Killing State

by Judith O'Reilly

  “I didn’t damage the goods, North. I was just softening her up before I brought her downstairs to convince you to talk.” Bruno was reasonable, two grown-ups together trusting in the logic of torture. But if Bruno hadn’t hurt Fang, it was because he hadn’t had time.

  He’d had every intention.

  “We can deal.” Bruno’s hands wrapped themselves around his dangling penis – eager to bargain. “I’ll tell you it all. Tarn’s gone too far this time.”

  North’s smile didn’t reach his eyes. “I can’t take you seriously, Bruno. Where’s Peggy? Is she still alive?”

  Bruno’s lip curled. He shrugged. He didn’t know? Didn’t care? Or there was nothing to be done?

  The cord had left its mark – a crimson welt around Fangfang’s slim neck. It would fade faster than the memories of Bruno. Rage built in North. He promised her he would keep her from harm. The sensible thing was to keep Bruno alive and find out what he knew. But then North never claimed to be all that sensible.

  “Look away, Fang.”

  Fangfang put her hand to her neck and her fingertips touched the pulse there, but she kept her eyes on Bruno – her absolute fury surging through North’s own veins joining his. The urge to take Bruno apart.

  He sensed the other gun before he saw it.

  The Baikal IZH-79 wasn’t a big gun but it was huge in Fang’s small hand, her fingernails bitten down to the quick, red and bleeding round the ragged edges, and Bruno’s bulging, sclerotic eyes fixed on it. He started cursing. He had put down his own gun on the chest of drawers by the door before tying her to the bed. Fang didn’t forget.

  “I found your medical records, North.”

  Of course she did.

  “A bullet in the brain is pretty sick.”

  North savoured the compliment.

  “Is that how come the Jedi mind tricks?”

  When she pored over Peggy’s notebook, she’d sensed him. She didn’t understand what she felt, only threw out the distraction that was Michael North from her own brain to concentrate better and find out what she needed to know. But she’d logged the intrusion. Fangfang missed nothing.

  A weight lifted from North. Dark and heavy and oppressive as North shifted out from it into the light. If Fang had sensed him, then his instinct – his intuition – was real and true.

  He wasn’t sliding headlong into insanity.

  “Complicated it is,” he told the girl with the gun, and she giggled, but the gun didn’t waver in her hands.

  A bullet in his head did complicate life. That much North knew for a fact.

  Was it a skill he could use? Or did it use him?

  Was it a weapon he could master? Or a force that would overwhelm him?

  That much he didn’t know. He didn’t know a lot of things. But that didn’t stop him feeling a whole lot better about himself.

  “Okay, your turn. Tell me – what does Fangfang mean?”

  Violence had been the answer for him for years, but the little hacker was cleverer than him. She was cleverer than anyone he ever met. And she didn’t have to kill Bruno, because North would do it for her. He might even sleep better for it. In the darkness of a London street, he once killed a man to protect a child and hoped to God he did the right thing. In the darkness of a Mayfair flat, he promised to protect a girl he didn’t know. A stranger. But Fang was more than a stranger to him now. She was family.

  The Baikal dipped and pointed at the carpet, and in the corner, the naked man’s muscles tensed as he made ready to take his chances at what he read as the hesitation of a child.

  Fangfang.

  “Fragrance of flowers,” she said, lifting the gun, her left hand taking the weight of the right around the stock, firing it point-blank into Bruno’s face, his brains splattering out of the back of his head, sliding down the overblown slick golden roses papering the wall, as his body slid to the snowy carpet – his legs outstretched – just a little way ahead of them. The noise and the recoil made her step back but she didn’t let go. What was left of Bruno’s face looked surprised, as if he thought the girl didn’t have it in her. Maximum damage. No mercy shown. He’d taught her the rules of war.

  The Doberman barked furiously once, then lowered her head and whimpered. It was quiet then, the guard dog pushing her way between North and Fangfang, her body warm between them as the enormous head bent to lick the girl’s foot.

  Outside – the sweet, pure song of blackbirds.

