The Mission

by Naomi Kryske

  Her anger grew and made her stronger. It sent the blood rushing through her body. It brought energy to her every step. It gave her purpose. It fuelled her. She liked the taste of it in her mouth.

  She needed her anger. So far she had been unable to locate her prey. Hampstead was a larger community than she had expected, with street after street of residences. Her travel on the underground, although not at the peak travel times, ate into the few hours between the end of her lunch shift and the beginning of her dinner shift. Only on Sundays was she able to devote significant hours to her quest.

  Where? Where? she stormed, her anger increasing the pace of her steps. Would her prey shop at the Sainsbury’s near Finchley Road? Or would she frequent the High Street? There was so much ground to cover between them.

  Her energy flagged. Were all her efforts in vain? Perhaps her quarry no longer lived in Hampstead.

  Determination, she screamed silently. She slapped her cheeks to make her blood rise and swore to herself that she would not quit until she had investigated every avenue, every possible place, every destination. She could not let doubt prevail. She would not.

  CHAPTER 24

  Marcia didn’t exercise, so Simon was glad for the walks he took with Jenny. Sometimes she cried on those walks, and he held her hand.

  “I have a pulse,” she told him, “but I feel more broken than alive. My concentration’s still shot. And the sadness – it comes over me like a flash flood. Other times I feel like I’m stuck in quicksand and fighting not to go under.” Always he wanted to comfort her further but felt Marcia wouldn’t understand.

  Someone needed to look out for Jenny. Most days she walked alone, and she wasn’t as alert to her surroundings as she needed to be. The Heath Constabulary policed the area, but the twelve of them were too thin on the ground to maintain the safety of any specific individual. He should see her more often – her lack of awareness made her an easy target – but after his long hours on the Job and his time with Marcia, little was left.

  On one visit the flat was a mess, all the furniture pushed to the middle of the sitting room and all the books and paintings on the floor. “I wanted a change but couldn’t decide what,” she said, “and I couldn’t figure out if the pictures were askew or I was.”

  It made no sense to him. She shrugged when he offered to help her straighten up. “I don’t know where I want anything. Anywhere but where it was, I guess.” The sofa ended up on one wall, the two armchairs next to the bookcase, and nothing facing the fireplace. She left the walls bare, the naked picture hooks the only décor. She tried to make a joke of it – “Are we playing house?” – but neither of them laughed.

  Once he found that the fruit in the bowl on the dining room table had moulded. “Artists paint arrangements like that,” she said. “They call them ‘still life.’ Get it? It’s an oxymoron. Still. Life.”

  Her bitterness surprised and disturbed him. Sometimes he found her mail unopened. Old dishes crowded the counters in her kitchen because she’d bought new ones and didn’t have room for both. When he made tea, he discovered the milk in her fridge had gone off. She hadn’t many tins in the larder. “Are you eating?” he asked.

  “Are you the pantry police?” she had retorted. “I just don’t have much appetite.”

  “Perhaps you should see Dr. Knowles.”

  “See a psychiatrist because my pantry isn’t stocked to your satisfaction? I don’t think so,” she snapped.

  He tried another approach. “You’re taking Sinclair’s death hard. It’s worrying. You’d be worried about me if I were in your situation, wouldn’t you?”

  “If you were grieving because your husband had died, I’d have been worrying about you for a long time already,” she responded, steel in her voice.

  “Damn,” he muttered. Women’s emotions were a minefield.

  She sighed and sank into a chair. “Simon, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t belittle your concern. But – he was my husband. His death was sudden. I loved him, and I miss him terribly. I’m sad and tired, but that isn’t crazy. I’m pretty sure it’s normal.”

  He left it.

  On another afternoon, he vented his frustration about the Job, and she opened a bottle of wine and drank with him. “We take as many baddies off the streets as we can, but more take their place. We’ve raided different locations and found the same scum we cuffed before. They’ve been bailed or not convicted or not even prosecuted. We’re not making a difference.”

  She refilled his glass as well as her own.

  “It’s like a mutant octopus,” he said, “with tentacles everywhere. We hack away at them, but they just grow back.” He drained his glass. Wine went down easily. “The suits add the numbers up,” he continued, “and the numbers show that crime is rising, so we must not be doing our job. It’s rubbish. Bloody rubbish.” Marcia wasn’t much for serious chat, and it felt good to get things off his chest with Jenny.

  “Simon, give me your hand.” She held it, palm up, and rubbed her fingers across it.

  He had done that for her many times. Had any other woman done, he would have kissed her. Wrong thing to do, he told himself. Wrong for her. She still wore her engagement and wedding rings. Wrong for – Marcia.

  CHAPTER 25

  Success, Alcina thought. Was it too early for her to think of her mission in terms of success? No, because success was built step by step with small achievements leading to a glorious and gratifying conclusion. Her first success was learning of Sinclair’s death. It had required little effort on her part, but she would take credit for it nonetheless. Second, her focus and dedication had led to her discovery of his city of residence. Next – she smiled with grim satisfaction – as a result of her perseverance and resolve, she had seen her quarry.

