Jess loves to drive at night, the thrill of the chase, the glowing array of lights on her dashboard. She feels dark: deep suntan, ripe plum lips, dark mascara, leather jacket, driving gloves. Feels in the mood: the girl who loves to kill, chasing her love to die for. Gripping the steering wheel, one-handed, lifting her soft camisole, rubbing the scarlet weal a man gave her fighting to the death. She feels hurt-in-her-heart, vengeful, shows no remorse for the unforgiven sex.
Her unsuspecting quarry joins the motorway. Entering the loneliest stretch, he accelerates his Tesla to eighty, ninety, one hundred miles an hour. Torn jeans, torn name, torn heart, torn flesh, she struggles to keep him in her sights. Just in time, the highway narrows to two lanes, chevrons keep them apart. Jess checks her clock radio: almost midnight. Time for the news. She will hit the headlines, dominate the traffic report: reports are just coming in of an…
Lights on her dashboard flicker red, amber, green. She takes her foot off the accelerator, selects fifth, moves herself clear of him, slowing till they’re chevrons apart. Jess turns on the radio, the DJ plays his final song of the night: his final song. Jess selects fourth, third, second, stops the car. Drive ends. The DJ says goodnight. She turns up the heat. The car in front explodes in a fireball: hell, hath no fury like a woman scorned.
*****
Imagine an arena, a natural coliseum offering every type of fight you could wish for. Whatever his dream, this is where she’ll make it come true. The murky hollow, nestled in the bowels of the downs, isn’t his idea of paradise. Their clandestine liaison, reason for her to appear, is her idea – not his.
Koch drives carefully over the speed bumps on the drive thru the woods, her secret enclosed like velvet baize on a card table. His rank precludes him from privileges such as his hero’s jetpack, shared use of a modified Aston Martin DB6. After a hell of an uphill struggle, the winding lane dips. He kills the engine, saving petrol, coasts downhill to the car park, arriving at the break of dawn, their designated time of rendezvous.
There is a hut converted into an angling tackle shop. Signs indicate his and her toilets. Her toilet sign refers to baby changing facilities. This strikes him as odd given men are deemed as capable of changing nappies, playing parent, as women. Koch enters the cabin, slips the latch, switches on the sea-blue pump-action gravitational suction system for human waste. Stands over the toilet, drops his jeans, his jockstrap, and relieves himself. To his horror, the hand basin is bereft of bactericidal handwash. There is no hand-dryer. Dismayed by the poor standard of hygiene, he shakes his hands dry as he steps outside. A sign explaining the venue is closed for holidays clings to the shop’s roller shutter blind.
He traipses thru the teeming rain to his van, loading his well-honed, muscular body with creel, lounger, telescopic fishing rod, umbrella, landing net, and a body-sized unhooking mat, for her.
She’s late. Where is she? He needs to fight her.
Koch likes his action fast, furious. His arms to ache with pleasure. A steady stream of hand-to-hand fighting to leave him exhausted, happy in a way only hard-fighting women like her can. He thinks of his wife, her unborn child. Thinks he hears a voice call him. Her? No, the call of the wild. He feels sad. His heavily pregnant wife waits anxiously for his return. Reflections on his family life are rudely interrupted by a woman’s voice,
‘Ready to fight me?’
He bows his head in shame. Jess dismounts from her pink hybrid mountain bicycle. Her face, bum, thighs and calves are spattered with orange mud, caked on by the gruelling uphill climb. Her chiselled cheeks are taut with strain. Under the grime lies a simple slick of make-up. Her lips are plump with pout. Her eyes shine with the tears of one who faces an unknown fate at the hands of her foe. She takes off her helmet. Her hair is thin, wispy. She extends a manicured hand, slim fingers, no ring.
‘I’m ready to fight you,’ she says, casually undressing for combat, ‘Shall we get it over with?’
It is a twisted game, she plays. A necro-sexual foreplay, climaxing in death. She hides behind masques. Trades futures on the dark web. Leaves no trace of human waste, corpse, or detritus. The halcyon days of illicit drop-offs coded tell-tale slips of rice paper are long gone. She traces, tracks, shuts down, then kills. The foe has changed her motives remain the same: disrupt, disturb, destroy. Jess mirrors the cruel, dispassionate society we live in. Owes no allegiances. Holds no respect, no morals. Recognizes no authority except the hand that feeds her. Officially, she doesn’t exist.
