foot up to rest it on the edge of the seat and tentatively felt around my ankle. One touch was enough to send sharp stabs of agony shooting up my shin. I whimpered, hissing through my teeth.
“Are you all right?” he asked, looking down at my leg. It was impossible to see if his eyes were sympathetic in the dark.
“I think so. It’s sore.”
“Did you bleed in the garage or the garden?”
With trembling fingers I felt around my jeans. The thick denim felt ripped, but dry. Reaching underneath, my skin and sock were slick and wet.
“I don’t think so. I think my clothes soaked it up.”
“You’d better hope so,” Samuel said under his breath.
“Is… is Alexander going to be mad at me?”
“That depends,” Samuel gave me a rueful grimace.
“On what?” I whispered, frightened now.
“On whether the bomb goes off tomorrow.”
“What about tonight?”
“Tonight maybe you should stay out of his way.”
I didn’t answer. My mouth was suddenly dry. How was I supposed to avoid Alexander when he dictated exactly what I did?
“Samuel—”
He held up a hand to silence me. His phone was ringing, the caller ID screen lighting up lurid green in the dark. I didn’t need to look at him to know who it was.
“Hello? Yeah… we’re on our way back. Clockwork? Well, the bomb got planted okay. There was a… complication.” He looked at me. “Lizzie had to kill the dog.” He listened to Alexander’s response. “No, she brought it with her. It bit her on the ankle. Yeah,” he laughed at whatever had been said, but it was a mechanical laugh – no real humour there. I dropped my throbbing ankle to the floor of the car and hugged my arms around my middle. “No, I’ll drive out further east then do the dumping in the river. Shouldn’t take much to weight it down.” Dumping in the river? Weight it down? Fear curled in my gut – were they talking about me? I wanted to butt in, to ask what Alexander was saying, but I knew I’d just be adding further trouble to the pile. The suspense was painful. I clamped my teeth together to stop myself from snivelling and one of my molars stabbed viciously. “Right. I’ll see you when I get in.” He hung up.
I, not we. I started to hyperventilate.
“What are you dumping at the river, Samuel?” I managed to whisper.
Samuel took a quick second to glance at me as he rounded a corner, alarmed by the tremor in my voice.
“The dog,” he said. Then understanding dawned on his face. “You didn’t think…?”
I didn’t answer. I was too relieved to speak.
“Christ, Lizzie. I’m not going to kill you for getting bitten on the ankle,” Samuel said, sounding exasperated.
I nodded an acceptance, but his words didn’t make me feel an awful lot better. Because I’d still messed up, and he might not blame me, but his brother would.
We drove out to North Woolwich, to an area of the river beside the abandoned London City Airport. It was very dark and totally deserted. Samuel parked as close to the river as he could get, killing the lights so that the residential streets in Woolwich town, across the water, wouldn’t expose us. Then he grabbed a couple of bricks from the boot – smiling wryly when he caught my expression: why the hell were they in there? – and added them to the carrier bag. He tied the handles in a knot, squeezed any air out, then lobbed the bundle as far out into the river as possible. There was a distant splash as the carrier bag connected with the calmly bobbing surface of the Thames.
“Now what?” I asked, still feeling anxious about whatever Alexander had said on the phone.
“Now we go home,” Samuel told me.
One of the bricks from the boot seemed to drop its way into the depths of my stomach.
It took a surprisingly short time to wind our way back to Stepney, probably because I was dreading facing Alexander so much. I vacillated between worrying about that and trying to ignore the pain in my ankle, which was getting worse and worse. My foot burned and throbbed in my shoe, and the skin around the joint felt puffy and swollen. I hoped I wouldn’t need hospital treatment, because I knew I wouldn’t get it.
When we arrived Samuel handed the car over to another nobody – pausing to tell him to take special care because there would probably be blood residue in the upholstery and the carpets – then led me inside. Rather than heading upstairs, Samuel made for the basement rooms, laughing at the look on my face when I realised which way he was going.
“I need to look at your ankle,” he assured me. “The medical stuff’s down here.”
I wasn’t altogether reassured, although I was happy
enough to delay seeing Alexander.
We passed by the stores, then the small windowless rooms used for holding and torturing and other nasty business, until we came to a large open space at the back. Samuel flicked a switch and two long fluorescent lights buzzed into life. I stared. The place was like a mini surgery with an operating table, a tray balanced on a stand with all sorts of instruments lurking under plastic sheeting, and cabinets against the wall.
