Killing Eva (18 page)

TWENTY FOUR

Eva was mesmerised
by the images on the laptop screens. She was aware she must be drugged as her thoughts were coming in confused bursts and she was talking to herself. The twirling computer-generated graphs and tables on the screens at the foot of her bed kept attracting her gaze. Each time she looked, the computer had added another line, dot or measure in colours that she didn't like. She vaguely noticed that her skull hurt when she moved her head to follow the movement, as if something had been drilled into it.

Eva was alone now in the zipped-up room which, in her moments of clarity, resembled a disease isolation tent. However, no one had been wearing facemasks so she could not be infectious.

But was she even sick?

Eva had lost much of her recent memory but she could not recall a point at which she had felt injury or illness worthy of this kind of confinement. So, why was she in this bed? A spark of anxiety lit her brain but faded again.

She just couldn't think clearly.

At the back of her mind was a drumming, tight feeling, like a voice shouting behind a shut door, but she couldn't really hear it properly so she continued to stare at the screen. And then she fell asleep.

At one point, she awoke to a velvety darkness, broken only by a large shaft of light that seemed to be shining directly onto her legs. She turned her head and realised that behind the zipped plastic there was a window and that this must be open as she could hear what sounded like the crunch of gravel outside. Then a figure had appeared on the other side of the plastic tenting, a figure with auburn hair. The figure had stopped and leaned in to the other side of the material so that all Eva could see was the oval of a pale, eyeless face staring in through the thick white plastic. She had shut her eyes tight and tried not to cry.

Between the fear, the spikes of almost supernatural horror and the muddy confusion in her mind, Eva could work nothing out. Whenever she tried to process her thoughts they simply got stuck in a viscose, honey-like cloud and then she forgot what she was thinking about.

At some point during one of the hours that she could hear the birds singing Eva opened her eyes to see that the plastic tent had been removed. She felt much less groggy and, as the wires that had also been attached to her had gone, she thought that perhaps she might like to get out of bed. She sat forward and pulled the covers back. The effort of trying to move her legs was intense, they seemed almost completely useless. Once again she felt a strong desire to just retreat into her drugged mind and she almost pulled her legs back under the sheet but this time something stopped her. She felt the skin on her legs prickle. Leg hair, she thought, looking down at her bare calves. She tried to calculate how long that might indicate it had been since she'd had a shower. She couldn't.

For several seconds, an urge to panic threatened. She took deep breaths and the fog descended just enough to quieten the anxiety response.

Looking around, she realised she had forgotten what she had been about to do. Then, a voice chimed in her mind ‘get out of the bed.'

Right
.

As she slipped over the edge, Eva realised her forearms were stinging and noticed two plasters stretching along the flesh of the insides. She looked down at them for several minutes but was unwilling to lift them up and look underneath; whatever was inside felt absolutely raw. Perhaps that could wait.

She stood up, shakily, and took a step. Then sat down quickly on the bed. She had been in that bed for some time, clearly, as her legs felt as if they had forgotten the natural human action of walking. A second wave of fear gripped her.
What has happened to me
? This time it was not misted over so quickly by the drug cloud.

Made determined by the fearful thoughts, she forced herself to get up and then stood on her toes, bent her knees and began moving her body around as if warming up for exercise. Gradually she began to feel more like she was inside her own skin.

She walked over to the window. The scene outside was remote, hilly and quite beautiful. Mist-shrouded mountains were all around, it was warm and not damp enough to be English. But there was nothing about the scene that gave her any lasting pleasure. All she felt was a sense of rapidly growing unease.

Irene gazed out of the window as the car sped through the open countryside; the sun was rising. They had taken a flight from Berlin to Barcelona Girona, arriving early and collecting the car left for them at the airport. They had already passed the Spanish border and were now heading at speed towards the tiny Pyrenees town of Céret, where Eva – whatever state she might be in – was located.

Irene was anxious, very anxious. This had to happen. And yet she felt a tiny nagging doubt over Eva and her own role in the girl's fate.

On a personal level, for Irene, Eva represented the second time in her life where emotions had clouded judgement. The first had been Eva's father.

Since Evan Scott there had been many times when Irene had looked back to that point and wondered what had overtaken her. She was living in a war zone, her world was chaos, and a love affair was a warm and wonderful place to escape to. Somehow it felt real, solid, when everything else was fleeting. But in a way her heart had tricked her because it was not real. If it had been real love then the two of them would have stayed together – got married, had children, remained together for decades. Then, although the situation was admittedly not perfect, any rational human could see that it was just life, that there was no need to do anything other than accept, forgive and move on. Because it would have been something real.

But that was not the case. Evan had returned to his family.

As she took in the breathtaking beauty of the French countryside Irene realised that was the point at which she had changed. After that, emotional isolation appealed. She simply shut her feelings away, no longer fought with herself over the ethics of right and wrong. Life became a series of goals, doing what she needed to do to move from one to the next and get what she wanted. And she felt nothing. Lines that had once seemed solid were crossed – the more of them she crossed, the less the crossing mattered.

Which is why she was where she was now. It was the inevitable final step along a path she knew she had always been on. Self-destruction disguised as ambition and success. She was no longer walking in the light.

Irene realised her assistant was looking at her in the mirror and wondered, for a second, whether she had given anything away. It was unlikely.

The metallic voice of the satnav directed them off the major motorway and they began to drive along smaller, more residential avenues. Céret was a picturesque town, with traditional steep cobbled streets, as well as some new-build houses – one of which they pulled into just as the sun began to climb in the sky.

