by A P Bateman
She was in a bathroom. It was unfamiliar. Dirty. There was mildew set in the grout of the tiles and the tiles themselves were chipped and stained. She noticed a tide mark around the bath, but she wouldn’t have believed the owner of this property had used it in a while. The flooring was just plain wooden boards, but not sanded and prepared and the gripper around the edge indicated that a lino floor had been pulled up at some time or other and no further work had commenced.
She heard heavy footsteps and they grew louder rapidly. Giorgi entered carrying two large builder’s buckets with screw down lids. They were twice the size of the feed buckets Caroline had used on her uncle’s farm where she helped as a child during stays in school holidays. They had writing on them, but her eyes were too blurred to see, although she made out the word mortar. Giorgi dropped them down and they made a sloshing noise. He ignored her, walked past her and reached into the bath. Caroline had contemplated faking unconsciousness, but she had not been quick enough. Besides, Giorgi hadn’t so much as glanced in her direction when he entered.
“Wait!” Amanda snapped at him as she stepped into the room. “Gloves. Gloves at all times!”
“What are you doing?” Caroline asked weakly.
“Killing you,” Amanda replied coldly. She studied Caroline, smiled when she saw her reaction. “Gosh, your face! Oh, it’s a picture!”
“But you’re a pathologist,” Caroline said disbelievingly. “You trained in medicine. This isn’t you.”
“So?” Amanda stared at her. “I’ve been working in pathology and forensics for almost ten years. I work with corpses all day long. My work solves murders. That makes me the perfect murderer. I have the highest insight into not only how to kill most effectively, but how to avoid tell-tale signatures and traces of evidence. And I don’t have a problem with killing you. There is too much standing in the way to keep you alive. You think I care what happens to you? If I did, I wouldn’t have slept with your boyfriend.”
“You didn’t,” Caroline said emphatically. “He has taste.”
Amanda smiled. “Would you like the details? Your pretty little Union Jack cushions in the lounge; tastefully faded, or stonewashed, of course. Very Cool Britannia, very retro. The barbeque area as well. I mean, who the hell barbeques on a cold evening in April? Oh, and that captain’s trunk at the foot of your bed. Nice and tidy for all your bed covers.”
“So?” Caroline did her best to shrug it all off. “You’re describing the inside of our cottage, not the man you say you slept with. I know you two had dinner together, you’re not telling me anything I don’t already know.”
“Whatever.”
“Go on then,” Caroline sneered back at her. “Hairy chest or smooth? Six pack or not? He has a scar. Where is it? Come to think of it, he has a lot of scars.”
Amanda looked at her contemptuously. “You’re going to die, and you want to spend your last moments testing me? You have bigger problems, believe me. I suggest you think about something else. Take some time to reflect.”
Caroline stared at her belligerently. She was damned if she’d do anything this woman told her. “Alex has a small scar on his side. Which side?”
Amanda scowled. “His left! What do you want? I was fucking him, I didn’t notice a scar!”
Caroline laughed. “Oh, you poor little girl. How tragic you really are! Alex was shot last year, and he bled internally. A lot. They had to open him up like an umbrella! It looks like Jaws took a bite and decided he tasted like shit and spat him back out!” She shook her head. “You’re a sick little bitch! What could you possibly expect to gain from saying you’d slept with him? Just the chance to hurt someone emotionally? You’re pathetic.”
Amanda lunged forwards and slapped her across the cheek. Caroline reeled, but didn’t go anywhere. She was securely fastened to the chair and there was little give. Amanda grabbed her around the throat. For the first time, Caroline noticed she was wearing surgical gloves, and the clinical presence of them in relation to the task Amanda had planned, made her heart race faster. Whatever she was planning to do, she was planning to do it well. Amanda stared into her eyes, smiled when she saw the fear and uncertainty. She released her throat and pinched her cheek.
“I’d never killed before,” she said quietly. “Not before that morning. Kerchenko killed the dog. I was sad about that, but I suppose we couldn’t have had it barking all bloody day.” She let go of Caroline’s face, squatted down on her heels, but her eyes did not shift from Caroline’s own.
