Killing Eva (10 page)

‘I'm fine really. I'm sorry, it was just a nightmare.'

‘You were sleeping?'

‘Yes, what time is it?'

He looked at her strangely. ‘It's 5pm.'

Eva had slept for most of the afternoon. She looked at the man. She could think of nothing else to say.

It was obvious he was waiting for something from her – some other explanation, an apology, perhaps a tip – but she was so tense she could hardly breathe. She desperately wanted to shut the door.

Finally, he nodded and she watched unmoving as he began to back away.

Eva pushed herself to action and quickly shut the door. As the locking mechanism clicked home, she leaned heavily against it. She shut her eyes and slid slowly down the door until she was sitting on the floor. She cradled her head in her hands, a low moan coming involuntarily from her. Why was she so panic stricken, she didn't feel as if she could cope.

She screwed her eyes shut.

The image was still there. The one she had awoken with.

It was a basement room. Her legs – in those socks – on a bed. Then there was nothing but black and screams. The couple she had seen outside the club, slumped on the floor, eyes lifeless, blood everywhere. And then – the thing that scared her most – the last image branded on her mind in that dark hotel room. A face.

Joseph Smith.

THIRTEEN

He looked at
himself in the mirror as he dressed in the bedroom of his suite. His face was shadowed and his eyes still bore the telltale dark circles of going without sleep for far too long. He couldn't remember the last time he hadn't looked like that. He had left a half-centimetre of stubble covering his cheeks and chin. It changed his appearance very slightly, no bad thing. But he had not gone for a full disguise. Whilst his instinct was he should be dead – that this had been the intention – he was aware of the threat to his safety now and, as far as he was concerned, awareness was all he needed to keep himself alive. Or perhaps, after all this time, he simply wanted to be found.

He pulled on a pair of charcoal grey trousers, cut close to the broad muscles of his thighs, and buttoned up a crisp white shirt. He was travelling business class to Berlin and he wanted to appear the faceless businessman. Except the suit was Tom Ford, as were the shoes.

He stopped and looked again at the mirror. Piercing dark eyes stared back at him. There was a moment of weariness, of the kind he had begun to experience more and more as the years had gone on. A feeling this could not be
it
. That there must be more. The thought itself sapped his energy, so he banished it as quickly as it had come.

He pulled on the suit jacket which, of course, fitted perfectly. He could understand why people would pay tens of thousands of pounds for ‘couture'. It was like wearing your own skin, only better.

He briefly wondered what Eva would make of seeing him in such an expensive suit. And then, even more intensely, he wondered about the moment when they were face to face. Would the light of recognition flare in her eyes or was he too changed and had too much happened?

He found himself fantasising the moment. How her dark eyes would widen – in surprise, disbelief, shock? Her hand would probably fly to her mouth as always happened when she was surprised. And then… and then what? He had no idea whether he would meet resistance or acceptance. He didn't want to think about it.

The phone rang and, in two large strides, he was beside it, receiver in his hand.

‘Yes.'

‘Your taxi is here, sir.'

‘Thank you.'

He put the phone down and scanned the suite for anything forgotten. He'd had nothing when he arrived, so there was little to remember. All his essentials had been sent to him covertly, in the usual way, and the rest he had purchased in London's finest stores, even though it galled him to waste so much money on everyday items. But he was following a pre-arranged plan and, because of that, he was not entirely autonomous.

He pulled the keycard from its holder by the door and the suite fell into darkness. He hadn't even drawn back the curtains the entire time he was there and he realised, suddenly, he wasn't sure whether it would be light outside. He shook his head angrily. Five years ago, that would not have happened, he would never have become so preoccupied with his thoughts.

He was changing.

Eva sat and stared at the piece of paper in her hand.

‘Do not leave Berlin. All the answers you seek are here.'

She put it down on the thick, satiny brown coverlet on the double bed, writing side up. She folded her legs underneath her and continued to stare at it, but no answers appeared.

Eventually, she slid down so that she was lying on her side, still looking at the piece of paper.

She closed her eyes. She was tired, her body ached, but her mind was restless.

It was now 7pm. She still couldn't get Joseph Smith's face out of her head. But why had she dreamed about him?

She had assumed the elements of her dream that had been drawn from reality were just fiction, but what if they were not? What if that had been a memory? A drug like scopolamine was an unknown quantity, she had never taken it before so she couldn't judge the most likely scenario. Which made her feel shaky and nervous. It did not help that she still felt drugged, the edges of her consciousness smudged.

