Die for Me Read online

  A third crack, and the balloon disappears. I lift my eye from the scope and glimpse a pink balloon bobbing up and down a few meters to the left. There’s a faint snapping sound and it vanishes.

  “Looks like we’ve got competition,” murmurs Ginge. “Anton reckons that other girlie’s a real dead-eye. One of the best shots he’s ever worked with.”

  “Let’s see,” says Charlie grimly, and Ginge gives me a wink.

  As the hours slip by, we settle into an efficient routine. Charlie maintains a kind of zen state, their breathing slow, their cheek welded to the cheekpiece, their features wiped of expression. There’s just the wind, the snapping of the frayed edge of the tarpaulin, and the quiet glide of the bolt. “Send it,” I say, and wait for the whipped-away crack of the shot. I try not to think what we’re preparing for. A .338 round is a hefty projectile and at a range of half a kilometer an upper body shot will leave an exit wound the size of a rabbit hole. It’s not quite the same thing as popping a balloon.

  We continue to pop them, nevertheless, and so do Oxana and Anton. Ginge starts counting off our hits against theirs, yellow against pink, but there’s really nothing in it. At midday we make our way to the canteen for tea and microwaved shepherd’s pie, which we eat with plastic spoons. Oxana doesn’t speak to me at lunch, or even look in my direction. Instead she hunkers down in her chair next to Anton, eating swiftly and in glowering silence. Nobby and Ginge sit together with their backs to me, comparing notes in an audible undertone. “Yours might be more of a natural marksman,” Ginge murmurs. “But long-term I’d back mine. She’s—”

  “You’re not supposed to call her ‘she.’”

  “Bloody hell, I’m not, am I? But you just did.”

  “Did what?”

  “Call her ‘her.’”

  “Call who her?”

  “Her. My one.”

  “You wouldn’t think they’d care, would you? Being Russian and that.”

  “‘They’ as in both of them, or one of them?”

  “Fuck knows. This PC lingo does my head in.”

  “You’re a dinosaur, boyo, that’s your trouble. You should be woke, like me.”

  “Ginge, no offense, mate, but you’re basically a dwarf. Have you ever thought of doing porn?”

  I sip a cup of tepid tea. I no longer have any idea what I’m doing, or why. Am I training to take part in a political assassination for the Twelve, or working as an undercover agent for Tikhomirov and the FSB? My compass is spinning. The only real allegiance I have is to Oxana. I’m rehearsing a murder to be at her side, and right now she won’t even look at me.

  But then, this is how Oxana is. Loving her is a kind of death. I feel hollowed out, as if the core of my being has been eaten away, like an apple by wasps. Is this what she always wanted? To occupy and toxify me? To make me wholly, helplessly hers, and then simply detach herself?

  Ginge, Charlie and I return to the firing point, and continue until dark. The wind gets angrier as the light goes, and the desolation of the place seeps into my soul, or what’s left of it. Charlie, meanwhile, is calm, patiently sending bullets to targets as I call the shots. I learn how to choose the moment to speak, how to align my breathing with Charlie’s so that they’re exhaling as the balloon is lifted by the swell, and squeezing off the shot as it achieves a millisecond of stillness at the peak of the wave. For all the differences between us, we’re a good team.

  That night, as Nobby and Ginge exchange banter over the food preparation—impossible to call it cooking—and Oxana and I studiously ignore each other, Anton informs us that it’s Christmas Day. Pulling a liter bottle of brandy and six paper cups from a locker, he pours a large shot into each and hands them out.

  We look at each other awkwardly. Oxana bolts her brandy straight down and holds out her cup for more, which Anton hesitantly gives her. She knocks that back too, and retreats into sullen silence.

  Charlie sips their brandy and shudders.

  “Don’t you like it?” I ask.

  “I like it with hot chocolate, fifty-fifty. That’s how Emma and Celia used to drink it. By itself it’s too acid.”

  “You’re very good on that gun.”

  “I know.” They look at me earnestly. “But it’s super-helpful for me, having you spotting. At the moment it’s all just sea out there. But when we get to the real firing point you’ll see how important your job is. Do you like working with me?”

