by John Connor
Until that day. The fifteenth of July. Her whole life had changed that day. She was thirty-five now, but it was still with her, waking her each night. Parts of the dream were false, invented – figments of her dream consciousness – but parts of it were terribly real, indistinguishable from memories she had worked hard to lose. Because men had come there dispensing unspeakable brutality, and she had been under the floor, cowering in terror, in that hole with the trapdoor flat against her face, struggling to breathe. She had heard it all happening above her – just like in the dream – heard the screams and the blows. And she had come out to see him hanging on the end of a rope.
3
He hadn’t always killed for money. But once it had started he hadn’t looked back, and hadn’t ever wanted out, something that, in any case, would have been virtually impossible. Once you were in, you were in – they made sure of that. But he was OK with it. He lay beneath the covering of dry soil and leaves, the tight bushes shading him from the midday sun, his face resting on the stockpiece, his eyes closed and his concentration relaxed, and he thought that overall he was OK with it.
He was thirty-five years old and he had killed five men – pulled the trigger and watched the consequences, but without anything tugging at him inside, telling him it was wrong. Instead, it had felt insignificant. The men he shot fell to the ground and life moved on, almost immediately. Everyone moved on, even the people who stood wailing above the corpses. Because they all knew they were headed there, into the vast forgetfulness of history. Time was short. Carpe diem.
That was one way to look at it. There were others. For example, he could see himself slotting into their lives like bacteria or fatal accidents slotted into other people’s lives. What did the precise timing or method matter? And the five he had killed had been in the same game, one way or another – the money-making game. They had killed too – business rivals, witnesses, in two cases even members of their own family. They were as dirty as he was, morally indistinguishable from those who paid him. They were all pissing in the same pot. Except this one, of course. There was no getting around the fact that this one was different. A ten-year-old girl. Rebecca Martin. Viktor had told him not to go through with it.
But he still didn’t need justifications. Children were dying all over the world – in Syria, Afghanistan, Gaza, Iraq. Hundreds each day, probably. So what? Death was a natural process, however it arrived. There was nothing to make this child special. He thought his attitude probably meant that a part of him was missing, a capacity to empathise. That was why it didn’t bother him much. He could date it to Liz, perhaps – to Liz Edwards disappearing, to the end of that chance and everything he had felt then – but that would be just glossing the truth, twisting a familiar story to fit himself. But real life wasn’t like that. More likely he had always been this way, even when he was with her, or even before that – as a teenager and a child. The opportunities to reveal himself just hadn’t yet arisen.
The name he had been living with for many years, the name on his fake passport, was Carl Bowman. The passport was Swedish, but he wasn’t from there. His mother was from a sparsely populated border region that seventy years ago had changed hands more than once between Finland and Russia, so that her passport had originally been Russian. But she had moved, at some point, abandoning the house, the land, the relatives, the husband – discarding all those attachments – and had met his father, who was from Helsinki, and started again.
She had insisted always, throughout his childhood, that she was Finnish, because that part of the world she was from – Eastern Karelia – was rightfully a part of Finland. Russia was the enemy who had occupied it, and hence though she had been born there and her birth certificate said she was Russian, he – her second son – was one hundred per cent Finnish. That was what she told him. But he didn’t feel it.
It was different for his older half-brother, Viktor, whose father was the Russian she left behind, the man her family had insisted she marry at sixteen years old, the man whose violence, family and criminal connections she had finally fled. Viktor had been old enough to remember all that, but his memories had a warmer tint; loss of a loving father, friends and home, that was what he carried with him, and Finland hadn’t filled any of it. So he had chosen to return as soon as he was old enough, leaving Carl behind.
At fifteen and sixteen Carl had missed Viktor like a part of himself. The way Carl thought about it, the way they had been, it was more like they were twins. They were that close. They looked similar too, walked the same, spoke the same – at least when they used Finnish. In their twenties it had been possible for strangers to mistake them for twins, despite the age difference.
He had joined the Finnish military at the first opportunity. At that point Viktor had been virtually untraceable, lost into the chaos that was the failed Russian state. But four years later he was back with cars and houses and money and offers too good to be turned down. So Carl had quit the army and followed him. He hadn’t even considered that there might be a choice. Russia had been just opening up – ripe with opportunity. Viktor had looked out for him, protected him, passed on the chances and connections he had cultivated, introduced him to key relatives – the criminals his mother had railed against. And that had led – eventually – to here, to what he did now. To lying in the dirt in the mountains north of Marbella, waiting for a human target to walk into his kill zone.
When he thought back on it, thought about the trajectory his life had taken to this particular point, he felt like he hadn’t chosen any of it. His life had run along rails that other people had laid out. The truth was that it was a massive struggle to change direction, to actually take the chances you were dealt and choose, and he hadn’t managed it. Neither of them had, neither Viktor nor himself. Yet they were successful. ‘Successful’, in that they were alive, surviving – biologically successful – the rest wasn’t something he wanted to dwell on. He liked to stick to essential facts, clean details. He didn’t like his head to feel cluttered, out of control.
