Kill Someone

by Luke Smitherd

  This is bullshit. This is too crazy to be real. It doesn’t matter what these guys look like. This is bullshit.

  The Man in White looked over his shoulder briefly to the unit standing behind him and nodded his head towards me. I flinched, suddenly expecting an attack, but one of the large man’s leather-gloved hands slowly emerged from behind his back holding an iPad. He took off one glove, revealing an enormous mitt of a hand, and pressed a thumb over the tablet’s thumbprint lock. Once satisfied, his expressionless face came up as he turned the tablet outwards to face me.

  On the screen was a video of five young women, on their knees, lined up in a row inside a darkened room. They were all wearing blindfolds. One of them was crying, one of them was calling to her repeating it’s ok, its ok, while the others were just breathing, steadily. That’s what I remember most clearly. The way they were visibly trying to stay calm.

  I looked at the image on the tablet, looked at the blank black windows of the Man in White’s sunglasses and his expressionless face, and looked back at the tablet. The big man’s hand moved in front of the iPad, tapping the screen and bringing up a bunch of options. When I saw the onscreen menu appear, I realized this was some kind of video calling app, which meant that this was live.

  Bullshit… bullshit… what the fuck…?

  “They can’t see you, don’t worry,” the Man in White said, as the bigger man’s finger tapped the microphone symbol on the screen. “But they can hear you now.”

  The only sound around my parents’ doorstep was that coming from the tablet. The screen, the sunglasses, back to the screen.

  “Who… what are you doing?” I began, needing something, anything, to break that moment of sudden and horrifying inertia, to try and snap back into a reality I understood, when every single girl on that screen suddenly became alert and straightened up. I heard my own voice echo back slightly from the speakers after a half-second delay, hearing my own voice echoing off the walls of a room I had never entered. All the girls started shouting at once.

  “Who’s there, who’s that, let us out, please, help us, help us—”

  I couldn’t speak. I couldn’t move. I could only listen to that terrified babble, a cacophony of fear and desperation.

  This was real.

  The iPad screen went blank, and the sound was cut off abruptly as the large man pressed the lock button. The tablet went away, and there was silence again as I stood trembling on the doorstep, holding onto the frame for support. The Man in White stood still, his black sunglasses like the eyes of a fly, and silent, as if waiting for a response from me. After a moment or two, the smile started to creep back onto his face. It was horrible to watch, like seeing an infection work its way across someone’s skin.

  “These young women, to be precise,” he said. “Again, no one you know, but people nonetheless. Perhaps you’ve heard of these five? They’ve been on the news quite a lot. I’d be surprised if you hadn’t, really.”

  No way, I thought, something making sense in a moment of utter horror. No fucking way. The MacArthur Quintuplets. Now that they’d told me, I realized I recognized the girls even behind the blindfolds. I’d known their famous faces even before their disappearances had been all over every hysterical news outlet in the country.

  Alan MacArthur was and still is a local businessman who had done very, very well for himself. A billionaire no less, taking his parents’ small chain of hotels and expanding it nationally, then growing the MacArthur brand to encompass gyms and nursing homes. He was famous for being a family man, backing after school programs and, more famously, having five daughters. They weren’t actual quintuplets. Three of them were triplets, and the other two had come so soon after that, whenever the papers ran a story on the family, the Q-bomb was dropped. It stuck. The youngest was now 22. The eldest three, 23.

  They had a brother too, one who was a good five years older than them, but despite resurfacing when the girls had been taken—standing quietly with his parents at the press conferences and appeals to the kidnappers—he didn’t normally do the whole “society scene”. But the girls famously did more than that. While glamorous (the press never tired of trying to link them to various male celebrities), they were well-known philanthropists, working tirelessly for child protection and animal charities.

