‘I’d like to stab that knife into someone’s ribs,’ Kurt/Peter had said as they watched the footage of a vicious murder. He mimed the action, enjoying the killing as he watched it unfold.
Katie and John stared at the screen with dead, unemotional eyes. Melanie (what did they call her in the end?) watched Kurt, a slight smile on her lips. ‘You’ll do it soon enough,’ she said. ‘We all will.’
By then the training had been underway for the best part of ten years. Neva was the expert with a knife, something that rankled with Kurt. He was seventeen then, Neva almost fifteen. But she was taller than the other three girls, not much shorter than Kurt and just as strong because she never let emotions fuel her actions.
Now Neva remembers their final spar. She was placed with Kurt, knife in hand. Within minutes, Neva had broken Kurt’s hold on his knife, expertly knocking it from his clenched fingers. She stepped back as she was supposed to, to allow Kurt to accept defeat, but anger got the better of him. He leapt towards her, grabbing Neva’s knife.
‘I’ll kill you!’ he said.
They fought. Neva held onto her blade, but only just. Tracey, Callan, and one of the other instructors pulled Kurt away. He was hauled out of the training area and taken down the corridor.
‘He’s history,’ Katie had said.
‘No, they’ll just give him treatment. He’s too emotional,’ John told them.
Tracey came back into the training area then and the sparring resumed. Afterwards, Neva was taken into Tracey’s office.
‘You have your first assignment,’ she said.
Neva felt a surge of excitement kindled by fear but she kept her face still.
‘Good,’ she said. ‘What do you want me to do?’
‘You’re going to retire Kurt.’
Neva nodded but the thought of killing her sparring partner for real made her feel odd. Going too far, hurting each other seriously, had been against the rules; she knew that. But did Kurt deserve to die because of it? She had always been taught control and restraint and had won all of her spars because of her ability to do this. Kurt struggled to keep his emotions in check, even though the conditioning should make him capable of it. Neva vaguely wondered what it would feel like to end a life. Wasn’t this ultimately what they were training her for?
‘How do you wish to do it?’ asked Tracey.
‘Knife,’ said Neva. ‘I will cut his throat.’
Later she was taken to Kurt. He was strapped into the chair, having spent time with the doctor. He was quiet, drugged, and in the state they all were after intensive treatment.
Tracey gave her a knife. ‘Kill him,’ she said.
‘No fight?’ Neva asked.
‘You don’t have to win a fight to score a victory for the Network,’ Tracey said. ‘When you finish an enemy, or in this case a disappointment, you do it for the best reasons.’
Neva stepped forward. She had listened to Tracey’s view on Kurt all afternoon. Reading between the lines, she knew she had to do it. It was Kurt or herself. Any failure now would make her a liability too. She couldn’t be the one to die. They had almost retired her once before. Tracey, at that time, had saved her but Neva understood this was a one-time-only deal. She never lapsed again, and never would.
Neva looked at Kurt’s drugged face. She thought he was unlikely to feel anything in this state. This was easy – a no-brainer. Even so, she hesitated. She was going to take a life, something they had trained her for all these years. Shouldn’t she feel something about that?
Kurt’s death meant she would be established.
She raised the knife and ran the razor-sharp edge across his throat. The knife bit into his skin as though it was no more resistant than warm butter. She watched the blood bubble out of the wound and drip onto the wooden floor.
She felt nothing.
In a way, she had always known she would kill Kurt. It was a rite of passage, a thing she must do to graduate from this level to the next. Kurt himself should have moved on by now, but Tracey had held him back, saying he wasn’t ready. Now he never would be. Maybe Tracey had only kept him around so that Neva could execute him.
Neva had glanced at Tracey but she kept her face passive. She was good at showing no curiosity. Curiosity kills, after all.
‘Make sure he’s dead before you leave him,’ Tracey had said.
‘I will.’
Neva waited until the blood stopped flowing, and then she pressed her fingers to Kurt’s pulse as she had been trained to do. He was gone.
‘Yes. It’s done.’
‘Good. Now, how do you feel?’ Tracey asked.
‘Feel?’
‘Do you feel pleased he’s dead?’
‘No.’
‘Do you feel sad?’
‘No.’
‘What do you feel?’
‘Satisfaction. I did the job you asked. I’m proud of that.’
Tracey studied Neva’s blank expression for a while and then she sent her away, back to the dormitory and the bathroom to wash the blood from her hands.
Cleanliness was equally important. Removing evidence. Washing away any guilt.
As the water ran over Neva’s hands, they had trembled slightly. It was the only response she allowed herself to mark the significance of Kurt’s death.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Neva
In the dreary hotel room, Neva’s hand trembles again as she closes her laptop, removing the pictures of the other children from her sight. So many memories crowd into her mind and it hurts. Kurt is gone, and she hasn’t thought about him for a long time. As though his death erased him from existence. She knows this is probably the conditioning. Maybe forgetting him helped her accept what she’d done. But seeing the others has damaged her equilibrium. She’s recalling fragments of the house, those days spent learning her craft and all the torturous moments she endured as they took her personality and thoughts away. She’s shaking as it all floods back. Her body is cold, as though she’s going into shock. Just as she had been after Tracey…
Yes. She is broken. And there is no going back, only forward.
