by A. S. French
She peered through the vapour at the large hole in the wall, waiting for her hearing to return. The noise had been a deep rolling crack like the voice of God in a furious apocalyptic mood. Laurel staggered forward, putting her hand on Astrid’s shoulders as she surveyed the damage in the room. There was smoke everywhere and the smell of burning metal fused with concrete.
‘I’m going to push George up, keeping his weight as high as possible. Can you climb onto the chair and cut through the restraints?’ Astrid shouted.
Laurel didn’t need to reply, pushing her legs on to the furniture and reaching up with the knife.
‘I’m going to cut the bag away first,’ Laurel said to George as she held the plastic with one hand and pierced the bag with the blade.
‘You must be new,’ he said as she threw the bag onto the floor.
She turned her attention to the thick rope around his neck. It was tough to slice through the material, but she concentrated on nothing else, freeing him from his death trap in a couple of minutes. Astrid lowered him to the ground, her wrist throbbing as if it was in a pan of boiling water. She wanted to hang on to him, to talk to him, but she turned to Annie to release her.
‘Same procedure,’ she said to Laurel as she sat George in the chair.
Another couple of minutes and they’d finished, helping the hostages into the main room and counting their blessings. It had been fewer than ten minutes since the explosion, but nobody from outside the building had come to find out what had happened; now, they had to get away as quickly as possible.
‘Come on.’
Astrid pulled George to the door with her one good hand as Laurel and Annie followed. As they stumbled through the front and into the afternoon sun, she realised why nobody had rushed over to them. A huge steel band had taken over the whole of the quay, made up of dozens of musicians and their drums belting out tunes, surrounded by hundreds of people screaming and shouting. The noise was louder than the explosion they’d survived.
She was glad of the distraction. The pain in her wrist focused her mind as she searched for the instigator of all her problems. The Reaper had to be there somewhere, basking in the confusion and pain they’d caused.
As they stumbled out of the art gallery, I thought she was going to look right through me. But a large man dressed in the colours of Jamaica stepped between us, banging the drum so hard I thought he’d damage his hands. Some of his compatriots joined him, smiling as they wiggled their hips and created the sounds of a euphoric calypso. It was the distraction I needed to move to the side and watch as the four of them faltered into the open. My mind was a combination of emotions: a heady cocktail of disappointment nobody had died, but also joy at the prospect of installing more pain into her.
The cameras I’d placed inside George and Annie’s clothes still worked. They’d allow me the perfect opportunity to watch her ingenuity in action once again. She wouldn’t die. I didn’t want her to die; that wouldn’t have been sufficient punishment for her.
Watching them struggle as the clock counted down was a bittersweet joy. Her psychological suffering gladdened my heart as I worried she wouldn’t have enough time to do the right thing and save one of them, and herself. Bringing the lead wall from the art installation as protection was a stroke of genius. That incredible mind of hers had lost none of its spark. I was glad she was safe, but disappointed Dvorak or Cross hadn’t been mutilated, anticipating Astrid’s horror as she stared at the scarred body of her only friend or ex-lover. How disappointing that was.
I continued to watch from the safety of the shadows behind the steel band, seeing the four of them stagger towards their car. I ran through the video recordings again, flicking through them on my phone, making sure they hadn’t gone upstairs in the short time they were there. The shock of finding Cross inside the gallery and dealing with the danger they were in didn’t leave them enough time to discover the other surprise I’d placed upstairs.
The photos stared at me from the phone, Director Davis sitting on the table where I’d placed her. Plastic bag obscuring her haggard unmoving face, legs and arms crossed as I’d positioned them. Head pulled backwards, the end of the bag tied around the large lamp in the room as if she was a normal part of the furniture.
And her DNA was all over the body. No matter what Cross would tell the authorities, the evidence pointed towards Agent Astrid Snow. All that mattered now was the next step of the plan.
I turned the cameras back on as the car drove away, wondering how long it would take before Cross revealed who kidnapped him.
George and Annie were recovering in the back seat. Astrid’s wrist was so bad, she left the driving to Laurel.
‘How’s your hand?’ Laurel asked her.
Astrid couldn’t hide the pain etched on her face. ‘I’ll survive. We need to head back to London.’
Frustration was mixed with agony in her voice as she stared out the window to see their way blocked by a vast crowd of revellers. Adults and children dressed in gaudy coloured clothes wandered in front of them. More people garbed in giant animal costumes danced in the streets, dragging unsuspecting members of the public into their wild kingdom; a colossal mechanical spider teetered on its eight legs and crawled towards their unmoving car. The four of them caught their breath as the insect strode by them.
‘Why go back to London?’ Laurel said.
‘We have to get these two to the Agency so they can tell Davis everything they know. You can take them in while I wait somewhere safe.’
It was hard for Astrid to move her wrist too much as she thrust her good hand into the glove compartment, searching for painkillers. Before she could start looking, a female voice behind provided an unexpected distraction.
‘Davis is dead. That woman dragged her up the stairs at the gallery.’
