Siren (24 page)

Paris. Paris!

Grinning like the tourist she now was, Mak took several steps from the kerb, and closed her eyes for a moment. Then she looked up.

Wow!

She was directly under the Tour Eiffel, its mighty beams weaving symmetrically into cool, overcast skies above her, a tower of intricate iron lace. A small breath of appreciation escaped her.

‘
Mademoiselle! MADEMOISELLE!
One euro!’

Mak could not take the time to appreciate the beauty of the famous French monument from that position for long. In seconds she was being hassled by a young North African man selling tiny glowing Eiffel Tower replicas. And then another one. And another one. She had no interest in a 10-centimetre-high flashing Eiffel Tower. But it was a cloudy midweek day, and the young hawkers did not have many other potential customers.

‘One euro!’ came the cries, ever more insistent, and a swarm of souvenir sellers gathered round her, many only reaching the level of her chest.

Mak quickly spotted a short queue for the trip to the top of the tower from the closest pylon. ‘
Non, merci
,’ she told her unwanted friends, and quickly broke away. Framed by the giant structure, she strolled purposefully through the scattered crowd, ignoring the pushy young men and their gaudy trinkets.

Once in the queue, she quickly relaxed again, safe. She paid her 11 euros, and stepped through the doors of the elevator that would pull her to the top of the structure. A couple was already inside. She smiled at them, and they nodded. Then kissed.

Mak had not been up the Eiffel Tower since she was a teenager modelling in Paris, and it seemed little had changed.

Buttons were pushed on a control panel by a solemn attendant, and the elevator began to move, rickety and slightly off-kilter, the four of them raised rung by rung up the giant structure in the little cubicle to the rhythmic sound of gears turning, catching ever more thrilling glimpses of the city through the webs of iron, enough to feel something like vertigo.

‘To top? Top closing twenty minutes,’ the attendant told them in broken English. ‘Weather.’

They arrived at the first level of the tower, and were escorted to a second elevator. The kissing couple joined her, along with a second, older couple who had been waiting on the lower platform. A very tall man slipped in last, seeming almost to fill the rest of the carriage on his own. The elevator doors closed and they ascended. This elevator seemed smaller,
and more fragile. Hundreds of metres in the air, it turned slightly on its side, perhaps only a few centimetres off balance, but enough to make Makedde hang on.

The doors opened at the top, and the little group of tourists spilled out. The platform was nearly empty. Mak had expected tourists at every turn, but then it was February, and a windy, overcast day. As she walked straight to the railing, she felt almost as if the view—what there was of it—was for her, and her alone. The wind was biting, and she had to pull her collar up over her chin while she gazed through swelling cloud at the fast-receding vista. It seemed this was probably not the day to take in the visual splendour of Paris, but she still fed a coin into the binoculars bolted to the viewing platform, and bent to take in the magnified view. She wondered if she’d be able to pick out the Moulin Rouge, perhaps even the Cité Chaptal and the historic little theatre.

Dammit.

The glass was fogged up.

In the distance dark clouds were moving in, a blur of approaching rain visible. The weather would soon turn.

I am being watched.

Makedde felt eyes on her, and the power of the gaze made her look up from her inspection of the fogged eyepiece.

Several paces away stood the very tall man from the elevator. He wore a hat, scarf and wool coat of black, and small clouds of mist formed just beyond his lips in the icy air before being whipped away by the winter wind. Yes, he was watching her. Mak had a trained eye for detail, so that even with his hat pulled low across his brow, it was obvious to her that the man had some unusual disfiguration of the face; a kind of pulling of scarred skin, which suggested an unsuccessful procedure by a
shonky plastic surgeon. Usually such unnatural pulling around the cheekbones and eyes was to be found only in wealthy older people of certain circles. She had seen it often enough in the fashion world on socialites and designers. But this man was no older than forty and did not look the part. Far from it. Perhaps, she thought, he was a boxer or a fighter of some kind, or had suffered in some sort of accident. His nose was crooked.

Feeling expansive and unthreatened, now on holiday in beautiful Paris, Mak smiled politely at the stranger and began a slow stroll around the railing, bracing herself against the wind and the approaching storm.

She looked right at me. She smiled at me.

Luther Hand stood on the viewing platform at the top of the Eiffel Tower, baffled that he had been locked momentarily in a gaze with the woman he was hired to kill.

Makedde Vanderwall.

Appearing unperturbed and only mildly curious about his scrutiny, she had offered an easy smile and turned her head to continue her appreciation of the clouded view.

She isn’t scared of me.

Luther had instructions to eliminate Makedde for an Australian client who could not risk her return to Australian soil. Madame Q had wired a payment to his account and made available a new black Mercedes containing a case of money and the tools necessary for the operation. The car was parked a couple of blocks from the base of the famous tower, ready for her. He would need to dispose of her body discreetly.

She looked right at me and was not alarmed.