*****
Neath stands on the right-hand side of the escalator when she passes, wiggling her bum at him, swaying her hips. The central aisle between the escalators is littered with paper flapping in the breeze. How long will it take commuters to create a firetrap as a result of their laziness? He dismisses the notion from his mind as he alights in the ticket hall, following her thru the ticket barrier.
Jess is wearing an unzipped black leather bomber jacket, a clingy cream camisole, skin-tight faded denims, slashed at the thighs, sneakers, a clootie bobble hat to keep her head warm. She lifts her camisole and rubs the nasty gash under her full left breast: a flesh wound from her mud-wrestling fight when she killed a man with her bare hands. Death is no stranger to this woman. She’s tough. She’ll survive as long as she stays fit, beautiful. She drops her camisole, zips her jacket, walks out of the station into the sleet-flecked fresh air, turning right onto the high street.
Neath follows her at a discreet distance, stopping to buy a paper from a kiosk. An old man with a glass eye stares over him at the white vellum sky, taking money in his gloved hand, his fingers cyan blue with cold where they poke thru holes in the leather.
The sleet turns to snow too light to settle. Flakes flicker on his eyelashes. He sees her cross the street at a pelican crossing, turn right by an arcade: greengrocer, halal butcher, pawnbrokers, chemist, walk under a railway bridge. Neath crosses the road at a break in the rush hour traffic, wary of the pigeon shit smearing the wrought ironwork, cowering in case the vermin’s mess falls on him, ruining his smart navy Crombie coat.
Jess stops at a left-hand turn while an HGV draws into the goods entrance of a DIY superstore, crossing the road when it is safe. Trust to no-one: the lorry might reverse, flatten her, squash her supple body in one long red blood-trail underneath its heavy wheels. Trust to no-one, except herself: rule number one in her survival manual. She glances over her shoulder at him, her snub nose red with cold, cheeks pallid. Neath knows her pre-ordained fate. He feels for her.
The rundown industrial estate is at the next turning on the left. Jess waits outside a three-storey ruin. A 4×4, Merx, and Lexus pull in, parking on the puddled yellow line in front of a disused soap factory with a redbrick chimney. Each car deposits a woman. Doors are slammed. Kisses are blown. The partners go off to work. Their women gather in the snow outside the converted workshop stamping their feet, waiting for him to unlock the cast-iron door, let them into the warm: two Caribbeans, an Indian, an Arab, Essex Girl, and Jess.
For Christmas she received an unusual present from him: a voucher to attend a one-day course where she can learn to make a dress in a day. Neath knows her vital statistics, had her examined head to toe, even the raised dark chocolate mole in her left groin. Knows all there is to know about Jess: her medical history, illnesses, injuries, mental health, diet, her sexual preferences, on the basis that he has a need to know.
He grins as she undresses in front of the other, shocked, women, and tries on a sample dress. It fits her perfectly. Each woman sits by their assigned sewing machine. Neath explains how to sew a dress. They cut out material from a pattern, then started to sew. He is patient with them, very understanding. At noon they put on their snug winter coats and buy lunch in the local café. All, except Jess. She just sits, staring nervously at him, wondering what is to become of her as he scoffs his bland feta sandwich. They don’t speak. They don’t need to.
After lunch, the women return, finish their dresses, stand behind a screen and try them on. They are delighted, parading their hand-made frocks around the cutting room, flaunting themselves, tipping, handsomely. They promise to attend his next course. Neath leads his happy flock down six flights of stairs to a tiny lobby by the factory exit, waiting with them until their mates pull in to collect them. The dilapidated industrial estate is dangerous after dark: drug addicts, rapists, beggars, rats-the-size-of-cats frequent the foetid-piddled streets.
He returns upstairs. Jess waits until he is seated. He watches, avidly, as she wriggles out of her jeans, pulls the loose camisole over her head. She is wearing her ruby red bra, soft pink cotton panties. He knows she feels apprehensive about the colour, his reasons for choosing pink. He beckons her to put on the dress. Jess pulls it over her head, rolling the material over her breasts and tummy, pressing the creased material close to her skin.
She looks pleased. Jess has a pretty pink dress with a red flower on it to take home: a summer dress, sleeveless, cut above her knees. The dress is fashionable. She is happy with her dress. He loves her when she is happy like this, his heart sinks at the thought of how he lost her love.
‘I’m sending you back,’ he says, passing her a folder stapled with a colour print: a ruddy-faced, chubby-cheeked man with a beard, ‘You’re to wear the dress for him. He likes his women in pink. Our agent, Hans, will contact you,’ Neath hands her a shot of a bearded blonde athlete, high cheeks, scowl, ‘Meet him tomorrow night at six beside the Four Acts of Love. He’ll be riding an ice cream tricycle. You can’t miss him.’
