Zero kill, p.3
Zero Kill, page 3
A voice she didn’t recognize said, ‘Westwood Club.’
‘Where’s Panda?’ said Elsa.
‘Who is this, please?’
‘It’s Elsa Zero.’
She didn’t appreciate the long, tense pause on the other end – when Elsa phoned Panda, she expected to be put straight through – and it didn’t bode well.
‘I’m sorry,’ said the voice finally. ‘Panda is out of the country.’
‘Don’t be daft, Panda hasn’t left the club in three hundred years.’ Sitting on the toilet seat, Elsa used tweezers to pick fragments of glass from the soles of her feet, dropping them into the bath. ‘Put him on, it’s urgent.’
‘I’m afraid that’s not going to be poss—’
‘What’s your name?’ she interrupted.
‘I don’t have a name,’ said the voice.
‘Mummy?’ called Harley from down the hall. ‘Shall I wear my hoodie or a T-shirt?’
‘Both!’ Elsa shouted and said quietly into the phone, ‘What you mean is, you don’t want to give me your name, which is different, and right at this moment, a very wise decision. Make up a name, so I can call you something.’
‘Megatron.’
‘Seriously?’ She frowned. ‘Is that the best you can do?’
‘Off the top of my head,’ said the voice defensively.
‘Mummy.’
India stood at the bathroom door and Elsa pressed the phone to her chest. ‘Yes, baby.’
‘I can’t find my ballet shoes.’
‘You’re not going to need your ballet shoes where we’re going.’
‘But I won’t be able to practise.’
‘Ballet practice is cancelled for the time being.’
‘Yessss!’ Her daughter pumped the air with her fist and left.
‘Well, Megatron,’ Elsa said into the phone. ‘I don’t know what Panda is playing at, but tell him I’m coming to visit, whether he likes it or not.’
She threw the phone across the bathroom, had no intention of ever using it again, and finished dressing and bandaging her feet. Palming a couple of ibuprofen, she hunched at the sink to swallow them down with water from the tap. When she lifted her hand to pull back her hair in the mirror, the diamond ring glinted on her finger.
She twisted it once, and then took it off.
Dropped it in the toilet, flushed it away.
Walking into the bedroom, Elsa climbed into knickers and a sports bra. Pulled on a pair of leggings, a T-shirt and hoodie, forced her bandaged feet into a pair of trainers and laced them up.
She pulled a rucksack from the top shelf of the wardrobe and stuffed it with clothes. She threw in the bottle of ibuprofen and a first-aid bag. Then helped her kids fill their backpacks, ignoring the endless questions they fired at her as they haphazardly continued to dress. If she told them to hurry up once, she told them a hundred times.
Moments later, she pulled down the ladder to the attic. Harley appeared on the landing when she was halfway up. ‘Where are you going?’
‘Show me your teeth,’ she commanded him and inspected his grotesque chimp smile. ‘Go brush them.’
‘I’ve brushed them already tonight.’
‘Go and do it again, and tell your sister to clean hers. I don’t want your stinky breath in the car.’
When he ran off, Elsa lifted herself into the attic and tugged the pull cord to turn on the naked bulb that dangled from the low roof. She walked in a crouch across the central beam in the sallow light, negotiating the piles of junk stored up there – the furniture and broken toys and decorating materials, all the normal stuff so beloved of normal people – to squat at the far end of the roof space. There, under a piece of lagging, was a bag she had hidden because – you know, old habits die hard.
She took out an envelope that should have contained twenty thousand in cash, but was empty. The stash of passports and various ID cards for her and the kids was also gone. Taking out a small rectangular case and opening it, she found her SIG Sauer P365 pistol missing from its neoprene lining, along with the box of ammo.
She hadn’t been up here for years, more fool her, because at some point Joel had found the bag and emptied its contents. Had he done it as a precaution, or because he knew something like tonight would happen sooner or later?
Her world fell apart at the stroke of midnight.
When the clock struck twelve, even Cinderella wasn’t forced to fight for her life against Prince Charming.
