Killing State

by Judith O'Reilly

“Is she there?”

  Honor shrank into the space between the passenger seat and the car door as North watched the road.

  “The exquisite but needy Ms Jones? She needs her friend. She needs you. Take. Take. Take. Some women are like that. Don’t you think?”

  North wasn’t worried about give and take. But if Tarn had the phone, they were tracking the car. He watched the rearview mirror.

  The black sedan was travelling three cars back, which meant two other cars were tucked in ahead. Fighting the wind, North swung out into the fast lane – a pause, and then the rearguard Mercedes S65 swung back out behind him. The driver let him get up to half a mile or so ahead on the straight road, before gaining on him again. Casual. Routine. Inconspicuous.

  North moved back into the stream of traffic.

  “Bring her in, darling one. Or better yet. Draw in some place dark and wrap your oh-so-capable hands around that pretty neck and squeeze.”

  Honor covered her throat as if to protect it from North’s imminent attack. She’d asked him who wanted her dead. Here was her answer.

  “It’s not too late for you.” Tarn sounded genuine.

  But it was far too late. North wasn’t beloved by the gods any more. He’d used up his lives. He was mortal and damned, and the gods would make him dead. Both of them – Honor and North together. He took a hand off the wheel, reaching over to reassure Honor and, instinctively, she slapped him away.

  “She’s using you, North.” Tarn carried on. The prosecution making his argument to the court. “She doesn’t trust you – how could she? You’re a killer. You always were, even as a child.”

  There was an intake of breath from Honor.

  “And don’t believe that she’s blameless in this.” A note of impatience entered the judge’s voice. “You can’t trust her either. Give her up and come home to Papa.”

  There was silence on the other end of the phone as Tarn waited for North to speak, and it was alive and dangerous.

  “You’re not going to find her, North,” he said, and there was regret in the soft voice. “You, above all men, should know better than to waste what time you have left.”

  And the line went dead.

  North kept his eyes on the road but he could feel the weight of Honor’s stare.

  “That was him. The one who told you to kill me? He said we weren’t going to find her. He knows where Peggy is. Who is he? Tell me.”

  He kept silent. Gripping the wheel. Ten to two.

  Don’t be distracted by a pretty face, Tarn said. Tarn had seen Honor’s photograph, had held it in his hands before he turned it over to write her name on the back in green ink. Blown on the ink to dry it.

  North couldn’t tell Honor who Tarn was. Couldn’t tell her about the Board. About the men he’d killed. She wouldn’t understand. All he could do for her was to try and keep her alive and help her find Peggy. That had to be enough.

  Later as the miles passed, her eyes fluttered, closed momentarily before she forced them open again. Had they doped her up in the hospital? Probably at least painkillers to keep the pain of the slashed wrist at bay. Or anti-anxiety medication.

  “Sleep,” he ordered. But she wouldn’t.

  Only when the winds set in around Yorkshire, did she turn her back on him, draw up her knees and close her eyes. He switched on the radio for the weather update, turning down the dial so it didn’t disturb her. Gale Force 8 and building. That’s what he needed.

  What he didn’t need was Tarn in his head. It was full enough.

  A killer, Tarn said, even as a child.

  Honor hadn’t asked, and he hadn’t offered any explanation. What could he say? That it was true? That he killed some no-mark who’d taken up with his mother? That six weeks after he was locked up, his mother died of an overdose. That he wasn’t there to save her? It was all too long ago, and too complicated.

  A juggernaut overtook them, its load rocking as it passed. The forecaster had warned that drivers of high-sided vehicles and motorcycles risked being blown over. North held his breath, but the juggernaut made it, flashing its hazard lights in thanks as it slotted into the road ahead.

  North never meant for anyone to die.

  Not at first.

  His mother was passed out on the sofa as the latest in a succession of her ape-like boyfriends ransacked the flat. It was the fact there was nothing worth stealing that did it, North thought afterwards. One hand clutching her grubby sweatshirt, her lover picked her up like she weighed nothing, all the better to pound her face. One punch after another. Like he was in the gym.