  The question takes me by surprise. For all Charlie’s lethal proficiency, they can be almost childlike at moments. I’m about to answer when Oxana starts to dance. We all watch in amazement as she bops around the tiny space, winding between us with her arms and hips swaying. “Come on, everyone,” she sings out. “It’s Christmas.”

  No one moves. Instead they watch open-mouthed as Oxana throws open the steel door of the container and shimmies outside. After a moment I follow her onto the unlit platform deck, where she’s still flailing around, her combat clothes flattened to her body by the salt wind. I grab her, terrified she’s going to go too close to the edge, and she twists violently in my arms.

  “Oxana, stop. Please.”

  She starts to speak, but I have to put my ear to her mouth to hear her words against the roar of the gale. “Didn’t you hear what Anton said? It’s Christmas.”

  “I heard him, yes.”

  “So don’t you want to dance with me?”

  “Not here.” I drag her back toward the door. “Come inside.”

  “Why won’t you dance with me?” She stares at me accusingly. “You’re so fucking… boring.” She screams the word at me but it’s plucked away on the wind.

  I leave her there, her eyes streaming, her hair a crown of spikes around her face. Back in the container, the ping of the microwave announces that the food’s ready. It’s some kind of curry-based sludge from a packet. I help myself to a portion, but I’m so pissed off that I barely taste it.

  Oxana comes back inside. Ignoring everyone, she takes a disproportionally large helping for herself, and starts shoveling it into her mouth. Her plastic spoon breaks almost immediately, so she throws the pieces on the floor and uses her hands.

  There’s a moment’s silence, then Nobby launches into an anecdote about a woman he met in a club in Brentwood High Street and Charlie starts telling me how they’re sure they have a future as a Hollywood film actor, and what do I think, and I pull myself together and say that stranger things have happened.

  Physically, Charlie would make a good superhero, with their broad, sculpted features, muscled arms and statuesque body. And it may well be that audiences would overlook the homicide charge, the jail time, and the bizarre English accent. The problem, I suspect, would be the actual acting. Subtlety is not Charlie’s forte. Witness the way that they’re staring with frank, open-mouthed lust at Oxana, who’s licking the last of the curry sauce from her paper plate.

  “Charlie,” I say. “It’s not going to happen.”

  Their gaze doesn’t flicker. “You really don’t know her at all, do you?”

  The next morning I wake at dawn, my anger dissipated, and make my way to the deck. Around me the sea heaves itself into blue-black peaks and furrows, marbled with foam. The sky is a soft gray, the wind sighs. At the westward end of the platform Nobby and Ginge are having a smoke, roll-ups cupped in their hands.

  I’ve grown cautiously fond of our desolate outpost. Its physical boundaries are hard and unambiguous. For as long as we’re here, we’re alive. In the unlikely event that we stay that way, do Oxana and I have a future together?

  Most relationships with psychopaths come to an end when the psychopath knows that their latest victim has succumbed, and so is no longer of interest. That’s not how it is with us. We play with the notion of Oxana as the predator and me as her prey, but that’s a game, and both of us know it. Right from the start, when she first looked into my eyes as Villanelle, Oxana recognized something that it would take time for me to understand. That we were fundamentally the same, and t
hat in consequence neither of us could ever fully possess or control the other.

  I think that this is why she acts up so obnoxiously, demanding my attention at the same time as rejecting it. She knows that I love her, but she also knows that the usual psychopathic love narrative, the one ending in my obliteration and her savage triumph, will not play out. Instead, it seems, we’re moving toward a tentative equilibrium. I know that there’s a place where I can’t follow her. Where she has always been alone, and always will be. I tell myself that I can live with that. That all I have to do is be patient. Be waiting there with open arms when she returns.

  This fragile optimism endures precisely until the moment when I walk into the canteen and see Charlie and Oxana sitting there, side by side. They have the sated, sleepy-eyed smugness of people who’ve been fucking all night. Charlie’s fingers are splayed nonchalantly across Oxana’s upper thigh, and Oxana’s head is tilted proprietorially toward Charlie’s.