  They’d been abducted a week ago during a fundraiser at a cricket ground. The papers had said that the kidnapping must have been particularly audacious, as the abductors would have had to take one girl, unseen, and kept coming back for the others. Considerable resources, a police statement had said. (I looked the police responses up later. I did a lot of looking things up once the whole sorry mess was said and done.) They’d managed to stay out-of-sight of the small number of CCTV cameras, particularly since most of the event was occurring on the out-of-season pitch. Nobody had seen anything. Nobody had reported anything. No one was even sure there was a problem until twenty-four hours had passed and Alan MacArthur’s daughters hadn’t come home. All five of their phones went straight to the answering service.

  The story had, of course, gone national, with all of the usual accompanying media madness and analysis, but the girls had stayed missing, and the leads appeared to be few.

  My wide, trembling eyes travelled from one set of sunglasses to another, meeting the gaze of the large man standing behind my early morning visitor. I took him in again; my initial suspicions proved quite right.

  Of course there were no leads. Men like him don’t leave trails.

  I felt my legs completely go, suddenly and without warning, but caught the doorframe again, white-knuckled this time. The Man in White actually darted forward for a moment to catch me but pulled up short when he realized I wouldn’t fall.

  You are now a part of this, I thought to myself. The girls. The news. Now you know who has them. They’re right here; they’re showing you. What the fuck is this? What are they going to do to you—

  “Chris, listen to me,” the Man in White was saying, holding up both hands as if to say whatever you’re worrying about, it’s ok. “We mean it. Even though you’ve seen us, trust me, you could tell the cops everything. They’d never find us. Our employer can fix anything even if they did. He’s connected. So you. Are. Safe. Ok?”

  “Did you… did you…” I stammered, feeling as if I couldn’t take in any air.

  “Not me personally, I’ll be honest,” the Man in White said, sounding impatient. “Our associates did. Look, it’s really cold out here, and I’ve promised you all I can promise. All you have to do is hear us out and then we’ll go. If you don’t, one of those five girls dies immediately. They’re nobody to you. I understand that, but even so, a life is a life. Is not listening to me talk for a few minutes worth somebody’s life? And look.”

  He gestured again to the large man behind him, and I nearly pissed myself right there on the doorstep as the giant slowly withdrew a large handgun from his black jacket. I’m English, don’t forget, and not only do we never see guns of any kind, but this was the Midlands. We didn’t even really have gangs in the urban areas, and here I was growing up on a bloody farm, and suddenly a large hand cannon was being waved inches from my face.

  And then the large man ejected the magazine and handed the now useless weapon to me.

  It was, in many ways, a pointless gesture. Given his size alone, the best I could have done would have been to bloody his lip – although I can promise you I would have at least gone down fighting - and that was before he used any of his no doubt formidable “certain skills” on me. So him being unarmed wasn’t actually reassuring… and yet, somehow, it was. It did at least make me feel, though my heart was pounding and I felt like I was having a nightmare, that they meant it. They weren’t going to do anything to me.

  But the girls. They’ll do something to them.

  It might not be the MacArthur girls. You don’t know.

  It might not be. This could all be a lie, a hidden camera show…

  But it wasn’t. I knew it wasn’t
. And even if it wasn’t the MacArthur girls, one of those young women was going to be killed.

  This is a dream. So just talk to them. Just talk to them, and you’ll wake up later.

  And then, crazily:

  I wish Mum and Dad were here to fix this.

  But they weren’t.

  In a stumbling sweep, I pretty much fell back against the hallway wall as I gestured for my two strange visitors to enter.

  “Ok, great,” said the Man in White, clapping his hands together, delightedly, and crossing the threshold. His large associate followed, his bulk sailing past me like a glacier, impossibly large in the tiny cottage hallway. I found myself suddenly thinking of what they said about vampires: you are powerless against them once you invite them into your home. The normal, so-familiar and sane sight of the courtyard outside disappeared behind the coffin lid of the front door as I pushed it closed.

  ***

  “Ok if I sit down, Chris?” the Man in White said, already pulling out a chair from the kitchen table and sitting down in it. His large associate stood in the corner, hands crossed in front of his groin, one still holding the iPad. I nodded, thinking I just need to hear them out, that’s all, and wildly wondering if I should offer them some tea. The Man in White’s bright suit was just as stark against the terracotta floor and wall tiles of the old kitchen as his associate’s had been against the snowy courtyard. For the said associate’s part, his size was accentuated by the room, dark ceiling beams nearly brushing against his head. The de-fanged gun they’d given me was now lying on the kitchen counter, a grim reminder of the seriousness of the situation.

  “You said… I just had to hear you out,” I said quietly, the image of the kneeling and bound girls flashing before my eyes. Already, it didn’t seem real. I leaned on the opposite wall from where the Man in White was sitting, not wanting to be within touching distance of such madness. “I’m listening, let’s, let’s, let’s get on with this.”

  “That’s fine, that’s fine,” the Man in White said, shrugging. “You’ve done a brave thing, Chris, letting us in like this. That took guts. You don’t know us from Adam, right? And he’s scary-looking, let’s face it. I wouldn’t let him in!” He chuckled at this last part, looking at his companion, who didn’t return the glance and instead stared out of the kitchen window. “Big fella like that, turning up first thing in the morning… no, thank you.”

  The Man in White turned that sickening smile back to me and raised a finger in my direction. “Guts. That’s going to be important from here on out. We’ll talk about that shortly. First, we have a little multiple choice thing for you to do here, Chris, to make doubly sure you’re the right person for the task, but I already think you’re the man for the job. The boss has picked well.” He leaned backwards and gestured at Black Suit again, who reached into his inner pocket and pulled out an envelope. He leaned forward and passed it to the Man in White; I noticed that he didn’t need to step forward to do so. His reach was long enough, leaning, to pass the envelope across the room. The Man in White took it without a word and placed it on the table, sliding it in my direction.

  “Just a personality test thing,” he said. “Take a look.”

  “Hang on,” I said, looking at the envelope like it was a bomb, “you didn’t say anything about a test. You said I just had to hear you out.”

  “Yes, I did, and this is part of hearing us out,” said the Man in White with a light sigh, as if I was being difficult. “You fill that in, then we explain. Look, the quicker it’s done, the quicker we’re out of your hair, right? And I’m sure you want that as much as I do.”

  “What else?” I suddenly snapped. “What else is there? You’re already adding things. Just tell me what else you’ve got, you’re not being fair.” I was angry, but it was coming out like the words of a child. I couldn’t shift the idea of my Mum coming home and seeing these two in her kitchen, total reality meeting insanity. But that wouldn’t happen because—

  They knew. They knew your parents are away for two weeks. That’s why they’ve come now.

  That immediately killed any fire I had stone dead. I reminded myself to be very, very careful, however familiar and ordinary my surroundings.

  “Hey, you know what, I apologise,” the Man in White said, suddenly throwing up his hands and leaning forward slightly in his seat, sighing once more. “It’s been… it’s been a hell of a week, and I was up late. We came here early because we wanted to make sure you were in, blah blah blah… I’m being snappy. My apologies.”

  For a moment, I didn’t know what to say. I was thrown anew by this shift in demeanour. Then:

  “Why me? Why have you, I mean, why me?” I asked.

  “Ah, I’ll be honest, Chris,” the Man in White said, scratching at his cheek and looking out the window, “I’d like to say that it’s because you’re special, but y’know, it’s not. Quite the opposite in fact. It’s what my employer wanted. A regular guy. Young. Where do you work, Chris?”

  You already know, I thought. But instead, I said,

  “Ventures. The call centre.”

  “Mm-hmm. And what do you plan to do after that?”

  “I don’t know.” I could feel myself reddening slightly, and I was getting angrier.

  “No plans?”

  “No. And don’t take the piss,” I said, but not as strongly as I’d like. My fingers were working around themselves nervously. The Man in White smirked.

  “Open the envelope, Chris.”