Jess smiles, her lips, plump with pout, ‘Acts of Love? Ice cream in January? It’s minus seven, snowing hard in Nuremberg. What is this, Neath? One of your sick jokes?’
‘No, this is for real. Read the instructions. He will issue you with a firearm. You are to acquire the target as he leaves The Old Boar opposite Oude Kirk, take him to Hotel Elk, despatch. Your expenses are pre-paid: train, flight, metro tickets, meals, hotel. You’ll pose as Spitz. Your flight departs Stansted tonight at eight-thirty. Are there any questions?’
Her eyes shine with the tears of a woman who faces an unknown fate at the hands of her foe. Jess puts out her left hand. The nail has been ripped off of her ring finger. She has no pinkie,
‘If they catch me,’ she pleads, ‘will they tear off another nail, or saw off my little finger?’
Neath can’t stare her in the face: the deceit. She looks beautiful in pink. Such a terrible waste. He feels ashamed of himself.
‘Shall we get it over with?’ she says, bravely.
She knows something’s wrong. Call it woman’s intuition.
He stares at his feet, can’t bring himself to tell her the dreadful truth.
Let her go, he decides, let her go.
*****
Heist’s initial reaction, when he reads the WhatsApp, is one of intrigue. He can’t believe they’re sending her back after the pain he inflicted on her last time.
He slumps on the seat of the shoulder press having lifted 115kg, watching a young frau perform on the treadmill opposite. She isn’t wearing her sports bra today, just a loose vest, tight-fitting shorts. He hopes she had warm clothes to change into when she ventures out into the snow. On another occasion he might test her. Today, he has more important priorities. Heist rubs the ugly black and red tattoos of death and hate etched into his massive biceps. The girl slows to a walk, checks her app, removes her earplugs, halts, turns to walk off the belt, stands perfectly still, and admires his animal physique.
‘What are you looking at, liebe?’ he taunts. His withering look makes her wilt in her trainers.
‘I am sorry, I saw you smile at me,’ she tells him, ‘I thought you might like to fuck me?’
‘You didn’t see me,’ he hisses, menacingly, ‘Get out of here!’
‘If you say so. Auf wiedersehen.’
Frightened, the blonde grabs her towel and hurries out of the gym.
He seeks further clarification:
How will I recognize her?
She will be wearing a zipped black leather bomber jacket, over a pretty pink dress with a red flower on it: a summer dress, sleeveless, cut just above the knee. The dress looks fashionable. Bare legs, pink sneakers, a white clootie bobble hat to keep her head warm.
Why does she need to keep her head warm?
Because her hair is thinning, balding.
Why is she balding?
She suffers from alopecia.
What is the password?
Christmas Dream.
The song by Perry Como, right?
Correct.
Ha! I have the music as a jingle for my tricycle!
Then you can play it to your heart’s content, can’t you? I have to go. Danka!
Ich dien!
What was that?
I serve!
Ah, of course! Don’t we all? Auf wiedersehen.
Auf wiedersehen.
He grabs his towel, leaves the gym, goes to the men’s changing room. The room is full of steam – a Turkish Bath: the stench of sweat from the fat swine who shower there after their vain efforts to work off their potbellies. Heist opens his locker, retrieving his warm hoodie, baggy tracksuit bottoms, avoiding staring at the sumo-bellied double-breasted baldies. They disgust him, gone to fat on their sausages and beer, a disgrace to the land their fathers and grandfathers fought for. They should be ashamed. He quickly dresses and leaves. Outside, it stops snowing.
His cosy furnished apartment is a short walk away in Alstadt the historic city centre. Alstadt is divided into Sebald, north of the River Pegnitz, and Lorenz to the south. The old town was completely destroyed by the allied bombing raids during the war and had to be rebuilt. He will never forget what they did to his beloved mediaeval city. Heist enters his student apartment in Sebald, a bargain rental: only 595 euros a month. There is a bedroom, kitchen, and bathroom.
He runs himself a hot bath, strips beside the pink bathtub, sliding under the water, dreaming of her: wearing only her pink dress, floating face down in the muddy waters of the swollen river. Heist sleeps in the bath until the water turns cold, climbs out, shaves off his beard, brushes his teeth, then he goes to bed.
