Chris Ryan - Killing for the Company

‘I can wait in there if you want to get changed,’ he offered.

Suze didn’t answer. Instead she put her clothes in an untidy pile on the floor, then took a tentative step towards him. Another step, and when she was close enough she rested her head against his chest.

They stood there like that for a moment. Awkwardly. Chet could hear her nervous breathing, and feel the beat of her pulse against him. He wrapped an arm around her shoulders, and then another. Suze felt tiny in his embrace. Her damp hair soaked through his shirt, and its fragrance filled his senses. It smelt good.

A boom of thunder. Suze was startled. ‘When will this bloody storm finish?’ she whispered. As if, in the grand scheme of things, a storm was important.

She looked up towards Chet and he felt her breath against his face. Her body was warm.

‘You should get some sleep,’ he said. ‘Take the bed. I’ll…’

‘I’m sorry about the things I said to you,’ she interrupted him.

‘No…’

He didn’t finish, because suddenly — as if she might lose the courage if she didn’t act immediately — Suze had brushed her lips against his. Chet frowned. It had been a long time since anybody had given him that kind of attention; since anybody had seen past the scars on his face or his awkward gait.

Suze stepped backwards. There was no smile on her face; just a kind of nervousness, as if she couldn’t quite believe what she had just done. Especially here. Especially now.

‘I need to wash,’ Chet told her. His words were stilted.

Suze glanced at the floor. ‘Right…’ she said. ‘OK…’ She watched him as he limped self-consciously past her and into the bathroom.

It was still steamy in there from her shower. Chet had to wipe the condensation from the mirror, and he only had a few seconds to look at his tired, scarred face before it misted over again. He unbuttoned his shirt and splashed cold water over his face and torso, hoping it would clear his mind as well as his skin. It didn’t. The words on the tape replayed themselves in his head, and the smell of Suze’s freshly washed hair lingered in his senses. She was scared. Vulnerable. That much was obvious. She was relying on him to protect her. Chet was no psychologist, but it wasn’t too hard to work out that her advances just now were a symptom of that.

Images rose in his mind. The intruder in his room, her face full of steely purpose. Doug, his friend, dead, broken and spattered in his own gore on the railway track. Despite all his setbacks, the guy had been so full of life. And now…

Chet winced at the memory.

The wind howled outside once more, and a fresh wave of rain battered the window. For a moment Chet forgot about shadowy intruders and corrupt politicians. It was bleak outside and they were alone. Why shouldn’t they take comfort in each other’s company? Seize the day — that’s what soldiers always did. He wiped the mirror again. A battered face looked back out at him. Chet grabbed a towel and dried his face and upper body, before slinging it round his neck, taking a deep breath and opening the door into the bedroom.

‘What the hell are you doing?’ he barked the moment he saw Suze.

She was sitting on the edge of the mattress, her towel still wrapped around her, and she was fumbling with the beige telephone on the side table, slamming it back down on its cradle.

‘I was just…’

‘Christ, Suze, do you think this is some sort of game? They want to kill us.’

She stared at him, looking like she might cry.

‘I said we don’t contact anyone. Do you know how easy it is to trace a fucking phone call? Who were you calling? I said, who were you calling? ’

‘I… it was… oh God… it was just the Met Office. I wanted to know how long this storm was going to last.’

Chet stared at her, then closed his eyes and drew a deep breath. ‘Just don’t… use… the phone, all right?’

When he opened his eyes, she was standing by the side of the bed. ‘I’m really… I’m really sorry. I didn’t think it was…’ His voice trailed off and she chewed at her lower lip.

Suze took a tentative step towards him, and then another. Before Chet knew it, she was in his arms again, trembling slightly as she pressed her damp hair against his chest. They stayed like that for a minute before she stepped backwards again.

One pace.

Two.

She inclined her head slightly, then let the towel fall. It dropped heavily to the floor to reveal her slim, delicately curved body, her pale skin and her small breasts.

Chet glanced over to the door. It was still wedged shut with the chair. He turned to look at Suze. She was lying on the bed, and finally managed to give him a nervous smile.

‘Look after me,’ she whispered.

Chet hesitated for a moment, but then, without another word, he went to her.

As the rain fell in the Brecon Beacons, it also fell on the southern outskirts of London. It kept most visitors away from the Greenacres Retirement Home, a recently, and cheaply, built establishment next to the main road through Morden. In truth it hardly took freak weather conditions to discourage visitors to this place. The corridors were starkly lit and smelt of disinfectant and hospital food. There were no stairs, but lifts and ramps to enable wheelchairs to move around the buildings. The day room was decorated with floral curtains and dark carpet tiles. Channel Four News was playing on the TV, even though there was nobody there to watch it; at this time of the evening all the clients of Greenacres were encouraged to be in their rooms. It was easier for the poorly paid, often temporary, often Eastern European staff that way.

In Room 213, on the second floor overlooking the main road, an old lady sat in her wheelchair. It was dim in here — only a low-voltage bulb in a bedside lamp lit the room, but she preferred it that way. Her eyesight was deteriorating, and she found that bright lights almost blinded her.

Her right foot and ankle were swollen and wrapped in a bandage to protect the sores on her skin. She had decided a long time ago that it was easier to stay in the wheelchair all day than haul herself in and out of the armchair that was, with the exception of her single bed and a glossy pine dressing table, the only piece of furniture in her sparse room. A pink hyacinth — her favourite flower — was blooming on the windowsill behind her. Its fragrance went some way to disguising the institutional smell of the place, but the old lady wasn’t thinking about that. She was holding the telephone against her ear, and she was clearly flustered and confused.

‘I… I don’t understand dear,’ she stammered. Her voice was as frail as the thin hands that held the receiver.

The old lady frowned as she listened to the voice at the other end.

‘But… but… where are you? What do you mean, you can’t visit me? I don’t understand. Hello? Hello? ’

She looked at the phone. And then, with frightened and perplexed eyes, she let it fall from her hands and squinted up to see the other woman in the room with her, half hidden in the shadows behind the door.

‘Stay quiet, or I’ll kill you.’

It was clear to the intruder that the old woman was confused, struggling to understand who she was and why she was here. It was perhaps the strangeness and uncertainty of her situation as much as the Beretta Model 70 semi-automatic aimed at her head that was now distressing the old lady.

‘Your daughter?’ the younger woman asked.

The old lady shook her head but she was too scared to keep the pretence up for long, and after a few seconds a pathetic little mewing came out of her lips, accompanied by a trembling of her whole body.

The woman put a mobile phone to her ear. She waited a moment before saying a single word. ‘Traced?’