She almost misses her stop. She brings her mind back to the present. She’s done something serious for which there will be severe consequences. Now is not the time to let any emotion in. Now is not the moment to be distracted.
Even so, she is preoccupied. Michael. Who is he? A cop. Sort of. A well-meaning citizen. A fool to have brought someone like her into his home. No matter. Despite her words, she won’t see him again.
She takes her phone out of her pocket and looks at the message. The text is anonymous, as always. Someone in the Network telling her Tracey is dead. They’ve also sent a new contact number – for a new handler, no doubt. Was this standard protocol? After all, operatives like her could not be left without a handler, could they?
She shivers as she exits the train though there’s no draught coming from within the tube tunnels at that time. She thinks again about the new handler, and her mind flashes to Michael almost straightaway, as though there is an indelible link between them. The feeling is disturbing.
Chapter Eleven
Michael
‘What happened to you?’ Beth asks as I enter the main office.
‘What do you mean?’
‘The locals were expecting you to be there when they scraped the woman off the tracks.’
‘Do we know who she was?’ I ask, changing the subject.
‘Not yet. What’s left of her will give the coroner nightmares, I expect.’
‘Any leads?’
‘A couple. Leon is interviewing the last possible at the local station.’
‘Really? I left it to the locals as I didn’t think this was in our jurisdiction. Do you think it’s something we should be involved with?’ I say. ‘I only called it in because I happened to be on the scene.’
‘That’s what we thought at first. Then we got these. Have a look. I printed them to leave on Ray’s desk.’
She gives me a print-out of a few witness statements in a folder.
‘See?’
Transcript of Witness Statement
Interviewer: Leon Tchaikovsky
Witness: Malcolm Radley
* * *
RADLEY
There was this woman in a black trench coat. She was holding out her hand to help. Then she must’ve got scared. She backed away and the train hit the woman who’d fallen on the tracks. It was horrible. I mean it, man. I’m traumatised.
* * *
TCHAIKOVSKY
Did you see the other woman fall?
* * *
RADLEY
No. Just heard a scream. Looked up. Then I saw the two of them.
* * *
TCHAIKOVSKY
Can you describe the woman in the trench coat?
* * *
RADLEY
Blonde, I think. Tallish. Didn’t get a good look. I was looking at the woman on the track… She had brown hair. Her face … she knew she was finished, man…
‘Radley might be able to give a better description of the victim,’ Beth says. ‘Might be helpful in identifying her if the coroner can’t.’
I’m quiet for a moment as I absorb Radley’s statement. Anna was wearing a black trench coat. I keep my face passive as I continue to read.
‘Do we have any CCTV footage?’ I ask.
‘The camera on that track was smashed a few seconds before,’ Beth says.
‘Vandalised? Seems a bit of a coincidence,’ I say.
‘That’s what I thought,’ says Beth. ‘Which is why Leon is doing the interviews. Something’s amiss here. Maybe we should find this mystery woman in the trench coat. She might shed some light on it.’
I don’t answer.
‘Can I take this?’
‘Sure. I’ll print more for Ray.’
I leave Beth and take the folder into my office. Then I sit down and read it all.
I should have told Beth then and there about Anna. As well as the trench coat, she could be described as ‘blonde’ and ‘tall’. After all, if Anna had seen the accident and she was genuinely traumatised by the death she’d witnessed, us interrogating her wouldn’t have helped right then. Perhaps I should have taken her to hospital, instead of back to my place. And why had I done that?
It was down to that first moment I saw her. She stopped dead in the street as though she’d just been told the worst news possible. She looked bereft. Shocked. As though all her grief washed over her in one single moment. A realisation that life would never be the same. It was all there on her face. Then the colour blanched from her cheeks and she just looked sick. I was compelled to help her. Despite everything I knew I should have been doing. And when the police arrived, I’d put her in the cab and taken her out of there. Something I’d never dreamed of doing with a perfect stranger before. A man in my line of work needs to be more careful than that. What was I thinking?
I pick up my phone and ask Beth to put the CCTV footage from outside the station on the shared drive when she’d downloaded it all. Part of me is worried that I’d been caught on camera; part of me hopes I have. I am a man with very little mystery in my life, but Anna was something unfathomable. I almost believe I imagined her, so fleeting was the contact.
Beth messages me to say the footage is there. I reply,
I’ll take a look and see if anything is amiss.
I look through the footage. Somehow, Anna has avoided being seen, even though I found her near the station.
Beth messages as though reading my mind.
There’s no sign of her exiting the tube, maybe she got on another train?
I’m about to send a reply, but hold back. I can’t reveal my accidental meeting with what could be the same woman without raising enquiries about my own somewhat reckless behaviour. It is out of character, I know that, and so I examine my reasons. Why had I taken care of her personally and not passed her on to the beat bobbies as they arrived? I could have. Should have. But she’d appeared to be so vulnerable. And I’d hoped I’d found a credible witness to the accident, hadn’t I? In the back of my mind, I know I hadn’t been thinking about her in those terms at all. It was a reaction. Something more primal than that. There was an affinity of sorts.
