The Hit List

by Holly Seddon

  Step.

  Step.

  Step.

  And finally they’re both trapped.

  Marianne

  Marianne’s head whistles and she bites hard on her hand to stop herself screaming.

  Throughout everything, Noah was the one person she trusted. Believing herself in danger, she fled here as if it was a sanctuary. But this is not a safe place, it’s a trap.

  ‘Marianne?’

  She doesn’t answer. Counts the footsteps as he comes nearer.

  ‘Are you up here?’

  He sounds like her Noah. The same gentle man who wept at those bereavement meetings, who carefully makes his daughter’s breakfast, packs her lunchbox. He sounds like the man who wraps his arms around Marianne in bed as if he’s stopping her from floating away. A man she was starting to love. A man she trusted. Another man I stupidly trusted.

  Perhaps if she stays quiet, he will assume that she’s already left again. She whispers to herself, perhaps, perhaps, perhaps. Tries to believe this is just another of those moments, the ones she’s been escaping all week. Just another of her nine lives gone.

  She put the key back under the plant pot, that’s good. And she locked the door from the inside. Yes, she could conceivably have got bored of waiting for him and left. What did she say in her message? She’d popped back here, that was it. Perhaps she popped back out again. Maybe she can stay quiet and bide her time. Wait for him to leave again or jump in the shower, then she can run. Get to the police and tell them everything, consequences be damned.

  ‘Your car’s outside, Marianne. I know you’re here.’

  Fuck.

  The handle rattles but the door doesn’t yield.

  ‘Hey,’ he says, a coolness to his voice. ‘What’s going on?’

  A pause. Then a rushing sound and a huge crack as Noah throws himself at the door. It bangs and bends but stays in place. Marianne covers her mouth with both hands.

  ‘You’re scaring me now!’ he says, his voice panicked rather than angry.

  ‘Leave me alone,’ she calls out. ‘Please, just let me go.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ He laughs in exasperation. ‘You came here! You’re in my house!’

  ‘I didn’t know who you were when I came here, I shouldn’t have come here, I didn’t know. I just want to leave but I can’t open the door with you out there.’ Her voice sounds high and hysterical.

  ‘What are you talking about?’ He’s still disguising his anger well. If she hadn’t found the Bluebell in his portfolio, she’d be opening up to him right now. Clinging to him like a life raft while he holds her head under the water.

  ‘You own the Bluebell Hotel,’ she says. It’s not a question.

  ‘Um, yeah, me and another person. What’s that got to do with anything?’

  ‘I know what you did there, at the Bluebell.’

  ‘What? What did I do there?’ That cynical laugh again, a blast of exasperation but something new too. Fear. ‘It’s been closed for a couple of years now,’ he adds, sounding flustered, the coolness gone. ‘We’ve been waiting for planning permission and it’s finally come through. It’s just an empty building, it’s nothing for you to worry about.’

  ‘Bullshit. I don’t know exactly what you did there but I know it was something bad. And I know Greg was involved and I think …’ She stops. ‘I think he was killed because of it. And maybe Jenna too and—’

  ‘Who the hell is Jenna? What are you talking about?’

  She feels him push the door carefully, feeling around its edge, testing its strength.

  ‘Why do you have a lock on the inside of your office door, Noah?’

  ‘To protect my valuables and business interests. Why shouldn’t I? And what’s that got to do with anything? I don’t know anyone called Jenna and I only know about Greg through you. Look, let me in and we can talk it all through, address your concerns.’ He’s switched to business lingo but his voice is soft, pleading almost, while changing the subject.

  ‘Most people would have a lock on the outside of their office, not one to lock them in. What didn’t you want Daisy walking in on?’ she says, her voice small. He doesn’t reply and she hears him sigh. A long, slow sigh.

  ‘Look, Marianne. Grief does funny things to people. I should know.’

  She shakes her head. ‘No. Don’t blame this on grief, don’t try that. This isn’t about me.’

