by Mark Burnell
‘You think I’m going to let it go just because you’re threatening me?’
‘I don’t think you appreciate what a serious situation you’re in.’
Stephanie tried to forget the claustrophobia. ‘Don’t you get it? I don’t care. Besides, I find myself in a curiously strong bargaining position.’
‘You’re not in any position to bargain.’
‘On the contrary. All the information that Proctor collected is on disk.’
He smiled again, as lifelessly as before. ‘Yes. I know. They were recovered with your personal belongings from the King’s Court Hotel.’
Stephanie tried to maintain her momentum. ‘And have you checked the contents yet? Of course you have. Let me guess. Heart-breaking stories of human interest on two disks. Tragic accounts of how the families and friends of the dead are coping with their grief two years down the line. In fact, nothing remotely threatening to you, whoever you are.’
Alexander smoked in silence. The contents of Proctor’s desk-top had also been stored on his set of seven. Stephanie had transferred them on to two new disks. Alexander’s expression gave nothing away but Stephanie instinctively knew that she needed more.
‘There are seven disks. Or rather, there were. In fact, there are now twenty-one, three complete sets. And there are four printed copies, too. I can’t pretend that I’ve been through all the material, or that I even understand most of it. But I’ve seen enough to know its value. Flight NE027 was brought down by a shaped Semtex charge. The evidence was all over the wreckage and the dead but this has been suppressed. I don’t know why. What I do know is that Reza Mohammed—currently a postgraduate student at Imperial College—was the man responsible. The disks prove that he is alive and in London, and that the relevant authorities know this and have sanctioned it. Maybe there is a perfectly good reason for this but I just can’t believe it’s going to look that way when it’s splashed across the front page of a newspaper, can you?’
She watched his pupils dilate. ‘You don’t honestly think a newspaper’s going to be allowed to print such ludicrous, unsubstantiated allegations, do you?’
‘They are substantiated but I take your point. Which is why I sent most of them abroad. I’ve got one set of disks with a firm of lawyers; they have their instructions if anything happens to me. The signals have been established. As for the rest? Well, they could be anywhere.’
Alexander’s smile was now patronizing. ‘Very good.’
‘Germany, Argentina, South Africa, Canada—who knows? It could be a large TV network or a small independent publisher. Money doesn’t come into this equation. It could just be an individual who likes to float stuff on the Internet.’
‘And who would you know in Argentina?’ he asked. ‘You’re lying to me, Miss Patrick.’
‘As I understand it, you’re offering me the chance to walk away unharmed just as long as I keep my mouth shut. Why would I reject that? It wouldn’t make sense. Not unless I had some serious protection.’
Alexander was quiet for almost a minute but it seemed longer. Perhaps he had expected her to say something when the stillness became uncomfortable, but Stephanie was good at icy silences.
Eventually, he checked his watch again and said, ‘You’ve bought yourself some time, that’s all.’ He took a final drag from his cigarette and then dropped the butt on to the floor, grinding it beneath his heel. ‘But not much.’
* * *
Two men came for her in the evening. One remained outside, the other entered the room to return her belongings. Stephanie strapped her watch to her wrist and saw that it was ten to eight.
‘How long have I been here?’
‘Since yesterday.’
‘Where are we going?’
‘You’ll see.’
It was cold outside. There was a blue Mercedes waiting, its engine idling, its exhaust breathing heavily. Stephanie noticed an estate agent’s ‘For Sale’ placard outside the building. It looked as though it had been there a long time.
One of the men opened the back door and waved her in with his hand. She looked around but there was nowhere to run to. Reluctantly, she obeyed. The man joined her in the back, while his companion rode in the front next to the driver. The doors locked centrally and the car pulled away.
They slid silently through the cones of orange light cast by street lamps, past semi-detached houses set back from the pavement, past small industrial estates, past furniture superstores whose names sparkled against the night in huge letters of bright neon. Stephanie saw a sign for Wembley. It was only a mile away. They were in north London. And as the architecture changed, it became clear they were heading back towards the city centre.
