In Cold Blood (7 page)

The last item she added was her
kukri
. It was a large, curved knife that was much favoured by the Gurkhas, the Nepalese soldiers with whom Beatrix had served in Iraq. It had belonged to a corporal who had died after Beatrix had rescued another two of his men. They had given it to her as a reminder of their gratitude. It was a little shorter than her forearm, kept in a leather scabbard that she could fit to her belt, and carried with a steel that was used to repair the edge of the blade.

She packed the gear in a waterproof rucksack and locked the range behind her. It was a bright night, with a full moon overhead, and eldritch light flooded down into the courtyard. The square aperture overhead framed the abundant star field like a painting. Beatrix sat by the plunge pool, took off her sandals and dipped her feet into the water. It was icily cold and refreshing, and, after just a handful of seconds her skin was tingling and alive. She looked around at the courtyard and then up to the second and third storeys. This was all hers. She loved the city and she knew that, had circumstances been different, she could have made a good life for herself here. But there was no point in fantasising about that. It was not the hand she had been dealt. She allowed her thoughts to drift and, for a moment, she lost a little of the fierce resolution that had driven her ever since John Milton had persuaded her to come out of hiding and leave Hong Kong behind.

Could she stay here and enjoy the time that she had left? There were eight years to catch up with Isabella. That would be challenging, but it would also be rewarding.

She felt the itch of the tattoo on her arm.

There was space there for five more.

Pope couldn’t seriously have expected her to just let it go?

She was owed a debt and she meant to collect it.

A blood debt.

To be paid in full.

HER ROOM was the biggest, and most luxurious, in the riad. It had its own veranda, swathed with bougainvillaea, overlooking the makeshift roofs and minarets of the city. She enjoyed the view and the cool night air for a moment and then returned to the bedroom. The walls were painted pink with tiny pieces of glass mosaic embedded within them. There were rustic woollen curtains before the wide windows and a pom-pom fringed throw on the bed.

She was tired, but her bones ached and she knew that she wouldn’t be able to sleep. She went into the large bathroom, its walls of polished cream
tadelakt
, and drew a bath. She undressed and slipped into the steaming hot water, cleaning herself with the orange peel soap and the argan oil that Mohammed sourced from a supplier in the souk. She had endured eight years of privation during her exile before John Milton had found her. She was prepared to spoil herself now.

There would be precious little time for any of that later.

She untethered her thoughts and let them drift. They travelled back across those eight years, the most recent lost amid the intoxicating clouds of sweet opium, all the way back to her flight from England and, then, to the events that had forced her to leave.

There had been an operation in London. Group Fifteen had been tasked with eliminating two targets. They were given no information on the targets, which was standard operating procedure, but she later discovered that they were supposed to have been dealing contraband weapons to the Syrians. That was the cover story, but it wasn’t true. They were Russian agents and Control, the man Michael Pope had replaced, had been caught like a rat in a trap. He was corrupt and rather than face the choice of flipping or being burnt, he had ordered them both to be executed. The operation had been Milton’s first and he had frozen. She had killed one of the agents and a Spetsnaz bodyguard, but the other one, a man named Shcherbatov, had escaped. She retrieved intel from the wreck of the car they had sprayed with bullets and discovered the truth behind the hit. She confronted Control and he had reacted in the way that cornered rats most often react.

He had attacked.

That memory was especially fresh. She remembered the little details: the crisp day in early autumn; the bright blue sky with scudding clouds; the way the sunlight shone against the red of their freshly painted front door.

The five agents who had been waiting for her in her house.

Number Five: Lydia Chisholm.

Number Eight: Oliver Spenser.

Number Nine: Connor English.

Number Ten: Joshua Joyce.

Number Eleven: Bryan Duffy.

She remembered her husband on the settee in the front room, his arm around a three-year-old Isabella.

Chisholm shot Lucas in the face and managed to put a shot into Beatrix’s shoulder before she had thrust the point of a letter opener into her neck.

