Two Kilometres Out

A short story about a woman who kills for a living.

This week I am sharing a short story that started as a meet cute exercise but tool a left turn along the way. Please enjoy and let me know your thoughts

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Farrah peered into the hole her bullet had created. Close up assassination had only recently become her speciality and she was fascinated by the deep, dark tunnel that led from the corpse’s forehead into his mind. Does the soul escape from here? If she put her head close enough, could she breathe in his very being as it left the body?

The wound was clean and direct. A little dark liquid started seeping down the bridge of the dead man’s nose and the area around the hole was turning a bruised shade of purple. Vacant death eyes stared into the meaningless luxury of the hotel suite.

Behind the body a strip of dark blood spatter cut across the expensive eggshell blue wallpaper indicating that the bullet had passed right through the skull. She saw it lodged in the plaster under the painting. The compressed end of the round protruded like an old and out of use rawl plug left behind as a reminder of something that used to be.

Nothing needed further staging: there was a rich white guy dead on a light grey sofa in the pastel suite of a West End Hotel with a single bullet through his head. All around him were signs of alcohol and drug use. A closer examination of the deep pile cream carpet would show that at least one other person had been present which phone records would show was an escort. She had kept her gloves on so there should be no fingerprints or DNA traces.

The TV shopping channel now had a new offer: flip- flops with a remote-control foot massage function which would be the must have accessory for the summer. She muted the TV volume and looked back at the corpse. This really was a different way to kill people. In another lifetime she had waited days to take a single shot. She had hunkered down in derelict apartment buildings or dug into damp drainage ditches, living off liquids and nicotine patches and wearing diapers so she didn’t need to move. A target, a shot and another step closer to victory.

Focus would often turn to fear when the surge of Blackhawk blades shook the ground, or the electric whine of drones hung around for hours threatening with their infra-red cameras and indiscriminate weapons. These sounds that still rattled her sleep ten years later. Back then she had been protected by distance. Taking shots from 2000 metres away and watching a bullet fly for 5 seconds is killing in another dimension. The target drops like a pricked water balloon and everyone nearby panics. There is shouting and shooting in all directions as confused, scared and dazed people worry for their own lives.

‘Thrive in the chaos’ is what her trainer had told her. The surprise death by an invisible assassin causes the chaos and gives the sniper, two kilometres out, space to vanish. After a shot Farrah would stretch and shake like an animal, willing her blood to circulate through sleeping and cramped muscles before disappearing through planned exit routes and RV locations.

Here in civilised London, it was time rather than distance that was her protection. It would be several hours before the hotel opened the suite, but Farrah knew that the hotel staff, having marked her out as a hooker when she entered the hotel, would subconsciously be expecting her to leave about 30 minutes later. This meant she had ten minutes before having to pass through the lobby. Training had taught her that disrupting expectations causes minds to alight on details which can be recounted later. However, if things go as expected then nobody remembers anything special.

Tomorrow the Police would interrogate everyone. CCTV would be analysed, and the Head of Security questioned. Detectives would show all the staff a blurry photo of a blonde woman in a dark coat. They would ask the Italian girl at reception what she remembered, then insist that the Ghanaian housekeeping woman must have heard something and take the Kurdish maintenance man to the local Police station to find out what his part was in the killing. Nobody would be physically tortured, but foreigners would feel the fear of being sent back to the countries from which they had escaped.

Farrah spotted the corpse’s phone on a side table next to the sofa and placed the dead man’s thumb on the sensor which lit up the screen. She tapped the WhatsApp icon and opened the message from Platinum Angels International which read ‘Rate our Service’. Typing in ‘10’ and ‘send’ as per instructions, she set her escape plan in motion. She replaced the phone and opened the target’s brown Aspinall wallet. Along with the Black American Express card, and a Coutts Business Card was the room key card which she removed.There was also £5000 in cash which she took and folded into her handbag.

Farrah put the wallet back next to the phone and checked the suite for anything she might have missed. The door to the bedroom was still shut. She walked across the suite and held her ear close to it but heard nothing. The dead man’s dead eyes continued to stare, the woman on the TV continued tosoundlessly sell and the bedroom door stayed shut.

Silence is rare in a modern hotel: there is always the rumble of air conditioning, the regular banging of hoovers on skirting boards and the occasional shouts of other guests. Farrah stayed still and looked at the closed door. She heard only the hum of moving air and her own pulse pounding in her temples.

Why had she not checked the bedroom before? Intel had said only one person present, but she had learnt that intel is great until it collides with reality. Was she losing her touch by not checking the room? Or was she worrying about nothing?

Go to debrief mode: ‘there was no indication to suggest further subjects present’.

“Did you carry out visual check of bedroom?” NO SIR!

In high stress situations the mind can present us with a doubt, which we then build into a challenge and then a fear. Our concentration is led astray, and our thoughts magnify what might be a tiny risk into a mountain sized obstruction. Farrah was starting down this dark alley. She could have left the door alone, got out of the hotel and thought no more of it but instead she was being pulled back towards it.

Heat rose to her cheeks, and she had to focus on controlling her breath. Think it through now. If I were in that room, what would I do? When would I make myself known? How would I be armed?

Instinctively she stepped out of the line of the bedroom door into the protection of the wall. She decided that she would enter the room quickly, sweep through and put her mind at rest. Farrah’s own preference was for quiet precision. As her trainer had told her

‘Don’t disturb the neighbours – go softly, go quietly, go home.’ She had no desire to get into an argument or a fight or a shoot-out. There’s probably nothing in the bedroom but let’s be safe not sorry.

Starting with her back against the wall to the left of the door and her gun in her right hand, Farrah jammed the handle down with her left hand and pushed hard. There was no sound or movement except for the door dragging over the carpet.

She spun through the doorway with the Glock leading the way and every nerve alive. A king-size bed faced her, at its head an outsize headboard upholstered in black velvet outlined in chrome. She mouthed a curse as she saw what had been hidden from her.

Moving to her right across the bedroom in four steps, she opened the door to the ensuite bathroom. It was clean and clear with a neat arrangement of expensive toiletries laid out on the marble sink surround. She went back towards the bed where, across the perfect white cotton sheets, lay a young woman, a girl who was perhaps 17 or 18 years old and was staring at the ceiling. Like Farrah, she was wearing a tight black dress and had long blonde hair which was spread across her shoulders and the pillowcase. Her skirt had ridden up to reveal stocking tops and plain black cotton briefs. Brown leather straps around her wrists and ankles were fixed to the bed’s legs and she was gagged with a silk Liberty print scarf. Her eyes were unblinking and even though she showed no reaction to Farrah’s entrance into the room, the gentle movement of her ribs confirmed life.

Hanging on a chair to the left of the bed, under the window was a long black coat that fanned out where it met the carpet. A pile of bedclothes lay on the floor at its side.

Farrah’s escape plan was crumbling. Witnesses would have noticed two similarly dressed women entering the hotel and heading to the fifth floor. The receptionist would naturally have thought ‘I’m sure I saw a woman dressed that way ten minutes ago’.

This woman on the bed might be a witness and Farrah could quickly and easily kill her – which was the standard contingency. But she did not know who this woman was, what she had seen or why she was here.