remember.
‘Get over to the bed,’ he instructed. ‘Lie down. Maybe I’ll let you live.’ The arrogance, she thought. This was why women made better killers than men.
Maya released the grip on her snubnose — she wouldn’t be needing it now. She was safe as long as this man’s sexual energy remained unspent. She did as she was told, positioning herself so that her knees were bent at the end of the mattress, her feet on the ground and legs slightly open. The man towered above her, lasciviously taking in the sight, then bent down and roughly yanked her knees apart. She felt the cold butt of his weapon being pressed into her right thigh at the same time as she felt herself being exposed by two rough fingers pulling her underwear to one side. And when she felt his tongue inside her, she gasped — feigning the arousal she never felt.
She let him continue for about ten seconds before slowly moving her left hand down to the pocket containing her knife. She moaned as she removed it, just to keep him interested.
‘You like that, huh?’ she heard him say, like some boorish stud in a porno flick.
‘Yeah,’ Maya replied in kind. She’d studied the movies, and she knew what guys liked to hear. But as she spoke, she raised her arm above her head. ‘Yeah, I like that…’
It was a single movement. She used the strength in her stomach muscles to sit up at the same time as she brought the knife arm down with all the force she had. The thin blade slammed into the back of the man’s neck with absolute ease, and with a second sudden movement, she pushed his head with her free hand so that he rolled on to his back. As she stood up, she saw his limbs twitching violently; his tongue, which just seconds before had been so busy, was still peeking out from his lips, surrounded by blood. It looked to Maya as though he had involuntarily bitten into it.
It took him about a minute to die. A minute during which a thick pool of blood seeped from the back of his neck and the twitching of his limbs receded into nothingness. Maya watched it happen, standing above her victim semi-clad and with a flat, dispassionate look in her eyes.
His death, she decided, once the corpse was still, was not enough. Her usual habit was to make things look like an accident, but tonight she had a different intention. She tightened her dressing-gown cord, then bent down and hauled his body on to the bed, ignoring the blood that smeared her hands, her feet and her gown. She rolled him on to his front, pulled out the knife and rolled him back again, before going about the awkward business of undressing him. In the end she found herself cutting strips of material away with the knife. Occasionally she scored the skin, but that hardly mattered now. Her victim was about to look a whole sight worse.
Once he was fully naked, she stepped back and examined him. One cut would do it, from the throat, down his abdomen, to the area just above his groin. The knife pierced the skin easily. With the precision of a butcher she sliced his body open in a single movement. Blood seeped from the incision, though not a great deal because his heart was no longer beating. Maya discarded the knife — it had done its work — and then slipped her fingertips into the incision in the belly and ripped the skin apart.
There was a sucking sound as the warm internal organs loosened and spilled out, bringing with them a terrible, rancid smell. The end result was monstrous and Maya, even though her stomach was turned only by the stink and not by the sight, recognised this. She went back to the bathroom for her second shower of the day, leaving bloodied footprints in the carpet as she went.
This time the blood took longer to clean from her skin. The shower ran cold, but she stayed there until the water spiralling around the plughole was no longer pink. When she stepped out, she was covered in goosebumps, so she dried quickly and put on a clean set of clothes, barely glancing at the mutilated corpse on her bed.
It was time to leave. There was nothing she wanted to take with her, except the snubnose, the Beretta and the extra rounds. She would never be returning to this place. She allowed herself one final look at her handiwork. Did it say what she wanted it to say? Did it warn Ephraim Cohen, and the others at the Institute, what would happen to anybody they sent after her?
‘
Maya Bloom walked out of the bedroom, descended the stairs and stepped out into the cold night air, closing the front door quietly behind her.
Ten years later, 2013.
FIFTEEN
Reg Parker, the driver of the soon-to-depart 16.55 train from Bristol Parkway to London Paddington, was deeply engrossed in his Daily Express. He had a thing for Kate Middleton and was glad to be alone in the driver’s compartment to lech over the double-page spread plastered with paparazzi shots of her on a beach in Antigua. No sign in the pictures of that chinless wonder Wills, thank God. Just Kate, the sea, the sand and, in his imagination, Reg himself — rubbing factor eight into her back. He looked up in irritation when he heard a tap on the platform- side window.
Some bloody foreigner was standing there, grinning like an idiot. He wore a baseball cap and dark glasses, so Reg couldn’t tell what nationality he might be. Chink, perhaps? He had a camera round his neck, so Reg reckoned he was a trainspotter. Bloody weirdos, the lot of them. He shook his head with irritation, pointed back towards the passenger carriages and went back to his paper.
But the trainspotter didn’t give up. He tapped louder. Reg, irritated now, threw Kate and her sun-kissed skin to one side, and lowered the window.
‘Look, mate, you need to step back from the…’ he said.
He drew breath rapidly. The trainspotter wasn’t smiling any more. And he obviously wasn’t a trainspotter either. As soon as Reg had dropped the window he’d stuck his right hand through the opening. He was holding a gun.
‘You’ve got five seconds to open up.’ The gunman’s accent was heavy and unknown to Reg, who started to tremble.
‘Three seconds.’
Reg fumbled desperately as he opened the driver’s door. The gunman stepped in immediately, pulled the door shut and slid down, with his back against the lower section of the door so he couldn’t be seen from outside.
‘Raise the alarm,’ he said, ‘and I’ll kill you. Do anything except drive off on time and I’ll kill you.’
Reg swallowed hard. He didn’t reply. He couldn’t do anything but stare, petrified, at the weapon in the foreigner’s fist. His own fist scrunched Kate Middleton’s midriff. He was weak with fear and not altogether sure that he wasn’t about to piss himself.
It had puzzled Hussam Hayek, in the weeks leading up to this moment, that trains were not more common targets. Yes, to bring down an aircraft was dramatic. But trains were easy to board and had none of the security restrictions that came with air travel. Unless you were unfortunate enough to encounter a sniffer dog, you’d be practically untraceable on any railway station in the world. And once the train was in motion and between stations, there was little anybody could do to stop you.
The 16.55 to Paddington was in motion and between stations now. One of Hussam’s accomplices, if everything had gone according to plan, had the driver under his control. Surely there was no way anybody could prevent this from happening now.
The train’s five carriages held about thirty passengers each. Men in grey suits and cheap shoes making the
