The Key

66

Dick kicked the door closed and laid the girl down on the bed.

He checked his watch. Still ten minutes before he was due to report back. The hardest part was done. He had flushed her out, discovered she was alone and now she was his. All he had to do was snap her neck, then slip away. A ‘Do Not Disturb’ sign on the door would ensure no one discovered her body until tomorrow at the earliest, by which time he would be long gone.

Leaning in close to study her face, he caught the hint of hotel soap above the ethanol-tang of the chloroform. She had clear, almost translucent skin stretched over fine bones. Her lips were parted, and small white teeth shone in the moist darkness of her mouth. He leaned close enough to feel her warm breath against his skin and noticed a faint crease of concentration running between her closed eyes. He had one himself, forged over years in the furnace of self-education, mostly in prison libraries.

Seeing her holdall, he picked it up and rummaged inside for the book she had been reading on the flight. He always liked to keep something. A sou-ve-nir. There was hardly anything in the bag so he found it immediately. But he also saw something that soured his good mood.

He removed the Gideon Bible, handling the tattered remains as tenderly as if it were an injured bird. The cover fell open and he felt fresh disgust when he saw all the scribble on the one page remaining. She had taken the Lord’s words in vain, destroyed them even, and in doing so had committed, in his eyes, the gravest of sins.

He looked down at her unconscious form. She no longer seemed pretty to him. All he wanted was to finish the job and leave.

Outside, the fire alarm cut out and the room fell silent. He would have to be quick if he wanted to use what confusion remained to aid his escape.

She had broken the spine of the Gideon Bible and now he would break hers. There was a certain Old Testament balance to this: an eye for an eye.

As he took hold of her head in his giant hands and tensed his shoulders ready to snap her neck, something chirruped in the silence of the room, the sound of a text message. He so wanted to hear the noise of her neck breaking, but instinct and experience told him to wait, and discipline made sure he complied. Pulling the phone from his pocket, he opened the message. It made his own frown line deepen. He read it twice then looked back down at her.

‘You like words,’ he whispered at her sleeping form. ‘Well, I have a good one for you. Re-prieve.’