It was the first time Annie Dvorak had spoken since they’d found her trussed up and hanging from the ceiling. The car moved, weaving its way through the excited crowd. Astrid’s shoulders slumped at the news of Davis’s death. She turned her head to look at the passengers, her mind racing ahead, neurones travelling faster than the car as it made it on to the main road and Laurel hit the accelerator.
‘No point going back to the Agency, then. They’ll lock us all up and throw away the keys.’ She dredged a smile from deep within her heart, gave it to George and gently took hold of his hand. ‘How are you feeling?’
The familiar sparkle was in his eyes, overshadowed by a combination of sadness and fear. ‘I have to tell you who did this, Astrid.’
They were travelling on the A3, heading through Queen Elizabeth Country Park.
‘There’s no need.’ She dropped her arm to the side, the discomfort growing the faster the car went. ‘I already know who it is.’ Laurel’s hands nearly slipped from the wheel, her eyes torn from the road, fixed to Astrid’s unmoving face. ‘Think about it.’
‘How do you know who the Reaper is?’
‘Somebody who loves me so much, their feelings have transformed into hate.’ There was no joy on her face as she spoke, just the utter disappointment with herself for not realising it sooner. But then again, it had been the perfect smokescreen.
Laurel kept the car moving forward while she waited for Astrid to continue. ‘We’ve all been fooled right from the very start.’ The sign to London whizzed by them. There were fewer than sixty miles to go. ‘Who loved me the most? So much so, when that love disappeared, their life collapsed.’
Laurel shrugged. ‘Your sister?’
‘It was some woman I’d never seen before,’ Sophisticated Annie said from the back of the car.
‘It was Cara Delaney,’ Astrid and George said in unison.
30 Camera Obscura
Silence engulfed the car, an oppressive vacuum hanging over them. Annie Dvorak stared at Astrid, her face weary and dotted with bits of ash from the explosion. After months of imprisonment, George seemed happy to be in the open again, even if it was inside a car. He held on to Astrid’s arm and squeez
ed. Traffic had stopped, and Laurel’s face was frozen at the moment. The car wasn’t going anywhere, and with her hands riveted to the wheel, she spoke.
‘You think Cara Delaney is the Reaper?’
Astrid’s mind sprinted through all the times she’d spent with Cara, thinking about their life together and those things they hadn’t shared with anyone but each other. Outside, it was a complete gridlock of metal cans designed to go somewhere, but stuck to the concrete. Red and blue flashing lights were behind them before being joined by a cacophony of sirens. Her arm hung down her side, numb to the point where she’d forgotten about the pain. The tension increased in the car, with sighs of relief when the emergency vehicles whizzed past. She squeezed at the discomfort in her wrist.
‘You might as well turn the engine off, Laurel. We might be here for a while.’
Astrid rolled down the window as everything in front of them stopped. The cold air whistled between them, disturbing the silence, prompting Laurel to speak.
‘Cara Delaney is dead.’
George didn’t attempt to hide his anger. ‘Then she must be a pretty solid ghost or have a twin sister.’
‘Do we need to get you two to a hospital or doctor?’
Astrid peered into the back of the car, appearing to have no desire to expand upon the bombshell she’d dropped. George leant forward, putting his hand on her cheek as the tension coursed through her body.
‘I think you’re the one who needs medical attention.’
‘I’m fine, George. I need to get a bandage around this and take some of the pressure off. And painkillers would help.’
‘Cara Delaney is dead,’ Laurel said again.
‘No,’ Astrid said. ‘She fooled us from the start; a classic case of misdirection.’
I wanted to believe Cara was dead.
George’s skin shivered as he relived his ordeal. ‘I didn’t recognise her at first when she came to my door. I was half-awake, expecting a delivery, and she wore a disguise. She mentioned your name, Astrid, and before I could react, she was inside the house, and I fell to the floor. Then I was locked in a room, forced to listen to her tirades against the rest of the world. The hate she has for you, Astrid. She kept me there for months.’
Astrid grimaced at the sadness in his voice, his normal assertive tone eaten away by his captivity until it was a thin, wispy imitation of what it used to be. His eyes had shrunk into their sockets, so it wasn’t easy to see the vivid hazelnut shade of brown which lived there. She placed her hands on his, clasping his fingers, determined to bring his spark back, to reignite the vivacity she’d always known. She ignored the ache in her wrist, holding on to his hands until Laurel spoke again. Then she turned to face the woman driving the car.
‘What about the body discovered in Berlin?’
The lights flashed ahead of them, but the sirens had stopped wailing. Annie Dvorak breathed heavily in the back, her gaze fixed on the younger woman.
‘Cara was, is, the most resourceful person I’ve ever met. She’d suffer as much as she needed to complete her objectives.’ Astrid rested her damaged wrist in her good hand. ‘She must have planned this for a long time. It wouldn’t have been hard to find somebody of similar weight, height and facial features. Then she snipped her doppelganger’s fingers off and dumped them somewhere. While we all thought it was a serial killer collecting trophies, she used this to hide behind everyone believing she was dead.’ There was admiration in Astrid’s voice, regardless of how much pain it had cost her and those murdered agents. ‘And Frank covered up anything out of the ordinary in the autopsy or from the coroner.’