  That was when something hit me. The white suit he was wearing wasn’t just a fashion choice. I mean, who actually dresses like that? Nobody, at least nobody in reality. Yeah, ok, his big friend was in standard spook/secret service/bodyguard gear, but this guy? He was a walking cliché. It was like somebody had said to me, Hey Chris, can you imagine a Colombian drug lord for me please? And this guy had popped up as the end result. The question was… why? I didn’t think this was all a wind-up – the video feed had been too damn real, and I can’t imagine any person I knew capable of such cruel humor or any TV show that would be allowed to get away with such material – but who was he trying to fool? Or intimidate? Or convince?

  I caught myself, seeing a slight furrow in the Man in White’s brow due to my silence, but I tried to make a mental note of what I’d realized. Maybe nothing, maybe something, but I hadn’t completely lost my nerve, it seemed. I moved forward and gingerly picked up the envelope.

  “It’s just a test, nothing to worry about,” the Man said, leaning back in his chair and lacing his fingers together. With a fresh perspective, I realized that all he was missing was a fluffy white cat to stroke. “Hey, you might even enjoy it. You know, like those quizzes in magazines? That kind of thing.” I opened the envelope as he spoke and saw exactly what he’d described: three sheets of A4 paper covered in questions and multiple choice tick boxes. I looked at the paper and looked back at his smiling face. “Should take about 15 minutes,” he said. I looked at the hulk in the corner.

  “You’ve done this too, I assume?” I asked. I felt light-headed. To my surprise, the big man shook his head slowly in response.

  “Take a seat, Chris,” the Man in White said, gesturing to one of the chairs.

  “I don’t need your permission,” I said, feeling my skin burn. The Man in White grinned wider and turned to the large man with a get-a-load-of-this-guy look. The big man’s face seemed expressionless, but the mouth might have twitched a little.

  “Guts, yes sir, guts,” the Man in White said. “Ok, apologies, your house. Well, not your house, your parents’, but hey. Take your time with that anyway. But the sooner it’s done, the sooner we’re out of here, which, you know, we could do right now if you want, but… you know.”

  “I know. Let me concentrate,” I said, taking a pen out of the drawer and sitting down.

  “Sure thing, Chris,” he said. I began the test.

  I was surprised by how normal it was. I am someone who is confident at making decisions: Strongly agree, somewhat
agree, not sure, somewhat disagree, strongly disagree. I have a strong sense of right and wrong. I am someone who thinks about the consequences of my actions. On and on it went. It took longer than fifteen minutes, I think. Even then, I didn’t want to half-ass a personality test. In hindsight, people would probably have said to me that I should have lied. I thought about it, sure, but I didn’t know if I would be making things better or worse. You could only say I should have lied with the gift of hindsight. I didn’t have that gift at the time.

  Eventually, I finished and handed it back to the white-suited man, who by now was fiddling with his phone. He looked up, grinned, took it from me, and then went through it, marking something into his phone as he went through each question. I watched in silence, looking at the large man on the opposite side of the room out of the corner of my eye.

  “Okaaaaay, Chris,” the Man in White said, putting his phone in his pocket and looking up. “Good, that all looks good. Great, in fact.”

  I didn’t want to know what that meant. I felt a heavy sensation in my stomach and knew that this was the beginning of the rabbit hole. There was a noose tightening around my neck, and even though I knew I could stop it… I couldn’t. In fact, it wasn’t tightening, was it? It was already tight. I was trapped from the moment I opened the door; from the moment I’d heard a word he said. I didn’t have a choice. Not really.

  “Here’s the situation, Chris,” the Man in White said, standing slightly to draw his chair nearer to mine and then sitting with his forearms on his thighs. “You have a chance, right now, today, to be a hero. A real, honest-to-goodness hero. Sound good?”

  I didn’t respond.

  “You, you Chris,” the Man in White said, grinning like a game show host from hell and pointing at me once more, “can save all of those girls’ lives. Every single one of them. Do you know how few people get to do something like that? To actually be a hero? Well, today you do. Or tomorrow. However long you like, but I probably wouldn’t leave it too long if I were you.”