Kindred Intentions (19 page)

Mike looked at her with intrigue on his face.

She gestured behind her. “They’ve found the
body. They were talking about it on TV.” She paused, placing her hands on her
face. “They believe I was in the car, they’re searching for my corpse. It’s
almost funny, isn’t it?”

“Well, it wasn’t intentional.”

“Why did you pick me up on that road? I don’t
understand.” She was gesturing. “You had set me free, I was out of the
picture.”

“I don’t understand it either. I was checking
you from afar. I wanted to make sure you were safe.” He pulled a funny face.
“Then I saw that someone was about to run over you and I thought I had to
intervene. I really wanted to take you to the nearest police station … at least
in theory.” The expression on his face seemed to say that it wasn’t exactly
what he had wanted to do with her, but perhaps he would.

“And you messed me up even more.” She could
barely restrain herself from smiling openly at him. He hadn’t really done her a
favour by picking her up there, but now she wasn’t sorry about that at all.

“I hadn’t realised they were following me.” He
resumed his serious look. “Now both Isabel and Yasir are dead and I got triple
what I thought I was going to get in the end.” The brief laugh that followed
wasn’t amused at all. “You may tell all of this to your chief; this way you can
boast that you solved the case. I don’t care. There’s an island in the
Caribbean Sea
waiting for me.” He lowered
his weapon, which he had kept aimed at her during the whole time.

Amelia glanced at it and then resumed gazing
at Mike. “I won’t say anything at all. I will come with you.”

He shook his head. “We’ve already discussed
that.”

“If I intended to return to being a police
officer, I couldn’t let you kill this man,” she said, indicating the figure
curled up against the wall. His face had become wan. Judging from the puddle
forming beneath him, the bullet must have damaged a big artery. He’d lost a lot
of blood. Weak as he was, he didn’t appear to have the strength to follow their
conversation.

She was observing Mike again. It seemed he had
a method for his executions. If the victim tried to escape, first he shot at
their legs, as he’d done with the biker, then finished them off while looking
them in the eye. Did he like seeing his victims suffer? Catching their very
last moments of life, their last breath leaving their body? No, she was certain
that there was no emotional involvement for him. Perhaps it was simply the fact
he followed a procedure that allowed him to remain detached as he carried out
that thankless task.

“I don’t see how you could stop me.”

“I’m not even thinking of stopping you. I want
you to kill him.”

“What?” Perplexity came to life on his face.
For once he was the one who was lacking a few pieces of the puzzle.

Amelia started laughing. “How do you think I
know about the
estate agency
?”

Mike remained silent, waiting for an
explanation.

She resumed being serious and stared at him.
“I’m the instigator of this murder.”

His astonishment was interrupted by a moan of
the man in agony on the floor. He turned to him for a moment, then looked back
at her.

“You know, I’ve been working at the City of
London Police
for about a week. I was at
Scotland Yard before that. And previously … years ago … I was a lawyer. Then, well,
I had some problems and I wanted to change my life.” She shook her head to
chase that thought away. “I digress. What I mean is that while I worked for the
Metropolitan Police in the Flying Squad I was dating a guy, an informer.” She
kind of laughed and raised a hand. “I’m terrible at choosing my bed partners,
we’ve already ascertained that. Anyway I was doing fine with him and I had told
him about the death of my son.” She succeeded in saying those last words
without bursting into tears. It was the first time she had managed that.

Mike’s face, instead, contracted as he heard
them.

“He was a good child …” She smiled as she
recalled his happy face. He really was. He was always happy, he never had a
tantrum, and she loved him more than herself. She didn’t exist anymore. Joseph
had been everything to her. She lowered her gaze. There they came, the tears.
“And he …” She pointed at the man on the floor who was observing her, unable to
react. “He caused the accident who killed him … and he has never paid for this.”
She turned to Mike again. “When I entered the police, I kept an eye on him, I
wanted to find something, anything to make him pay.” She emitted a vexed sigh.
“Just think, how silly of me! I thought I could succeed with the law. And
instead nothing. A real model citizen, except when he ran that red light,
hitting my car. But there were no traffic cameras to prove it, no witness who
could confirm it.” She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand, so that she
could see better.

Mike had approached her, but it seemed he
didn’t dare touch her or comment on her words.

“So Sam, my
boyfriend
, suggested
another way to punish him. He wasn’t certainly a model citizen, he used to know
a lot of people. Some acquaintances of his acquaintances knew how to contact
this
estate agency
.” She let a laugh escape. “At the beginning I thought
he was joking and then, when I understood he was serious, I was horrified by
his proposal. But the more time that passed, the more I liked the idea. Until I
told him I wanted to do it. I gathered the money in cash, fifty thousand
pounds, and I gave him the dossier I had created for this …” She scrutinised
the man. She couldn’t find a sufficiently disparaging word to describe him.
“Two days later, Sam was killed in a shooting.” As she turned to Mike, she saw
he was a step away from her. “And I’ve never known where the money had ended up
… until now.”

She crossed the distance that separated them.
Now she was looking him straight in the eye. She reached out to touch his right
arm. Her hand slipped to his wrist and onto the gun he was holding along his
side. She added her other hand and felt Mike’s fingers loosening their grip.
Now she was the one holding the weapon. She raised it to look at it. She ran
her fingers along the slide and the silencer. She backed off one, two, three
steps.

Mike’s face became alarmed. His lips moved as
if he were about to speak, but no sound left his mouth.

Amelia extended her arm in front of her,
aiming the weapon at him. She felt like smiling. That was a funny situation.
For the first time she had him at gunpoint without him having any way to defend
himself. He was completely disarmed; not only his body, but his soul, too. She
could see his emotions shine through his face. Sadness, doubt, curiosity, fear.
She could have done anything.