Still. What he was doing right now – this particular job – it was different. Different enough to worry him. Earlier, lying here with nothing better to do, he had imagined bumping into Liz in the middle of a London street, maybe as he was making his way to Heathrow to get here. It was one of the peculiarities of London life that that kind of thing could happen. He had run into other people he knew, despite the odds, so why not her? She would appear in the crowd of faces – the mindless single face of the commuters – she would separate out from it and be there, standing in all her shocking singularity, as amazed as he was, speechless. Imagine running into you here. What are you doing? She would be standing very close, with the crowd moving around her. What are you doing these days? She would ask something like that.
And what would he say? He couldn’t tell her what he had been doing, couldn’t get near it. In fact, he wouldn’t even be able to look her in the eye.
4
I just don’t want you to freeze. Rebecca remembered her mother’s words right now, as the man first came into view. What else had she said? This had been one of their little ‘security’ conversations, about four weeks ago. I just don’t want you to freeze. When you do that you give them all the time they need. Someone comes at you, someone tries to grab you, you do not freeze, you scream and yell and run, immediately.
She had cringed inside, listening to her mother, because this kind of conversation had been a refrain throughout her life. Her mother was paranoid; always stopping her doing normal things that everyone else did, because they were ‘too dangerous’. And worse, she went on like that in front of her friends. It was embarrassing.
This was the first year her mum had let her get the school bus home, despite her being ten now, despite all the other kids having done that for years. Some of them lived out in the hills too, like they did, so that wasn’t the reason.
It meant she had to walk from the bus stop to
the house, along the track that led from the junction with the surfaced road, which was as far as the bus would go. It was one point nine eight kilometres from there to home, her mother had told her, a gentle slope up the side of the valley. It usually took Rebecca about thirty minutes to walk it, going slow. The weather was good right now, warm but not too hot, and the view across the other side was great, with the peaks all hazy like something out of an adventure story. If you went right up there – where it really was wild – you could sometimes see a warthog, getting out of your way, then smell it as you crossed the trail it used. Warthogs smelled like pee, she thought, all pigs did. She didn’t like ham or bacon because it came from pigs and she knew what pigs smelled like. She still sometimes ate pork though, if it was cooked in a stew. Her mother cooked fantastic stews.
You couldn’t see the warthogs from here, from the track, but you could sometimes see a herd of ibex – the little, wild, Spanish mountain goat – up on the ridges. And there were butterflies and birds, sometimes a snake, and many lizards. And the buzzing of the insects, flies and mosquitoes. These things interested her because her mum had always told her things about them when she was little, interesting details – like the fact that the lizards lost their tails if you grabbed them, but didn’t die, or that it was only the female mosquito that made the really irritating high-pitched whine that woke you up, and that it was a mating call, the same thing birds did, only it sounded nice when birds sang – It’s just the mosquitoes’ song, her mum would say, when she couldn’t sleep. They’re singing for you. That was a nice way to put it – typical of her mum – but it didn’t stop them biting her. Her dad used to come in with a can of fly spray afterwards, spray the room even though she hated the smell and didn’t want to be the cause of anything dying, not even a mosquito. Her dad was generally irritating at the moment.
Right now she couldn’t hear any insects or birds or anything, because she had the headphones in. She was listening to a track by Katy Perry when the man stepped onto the road ahead. He was still about three hundred metres away, too far to see properly. It looked like he had stepped out from behind the clump of olive bushes at the bend in the road, but she might be mistaken. Maybe he had just walked up from their house. Their house was the only one past that bend, the only one on this stretch of road for another two or three kilometres. After their place, over the top of the hill, there was a long, twisting track down into the next valley, the hillsides overgrown, then, at the bottom, the big villa they called ‘The Italian’s Place’ because that was just about all they knew about the owner, despite having lived here for almost five years.
She shifted her school bag onto the other shoulder. She wasn’t used to seeing people on this road. She thought her mum was mad, but it still made her pause when she saw him there. Since she had started getting the bus back, this was the first time she had seen anyone else here. She slipped the headphones out and stopped walking. What should she do? He was in her way, between her and their house.
She looked back behind as she realised that she was doing nothing – exactly what her mum had tried to teach her not to do. But he was still far away – though walking towards her, quite quickly – no danger yet. She could turn and run back down the hill to the road. The neighbours lived at the junction there – the Ramirez family. She could go in there. He wouldn’t be able to catch her because she was an excellent runner. It was just about the only sport she liked. She had won competitions at school, both at sprint distances and longer. This year they were to enter her in a national athletics competition in Madrid, representing a group of clubs in the area. She usually found it easy to outsprint adults, unless they were runners too. He would have to be fit to catch her when he was starting so far back.
But that was silly. None of her friends would think like this. She shaded her eyes from the sun so she could see him better, and immediately relaxed. It was a policeman. When she put her hand up she could see his uniform and hat. She smiled to herself, wondered vaguely what he could be doing here, a long way out without his car (had she seen a car back at the junction? She didn’t remember one, but she hadn’t been looking specially), then started to walk towards him.
