The Distance: A Thriller

by Helen Giltrow

  “Where did they get it from?” he asks. He hopes his voice sounds normal.

  “Some copper, hired to keep an eye on her—a freelance job, the Met’s not in the picture. Apparently she’s alone in the house.”

  “So where’s the copper?”

  “Toss-up between an operating theater and a slab, I’d say. They want it done today. Can you handle it?”

  Automatically he says, “ ’Course.”

  “You sure? You don’t sound—”

  “I’m fine, I can do it.”

  “All right then. The place is fucking fortified, but our copper friend’s provided the entry codes.” Fielding pauses. “Just one thing: client wants proof. You know what I’m saying?”

  Proof? He doesn’t understand, and then he does. He says, “You trust them?”

  “Oh yeah. Ask Karla if you don’t believe me. She knows who they are.”

  He tries her phone again. Still dead. And then he tries the old number, the one he phoned before, when he came back, the one that was answered by the Scot. He works for me. He’s safe.

  The number isn’t recognized.

  Outside, it’s early Friday evening, heading for night. The light’s a fading winter gray, and it’s raining. He walks with his head down, trying not to limp. A man who’s been beaten stands out from the crowd. He must be careful. But the rain’s on his side: people hurry past under their umbrellas. Nobody looks at him.

  Still he’s putting it all together, through the fog of drugs, pain, adrenaline. Karla compromised. Or missing. Or running. She knows who they are. Cate alone, abandoned in that house … The client wanting proof.

  The car’s parked in a rundown block of garages in Dalston. He opens the door, slides into the driver’s seat—the pain shoals around him, then recedes again.

  Somewhere in his head, a voice he’s heard before is reminding him to run.

  The house has high walls, electric gates. He wonders if they’ve got it under observation; walks round once, sees nothing. But you don’t these days, do you?

  There’s an entryphone by the gates, with a camera, and a keypad for the lock. He keys in the code; the side gate clicks; he steps inside, and it swings to behind him. He’s in a drive. Big white house with blinds drawn on the windows. One sleek black Mercedes slumbering on the gravel. No lights on anywhere.

  The front door’s locked. Another keypad. He walks round the back. A swimming pool is covered for the winter, a strange synthetic turquoise. The blinds are down on this side, too. He goes back to the front door, keys in the second code. Pushes the door open.

  She’s standing in the hall as if she’s been waiting for him. Face white as paper, features drawn; sharpened by pain but dulled by something else, something he’s seen before. One hand clutches her belly: through the thin fabric of the robe she’s wearing, the dressings bulge.

  She says, “It’s you.”

  “Get dressed,” he says.

  She moves toward the staircase, but stiffly; her body automatically protecting itself against the pain. He wonders what she’s taking. Anything?

  At the foot of the stairs she stops. “Why are you here? Ellis went out. Some woman called from Scotland Yard, she said they had to meet.” Then, “He asked if I’d be all right on my own—” As if it’s some sick joke.

  “They know you’re here,” he says. “We’ve got to move you.”

  She thinks about it. She says, “It’s all going to pieces, isn’t it?” but as if she doesn’t care.

  He doesn’t reply.

  She nods and goes up, slowly.

  She was like that in the makeshift workroom, before he injected her. Passive, spent.

  He finds a downstairs bathroom, slips his jacket off, checks a mirror. He’s bleeding through the back of his shirt.

  She doesn’t want to live.

  It’s full dark when they leave. She doesn’t ask where they’re going. He walks her to the car: two invalids together. Thinks, We don’t have a prayer.

  She gasps a little when he helps her into the passenger seat, but that’s all.

  He climbs in on the driver’s side, shuts the door. She’s looking straight ahead.