  At 13, North was tall for his age, but he’d yet to fill out. He tried pulling Tony off his mother, but only after North broke a chair over the enormous back, did Tony stop. Turning. Come on then, you little fucker. Grinning - teeth black in his head, he’d knocked him clear across the room. No, North didn’t mean for anyone to die. Not at first. Not till he’d come to. Till he’d checked his mother was still breathing. Till he’d crawled into the kitchen to empty out the drawers and the cupboards. Till the hammer was in his hand and Tony staggered back downstairs. And afterwards, when it was over, no one spoke up for him. No teacher. No social worker. No one even seemed surprised.

  He should tell Honor that he wasn’t a man like the father who killed her mother. Not a monster. Even as a child. The way Tarn made it sound.

  But she wasn’t interested. She’d waved the unspoken words away. I don’t need to know. I don’t want to know.

  He’d read the interview with her. “Let’s say I have a special interest in resilience. How children who’ve been the victims of domestic violence or witnessed that trauma close-up are affected long term.” “Is it something you have personal experience of?” “Unfortunately, that would be correct.”

  They were the same. Victims. Survivors. Surely she would understand.

  But she wouldn’t go there. He let out a sigh. It was easier with her asleep. He wished he could do the same. Take refuge from reality. In the Army sleep was an escape from boredom or from fear. Close your eyes and will your mind under, press it down far enough till it stopped struggling and oblivion came, but he lost that skill when the bullet pierced his skull.

  She stretched as she woke up, yawning, twisting around stiff wrists, turning her slender neck this way and that. It made him think of bed and sleep, of naked women in the early morning. Of squeezing her pretty neck till the breath went out of her, and going home.

  “Where are we?” Confused.

  She should be. More than an hour ago, he drove past the black and white road signs announcing Newcastle.

  He glanced across. He was doing 80mph, yet her hand was on the car door handle as if she was considering leaping from the speeding 4x4 and out on to the dual carriageway.

  “Don’t panic.”

  “Don’t make me.”

  “There was a photo of you and Peggy on your fridge.”

  She took a moment to catch up with what he was saying, to bring to mind the photograph, the day. The wind blowing their hair. Dune grasses in the background. The long walk over the sands with the wind pushing and shoving them onwards – pausing for a selfie, heads together. Hermitage Island off the north Northumberland coast.

  “I checked with the Land Registry. Peggy owns something called Marlin Cottage. I have the co-ordinates. There’s an outside chance she’s holed up there. At the very least, she might have left something which tells us where she is.”

  He hadn’t changed his speed after spotting the tail, taking the road fast but steady – fast enough for a night-time get-away, steady enough for a man driving in extreme weather conditions who thought he travelled without an escort. It was time. Do or Die. Without signalling, he swung right and took off down the narrow country road into the storm. Ahead of him, darkness. A roar of engine, the squeal of brakes and horns as the Mercedes cut across the A1 and set off down the narrow road in full pursuit. He checked the gun. If this didn’t work there was nowhere else to go.

  She saw
it before he did. The road disappearing into the sea.

  “You can’t be serious,” she said, her arms outstretched again, braced against his headrest and the window.

  “Deadly.”

  Ahead of them Hermitage Island gleamed white and gold across the dark and choppy North Sea.

  “It’s only a mile,” he said, attempting to sound more confident than he felt.

  The lights of the Mercedes appeared at the top of the hill. The cars travelling ahead of him would take longer to make the turn.

  “A mile across the sea,” she was shouting. “We’re in a car not a boat.”

  The wind blew fiercer again on the coast – the white-topped sea already across the causeway. Only the poles either side told him how far it was up – too far. He’d calculated it to the second but the wind was bringing the tide in sooner than he expected. The wooden refuge box stood on its stilts, water all around. The water at its deepest there. If he could get the car past the box, they might still make it to the other side. In his rearview mirror, lights from the second car, then the third, showed at the top of the hill.