Eva pushed herself back up so that she was sitting and then stood. With sudden energy, she began changing out of the leggings and T-shirt she had originally put on, into dark, tight jeans and a lightweight jumper – an almost fluoro shade of orange, in sharp contrast to her current mood.

She pulled on her coat and boots, grabbed her small, battered satchel, threw her phone and purse into it and strode towards the door, pulling the key card from its holder as she did so.

As the lights went out, the piece of paper that had been lying on the bed fluttered to the floor and landed writing side down.

Seconds later, she was striding along the thick, patterned carpet of the hotel corridor; she knew she had to move fast. If she didn't go outside the hotel, fear would overtake her and she wouldn't be able to do it.

She stood in the lift with two businessmen and a woman wearing a clinging gold dress, which shimmered in the bright lights. Eva tried not to choke on the vanilla-scented perfume, filling the lift so full it was almost tangible.

At the ground floor, she let the other guests exit before her and followed. Footsteps strong, stride firm. She was going to do this. Her heart felt as if it might explode.

She could see, through the glass doors of the hotel, it was dark outside.

Her memory-less brain terrified her. But she couldn't be in that room anymore. Or inside her own head. It was not a happy place.

As she crossed the lobby, she slowed her pace. Where was she even going? But she didn't stop. She just needed to be outside.

She pushed her way out through the hotel doors, stood and took some deep breaths. She glanced around – no one was paying her any attention. Of course they weren't, why would they?

Eva's reality had sometimes suffered at the hands of mild paranoia – she had never crossed the line into being unable to distinguish between the two but there had been times when it was blurred. Her life had been a series of lies, important people had concealed the truth from her at key moments. Sometimes this made it difficult for her to trust that the world was what it seemed to be. Wasn't it all a matter of perception anyway?

Eva tended to take what people said with a pinch of salt, which could isolate as much as protect. But recently – especially today – there was cause to indulge paranoia. And she had. However, now she had to distinguish her instincts from fear, even if it was instinct driving her out into the night. That was the thing about instincts, they often didn't seem to make sense.

With one last glance to left and right, Eva crossed the road from the hotel and set off along the pavement towards the nearest S-Bahn station. She had spent the last two hours alternating between fits of panic and fear, until she could not take it any longer. It had occurred to her that some clarity might be provided if she could go back – retrace her steps to the point where she left the club Berghain. It might trigger a memory and that was what was really driving her mad – the lack of information about what had occurred.

The next morning, she would have to return to London. She could not spend any more time or money on this trip. Which meant she had a matter of hours to do this or it would have to be forgotten forever – and, frankly, that was more frightening than the idea of being attacked again. At least, if the crime were repeated she might be able to find some answers.

The thought of being outside – vulnerable again – had terrified her. But the longer she sat in that hotel room waiting for someone else to solve the problem, the more afraid she would become.

The entrance to the S-Bahn station looked like an underpass to get mugged in.

Great, Eva thought, pulling her coat tighter around her.

Like many locations she had come across in Berlin, there was a random, inexplicable air of aggression or danger, as if something unspeakable had once happened in the spot and left behind a ghost of a feeling. Or perhaps she was imagining it.

She walked quickly into the station and began putting coins into the slot of the ticket machine. She bought a single to Berlin Ostbahnhof. She would have to do the rest on foot. Then she began to walk to the platform.

And that's when she began to feel uneasy.

For some reason, she kept walking towards the other end of the platform, keen to move away from the station entrance and maybe conceal herself behind a pillar until the train pulled into the station. She was sure she could hear it coming now. The faint rumble that indicated, in any mass transit system in the world, that a train was on its way. She checked which side the train would come in and then looked nervously up and down the track. Why were the hairs standing up on the back of her neck?

She pulled her sleeve back from her arm and looked down. Goosebumps.
Instinct
.

She found a wall to lean against and casually glanced down the platform towards the exit. Had she heard footsteps behind her as she walked to this spot? Or was she simply imagining that because she was scared? She pulled her sleeve back down to her wrist and took a step away from the wall.

At that moment, the whooshing and rumbling of the train became louder. It was almost at the station. She took another tentative step towards the edge of the platform, steadied herself as a silent gust of wind made her wobble slightly. She was just a pace from the edge of the platform now, ready to step into the warmth and light of the train. Where there would be other people and she could stop listening to paranoid thoughts circling around in her brain.