  She says, “Ellis told me William’s dead. His friend Ian. Mark Devlin, too.” She turns her head to him: her eyes are without emotion, the spark gone out of them. “It’s all because of me. Because I was flattered. She said it was for the good of the country, it was all about saving lives. She said he’d talk. Hours, that’s all it should have taken.” She stops. He says nothing. She turns away. “At the end of the first day Daniel told me what was going to happen to him. He knew already, but I didn’t listen. I didn’t believe it could go that far. Four days, I put him through four days of that, because I didn’t want to know that I’d been wrong. I should have killed him right at the start, when he asked me to.”

  She turns away. “You haven’t told me we’ll be fine.”

  He says, “I’ll sort something out.”

  He gets out the phone, calls Fielding again. He says, “I’ve got her.”

  “They still want proof.”

  “They can have it.”

  DAY 24: FRIDAY

  KARLA

  She shows us the gun again—nine mil, with a suppressor—before she blindfolds us and unties our feet. She takes Powell first, then comes back for me. She walks beside me, a firm grasp on my arm, the gun’s muzzle brushing my jaw. She doesn’t touch my damaged hand, still cable-tied behind my back, and I’m pathetically grateful. So this is what you become when confronted by the imminent reality of pain: how docile, how easily dominated.

  She steers me to the back of the van. The bumper brushes against my thigh. “In you go,” she says, quite coolly. I lift one leg to get my knee up on the sill, she gives me a push, and down I go face-first, the van’s floor smacking into my nose. I cry out; the gag muffles it. I breathe in and taste blood.

  She lifts my feet into the van and shuts the doors. A moment later the engine starts, and we move away.

  Powell lies beside me. We are touching.

  Another journey comes back to me, the one from Wales; an unmarked van, a hard-faced woman with too much jewelry, Mark Devlin dead, and the misery and shock and guilt still washing over me.

  And I start crying.

  I don’t know if it’s for Devlin or for Powell’s little girl. Or if it’s simply for all the bits of life I haven’t had yet, and now I never will.

  DAY 24: FRIDAY

  JOHANSSEN

  He comes to the place on foot, through the darkness. Friday night, and everyone’s gone home. The streetlights shine down on deserted pavements, tatty old industrial units, the odd dumped car. The roads are slick and wet and don’t look right. Everything’s been tainted with a sickly sheen. The drugs have worn off now, and he’s dragging the pain behind him like a weight. The pain, and the knowledge he shouldn’t be here, he’s not up to this.

  He doesn’t have a choice.

  The area’s still crappy, desolate: the litter in the gutters, the air of abandonment, that London’s wealth has passed by on the other side of the road and left this place behind. The gates are closed, but someone’s cut off the padlock and unlooped the chain: in the yard, among the broken fairground rides, an unmarked van is parked.

  He circuits, checking for surveillance. Then goes in.

  She’s standing alone in the warehouse: a woman with brown hair, the sort some men would call pretty. She’s wearing a tidy coat and shoes she doesn’t plan to run in—she looks like she’s just come from the office, but she’s sharp, this one: she spots him early, when he’s still feet away. And she has a gun.

  He stops, and lets her look at him.

  “Hello,” she says at last. Her voice is educated, calm, polite.

  “You found it okay, then?”

  She nods. Her expression’s neutral. She’s looking at him carefully, measuring him up. How much of the damage is detectable? How much can she see, or guess?

  She says, “You’re not wha
t I expected, for a killer.”

  “No?”

  “No.” Then, more businesslike: “Any issues at the house?” He shakes his head. “So, proof.”

  “In the car.”

  “And where’s that?”

  “Half a mile away.”

  He sees her register that. “You’re careful.”

  “You have to be. You want to see it now?”

  “Not yet.” The gun hasn’t moved. She’s wary. Another long look. Johanssen feels the world shift beneath him.

  The woman’s seen it. “Are you all right?” she says. It’s calculating.

  “Just some problems getting out of there.”

  “You’re wounded.”

  “Nothing much.” He looks again at the gun, the assurance with which she holds it, with which she speaks. The level of control. He says, “I was told the client was civilian.”

  “And I’m not.” She seems to take it as fair comment. “Your boss dealt with someone else at first. I’m just tidying up. You know you’ve done this sort of thing for us before?”