She remembered how much Frank Delaney hated her and how he said he’d do anything for his sister.
‘She killed her brother?’ Pain lurked in Laurel’s eyes.
‘They had a complicated relationship.’
Astrid opened the door and stepped onto the side of the road. Up ahead, the traffic was jammed as far as she could see. Laurel got out the car, walking around to stand next to her.
‘What aren’t you telling me?’
Astrid stared beyond the flashing lights, wondering how many were dead or injured. These feelings of concern and empathy were both wondrous and crippling, but she didn’t want them hampering her in the pursuit of Cara Delaney.
‘Cara is damaged. I’m damaged. It’s what drew us together.’ The slight tremor in her lips betrayed the calmness in her voice. ‘She was already broken when we met. I just created more pieces that she couldn’t put back together.’
‘Damaged, in what way?’ Laurel said.
The drivers on the opposite side slowed down to gawp at the accident before accelerating towards Portsmouth. The sun was low in the sky, with vast shards of yellow shooting through the blue and white canvas, warming them both as they stared at the destruction ahead.
‘I was twenty-three when we met. She was twenty-one. I was the first person to say “I love you” to her.’
Astrid stood at the roadside as the lights went by on the other side, her mind a jumble of sights and sounds of Cara Delaney: Cara’s eternal sobbing when she told her it was over; her anguished face when Astrid ignored all the pleading. The memories were as if she gazed at an alternative version of herself which didn’t exist anymore.
‘You ended the relationship, I get that, but why would it create such bitterness in her?’
Astrid turned to Laurel and told her about Cara Delaney’s early life.
‘Cara grew up in a household where she believed she was invisible. She was a non-person to her parents and her brother. Mother and father showed her no emotions, took no interest in her life beyond food, clothes and shelter. Whether intentional or not, they denied her the one thing she desperately needed. All her life, she cried out for love, and then she thought she’d found it with me. It was different for me. My parents were violent and abusive; nothing but negative emotions.’
Sorrow, remorse, sadness and regret saturated Astrid’s words. There was a stone in her heart, and she feared the weight would drag her into an inescapable abyss. ‘When Cara unburdened herself to me, I was struck by the similarities between us. There were many differences, but the emotional wreckage was the same. I thought Cara’s revelations would release my feelings from the crippling burden oppressing me, that they would produce a spark of empathy for the woman I wanted to love. But it was the opposite, forcing my memories back into the void at the centre of me and pushing Cara away. I knew I’d hate her for it if I didn’t get away from her.’
‘And that’s why you ended it in Berlin?’
‘I had to. Cara was starting to unravel, and I couldn’t help her. It had taken me a long time to get control of my past, and I wouldn’t let her problems resurrect mine; especially when she became obsessed with things beyond the reach of her memory.’
‘What things?’
‘She believed something terrible happened to her when she was a child. Cara didn’t know if it was real or if it was a false memory. Either way, it messed up her head at a time when she needed love and support from those who didn’t provide it. And that confusion never left her.’
‘What about Cara’s brother? What about Frank?’ The vehicles started to move ahead of them, and they would have to get back into the car soon. ‘Why would she kill him?’
‘Like I said, it was a complicated relationship. In the Delaney household, both kids were ignored, bereft of love and any encouragement. Frank handled it better than Cara, six years difference between them in age. She blamed him for not looking after her, forgetting he was only a kid himself and that the adults in the house never took any responsibility themselves. I think she resented him all her life, while he loved her, but was incapable of showing it.’
‘She was waiting for someone like you to come along and give her everything she’d wanted but never had.’ Laurel laid her fingers on Astrid’s right cheek.
‘And then I took it from her again.’ Astrid turned away and slipped into the car. Laurel got inside and swi
tched on the engine as Annie and George sat silently in the back. ‘We need to get you two safe.’
The pain receded in her wrist, allowing her to move it a little. She was wishing she had more time to get reacquainted with George when something caught her attention. A tiny light flickered on his shirt, a few inches below his neck, and there was something similar on Annie. She reached across to him, placed her fingers on the top button, and found the miniature camera hiding there. She pulled it away in one go, turned her head to the front of the car, and held the device up to the light. She peered straight into it, knowing Cara was at the other end.
‘That’s an Agency surveillance camera,’ Laurel said.
‘She’s been spying on us the whole time.’ Hidden fingers clawed at Astrid’s gut as the car passed the debris of the accident. She stared at the device, hoping her piercing gaze would travel down the connection and smash Cara straight between the eyes. ‘This is good for us. George can take these into the Agency and they’ll be able to trace where she is, or perhaps retrieve some of what came through both cameras.’
Astrid clasped her fingers over the lens, obscuring anything Cara could see. She turned back to Annie, reached over and removed her camera. With both devices in her hand, she fixed on the windscreen. They were thirty miles from London, and the road was clear. She was about to drop the cameras into her pocket when they started vibrating inside her hand: sounds hummed from both of them.
‘What’s that music?’ Laurel asked.
Astrid opened her fingers, recognising the song as soon as the noise hit her ears.
‘It’s Suffragette City.’
