The Distance: A Thriller

by Helen Giltrow

  But there’s something else.

  I’m back in that dark room, with the bloodstains glowing blue on the walls around me. A man I still know only as Daniel died in that room for a reason. I’m going to find out why.

  DAY 23: THURSDAY

  JOHANSSEN

  He sleeps, and then he wakes, eats, sleeps some more. Cate’s up in her room; Riley takes her food, can’t get her to eat it. Johanssen doesn’t go up. He listens for her movements—footsteps, scratching—but there’s no sound.

  Quillan’s men still loiter downstairs. Where’s Brice?

  Riley comes in and says, “I thought you were leaving.”

  He says, “I’m waiting for a call.”

  He sleeps again. At some stage he dreams.

  He’s in the clinic, and they’ve just brought Terry Cunliffe in. The man’s a mess of raw flesh, but he isn’t screaming. Instead he looks at Johanssen expectantly, as if this is his problem, his responsibility, something he’s expected to fix, and Johanssen feels panic rising, because it’s too late, and there’s nothing to be done.

  Then he’s back there, in the office, in front of the man at the desk.

  This is no reflection on your abilities—

  He wakes on an intake of breath. It’s four in the afternoon. Outside, distantly, someone’s shouting.

  Then he hears it, from the room below: a phone, ringing.

  There is a playground, you can see it through the glass of the Family Room, in the dusk: a patch of blighted grass, a few swings and a slide, a flimsy shelter, and the stained concrete bowl of a paddling pool, drained for the winter. A shallow puddle of rainwater has collected in it. Around it all, a six-foot-high metal fence: another prison within a prison.

  The building he’s in is tacked on to the wall, beyond the strip of waste ground. It’s where the visitors come, and there’s a handful this afternoon. Strained women trying to make conversation with their men, sullen kids who don’t know why they’re here, an elderly couple who sit close, bright eyed, tearful, holding it together for a heavy tattooed guy who must be their son and who’s wishing they hadn’t come … Opposite Johanssen, Whitman looks jumpy and unwell and eyes the guards uneasily. He delivers the message without quite looking at Johanssen. “She says there isn’t any other way.”

  Johanssen nods and goes.

  Quillan’s men are waiting outside, in a pool of floodlight on the edge of the rubble. Four of them today: a bodyguard. But they haven’t had sight of Brice’s crew. He wonders where they are and what they’re waiting for.

  All the way back across the Program he watches for them, but they don’t appear.

  He reaches the compound gate at last. Lights in the windows of the council block, and in Quillan’s building, too. He looks around: one more quick survey, fixing it. The next time he leaves it must be with her.

  Will she agree? But why should she? She counts the ones she saves, that’s her defense against the guilt and the nightmares, and it’s kept her going for a year: the hope that somewhere all those lives add up, that one day she’ll look at that wall, count the marks and think, Enough. Now he’s trying to take even that away from her. And leave her with what? The memory of those two deaths, Daniel’s and Vinnie’s, and no way to make them right?

  Still it comes back, like a reflex: She’s wrong. She’s wrong. You have to get her out.

  He’s crossing the yard when someone falls into step with him. The man says to Johanssen pleasantly, “Sorry I missed you. Next time, eh?” It’s Brice. The light from the gate catches his smile, and then he’s gone, strolling across the tarmac, hands in pockets, humming to himself.

  He opens her door quietly. She’s asleep, over on the mattress by the window; he can tell from the easy rhythm of her breathing. He closes the door again and settles down against it. Replays what Whitman said to him, begins to pace it out. It’s cold on the stairs. He doesn’t mind. The cold will keep him awake.

  DAY 23: THURSDAY–DAY 24: FRIDAY

  KARLA

  It’s late now. I walk from room to room. The blinds are up: beyond the glass the city glitters indifferently.

  I’ve had my meetings, made my calls. Craigie first, late this morning—Craigie looking edgy and reluctant, but only hours before he’d exfiled me from a crime scene, where a man Charlotte Alton knew was killed. By rights I should have been keeping my head down, and he shouldn’t have been here. But we needed a team in place as soon as possible; there wasn’t time to waste.

