by A. S. French
‘It’s a tight squeeze, but I think I can fit in,’ Astrid said from the other side of the steamed glass.
She stepped inside; their bodies pressed against each other again. Unlike the first time in the lift back in the Agency, there was no resistance from Agent Laurel Lee, just blissful consenting acquiescence.
Astrid shampooed the younger woman’s hair. Her fingers created a gentle foaming caress through Laurel’s locks, and then moved down to her neck. Her delicate touch moved across Laurel’s breasts, over that flat stomach and down until she found expectation and desire combined into one. They pushed up against the glass, letting the water wash over their skin and the heat consume them.
Thirty minutes later, they were eating microwaved chilli beans and rice. Laurel clutched at the cross around her neck, and Astrid’s curiosity got the better of her.
‘Do you regret what happened?’
She told herself she wouldn’t be disappointed if the answer was yes, but it was a lie. Those pesky new emotions were playing with her heart again.
‘Quite the contrary; it was the best time of my life.’
Laurel held on to the cross as she shovelled a solidified block of rice into her mouth. Astrid noticed her eyes wandering around the room as if somebody on high had seen everything she’d done.
Laurel laughed with a smile which melted any last resistance Astrid had. The sex was great, there was no denying it, but the sensations coursing through her were worrying. Emotional attachments were things she avoided whenever and wherever possible; she had too many scars to want to get burnt again.
First, it was her niece, and now there was this. And she should be focusing on finding who’d framed her, what had happened to George and checking on Olivia’s safety. She tore her eyes and mind from Laurel and went to find the laptop she’d left in the other room. Laurel’s fragrance was still on her skin, and it was glorious; the touch of her fingers lingering across the nape of her neck. She loved the sensation, but it played havoc with her thoughts.
She turned to religion to clear her mind.
‘Have you always been a believer?’
Laurel held on to the cross as she sat next to Astrid. ‘My mother gave this to me. She had unwavering faith; I fluctuate between believing and not believing. It’s the same with people.’ There was melancholy in her face, seeping out through the small amount of shadow she’d applied around her eyes and the unusual vibrant pink lipstick Astrid only just noticed. ‘Director Cross has a great choice of products in the bathroom cabinet. I wanted a change from Agency dullness.’
Laurel placed the top of her fingers on those succulent lips, distracting Astrid for a second from the digital screen she was peering at. Astrid’s soft lips stretched into a smile which didn’t quite reach her glowing eyes.
‘It suits you. George would approve.’ She stretched out her arm and took Laurel’s hand in hers. ‘Make sure you bring it with you on our road trip.’ Laurel gripped back.
‘Where are we going?’
On the screen were the seven names Astrid had filtered through the Agency database, the same female names she’d written on the piece of paper in the Delaney house.
‘The furthest away is in the wilds of Scotland; the closest is about ninety minutes down the road in Portsmouth, so we’ll start there.’
Her mind worked on that plan of action as Laurel leant in closer, her shoulder pressed against Astrid’s arm, their heads separated by the smallest amount of space.
‘Are these potential victims or suspects?’
‘Could be both, could be neither, but we have to start somewhere.’
Laurel stared at the name and address of their next destination. ‘Anne Dvorak; thirty years old and runs an upmarket art gallery in Portsmouth. That’s not a bad cover identity to have.’
‘Better than I ever had.’
‘So, what did she do to offend you?’
Astrid closed the laptop and handed it to Laurel. ‘We argued over the aesthetics of contemporary art versus Art Nouveau. I told her Mucha and Klimt had more artistic merit in their little fingers than anything produced in the last thirty years.’
She moved to the living room window, staring outside as her mind jumped back to her last meeting with ‘Sophisticated Annie’ Dvorak. They were working to find stolen paintings. Dvorak’s expertise in that field was supposed to complement Astrid’s considerable expertise in everything else.
‘That doesn’t sound too problematic.’
Laurel relaxed into the comfort of the sofa. Astrid continued to look through the window: something was wrong on the other side, but she couldn’t work out what it was.
‘It wasn’t, until I whacked her over the head with a small recreation of a Damien Hirst shark.’ Laurel was a picture of shock and amusement. Then she burst out laughing. ‘The idea of me hitting a woman with a small plastic half-shark amuses you?’
‘The image of it will never leave me.’
‘I had a fierce temper then.’
She peered through the glass. Laurel switched on the TV and searched through the channels. Astrid tuned out the chattering heads on the screen, pressed her head against the glass and listened to find the noise from before; and there it was again, the low growl of dogs preparing to bark. Familiar sounds to her.
‘Fuck!’ Laurel dropped the computer onto the floor. Astrid didn’t turn around.
‘I know; it’s the dogs from outside the pub.’ She spotted them running across the road and towards the house, followed by their owners; the same men who’d ogled her earlier. ‘We’ve got company.’ If they weren’t from the Agency, then they were brave local thugs.
‘No, look at this.’
Laurel’s high-pitched voice forced her to turn and stare at the screen. She recognised the scene at once: it was the outside of Frank Delaney’s house, joined by many flashing police cars and an ambulance. Across the bottom of the screen ran a ticker tape of information which had one large headline:
THE REAPER STRIKES AGAIN.
