Don't Fear the Reaper

by A. S. French

  ‘Why did you do that?’

  ‘The best time to explore Berlin is at night. Everything is illuminated, and there are fewer tourists. I did a circular route from the other side of the station, up to the Reichstag and the Washing Machine.’ Astrid paused and waited for one of them to ask, surprised it was Agent Lee with her curious eyes and cute cheekbones.

  ‘What’s the Washing Machine?’

  ‘It’s what the locals call the building which houses the Chancellor. They think it looks like a domestic appliance.’

  ‘And what did you do then?’ Davis didn’t appear interested in the tourist version.

  ‘I took photos at the Weimar Memorial, walked through the Brandenburg Gate, and then under the linden trees. There are images on the phone if you want to check.’

  ‘Did you talk to anybody on your evening stroll?’ Davis asked while the assistants made notes.

  ‘I spoke to a few tourists who wanted directions.’

  ‘Your knowledge of Berlin is that good?’

  ‘I’ve been there a few times, which you’re well aware of since all the details are in Agency files.’

  ‘And then?’

  Astrid dug into her memory for the rest of that first night in Berlin.

  ‘I went to the late-night bookshop, Dussmann on Friedrichstraße, peered into shop windows and stared at the bears before returning to the hotel for a drink.’

  ‘You were there for another two days?’ Director Davis never removed those dull eyes from Astrid.

  ‘I took the tube to Alexanderplatz the next day to go up the Fernsehturm TV tower and look upon Berlin from a thousand feet up. You can see across the city, including where the communists split it in half in the sixties. That motivated me to visit Checkpoint Charlie to get my photo taken with some fake soldiers before heading to the Hackescher Market for traditional German food and beverages. Then I returned to the hotel. The next day I visited where Bowie lived in the seventies and bought some Krautrock CDs; all mundane stuff unless you have the same interests as me.’

  ‘Far from it, Snow; what you’ve told us has been useful for our investigation.’ Davis tried to smile, but the muscles in her mouth appeared to fight against it.

  ‘So, you’ll tell me what this is about?’

  Astrid was more bored than irritated, looking at her phone to notice it had gone nine o’clock. If she got out soon enough, she could stake out her sister’s house. She had an overwhelming desire to leave and ensure her niece was okay, as long as she didn’t have to talk to Courtney.

  I don’t like these emotions. They’re messing with my head.

  ‘Do you know Agent Cara Delaney?’ Davis stared at the digital screen as she spoke.

  ‘I do. We worked some cases together.’

  Astrid lifted her fingers to her mouth, about to bite her nails until she remembered how much of a filthy habit it was. She hadn’t seen Cara in a long time. Not after what happened and their traumatic separation.

  ‘How did you meet Delaney?’

  ‘Cara?’ Astrid had shut out most of those memories, but some things she never forgot, and her first and last meetings with Cara were always with her. ‘I’d just been punched in the face by a people trafficker when I saw her in the flesh for the first time.’

  Agent Lee spoke while the other two checked the digital screen.

  ‘This was in Newcastle during the Vertigo operation.’

  Astrid placed one hand on the table, allowing the cold of the plastic top to relight the parts of her brain where she locked away those images and sounds she couldn’t erase.

  ‘That’s right.’

  Davis moved the screen so Astrid could see the photos she’d retrieved. ‘This was your doing?’

  Astrid didn’t need to look at them to see the bodies on that factory floor.

  ‘The police had struggled to catch the leaders of a trafficking gang who were operating throughout England, moving people around the bigger cities. They’d caught lower level functionaries in a few places, Birmingham, Leeds, and Sheffield, so someone high up in the government passed the case files on to the Agency.’ She peered into Davis’s unmoving expression. ‘And we caught a break in Newcastle with a name, Vertigo, and a location. All we needed was someone to work undercover at the factory where the gang were transporting people from.’

  ‘This was Delaney?’ Davis said.

