Kill or Die

by Samantha Lee Howe

  As I take a shower in the new house – almost a clone of the previous safe house – I try to wash away the deep depression that the possible revelations about Neva’s motivation have plummeted me into.

  I had begun to trust her and, coupled with my confused emotional connection to Neva, this is all so hard to take.

  I get into the strange bed and try to sleep but my broken dreams are full of anxiety and anger.

  Chapter Fifty-Eight

  Bill Kent

  Bill Kent pulls the door down on his garage and locks in his expensive tools. It’s late and he’s spent the day building a bespoke bookcase for a customer in Surbiton. The shelving unit is now in the back of his van to be delivered and for the job to be finished first thing in the morning.

  ‘I didn’t think you’d still be here,’ says a voice behind him.

  Bill turns and finds himself face to face with Angie … only she’s no longer wearing the blonde bob wig. Now she has long red locks. Bill wonders if these are genuine because he’s never had contact with her except as Angie.

  ‘Christ! What are you doing here?’ he says looking around.

  ‘They found the body?’ she says.

  Bill nods. ‘Yeah. Had to give a witness statement, but I said what you told me to.’

  ‘Let’s go up to your flat,’ Angie says.

  ‘Okay, but what if … you know … we are being watched?’

  ‘The coast is clear,’ she says.

  Kent leads her away from the double garage and to the front of the apartment block. He opens the door and they both go inside. She follows him up to his apartment on the first floor.

  Angie glances at the police tape covering her former apartment. Then she follows Kent to his flat across the landing.

  Kent unlocks the door and they go inside.

  Angie glances around as she closes the door behind them.

  ‘It was quite hilarious,’ he says now. ‘Cops and MI5 in here, drinking cups of tea. Best acting job I’ve ever done. I was all tearful and upset.’

  ‘Where did you keep her?’ Angie asks.

  Kent frowns. ‘You know she was restrained in the bedroom.’ He glances at the door of his bedroom.

  ‘Did you get rid of the restraints?’ Angie asks.

  ‘Why? You fancy trying them out?’

  Angie walks to the bedroom.

  ‘Look, you’ve nothing to worry about. They don’t suspect a thing,’ Kent says. ‘I was just a casual neighbour.’

  Angie opens the bedroom door and walks in. She sees twin beds, one of which has a metal grilled headboard. She examines it, sees the scratches from the cuffs that had once held Angela Carter.

  ‘What’s up?’ Kent says from the door.

  ‘While I was … on the mission,’ Angie says. ‘What happened here?’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Kent says.

  ‘Tell me how the end went?’

  ‘Ah, get off on the detail, do you?’ Kent says.

  Angie glares at him.

  ‘Okay. Well, I know you said we had to put her in the car and I should complain about noise and they’d come and find her. Well, when I got your note, I was a bit surprised.’

  ‘What note?’ Angie asks.

  ‘I destroyed it, but you said, when the baby comes, to call this number and they’d take care of everything,’ Kent says.

  ‘Okay. So you got my note. How did you know it was genuine?’ Angie asks.

  ‘I get it, this is a test? It was left in the letterbox. Like usual. A brown envelope, with another envelope inside for me to leave with the reply. I kept the number and rang it when the kid was born,’ Kent says.

  ‘So the baby was born. Was it alive?’ Angie asks.

  ‘Yes. Screamed its head off – I was a bit worried we’d have complaints from the tenants below. Then I remembered that you’d taken care of that already and the place was empty.’

  ‘Boy or girl?’ Angie asks.

  ‘Sentimental over kiddies, are you?’ asks Kent.

  ‘Answer my question,’ she says.

  Kent frowns.

  ‘Boy. Your boss was pleased,’ Kent says. ‘Anyway, they came to get it and told me to finish her off.’

  Angie nods. ‘And how did you go about that?’

  ‘Well, I thought you wouldn’t mind if I had a little fun, but then I thought about the DNA. You’d gone on about that a lot. So I strangled her a bit. Watched her eyes bulge. She was all scared… I―’

  ‘Liked it?’ Angie asks. She has a half smile on her lips as Kent speaks.

