Chéri, you of all people know that the training never leaves you.
After Yemen, when the Directorate faked my death and provided me with a new identity, I took my own precautions. They trained us to think this way.
It was therefore not difficult for me to get out of France. It is amazing how a woman can alter her appearance completely, simply by changing her hair and clothes and demeanour. Some makeup and a pair of spectacles help, too. I drove to Switzerland, left the car, walked over the border – just another hiker out for the day – and then took a train to the airport in Geneva. I know the country well, as you know. I grew up there.
Leaving your life behind is not so hard, if those who define and give purpose to that life are gone.
The Egypt Air first-class cabin is cold. I pull the blanket up around my shoulders, and stare at my passport. The photograph is of me. But the name, the history is someone else’s: Veronique Deschamps, thirty-two, Swiss, born in Geneva. In fact, she died at the age of three, along with her parents, in a car crash. In the bag at my feet are enough cash to last me a year, my father’s Koran, and every bit of information I have been able to gather about Hamid and Eugène’s murder. Just writing their names sends sorrow and anger shooting through me.
I put away the passport and open my laptop. I start searching through my email. I go through every email I have sent, starting with the most recent and going back in time. In my main account, six and a half months of replies and requests and routine administrative rubbish – nothing unusual. So much irrelevance, pages and pages of it. My eyes start to close. I am tired.
And then, on the edge of sleep, I see it – in the outbox of my secondary account. An email sent on 18th October to an address I do not recognise. The subject line: Call Me.
Dearest Hope:
I tried calling you but you were out, probably taking Kip to daycare. I need to talk about what we discussed earlier. I think Hamid is having an affair. I think he is planning to take Eugène away from me. I am not going to let that happen.
R.
I almost choke on my drink. I can hear myself pleading: I did not write that email. It was not me. And yet here it is, in my account, apparently addressed to my closest friend, and signed R. Hope is one of the very few people who knows me by my original name, Rania. Am I going insane? I read the words again, double-check the date, the time the email was sent, the address. How is this possible?
My finger hovers over the delete button. But it is obvious, as I knew it was as soon as I read the words. Someone has accessed my email account and sent an email as me. What better way to provide me with a motive for murder than a cri-de-coeur to my best friend?
I go back further in time. On 4th October, another email, again to the same unfamiliar Hotmail account:
Dearest Hope:
Hamid has started to behave strangely. He is becoming increasingly paranoid, ranting about how I have betrayed him, that I was not a fit mother. Yesterday, for the first time in our marriage, he struck me. I am frightened. What should I do?
R.
There is one more, on 29th September:
Dearest Hope:
I live in fear. Not only for myself, but for my son, his very soul. Yesterday Hamid accused me of apostasy. He called me a whore. He has become radicalised, the worst incarnation of Islam. I know he is planning to leave me, to take my son away. I am not going to let that happen. To think of my son being brought up that way – intolerant, misogynistic, brutal, vile and backward. I would rather he be dead than become such a person. Hope, why don’t you answer me?
R.
I sit and stare at the seatback in front of me. The pattern is abstract, like the eddies in a stream, hues of saxe and heliotrope no doubt designed to soothe, to reassure. My heart is pounding. I cannot breathe. The words I am trying to write come out as scrawls. Just as well. I look back at the screen. There it is: a perfect ternion of growing suspicion and desperation. Paranoia and fear ooze from every word. Whether or not the police have managed to access my email accounts – by now they will have initiated a full-scale search for me – I delete the emails from the sent box and from the trash file. Of course, it makes no difference. I must proceed as if the emails have been sent – they are out there. The moment I try to access my accounts, I am traceable.
I must assume that my motive for murder has now been firmly established. They have placed me at the scene of the crime. My DNA is on everything. No bullets were found with the remains of the bodies in the incinerator, which means they were killed by other means, most likely with a knife. That would explain the blood-stained clothes. My ability to plan and execute such a murder has been established. And now, I have fled the country, reinforcing my guilt.
And yet, as attempts to implicate me in the murders, these emails are beyond clumsy. How could any mother kill her own child? Before I have finished the thought, I realise my error. Of course, it happens all the time. Every day, children are murdered, abandoned, violated by their own flesh and blood. God help us all.
Claymore, Majnun – my tortured soul, where are you? If ever I needed you, I need you now.