The Angel

by Mark Dawson

  She showered, standing under the hot water for fifteen minutes until the mud and sweat had been scoured away and her skin was tingling. She wrapped a towel around her torso, ran a hand across the mirror to swipe away the condensation and looked at her reflection. She wasn’t accustomed to considering her appearance. She wasn’t vain or self-obsessed in the slightest, and had nothing in common with Claudette and the other girls. She had never had the occasion to take advantage of her looks before she met Khalil. It felt duplicitous. She preferred to be honest and open, like her mother had been with her. She realised she was being naïve. Of course her mother would have used her looks if that meant that she could secure an advantage for herself. You worked with the tools that you had at your disposal. Honesty would get her into trouble. She would save that for when it mattered.

  She went into the bedroom. She got out the other dress that she had bought with Kelleher and took it from its cellophane wrap. It was a pink mini, zipped up at the back. Kelleher had suggested a pair of metallic skyscraper heels and clashing red lip gloss. It was the kind of dress that Isabella would never normally have worn. She was most comfortable in jeans and a T-shirt, and this was showy, flirtatious and desperate for attention in ways that she found instinctively uncomfortable. She put it on, applied the lip gloss and mascara, and stood before the mirror and conceded, a little reluctantly, that it was what she needed. She looked older, for a start. That was good. She thought that she looked attractive.

  She took the watch that he had bought for her and slipped it on her wrist. She had a small clutch bag, and she put her cell phone and two €50 notes inside. She wished that she had a gun – something small and easy to hide, like the Springfield XDS 9mm she had in her dresser at the riad – but she knew she would never have been able to explain what she was doing with it if it was found. No. She would have to trust that Pope and the others would be able to get to her quickly if she found herself in trouble.

  She dragged her suitcase out of the wardrobe and took out her spare pair of running shoes. She pushed her fingers inside and pulled out the insole. The device that Pope had given her was hidden inside, and as she turned the shoe upside down it dropped into her hand. It was wrapped in cellophane and was small. Not much bigger than her thumbnail. She took her clutch, took out her lip gloss and pulled off the lid. There was enough space between the hollow lid and the lip gloss to fit the device and still have room to click it closed.

  She checked the time: 6.50.

  Khalil had hired a coach that would make runs to and from the house every thirty minutes. The first coach was leaving at seven. She would let the first two go without her and get the third one at eight-thirty. She wanted the party to have started by the time she got there. The more people there, and the more drunken they were, the better her chances of slipping away from the others without being noticed.

  The coach was able to accommodate fifty passengers, and it was full. Isabella recognised several of the partygoers from the refectory. There were six boys at the back swigging from a plastic bottle of Coke – laced with vodka – that they passed between them. There were four other quieter boys of Middle Eastern appearance who looked a little discomfited by the rowdy, drunken atmosphere onboard the coach. The rest were girls. Claudette wasn’t there – Isabella had seen her through the window of her room as she had gone to catch the previous bus – but there were girls whom she had seen at her dinner table. Isabella was sitting next to one of them; the girl turned around on the seat so that she could join in the lascivious conversation behind her. They were as haughty and supercilious as Claudette, barely sparing her a glance and certainly not interested in including her in their conversation. That was fine. Isabella had no interest in talking to them either. She didn’t need the distraction or the investment of energy it would have taken to try to be someone she was not.

  She gazed out of the window as the Swiss countryside rolled by. She thought about Pope. He had said that he would be able to track her phone, but it would have been good to know where he was. They might have been following in a car, she thought. Or perhaps they had split up, with someone waiting outside the house. She realised she had no idea how something like this would be organised. It made her feel vulnerable again. She would have liked to know.

  She caught sight of her face in the glass. She looked pensive. She clenched her teeth and told herself to get it together. She had to look as if she was supposed to be at the party. Khalil had to think she was happy to be there, that she had no other agenda. No secrets. That she was just there to get drunk and have a good time.

  She thought of the little component that she had hidden in her bag.

  The bus slowed down, waited for a large pair of automatic iron gates to open and then passed into the grounds of Salim al-Khawari’s mansion. The big building was lit up, the illumination from within spreading out of the expansive windows. The driveway was picked out by lights that glowed from little sconces on either side of the gravel, and external lights lit a path down to the boathouse and to the garage block. Isabella looked at the house and felt small and insignificant. It was huge and must have cost millions to purchase. With something as impressive as this, surely there must be sophisticated security inside? Alarms? Motion sensors? She quailed at the prospect of what she had agreed to do. How was she going to manage? They would see right through her. She wouldn’t last five minutes.

  The bus slowed right down and drew to a halt. She reached into her bag and took out her phone. She opened a message to Rupert and typed out two words.

  I’M HERE.

  She pressed ‘Send.’

  The door of the bus opened on wheezing hydraulics, and Isabella waited her turn to step down. It was cold, and the dress did little to keep her warm. Claudette’s friends were right behind her, and she heard them make a joke at her expense. She ignored them. The house was at the end of a short path. It loomed up out of the ground, all shimmering glass and cold steel, its light thrown out in rippling shafts across the gentle waves on the lake. She collected herself, ignoring the cold knot of apprehensiveness in her stomach and the dryness in her throat, and followed the others to the big front door.