Beatrix would have killed every last one of them, but they had Isabella. It had been a stalemate: as long as they had her, there was nothing Beatrix could do.

She had escaped the country and stayed away for eight years. Isabella had been swallowed up by the foster system, her name changed, kept hidden from her mother. Milton had forced Control to give her up. Her grandparents had taken her until Beatrix was able to get into the country to be reunited her.

Now it was a question of settling scores.

How many of them were left?

Was Chisholm dead? That would need to be confirmed.

She had murdered Spenser in the grounds of a dacha in Plyos, north of Moscow. She had drawn a line through his name, etched his rose on her arm.

Three or four of them remained to be dealt with.

Plus Control.

Especially Control.

But Joyce would be next.

Beatrix used her memories. They were her fuel. She looked up at the second floor and the room where her daughter was sleeping as the fire she recognised so well took hold, scorching away her doubts and reservations. Her will was irrelevant. She had no choice. She did not have the luxury of the softer option. If any of those agents found out that she was still alive, they would come for her. They were all peerless killers. Machines that would keep coming and coming and coming until she was dead. They would have the advantage of surprise and there would be nothing that Beatrix would be able to do to stop them. Isabella would be in the gravest danger and that was something that she would not permit.

No.

Not again.

She had no choice.

She would invest the time that was necessary to wipe away every single threat that might threaten her precious little girl. She had been absent throughout her childhood and making her future safe would be her way of making amends.

A mother’s gift to her child.

BEATRIX AWOKE a little later than normal. She was usually up at five but it was six today. Her body preparing itself, perhaps, for the difficult task that was ahead. She showered, sloughing away the torpor of sleep, and then stood in front of the mirror to inspect her reflection. Her life in Hong Kong had been unhealthy and she had lost a lot of weight and all of the muscle tone that she had gathered over the course of her career. She had worked hard to correct that. She had a set of free weights in the range downstairs and she usually began the day with an hour’s worth of exercise. Now, her arms and legs had started to assume their old litheness and her shoulders were cambered with muscle.

She dressed in a pair of loose black trousers and a plain white tee-shirt and went downstairs.

Mohammed brought her a glass of freshly-squeezed orange juice and the international edition of the Times.

“Where’s Pope?”

“I think he is just rising now.”

“And Bella?”

“Gone for a run.”

Most mothers would be concerned about that in a place like Marrakech but Beatrix was not afraid at all. Isabella could handle herself.

Beatrix left the newspaper on the tiled table next to the pool and took the orange juice into the range. She looked at the rucksack that she had packed last night, pregnant with weaponry. She opened the armoury, took out another magazine of 9mm rounds and slipped it into the bag. She zipped it up again and hauled it out into the courtyard.

Isabella had just closed the door to the street. She was wearing a tee-shirt and shorts and the new Nike running shoes that they had bought together the previous week. She was sweating lightly, fronds of her blonde hair stuck to her forehead.

“Hello mum.”

“Good run?”

“Five miles. It’s getting easier.”

“Then do ten.”

She looked at the rucksack next to the pool. “Where are you going?”

She sat down next to her daughter. “I have to make a quick trip.”

Isabella was a tough child, her peripatetic childhood had guaranteed that, and she had become skilled at hiding her emotions. But she was unable to disguise the panic that crossed her face. “How long for?”

“Just a few days.”

“You’re coming back?”

“Of course I’m coming back.”

“Promise?”

“I promise, Bella.”

She looked at the rucksack again. She knew very well what must be inside. “Have you found one of them?”

“I have. That’s what Mr. Pope came to tell me.”

“Who?”

“Joyce.”

“Where is he?”

“In Somalia. I’m flying to Kenya with Mr. Pope, then I’m going to drive across the border.”

“And you’re going to kill him?”

Beatrix nodded.

“Good,” Isabella said.

“Mohammed and Fatima will be here with you.”

“I’ll be okay.”

