Kindred Intentions

by Rita Carla Francesca Monticelli

  It was just an impression, unfortunately.

  She wasn’t even wearing a wristwatch to calculate how far from the city she was. She had stopped using it for years. With her mobile phone always with her, what use was it anyway?

  The pace became more regular. They were on a straight road again, but judging by the reduced noise, they were travelling more slowly. Sometimes she perceived a jerk, a steering, a braking, followed by an acceleration. Then all at once the car started jumping, repeatedly. A country lane.

  Amelia shuddered. He was taking her to the middle of the country to kill and bury her. An image, born of a thousand films and TV series, came to life in her head. He would make her dig her own grave. At least, there was no spade in the boot.

  Minutes, many minutes, passed. Innumerable films with as many summary executions crowded her mind. She couldn’t stand it anymore.

  All of a sudden there was a braking, more abrupt than the previous ones. Her face hit the panel of the backseat. Then the car made what seemed like a ninety-degree turn. It went on for some more seconds at slow speed, then it stopped.

  The moment had come.

  Amelia tightened her grip on the bottle. She would fight. Perhaps she would die anyway, but she would not make it easy for him and she would not beg.

  The entire vehicle vibrated, when a door was slammed closed. She pricked up her ears to hear his footsteps, but they blended with the drumming of her heart. She tried to imagine the man walking around the car, placing his hand on the boot hatch, and opening it.

  Only nothing of the kind actually happened.

  The silence was absolute. Little by little Amelia calmed down; her mind was considering more options. That was a cold-blooded assassin who didn’t hesitate to kill someone in a public place. Why would he go through all the trouble of hiding her corpse? After all, she was nobody. She had been called to be part of that investigation team for just a week. And that was what worried her. She had no value even as a hostage.

  The hatch burst open.

  Fuck, she was unprepared. She tried to snap up and hit the man, but the light penetrated the narrow space she had been in for who knew how long with such a violence that for a moment she could see absolutely nothing. Her movement missed its target. A hand grabbed her armed wrist.

  “Behave.” It didn’t seem the same voice.

  As she reopened her eyes with difficulty, Amelia discerned two men in dark clothes. She recognised the one on the right. It was the killer. She would be able to identify him in the middle of a crowd. He was wearing his security guard jacket soaked with blood, but apart from that, he didn’t look in bad shape. The man on the left was tall as well, but slimmer. He had a lighter complexion and his sparse hair was white. He looked older. He was the one holding her wrist.

  “If you do all that we say, you might make it out in one piece,” the killer said.

  She rose to a seated position and noticed that the latter was holding something in his hands. A scarf? No, it looked more like a sack. A black hood.

  He approached and she tried to shove him away with her free hand. The other man blocked that wrist too and the killer hooded her. The canvas was so thick that the darkness fell on her eyes again.

  She felt someone taking the spray bottle from her hand and dragging her out of the boot. Since she couldn’t hold on to anything, she risked slipping, but in the end she found herself standing. She could feel little gravel stones under her soles. They bent her arms backwards and tied her wrists. Then, with some shoving, they invited her to walk. Perhaps at that point she should’ve offered resistance, but all her vain ambitions had disappeared when she’d realised she had to face two people.

  Everything was so strange. Based on what she had learnt so far about the case, their colleagues supposed the killer was a loner. But perhaps the police hadn’t understood a thing. For sure Amelia was groping in the dark, literally.

  With some more pushes, they guided her for a few steps. The gravel under her feet became warm concrete.

  “Mind the step,” killer one said.

  Killer two gently pushed her again.

  Now she was walking on something smooth and lukewarm, which creaked a bit under her weight. A parquet floor. She heard the sound of a door being closed and the strong air current that had shaken her clothes and brushed her legs until that moment, making her shiver, vanished.

  “Why the hell have you brought her here?”

  That was another voice. Killer three? Forget the lone assassin; that was a proper team. She wasn’t surprised at all that they had snuffed out some overprotected lawyers so easily. Who knew how many of them were there?

  “She looked me in the face.”

  “And why haven’t you killed her?”

  Meanwhile, killer two was holding her by an arm and guiding her through the room. Amelia’s legs touched something. “Sit here,” he said to her. He was almost gentle.

  “She’s a police officer; I think she was trying to infiltrate Goldberg’s. She could have some interesting information.”

  As she was finding herself seated on a soft sofa, a real luxury after hours in a boot, Amelia could hear a grumble of approval. It was followed by a series of swishes, rustling, the impression that someone had come closer. Her breath became laboured again. At each inhalation the canvas of the hood stuck to her face, at the same time making her feel she was suffocating. The bad day was transforming into a nightmare so out of reality that a part of her kept saying that nothing of the kind was really happening. She would surely wake up any moment. Or she was just imagining it. Any explanation seemed more logical than the facts. It was the way her mind tried to defend her from fear. Thinking it wasn’t real made it more tolerable.

  “So, officer.” The voice of killer three was exactly in front of her. “Tell me, fancy a chat?”

  What was she supposed to tell him?