What happened next was so fast and so violent that Eva had no time to react. A pointed force smashed her hard between the shoulder blades, forcing her body to contract backwards and projecting her forward at the same time. She felt herself being pushed in the direction of the train track. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see the yellow train approaching. She resisted the force from behind, compelling her towards the tracks, but she was dizzy and her balance was shot. Then, with one final shove, the force released her and she fell forward. She turned as gravity dragged her down, her shoulder clipping the front of the S-Bahn train which bounced her straight back on the platform with its forward momentum. She skidded, stumbled and then fell against the wall separating the two directions of the platform. And there she sat like a rag doll.

‘There has been a lack of caution. We have taken too many chances.'

There were four people in the conversation, two in the room and two via video link.

The man with the Mediterranean tan was projected large on to the screen. He looked angry. ‘I don't think you realise the pressure we've been under. The deadlines have been incredible – unrealistic and almost completely unmanageable. You have parachuted someone in at the last minute, it has disrupted everything.'

‘But… you have managed it haven't you?'

‘No! I told you, we're already behind schedule and the additional issues – the failure of this technology – have left us in a very compromising position.'

‘Are all three of them free?'

‘Yes. For now.'

‘And what do you think they will do next?'

‘Heaven knows!' the man was becoming exasperated. He disliked this cold, logical approach, the appraising and the rationing, a life lived like that was a life lived at half speed. Action was what mattered. Besides, if he had not been forced to incorporate Paul into his plans, none of this would have ever arisen. ‘Honestly, how do you expect me to predict what they will do next?'

There was a tense silence in the room and across the video connection.

‘It's your job,' was the cold response.

‘Not strictly true.'

Again another silence. He knew he was pushing it.

‘This is a serious threat,' came the voice from the screen, ‘and you are both responsible. You will resolve it.'

The man's voice had assumed an unmistakably authoritative tone. Perhaps he had had enough pretending in this partnership. They were, after all, not really partners.

‘I don't understand what you expect me to do about this.'

‘You must make it work. There is not much time.'

FOURTEEN

The driver of
the S-Bahn train had been almost hysterical. Eva had heard him shouting at someone. She had heard his panic from her hiding place in the dark recesses of the entrance to the ticket hall, where she had pressed her shaking body into a half open doorway and waited for the noise level to die down. She had no idea what he was saying but she could hear the high pitch of his voice and the way his sentences were punctuated with semi-hyperventilated inhalations of breath. She clutched at her shoulder and held it tight as she waited for the chance to escape to her hotel. She didn't want to cry and ask for help but this pain was very real. Her biggest concern was she might have punctured something internally. The rest would heal but, presumably, that could kill her.

Why was this happening? She shut her eyes and tried to block out the waves of pain washing over her from the tip of her shoulder across her back and neck. But she couldn't and she began to cry softly.

He had, of course, visited Berlin many times but never so conspicuously. Usually, his MO was staying below the radar, being as inconspicuous as possible, but this time there was no point. They knew he was there, he knew they knew and, from the information he had, there was little sense in trying to conceal his movements or where he was going. Stand up and fight – face them. Finally. He was glad that was the path chosen, it suited him far better than being on the run.

‘Mitte, please,' he said as he entered one of the cream-coloured taxis waiting in line at the airport.

The driver nodded at him in the mirror and pulled the car out into the lanes to take them into the city. It was dark outside and the cover of the velvety blackness always gave him more comfort than the bright, harsh, revealing light of day.

He had chosen to fly into Berlin Tegel as he was familiar with the strange, circular airport and, without luggage, he had known he could go from his seat to the taxi in less than 15 minutes. Normally, he hated the exposed nature of these small airports, where anonymity was virtually impossible, but on this occasion he had been grateful for it. Now, as he sat in the back of the air conditioned taxi, watching the lights of the city flash past, he felt the flaws in all his planning pinching at the edges of his consciousness. He knew that, for all his predicting, foresight and rigid organisation, there was one unpredictable factor in all of this – Eva.

He had never been able to read her. Whether because she followed her instincts rather than doing what she should do, or was just very good at keeping her real feelings concealed, he didn't know. Either way, she had taken him by surprise more times than he cared to admit – even without meaning to – and, as she had neither formal training, nor apparently any intention to mislead him, that made her mercurial to deal with.

It was that instinct. He thought hard as the cab took him from leafy suburban streets and further into the heart of the city. For most people, instinct had become a dumbed-down reaction, something that was subject to guilt and fear, to the manipulation of advertisers and personal drive for wealth and personal status. Few people could hear their inner voice these days – or few cared to listen. This made them powerless, easy to read and simple to manipulate.