Elsa ground her teeth in anger for letting that snake Joel into her life.
But there was a burner phone still in the bag, she saw. A Nokia 8800, a simple graphite rectangle, the charger cable wrapped tightly around it. The plastic phone felt light and insubstantial in her hand. Elsa struggled to remember anything about it, until she recalled how Max Saint had insisted years ago that she take it.
‘What’s this about?’ she had asked him.
‘Every sinner needs a Saint.’ He tapped the side of his nose. ‘You ever need me, Elsie, give me a bell.’
Elsa inspected the phone closely, wondering if Joel had left it behind because he believed it was old and useless, or if he had fitted a tracker inside it. The moulding was smooth and didn’t look like it had been tampered with, so she put it in the rucksack, just as Harley’s head appeared at the top of the ladder.
‘What are you doing?’ he asked.
‘Did you clean your teeth?’ she demanded.
He gave her another hideous grin to prove it. ‘Where are we going?’
Coming towards the ladder, she said, ‘Never you mind.’
Truth was, she didn’t have a clue.
4
She needed to park the kids for an hour, until she could think of somewhere safe to take them, a long way from whatever horror show was unfurling.
Nowhere sprang to mind. There were associates from her old life who could provide secure mansions filled with private muscle, steel shutters that covered the windows in a split second, panic rooms; all kinds of state-of-the-art security. But they weren’t the kind of people Elsa would trust to protect a packet of Percy Pigs if there was money to be earned, let alone her kids. And she didn’t want to drive around in search of refuge, activating every single ANPR and face-recognition camera in the city.
‘Come on.’ Pulling a baseball cap low over her face, she hurried her children outside.
‘Where are we going?’ asked India.
There was no point in locking up – a heavily armed team of Kevlar-wearing thugs would soon take their size twelves to the front door – and they ran across the street.
She hoped the plan she had come up with was counterintuitive. Nobody would believe she’d leave her children so close to her own house. They, whoever they were, would think she was on her way to a seaport, a secluded airstrip or a safe house, and that’s what she would probably have to do soon enough. But her immediate priority was to get a handle on what was happening; try to find out why her life had suddenly been torn apart.
Rushing the twins across the street beneath the orange spray of the streetlamps, Elsa swallowed down the anger she felt at Joel’s betrayal. If she survived the night, maybe there’d be time to contemplate the bitter fact that their whole relationship – all the fun and intimacy and laughs, all those accumulated moments of shared experience – was a treacherous lie; their imagined future together a ridiculous fantasy.
The joke was on her, and Elsa didn’t like being made fun of. She intended to catch up with him – and kill him.
‘Hurry up, guys.’ With the clock edging towards one in the morning, the South London street was empty. There was no late-night traffic, no pedestrians, just cars parked bumper to bumper at each kerb.
India let out a yawn. ‘Where are we going?’
Elsa hadn’t made many friends in her life; she could probably count them all on the fingers of both hands. Of those, at least three were dead, two had vanished in mysterious circumstances, one was serving time in a supermax, and the others were flung across the globe.
Fact was, she found other people hard to trust, hardly surprising considering her former line of work, and it was wearying to keep so many secrets when they got too close. She had learned to keep a distance – her own nutcase parents had given her a head start in that regard – and maintain a healthy paranoia. Which is why it hurt, it really fucking hurt, that she had dropped her guard and allowed Joel within touching distance of her heart.
‘I said, where are we going?’
‘We’re going to Miriam’s.’ She pushed them through the gate leading to the house opposite her own.
Miriam was one of the few neighbours that Elsa had any time for. She was a lonely middle-aged woman who spent her days baking cakes and doing errands for vulnerable people. Elsa couldn’t remember how they’d got talking a few months back; it certainly wouldn’t have been Elsa’s choice to strike up conversation. But all her attempts to stonewall Miriam by glaring at her, which usually worked a treat with the mums at the school gates, delivery people, tradesmen, and everyone else, came to nothing. Miriam was one of those people who didn’t get the message when you ignored them in the street, and she insisted on chatting whether Elsa liked it or not. Eventually, Elsa allowed Miriam to make flapjacks for the kids, and she had even on occasion babysat the twins. Thank God, Elsa had never got around to mentioning her neighbour to Joel.