Half an hour later, the Mercedes followed the tight descending curve of Lower Robert Street as it twisted round and then, apparently, through the building above, which was on the corner of Robert Street and Adelphi Terrace. The car did not carry on into Savoy Terrace. Instead, it halted outside a door set in the wall. One of the men opened it by tapping a code into a metal key-pad. Stephanie followed him into the building and found herself in a small reception area; there was an unmanned desk with a monitor on it. Ahead, there was a lift, which her escort summoned. They stepped inside and he pressed ‘three’. Stephanie looked at the lights on the panel; they were starting on a level designated ‘minus four’.
The doors parted to reveal a carpeted hall with cream wallpaper. On the walls, there were prints of engravings depicting idyllic rural scenes. The man showed her into a room. There was a single bed by one wall, a TV, a desk, two armchairs, a full bookcase and a door leading through to a small bathroom. On the desk, there was a tray with a glass and a plate of sandwiches.
‘Get some rest. Someone will come for you in the morning.’
He closed and locked the door.
Stephanie checked the windows. They were sealed. Over the tops of the trees in Victoria Embankment Gardens, she could see the Thames and, on the south bank of the river, the Royal Festival Hall. She left the curtains open.
She took a long, hot shower and then wrapped herself in a thick white towel before sitting on the bed to eat the sandwiches. Ham and cheese. She turned on the TV and flicked through the channels but found herself unable to concentrate. She examined the books in the bookcase; mostly paperback fiction, mostly well thumbed. Neither the room nor its contents said anything to her.
Despite her exhaustion, she could not relax. It was after two when she fell asleep and just before nine when she awoke. She had another shower. Stepping on to the bath mat, she glanced at her reflection in the mirror and ran a hand through her bright blonde hair. Her roots were beginning to show, as dark as her pubic hair. In the early days, before she asserted herself and came to an uneasy understanding with him, Dean West had forced her to shave her pubic hair because it was, he’d told her, better for business. She found the implication behind this explanation disgusting but had been too scared to protest. West had insisted on watching her perform the ritual and this memory always left a knot of nausea in her stomach, which inevitably matured into seething resentment.
She wrapped a towel around her dripping body and returned to the bedroom to find a small, round-shouldered woman carrying a tray towards the table. Coffee, toast, butter, jam. Stephanie’s head spun towards the open door. A man with a complexion like uncooked steak was blocking her putative escape. A second, fatter man lurked in the corridor. Stephanie feigned indifference as the woman collected the tray from the previous evening and left. Not a word was spoken.
An hour later, the door opened again. This time, it was Alexander. He was smarter than before, wearing an immaculately tailored double-breasted, navy pin-stripe suit. His shirt was white, his tie was maroon silk, his oval cufflinks were gold. Her own clothes, which were now filthy, lay in a heap on the carpet. She was wearing a white-towelling dressing-gown that she had discovered on the back of the bathroom door. It was for a man; the sleeves concealed her hands.
‘Have you slept well?
’
‘What am I doing here?’
He offered her a Rothmans, which she refused, before lighting one for himself.
‘I’m going to ask you one simple question. Will you let Reza Mohammed go?’
Yes. That was the instinctive response. Stephanie hoped it didn’t show because she now knew that the matter was no longer one of choice. Somewhere between anger and obligation, the answer was almost as clear as her desire to deny it.
Alexander looked pained by her silence. ‘I understand your position entirely. The problem is, you don’t understand mine. You can’t.’
‘What is this place?’
‘Are you listening to me?’
She disliked the way he now looked. Like an investment banker, or a lawyer. ‘So what am I supposed to do? Try to forget about it? Pretend he doesn’t exist, that none of this ever happened?’
‘The honest answer is, I don’t know.’
‘The honest answer!’ she scoffed. ‘The reality is, there’s nothing left for me.’