“What’s this?” I asked, astonished.
Samuel smiled at my flabbergasted face, then started pulling gauze and wadding out of a drawer.
“People get hurt quite a lot in our line of work, and you and I can’t just step into the nearest hospital. We’ve learned to patch ourselves up pretty well. Now,” he looked over at me, “You’ll need to strip off your jeans, then jump up on the table.”
I hesitated, not entirely comfortable with the idea of standing there in just my underwear. Being Alexander’s plaything, my modesty in front of him had died a long time ago, but it was different with Samuel somehow.
“What?” he asked.
“Nothing,” I muttered. My fingers went to the button of my trousers as I kicked off my boots. Closing my eyes so that I wouldn’t have to look, I shimmied my jeans down my thighs, wincing as I eased them around my ankles. Samuel deliberately looked away so that I could slide onto the table, then he turned round with surgical gloves on when I was seated, my arms draped over my naked legs.
“Right, let’s see,” he said, bending over and examining my ankle. I peered around my knees to assess the damage.
My skin was a mess. The dog had grabbed me just where my sock met my shin and the cut was a tangle of ripped skin and wisps of nylon. Blood had congealed around it, sticking the fabric to my shin like glue.
Very gently, Samuel wiped at the outer edges of the wound with a damp tissue, clearing off most of the blood. Then he grabbed the edge of my sock and tried to prise it down. The nylon resisted, holding resolutely on to my skin. I sucked in a breath as I felt the cuts break open afresh. Little droplets of blood oozed through.
“Sorry,” Samuel muttered. “Nearly there.”
I closed my eyes and chomped down on my tongue, letting my teeth dig into the spongy muscle until the pain was enough to distract me from Samuel’s treatment of my leg.
“Right,” he said. “I can’t stitch it. It’s deep enough, you’ve got some really nasty lacerations, but the edges are a mess. I’ll clean it up and bandage it, but we’ll just have to keep an eye on it and make sure it doesn’t get infected. When did you last have a tetanus?”
I stared at him. I’d no idea.
He made a face, then wrapped my lower leg in a bandage, knotting it tightly so that the whole area immediately began to pulse.
“Okay,” he sighed when he was done. “Lift up your sleeve.”
But I couldn’t do that either, because my sleeve was too long, and too tight. After a moment’s deliberation I shrugged out of my top, too.
“Is this going to hurt,” I asked, as he approached me with the needle.
“Not as much as that probably did,” he pointed to my ankle.
I grimaced. Fair enough.
He grabbed the big muscle in my upper arm, squeezed it, then stabbed the needle straight into the flesh, slowly forcing down the plunger.
“Ow,” I complained as he massaged my arm.
He smiled at me apologetically, then looked up, towards the hallway. I followed his gaze and saw Zane standing there. He raised his eyebrows and half-smirked, eyes raking in my semi-naked state. I bristled, but didn’t bother covering up; it was nothing he hadn’t seen before.
“Alexander’s waiting,” he said.
“We’ll be up in a minute,” Samuel replied, staring hard at Zane until he went away.
I exhaled as his white-blond hair disappeared back into the darkness. Alexander.
“Don’t worry about it,” Samuel murmured, reading my mind. “You got the job done, that’s all that matters.”
I wished I believed that.
Samuel waited until I’d winced my way back into my jeans and yanked my top back over my head, then he walked along slowly beside me as I limped my way up the two floors to Alexander’s office. Zane must have heard my thumping shuffle because he opened the door just as I reached the top step. The smirk was gone. He glowered at us as we passed, his expression sour for a reason I couldn’t fathom. Surely he’d be delighting in my failure, my imminent punishment?
“Elizabeth,” Alexander said, appraising me from the sofa. “Are you all right?”
My eyebrows drew together in confusion before I could smooth my expression. I hadn’t expected concern.
“I’m fine,” I stammered. I looked down at my ankle. “It hurts a little.”
“Well, you shouldn’t have made a mistake.”
I waited for the rest to follow, but he astonished me by smiling with almost genuine warmth.
“You’re lucky,” he said.
“What do you mean?”
“Haven’t you heard?”
I shook my head. I’d no idea where he was leading me.
His smiled widened into a grin and he waved Zane and Samuel out of the room, waiting until the door was closed before reaching for the remote.