  ‘Cara, yes. She was born in Newcastle and only left after university. She’d lost her accent by the time she joined the Agency, but she knew the city like the back of her hand and had contacts there. Director Cross showed me her file; I’d read her details and knew what she looked like and understood why they’d sent her in undercover.’

  ‘But something went wrong,’ Lee said.

  Astrid plucked the images from her head, seeing everything in front of her as if she was back in that factory.

  ‘Cara was undercover for nine months, working as a facilitator moving their product around. The only contact we had with her were the posts she made on an online toy collecting forum.’

  Davis narrowed her eyes. ‘Toy collecting?’

  ‘She’d done it since she was a kid, so if the traffickers caught her posting in the forum, she was clued up enough to deceive them.’

  ‘But then the posts stopped.’

  ‘Yes. She was supposed to leave something every day, so twenty-four hours of silence was a message for Director Cross to send someone in.’

  ‘Which was you?’

  Astrid shrugged. ‘They needed someone on the street, someone who appeared to have been living rough for long enough not to arouse suspicion when they broke into the factory for a warm night’s sleep. And I had plenty of experience of that. Plus, I’d been stuck in the office for six months and was desperate to get out.’

  Agent Lee scrutinised her every word. ‘And you got punched in the head when climbing through the window.’

  Astrid rubbed at her cheek as if it had only been yesterday. ‘He was smaller than me, but I got my leg caught on the window. He pulled me inside and thumped me. When the birds stopped flying above my head, he dumped me in front of some other goons.’

  She closed her eyes and returned to Newcastle, the voice of the one who hit her still in Astrid’s head.

  ‘She’s just some street tramp. What are we going to do with her?’

  A tall man strode over and grabbed her cheek. ‘She’s not bad under all this dirt. We could put her with the others and make a bit of money off her.’

  ‘The Boss doesn’t like surprises. We should just get rid of her.’

  Then she heard Cara’s voice for the first time.

  ‘Leave her with me. He doesn’t need to know about this. You two get back to your work. The transport leaves in an hour.’

  They grumbled, but Astrid watched them leave. She rubbed at her eyes before staring at Delaney. Her legs creaked as she stood and said the magic words.

  ‘The fog on the Tyne is all mine.’

  Cara’s eyes darted around the room, checking the door before she pushed her head close to Astrid. ‘You shouldn’t be here.’

  ‘Someone had to come after you went radio silent. What’s going on?’

  ‘There’s a shipment being moved to Scotland tonight, and Vertigo was becoming suspicious of my internet posts, so I had to stop them.’

  ‘By shipment, you mean people?’

  ‘Yes. Thirty women and girls.’

  ‘So we need to stop it.’

  ‘Only if he comes, which I’m not sure he will.’ Nine months of watching people being victimised seeped out of Cara’s eyes, and Astrid tried not to think of all the horrible things she must have witnessed while waiting to get this close to catching the man they wanted. ‘He’s the one with all the contacts in Europe and Africa. Without him, all we’ll have are more functionaries, and the whole thing will start again somewhere else. Don’t you understand that?’

  It was at that point, when Astrid stared into Cara’s eyes and saw the pain, she felt th
e first pang of emotion she’d thought impossible to have.

  ‘Of course I do. What do you suggest?’

  The click of a gun trigger stopped Cara from replying. Astrid looked up to see the goons back in the room, standing with a third person. He wasn’t the one holding the pistol, but by the way he carried himself, she knew who he was even before he spoke.

  ‘I should have known never to trust someone who collects toys, but Beth was so good at her job.’ He strode to Delaney and ran his fingers through her hair. Astrid was impressed with how Cara didn’t flinch at his touch. ‘Are you two coppers?’

  Astrid stood straight. She’d learnt an important lesson early in life never to back down when around predators.

  ‘Something like that. If you tell Mr Potato Head to hand over the gun, nobody will get hurt.’

  The man she assumed to be Vertigo laughed. ‘Have the police changed their methods?’

  Astrid cracked her knuckles. ‘This operation you’ve been running, while terrible and a crime against humanity, is impressive considering how you’ve been able to move around so many victims while staying so far under the radar.’

  He shrugged. ‘It’s all about brains and opportunity. The public has this misconception that the police are clever and trustworthy when both things are far from the truth. So, once you’re dealing with stupidity and corruption, and you factor in how nasty some people are, it’s not hard to do.’ He held up his hands. ‘It’s not as if I’m the only entrepreneur in this line of business.’

  It was her turn to laugh. ‘Entrepreneur? Is that why you called yourself Vertigo?’

  ‘It’s good, don’t you think? I couldn’t use my real name, could I? And I’ve always been a Hitchcock fan since my old man’s obsession with those movies.’

  Astrid needed to keep him talking while she inched closer to the goon with the gun, lucky that both thugs seemed more interested in listening to their master’s voice than watching her.

  ‘Maybe Psycho would have been a better choice.’

  He waved his finger at her. ‘No, no, that’s not right. I’m not a bad person. I’m only doing this for the money, working as a businessman as many others do. I mean, the government makes millions every year selling arms to countries that do far worse damage than I’ll ever do. Where’s the moral outrage about that?’

  Astrid watched Cara’s frustration and anger finally burst from her.

  ‘Businessman? You’re responsible for the rape and torture of hundreds of people.’ Her eyes were fiery red. ‘That stops now.’

  Vertigo continued to wave his finger. ‘I’m going to miss you, Beth.’

  He turned his head to speak to the goon with the gun as Astrid reached out and grabbed that wagging finger, snapping the bone with ease. The gunman froze, and Astrid threw Vertigo into him. The sound of the gunfire and the screams were still in her head when Agent Lee’s voice brought her back into the present.

  ‘You said the deaths of James Bower, known as Vertigo, and his two associates were accidents.’

  Astrid stared at Lee. ‘The gunman shot Bower and the other one as he fell. Then, as I tried to restrain him, he shot himself in the stomach.’

  Davis peered at the photos on the screen. ‘How unfortunate.’

  ‘For them,’ Astrid said.

  ‘And this is where your professional and personal relationship with Delaney started?’ Lee said. Astrid hoped that was jealousy she heard in her voice and not disgust.

  ‘It was one of those first meetings we always liked to mention at dinner parties or weddings. You know, when someone would ask how we got together, Cara would say it was over three dead bodies, and we’d both laugh. People didn’t know what we really did for a living – they thought she ran a toy shop, and I wrote poorly selling books – so they assumed she was joking.’

  ‘And you worked many cases together after that?’

  She wondered why they were asking things they knew from Agency records. Davis and Lee continued to scrutinise the computer screen, but Lee peered at Astrid.

  ‘We did.’

  ‘Including one in Berlin?’

  ‘Yes, five years ago. You know this, so why ask?’

  ‘Did you have a relationship with Agent Delaney?’

  Davis couldn’t keep the disdain from her voice; physical entanglements with other agents were forbidden. Astrid hesitated, but it was pointless to deny it.

  ‘We did.’

  ‘Have you kept in touch since?’

  ‘No. Why?’

  ‘Did you meet her on your recent trip to Berlin?’

  ‘No. Why?’

  ‘Because the police found her floating in the River Spree in Berlin the day after you left for Vienna. When we checked her phone to see where she’d been, do you know what it revealed?’

  ‘No.’ Astrid realised she was about to find out.

  ‘Wednesday, the night you arrived, the Reichstag, the Washing Machine, the Memorial, the Brandenburg Gate, the bookshop, your hotel. Thursday, Alexanderplatz, Checkpoint Charlie...’ she stopped reading from her digital list and stared at Astrid.

  ‘Need I go on?’

  A portent full of potential danger possessed Astrid as she shook her head, calculating how much worse it could get.

  I thought of Snow sitting inside the Agency, imagining how her interrogation was going, wondering if they’d blamed her for my crimes yet. She was no stranger to Death, but then neither was I. As a child, my only friend was Death, my constant companion. Not that corpses surrounded me. She was my imaginary friend, Death. I craved Her approval, Her attention.