A flash of memory accompanies this emotion.
Mia and I are running and playing near a canal. That little boy … a friend of hers chasing behind us and then the splash of water. We both turn to see him going down, pulled by some fierce current. Mia screams. I pull her to me but she struggles in my arms.
‘We have to save him!’
But I know we can’t, and I won’t let her risk her life for him.
‘Jacob!’ she calls. And then the adults are there and my father jumps into the water without a second thought.
There is an excruciating moment as we anticipate our father’s superhero rescue. Jacob is tangled on something – reeds or garbage thrown haphazardly into the water buy uncaring, callous hands.
I cover Mia’s face as they pull him free and our father, sodden to the bone, is helped out.
Jacob’s body is worked on. There are torturous seconds of trying to make him breath. I watch it all but protect Mia from it as best as I can. Nothing they do, or even the paramedics that arrive soon after, can bring back the boy.
I shake these thoughts away. I had no responsibility for Anna, unlike my sister. I should have been thinking like an agent. I should have turned her over to be questioned or taken care of by a medic. I should have known better.
I ask Beth on the message system:
No other sightings of the closest witness?
She answers,
Just a few others who said they looked up and the woman had already fallen
I go back into Beth’s office.
‘Do we know which of them screamed? That person must have seen it.’
Beth shakes her head. ‘I don’t know. No one has admitted to that so far. Maybe Leon will have more when he gets back.’
I go back into my office, closing the door. Without Beth’s help, I access the CCTV cameras outside the hotel across th
e street from the station. I look through them until I see myself making the emergency call from my work mobile. I’d been on the underground, commuting into the office, when the incident occurred. I hadn’t been on that particular line, just there when the uproar happened. After instructing the station staff to stop anyone leaving, I’d gone up and outside to make the call. I should have gone back inside and waited for the police to arrive to hand it over to them properly, but then I noticed Anna.
On the footage I see myself hang up the phone as I turn to look at a disturbance off-camera. I walk away. I remember seeing Anna then, and how I’d hurried to help her. I’d been thinking I knew her. There had been something about her that was so familiar it was overwhelming. I didn’t know what at the time. But now, looking at the footage, an idea occurs to me. I thought I knew her because I have seen her before. The way she moves. The way she holds her shoulders back. Her height, above average. The hair is different but…
I pause the recording, then open a folder on my computer containing information on the murder of Aidan Bright. In the folder, I find and open the saved camera footage near the off-licence. I watch it playing out, see the girl with the bobbed hair and glasses. Her height, build, and the walk. Yes! She had walked that way as she hurried down the corridor from my flat. Why hadn’t I realised? Anna wasn’t some random woman on the street; she was someone I’d been pursuing for three years.
I can’t keep it to myself any more.
I open my office door.
‘Beth? Can you come in here a minute?’
Beth leaves her computer terminal and walks over. ‘What’s up?’
‘I did something stupid today. I think I helped a witness leave the crime scene.’
‘A witness?’ Beth says. ‘Why do you think that?’
I shake my head, not wanting to voice what I really think. My gut tells me, even though I have no proof, that Anna isn’t just a witness; she took an active role in this death.
‘There was a woman. She was…’ I explain helping Anna, but don’t tell Beth how much I had helped.
Beth listens, making little comment. ‘From what you’ve said, it sounds like you helped someone who wasn’t feeling well. I don’t see a problem with that.’
‘That’s what I thought at the time. But then the description in these statements. It was the same woman. She saw what happened.’
‘You’re not telling me everything,’ Beth says.
‘I can’t. I don’t know any more. It’s just … she reminded me of…’ I glance back at my desk, and the computer that’s still open, though paused, on the footage relating to Aidan Bright’s death. ‘She didn’t look exactly like her, but she walks like her.’
‘Like who?’ Beth asks. She’s frowning at me now, and I can’t blame her because I’m being so vague.
‘Like the suspect in Aidan Bright’s killing.’
‘Jesus. This could be a really lucky break,’ says Beth. ‘I mean, if she was there, then this probably wasn’t an accident at all.’
‘We don’t know that,’ I say. ‘I can’t accuse her as I don’t have any evidence and there hasn’t been anyone who saw the actual … fall so far.’
‘What do we know, Mike? Come on, there’s no such thing as coincidences. Not like this. If she was the same woman and she was there, she more than likely did it.’
I remind Beth that we don’t even know who the victim was yet, but she’s on a roll now. Her eyes are shining. I’ve seen this kind of excitement before. She gets like this whenever she thinks we have a breakthrough. I still want to err on the side of caution though.