  Crossing the causeway over to Hermitage Island on a night like tonight was madness – it was drowning weather. The sensible option would be for any pursuer to stop at the water’s edge, to calculate they were heading for an island and to wait for the tide to go out and for the rain to stop before they came for them. They’d be like rats caught in the corner of a barn. As they passed the refuge box, a wave smashed against his window and Honor screamed. They weren’t going to make it.

  “Can you swim?” he asked her.

  She swore – out loud this time as the car shifted, its front end swinging round, its tyres still on the causeway underneath the rapidly flowing water, its rear end sinking into the muddy sea bed. He pushed against his door but the force of the sea kept it closed. He didn’t believe in God – not for a long time, maybe never. Making a silent prayer to any god willing to listen, he pushed the button for the windows.

  “Climb on to the roof,” he said.

  Chapter 18

  NORTH SEA

  8.10pm. Tuesday, 7th November

  The rain was cold – the sea water colder – Honor’s teeth chattering in her head before they even cleared the wash of the car. They could half-swim, half-wade for the refuge box – lie up till dawn and let the winds play themselves out until the tide turned. When it did, the watchers on the bank would come for them. As North calculated his options, the Range Rover drifted past, seawater rushing through the open windows filling it, drowning and claiming it, the headlights shining as it sank beneath the black water. He’d loved that car.

  Once in the box though, their pursuers knew just where to find them. They could sit it out in their own nice dry cars and wait for dawn.

  Honor made the same calculation. Kicking her feet, her arms in a clumsy crawl, she was heading away from the refuge box towards the island. If they made it to shore, they’d have a couple of hours before their pursuers managed to get hold of a boat. “If” they made it.

  The exact same moment the water went over her head for the second time, he glimpsed the memory key floating on top of the waves, bobbing, accessible but out of reach. He thought about letting her drown – strands of Honor’s hair drifting upwards as she sank. One last look at the memory key as it disappeared, and he dived for her under the crashing waves, his legs working ferociously. Dragging her to the surface, he swung her body behind so she lay on her back, her hair spread out in the water, and put his arm around her neck. Her pretty neck. She fought him, her hands pulling away his forearm.

  “I can do it myself,” she yelled, slapping him away and coughing up sea-water.

  In the Army, North saw men fight out of bravery, saw them die rather than be thought a coward, but this was the first time he watched as a woman refused to drown out of sheer bloody-mindedness. Most people don’t know how they’re going to die. North knew because the bullet in his brain would kill him. Death held no mystery, and for the first time in years, for the first time since an Afghan insurgent shot him, North realised the bullet might not have the chance to kill him, because Honor and the cosmic chaos she trailed were going to do the job first.

  By the time they crawled on to dry land, North was trembling as much as Honor. Spread-eagled on the beach, they lay with the stench of brine and rotting seaweed in their noses. For some reason he thought of evolution, of Adam and Eve gilled and fresh from the sea, and of starting over.

  “You have to be the stupidest person I’ve ever met and I work with idiots,” Honor said, her face half-covered in sand, her lips blue-black in the darkness. “Do you ever think about the consequences of your actions?”

  North got to his feet, stumbled on a lichened rock, then steadied himself against the gusting wind and the horizontal rain. He checked the rucksack, attempting to keep its contents protected from the elements – but he might as well have not bothered. The money was so much mulch. The pages of the passports running with ink, the thumbnail photographs either missing or cock-eyed. The two boxes of purple pills had been washed away. He checked his pocket – he had one final strip. The gun? Salt-water immersion wasn’t ideal but the Sig would still fire – he was sure of it. He may well have been right, but the gun was gone too.

  The missing gun proved nothing. It did not make Honor’s case for her.

  He spat once, the taste of salt in his mouth. On the upside they weren’t dead yet, and they only needed to walk the length of the island through the storm to get to Peggy’s cottage. And, bonus – he still wore his shoes. Things could be worse. It was all in your attitude.

  Honor had lost her shoes in the water, her pale feet gleamed in the light from the rind of the moon. He started walking. Behind him, under the noise of the shifting shingle and the dull roar of the sea and the gale, she cursed him. Her language was terrible.