  I kept it cool, and hard, and practical: boiled it down to pure risk management. Made all my points as if no one could doubt them. That tomorrow isn’t far too soon for this. That we can minimize the risk, and everyone’s exposure. That given the right set of circumstances we can pull it off—as if this isn’t way beyond our comfort zone, our capabilities. When I’d finished he went quiet, and his face took on an odd immobility. At last he said, “This is for him.”

  “He is our client, yes.”

  “And he’s just gone native.” I knew what he was thinking: unreliable. At least he didn’t say it. He sat back, then he said, “You’ve already decided,” and he shook his head. I’ve lost the bigger picture, haven’t I? My judgment’s clouded. We don’t stand a chance.

  “You don’t have to be a part of this—”

  He looked me in the eye. “You need me.”

  He could have walked out when Drew did. He’s not leaving now.

  Then Whitman, over the phone, with the message he had to deliver. And there it was in his silence on the other end of the line: the penny slowly dropping, the realization of what this had to mean. He believes I’m Laura Pressinger, who works in intelligence, pulls some weight, gets Washington on board. Even so: he knows what this sounds like, and it sounds bad.

  And finally, Ellis. I hesitated before phoning him. But tomorrow he’ll be all over this anyway, and I need him on my side.

  Ellis didn’t answer. I left a coded message.

  Until he calls back there’s nothing more I can do, but I can’t settle. I’ve tried music, television, a book. I’ve tried routine paperwork. I can’t concentrate. It’s as if the cogs of my mind have all been filed smooth: nothing catches.

  I’m so tired. The past keeps coming back to me in snatches, like disconnected fragments of a dream. I’m in Graves’s consulting room with Ellis, and Graves is making notes I cannot see. I’m back outside the gallery under the too-bright streetlights with Mark Devlin saying, so seriously, I can’t just leave you like this. I’m stepping out of the laurels, confronting William Hamilton—Oh, you’ve come, as if he’s been waiting for me all this time, and can’t believe it’s taken me so long—

  I’m in a corridor at the Royal Opera House, and for a fraction of a second, less, Johanssen’s hand’s in mine. A signal, in a code I thought I understood but didn’t, at all, until yesterday.

  Do not think of him. You can’t afford to think of him. You have a job to do.

  But still I can feel it: the shape of his hand in mine.

  The plan will work. It has to.

  But you’re up against intelligence. How long do you think you can keep her out of their hands? A month? A week? A day? And in that time, will she tell you the truth?

  And what will you do when she does?

  At last I stop pacing and go to bed. I need to sleep tonight. Tomorrow, and the day after, and maybe the day after that, I could be working double shifts, and sleep will be something I snatch in odd hours—so I’m lying in the bedroom, with the lights out and the blinds down. But tonight sleep won’t come. The part of my brain that deals with these things is still turning, numbering off all the elements we need to have in place for this to work.

  And it’s too many, isn’t it? I’m out of my depth already, before I’ve even begun.

  So I’m still awake in the early hours of Friday when the handset beside me rings.

  “It’s Ellis.”

  In those two words I try to gauge his mood. “You got my message.”

  He
just grunts.

  “This is a heads-up, Ellis. Get a good night’s sleep. Tomorrow you find Catherine Gallagher.”

  A five-second silence, then he says, “I fucking knew it.”

  “Knew what, Ellis?”

  “You knew all along where they put her. Why now? Why not a week ago? Two weeks? All this time I’ve been—”

  “Things have moved on.”

  “Then why wait until tomorrow? Give me the location now. We can start digging as soon as it’s light. What earthly fucking difference is it going to make now?”

  “We’re not ready.”

  “Karla—”

  “Get your head clear and get some rest. I’ll give you all the information I can, as soon as I can. You can’t help her now. But tomorrow, she’ll need you.”

  “Spare me the CSI crap about bringing her murderer to justice, Karla,” Ellis snarls, “I know my job.”

