Day 140

Writing exercise

…

She lost sight of him in the frozen food aisle.

That was the problem with casual surveillance. Take your eyes off the target for one second, and they’re gone.

Of course, you would think there wouldn’t be that many people in the aisle, but it wasn’t the number of people. It was the distractions.

The lady reaching into the freezer and the boy shutting the lid on her, the baby in the stroller screaming its head off, and the mother casually ignoring it, the three or four-year-old pulling stuff off shelves and throwing it on the floor in a temper tantrum.

Distractions that she was supposed to ignore.

“You do realise your target has left the building?”

Her training supervisor had just managed to sneak up on her and, at the sound of his voice, made her jump.

Nerves.

Fear of failing.

A God awful row at home with a husband who didn’t want her to work, and probably would be even more incensed if she told him what she was really doing.

What else could go wrong?

“I know.  I thought it would be easy, but you’re right, there are so many other factors involved.  But, if you say that’s why we have a team, another member would pick them up.”

“And if there was not?”

“I’d be going back and giving the person who organised the job and the team a serve.”

OK, she thought, that was not called for, but that smug, supercilious look was annoying her.

“Are you usually this rambunctious?”

“Do you after use words no one understands when you really meant pain in the ass?”

This girl was trouble.  She had the talent and the ability when she first started, but that had slowed and waned.  It wasn’t a lack of interest.  Something else was going on.

I looked around and realised this was not the place to be discussing her career prospects.

“I saw a cafe outside.  Let me treat you to a cup of coffee and talk about what’s going on.”

Her expression told me that, for her, it was not the time or place and that there probably wasn’t going to be one.

“Is that really necessary?”

“If you want to continue the training program, yes.”

…

From the supermarket to the cafe, I went over the aspects of her file that her training officer had used as justification for her retaining her place in the program.

It was not the first time her name had come up in the weekly meeting to decide which trainees to retire who were not making the grade.

Her name made the list the previous week and was the reason why I’d come out to observe the exercise and her performance.

Her training officer was adamant she should be retained, that whatever was affecting her performance was only temporary.  Of course, most trainees rarely discussed any outside factors that might be affecting them for fear it would get them where she was now.

I didn’t expect any candour now.

I waited until the coffee was delivered before bringing up work, and went straight to the heart of the matter.  “Do you really want to do this job.  It seems to me that you’ve lost interest.”

“I’m juggling stuff.  You know, in preparation for throwing myself into the job.”

“And your husband is on board.  You’ve told him that it will require you to go at any time and hour of the day, for weeks at a time, to places you can’t tell him about?”

It was better to accept single people with no ties and no permanent anchors like partners or residency, but laws ensured we had to take on everyone, irrespective of background.  They simply had to pass a security check.  Having a partner, particularly in the case of female recruits, came with its own particular set of problems

When she didn’t answer straight away. I knew the problem.  She hadn’t told him.

“It’s not a problem.”

“Until it is.  You haven’t told him.  What does he think you’re doing?”

“It wouldn’t matter.  We had this talk before we were married, and he would support me in anything I wanted to do.  He’s happy to see me behind a desk, nine to five, home to cook dinner.”

“That’s not what we do here.  This is anything but nine to five.  Was he like this before you got married?”

“Now I look back, I should have seen the signs.  I guess when you’re in those first initial throes, you are either not looking or choose to ignore anything bad or decide you can work on it later.”

“And now that it’s later?”

“Am I allowed to kill him?” 

I looked into her eyes, and I could see she was deadly serious.  I had no doubt that she could, she would.  My impression, if she channelled that rage into her world, even I’d be scared by her.

“Since that is off the table for obvious reasons, is there anything else that can resolve this problem?”  It was time for her to start thinking outside the box and prove she had the ability she said she had.

She sighed.

“Coffee’s nice for a mall cafe.”

No brilliant solutions.  “Go home and tell him, then decide what you want to do.  You sort that out, get your head back in the game, and there’s a place for you.  You come back, I will be asking him myself if you discussed it and what it means.  Am I understood?”

“Clearly.”

…

That discussion was a whole lot worse than simply losing a target in the freezer aisle.

Losing targets she could get past, at least for a while, but telling Jimmy that his ‘possession’ had a mind of her own and a way cooler job than he ever would, wasn’t going to stoke his alpha male ego.

It was a question of what she wanted.

He did say that he wanted her to pursue whatever career pleased her, but that was back in the days when the only options were law school, architecture, or scientific research.  Jobs that brought in very good salaries that would keep Jeremy in the lifestyle he wanted to become accustomed to.  His joke about her working and him staying home to look after the children was wearing a little thin.  Particularly since he wasn’t ready for children, yet. 

And what did he do?

Plod along in a nine-to-five paper shuffle with sickies once a week so he could have long weekends boozing at home or boozing away with the lads while she worked two jobs and trained.

He’d carefully hidden that trait until after she overheard him tell one of his friends, he landed the fish.  Then he could do what he liked.

Sitting on the train, going back to the flat where they agreed they would live until her studies were over, she had to ask herself why the only things about her marriage were bad memories.

Was her inner self trying to tell her something?

Once home, the trail of clothes running from the bathroom to the bedroom was waiting for her to clean up, after which there were yesterday’s dishes to clean before preparing the evening meal

She looked in the refrigerator and closed it again.  Normally, if she wanted something, she would send him a text of what she needed or to suggest eating out.  Tonight felt like an eating-out night.