Astrid was about to swear when there was a knock on the door, and a group of boisterous dogs barked against the wood.
23 The Director’s Cut
After Frank, the plan neared completion, but I needed something else to clear my head. The disc I’d gotten from Chill provided me with the perfect recreational opportunity. Now I could let my creativity flow. And nobody would shed any tears for what I was about to do.
I waited outside as he left his hotel. He clutched a copy of today’s paper under his arms, walking with the confidence of a man about to do something terrible, and nobody would do anything about it.
The bottle was cold to my lips, the beer not having time to touch the sides of my throat. I dropped the empty into the bin and stepped over the homeless woman in my way, her head bowed, arms outstretched in the hope of receiving a few coins. Change rattled in my pocket as I kept my focus on the target. It needed doing if the plan was to stay on schedule.
It was a thirty-minute walk, through the beaten paths no self-respecting tourist would dare to venture into. He headed deeper into the shadows, expecting their dark blanket to nurture and protect him. Other hunters lurked there, but they avoided him, recognising a kindred spirit as he passed. They did the same with me.
A delicious smile crept across my façade as a chill wind snapped at my bones. These were the same shadows I’d feared for most of my life, but now I fed off their penetrating gloom. He kept on going, beyond those who held no interest to him. They were always blonde, skinny and young; the younger, the better for his tastes; girls with vacant eyes and dreams of better lives in different worlds. As he strode past the ones who didn’t meet his requirements, I peeked into their grim faces, spotting a desire to be invisible. I didn’t have the time to tell them invisibility was worse than pain. At least with the pain, somebody acknowledged your existence; with the invisibility, it was the same as never being born.
The narrow streets smelt as if all human existence had passed through them. Sw
eat, blood and tears mixed in with decaying food and never-ending shit. A summer rain had splashed through the gaps in the city’s veins, but still, the aroma lingered. Excitement rippled through my heart as we neared our destination, close to where concrete and stone met the river. I reached into my pocket for the tiny bottle, brushing against the plastic. There was a knife in the other one for emergencies. This was the first time I’d practise my future techniques. I was planning ahead, just like she did.
He let fly a bunch of expletives in front of me, frustrated at failing to find what he wanted and running out of room. There were only the two of us there, but he was unaware of me. The hair on the back of his head was straggly and unkempt from where he’d pulled his fingers through it. Before he could turn, I strode forward and kicked him in the back of the legs. He dropped to his knees, cursing as his bone cracked into the concrete. I put my foot into the square of his back and pushed him forward. This time, the crack was his chin hitting the ground before he rolled towards the edge of the river.
I left him to wallow in the dirt for a second, confident he wasn’t going anywhere, and he was no danger to me. I made sure nobody else was with us, thinking again how fortunate it was there were no street cameras in this neglected part of the city. I grinned as I approached him, wanting to thank him for making this much easier than I thought it would be.
His head was in the ground, blood leaking from his skull and swimming down to join the river below him. I pressed my knee into his back, hearing his spine buckle as the smell of his piss cut through the air. I stared across the river and wondered if anybody on the other side was peering in my direction. Not that I was worried anybody would see my face; the scarf pulled up to my eyes and the flat cap on my head was an adequate cover. No, it was a new sensation which had recently possessed my waking thoughts and occasional dreams: of having somebody watching me as I ended the life of another human being. I guess it meant I was evolving.
I considered it some more as I tightened the plastic around his neck and over his head. I contemplated the future. He struggled for a couple of minutes, but I kept on pulling for at least five, his strength dissipating and transferring into me. I flipped him over and scrutinised his death mask. There was one last thing to do before I rolled the body into the river.
I took the phone from my pocket and clicked on the camera function.
The TV screen showed a mass of bodies outside Frank’s home. Uniformed officers kept the media and the general public back, but there was no doubt the Reaper circus had descended upon the sleepy West Sussex town of Crawley.
The barking of the dogs jolted Astrid and Laurel from their reverie.
The loud knocking on the door forced Astrid to the window. She pushed the curtain to one side. Outside was one of the men from the pub, the taller of the two, dressed as if he was going to a football match in his tight sport’s top and faded jeans. A dark, overgrown beard obscured most of his face.
‘They’ve found us.’ Astrid didn’t remove her focus from their visitor.
Laurel continued to stare at the TV. ‘What?’
‘What do you want?’ Astrid shouted through the glass. The man gripped on to the leash, holding the dog from the door, and moved towards the window. There was no attempt at pretence.
‘The director wants to speak to you.’
His politeness and formality were the exact opposite of his outward appearance. She gazed beyond his craggy face, finding no one else but knowing they were there.
‘I’ll think about it.’ She moved from the window and into the centre of the room, her mind switching to escape mode. Laurel focused on the screen. ‘Any news on what happened to Frank?’
She didn’t like the man, regardless of the fact he’d rescued them from the van, but she bore him no malice, annoyed he’d become another victim of whoever hated her so much.
‘No, they keep repeating the same information about another Reaper death. They haven’t released his name yet. Who was at the door?’
‘Davis is here with her merry band of acolytes; she wants to speak to us.’