  There were people to whom things happened. And there were people who made things happen. Fangfang made things happen.

  “It suits you,” he said.

  The girl’s irises were the dark grey of the winter sky he could see behind her through the bedroom window of a dead man; the barrel of the gun she still held, a third eye – black this time and smoky.

  Moving slowly, he reached out to take the gun from her. Made in Russia on the slide. Converted from a CS gas pistol to 9mm ammo by Lithuanians. Fired by a tiny Chinese Geordie. Killing a genuine Cockney monster. Fangfang. Dragon killer. The small fingers reluctant to let it go.

  When Fangfang’s bottom lip came out, it was far enough for him to see the ragged cut Bruno’s teeth had left.

  “I won’t feel bad about him.” She nodded in the direction of the sitting corpse.

  Telling North. Telling herself. Telling the corpse. He believed her.

  North didn’t want her feeling bad. In point of fact, he’d rather she never thought of Bruno again.

  “Good. Forget him. Forget all of this Fang. Go work for Google, kiddo.”

  For a moment, he thought she was about to argue the case, then something in her relaxed. “ ‘Do no harm’,” she made a small, spitless sound of disapproval, retched a little. “I’m taking Mam and Granny Po back to China for a holiday. I’ll send you a ‘postcard’, old man.”

  “You don’t have my address, Fang.”

  The girl grinned as she turned her body away from the ruin of the attacker she’d shot, her hand finding the dog, scratching behind the pointed ears, the rear end shivering with satisfaction, and the hind leg thumping the ground in approval.

  “Sure I do, moron-person.”

  The study was on the ground floor to the left of the front door. A display of waxy lilies smelling of funerals and grief, filled an ornate silver vase on a burnished burr-walnut table dead centre, an immense longcase clock standing sentry. North’s eye snagged on the hand-painted bucolic scene on the clockface. Plump villagers celebrating the harvest, sheaves of corn, Jollity. Death standing by with skeleton fingers wrapped around a scythe. North didn’t register the time. He didn’t need to. All he knew was that it was time for Judge Lucien Tarn to die.

  Inch by inch, he pushed open the door, his palm flat against the painted wood, the P226 in his other hand.

  Tarn stared out of the window at the garden as the rain fell. He must have heard the shot that killed Bruno but gave no sign of it. Across from him, a fire raged in the hearth – logs and papers curling and crimping and turning to ash.

  “You’re letting in the cold.”

  In a brocade smoking jacket the colour of clotting blood, the reflected Tarn bared his white teeth in a smile or the grimace of a cornered animal, North didn’t know which. But by the time the judge turned round – a brandy balloon in his hand – there was no doubt that it was a warm smile.

  “I find myself constantly delighted to see you, North – even now.” The judge laughed at his own absurdity, the brandy crashing from side to side against its fragile glass walls.

  I trust there’ll be no pain.

  Behind North, a draught pushed against him, and then fell away again like a breath taken and let go. Fangfang was gone, along with a dog almost as big as her. It was as if she’d never been there. Never killed a man. She’d travel to China. Come back and rule the world someday.

  The judge felt it too. North could tell. That someone was leaving, rather than arriving; that there was no rescue from Bruno or anyone else.

  “Y
ou boys never did get on.” There was a note of regret in Tarn’s voice. “A regular Cain and Abel. Cain killed Abel because he was jealous that God loved Abel more. I didn’t love Bruno more. You were always so much more intriguing, so much prettier.”

  “Good to know.“

  “Taking the money was an act of genius, North. Bravo. Everyone was perturbed, which I imagine is how you wanted them. I warned them to leave you be, but money is so very necessary. I’m impressed you managed, though it was naughty and you must know they won’t ever let you keep it.”