Except, she was feeling the first stirrings of rebellion.

She threw everything unwashed or lying around in the kitchen into the bin.  There were two plates left, with chips in them.  She put them on the table, along with a can of beans and a can opener.

Then she tossed his mess of papers and magazines out of what had been her seat and threw it in the corner of the room.  A quick look around, then went into the bedroom and put what she considered essential items into a backpack she had recently bought and put it by the front door.

A plan was forming in her mind, one that might have been unthinkable a week ago.  Well, perhaps a month ago, to be honest.

Then she sat down, facing the door, and waited.

….

It was an hour later than usual.  It didn’t surprise her, because several times in the last month he had gone to a bar with his friends and come home half drunk.  Wisely. 

The door opened, and he burst in, with Walter, one of his friends, in tow.  Yes.  A shade more intoxicated than usual.

“Hi, honey, I’m home.  Brought Wally, didn’t want to go home to his parents, yet.  What’s for dinner?”

And then stopped when he saw her sitting with her arms crossed.

Wally said, “Hello, Agnethe.”

“Hello, Walter, goodbye Walter.”

“But…”

“Get out!”  It was almost as rapid as a bullet.

“See you tomorrow, Jeremy.  Whatever you did, I’d apologise.  Very humbly.”  Walter patted him on the back and left, closing the door very quietly behind him.

Jeremy looked shellshocked, but only for a few seconds until he realised this was his place and therefore his rules.

“You can’t talk to my friends like that. And why aren’t you cooking dinner?”

Belligerent. 

She slowly stood and walked over to him, seeing him for the first time for who he really was.  How the hell had she fallen for a guy like him?  Easy.  He had been someone completely different then.

No.  He acted like someone completely different then.  This is who he always was.

What did that say about her?

“You’re lucky I don’t get what I was going to make and shove it down your throat.”

He looked puzzled for a few moments, then smiled.  “Oh, I get it.  This is a new thing, acting all tough, making me all hot and sweaty.  Things were getting boring in the bedroom.”

She shook her head.
¹
“It’s over, Jeremy.  I’m done.  When I walk through that door, I never want to see you again.”

He finally got it, and the accompanying expression wasn’t nice.  He grabbed her by the front of her shirt and pushed her harshly up against the wall.

“You aren’t going anywhere, bitch.  I own you, and you do what I tell you.  Now, when I let you go, you’re going to make me my dinner.  Then I’ll decide what else you can do for me.”

She relaxed under his grip and put on a compliant expression.  How many times had she been in this position in training, the scenarios far more dangerous than this?

He let her go, and in five seconds, he was on the floor, face slammed into the floorboards with such a crack, she hoped she hadn’t killed him, but just to make sure, she rammed her knee into his back and elicited a grunt. 

Not dead yet.

Hands immobilised, she leaned forward and whispered in his ear, “I’m going to get up and walk out of here.  You decided, stupidly, to retaliate; I will kill you.  That isn’t a threat, it’s a promise.  What I just did then, that’s me being nice.  Trust me when I say you do not want to see me mad.”

…

I’d seen the same expressions on people who had been through the same experience.  Resentment of the people who were holding them back.

Her psychological profile made interesting reading, and it had been a calculated risk sending her home.  So far she hadn’t hurt him too severely, but if he was as dumb as the report on him said, then he was an inch away from becoming a statistic.

Not a good one.

I knocked on the door to her apartment, two offices, armed, ready to go through the moment she opened the door.

Nothing. 

My assistant was holding an iPad, with infrared imaging.  His hand indicated she was still holding him down.

I knocked again.  No urgency.  All her exits were cut off.

I heard a muffled voice from behind the door.  “It’s not locked.”

I looked at the others.  “Wait here, but be ready.”

The two beside me closed up and would remain at the door.  I would go in and not close it.  A voice behind me said, “We’re getting attention.”

“Sort it.”

I opened the door, went in, then left it only slightly ajar.  When I looked down, I could see the man under her was unconscious, and she was getting up slowly, hands outstretched.

When fully upright, hands outstretched, she backed up to the wall.”You’ve been busy.  Is he…?”

“Simply unconscious.  Do need to make things worse with him screaming like a stuck pig.”

“What happened?”

“I told him I was leaving.  He didn’t take it well.  I want the job more than I want him.”

She looked down at him with a look of pure malice.  Then back up at me.  “I’ll do whatever it takes.”

“In three months, you might regret saying that.”

“In three months I could be in a shit arse jail cell.  I’d prefer not to be.  Why are you here anyway?”

Perhaps it finally dawned on her that my presence was an anomaly.

“Our conversation.  You had to think that at some point, we were watching you and your husband.”

“You could have just asked me.  He’s a scumbag lowlife, him and his mates.  Surveillance for practice.  If you were at it you’d know what I know.  I was about to kill him when you arrived.”

“Wouldn’t help your cause.  We’ll take it from here.  If you want to join the group, the real group, then once you say “yes”, Agnethe ceases to exist, and a cover story is created to cover that disappearance.  You will leave here ostensibly under arrest, my team will clean the site, and poof, you’re gone.  You cannot come back, you cannot see any of your old friends, family or acquaintances.  Ever.  Do you agree?”

“Yes.”

…

©  Charles Heath  2025