  The party was in full swing. A large reception room had been cleared for the night. Furniture had been pushed to the walls to open up a wide space for dancing. A table was making do as a makeshift bar, the guests helping themselves to drinks.

  The atmosphere was drunken. Isabella remembered reading that drinking was un-Islamic; Khalil and his guests were not paying much attention to that. She saw a woman in a maid’s uniform standing in an open doorway, her arms folded across her chest and an expression of discomfort on her face. What Khalil had said must have been true: Salim al-Khawari couldn’t possibly know what was happening here tonight. She remembered the coldness in his eyes when she had met him in Geneva. The thought that he was somewhere else was reassuring. How long would he be away for? The maid, and presumably the other staff, must have reported to him what was happening. What would he do? Get them to close it down?

  A DJ had been provided with a table to set out his laptops and equipment. He was mixing hard, aggressive house music that Isabella had not heard before. She couldn’t say that it was to her taste, but it was thunderously loud, and it added to the host of distractions that she knew would prove useful.

  She tried to work out where she was in relation to the rest of the house. This big room was on the lower level. There was an elevator in the middle of the room with a spiral staircase wrapped around the shaft. She believed that there were another three floors above her. A door to the outside was open so that smokers could have access to the area around an ornamental pool, where they could enjoy their cigarettes. Some ignored that and smoked inside. Others smoked joints. There was another set of doors opposite her, across the dance floor. They stood open a little and looked promising.

  Isabella took it all in.

  The atmosphere was rowdy and confused. It felt on the edge of control.

  That w
as good.

  She wanted it to be like that.

  It would be easier to slip away unnoticed.

  She looked for Khalil. He was sitting in the middle of a wide sofa with two girls, one on either side of him. He had his arms around both of them, squeezing them close to him as someone took a picture with a phone. He was a quarter turn away from her, and distracted, and she was able to move around the room so that the elevator and stairs were between them without him noticing that she had arrived. There was a mirror on the wall in front of him, and she was able to observe for a moment. He was the centre of attention. She wondered whether he would even remember that she was coming.

  There didn’t seem to be any reason why she should wait.

  The next bus departed in thirty minutes. If she was lucky, she could fit the device and be back in her room at school within the hour. She could say that she felt ill. It wouldn’t matter what she said.

  She walked across the room, her eyes on Khalil, until she was two metres away from the doors. She checked again, one more time, turned back to the doors and saw that they had been left ajar, pushed them and stepped through.

  Chapter Forty-Nine

  There was a corridor on the other side of the door. She followed it deeper into the house. She had decided that if she were questioned, she would say that she was looking for the bathroom and had lost her way. That seemed like it would be a legitimate situation for her to find herself in, especially if she pretended to be a little drunk.

  The corridor was long, and as she walked, the noise of the party faded away behind her. Pope had shown her the architect’s plans for the property, and she had studied the satellite images from Google Maps as she was preparing for her visit. She knew that it was comprised of two large four-storey wings that were joined by the single-storey span that she was passing through. The corridor, which was more like a hallway, was glassed on both sides. The first door she passed had been marked with a sign that indicated it was the bathroom. That was annoying. It would be difficult to argue that she had missed it. She passed a cream sofa, a low glass table and a selection of vases and standard lamps. The open windows showed out onto a rock garden on the left and a view to the lake on the right. They were uncovered and made her feel particularly vulnerable.

  She reached the end of the hallway. There were two large glass doors, and beyond them, a second vast living room. She saw a huge circular sofa, pieces of confusing modern art, an enormous television fixed to the wall and another spiral staircase in the centre that wound around a second clear glass lift shaft. There was a table with a fruit bowl. A bottle of wine and a corkscrew had been left on the table next to the bowl.

  There was no one inside the room.

  She opened the door and went inside.

  It really was vast. She hadn’t been able to see quite how big from the other side of the doors, but now that she was inside, she saw that the ceiling reached up to the third floor, thirty feet above the ground. There was a pool outside, the water lit from beneath with a series of twinkling lights. She paused, listening. She could hear the muffled bass from the party, but nothing more.

  She went further inside.

  There was a door to the north.

  She crossed the room, paused at the door and then, when she was satisfied that the room beyond was empty, opened it.

  There was a noisy clatter from inside as something toppled over.

  She clenched her teeth, her stomach tight with tension, and waited. Nothing. The noise from the party would be helpful to her now. She waited a little longer, then went inside.

  It was a smaller room, but still big. There was enough space for a large desk, a roller chair and several large bookcases. There was an overturned lamp on the floor. She had knocked it over when she opened the door. It looked like the room was used as a study. She found what she was looking for on the desk: a PC tower.

  She crossed the room and was at the desk, ready to move the PC, when she heard someone behind her.

  ‘Excuse me?’

  She froze. She turned and saw a well-dressed middle-aged woman.

  What?

  She recognised her: it was Jasmin al-Khawari, Khalil’s mother. The woman was wearing an abaya cinched by a belt featuring an oversized buckle and studded with Swarovski crystals. Her face, immaculately made up and bearing the signs of surgical intervention, was haughty and unfriendly.