Luther wandered the platform, watching Mak in his peripheral vision and pretending to take in a view that he had
seen many times before. Paris was not a romantic place for him. It was a place for work, like everywhere else. After a few minutes Mak walked back towards the elevators. She would be heading back down the tower with everyone else. The top level was closing.

The next elevator arrived and they both stepped in. Alone. The elevator operator ignored them.

He was all but alone with his target, but he did not let his attention betray him.

Mak.

Luther had encountered her twice before, and despite this, he was sure that she did not recognise him, nor did she sense his sinister purpose. She had never before seen his face. She had no reason to be able to identify him.

‘Beautiful, isn’t it?’ she said casually.

Luther looked around. She had addressed him. Their eyes met again and she held his gaze fearlessly, seeming at ease in her surrounds.

He nodded in reply, and looked away.

Mak.

The tiny elevator rattled and shifted as it descended to the next level. They both swayed in sync with the old carriage, which squealed and hummed. At the next platform, the doors slid open, and Luther stepped out after she did. He walked to the elevator that would take them to street level, following a few feet behind her. Four tourists got in, and the carriage delivered them safely to ground level.

Mak was the first out.

Luther watched her walk away.

He did nothing.

Makedde walked below the cold, rainy streets of wintry Paris, navigating the dank domain of six million dead Parisians.

The Empire of the Dead.

After the Eiffel Tower and the Basilique du Sacré-Coeur, Denfert-Rochereau Ossuary, famously known as the Catacombs, was Makedde’s favourite Parisian icon. She had visited the web of underground passageways nearly a decade earlier when she was working in Paris as a fashion model, and, being Makedde, she’d long had the morbid tourist destination at the top of her list of places to revisit. Walking amongst the bones of six million long-dead Parisians was a unique experience, and had affected her enormously on her first visit. Makedde had seen death many times in many settings, but there was something about the seemingly endless corridors of anonymous femurs and skulls, the display of all those naked bones placed namelessly, sometimes haphazardly and other times in meticulous, near-artistic stacks, that spoke to her of her own smallness, and mortality. She found it strangely reassuring to face the facts so largely ignored aboveground.

Underneath, we are all just bones. We are all the same. We are all dying.

There could be no better
memento mori
, or reminder to value your moments of living.

THE EMPIRE OF THE DEAD, the sign above the entranceway said, and with a sense of both fascination and respect for her surroundings, Mak made her way through
les carrières
of Paris, the old limestone quarries famously transformed in the 1780s into a place of reburial. In those times Paris had been suffering disease due to insanitary burials and overcrowded cemeteries, and officials decided to move thousands of bodies from their marked graves to the abandoned quarries, to be placed in anonymous stacks.

Skulls. Stacks of skulls.

Each of those hollow eye sockets had once framed the outlook of some living person, some unique life. Mak found that she was as fascinated by the place as she had been as a twenty-year-old seeing it for the first time.

With her mind fixed contentedly on her sightseeing, and the anticipation of Bogey’s arrival, Mak did not foresee her fate. And the bones could not warn her.

Mak was not alone.

She had been followed.

Oh!

A whirl of movement caught her eye, and she turned too late, her motion arrested by a stifling set of arms, her neck locked within the crook of an elbow, pressure behind her head, squeezing…she was in a chokehold…the chest behind her felt as solid as a slab of boulder. Immovable. Impenetrable. And she was being lifted, her heels off the ground now…and her toes. She wanted to cry out but had
no breath. Her arms, which now felt strangely autonomous and almost detached, had at first flailed at her attacker, but her stabbing fingers met only with the unyielding flesh of solid muscles, no eyes to scratch at, no soft tissue to grab. Her own eyes remained open, though half blind with a fog of increasing moisture, and the throb of pain and pressure in her head.

Time stretched to slow motion as she frantically kicked at her surprise attacker. She tried to punch, to gouge, but all the while the pressure on her neck increased painfully, and she could not breathe. Every single molecule of her being switched to blinding panic, the sensation of death—of drowning—weighing hard on her nerves, urging her for action.
Do something! Breathe!
But she had no air, she had no air, no air, no air…
no air…

Time seemed to stretch on, breathless, while her brain fought against its inevitable disconnection from vital oxygen.

In reality it only took a few seconds.

Mak was unconscious.

Seconds or minutes or years later, Makedde Vanderwall woke disoriented, and disconcertingly euphoric, her muscles tingling warmly throughout her limbs.
Discombobulated.
A deep tiredness weighed against adrenaline-fuelled elation. Her heart beat in an odd rhythm. Strange.
Where am I?

She was slung over a man’s shoulder. The man seemed huge, monstrous.

Nothing felt right.

What’s going on?

Disorientation soon made way for electrifying fear.

Arslan. My God, is it Arslan? Is he trying to kill me? No, this man is too big.

She had been choked unconscious, she now realised, and she was only just waking up. How long had she been unconscious? How much time had elapsed? She had not even spotted her attacker before he had his arm around her throat. If she had not even spotted him, had not even made a dint in him with all her struggling, then he was capable and meant business, and she was in terrible danger.

