Ghosts

“What did you do?”

“I copied the flash drives and hid them and then I went in with the photographs. I asked him to explain them. He couldn’t, of course. He tried, but it was all bullshit. I was about ready to quit before that assignment, like you, and that was just the final straw as far as I was concerned. I played along with him, gave him the answers that he wanted to hear, and then I went home.”

She paused and swallowed, her ski

Milton pressed gently. “What happened?”

“He’d sent five agents. They were waiting for me. They had my husband and daughter. They had a gun on my little girl.” She looked down, her eyes closing. She stayed like that for twenty seconds, her chest rising and falling with each deep lungful of breath that she took. When she looked up again her eyes glistened with tears. “I knew if I didn’t do something they’d kill all three of us so I waited for my chance and went for them. My husband was shot, I got a round in the shoulder but I managed to fuck one of them up pretty good. I don’t know. If she wasn’t dead she’d be smoking these”, she held up the cigarette, “through the hole I put in her throat. The other one got my daughter.”

“Got?”

“Grabbed her. They—”

The words choked in her throat. She stood up and went to the counter for more cigarettes. Milton remained at the table, staring at the half eaten doughnut, unsure quite what to say.

She returned, tossing the cigarettes onto the table. There was fresh steel in her face.

Milton started, “You don’t have to say…”

“It was a stalemate,” she said over him. “I had a gun on them, they had her. What was I going to do?” She tore off the cellophane wrapper, opened the carton and took out a cigarette. Milton lit it for her. “The only thing I could do was run. I got on the Eurostar, went through the tu

“Where is she now?” Milton asked. “Your daughter?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “They emailed a picture a week after it all happened.” She took a slim wallet from her jeans pocket, opened it and took out a photograph. She laid it on the table and Milton took it. The girl had a happy, open face, a ready smile and a cascade of brown curls that gathered on her shoulders. The picture had been taken in an anonymous room, the little girl sitting in front of a large TV with beige walls in the background. She was playing with a doll. “She looks fine but I know that was a reminder. A warning. Control will have her in care somewhere. She’ll be alive. He knows that as long as he has her, that’s the one thing that’ll stop me coming back and tearing his throat out.”

“The tattoos on your ribs,” he said, pointing to his own trunk. “That’s one for every year, right?”

“That’s right. Eight years. It’ll be time to add another one next month.”

“But you can’t stay here.”

“Why not?”

He leant forward and spoke urgently, “Because I found you. Shcherbatov knows where you are. If I can’t persuade you to help them he’s not going to give up. He wants what you have about Control. He’ll just send someone else who won’t ask as nicely.”

“You didn’t find me, Milton, I found you. And that threat doesn’t work if you’ve got nothing left to lose.”

He pressed ahead. “What about Control?”

“What about him?”

“If he finds out where you are, you know what will happen. He’s still there. He hasn’t stopped.”

“Look at me, Milton. You’re not listening. Do you think any of that frightens me? Shcherbatov. Control.” She shaped her fingers into the shape of a gun and pressed the tips against her temple. “You think the gun’s for defence? You know how many times I’ve wanted to put a bullet in my head and lost my nerve? Every day.” He felt his stomach turn and he reached across and took her wrist; there was no resistance in her arm as he gently lowered it and held it against the table. “I can’t even do that. I’m fucked up. They come over here and do it for me, I’m telling you, they’d be doing me a fucking favour.” She sucked down on the smoke and gazed out into the street. “My life is over. My husband is dead. I lost my daughter. I’ve got no money. I’m a drug addict. I’m done, Milton. Finished. How do you think this is going to end?”

“There must be something you can do.”

“You got any ideas? I’m all ears.”

“Something, anything. It would have been better than coming here to all … this.”

“This?”

“The opium, for a start.”

“I don’t need your morality,” she said, glaring at him. She took another cigarette from the packet and lit it.

“Why?”

“Why do you think?” she snapped. “It helps me forget how I’ve fucked up my life.”

“It doesn’t work, though, does it?”

“No? I don’t think about very much when I’m high. You should try it.”

“I have tried it,” he said. “That’s the reason I don’t drink any more. It works for a while until it doesn’t. And then it’s much worse.”

“Please don’t tell me you’re in a program?”

“A.A.” Milton said. He smiled wryly.

“What’s so fu

“That’s the first time I’ve admitted it to anyone who wasn’t already in the Rooms.”

“Yeah? Well, good for you, but I still think it’s bullshit. There’s no point trying to persuade me to do something stupid like that. The first thing you need is to want to stop, right?”

Yes…”

“I don’t want to stop.”

“You’re not…”

“There’s something else, Milton. The other reason I do it.” She took a deep breath and laid her hands out on the table, palms down, fingers splayed. “It’s a palliative.”

“For what?”

“I have cancer.”

“Oh, shit. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. I told you. I don’t need your sympathy.”

He shifted uncomfortably; the conversation had veered hopelessly away from where he thought it might go. “How bad is it?”

“Bad. Breast cancer, stage four. It’s in my liver and my lungs. I found out three months ago.”

“Have you had treatment?”

She shrugged. “What’s the point?”

“So you haven’t?”

She waved a hand disdainfully. “There’s a doctor I know, discreet if you pay him enough. He’s given me two rounds of chemotherapy. I might’ve had a third but I’ve run out of money. Don’t do anything stupid like offer to pay for it. I’m alright with it. We’re all going to die, Milton, especially people like us. I just know I’ll be sooner than most.”

“How long do you have left?”

“He can’t say for sure. All they can do is manage it now. No more than twelve months.” She smiled bitterly. “So I eat like shit and I smoke and I drink and when the pain gets too much I smoke heroin so I can’t feel it any more. And one day, when I can’t take it any more, I’ll shoot up enough to bring an end to it. You think about it from my point of view, it’s not a bad way to go.”

Milton laid his hands flat on the table. “What about your daughter?”

Her eyes flashed. “Don’t.”

“You don’t want to see her again? Before…”

“Before I die? Yes, Milton, of course I do. I want that more than anything. But if Control gets even the slightest hint that I’m in the country again he is going to think I’m coming after him; and if he thinks that, she isn’t safe. I can’t take the risk. I can’t go back. You see, Milton? This can’t be fixed.”

He stared right into her face. “No. You’re wrong. Everything can be fixed.”

“Not this.”

“What about if I said I could get her back?”

Chapter Thirty-One

They talked FOR another two hours. Milton didn’t have a plan and so they worked it out on the fly.

“Where are the flash drives?” he asked her.

She paused.

“You have to trust me. I’ve got almost as much of a reason to bring down Control as you do. And this won’t work if you don’t.”