But not Eva. Somehow, Eva was fully plugged into her instinct – or most of the time at least. And that meant she could read people and situations almost as well as he could. Luckily for him, she didn't know this and she occasionally hesitated.

He wondered whether it was the life she had led – such adversity and so much to deal with from such a young age. Not for Eva the mind-numbing ties of an early marriage, the security of a predictable childhood, a regular job, a life that made her feel safe. She had existed outside many of society's structures from what he could see and yet, as a result, she seemed to know herself better. As the taxi pulled up to the address he had given the driver he realised that it made him feel emotion – which was unusual for him – sadness perhaps, that there was a chance that the events she was caught up in, that he had involved her in, could mean that she might never get the chance to live that potential. And that he might have to be the one to take it away.

Eva quietly closed the door of her hotel room and thumped against it. Immediately, she gasped in pain. More tears sprung to her eyes. She felt desperate. The last 48 hours had been too much. She almost couldn't take it. How could anyone handle so much?

At the back of her mind, she heard a calm, logical voice ‘you need to go to a hospital.' But she couldn't think straight and she didn't want to leave the safety of her room. Not now. Not yet.

She staggered over to the mini bar and, using her left hand, pulled open the faux oak wood panel disguising it and then the door behind. She reached for a miniature bottle of Jack Daniels, one of the only spirits other than brandy that she could drink straight, and twisted the tiny cap off with her teeth.

The liquid was cold. She felt it pour smoothly down her throat and then its cool warmth spread through her chest and into her gut. She threw the bottle into the bin and reached for the miniature gin, repeating the same movements in the space of seconds. The gin was not pleasant and she choked slightly as the sour liquor made its way into her body. But the effects were welcome. A slight dulling of the pain in her shoulder. An easing of the anxiety in her mind. She let the miniature gin bottle drop to the bed and took three deep breaths. Her mind was racing. Her nerve endings felt as if they were on fire, adrenaline seared through her system. At the back of her mind she knew that these reactions were not all her.

She walked over to the door. Checked it once again. Then she searched the room. She packed her suitcase. Methodical movements,
doing
. The only way she knew to calm herself down. Other than running. And she could not leave the hotel again in darkness. Not now.

Finally, as the mist of emotion settled into an alcohol induced calm, she tried to think back to the S-Bahn and work out what had happened to her. There was no way she had fallen, none whatsoever. She had felt something hit her in the back, between the shoulder blades, and something – presumably someone – pushing her towards the train tracks. What puzzled Eva was that there must have been witnesses. There must have been cameras on the station, it was all very public – and yet, from what she could make out, everyone at the station was as confused as she was. They all seemed to think she had jumped. Then there was the fact that pushing someone in front of a train wasn't exactly a subtle way to kill. Definitely not as efficient as a quick shot to the back of the head in one of the many dark and lonely spots in this city. Plus, she wondered whether the train would even have killed her – did they travel that fast?

Instinctively, it felt to Eva like a warning rather than an attempt on her life. Maybe it was even an attempt at disabling her, slowing her down. But why? And who? She had come to Berlin on an innocent business trip, entirely unconnected to other events that had begun to happen to her – the phone calls from Jackson, seeing that poor man being kidnapped outside her house – so why should everything suddenly be coming to a head in Berlin?

She remembered the piece of paper she had been given in Berghain and spotted it on the floor. It was now writing side down on the carpet. She stared at the small white shape and, as she did so, her eyes seemed to unfocus and then focus on it again. She looked harder and realised that, with the paper this way up, there was something marked on it she hadn't noticed before. On the back was a symbol, one that made her heart begin to beat faster again. It was hand drawn but it was definitely the same symbol she had seen throughout everything that had happened to her in Paris. It was an acorn.

It took Eva several minutes to recover from the shock of seeing the acorn on the back of the paper. It had been drawn in a very light green colour, so as to be almost invisible, and certainly not obvious from looking at the words on the other side. As soon as she saw it, her mind cleared of everything else. It was surely a connection between what was happening now and what had happened before. To Eva, acorn meant ACORN – the Association for the Control of Regenerative Networking – whose logo had appeared on everything from the antidote vaccines in the basement in Paraguay, to a building she had visited in France – in fact, the building at the same address as that of ‘kolychak', the bank her research had turned up only days before. There were connections forming. Lots of them. Eva's mind hesitated over the credibility of the connections, she began to wonder whether she shouldn't be more suspicious.