  ‘And it’s only been a year,’ he continues, dropping his voice to the pitch she recognises as the one he uses when he wants to get her into bed. ‘You’re still processing everything. Maybe we rushed into things too soon, gave in to our feelings too early. But if you feel guilty, you’re lashing out at the wrong person here.’

  She says nothing, instead looks at the window, tries to gauge whether anyone could see her if she waved for help.

  ‘I’ve not done anything wrong,’ he says. ‘I don’t know why you have a problem with one of my investments, but it’s hardly a secret. I’ve told you all about that development. And other businesses too. I’ve not got any secrets from you, Marianne.’

  Has he told me about the Bluebell?

  She’d not really been interested in his work, hadn’t paid a lot of attention when he had talked about profit and loss or opportunities and risk. Maybe he had told her. Maybe. She closes her eyes and presses her eyelids with her thumbs.

  ‘Just open the door and we can talk it all through,’ he says.

  She stands up, bones aching with fear and tension. Maybe she could open the door. Maybe she could unburden herself, they could unpick these coincidences together. She could test him, ask him to come to the police with her. But … But.

  It’s not just the Bluebell, is it? There’s more.

  She turns from the door and switches Noah’s computer back on. It whirs loudly enough for him to question the noise. ‘What are you doing in there?’ The gentle voice is gone and he bangs on the door but she ignores it, staring at the screen, willing it to load.

  Yes, there it is.

  ‘Why have you been going on the dark web?’ she asks, trying to keep her voice under control.

  ‘What?’

  ‘I can see it now, the browser. I can click on it and see what page opens up, so you might as well be honest.’

  A long moment passes. He takes a sharp breath but still says nothing. More silence. For a moment she thinks he has slipped away, socked feet padding down the hall.

  ‘I …’ he starts, ‘I went on there because—’ He stops. She can hear him sobbing. Enough of this bullshit. She clicks in and waits for it to load. The page is blank, no historical tabs still open.

  ‘It was for Louise,’ he says, finally.

  Noah

  It started with a kidney.

  No, it started with a positive pregnancy test, grasped in Louise’s hand.

  ‘I’m pregnant,’ she said, fingers trembling as she offered it for him to see. ‘Oh my god, I’m pregnant.’ He stared at it. Two thick blue lines in a cheap bit of plastic.

  ‘But how?’ he finally managed to say and she started to sob. His heart sank as he realised they were happy tears.

  ‘Lou, we can’t,’ he said, pleading with the back of her head as she turned away from his expression. ‘It could kill you.’

  But this whole mess, this started with a kidney.

  Every month of the pregnancy had seen a deterioration. As the apple pip grew to a tennis ball to a grapefruit to a melon, his beautiful, healthy wife turned ever more grey, withering in front of him until only her stomach showed signs of life.

  ‘I’m so happy,’ she said. ‘I never thought I would be so lucky.’

  He begged the universe, held his hands in prayer, threw fistfuls of pennies into the wishing well in the park. But still the baby held on in there, growing ever stronger while its mother, its host, suffered a steep decline.

  They went private but it made no difference. Her kidneys were shot and having nicer flowers in the room at the hospital made no fucking differ
ence. She needed a new kidney, there was no other option.

  Everyone they knew was tested but there were no matches. Every time a fatal crash hit the news, he hoped and prayed they would get a call. Trawling for tragedy. His moral compass spinning.

  Soon he had a tiny baby and a sick wife to look after, and still no kidney was available. At night, he’d held Daisy to his chest while Louise slept, shushing and patting, apologising and crying while he logged on. The dark web. His last hope.

  *

  You could buy anything there; that was the rumour. It was even more of a Wild West back then than it is now. He followed rat runs and whispered links, combed dingy places while he covered his daughter’s eyes. There were false starts, obvious hoaxes and, eventually, an offer.

  He sent money. A lot of it. A Macedonian outfit with organs of all kinds, all blood types. A veritable warehouse of working parts. Except it wasn’t. There was never any kidney, there was never any hope. He wasted his precious time with her, he wasted savings he would need to rely on. Louise wasted away.