“Our little present went off early,” he said, turning on the enormous flat screen. “We didn’t get Bowles. But we went one better. Well, two actually.”
“What do you mean?” I whispered.
Alexander flicked through the channels until he came to the news. A face filled the screen. A child’s face.
“Seems the dog went missing, and little Annabel was so upset she convinced her mother to take the car out so they could search for her. Tragically, the pair didn’t make it out of the garage. Some awful person had laid a surprise for them.” He stopped then, soaking in the moment so he could revel in my agony. His eyes drank in my horrified face, but he couldn’t help himself from having one more dig. “Well done, Elizabeth. Well done.”
I gaped at the screen. It wasn’t real. No, surely not. It wasn’t. It wasn’t.
But the truth was staring me in the face, staring out at me from the screen.
What had I done?
“No! No, no, no!” I was almost yelling, forgetting, for once, Alexander’s dislike of raised voices. “I killed a little girl? I killed a little girl!”
The child’s face smiled out at me from the television screen, her big, beseeching blue eyes magnified, as was her carefree, innocent smile. In my mind’s eye I saw her expression change in the split-second before she died. Had there been time for realisation, shock, fear? Had there been time for pain?
“No, no, no, no, no!”
I fell forward onto my knees, my hands clutching my throat. Tears and sobs welled in my chest, choking me as they forced their way out. My stomach heaved, and I thought I might vomit.
“Oh God. What have I done? Oh God!” I couldn’t take it in, couldn’t stop seeing her face, even now the television report had moved on to interviewing a severe-looking man in a dark suit.
Alexander didn’t even look at me.
“Stop crying.”
I clapped my hand over my mouth, holding in the noise, but I couldn’t stop the tears that streamed down my cheeks or the shudders racking my shoulders, my ribs. It was torture, knowing I’d murdered that little girl and her mother just as sure as if I’d held a gun to their heads and pulled the trigger. Only my method had been so much more cowardly; I hadn’t had to look in their faces as they’d died.
I stayed there, silently grieving, for the rest of the night. Eventually Alexander tired of the news and he turned off the television, turned off the lights. Then he went to bed and left me huddled on the floor, drowning in a puddle of my own tears.
CHAPTER SIX
Just days later Alexander sent me out on a routine drop off: a small payment of cocaine to a man who specialised in smuggling Celts across the wall. It was in Brixton, awkward to get to, and dangerous,
but he let me take a car and driver, Cameron. Cameron usually watched the door, or the street, or patrolled the various business premises and warehouses that Alexander owned. He didn’t talk much, but he was big and mean, and he drove fast, so we had no problems and were back by mid-afternoon. Cameron dropped me off at the front door then sped off round the corner, where Alexander had his garages.
I headed inside, pleased that I’d have another clockwork mission to report. I rushed past the man on the door with a nod and a smile, then headed for the staircase to the upper floors. I’d just put my foot on the first step when a hand clamped down on my shoulder.
“Not today,” the doorman said, shaking his head at me. I frowned. He wasn’t one I recognised and I wondered if he realised who I was: nobody, but a nobody with access to just about everywhere.
“But I’ve got to report to Alexander,” I protested.
Alexander always wanted to know exactly when I got back. He wasn’t just interested in how it went; he liked keeping tabs on me, on my every movement.
“Not today,” he repeated. “Orders from Mr Alexander. Nobody, but nobody, goes up there this afternoon. Not me, not you, not God.”
I made a face and looked away, caught sight of Zane in a room down the hallway, doing the inventory by the looks of it and none too happy about that fact. That brought me up short. What sort of meeting would Zane be excluded from? Who was up there?
Slowly I took my foot back off the step.
“Well,” I said, thinking. Now what? I’d nowhere else to go and I didn’t fancy hanging about with Zane, whose face was like a black cloud and who despised my company at the best of times. “I guess… I guess I’ll just take a walk, come back later. When they’re done.”
The doorman said nothing, but held open the door for me to go back out. My heart in my mouth, I flipped my hood back up, stuffed my hands in my jeans pockets, and marched back out of the door.
What was I doing? Alexander was going to be furious when he found out I’d just disappeared without permission. And where was I going? Stepney had never been particularly affluent, but now it definitely wasn’t the sort of area you just wandered around. I was somewhat protected because most people who knew my face knew that I belonged to Alexander. But what about all the thugs and thieves and scumbags who didn’t know me?
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