  “But you’re not looking for her murderer,” I tell him. “Your job, Ellis, will be to keep her alive.”

  I’ve told him I’ll deliver her to him, at an address he’ll be given tomorrow. I’ve told him I’m relying on him for her protection. Perhaps I should have told him more. But no: the less he knows about what I’ve planned, the better.

  So here I am: piece by piece, bolting together the machine that will save Catherine Gallagher. But the second it starts up, this whole mechanism could spin out of my control, and if it does, there’s nothing I can do to stop it.

  DAY 24: FRIDAY

  JOHANSSEN

  They opened the clinic at eight, two hours late. It’s been a quiet night since then, the cases trickling through. Cate works in silence. But just after one, as he helps her with a heart case—labored breathing, chest pains—she murmurs, “How much longer?” As if she knows he’s watching the time tick away. As if she’s watching, too. But when he tries to catch her eye, she turns away.

  He gets Vinnie’s mop and cleans the floor. Someone’s got to do it.

  At three he goes to stand outside the main door, beyond the awning, and tilts his face up to the sky.

  And if she won’t go?

  The men talk and smoke on the gate: their voices and the smell of their cigarettes drift across the tarmac. Figures shift behind the windows of the council blocks beyond the wire. Everything is a million miles away from him.

  The door swings open behind him. He turns, expecting Riley, but it’s Cate.

  He looks at her once, then away. Find the words. You’ve got to find the words—

  She says, “Brice spoke to you.”

  “Who told you?”

  “Riley saw it.”

  “Riley say where Brice is now?”

  She nods toward the wire, the gates, the council blocks, the night. “Out there somewhere.” Then, “He’s coming back for you. You have to leave.”

  “Not unless you do.”

  “And if I don’t?” He doesn’t answer. “If you stay Brice will—”

  “Yes.”

  She wraps her arms around herself, that protective gesture, or she’s cold again. After a minute her head drops; she’s standing in the litter of Riley’s cigarette butts, and she stares down at them as if they demand all her concentration. He thinks of Vinnie suddenly, always cleaning—Vinnie should have swept them up—

  She says, “Why are you doing this? Why is it so important to you?”

  The past unfurls in pictures. An office with a uniformed man behind a desk. The lilies in the house in Marlow, and Charlie Ross, gold watch and business shirt—“What can you do?” “Whatever I have to.” A hallway in a remote farmhouse—

  He doesn’t answer.

  She says, “You think you can save me.” Her eyes are huge, unfathomable in her wasted face. “What if you can’t? What if it’s impossible?”

  Karla on the park bench, in the cemetery. Karla holding his hand.

  “It’s always possible,” he says. You’ve got to believe it’s possible.

  After that they fall silent. He glances down once: she’s looking out across the yard, but her eyes are blank.

  It’s 7:55 a.m. when he touches her arm. The flow of patients has stopped. The very sick and the walking wounded are waiting for the first of the morning ambulances. She’s sitting on a chair over by the sink, head down, but at his touch mechanically she starts to rise as if he’s brought her another case.

  “I’m going now,” he says.

  Riley’s over by the sink, scrubbing up. At the words he turns and looks at Johanssen.

  Cate says, “For good?” He nods. “Then I’ll walk out with you.”

  When she goes upstairs to get her coat Riley comes across. “This is it then?”

  “This is it.”

  Riley says, “You haven’t got your stuff,” and Johanssen says, “They’ll only take it off me. You have it,” and Riley nods.

  The door to the stairs opens. She’s wearing that bulky padded coat, the one that’s too big for her.

  He holds the outer door for her, but when she reaches it, she turns. “I’ll be all right,” she says to Riley. She could be saying sorry.

  DAY 24: FRIDAY

  KARLA

  Friday’s dawned, chill and gray. My coffee tastes of nothing. But that’s what it’s like when you’re in the middle of a big operation: everyday life ceases to register. Food, sex, sleep become irrelevant. You live in a constant state of preoccupation. There’s only the job.