  ‘Yeah…’ His eyes glaze a little as though he’s reliving the feeling of having his hands around Angela Carter’s throat.

  ‘You see, that’s the problem with you,’ she says. ‘I told you to keep her alive. I told you to look after her. Not hurt her. Didn’t I?’ Angie says.

  ‘Well, yeah, but once you didn’t need―’

  Kent’s words are cut off as she grabs him by the throat. He’s not a tall man and she’s strong and cold and he knows she’s capable of snapping his neck with barely a twitch. Kent remains still as she holds him.

  She releases him suddenly. ‘Where’s that number?’ she says.

  Kent pulls his mobile phone from his pocket. Angie snatches it from him. She memorises the number and then deletes it from Kent’s phone.

  ‘I know what you did to her,’ she says. ‘I saw the autopsy report. I wanted her alive. I didn’t authorise this and your instructions were only to come from me. You’ve caused me a lot of trouble, Kent.’

  Her hand flicks out and the knife slices across Kent’s throat. His hands fly up to his neck as the blood gushes down over his pale blue T-shirt, turning the fabric aubergine.

  As he falls to the floor, unable to stop the bleeding, Kent watches her go into his bathroom. Through muffled ears he hears running water.

  As Angie walks back, he sees her push the knife back up her sleeve and remove the long red wig. Underneath is strawberry blonde hair.

  His eyes glaze over as she walks from the room, leaving him dying and bleeding out on his bedroom floor.

  Chapter Fifty-Nine

  Solomon

  Solomon lies on top of a low bunk in a cell. He has no idea where he is. They took him from the Tower Bridge Hotel and then he spent hours telling them all about Subra’s plans.

  There is a cathartic relief in telling someone what Subra had forced him to do, but still, he can’t sleep. It is as though the blindfold he was peeking around has at last been removed. Every detail of what has happened ever since he met Subra now repeats over and over behind his eyes, as though he is a dying man reliving the key moments of his life.

  He finds his life lacking and desperate. A series of horrific mistakes. Distant from it all, he can see the experiences for what they were. He fell for the glitz of Subra, and the money, always in abundance, was a contributing factor.

  That night he develops an unrealistic fear of the dark. In the cell, a box barely big enough to pace, he feels as though he is already in a coffin, lying underground waiting to suffocate as claustrophobia swamps him.

  The panic rises in him. He imagines Angela’s ghost lurking in the corner of the room, and when he drifts to sleep, he jerks awake thinking he hears the sound of a crying baby.

  When the hysteria threatens to overwhelm him, he gets off the bunk, trips over the table and chair that fill the corner nearest the door, and starts to bang on the metal, calling for help.

  A duty officer comes. He opens the flap in the door and looks in. Light bursts into the space, dispelling the phantoms of Solomon’s guilt.

  ‘Please,’ he begs. ‘I can’t sleep in the dark. Not tonight.’

  They send a doctor in to sedate him. But the drug just makes him woozy, and ultimately his body fights to shake it off as his terror increases.

  They’ve taken his watch and belt. Even the laces from his shoes, though he can’t imagine what they expected him to do with those. And so the pitch blackness remains unrelenting.

/>   ‘Please,’ he cries again. ‘Please. I can’t be alone in this dark.’

  The duty officer takes pity on him and leaves the flap open, letting light from the corridor drift in.

  It calms him until his mind clears and he lies thinking about Angela – and Angie, whom he could never confuse with the woman he loved.

  Angela is dead. He should have known, should have felt it. And above all he should have been able to stop them taking that plane. Instead, he’d used his skills to give them access to it. All those deaths were on his hands, including Angela’s.

  Subra would have killed me, he thinks. But it’s no excuse and he rubs his palms together as though he can remove the invisible stains. I’m a coward.