“What if what I’ve just told you isn’t true?”
She rolled her eyes, and then focused them on him again. “Yes, well, my son
really did die in a car accident. But … come on … it would be too much of a
coincidence if it was this man’s fault, wouldn’t it? Perhaps it was just a
story I’ve invented on the spot to distract you.”

She enjoyed seeing him so confused.

“Or maybe it’s true, but I could arrest you
anyway now,” she said. She moved her head to one side, indicating the other
man. “He will die anyway. He’s already dying. I could get everything. My
vendetta, glory, a brilliant career in the police. Uh …” She started laughing.
“Can you imagine that?”

She smiled at the thought of being praised by
Monroe
. The detective had taken her into
his team because she was a new face and at the same time had a real
understanding of the legal field, which made her perfect for that undercover
job. Who knew what his expression would’ve been, if she had shown up with the
killer they were looking for, caught right in the act of committing a crime?
Imagining his face amused her.

“Or …” She resumed speaking, putting aside
those ideas. “I could pull the trigger and kill you.” She shrugged. “I can say
I tried to stop you and the gun went off.” She felt a deep satisfaction as she
saw a micro-expression of anger in his face. He wasn’t the one now intimidating
her, humiliating her. Being on the other side of the weapon changed the balance
of power. “After all, you know everything about me now. You could get me in
trouble.”

She waited in silence for her last statement
to have an effect, but in vain. He was again wearing that calm expression of
someone who had nothing to lose.

“Or instead, you could take me with you, as I
asked.”

“I have to choose between being arrested, or maybe
killed, and taking you with me?” His voice was controlled, analytical.

“You and I aren’t so different,” Amelia said,
cracking a smile. “Our purposes are kindred, our desires are alike. We could
find a common ground.”

She moved her arm and aimed the weapon at the
man seated beside the wall. And then she pulled the trigger. The shot hit his
chest. It was strange to feel the recoil of that silent weapon, but even
stranger hearing that low noise in place of a real gunshot. She stepped
forward. She pulled again. This time she scored a direct hit to his head.

The man’s gaze became glassy. His body
stiffened, then started slipping along the wall until it finally collapsed on
the floor.

She didn’t think it was going to be this way.
A million times she’d imagined how it would be to take his life, picturing the
most ferocious ways. She thought she would feel satisfied, almost happy. Now
that she’d done it, the only thing she felt was nothingness, an absence of
emotion. Her soul had become a blank slate. No satisfaction, but neither was
there sorrow anymore. From now on she would be free to build everything from
scratch, to be a different person. She was finally ready to let Joseph go and
welcome anything life had in store for her.

Amelia lowered her weapon and turned to Mike
again. “I can’t go back now.” She smiled because that knowledge eliminated any
doubt. Having deleted that choice, a thousand more were opening in front of
her.

He reached out with his palm up. “No, you
can’t. You must go on now.”

“Moreover I’m dead, and you … well … you don’t
even exist.” Laughing a bit, she offered him the weapon by its butt. She didn’t
need it anymore.

“But I still have one last piece of business
to fix,” Mike said, gently retrieving it from her fingers. “I could use your
help.” And he smiled, too.

The black car was proceeding slowly in the
London
traffic of Wednesday morning. The
dark windows obscured the sunlight of what would otherwise have been a nice
summer day. But from time to time the sky was covered by clouds pregnant with
rain, which were crowding over the city and soon would water it. It was quite
hot anyway, even though the car’s interior was air-conditioned. The man at the
steering wheel was wearing a chauffeur’s cap and driving carefully. The woman
on the backseat checked the time. It was a few minutes to ten. Only twenty-four
hours earlier she’d been about to sit through a job interview, but events had
taken an unexpected turn, which had led her to this moment.

The driver hit the indicator and pulled over
near the pavement in front of the Old Bailey, the Central Criminal Court, from
which Goldberg was coming out accompanied by his bodyguard. The latter opened
the back door for his boss. The lawyer nodded his thanks and with a distracted
air got into the car. He was reading something on his mobile phone, while with
the other hand was holding a briefcase, but as soon as he was seated his gaze
was drawn to the unexpected female presence.

“Who …?” he started off with a perplexed tone,
as the door was closed.

Amelia put her gun fitted with a silencer to
his side, adding a friendly smile to her gesture. “Good morning, lawyer, I
suggest you don’t move.” She showed him her free hand and indicated his phone
with a nod of her head. “If you don’t mind.”

Goldberg gaped, then swallowed, at last
surrendering his device to her. She accepted it, but left her hand there, so he
gave her the briefcase, too. They turned to the front door, which was opened by
the bodyguard.

The man was sitting, but at once he seemed to
notice something strange.

The driver’s hand, brandishing a gun, appeared
in front of him. An arm grabbed his, dragging him inside. “Close the door.”

The bodyguard hesitated. He lowered his head,
perhaps looking for his weapon.

“It isn’t a good idea,” the driver commented.

The other appeared to change his mind and did
as he was told. Then the noise of a gunshot deadened by a silencer was heard
and the bodyguard collapsed on his seat.

“What the fuck …” Goldberg exclaimed, but the
sentence was cut off halfway, when the driver turned to look at him through the
compartment. The lawyer went pale.

“Good morning, Goldberg, did you have a good
hearing in court?” Mike asked him, straightening his chauffeur’s cap, whilst
with the other hand was holding a gun aimed at his interlocutor.

“Connor …” There was pure terror in the
inflection of his voice.