When she remembers all the deaths she has delivered – cold, decisive killings that meant nothing to her – she thinks about those people who created her. She also considers Kurt and Ansell. They were like her. They had been taken, groomed and changed, turned into killing machines. Ansell had been a success, graduating on to be an efficient operative, but Kurt hadn’t survived the house. But in the end, they had both died by Neva’s hand on the orders of the Network that had made them what they were. Loyalty went only one way, and that came from the threat her handlers had wielded.
Tracey’s death has satisfied Neva for a while, but now she wants more blood. Not hits that her supervisors desire. Her choice of kills. She wants to discover who the people behind the Network are. The ones who made her kill. She wants to destroy them.
The urge to maim and kill intensifies with a passion that Neva has never experienced before. She prowls around the hotel room thinking, remembering. She has to know the details that they tried to hide from her. But it’s like a jigsaw puzzle with too many missing pieces.
‘One day you’ll be a handler, Neva,’ Tracey had told her once. ‘I’m preparing you, because you’re different. You are not like all the others.’
At the time she had been flattered. Tracey had encouraged this feeling at frequent intervals. ‘Only you can do this; you’re our special girl.’
Hadn’t Tracey used those words often? Now she wonders who else Tracey said this to. It was likely that all handlers used such persuasive terms. It was a way to control them.
She glances at her laptop. John and the other girls – women now – perhaps she could find them? They could fight against the Network … together.
She shakes away this thought, realising how ridiculous it is.
They weren’t superheroes fighting for justice. They were killers, trained to take orders only from their masters. Of course, they might come
looking for her. But it wouldn’t be to compare notes on their warped childhoods; it would be to kill her for her betrayal.
For the first time since she was five years old, Neva feels alone. Tracey was a touchstone, even though her judgement was something to fear. Neva has no one to turn to, and until now, that has never been a problem.
Since she met Michael, she has been different. He was another link in the slow awareness that has been growing inside her since she killed Ansell. She remembers the concern in Michael’s eyes, the day he helped her. Without realising it, he pulled her back from the dark void she almost fell into. Neva doesn’t know where that blackness would have led her, but she knows she would not have easily escaped without Michael. He’d taken her away from Tracey’s death. A pivotal moment of freedom, that had also left her bereft, confused, and terrified – all emotions she was unused to. He’d helped her regain a modicum of control, and it was enough to stabilise the growing anger. Michael’s impromptu rescue had given her the breathing space she’d needed to start to think.
Since then, that’s all she’s done. When she’s not thinking about revenge, she’s focusing on Michael. She knows he can be part of her retaliation, but she’s yet to figure out how.
The rage begins, cold and dark, a fury like she has never experienced. She hates the Network. She despises Tracey. She wishes she could kill her again!
‘The only way to ease the pain is execute them all,’ she murmurs.
But how? They kept her in the dark all along.
She knows nothing of where she’s from. Nothing of the location of the house – the starting place. Nothing of how she got there.
Her fists clench and she grinds her teeth in frustration. She needs more than her own meagre resources to find them. She needs help. But who can she trust? Anyone could be part of the Network.
She sees Michael as he was that day. Kind. Caring. Gentle. The unfaltering way he took her out of that bad situation, never realising who she was.
But how can she go to him? He is MI5 and part of a taskforce whose nature is secret, all of which tells her that he can’t be trusted. For all she knows, he too could be in the Network’s employment. But no. She’s followed him enough to know he isn’t.
She forces her hands to unclench when the tension begins to make her fingers ache. She runs her palms over her knees as she sinks back down onto the edge of the uncomfortable hotel bed.
She turns off her unquiet mind with practised ease. Anxiety causes weakness.
Sleep, little one.
Neva removes her clothes and a soft, hypnotic mantra rolls over her as the pressure inside her grows quiet. Sleep cures all, wasn’t that what her mother had once said? For a moment she tries to chase this memory, but it only results in pain.
She slips under the covers. The sheets are cool and the bed is more comfortable than she thought it would be. Her limbs relax as the warmth which accompanies sleep washes over her. Sleep will bring an answer; revenge can wait until the morning.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Michael
I take a beer from the fridge and switch on the television. I’m still unnerved by the meeting with Simone Arquette. I don’t know why. But the more I think about it, the stranger it was. I replay the interview, reliving her responses, and facial expressions; the lack of emotion she displayed jars as much now as it did at the time. But my memory of it seems to accentuate the feeling.
I run over the moment when she admitted to still having contact with the other parents. That slight break in her façade is still unfathomable and was the only chink in her otherwise cold armour. I’ll have to consider it when I have more information. Then it will make sense.