When he wakes up it is dark, time for his injection. He keeps his insulin cold in the fridge with the drug. His thighs and buttocks are covered in pinpricks, hollowed out by the countless jabs he has endured since he was diagnosed as Type 1 diabetic at the age of four. He learnt to inject himself using an orange until he felt confident enough to slide the needle into his flesh at the correct angle. They say pain is something you get used to, but each jab hurts him just as much as the last. Heist rests his foot on the bedroom chair and stabs himself in the thigh imagining it is her thigh. He sterilizes the needle with a swab, returning the syringe to a metal casing that he stores in the kitchen cupboard.
The drug comes in a small bottle with a rubber cap, sealed with a metal ring. Heist takes one out of the fridge, unwraps a fresh disposable syringe, and sticks the needle in the cap, drawing off fluid till the syringe is half-full. There is an air bubble. Air trapped inside a syringe can, if injected into the human body, induce an embolism, a bubble of air in the bloodstream, fatal if it reaches the brain. He doesn’t bother to expel the air. She is going to die anyway, what’s the point?
Unusually for him, he feels uncomfortable about this assignment. Guilty about his act of deceit towards her, the danger his despicable act could cause. Heist feels for her standing, waiting for him in the freezing cold by the ice fountain overlooked by the white tower of death. This is the choice he made when he was acquired. To kill men and women, despatching them mercilessly, without love. To exist as lowlife in his squalid hovel inside the mediaeval city wall, a sleeper waiting to be activated by some faceless clown in an alien country he’ll never visit, a superior authority he cannot trust.
Rule number one: trust to no-one.
Heist must comply with his instructions or risk being exposed. Risk having his extreme political convictions broadcast to a disparaging world. He believes in the sanctity of the Aryan race, the blue-eyed, blonde-haired boys and girls who march with him in khaki-uniformed legions thru the pine forest on Sunday mornings waiting for their time to come. He is convinced, they will rise again. Until then, he’ll lie low in his hole, a slug of contempt waiting for the rain of anarchy to fall on the unsuspecting heads of civilisation.
He walks slowly but steadily along the icy streets, crossing the flooded grey river at Maxbrüke by the ancient Weinstadel passing Unschlift Platz to Karl-Grillenberg Strasse. Soon, he reaches the frozen fountain. She will have taken a U1 transit from Hauptbanhof central railway terminal to Weisser Turm, having arrived at Hotel Elk late last night. He hopes she speaks German. Her journey to the city by U2 transit from the airport is easy enough. Finding her hotel at night-time in the knot of narrow backstreets beside the river? Impossible!
He loiters by the mis-named Four Acts of Love. It is actually called The Marriage Merry-Go-Round: four hilarious, vulgar bronzes of wedded bliss, from courtship to skeletons, one of the largest figure fountains of the 20th Century.
Despite his balaclava helmet, warm winter fleece, and tracksuit bottoms, Heist is chilled to the bone. He stamps his feet on the pavement, removes his leather gloves, blows into his hands. It starts to snow. A small group of forlorn tourists appear at the top of an ornate tiled staircase, step out of the transit station, stop, and take a photo of him by Death, the fourth bronze. They laugh at him.
They will laugh on the other sides of their smug faces when we march again, he broods.
The group disappears in the direction of the beautiful Lorenzkirche church, a warm hostelry, a stein of blonde beer, to wait for his signal.
Heist checks his watch. The icy street is deserted. She is late. Where is she? A slim figure appears briefly at the top of the staircase, disappears from view. He walks slowly around the fountain. She is standing by the second bronze, Family a sculpture of a mama and papa withered by their screaming infant son and baby girl. He sends a text. Jess is wearing her black leather bomber jacket, a skimpy pink dress. Her legs are bare. Sneakers. Bobble hat.
‘Mein Gott!’ he swears, under his breath, ‘She must be fucking freezing!’
He listens to her sing: his sweet, lilting songbird. She smiles for him, the smile that disarmed a thousand men. He can’t help himself, can’t help but sing with her. Jess overwhelms him with guilt. Guilt resonates in his hoarse voice. They stare up at the starry night sky, white tickertape fluttering down onto their frozen cheeks and lashes. Tears of pride glisten in their eyes, masking their true feelings, real expectations. The tourists reappear beyond the fountain of Death. A taxi creeps off its rank in Jacobs Platz.
Jess smiles at him.
‘Come to me,’ he tells her, excitedly, ‘I have a present for you.’
She takes his hand. He holds her to his face. Her ring finger has no nail. Her hand has no little finger. They walk beyond the fountain of Death, footprints covered with snow, still she sings.
