Sometime later, she woke and gazed at the walls. While she’d rested, somebody had left water and food in the cell. Two tired-looking sandwiches stared at her from the floor. Astrid picked one and bit into it with relish. Pale ham and plastic cheese fell down her throat, desperate to silence the grumbling at the bottom of her gut. It tasted terrible, grit and cardboard masquerading as nourishment, but was a banquet to her withered insides. She drank half the water in a gulp to remove the flavour. Then she turned her attention to the wall, glancing at the purple letter A.
Astrid took the red pen and started doodling, sketching a face half Picasso and half Dali, in style, not in homage. She’d always wanted to be an artist after a teacher introduced her to Hieronymus Bosch, but her parents frowned upon the idea, forcing her to concentrate on maths and science. She became the geek everybody ridiculed; until she smacked the biggest bully to the ground, pushing his thick nose into the dirt and rubble. None of the kids bothered her after that. Some of them whispered about her behind her back, mentioning how special she was, but meaning it as an insult. She wasn’t the only kid in the school with ADHD, but she was the only one not taking medication for the condition. Her father didn’t believe in using pharmaceuticals for solving health issues, and it was the one thing she agreed with him on.
She probed her memories and sketched the faces of the murdered agents on the wall: Delaney in red because Astrid broke her heart; purple for Dark because she’d made a mistake; Andrews in black for a rapist and sexual predator; and finally, Chill in yellow because he was a traitor. The Agency wouldn’t return to her for weeks, but the cameras watched her, and she wanted to give them something to dwell on. And it helped to stay focused.
More nourishment came later, pushed through the vent: a stretch of grey plastic pretending to be meat, plus some tired green mush which might have been vegetables in a previous life. Another jug of water arrived with it, the drink reminding her of the rivers and the bodies. The murderer knew about her trip to Europe, knew which cities to visit, which meant they might have hacked into her computer. That thought consumed her sleep that night.
The second day, she returned to who’d framed her. Astrid focused on her family first. Her mother and sister hated Astrid, but they weren’t capable or desperate enough to devise something so complicated, which left only him. Lawrence was in his seventies. Would he have the strength to strangle four people? He would; his hate would provide him with all the fuel he needed. Part of her hoped it was him, but she thought it unlikely.
Ramon and his gang were a more obvious choice. She’d ended up in prison because of them, failed to steal what they wanted, but she couldn’t see this being their work. It was more than a decade ago, and none of them were the sharpest tools in the box.
No, it had to be somebody she’d worked with at the Agency, so she focused on that. Astrid spent the rest of the day staring at the letter A, trawling through memories of every assignment she’d undertaken for the Agency.
On the third day, she wrote her favourite song lyrics on the walls. To make it enjoyable, she did each artist in a different language. The Smiths in English; Bowie in German; Joy Division in Danish; PJ Harvey in French; the Sex Pistols in Spanish; Nina Simone in Urdu; and, to keep herself amused, the Stooges in a bastardised version of American English.
By the end of that night, Astrid was surprised with how creative she’d been; and how she’d staved off the boredom so far. She fell asleep, wondering what she’d do next to keep her mind active, but she didn’t have to worry too much as they came to her the next day.
Late in the afternoon, when the mush masquerading as food arrived, the door opened and in walked Agent Lee. Astrid continued to lie on the bed and stare at the ceiling.
‘Only four days; you must miss me.’
She wanted some fresh clothes, but didn’t bother making a futile request.
‘I have important news for you.’ Ice seeped from Laurel’s voice, and it disappointed Astrid.
‘I’m all ears.’
‘There’s another body, this time in the Manchester canal.’
Astrid sat up with her mind full of a thousand possibilities.
‘So, that proves I’m innocent, right?’ She hated herself for sounding so desperate.
‘I wish it were true. But the pathologist puts the time of death to about six weeks ago.’
Astrid sighed. ‘When I was there before my flight to Berlin?’
