Killing Eva

by Alex Blackmore

  Eva leaned back in her seat and closed her eyes as the front wheels of the plane lifted off and gravity pushed her back against the seat. She always felt that, at the moment the last part of the plane lifted from the ground, there was nothing she had control over anymore. In fact, perhaps 30,000 feet up in the air was the only place she really ever relaxed.

  When they landed in Berlin, it was to a surprisingly bright and sunny morning. The air was cold but less so than London and, without the chilled fog, the conditions were far more pleasant. Eva took a taxi to the hotel booked for her – a stark, modern building that appealed to all her minimalist tendencies. It was not too pricey, not too cheap, the perfect option for someone travelling on the budget of an NGO.

  She checked in and found her room, an attractive enough space on the third floor, with a window that looked out on to wide roads and glass-sided buildings, the closest of which housed another hotel. The street was lined with cars; on one side a fleet of cream-coloured Berlin taxis waiting to pick up, and on the other a selection of private vehicles. At the front was a large black bus with ‘VIP’ emblazoned in the kind of silver lettering that indicated no one ‘very important’ was on that vehicle.

  She deposited her suitcase on a chair, unzipped it and began unpacking, quickly hanging up a pair of black jeans, a dark dress, the only pair of smart trousers she still owned, a bright orange sweater and several lightweight shirts with tiny prints on them, one miniature lemons and the other swallows flying in regulated geometric lines. She retrieved her wash bag and walked into the bathroom where, once again, she found herself looking into a face that didn’t feel like hers.

  Her resting expression now appeared to be a combination of exhaustion and wariness. She looked like she hadn’t slept properly for a week. Which, actually, she hadn’t.

  She put down the wash bag and unpacked toothbrush and paste, which she placed neatly in a glass holder by the sink. She took out her hairbrush and pulled it through her dark hair and then retrieved make-up that would disguise some of the exhaustion that she felt.

  Once she had finished, she looked better. And felt better.

  She left her room, slamming the door behind her, and decided to walk around the hotel. It was the kind of place she knew would have conference and meeting rooms, as well as a ‘fine dining’ restaurant with white tablecloths, sparkling silverware and a jus on the menu.

  She found the reception desk and asked where she could buy a coffee and breakfast. It wasn’t time to leave the hotel just yet. The receptionist indicated the ‘Grande Gallerie’, a modest space housed in what was essentially a glass atrium in between the lifts.

  Once the waiter had handed over the Wi-Fi password Eva, like anyone alone in a restaurant, began to pay excessive attention to her phone. She scrolled through old messages, tidied up her emails and then browsed a few social networking sites. She decided to clear out some of the older texts and began methodically working her way through the list.

  There, towards the end, were the texts she had received from ‘Jackson’ when she had been in Paris. Thirteen months ago. She had looked at these only twice after she had received them. There had simply been no time to find out what they meant. But now, she had time.

  She scrolled through the two messages. The content looked like lines of code – it was certainly not English, nor any other similar language. But neither was it the Cyrillic alphabet she had come across several times recently. When she realised she was unlikely to make any progress alone, she took a screenshot of the message on her phone and sent it to Sam. He seemed naturally gifted with computer stuff so perhaps he could help her decipher what ‘Jackson’ had been trying to send her.

  She didn’t trust Sam to the extent that she would reveal why she needed his help, but she figured he was an innocuous enough person to ask in her current situation. Perhaps working on this might deter him from asking more of the searching questions he seemed to specialise in – when can we be exclusive, do you love me, that kind of thing…

  Eva shifted awkwardly in her seat at the thought of it.

  At first, the attachment refused to send. She noticed her phone seemed to have dropped the hotel’s Wi-Fi connection. She waited and then, several minutes later, the bars returned and the message went through straight away.

  As she was online, she decided to try her own translation, opened an internet page on her phone and copied and pasted the message content into a free translation website. There was no result. She was not surprised, she couldn’t even see what language it was supposed to be, so she couldn’t blame a machine for being unable to do it either.

  Out of interest, she pasted the copied text into the search engine of the internet page. At first, the jumble of letters and symbols appeared to generate no response. And then she noticed it. She had been about to close the internet page on her phone but the word was there on one of the search engine hits – ‘kolychak’.

  EIGHT

  As soon as she left the hotel, Eva knew she was being followed. She could sense the presence behind her even if she couldn’t see it. She crossed the road on her right, glancing slightly further than the flow of traffic to see if she could make out a figure in her slipstream but none stood out. She continued walking along the pavement on the other side of the road. It was broad daylight in Berlin, there were people everywhere, surely approaching her at this time of day would be crazy.

  But she was wrong.

