Killing Eva (15 page)

TWENTY ONE

Eva couldn't hear
, other than a high-pitched ringing noise. She realised she was shouting when she felt the pressure of her voice in her throat but she couldn't hear anything. She was lying on a stretcher inside a moving vehicle. There was nothing she recognised, she didn't even have any belongings and she couldn't see a single face she knew. She was being attended to by a middle-aged man with a narrow, lined face and a shock of grey hair which made him look as if he had been electrocuted. Although she couldn't hear him, he seemed to be very concerned to stop her shouting. He pointed across the interior of what was, apparently, an ambulance and, on the other side, Eva saw a body. So badly burned it was almost black. But, apparently, still alive.

She closed her mouth.

The grey-haired man looked relieved.

Eva continued to stare at the body opposite.

Her heart was pounding. She realised the body was too tall – and far too male – to be Irene. What was left of the hair was not the right colour to be Irene's assistant. And nor was it Anya.

Eva's fragile flow of consciousness was interrupted by each jolting movement of the ambulance. Her thoughts were travelling too fast, she couldn't pin anything down. All she could think about was the body on the stretcher.

She tried to push herself up on her elbows but the movement of the vehicle in motion – and the arms of the paramedic – stopped her. It had to be the man she had seen in her room before the explosion. It had to be. She had to find out who he was.

Eva continued to stare across at the prone figure.

With a start, she realised its head was on one side. Her vision was blurring, her head was thumping. But she could have sworn there were eyes looking directly at her.

The vehicle began to slow down and Eva realised they were about to reach their destination. Where they would no doubt be separated and she might never be able to locate him because he had no face. She had to find out who he was, why he had been in her room.

She turned to the paramedic and tried to speak but her words sounded as if she was shouting into a balloon. He winced as she tried again; she realised it was futile.

She shut her eyes.

What the hell was happening?

The next time she opened her eyes, she was in a hospital room, dressed in a gown and tucked underneath several blankets, almost secured to the bed by them. The paramedic must have sedated her. Cold fingers of fear scratched at her consciousness. What was going on?

It was dark outside but there was a soft light coming from a lamp near the bed. There was no one else in the room, although she could hear voices from the corridor.

Hear. She could hear.

Eva lay still and realised she no longer had a harsh ringing in her ears. It had dropped to a low hum. However, now that the adrenaline had worn off, her body felt broken. She was sore in a way she had never been before – her skin burned; she knew that, if she tried to move, it would disturb every bruise and cut. But shouldn't she try?

Small lights danced in front of Eva's eyes as she tried to follow the thought through. Her body felt heavily medicated, she could barely keep her eyes open and the edges of her consciousness were blurred, unclear and lacking focus. She gave in to the heaviness and began to close her eyes.

Almost as soon as her eyes were shut, she began to dream. She was in the hospital bed in the same room, feeling the same pain. Her dream self looked across at the door and there was something there, silhouetted against the light. Her eyes focused and she saw it was the other body from the ambulance, tall, dark-haired and horrifically burned, but standing – in exactly the same position as the person she had seen in her room just before the explosion.

He stared from the other side of the room. He said nothing. He just stood half facing her, the rest of his body turned towards the door, completely still as if he was an actor waiting for a cue. She felt as if his head might rotate 360 degrees on his neck. Then, in the dream, he turned and walked out of the door to the private room and, as he did so, went up in flames.

Eva awoke with a sharp intake of breath.

Briefly, her heart fluttered into arrhythmia as she tried to place where she was and why.

It was just a dream.

She looked around but experienced no post-nightmare relief.

The image from the dream continued to run through her head, as if on replay. The turn of the man's head, the walk out of the door and then the hellish rush of flames as the body was consumed.

Eva looked at the door. Nothing.

She continued to stare at it, as if she would miss something if she looked away, but nothing happened.

The dream was unnerving. It did not help that she had nothing from her world to comfort herself with, to reassure herself that she was real and that the vision was just a dream – because at that moment she wasn't sure she could tell.

Eva felt immensely vulnerable.

She moved and found that sitting up was painful but not impossible. Her body hurt, but she could move.

She pushed back the sheets and disconnected herself from the wires delivering rehydration and monitoring her bodily functions. Despite what she had been through, it was clear that she wasn't seriously injured or she wouldn't have been left alone like this. And there would have been more tubes.

She swung her legs over the edge of the bed and felt for the floor with her feet. It was cold and rough and her skin was tender and feverish.

Carefully, she stood and tightened the ties on the hospital robe, closing the gap at the back. She began taking slow, steady steps towards the door, until she realised she could walk without difficulty and then she stepped out into the corridor.

The hospital ward seemed to be a collection of private rooms and it was quiet. All the doors were shut. There were no windows looking into the rooms, which seemed a little odd. At the end of the corridor, Eva saw a nurse's station with one occupant reading in the light of a muted desk lamp.

The woman looked up.

Eva walked towards her.

It was impossible to read the expression on the woman's face. Eva began to feel nervous. Her feet were cold against the hard floor and she shivered.

‘I wonder if you can help me,' she said, smiling as she reached the nurse.

The nurse continued to look at her. ‘If I can, I will.'

She was English.

Strange. Wasn't it?

‘Can you tell me where I am?'

‘You're in a hospital.'

‘I know, but which one?'

‘We're on the outskirts of Berlin.'

The answer was evasive. Why avoid giving a straight answer to a sick patient? Eva noticed that her own skin was alive with goosebumps she couldn't attribute solely to the cold.

‘There was a man. Or a person. They arrived with me in the same ambulance. Do you know what happened to them?'

‘No.'

‘Is there any way that you could find out?'

‘Unlikely.'