They unloaded several suitcases; just another of the numerous ex-pat couples in the area – albeit with a slight age difference. Then they crunched over the gravel of the two-storey building which would be their home until… well, until it was done.

‘You're awake.'

Eva was walking down the stairs of what appeared to be a grand château, with an opulently decorated set of doors opening onto expansive lawns.

The comment came from a small man in what looked like a butler's suit who had emerged from a door as Eva creaked her way down the stairs.

How ridiculous, she thought, looking at his crisply pressed shirt.

‘I'm sorry, I don't know who you are.'

She still felt relaxed, as if no action was required. Something told her that, in some way, she was sedated still. Otherwise, she would surely be in panic mode. Fight or flight.

‘Would you like a drink – some coffee perhaps?'

She registered that the man had not tried to provide identification.

‘I would love some coffee,' she said, as she realised she really would.

‘Go and sit outside and I will bring it to you.'

Eva did as she was told, drifted through the front doors of the château, onto a large stone area overlooking broad, green lawns dotted with whirring sprinklers, a tennis court visible in the near distance. Her bare feet felt cold on the stone and she was instantly aware she had very little on.

She found a table and chairs and sat on the wood, which was warmer than the stone, lifted up her feet and placed them on a chair opposite.

The man returned, looking vaguely displeased, so she took her feet down.

He had with him a tray, but he didn't carry it as if it was natural, in fact he almost let the silver coffee pot slide off.

Eva recoiled, realising she wasn't entirely sure what she would have done if the pot had left the tray. Would the natural reaction have been to try and catch it? She didn't know.

With the coffee in front of her, the man began to depart.

‘Where am I?' she suddenly thought to ask at his retreating back. He turned as he walked and looked at her, but he didn't reply.

A smudge of anger clouded Eva's mind. And then disappeared.

She sat back in the chair, uneasily, and took several sips of the hot coffee. And then she downed the entire cup. She poured another cup and downed that too. And then a third.

She sat still, very still. She looked around at the scenery and realised this pretty place was vibrating with unease.

And that's when the clouds began to lift. Stimulated by the caffeine, her mind began to turn once again – fast. She stood up.

I'm in danger.

She wondered whether she had any possessions with her, perhaps a phone, but they would surely be upstairs. And besides, she thought as she looked around, this was too good an opportunity to miss. The land around was open, there was no one here. She should just go.

Draining the last drops of the coffee, she began to walk, first across the stone and then the wet grass. Then she began to run. No one stopped her, there were no panicked shouts, nothing happened.

The muscles in her legs complained but her heart was beating healthily and the blood pumping through her veins felt good.

Perhaps it was too early for anyone to notice, she thought, and began to pick up her pace. When she reached what looked like the edge of the property, there was a small stream running clear over pebbles with concrete banks on either side. She could jump it, easily.

She took a couple of steps back.

Her right arm began to throb.

She started a run up.

Both arms felt as if they were pulsating.

Eva continued to move. And then, suddenly, her body jerked forward and back; she howled and fell to the floor.

Joseph Smith watched as Eva lay on the wet grass, writhing.

She was clearly in agony although, from his position, he could not hear her – which was a shame.

He took a sip of the watery coffee he had made for himself before spitting it out in disgust. He missed the thick, dark coffee of his homeland.

He put down his binoculars, stood up and walked over to the sink of the small cottage he was occupying in the grounds of the extensive château.

The château in which he was not allowed to set foot.

He had wondered if his exclusion was simply because he'd had contact with Eva, whether she would recognise him, or whether it was something else.

Joseph, over the years, had worked with gangs and groups of all shapes and sizes – he was not particularly fussy about those for whom he killed, as long as someone had deep pockets to pay for it. In that time, he had noticed one thing – that racism (if you could call it that) went all ways. The human condition was so evident when it came to this fundamental issue of trust – you trust someone who is like you. You instinctively don't trust what you don't understand. No matter how advanced the human race became this would never change. No matter how civilsed we consider ourselves, he thought, it all boils down to the fact that we trust people who look like us – we assume that they
are
like us. And even if we make an effort to overcome those doubts it's still not the same as implicit trust.

Such implicit trust had often worked in his favour, which is why he took the time to think about it.

Yet others like him – whether from the same country, or of similar skin colour – would choose to trust him over another with a different heritage or a white face. That weakness was one of the easiest ways to gain an advantage. For he trusted no one – at all.

Joseph stopped. He realised he had become distracted. A surge of anger travelled through his body and he felt like banging his head against the wall.

He stood for several seconds until his pulse-rate began to normalise.

Abandoning the idea of making more coffee, he returned to the table. He looked through the binoculars.

Eva was no longer there.

He wondered why she had been so underdressed out on the lawn. He briefly considered what was being done to her, and why. But unless it affected his interests he didn't really care.

He put his hand in the pocket of his trousers and pulled out a key. A tiny metal key – the one he had stolen from the genetics scientist.

He turned it over and over in his hands, watching as it caught the light. It was small, but solid, hollow at one end and curved into a small circle at the other. And it was light, much lighter than it looked.

He tested its resistance by squeezing it between a powerful thumb and middle finger but it did not give.

He looked at it close up but there did not seem to be a single mark on it. There was apparently no indication as to what lock this key would fit. And then he saw it – lettering. It was only visible when the sunlight caught the edge of the key and only after he had pressed his thumb onto the metal.

Heat activated?

Must be.

Joseph looked at the blank key. He pressed his thumb hard on the metal, before turning it quickly to the light.

Three letters appeared, ‘…tas'.

The word he had seen before had been longer.