I swig the beer from the bottle – this is becoming a nightly habit – and then I swipe the back of my hand across my eyes, rubbing a knuckle in the corner to push away the sleep. I’m tired but wound up. Sometimes switching off is difficult for me and the job is one of constant frustrations, often leading to disappointment. The last few years have been unsatisfactory. How many cases have we actually solved recently? I’m beginning to wonder what the point is.
‘Archive is not just about solving, but about cataloguing information that may help us in the future,’ Ray had explained to me in the early days. ‘We haven’t failed as long as we are doing that.’
I wish I could have Ray’s easy attitude to the job. Does Ray ever lie awake worrying that we aren’t achieving anything? I doubt it.
I finish the beer and take myself off to bed, but not before I check my security.
A few hours later I jerk awake. I find myself slumped on the sofa, an all too familiar occurrence lately. The bottle of beer is half-full on the table and the room is cold as the heating has automatically turned off. I realise that I dreamed locking up and going to bed.
I go to the bathroom, pee, then go into the bedroom.
I set the alarm on my phone and then slip into the bed, aware that I’m repeating my dream. But I’m so tired that the thought is only fleeting. I’m asleep again within seconds.
Chapter Thirty
Michael
‘How’s things?’ my brother-in-law, Ben, asks as the bartender places two pints of beer in front of us. ‘You look tired.’
Ben is always direct.
‘I’m fine. Working too hard as usual. How are you?’
Ben smiles. ‘Mia keeps me busy. She wants to move house.’
‘Why? Thought you guys were happy in the country.’
‘We are, but the owners of the farm next door are dicks. The woman has a meltdown if the leaves from our trees fall onto their side of the fence.’
‘Jesus.’
‘I know.’
‘There’s always a fly in the ointment somewhere.’
It’s nice to see Ben on one of his rare visits to London. I find myself smiling.
‘How’s Mia otherwise?’
‘Okay… We’re trying for a baby,’ Ben says.
‘That’s great news! But … I thought you two weren’t the parenting kind.’
‘Yeah. So did we. Then we both started to … want this, you know?’
I don’t know. But I’m happy for Ben and Mia. My twin sister was always such a tomboy. Then she met Ben and everything changed. She became a woman overnight. They’ve been together since university and they’re happy, as far as I can tell. Even our parents like Ben and that is no mean feat.
‘So, is it serious? With the neighbours? I mean, what’s a few leaves?’ I ask.
‘It’s worse than that. We probably will move. Mia can’t stand their dogs barking and the whiney kids that scream all the time like they’re being murdered. I swear if they really were being killed, we’d ignore the screams because it’s just another Tuesday.’
‘Sounds awful,’ I say. ‘Can’t you have a word with them about it?’
‘We tried. The woman had a meltdown again and accused us of “spying” on them. Next, her husband comes round, all heavy-handed. I wasn’t there and Mia had to deal with it. Upshot is, he says we’re harassing them. But he admits his wife’s neurotic. They aren’t right in the head, either of them. Guess that’s what happens when you start to believe that the piece of England you own is the only important stretch of land in the country. And it’s a laughable few acres.’
Ben laughs but it lacks humour and seems punctuated by genuine frustration. I pat him on the shoulder to show I understand.
‘Have you spoken to Uncle Andrew lately?’ Ben asks, as though to change the subject.
I nod. ‘Yes, we have a talk about once a month. Sometimes we meet up, or he calls me. When did you last see him?’
‘Last week. He’s looking good. He’s such a chick magnet. Silver fox. Am I right?’
I laugh. ‘Yeah! I love that man!’
Chapter Thirty-One
Neva
The surveillance equipment focuses Michael and Ben’s voices through the crowded bar. Neva is in a booth with her back to them. There’s a hairclip pulling back strands of gol
den-blonde hair from her face; it hides a directional microphone in her hair. She listens. For a moment she toys with the idea of finding the farm and killing the obnoxious neighbours, especially the neurotic whiney wife. It’s a way to help, and she’s killed for less important reasons. She stows this information away for future research and possible action.
As Michael drinks his beer, Neva observes him through a small mirror that she holds in her hand as she applies lipstick. The more she sees of Michael, the more she wants to approach him. But it has to be the right moment, when she’s sure they won’t be noticed.
After his third pint, Ben stands up and pushes his way through the crowd towards the bathroom. He sways a little when he walks, not quite in full control, but not too far gone either.
Reacting to this unexpected opportunity, Neva gets up. She walks to the bar and stands beside Michael. She leans close to his ear.
‘I have a gun,’ she whispers.
Chapter Thirty-Two
Michael
I turn my head and look at the woman beside me. It takes a moment to recognise her. She’s so good at disguise, how many more times has she been this close and I haven’t noticed? When she says she has a gun, my body instinctively stiffens but I remain calm. This is a busy bar; there are too many witnesses. She’s not here to kill me or she would have taken a shot in a better place.
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