Perfect Kill

by Helen Fields

  ‘Fuck you,’ Jean-Paul laughed. ‘If you hadn’t been so slow jumping out of that goddamned window, I wouldn’t be in this mess.’

  Callanach waved and began walking away.

  ‘Oh hell, Luc, wait! Come back!’ Callanach turned round, apologising to the people already queuing behind him, and returned for another dose of Jean-Paul’s sarcasm. ‘I completely forgot. They found those kids’ mother, the two Afghan children you helped. She’s flying out here to be reunited with them.’

  Callanach’s heart double-timed for a few seconds. He’d resisted the temptation to visit Azzat and Huznia before leaving Paris but he’d been told they were settling well into foster care, and that Azzat had even started school. It was a rare triumph in a system that struggled to cope.

  ‘Will she be allowed to stay or will they all have to go back to Afghanistan?’ he asked.

  ‘They’ll be able to make an asylum application. She was subjected to a substantial level of violence and abuse, and she was living on the streets, begging. Interpol identified her as she was using an international charity’s medical service regularly. Don’t get a hero complex, but I guess it’s fair to say those kids’ll be pretty grateful to you.’

  Callanach considered answering then gave up on it. Some things didn’t require a response. He stepped forward, kissed Jean-Paul on each cheek, then disappeared through into security. Half of him longed to stay in France and the other half was counting down the minutes until his feet hit the ground in Edinburgh. He felt the pull of his dual nationalities, no longer running away from one or the other, but equally invested in both. Settling on the plane, he closed his eyes and let himself drift back in time to a day he spent at Eilean Donan Castle.

  Lively shoved the bunch of flowers forward, looking off in a different direction. Elenuta took them carefully, putting her face to the orange roses and breathing deeply.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘Beautiful.’

  ‘I just figured you wouldn’t have had many visitors except for immigration and doctors. Shall we sit?’

  Elenuta glanced at the sad, hard chair next to her bed in the hospital room where she’d been left – in theory – to recuperate. The authorities were still processing her and the other women, and leaving them in the hospital was easier than organising a longer-term solution.

  ‘Can we walk? I am allowed to leave room if police with me.’ She smiled, looking out of her window at the grounds below. It was chilly, but not raining. Lively could sympathise with her desire to get fresh air. Hospitals made him feel ill as soon he walked in the door. It was enough to make anyone long for freedom.

  ‘Will you be warm enough?’ he asked, as she put the flowers by her bed then pulled on a patchy denim jacket, obviously donated from a charity store.

  ‘I don’t mind cold,’ she said, pushing her feet into trainers and moving for the door. Lively followed her, showing his ID to the officer who stood at the end of the corridor, though he didn’t check it anyway.

  They took the stairs rather than the elevator, and headed for the car park. Elenuta turned her face up towards the weak sunshine and smiled.

  ‘So how’re you doing?’ Lively asked. ‘I mean, I know it’s only been a couple of days, so it’s probably a stupid question …’

  ‘I’m alive,’ Elenuta smiled. ‘Must not be sad. Others dead.’

  Lively shoved his hands hard in his jacket pockets and gave a small cough.

  ‘I, er, think you were very brave. Maybe braver than anyone else I’ve known. You could have asked me to stop it all earlier on. Maybe we should have done, too. What happened during the race when I couldn’t get to you … Shit, I don’t even know how to say sorry properly. It just doesn’t do it justice.’

  ‘You save me.’ She tipped her head to one side and smiled. ‘Why sorry?’

  ‘It should have gone down differently,’ he said. ‘You shouldn’t have had to fight the way you did. I don’t know why we didn’t anticipate them blocking phone signals to the outside. It makes absolute sense now. And as for locking the doors into the viewing area … we tried to be too clever, and … hell.’ Lively hung his head. Being stuck for words wasn’t something that happened to him very often. Perhaps ever.

  ‘You did best, right? All the women found. So many of us. All safe now. You are hero.’

  ‘Not at all,’ he muttered. ‘You are hero.’

  ‘Perhaps both,’ she laughed and Lively marvelled at the sound. ‘Come, we walk,’ she said, slipping her hand into the crook of his elbow, pulling him away from the hospital doors and around the side of the building.