  Almost as soon as the thought came, so did the assault. She was shoved from behind – so hard it completely took her breath away. She fell, sprawling onto the pavement, her bag hitting the floor before her body did. She felt the palms of her hands graze the concrete and she hit the front of her skull, hard. Instinctively, she reached for her head and then her bag, which had fallen in front, to her right. She grasped the leather strap. A heavy boot stamped down on her closed fist, making her grimace, but she didn’t let go. Lifting her head caused a bolt of pain across her skull; the sun was bright in her eyes and Eva couldn’t see who the foot belonged to. She dipped her head again, quickly brought her left hand to join her right on the bag strap. She felt her body jerk forward as someone picked up the bag and tried to rip it from her grasp, pulling her along the pavement with the soft leather satchel. She glanced up, breathing hard. Now she could see the face. She didn’t recognise it but she understood the expression it wore. She yanked the bag back, trying to free it from the man’s grasp, but he was built like a machine. She knew she should let go but she couldn’t.

  So she started screaming.

  Her assailant’s eyes widened and she knew people around would be staring at them. What would he do? And then the man surprised her.

  ‘Bitte,’ he said, in a hushed voice, his eyes pleading with her. ‘Please, just give me your phone. That’s all I need.’

  Eva stared at him but did not release the bag.

  ‘What?’

  His grip on her bag had loosened.

  ‘I don’t want to hurt you,’ he said urgently, ‘just give me the bag so I can get the phone.’

  Why did he just want her phone? If this was a mugging, why not the cash and credit cards, too.

  ‘Bitte!’ the man repeated and Eva could sense there were people running in her direction as the man began to glance left and right.

  Eva, looking up at him from the ground, her neck vibrating with tension, shook her head.

  NO.

  His eyes narrowed and he went to reach for something in his pocket. Then, apparently thinking better of it, he simply dropped the strap of her bag and began to run in the other direction.

  ‘I will see you again!’ he yelled, over his shoulder, as he turned a corner into a side street. The oddly civilised threat hung in the air. Eva heard someone running behind her and the hotel’s porter streamed past in his smart green uniform.

  Several minutes later, the porter returned to where Eva sat on the p
avement with several inquisitive commuters around her.

  ‘Are you OK?’ he asked, looking genuinely concerned.

  ‘I’m fine,’ she said, shakily. ‘I take it you didn’t catch him?’

  The porter shook his head.

  ‘Thank you for trying.’

  A small crowd had gathered around Eva, who was staring at the smears of blood that had appeared on the concrete from her grazed hands.

  There was a quiet ripple of German conversation and Eva felt herself being helped to her feet.

  She looked at the owner of the strong pair of hands that had hoisted her up to a seated position.

  A man with bright blue eyes, a narrow face and black hair slicked to his head. He gazed at her for a second and she stared back. Her heart double beat. He looked as if he was about to say something and then, without warning, he made a grab for her handbag and started running away with it in the other direction.

  ‘Hey! HEY!’

  Eva was taken by surprise. However, she set off after the man at a run. Without her phone, her passport and her bank cards she really would be helpless here.

  ‘Come back!’

  People along the street turned and stared as the two ran past, but this time no one stepped in to help.

  Perhaps they could see the odds were stacked against her.

  As she ran, Eva could feel herself becoming breathless. She was used to jogging, but not to this fast-paced sprinting. In a different situation, she might have wondered whether it was a good idea to be chasing someone down the street like this – and perhaps stopped and given up.

  But she had eight months of self-defence training behind her.

  And she was seeing red.

  Or rather, she was seeing clearly.

  This was no ordinary mugging. This was something to do with… with it all, with the man at Waterloo Station and, most of all, with the word ‘kolychak’. Perhaps the text messages on the phone were what they wanted, perhaps not. She felt she would never find out what was going on if she stopped chasing this man now.

  And so she pushed all the energy she had through her limbs, forcing her body to switch up another gear, even though all her muscles burned.

  Ahead, the running man was coming to the edge of a busy main road. He threw a glance back in her direction and, when he realised Eva was the only person in pursuit, he slowed his pace.

  And then he stopped running. Unexpectedly, he turned to face her.

  Eva slowed down too until she was just steps away.

  They stared at each other for several seconds.

  He was short but powerfully built.

  ‘Give me my bag!’ she yelled, over the traffic noise, breathlessly, forced to rest with her hands on her hips to try and support her lungs, which felt as if they were about to collapse.

  ‘You’re brave to chase me,’ he replied, apparently having no difficulty breathing.

  Eva regretted the cigarettes she had smoked recently, as she attempted to fill her lungs.

  ‘Probably unwise,’ said the man, ‘but brave.’

  She ignored the threatening tone. ‘Just give me the bag and I won’t make any trouble for you.’

  The blue eyes laughed back at her. ‘You won’t make any trouble for me!’

  Eva took a step towards him. ‘You’re holding something that doesn’t belong to you. You’re a thief.’

  She wondered where this casual antagonism was coming from. This was dangerous – reckless. It was not just the confidence of knowing she could defend herself, this was attack. Something else was driving her now.

  ‘Give me my bag,’ she said, trying to sound bigger than she was.

  The man laughed again and took a step backwards towards the edge of the stream of traffic. Eva inhaled sharply, he was a hair’s breadth from being clipped by the cars steaming past at high speed.

