Time passed. The day slipped away and darkness crept into Maya’s flat. She switched on the standard lamp by her armchair and continued to wait. She knew Ephraim Cohen’s methods well. She had carried out his instructions often enough, after all. He would send someone today. If a job needed to be done, it needed to be done quickly. And if she refused to leave this flat, they would have to come to her. That meant she was in control, no matter what anybody else thought.
She heard the first noise a little before ten o’clock. It was very quiet, barely louder than the beating of her heart: the sound of the lock on the street door being picked. She loosened the dressing gown around her cleavage, then slipped her right hand into the pocket containing the snubnose and pointed it through the flimsy material of her gown, towards the door of her bedroom. Perhaps she would need the weapon instantly, but she hoped not. The noise would attract attention.
And besides, Maya Bloom had other plans for her expected, but unknown, guest.
She didn’t hear footsteps coming up the stairs, but then she wouldn’t have expected to. Any hitman worth the name should be able to tread quietly. The first she saw of him was his weapon, a suppressed handgun peeking round the corner of the door as it slowly opened to reveal a shadowy figure silhouetted in the frame.
Silence.
Her finger slowly caressed the trigger of her weapon.
‘Who are you?’ she whispered, injecting a note of fear into her voice. ‘How did you get into my…?’
‘Shut up.’
The figure stepped into the room. Maya saw a young man, perhaps in his mid-twenties, with black hair and stubble on his face. His voice had a cockney twang. She examined his weapon. A matt-black Glock, safe-action trigger.
‘Please,’ Maya whispered. ‘Don’t hurt me. I’ll do what you want…’
The young man took another couple of steps towards her.
‘Please,’ she said. ‘I’ll do anything…’ She kept the hidden gun pointing directly at him, ready to shoot at the slightest hint that he was going to use his.
He eyed her up and down. Maya understood the look. She understood that he was already hers.
Feigning timidity, she stood up. Her dressing gown was tied sufficiently loosely for her breasts to be exposed, and she saw the newcomer appreciating the sight. She understood assassins, understood their love of danger and of risk-taking, and that they were devoid of principle. And she understood men too. She knew what was going through this one’s head: that he was going to kill her anyway, so he might as well have her beforehand. It didn’t matter how good they were, they always thought with their dick first and their head second. It was one of the first things she’d learned during her training, and she’d used that knowledge more times than she could 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?
‘Ken behekhlet,’ she muttered to herself. ‘Damn right it did.’
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.
PART THREE
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.