The student was starting from scratch. He had never fought anyone before, never needed to, never felt the need.
She taught him the horse stance from Indonesian silat, mimicking the posture from stallion riding. He learnt joint-locks and chokeholds from Brazilian jiu-jitsu, then how to use side control, pinning the leader to the floor by lying across his chest. ‘Use your levers!’ she had shouted. The student had dug his elbows into the leader’s hips until she had told him to stop. When the leader retired (hurt, presumably, thought the student) she had one more trick up her sleeve.
The woman was in jogging bottoms and a loose T-shirt, the student in running shorts and a football top. His ‘games kit’, she called it. Her hair was loose, her eyes wide and her smile broad. It made him nervous.
‘You’re about to enjoy yourself,’ she said, taking the horse stance, crouching low.
She threw a white plastic knife to him. He caught it.
‘Come at me,’ she said. ‘Stab me somewhere. Anywhere.’
He had tried to play it cute. He kept his off-hand close to his chest for defence, he kept swirling his bladed hand to keep her guessing. She was still smiling. Her stance remained casual; her arms were raised and her legs were firmly planted but she managed to make it look patronizing. He felt sweat dripping into his eyes. He tried to blink it away but his vision blurred. The student wiped his eyes with his sleeve, and that was that. She lunged. He felt her foot hook behind his, lift sharply, and he toppled to the ground. As his head hit the mat, she was on him. The woman sat astride his waist, then worked her way up his body till her knees were locked in his armpits. He felt paralysed, pain searing across his chest.
‘Full mount,’ she said.
‘Submission,’ he said.
Today the car radio was off – the woman said she preferred silence. The windows were closed – the woman said she found open windows distracting. The student was sweating copiously. The woman had her eyes shut. He took the inside lane of the M6 and stayed at seventy miles an hour until the service station signs appeared.
‘We’re here,’ he said.
She opened her eyes, checked the buttons on her shirt. She picked at a thread, checked herself in the car mirror, retied the laces of her trainers.
She’s as nervous as me, he thought. And she doesn’t have poison in her pocket.
The slip road took them off the motorway and he swung the car into a space three lines of parking away from the main entrance. It was a wide space, but he made sure to park tight against a white van on his side, allowing the woman plenty of space to get out on hers. They both had clear lines of vision to the building’s large sliding doors. He breathed deeply.
‘Ready?’ he said.
‘Let’s watch,’ she said. ‘We’re early.’
He couldn’t sit in the car another moment. ‘I’ll clean the windows,’ he said.
He eased himself from the car, taking a cloth and a bottle of water from the driver’s door as he stepped out. It was another day of oppressive heat but it was a relief to breathe whatever it was that passed for fresh air here. Diesel fumes and a Cornish pasty stall competed for dominance. He dripped some water on the back window and started to rub. His eyes jumped everywhere. An ancient Ford Cortina rattled past, a grey Volvo estate parked opposite, a shouty family with the remains of a burger breakfast in their hands wandered in front of him. He thought it unlikely they were the forces of oppression that the leader had warned them about. Or members of another cell. But he watched them closely anyway. A beggar approached him, a filthy coat wrapped around nothing much. He held up a hand-painted piece of cardboard: ‘Very hungry. Homeless. God bless you.’ The student waved him away.
The woman was staring straight ahead. The concrete rubbish bin a few metres from the entrance had been the drop point last time. He assumed they were sticking to the routine. The bin, they had established before, was emptied approximately every half hour. The emptying at 10.30 was the trigger. A deliberately messed-up envelope would be dropped inside the bin by one cell. Ninety seconds later it would be retrieved by another. His cell. The woman’s cell. The leader’s cell.
The back window was clean but the student continued to rub.
A red Mondeo, a black Mercedes, a black VW Golf. A delivery man, a girl in a tracksuit, a wide woman in a business suit.
The student felt for the foxglove bloom. He wasn’t sure how long it would take before the poison worked but figured if he swallowed it as the woman completed the dead drop, he should just make it back to the house. Nausea, sweating, fitting and heart tremors were all likely. He hoped the flower and leaves were small enough.
It was the delivery man. Twenty-something, average height, average build, white. Unremarkable in every way. Brown cap, brown jacket and invisible. He hesitated as he walked past the bin, then as if with an afterthought produced a brown envelope from an inside pocket and placed it in there. He then drained a can of drink, dropped that on top.
The student tapped the car roof. The door opened. The woman got out. For twenty metres she would have her back to him. He had to do it now. Heart racing, he palmed the foxglove. Ten metres. His hand to his mouth. The petals smelt of nothing in particular. Two metres. They tasted of nothing in particular either but stuck to the roof of his mouth. A swig of water and they were