  The whole thing is so flagrant, so bare-faced and unapologetic, that for a moment I just stand there. How have I never noticed Charlie’s fingers? Meaty, pink and spatulate, like the artisanal pork chipolatas Niko used to buy, and probably still does, from the West Hampstead farmers’ market.

  “Tea, detka?” Charlie asks Oxana, fixing me with eyes the color of wet slate, and I feel my guts churn and my fists bunch uselessly at my side. I want, so badly, to hit them. No, let me amend that. Looking at those big chipolata fingers, and thinking of where they’ve been, I want to kill them. I want to kill them both.

  Oxana shakes her head. She’s got her blasé, what’s-the-big-deal face on, and watches unblinking as I approach. “Eve,” she says. “Hi.”

  “Fuck you,” I tell her, trying to keep my voice steady. “Fuck you both.”

  “Perhaps chill?” Charlie suggests, and without even thinking about it I reach for the nearest hard object, which turns out to be an unopened can of baked beans, and hurl it straight at them. The can catches Charlie right between the eyes. They collapse sideways off their chair, slide to the floor, and stay there.

  Oxana stares at me speechlessly, her gray eyes wide. “We’re finished,” I tell her, picking up the dented can, slipping a finger through the ring-pull, and shaking the beans into a saucepan. “Don’t speak to me. And I hope the two of you are as happy together as pigs in shit.”

  Anton walks in, and seeing Charlie slumped on the floor, stops dead. “What the fuck’s going on?” he asks, incredulous. “You been fighting?”

  I bang the saucepan down onto the Calor stove, and light the gas. “You know how emotional we women get.”

  On the floor Charlie stirs and groans. There’s a lump the size of a walnut in the center of their forehead, and a nasty-looking cut. A trail of blood runs into one eyebrow.

  Anton looks at them irritably. “So what happened to her?”

  “Hit their head. They’ll be fine.”

  “Better be. You’re her spotter. Find the first-aid box and get a dressing on that wound.”

  “You fucking find it. I want my breakfast, and to be honest I don’t care if Charlie lives or dies.”

  Anton sneers. “We’re very full of piss and wind all of a sudden, aren’t we? What brought that on? Girlfriend decide to start grazing in pastures new?”

  I ignore him, and when Oxana stands Charlie’s chair up, helps them to their feet, and examines the bump, I ignore her too. When the baked beans are ready I take the hot pan and a spoon outside to the deck, where I run into Nobby and Ginge.

  “Lovely morning for it,” says Ginge, as he says every morning.

  “Sure is,” I say. I’ve never eaten an entire tin of beans before.

  When Charlie and I meet at the firing point, they’ve got a bandage around their head and regard me warily. Ginge clearly knows we’ve had a fight, but tactfully makes no reference to it. Instead, as I make the range and trace calls, my voice emptied of expression, Charlie puts round after round through the sniper rifle. Visibility is good, the sea is calm and there’s almost no crosswind. I can’t have done Charlie any serious damage because we’re soon knocking out the balloon targets at ranges of close to a kilometer.

  “I wish there was more wind,” Charlie mutters to Ginge.

  “Too easy, is it?”

  “No, Eve keeps farting.”

  “Ah.” He leans round and grins at me. “I had a dog with that trouble. Good dog, mind.”

  Somehow, the day passes. I hold on to my anger, keeping it icy and sharp inside me, and address not one word to Charlie that I don’t have to. The sight of their bandage and the livid swelling beneath it consoles me a little. It was a brilliant reflex shot, though I say it myself, and I’m confident that they’re not planning any immediate revenge.

  They don’t need to. Their triumph is complete. Why was I not prepared for Oxana to behave so viciously, so unforgivably, when in retrospect it was the most likely thing in the world? I know that she can’t resist subjecting my feelings for her to cruel and wounding tests, and it was always probable that sooner or later she’d test them to destruction.

  Fuck her. Seriously. I’m better off alone.

  At the end of the day, a hard wind gets up and thin spits of snow come whirling in from the east. Standing on the edge of the platform in my combat clothes, my face pricking with the cold, I feel myself consumed by guilt and sadness. I gaze at the sea for what seems like a very long time, and as the light fades, and the feeling drains from my exposed face and hands, something in the vast indifference of the scene—some sad, steely note—possesses me, and my anger becomes determination. I may be empty inside, hollowed and devoured by Oxana, and I may be alone and beyond redemption, but I will not be broken.

