The Darkest Day

FIVE

Victor pulled the hanging string by the door to turn on the light. An extractor fan whirred into life as the fans got to speed and emitted a quiet hum. He reached behind the shower curtain to turn on the shower. Then he lowered the toilet lid and stood on it so he could reach the extractor fan high on the same wall as the bathroom’s small window.

He took a cent coin from a trouser pocket and used it to unscrew the plastic protector from the face of the extractor fan. He felt the change in air pressure as the whirling blades sucked air from the bathroom and forced it outside. The blades were made of plastic and weak, but were spinning fast enough to split skin and maybe damage tendons. He reached into his inside jacket pocket and took out a ballpoint pen. Its shell was made from aluminium.

He held it in a tight grip and pushed it between the blades. They came to an abrupt stop.

He heard clicks and creaks and a mechanical whine before the sound stopped and resistance died with it. He removed the pen and the blades sat unmoving while he replaced the fan’s face-plate and screws.

He gave it a couple of minutes for the room to steam up, then began undressing. He did so in a particular way, in a particular order to limit his vulnerability doing so. His balance and flexibility were both excellent, but bending or squatting and standing on one leg all put him at greater risk than sitting down. He first sat on the toilet lid to untie his shoes, perched on the edge, head over hips, ready to spring to his feet if necessary. He untied both shoes before removing them, to spend the least possible time wearing only one shoe. Running or fighting wearing one shoe would be a considerable hindrance, even without the fact Victor had no intention of dying in such an undignified manner. His socks followed because bare feet gripped surfaces far better than soft wool. The jacket and tie were next, which he stood up to remove, followed by his shirt, trousers and then underwear. He placed all the items in an easy-to-carry pile and left them on the toilet seat while he ran the taps to wash himself as requested.

When he had finished washing he turned off the shower and dried himself off on one of the several white towels hanging on a rail and wrapped it around his waist. He saw the rail could accommodate another two towels and tried not to imagine the previous two clients who had been here today before him. He slipped into a towelling robe but did not tie it.

The woman was waiting for Victor in the lounge when he stepped out of the bathroom.

‘You take your time, don’t you, honey?’

He shrugged and said, ‘I think your extractor fan is broken. The bathroom’s all steamed up.’

‘Oh, that’s annoying. Be a dear and open the window for me.’

He placed his folded clothes on an armchair in the hallway and returned to the bathroom and did as she asked.

He heard her say, ‘Would you please excuse me for a second?’

‘Of course,’ Victor said.

He used the time to approach the lounge window, standing side on to the wall next to it and peering outside and over the balcony. He saw that there were no conceivable sniping nests from which a marksman could take a shot, so he allowed himself a few extra seconds to gaze outside at the city.

The view from the window showed a sky blanketed by cloud. No sun was visible. He could see an uneven cityscape of sloping rooftops of red tiles and tall chimneys. A scattering of snow lay across them, thicker on the west-facing slopes and patchier on those facing east. The buildings beneath had an understated beauty with their pale pastel-coloured walls and arched windows. Clock towers and spires poked at the grey sky above. For a pleasant moment he watched the swirling gentle spirals of white chimney smoke rise and dissipate, seeming to join the clouds as though they linked Earth to the heavens. He heard the woman return and turned away from the soothing fantasy.

‘Do you like the city?’ the woman asked him.

‘Yes,’ he said, speaking the truth, then added, ‘It’s my first time here,’ which was a lie.

Of all his skills, lying was the one he employed with the most frequency; he spoke more often in lies than truth, existing in a constant state of pretending to be someone he was not — a businessman, a tourist, a nobody. Always unremarkable, always unworthy of attention. It had become second nature to do so because the part he played least of all was himself.

No one saw that side of him other than his victims and the reflection in the mirror of a face that was no longer his.

She stepped closer to him and untied her robe, slipping out of it in an effortless motion that would have been elegant if Victor could have ignored the fact she had performed the move countless times. She stood before him in a white bodice. He looked her over as she expected him to.

She parted his robe and eased it off his shoulders. She spent a long time looking at his body and the many scars and marks that covered his skin. He was used to the stares and the questions that followed. He had been cut and burned and shot and torn and bitten and more. He had whole tales memorised for every one of them, explaining away the more prominent scars as the result of a car crash and the lesser ones as sports injuries; if the person enquiring knew a scar caused by a bullet when they saw it, he had war stories from a military career that was different to his own.

But when the woman had finished examining him and her gaze returned to his, she did not ask a single question. Which was as rare as it was unexpected. Instead, she said to him:

‘I knew that you weren’t boring.’