  They’d have to find it first, thought North. All of it – not just the two Cayman Island accounts that Fang dropped breadcrumbs to. The other two – his and hers, she wrapped within so many layers of virtual and financial chicanery, North wasn’t convinced he’d find them himself. She built her own firewall against the prying of the one-eyed man, blocking their access and playing back recorded files to maintain the outgoing traffic. She told him as much with her empty cans of diet coke. “£?u/me” she’d written in steam from ancient coffee that belonged to a dead woman. “OK£1m,” he’d replied, then wiped it away with his sleeve. Fang didn’t understand – defending herself from criticism with big round eyes as they came down the stairs together. She took £100m for each of them. She dazzled and he didn’t begrudge her.

  “When they couldn’t dig you out – the thought was you’d slipped away to find the consolation that comes with immense wealth. I very much wanted that happy ending for you.”

  “I was never one for fairy tales.”

  “Even so, I put you down as a romantic. Perhaps that’s why I thought you had to see Honor Jones one more time to save her from the wolves. But you didn’t, did you? You knew we wouldn’t be able to resist bringing you in to retrieve the money. Because this is what you intended all along isn’t it, my darling boy. To be standing right where you are with a gun in your hand. So very ‘macho’ of you.”

  “Where’s Peggy?”

  “There’s never any point asking a question to which you already know the answer.”

  “Where is she?”

  Tarn sat down in the captain’s chair behind the outsized desk. “I liked her.” Weary and old. “I’ll go so far as to say I admired her, and between you and me I don’t admire many women. But she had a brilliant brain. Utterly original.”

  “What happened?”

  “Some throw-away remark by that pomposity Bannerman. She went back in and saw the ‘corruption’ I believe was the word she used. It wasn’t any corruption. It was simply that her work was worth far more to government, or indeed to any government-in-waiting, than she could begin to guess.”

  “And the Board – who else is on it?”

  “Of course, you’re asking so you can kill them too.” A statement rather than a question – the long bony fingers steepled, the legs stretched out under the desk, leather-soled shoes, as if the judge were in chambers. “Very well. A former Prime Minister, the New Army’s Chief of Staff, the head of the Met, two former heads of the security services and a Cabinet Secretary, a newspaper proprietor, several captains of industry, a Duke. The list goes on.” Counting them off on his fingers bored him. “There’s a note of all the names here. I thought you might still be curious.” He picked up a piece of paper North hadn’t noticed before and started reading from it. “ ‘Bulldog’ Milton, General Sir Benet St John, Pandora Koch.” He laid the list back down on the blotter and sat forward in his seat. Ready to hand down his considered opinion. “But there’s no point, dear boy. Were you to go round night after night chopping off their heads, they will grow back. Power is an addiction every bit as bad as your purple pills.”

  Tarn picked up the brandy glass again and raised it to his lips, a help-yourself gesture to the cut-glass decanter with his free hand – the civilized host, and firelight shone through the brandy, crawling and flickering across the skull which rested on a pile of shiny black envelopes next to it. Something in Tarn’s eyes. Malice. Extreme malice.

  Peggy and Honor, their heads together, dark and blonde, as the east wind blew on Hermitage Island. Peggy’s broad smile. Her bruised and swollen face. Her mouth moving – reasoning. Raising broken hands to gesticulate. The clink of heavy chain links. Bruno moving closer. Her back to the room. Gazing into the night sky beyond the glass. Stars everywhere. Bruno’s meaty hands around her slim throat. Reaching out towards the darkness and the light. Unseen galaxies. Breaking with who she’d been. Hearing the birth of the universe and the death of planets as her knees buckled. Understanding all of it.

  Peggy lived and died with stars in her eyes. The sockets of the skull were dark.

  And North knew. Peggy was dead. No doubts.

  Sane. Rational. Trusting himself.

  Tarn’s thin lips twitched in what might have been a smile if there had been any humour in it.

  “I’m forgetting my manners,” the judge said. “After all, you’ve never met.” His bony index finger reached out, pointing first at North. His chest. “Michael North – my protégé and faithless assassin.” The hand dropped, the buffed nail of the index finger tapping the skull as if to call it to attention. “Do let me introduce – Dr Peggy Boland, my reluctant houseguest and astronomer extraordinaire.”

  Tarn’s palm cupped the bony pate in ownership then slid over it with a faint sibilance.