  After his wife died, he was held together by his daughter. His burning, angry love for her. His guilt. He told himself the anger would fade, but with every gummy smile from Daisy, every milestone her mother missed, the anger grew. He nursed thoughts of revenge, dared himself to do something. Anything to puncture the swelling balloon of rage.

  A couple of years passed. Still he couldn’t let it go. They’d robbed him of his time with Louise but more than that, they’d robbed him of hope.

  Daisy was sleeping at her grandparents’ when he did it. Taking a slug of cognac for nerves, left over from a happier Christmas. The Macedonian outfit had disappeared when he visited the forum on which he’d first found their advert.

  Another cognac sitting hot in his gut, he’d posted a clarion cry. Was anyone else scammed by them? Was anyone else raging? Did anyone want to join forces to stop this happening again?

  No one replied.

  After he’d called his in-laws to check Daisy had settled fine, he posted again. This time included his anonymised email address.

  Someone got in touch. They said they were the founder of Hacker Supermarket, as if he must have heard of that. He hadn’t. When he searched for it on the normal web, nothing came up. But they were sympathetic and angry on his behalf. Even hinted that they’d experienced a loss like his. And they wanted to hit those scammers where it hurt – and didn’t he?

  Noah replied that, yes, he did. He fucking well did want to hit them where it hurt. And then he poured the last of the cognac into his glass as he waited for a response. Perhaps this ‘hacker’ could track down the scammers, stop them hurting other people. Could he trust them? Should he get his hopes up? Maybe they’d come back asking for money and, god, well, he’d probably throw the bloody computer out the window if they did, he was so snarled up by then.

  But no. They didn’t want money. And they didn’t offer to hack anything, not at that point anyway. The proposal was something very different. Rather than track each scammer down – an impossible task – they would strangle their business another way: by providing an ‘ethical’ alternative.

  It appealed to the businessman in him. But more than anything it appealed to the grieving husband in him. For the first time since Lou held that damned pregnancy test – the best and worst thing that had happened to him – he felt genuinely hopeful. For all the complexity, the murkiness of what was being planned, of what he had signed on for, he felt something clean and pure. He felt renewed.

  First, they needed to build capital. Sure, they cut corners and used unconventional methods to take over businesses, but those people didn’t have a gun to their heads. Bribery, technically, but it was always their choice. And in exchange for keeping their secrets, Noah and his partner took over. It was for the greater good. Some of the businesses died, some thrived, and gradually Noah had a portfolio of income streams. He’d always had a natural flair for investment and business, but he was taking things to the next level. He was finally building a future for him and Daisy.

  The Bluebell came along at just the right moment.

  The owner, David Ross, was up to his neck in gambling debt. He didn’t need blackmailing, he was an eager seller. David grabbed the low-ball offer and agreed to stay on after the hotel closed down in exchange for a cash-in-hand stipend.

  For Noah, this whole endeavour was a passion project, a new way of life. Helping desperate people to source organs, saving other families from suffering like his had.

  And when they finally got it up and running, it worked well. His partner took care of the other sides of the online business, sides he didn’t ask too much about. But this part was genuinely life-changing for everyone. Everyone who deserved it, anyway. Happy clients got a second chance at life and so did happy donors – once their scars healed.

  Noah couldn’t save Louise, but he could help other people. And for a while, he really believed he was doing a good thing.

  Sam

  I’m on the middle floor. Upstairs, Noah Simpson has been doing everything wrong to try to get inside the office to Marianne. Banging the door, yelling, patronising her with thin excuses and provable lies. Men like him never learn. I was raised surrounded by men like him. My father was an exception. Not that he was hearts and rainbows, but he trusted me. He didn’t patronise me. Quite the opposite. He taught me how to handle myself, how to use anything around me to keep myself and my mother safe. If I had a knife when the moment came, I had the skills to use it. But he also taught me about rope, knots and sticks. How to use my body to make it seem stronger, bigger, than it really was. Other girls were not prepared so well.