“The Jameson family?” she said. “Why?”
“We had to cover for Helena and Viktor. They had performed the killings up to that point. But they couldn’t kill Snell, because they needed a cast iron alibi. They were in London, shopping and eating out. CCTV everywhere. Helena called on her cousin. In return for the promise of a large pay day. And I was already involved, Hugo wanted me to corrupt the evidence, or remove it altogether,” Amanda smiled. “Kerchenko was all for tying them up. He would have to take the shot, of course, and I would have to spot the bullet strikes and guide him in towards Snell.”
“But why kill the entire family?”
Amanda stroked Caroline’s cheek with the back of her gloved hand. “Does that make you sad?”
“Of course it does!”
“Flesh, muscle, fat and bone. That’s all we are.”
“And feelings and emotion! Love, anger and kindness! Not to mention, unfulfilled potential.” Caroline shook her head. “You could have tied them up! You could have tied the boy up!”
“We were going to. But the man turned on Kerchenko and they got into a fight. He was mad and scared and fighting for his life. He took Kerchenko by surprise. I was carrying the rifle and I hit him in the face with the buttstock. When he went down, Kerchenko got out his pistol and aimed it at him and the man gave up. Then he lunged at Kerchenko when he thought he was off guard and Kerchenko shot him in the head.”
“And the wife?”
Amanda looked to the floor. “Kerchenko handed me his pistol and told me to do it. He wanted us both committed. He didn’t want to be the only one with blood on his hands.” She looked back into Caroline’s eyes. “And I did it,” she said. “I aimed the pistol at her head, saw the tears in her eyes, heard the please escape her lips, and I ended her life. Just like that.”
Caroline leaned forward. “It’s not too late, Amanda. We can blame it all on Kerchenko and you can let me go. I’ll tell them how you were coerced into going along with their plan, falsifying the pathology evidence.”
Amanda smiled. “Oh, you just don’t get it, do you? I think the moment I killed that woman was one of the best experiences of my life. I felt… free. Finally! Like I’d lived my entire life to rules and expectation, but released my entire repressed soul in that one act. I went straight into that little boy’s room and I suffocated him. God, you should have seen the look in his eyes, like that moment was everything to him. As if nothing he had experienced in his life had truly mattered up until that moment. We shared something special, something infinite. Something truly unique. After that, I wanted to take the shot, but Kerchenko wouldn’t let me. The rifle had been zeroed. Viktor knew the exact distance and had used a laser range finder and maps to get the range, and zeroed the rifle on a table with a vice. He’d taken his time, used a lot of ammunition on Bodmin Moor to get the rifle perfectly set up for the shot. Kerchenko was an experienced marksman in the military, but he still took three shots to hit Snell’s corpse.” “You’re sick!” Caroline shook her head. “That poor family.”
“God, it gave me a taste for it,” she said emphatically. “Kerchenko gave me the incendiary device to plant in your cottage. I couldn’t wait to go along with that. I used the excuse of visiting your bathroom, but I planted the device in your bedroom. I also planted the tracker Kerchenko gave me in King’s travel bag. A cut with a scalpel, a few expert stitches and Plan-B was instigated, and all the while, super-agent downstairs was oblivious. Your sanctimonious boyfriend thought I wa
s drunk, but I was pouring it down the sink, into the fireplace, behind the sofa. Everywhere! Acting like a drunken little floosy, and the entire time, he’s shitting himself because he’s got this unstable, and dare I say, desirable, woman fast getting out of control in his house, while his little woman is none the wiser!” She laughed, patted Caroline on the cheek and stood up. “I drove away, but only so he would follow. He’s a noble man, but that’s not practical in his line of work. I see it as a flaw. Because if he hadn’t chased after me, in my supposed drunken state, he wouldn’t have driven back into Kerchenko’s ambush.”
“It didn’t do Kerchenko much good though, did it?” Caroline retorted.