  Just past midnight, Solomon drifts off to sleep, as the doctor’s sedative begins to work. He dreams of Angela, smiling and flirty in Dubai. And then he feels a tug as his body is hoisted up.

  He’s standing now on a precipice, teetering on the edge. His confused and drugged brain recognises danger and his mind, flushed with flight-mode adrenaline, wakes.

  He’s standing on the chair in his room. Something is wrapped around his throat.

  He looks around. The door to the corridor is open and a female figure stands there, silhouetted. Though he can’t make out her features, he knows it is her. Angela: come to take her revenge.

  But no. The dead only rise in fairy tales, and Solomon reminds himself of this.

  ‘I loved you,’ he says. ‘No! Not you!’

  She looks up at him and Solomon knows then this is no ghost of the woman he loved, but the reality of a murderer.

  ‘Angie…’ he says as the chair is kicked out from under him.

  His neck doesn’t snap and so it’s a slow death that chokes away the air, crushing his throat. His befuddled and dying brain almost sees this as poetic. He’ll die as he deserves, and maybe if there’s a god he will see Angela again.

  The cell door closes and locks as his feet kick in an unconscious effort to flee. And then the flap is slowly drawn closed. Solomon is dropped once more into the darkness, making the fear of this cell becoming his coffin very much a reality.

  Chapter Sixty

  Annalise

  Annalise sits back in her first-class seat. She’s home free again and she’s delighted with the outcome. She couldn’t have planned it better. Subra, a thorn in her side, is now dead. And Michael is now even more in her sights. It is only a matter of time before she brings both him and Neva back into the fold and she will welcome them both with open arms.

  How incredibly stupid Subra was to think that Beech had trusted her with his biggest asset. Beech had known all along that she was working with the Almunazama.

  No, Subra’s knowledge was only half the story, and there was Kritta who owned the other half. Mia. Oh yes, Mia: the key to Beech’s empire.

  She accepts a drink from the flight attendant and finds herself chuckling. Her private jet is up in the air, the Network are still under her thumb, and Subra’s attempted, and failed, coup will knock back any future attempts at a takeover for a while. She is flying high in every way.

  She studies the luxurious cabin of the plane. Once Beech’s personal transport, it has a jacuzzi bathroom, and a bedroom at the tail end, as well as this lovely sofa relaxation area, with a personal bar.

  As they climb further up into the air, Annalise’s phone, attached to the onboard Wi-Fi, receives a WhatsApp call.

  She glances down at the number and then answers.

  ‘It’s done,’ a voice says on the other end.

  ‘Well done. I knew I could rely on you,’ Annalise says. ‘You can come home to me soon, my little one.’

  The call ends and Annalise sips her drink once more.

  There’s noise from in the bedroom, and she nods to her security guard to go and check on its occupants, trussed up and drugged. She is taking Kritta and Stefan back to her chateau. There she will have the time to get all she wants from them before she rids herself of yet another dent in the Network’s armour.

  The net is closing around the other committee members, but this is just the beginning. Annalise has many plans for the future as she deploys and infiltrates with her own personal, and very loyal, army.

  She sips her drink. The gold locket around her neck feels heavy.

  As she often does, Annalise opens it up. She looks inside at the picture of a cute five-year-old child on one side, and the lock of hair, trapped behind plastic, on the other. Strawberry blonde, the same colour her own hair was once, but now it is pure white. The picture was taken on the day that Annalise handed her over to the Network’s chief procurer, Tracey Herod.

  Neva, my child. You continue to do me proud.

  Annalise closes her eyes. She gloats on her achievements. Twenty years in the planning and she is almost there. Even Subra, a tremendous strategist, did not have such foresight.

  As the plane draws closer to its destination Annalise relaxes in her seat. Not long now and the Network and the Almunazama will both belong to her.

  Chapter Sixty-One

  Michael

  ‘Pull him down,’ I say.

  Elliot Baker, ever reliable, is there to do what’s necessary. ‘Sometime between midnight and 2 a.m.’, he predicts, as the guards haul down Granger’s body, found that morning hanging in his cell.