  ‘So, am I in trouble?’ she asked quietly.

  ‘What could you possibly be in trouble for?’

  ‘I kill man. Stab him, in race.’

  She looked up into Lively’s face, eyes wide.

  ‘No,’ he said softly. ‘There’ll be no charges. You’re not in trouble. We’ll take statements from everyone there, but we already know the circumstances. It was as clear a case of self-defence as I’ve ever seen. The man you killed had it coming.’

  ‘Thank you,’ she whispered.

  ‘Please, don’t thank me. You should never have been there. If I’d known you were going to be chosen for the race …’

  ‘I make Scalp choose me,’ she said. ‘It was me or sixteen year old.’ She shrugged.

  Lively dashed the back of one hand against his cheek and turned away for a second, coughing loudly before looking at her again.

  ‘Have you been told what will happen to you now?’ he asked.

  ‘I go home,’ she said, raising then dropping her shoulders. ‘I have no passport here. Not legal. People wait for me there.’

  ‘Of course,’ he said. ‘That’s what I figured. Obviously Scotland is the last place you want to be after everything you’ve been through.’

  ‘Scotland did not do this,’ she said, shivering suddenly at a blast of wind that hit them. ‘Bad people everywhere in world.’

  ‘That there are,’ Lively said. ‘I wish I could show you what it’s really like here. The cities, the lochs, the castles and the Highlands. It’s not all bad.’

  ‘Maybe I come back? With passport this time. But not by boat.’

  ‘I hope you do,’ Lively said. ‘Could I maybe write to you?’ he blurted.

  ‘Write letters?’ Her eyes opened wide. ‘I would like.’

  ‘I mean, I’m not much of a writer. Can’t remember the last time I put pen to paper, to be honest, so don’t expect anything grand.’

  ‘You are kind man.’

  ‘I’d just like to know that you’re home safe, and that your family are looking after you,’ Lively said, managing a direct smile. ‘I wish none of it had ever happened to you. The things I see in this job … every time I think it can’t get any worse, someone ups their bloody game.’

  ‘So we … I don’t know word. We make like was different, you know?’

  ‘Pretend?’ Lively asked.

  ‘Yes!’ She waved an excited hand in the air. ‘In letters, we not talk of it. Tell me about Scotland. I tell you about my life, my country. You want this?’

  ‘I do,’ he nodded. ‘I should walk you back now. You’re turning a bit blue.’

  ‘Cold but happy,’ she said. ‘For first time in many months. You make me feel safe.’

  Elenuta stepped forward and hugged him fiercely. The gesture took Lively by surprise. He raised a tentative hand and patted her back.

  ‘You’re all right now,’ he said. ‘Every bastard involved is going to rot in jail, I promise you.’

  ‘I just try to forget,’ she said. ‘Too much hate inside me. I need peace.’

  She was right, Lively thought, as they walked back towards the hospital entrance. He wanted to find peace, too. For the first time in more than thirty years of policing, he wondered if he was finally done.

  Bart and Skye sat at a table near the back of The Newsroom, the music playing just quietly enough for them to talk. The bandage on Bart’s wrist poked ou
t a fraction below the sleeve of his shirt, but the wound was healing. A blood transfusion and an amazing medical team had saved his life. In spite of a lengthy period of unconsciousness, there had been no brain damage. He was due a scar, but it would fade with time. Faster than the memories would, anyway. Skye had a half-full pack of cigarettes set on the table in front of her, the lid open a crack and a lighter balanced on top.

  ‘You took up smoking since we got back?’ Bart asked, topping up her glass with champagne. The choice of drinks was a gesture of celebration. He’d have preferred beer or red wine, but the gold label and ridiculous bubbles were so iconically happy and alive that it had been a no-brainer.

  ‘I’ll never smoke,’ Skye said in a half whisper. ‘But if that’s what it takes to stop anyone from ever thinking my body would make a good sales product in the future, then I’ll never be without a pack again.’

  ‘It won’t happen again,’ Bart told her. ‘It was nothing we did. Wrong place at the wrong time, maybe, but you can’t live scared.’