‘You’re twenty-two. You could have any future you like.’
‘My future’s history.’
‘It doesn’t have to be. You can change.’
‘Why don’t you fucking change?’ she snapped.
Whatever Alexander had expected from her, this was not it. ‘Is that your answer?’ When Stephanie declined to reply, he sighed sadly. ‘Then we have a serious problem. Serious for you, that is. Because I can solve my problem, if I have to.’
‘Not without public exposure, you can’t.’
Alexander shrugged. ‘Only if you’re telling the truth. Personally, I think you’re lying but I don’t want to be proved needlessly wrong. On the other hand, if push comes to shove, I’ll take my chances. You might want to think about that. You’re as expendable as anyone else.’
‘As long as that anyone isn’t Reza Mohammed. Right?’
Alexander held her gaze. ‘You can’t save your family, or anyone else who was on that flight. You can’t save Keith Proctor, either. But you can save yourself, Miss Patrick. There’s still time. But I’m warning you, it’s running out.’
* * *
Stephanie supposed it was a tactic, to suggest time was expiring and then to keep her waiting. She was confined to her room. Lunch and supper came and went on trays, borne by the same, silent woman. She even avoided eye contact whenever possible. Stephanie was not unnerved by her isolation. She dipped in and out of the paperbacks, surfed the TV channels and slept. Alexander did not return that evening or at any point during the following day. On the third morning, however, he accompanied the breakfast; there were two cups on the tray the woman brought into the room. Once she’d left, Alexander closed the door and poured coffee for both of them.
‘You’ve been here for more than forty-eight hours. It’s more than seventy-two since you disappeared.’ He checked his watch. ‘More than eighty-two, in fact. Can you guess what I’m wondering?’
Stephanie knew precisely but said nothing. Alexander handed her a cup and saucer.
‘How long do we have to wait before your insurance kicks in?’
She was sitting cross-legged on the bed. Alexander turned one of the armchairs to face her and then sat down. He took a sip of coffee. ‘On the surface of it, it looks as though you and I are locked in stalemate. But there may be a way forward. I’ve been looking into it, looking into you. But I want you to understand that this is my compromise and it’s as far as it goes. It’s a take-it-or-leave-it offer and it will require you to compromise too.’
Stephanie felt her skin creep. So this was it, the subtext revealed.
‘You could come to work for us.’
What work? Stephanie only just resisted the temptation to blurt out the question. Hauling people off the streets, drugging them, imprisoning them. How did one describe such work? What job title might she be given?
‘We would train you. Then we would operate you.’
Operate? She was to be a machine again?
‘And in return, you would get Reza Mohammed.’ Almost as an afterthought, Alexander added: ‘But only if you were successful.’
‘At what?’
‘At whatever we required of you.’ When it seemed she might protest, he qualified his answer. ‘I can’t imagine there is too much that you would consider off-limits. Not after what you’ve been doing for the last two years. Not after what you were about to do in Earls Court, the other night.’
‘That was different. Those were special circumstances.’
‘Meaning?’
‘Meaning that what I’d be prepared to do would always depend on the circumstances.’
‘The circumstances would be—would always be—that we ordered it.’
‘And that’s my compromise, is it?’
Alexander shook his head. ‘No. That’s just one of the conditions. The compromise is this: you’ll have to wait for Mohammed. I don’t know how long it would take to train you. I don’t even know if it’s possible—you might not make the grade. But if you did, and you were successful, thereby rendering Mohammed irrelevant, we would not be talking about a matter of weeks, or even months. We’d be talking about a year, maybe two, maybe more.’
Stephanie felt lead in her chest.
‘Can you be that patient?’ Alexander wondered. ‘Maybe your anger will burn itself out–’
‘You’d like to think that, wouldn’t you?’
‘Personally, I couldn’t care less. I only mention it because if you accept my offer, you’re in and, once you’re in, you can’t just walk out.’