  “First of all, with whom do I have the pleasure of speaking?” Considering he belonged to a team of assassins, he was rather too affable.

  Amelia opened her mouth. “A …” was all she could babble. Come on, she could do better than this. “Amelia.”

  “All right, Amelia.” His tone sounded satisfied.

  “And with whom do I have the pleasure of speaking?” Fuck off, if he really wanted to arse around, he had to do it all the way.

  Killer three laughed. “It’s better that you don’t know my name.”

  “Otherwise you’ll have to kill me?”

  “You’re smart, Amelia.”

  You didn’t need to be a genius to understand that.

  “Let’s say I’m your best friend in this room.”

  “Well, friend.” She was getting a taste for it.

  Another laugh, this time louder. “You’re funny, Amelia. I really hope I don’t have to kill you. It would make me sad.”

  It bore all the hallmarks of good news. “What do you want from me, friend?” Hm. Perhaps she shouldn’t take it too far.

  “First …” The amused tone had disappeared and killer three had assumed a serious, pensive one. “You could tell me all that the police know about this matter.”

  Here it was; she knew she should have studied the case better. But they had filled her desk with all sorts of papers: stacks of reports, pictures from the crime scenes, dossiers on the criminals represented by the five law firms that were victim of the murders. There were thousands of pages. The first day she had tried to assimilate as much as she could, but then she had given in. She had resolved to review them methodically one by one. The undercover work could have gone on for weeks and she wasn’t a detective; her task was to report any overheard words, take pictures of any document ending up in her hands, record private conversations. In a nutshell, she was to have played the mole.

  And now a killer turned up and wanted to know everything, otherwise he would most probably snuff her out. What a pain!

  “It’s a lot of information …” Honesty was always the winning card. “I can’t know all of it.” Tr
uth made you free.

  “And what do you know?”

  What did she know? She knew that several senior partners and associates of five law firms from the City, connected with well-known international criminals involved in drug and weapon trafficking, and who knew what else, had been done away with in a few months, in what looked like a large-scale cleaning action. In the scope of the operation another ten people, who were around during the killings, had died, usually bodyguards, drivers, but sometimes even relatives. Their only fault had probably been that they’d seen the killer in the face. No, correction: the killers. The City of London Police was investigating the activities of the law firms, their clients, to understand which of them had ordered the carnage.

  Oh God, she was almost certain that the team had identified some suspects, but in all honesty not a single name occurred to her right now.

  “Listen, I’ve been on the team for less than a week. They told me: ‘We’ll get you hired as an internal investigator and you’ll be our eyes and ears in Goldberg’s law firm’. Concerning the rest, I know nothing and I can’t even remember the little I’ve read.”

  “But a simple police officer, who’s just a spy, doesn’t hunt down a dangerous criminal, going against the orders of her chief, without a reason.”

  How did he know?

  “I fucked up, okay, I swear I don’t know a thing. And I haven’t seen his face very well. I wouldn’t recognise him, I swear.”

  “Don’t tell lies to me, Amelia.”

  All at once a loud explosion burst into her ears. With her hands still tied tight on her back and her arms numb, Amelia flattened herself on the sofa as much as she could.

  The following seconds were confused. She could identify some shouts, a pungent smell in the air. She started coughing, her eyes were burning. It seemed to be teargas. Gunshots and moans followed, but distantly, like it was just an American action film being played on a remote television.

  Were her colleagues breaking into the premises to save her? She would’ve liked that, but it wasn’t like them. They would’ve tried a negotiation rather than put her life at risk. Moreover, they had no idea she was there. She wasn’t in London anymore, let alone in the City. She could have ended up in the middle of a police operation from another jurisdiction. Who knew what other crimes that merry little team of killers was guilty of?

  She started to rattle off the Lord’s Prayer like she was the most pious of believers, imploring that she wouldn’t catch some wandering bullet. But wait, what was she doing on the sofa? Leaning forward, she climbed to her feet. At least they hadn’t tied them. And then she threw herself to the ground. The more you stayed down, the less the risk of being hit. Perhaps.

  Then all the chaos ceased as suddenly as it had started. Amelia remained motionless on the floor. There was a tiny chance that, if the incursion wasn’t a friendly one, the attackers would think she was dead. And maybe, in the rush, they’d overlook her body and not check to be sure.

  There was a surreal silence, except for the loud tinnitus in her ears. But nevertheless she had the clear sensation that there was someone watching her without making the slightest noise. It was an almost palpable presence. And dark. It was the best adjective that occurred to her.

  Long seconds passed and, from time to time, Amelia questioned her sensations, but she didn’t risk moving.

  Then a hand touched her.

  She shouted and backed off, hitting her head against the foot of the sofa.

  “Ssshhh.”

  The hand lifted the hood a bit. She expected it to be taken off or that a finger would touch her skin any moment. But all that she felt was a pinch on her neck. No, a sting. And then nothing.

  As she opened her eyes again, she realised it wasn’t dark anymore, and that was already good news. Still, the world was askew and nothing made sense. There was silence around her, or at least it seemed so, not least because she had the impression that there was a sort of delay between the moment the perceptions were detected by her hearing and when her brain finally interpreted them.

