Lethal Profit (3 page)

‘Hello?… er… Shaun?'

No answer.

Eva walked further into the flat then paused and looked back at the open doorway. Still no sound came from the hallway. If anyone had noticed, they were keeping themselves to themselves. She took a deep breath. Was she really going to do this? She wanted to find Shaun himself, not go searching through his flat. And why was his front door open? Realising she was probably wasting her time, she turned back towards the door, about to leave. Suddenly she stopped.

In the corner of the door leading through to what looked like the living room was a bare foot, sole up. The foot was completely still. Eva stepped closer, her heart almost stopping as she held her breath, knowing there was only going to be one outcome to this regrettable burst of curiosity.

She walked quickly into the living room, came to a sudden halt and rocked backwards on her heels, a scream stuck somewhere in the back of her throat.
Oh my god.

A man – presumably Shaun – stared back at her from the floor, eyes wide and bulging. His mouth was open and gaping and his body was lying twisted at an unnatural angle, his lower half facing down and his upper torso twisted so that from the waist up he was lying on his side, almost on his back. A wave of nausea overwhelmed Eva and she turned out of the living room door and retched. When she managed to compose herself she looked again at the corpse; his eyes were wide open, desperate, almost surprised, his naked body so white against the faux wood flooring. She took several steps towards him, slowly bent down and felt for a pulse, just in case. Nothing. She stepped back again. She had never seen a corpse before; the complete stillness was unnerving. There were red marks around Shaun's wrists but other than that she couldn't see anything on the flaxen white skin that could explain his sudden demise. There was no blood, no knife wound, no ligature marks around the neck. She took a tentative step forward and leaned in closer, fighting her imagination that was convinced he would rear up and suddenly grab at her like a character from a cheap horror film.

Then she noticed an angry red dot on the back of his right thigh. It was tiny and wouldn't have attracted her attention except that it was so red and his body so white. She bent down and looked at the mark, aware of her breath coming in short, measured bursts. It was a small red welt, like a small version of the mark she'd been left with after a Hepatitis B injection before a holiday several years ago. It was the mark left by a needle. I have to get out of here, she thought suddenly as a flight reflex kicked in. She started towards the door but something held her back. Shouldn‘t she look around? If someone had come here based on the same information she had, then maybe she was on to something. Shaun's death could be completely unrelated but maybe it wasn't; maybe there was something here that might give her some clue about what had happened to Jackson.

Very slowly, her heart hammering, Eva walked back to the front door of the flat and pushed it closed. She returned to the living room, trying to ignore the growing sense of unease creeping up her spine. The living room was tiny, dark and a total mess but empty of hidden attackers. Although all the curtains were drawn, all the windows in the flat were open, which was probably why the smell of the corpse had not reached her at the door or drawn the attention of the neighbours. In the middle of the room was a tiny TV perched on a stack of books, an old battered orange armchair and a low metal coffee table littered with cigarette butts.

There was no obvious place to look for anything – no letters, no bag, no wallet, no mobile phone, nothing – even if she had known what she was looking for. She noticed a lone birthday card embossed with ‘Happy Birthday Son' perched on top of a grubby mantelpiece. She quickly looked away. Another family would have to go through what hers had. Eva tried to focus. If she were Shaun, where would she keep her important documents? She looked around again. It didn't look like Shaun had any important documents, there didn't seem to be anything of value in the whole flat.

Then she heard an electronic beep. Muffled at first, but when she heard it again she realised it was coming from the orange armchair. She ran over and threw off the cushion and there, underneath, was a mobile phone, singing out at regular intervals to indicate its battery was low. That would do. She grabbed the phone, stuffed it in her bag and turned back towards the door. As she was walking out of the living room, she heard footsteps coming up the stairs towards the flat and she stopped and stood still. A woman's voice was speaking in French she could just about understand, telling someone ‘she went in there.'

