Bleeding Hearts

18

We flew into Boston. I always try to do that, avoid JFK. The place is more like a cattle market than an airport, and they do more checks there than anywhere else. We flew as Michael Weston and Belinda Harrison, since our real passports were the only ones we had. I knew we’d taken a calculated risk. Airlines keep computer records, and anyone can access computer data. That was another reason for flying into Boston: it was a long way from our ultimate destination.

At the airport, I found us a hotel room in town, and we took a taxi. Bel was still disoriented from the flight. It was tough on a beginner, flying backwards through time. We hadn’t touched any alcohol on the flight; alcohol stopped you retuning yourself. We watched the films and ate our meals and took any soft drink we were offered. Bel was like a child at first, insisting on a window seat and peering out at the clouds. She made me tell her some things about the USA. She’d never been there before, and only had a passport at all because Max and she had taken a couple of foreign holidays. He never took her with him on business trips.

‘His wasn’t a very honourable profession, was it?’ she said suddenly, causing me to look up from my newspaper. I thought of a lot of answers I could give her, the standard one being something about guns never killing anyone, it was only people who did that.

‘More honourable than mine,’ I said instead. Then I went back to my reading. Bel was coping in her own way. We’d talked about Max, of course, edging around the actual discovery of his mutilated corpse. Bel had gone through a few transitions, from hysterical to introspective, hyperactive to catatonic. Now she was putting on a good act of being herself. It was an act though. When we were together in private, she was different. I tried not to show how worried I was. If I needed her to be anything this trip, I needed her reliable.

It was a good flight. There were a couple of babies on board, but they were up at the bulk-head and didn’t cry much anyway. Some children nearer us went through a bored stage, but their parents and the aircrew were always prepared with new games, toys, and drinks.

It would have been a good time for me to do some thinking, but in the event I didn’t think too much about what we were doing. I had a very vague plan, and maybe if I thought it through too hard it would begin to look mad or full of holes. So instead I read old news, and did some crosswords, showing Bel how you worked out the answers from cryptic clues. That part was easy: the flight, getting past customs and immigration (tourists didn’t even need proper visas these days), finding a hotel... it was all easy.

But by the time we reached the hotel, just off Boston Common, I realized I was mentally exhausted. I needed rest and relaxation, if only for a few hours. So I closed the curtains and undressed. Bel had slept a little on the plane, and wanted to go out exploring. I didn’t argue with her.

She woke me up a couple of hours later and told me how she’d walked around part of the Common, and seen where they used to make some TV series, and then walked up and down some beautiful cobbled streets, and seen inside a gold-domed building, and wandered into the Italian part of town...

‘You must walk fast,’ I said, heading for the shower. She followed me into the bathroom. I hadn’t heard half of it. I’d given her fifty dollars and she’d used some of it to buy herself a meal and some coffee.

‘I had a hot dog and some Boston baked beans.’

‘Yum yum.’

She deflated only slowly. When I came back from the shower she was flicking channels on the remote TV, finding episodes of Star Trek and other old reruns, plus the usual talk shows and sports, and the cable shopping and Christ channels.

‘Can you turn the volume down?’

‘Sure.’ She seemed to enjoy the shows just as much without the sound. ‘There are a lot of adverts, aren’t there? I mean, they even put them between the end of the programme and the closing credits.’

I looked at her and tried out a sympathetic smile, but she was back watching TV again. I knew what she needed; she needed a period of calm, reflective mourning. The problem was, we couldn’t afford that luxury. We had to keep moving.

I was making a phone call. Somewhere in Texas, I got an answering machine. I decided to leave a message.

‘Spike, it’s Mike West. I’m here on a brief trip. This is just to warn you I have another shopping list. I’ll be there in a couple of days, all being well.’ I didn’t leave a contact number.

‘Spike?’ Bel said.

‘That’s his name.’

She went back to her TV stupor. A little later she fell asleep, lying on the bed, her head propped up on the pillows. The remote was still in her hand.

I felt a little better, though my nose was stuffy. I went out and walked around. My brain told me it was the middle of the night, but in Boston it was mid-evening. I found a bar with the usual shamrocks on the wall and draught Guinness. Everyone was watching a baseball game on the large-screen TV. There was a newspaper folded on the bar, so I read that and sipped my drink. Drive-by shootings had gone out of fashion; either that or become so prolific they weren’t news any more. News so often was fashion. Car-jackings were still news, but it had to be a particularly nice model of car to make a story.

Gun stories were everywhere. People were trying to ban them, and the National Rifle Association was giving back as good as it got. Only now even the President was pro-legislation to curb gun ownership, and a few states had made it an offence for minors to carry handguns. I had to read that sentence twice. In some cities, it turned out, one in five kids took a gun to school with them, along with their books and lunch-box. I closed the paper and finished my drink.

I knew what Spike would say: Welcome to gun heaven. The barman was asking me if I wanted another, and I did want another. He took a fresh glass from the chiller and poured lager into it, only here it was called beer, and dark beer — proper beer — existed only sparsely, usually in trendy bars near colleges. I couldn’t remember how easy it was to buy beer in Boston. I didn’t know whether off-licences existed and were licensed to sell at night. Legislation differed from state to state, along with rates of tax and just about everything else. There were no off-licences, for example, they were called package stores and were government run. At least, that seemed right when I thought it. But my brain was shutting down transmissions for the night. I was trying to think about anything but Bel. In seeing her grief, I was face to face with a victim. I’d killed so many people... I’d always been able to think of them without humanising them. But they were drifting around me now like ghosts.

I drank my drink and left. There was a beer advert pinned to the door of the bar as I opened it. It read, THIS IS AS GOOD AS IT GETS.

I thought about that on the way back to the hotel.

Next morning we went to the Amtrak Station and took a train to New York. Bel got her window seat and became a child again. She was actually well prepared for some aspects of ‘the American experience’, since back in the UK she watched so much American TV. She knew what sidewalk and jaywalking meant. She knew a taxi was a ‘cab’, and that chips were ‘fries’ while crisps were ‛chips’. She even knew what Amtrak was, and squeezed my arm as, nearing the end of the trip, she started to catch glimpses of the Manhattan skyline behind the dowdier skyline of the endless suburbs. Upstate New York had just been countryside, and she could see countryside anywhere. She couldn’t always see Manhattan.

Our hotel in Boston was part of a chain, and I’d already reserved a room at their Manhattan sister. We queued for a bone-shaker yellow cab and tried not to let it damage our internal organs. The hotel was on Seventh and 42nd Street. Outside, spare-change hustlers were being told where to get off by merchants trying to sell cheap trinkets, scarves and umbrellas. The sun was hazy overhead. More men shuffled around or stood in doorways, oblivious to the traffic and pedestrians speeding past. I practically had to push Bel through the hotel door.

The reception area was like a war zone. A coach party had just arrived and were checking in, while another consignment of tourists attempted to check out. The two groups had converged, one telling the other useful tips and places of interest. We took our luggage through to the restaurant.

‘Two coffees, please,’ I told the waitress.

‘You want coffee?’

‘Please.’

‘Anything with that?’

‘Just milk for me,’ said Bel. The waitress looked at her.

‘Nothing to eat, thanks,’ I told her. She moved off.

‘Remember,’ I said to Bel, ‘we’re only here the one night, so don’t start going tourist on me. If you want to see around, fine, I’ll do my bit of business and we can go sightseeing together. What do you fancy: museums, galleries, shopping, a show, the World Trade Center?’

‘I want to take a horse and carriage around Central Park.’

So we took a ride around Central Park.

But first, there was my business. My safe deposit box was held in discreet but well-protected premises on Park Avenue South, just north of Union Square. I telephoned beforehand and told them I’d be coming. Bel insisted that we walk it, either that or take the subway. We did both, walking a few blocks and then catching a train.

At Liddle Trusts & Investments, we had to press a door buzzer, which brought a security guard to the door. I told him who I was and we were ushered inside, where my passport was checked, my identity confirmed, and we were led into a chamber not unlike the one in Knightsbridge. Bel had to wait here, while the assistant and I went to the vault. It took two keys, his and mine, to open my safe. He pulled out the drawer and handed it to me. I carried it back through to the chamber and placed it on the table.

‘What’s inside?’ Bel asked.

The drawer had a hinged top flap, which I lifted. I pulled out a large wad of dollar bills, fifties and twenties. Bel took the money and whistled softly. I next lifted out a folded money-belt.

‘Here,’ I said, ‘start putting the money into this.’

‘Yes, sir. What else have you got?’

‘Just these.’

The box was empty, and I held in my hand a bunch of fake American documents. There was a passport, social security card, medical card, various state gun and driving licences, and a few other items of ID. Bel looked at them.

‘Michael West,’ she said.

‘From now on, that’s who I am, but don’t worry about it, you won’t have any trouble.’ I smiled. ‘My friends still call me Michael.’

She packed some cash into the belt. ‘No guns or anything? I was expecting at the very least a pistol.’

‘Later,’ I said.

‘How much later?’

I looked at her. ‘Not much.’

‘Good.’

I sat down beside her. I could see that Manhattan’s charms had failed to take her mind off the fact of Max’s murder. I took her hands in mine.

‘Bel, why don’t you stay here?’

‘You think I’d be safer?’

‘You could do some sightseeing, have a bit of a break. You’ve been through a lot.’

Her face reddened. ‘How dare you say that! Somebody killed my father, and I want to look them in the face. Don’t think you can leave me behind, Michael, because you can’t. And if you try it, I’ll scream your name from the chimney-pots, so help me.’

‘Bel,’ I said, ‘they don’t have chimney-pots here.’

She didn’t grace this remark with a reply.

We took a cab back towards Central Park. The driver reckoned we could find a horse and carriage near Columbus Circle. Bel had bought a tiny foldaway map of the island. She kept looking at it, then at the real streets, her finger pointing to where we were on the map.

‘It’s all so crammed in, isn’t it?’

This was before she saw Central Park.

The park was looking at its best. There were joggers, and nannies pushing prams, and people walking their dogs, and throwing frisbees or baseballs at one another, and arranging impromptu games of baseball and volleyball, and eating hot dogs while they sat on benches in the sunshine. She asked me if I’d ever walked all the way round the park.

‘No, and I doubt anyone else has. Further north, the park hits Harlem.’

‘Not so safe?’

‘Not quite.’

Our coach-driver had asked if we wanted a blanket or anything, but we didn’t need one. Our horse didn’t scare easily, which was a blessing, considering the number of cars and cabs crossing town through the park. Bel squeezed my hand.

‘Tell me something, Michael.’

‘What sort of thing?’

‘Something about yourself.’

‘That sounds like a line from a film.’

‘Well, this is like living in one. Go on, tell me.’

So I started talking, and there was something about the sound the horse’s hooves made on the road, something hypnotic. It kept me talking, made me open up. Bel didn’t interrupt once.

I was born near an army camp in England. My father was an army officer, though he never rose as far as he would have liked. We moved around a lot. Like a lot of forces kids, I made friends quickly, only to lose them again when either they or I moved. We’d write for a little while, then stop. There was always a lot to do on the camps — films, shows, sports and games, clubs you could join — but this just set us apart from all the other children who didn’t live on or near the camp. I used to bruise easily, but didn’t think anything of it. Sometimes if I bumped myself, there’d be swelling for a few weeks, and some pain. But I never told anyone. My father used to talk about how soldiers were taught to go ‘through the pain barrier’, and I used to imagine myself pushing against it, like it was a sheet of rubber, until I forced my way through. Sometimes it would take a few plasters before a cut knee or elbow would heal. My mother just thought I picked off the scabs, but I never did. My father had to take me to the doctor once when I bit the tip off my tongue and it wouldn’t stop bleeding.

Then one day I had to have a dental extraction. The dentist plugged the cavity afterwards, but I just kept on bleeding, not profusely, just steadily. The dentist tried putting some sour stuff on my gums, then tried an adrenaline plug, and finally gave me an injection. When that didn’t work — I was on my fourth or fifth visit by now — he referred me to a specialist, whose tests confirmed that I was a mild haemophiliac. At first this gave me a certain stature within my peer group, but soon they stopped playing with me. I became an onlooker merely. I read up on haemophilia. I was lucky in two respects: for one thing, I was a mild sufferer; for another, I’d been born late enough in the century for them to have made strides in the treatment of the disease. Factor VIII replacement has only been around since the early 1970s, before that you were treated with cryo. Acute sufferers have a much harder time than me. They can bleed internally, into joints, the abdomen, even the brain. I don’t have those problems. If I’m going for an operation or for dental treatment, they can give me an injection of a clotting agent, and everything’s fine. It’s a strange sort of disease, where women can be carriers but not sufferers. About one man in 5,000 in the UK is a haemophiliac, that’s 9,000 of us. Not so long ago, nobody bothered testing blood donors for HIV. That led to over 1,200 haemophiliacs being treated with a lethal product. Over 1,200 of us, men and boys, now HIV positive and doomed.

A similar thing happened in France. They gave contaminated clotting factors to children, then tried to hush it up. I was in such a rage when that happened, such a black rage. I almost went out and picked off those responsible... only who was responsible? It was human error, no matter how sickening. That’s one reason I won’t do a hit in a Third World country, not unless the money is very good. I’m afraid I might be injured and treated with contaminated Factor VIII. I have dreams about it sometimes. There are rigorous checks these days, but does every country check, does every country screen and purify? I’m not sure. I can never be sure.

I carry my works with me everywhere, of course, my syringes and powdered clotting factor and purified water. I’m supposed to visit a Haemophilia Centre when I need a doctor or dentist, and for a yearly check-up. The blood products we haemophiliacs use can contain all sorts of contaminants, leading to liver damage, hepatitis, cirrhosis... Then there’s the bleeding, which can lead to severe arthritis. (Imagine an assassin with arthritis.) Between five and ten percent of us develop inhibitors, antibodies which stop the Factor VIII from working. Like I say, it’s a strange disease. We can’t have intramuscular injections or take aspirin. But things are always getting better. There’s DDAVP, a synthetic product which boosts Factor VIII levels, and now there’s even properly synthetic Factor VIII, recombinant Factor VIII they call it. It’s like 8SM and Monoclate P, but created in the lab, not from blood. No contaminants, that’s the hope.

Meanwhile, there is a cure for haemophilia: liver transplant. Only at present it’s more dangerous than the disease itself. There will come a cure; it’ll come by way of genetic research. They’ll simply negate the affected chromosome.

As you can tell, haemophilia has had a massive impact on my life. It started as soon as the disease was diagnosed. My parents blamed themselves. There was no family history of the disease, but in about a third of cases there never is; there’s just a sudden spontaneous mutation in the father’s sperm. That’s how it was with me. My parents, especially my mother, treated me like a china wedding present, as though I could only be brought out on special occasions. No more rough games with the other boys — she made sure the other parents knew all about haemophilia. My father spent more time away from me, at the shooting range. So I followed him there and asked him to teach me. A pistol first, and later a rifle. To stop me bruising my shoulder, he had my mother make a little cushion to wedge behind the stock. I still use that cushion.

My mother was opposed to the whole enterprise, but could never stand up to my father. It was a couple of years before I could beat him. I don’t know whether his eyes were getting worse, or his aim less steady, or it was just that I was getting better. When I finally left home, I left it as a marksman.

I’d always been clever at school, and ended up at a university, but I didn’t last long. After that there were dead-end jobs, jobs which gave me a lot of time to myself. I worked in a library, then in a couple of bookshops, and eventually got a great job working with kayak rentals in the Lake District. Only that fell through when my employers discovered I was a haemophiliac. They said the job was too risky, I’d become a liability.

Was it any wonder I couldn’t hold down a job? The only place I wanted to be was on the range. I joined gun clubs and shot competitively. I even went hunting on a few occasions, looking for a new challenge. Then I met a disarming man called Holly MacIntyre. He swore this was his real name. Friends of his called him ‘Mad Dog’ MacIntyre. He was huge and bull-headed with cropped hair silvering above the ears. His eyes were bulbous and red-rimmed, like he spent too long in chlorinated swimming pools. He was always ready for a fight, and sometimes initiated it for its own sake. He reminded me of a rugby league forward.

Holly had known my father, and he’d seen me shoot a few times. He was by this time long out of the armed forces and working in what he called a ‘security capacity’ for a number of countries, though he couldn’t name them. In fact, he was a mercenary, leader of a gang of about a dozen men who could be bought, who would go anywhere in the world and train any rag-tag rabble for a price. Mad Dog was on the lookout for fresh blood.

I told him he couldn’t have mine, and explained why.

‘Is that all that’s stopping you?’ he said. ‘Christ, you could still be useful to me.’

I asked him how.

‘Sniper, my boy. Sniper. Put you up a tree and leave you there. You’d be nice and cosy, no cuts or bruises, nobody’d know you were there. All you’d do is pick ’em off as they came into sight.’

‘Pick off who?’

‘The fucking enemy, of course.’

‘And who would they be?’

He leaned close to me and hissed whisky. ‘Whoever you like!’

I turned down his offer, but not before he’d introduced me to a few people who were later to prove useful. See, at this time I was a military groupie. I liked to hang around with squaddies and old soldiers, with anyone who shared my background and belief system. I knew which pubs and clubs to go to, which gyms. I knew where some weekend shoot was going to be. These shoots, they weren’t paintball or grouse or a few hoary old foxes. They were held in secret, far away from humanity, where you could make a big noise and nobody’d hear you. I used to take bets. They’d place a coin upright on the bonnet of a car, and there’d be someone in the car with his hand by the bonnet-release. At a given signal, I’d have to hit the coin before the bonnet sprang open.

Everyone loved me. But I knew I was turning into a sideshow. Worse than that, I was becoming a freak. So I did something about it. I made myself a life plan. It didn’t happen overnight; I read books and went travelling. I knew three things: I was bored, I was poorer than I wanted to be, and I had a skill.

I started small, shooting a few rats I bought from a pet shop. That wasn’t very satisfactory: I’d nothing against the rats, and nothing to gain from shooting them. I found I actually liked them better than I liked most of the people around me. I don’t like people really, I’m just very good at pretending. I did some hunting in the USA, and that was better than shooting rats. Then one night in New York, I picked off a junkie from my darkened hotel room. They were standing in an alley six floors below me. I reasoned that they didn’t have long to live anyway, the life expectancy of a junkie on the New York streets being slightly less than that of your average rat. From then on, it got easier.

I went back to see Mad Dog, only he was somewhere in Africa, and this time he didn’t come back. But I knew other people I could talk to, other people who knew what I needed to know. It was six months before I got my first contract. They were expecting me to hit the victim on the head and bury him in Epping Forest. Instead, I took him out from four hundred yards and created an immediate news story. My employers decided this was okay, too. I was paid, and my name was passed along. I knew I wouldn’t be working for the Salvation Army. But then I wasn’t killing any nuns and priests either. It was only after a few hits that I decided anyone was fair game. It isn’t up to the executioner to pronounce guilt or innocence. He just makes sure the instruments are humane.

I noticed that Bel was sitting like a block of stone beside me.

‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘But I’m not telling you anything you didn’t already know.’

‘Michael, you’ve spoken for so long, and yet you’ve said almost nothing.’

‘What?’

‘Can we go get something to drink?’

‘Sure.’

I told the driver to take us back now. We passed another carriage on the way. There were some Japanese tourists in the back. While the drivers exchanged bored looks, the Japanese videoed us, waving and grinning as they did. We looked like a couple weary of their life together, and reeling from yet another spat.

‘You know,’ Bel said, ‘you’ve never asked me about myself. That’s strange. When I’ve gone out with men before, they’ve always ended up asking me about myself. How old are you, Michael?’

‘My passports say thirty-five.’ We were lying in bed together. We hadn’t made love, our bodies weren’t even touching. The silent TV was playing.

‘And you’ve never been married, never had a steady girlfriend?’

‘There’ve been a few.’

‘How many?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘A few hundred? A few dozen?’

‘Just a few. Christ, Bel.’ I threw off the cover and stood up. The air conditioning was whirring away, blowing cool air over me.

‘Look,’ I said, ‘I’m not... I never said I was much good at this... this sort of thing.’

‘Do you hear me complaining?’

‘Okay, I’ll ask you something about yourself.’

She smiled sadly. Her eyebrows were beautiful. Her lips were beautiful. ‘Don’t bother,’ she said. ‘Ask me some other time when I’m not expecting it.’

Then she sat up and started watching TV, disappearing back into herself.

The next morning we flew to New Mexico.

I wasn’t going to buy a car in New York. Nobody buys a car second hand in New York if they can help it. The cars are rustier than elsewhere, with more miles on the clock (even if they show less miles) and steeper price tags. You either buy on the west coast or you buy in New Mexico, Texas, somewhere like that. We bought in Albuquerque.

Bel was right: the blond man and his team might have no trouble picking up our trail again. From flight and hotel information, they could trace us as far as New York. But Michael West, not Michael Weston, had paid for the flights to Albuquerque, and the name on his companion’s ticket was Rachel Davis. I was taking all these precautions when all the blond smiler from Oban had to do was head directly to the Olympic Peninsula and wait for us there. That was okay; I just didn’t want him intercepting me. This way, I might get at least one good shot in first.

We didn’t linger in Albuquerque. My New Mexico ID and a bundle of cash bought us a fast car. It was a Trans-Am, just right for the trip ahead. I’d picked up a few small ads and car ads magazines from the first newsagent’s in town, and we sat in a diner while I scoured them. I ringed half a dozen and went to the pay-phone. The first number I called, the owner was at work and his wife said I’d have to see the car when he was around. I hit the jackpot with the second number. I was talking to a drawling mechanic called Sanch who was mad about ‘shit-kickers’ (his term for fast cars) and was selling this Trans-Am because he wanted to buy a beautiful old Firebird with a paint job ‛to die for, man’.

He was so keen to sell, he picked us up outside the diner in a pickup truck and took us back to his three-storey house along a dirt road in what seemed a nice middle-class neighbourhood.

‘I fix all the neighbourhood cars, man, they bring them all to me.’

It looked like half the neighbourhood cars were parked right outside Sanch’s house, mostly in bits. He kept his best models in the garage, including another, highly-tuned Trans-Am. I’d rather have had this one, but the one he was selling sounded sweet too. I looked at the engine, and we took it for a spin. It was white, and the interior was a bit grotty, plus it was missing quarter of a fender. The engine was clean though, and it had a hi-fi. He brought the price down another $1,000 for cash and I asked if I could use his bathroom.

While Bel enjoyed a cold beer and the collection of nude calendars in Sanch’s kitchen, I unzipped my money belt and took out the notes. Back in the kitchen, Sanch had already filled in the relevant details on his ownership papers.

‘Hey,’ he said, handing me a beer, ‘I meant to ask you, what you gonna use the car for?’

‘Just some driving.’

‘That’s the way to see America.’

‘Yes, it is,’ I said, handing over the money. He examined it, but didn’t count it.

‘Looks about right. Here, I got something for you.’ It took him a little while to find what he was looking for. It was a Rand-McNally Road Atlas, its covers missing, corners curled and oily. But the pages were all there. ‘I got about half a dozen of these things laying around. After all, you don’t want to get lost between here and there.’

I thanked him, finished the beer, and put my part of the ownership document in my pocket.

Then we drove to Lubbock.

It served as a nice introduction to American driving. Long straight roads, the occasional shack planted in the middle of nowhere, and sudden towns which disappeared into the dust you left behind. The car was behaving, and, lacking a TV, Bel was communing with the radio. She liked the preachers best, but the abrasive phone-in hosts weren’t far behind. One redneck was praising the gun.

‘Guns made America, and guns will save America!’

‘You’re loon-crazy, my friend,’ said the DJ, switching to another call.

Albuquerque is only about 250 miles from Lubbock. We could do it inside a day easy, but we weren’t in any particular rush. When we stopped at a place called Clovis and I still got an answering machine in Lubbock, we decided to check into a motel. The place we chose was choice indeed, twenty dollars a night and decorated in 1950S orange. Orange linoleum, orange lampshades, orange bedspread. We looked to be the only guests, and the man in the office could have given Norman Bates some tips. He rang up our fee on an ancient till and said he was sorry about the swimming pool. What he meant was, the swimming pool wasn’t finished yet. It was a large circular concrete construction, waiting to be lined. It was unshaded and sat right next to the road. I couldn’t see many holidaymakers using it. There was a hot wind blowing, but the motel boasted an ice machine and another machine dispensing cold cola.

‘The TV hasn’t got cable!’ Bel complained, already a seasoned traveller in the west. Along the route we’d been offered water beds and king-size beds and adult channels and HBO, all from noticeboards outside roadside motels. Bel wasn’t too enamoured of our bargain room, but I was a lot more sanguine. After all, the owner hadn’t made us fill in a registration card and hadn’t taken down the number of our licence plate. There would be no record that we’d ever stayed here.

‘Let’s go do the sights,’ I said.

We cruised up and down the main and only road. A lot of the shops had shut down, their windows boarded up. There were two undistinguished bars, another motel the other end of town with a red neon sign claiming NO VACANCIES, though there were also no signs of life, a couple of petrol stations and a diner. We ate in the diner.

There was a back room, noisy from a party going on there. It was a fireman’s birthday, and his colleagues, their wives and girlfriends were singing to him. Our waitress smiled as she came to take our order.

‘I’ll have the ham and eggs,’ Bel said. ‘The eggs over easy.’ She smiled at me. ‘And coffee.’

I had the chicken dinner. There was so much of it, Bel had to help me out. Since there was no phone in our room, I tried Lubbock again from the diner, and again got the answering machine. After the meal, we stopped at the petrol station and bought chocolate, some cheap cola, and a four-pack of beer. I had a look around and saw that the station sold cool-boxes too. I bought the biggest one on the shelf. The woman behind the till wiped the dust off with a cloth.

‘Fill that with ice for you?’

‘Please.’

Then I added another four-pack to our bill.

Next morning we filled the cool-box with ice, beer and cola, and had breakfast at the diner. The same waitress was still on duty.

‘Good party?’ Bel asked.

‘Those guys,’ clucked the waitress. ‘Practically had to hose them down to get them out of here.’

It was ten o’clock and already hot when we headed out of town. One thing Sanch hadn’t told us about the Trans-Am, its air conditioning wasn’t a hundred percent. In the end, I turned it off and we drove with the windows down. At another service station, Bel bought some tapes, so we didn’t have to put up with the radio any more. The drivers on these long two-lane stretches of Texas were kind to a fault. If you went to overtake someone, the car in front would glide into the emergency lane so you could pass without going into the other carriageway. Even lorries did it, and expected you to do the same for them. Not that many people passed us. We cruised at between 70 and 80 and I kept an eye open for radar cops. Every time we passed a car or lorry, Bel would wave to it from her window.

This was the most relaxation I’d had in ages. I’d driven part of the way across the USA before, and had enjoyed it then too. As Bel said, you became your favourite film star in your own road movie. More importantly from our point of view, no one could trace your route.

Lubbock, birthplace of Buddy Holly, was a prairie sprawl with a museum dedicated to ranching. The museum boasted a large collection of types of barbed wire, plus a rifle display that took the breath away. That was all I could tell you about Lubbock. The last time I’d been here, I had failed to find a centre to the place, but that’s not so surprising in American cities. Last time, I stayed in a run-down motel near the Buddy Holly statue. But after last night, I reckoned Bel would object, so we found a new-looking hotel just off the highway and registered there.

American hotels and motels used to ask for your ID, but these days all they did was ask you to fill in a registration card. So it was easy to give fake names, fake car details and fake licence. Bel liked the room: it had Home Box Office on cable, plus in-house pay-movies. It also had a king-size bed and a telephone. I called the number one last time, then decided to head out there anyway.

‘So do I get to know now?’ Bel said as we got back into the Trans-Am.

‘What?’

‘Who you’ve been trying to call.’

‘A guy called Jackson. Spike Jackson. You’ll like him.’

Spike lived not far from Texas Tech and the Ranching Heritage Centre. He’d taken me there on my previous visit. There was a dual carriageway, with single-storey shops along one side, and a couple of lanes off. Up one of these lanes, at the end of the line, was Spike’s place. I hoped he wasn’t out of the country on business. I knew he did most of his business from home.

We came off the dual carriageway and drove alongside the shops. Bel spotted a western-wear emporium, and wanted us to stop. I dropped her off and said I’d be back in five minutes, whatever happened. She disappeared through the shop door.

There were a couple of cars parked outside the two-storey house, but that didn’t mean anything. Like all ‘good old boys’, Spike usually had a few cars hanging around. He owned at least two working cars, and sometimes bought another dud, which he’d tinker with for a while before towing it to the junk yard. I revved the Trans-Am a couple of times to let him know he had a visitor. I didn’t want him nervous.

But there was no sign of life as I walked up the steps to the front door. There was a screened-in porch either side of the door, with chairs and a table and a swing-bench. Spike hadn’t had the maid in recently; there were pizza boxes and beer cans everywhere. I rang the bell again, and heard someone hurtling towards the door. It flew open, and a teenage girl stood there. Before I had a chance to say anything, she waved for me to follow her, and rushed back indoors again.

‘I’m about three thou off the high score!’ she called. I followed her upstairs and into a bedroom. It looked like a radio shack. There were electronics everywhere. Sprawling across a makeshift table (an old door laid flat with packing-cases for legs) was a computer system.

The girl could have been anywhere between fifteen and eighteen. She was thin and leggy, her black denims like a second skin. She’d tied her thick red hair carelessly behind her head, and wore a black T-shirt advertising some rock band. She was back in front of the computer, using the joystick to fire a killing beam at alien crustaceans. Two speakers had been wired to the computer, enhancing the sound effects.

‘Who are you anyway?’ she asked.

‘I’m a friend of Spike’s.’

‘Spike’s not here.’

‘When will he be back?’ As the screen went blank and a fresh scenario came up, she took time to wipe her hands on her denims and look at me.

‘What are you, Australian?’

‘English.’

‘Yeah? Cool.’

I was tempted to pull the plug on her game, but you could never tell with teenagers. She might draw a gun on me. I had to attract her attention somehow.

‘Spike never used to like them so young.’

‘Huh?’

‘His girlfriends.’

She smirked. ‘Not!’ She had dimples and a faceful of freckles, a pale face which seldom saw the sunshine outside. The curtains in her room were drawn closed. She’d stuck photos on them; film stars mostly. ‘I’m not Spike’s girlfriend.’ She rolled her eyes at the thought. ‘Jee-zuss!’

I sat down on her unmade bed. ‘Who are you then?’

‘I shouldn’t have let you in, should I? I mean, you could be any-fucking-body, right? You could be a rapist, or even worse a cop.’

‘I’d have to be an English cop, wouldn’t I?’

‘Not. I know who you are. Spike’s told me about you.’

‘Who am I then?’

‘He calls you “Wild West”.’

I smiled. This was true. She was looking at me again. ‘Am I right?’

‘Yes, you’re right. I need to see Spike.’

‘Well, he’s not here. Look at that, eight million seven hundred thou.’

‘The high score?’

‘You bet.’

‘I’m a great believer in quitting while you’re ahead.’

‘Uh-uh, bud.’ She shook her head. ‘I’m headed all the way to annihilation.’

‘Where is Spike?’

‘You’re getting boring, man. He’s on a shoot.’

‘A shoot?’

‘Down towards Post. It’s an hour’s drive.’

‘Can you give me directions?’

‘Sure, head south-east out of town—’

‘On a piece of paper?’

She smirked again. ‘I’m an American teenager, we don’t write.’

‘I’m going to pull the plug on your little game.’

‘Do that and you’ll be sorry.’ There was no humour in her voice, but I’d run out of patience. I found a four-way adaptor on the floor and picked it up, my hand clenched around the first cable.

‘Okay, man, you win.’ She hit a button on the keyboard and the screen froze. ‘This thing’s got a sixty-second pause.’ She looked for paper, found a paperback novel, tore the back cover from it, and drew a map on the blank side. She threw the map at me and jumped back into her seat.

‘Thanks for the hospitality,’ I said.

‘How hospitable would you be if your parents kicked you out?’

She was asking me to ask her something. My only weapon was to walk away, and that’s what I did.

Back at the store, Bel had bought a pair of boots for herself. They had shiny metal tips and ornate red stitching on black leather. She’d bought a new pair of denims to go with them. She almost looked like a native, which was no bad thing. Maybe that was the reason she’d bought the stuff. Or maybe she was just trying to shed her old clothes, her English clothes. Clothes from a home she no longer wanted.

I handed her the map as we drove off. She looked at the drawing, then at what it was written on.

‘ “Mainframe bandits”,’ she read, ‘“are on the loose in hyperspace, and only you can stop them, playing the role of Kurt Kobalt, Inner-space Investigator, with your beautiful but deadly assistant Ingress”.’ She looked at me. ‘Is that us, do you think?’

‘Not.’

19

It wasn’t that easy to find the shoot.

The map wasn’t wrong in itself, but some of the roads were little more than dirt tracks, and we doubted we were ever going to end up anywhere. As a result, we lost our bottle once or twice and headed back to the main road, only to find we’d been on the right road all the time.

At last we came to a lonely spot, a wilderness of hillocks and valleys. There was no habitation for miles, yet cars and vans had gathered here. Men and women were standing around guzzling from cans. That worried me straight off: guns and alcohol — the worst marriage.

As soon as we stepped out of the car we could smell it: the air was thick with cordite. We couldn’t tell if there was smoke or not, we’d kicked up so much dust along the track. I was glad I’d bought the Trans-Am and not some anonymous Japanese car. These were Trans-Am people. There were a couple more parked nearby, along with Corvette Stingrays and Mustangs and a couple of Le Barons.

Somebody yelled ‘The line is hot!’ and there was a sudden deafening fusillade from behind the nearest rise. Instinctively, Bel ducked, raising a knowing smile from the beer-drinkers. The sound of firing continued for fifteen seconds, then died. There were whoops and sounds of applause. A man came up to us, beer can in hand.

‘It’s six bucks each, buddy.’ I was handing over the money when I heard an unmistakable voice.

‘You old dawg, what in the hell are you doing here?’ It was Spike Jackson. He had a baseball cap on his head, turned so the shield was to the back. He took it off and ran a hand through his hair. He had thick wavy brown hair swept back to display a high prominent forehead. He wore steel-rimmed glasses, sneakers and old denims, and a T-shirt with the sleeves ripped off, showing rounded muscular shoulders and thick upper arms. He stopped suddenly, arched his back to the sky and threw open his arms.

‘This is gun heaven, man! I died and went to gun heaven. Didn’t I always used to tell you that, Wild West? That’s what this country is, man.’

His audience voiced their agreement. Now he came up to us and, arms still open wide, closed them around me in a hug that lifted me off the ground.

‘Wild West, man, how in the hell are you doing?’ He let me down and gave Bel a smile, touching his crotch for luck, then turned back to me. ‘You old dawg, you! Come on, let’s go where the action is.’ He went to a stack of beer cans and pulled off a few, tossing one to me, but opening Bel’s and handing it to her with a bow from the waist.

‘Name’s Spike Jackson, ma’am, and this one’s for you.’ Bel took the beer but didn’t say anything. Spike led us around to where, as he’d put it, the action was. In another clearing people milled around examining the damage the latest fusillade had done to a couple of wrecked cars, a lean-to shack, and an array of crates and bottles and cans. Fresh targets were being set up by sweating volunteers.

I knew what this was, of course. Spike had taken me to a Texan shoot before. Forty or fifty enthusiasts would gather together and fire off a range of weapons. You could spectate, or you could participate. A couple of arms dealers, who supplied much of the arsenal, would then take orders. I could see the dealers. They were short and dumpy and wearing holsters under drenched armpits. The day was fiercely hot, and I half wished I’d bought a stetson; or at the very least a baseball cap.

Spike never officially organised these shoots, because he wasn’t officially a gun dealer. He worked the black market, and got a lot of his stuff from army bases throughout Texas. He bought from overseas too, though. He just didn’t do any of this legally.

‘Look at this,’ he told me. He had led us to where today’s arms were displayed, spread on sheets of plastic on the ground. It looked like an arsenal captured from the Iraqis. Spike had picked up a Browning anti-aircraft gun. It showed off his bronzed arm muscles. ‘Something for the lady,’ he said, laughing.

I laughed back, and Bel gave me a disgusted look.

‘We got your M16s, your AK-47s and 74s.’ Spike pointed out the most interesting items. ‘Look here, we even got something from Finland or Sharkland or someplace, a Varmint.’

‘Valmet,’ I corrected. ‘The M62.’

‘Whatever. We got armour-piercing ammo you wouldn’t believe, man. Look here, the M39B. Use it in a handgun, it’ll go through a bullet-proof vest. Get ’em while you can. Black Talon bullet here, you ever hear of it?’

‘It expands on impact,’ Bel said coolly, ‘and has these sharp little edges.’

Spike opened his eyes and mouth wide. ‘Lookee here, we got us an expert! It’s the quiet ones you have to watch out for!’ Then he went back to his inventory. ‘It’s all cute stuff, and believe me we got everything.’

‘So what would you suggest?’

Spike stopped his spiel and looked at me. He was wavering, but it was an impersonation of a drunk rather than an effect of drink. His blue eyes were clear.

‘Well now, depends what you need it for.’

‘We need a variety of things. A sniper rifle, a couple of pistols, and maybe an assault rifle, something serious.’

Spike nodded thoughtfully, then counted off on his fingers. ‘Sniper rifle for long range, pistol for close range, and assault rifle for taking on the Seventh Cavalry.’

‘You might not be far off.’

He finished his beer and crushed the can, throwing it on to the ground. ‘What’s this “we” shit, man?’

I nodded in Bel’s direction. Spike stared at me, working out if I was serious, then he shook his head.

‘Maybe we better discuss this,’ he said.

I knew he wouldn’t want to discuss anything out in the open. Texas had lax gun laws, but that didn’t mean illegal dealers were encouraged. After the Waco siege, even Texans had started to ask questions about the amount of guns around.

We followed Spike’s pick-up truck. Bel said she wanted to drive, so she drove the Trans-Am. I didn’t mind her driving at all; two drivers would make the trip north all the faster. Back at his house, Spike yelled up the stairs that he was home, then went into the kitchen and brought out half a dozen refrigerated beers. We made ourselves comfortable on the porch. Bel said she needed the bathroom, and Spike told her where it was. We didn’t see her for a while after that.

Spike drank his first beer in silence.

‘So who is she?’ he said at last.

‘A friend.’

‘What’s her problem?’

‘She’s in mourning.’

‘Mm-hm.’ He opened the second beer and wiped sweat from his brow with his forearm. ‘So, what’s the story, Wild West?’

I shook my head, and he shrugged.

‘That’s up to you, of course, but if you’re looking to buy so much hardware, people are going to be wondering.’

‘That’s not my problem. My problems start if you can’t get the stuff.’

‘Man, I can get anything. I just want to be right in my mind about why you want it.’

‘What is this, new legislation? You have to have a clear conscience after each sale?’

He smiled and shook his head. ‘Things are crazy though. We’ve got doctors telling us guns kill more teenagers than every known disease combined. We’ve got Clinton, man, the most anti-gun president we’ve ever known. That fucker got the Brady Bill through! We’ve got the NRA fighting its battle, but not always winning any more. I don’t always agree with the NRA, man, you know that. It simply isn’t right that minors can carry handguns, no way. But now some states are banning assault weapons, they’re limiting how many guns you can buy... Forty deaths a day, man, forty a day. I know it’s mostly gangs fighting each other, but it’s a lot of blood.’

‘Maybe you’re just getting old, Spike. Either that or Democrat.’

‘Wash your mouth, boy! No, I’ll tell you what it is, it’s ever since Jazz came to stay. Her real name’s Jasmine, but she likes Jazz. There are kids she hangs around with, they carry guns, a boy in her class got himself shot. There was a shoot-out at some zoo someplace. She tells me all this, and I just...’ He shrugged his shoulders and finished beer number two.

‘Who is she?’ I asked.

‘Jazz? She’s my niece, man, my sister’s kid. Her mom and dad split up, and neither of them was ready to take her with them. Hell, I don’t blame my sister, she’s just mixed up just now, you know. So I said I’d let Jazz stay here for a while, see if I couldn’t give her a less crazy environment, something stable, you know.’

I think I nodded.

‘She’s a great kid, man, clever too. She’s got a computer up in her room, she can do anything with that pile of junk. She’s some kind of genius, I guess.’

‘Can you get me an assault rifle?’ I said, smashing into his reverie.

‘Hell, yes, just so long as you don’t want an ownership licence. Know why they started licensing automatics?’ He’d told me before, but I didn’t say. ‘To stop Dillinger, man, and gangsters like him. They reckoned you could stop those guys by getting the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms to run background checks. Man, they can hardly check the baseball scores.’

Spike had drunk more than I’d thought. He could ramble on all night, trying to justify his existence and that of the other people around him, trying to make sense of his world. I knew the only place his world made sense was out on the gun range.

‘You’re staying tonight, right?’

‘We’ve got a hotel.’

‘Aw, you could stay here.’

‘Thanks, but it’s already bought and paid for.’ I shrugged my shoulders.

‘That’s too bad.’

‘We can talk more in the morning. How long will it take to get the stuff?’

‘I can have it for you tomorrow, I guess. Cash, right?’

‘Right.’

‘We’re talking big numbers here.’

‘Let me worry about the money.’

‘That’s cool.’ He looked around. ‘Where’s your woman?’

‘She’s not my woman.’

‘Oh? Whose is she then?’

‘Her own.’

‘A ballbreaker?’

‘That’s not what I said.’

‘It’s what I hear in your voice. She must’ve got lost or something.’

We went inside. Bel wasn’t lost, she was in Jazz’s room, seated at the computer and playing a new game while Jazz gave instructions over her shoulder.

‘Time to go, Bel.’

‘Five more minutes, Michael.’

Jazz glowered at me. ‘If you don’t obey him, Bel, he might pull the plug.’

‘He’ll get a kick in the balls if he does,’ Bel said quietly, bringing a spume of laughter from Jazz. Spike mouthed a word at me.

The word was ballbreaker.

We lay in bed naked, damp from our shower, and watched TV. Then Bel did something that surprised me. She turned the TV off and put down the remote.

‘Jazz,’ she said.

‘What about her?’

She turned on her side to face me. ‘She’s got an incredible computer.’

‘Yes?’ I started stroking her spine.

‘Maybe we could... use it in some way.’

‘How?’ I was interested now.

‘Keep stroking,’ she instructed. ‘I don’t know how exactly, but you can do things with computers these days, can’t you? They’re not just for games or glorified typewriting.’

‘It’s a thought. We’ll put it to her.’

‘Michael, tell me something. You love guns, don’t you?’

‘Yes.’

‘Why?’

‘I don’t know. Maybe I can control them.’

‘Or control other people with them.’

I shrugged. ‘Maybe I should go on one of these chat shows and talk it out of my system.’

She smiled for a moment. ‘I hated what was happening out there on that range. Those people were having fun. How can it be fun?’

I shrugged again.

‘Michael, do you think you love them more than you’ve ever loved a woman?’

By them she meant guns of course. I thought for a second. ‘I wouldn’t say that exactly.’ She’d turned on to her back, trapping my arm beneath her. Our faces were close.

‘Prove it,’ she said.

This time when we made love she didn’t cry, not on the outside. But there was a rage inside her, and she bucked, punching and clawing at me. Then she stopped suddenly.

‘What is it?’ I asked after a moment.

‘We’re going to kill them, aren’t we?’ Her voice was strangely calm. ‘Promise me we’re going to kill them.’

Kill them? Jesus, we didn’t even know who they were.

‘Promise,’ I whispered. She wanted me to say it louder.

I said it louder.

Spike had invited us round for lunch, which meant barbecued steaks in his ‘yard’. The yard was in fact a very long narrow garden, nearly all of it grass, with a wire pen at the bottom where Wilma lived.

‘It’s a pig,’ Bel said when introduced. She was wearing her new denims and cowboy boots with a fresh white T-shirt.

‘That’s no pig,’ said Spike, ‘that’s a hawg. Anyone I don’t like, Wilma eats those suckers alive.’ He was wearing a plastic cooking-apron and waving a wooden spoon, which he occasionally stuck in his mouth. Then he’d go and stir the barbecue sauce again and add another dash of Tabasco.

Spike’s living room was no advert for the bachelor life. There were photos and magazine cuttings covering most of the walls, and you couldn’t see the carpet for old engine parts, sports trophies, discarded clothes and memorabilia. Spike collected service-station signs, especially ones made of metal. He also seemed to be going in for full-sized cardboard replicas of his sporting heroes. There was a black basketball player I’d never heard of leaning against one wall, and a baseball pitcher behind the sofa.

‘When he’s watching a game,’ Jazz confided, ‘he actually talks to it like it was the real person.’ Then she shook her head and went back to her room.

Muffled in black cotton cloth on the sofa were several items for me to look at. Spike, his lips coated orange with sauce, came back in and waved his spoon. ‘Gimme a minute and I’ll be with you. Bel’s gone upstairs with Jazz.’

When he left, I unwrapped the first gun. It was the sniper rifle, a Remington 700 ‘Varmint’. It wasn’t the military version which Max had offered me, but the commercial version, which meant it was beautifully polished and didn’t have a pre-fitted telescopic sight. I’d used one before, last time I’d been in Lubbock. Maybe it was the same gun. It was manufactured in Ilion, New York State, and I knew it was an accurate weapon. It wasn’t the greatest sniper gun around, but it would do. The sight was a Redfield. I checked that it was compatible with the mounting plate. Then I opened the second package.

These were the handguns, one pistol and one revolver. The revolver was a Smith & Wesson 547, with the four-inch rather than three-inch barrel. I’d never had much time for revolvers, though I knew Americans loved them, more for what they represented perhaps — the past — than for their modern-day ability.

The pistol felt better. It was another Smith & Wesson, a 559 semi-automatic, steel-framed and heavier than the revolver. It took fourteen rounds of parabellum ammo, but wouldn’t accept a silencer. Not that I thought I’d need a silencer, though the option would have been welcome.

I was opening the third package when Spike came in.

‘Wait till you see,’ he said.

I’d been expecting an M16, but this was a lot shorter, almost a foot shorter in fact. It didn’t weigh much more than double the pistol, and I picked it up one-handed.

‘It’s a Colt Commando,’ Spike said. ‘It’s close to the M16, but the barrel’s half the length. The stock’s adjustable, see, and there’s a flash hider if you want it. It’ll take anything from a twenty- to a thirty-round mag. Elite forces use them, man, so you know you’re talking quality.’

‘Spare me the sales pitch, Spike. It won’t take sights.’

He grinned. ‘That don’t matter, see.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because they’re shit long-range. They don’t have the muzzle velocity of an M16. You need the muzzle flash, too, because this thing makes a noise like a Gatling gun. But for close-up action, you can’t beat it. Tuck it into your shoulder with the stock retracted and you can fire one-handed, just like Big Arnie!’

‘I like that it’s compact.’

‘Man, you can put it in an overnight bag, nobody’s going to know. Shit, the steaks!’

He ran out of the room. I tucked the guns away again and checked what ammo he was giving me. I knew I was going to take everything except the revolver. Bel had shown some interest in being armed, but I wasn’t about to encourage her. Whatever the NRA says, if you’ve got a gun, you’re more likely to get shot than if you haven’t.

I went upstairs and found Bel and Jazz busy on the computer.

‘Go away!’ Jazz screamed. So I went away.

Downstairs in the garden I opened another tin of Old Milwaukee. ‘So how much?’ I said. Spike turned another steak and basted it.

‘Oh, well now, let me see...’

Which meant he already knew the exact figure he was going to ask. He started pretending to tot up numbers. Then he went into the kitchen and brought out a tub of potato salad Jazz had made earlier.

‘She’s a sweet little thing really,’ Spike said. ‘I know you didn’t hit it off with her yesterday, she told me last night. She always sits and talks with me at night. Of course, then she hits me for a twenty and takes off till dawn.’ He laughed. ‘Only kidding. She’s usually back home by two.’

‘That’s all right then.’

‘Bel seems nice.’

‘I know you didn’t hit it off with her yesterday.’

‘Touché, brother. You know me, I’m called Spike ’cause I’m spikey. You say the two of you aren’t doing the devil’s business?’

‘I don’t recall saying that.’

Spike smiled, then worked on the steaks again. ‘I get the feeling... Man, I’m sorry, you know me, I don’t pry or anything. But I get the feeling you’re in deep shit.’

‘I am.’

He nodded to himself. ‘And are you going to get out of it all right?’

‘I hope so.’

‘Wild West, you shouldn’t be taking a civilian along.’

‘Bel’s not a civilian, Spike. Her father was a casualty.’

‘I guess that makes it her war too,’ he admitted. ‘Only, she don’t look the type. But then, neither do you.’

‘I’ve become the type.’

‘Yeah, I can see that, partner, but I see something else too. I see you’re tired of it. That’s dangerous.’

‘After this trip, I’m thinking of packing it in.’

‘That may not be soon enough, Wild West.’

‘Just tell me how much I owe for the guns.’

‘Well, what do you want?’

‘Everything except the revolver.’

He basted the steaks afresh. ‘Need any help?’

I knew what he was offering, he was offering himself. He didn’t look at me.

‘I appreciate it, Spike, but I don’t think so. Now, how much do I owe you?’

‘Tell you what, come back and see me when it’s over. I’ll take the guns off you if you’ve still got them, and I’ll relieve you of that car of yours.’

‘The Trans-Am?’

‘That’s the deal.’

‘What if I don’t come back?’

‘You wouldn’t do that to me, man.’ He stuck his free hand out, and I shook it. ‘Only, I don’t want no fresh dents in it, okay?’

‘Immaculate,’ I said. Then: ‘Do you know anyone who fixes air conditioning?’

Spike called a friend, who could look at the Trans-Am that same day. The guy turned up with a friend, and they took the car with them. Spike had already called upstairs three times that the food was ready. It was more than ready by the time Jazz and Bel came downstairs. They looked shiny-faced and excited about something. Bel had her hand on Jazz’s shoulder. Jazz was looking younger and prettier than yesterday. Bel had certainly done something to her.

Spike and I were halfway through our steaks.

‘Outstanding potato salad,’ he told his niece.

‘Thanks, Unc.’

Jazz opened beers for Bel and her. They toasted one another.

‘Okay, give,’ said Spike.

‘Wait and see,’ said Bel. ‘The printer could be busy for some time.’

After which all they wanted to talk about was the food, the car, and the drive which lay ahead. I tried giving Bel my long hard stare, but it didn’t so much as nick her. We feasted on meat and beer, and then Jazz announced that there was something she wanted to show me. Bel came too, Spike staying behind to scrape the plates into Wilma’s pen.

Upstairs in Jazz’s room, paper had spewed from her printer. She started gathering it up, while Bel explained.

‘This machine’s fantastic, Michael. We got into an information network and asked for stuff about the Disciples. Where was it we went, Jazz?’

‘Library of Congress to start with.’

‘Yes, Jazz’s computer talked to the one in the Library of Congress. Then we went to Seattle. What was the name of that place?’

‘The U-Dub,’ said Jazz.

‘Short for the University of Washington. We talked to their information system, and to one at a newspaper, and lots of other places. It only took minutes... and see what we got.’

Jazz proudly handed me the pile of printed sheets. There were newspaper reports about the Disciples of Love, a whole bibliography of source material. I should have looked more impressed, but I knew none of this could tell me anything fresh.

‘This is the guy,’ Jazz said, tapping one sheet. It was a piece by a reporter called Sam T. Clancy.

‘He’s been looking into the Disciples,’ Bel explained. ‘And now he’s disappeared.’

‘Gone into hiding,’ Jazz corrected. There was a story about this too. After a near-miss hit and run followed by a near-fatal malfunction of his car’s braking system, Sam T. Clancy had gone to ground. His newspaper, the Post-Intelligencer, had made it front-page news. Being a newspaper, they’d also printed a photo of the journalist. I couldn’t see that exactly helping him go to ground.

‘I don’t see where this gets us,’ I said.

‘Come on,’ said Bel. ‘Someone sets you up, someone gets rid of a reporter in England, now they try to bump off a reporter in Seattle. We need to find this Clancy and talk to him, see what he knows.’

‘Do you know the north-west, Bel? The coastline, the islands, the wilderness, the mountains? What do we do, climb to the top of Mount Rainier and yell for him to come see us?’

‘Jesus,’ said Jazz, ‘talk about no spine.’

‘Look, I appreciate—’

‘No forward planning,’ Jazz went on. ‘Think artillery’s the answer to everything.’

Bel just stood there, lips slightly parted like a ventriloquist.

‘Big macho guy, kick down a few doors, fire a few rounds, and suddenly everything becomes clear. Wrong!’

‘Look, Jazz...’ But she pushed past me out of the room and took the stairs three at a time. Bel was pouting now, her arms folded.

‘She worked hard to get that information. She worked fast and well.’

‘I know, Bel.’

‘And how hard can it really be to find this reporter? Think about it, Michael. He’s a reporter. If we turn ourselves into a story, he’ll come to us.’

I had to admit, she had a point.

We got the car back in A-1 shape. The air conditioning worked. It had been a minor repair, no more. The mechanic had also retuned the car. It purred when I turned the ignition. And all for a hundred dollars cash. We celebrated with a trip to the Ranching Heritage Centre. Bel thought the whole thing was a bore, a distraction: the reconstructed plantation houses and windmills, the steam locomotive, the indoor exhibits.

Me, I went and paid my respects to the Winchesters.

We took Spike and Jazz out for a meal that night, but I didn’t drink. There’d be a hard day’s drive tomorrow, which was no place for a hangover. But I did have a shot of Jack Daniels to finish the meal, just to placate Spike. After all, I had several thousand dollars’ worth of guns in the boot of the Trans-Am, and he hadn’t even asked for a down payment.

I didn’t ask him again about the chance that I wouldn’t make it back. I didn’t want to think about it.

Back at the hotel, Bel flaked out on the bed. I went for a walk, and ended up at the Buddy Holly statue. He held his guitar the way a marching man would hold his rifle. Well, almost. I’d settled up for our room, explaining that we’d be leaving at dawn and wouldn’t require breakfast. I was glad now we’d booked into somewhere comfortable and clean, if utterly soulless. I didn’t know how things would go from here on in.

I went to bed at 11.30, but didn’t sleep. I lay there for an hour, ticking off the minutes and assuring myself that Bel was fast asleep. Then I got out of bed and went to the bathroom, where I’d left my clothes. We’d packed before dinner, and I picked my bags up on the way out of the room. I’d thought of leaving a note, but couldn’t find the right words. Bel would know what was happening. She’d go to Spike’s place. I’d phone her there in the evening.

Out in the car park, the streets were silent. I laid my bags on the ground and searched my pockets for the keys to the Trans-Am. I’d left them back in the room. I said a silent curse and hauled my bags back upstairs. We had a room key each, and I’d left mine at reception. Now I had to pick it up again and take the elevator to the third floor.

I left my bags in the corridor and let myself in. The keys had to be lying on the table next to the television, but I couldn’t see them or feel them. Bel’s breathing was still deep and regular.

‘Looking for these?’ a voice said.

I turned around. She was still lying with her head beneath the cover, but one arm was raised and she was waving the keys at me.

‘I was just putting some stuff in the car,’ I said.

‘It can wait.’

‘I couldn’t sleep.’

‘Liar. You were creeping off without me.’ She pushed the keys back under her pillow. ‘I’ d’ve hated you forever if you’d done it. That’s why I couldn’t let you do it.’

‘You’d be a lot safer here.’

‘So would you.’

‘Bel, it’s not...’

‘I know what it is, Michael.’ She sat up in bed, drawing her knees up in front of her. ‘And it’s okay, I accept it. But I need to see those bastards blasted off the planet. I need to be there.’

I stood for a moment in the dark, trying to understand. Then I brought my bags back in from the corridor and got undressed again.

I woke again at five. Bel woke up too. She didn’t complain or say anything more about last night. She just got up and showered, then got dressed.

Before she dressed, she gave me a hug, her eyes squeezed tightly shut.

We stayed that way for a long time.

20

Robert Walkins had a house overlooking Chesapeake Bay, between Washington DC and Baltimore and not too far from Annapolis. It was finished in clapboard which had been given a recent coat of brilliant white paint. The picket fence around the house was white too. You couldn’t see much of the place from the road. You had to get out of the car and walk around to what should be the back of the house. In fact, the back of the house was what looked on to the road. The front of the house, naturally enough, looked on to the bay. The downstairs seemed to be mostly workshop, garage, play room. A flight of stairs led up to a columned balcony, and that’s where the front door was. The Stars and Stripes was fluttering from one of the columns. Hoffer blew his nose again before knocking on the door.

While he waited, he turned and looked out across the long narrow lawn which was broken only by a few mature trees as it swept down to the edge of the bay. He knew erosion was a problem for a lot of these waterfront homes. Each year the Bay crept a little closer to your door. There was some wood lying around, either driftwood or part of some scheme to ward off nature’s encroachment. And past it, stretching out on to the Bay, was a plain wooden deck. The day was fine and Hoffer had to squint against the water’s reflections as he peered towards the deck.

There was someone there, sitting on a chair with their feet up on a circular wooden table. They lifted a glass to their lips, then placed the glass down on a smaller table next to the chair. From this distance, Hoffer couldn’t be sure, but he reckoned it had to be Walkins.

As he walked back down the stairs, he didn’t know whether to be relieved or not. He didn’t like sitting in Walkins’s house. The place gave him the creeps, what with there being no photos of the daughter anywhere, and all those photos and paintings of the wife. So he should feel better, more comfortable, talking to Walkins in the fresh air. Only, he wasn’t the outdoors type. He’d sat on Walkins’s deck for a few hours one time, the salt wind whipping across him, and afterwards his skin had stung for days and his lungs had tried rejecting the smoke he sucked into them.

He crossed the lawn, slipping his jacket off and slinging it across one shoulder. He was nervous too. Well, meeting your sugar daddy face to face. It was bound to make you nervous.

‘Sit down,’ Walkins said, eschewing greetings. ‘Drink?’

There was a bottle of J&B on the table, along with a bucket of ice and a spare glass. But Hoffer shook his head. He gave a half-yawn, trying to unblock his ears. The flight had done for him again. Goddamned flying.

‘How was England?’ Walkins asked.

‘Like it had just lost the war.’

‘We took vacations there occasionally. I liked the people.’

There wasn’t much to say to this, so Hoffer stayed quiet. He noticed that Walkins was looking old these days. Maybe it was just that he looked bored: bored of doing nothing all day but waiting for Leo Hoffer to call with news.

‘Is he here?’ Walkins asked.

‘Yeah, he’s here.’ Hoffer was lighting a cigarette. Walkins didn’t mind him smoking out here, so long as he took the stubs home with him. Hoffer never did figure it; the whole of Chesapeake Bay for an ashtray, and he had to take his goddamned stubs home with him.

‘How do you know?’

‘I’m paid to know, sir.’ Hoffer tried to get comfortable on the chair. The thick wooden slats didn’t make things easy. ‘I’ve got contacts: airlines, travel companies, the airports...’

‘Yes?’

‘They flew into Boston. That part was easy. The woman was travelling under her real name, Belinda Harrison. There probably wasn’t time or opportunity enough for them to arrange a fake passport for her.’

‘And him?’ Walkins was nothing if not singleminded.

‘Her travelling companion was called Michael Weston. That’s the third name he’s used so far this time. I’ve got a contact in the FBI, I’ve got him keeping eyes and ears open. If they get into bother, we’ll hear about it.’

‘Good.’

‘Meantime, I’ve sent one of my team up to Boston to check hotels, car rental, that sort of thing.’

Hoffer was on auto-pilot. It gave him a chance to check out Walkins while he filled him in. Walkins had steel-grey hair and deep grooved lines in his face. He was a handsome man, ageing well despite his tragedies. But his eyes were filled to the brim with liquid, the pupils not quite fixed on the world outside. He took another drink of Scotch, but really the whisky was drinking him.

‘This is a damned big country, Hoffer,’ Walkins said at last. He sounded like he was boasting.

‘Yes, sir,’ Hoffer replied.

‘A man could hide forever in a country this size.’

‘Not if someone wants him found.’

‘You believe that?’

‘Yes, sir, I do.’

Walkins stared at him, so Hoffer daren’t blink. He felt his eyes getting as watery as Walkins’s. At last the old man pulled himself to his feet and walked to the rail at the end of the deck, leaning on it as he spoke.

‘What now?’

‘I’ve got a few leads,’ Hoffer said, half-believing himself as he spoke.

‘A few leads,’ Walkins repeated, as though exhausted.

‘You might be able to help, sir.’

‘Oh? How?’

‘Well, I presume you still have friends in positions of seniority?’

‘What if I have?’

‘Maybe one of them could play with a name. The name’s Don Kline. He was in London, and interested in the D-Man. He told me he was agency, but I’m not sure he was. That’s K-l-i-n-e.’

‘I can ask around.’

The state Walkins was in, Hoffer doubted he’d recollect the name half an hour after Hoffer had driven away. He wrote it on the back of one of his cards and walked to the table, where he weighed it down with the lid from the ice bucket. Walkins was watching from the corner of his eye. He nodded towards Hoffer as Hoffer went back to his seat. Then he turned from the rail to face the detective, and took a good deep breath. Ah, at last, thought Hoffer: the floor-show.

‘I want that bastard dead,’ said Walkins, ‘do you hear? I want his ass as cold as a mountaintop, and I want it delivered to me here.’ The voice was growing louder, trembling with anger. Walkins started to move towards Hoffer. ‘And I don’t want a quick death either, it’s got to be slow... slow like cancer, and burning like a fire inside. Do you understand?’

‘Loud and clear.’ It struck Hoffer, not for the first time, but now with absolute conviction, that Robert Walkins was howl-at-the-moon mad. There were white flecks at the edges of the old man’s lips, and his face was all tics and wriggling demons.

‘You’ve got it, sir,’ Hoffer said, trying to calm things down. He was in the employ of a lunatic, but a lunatic who paid the bills and the rent. Besides, rich lunatics were never crazy... they were eccentric. Hoffer tried to remember that.

Finally, Walkins seemed to grow tired. He nodded a few times, reached out a hand and patted Hoffer’s shoulder.

‘Good, son, that’s good.’ Then he went and sat down again, poured himself another whisky, and dropped some ice into the glass. He sat back, sipped, and exhaled.

‘Now,’ he said, ‘how will you do it?’

It took Hoffer a minute to answer. He was still trying to imagine himself as the Good Son.

21

No sightseeing now, just concentrated travel. North on Interstate 27 to Amarillo, then the 287. We were going to be travelling west back in time, from Mountain to Pacific. But we were heading nowhere but north to begin with. It was over 500 miles from Lubbock to Denver. We skirted the peaks to the west of Denver and crossed into Wyoming just south of Cheyenne.

‘Tell me again,’ said Bel. ‘Why aren’t we flying?’

‘Air travel’s easy to check if you’re someone with the clout of a government agency. Also, it’s easy for them to have airports covered, or car rental facilities at airports. This way, we’re sort of sneaking up on them.’

She nodded, but didn’t look convinced. I could have added that I needed time to think, time to plan, time this drive would give me. The thing was, I didn’t know what we’d do in Seattle. I hadn’t a clear plan of attack. I was praying something would come to me between here and there.

We’d covered over 600 miles by early evening. I’d been thinking about a lot of things. One of them was that it was crazy to arrive at our destination wiped out. Just off the interchange we found a motel. Or it found us. We just cruised into the first forecourt of many on the road and booked ourselves a room.

Standing up and walking were strange. My whole body tingled. In my head I was still in the car, still driving. I’d been on automatic for the past hour or so. My left arm was sunburnt from leaning on the driver-side sill. Bel had done her share of the driving too, seeming to understand the car better than I did, at least at first. We had our differences about choice of music and choice of stops along the route, but otherwise hadn’t said much really. Oh, at first we chattered away, but then we ran out of things to say. She bought a trashy novel in a service area and read that for a while, before tipping it out of the window on to the verge.

‘I can’t concentrate,’ she explained. ‘Every time I think I’m managing to block it out, I see it again... I see Max.’

She didn’t have to say any more.

At the motel, we each took a bath. We phoned out and had a restaurant deliver ribs and apple pie. We stared at the TV. We drank Coke with lots of ice. And we slept. The beds were too soft, so I swapped mine for the floor. When I woke up in the night, Bel was lying beside me. I listened to her breathing and to the vibration of the traffic outside. Our room held a pale orange glow, like when my parents had left the landing light on and my bedroom door ajar. To keep away the monsters.

How come the monsters would only come at night? What were they, stupid?

In the morning, we ate at another diner. ‘The coffee gets better out west,’ I promised. But Bel took a proffered refill anyway.

We took I-80 west across the continental divide. This was high country, and there were tourists around, slowing us down sometimes. They travelled in state of the art vehicles which were like motor caravans only the length of a bus. And behind they usually towed the family car. They probably saw themselves as descendants of the pioneers, but they were just vacationers. It was hard not to get into conversation with them at stops along the route. But if we did, there were endless questions about Europe. One woman even insisted on capturing us on video. We tried to look lovey and huggy for the seeing-eye. It wasn’t easy.

‘Maybe drugs would help,’ Bel suggested.

‘Not in the long run. They’d keep us driving, but they only mask the symptoms, they don’t cure them. We’d end up hospital cases.’

‘You’ve been there before?’

I nodded and she smiled. ‘I keep forgetting how much more worldly than me you are, Michael.’

‘Come on, let’s see if we can fill up the cool box.’

We stopped outside Ogden on I-84. Another motel room, another long soak, another diner.

Bel rested her head on the table top. ‘Remind me,’ she said, ‘which state are we in?’

‘Utah, I think. But not for much longer. It’ll be Idaho soon.’ The waitress took our order.

‘Are you all right?’ she asked Bel.

‘I’m fine, thanks, just tired.’

The waitress moved off. ‘She thinks you’re on drugs,’ I told Bel.

‘Only adrenaline.’

‘This isn’t the best way to see the country. Actually, that’s a lie. This is the only way to see America. We’ll do it properly one day, if you’d like to.’

‘I’d love to, Michael.’ She rested her head on the table again. ‘Say, in a decade or two.’

‘I once spent a week in a car going across the country. I slept in that car.’

‘You must have felt like shit.’

I smiled at the memory. ‘I felt very, very alive.’

‘Well, I feel half-alive at best, but that’s better than nothing.’ She took a long drink of iced water. ‘You know, if I hadn’t gone off with you, I mean to London and Scotland...’

‘I know,’ I said.

‘Christ, Michael, I’d be dead now.’ There were tears in her eyes. She looked away, staring out of the window, and put her hand to her mouth. The hand was trembling. When I made to touch her, she jumped up from the table and ran outside.

I ran out to join her. Our diner was a truck stop. There was a vast tarmac parking area, with only a couple of trucks at its farthest edge. Stadium-style lights shone down on us from the lot’s four corners. Our waitress was peering out of the diner window.

Bel was walking in a rough circle, eyes to the ground, and she was wailing. She flapped her arms to keep me away, so I took a few steps back and crouched down on the ground. The tarmac was warm to the touch. I sat there with my legs out in front of me, watching the exorcism with little pleasure.

She was saying things, sometimes yelling them. Curses, swear-words, imprecations. Finally she got to her father’s name. When it came out, it was stretched to breaking point, like she was tearing it out of her system. She repeated it over and over, then had a coughing fit. The coughing became a dry retch, and she fell over on to her hands and knees. A huge lorry was pulling into the car park, air-brakes wheezing. The headlights picked out the figure of a crazy woman. The driver made sure to park at a good distance.

Eventually, when Bel was taking deep uneven breaths, I got up and walked over to her and crouched down again to put my arm around her.

‘Buy you a coffee?’ I said.

Next morning we crossed into Idaho. The state licence plates all had Famous Potatoes written on them.

‘Potatoes?’ Bel said.

‘Potatoes. These are a proud people.’

We were about 800 miles from Seattle. I thought we should get as close as we could then stop for another night, so we’d arrive fresh in the city. Bel wanted to push on. The road really had become her drug. She could hardly relax when we stopped. Even in the motel she fidgeted as she watched TV, her knees pumping. Her diet now comprised hamburgers and milk shakes. Her skin and hair had lost some vitality, and her eyes were dark. All my fault, I kept telling myself. She’d seemed better since last night though, a bit more together. Her voice was hoarse from shouting, and her eyes were red-rimmed. But I didn’t think she was going to fall apart again. She seemed more confident, tougher... and she was ready to rock.

‘No,’ I told her, ‘we’ll stop somewhere, pamper ourselves, take a little time off.’

Problem was, where did you pamper yourself in the wasteland between Salt Lake City and Seattle? A detour to Portland wouldn’t make sense. The answer started as a sort of joke. We decided to stop at a place called Pasco, for no other reasons than that it was a decent size and Bel’s mother’s maiden name had been Pascoe. But on the road into town, alongside all the other cheap anonymous motels, there was a Love Motel, with heart-shaped waterbeds, champagne, chocolates, adult movies... Our room was like a department store Santa’s Grotto, done in red velvet and satin. There were black sheets on the bed and a single plastic rose on the pillow.

‘It’s like being inside a nosebleed,’ Bel said, collapsing on to the bed. When it floated beneath her, she managed a laugh, her first in a while. But after a bottle of something that had never been within five hundred kilometres of Champagne, everything looked better. And lying on the bed, as Bel pointed out, was a bit like still being in the car. We didn’t watch much of the porn flick, but we did take a bath together. It was a spa-bath, and Bel turned the jets up all the way. We started making love in the bath, but ended on the waterbed. We ended up so damp, I thought the bed had sprung a leak. I’d not known Bel so passionate, holding me hard against her like she was drowning. It was the kind of sex you have before dying or going off to war. Maybe we were about to do both.

We fell asleep without any dinner, woke up late and went to an all-night store where we bought provisions. We sat on the floor of our room and ate burger buns stuffed with slices of smoked ham, washed down with Coke. Then we made love again and drowsed till morning. We still had over 200 miles to go, and decisions to make along the way, such as whether it would be safer to stay in a motel out of town or a big hotel in the centre. It made sense to have a central base, but it also made sense not to get caught.

Snow-tipped Mount Rainier was visible in the distance as we took I-90 into the heart of Seattle.

There were things I wanted to tell Bel. I wanted to tell her why I hadn’t cried over Max’s death. I wanted to tell her why I didn’t do what she had done out on that parking lot. I wanted to tell her about bottling things up until you were ready for them. When I met Kline again, the bottle would smash wide open. But somehow I didn’t find the words. Besides, I couldn’t see how they would help.

It was another hot dry day, and the traffic was slow, but no one seemed to mind too much. They were just happy to be here and not in some other more congested city. The placement and layout of Seattle are quite unique. From the east, we crossed on to Mercer Island and off it again on to the narrow stretch of land which housed the city itself, squeezed between Lake Washington and Puget Sound. We came off the Interstate into the heart of the downtown grid system, Avenues running north to south, Streets east to west. Last time I’d been here, I’d taken a cab from Sea Tac, which took you through a seemingly unending hinterland of sleazy motels, bars, and strip joints advertising 49 Beautiful Women... and 1 Ugly One. This was a much better route. There were a few prominent hotels, all outposts of known chains catering mostly to business travellers. The first one we tried had a vacancy, so we took it. It was a relief to garage the car and take our bags up, knowing we now had a base. We’d decided to stay central, since it would cut down travelling time. We checked in as Mr and Mrs West, since we’d bought pawnstore rings. Bel flicked through the city information pack while I made a phone call.

I spoke to someone on the news desk.

‘Can I speak to Sam Clancy, please.’

‘He’s on a sabbatical.’

‘That’s not what I’ve read. Look, can you get a message to him?’

There was a pause. ‘It’s possible.’

‘My name’s Mike West and I’m staying in a hotel downtown. I’d like Sam to contact me. It looks like we’ve been following a similar line of inquiry, only I’ve been working in Scotland, near Oban.’ I waited while he took down the details. ‘That’s O-b-a-n. Tell him Oban, he’ll understand.’

‘Are you a journalist?’

‘In a way, yes.’ I gave him our room number and the telephone number of the hotel. ‘When can I expect him to get this message?’

‘He calls in sometimes, but there’s no routine. Could take a few days.’

‘Sooner would be better. All I’m doing here is pacing the floor.’

He said he’d do what he could, and I put the phone down. Bel was still studying the information pack.

‘I’ll tell you what you do in Seattle,’ I said. ‘You go up the Space Needle on a clear day, you visit Pike Place Market any day, and you wander around Pioneer Square.’

‘Michael, when you were here before... was it business?’

‘Strictly pleasure,’ I said.

‘What sort of pleasure?’ She wasn’t looking at me as she spoke.

‘Whale-watching,’ I said. Now she looked at me.

‘Whale-watching?’

‘I took a boat up to Vancouver Island and went whale-watching.’

She laughed and shook her head.

‘What’s wrong with that?’

‘Nothing, it’s just... I don’t know. I mean, you’re so normal in a lot of ways.’

‘You mean for a hired killer?’

She had stopped laughing now. ‘Yes, I suppose I do.’

‘I’m still a killer, Bel. It’s what I do best.’

‘I know. But after this is over...’

‘We’ll see.’

The phone rang, and I picked it up. It was Sam Clancy.

‘That was quick,’ I said.

‘I have to be careful, Mr West. The desk downstairs tells me you only checked in twenty minutes ago.’

‘That’s right.’

‘You’re not losing any time.’

‘I don’t think either of us can afford to.’

‘So tell me your story.’

He didn’t sound far away at all. He had a soft cultivated accent, which just failed to hide something more nasal and demanding, a New York childhood perhaps. I told him my story, missing out a few details such as my profession and my true involvement in the whole thing. I said I was a journalist, investigating the murder of one of my colleagues. I told him about Max’s death, and how the gun dealer’s daughter was with me in Seattle. I told him about the Americans we’d met on the road out of Oban, just after a visit to the Disciples of Love. I probably talked for twenty or thirty minutes, and he didn’t interrupt me once.

‘So what’s your story?’ I said.

‘I think you already know most of it. There have been two attempts on my life, neither of them taken very seriously by the police. They couldn’t find any evidence that someone had tampered with my car brakes, but I found a mechanic who showed me how it could be done without leaving any trace. Never buy an Oldsmobile, Mike. Anyway, since Seattle’s finest weren’t going to do anything about it, I thought I would. Then the paper ran my story, and that merely confirmed for the police that I was seeking publicity, nothing more.’

‘You think the Disciples were responsible?’

‘Well, I asked my ex-wife and it wasn’t her. That doesn’t leave too many enemies. Jesus, it’s not like I wrote The Satanic Verses or anything, all I was doing was asking questions.’

‘About funding?’

‘That’s right.’

‘What did you find?’

‘I’m still finding. It’s just not so easy when I have to walk everywhere with my head in a blanket.’

‘I could help you.’

‘I’ve got people helping me.’

‘At your newspaper?’

‘No names, Mike. I still don’t know that I can trust you.’

‘Could we meet? I want to talk about the Disciples.’

‘I don’t know... Do you have any proof you could give me? I mean proof of anything you’ve said, of who you are?’

I thought about this. The answer was, no. ‘I think you’d find the murdered man’s daughter proof enough, Sam.’

He sighed. ‘Is she there with you?’

‘She’s right here.’

‘Put her on.’

I passed the phone to Bel. ‘He needs convincing we’re genuine.’

‘Mr Clancy?’ said Bel. ‘You’ve got to help us. If you saw what they did to my father. I mean, they didn’t just kill him, that wasn’t enough for them. I want them caught... whatever it takes. With you or without you, we’re going after them.’ She handed me the receiver.

‘All right,’ said Clancy, ‘let’s have dinner.’

‘Where?’

‘There’s a little Mexican place near Green Lake. Do you know where that is?’

‘I can find it.’ He gave me the name and address of the restaurant. We agreed eight o’clock, and the call ended there.

‘Sounds promising,’ I told Bel, giving her a kiss. ‘Is there a street map in that pile of stuff?’

‘Only a downtown one.’

‘Then let’s go do some shopping.’

It’s very hard to get lost in American cities, so long as you stick to the grid system. You’ll nearly always find the right road, though you may then have trouble finding the right building, since there doesn’t always seem to be much sense to the way street numbers run.

That evening, we got on to Aurora and followed it for miles. I don’t think Bel had ever seen a street so long, and when we came off at Green Lake, Aurora still had a long way to run. Green Lake was busy with joggers and walkers, skateboarders and roller-skaters, and people just enjoying the air.

We’d had a good afternoon, walking the streets, sitting in coffee shops, making new friends. As I’d promised Bel, the coffee here was definitely a class above the stuff they doled out in diners. She’d already had three cups of Starbuck’s, and the caffeine was showing. Every café we sat in, when people heard our accents they wanted to talk to us. So we learned a bit more about the city. Ballard was the district where the descendants of the Norsemen lived. The streets east of the Kingdome were to be avoided. The Mariners were having another lousy season, and were now owned by Nintendo. We’d missed the annual Folklife Festival. There was a drought. A couple of local micro-breweries were producing excellent dark beers... Some of this I already knew, but some of it was new to me, and I appreciated all the information I could get. Jeremiah Provost, after all, was on home ground. It was important to know as much about the city as he did. That way, we’d be less likely to fall into any traps.

So far, Seattle had looked distinctly free from traps. I showed Bel Pike Place Market, pointed out the bicycle cops in Pioneer Square, and steered her around the street people and panhandlers milling around the streets near the waterfront. The pawnshops were doing good business in Seattle. They had guns and guitars in their windows, but I didn’t stop to look. I wasn’t carrying a gun with me, but when we headed off for dinner with Sam Clancy, I hid the pistol under the Trans-Am’s front seat.

The car was sounding ropey. It needed another tune, oil change, and maybe a new exhaust. Probably it also needed a complete rest. We’d pushed it hard, and it had served us well, but we needed it healthy for a while longer.

We’d overestimated the weight of traffic and were early at the restaurant, so we parked the car and walked back down to the lake. Bel pulled off her cowboy boots to walk barefoot on the grass. She looked okay, not tired or stressed out. She was keen for something to happen, for some showdown to arrive, but she managed not to look too impatient.

By the time we got back to the restaurant she declared herself ready for a drink. There was still no sign of Clancy, but a table had been reserved in the name of West, so we took it. It was laid out for three diners. The waiter asked if we wanted a margarita while we waited. Bel nodded that we did.

‘Large or small?’

‘Large,’ she stated, before ploughing through the menu. ‘What’s the difference between all these things?’ she asked me. ‘Tacos, burritos, fajitas, tortillas...?’

‘Ask the waiter.’

But instead she took her very large margarita from him and ran her finger around the rim.

‘It’s salt,’ I said.

‘I knew that.’ Having wiped a portion of the rim clean, she sipped, considered, then took another sip.

There was a man at the front of the restaurant. He’d been studying the takeaway menu when we’d come in, and he was still studying it. I got up from the table and walked over to him.

‘Why don’t you join us?’ I said.

He tried to look puzzled, then gave up and smiled. ‘Have you known all the time?’

‘More or less.’

I led him to the table. Sam Clancy was tall and thin with a cadaverous face and sunken eyes. He was in his late twenties or early thirties, with thinning brown hair combed across his forehead. From his voice, I’d imagined he’d be older. He took Bel’s hand before sitting down. The waiter arrived, and Clancy nodded towards her drink.

‘Looks good,’ he said. The waiter nodded and moved off. ‘So, I guess I wouldn’t make a career working undercover, huh? Do you want some introductory conversation, or shall we get down to work?’

‘Let’s consider ourselves introduced,’ said Bel.

‘Right. So, you want to know what I know. Well, here goes. Jeremiah Provost takes a bit of a back seat these days as far as the day-to-day running of the Disciples is concerned. You know a bit about his background?’

‘Rich family,’ I said, ‘bad college professor.’

‘That’s not a bad precis. Also completely mad. He’s been in and out of expensive clinics. No sign that he does heavy drugs or booze, so there has to be some other reason, like pure mental instability.’

‘So if he’s in the back seat,’ asked Bel, ‘who’s behind the wheel?’

‘On the business side, a man called Nathan. I don’t even know if that’s his first or second name, he’s just called Nathan. You know a couple of reporters got hit on by the Disciples? That was Nathan. He didn’t like them, so he whacked them.’

‘He’s a bit handy then?’ I said.

‘He’s a tough mother. Then there’s Alisha, she’s an earth mother type with just a streak of junta. She runs the people, makes them do what needs to be done.’

‘And this is all out on the Olympic Peninsula?’

Clancy nodded. ‘The most beautiful spot on the continent. But Provost isn’t there much. He’s taken on a Howard Hughes existence in a brand new house up on Queen Anne Hill. Terrific view on to downtown, a few thousand square feet and a swimming pool. Rumour has it Kiefer Sutherland wanted to rent the place when he was here filming The Vanishing. Anyway, that’s where Provost spends his time, surrounded by phones and fax machines and computers, so he can keep in touch with his minions overseas.’

‘There was a fax machine in Oban,’ I recalled, ‘it had at least two Washington State numbers on its memory.’

‘Olympic Peninsula and Queen Anne,’ Clancy stated with authority.

‘Have you ever spoken to Provost?’ Bel asked him.

‘I’ve tried, but he’s ringed with steel.’

‘But who runs the show really, him or his lieutenants?’

‘Now that’s a good question.’

Clancy broke off so we could order. Bel took his advice when her turn came, and we ordered another round of drinks to go with the meal. Some tortilla chips and dips had been placed on the table, so we munched as we spoke.

‘The men who killed my father,’ said Bel, ‘if they were the same men who stopped us on the road out of Oban, then they were Americans.’

‘They didn’t look like cult members though,’ I told Clancy. ‘They seemed more like government types.’

‘Which brings me to my research,’ Clancy said, beginning to enjoy himself. ‘You know that the Disciples suddenly took off late in 1985? I mean, they started buying land and real estate. Which means Provost had money to spend. Where did it come from? Nobody knows. Did a bunch of rich relatives suddenly and conveniently die? No. Did he win some state lottery? No. A lucky week at Vegas? Uh-uh. It’s been driving people nuts, wondering where that money suddenly came from.’

‘You’ve found out?’ Bel asked.

‘Not exactly, not yet. But I think I was getting close.’ So maybe Eleanor Ricks had been getting close too. ‘I do know this.’ Clancy made a melodramatic point, glancing around the restaurant then leaning forward across the table. I wondered if he could always differentiate between gossip and fact. ‘Provost went to Washington DC. Please, don’t ask how I know this. I have sources to protect and my... uh, techniques weren’t always strictly legit. He was in DC for a meeting with some lawyers and other fat cats. But while he was there he had a couple of visitors, two men called Elyot and Kline. They visited him on more than one occasion. This was in January 1986, a few months after Provost started spending.

‘Now, I think I’ve tracked down who Elyot and Kline were and are. There’s an agent called Richard Elyot works for the CIA. And at the NSC there used to be a cat called Kline.’

‘Used to be?’

‘He resigned officially in 1986. Since then he’s been on the fringes, only his name’s not on the books any longer. Nobody knows why he resigned, whether he was forced out or what. I’m going to describe Kline to you.’

He did. I nodded halfway through and continued nodding. ‘Sounds familiar,’ I conceded.

‘The guy in the rear car, right?’ Clancy surmised.

‘Right,’ I confirmed. ‘What about Elyot?’

‘Elyot’s posted in some overseas embassy just now, not a very prestigious one. He’s been getting shitty assignments for about the past five years. I even hear that he was in the US consulate in Scotland for a couple of months.’

‘Interesting.’

‘It’s all interesting,’ said Bel, finishing her second margarita. ‘But where does it get us?’

‘The Disciples,’ Clancy said, ‘are somehow connected to the CIA and the NSC. How come? What could they possibly have in common?’

‘And whatever it is,’ I added, ‘does it add up to Provost being in their pay?’

‘Absolutely,’ said Clancy, sitting back.

‘I wouldn’t mind a word with Jeremiah Provost.’

Clancy laughed. ‘Get in line, fella.’

‘Michael has ways,’ Bel said quietly, staring at me.

‘Oh, yeah?’ Clancy was interested.

‘But his techniques,’ she went on, ‘aren’t ever strictly legit.’

Clancy looked more interested. ‘Bel,’ I said, ‘it’s been a long day.’

‘A long day’s journey,’ she agreed.

‘Maybe we should get the bill?’

She didn’t say no. I asked Clancy how he wanted to play it. He shrugged, so I made a couple of suggestions. We agreed he’d meet us at our hotel in the morning. I settled the bill with cash. On the back of the check there was a little form asking for comments. We’d seen them before in diners. Bel had filled one of them in. She’d put, Service overfriendly, food big but tasteless, have a nice day. This time she got a pen from Clancy and wrote: I love tequila.

At the bottom she drew a little heart, broken into halves.

22

We met Clancy next morning in the hotel lobby. His first words were, ‘I made a few calls to England. Nobody I spoke to has heard of you.’

‘Michael does magazine work,’ Bel said. ‘Let’s go get some coffee.’ We ordered three caffè lattes at a nearby coffee shop and sat at a table inside, even though the proprietor assured us we’d be better off sitting at one of the sidewalk tables. We had a view across the street to the Seattle Art Museum. Clancy just called it SAM.

‘There’s a porno theatre one block down,’ he said. ‘It used to advertise SAM exhibitions on its awning. Only in Seattle, friends.’

He told us that Seattle’s main industries were Boeing, fish processing and Microsoft, and that things at Boeing were extremely shaky just now. ‘We used to be world leaders in grunge music. You know what that is? Torn jeans, drug habits and sneers.’

‘Didn’t Keith Richards patent that?’

Clancy laughed and looked at his watch. I knew he didn’t altogether trust us yet, and I didn’t like it that he’d been asking about us in London. Word there could get to anyone. ‘Come on,’ he said, ‘time to rock ‛n’ roll.’

We took the Trans-Am to a mechanic Clancy knew near the U-Dub. ‘He’s a Christian mechanic,’ Clancy said. ‘Every job he does comes with a blessing and a guarantee from above.’

The man was young, stocky and bearded. He reminded me of the Amish. He said the car would take a day or so, and meantime we could have a VW Rabbit. It was a small brown car, perfect for the trip we were about to make. There was a plastic litterbag hanging from the dashboard. It had Uncle Sam’s hat on one side, and the Pledge of Allegiance on the other. I took my bag from the Trans-Am and locked it in the boot of the Rabbit. Nobody asked what was in it, and I wouldn’t have answered if they had.

Bel sat in the back of the car, and I let Clancy drive. We drove south on Aurora into Queen Anne Hill. This was a prime residential area, mostly bungalow-style housing. A precious few lots sat on the very edge of the hill, looking down on to the city. This was where Jeremiah Provost had his house.

It was big, even by the standards of the area, and it was on an incline so steep it made you giddy.

‘I wouldn’t fancy walking back from the shops,’ Bel said.

Clancy looked at her. ‘Walk? Nobody walks, Bel. Nobody ever walks.’

We parked across the road from Provost’s house. Even with the handbrake on and the car left in gear, I wasn’t sure I trusted the Rabbit not to start careering downhill. We all wore sunglasses, and as further disguise Clancy was wearing a red baseball cap. There was a sheen of nervous sweat on his face. We knew we were taking a big risk coming here. But the time had come to take risks. We were parked outside a house with its own turret. We couldn’t see much of Provost’s house though. Steps led up through a bristling garden to a white concrete wall, showing no windows or doors.

‘There’s only one entrance,’ said Clancy, ‘round the side of the house. There are French windows leading on to the pool and patio, so I suppose that makes it two entrances really.’

‘And two exits,’ I added. ‘Where are the security cameras?’

He looked at me, perhaps wondering how I knew. ‘Just as you round the corner.’

‘Is there an infra-red trip?’

‘I don’t know, could be.’

‘It’s just that on the surface, there looks like there’s no security at all. So I take it what security there is is high-tech.’

‘Sure, plus the muscle-man on the door.’

‘Just the one?’

‘Hey, Provost’s a religious nut, not a Middle East guerrilla.’

‘What about at night? He’s got approach lights?’

‘Yeah, if a hedgehog so much as inspects the lawn, the place lights up like the Fourth of July.’ Clancy was still looking at me. ‘You’re asking all the right questions, only I’m not sure they’re questions a reporter would think to ask.’

‘I’m not your everyday reporter,’ I said. ‘He spends most of his time in there?’

‘Yeah. There’s a house out on Hood Canal belongs to Nathan. That’s hot real estate too. Sometimes Provost goes there for the weekend. He doesn’t do much, digs clams, picks oysters at low tide. Mr Microsoft has a compound a few houses down.’

‘How much do you know about Nathan?’

‘Not much. I got a name and a face.’

‘When did he join the Disciples?’

‘I don’t know. The problem is, only having one of his names, I can’t even begin to do a trace back.’

‘He handles the business, does that mean the money?’

‘Yeah, there’s an accountant too, but Nathan does the day to day balance sheet. Thing is, there’s very little on the profit side. Very little income compared to the outgoings.’

‘Maybe we should talk to Nathan rather than Provost.’

‘He’s no easier to get to, Mike. And he wears this look like he’s just waiting to break someone’s face open. These cults, they’re always suspicious. I mean, someone comes sniffing around them for a story, chances are it isn’t going to be a panegyric.’

I looked out at Provost’s house. ‘Can we see it from another angle?’

‘Yeah, if you walk downhill and take a left. But frankly, you won’t see much more than you can from here. More concrete and the top of a window, that’s about it. It’s a smart design, completely open but totally private. He doesn’t even have a fence, but he could be filming hard-core in his pool and none of the neighbours would know.’

‘Some of these cult leaders like to initiate new recruits,’ said Bel, who’d done her reading.

Clancy shrugged. ‘I don’t know if Provost shafts the women in the cult. I mean, with a name like Disciples of Love, and starting off where it did and how it did, it’s got to be a good bet. But he’s never gone public on humping politics.’

‘That sounds like a quote from one of your own stories.’

He grinned. ‘It is, only the paper spiked it as defamatory.’

‘Okay,’ I said, ‘I’ve seen enough. Let’s go buy what we need.’

The shop we wanted was on Aurora, way north of Green Lake. It was called Ed’s Guns and Sporting Goods and was run by a man named Archie with a trace of a Scots accent. I knew pretty much what we needed: camouflage jackets, overtrousers, boots, a couple of tents, a small stove and pot, plates, mugs and cutlery, binoculars, and a couple of rucksacks to put everything in.

The binoculars he showed me were small but powerful. ‘Bird watchers love them,’ he said, like this was a recommendation.

I handed them back. ‘Got anything with a night vision facility?’

‘You’re talking major expense.’

‘So let me talk.’

He went off to find a night-scope. Bel was picking out thick socks to go with her boots. ‘We want to look like tourists, right?’

‘Right.’

‘Then we’d probably have too much gear, all of it brand new.’

‘Right again.’

‘So I want some new sunglasses.’ I nodded and she went to choose some. Meantime I picked out a compass, and studied a few of the available knives. The survival knives looked good. There was one with a hollow handle, inside which were fishing-line, hooks and a needle, a tiny compass, stuff like that. Another was so versatile you could turn it from knife into axe or shovel or even a torch. It was big too. I reckoned it was big enough to scare most people.

‘I’ll take that,’ I said, pointing it out to Archie, who had come back with a plain cardboard box. He was licking his lips, excited at the total sale but nervous about the ease with which we were spending money. Maybe he thought we were going to pull a gun or even one of his own combat knives on him. Instead I pulled out a wad of cash and waved it in his face. He nodded and relaxed a little.

I checked the night-scope. It was perfect. I could use it like a telescope or, with a couple of adjustments, fit it to my sniping rifle.

‘How discreet are you, Archie?’ I asked.

‘That depends.’

‘Well, I want to buy all this, and I want to pay cash. But I’ve a job I’d like to do. Do you have a workshop back there?’ He nodded. ‘Could I borrow it for, say, fifteen minutes?’

He shrugged. ‘You buy that lot, you can bunk in the back for all I care.’

‘That won’t be necessary.’

Bel was asking Archie about maps when I left the shop. She’d slid a survival knife into the top of her right boot to see how it felt. Clancy stared at the knife for a moment, then followed me out. Clancy wasn’t a country boy or a born-again backwoodsman. Seattle still had something of the frontier town about it, but he was strictly latte and art museum. He told us the only times he’d been out to the Olympic Peninsula had been to visit the hot springs resort. He’d driven past the Disciples’ compound, but only on day trips, and he’d hardly budged from the car.

But a lot of the Olympic Peninsula was wilderness, mountains and first-growth temperate rainforest. I knew there was no such thing as being underprepared. Clancy stood watching as I unlocked the boot and lifted out my bag.

‘Come on, Mike, who the fuck are you, man? You’re security, right? I mean, a secret agent or something. Reporters I know, they wouldn’t have the expenses to claim for that hotel you’re staying in, never mind leaving the room empty for a night. Even if they could claim it, they’d stay someplace ratty and cream the cash. And they’d never ever have so much cash on them. Strictly plastic, and a receipt every time you spend.’

I locked the boot. ‘So I’m not a journalist. All you have to know is, if you stick around I’ll give you a story. This is better for you, Sam. See, I don’t represent any competition. It’s your exclusive.’

He was shaking his head. ‘I’m not going.’

‘Sam, we don’t need you any more. You want to stay here, fine. Maybe it’ll take us an hour or two longer to find the compound. But we’ll find it. I’m not going to beg you to come with us.’

‘I could blow you wide open, man. All it would take is a call to Provost.’

I smiled. ‘We’re not your enemies, Sam. Why would you do that?’

He thought about this. ‘I wouldn’t do it. Forget I said it.’ He followed me into the shop. Bel was trying on a red-and-black-check lumberjacket. Archie gestured for me to follow him. Sam was still on my tail. We entered a back room full of equipment and work benches. There was even a metal-turning lathe. And there were bits and pieces from gun-cleaning kits. I put the bag down on a bench and unzipped it.

‘I just want to know,’ Sam was saying. ‘See, people have been trying to kill me, and I can’t afford not to be choosy about my friends. Someone comes up to me with a chickenshit story about being a journalist, and it turns out he’s not, then I’ve got to wonder what he really is.’

The words died in his throat as he saw the Varmint being unwrapped, then the pistol and finally the Colt Commando.

‘Sweet Lord Jesus,’ he said quietly. I started seeing if I could fit the night-scope to the Varmint.

‘Sam,’ I said, not looking up, ‘you’re safe with us.’

‘I hear that.’

‘I’m a friend of Bel’s. I was a friend of her father’s. He sold me guns from time to time. I saw what those bastards did to him, and I intend finding out just why they did it. That’s the whole story, except for one thing.’ Now I looked at him. ‘I don’t care what it takes.’

His mouth was suddenly dry. There was an open can of beer on the bench, and he took a swig from it.

‘Why don’t you go get us a pack of those things from the grocery?’ I suggested. ‘Think things out while you’re there. If you want out, we’ll get your camera from the car and you can catch a cab back into town.’ I made to hand him some money.

‘I don’t need your money, Mike. I can stretch to a few beers.’

‘Okay then.’

And he was gone. Archie put his head round the door.

‘Sorry to interrupt, but that lady out there is going to put you in the poorhouse.’

‘We’ll be the best dressed paupers there.’

He laughed. This was turning into a more interesting day than usual for him. He looked at what I was doing. ‘Nice gun. Give you some help there?’

‘I might just need it. The receiver and the sight-mounting are all wrong.’

‘Well, let me take a look. No extra charge.’

‘It’s all yours, Archie.’

It took us a little while, but Archie had a few bits and pieces in the back, and one of them seemed to be what we needed. It made the gun look like something from The Man from U.N.C.L.E., but it seemed okay.

‘I never ask customers what they’re planning to shoot,’ said Archie.

‘Maybe an animal or two,’ I said.

‘Yeah, maybe, but that other gun you’ve got there, that’s strictly terror.’

I grinned. ‘I hope so, Archie. I really do.’

When we went back out front, there were no new customers and Clancy hadn’t come back.

‘Where’s the nearest place to buy beer?’ I asked.

‘There’s a grocery on the corner,’ Archie answered. I nodded to myself. It looked like Clancy had just walked away.

‘Better start adding this lot up, Archie.’

‘And then maybe I better close for the day for restocking.’ He got to work on his calculator.

Bel was back in her ordinary clothes. She hadn’t worn anything on her feet but the cowboy boots since she’d bought them. ‘Where’s Sam?’ she said.

‘I think we’re on our own.’

‘He didn’t even say goodbye. Will he tell anyone?’

‘I doubt it.’

‘What did you say to him?’

‘I admitted I wasn’t a reporter.’

‘Did he see the guns?’ I nodded. ‘No wonder he ran. They have that effect on me, too.’

Archie had paused in his addition so he could fill a few carrier bags with goods already totted up.

‘Just put them straight in the rucksacks, Archie, we’ll sort them out later.’

I added another torch to the total.

‘Listen,’ he said, ‘I know you may not need it, but I’m giving you a first aid kit and some mosquito repellent. Plus all my cash customers receive a ten percent discount.’

‘Thanks.’ I turned back to Bel.

‘So we’re going on our own?’ she said.

‘I suppose so. I think we can find the ferry terminal, don’t you?’

‘We can also save some money.’

‘How’s that?’

‘We don’t need two tents now, and one big sleeping bag would do us.’

‘You’ve got a point.’ But just then the door opened and Clancy staggered in. I thought he was hurt, and moved forward, but he was only staggering under the weight of the shopping bags he carried.

‘A few provisions for the trip,’ he said, putting down the bags. ‘Beer, potato chips, cans of chili, tuna, franks, and beans.’ He put his hand into one bag. ‘Look, I even packed the tin opener.’

We all laughed except Archie, who was too busy on his calculator. When he’d finished, it was his turn to laugh. I counted out the money, and Clancy snatched the receipt.

‘If you can’t claim, maybe I can.’

‘Then you can pay for the boat tickets,’ I said, hoisting a rucksack on to my shoulder.

‘It’s a deal.’

The ferry was busy with families heading off on holidays.

‘Where are they all going?’ I asked Clancy.

‘The same place as us,’ he said. ‘The Olympic Peninsula’s popular this time of year.’

‘I thought it was wilderness.’

‘Mostly it is. The folks you see here probably won’t get more than a couple of hundred yards from their vehicles all the time they’re away. There’s a highway circuits the Peninsula, but almost no roads at all in the National Park itself. Here, I brought a map.’

It was the map the National Park Service handed out to visitors. As Clancy had said, there were almost no roads inside the park, just a lot of trails and a few unpaved tracks. The one good road I could see led to the summit of Hurricane Ridge. We were headed west of there, to Lake Crescent. Clancy pointed it out on the map. Outside the National Park boundaries, the rest of the peninsula was considered National Forest. The National Park ended just north of Lake Crescent.

‘See, what Provost did, he took over a house that was already there. They’re very cautious about new building inside the park, but there’s nothing they can do about homes that were there before the area was designated a National Park. He didn’t have too much trouble getting permission to add a few log cabins of the same style. He even had the timber treated so it looked weathered.’

‘I bet he’s kind to dumb animals too.’

We were part of a slow-moving stream coming off the ferry. There were backpackers trying to hitch a ride with anyone who’d take them. Bel smiled at them and shrugged her shoulders. Everybody took the same road out of Bremerton along the southern shore of Hood Canal. There were no stopping places, other than pulling into someone’s drive, so Clancy just pointed out Nathan’s house to us as we passed. It had a low front hedge, a large neatly cut lawn, and was itself low and rectangular, almost like a scale model rather than a real house, such was its perfection. Beyond it we could see the canal itself, in reality an inlet carved into the land like a reverse J. We kept along Hood Canal for a long time, then headed west towards Port Angeles.

‘From what I’ve heard,’ said Clancy, ‘as well as what I’ve seen today, I think our first priority should be to find a campsite.’

He was right. Fairholm was the closest campsite to the Disciples’ headquarters, but by the time we got there it was already full. We retraced our route and called in at Lake Crescent Lodge, but it was fully booked. So then we’d to head north towards the coast where, at Lyre River, we found a campground with spaces. It was less than a mile from the Strait of Juan de Fuca, beyond which lay Vancouver Island, Canadian soil. The air was incredible, intoxicating and vibrant. You felt nobody’d ever breathed it before. It wasn’t city air, that was for sure.

Clancy had been telling us that there was bad feeling in the Pacific north west about logging. A lot of loggers were losing their jobs, a lot of logging towns were going broke. They’d asked if they could go into the National Forest and ‘tidy up’ fallen trees, but this request had been rejected. There were other forests they couldn’t touch because of a protected species of owl. They were getting desperate.

‘One man’s paradise...’ I said.

At the campground, there was a box full of envelopes. We put our fee in the envelope and pushed it through the posting slot. Then we stuck our receipt in a little display case on a post next to our own little site.

‘Isn’t this cosy?’ I said. Bel looked dubious. She’d been sleeping in too many real beds recently to relish a night under the stars. It was about fifteen miles from here to the Disciples’ HQ, so we pitched our tents. Or rather, Clancy and I pitched the tents while Bel walked by the river and chatted to a few other campers. Then, happy with the state of our accommodations, we got back in the car and headed off. We were on the wrong side of Lake Crescent, as we soon found. No road went all the way around the lake. The main road went round the south, and to the north it was half unpaved road and half trail. We were the trail end, which meant we couldn’t take the car anywhere near the Disciples without going all the way around the lake and heading in towards them from the west along the unpaved road. We took the car to the trail-head past Piedmont and got out to think. It looked like it was about a three-mile walk. Driving around the lake might save a mile of walking.

‘Well,’ I said, ‘we might as well get our money’s worth from all this gear we’ve brought.’

So we got ourselves made up to look like hikers, Clancy carrying the only rucksack we’d need, and I locked the car.

‘You’re not carrying heat?’ he inquired.

‘You’ve been watching too many gangster flicks.’

‘But are you or aren’t you?’

‘No.’

‘Good.’

We walked for about half a mile, till Bel suddenly stopped. I asked what was wrong. She was looking all around her.

‘This,’ she said, ‘is the most beautiful place I’ve ever been. Listen: nothing. Look, not a soul around.’

She’d barely got these words out when a party of three walkers emerged on the trail ahead of us. They nodded a greeting as they passed. They hadn’t spoilt things at all for Bel. She looked the way I’d seen girls in my youth when they were stoned at parties. She was an unfocused, all-encompassing smile.

‘It’s the lack of toxins in the atmosphere,’ Clancy explained. ‘If your system isn’t used to it, weird things start to happen.’

We walked on, and she caught us up. Clancy had the map.

‘There’s a picnic area at North Shore,’ he said, ‘but we’ll see the cabins before that. They’re between this trail and the one leading up Pyramid Mountain.’

We came upon them sooner than expected. It was a bit like the set-up at Oban, but a lot less obtrusive. No signs or fences or barriers, except that the very existence of the cabins, here where there should be nothing, was a barrier in itself. I couldn’t see the Disciples getting many casual visitors.

‘So what do we do now?’ Bel said.

‘We keep walking,’ I told her. ‘We’re just out for a hike. We’ll soon be at North Shore. We’ll have our picnic and we’ll talk. Just now, we’re walking.’

But from the corner of my eye I was taking in the cabins, the small vegetable plot, the boat on its trailer. I couldn’t see any signs of life, and no cars, no pick-ups or vans. No smoke, but then the cabins didn’t have chimneys, with the exception of what I took to be the original structure, slightly larger than the others. Instead, there were solar panels on the roofs, and a couple more on the ground. There was plenty of tree and bush cover around the cabins, and no sign of any pets. I wasn’t even sure you were allowed to keep pets inside the park.

There were boats out on Lake Crescent. They looked like they’d come from Lake Crescent Lodge. I could see fathers wrestling with the oars while spouses caught the antics on video and the children rocked the boat further to discomfit ‘pop’. We sat down at the picnic site and gazed out over the lake.

‘It is beautiful,’ said Bel.

‘Almost as pretty as a baseball game,’ Clancy agreed. Bel ignored him.

‘So that was it?’ I said.

‘That was it.’

‘I was expecting more.’

‘The Disciples are small-time, Mike. I could show you a dozen cults bigger than them in the US, including the cult of the Sainted Elvis. They’re not big, they’re just rich and obsessed with their privacy.’

Bel turned away from the view. She had been bitten already, and sprayed more gunk on her bare arms. I’d bought a dark blue baseball cap at Archie’s, and was now glad of it. The sun beat down with a sizzling intensity. Clancy opened the cooler and handed out beers.

‘So now we go and knock at their door,’ said Bel, ‘ask them what the hell they were doing murdering my father?’

‘Maybe not straight away,’ I cautioned.

‘But I thought that was the whole point?’

‘The point is to play safe. Sam, have you ever heard of anyone leaving the Disciples?’

He shook his head and sucked foam from the can. ‘That was my first line of inquiry. If you’d been a real reporter, it’s about the first thing you’d’ve asked me. I was desperate to find someone with inside info, but I never found a soul.’

‘Ever talk to any existing members?’

‘Oh, yes, lots of times. I’d strike up conversations with them when they went into Port Angeles for supplies. I have to tell you, those were very one-sided conversations. Hamlet’s soliloquies were shorter than mine. I got snippets, nothing more.’

Bel was sorting out the food. We had ham, crackers, cold sausage and potato chips.

‘Bel,’ I said, ‘how’s your acting?’

‘I think I played a policewoman pretty well.’

‘How about playing a very stupid person?’

She shrugged. ‘It’d be a challenge. What sort of stupid person did you have in mind?’

‘One who’s on vacation and has gone for a walk on her own. And she comes across these cabins and thinks they must be a restaurant or something, maybe a ranger station or some souvenir shops.’

Clancy was looking at me. ‘You’re crazy.’

Bel opened a packet of chips. ‘Are you saying, Michael, that I’d be going in there on my own?’

‘That’s what I’m saying.’

‘Why?’

‘I think they’d suspect you less if you were on your own.’

‘Yes, but why do I need to go there at all?’

‘Reconnaissance. I want you to learn as much as you can about the lay-out, memorise it. Are there locks on the doors and windows? Are there any alarms or other security precautions that you can see? Any skylights, loopholes, chinks in the armour?’

‘You’re thinking of paying a night-time visit?’

I smiled at her and nodded. She wasn’t fazed at all by my intention. She just ate some crisps and thought about it.

‘I’d have to go into the cabins,’ she said at last.

I shook my head. ‘Just the one, the main cabin. That’s the one I want to know about.’

‘You’re both crazy,’ Clancy said, gripping his beer with both hands.

Bel finished her crisps and stood up, wiping her hands on her legs. ‘I need a pee,’ she said. ‘I’ll see you back at the trail-head.’

‘We’ll be waiting.’

I watched her walk away. I’d promised Max she wouldn’t be in any danger. I’d been breaking that promise time and time again.

‘She’s got guts,’ Clancy admitted.

I nodded but didn’t say anything. Clancy couldn’t get a word out of me the rest of the makeshift meal.

We walked back along the trail quite slowly, nodding to people who passed us. Again, we didn’t look at the cabins as we passed within a hundred yards of them. They were built on a fairly serious slope. Slopes and night-walking did not make good companions. But if I stuck to the path by the lake, there’d be more chance of being spotted. I had a lot on my mind as we walked the rest of the route. We sat in the car for a while. Clancy switched the radio on and retuned it, and I got out and walked about a bit.

It was over an hour before we saw Bel. She was hurrying towards us, her cheeks flushed with what I took to be success. When she gave me a grinning thumbs-up, I hugged her, lifting her off the ground. Then we got back into the Rabbit and on the way back to the campsite she told us all about it.

Not that there was a whole lot to tell. She’d found a young woman first of all, who’d turned out to have studied in England for several years. So she’d wanted to ask Bel all about how England was these days, and then Bel had asked to use the toilet, and only then had she asked the woman what this place was exactly. At which she got the story and even a brief tour. Because she and the woman appeared to be friends, no one else batted an eye at first. Then a man came up and asked who she was, and after that everything was distinctly cooler. She’d lingered over a cup of herbal tea the woman had prepared, but then had been asked politely but firmly by the man if she would leave.

She hadn’t gotten to see the inside of the old cabin, just its outside. But there were no alarm boxes, and none of the windows she’d seen had boasted anything other than the most superficial locks. There was more, and at the end of it I felt like hugging her again. Instead we celebrated back at the campsite with a meal cooked on our stove: franks and beans, washed down with black coffee. Clancy had bought a pack of filters and some real ground coffee. It smelt great and tasted good. The insects by this time were out in force, hungry for a late supper before bed.

‘Oh, one other thing,’ Bel said. ‘In a couple of days, Provost himself is visiting the HQ.’

‘Really?’ I looked at Clancy. ‘Any significance?’

He shrugged. ‘It’s rare these days, but not exactly unknown.’

‘It’ll mean his house in Seattle is empty,’ I mused.

‘Yeah, as empty as a high-security bank.’

I smiled. ‘I get your drift.’

Later, Clancy hinted at taking Bel into Port Angeles to check out the night life. They could drop me off first, then pick me up again on the way back. But Bel made a face. She just wanted to crawl into her sleeping bag with a torch, another beer, and her latest cheap paperback. I was pleased she didn’t want to go with Clancy. I sat outside with him for a while longer. He asked if I wanted him to drive me to Piedmont, but I shook my head.

‘I’ll do this one alone.’

When it was properly dark, I was ready.

23

I drove back to Piedmont and parked a little way from the trail-head. I was wearing a camouflage jacket and dark green combat trousers, plus hiking boots. I had the night-scope with me. If anyone stopped me, my excuse would be that I was out looking for nocturnal animals, maybe the rare Roosevelt Elk.

Firearms weren’t allowed in the park, but I had the 559 with me too, fully loaded. I reckoned that, laws or not, the Disciples would have an armoury.

There was half a moon, appearing now and then from behind slow-moving clouds. The cloud cover wasn’t thick, so there was a welcome glow, and as my eyes got used to the night, I found I could pick my way forwards without falling arse over tit.

I hadn’t done much of this sort of thing before, though of course I’d recced my hits. There was silence in the camp. Bel hadn’t heard any radios or seen any TV aerials. It looked like the Disciples were early-to-bed early-to-rise types, which suited me fine. Maybe they were busy making love under their patchwork quilts.

The old original cabin faced the newer ones, so I would be at my most vulnerable if entering by the front. I looked in through the rear and side windows, but couldn’t see anyone. The windows were locked though, and I’d no tools with me. I knew Bel could have used her skill here, but no way was I going to bring her with me. In the silence, the sound of breaking glass would be like a foghorn. So I went around to the front of the cabin. Then I saw the torch. I saw the beam first, scanning the ground. Someone had left one of the other cabins. If I moved, I’d be heard, so I stood still, my face averted, hoping I’d blend in with the cabin walls. If they shone the torch right at me, of course, they’d see me instantly. I held my breath and waited.

Someone cleared his throat. Then I heard water pouring on to the ground. He’d come outside to urinate. Yes, I’d seen a compost heap over where he was standing; no doubt he was peeing on to that. I could hear the blood rushing in my ears, my heart thumping. Then the man turned and retraced his steps. I heard a cabin door close, though I hadn’t heard it open.

Quickly, I went to the front door of the old cabin and turned the handle. It wasn’t locked. I slipped inside and closed the door again slowly. I didn’t want to use my torch. It would be too obvious. Anyone stepping out to the compost heap would see its glow reflected in the windows.

As far as I could make out, I was standing in an office. There were two desks, and another table with office machines on it. I saw the outlines of computers and file-boxes, what looked like a photocopier, and several large filing-cabinets. I went to these and tried a drawer. It too was unlocked. I knew I really needed some light, so took the handkerchief from my pocket and wrapped it over the torch. Now when I switched the torch on, there was a faint illumination, just enough to read by. I started working my way through the papers in the first cabinet.

Though the night was cool, there was sweat on my back and my brow. The third drawer down was full of details about cult members. I checked out Nathan and Alisha. Alisha had joined in early ’86, having come west from Raleigh NC. Nathan had joined later the same year. His file gave scant details of any life before joining the Disciples, which was unusual. I knew which high school Alisha had attended, when she was born and where, what she had studied at college. All I really knew about Nathan after reading his file was that Nathan was his first name.

His second name was Kline.

It couldn’t just be coincidence. I tucked his file back in place and closed the cabinet. I tried a few other drawers, but didn’t turn up much. There was certainly nothing about the finances of the cult, other than the daily outgoings. The only way Provost could be financing the set-up was if he had a mountain of cash back in his Queen Anne house. I also found no evidence of conspiracy to murder, though any such documents were unlikely to be kept here. Nathan’s house on Hood Canal would be an infinitely better bet, and suddenly I was keen to return there and take a closer look.

But I had other things to do first. Beyond the front office there was a narrow hallway with doors leading off. More offices, by the look of things. I tried a door, opened it, and looked in. Yes, if the front desks were manned by underlings, then these two offices most probably belonged to Nathan and Alisha. One of them might even be Provost’s. There were no clues to the owner of either office, and the desk drawers and filing-cabinets were locked. It wasn’t very trusting, was it? It told me something about the Disciples. So open on the surface — witness the unlocked front door — yet with secrets which had to be kept locked up. I decided against forcing any of the locks. I didn’t want them to know how close I was.

Out in the hall again, I noticed a staircase. It was right at the end of the hall, and led up into the roof-space. I hadn’t thought about the roof-space. There were no windows up there, so I hadn’t considered it used. Yet here was a stair leading up.

I’d climbed three steps when I saw the figure standing at the top.

‘Who the hell are you?’ he said.

But I was already running. He took the stairs quickly, but not quickly enough. I was out of the front door and running. I didn’t think he would follow, but he did. He must have been wearing shoes, or the forest floor would have cut his feet open in seconds.

I didn’t have any plan other than flight, but of course my pursuer knew the woods better than I did. He hadn’t yelled out for help, so it was one-on-one. What’s more, I had a gun and a knife. I was feeling a little more confident when he appeared suddenly in front of me. I went for the knife, but he slammed a fist into my face and a foot into my leg. I knew he was trying for the kneecap, which told me he’d been trained. But he landed high, numbing my thigh but not paralysing me. He was quick, no doubt about that. But now I had the gun in my hand. He snatched at it, his hand snaking out of the dark, and twisted my wrist until it nearly broke. I let the gun fall and went for the knife with my left hand. This gave him all the time in the world to land another punch and kick. The punch caught me on the side of the head, and the dark suddenly became fifty shades of stunning blue. His kick was Kung-Fu style and just missed my heart. It had enough power to throw me back through the trees. I kept my balance, God knows how. I knew I had to get the damned knife into play.

The moon appeared, lighting his bare torso. It was criss-crossed with cuts from branches, but that wasn’t going to slow him down. There was a snarl on his face as he launched himself at me, hurling himself forward, arms outstretched. He knew all about close-quarters combat, knew I couldn’t use the knife once he got me in a hug.

I dived sideways, falling as I did. I heard him grunt as he missed me. There was a cracking sound. I got to my feet as quick as I could. He wouldn’t miss a sitting target. But when I looked, he was standing very still, his arms hanging by his sides. Then I saw why. There was a low branch sticking out through his back. He’d speared himself on a hemlock.

‘Thank Christ for that,’ I said. Then I switched on the torch and found my pistol, sticking it back into my trousers. I considered burying the body, but knew it wouldn’t be easy. At least leaving him here, any coroner might be persuaded of a bizarre accident. It certainly didn’t look like murder. I shone the torch into his face, and saw the resemblance to his brother immediately.

‘Hello, Nathan,’ I said.

I was shaking as I drove back to the campsite. I hadn’t been so close to death before. I’d never seen that much fresh blood close up. I’d seen Max of course, but Max’s corpse hadn’t been warm. The picture of Nathan Kline would stay with me long after my victims’ had faded. I didn’t think liquor and a holiday would ever wipe out Nathan’s staring face.

Clancy and Bel were still awake, awaiting my return. When they saw me, they knew something had gone badly wrong. One side of my face was swollen, bruising nicely. My chest hurt, and I was still limping from the kick to my thigh. My hair was tangled with sweat, and my clothes were smeared with earth.

‘I need to get to a hospital,’ I said.

‘There might be something at Port Angeles.’

‘This is sort of specialized,’ I said.

‘Michael’s got haemophilia,’ Bel explained.

‘It’ll have to be Seattle or Tacoma,’ Clancy decided.

So we packed everything up by torchlight. Or rather, they did while I stayed in the car. A couple of campers complained about the noise, until Bel explained that we had an emergency and had to get someone to hospital. I’d been hoping she wouldn’t say anything. Now we had campers out looking at me like I was a zoo exhibit. I kept my head bowed so they wouldn’t see the bruises. I knew most of the campers would be gone by morning, when Nathan’s body would be found. But the police could find them elsewhere in the park and ask them about tonight. And now they’d be able to tell all about a man with his head hidden from them, a sudden need to break camp in the middle of the night.

Things, I thought, had taken a very bad turn.

We got out of there and Bel apologised.

‘I just didn’t think,’ she said.

‘That’s okay.’

Clancy was driving. There were no ferries that he knew of, not this late, so we headed south on 101 and picked up I-5 through Tacoma to Seattle. There was a hospital not too far from our hotel. We had to go through the usual American bureaucracy, details taken, disclaimers and waivers signed, and of course they wanted to know how they’d get paid, before a doctor took a look at me. He wasn’t a haemophilia specialist, his first few questions were all about what had happened.

‘A fight outside a bar,’ I told him.

‘You’re not supposed to get into fights.’

‘That’s what I told the guy who hit me.’

Eventually he gave me a dubious all-clear, but told me to come see a specialist in the morning. I paid cash back at the desk and Clancy drove us back to the hotel.

The night staff didn’t say anything when Bel asked for the room key. Maybe they’d seen wasted-looking people before, turning up in the wee small hours wearing hiking outfits.

We broke into a bottle of tequila Bel had bought, and I put some ice into a towel for my bruises.

‘I still don’t get it,’ said Clancy. ‘You say his name’s Nathan Kline?’

‘That’s what it said on his file.’

‘You think he’s some relation of Kline’s?’

‘There were facial similarities.’

He shook his head. ‘Jesus,’ he said.

‘And whatever he was, he wasn’t my idea of a “disciple of love”. He knew unarmed combat like I know rifles. I’m lucky we were fighting at night. In daylight he’d have killed me.’

‘So what does that make him?’

‘Ex-military, something like that. Maybe CIA or NSC. All I know is that it makes him dead.’

Bel was staring at me, so I turned to her.

‘I don’t feel great about it, Bel, but this time it was him or me. And I didn’t kill him, a tree-branch did. But I would have killed him. And he’d have killed me.’

‘I know,’ she said quietly. ‘I’m glad he’s dead.’ Then she went back to her drink.

Clancy didn’t go home. He slept in a chair, while Bel and I took the beds. We talked some more, and finally settled down to sleep as the sun was rising. I probably slept for an hour, maybe a little more. Then I went into the bathroom, closed the door and turned on the light. I looked like I’d been in an accident with a timber-lorry. My chest and thigh were purple with shades of mauve and black. My eye had closed up a little as the flesh below it swelled. It was tender to the touch, but at least I hadn’t lost any teeth.

I didn’t think I was going to die. Haemophiliacs rarely die these days, not if they look after themselves. But I’d go back to the hospital anyway and have a proper check done.

I went down to the lobby and out into the fresh air of a new day. Only in my head it was still the middle of the night and I was out in the woods, being taken apart by a crazed jungle-fighter. I tried not to limp as I walked. I’d changed into some clean clothes. There were a few early risers about, driving to work, or shuffling through the streets examining garbage. I headed for the waterfront to do some thinking.

I didn’t doubt that Nathan was Kline’s brother, which tied the Disciples of Love very closely to the NSC. But a question niggled: did anyone at the Disciples know Nathan’s real identity? And come to think of it, what was so important that Nathan would go undercover for nearly eight years to protect it? They might have discovered his body by now. They might be contacting the police. If they didn’t contact the police, that would be a sign of the whole cult’s complicity. I knew I had to go back to the peninsula to be sure.

I also wanted to investigate Nathan’s house on Hood Canal. If I wanted to do it, I’d have to do it fast, before Kline got to hear of his brother’s all-too-suspicious demise.

‘Great day for it,’ a woman told me as she pushed a supermarket shopping-trolley over the train lines. A train had just crept past, holding up the few cars. It carried wood, thousands of planks coming south from Canada. We’d both watched it roll inexorably past.

‘Great day for it,’ she said again, waving to me as she moved away.

We went out for breakfast and ate huge blueberry muffins, washed down with strong coffee. I told Clancy and Bel I wanted to go back to the peninsula.

‘You’re out of your mind,’ Clancy said.

We’d listened to the early-morning radio news, and there’d been nothing about Nathan’s death. And only a few minutes ago, Clancy had phoned a colleague at the newsdesk and asked if any reports had come in of ‘anything’ happening in the park. The colleague’s reply had been negative.

‘First,’ Bel said, ‘you’re going to go back to that hospital. I don’t want you keeling over on me, Michael.’

‘And we need to change cars,’ Clancy added. He had a point. It would be a lot safer heading back to the peninsula in a new car. The campers had seen me sitting in a VW Rabbit, which was a world away from a Trans-Am. ‘Look,’ he said. ‘Why don’t I drop the two of you off at the hospital, go fetch the Trans-Am and pick you up again afterwards?’

‘Sounds good to me,’ said Bel.

So that was agreed. We checked that the car was ready and that my hospital appointment was confirmed. I checked we’d left nothing in the Rabbit before we left the hotel.

The car worried me. All it needed was for one camper to remember the licence plate and reel it off to the police, and they would track it instantly by computer to the repair shop, where the owner knew Clancy. And once they knew about Clancy, that would be the end of it.

I had to trust to luck that no one would remember the plate. And I hated trusting to anything other than myself.

Bel and I sat in the hospital for a while. She remarked how bright and new it seemed, how well equipped. She was just making conversation, that was all.

‘Wait till you see what they charge,’ I told her, ‘then you won’t be surprised.’

We were getting through the money. I didn’t like to think about how I’d go about earning some more.

‘I wish I’d been there when you killed him,’ Bel said quietly.

‘I didn’t kill him,’ I reminded her. ‘And for God’s sake, why would you want to be there?’

She turned to me and smiled a humourless smile.

I saw the doctor and everything seemed to be all right. He insisted on a few blood tests, since he wanted to be ‘on the safe side’, even though I objected I’d be flying back to England in a few days.

After all of which, I parted with some cash. The person behind the desk pointed out that they couldn’t know yet how much everything would cost, since the blood tests were done at an independent lab, so they’d bill me later. I gave my fake address again, the same one I’d given the previous night, and walked out of the hospital knowing I’d saved a few dollars at least.

Then we waited for Clancy. We waited a long time. At last we gave up and took a cab back to the hotel.

The receptionist remembered something as Bel and I stood waiting for the elevator.

‘Oh, Mr West? Did your friends get in touch?’

‘Sorry?’

‘There were a couple of calls for you yesterday evening. I said you were out.’

‘Did they leave a name?’

‘I’m sorry, sir, they just said you were expecting them to call.’

Well, in a way this was true. I walked back to the desk.

‘We’ll be checking out,’ I said.

She looked surprised. ‘Nothing wrong, I hope?’

‘I’ve got to go back to England. You can see I’ve been in an accident...’

‘Well, I wasn’t going to say anything, but—’

‘And the medical costs here are too high. We’re just going up to our room to pack. Could you make up our bill?’

‘Yes, of course.’

The elevator had arrived. I followed Bel into it. She waited till the doors had closed before she asked what was wrong.

‘Everything,’ I said. ‘Someone knows we’re here. It had to happen, we’re just lucky we got this warning.’

We packed quickly. I kept the Colt Commando near the top of my bag, and put the pistol in my waistband. If you see someone in the US with his shirt hanging outside his trousers, think gun.

I paid our bill and the receptionist hoped she’d see us again. I wasn’t laying bets on it as I went outside and found a cab. Only when he’d pulled up to the hotel door did I signal for Bel to come out. We loaded our bags into the boot, as well as a carrier bag belonging to Clancy. Inside it were a camera, film, and a small cassette recorder.

‘Sea-Tac?’ our driver asked. But I gave him the address of the car repair shop instead.

We passed close by the hospital and stuck to the main route. But the road ahead was cordoned off, and a police officer was waving traffic on to other streets.

‘Musta been an accident,’ the driver said.

‘Can you pull over?’ I asked him. He did. ‘Wait here, I’ll only be a minute.’ I told Bel to stay put. I think she knew what was going through my mind. She bit her lip but nodded.

I walked back towards the cordon. There were sightseers standing beside it. A car was standing at traffic lights, officials milling around it. An ambulance was there, but mostly I saw people who looked like detectives. Some of them were taking photographs.

The stalled car was our white Trans-Am. There were splashes of blood on the windshield. A sightseer asked what was going on. A veteran at the scene was eager to supply details.

‘A drive-by shooting. Probably pushers, it’s getting as bad here as LA. Guy’s dead. They sprayed him all over the inside of the car. Looks like strawberries in a blender, the cops told me.’

‘Strawberries, huh?’

I walked away with deadened feet. Bel didn’t need to ask. I told the driver there was a change of destination. He took us out on to Aurora until we found a cheap motel with a red-neon vacancy.

It reminded me of the first motel we’d stayed in after buying the Trans-Am: gaudy colors and infrequent maid-service. I went out to the ice machine while Bel unwrapped the sanitized plastic tumblers she’d found in the bathroom.

We drank tequila. Bel finished her second one before collapsing on the bed in tears. I stood at the window and looked out through the slats in the blind. I’d specified a room round the back of the motel, not sure how much safer this made things. My view through the window was of the parking area, strewn with litter, and behind it a narrow street with junkyard housing, hardly meriting the description ‘bungalows’.

‘What do we do now?’ she said.

‘Same as we would have done,’ I replied. ‘Only now we know they’re close to us. Forewarned is forearmed.’

‘Yes, and cleanliness is next to godliness. It doesn’t mean anything, Michael.’

‘Bel.’ I went to the bed and pulled her up, hugging her close. I ran my hands down her hair. I kissed her wet cheeks. I didn’t know how long we’d be safe in this motel. A couple of days maybe, but it could be less. There were dozens, maybe hundreds of motels on Aurora. But I was sure Kline or his men would search each one. The quicker we went to work the better.

‘Stay here,’ I said. ‘Switch the TV on. They’ve got HBO.’

‘I don’t want HBO! I want this to end!’

‘Bel, it’s ending, believe me.’ I just didn’t trust myself to script the finale.

I did something not many people do on Aurora. I walked. There wasn’t much in the way of pavement, and the drivers looked at me like I was roadkill. I didn’t have far to walk though. Our motel hadn’t been entirely chosen at random. It happened to be close to half a dozen used-car lots. I walked into the first one and browsed. There were some serious cars here, highly-polished numbers from the ’50s and early ’60s, all chrome and fin and leather. But I wanted something a lot more prosaic. Most important of all, I wanted local plates. We needed to merge with the scenery.

‘Hi, can I help you?’

He was exactly what you’d expect: ill-chosen clothes and a grinning cigar. He walked with splayed feet and was shaped like a rugby ball: all stomach, tapering off top and bottom. I asked about a couple of the cars, and said I might be back. I also told him I’d be paying cash.

The next lot I tried was full of dodgems, not a roadworthy car in the place. They had a good mechanic though. He’d done a few tricks to make the cars look and sound nice. You had to study the trick twice or even three times to see how he’d done it. The Americans have a love affair with their cars, as a result of which there are a million products on the market for the home mechanic. You can pour gunk into your car which will temporarily stop an oil leak, or make the engine sound smoother, or stop the thing sounding like a cancer patient. They weren’t even remission, these cures. They were quack.

The next place along had some nice newer models. There was a Volvo I liked the look of, and an older Mercedes. A Ford Mustang was an expensive option I toyed with for a couple of minutes, but then I saw the VW Camper. I knew it was by no means perfect. It wouldn’t outrun a bicycle, was slow on hills, and was noisy. In its favour, we could get out of town and sleep in it instead. The guy was asking $4,000 for it, but when we had trouble sliding open the side door, he came down to three and a half. I studied the engine. It had been twin-carbed, and not by an expert. I told him I didn’t want anything twin-carbed.

‘Brings the life span and the resale down.’

I walked away from the vehicle, then turned and looked at it again, ready to banish it from my thoughts.

‘Oh, did I mention I’d be paying cash?’

He came down to three and told me he was cutting his throat.

‘Just don’t splash blood on the hubcaps,’ I said. I shouldn’t have: it made me flash back to the Trans-Am and Sam Clancy’s death.

We settled the paperwork and I drove out of the lot. The steering felt slack, but not too slack to be fatal. The indicators weren’t working either, so I didn’t make many friends crossing the traffic into the motel. I parked right outside our room. Bel was standing at the door, hugging herself, bouncing on her toes. I didn’t imagine the sight of the VW had got her so excited.

‘He’s alive!’ she said. I got her inside and shut the door.

‘What?’

‘He’s okay, he’s not dead. It was on the TV news.’

I sat down on the bed. ‘Clancy?’ I said. She nodded, biting back tears. We watched the TV together in silence, holding hands. It took a while till we got another news bulletin. There was a reporter at the hospital.

‘That’s the same hospital I went to.’

The reporter said that the driver of the vehicle, Sam Clancy, a local journalist who had been in hiding after what he claimed at the time were attempts on his life, had been shot four or five times, once in the head, once in the neck, and at least twice in the shoulder. He was in a stable condition, but was still unconscious. Police were at his bedside and were on armed guard outside his room.

‘I’ll be damned,’ I said.

There was an interview with a senior police officer. They asked him about the previous attempts on Sam Clancy’s life, but the cop had nothing to say at this juncture. Then they spoke to Sam’s editor and to a colleague. It could have been the man I spoke with the first time I phoned the paper. And finally they showed pictures of the Trans-Am and the repair shop.

‘Shit.’

So they would have talked to the owner, who would tell them that it wasn’t Sam Clancy’s car, no sir, it belonged to a couple of English friends of his... Which would set the police wondering: where were those friends now? And if they were really clever, or really lucky, they’d connect Sam and his friends with the late-night disappearance of three people, one of them injured, from a campground near where a man had died.

Bel saw it all too, of course, and she squeezed my hand all the tighter.

‘We’ve got to move,’ she said. ‘Before this starts falling around our heads.’

I nodded slowly, and she smiled at me. ‘He’s alive, Michael. He’s alive.’ We hugged one another, then I pulled her off the bed. ‘Come on, places to go, people to see.’

‘By the way,’ she said, ‘what were you doing in that rattle-wagon?’

That rattle-wagon took us back over to Bremerton and into the Olympic Peninsula. The gearbox had a habit of springing back into neutral, but apart from that there were no problems. The van didn’t have air conditioning of course, or a radio. But Bel lolled in the back and opened all the little cupboards and took the cover off the sink, and seemed to like it well enough in the end.

It was true there wasn’t anywhere to park on the road along Hood Canal. I suppose they’d done it on purpose so tourists wouldn’t stop and gawp at the nice houses. However, you couldn’t always see the house from the driveway, and vice versa, so I stopped in a driveway across the road from Nathan’s house and a couple of houses down. Effectively, I was blocking the access, but the only people likely to complain were the occupants of the house, and they might never know. Clancy had pointed out that a lot of the homes here were used only at weekends and vacation time. I went round the back of the VW and propped open the engine, so we could claim mechanical trouble if anyone asked us. I’d tell them we were waiting for the triple-A.

We seemed to sit in the van for a long time. We hadn’t brought anything with us, nothing to eat or drink or read. Bel found a pack of cards in the glove compartment, but there were only thirty-three of them. She found a few other bits and pieces too. A soiled dollar bill, a cushion-cover, the whistle from a steam-kettle, an unused stick of Wrigley’s, and a bicycle pump.

‘If we had a boot,’ she said, ‘we could have a car-boot sale.’

‘Hey, come and look at this.’ She came forward and peered through the windscreen. A car was coming out of Nathan’s drive. It hadn’t been there earlier when we’d passed, so must have been parked in the garage. It was smart, long at the front and squat at the back. I guessed it to be a Buick sedan. We’d seen enough cars on the road to make us expert.

‘It’s a Lincoln,’ Bel said.

‘Is it?’

As it passed our drive, I caught a glimpse of the figure in the back. All I could make out was platinum hair and a suit, but by this time that was enough.

‘You want to break into the house?’ Bel asked.

I’d been thinking this over, and now I shook my head. ‘The house is just a meeting place. I don’t think we’d find anything there.’

‘So what now?’

‘Now,’ I said, ‘we follow Kline. Here, you drive.’

‘What?’ We started to change places.

‘He doesn’t know you,’ I said. ‘At least, he hasn’t met you. If we’re going to tail him, it better be you in the front seat and me in the back.’

‘He saw me when I got out of the car that time outside Oban.’

‘He didn’t see much more than the back of your head. Besides, you weren’t wearing sunglasses then.’

Bel squeezed into the driver’s seat. ‘He’s probably halfway to Seattle by now.’

‘Doesn’t matter,’ I said. ‘I think I know where he’s headed.’

The problem was the ferry, or it could have been. But we stayed in the van, sitting in the back, pretending to play cards with our incomplete pack.

‘Snap,’ Bel said. We didn’t look up much from the table, just in case Kline happened to stroll past and glance in. To the outside world, we must have appeared as engrossed as any poker fiends. We needn’t have worried. Kline’s sedan was in a different line, and about eight vehicles ahead of us. He stayed in his car, while his driver went for a smoke on-deck. I saw the driver very briefly, and recognised him as the same man who’d been driving for Kline that day in Oban.

We followed them off the boat, but lost them on the steep streets up near the Seattle Centre. It didn’t matter. I directed Bel up into Queen Anne and then over to the big houses off Bigelow. The second street we tried was the right one.

‘How’s the handbrake?’ Bel asked as she parked roadside.

‘I haven’t needed it yet,’ I answered.

Jeremiah Provost’s house boasted a cellar garage with a slope running down to it from the pavement. This was where Kline’s car was parked, its nose almost touching the garage’s closed door. Bel had taken us a bit further down the hill, which was fine. We couldn’t afford to be obvious; it was still daylight. But I decided to take one risk anyway.

‘Stay here,’ I said.

‘That’s what you always say.’

‘This time I mean it.’ I left the van and stuck my hands in my pockets, whistling like a regular Joe on his way home from work. I climbed back up the hill and passed Kline’s car. Bel had been right, it was a Lincoln. I didn’t suppose the licence would help me, but I memorized it anyway. I passed the path which led around to the side of the house. I looked up and down the street, but there was no one about, no one to see me dive into the shrubbery and begin crawling my way around to the front door. Clancy had mentioned night-lights, but this was still daytime. I was hoping the system would only work at night.

I could hear voices, and slowed my pace accordingly. I could hear Kline’s voice, then another man’s. It seemed, amazingly, that they were holding a conversation — and a heated one at that — on Provost’s doorstep. I could hear snatches. Kline kept his voice low, the other voice was the angry one.

‘I told you not to come back here! You never did listen, did you?’ This was the other voice talking.

Then I found myself nose to a prickly bush, and looking through its foliage across a postage stamp lawn to the open front door. A man stood in the doorway, looking down on to where Kline and his driver stood. The driver had his hands behind his back. Kline stood with hands in pockets, head bowed. He started to make a speech I couldn’t hear. Above the three men, I could see a lamp high on the wall of the house. It was pointing in my direction and it was on. I must have triggered a beam. I prayed they wouldn’t look up and see it. There was no point worrying anyway.

So instead I concentrated on Jeremiah Provost.

It was my first sight of him, and he was impressive in a mad professor sort of way. He looked like he’d gained weight since the most recent newspaper photos. His beard was longer and greyer, his frizzy hair swept back and out from his forehead, like he had electricity searing through him. He was wearing denims and a T-shirt and an old cardigan. There was a strand of thick round beads around his neck, and he touched them as he spoke. His stance made it clear he had no intention of letting Kline over the threshold.

That was the most puzzling thing of all.

Kline’s speech over, Provost looked to the sky for guidance. ‘Look,’ he said, his voice an educated drawl, ‘just stay the fuck away, okay? Is that too much to ask?’

More undertones from Kline.

‘I know he’s dead,’ Provost snarled. He meant Nathan. Nathan’s gory end still hadn’t been on any news I’d seen. No doubt Kline and his men had been busy covering it up. Provost was still talking. ‘As yet,’ he said, ‘we don’t know anything other than that he is dead. What’re you saying?’

I almost whistled: Provost didn’t know the connection between Kline and Nathan. I even felt a moment’s pity for Kline, who had just lost a brother. Then I smiled to myself.

The light overhead was still on. I wondered what kind of timer it had. And I thanked God it wasn’t wired into any alarm. There was a camera, but it was aimed at the path, just in front of the main door. Kline was shuffling his feet. He said a few more words, then turned to go.

‘Yeah,’ said Provost, ‘and don’t forget to take your fucking gorilla with you.’ I could see the gorilla clench his fists behind his back. Oh boy, he wanted to swipe Provost. But all he did was give him the surreptitious finger instead.

I waited till they’d gone and Provost had closed and locked his door, then worked my way around the rest of the perimeter towards where the shrubbery ended just before the swimming pool. ‘Swimming pool’ was actually stretching things; it was more an outsized bath. The French windows were open, curtains wafting through them. There was a big white open-plan living area, and a dumpy woman standing in the middle of the floor. She was stroking Provost’s hair and kissing his neck, whispering to him. I squinted against the glare from the sinking sun. On the other side of the house, I could hear Kline’s car pull back on to the street and drive off. The woman had long lifeless hair and was wearing a floaty kaftan which caught the breeze from the French windows. I guessed she might be Alisha. She stepped back from Provost, who was rubbing his hands over his face, a man carrying the weight of the world. He started flapping his arms, shouting something, near to frenzy or madness or something.

‘What’s on your mind, Jerry?’ I said to myself, hoping he might yell out an answer.

But instead the woman hiked the kaftan over her head and let it fall to the floor. She was naked underneath. It wasn’t a bad move. Provost stopped fretting and started looking. There was a lot to look at, including a wondrously large pair of breasts. He walked forward to meet her, and she took his head and rested it against her. He seemed like a child then, as she spoke quietly to him and stroked his hair and soothed him. When he broke away from her long enough to start taking off his own clothes, I back-pedalled through the shrubbery and on to the street.

My knees and elbows were black with earth, and with my bruised face I knew anyone seeing me now would have little hesitation calling the cops. So I fairly jogged back to the VW and got in.

‘I saw them leave,’ said Bel. ‘When you didn’t come back straight away, I thought—’

I stopped her panic with a kiss. What do you know, it worked, just as it had with Provost. In fact, she took another kiss and then another, this time with eyes closed.

I told her what I’d found out, but she couldn’t make much out of it.

‘Things seem to be getting more confused all the time.’

She had a point. It took us a while to find a road down on to Aurora, where we found ourselves part of the evening rush-hour. There was a drive-in burger bar, so we stopped there for dinner. The burgers were huge and delicious. Then Bel dropped her bombshell.

‘I want to see Sam.’

24

New York, New York. Hoffer was back in his element.

He loved all of it, from Brooklyn and Queens to downtown Manhattan. He belonged here, along with all the other movers and shakers, the trick operators and cowboys and scammers. New York made sense to him, he knew its rules, knew when to play and how to play. Other cities, other countries: fuck ’em.

He stood outside the splatter gallery and felt so euphoric, he almost climbed the stairs to his office. Then he crossed to the diner and phoned his secretary instead.

‘Moira baby, I’m down here if anybody wants me.’

‘Sure. Constantine’s here.’

‘Send him down in five minutes.’

‘Okay. Did you bring me a souvenir?’

‘Hah?’

‘A souvenir,’ she persisted. ‘I wanted something royal.’ She sounded petulant.

‘Give me a break,’ Hoffer told her, putting down the phone. He didn’t recognise any of the waitresses. The one who came to his table told him it was vacation time, everyone waiting tables this week was relief.

‘And do you give relief as well, honey?’ Hoffer said, grinning. She stopped chewing her gum and gave him a look. You couldn’t have called the look interested. ‘Just coffee,’ Hoffer said, dismissing her.

He glanced at his watch. Five minutes gave him time for one quick coffee. He didn’t intend staying here, not with Constantine. That fuck always had an appetite, and never seemed to have money enough of his own with which to satisfy it.

Constantine was one of Hoffer’s three employees. He’d just come back from Boston, and Hoffer wanted the lowdown. Meantime, he drank his coffee and stared out of the window. The street was noisy with cabs and drunks and what looked like a few tourists. Someone who looked like a prospective buyer even walked into the splatter gallery. That had to be a first. Then he saw Constantine come out of the building. The guy was young, mid-20s. He was always sharply dressed. Hoffer reckoned he had a side job. He sure as hell didn’t buy all those clothes on what Hoffer paid him. Constantine was a shrewd guy, despite his years. He’d grown up on the street, or not far from it, and had a good way with words. He usually got people to talk.

Hoffer was at the diner door waiting for him. He put an arm round Constantine’s shoulder and led him away from the diner.

‘Let’s walk, get some air.’

‘I was gonna have some cheesecake,’ Constantine complained.

‘Sure, kid, later. First, tell me about Boston.’

What was there to tell? Armed with the information that the D-Man and Harrison had touched down there, all Constantine had done was find their hotel.

‘They only stayed one night,’ he told his employer. ‘Staff hardly saw them. Crashed out, I’d guess.’

Hoffer was only half-listening. Between his friend in the FBI and Robert Walkins’s contacts, he’d been able to find out a little about Don Kline. This past day or so, he’d found himself thinking more about Kline than about the D-Man. After all, the D-Man had never had the bad grace to disturb Hoffer at breakfast.

Kline was ex-NSC. Nobody seemed to know why he’d resigned; at least, nobody was telling. This niggled Hoffer, because now he couldn’t be sure who was paying Kline. Somebody had to be paying him. That trip to the UK must have cost something, plus he had men to feed. Kline was beginning to worry Hoffer more than the D-Man himself was. Maybe he was just nervous that Kline might track the D-Man down before he did. Maybe there was more to it than that...

‘What’s that you said?’ Hoffer said suddenly.

‘The sister hotel,’ Constantine repeated. ‘That’s where they headed after Boston. They booked from their hotel.’

‘Sister hotel where?’

‘Here,’ Constantine said, opening his arms wide. ‘That’s what I’ve been telling you. Here in Manhattan.’

‘Where in Manhattan?’

‘The corner of 42nd and 7th.’

Hoffer was already waving down a cab.

The hotel was a typical tourist place, lacking style but clean enough to suffice. They’d booked in as Weston, and again they’d stayed just the one night. Hoffer handed a twenty to the desk clerk, as agreed.

‘Any idea how they spent their time?’

‘Sir,’ said the desk clerk, pocketing the money, ‘to be honest, I don’t remember them at all.’

‘You don’t, huh?’ The clerk shook his head.

‘Well, thanks for your time. Rate you charge, I’d’ve been cheaper renting a hooker.’Hoffer turned away and found himself face to face with Constantine. ‛I don’t like it,’he said.

‘What?’

‘The fact that the D-Man’s been here. This is my fucking town!’ Then he stuffed his hands into his pockets and charged out of the hotel, nearly toppling two elderly tourists in his wake. Constantine followed him into the street. Hoffer turned so suddenly, the two almost collided.

‘Right,’ he said, ‘look at flights, trains, coaches, car rental, the lot. Leave nothing out. Names to check: Weston, West, and Wesley, pre-names Michael or Mark. And remember there’ll be a female companion.’ Hoffer turned away again and faced the traffic. He wasn’t seeing it.

‘What was he doing here?’ he asked. ‘What did he come here for? He must’ve had someone to see, maybe something stashed away.’

‘You don’t think he’s still here, chief?’

‘What am I, fucking Sitting Bull? Don’t ever call me chief, understand?’

‘Sure.’ Constantine swallowed. He’d never seen his boss like this. Come to that, he’d seldom seen his boss period. But the guy paid, always on time and always the amount owing, and you had to respect that. Money: it was practically the only thing, excepting the Giants, his mother, and the pairing of Cary Grant with Katharine Hepburn, that Constantine did respect.

‘So what’re you waiting for?’ Hoffer said. ‘A gratuity?’

Then he turned away from Constantine and walked away. Constantine watched him go. There was room in his heart for a moment’s pity. He wouldn’t like to be Leo Hoffer, not for a day, not for a hundred thousand dollars (which was what he reckoned Hoffer earned in a year). There couldn’t be many years left inside Hoffer’s oversized body, maybe ten at most. Guys his size never lasted; they were like dinosaurs that way, neither species meant to last.

Eventually, Constantine’s attention was diverted by a burger bar across the intersection. He dug into his pocket and started counting his change.

Back in his apartment that evening, Hoffer took a shower, then wished he hadn’t.

His ears still hadn’t recovered from the flight, and he got some water and soap in one of them, making it worse. It was like the wax was moving in there, like it was alive, crackling. Maybe the stuff was evolving or mutating. He stuck a match in, but that hurt, so he let the wax be. Maybe it was more than wax, some infection or something. He took some painkillers and had a hit of his duty free. Then he slumped on his sofa and took a look around him.

The apartment didn’t have much to it. No personality or anything like that. It was a place to sleep, to ball sometimes, a place to cook up a meal if he could be bothered. He didn’t have hobbies, and he wasn’t about to waste his time decorating or anything like that. He never brought friends back here, because he didn’t have any friends. There were a few guys he might go to a ball game with or play poker with, but that was always someplace else, not here. They were men he’d known on the force. Actually, these days, he hung out with more old hoods than old cops. A sign of the way his life had gone.

He couldn’t remember the last woman he’d brought back here. Why should he? They were always one-night stands, the woman was usually drunk, and so, come to that, was Hoffer. He had plenty to waste his self-pity on. He could sit here all night bawling inside like a baby. Or he could go get ripped at the bar down the street. Instead, he pulled out the file Joe Draper had given him. And he wondered again, what am I doing here when I could be in Seattle? He knew that’s where the D-Man would head, maybe not straight away, but eventually. So what was Hoffer doing hanging around New York? He reckoned he had half the answer: he wanted the D-MAN to do his thing. Because Hoffer too wanted to know who had set the D-Man up, and why. He wanted to know who else wanted the D-Man as badly as Hoffer himself did. Part of him didn’t like the competition. It was like someone was trying to steal his pet mutt.

But there was more to it than that. There was Kline. He still couldn’t see where Kline fitted in, but he knew Kline would be on the lookout for him. Since arriving back in the States, he’d been watching for tails, checking for bugs. Kline would be keeping tabs somehow. Hoffer didn’t want to look too keen. He’d hit Seattle soon, but on his own terms. And by then maybe Kline and the D-Man would be out in the open. That would be interesting. That would be very interesting.

‘Yeah,’ he said, nodding to himself. Then he got up and put his jacket back on. All of a sudden he wanted two things: a drink, and not to be alone.

‘Simple needs,’ he muttered, locking the door behind him.

25

It was time Bel had a disguise.

So we dyed her hair dark and I helped her with a haircut. Her hair had been short to start with, now it made her head look like a hedgehog. Not that I told her this. She quite liked the cut, and ran her hand over her head, enjoying the feel of the bristles. She used an eyelash-brush to dye her eyebrows. Then she started playing with the make-up we’d bought in the supermarket next to the motel.

Bel trimmed my hair. She was good at it, she’d gone on a course once. My own choice of dye wasn’t so successful, and left my hair streaky. I didn’t bother with the eyebrows.

‘How do I look?’ said Bel. The truth was, she looked stunning. It was just that she didn’t look like Bel any more. Her eyes were heavily made up, black, and incredibly sexy. It was hard to look at them without looking away again quickly. She’d dusted her cheeks and applied cherry lipstick to her mouth. She’d bought some cheap jewellery, and now wore earrings and bangles and a gold chain around her throat.

‘You look different.’

‘Different is what we want.’ She pouted. ‘Now, Mikey, do I get to go to the hospital?’

‘Just don’t try an American accent, all right?’

‘You got it, Mikey.’

Actually, to my ears her accent was pretty good. Its only flaw was that it sounded like an actress doing it rather than the real thing. I guessed she’d picked it up from TV and films rather than from our travels.

She seemed confident, so I drove her downtown. Part of me was hoping she’d walk into Clancy’s room and be arrested on the spot. I didn’t think she’d tell them anything, but at least she’d be safely locked away. I considered phoning the cops from a callbox and tipping them off, only she’d know who’d done it.

So I dropped her off near the hospital steps and drove the VW around the block. There was a visitors’ car park, and since I couldn’t find a space anywhere else, I ended up there. The problem was, I couldn’t see the hospital entrance, so I got out of the van and walked about, kicking my heels like I was waiting for someone. I wasn’t alone. There were a couple of other men doing the same thing, plus a cab driver chewing gum and leaning his arm out of his cab to beat a tattoo with his fingers on the roof.

It was a warm evening, but not sticky. It had been about this time of year that I’d come here whale-watching. I’d been lucky. I’d seen several pods of orcas. I couldn’t remember now why I’d wanted to watch whales, but I was glad I’d done it.

‘I hate hospitals.’ I turned towards the speaker. It was the cabbie. I walked over towards him. ‘I mean, I could wait inside, right? But I prefer to wait in the car. Inside, I could maybe get a coffee, but then there’d be that smell wafting up at me. You know that smell?’ He waved his hands beneath his nose. ‘That damned doctor smell, things in bottles. That sort of smell.’

‘I know what you mean.’

‘You need a cigarette?’ He offered me one, and for some reason I took it. He decided this had broken sufficient ice for him to get out of the car. Once out, he lit both our cigarettes. He had an ex-boxer’s face and a few faded blue tattoos on his arms. He was wearing a short-sleeved shirt with a row of pens in the breast-pocket. ‘You ever wonder how many people are dying in there while you’re waiting outside, huh? How many are throwing their guts up or haemorrhaging? You get in a fight or what?’

I touched my face. ‘Yeah, sort of.’

‘Jesus, what did he hit you with, a tyre-iron?’

‘Actually, it was his fist.’

The cabbie whistled. ‘Big fuck, huh?’

‘Huge.’

He flexed his shoulders, wondering if he could have made a better job of my opponent.

‘Have you ever boxed?’ I asked him.

‘Yeah, I used to do some.’

‘I thought so.’

‘You?’

‘I’m a man of peace.’

‘Well, in my estimation, everyone’s a man of peace until he gets steamed up about something. I had a lot of aggression in my youth. What was I going to do, be a public nuisance or step into a ring? Step into a ring, all that aggression is licensed. It’s entertainment.’

‘You enjoyed it, huh?’

‘I didn’t much enjoy getting beat.’

I wasn’t listening any more. I was watching the entrance. A few people had just come out of the hospital and were standing on the steps. I recognised Kline first. It took me another moment to recognise Bel.

Kline was looking up and down the street. At first I thought he was looking for me, but in fact they were waiting for a car. One of his men, the passenger from the front car in Oban, spoke into a radio. Bel was staring at the ground. Kline had a hand on her arm.

‘Hey, you okay?’

The cigarette had dropped from my mouth. I turned away from the cabbie and walked quickly to the van. I went into the back, opened a cupboard, and brought out the Colt Commando. It was pre-loaded and ready for action. Then I got into the driver’s seat and started the van. The cabbie was wide-eyed as I passed him, one hand on my steering-wheel and the other gripping the gun.

Kline’s car was just arriving. They’d brought Bel down to the kerbside. I speeded up and hit the kerb, bouncing the van on to the pavement. Kline and his men looked surprised, then scared. They dived out of the way as I let rip with a few rounds. Bel didn’t need to be told what to do. She opened the passenger door and clambered in.

‘Hey, Kline!’ I roared. ‘We need to talk.’

He was crouching behind the car. ‘Fuck you!’

I fired another burst to keep them down, then reversed back on to the road, hit first gear again, and roared forward.

‘Get down!’ I yelled. I fired a burst up into the air, but they weren’t scared any more. The initial shock had worn off and they’d found their pistols. I felt rounds thumping into the side and rear of the van. But they missed the tyres. We took a hard right into another street, ran a red light and took a left. I didn’t know where the hell we were, but I knew we were out of range.

‘We don’t seem to be having much luck with our vehicles,’ I said. I was thinking: at the very least now they’d know that I was seriously armed and driving a VW van. They might even have got the licence number. It was only three letters and three numbers, easily memorized. I kept checking in the rearview, but there was no sign of pursuit. I slowed down a bit until I’d got my bearings. Soon we were back on 99 and heading north.

‘Don’t you want to hear what happened?’ Bel said. She was shivering. I wound my window back up, then realized that wasn’t why she was shivering.

‘So what happened?’ I was more than angry with her, I was furious. I’d told her not to go, I’d known it was a stupid idea. Yet I hadn’t stopped her. I was furious with myself.

‘They must have been in the reception area, only I didn’t see them. I asked where I could find Sam Clancy, and the woman on the desk pointed me along a corridor. Only, halfway along they grabbed me. They had a good look at me, and then Kline told me to say something.’

‘You tried your American accent?’

‘Yes. The bastard hit me. So I started swearing at him, and all he did was smile. Then he told me he knew who I was and he asked me where you were.’

‘What did he call me?’

‘Weston.’

‘Not West?’

‘No, Weston. Or maybe West. I don’t know. Jesus, I was petrified, Michael.’

‘Did you say anything else?’

‘I told him I knew he killed my father and I was going to kill him for that.’

‘Well then, you’ve told him pretty much all he needs to know. He can’t let either of us live now.’

She bit her lip. ‘Thanks for bailing me out.’

I managed to smile at her.

I passed the motel without stopping, turned at a fast food place, and waited for a minute by the roadside. No one was following us.

‘Tomorrow we have to move again. For tonight, we sleep in shifts. The other one keeps watch from the window. Okay?’

‘Okay.’

As it turned out, I didn’t have the heart to wake her. It was all my fault she was here in the first place. What had I been doing taking her to London with me? Of course, if I hadn’t taken her with me, they’d probably have killed her when they killed Max. This thought pushed away the guilt. I sat in a chair by the window, and went out to the vending machine occasionally for ice-cold Coke and chocolate bars. I crunched a few caffeine tablets until my heart rate sounded too high. I knew every inch of the parking lot, every scrap of trash blowing across it. The sodium glare hurt my eyes. I wanted to close them, to wash them out. Then I closed them for a second too long.

I slept.

It was morning when I woke up, and not early morning either.

Through the window I saw the maid’s cleaning cart. She was looking at me, so I shook my head and she pushed the cart along to the next room, knocked, and then went into it.

My watch said 10:15. I got up from the chair and stretched, shrugging my shoulders free of their stiffness. I needed a shower.

‘Bel,’ I said. ‘Time to wake up.’

She rolled over, exhaled, and then lifted her head from the pillow. Like me she was almost fully dressed.

‘What time is it?’

‘It’s gone ten. Come on, get up. You can take first shower.’

I watched her as she slunk into the bathroom and closed the door. I knew our options now had narrowed considerably. We were no longer the hunters but the hunted. Worst of all, I still didn’t know what was going on. I could think of one man who knew: Jeremiah Provost. But Kline would have Provost covered. Kline would have everything covered.

I had enough quarters left to buy us a couple of breakfast Cokes. I had a head full of mud and my body felt like it was dragging weights. The vending machine was next to the ice-box in a little connecting alley between the back of the motel and the front. There was a concrete stairwell up to the rooms on the first floor. I’d sat there last night for a while, listening to traffic. Now, as I got the second can from the machine, I heard tyres squeal out front. I looked around the corner and saw a car sitting next to the motel office. A man was getting out of the passenger side, buttoning his jacket as he walked to the office. He wore sunglasses and looked around him. I didn’t recognise the man, but he didn’t look like a typical resident. He looked official. I ducked back into the alley and flew to our room.

‘Got to go!’ I called. Bel came out of the bathroom dressed and rubbing her hair with a towel. ‘Got to go,’ I said. When she saw me throwing stuff into a bag, she took the hint, threw down the towel, and started packing.

‘What’s the problem?’

‘Bad guys at the office. They could be asking about VW vans.’ I took hold of the Smith & Wesson. ‘Here,’ I told her, ‘take this.’

She didn’t say anything. It took her a moment to make up her mind, then she snatched the pistol from me. She checked the clip, slapped it home and made sure the safety was on. I didn’t have time for a smile.

They say discretion is the better part of valour, but we were anything but discreet leaving the room. We ran to the van, heaving bags into the back. Bel was toting the pistol, and I had the Colt Commando by its carrying handle. I’d taken off the flash-hider. When I’d used the Commando last night, the noise without the hider had been impressive. It had made people duck. So the hider stayed off.

Now we were in the van, I hesitated for a second. What were we supposed to do? Cruise past the car with a nod and a smile? Play hide and seek around the motel? Or leave the van and take to the streets? I certainly didn’t want to leave the van, not just yet. So the only thing to do was drive... drive, and see what happened. I knew I could tell Bel to split, to run off on her own, or stay holed up in the room. It was me they wanted. But of course they’d want her too. We were a package now; she knew everything I did. Besides, she wouldn’t stay behind. It wasn’t her style. I turned to her.

‘Tell me about yourself.’

‘What?’

‘You said I should ask you some time when you weren’t expecting it.’

‘You’re crazy, Michael.’ But she was grinning. I realized she was probably readier for this than I was. I started the engine.

‘It’s just, it’d be nice to have known you before we die.’

‘We’re not going to die.’ She raised the pistol. ‘I love you, Michael.’

‘I love you, too. I always have.’

She flipped the safety off the semi-automatic. ‘Just drive,’ she said.

I drove.

We took it slow out of our parking bay and around the side of the motel, then speeded up. I saw that the car was still parked. Worse, it had reversed back to block the only ramp into and out of the car park. I brought the van to a stop. The passenger came out of the office and saw us. He pointed us out to the driver, then took a radio from his pocket. With his other hand, he was reaching into his pocket for something else. And when the driver got out of the car, I saw he was holding a machine-gun. I risked a glance over my shoulder, but all I could see were walls.

‘Come on, Michael, let’s do it.’

‘Do what?’

‘What do you think?’ She pushed open her door, readying to get out. The driver was taking aim against the roof of the car. I opened my door and steadied the Commando.

Then I saw it.

It was a flat-bed pick-up with a cattle bar on the front and searchlights on top of the cab. I don’t know where it came from, but I could see where it was going. It mounted the pavement and kept on coming. Hearing the engine roar, the car driver half-turned, saw what was happening, and pushed himself away from his vehicle, just as the cattle bar hit it from behind. The pick-up’s back wheels lifted clean off the ground from the force of the collision, but that was nothing compared to the car. It jumped forward and then spun, looking like a wild horse trying to throw off its rider. Its boot crumpled and then flew open, its rear window splintering. Both driver and passenger had hit the ground. Now a shotgun appeared from the pick-up’s passenger-side window and blasted two rounds over the heads of the men, shattering the office window. Then the pick-up reversed back down the short ramp and out on to the road, stopping traffic.

‘He’s waiting for us!’ Bel yelled. She was back in the van now, and slammed shut her door. I drove out past the wrecked car, keeping the Commando aimed out of my window in case the two men decided to get up. The pick-up was already moving, so we followed it, stalled cars complaining all around.

‘Who is it?’ Bel was shouting. ‘Who’s in the truck?’

I had a grin all over my face. ‘Who do you think it is? It’s Spike, of course.’

26

The pick-up seemed to know where it was going.

We followed it east on to I-5 and then south through the city till we connected with the I-90 east out of town.

We were headed for the interior.

‘Why doesn’t he stop?’ Bel said.

‘I don’t know.’ I’d flashed my lights a couple of times, but all I’d received in return was a wave from the window. We crossed over Mercer Island, retracing the route we’d taken into Seattle when we’d arrived. Soon we were on a wide road with wilderness either side. This really was frontier country. Few tourists or holidaymakers ventured into the interior. It was hot and dry, and if you didn’t like hills and trees there wasn’t much in the way of scenery. That this was logging country was reinforced by crudely made roadside signs denouncing government policy, foreign timber imports, owls and environmentalists. Not always in that order.

We came off the Interstate at Snoqualmie. I was wrong about the tourists. A lot of cars had come to see the Snoqualmie Falls. The pick-up signalled into the car park and we followed. The only space left was a dozen cars away from the pick-up. I could hardly turn the ignition off quick enough.

I sprinted back to the pick-up. There was no one in the cab. Then I saw Spike. He was crouched in front of the vehicle, examining the damage to his cattle bar. He stood up and grinned at me, showing gorgeous white teeth.

‘You look like hell,’ I said.

‘I’ve been driving all night, what’s your excuse?’

We met and hugged, and this time it was me who lifted him off the ground.

‘Damn it, Spike, I don’t know where you came from, but you’re an angel straight from heaven.’

‘Man, you know where I come from: Lubbock, Texas. And the only angel I ever was was a Hell’s Angel. Oo-ee!’ He touched the bruise on my face. Then Bel came running up, and there was a hug and a kiss for her.

‘Why didn’t you stop before now?’ she asked.

‘I wanted to be sure those chimpanzees weren’t on our tails.’

‘Are you kidding? Did you see what you did to their car?’

‘Oh, but they’ve got friends. And you folks, looks like you’ve got enemies.’

‘And not many friends,’ I conceded.

‘But we only needed one.’ And Bel pecked Spike’s cheek again and squeezed his arm. He blushed, but covered it up by wiping his face with a red bandana. He had dark eyes and greasy hair and three days of beard growth.

‘Man,’ he said, ‘I been living in these clothes.’

‘Yeah, we can tell.’

He punched me in the chest. It was a playful punch, but it hit a raw spot. I winced and doubled over.

‘Jesus, Wild West, I’m sorry.’

Bel helped me upright and explained, ‘Michael got into a fight with one of the bad guys.’

‘I see you’ve got a story to tell me.’

‘We have,’ I said, now recovered. ‘And we’ve a few questions for you.’

Spike shrugged. ‘Let’s find a bar in town, somewhere to take the weight off.’ He thought of something. ‘You didn’t swap my Trans-Am for that Nazi shit, did you? The thing’s full of bullet holes!’

I thought of an answer. ‘Let’s get a beer first.’

‘Follow me.’

It turned out that Spike knew the Snoqualmie and North Bend area pretty well.

He’d hunted out here, he had old friends here, and he’d once crashed a car here, which put him on crutches for a month.

‘Good people,’ he said in the bar, ‘but some of them can be a bit strange. I don’t know, inbreeding or something. You know they filmed Twin Peaks here?’

My face remained blank, but Bel looked interested.

‘So what made you follow us?’ I asked.

Spike took a mouthful of Rainier. ‘Figure it out. I knew you were in trouble, Wild West. Jazz told me some of what Bel had told her. I got the kid to tap back into her computer and print me the same stuff she printed for you. I knew then why you were headed for Seattle, and I knew it could get serious. These cults are bad news. I had a friend got mixed up in one. He’s still in therapy. And don’t forget, I have a Trans-Am riding on this. So I thought maybe I’d tail along.

‘I got to tell you, though, it was coincidence I was there this morning, not inspiration or anything. I hit town first thing this morning, and I was cruising up and down Aurora looking for a motel I liked the look of. I have to tell you, I passed yours twice and never even considered it. What’s wrong, man, your credit no good in this town or what?’ He sniffed and leaned back in his seat. He’d crossed a foot over one leg, showing off scuffed silver-toed shitkicker boots. Very clearly, he was enjoying telling the story. ‘Anyway, as I was going up and down I was seeing these cars with suits in them. They didn’t look like Aurora types at all. They looked like the worst kind of normal. They were checking all the motels, not looking for rooms, that was obvious. They were asking for someone. I followed one of them into an office and got to hear the description he gave to the clerk: man and woman, English, in a Vee-Dub. Well, apart from the car, that seemed to fit. So I stopped looking for a room and started following. When I saw your Volkswagen, man, I knew I’d done something right.’

‘You can say that again,’ said Bel.

‘The Trans-Am got shot up,’ I said. ‘That’s why we’re in the camper.’

‘What happened to it?’

‘A man called Kline had his men spray it with bullets. A journalist who’d been helping us was driving at the time.’

‘Is he...?’

‘He’s okay, we think. He’s in hospital.’

‘So those sonsabitches shot up my car, huh?’ Spike had a determined look on his face. It was the sort of look he got every time he picked up an assault rifle. ‘We’ve got to total them, man.’

‘Not so fast,’ I said. ‘You haven’t heard our story yet. Maybe when you have, you won’t be so enthusiastic.’

‘Then let’s get some more beers in and tell me all about it.’

We got in more beers.

‘This guy called Kline,’ said Spike, ‘I’ve got to waste him, man. I’ve never met him, he doesn’t know me from shit, and yet I just know I’ve got to waste him. I won’t rest easy till I do.’

It wasn’t just the beer talking; it was all the drugs he’d been taking on the road, drugs to keep him awake, drugs to push the accelerator harder, and drugs to hold it all together. I could see that in anywhere between five minutes and a couple of hours he was going to come crashing down.

‘I need some sleep,’ I said. ‘My brain’s stopped working. I was awake all night. Why don’t we head out into the country, find a quiet spot, and recharge a little?’

‘Hey,’ said Spike, ‘I know just the place.’

He led us out of Snoqualmie on the North Bend road, but then turned off and up a forest track. He was kicking up so much dust I thought our engine would die on us, but the VW just kept on going. The track got narrower, then narrower still. At first it had been a logging track, wide enough for a transporter, but now the trees were scraping both sides of the van, and there was grass growing through the gravel. I counted eight miles of this before we emerged into a clearing. So far since coming off the main road we hadn’t seen a single signpost, and no signs of habitation: no electricity pylons or phone lines or mailbox or anything.

But here was a big log house, fairly new and with a lawn surrounding it, beyond which lay impenetrable forest. Spike sounded his horn a few times, but no one came out of the house. We went up to the front door together. There was a note taped there, which Spike read out.

‘ “Dear Friend, If you’ve travelled this far, then you probably know us, so you also probably won’t be surprised that we’re not here. We’re in Portland for a few days and will be back Thursday or Friday. You’re welcome to camp. There’s a stream if you know where to find it. Love and peace, Marnie and Paul.” ’

‘Friends of mine,’ Spike said. There were potted plants all around the outside of the house, and he tapped a few playfully with his toe. ‘We go back a long way.’

‘This is fine,’ I said. ‘We’ve got tents in the van, and the van itself is good for sleeping in.’ He was bending down, lifting the plants and looking at them, sniffing them. ‘We even have a stove...’ My voice died away as he turned a small plant pot upside down and eased the earth and shrub out on to the palm of his hand. There, embedded in the soil and the thin white roots of the plant, was a house-key. Spike winked at me.

‘Friends know where to find the key.’

Inside, the house was fantastic, almost too bright for my liking. Sun streamed through huge louvered windows in the roof. There was unpainted pine everywhere. The walls and furniture were made of it, and the ceiling was panelled with pine tongue-and-groove. There was one large living room, complete with a central stove. Then there were doors off to bedrooms, bathrooms and a kitchen.

‘The bathroom has a whirlpool spa,’ Spike informed us. He flopped on a white sofa. ‘Man, this is the life.’

I didn’t want to sit down. I didn’t want to touch anything for fear of contaminating it. I was amazed to see that when Spike got up again he hadn’t left black smudges on the white material.

Bel had examined the place like a sceptical would-be buyer. She picked up a wastepaper basket and showed it to me.

‘They’ve cleaned the inside of it,’ she said. And so they had.

‘Hey,’ said Spike, ‘you want trash, you come back to my place. This is perfect for our purpose.’

‘And what is our purpose?’ I asked.

‘Follow me and find out.’

He led us back down to the pick-up. I noticed it had a rifle rack behind the bench-seat, but the rack was empty. Spike had opened the door of the cab so we could see in. It wasn’t a pretty sight. The ashtray was brim-full, with cigarette ends lying on the floor where they’d been stubbed out. There was enough lettuce and tomato to make a family a salad. I guessed Spike had been fuelled by service-station subs. There were empty cans and dirty socks and a begrimed T-shirt and maps and cassettes lying everywhere.

‘Nice,’ I said, ‘we’ll take it.’

Spike just smiled and swept everything off the bench-seat on to the floor.

‘Put some carpet down there and it’ll all look spick and span.’

He was still smiling as he unhooked a couple of catches underneath the seat. Then he pulled at the bench-seat, sliding out the actual part you sat on. He pulled the whole thing out and stood it against the pick-up.

‘Well, well,’ I said.

There was a lot of storage space underneath the seat. Spike had filled the space with a lethal array of arms.

‘I think I thought of everything,’ he said.

Bel stuck in a hand and pulled out a cartridge belt. It was full of very long brass cartridges. She held it up like it was a python which had wrapped itself around her wrist.

‘Heavy artillery,’ I said.

‘The time for tiptoeing through the tulips is long past,’ Spike said, pulling out what looked like an Ingram, maybe a Cobray. Beneath it I could see some M16s. My mind boggled at what else he might have in there. ‘No dynamite,’ he said ruefully. ‘Otherwise I couldn’t have taken a chance on ramming that asshole. But I’ve some plastique if you’re in the mood.’ He put his face close to mine. It was a good-looking face, typically American in being well-fed but still hungry. He was wearing one of his sleeveless black T-shirts with black denims. ‘Gun heaven, Wild West, pure gun heaven.’

I hesitated for all of five seconds.

‘Let’s do it.’

We slept the rest of the daylight away. I emerged to find Spike dressed only in fresh T-shirt and shorts, chopping onions in the kitchen. He’d found a marijuana plant in the main bedroom and pinched off a few leaves. The aromas in the kitchen weren’t just cooking herbs. He held up the chopping-knife for me to see. It was a rubber-handled combat knife with a fat nine-inch blade, the last three inches of which were saw-toothed.

‘Chops vegetables great, Wild West.’

‘I’ll take your word for it.’ I looked in the fridge and pulled out a carton of orange juice. I was a lot more comfortable about the place. The condemned man tends to worry less about the state of his cell. I shook the carton and drank from it.

‘Oh, man, cooties!’ Spike complained. ‘Glasses are in the cupboard over the sink.’

So I poured the rest of the juice into a glass, filling it to the brim. I’d drunk half the juice when Bel came in, wearing a long trucker’s T-shirt and not much else that I could see. She’d bought the shirt at a service station. It showed a chrome-fronted truck blowing out smoke like steam from a cartoon bull’s nose. There was a Confederate flag in the background and the legend Ain’t No Chicken!

Spike was trying not to look at her legs as she stood in front of the fridge, bending from the waist to see what there was.

‘Any juice?’

‘Here.’ I handed her my glass. ‘We’re on cootie-sharing terms,’ I told Spike.

‘Cosy,’ he said, still chopping. He scooped the onion into a pan and added oil. Bel went to watch. ‘Uncle Spike’s Texas-Style Chilli,’ he revealed. ‘So long as I can find all the ingredients.’ He opened a tin of tomatoes and poured the lot in, along with half a tube of puree. Then he added chilli powder and some other herbs, and finished with a drained tin of red kidney beans.

‘Can’t find any meat, but what the hell. How hot do you like it?’ He offered Bel a spoonful of the juice. She thought it was hot enough already.

‘Chicken,’ he said to her.

‘Well, Spike, why don’t you pour some into another pan, that can be my pan? Then you two boys can add as much fire as you like to your share. I’ll just sit and watch you tough it out when it comes time to eat.’ She patted his back. ‘It’s food, remember, not an arm-wrestling contest.’

Spike waited a few moments, then howled with laughter.

‘Bel, you’ve got more balls than half the guys I know. Move down to Texas and marry me.’ He got down on one knee and grabbed her hand. ‘I’m proposing right now, proposing to the woman of my dreams.’

She pushed him away with her bare toe and he sat back on the floor, arms behind him.

‘The Good Lord spare me from rejection!’

‘Sorry, Spike. Maybe one day when you’re older.’

‘Come on,’ I said, leading her through to the living area. There was a breakfast bar between it and the kitchen. We flopped on to the sofa while Spike sang a few bars of some country song, then decided to whistle it instead.

‘Bel,’ I said quietly, ‘I want you to stay here while Spike and I—’

She leapt back up. ‘No way, José! I come this far and now you want to dump me?’

‘Sit down, please.’

She sat down. ‘Listen, before you try any other speeches or tactics, Michael, I know why you said what you said, and I appreciate it. It shows you care. But you couldn’t stop me coming with you if you put a gun to my head, not even one of those M16s. If you leave me here, I’ll wave down a car, cosh the driver, and come after you. And I won’t be in a good mood.’

‘Bel, I only want to—’

‘I know you do, sweetheart.’ She stood up, then bent over me and planted a kiss on my forehead. Then she went over to the hi-fi and searched for something suitable.

Well, I thought, that went pretty much as predicted. I’d tried, which didn’t mean I could now progress with a clear conscience. What I’d been about to tell Bel was that if she came along, she’d only be a liability. She might get in the way, or she might cause us to make a critical misjudgment. I knew if I was wounded and there was heavy fire, Spike would leave me... and he’d be right. But would either of us leave Bel under the same circumstances? Spike had already confided that he didn’t want Bel along.

‘I’m not being sexist, man, but this won’t be any party for a lady. Nobody’s going to be eating sausage-on-a-stick and drinking Californian white. There won’t be nice dresses and urbane conversation. It’s going to be expletives and explosives, and that’s pretty much all. What if she freezes? What if she chokes, man? What then?’

I hadn’t an answer for him. It was a question, really, that had to be put to Bel.

Bel put Springsteen on the hi-fi, which met with a roar of approval from the chef. It was early Bruce, and even I knew the record. We sang along where we could, and Spike even sang along where he couldn’t. Bel disappeared back into the bedroom and reappeared wearing jeans and boots. Spike had worked up a sweat in the kitchen, and guzzled from a bottle of red wine. He saw me looking at him.

‘Hey,’ he said, ‘not a touch after this, okay?’

‘That’s okay,’ I said, ‘we’re not going out there tonight.’

‘Why not, Wild West?’

‘Lots of reasons. They’re almost certainly expecting us, we’re not ready, we’re still all a bit zonked or a bit hyper. Lots of reasons.’

‘Not ready? Man, how ready can we be?’

‘Readier than this. We want to be fully rested. Tomorrow is better.’

‘What? Tomorrow at dawn?’

‘Tomorrow night.’

‘Why wait, man?’

‘Because Jeremiah Provost’s supposed to be visiting HQ tomorrow.’

Bel sat down beside me. ‘You think he still will?’

‘I don’t know, maybe.’ Spike had come out of the kitchen. He handed round glasses and poured wine into them from the bottle he’d been swigging from.

‘It’s safe, Wild West, no cooties on me.’

‘He means germs,’ I told Bel.

‘I knew that,’ she said coolly.

‘Spike,’ I said, ‘we need this extra time. You’ve still got to show us how to use that arsenal you’ve provided.’

‘Yeah,’ he conceded, ‘that’s true. I was just itching to do it tonight.’

‘Relax, calm down. Take a slow drink and we’ll eat a lazy meal. Tomorrow we’ll fire off some guns, check their action.’

Bel shook her head. ‘If we’re going to the peninsula tomorrow night, surely it makes more sense to try out the guns tonight, when conditions are the same?’

Spike whistled through his teeth. ‘That is a good point.’

‘I do have my good points,’ Bel said, accepting more wine.

Twenty minutes later, we sat down to the meatless chili. We ate it with rice and nothing else. It was fine, but Spike kept complaining about how tame it was and splashing pepper sauce over his. His forehead was all perspiration as we talked.

‘That Commando is pretty good,’ I said. ‘Kicks a bit.’

‘You’re using it one-handed, of course it kicks. Wait’ll you try the Ingram, that thing is like somebody’s standing there jostling your arm all the time. We are not talking pinpoint accuracy, but it’s a nine-point-five on the mayhem scale.’ He scooped up another spoonful of beans. ‘Have you tried the Varmint yet?’

‘Haven’t needed to.’

‘Been one of those weeks, huh? Well, here’s my plan. I’ll fire an Ingram up into the air and flush them out, then spray the fuckers, while you sit up a tree and pick off the clever ones who’re hiding in the cabins. How does that sound?’

‘Lousy,’ I said, reading Bel’s mind. Me, I didn’t think it was such a bad plan.

But Bel threw her spoon into her bowl. ‘You could be shooting innocent people. We don’t know that they’re all involved. So far as the cult goes, we don’t know that any of them are involved.’

‘That’s true, Spike,’ I said quickly. I didn’t want to give him a chance to say something that would really get Bel angry. ‘From what I heard and saw of Provost’s conversation with Kline, they’re not exactly buddies. Kline couldn’t have been treated worse if he’d been selling Bibles in hell.’

‘Hell’s full of Bible salesmen,’ Spike said, and I smiled a wide smile at his joke. Bel was still stony-faced, but he had one weapon to throw at her.

‘Bel,’ he said, lobbing it without looking, ‘now don’t get me wrong, but I don’t want you along tomorrow night.’

‘Tough,’ she said. Spike looked to me for support, but I was busy trying to get the last few beans on to my spoon.

‘See,’ he went on, ‘Wild West and me, we’ve been there before in our different ways. