Kindred Intentions (3 page)

The surgeon had left the operation room. The
meaning of the expression on his face was evident. No words needed. Gavin was
crazed and she had found herself sitting on the floor, while the room around
her had been dimmed by her tears, with nobody trying to comfort her, not even
her husband.

For a while she’d thought that her life was
over, that she had nothing more to live for, but then she’d entered the
academy. What had happened to her had destroyed the plans she had built with
care since she was a little girl and had projected her towards an uncertain
future. It was up to her to give a meaning to it. Fighting those not respecting
the law had appeared to her the more satisfying choice. She would chase them
down, one by one, and make sure they never came out of prison, unlike what had
happened to the person responsible for the death of her son.

What a fool.

A sudden screeching of the brakes, a change in
direction recalled her to the present. The car had taken an exit. She felt she
was being dragged by the centrifugal force. It had to be the typical motorway
or dual carriageway interchange. Given the prolonged sensation of crushing to
the left, the car must had travelled a half circle. Perhaps it was crossing a
flyover. Not that all those details were worth anything, but trying to
understand what was happening out there made her feel a little less at the
mercy of the events.

It was just an impression, unfortunately.

She wasn’t even wearing a wristwatch to
calculate how far from the city she was. She had stopped using it for years.
With her mobile phone always with her, what use was it anyway?

The pace became more regular. They were on a
straight road again, but judging by the reduced noise, they were travelling
more slowly. Sometimes she perceived a jerk, a steering, a braking, followed by
an acceleration. Then all at once the car started jumping, repeatedly. A
country lane.

Amelia shuddered. He was taking her to the
middle of the country to kill and bury her. An image, born of a thousand films
and TV series, came to life in her head. He would make her dig her own grave.
At least, there was no spade in the boot.

Minutes, many minutes, passed. Innumerable
films with as many summary executions crowded her mind. She couldn’t stand it
anymore.

All of a sudden there was a braking, more
abrupt than the previous ones. Her face hit the panel of the backseat. Then the
car made what seemed like a ninety-degree turn. It went on for some more
seconds at slow speed, then it stopped.

The moment had come.

Amelia tightened her grip on the bottle. She
would fight. Perhaps she would die anyway, but she would not make it easy for
him and she would not beg.

The entire vehicle vibrated, when a door was
slammed closed. She pricked up her ears to hear his footsteps, but they blended
with the drumming of her heart. She tried to imagine the man walking around the
car, placing his hand on the boot hatch, and opening it.

Only nothing of the kind actually happened.

The silence was absolute. Little by little
Amelia calmed down; her mind was considering more options. That was a
cold-blooded assassin who didn’t hesitate to kill someone in a public place.
Why would he go through all the trouble of hiding her corpse? After all, she
was nobody. She had been called to be part of that investigation team for just
a week. And that was what worried her. She had no value even as a hostage.

The hatch burst open.

Fuck, she was unprepared. She tried to snap up
and hit the man, but the light penetrated the narrow space she had been in for
who knew how long with such a violence that for a moment she could see
absolutely nothing. Her movement missed its target. A hand grabbed her armed
wrist.

“Behave.” It didn’t seem the same voice.

As she reopened her eyes with difficulty,
Amelia discerned two men in dark clothes. She recognised the one on the right.
It was the killer. She would be able to identify him in the middle of a crowd.
He was wearing his security guard jacket soaked with blood, but apart from
that, he didn’t look in bad shape. The man on the left was tall as well, but
slimmer. He had a lighter complexion and his sparse hair was white. He looked
older. He was the one holding her wrist.

“If you do all that we say, you might make it
out in one piece,” the killer said.

She rose to a seated position and noticed that
the latter was holding something in his hands. A scarf? No, it looked more like
a sack. A black hood.

He approached and she tried to shove him away
with her free hand. The other man blocked that wrist too and the killer hooded
her. The canvas was so thick that the darkness fell on her eyes again.

She felt someone taking the spray bottle from
her hand and dragging her out of the boot. Since she couldn’t hold on to
anything, she risked slipping, but in the end she found herself standing. She
could feel little gravel stones under her soles. They bent her arms backwards
and tied her wrists. Then, with some shoving, they invited her to walk. Perhaps
at that point she should’ve offered resistance, but all her vain ambitions had
disappeared when she’d realised she had to face two people.

Everything was so strange. Based on what she
had learnt so far about the case, their colleagues supposed the killer was a
loner. But perhaps the police hadn’t understood a thing. For sure Amelia was
groping in the dark, literally.

With some more pushes, they guided her for a
few steps. The gravel under her feet became warm concrete.

“Mind the step,” killer one said.

Killer two gently pushed her again.

Now she was walking on something smooth and
lukewarm, which creaked a bit under her weight. A parquet floor. She heard the
sound of a door being closed and the strong air current that had shaken her
clothes and brushed her legs until that moment, making her shiver, vanished.

“Why the hell have you brought her here?”

That was another voice. Killer three? Forget
the lone assassin; that was a proper team. She wasn’t surprised at all that
they had snuffed out some overprotected lawyers so easily. Who knew how many of
them were there?

“She looked me in the face.”

“And why haven’t you killed her?”

Meanwhile, killer two was holding her by an
arm and guiding her through the room. Amelia’s legs touched something. “Sit
here,” he said to her. He was almost gentle.

“She’s a police officer; I think she was
trying to infiltrate Goldberg’s. She could have some interesting information.”