‘That’s what they say.’
Astrid slumped back onto the bed and stared at the ceiling again. ‘It’s another agent?’
‘I’m afraid so.’
‘Who is it?’ Astrid couldn’t be bothered to guess.
‘Agent Joe Storm. Do you remember him?’
She’d never forgotten Joe since he saved her from a life of crime. She lifted, confident she’d found something to dispute their accusations.
‘Joe rescued me from prison; why would I want to kill him?’
‘The theory is you resented him for bringing you into the Agency, and this was payback.’
‘After ten years? Are they crazy?’
Her patience was worn as thin as her nerves as she picked up a group of the pens and smashed them against the wall. Small shreds of plastic splattered over the table like tiny ink-stained children birthed from the hand of destruction.
‘I’m sorry, Astrid; I thought you should know. The media have also connected the five murders and have given the killer a name: the Reaper.’
Laurel closed the door and left as Astrid stared at the blank parts of the wall and remembered Joe Storm. She picked up the black pen, searched through her memories until she found the one she wanted. In it, she was confined, like now, but in a different environment. Whereas her current one was sparse and clinical, the one from her youth was the hustle and bustle of a detention centre. Staff wandered around, ever vigilant to visitors passing things to inmates they shouldn’t, while most of the prisoners were furtive and agitated. Astrid was a picture of serenity, staring at the unknown man who’d come to see her: his long aquiline face, sculpted cheekbones, neatly brushed short inky hair and narrow eyes which gave nothing away. He made her an offer that day which she couldn’t refuse.
She kept the image of him in her mind and drew it on the wall. When she’d finished, Astrid sat on the bed, pushed her shoulders against the concrete and gazed at her work, pleased with what she’d created. After staring at it for five minutes, she returned to it, using a different coloured pen for each letter, and in her best cursive handwriting wrote one word: Reaper.
By the end of the week, she was surprised at how refreshed she felt, both mentally and physically. The cell was small and sparse, but it gave Astrid room to continue her exercise routine: sit-ups, press-ups, running on the spot. It made her think of Joe Storm again and her early days at the Agency when they’d concentrated on getting her fit.
The work she’d done on the wall recharged her mental batteries. It surprised Astrid in the discovery of talents she’d long thought lost. She switched from focusing on who’d framed her to the method: why strangulation and why dump the bodies in the rivers? The last part might be a forensic countermeasure. Why did this Reaper strangle the victims when there were easier ways to kill people?
And what happened to the missing fingers?
I wanted to feel the power flowing through my hands, their lives flowing into mine. Would the experience make me feel alive? I have to admit that, at the start, the deaths were a means to an end, her end, but as I went along, they took on their own objective. Murder took on its own life.
The Manchester one was the worst because Storm had a family, and that made me uncomfortable. Families always make me uneasy; I never know how to act around them and those who put the family at the zenith of achievement in their existence. Still, my plans had to begin somewhere, and a journey of a thousand steps starts with one, so they say. Joseph Storm was the start of my voyage.
It was easy to get him out of the house: a promise of secrets too scandalous to be shared anywhere else but a derelict warehouse on the outskirts of Greater Manchester. I beguiled his weary soul with the lost and clandestine treats. His reputation in recent years was a man of notorious melancholy and sombre disposition. This changed when he met someone new.
He appeared older than I expected, with thin greying hair and thick dark bags under tired eyes. I guess that’s what a new wife and family will do to you.
‘I can’t be gone too long,’ he said to me. ‘It’s my youngest daughter, Ella, she has football practice tonight, and I said I’d watch her play.’
An attentive father; a loving father. What a rare beast he was, and there I stood, ready to take him away from that child. In the long run, I’d be doing the kid a favour.
‘Don’t worry. You’ll be back in plenty of time. Perhaps I’ll come with you.’
Yes, I could watch kids enjoying themselves and marvel at what I’d missed out on in my life.