  “I don’t know who you are.”

  She seems satisfied. She says, “I’ll need to see that proof. But first, there’s two more in the van,” and his heart stumbles.

  They go outside together. She lets him lead, keeps out of his reach, watches him all the way; he’s still trying not to limp. All the time he’s aware of the gun in her hand, unwavering. His heart is beating very fast. He opens the van door.

  Two, tied up, blindfolded, gagged, both alive. A black guy in a dirty suit, and—

  Not this Not this Not this

  The woman says, “We should do this inside.”

  The streetlamps’ glow brightens, then recedes. Do not fucking screw this up, not now.

  Karla first. She’s lying prone, her head turned to one side, hands tied behind her back, one finger twisted oddly; someone’s broken it. Suddenly he wants to strike out, hard and fast, but the woman’s backed off, the gun still in her hand—Don’t let it show. He reaches in, turns Karla with his hands—she whimpers through the gag—half lifts, half drags her to the van doorway. When the light hits her face he sees her nose is smashed, blood crusting her nostrils and round the gag.

  Around him everything shifts again.

  As soon as she’s out, the woman takes Karla’s arm and settles the gun beneath her jaw, but Karla doesn’t flinch, and then he knows that it’s been done to her before.

  He reaches for the man, less gently, hauls him out, and back in they go; Johanssen leading the man, the woman behind with Karla and the gun. And all the time he’s trying to work it out, how to set this up. The man’s the shield if needs be, the man can take the bullet when it comes, the man can buy him time—

  They’re inside again. The woman releases Karla and backs off, keeping him in range. Karla stands there mute, head down, swaying a little on her feet.

  The woman says, “The target. You use a gun?”

  The room blanches. Don’t lose it now.

  He says, “There wasn’t time to pick one up,” and Karla jerks, and the woman sees it, and something flickers in her gaze.

  “Do her first,” she says.

  “All right,” he says. Then, “You mind if I take the blindfold off? I like to see their eyes.”

  The black guy moans.

  Johanssen reaches out. Karla trembles when he touches her. The blindfold’s just a strip of cloth, knotted tight—he pulls out the knife and starts to cut through it. If she can see she’s got a better chance. But all the time he’s focused on the gun, his mind groping toward it across the space, measuring the distance, the trajectories, the odds. Ten feet between it and him. The woman looks like she’s handled one before: the recoil won’t take her by surprise, and range won’t be an issue. Can he take the gun? How slow will he be, crossing those ten feet of space?

  The blindfold falls away. Karla blinks.

  The woman says, “Get on with it.”

  Karla’s head comes up, and she looks at him.

  Now.

  He pushes Karla down.

  The first shot goes wide, punching a hole in the air inches away from his ear, but he’s already moving: eight feet of distance, six now, but he’s slow, his blood’s sluggish, and his feet won’t respond, and the gun comes round again, and it kicks, and there’s the muzzle flash—

  Something punches hard into his jaw. It hurts less than he thought it would, and then much, much more.

  He’s down.

  He cannot breathe. His mouth is full of blood and bone and teeth. He’s choking.

  He looks up—the woman’s standing over him. The gun points to his head.

  Movement, fast: a flash, bright and hard, at the edge of his vision. Just like before—

  The world breaks into fragments.

  The woman turning from him with the gun.

  The bright arterial spurt of blood—

  And Karla beside him, on her knees. Trying to say something through the gag. He can’t make it out.

  He can’t breathe.

  Then nothing, because his sight has gone.

  There is no pain.

  He’s on a rooftop, with the streetlights and the taillights of the traffic below so bright, and everything else so clear and sharp: the rain on his skin, the slickness of the roof tiles, the rough grain of the stone parapet under his hands.

  A simple exploit: A to B, and this time they will never stop him.

  He is alone on that rooftop, and he is running, running toward a light, and a woman steps out from behind the light and says in a voice he knows, I think it’s time you saw my face.

  And then he’s gone.