  What was she doing here?

  She was supposed to be in Paris.

  Khalil must have been mistaken, or his mother had changed her plans without telling him.

  She guessed that he was about to find himself in a world of trouble.

  That would be true for her, too, unless she was quick on her feet.

  ‘I thought I heard something,’ the woman said with no attempt to mask her distaste for her. ‘You little kafirs running amok in my house.’

  ‘I’m here for the party,’ she said.

  The woman’s eyes narrowed. ‘What are you doing in here, then?’

  Isabella twisted her mouth into an awkward smile. ‘I’m sorry. I’m a bit lost.’

  ‘What are you looking for?’

  ‘The bathroom.’

  ‘Well, this obviously isn’t the bathroom.’

  ‘No, I can see that. I’m really very sorry. If you could show me where it is . . .’

  Isabella took a step towards the door, but Jasmin stepped across to the side so that she was blocking it. Her lip curled with distaste as she asked, ‘Do you think I’m an idiot?’

  ‘No, I—’

  Recognition bloomed on her face. ‘I remember you,’ she said. ‘You were the little bitch who was with Khalil.’

  ‘You’re overreacting, Mrs al-Khawari. You—’

  The woman lunged forward and gripped Isabella around the bicep. ‘I’m not.’

  ‘Let go! You’re hurting me.’

  ‘No, I won’t let go. You know what I think? I think you came in here to steal something. That’s what you are, isn’t it? A thief? A nasty, ungrateful little kafir thief.’

  Isabella jerked her arm and managed to free it from Jasmin’s grip. The woman lost her balance and stumbled against the wall. Her face became clouded with fury, and before Isabella could raise her hands to defend herself, she slapped her hard in the face. The blow was sharp and stinging, and as Isabella put her hand to her cheek, she could feel the hot blood rushing to the surface.

  They paused there for a moment, staring at each other. The woman’s eyes were hot with anger.

  ‘You little bitch!’

  Jasmin came at her, reaching for her arm again.

  Isabella reacted. It wasn’t a question of panic; her training was much better than that. It was a hard-wired response, a reaction rendered automatic by hours of repetition. Her mother had taught her that in moments like this, instances of threat, there could be no equivocation. No second-guessing. The most effective self-defence requires an expression of force that either incapacitates the antagonist or makes it very clear that further aggression will be more trouble than it is worth. Her Krav Maga instructor had reinforced the message.

  You didn’t stop until the threat was neutralised, knocked out, disarmed or dead.

  Isabella didn’t consider any of that, at least not consciously.

  She just reacted.

  She dropped her right foot a half pace backward, closed her fist and delivered a straight right-handed jab. Jasmin wasn’t expecting her to strike her; her guard was down, her avid hands clutching for her, and as Isabella transferred her weight through her core, leaning from back to front, the punch landed heavily on her chin.

  It knocked the woman out instantly.

  Her eyes rolled back into her head and her knees buckled. She toppled forward.

  Isabella caught her and lowered her the rest of the way to the floor.

  She looked back to the door. Nothing. No sound, save the thud of the bass.

  She had to move quickly.

  Pope had taken position on the same vanta
ge point from where he had originally scouted the big lakeside property. The place was lit up tonight, the lights blazing and the reflection glittering far out into the dark waters of the lake. He held his binoculars to his eyes and scanned the estate, left to right, looking for anything that might suggest difficulties. He saw nothing. The last coach bearing guests to the party had arrived twenty minutes ago, waiting for the gates to open and then rolling down the driveway to the courtyard area. He watched as a handful of boys and girls, wearing not very much at all, stepped outside and disappeared into the house.

  The property itself offered no additional information. Most of the windows were dark and others were covered. He could see oblongs of light that were cast by the picture windows that faced the lake, but those were angled away from him, and he couldn’t see inside from this position. He would have to go up onto the wall, maybe even get into the grounds themselves, before he could get the angle to see inside them.

  Something caught his attention, and as he turned his head and looked out to the south-west, he saw a glow of light as a car from the direction of Geneva negotiated the turn of the lake. The car continued towards them and then, turning the bend so that they, too, were visible, came more cars. Pope counted ten. The road was usually quiet. He had only seen three cars since he had been up here. He brought the binoculars to his eyes, found the cars and tried to identify them. It was too dark, and the glare of the headlights was too bright.

  ‘Control, Nine,’ he said into his microphone. ‘I’ve got a convoy of vehicles approaching your position from the south-west. Be aware.’

  ‘Copy that.’

  Chapter Fifty

  Jasmin al-Khawari was breathing, in and out, her eyes closed.

  Isabella hadn’t planned for this. She felt a flutter of panic. No, she said to herself. She had done the right thing. There was no other choice, not if she wanted to carry out Pope’s orders. But now? She had to do something. She couldn’t just leave Jasmin here. If she awoke and sounded the alarm before she had boarded the next bus out of the estate, she would be compromised. She started to breathe a little faster. Her pulse began to run. She concentrated on maintaining her calm.