  I think of the girls whose names are in that ledger. The women who were chopped about like they were cheap meat. I think of Cristina, just another cheap life. I think of the news story I read recently. It barely pricked the public’s consciousness and was immediately swallowed up and pushed down by articles on celebrity love rats and MP in-fighting. The body of a young girl found rotted under a pile of manure in a field in Surrey. Believed to be the victim of human trafficking but not matching any reported missing persons. No flesh left to examine but her dental work looked Eastern European.

  As I listen to Noah’s fairy-tale version of what they’d been up to, the final pieces fall into place. I know who is really behind this.

  Marianne

  ‘But what does Greg have to do with …’ She sucks in the air as the penny drops. ‘The donors,’ she says to Noah. ‘Were they—’

  ‘Yes, he found people willing to donate their organs.’

  ‘You paid him to find people?’ Greg who rescued the frogs? Who cried for every person he hadn’t helped? Who wouldn’t bring children into the world because the world was so fucking cruel? Greg who never had any money.

  ‘I don’t believe you.’

  ‘But you do, don’t you,’ Noah replies. ‘And for what it’s worth, he didn’t take payment. He gave it all to them.’

  She won’t let this point settle, won’t concede it. Even though, in the depths of her heart, she can believe it.

  ‘So are you still doing it?’ she cries out. ‘Still trading in body parts?’

  ‘No,’ he says, sounding almost apologetic. ‘It got too risky.’

  Marianne says nothing but reaches into her pocket and pulls at the unfamiliar little bulge there. A small purse, handmade and embroidered with the name ‘Lina’. Inside, there are a few coins, a five-pound note softened by hundreds of hands, and two frayed photographs. A young girl, no more than a teenager, with her arms around what looks like her family. In the second photo, one of the younger children from the family picture standing in front of a small house. It doesn’t look English but Marianne can’t guess where it is.

  ‘What happened to Lina?’ she says.

  ‘How did you—’ he starts. ‘What?’

  She stares at the photos. ‘Where is Lina now?’

  ‘Those girls,’ he says, quietly. ‘They knew the risks. And they
kept coming, even after some hiccups.’

  ‘Hiccups.’ She feels sick. ‘Did they even know about these hiccups?’

  He doesn’t answer, starts to rattle the handle again. ‘Come on, Marianne, it doesn’t have to be like this. We can talk it through, I can show you it’s over now.’

  ‘If it was working so well, why is it over? Because Greg died? Because you killed him?’

  ‘I didn’t kill your husband! And we had another source of supplies then anyway.’

  ‘Supplies,’ she repeats. Her blood feels cold as it rushes to her guts. ‘Supplies,’ she says again, swallowing back nausea.

  ‘I didn’t mean it like that, it’s just … It was easier to handle if I stayed dispassionate. If I got too involved I could have made mistakes and if I’d got caught, who would Daisy have then? And I wanted to go legit, I wanted to stop everything I was involved in that was in any way dodgy—’

  ‘More dodgy than black market organs?’ Marianne says.

  He pauses and she can hear him shuffling position, moving his trainers around on the hardwood floor.

  ‘It got out of hand,’ he says eventually. ‘And I’ve spent a lot of time unpicking it all and straightening it out. I don’t want to be that person any more, I’m parting ways with my business partner. I want to live a normal life, with Daisy and with you.’

  ‘You must think I’m insane,’ she shouts. ‘And there’s no way it was a coincidence that you just turned up at the same bereavement group on the other side of London.’

  ‘There was no coincidence to any of this,’ he says. ‘I had to plug any potential leaks, I had to find out if you knew anything. But you didn’t. You told me you’d gone through Greg’s things and you clearly hadn’t found anything, so I knew you were clean. I told my partner that you were clean, you were safe, you could be left alone. You’re someone who I might be able to build a future with. And I still want that future with you! Please, I never meant for anyone to get hurt.’

  ‘You’re trying to hurt me now!’ She thumps the desk.