‘Excuse me, are you Miss Rouille?’
Neva turns to see a small, dark-haired woman, carrying a pointlessly small dog, possibly a shih-tzu. Neva smiles. Then she answers the woman with a carefully crafted French accent.
‘Oui. I am Ingrid Rouille.’
‘I just wanted to introduce myself. I’m Carleen Calendar. I’m your neighbour. We’re on the same floor. I also run the tenants’ association and we’re having a gathering this evening. I thought it might be the perfect time for you to meet us all.’
‘That’s kind. I’m afraid I’m busy this evening.’
The lift arrives and Neva enters, pressing the button for her floor. The pointless dog yaps as someone else comes into the reception. Neva glances at the newcomer. It’s the postman. She puts her head down as he looks her way.
Opening the door of her flat, she enters with soundless stealth. The rooms are furnished with borrowed taste. Ingrid is a story she has written in her head. A play she is performing. Neva enjoys this idea; being someone else is the second-best thing she’s good at.
In the kitchen she boils the kettle and begins to make some herbal tea but something is nagging at the back of her mind. The image of the postman flashes behind her eyes. The man is familiar. He looks like someone she’s seen before. She shudders, shaking away the feeling of paranoia. No one knows she’s here. She has to be imagining it. Besides, the man barely saw her as the lift doors closed, cutting the reception and Carleen Calendar from view.
Neva sits down on the expensive, but stiff, sofa and sips her tea.
Taking her mind off the postman, she thinks again about Michael. The building he works in is listed as belonging to a publishing house but she’s certain that really this is an MI5 or MI6 agency taskforce he’s working for. Perhaps they’re hidden there to make them a less obvious target.
Michael’s behaviour interested her the most, however. He was acting as though he knew he was being followed. Neva was sure he hadn’t seen her though, which meant one thing: he knew someone had been in his flat. She’d kept back and had remained unobserved. She’d even managed to snap some pictures of him and the building to use later. One of her contacts would know what this place really was; it would cost, but Neva could afford to pay. She had plans too for her future security, which involved taking contracts other than from the Network.
All of this needed to wait until such a time as she found herself safe. But that period wouldn’t come until Neva discovered how far their influence reached and if it was just Europe, which she suspected, or worldwide. Either way, the Network couldn’t do what they did without help. Throughout the years she’d worked for them, Neva had learnt more than Tracey suspected. She knew that there were government officials involved, operatives in the Ministry of Defence and even paid collaborators in British spy agencies. Names had been bandied about; her victims were often willing to tell her what they knew in the hope she’d show mercy. At first their blabbering meant nothing to her, but familiar names repeated time and again began to sink into her conditioned brain. She began to actively listen, even though she never asked questions.
There was mention of a Mr Beech on a few occasions, but Neva had trouble finding out more about this man. Those who uttered his name had been full of remorse, begging with more fervency than was normal.
Neva recalled one such man now. He was not the sort she was usually sent after. He had appeared to be just a rich upper-class wastrel. Someone the Network rarely took notice of. But this man, a lord of some kind – and even now she couldn’t recall his actual name or title – had done something to bring down their wrath on his head.
Neva had picked him up at the theatre. She’d smiled at him in the bar, and the creep soon found his way over to where she was sitting. More, she discovered, to share the bottle of champagne she had on ice.
‘Drinking that alone?’ he’d asked.
‘My date didn’t show,’ she said in her finest ‘royal family’ accent. ‘A total cad.’
‘Indeed.’
She’d asked him to join her. They didn’t go in to the second act of the show. The play was awful and Neva’s new friend was more interested in buying the next bottle, most of which he drank himself.
Neva persuaded him to come back to ‘her place’. It was a penthouse flat in the docklands, all organised by her superiors. He was so drunk by then that he didn’t notice the plastic sheets covering everything in the living room until she’d led him inside and closed the door.
‘Oh God!’ he said when he saw the knife in her hand. ‘This is Beech’s doing. That bastard. He wanted to steal my company and I let him. But he’s never happy. Him and the Network … they want it all …’
Neva stopped advancing on him when she heard Beech’s name. There was a flash of something behind her eyes, a painful memory that her conditioning quashed. She tried to recall it but the result was a blinding headache and an urge to cut her own throat.
Noticing her hesitation, the man had fallen to his knees.
‘Don’t kill me,’ he said. ‘I won’t tell on him. I won’t talk about the imports and exports. What he does … I hardly know anything about it.’
But his jabbering implied otherwise.
Neva was on a strict time limit with this one. Clean-up would be here within the hour. She had to be long gone by then and the toff had to be dead. But she allowed him to talk, and she stored up the information, even though some of it didn’t make any sense at the time. When the man had exhausted himself with pleading, she ended it quietly, and he didn’t even fight. He knew, despite everything, that it was over.
The death had left her feeling empty, which was far worse than when she felt nothing at all. A lot of the kills had started to make her feel that way. Especially the ones that were pointless or somehow inconsequential. This man’s end fell into the petty category. As though this Mr Beech had a personal score to settle and Neva had been used to do that.