  ‘I want all the security footage for last night,’ I say.

  As I walk away, leaving Elliot to do his job, Ray calls me.

  ‘It was a busy twenty-four hours,’ he says. ‘Bill Kent was found dead in his apartment this morning too.’

  ‘Who’s Bill Kent?’

  ‘He was the man who lived opposite the doppelgänger Angela Carter. It looks like he was more involved than we realised. Get over here, I need your observation skills, and then I want Baker here when he’s done with Granger.’

  Later I go to the apartment. I hadn’t read the transcripts of Kent’s interview about Carter, there’d been so much happening, and Leon and Beth had been dealing with him, not me, and so it was one of those things I had to catch up on.

  Therefore, I’m not surprised to find both Leon and Beth at the scene.

  ‘He didn’t appear to know much,’ says Beth as I reach the top of the stairs. Ray is keeping everyone outside now that forensics have taken samples and photographs, but he doesn’t want to move the body until I see it.

  I go inside after pulling on a crime scene suit over my clothing as we don’t want any cross contamination.

  ‘In the bedroom,’ says Ray.

  Kent died kneeling and then keeled over into his own blood. His throat has been cut. I examine the wound but have to take a breath as I know whose MO this is. I go into the bathroom and smell bleach, see that the sink is washed out. I note that any and all evidence has been removed.

  ‘Mike?’ says Ray from the living room door.

  ‘It’s her,’ I say. ‘Neva.’

  ‘We found restraints and evidence that we think will prove Carter was being held here,’ says Ray. ‘In one of the drawers there were newborn nappies and clothing.’

  ‘No sign of the child?’ I ask.

  ‘No. But we can guess who has it.’

  I feel sick as I walk past Ray but I try to do my job. Pointing out everything I observe as I move through the flat. Leon and Beth remain quiet out on the landing, and I consider that both of them feel guilty for not picking up on something about Kent. I wonder if I would have felt something, had some gut reaction to Kent, if they’d allowed me to come that day. But I squash this thought, recognising it for what it is: pointless and arrogant.

  Whatever Kent knew doesn’t matter because he’s not telling anyone now.

  Afterwards I return to the safe house, depression hanging heavy on my heart. I’m haunted by the image of Neva moving through Kent’s apartment.

  In the kitchen I pour myself a stiff drink.

  Idiot! I say to myself. For all my education, I’ve been led along by my cock.

  But I know this
isn’t strictly true. Neva means something more to me than that. But was it all a game to her in the end? I’m still struggling to accept her betrayal after the many times she’s had my back.

  This is the strange place I live in. These are the dark and confused corners my mind reaches into. I try to shake away the pointless rage and push aside what I believe I know of her, focusing on the facts. She kills him. She cleans up after herself. The evidence at Kent’s appears to be overwhelming.

  When I weigh everything up, I can no longer deny that Neva was involved. She was probably Angie, as Granger said; why else was his silence so important? Hadn’t Neva told me she could get to anyone, and if MI5 had them they were ‘sitting ducks’? Which can mean only one thing: Neva lied to me. She played me. All along I’ve been her foil. And worst of all, she almost gained access to Archive through me. The reality of her betrayal sinks into my unwilling mind. I switch my focus from the sadness it brings. I turn on the assassin inside me, trying to freeze out the pain, but Beech’s Michael is pushed out and away as my anger rises in a way I’ve never experienced before.

  The killer inside me analyses my fury. It has nothing to do with ego: it’s not because Neva outsmarted me. It goes way deeper than that: how can I ever forgive that she made me believe in her? How can I ever forget the promise she gave of a new and fuller life? Promises that scatter now in the wind like cheap paper confetti.

  To calm the rage, I make myself some promises.

  I’m going to catch Neva. I’m going to end this and when I do, I’m going to make her admit every single lie she’s ever told me. And in doing so, I’m going to take back the heart that I gave her. And after that, I might even kill her for her treachery.