  The first memory imprinted on my brain involved the shadows sweeping me up inside their long fingers. They consumed me with small cuts every day, biting into my flesh, mind, and soul. Large, dark, luminous eyes followed me everywhere.

  My father was the human version of an iceberg, and not only because he was cold and indifferent to what happened around him. Almost ninety per cent of an iceberg is below the surface of the water. And it was like that with my father’s personality and what little emotion he possessed. Occasionally, tremors bubbled beneath his cold exterior. Something inconsequential would upset him to the point his eyes bulged, and his voice stuttered sounds beyond the usual grunts.

  ‘You’re the child I never wanted,’ he’d say to me.

  Or, ‘I should have dropped you on your head in the hospital.’

  I thought that was normal, that it was the same for all the other kids at school.

  My mother never stopped him, but maybe she couldn’t.

  He was an unhappy man born at the wrong time, at the wrong place and to the wrong people. His parents lived in poverty and, from all accounts, treated him and his brother worse than dogs. Was it all learned behaviour, the reason behind his lack of humanity? Did his lack of empathy transmit to me as I got older? Nurture or nature, which was it that played the most significant part in my metamorphosis? Are we all only the sum of those who gave us existence?

  Or did free will drive my quest for revenge?

  Revenge on her.

  Revenge on Snow.

  5 Drowning in Berlin

  ‘What happened?’

  Sorrow ruffled Astrid’s brows, and the sensation irritated her. A week ago, she wouldn’t have been like this. Death had been a constant for most of her life; it didn’t bother her. But now mixed emotions and memories irritated her.

  ‘That’s why we’re here.’ Director Davis placed her hands on the table while Lincoln tapped on his screens. Lee was unmoving, but Astrid saw something working behind her eyes.

  ‘You believe I had something to do with it?’

  They’re keeping something from me.

  ‘That’s what we’re here to discover.’

  ‘How did she die?’ Astrid remembered the last conversation they’d had on the bridge in Berlin, the tears in Cara’s eyes when she recognised it was over between them. It would have been difficult for her not to understand, considering Astrid told her in direct enough term
s.

  ‘I never loved you, Cara. I’m incapable of loving anyone.’

  Had she pretended all the time they were together, or perhaps she’d misled herself? If that was so, then maybe these feeling she had for Olivia were just the same, and they’d vanish as well in time.

  Would that be good or bad? Was my father right all along?

  She pictured Cara’s face on that bridge in Berlin. It had been a shock to see a grown woman collapse into a shuddering pool of helplessness. Her tears came in great waves, threatening to burst the river below them. Astrid walked away guiltless then, but the news of Cara’s death upset her now. It surprised her.

  Agent Lee spoke next, the details flowing out of her without her having to refer to a computer screen or any notes.

  ‘Even though they discovered her floating in the river, she’d been asphyxiated somewhere else. The plastic bag still was tied around her neck.’

  It was a terrible way to die. A method Astrid had used many times on assignments; all of them in the Agency files and her memories.

  ‘What sexual relationship did you have with Agent Delaney?’ Director Davis peered into Agent Lincoln’s digital screen, her eyes focused on the photos from the crime scene.

  ‘What?’ Astrid replied, her brain assuming hostile intent in the questions, glancing at the image of a body being pulled from the river.

  ‘Did you engage in perverted or dangerous sexual practices?’

  Astrid held back the laughter, the words coming from the director’s mouth triggering an intrusive recollection of her parents asking something similar to her fifteen-year-old self. She remembered the lock of horror on her mother’s face and the anger on his. Courtney stood in the corner and laughed. It was her sister who had told them what Astrid got up to at night, away from the house and his hard fists.

  ‘You assume she died after we fooled around in my hotel?’

  ‘It is possible, yes?’

  ‘No.’ She stared deep into Agent Lee’s cold eyes.

  ‘We’ll return to this. What did you do after leaving Berlin?’ Davis oozed professionalism, her piggish brown eyes reminding Astrid of crushed hazelnuts.