  Fuck them all.

  I will not be broken.

  9

  The next day passes swiftly. I speak only when spoken to, ignore Oxana completely, and limit my exchanges with Charlie to calling the shots for them.

  We have two nights left on the North Sea platform, then we return to Russia. At least I’m assuming that that’s the case, as my passport contains no visa for any other country. Over the course of the day, I run through possible ways of contacting Tikhomirov. My only chance to do this will be when we’ve landed in Russia, and are making our way through the border controls. It will be impossible beforehand, while we are under the eye of Anton, and almost certainly impossible afterward.

  I consider different scenarios. A diversion of some kind, in the course of which I throw myself on the mercy of customs or security officials. A medical emergency, perhaps, with me writhing on the arrivals’ hall floor with simulated gastroenteritis. Could I carry that off? Unlikely. Anton will be looking out for any hint of weird or erratic behavior. He will keep us on a very short leash, and he’s undoubtedly practiced in dealing with the kind of functionaries you find at Russian airports.

  Maybe I could try to steal a phone? The passport queue would be a possible place to lift one from a fellow traveler’s back pocket or bag. All I would have to do would be to input Tikhomirov’s number and let it ring. He would know it was me and be able to identify my location and track the phone. The penalty if I was discovered, however, would be severe, and given how closely we would all be watched, discovery was the probable outcome.

  We’ve been working our way through our evening meal for the best part of fifteen minutes when I realize what’s happening right in front of my eyes. Anton’s watching us from the head of the table, and making entries in a small spiral notebook.

  He’s writing. With a pencil.

  When he’s finished Anton shoves the notebook in his trouser pocket and tosses the pencil onto a worktop, between a box of plastic spoons and a glass jar filled with teabags. Looking up, he catches my eye, and we exchange tight, non-committal smiles. Neither of us has quite worked out how we should conduct ourselves with each other. He’s tried to have me killed at least twice, and I’ve never disguised the fact that I find him repulsive. It’s not the ideal basis for a relationship.
>
  I glance at the pencil. It’s almost hidden behind the cardboard spoon-box, and as I look away a plan comes to me fully formed. It’s dangerous, so dangerous that I can’t bring myself to think of it in too much detail, but it’s all I have. And weirdly, it brings me a sort of peace.

  Sliding out of my bunk in combat clothes and socks, I open the door inch by inch, terrified that a squeak of hinges will betray me. Outside the cabin it’s dark, but I’ve learned the layout. I’m on a small landing, inside one of the platform’s cylindrical legs. Bolted to the wall opposite me is a ladder, which runs upward to the deck and downwards to the level of the sea. Below me is Ginge’s cabin. Above me is Anton’s. I’ve got to get past his door without him hearing me if I’m to get to the deck.

  Taking a deep breath, I begin to climb the ladder. My socks are slippery on the cold steel rungs, and I can feel my heart pounding fearfully in my chest, but I force myself to keep going. There’s no sound from Anton’s cabin. I move upward, and now I can hear the faint hum of the generator that provides the platform with power; it’s housed in a hut next to the canteen.

  As I haul myself through the hatch onto the platform deck, a gale-force wind whips my hair into my eyes. Above me the sky is a streaky blue-black, around me the sea is a roiling gray, faintly illuminated by the warning lights at each corner of the platform. I crouch there for a moment. I can no longer hear the generator, only the scream of the wind and the crashing of the waves. Then, keeping low, I run to the canteen and close the door behind me. Inside it’s quieter, but no less cold. A couple of steps take me to the worktop, and I reach around the box of spoons for the pencil.

  A moment later it’s in my hand, and just as I feel its hexagonal shape between my fingers the door swings open and a torch shines in my face. The shock is so great that I stop breathing, and stare open-mouthed into the light.

  “You deceitful cunt,” Anton says. “I knew I was right about you.”

  I can’t see his face behind the torch beam, but I can imagine the sneer. There’s no way I can escape. He’s standing between me and the door.