  It’s happening today, even though it’s too soon, we’re not ready, we don’t have enough people in place, there’s still too much to do. But I don’t say it and neither does Craigie, on the other end of a secure phone line, and that’s why I chose him in the first place: for his diligence, his doggedness, his ability to work to the task. He’s been dealt a hand, and he’ll play it.

  “Surveillance feeds?” I ask.

  “I’m in,” he says. “Compound gate.”

  It’s on my screen, too, the men on sentry duty stamping and smoking in the cold early light.

  “Everyone ready?” I ask.

  “Standing by.”

  The clock on my screen clicks over to 08:00.

  At the command posts the shutters are rattling up, the snatches nosing out into the streets. The main gates are opening, too, the armored ambulances rolling forward in clouds of exhaust, the guards’ faces pinched and white with cold.

  Please God, it’s all about to happen.

  The Program’s surveillance cameras pick them up as they reach the compound gate: Johanssen, and beside him Catherine Gallagher bundled into her oversize coat. She walks as if she’s in a trance.

  I say to Craigie, “We’ve got some movement.”

  “I’m on it,” he says.

  The men on duty exchange uneasy glances. There’s a shuffling of feet, and then the gate unlatches. Out they go. Immediately they turn left.

  Their departure’s caught someone out. They’ve reached the next corner before two figures detach from the group on the gate and begin to follow.

  Johanssen and Catherine Gallagher turn the corner. I switch to the next surveillance camera—it takes me just a few seconds to get there, but when I do the street it shows is empty.

  DAY 24: FRIDAY

  JOHANSSEN

  After three minutes he’s sure they’ve lost the tail. He doubles back, leading her through side streets. Down an alley and through an unlocked door into an abandoned small-business unit. The lights are out. He doesn’t switch them on. Enough gray daylight seeps through the window to show a room full of waist-high tables. Scattered across them in heaps, and in sacks against the walls, are plastic toys and crayons to be packed into pouches and given away with children’s fast-food meals. No one’s been here in months. A soft fuzz of dust has settled over everything.

  One block away sits the main command post with its fortified garage.

  She’s followed him without a word. When he turns she’s right behind him, her breath faint and pale in the cold air.

  He says, “You’ve got
it?” She doesn’t move. “Give it to me.”

  She reaches into her padded coat. Brings out the syringe, the needle in its protective case, the little vial of fluid. He takes them from her. Her hands are cold.

  He places a chair—“Sit down”—then he plugs the needle into the syringe, and fills it, checking the dose. She just sits and watches, passive. She’s stopped arguing, stopped making decisions. Become somebody else. He doesn’t know if he should be afraid.

  He says, “Take off your coat. Roll up your sleeve.” She doesn’t move.

  He says, “They’ll only rush you out if you’re unconscious. Don’t be frightened—”

  “It’s not that,” she says.

  She shrugs her coat off, rolls her sleeve right up. He takes her arm in his free hand to steady it, prepares the needle. Muscle, sinew, bone; no spare flesh. Her skin’s blue-white. When the needle goes in, she sighs.

  He steps back. “You’ll be all right—”

  She says, “You should cut me. The blood will panic them—”

  “No. Unconscious is enough.”

  Footsteps outside. Running footsteps, coming close. A voice. “Down here?” Just feet away. He turns his head toward it. Holds his breath. Beside him, Cate stirs—moves, restlessly—for a moment he’s almost afraid she might call out. How long before the drug takes effect?

  He moves toward the door. The lock’s already broken: all they need to do is push. He closes his fist, plants himself, waits for the handle to turn.

  A different voice, farther away. He can’t make out the words.

  “All right,” the voice outside says. Behind him Cate shifts again. “All right.”

  The footsteps retreat.

  Another movement at his back. He turns. She’s still in the chair, the fabric of her top pulled up with one hand, her midriff bare—

  The blade in her other hand draws a careful line across it, in red.

  He’s across the room, grabbing at the blade. Blood surges.

  She looks at him. “I should feel something,” she says. She’s shaking. Her eyes are wide, imploring. “I ought to feel something.”