The tourists close in on her, dragging her from him. One thug pulls her arms behind her back. One kicks her hard in the calf, forcing her to slump to the frozen ground. Another tears off her warm hat, holding her head, twisting her confused face away from him, baring her gilded neck. Heist removes the metal case from his fleece, a syringe primed to inject her. Holds her smooth, soft chin still, smudging her cherry red lipstick with his gloved thumb.
‘Hans?’ she pleads: her teak eyes shining with icy droplets of fear.
‘Hans is dead!’ he jeers, ‘Hans is lying in the silt, rotting in the Pegnitz!’
‘Then who are you?’
Jess starts to whimper, tremble. He feels her teeth chatter against his face. The taxi arrives. Her time is over. He stabs the needle in her neck, depressing the plunger, feels her body flop, a soft, soggy, sponge rubbing his thighs. The thugs let her flaccid torso sink to the ground.
‘Go easy with the manicure,’ she says, sexily, as she lapses into unconsciousness.
*****
From what Jess can see and feel, she is lying on a bed, incarcerated in a dungeon. The cell is hot, humid, claustrophobic as a sauna. Women are meant to perspire, but her body is spurting out sweat in a human geyser. The crumpled sheet beneath her back is saturated, leaving her restless, uncomfortable. She has no idea of the time, desperately needs to piss. It’s hard to hold it in when your limbs are under full restraint.
She wants to rub the sore gash under her breast, a flesh wound from her mud-wrestling fight in the pissing rain when she killed a man, snapping his neck like dry matchwood with her bare hands. But her wrists are firmly manacled to the bed. The bruised creases in her elbows hurt where the leather straps rub her needle-holes, punctures made by an evil foe determined to pump her full of truth drug – until she breaks.
Her neck is stiff from staring at the bare light bulb hanging from the craggy rock ceiling. She cranes her head to the left. Her captors have gone to considerable lengths to install a coat rail, plastic hangars beside her bed, confirming her worst suspicions. There, displayed in order of their removal, are her pink dress, ruby red bra, and soft pink cotton panties. Jess shivers and shudders – despite the cell’s heat.
A zephyr blows over her hair making her skin wrinkle. She misses her clootie bobble, sneakers, dress, her underwear for that matter. Jess feels, smells, senses, him approaching her, sprawled over the bed. She cranes her neck, her chin hugging her chest, watching him take up position at her feet: her perpetrator of fear. She fears he will torment her, extract her intimate knowledge, then kill her.
He is tall, skeletal to look at: thin blanched face, ice-blue eyes, straggly hair. He wears pebble-glassed bifocals, full-length leather trench coat: a crossbreed hybrid of Satan and Goebbels. He bows from the waist for her, then looks away, clearly embarrassed by her nakedness. Jess tries to close her legs for him. The leather straps wrapped round her thighs, steel chains binding her ankles, prevent her from doing so. He looks like fun, not. A failed family man, divorcee? His worried face tells her he doesn’t want to be there any more than she does – reassuring to know.
His colleague walks out of the shadows: short, well-built, ruddy-faced, chubby-cheeked, Balbo beard. His gold fillings shine in the lamplight when he leers at her, which is far too often. He paces around her, examining her: head to toe, pausing to feel her raised dark chocolate mole. She winces as he touches her wound. He runs his stubby fingers over her body, caressing her until he feels he knows every inch of her. He admires her dress. Jess feels a rush of adrenalin. It’s him, the man she came to kill! Without warning, the slob grips her petrified face and presses his thumb into her soft cheek, holding her deformed hand aloft, his trophy. He has bad halitosis. She wets herself.
He kneels between her open thighs and asks her name.
‘My name is Spitz,’ she says, groaning, ‘Spitz.’
He slaps her, bending her face, screaming blue murder at her, ‘Your real name! Tell me your real name!’
Jess vows not to speak to him for as long as she lives. Feels him being pulled off her by the tall man. At least, he has a heart.
As soon as her captors have left the room, she bursts into tears of relief, straining against the shackles that bind her.
*****
‘You won’t let him hurt me again, will you Daddy?’
‘No, child, I won’t let him hurt you. He has gone away. He has been sent far away.’
‘To where the faeries live?’
‘Ya, to where the faeries live.’
‘Good! He was horrid to me! Horrid! I hate him! Hate him!’
‘Calm down, child. He has gone. Did you like Heidi?’
‘Mm! Heidi made me feel all nice inside!’
‘Did you tell her about him?’
Jessie shakes her head, left to right, ‘Oh, no,’ she says, looking very grown-up, ‘I wouldn’t do that.’
Her body is dripping sweat. The crinkled sheet under her bum is soaking wet, leaving her sore.