  Her quarry had been alone and seemingly unaware of the presence of others on the pavement. Her hair was longer and she was thinner, and at first Alcina hadn’t been certain of her identity. Then the breeze had blown her hair, and she had seen the scar on her cheek and known she had found the one who had spoken lies and destroyed her world. A chance encounter? No, it was meant to be. An important piece of the puzzle had slipped into place: Her quarry was alive and living in Hampstead.

  Success never came singly, but Alcina knew she would not have come this far if she had not been determined, if she had not persisted in her quest. She smiled again. What wonderful qualities she was cultivating in herself, qualities that were certain to move her forward.

  Now, however, she must plan. She needed to spend more time in Hampstead. She didn’t earn much from the lunch shift at Kosta’s. She would continue to work the dinner shift there, but she would look for a day job in Hampstead.

  CHAPTER 26

  Summer turned into fall, and with it came the anniversary of September 11. The Queen attended a service of remembrance at St. Paul’s Cathedral, and at the U.S. Embassy in London, the American flag flew at half mast. Jenny wondered if she should describe herself as “flying at half mast.”

  She remembered the shock and horror of that day, and no matter how many times she saw the twin towers crumbling, she was still moved. The two one-minute silences observed across Britain to mark the times when the hijacked airplanes hit didn’t seem long enough for the scope of the tragedy. And why silence? Was silence the way she should honor Colin on the anniversary of his death? If so, she honored him already, because the flat was always silent.

  She now shared the heartbreak of the families of the 9/11 victims. They of all people understood how deep and enduring was the suffering caused by sudden death and the injustice when innocent people were struck down. Were they healed after one year? Seven months since Colin’s death, and she wasn’t. Did they also feel that nothing worse could happen to them than already had? Did they feel guilty for being alive? Were they angry at the unfairness of it all?

  The newspapers were full of articles about terrorist alerts. Clearly both the British and American governments expected an incident to occur, and fear rose in h
er throat. As she knew from Colin’s death, it took only one crazed fanatic to cause panic and anguish. Was that why the hairs on the back of her neck stood on end sometimes as she walked the Hampstead streets?

  The anniversary of her attack came, and with it, Simon’s call of support, which touched her, because no one else remembered. It had been four years, after all, and although she still bore the scars, its consequences no longer ruled her life as they once had. Those dark clouds had been replaced by others, her grief for Colin the most constant and intense.

  When he was alive, it had never occurred to her how large the flat was, but now it seemed as titanic as her sorrow. Shortly after she and Colin decided to have children, he had purchased the apartment building, or block, as the Brits called it, where they lived. The flats on the east side were smaller than those leased by the tenants on the west, but remodeling had customized the floors to suit Colin and Jenny’s needs. Colin’s car was parked in the basement, and the ground floor held two guest bedrooms, both en suite, and the utility room. An expanded kitchen, dining room, living room, and guest bath filled the first floor. The second floor was home to a spacious master suite and two smaller bedrooms, intended for the children, with a bathroom in between. All the rooms had wainscoting separating wallpapered and painted walls, except the kitchen, where Jenny had wanted pale blue paper with branches bearing tiny red apples from floor to ceiling. The public rooms were shades of ivory, but other pastels had been used in the bedrooms.

  Every room reminded her of her loss, so she spent as little time there as she could, increasing her time at the school where Beth taught and at Hollister’s Books. After school she stomped past the four-story buildings on Heath and Hampstead High Streets, no longer noticing their varying shades of red or taupe brick. In some places the sidewalk was wide enough for the cafés to set a few outdoor tables and chairs, but she did not stop. She was still angry at everyone who had hurt Colin, including herself. Up Spaniards Road and through the Heath she went, all the way to Spaniards Inn. Other times she trudged up South End Road, the walkway darkened by plane trees, and through South Hill Park. When she walked past the ponds, she watched raindrops blend and disappear on the surface, much as the world absorbed her grief without a ripple.

  Once she wandered down Church Row past the succession of Georgian houses, their brown bricks reminding her of rye and pumpernickel toast. Each window was trimmed with the orange red of apricot preserves. At the end was the parish church of Saint John-at-Hampstead, its clock tower and Roman numerals reaching toward heaven and the building surrounded by a cemetery shaded by the branches of ancient trees. The atmosphere was cool and peaceful, but Jenny felt a pervasive sadness. Many of the gravestones were tilted, no longer straight and proud, and their inscriptions were nearly worn away. Others were covered with moss or nearly lost in the underbrush. Joanne would never allow Colin’s grave to look so neglected, so forgotten.

  Colin had liked Hampstead, partly because the name came from the Old English word for homestead and also because the trees and ponds on the Heath reminded him of his boyhood home in Kent. He had introduced her to it early in their relationship.

  She also liked the Heath. Like the feelings of grief she could not curtail or control, the park was wild and unmanicured. The seasons came and went, but outside the natural cycle, time stood still there, captured among the trees. When she had been confined to the witness protection flat, Colin had encouraged her to look beyond its walls, explaining that freedom was found in one’s spirit, not one’s surroundings. Now she was free to go anywhere she pleased, but her spirit was imprisoned by sorrow. No matter how far she walked, she did not find release, and returning to the flat meant passing numerous Georgian houses with chimneys on both sides of the roofs and shutterless large symmetrical windows on the main floors. Seeing those homes irritated her, because she was unable to attain the balance or equilibrium in her own life that the architectural design reflected.