‘The woman I spoke to did appear to be genuinely sick. Would an assassin get like that after a kill? Especially one confident enough to throw a credit card to a starving vagrant?’ I point out. ‘Let’s not get ahead of ourselves.’
‘I don’t know,’ Beth says now. ‘There could be many factors at play here.’
‘Such as?’
‘This might not have been a hit. It may have been personal. And even to a sociopath, that will feel different.’
Beth’s words strike a chord with me though I don’t know why. Did Anna know the victim? Was she involved with her somehow? If so, what had the victim done to deserve such a violent death?
‘You’d have to really hate someone to push them under a train and then watch as it ploughs into them, wouldn’t you?’ Beth says.
I try to imagine hatred that extreme and I can’t.
Chapter Twelve
Neva
The black cotton trench coat burns on the small pile of garden waste. All evidence of her association with Tracey is now gone. She has saved the new handler’s number into a new burner phone, destroying the old one as per procedure and removing Tracey’s number, eliminating a part of her past. Like a scab that’s been picked, it bleeds and then closes over. The anger has gone. She feels numb as she now stands in the garden, burning the last pieces of Anna’s identity. Though she had not been wearing a disguise, destroying the clothing gives her a sense of control.
She thinks about Michael. She knows his address. He’s the only person of importance who has ever seen her true face. She should go back and kill him. But she doesn’t want to.
Though she sent on her new phone number, the new handler has not been in touch. This is not an issue. Her employers are regrouping. It didn’t take long for Neva to realise that they didn’t know she killed Tracey. She doesn’t understand why Tracey didn’t tell them what she’d done before she ran, even though she knew Neva could no longer be trusted. Still, Neva hadn’t planned this. Tracey’s flight had spurred Neva on. She had wanted to know who was controlling her life. Spooking Tracey had been a means by which she might find out and the plan had been to follow.
The recent dreams and recollections had been crowding around her, screaming that her life was wrong. And then, something inside her … snapped.
One deep, dark memory had informed her that this moment was important. It was her or Tracey. And she chose to live. It was the first step to destroying the link that tied her to them. The next stages, she hoped, would bring her closer to finding out who they were.
They’d taught her to have no fear, even of death. But Neva had decided she wouldn’t make it easy for them to retire her. She was ready to fight. Readier than Ansell or Devlin had been.
She’d had an escape plan for a while. A strategy she put in place a few days after she killed Ansell. At the time, though, she had believed she had a long career ahead and the contingency had felt like a fantasy, something she’d never need but liked to toy with.
But things had changed. Her strength was being worn away, year by year, and the coldness that had once been inside her had thawed. She has no regrets for the kills she’s made – that isn’t in her make-up, though maybe once it had been, before they altered her – but Neva doesn’t need to do this for much longer. She doesn’t want to be someone else’s puppet. If she kills, she has to know the reason for it. Questions are not permitted within the Network and had she asked any, she would have found herself back at the house, back in that room at the end of the dark corridor, or worse, in a deep dark pit with her brains blown out.
With Tracey gone, she hopes for breathing space while she plans her future escape. She’s been saving money. They pay well; it is a sweetener for the cost the job has on the recruits.
She snorts a laugh at the idea of being ‘recruited’. As if she ever had a choice.
Neva never saw any need for extravagance and as a result she chose to live simply and she saved the money. It goes into a Swiss bank account that she’s been careful to keep secret. There are three million pounds that she’s put away over the last five years. Also, she has a flight bag, filled with £50,000 in cash and several different passports for various countries under different names. Some of which the Network provided so that she could do her job without detection, others … well, there’s always a black market for everything if you have the money.
They trained her well:
always be ready to go to ground. Have an exit plan. Neva does and she’ll use their training against them the day they come after her.
The text she received after Tracey’s death proves her situation needs a great deal more thought. It’s why Neva is taking her time and not running immediately. To do so will mark her as guilty. She’s clever – that’s why they chose her – and only someone stupid would give themselves away like that.
The fire burns down to ashes. It’s cold out, but the heat from the flames keeps her warm. She waits until all the evidence is gone. She turns away.
In the field, wild daffodils grow in a patch. Her breath catches in her throat. She stops and looks at them. Then she picks one and places it on top of the pyre. There’s enough heat remaining to cause the flower to shrivel and disintegrate.
Neva shudders. It’s a fitting tribute for the end of Tracey’s life.
When the flower is absorbed into the ashes, she walks back across the land towards the house.
The landline phone rings as she enters the kitchen. She goes to the sink, washes her hands, and the phone stops ringing. She doesn’t check who’s calling. No one important ever calls this landline.
The house is quiet. Neva has never disliked solitude, but now she craves noise. She wants company. Time to let off some steam…
As she pulls the drapes closed on the bedroom window, she notices a car parked down the lane. Periodically they watch her, and Tracey’s death may well have raised suspicion. Neva goes about her daily business as though nothing has happened.
The House of Killers, Book 1 Page 7