  DAY 24: FRIDAY

  KARLA

  She comes out of the shadows, between the dusty Christmas decorations. She’s pale and thin, her skin almost gray, but she has a knife.

  Perhaps Anna sees it. I don’t know. Perhaps some instinct just tells her that it’s coming, because she half turns, and that’s my chance, because I’m on my feet again and charging—she sees that, too, and the gun comes back to me.

  The blade goes home.

  An arc of blood spurts. She drops the gun.

  She reaches for her throat, but it’s too late, and her eyes say that she knows. She half turns—I think she wants to say something to Catherine, and Catherine strikes a second time. I know it happens, though I don’t see it. I’m on the ground now, at Johanssen’s side, head down, still gagged, my hands still tied behind my back. Please please no—

  I’m there the moment when he stops, and fails.

  These are the things I will remember later.

  Johanssen’s body beside me, eyes fixed, not moving, jaw smashed by the bullet. Catherine trying frantically to get the tube into his throat. Running feet and someone ripping me away from him. Powell bellowing into a phone. Me clawing at a stranger’s face (gag off now, hands free), one finger broken, useless—someone shouting, “Get her out of here.”

  And fighting, fighting, fighting all the way.

  DAY 55: MONDAY

  KARLA

  The elderly woman in the coffee shop is struggling. She cannot cope with her tray (a small latte, a muffin, a glass of water) and her stick at the same time, and there are no empty seats. But just then a pale young girl by the window rises and offers her chair—“I’m just off anyway”—and the elderly woman accepts. She settles in place, sips her coffee, and stares out, blinking vaguely at the traffic and the suited people and the buildings. The coffee shop sits on a busy street in Victoria: accountants’ and lawyers’ and travel agents’ offices mix with government departments. The elderly woman must be meeting someone—a son or daughter who works in one of the buildings, maybe. Occasionally she seems to glance at one door in particular—an odd blank door without a nameplate—but mostly she watches it out of the corner of her eye. She only speaks once, softly, to herself: “Good job we’ve got all day.”

  In my earpiece Robbie says, “Copy that.”

  I will wait as lon
g as I have to. Because sooner or later he’ll emerge. And I have to see this out.

  Thirty days have passed since that Saturday morning in the police station: the interview room, the cups of coffee, the questions, the pain, the lies. The way they looked at me—cautious, speculative—and the way they spoke so I couldn’t overhear. But they seemed focused only on how much I’d heard at the scene, and the risk I’d repeat any of it later. Damage limitation. I was just an innocent bystander, wasn’t I? The woman who, like Daniel Fenty, unwittingly became a blip on Anna Leeson’s radar and made herself a target. How could I be anything else?

  So I played dumb, and shocked, and it was easy. And finally they extracted a promise that I wouldn’t talk to anyone about the night’s events, and they said, “You can go now.”

  Stephen was standing in the station’s waiting area. He insisted I come home with him. I didn’t argue. By then I could barely speak.

  He didn’t ask about the young woman whose psychiatric history I’d asked him to read. He didn’t ask what had happened to my finger. He still hasn’t, though one day he will.

  I stayed at Strand on the Green just one night, refusing Stephen’s offer of a sedative, lying awake through the dark hours, obsessed with one idea alone.

  I phoned for a cab as soon as I decently could the next morning.

  I needed Craigie, I needed Finn, I needed Robbie and Sean, but they were nowhere. I was tainted now.

  An hour later another janitor arrived: a woman in her late fifties, very sharp. I was being handled. I played along.

  But that one idea had got into my blood, like a virus, and there was only one cure for it.

  I spent two days isolated in my apartment, turning away visitors, screening calls, listening to the official version on the news, a version that left Anna Leeson dead by her own hand, alone, in a warehouse full of Christmas decorations and broken fairground rides; and felt the past few weeks being rolled up like a carpet and put away out of sight.

  At last Craigie arrived at my door, but all he wanted to talk about was my share portfolio and the performance of my securities. I kept telling him, “I need more data,” and he said, “This is all I’ve got.”