  ‘I don’t care if I live scared, terrified, or under my bed forever.’ She raised her glass. ‘The fact that I have a chance to live at all is a fucking miracle as far as I’m concerned. Tell me it’s not just me. You’re so calm, and after everything you went through …’

  ‘It’s in the past. I don’t want to think about it any more.’

  ‘But I wake up twenty times a night back in that building, waiting for them to come for me. The only thing that keeps me from screaming is knowing that you were always in that room across the corridor. I have to imagine your voice to stay sane. The only way I can get back to sleep is by replaying our conversations in my head. God, that sounds so pathetic.’

  Bart reached out, slipped an arm around her shoulders, and pulled her towards him until her head was resting on his shoulder.

  ‘This, here, is what kept me going, and it’s why I couldn’t cope when they took you,’ he said. ‘Until that moment, the thought of being here with you some day was everything. The idea that we would find a way to fight or to escape, or that someone would finally come the way they did. I pictured the tables, the menus, the lamps in the window and the passersby looking in. It was always raining in my head, just like it is now, because when it rains in Edinburgh at night, all the lights from the cars, the shops and street lights reflect on the roads and I think the city’s even more beautiful like that.’

  ‘I used to imagine Paris like that,’ Skye said. ‘There’s a painting by an artist called Gustave Caillebotte. Rainy Day, I think is the title. Anyway, it’s this Parisian street and everyone has an umbrella. The flagstones are wet and the sky is this stormy yellow colour but it’s just so atmospheric and romantic. I used to have a poster of it in my bedroom. Now I’ll never go back to France again. Not if I live to be a thousand.’

  She looked up at Bart but kept her head against his shoulder.

  ‘There are lots of other places to visit,’ he said. ‘California?’

  ‘I always fancied Australia.’ She smiled. He didn’t need to look at her to know. He could feel the muscles of her cheek lift against his chest.

  ‘What about Hawaii? I could learn to surf.’

  She laughed. He felt as if he’d won the lottery.

  ‘You think you could pull off one of those flowery shirts?’ she asked, taking a sip of champagne and picking her head up. She stayed close, though, and he kept his arm around her shoulders.

  ‘Sure, and I’ll let my hair grow like those guys who live in a camper van next to the beach all year round. I used to skateboard a bit. How much harder could it be?’

  ‘Hawaii it is then. I reckon I could get a bar job to pay the rent.’

  ‘And I can get work as a waiter, buy all our food and suntan lotion. Is it a date?’ He grinned.

  ‘Is this a date?’ Skye asked quietly.

  ‘Do you think you’ll ever be able to look at me and not think of the time we spent watching each other through toughened glass wondering if we’d survive? Because I don’t want to be only that man to you. Sooner or later I can see how you’d need to leave that behind.’

  Skye put her drink down delicately on the table and shifted her body round to face Bart front on, her hands together in her lap.

  ‘You’re right,’ she said. ‘I will need to move on. We both will. But you’re not the man who reminds me of being locked in a room thinking I was going to die, or the person who reminds me of the city I was abducted from. Bart, you’re the man who made me laugh during the darkest moment of my life. I know you. Maybe not everything about you, and I get that ours has been a brief and entirely bizarre meeting, but you’re never going to hurt me, or be cruel, or take advantage. I know you’re good, brave, and resilient. If you actually want to give …’ she gestured from herself to him and back again ‘… this a go, then I think I’d have to be a strong candidate to win luckiest girl in the world.’

  Bart looked at her demure hands. Her right middle fingernail was still missing from the damage it had sustained inside the cargo container, scratching at the walls. Her face bore faint yellow bruising around one eye from rough treatment forcing her to comply with orders. Her ribs, elbows and collarbones were visible reminders, even beneath her black top, of the fact that she had been too desperate and stressed to eat in captivity. In spite of what she thought, her soul was hopeful. Bart took a moment to remember the way she looked right then. She was the most beautiful girl he’d ever seen.

  He leaned forward, stopping an inch away from her face.

  ‘Do you think it would be okay if I kissed you?’ he asked.