As she was finding herself seated on a soft
sofa, a real luxury after hours in a boot, Amelia could hear a grumble of
approval. It was followed by a series of swishes, rustling, the impression that
someone had come closer. Her breath became laboured again. At each inhalation
the canvas of the hood stuck to her face, at the same time making her feel she
was suffocating. The bad day was transforming into a nightmare so out of
reality that a part of her kept saying that nothing of the kind was really
happening. She would surely wake up any moment. Or she was just imagining it.
Any explanation seemed more logical than the facts. It was the way her mind
tried to defend her from fear. Thinking it wasn’t real made it more tolerable.

“So, officer.” The voice of killer three was
exactly in front of her. “Tell me, fancy a chat?”

What was she supposed to tell him?

“First of all, with whom do I have the
pleasure of speaking?” Considering he belonged to a team of assassins, he was
rather too affable.

Amelia opened her mouth. “A …” was all she
could babble. Come on, she could do better than this. “Amelia.”

“All right, Amelia.” His tone sounded
satisfied.

“And with whom do
I
have the pleasure
of speaking?” Fuck off, if he really wanted to arse around, he had to do it all
the way.

Killer three laughed. “It’s better that you
don’t know my name.”

“Otherwise you’ll have to kill me?”

“You’re smart, Amelia.”

You didn’t need to be a genius to understand
that.

“Let’s say I’m your best friend in this room.”

“Well, friend.” She was getting a taste for
it.

Another laugh, this time louder. “You’re
funny, Amelia. I really hope I don’t have to kill you. It would make me sad.”

It bore all the hallmarks of good news. “What
do you want from me, friend?” Hm. Perhaps she shouldn’t take it too far.

“First …” The amused tone had disappeared and
killer three had assumed a serious, pensive one. “You could tell me all that
the police know about this matter.”

Here it was; she knew she should have studied
the case better. But they had filled her desk with all sorts of papers: stacks
of reports, pictures from the crime scenes, dossiers on the criminals
represented by the five law firms that were victim of the murders. There were
thousands of pages. The first day she had tried to assimilate as much as she
could, but then she had given in. She had resolved to review them methodically
one by one. The undercover work could have gone on for weeks and she wasn’t a
detective; her task was to report any overheard words, take pictures of any
document ending up in her hands, record private conversations. In a nutshell,
she was to have played the mole.

And now a killer turned up and wanted to know
everything, otherwise he would most probably snuff her out. What a pain!

“It’s a lot of information …” Honesty was
always the winning card. “I can’t know all of it.” Truth made you free.

“And what do you know?”

What did she know? She knew that several
senior partners and associates of five law firms from the City, connected with
well-known international criminals involved in drug and weapon trafficking, and
who knew what else, had been done away with in a few months, in what looked
like a large-scale cleaning action. In the scope of the operation another ten
people, who were around during the killings, had died, usually bodyguards,
drivers, but sometimes even relatives. Their only fault had probably been that
they’d seen the killer in the face. No, correction: the killers. The City of
London Police
was investigating the
activities of the law firms, their clients, to understand which of them had
ordered the carnage.

Oh God, she was almost certain that the team
had identified some suspects, but in all honesty not a single name occurred to
her right now.

“Listen, I’ve been on the team for less than a
week. They told me: ‘We’ll get you hired as an internal investigator and you’ll
be our eyes and ears in Goldberg’s law firm’. Concerning the rest, I know
nothing and I can’t even remember the little I’ve read.”

“But a simple police officer, who’s just a
spy, doesn’t hunt down a dangerous criminal, going against the orders of her
chief, without a reason.”

How did he know?

“I fucked up, okay, I swear I don’t know a
thing. And I haven’t seen his face very well. I wouldn’t recognise him, I
swear.”

“Don’t tell lies to me, Amelia.”

All at once a loud explosion burst into her ears.
With her hands still tied tight on her back and her arms numb, Amelia flattened
herself on the sofa as much as she could.

The following seconds were confused. She could
identify some shouts, a pungent smell in the air. She started coughing, her
eyes were burning. It seemed to be teargas. Gunshots and moans followed, but
distantly, like it was just an American action film being played on a remote
television.

Were her colleagues breaking into the premises
to save her? She would’ve liked that, but it wasn’t like them. They would’ve
tried a negotiation rather than put her life at risk. Moreover, they had no
idea she was there. She wasn’t in
London
anymore, let alone in the City. She could have ended up in the
middle of a police operation from another jurisdiction. Who knew what other
crimes that merry little team of killers was guilty of?

She started to rattle off the Lord’s Prayer
like she was the most pious of believers, imploring that she wouldn’t catch
some wandering bullet. But wait, what was she doing on the sofa? Leaning
forward, she climbed to her feet. At least they hadn’t tied them. And then she
threw herself to the ground. The more you stayed down, the less the risk of
being hit. Perhaps.

Then all the chaos ceased as suddenly as it
had started. Amelia remained motionless on the floor. There was a tiny chance
that, if the incursion wasn’t a friendly one, the attackers would think she was
dead. And maybe, in the rush, they’d overlook her body and not check to be
sure.

There was a surreal silence, except for the
loud tinnitus in her ears. But nevertheless she had the clear sensation that
there was someone watching her without making the slightest noise. It was an
almost palpable presence. And dark. It was the best adjective that occurred to
her.

Long seconds passed and, from time to time,
Amelia questioned her sensations, but she didn’t risk moving.