Now, Neva analyses the thought of being ‘used’ by the Network. It isn’t as if they had endowed her with a personal code. She’d watched a TV series like that once, where the killer did what he did because his victims were themselves killers or molesters who had evaded the police through luck or clever lawyers; they deserved to die. Neva had no such sentiments. She’d been taught not to care enough about the mark. It was a job, nothing more, and as such it shouldn’t matter whether the target was justified or not. But it started to matter, and then gradually everything changed for her.
Like now. She should be leaving London, flying to a different country, and getting as far away from the Network as she possibly can. Instead she’s here, biding her time and thinking about a man who might be a security agent. A man who means nothing to her.
Neva remembers the kindness Michael showed her. For some reason, that moment in the street was important. Michael Kensington, whoever he is, and whatever he does, is someone who can be relied on. Someone who might just be willing to help her find out more about Beech and more about the house in which she was made. For each of these things have grown into a significant part of her daily consciousness.
As if thinking about the house is some form of spell, Neva feels the coldness of the conditioning seeping back into her limbs. She stares at the wall of the flat. The mantra flows in and around her and then she presses back.
I will be curious. I will fight back. I am death.
‘Who are you?’ she says aloud. Mr Beech looms, real but as a shadow in her subconscious. ‘Why can’t I see your face?’
Behind the human-shaped shade she sees the house. A large monstrosity, sprawling as it does across impressive grounds. It was home for years, but she never knew where there was.
‘I know you are part of this. I know you made me what I am. I’m coming for you, Beech,’ she says. ‘I’m coming for all of you.’
The teacup shatters in her hand.
Chapter Seventeen
Sharrick
‘Neva’s gone,’ says Sharrick to the person on t
he other end of the phone.
He’s standing in the small hallway of the cottage while a team of four men systematically pull the rooms apart.
‘Any idea where?’ asks the voice on the other end.
‘She’s left her whole life behind, except, I suppose, for a few things. She’s taken her laptop, a few clothes. And I assume passports. Although her regular ID was left behind in a top drawer in the bedroom. Weapons are cleaned out too.’
‘I thought she “owned” that house. Why put down roots and then leave?’
‘We found documents that say otherwise. It turns out she sold it some months ago. She’s been renting it back ever since. I guess Herod hadn’t thought to check on what she was doing. Neva has always been so … steady.’
‘And the money from the sale?’
‘Switzerland is my guess. Can you get authority to find the account?’ Sharrick asks.
‘She won’t have used a British ID. So asking for new account details from the Swiss won’t be of any help. And she’s more than likely used a bank whose discretion can be bought. Or a third party to buffer her. But I’ll ask the question anyway. See what turns up. I’ll put out some other feelers.’
Sharrick hangs up and walks into the living room. He curses himself for not noticing that Neva was compromised. She’d given no sign. But he should have pressed her harder; he’d known how good at this she was. She has to be caught, even though it’s unlikely they can salvage her after this. It’s a relief that Beech isn’t blaming him … yet.
‘Anything?’ he asks. The two men in the living room look up. They shake their heads in unison and then return to their task of slitting open the furniture.
‘I found these,’ says a voice from the hallway. Sharrick looks over to see Harman holding up a stack of passports in a clear plastic wallet.
He takes the wallet and opens it, rifling through the identities. ‘All ones we gave her. She’s taking no chances.’
‘She planned this,’ Harman says.
‘For some time,’ Sharrick agrees.
‘Was that Mr Beech on the phone?’ Harman asks.
‘Yes.’
‘I’m sorry,’ says Harman. ‘Is he…?’
‘Calm at the moment. He thinks we can find her.’
‘Then what?’
‘We find out why she ran. If she’s just … breaking down, well, there’s ways of dealing with that.’
‘What other reason can there be?’ Harman says.
‘Neva may have been warned by Herod. Perhaps she was compromised too and has been compelled to go into hiding.’
‘But that would mean we have a major breach somewhere.’
Sharrick and Harman exchange a look. Sharrick is sure that if such a breach is suspected, Mr Beech would have been talking to him differently. He’d be in having a polygraph and so would everyone else.
‘But the other possibility is … Neva is the problem,’ Sharrick says.
‘And she killed Herod… Do you think that’s likely?’ asks Harman.
Sharrick says nothing. No operative has ever killed their handler. Beech doesn’t want to believe it’s happened now, and neither does Sharrick. But the only way to know for sure is to bring Neva in.
‘Anyway,’ Sharrick says. ‘It’s why the protocol is changing. In future, if there’s a compromise, we need to reveal to Mr Beech directly who and what, not do what Herod did. Because we can only speculate who was the cause now.’
Harman nods.
‘Let’s pack up Neva’s stuff and get out of here,’ Sharrick says. ‘She won’t be coming back here, no matter what.’