Elsa banged on Miriam’s front door, anxious to get off the street. Joel had answered his phone at the stroke of midnight, when some kind of kill order had been activated; it would have become clear very quickly to whoever sent that order that Elsa wasn’t dead. They could be on the way to her house right now.
‘She won’t hear you, she’s asleep,’ said Harley.
‘Then let’s get her up,’ said Elsa, as if it was a funny game, and she placed her finger on the bell and kept it there. The last thing she needed was to wake the neighbourhood, but she didn’t have any choice. When a car turned into the street, she pulled her kids into the shadow of the porch, but the vehicle went past without slowing.
Then the hallway light went on and Elsa saw Miriam’s blurred figure shuffle to the door, pulling a dressing gown around her. After spending a lot of time fiddling with locks and latches, she finally cracked the door and peered out, bleary-eyed, hair sticking up every which way.
‘Elsa?’ Miriam said in surprise. ‘Is that you?’
‘Hi, Miriam.’ Elsa took a deep breath and tried a smile on for size. The last thing she needed was for Miriam, as nice as she was, to refuse to help. ‘I’m so sorry, but I wonder if you could look after the kids for a couple of hours. I’d be terribly grateful.’
‘Do you know the—’
‘Yes, it’s very late,’ she said impatiently. ‘But it’s an emergency. I really need to—’ find out what the fuck is going on ‘—see someone as a matter of urgency. And obviously I can’t leave Harley and India alone.’
‘Oh dear, not bad news, I hope?’ asked Miriam, interested in the way Elsa glanced up and down the street.
‘No, everything’s fine, really fine. Lovely!’ Elsa grinned. ‘But I wouldn’t ask you if it wasn’t important.’
Miriam opened the door wide for the kids. ‘Well, you munchkins had better come in!’
‘Thanks, Mir,’ said Elsa. ‘I owe you one.’
When Harley and India ran inside, Miriam said quietly to Elsa, ‘Why don’t you come in for a cup of tea? If there’s a problem—’
‘Why would there be a problem?’ snapped Elsa.
Miriam looked carefully at the cuts on Elsa’s face, the cap pulled low over her unruly hair; at her leggings, hoodie and rucksack. ‘Because you’re dropping the children off at my house in the middle of the night.’
‘Oh.’ Elsa rooted in the bag for the mobile she’d found in the attic. ‘Do you mind charging this for me?’
Miriam took it, bewildered.
‘One more thing.’ She didn’t want to take her own car because the number plate would be identified as soon as it turned onto the high street, and the police – and her mystery assailants – could already be looking for the BMW she’d carjacked. ‘I need your car.’
Miriam looked concerned. ‘I’m worried about you.’
If only you knew, thought Elsa.
‘It’s really nothing, I’ll explain when I get back.’ There were two lies in that short sentence. ‘But I need to borrow your car.’ She winced at having to say the word… ‘Please.’
The kids were running around in Miriam’s kitchen at the rear. Excited by the unexpected late-night adventure, they weren’t going to sleep any time soon. Miriam sighed, then fished in a coat hanging from the banister. Took out her car keys.
‘Thanks.’ Elsa reached for them. ‘I’ll be an hour or so. But if I don’t come back—’
‘Why wouldn’t you come back?’ Miriam pulled the keys out of her reach, and Elsa knew she’d said too much.
She smiled sweetly. ‘Of course I’ll be back.’
And snatched the car keys.
5
Elsa drove Miriam’s Renault Clio into the West End. Across Chelsea Bridge, up through Victoria, skirting the edge of Hyde Park to turn onto Park Lane, beneath a silver moon the size of a dinner plate. Traffic was light: minicabs, mostly, and night buses cruising the near-empty streets, carrying home the last dregs of the Thursday night crowd.