The strange man with the female voice has a heart, feels sorry for her, doesn’t know where to rest his hand: on her thigh, her tummy, her breast? In the end he settles for her cheek, brushing her face affectionately with the back of his hand. Jessie likes him, always liked him. He looks years younger without the bifocals and trench coat. He reminds her of her daddy.
Patiently injecting her thigh with truth drug, listening, mostly listening, he empties her mind of memories. The heavy lump inside her bowel. A coloured imprint of the man she came to kill.
She can tell he is embarrassed by her. They don’t speak for minutes on end,
‘I am sorry,’ the strange man sats, patting her thigh, ‘So sorry.’
Jessie shuts her eyes, squeezing out more tears, trying to stay alert, to battle the drug. Sealing her lips closed to his questioning,
‘Tell me his name and I can send you home.’
She vowed not to betray him for as long as she lived. She shakes her head from side to side.
‘Tell me his name.’
She bursts into tears.
Turning her head to face her interrogator, she asks him, ‘Will it hurt?’
His face pales, lips quiver, ‘No, child, it won’t hurt.’
The syringe lies in a kidney dish at her feet. She cranes her neck as her medical expert holds it up to the light, expelling a bubble of air. There is a brief respite as he dabs her right thigh with a sterile swab. She lies back, can’t bear to watch. He slides the tip of the needle under her skin.
Jessie shuts her eyes feeling the heavy lump inside her bowel. Some agents put up a lot of resistance. She is one of them. Her limbs are weary. Her joints are stiff. Her muscles ache. She braces herself, tenses the muscles in her legs, then arches her body upwards.
The needle snaps! Its tip is lodged in her thigh. Jessie relaxes, sinking into the soft bed. Bliss!
She opens her eyes, craning her neck, watching her executioner hold the syringe up to the light, examining the break. To her surprise, he totters to the end of her legs, takes a fresh needle out of the kidney dish, and attaches it to the hypodermic. The man at her right thigh prepares to re-inject. Is Jess about to become the first woman to be put to sleep by lethal injection since the end of the war?
She senses her lucidity return. Her pathetic host turns to face her, in his hound dog expression,
‘I’m sorry. I carry spares.’
He slides the needle deep into her thigh. Jess winces, raising her eyebrows, humming a trendy tune inside her head. Concerned, he might not have put a woman to sleep before. Worried, he doesn’t have a clue of what he’s doing. She didn’t bleed when the needle snapped. Why didn’t he find her vein?
‘My groin.’
‘I am sorry, child?’
‘My groin. You’ll find a good vein in my groin? Next to my mole?’
Jess feels the needle pull out of her thigh, watching intently as he holds the hypo up to the light and squeezes out an air bubble. His incompetence prompts her to focus on her impending death. Depending on the serum or cocktail in the syringe, her death could be prolonged, painful, or pleasurable just like falling asleep. The most efficient method would be for him to increase the concentration of the truth drug, sodium thiopental, administer a single dose. Her expiry could be expected to take as little as one and a half minutes. She much prefers quick and painless.
The alternative three-stage solution doesn’t bear thinking about. An initial shot of pentobarbital to render her unconscious. Followed by the neuromuscular blocking drug, neat pancuronium bromide, to paralyse all of her muscles except her heart, stop her breathing. Then a lethal dose of potassium chloride to arrest her heart. With luck she might be dead in ten minutes. The potassium irks her. Given alone it causes terrible pain akin to fire, electricity coursing through her veins.
She weighs up the advantages of dying. She’ll no longer be in pain. They won’t be able to hurt her anymore. Jess supposes that constitutes some kind of happy conclusion, gazing deeply into her assailant’s eyes: cold, dispassionate, ruthless,
‘How will I die?’
He sucks in his cheeks, palpates her vein, looks away, and jabs the needle into her groin, his forehead sweating beads of concentration, ‘I am injecting you with three different serums: a sedative, a neuromuscular blocker, then potassium chloride to arrest your heart.’
Jess shakes her head sadly, speaking from the heart, ‘I want you to know, I don’t blame you.’
He seems relieved: ‘Thank you.’
She thinks of the young frau who wasn’t wearing a bra or panties, just a loose white vest, who took out her plastic earplugs, and washed her clean.
‘What are you looking at?’ she asked.
‘I saw you smiling at me, thought you might like to fuck me?’
The young frau who kissed her breasts, caressed her moist cleft, then asked her for his name.
‘Get out!’ she cried.
‘If you say so. Auf wiedersehen.’