Amanda smiled. “Fair enough. But I was the one who pressed the detonator on your lovely cottage. Shame I missed King. But the tracker fooled him, and we would always get another chance. God, imagine if I’d killed him with that blast? I would love to be here, looking into those doe like eyes of yours and telling you how he died. How he burned and screamed his way into hell.”
Caroline scoffed. “It will take a better person than you,” she paused. “You know? You’re not that great. You didn’t move the two missed bullets from the scene. Forget that? Or was Alex too quick for you, too thorough?”
Amanda laughed. “Well, I think from what I saw of his work, he got lucky.”
“He switched reports, or at least had them switched.”
“What reports?” she asked, incredulously.
“Snell’s medical report. His entire medical history.”
“So, what?”
“Ian Snell was a diabetic. King suspected he had to be more than merely asleep with a gun like a point three-three-eight going off across the valley. He suspected he was unconscious, or dead already.”
“Rubbish!” Amanda looked uncertain, but she knew there was no way that her findings could look anything but fraudulent now.
“I can’t remember the medical name for it, but it was a diabetic coma, and massive organ failure that finished Snell,” she paused. “But you knew that. You just didn’t want anybody else to know that. And now that you have completed your autopsy with no mention of his condition, let alone signs of his glucose induced coma, then anybody can see that your examination was bogus. Basically, you’ve been uncovered, whatever you decide to do with me.”
The revelation had stopped Amanda in her tracks. She looked contemptuously at Caroline, but couldn’t hold her stare. She looked past her, at some apparent point of interest on the wall. It was clear to Caroline that she was weighing her alternatives, making her next decision based on this revelation. Up until now, Amanda Cunningham hadn’t known that she was on somebody’s radar. Let alone a team from MI5.
She let out a deep sigh, then swept a hand towards the bath and smiled as Giorgi arrived with two more buckets. He opened the lids and started to pour the buckets into the bath.
“Thames water,” she said. “Full of parasites, minerals, sewerage. Nasty stuff, but the same water they’ll find your body in tomorrow. Or sometime afterwards. You see, Giorgi here will hold you down, drown you, and the water that goes into your lungs, your stomach, that even gets sucked up into your other orifices as you struggle, as your body goes into spasm, will be the same water that you’ll be found in. It won’t look like murder, just an unfortunate trip and fall. Giorgi knows a quiet place to drop you off. Much easier to do it here, at our convenience. Do the job right. Too many variables drowning you out there, potential witnesses, the chance of escape. No, this way, we get to kill you, then dispose of you in the right location. Once we’ve checked thoroughly and are confident that nobody will see.”
Caroline could feel her pulse quickening. It was racing like she had sprinted to exhaustion, but she tried to remain calm. There may be an opportunity, but only if she was calm enough to recognise it. “Amanda,” she said quietly. “You don’t have to do this…”
“No, I do,” she said. “We can control this. Bukov and Giorgi can silence the chain. And besides, I really want to. I want to watch you die. You’re a sanctimonious, stuck up bitch. I want to see all that confidence, all that superiority wiped off your face.” She turned to Giorgi and said, “Let’s do this.”
53
King could hear Caroline screaming from upstairs. He had heard and recorded their conversation using the parabolic directional microphone he had been given by Randall. He had heard enough and was now outside in the darkness, studying the property and working out his best approach.
Intrigue had kept him listening to the live feed. And now he was worried he’d left it too late. He had wanted answers, needed them. But things had escalated quickly and now he could hear her desperation, and could only imagine what was happening. He had moved as soon as Amanda Cunningham had told Caroline what the dirty water was for.
The building was derelict. One of eight empty terraced houses that looked set for demolition. They were on the bank of the Thames, in an area that would have once thrived industrially. A vacant warehouse loomed behind the houses and he had noticed a property development sign on a security fence further up the road.
King tried another door. It was locked, but unlike the previous two he had looked at, this one was not battened shut. He put his ear to the wood, pushed so hard it almost made a seal. He could feel vibrations. He could hear muffled moans. This had to be it. This was the door. And then, ominous in its abruptness, he heard nothing. Stillness.