  She glanced around. They were close to a set of traffic lights. Presumably, he was waiting for the lights to change so he could run through the traffic. She saw him glance sideways.

  Then she ran at him.

  Surprised, he took that too-soon step back towards the road, just as a large lorry came speeding the other way, too close to the pavement. The huge wing mirror clipped the back of his head at high speed, the sound of bone cracking seemed to echo off the surrounding buildings. The man was thrown to the ground as the lorry began to screech to a halt. Eva’s bag launched into the air and landed almost at her feet. Behind the first lorry, a second was too close to stop and ploughed into the back of the trailer in front. Eva watched, horrified, as the tail end of the vehicle in front began to swing around in her direction, shunted from behind. She heard a voice screaming inside her head and bent down, just about managing to close her fingers around part of her bag before she ran at speed in the other direction. She kept moving, expecting at any second to feel the enormous vehicle hit her in the back. She was braced for the impact – but it never came. She kept running for several minutes; all she could hear behind her was the sound of crunching metal. When she finally stopped, two streets away, she heard an explosion.

  Eva stood dazed for several seconds, gulping down air into raw, empty lungs and trying to calm the frantic beating of her heart. She shut her eyes as, in her mind, she saw the tail end of the lorry swing at her again. She shook her head.

  Stop, she thought to herself. Stop thinking. Just stop.

  She forced herself to empty her mind and take deep breaths. Then, she realised she was being watched. A man in a small papershop – perhaps drawn out by the distant noise – was watching her, expressionless.

  She met his eye and smiled, then forced herself to put one foot in front of the other.

  She swung her bag over her shoulder and continued onwards, trying to make her awkward, wooden gait less obvious. But she felt as if her body was frozen in shock. She was like the Tin Man.

  She exhaled, for the first time in several minutes she realised. Quickly, she pulled a pair of sunglasses out of her bag and covered her eyes, which no doubt were bloodshot and wide. As she made her way back towards the direction in which she had come, she straightened her hair, wiped the sweat from her upper lip and forced herself to move as if she had no idea what had just occurred on the adjoining street. There was no way she could allow herself to be connected to that.

  It wasn’t actually that difficult – despite the incredible noise the crash had made, there was no screaming and shouting, no panicked running in the direction of the street. Most people would not assume the worst until they were presented with it – at least at first. Although she knew the sense of calm wouldn’t last, at that moment everything around her seemed normal, so Eva forced herself to pretend she was part of the scene and not the devastation she had left behind.

  Despite the sunglasses, she felt self conscious. Should she report what had happened to the police, tell them her part in all of it? She should, she knew she should. But she wasn’t going to.

  Walking through the doors to the hotel, she jumped as the porter put his hand on her arm.

  ‘Are you OK? Do you want me to call the police?’

  ‘No,’ she said, a little too forcefully, ‘thank you, I’m fine.’

  He noticed the bag. His eyes widened in surprise. ‘How did you get it back?’ he said, obviously assuming she could not have done it herself.

  ‘The kindness of strangers,’ she mumbled and walked back through the hotel lobby towards the lifts.

  She shared the lift with three businessmen in expensive looking suits. The mirrored panels of the elevator revealed that, despite her best efforts, she looked dishevelled.

  Back in her room, Eva stripped off and stood under the shower for twenty minutes. Then, she began again the process of making herself look human – a change of clothes, more make-up, a blow dry – so that not a hair was out of place. She ordered a large brandy and a po
t of coffee to her room, as well as a sandwich and a bowl of fruit. Finally, she sat down and prepared herself for the interview with the climate change expert. As if nothing had happened.

  He knew he had compromised himself. As soon as that van pulled up next to his car on the street in London, he knew. But until the blackout blindfold was removed from his eyes two days later, he didn’t quite know how much. He had been kept in the dark the entire time. He had not been allowed to eat, drink or use the toilet and he felt weak, disorientated and tense. Exactly as he was meant to feel. But there was also something else, a chemical haze around his senses that he couldn’t place. And a pain under the skin of his head, as if something had been inserted there.

  He blinked as he tried to adjust his eyes to the sudden influx of light after all the time in the darkness. It was too difficult, so he shut his eyes again.

  He could hear voices in the other room but, whoever had removed the blindfold had then left. Obviously, as yet, they had nothing to say to him.

  He tried to make out a sound he recognised, something that would tell him where he was. But he had been senseless for too long and he was struggling. He felt the urge to panic rising inside his chest. His ribcage began to expand. He clenched his fists and pinched his eyelids together until the need to react had passed, then he focused on making his breathing slow and regular.

  What did he know? He knew he had been here for two days because he had heard the birds singing twice. But he did not know where ‘here’ was. When they had taken him off the street, they had gone to great pains to ensure he couldn’t tell what kind of vehicle he was being transported in, or where he was going. By his guess, he was no longer on British soil.

  He slowly started to open his eyes again, testing each eyeball against the harsh light filtering in through his raised eyelids.