He called out to her when he was still a little away, then shouted his name, or maybe his rank, but she didn’t quite get it. He stopped in front of her, looking down at her, but not too far down. She was already one metre sixty-five, very tall for her age. He had the sun right behind him when he was talking to her, so she couldn’t see his face too well. He looked like a teenager, she thought, spotty, slightly unshaven. He was sweating like he’d just run from somewhere, but not out of breath. He asked her for her name, age and where she lived. She told him. Spanish was her second tongue, but not far behind English. She had gone to Spanish nursery before school. She was at an English ‘international’ school now, but she had Spanish friends and spoke it all the time with her dad. ‘Rebecca Martin,’ she said, pronouncing Martin the Spanish way – Marteen – though her mother said it the English way quite often, as a joke, to annoy her dad. ‘I’m ten. I live just over there. The next house.’
He asked her what she was doing out on the road alone and she told him. He nodded. She did this every day after school, she said. He licked his lips and gazed off at the ridge line on the other side. ‘Good,’ he said. ‘I’m just checking the area.’ He reached a hand out and patted her head, clumsily, because she was a little tall for that. Then he stepped around her and walked on.
She would tell her mum she had seen him, because that was another of her mum’s little rules – that she should always report back if a stranger spoke to her, no matter who they were. She watched him for a bit before starting off again. She would have about half an hour alone in the house before her dad got back. That was good. Later they would do pizza. Even better. She put her headphones back in, selected her favourite tune from Gaga’s second album – a song called ‘Born This Way’. The beat started a little after the intro, lifting her mood – then she felt like dancing her way home. She started waving her arms around, singing at the top of her voice as she went.
Carl had seen the policeman. The man had walked straight through his sights, in the direction of the house, then back again fifteen minutes later. Was he really a policeman? Hard to determine at this distance. He had looked young, but policemen were young these days; either that or he was getting older. But Jones had told him the local police were involved, so unless squad cars started to arrive in force he wasn’t going to change plan.
In between the man’s appearances the school bus had arrived at the bottom of the valley dirt track. Carl had heard it, then shifted position to search for it through the spotting scope. A stand of trees and a fold of land had prevented him from watching anyone get off or on. But he knew it would be her. Jones had given him the timings and they were accurate. It would take the girl about half an hour to reach the point directly below him. So it was on. Right now. It was happening.
He concentrated on his breathing, on keeping everything calm and slow. His heart wanted to pick up, of course, the adrenalin starting already. But a fast heartbeat made the shot harder. He could control it through his breathing, up to a point, the rest was mental state. A certain increase in pulse couldn’t be avoided.
Aside from the policeman there had been one car, an hour and a half ago, a Nissan. The same car that had come down the road, going in the direction of Marbella at 9.30 that morning. There had been a Toyota right behind it and so far the Toyota hadn’t returned. He hadn’t been able to see the drivers, but he knew that the occupants of the house used these cars, which meant there was someone back there now, waiting for the girl, probably. She would come on the school bus, and walk up the valley, right into his zone. If she didn’t then he would abort and seek instructions.
He moved off scope and picked up the spotting sight again, focused on the ridge across the other side of the valley. At 5.30 that morning, in the grey dawn light, he had seen movement
up there and had got the sights onto a single man, moving in amongst the rocks, dressed in camo khaki. He had settled there with binoculars and started to search the valley. Carl didn’t recognise him, so it wasn’t Jones, but he hadn’t met anyone else in ‘the team’. He assumed it was someone involved, maybe even someone sent to locate his position and watch the hit, make sure it went to plan. He had seen no weapon – just the binoculars. He was sure the man wouldn’t have spotted him. He looked now for him in the two places he had moved between, but the hillside was empty. That didn’t mean he hadn’t moved to somewhere further up the ridge, out of view. Carl had a limited range of movement in the shallow trench.
He got his eye back on the scope, moved the gun slightly, then heard someone shouting, from back in the direction of the bus. A moment later he realised it wasn’t shouting, it was singing. He slipped his finger over the trigger and listened. It was her, he thought, singing very loud, slightly out of tune. He didn’t know the song. She sounded breathless, happy.
Then suddenly she was there, at the edge of his area, moving fast. He hadn’t expected that. She was almost running, waving her arms about, singing at the top of her voice. Rebecca Martin. Ten years old. She was tall, he thought, for a ten-year-old. The blonde hair was tied back into a ponytail. She had a small backpack on one shoulder. It took him a couple of seconds to track her because she was moving so erratically. Was she actually dancing? Either that or skipping.
He cursed silently, forced himself to stay calm. As he took deeper breaths she stopped for a moment, right in the middle of his set-up zone, catching her breath. He got the cross hairs onto her head, then he could see her properly. The scope had a twenty-five times magnification and she was just less than five hundred metres away. Her face was large and clear. He could see her eyes, her mouth, the freckles across the bridge of her nose.He thought, Would you have shot through that little boy? – in Russia, the hit on Barsukov – if you had known that the woman wasn’t involved, that there would be no repercussions, would you have shot through his head?