King stepped back and aimed a powerful front kick at the lock. Unlike at Amanda’s flat, the door gave way. He stumbled into the hallway and flicked on his torch. He could hear a scream above, and a shout. And then came heavy footsteps. He raised the torch and pistol expectantly.
The noise, when it came was devastating. He knew, as he dived out of the line of fire, that it was an AK47. He had heard enough of them to know. From both ends. He tore down the hallway, bypassed the stairs to his left and fired five shots into the underside of the staircase above his head. He heard a grunt, then the reply which came in twenty or so 7.62x39mm bullets. They tore through the wooden tread and down into the floor at King’s feet. King had earlier topped the magazine up with the three loose bullets from his pocket and now had ten rounds remaining. He could hear a magazine being changed. The AK47 was a rudimentary tool that was rough and tinny, sharp and hollow. It worked every time because of its simplicity, but it was a noisy and crude thing to work with. King was out from his position and running. He caught the bannister and swung round, took the steps two at a time. When he threw himself to the landing, he saw the man bringing the rifle up to aim. He fired. He wasn’t even close, knew he wouldn’t be, but it was enough to make the man flinch and that gave King enough time to empty his weapon into the man’s neck and face. The man’s head snapped back, and he pulled the trigger in reflex. The AK47 rattled off and bullets tore up the wooden floorboards around King.
King braced, but felt nothing except splinters of wood and dust raining upon him. He pushed himself up and charged up the stairs onto the landing, slipping in Giorgi’s blood and briefly losing his footing.
There were a series of battery powered camping lights placed at intervals, but the most light emanated from an open doorway to his left. He knew he should take his time, check for further threats, but he was also painfully aware that there was no time. There was still no sound, but as he neared, he could hear splashing.
Caroline was face down in the muddy bath. She was struggling, but her legs were tied back to her wrists and she had no strength or flexibility to keep her head out of the water. King lunged to the bath, just as her face went down and her whole body went ominously still.
King grabbed her roughly and hauled her out. She dropped to the floor like a game fish on the deck of a boat. She wasn’t moving. He took out his knife and sliced the bonds at her wrists, rolled her over onto her back. He started to pump her chest. He knew he should calm down, follow procedure, but he was simply too desperate. He bent down, listened to her for breathing, but her chest was still. He open
ed her mouth, checked her airway and thrust his fingertips into her carotid artery at the edge of her windpipe. There was a pulse. Faint, but detectable. He knew he had to get air into her, clear the water out of her airway, her lungs. He pinched her nose and breathed steadily. He started to pump her chest again, this time with the knowledge that she had a pulse and he had calmed himself enough to do it right. He worked on the principle that if air went in, he needed to get it back out. He couldn’t simply keep filling the lungs. He breathed for her again, pumped three more times to work her lungs. On the third attempt at breathing for her, she lurched, and a large amount of muddy water spewed out of her mouth. She opened her eyes and turned her head as she was sick. King rolled her over and rubbed her between her shoulder blades.
“Thank God!” he said. He wasn’t a religious man and had seen enough evil and hostility in the world and questioned the morality of it all enough to call himself an atheist. But he also knew that he had begged for his own survival in the past, and had no idea who he had been begging to.
Caroline wrapped her arms around him. She was sobbing. He had never seen her in such a state before, but then, she had never been so close to death before. And this from a woman caught in the terrorist’s blast that had killed her fiancé.
“Where is she?” she rasped, her throat raw, her breathing shallow and wet. The effort of talking make her cough repeatedly.
King looked up, saw the broken window. He hugged her close. “She’s gone,” he said.
“And Giorgi?”
“Dead.”
She smiled, wiped her tears. “Get her, Alex. I’m okay here. Leave your knife so I can get my legs undone,” she said. “Just get the bitch…”
54
There were noises. There was ambient light. The city was seldom dark, especially in open ground like this, where the light created a halo around the edges of buildings. The city was seldom quiet either.