She drove as fast as she dared, conscious of the many cameras lining the route, trying to work out who had targeted her and why. Elsa Zero had learned to live with the paranoid possibility that retribution would one day come her way as an unexpectedly bitter taste in her morning coffee, a fatal collision on the street, a pinprick in Waitrose, but she was still bewildered and angry that it had been Joel who had attacked her.
She only had herself to blame for hooking up with him in the first place. Elsa never had any intention of starting a relationship. But tired of being alone, vaguely hoping that one day a suitable co-parent for her kids may come along, she’d let down her guard and flirted with a charming, good-looking stranger in a café.
It was a slippery slope, and like most relationships full of unexpected twists and turns. One moment he was buying her a chai latte, the next asking for her telephone number, insinuating himself into her life, winning her trust and the devotion of her children, then lunging at her throat with a pair of greasy kebab skewers.
Elsa had genuinely believed Joel was a normal middle-management guy. Sensible, dependable, maybe a little on the dull side. She had met his ‘friends’, she had met his ‘family’, she had given him a spare key to her house. Sometimes when she got home he’d be there, jiggling about to Smooth Radio as he made dinner.
Joel had loved her, or so he had said – and she’d almost, almost, told him the same thing. Seconds later, they were fighting to the death, which was a brutal and unexpected way for a relationship to end, even by her own low standards.
Furious with herself, disgusted at her own weakness, Elsa lifted her fists high and smashed them down on the steering wheel again and again, screaming in fury with each blow.
She didn’t believe that Joel had planned earlier in the evening to kill her, or he wouldn’t have smiled so easily, or flirted so much; he wouldn’t have asked for her hand in marriage seconds before that phone call. His face when he looked up from his mobile – resigned, sad – said it all. The kill order had been given – and he struck. Judging by his fighting prowess, Joel was trained to use lethal force, but he could have done the job anytime. Snapped her neck when she was turned away, in the toilets, in the cab, back at her place. She wouldn’t have felt a thing.
Her instinct was that Joel had been placed in her life as a deep cover operative, but he’d gone way too deep and fallen for her, and when the clock struck twelve and he was ordered to kill her, he’d panicked. Which may just have given her the edge she needed.
But if he had been ordered to kill her, who were the jokers who had tried to bundle her into the fake ambulance outside the restaurant?
Elsa parked Miriam’s car in Mayfair. In the early hours, this part of the West End, one of the most expensive areas in the world, was deserted. Moonlight reflected off the upper windows of the tall, imposing apartment blocks. But there was life even in this sleepy place, and Elsa knew exactly where to find it. Walking a couple of streets to a parade of shuttered shops and luxury boutiques, she found a queue of people standing at a velvet rope.
Men and women dressed in suits and slinky dresses waited in a noxious cloud of perfume and vape to be let into Panda’s club, ready to party till dawn. Elsa swung a leg over the rope, ignoring complaints from the people behind her. A massive bouncer stood in front of a blue door, his hands folded demurely in front of his groin.
‘Hello, Terry.’
Elsa was tall, but Terry was a giant, and used his height and bulk – like most doormen, he looked like he knew his way around a string of sausages – to intimidate.
He looked genuinely happy to see her. ‘Long time no see, Elsa.’
‘Is it?’ she asked, but he was right, because she’d had scant reason to visit Panda in the last few years.
‘You’re looking great, my darling.’ He grinned from ear to ear. ‘You know how much I love you.’
She ignored the scowls and comments coming from the people queuing. ‘I’ve come to see Panda.’
‘Here’s the thing.’ Terry led her away from the camera above the door. ‘I’ve been told not to let you in.’
‘Get to the back of the queue!’ shouted a woman, who shivered in a ridiculously short skirt and crop top.
Elsa pointed at a sign beside the door: Strictly Smart Dress. ‘Is it because of what I’m wearing?’
‘I think you’re bloody lovely whatever you wear.’ Terry raised his voice so the woman in the skirt could hear. ‘Not like mutton dressed as lamb.’