Then her phone rang. Sam. She ended the call. Instantly, the phone rang again, its harsh tone sounding loud in the room, as if it could be heard in the corridor beyond.

There was a sharp knock at the door. Eva froze. She silenced the phone. She took several steps towards the door, and looked for a spy hole, but there wasn't one.

‘I can see your feet, Eva.'

Sam's voice! Eva took a step back, puzzled. He was in Berlin? She turned to the mirror and tried to disguise the effects of the tears she had shed and the injuries she had suffered. She reached for the paper with the acorn on it and shoved it into her pocket. Cautiously, she opened the door. It was definitely Sam, who walked in brusquely, immediately spotting the empty miniatures and shaking his head disapprovingly. But he did not have the air of the Sam she knew.

‘What are you doing here?' she asked, in surprise.

‘Well, that's a nice way to greet your boyfriend.' His voice had a hard undertone she had never previously heard directed at her.

She closed the door. ‘Why didn't you tell me you were coming?'

He seemed to be looking around the hotel room.

‘You'd probably have taken off somewhere if you knew I was on my way. Wouldn't you?' He fixed her with a hard stare.

‘Have you come all this way to say that?'

‘You were supposed to come home yesterday.'

‘I decided to stay on.'

‘Do you
know
how irresponsible it is not to show up back at the office? That interview has a deadline, people are worried about you.'

‘The deadline is five weeks away, Sam, it's not exactly a stop-press piece. And we both know there isn't anyone in that office who would be genuinely worried about me, they're just colleagues.'

He stopped looking around the room and turned to face her. ‘I was worried about you.'

‘Why?'

‘You haven't responded to my messages and you haven't been in touch. I thought you were having some kind of breakdown.'

‘Why on earth would you think that?'

He hesitated for the first time since he had confidently stormed into the room.

‘I know you,' he said softly, apparently deciding to change his approach, ‘you're vulnerable, things have happened. I just didn't want to think of you here, dealing with stuff alone.'

He took a step towards Eva and reached for one of her hands. She didn't move.

He was lying. She could
feel
he was lying. His words were designed to make her believe he was right – that she was vulnerable and needed his help. It was the equivalent of telling her she was overreacting, over emotional; it was intended to have a crippling effect on her ability to discern what was actually happening.

She did not sense any genuine affection from him, perhaps she never had. But what other reason could there be for his showing up here like this? She had to be careful not to become too suspicious of the motives of absolutely everyone, despite everything that had happened. She could easily end up on the wrong side of crazy.

‘I just want to take care of you, Eva. I know things haven't been easy but I think, sometimes, you see life much more negatively than you need to. I can help, I can be there for you.'

Eva looked at him. The aesthetically perfect face, the apparent warmth streaming from his eyes, the hands held out towards her.

She felt nothing. Absolutely nothing.

In a large white cube of a house, high up in the Hollywood Hills, a memory stick was delivered via fast courier. A woman in pale denims took it and signed for it – she had been expecting the delivery. The sun was just setting over the west coast of America but still she made herself a large coffee. If this was what she had been told to expect she would not be sleeping tonight. Her work for such clients was not something she chose to share with anyone. It was not entirely legal – not so much what they asked of her, which was purely analysis – but what was revealed to her in the process. She worked in finance, she specialised in financial mechanisms, control and complex structuring. But these days it was not just legal, visible organisations that needed to understand how to make, and hold, money.

Yes, this work was lucrative. No, it didn't trouble her that she didn't know who it was for. She did it for a combination of the income and the insight. It was never ordinary. Like all her clients, the focus was on liquidity and control, but what was fascinating about this particular work stream was the disregard for law and regulation – and the need to circumvent it. That was very liberating although it could never be approached entirely without caution. Sometimes she wondered what these brains could do if employed legally rather than in a criminal capacity but she knew the answer was simple: they would do much less.

As the sun began to set, she took a seat at the breakfast bar in the kitchen. She sipped from the freshly made coffee and, for a second, listened to the sounds of her husband preparing the children for bed.

Then she opened the laptop reserved specially for this work – it was physically and electronically locked away, inaccessible to anyone but her with a password impossible to guess at and identification that only she could provide.

She opened the small padded packet and retrieved the memory stick inside. It was blue and looked scratched, as if it had already seen much use. She opened the envelope but there was nothing else – no note, no instructions. That meant she would simply be required to report back on the usual: viability, potential and risk.