  Skye closed the distance between their lips and gave her answer.

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Natasha’s kitchen was warm and bright as they sat around the table, drinking coffee. Ava perched cross-legged on her chair, staring into her cup. Callanach studied Natasha as she pulled her blanket closer around her shoulders in spite of the blasting heating. The after-effects of surgery and chemotherapy were wearing through her.

  ‘Dinner’ll be ready in ten minutes,’ Natasha said quietly. ‘Nothing fancy, I’m afraid. I just threw a quick curry together.’

  ‘You shouldn’t have cooked at all,’ Ava scolded her. ‘I said I’d pick something up on the way.’

  ‘I know. I appreciated it, but I still love to cook and there are a certain amount of fresh vegetables I need in my diet that takeaways occasionally forget to include. The point is that I want to carry on as normal when I’m up to it.’

  Ava turned away. Callanach wondered how long it had been since she’d been able to look her best friend in the eyes without tears forming in her own.

  ‘I’ll learn to cook,’ Ava muttered. ‘Properly. I’ll do a course or something. We can all eat raw, or clean, or whatever the phrase is. Fruit and vegetables three times a day. I’ll get deliveries set up …’

  ‘Ava …’ Natasha said.

  ‘No, it’s fine, I can make sure I’m here at set times each day. We’re fully staffed in MIT again now that Luc’s back. I’m due a ton of leave in lieu of overtime …’

  ‘Stop, please. I know you feel like you need to fix this, but it’ll be easier on all of us if you just accept that you can’t. Not this time. As for the cooking lessons, please – for the sake of us all – don’t even contemplate spending time in my kitchen. That really would kill me.’

  Still no smile from Ava.

  ‘Then I’ll get someone in to cook. I can afford it. It’s not like I’ve had a holiday in the last five years and I haven’t touched the money my mother left me …’

  ‘Actually I need more from you than that,’ Natasha said. ‘I asked you both here for a reason, and it would be quicker if you’d just listen. Let me finish. If at the end you need some time to think about it, or if you know it won’t work, then that’s fine.’

  Ava frowned, opened her mouth, but Natasha shook her head.

  ‘No, you’re at my table. That means I get silence when I want it.’

  �
�Go ahead,’ Callanach said. ‘I’m sure we can stay quiet for a few minutes.’ He looked to Ava for a response. She studied the wall.

  ‘All right,’ Natasha said. ‘Here goes. I have something to ask of you both. It’s a big thing, too, but given the position I find myself in, I’ve decided I’m entitled to take advantage a little.’ She smiled and topped up her mug from the cafetière. ‘I’ve got plenty of chemo left to go, probably followed by radiotherapy. My doctors say I’ll need rest, emotional support, help making sure the house is as clean as possible while my immune system is down, and just … everything, I guess. Anyway, I think the thing that scares me more than anything is being alone through all this. Nights when I can’t sleep. Evenings when I’m sick of listening to my own scared voice in my head …’

  ‘Tasha …’ Ava said, crumbling, reaching for her friend’s hand across the table.

  Natasha folded her fingers over Ava’s and gave it a tiny shake. ‘No,’ she said. ‘You have to be quiet or I won’t get through this.’

  Ava swallowed a sob and used her sleeve to dash away tears.

  ‘I can’t sit in this house alone. I don’t want there to be silence around me. My parents have asked me to go home. They decided after years of being ashamed to have a gay daughter that the prospect of me dying was worth compromising over, but they’re not really my family any more. Family, it turns out, are the people you want around when you suddenly discover that death is a realistic possibility. In case you hadn’t figured it out yet, I’m talking about you two idiots.

  ‘Anyway, I want to stay in my own home. I need my bed, my paintings, and my own oven. And I need you to move in with me, Ava. Not to stop work. You’d be unbearable after twenty-four hours, and the point is that I need you to come home each day full of incredible stories about what you’ve seen and done, with all the gossip …’

  ‘Yes,’ Ava said. ‘Of course. If you hadn’t asked, I’d have broken in anyway. I’ll be here for you every day. We can watch movies, I can drive you to all your appointments …’