For several seconds, all that passed between the two women was a look. Eva felt as if she were trying to engage a brick wall. She considered demanding that the nurse help her, she was sure she could find a convincing reason – or at least make enough noise – to force a response. But she needed to conserve her energy. Besides, there was more than one way to get what she wanted.

‘Thanks,' she said and turned and began walking in the other direction. Eva heard a phone ring as she reached her room and looked back. The nurse was now on the phone. She glanced at Eva and looked down at something on the desk in front of her, apparently not interested in what Eva did next. Which was not very nurse-like behaviour. Eva stopped and stared at the top of the woman's head. Was she even a nurse?

After several seconds, Eva collected herself. Whatever medication she had been given was making her slow. She veered left away from the door to her room and ducked down the corridor opposite, moving silently along the hard floor in her bare feet.

As she walked away from her room, the hospital became colder and darker. Eva didn't know if it was her drugged imagination but the place seemed to chill the further she walked from the nurse's station; she wished she had thought to bring a jumper. Or shoes.

She stumbled and swore as she stubbed her toe on a concrete block next to the wall on the left. She stopped walking, looked at it, puzzled. It looked like debris. Then she scanned the rest of her surroundings before glancing back in the direction she had come. It was almost as if the room she had been in was a film set and this was backstage.

She felt compelled to keep walking, so she turned away from the warmth and light and pushed open a door into the darkness of the corridor beyond.

At the end of the corridor, she could see a single room illuminated by a bright fluorescent bulb. Unlike the other rooms, this one had glass on all sides and in the bed, propped up into a sitting position, was the charred figure of the man she had seen in the ambulance. As she drew closer to the room, she could see he had no wires, drips or monitors attached to his body, and no one was attending to him. The only movement was the jagged rise and fall of his chest, as if he too had been drugged, this time into an uncomfortable sleep. She couldn't take her eyes off him as she walked down the corridor. He cut a shocking figure.

It was as if he had simply been left to die.

When she reached the room, she pushed open the door. No one stopped her, no alarm sounded.

The man in the bed continued his ragged breathing and then, as she looked closer, she noticed an eye peeling open.

It was a deep brown eye. So similar to one she knew from many years ago. She shook her head to try and clear it. The room was cold. The man was shivering. Eva pulled her arms around her. She looked at what was left of his hair, thick and dark, like… like…

No, surely not.

Her stomach dropped like a stone.

‘Jackson?' she took a step towards the bed.

The burned figure was still. And then, slowly, he began trying to turn his head. There was a sucking noise as the melted skin on one side of his neck began to tear, as he turned towards her. His moan made the hair on the back of Eva's neck stand on end.

He could only open one eye. Nevertheless…

Eva felt her heartbeat spiral. The room started to spin. She stared hard at his face but her vision kept shifting.

‘Jackson? Is that you?'

The one open eye was all she could focus on.

Was she going mad?

But she was sure she recognised that eye. It had to be… it was…

‘Jackson!'
she ran at the bed, losing her balance as her body failed to cope with the sudden movement and falling as the man in the bed began to emit a low moan.

She hit her head on the bed frame, which was rusted, but pushed herself back up into a kneeling position. She struggled to stand again. The body in the bed was making an inhuman noise now, keening, rocking from side to side.

Eva's nostrils were suddenly filled with the smell of charred flesh, she hadn't noticed it before. She retched; put her hand to her mouth; retched again.

‘Please,' she said to the man, ‘please stop making that noise.' She tried to look for somewhere to put a hand on his chest or arms, to try and comfort him, but the flesh was completely raw. Why is no one taking care of him, she thought unsteadily, those must be first degree burns. He will die!

Eventually, the man calmed down and was quiet. He lay still and, again, attempted to open one eye.

‘It is you isn't it? Jackson?'

It seemed as if the man was trying to speak but the flesh of his mouth was burned shut. Eva stared again at that one open eye; years of pain and frustration began to well up inside her. She felt an urgency overtake her. ‘
Please
.
Just tell me if it is you.
'

Teresa had to admit the date had not gone particularly well. She had been hesitant to go in the first place and, frankly, the whole experience left her wishing she was of pensionable age so she could stop trying. ‘Oops!' Teresa laughed out loud as she stumbled on her heels, climbing up the steep concrete steps to her Berlin apartment. She was tipsy, there was no doubt about that – but how else did one survive a bad date?

‘Exactly!' she laughed to herself.

She had been single for several years and had never felt an urgency to start searching for someone. At least, until all her friends turned 30 and started marrying the first pair of trousers which came along. She knew at least half of them were miserable, and made more so on a daily basis by staying with their partners, but they never left. They just bitched and moaned, put on weight, silently resented their husbands' freedom ordained by biology, dreaded the day the kids left, and drank too much wine.

However, the pressure to at least start dating had affected Teresa, despite the long hours she worked and the fact she already had more than enough money to keep herself in the lifestyle to which she had become accustomed.

She had no financial need for a man, no desire for security. But she did miss the sex – it was so variable and inconsistent outside the confines of a relationship.

As she pushed her key into the front door, Teresa suddenly stopped dead. There were tiny scratches around the keyhole. Had they been there before?

She looked closely.

A shiver travelled down her spine.

She turned and glanced back down the dark hallway of her apartment block. The light flicked off its timer switch and, for several seconds, she stood in the dark as the hairs rose on the back of her neck.

‘Shit,' she muttered to herself, turned the key and opened the door. Don't be ridiculous, she thought. As if anyone had broken in.

Nevertheless, she checked the entire flat before pouring a glass of wine and retreating to the bedroom to record her evening for posterity on her various social media accounts.

She scrolled through the feeds, chuckling delightedly to herself at several notifications which informed her a man she had been flirting with quite carelessly was responding in exactly the way she wanted. How easily manipulated they are, she smiled to herself.