Eva scanned the room and noticed a fire escape ladder through one of the open windows on the other side of the fluttering curtains. She ran over and threw herself out, clinging to the rusted railings, wincing in pain as small slices of paint cut up underneath her nails. She forced herself down the ladder as fast as she could go and jumped the last two rungs, accidentally ripping a small part off the inside of her coat as she became airborne. She grabbed the material off the ladder and picked up a small black button that had fallen at the same time, determined to leave no trace. Eva glanced up to see if anyone was looking out of the window at her but she hadn't been spotted.

Suddenly there was a terrified scream from the flat upstairs. Obviously whoever was up there had discovered Shaun's body.

Eva got as far as the bottom of the fire escape before she had to check her pace. Outside Shaun's apartment block at the front, two police cars idled at the kerb. From her position behind a large bin, Eva could see two policemen, one in each of the cars, which presumably left a maximum of two other policemen inside. She tried to calm her frantic heartbeat.
Think
. Had the woman downstairs called the police? They had arrived very quickly if she had. But why would she do that? Eva's skin chilled. There was no reason for the woman downstairs to have called the police so someone else must have done it – someone who knew exactly where Eva was. From what she had heard from inside the flat – ‘she's in there' – the police seemed to have been looking specifically for her, which should have been impossible as no one knew she was here. But it looked like someone did know.

Eva tried to remember whether she had touched anything in the flat. While it was unlikely that the rough material of the orange armchair would provide a good surface for fingerprints, the door she had pushed open certainly would. Was she being set up? She felt the heaviness of Shaun's phone in her bag and realised it would not look good if she was caught sneaking out of the flat of a dead man with his phone, no matter how innocent she might be. She needed to get out of there. Suddenly there was movement out front and both policemen in both cars got out and walked towards the front door of the flats. At the same time Eva noticed a figure appear at the top of the fire escape she had jumped down. She had to move. Now.

As soon as the two policemen at the front disappeared through the door Eva left the protection of the bins. Veering left out of the flats she crossed the road that led back to the station and, unable to walk in front of the flats and risk being seen, went deeper into the housing development opposite to try and find her way around. Here, the flats were in a far worse state than Shaun's. At every step Eva took she could feel her presence attracting attention. She walked quickly past a stairwell occupied by six young men, all wearing loose, dark clothing and staring at her with a mix of suspicion and anticipation. She quickened her pace. By the time she was at the edge of the estate she thought she could feel a presence behind her. Unable to turn around, Eva pressed forward and tried to ignore the scenarios playing out in her head. Instinctively, she veered right again and hoped she was walking back towards the station.

Almost as soon as she rounded the corner, Eva felt an urgency push all her senses into overdrive. She turned slightly, reacting to movement to the left of her field of vision and thought she saw one of the men from the stairwell running towards her, steel glinting in his hand in the weak wintery sunshine.
A knife
. Immediately she took off in the opposite direction, pumping her hands to force her body forward, despite the cold grip of panic that had taken hold of her throat and lungs. She rounded another corner in the maze of narrow passageways that ran between the mid-height tower blocks of the housing complex and skidded, almost colliding with an old woman in a printed scarf who shouted something unintelligible at her, but she had no time for apologies. Running down an uneven path, Eva was aware that at every step she could stumble or trip, giving her pursuer the opportunity to close the tiny gap between them. She considered stopping and challenging whoever was behind her but instinctively she felt that would not end well.
Keep going
. Ducking under a line of fresh washing Eva ran on, risked a quick glance behind her and then hearing footsteps just behind the wall of laundry, pushed her body to move faster, get further away.

Suddenly, around another corner a wall rose up in front of her. The way ahead was blocked.