‘What if I don’t make the grade?’
‘Then you won’t be of any use to us. Which means we’ll still need Reza Mohammed.’
‘Why?’
‘At the moment, you are not entitled to an answer to that, no matter what you might think.’
‘But if I do make the grade, then he’s mine?’
‘If you’re successful, yes. You have my word on it.’
Stephanie wondered how good a bond that was. ‘And if I don’t make the grade, what then?’
The question seemed to catch Alexander by surprise. He had no prepared answer and so thought about it for a while. ‘This is what I’ll do: if you quit the training course—or you fail it—I’ll allow you to walk away in return for a vow of silence. In other words, a deal just like the one I’ve already offered you. No more, no less, the same rules apply.’ He stood up and placed his cup and saucer on the tray. ‘We’ll speak again this afternoon. Think about it between now and then.’
‘How did you find me?’
‘Does it matter now?’
‘Yes.’
‘Easily. That’s how we found you.’
Recognizing a dead-end when she saw one, Stephanie let it pass. ‘How long would I have to work for you for?’
‘For as long as we decide. You will belong to us. That is the price you have to pay for Reza Mohammed.’
* * *
How biblical. A life for a life. When I was planning to kill Reza Mohammed, I only saw my life in terms of the hours and minutes leading up to the pulling of the trigger. The future didn’t exist. So why should this be different? Five minutes, a year, five years, does justice really have a time limit? Does it exist only in the here and now?
I have no statute of limitations.
For two years, I had no reason to live. I was dying slowly. But Keith Proctor changed that. If I accept Alexander’s original offer—his conditional discharge—I know that I will relapse. The dead must be avenged. This, I know, is a thought that would never leave me. It would live inside me, festering, gnawing at my self-respect until, finally, I’d find the pain had become intolerable and I’d surrender to the craving to take something—anything—to make it go away. And that would be it. One moment of weakness and the damage would be done. In no time at all, I’d be Lisa again with no Proctor to save me. That kind of intervention only happens once in your life, if you’re lucky.
As for working for Alexand
er for as long as he decides … well, we’ll see. I don’t belong to anybody and the world is a big place.
The decision isn’t hard to make.
* * *
‘I—that is, we—belong to no organization. We exist in the ether, which is the only safe place to be.’
They were standing on Adelphi Terrace, overlooking the Thames. Alexander had suggested that Stephanie might welcome some fresh air and a chance to stretch her legs. It was a slate-grey afternoon, a stiff wind stirring the river. Behind them, on the corner with Robert Street and dwarfed by the huge Adelphi building to their left, was the building in which Stephanie had spent the previous three nights. It was really an amalgamation of two separate buildings; an old one of black brick and cream columns married to a smaller, squatter one in front.
An age-worn brass plate by the front door announced: L. L. Herring & Sons Ltd, Numismatists, Since 1789. Their office was in the front building, a musty collection of rooms staffed by musty men and women, all comfortably cocooned in their time-warp. Just inside the front door, there was a board that listed the other companies with offices inside the Siamese buildings: two small investment houses, one English, the other Spanish; three companies registered to Galbraith Shipping (UK), all of which were based in a single, cramped room at the rear of the larger building; Truro Pacific, an Anglo-Australian mining company; a property firm named Porterhouse Services; Adelphi Travel, a travel agency with no obvious customers.
‘We used to operate out of a building on the Edgware Road called Magenta House,’ Alexander explained. ‘It was a terrible place. Post-war rubbish where nothing ever worked. Most of the companies were in tele-sales, flogging advertising space for DIY magazines and the like. Established one week, bust the next. You never knew who was who. That was an advantage. In the end, though, the building had to be demolished. Talk about built-in obsolescence; it lasted less than forty years. That was when we moved down here. I only mention this because sometimes we refer to ourselves as Magenta House; you’ll never hear that name from an outsider.’
‘You don’t have a real name?’