She was somewhere in low light, and she could make out the heels of the man’s shoes as he walked along an old stone pathway. They were underground. He had choked her unconscious and was carrying her.

Skulls.

There were skulls everywhere she looked, their empty eye sockets staring back at her in the low light.
The Catacombs.
She was still in the Catacombs. Not far from where she had been standing before she had suddenly had the oxygen choked out of her.

‘Hey!’ she shouted, although the cry came out strained. Her throat throbbed, as if she had been axed in the Adam’s apple. She tried to punch the man again but could only reach his hamstring.

No!

There was a jab of something—a needle; it sheared through her jeans and into her buttock. She let out a short cry.

Blackness folded around her abruptly, sending her into a much deeper, much longer sleep.

Impassive, the fleshless faces of Denfert-Rochereau Ossuary’s dead watched Makedde’s attacker bear her away.

Bogey woke with a start.

Mak.

He found himself strapped into an economy seat on a plane bound for London. His limbs felt stiff, and his mouth dry. He had no place to stretch his legs out. Bogey blinked and looked around him. Passengers up down the aircraft were dozing, their mouths hanging wide and slack. The man next to him had a reading light on, washing him in a white circle of light. The man cast an uncomfortable glance his way, and Bogey realised with embarrassment that he had made a strange noise as he woke. He was a nervous flyer, and had never taken as long a flight as this one would be. He was only four and a half hours in.

The flying, however, was not the root of his uneasiness.

For reasons he could not justify, Bogey had woken in a strange terror, deeply concerned about Makedde’s wellbeing. His sleep had been intermittent, his armrest already pummelled by a violent restlessness. Distress soaked his every pore and nerve ending, as convincing and real as any legitimate panic.

Mak.

He had every reason to be smiling. He should have been excited by his fast-approaching arrival in London, then Paris. He had every reason to feel elated to soon be seeing Mak, a woman who, should he be honest with himself, he had fallen for when they first met.

Instead, he felt panic.

Bogey rubbed his eyes and replaced his glasses. He put his seat upright, and remained that way for a few minutes, willing his heartbeat to slow to a normal pace. Out of habit, he reached for the packet of cigarettes in his leather jacket before remembering that he did not have any. He had no matches either. Neither would be helpful on a flight. Bogey was trying to quit. It did not seem to be working. In his mysterious rush of panic, the urge to smoke was strong.

It wasn’t guns that killed people, it was the bullets. Not the cigarettes, but the matches.

Makedde did not smoke. She never had. He wanted to quit for her.

By now it would be night-time in Paris, where Mak had said she would be sightseeing for the day—the Louvre, the Arc de Triomphe, the Eiffel Tower. She had promised to show him these places if he had time out from the Form Art and Design Fair.
Of course I have time.
The truth was that London was an excuse to get to Paris to see her. She was the reason he was heading all the way to the design fair. He was not exhibiting his work there, and would most likely not be able to exhibit for another couple of years. She was the reason. He dared not tell her, but she probably already knew.

Bogey found he could not take his eyes from the inflight phone that was staring him in the face from the seatback in front of him. EASY CALLS IN TWO STEPS, it said.

Just call her and see if everything is okay. Bugger the cost.

In moments he had swiped his credit card into the seatback and the headset was ringing. The receptionist at Mak’s hotel answered.

She put his call through, and it rang a dozen times. With each ring, his distress increased.

‘
Il n’y a pas de réponse
. There is no answer,’ she said.

Bogey took a breath and swiped his credit card again. This time he dialled her mobile.

‘Hi, you’ve reached Mak. I’m sorry I can’t come to the phone right now…’

It went straight to her voicemail.

Strange.

He had expected her to be back at her hotel by now, or at the very least answering her mobile in a restaurant or café somewhere. Why was it turned off? By his calculations it was already ten o’clock Paris time, yet she could not be reached. Was the stab of worry he felt motivated by fear for her, or fear of a misunderstanding? He recalled their last conversation, and tried to think of anything he might have said wrong. Was he pressuring her by suggesting he join her in Paris? Did she know that he had not intended travelling across the globe to London to attend the show this year, that it had always been a dream of his, but that he was not planning to go until he had something special to exhibit? Did she know he was only going as an excuse to see her, removed from all distractions, in the world’s most romantic city? Would that knowledge make her uncomfortable? She had just come out of a significant personal break-up. Perhaps this was all too much, too soon?

No.

Mak is in trouble.

Bogey resolved to continue calling her until she answered. He knew he would not be able to go to sleep again until he heard her voice and knew she was okay. His fingers reached again for the packet of cigarettes he did not have, and he sat back, worried and trapped. He tried to reassure himself that she was at a show, or a cinema, and had therefore turned off her phone. She would soon turn it back on. She was fine.

Mak is in trouble
, he thought again.

It would be another twenty hours before touchdown at Heathrow.