Stopping momentarily, Eva made a quick calculation, ran to the wall, pulled herself up onto a plastic bin and then tried to pull her body up onto the top of the wall. Her flailing feet kicked the bin over and it spilled its stinking contents all over the floor. She fought desperately to pull herself up to the peak of the wall but her arms were too weak and the rough surface was already stripping the skin from her fingers. Eva tried one more time to heave herself up over the wall but it was too high and, horrified, she realised she was slipping. As she lost her grip she landed in the rubbish, slipped backwards, struggled to find her footing and then turned herself around so that she was facing whoever was following her. For what seemed like minutes, the path behind her remained empty. Then very slowly, a small group of men, those she had seen at the stairwell, rounded the end of the narrow passageway. When they were just paces away they stopped and looked at her; they must have been all of fifteen but they were working hard at being menacing.

Eva realised she had made a big mistake coming into what was essentially their turf and then reacting like a spooked deer. There had been no trained assassin following her. Obviously they had nothing to do with Shaun. She had allowed her imagination – and maybe the residual fear after being attacked by March the night before – to get the better of her. She took a deep breath. Slowly, she walked towards them. As she reached the group of five, she smiled at the first boy, a tracksuit-clad figure, taller than her, his eyes rimmed with dark circles and his dark hair shorn close to his skull.

‘Ton mobile.'

Her smiled quickly faded. Eva ignored him and took a step to the right, trying to walk around the group but they fanned out, completely blocking her path.

‘Your mo-bile,' the boy repeated, this time in halting English, and then held out his hand. Eva hesitated. What choice did she have? She reached into her bag and handed over her phone then, in a split second, wished she had given them the device she had taken from Shaun's flat instead. Too late now, she thought, trying to meet the boy's eye with a steady gaze.

‘And cash.' His English was appropriated from gangster films, and as if to illustrate his point, he lifted two fingers and rubbed them together in the air, causing the four boys standing behind him to laugh menacingly. She handed over a small leather purse and the boy opened it and peered inside. ‘Carte?'

She shook her head and opened her palms. ‘I don't carry them.' It was a lie but she hid her cards separately for this very reason and she wasn't about to just hand them over to this child.

A flash of anger crossed the boy's features and he glared at her, bristling at the reply. Clearly a stolen credit card was worth much more than a foreign phone or such a small amount of cash. He continued to glare at her, apparently waiting for her to flinch but Eva stared him down and the boy seemed to have no wish to search her or take possession of her bag. After several heart-stopping minutes, he made a clicking sound in his throat, nodded briefly at her and then ambled off, his crew following behind. Eva stood motionless in the alleyway, her heart thundering in her chest. Never in her life had so much happened to her in 48 hours. Suddenly she felt a vibration against her hip. She opened up her bag to see that Shaun's phone had sprung to life.

There on the stark white screen were two words: ‘Jackson calling.'

E
VA
LOOKED
AT
THE
CLOCK
DISPLAY
on Shaun's phone: 7.30pm. Since the phone call from ‘Jackson' earlier she had checked the phone constantly, afraid to see Jackson's name jump up again, but somehow also afraid that it wouldn't. She had bought a universal charger on the way back to her hotel, just to make sure the phone didn't die. Sinister as it was that whoever had called her own phone had now also called Shaun's, it was also her only possible link to… well to what? Did she really believe Jackson was still alive? She felt exhausted.

She hadn't eaten since the croissant she had forced down with her coffee that morning before travelling to Shaun's flat. She was starving. She got up and walked over to her laptop on the other side of the room and pressed the refresh button; no new emails. She considered going for a run – she hadn't been since she arrived in Paris and she could feel her body aching for the release – but March had made her wary of adventuring through streets she didn't know in the darkness. She looked around the dingy hotel room for another excuse not to go outside and when she could find none, cursed her choice of a hotel without room service. It was raining as Eva stepped down from the chipped double stairs at the entrance to her hotel and into the street. She flipped up an umbrella and felt the cheap device bend as a gust of wind almost turned it inside out. She stood still for several seconds in the light of the hotel reception and looked around. The street was still; cars gleamed in the moonlight and there was a smell of wood smoke in the air. Nothing moved. She realised her heart was hammering in her chest. The rain drove into the fabric of her jeans.