He was excited as he entered the building, more about our location than anything else. I don’t think he remembered me; he just wanted to see the spot where Joy Division first practised as a group. It was nonsense, a lie I’d told him over the phone; music addicts like him were always ready to believe anything if it fuelled their fantasies.
‘I can’t thank you enough for finding this for me.’ His eyes glazed like the heavens above. ‘This is all going into a book I’m writing.’
‘Think nothing of it. The whole point of life, I believe, is for every man and woman to help each other.’
I was possessed of calm and premeditated prudence as I led him to the corner of the building, stepping over animal droppings and discarded beer cans. His anticipation grew as I played the knowledgeable tour guide, his face all excitement and giddiness, so he transformed from a responsible adult worn down by the trials and tribulations of life into a fitful boy full of dreams and hopes.
‘It took me a long time to realise that work isn’t worth it apart from the money, and if I couldn’t find something outside of it to engage my brain, I’d go mad.’
‘Isn’t that what your family is for?’
He pushed his hands together. ‘Yes, they’re great, of course, but we all need something else to fuel our reasons to live. It might be something simple as a hobby that everyone else dismisses as trivia, or going to a football match at the weekend, or visiting the cinema, or anything, really, but there has to be a spark up here,’ he tapped at the side of his head,’ that gets the juices flowing. Don’t you think?’
I smiled at him. It felt crooked on my face, and I wondered if he thought I looked like a demented frog. That’s what my father always said on those rare occasions he found me happy.
‘Absolutely. Being with you in this place is what really gets my heart beating. That and how this will make others feel, knowing you’ll have met your destiny inside this place.’
His smile was warmer than a faulty microwave, and his exhilaration fuelled mine. I didn’t revert to a mythical earlier life, but projected forward to the future when I would ascend into the person I’d been denied all these years.
‘So where is it?’ he said to me.
I made him kneel by pointing to the spot where Ian Curtis had allegedly scratched his name into the wall; in reality, I’d struck the letters there earlier in the day. It was sad to see him scrambling around in the Manchester grime for the scrawled notes of a man who’d been dead for more than forty years.
When he was down there, I pushed my right knee into his back, keeping him pressed into the ground.
‘What? What, are you doing?’
‘Don’t worry; you’ll be joining your hero soon.’ I kept pushing him down, watching the dirt swirl up into his face as he struggled against me. ‘Think of your daughter now, take an image of her and keep it there, so it’s the last thing you see as you leave this world.’
Then I slipped the bag over his head, pulling the corners inwards as he struggled to breathe. He tried to push back against me, but I had too much leverage. I stayed like that for ten minutes, long after he’d stopped thrashing, making sure the job was done. I wondered if he’d died happy because he thought he’d witnessed the writing of one of his heroes. Or if he’d thought of his daughter.
‘If you’d never met her, you’d still be alive,’ I said to his cold flesh. ‘If you’d left her inside the jail, none of this would’ve happened.’
It was good to speak to him and not expect a reply. I wasn’t invisible anymore. Once done, I rolled him onto his back, pushed up his hands and removed the knife from inside my jacket. I’d practised for a week on cats and puppy dogs. His blood smelt of burnt copper, the flesh starting to rot and giving off an aroma that reeked of decaying fish. I popped the fingers into a plastic box and tried not to breathe too much of the local air.
Then I waited until dark and dragged him to his car. He was a tall man but not very heavy, underweight for his height, so it wasn’t too hard to get him into the boot. The drive to the most isolated part of the canal was accompanied by the second Joy Division album playing in the CD player. The moon had disappeared from the night sky, only a tiny sliver of it sticking out from behind an ebony cloud, as I let him float away from the bank, making sure he was weighed down properly.
I left the car and took a slow walk back into the city centre, concentrating on the flight to Berlin and the next part of the plan.
And the woman I’d meet at the airport.
I hadn’t had a date in a long time.