  It took less than an hour to make it across the island to the cottage which Peggy bought a year before. It was in darkness, shuttered and locked up.

  North considered the noise he would make jemmying open the door – who it might bring and the distance they lived – against the racket the wind was already making. It was a solid door, heavy oak with a cast iron lock. He needed a crowbar. At the very least, a piece of metal he could use as leverage, or a heavy stone to smash the lock. He was deciding they were safe enough in terms of the noise when with her bare foot, Honor moved a conch on the doorstep to reveal a large black key.

  “You’d probably prefer to break it down,” she said, sliding the key into the lock and turning it in one swift movement. “Next time, eh, Slugger?”

  She stood back, her face all-kinds-of-righteous, and North lifted the cast iron latch, the wind taking the door from him and almost pushing him bodily into the room.

  Chapter 19

  HERMITAGE ISLAND

  9.10pm. Tuesday, 7th November

  Inside the stone-built cottage the only glimmers of light came from the top and bottom of the wooden shutters. It was colder than it was outside, though at least there was no wind. They didn’t have long. The cars couldn’t cross the causeway for hours yet, but if they had any sense one team was already heading back down the coast for a boat. No boat would put out in this weather, but as soon as the storm dropped, they’d come for them. He knew that. Nothing was more certain. But the roar of the shifting sea and the gusting wind was still going strong, and getting warm and dry was the priority before any search of the place, or Tarn wouldn’t have to bother shooting them because they’d die of hypothermia first.

  Honor’s fists were clenched and buried in her oxters – teeth chattering as she sank down on to the single bed with its quilt of grey patchwork stars. She didn’t seem to care that she was making it wet.

  “She’s not here,” her voice was hollow. It surprised him. Although there’d been a chance of finding Peggy here, he never believed it would be that easy. Honor must have known it was unlikely – even so, she sounded desolate. Uncowed by the sea, or t
he freezing walk across the island, the starkness of her friend’s absence in the relative comfort of the cottage hit hard.

  “And the memory stick with the list of other names?”

  He shook his head.

  “Lost?”

  He didn’t bother telling her if he hadn’t driven into the sea they’d both be dead in a ditch by the side of the road.

  She took a deep breath. “How long have we got?”

  “No one can cross the causeway till the tide goes out, and it’s too rough for a boat if you’ve any sense. I’ve none at all and you’ve less, so we’ll get dry as quickly as we can, search the cottage and then go back out into the storm.”

  “How? Our car’s in Norway by now.”

  “It’s an island. There’ll be boats.”

  He wanted to reassure her. They had one advantage, Tarn’s men were following them which meant they didn’t know the exact whereabouts of Peggy’s cottage. They would have to comb the island for them. Even so, from the moment the winds dropped, North figured they had an hour at most.

  “I’ll bring in firewood and light the stove. We’ve got time for that,” he said. “You find us dry clothes.”

  The cottage stood in its own stony yard alongside a falling-down timbered outbuilding that he figured Peggy used as a wood store. North pushed his way through the wind, the oak door of the cottage banging good riddance behind him, back out into the elements and wrenched open the shed door, the wind almost taking it from him before throwing himself bodily inside and pulling it shut behind him.

  The good news was there was diesel in battered cans sitting on the plank floor and what looked like a broken-apart lobster pot. Did she catch her own lobsters when she was here? Or perhaps she let a local use the outhouse and moor up on her dock. He hoped so. He said it was an island and there would be a boat – in reality he had no idea. He pulled out a rusting metal bar from behind the cans. He’d have preferred a gun but he was prepared to improvise.

  The outhouse was a wreck, but its roof was sound enough and the wood was dry which was what mattered. From the tiny, cobwebbed window North watched the sky and prayed for the storm to be long and vicious. One row after another he pulled out the logs. Nothing between them. Nothing behind. With his foot he kicked over a can of diesel, watching it run under the door and across the yard oily and slick under the rain. Having salvaged what he needed for the stove, he used the second can to damp down the tumbled wood from what was left of the log store. Nobody ever died from being over-prepared.