The frightened blonde who grabbed her wet flannels and towels and hurried from the cell.
Jess is ready to die, ‘Can we get it over with, please?’
Her captor looks at her as if she’s mad. He feels sorry for her, she knows he does, he wants to be somewhere else. Jess feels the needle lying in her groin. He is about to depress the plunger. It occurs to her that it is illogical for the enemy to kill an agent before they extract the necessary information. She scans her assailant’s bovine face, teary, pleading,
‘Why now?’
‘I am sorry, child. So sorry.’
‘For fucks sake! I get that! Why kill me now?’
‘He’s waiting for you outside the door. He wants your body.’
She pleads with him to kill her. Stares at the syringe. Closes her eyes. Feels the twinge, as he depresses the plunger.
*****
The wheels on the train go round and round all night long. Or so it seems. The ride to the pebble-dashed, unmanned halt seems to take forever. Neath stares at his worried expression in the dark window, guilt coursing like treacle through his arteries. Only matched by the yellow, dirty sea fog pervading the vale as the train squeaks its way round the home curve towards his destination.
His chin is stubbled from where he didn’t sleep last night. He hasn’t heard from Jess for forty-eight hours. If she bleats, squeals, if she sings… The train slows at the home signal. He seeks relief, urgent clarification, before he dines with his control. He scrolls thru his phone screens and sends a coded message. The response is instant, frighteningly instant,
Where is she?
She is dead! Dead!
What? That’s not possible.
She is dead! Hans is dead also!
Who are you?
Ich dien!
Who are you?
I serve!
Auf wiedersehen.
He feels sick in his gut. The wet squad is a blame culture, deliberately perpetrated by his control to keep underlings on their toes. If she is dead, he’ll have the blood of his best covert agent on his hands, not to mention her. Neath can’t believe she is dead. She bore his child. Had his baby. Now he will have to care for him, collect him from school at exeat, cope with his grief, take him back to the Broads, the country haven, she treasured so much when she was alive. He loved her once, before he came out.
Neath climbs down from the train, his clean white trainers scudding grit on the platform as the door slides shut behind him. The train meanders off past the distant signal towards the sea, its final resting place. His lungs suck in the chill of thick mist. The smack of salt tests his lips. He pulls his old school scarf tight round his neck, lifting his collar to warm his ears. As he huddles into his coat and edges towards the exit, he sees a delicious manly figure, moving towards him.
The man descends on him, a bat flitting out of the lamplight. He draws him close. They hug. He opens his mouth to him letting his langue tumble down his throat. They kiss deeply, longing, yearning, for each other. It has been so long. Neath feels him harden through his crisp, stretch-cotton, khaki sharps. Pushes his hands inside the dark navy bullet-proofs, feels him throb. They stop kissing.
He regards his control pleadingly, wants to share his bed, his passion. Wonders at the devious expression spread over his man’s bearded face. He’s wearing a bobble hat, olive green, red fish emblazon. He thinks of her is she alive, warm? Her head gets so cold without her clootie bobble. Or is her body cold? Neath decides to play his ace of hearts with his control over dinner, risking all: promotion, position, career. He has to, for her. His boss seems more preoccupied with his new underpants than the fate of the brave, dead, woman,
‘Love my new chuddies?’ he hoots, ‘Absolute ripper of a product! Like ‘em?’
‘Suit you, suit you down to the groin,’ they kiss-some-more, ‘My perfect man. Do they…?’
‘No, they don’t deflect bullets. We’re not that advanced. Take my arm, boy.’
Neath relaxes. He loves this man: his humour, his smooth body, his sophistication, his taste, his sex. They move off of the platform to the booking hall: appreciating the glowing embers of the fireplace, tattered seaside posters from last summer’s heatwave.
He recalls her mudwrestling with the enemy, snapping his neck, as the rain poured down, as he watched him die in her hands from the safety of a birdwatching hut. Neath loves birds. Birds that kill. The dead man was a closet gay. He left behind a broken heart. The notion strikes an inner chord, a connection.
His love wheels him up a country lane, past a malt house, the dark stacks of a brewery chimney. A broad estuary stretches into the distance. He shivers as his companion, lover, direct report, controller, grips his elbow, taking him to one side, like a naughty little boy in his middle class,
‘We’re here. Step inside.’
They step into the empty restaurant with rooms, stamp their feet, wait patiently by the till. A smart young girl in black shirt and trousers is busy setting a polished wine goblet on the only laid table in the house. She flicks her service cloth over her arm, comes over and greets them.
‘Hello!’ she says, cheering them with a lovely smile, ‘Is it Mr Michael Hadleigh, double room, breakfast, dinner for two at seven-thirty?’
‘It is, indeed, dear,’ his control replies, giving his whipping boy a sly wink.
‘If you would like to follow me, I’ll show you to your room?’
She is wearing a gold name badge. They follow her upstairs.
*****
Neath goes to speak to him about Jess – just as the server arrives at their table with the menus.
The place is empty.
‘Tonight’s special is Dover Sole,’ she announces confidently, ‘Afraid the Halibut’s finished.’
‘Finished, dear? But we haven’t started yet!’
Neath raises his brows at the server:
Don’t worry, girl, he’s always like this: showy and posh.
She looks glum, having disappointed her only guests tonight. He thinks of her, lying cold. The girl speaks, wanting to be of service. Neath encourages his glum rag doll. She fakes a face:
‘I’m sorree,’ she panders, ‘Can I fetch you a drink?’
Fetch! He likes that! Fetch! As in fetch my slippers, girl. He smiles genially, he likes that!
‘Tanqueray. Double. Fever Tree. No Ice. Mixed. Think you can manage that?’
Oh, dear, we are in a funny mood tonight, aren’t we?
Neath beams at her. She blushes.
‘I’m sure I can!’ she crows, looking daggers at him, ‘What can I get you to drink, Sir?’
‘Scotch.’
‘Ice?’
‘No, Scotch.’
‘Thanks.’
She trots over to the bar. They browse the menu. Neath goes to speak. His man places his hairy hand over his fist, pressing it to the table. His glass wobbles. His fish knife moves to the right,
‘A little bird tells me your girl has gone missing. She is yours, isn’t she, dear? Had your bastard I hear. You never told me you were straight? One is disappointed.’
Neath slumps in his chair, his jaw flaps into his neck, stunned, speechless. He isn’t hungry.
‘Won’t sing, will she, your pretty nightingale? Won’t blow the whole show?’ his control asks.
He struggles to speak, reeling, still in shock. Her. Her son. His dearest man. His acid. His spite.
‘Think we should let sleeping birds lie, don’t you? No point stirring up a hornet’s nest with our new friends is there? Not with all this wretched Brexit business. Don’t think the new PM would take kindly to a cock-up in our backyard, do you?’
He shakes his head at the hypocrisy, the incredible C-Y-A of his superior. He loves this man!
‘Now, can I suggest the Dover Sole?’ his lover says, unfurling his spotless pink cloth napkin, ‘I hear the local fish is exceptionally good.’
*****
Jess hears a loud thud. A second thud. A jackhammer! She closes her eyes. Feels the twinge. A creaking noise! The door opens. She cranes her neck to watch. He looks up. At her. Standing over him. The girl, shouting at him,
‘Gerd, no!’
He lets go of the syringe. It lies between her thighs. The girl fires twice, shooting him between the eyes with a .22 calibre semi-automatic. Jess is spattered with his blood, brains, shattered bits of bones. She shuts her eyes, relaxing as the girl gently unshackles the straps that bind her.
‘You are in a bit of a mess,’ the blonde young-frau observes, ‘I must wash you. Please, do not move.’
Jess flexes her muscles, clenches her fists, wiggles her toes. It feels good to be alive. She tries to sit up, can’t, isn’t going anywhere in a hurry. She focuses on the now. Her mind comes alive. She asks the girl, ‘What day is it?’
The young frau checks her digital watch, ‘The time is almost twenty-one hours on Thursday.’
Thursday? Her mind swims. Monday: dress-making course. Jess stares at her clothes on the rail covered in blood, her pink dress ruined. Tuesday: my abduction by the frozen fountain. She shuts out the carnage of her captivity. Tonight: liberation. Tomorrow: the man is coming to fix the dishwasher. Saturday: collect my darling boy.
She stares at her liberator, bewildered.
‘Don’t worry,’ the girl soothes, ‘You are safe now. I have checked you out of the Elk, brought all your things: passport, handbag, case.’
‘Thank you!’ she cries, finally breaking down ‘Thank you! Thank you!’
Heidi takes her in her arms, cradling her sobbing head to her breasts, rocking her like her baby, ‘It’s alright. It’s over, darling.’
‘Why?’ Jess asks her, loving her warm caress, her soft hugs, the sweet kisses on her lips, ‘Why did you save me?’
They both know why.
They share a love to die for.
*****
Meet Jess & Co in full glorious technicolour at my free website: https://www.isittodayhjfurl.com
From predatory and Blushes in the Dark.