  She tried to move her arms and to her surprise they responded, putting themselves in front of her. Her wrists weren’t tied. She pressed with her palms against the soft surface on which she was lying and she managed to get herself up in a sitting position. The world became straight again. It consisted of a kind of small cottage. Beside the sofa where she sat was an empty fireplace, but its blackened walls suggested that it was often used in the winter season.

  Despite her constant vertigo, together with a slight nausea, Amelia tried to interpret the environment surrounding her. The walls were bare. The paint was partly stripped off. Dark stains of mould were in the corners of the ceiling. Beyond the sofa, in the middle of the room, was a rectangular table with four chairs, arranged in an orderly manner. A plastic bottle and a glass were on it. On the other side of the room she could see a door and a window with worn-out, white curtains. On the floor a neglected—to say the least—parquet was covered by a large, dark carpet. It wasn’t clear whether it was normally this way or had become so because of the dirt.

  She placed her hands on her head and massaged her temples. What the hell had happened?

  She remembered the interrogation, the gunshots, and the shouts. And that presence. Just thinking of it gave her the creeps. She turned, to make sure there was nobody around. As she did so, she saw a door behind her, which presumably led to another room.

  She wasn’t sure she was in the same place as before. She couldn’t see any trace of what she had heard. She had been drugged, so it was possible someone had taken her away from there, who knew where? But the sofa under her seemed to have the same texture. Had she imagined everything? Or maybe that stuff they had given her had altered her memories and she hadn’t really heard any gunshot. Maybe it had been the TV. Only she couldn’t see any TV set now.

  She exhaled a snort. She’d had no idea where she was even before, so there was no reason to worry about it. If nothing else, she wasn’t tied and blindfolded anymore. And nobody was threatening her.

  Her gaze reached the door on the opposite wall, the one heading outside. Could she leave?

  She made to stand up, but her world started whirling round and round and she found herself on the sofa again. Fuck, they had given her some pretty hard stuff. She had to do it slowly.

  She moved her mouth. Only then did she regain the sensation of having one. It was dry. Her eyes returned to the bottle on the table. It looked like water. If only she could reach it without ending up lying on the floor. A gurgling in her belly reminded her she also owned a stomach, which she hadn’t filled for an incalculable time. While they were there, they could have left her a sandwich, too.

  Okay, another attempt. Leaning a hand on the armrest, she tried to rise, slowly. At each slight fit of dizziness she stopped to stabilise her position, until after a long manoeuvre she was up on her legs. Now she just had to move them to reach the table. A few steps. How difficult could it possibly be? Nothing, a breeze. Indeed.

  She ventured with a step forward and strangely her world kept staying straight and stable. She repeated the motion with the other foot, and then again the previous one. At last she reached the bottle and started unscrewing the cap, but her fingers slipped. What the heck! Her hands were trembling. She focused on that stupid gesture. The cap gave way and popped off the neck, making a part of the contents squirt onto the table. Amelia drank avidly.

  Then she stopped. What if there were more drugs in the water? Oh, what the heck, who cared? She was thirsty. She resumed gulping down and finished up half of it in a few seconds. A large part had ended up on her clothes. As she looked at them, it occurred to her that they seemed perfectly matched to the filth of the place. Her beautiful grey suit. Who knew whether they would refund it? After all she was using it during a police action.

  She muttered under her breath as a reply to that question, while her brain was focusing on that sense of annoyance she’d had since her awakening. Her feet. Of co
urse she was still barefoot. They were dirty and she felt a diffused burning sensation. But she hadn’t the courage to check them.

  She raised her eyes. The door. Yes.

  The water had put her straight. She was still in the cottage, alone. And that thing over there was an exit. She didn’t certainly delude herself it was open, but perhaps she could peep from the window and see what was outside. Or who was there.

  She set the bottle down. She was feeling more confident on her legs now. She crossed the rest of the room with ease. She reached out to the handle, hesitant. It had to be a trap. As soon as she had touched it, she would catch a shock, or get burnt. But no, it wasn’t a film. She grabbed and turned it. The door opened.

  Oh!

  Careful not to cause the slightest noise, she pulled it as much as she needed so she could look outside. The sun’s rays ran over her, but her eyes, already accustomed to the light, didn’t betray her.

  An open space covered with white gravel spread before her, and beyond it were some bushes.

  She ventured out on the doorstep. She looked at one side and then the other of the cottage. No car, no other building nearby. Not another living soul.

  She descended a step and placed a foot on the small concrete passage. She remembered the sensation she had felt when she’d entered. It had to be the same place. She turned to the house, then forward again.

  Had they let her go?

  She was convulsing with laughter. She was free. They hadn’t killed her. Hurray!

  She ran to the open space and, oblivious of her sore feet, started hopping. Then she stopped, breathless. Her jubilation vanished in a moment. Her eyes were still not betraying her. All around her was an uncultivated field, and a little further away to the right were some hills, while on the other side there were more plots of land. A grove opened behind the cottage.