Astrid let the information sink in and sprinted up the stairs to get a better view outside the house. There would be agents on all sides, preventing any chance of escape. She checked the front first: the bearded man with the dog had retreated to beyond the wall, staring towards the house and whispering something under his breath. It wouldn’t be long before he’d return, with more than the dog for company.
The street outside resembled the emptiness of deep space; only it was inhabited by stationary vehicles and exquisitely manicured gardens. For a brief second, she imagined the curtains twitching in the bedroom opposite, but dismissed it as nothing and went to check the back, heading towards the room George had said was hers anytime she was in the city. She’d glanced through it when they’d first arrived; now, she walked inside and peered out the window.
The landscape stretched beyond George’s garden, over the fence and path they’d travelled to get there, and then what was left behind by the city planners. It was the embodiment of architectural boredom, the back ends of numerous housing estates merging into one amorphous urban beast, where a multitude of concrete, plastic and wood extensions had grown outwards like weeds of humanity hell-bent on destroying the beauty of nature.
There could be dozens of agents hiding there, waiting for them to get desperate and flee over the fence. She took one last look around, smiling at the pile of new books George had left for her at the side of the bed. She was wanting to pick one up, to keep it as a souvenir, when the banging on the front door returned, and there was no more time for stalling. She jogged down the stairs and headed for the entrance. Laurel got there before her, pulled the door open without hesitation, grimacing at the pallid blank face of her boss.
‘How nice to see you, Agent Lee; we’ve all been worried about your safety. Can I come in?’
Years of smoking had made her voice sound like each syllable was crawling over sandpaper to get out of her mouth. Laurel glanced at Astrid for confirmation.
‘Take a seat, Davis; let’s get this over with.’
Astrid took the space at the end of the sofa while the director examined the room before settling for the seat opposite the woman she’d come to apprehend. She wasted no time in getting to the point.
‘We found Frank Delaney’s car not far from here.’ Davis peered at her. ‘With a confused man in the boot who said you’d kidnapped him.’
‘Are you here to arrest us for that?’
Davis smirked and shook her head. ‘Tell me, Snow, why the affection for George Cross? I’ve read your files, and apart from your sexual dalliances, you’ve never shown positive emotions for others; so why this?’
Director Davis held her arms aloft as if the room they sat in encompassed the whole of George Cross. A momentary pique of curiosity crawled across those blank features. Astrid recognised when someone wanted to mess with her head. She didn’t mind; the feeling was mutual.
‘You shouldn’t take your work so personally, Davis; the mistakes you’ll make will eat you up inside.’
‘You weren’t lovers, obviously.’ Davis’s smirk was out of place on her like an elephant in a china shop. ‘Was he a long-lost relative? The father you never had? Or perhaps he had an affair with your old man? Your dad was a cop like Cross, right? The two of them, maybe, fumbling outside of those tight blue uniforms while your mother was crying in the other room.’ The smirk transformed into a grin, creating the first sparks of emotion her pale flesh must have experienced in a long time. ‘Of course, your father was a strange one as well.’ The director let those words linger while she searched for something in her pocket. ‘Don’t worry; it’s not a gun.’
‘It wouldn’t do you any good, Davis.’ Astrid clenched her fist.
‘It must have been hard for him, watching his career and reputation vanish into thin air once you made your accusations.’
It was a crooked sneer aimed at Astrid, words scattered in her directi
on like bullets from an emotional shotgun. In contrast, she observed Laurel grip the sofa so hard, her fingers tore into the soft fabric. She shot Davis a blank expression, smiling on the inside and amused by the director’s blatant attempts to unsettle her. They could have stormed the house with guns blazing, but hadn’t.
‘You know there’s an alarm here connected to the local police station.’
She hadn’t discovered where it was, but they didn’t know that.
‘Cross was always the paranoid type.’ To Astrid’s great surprise, Davis took an electronic cigarette from her pocket and started to suck on it like a kid with a lollipop. She continued to talk about Cross in the past tense; it was just another tactic intended to upset Astrid. ‘George did like his secret life, but his feelings for you were a shock to us all.’ The grin was now as vicious as a virus. ‘You appear to be somebody difficult to like, never mind love.’
‘What do you want?’ It was a stalling tactic as she considered how they’d get out of the place in one piece. She raised her eyebrows to Laurel and nodded towards the window. Davis shifted in her seat, the grin changing into a bitter, sarcastic smile.
‘I want you to come back with me peacefully, and we can deposit you in your rightful spot.’
She crossed her legs as an expression of a job on the verge of completion, her plain dark slacks as conservative as her imagination.
‘And what happens to Laurel?’
‘Agent Lee will return to us as a hero, survivor of the serial killer known as the Reaper.’
The scenario was set in stone, scripted to scapegoat some poor unfortunate, while Astrid would rot away in some unseen underground imprisonment.
‘You believe I’m a rogue agent who’s been murdering people I didn’t get along with? There’d be enough bodies to stretch to the moon if that was the case.’
Her gaze never left the director’s stony face, aware Laurel had completed her surveillance of the outside of the house.
‘We have the evidence, Snow. You would do the same in my place.’