Chapter Eighteen
Neva
In an internet café, Neva reaches out to a once trusted source. It is a forum, a place to which only those who know about it go. A place situated in the deepest, darkest parts of the Web. She negotiates through encryptions and navigates to a site she knows, leaving the Clearnet behind. She is now on the Tor dark Web, often referred to as Onionland. Neva has always thought the name amusing, and it makes this place sound unbelievable. But the dark Web is real, and she can find anything and anyone through its illegal resources with total anonymity.
She sends pictures of Michael and the location of his workplace in a private message to her source. Then she sits back and waits to hear the response, pretending to check a social media account she has just for this reason. It’s a fake account, containing no pictures of herself, and no genuine information. But it makes her look innocent to anyone passing by her screen.
Her source comes back to her just before she’s about to give up and leave the café. There is only so much time she can stay in one place before her movements online become of interest.
Over the years, Neva has made some loyal contacts. This man, whom she knows as Ruben, is still, she hopes, one of them. She takes Ruben into a private chat to discuss what she’s looking for.
Ruben tells her Michael Kensington is a security agent at MI5. He has full security clearance and is licenced to carry a firearm. Ruben tells her that Michael is working for a taskforce.
She types:
What does the taskforce do?
Ruben replies:
No one has clearance enough to know, but cold cases are among the things they are openly listed to investigate. It’s called Archive. That’s all I know.
He adds at the end of the message.
They’re looking for you. Just be careful. Trust no one. Not even me.
Neva signs out from the computer. She’s concerned that they’re watching him. Ruben is too smart to be hacked, but the Network has ways of gathering information. Ruben knows that and so does she. It’s why he encourages her to break contact as soon as she has the information she needs.
Neva returns to the Hammersmith flat. She’s just about to cross the road when she sees the postman again. He’s loitering near the reception door and he’s on his phone. Neva goes into the café across the road from the building. She orders a coffee and watches. A few moments later, a black Mercedes pulls up. Neva recognises the standard black suit worn by bodyguards employed by the Network, but not the two operatives that get out of the car.
She expects them to go and talk to the postman, but instead they walk past him and go into the building next door to hers. A few seconds later, the two men come out and get back in the car. They drive away.
Is it a coincidence? The Network is everywhere, after all.
Neva sees a Royal Mail van arrive and the postman hangs up his phone. He gets in the van. Even though he never spoke to or acknowledged the men in the Mercedes, she’s still suspicious of him.
She leaves the coffee shop and walks a few hundred metres down the road before she crosses over to the right side of the street. She doubles back, slipping behind the building. The janitor’s office is accessible via the back door of the building. Neva has already established that he has a habit of leaving the fire exit open when he goes out back to smoke. This day is no exception. Neva is cautious as she traverses the back alley. No one is around, but she’s now wary of the building next door and who might be there, watching, waiting for her to fall down.
She slips into the building and goes up to her floor by the maintenance stairs. As she opens the door onto the landing, she checks to see if anyone is around. The corridor is quiet. She hurries along, retrieving her key from her jacket pocket. She reaches the flat and checks the bottom of her door. She had left a hair stuck across the jam and the door; if anyone opened the door, the hair would become dislodged. It is still in place.
She gets inside without incident. Then she closes all the blinds and curtains and begins to pack. She isn’t sure if she’s been noticed, but she prepares for the possibility of flight.
Then she lies low, lights off, as though she has not returned home at all that day. In the corridor outside her flat she hears people arriving at the flat opposite and realises that Carleen’s tenants’ party is in full swing.
Through her security camera – a discreet lens no large
r than the size of a button hidden in the pattern of the brocade wallpaper in the hallway above her door – she watches on her laptop the movement of the residents as they go in and out of Carleen’s flat. Then she notices the two men she saw earlier. They walk up to Carleen’s door, but don’t knock. One casts a glance over his shoulder at Neva’s door. They exchange a look.
‘Oh, gentlemen, come in!’ says Carleen, opening the door to them. ‘She’s not returned…’ she whispers, though Neva’s camera microphone picks up every word. All three of them glance at Neva’s door.
They go inside and Carleen closes the door with one last look at Neva’s flat.
Neva is now sure that she’s been compromised. Who is Carleen Calendar? The name sounds too perfect to be genuine and this turn of events implies that she is connected to the Network. Is this how they found her? It would make sense that they had put the word out to all of their spies to watch for any new female moving in to their respective flats.
Neva turns away from the laptop screen. She shuts the machine down. She has to be ready to leave here, but passing Carleen’s door will be dangerous and she has a lot to take with her.
She goes to the bedroom, picks up her flight bag and then returns to the kitchen. She unzips the bag, pushes in the laptop, and checks through her wallet to select a new ID.
She tosses Ingrid Rouille’s passport down on the kitchen table.
She has four more under different names, but now she is uncertain if any of them are safe.
The kitchen is in darkness, with just the light from the street illuminating the room. She glances outside, down into the alley below. The reason she picked this flat was because of the fire escape stairs that frame the side. They’re not common in London buildings but someone will be watching in case she returns and goes up the back steps. It’s time to call in the cavalry.
The House of Killers, Book 1 Page 10