“I know you will, but I want you to listen to them and do what they say. Do you understand?” She nodded. “And I want you to keep training. You can shoot as much as you want to now. Mohammed will help you if you have any problems. You need to work on your accuracy. By the time I get back I want you to be putting one out of every three shots into the middle of the target. And next week, we’ll make it one out of every two.”

“When can I try the automatics?”

“When I get back, baby doll” she smiled. “They’re noisy. We’ll need to go out into the desert for that.”

Isabella nodded, swallowed down sudden emotion, and stepped into Beatrix’s embrace. She buried her face in her mother’s shoulder, snuffling a little. Beatrix cupped her hand around the back of her neck and held her there for a moment. She saw Pope descending the steps from his room on the second floor and she disengaged, kissing Isabella on the top of her head and stepping away.

“I love you,” she said quietly.

“I love you, too.”

MOHAMMED CARRIED her rucksack through the alleyways to the street where he had parked the car and loaded it into the back. Pope had already left for the airport to make the arrangements. Beatrix told him she would meet him there later. Beatrix got into the car and Mohammed drove them through the town to the Palmeraie, the expensive enclave on the northern outskirts of the town. The surgery overlooked the immaculate greens of the Palmeraie Golf Palace, banks of sprinklers cascading water onto them in a display that Beatrix found rather excessive and vulgar.

Beatrix had been able to afford a private doctor. The luxuriously appointed reception was an exercise in expensive minimalism: frosted glass, leather Eames sofas and soft classical music piped through hidden speakers. There was an internal fountain, the water tinkling musically, and tasteful prints were hung from the walls. Everything was designed to distract those who were rich enough from the worry of their ailments. The other waiting patients were arrayed around the room, reading magazines and drinking tea that was brought to them by a deferential member of the staff. It reminded Beatrix of a hotel or a spa. She found it difficult to stomach when she remembered the squalor just a few feet from its doors, and the penniless sick who would die from their poverty as much as from their illnesses. She would never have chosen to come here, but she had the money and there was no alternative. She could not sacrifice Isabella and the pursuit of her future safety for the sake of her scruples.

The receptionist announced softly that the doctor would see her and she followed the familiar corridor around to his open door. His name was Abdeslam Lévy. He drove a Porsche Cayenne, lived in a big villa on the outskirts of the city and was putting his three children through an expensive private education. Beatrix had researched him very carefully. Old habits died hard.

“Beatrix,” Lévy said, in the manner of someone greeting an old friend. “How are you feeling?”

“Not bad,” she said.

“Given the circumstances.”

“Of course.”

“You’ve been taking the morphine?”

“Every day.”

“And it’s helping?”

“Yes,” she said. “The pain is better.”

“Very good. That’s about as good as we could have hoped for.”

“Given the circumstances?”

“Yes.” He smiled in what she took to be a paternal fashion. “You’ve come to talk about the scan results?”

“That and something else,” she said.

“Well, let’s talk about the scan first, shall we?”

She nodded; she didn’t really care about that since all it would do would be to recalibrate the time she had left and, therefore, the time she had to accomplish the tasks that she had set herself. Useful enough, but it wasn’t going to change the conclusion they had already reached.

“It’s good news,” Lévy said. “The tumours in your lungs haven’t grown. If anything, they might even have receded a little. And so that’s good. The Docetaxel is working as well as we hoped it would.”

“What does it mean? Practically.”

“It means we have it under control for now. We’ll do another scan in a couple of weeks, but if it keeps inhibiting growth, we might be looking at the higher side of the average I gave to you.”

“So, a year?”

“Yes,” he said. “Maybe a little more. As I said, it’s good news.”

A year. Yes, she thought, that was good news. The initial prognosis had been bleaker than that. She had found the tumour while she was in Hong Kong: a tiny pea that she could almost roll between her fingers when she showered. She had known, of course, that she should have had it checked out, but she had been wary of anything that would record her details, especially her DNA, on any kind of online database. She knew, from experience, how quickly something like that would have been picked up by the people who were looking for her and so, initially, she had done nothing and felt it grow a little each day.