  CHAPTER 27

  Their work done, Casey’s team hit the pub. Today’s specials were listed on a chalkboard to the right of the bar, but they hadn’t come to eat. They needed to release some of the tension that built up on the Job. Regulars by now, they didn’t have to tell the barman what they drank. He filled glasses from the array of bottles on the wall and handed them over. No table service was offered in the small rooms, so Davies collected the first round, Moe the second, and Traylor the third. When the others topped off and headed home to their families, Casey moved to a stool by the curved bar and drank alone, not so much from thirst as from a need to fill the time. Marcia was on at hospital until late; they wouldn’t see each other tonight. His flat? He was not drawn to it.

  Lately he and Marcia had rented films, Marcia having decided to fill in the gaps in his entertainment education. Most were chick flicks she liked. No matter – it was worth it for what came after. Watching the girl get the guy made her happy. Probably a message there, because she wanted him to meet her parents. He’d put her off, not certain he was ready for that. At a nod, the barman pulled him another pint. On the other hand, it couldn’t do any harm, could it?

  He recalled the first time they’d made love. She’d worked extra hours and confessed that she was so tired of being on her feet that she’d taken a cab home. He’d removed her shoes and massaged her feet, then her calves. She had leant forward and kissed him. “I promise not to let your feet touch the floor,” he had told her. “Sounds good to me,” she said. He thought it had been good for both of them.

  He took another swallow and looked about. Framed football posters covered every inch of space and made the pub feel crowded even when it wasn’t.

  He hadn’t told Marcia about Jenny. Nothing to tell, really; he hadn’t kissed her. And it had been some time since he’d seen her. He rang her mobile and told her he wanted to call by.

  “I’m not home. I’m walking. I just left the Heath.”

  “Jenny, it’s after dark. Not safe.”

  And raining, but gently, a rain that distorted the landscape, elongating the limbs of the trees and making them look as ungainly as she felt. She wanted rain that would sting her face, rain that would cause an external pain to counter what she felt inside. “It gets dark too early, and the flat is as empty and quiet as the North Pole.”

  His in Ruislip as well. When he’d first moved to the London area, he’d taken the first flat available, planning to find a better one when he had time. But as the months passed, he’d discovered that since he used it so little – just for stowing his gear and getting a little kip – upgrading made no sense. It was still as small and stark as when he had let it. “Go home, Jenny. I’ll meet you there.”

  He arrived before she did and waited outside on the stoop.

  “The street lights make the wet pavement shine, but it’s poor compensation for always having to carry my umbrella,” she said.

  “How far away were you when I rang?” he asked as they went in together.

  “The farthest I’ve been. I didn’t have anything to hurry home for, so I explored the West Heath. It was nearly deserted, but the Hill Garden and pergola were beautiful.”

  He raised his eyebrows.

  “I had to look it up in the dictionary after I read about it,” she laughed. “A pergola is like an arbor, but large enough for you to walk beneath the arches. The one on the Heath has an elevated walkway, with roses and wisteria hugging the stone columns. The view is beautiful, quite a contrast with the wild woods around it.”

  “You walked all that way in the rain?”

  “The rain stopped and started, but it was dry when I reached Golders Hill Park. There were more people there, because it has a bandstand – no music today, however – and a small zoo. And a pub nearby with a typical British name, the Old Bull and Bush. They have a big bar, of course, but what caught my eye while I drank my coke was the wallpaper – bulls in all kinds of action poses. Reminded me of Texas. Would you like a beer?”

  “Coffee will do.”

&nbs
p; “I read an article recently that made me think of you,” she said as she made coffee for both of them. “Something about the Special Boat Service having its image brought up to Special Air Service standards.”

  He laughed shortly. “To qualify we had to pass their selection and then ours. We never felt we were second class citizens. And we never sought the limelight. We didn’t need others to recognise us to be proud of what we did.”

  “Did you jump off a diving board blindfolded? Wearing all your equipment?”

  “Where’d you get that?”

  “The newspaper, Simon. It also said you had to swim for two miles, canoe five miles at night, and then march for thirty. Compared to that, being a policeman must be easy.”

  “We carry firearms, love. And face low-lifes who do also. There’s risk.”

  She watched him finish his coffee. He always took it black. “Do you miss it, Simon? The SBS?”

  He paused. “I’ve been a copper a while now, and what I do is useful.”

  She set her cup aside, having barely sipped any of the coffee. “I miss Colin. At night the most. I miss having someone to talk to when I’m afraid.”

  “What are you afraid of?”

  She shrugged. “Nothing specific, but sometimes when I’m running errands and stuff, a creepy feeling comes over me, like something bad is about to happen. It isn’t a sudden fear, more a sense of something not being quite right. I just feel like I should get out of there, wherever I am. So I come back here and then feel suffocated and head out again.”