  He lifted Peggy’s skull up to his own face to gaze into the sockets, before holding it away from himself in appraisal. “Disappointingly, her cranium was no larger than you’d expect for a woman, her brain no heavier. I hoped it might be. An ounce. Two. Bruno indulged my whim. His family were taxidermists in Whitechapel for generations. He severed the head and boiled the skull. He’s not at all squeamish. It’s one of the reasons I keep him around. Kept him around, I should say.”

  Peggy refused to co-operate.

  “Dr Boland and I enjoyed several fascinating conversations. In my own defence, I did attempt to reason with her. In point of fact, I pleaded with her to keep working with us. I explained that we aren’t doing anything that Russia isn’t trying to do as we speak. Or China. We merely got there first – thanks to her. She’s less judgmental in death than she was in life.” He opened the jaw till it gaped. “ ‘You’re a very bad man’.” Then snapped it shut again, cackling.

  This was North’s mentor – more than his mentor. The judge who jailed him and the redeemer who saved him – recruiting him, and turning him into a weapon to protect the state as he saw fit. To Hell and back with the rule of law.

  “Don’t look like that, North. Dead is dead. Peggy was a scientist – not a woman for churchyards and mournful vicars. The rest of her is under a white camelia in the garden. I sit out there in summer – it has an excellent view of the night sky.”

  Honor would have to be told. And he would have to do it. Watch her fall apart.

  Hoping she would come together again.

  “Of course, Peggy would have lived on the mantelpiece once Bruno worked his kitchen magic on you. He was looking forward to it, and I confess I was intrigued to see that bullet hole from the inside out as it were.”

  The judge made a violent poking gesture with his stiffened index finger into the curled fist of his other hand. Despite himself, the gun in his hand and the distance between them, the hairs on the back of North’s neck rose at the anticipation of his own damaged skull on the judge’s desk.

  “I’m sorry you have to die young, North. Life is about what you leave behind. Your legacy. Peggy was a young woman, but she understood that, which is why she fought to protect hers. You, on the other hand, leave nothing.”

  The one-eyed man knew North was inside the judge’s townhouse. His watchers witnessed North’s capture in the park. They didn’t come for him. Didn’t rescue him, and he didn’t expect them to. The judge was right. He had sprung the trap using himself as bait. A hand-off straight out of Honor’s playbook. He found Peggy – at least what remained of her and he was in the machine. All he needed to do now was shoot the man who knew
him better than he knew himself, who’d loved him and now hated him.

  “You went too far, Tarn.”

  “Fathers always disappoint, my darling.”

  “The Board was about defending the country – not taking over.”

  “Semantics. We’ve defended this country and its values the best way we know for more than four hundred years,” Tarn’s fury was mounting. “Steering her. Guiding her. Doing what had to be done. The rise of Parliament – us. The death of Kings – us. Wars – us. Peace – us. Brexit – us. History doesn’t happen – we write it.” He laughed, and the laughter was jagged. “The bombs unsettled the populace, made them fearful. And it won’t stop there because we have a backdoor into everything thanks to Peggy. A power blackout? Hospitals down? A small nuclear catastrophe? Everything is connected.

  “And sooner rather than later, North, there’ll be a spark to the tinder and up it will all go. The old politics. Another Great Fire to purge us. All the excuse we need to impose order.”

  “You’re talking revolution.”

  “I’m talking transition. Look around. Old alliances are over. The world as we know it is gone. The nation-state is threatened by multinational corporations with respect for no one and nothing. By religion. Global migration. Technology. The market has failed us over and over despite its promises. Democracy is dying and people are crying out for change, for strong leadership if they but knew it. One spark, North – the New Army will move and the Board will take charge. And when that happens, this country will rise up again richer, stronger, united whether I’m here to see it or not. That – is my legacy.

  “Do what you’ve been trained to do, North.” From the hallway, there was a whirr and a settling of brass, as the hands of the grandfather clock came together at noon and the first chime sounded. Tarn’s voice was a thing of dust. “And do it, knowing I’m proud of you. What I’ve made you.”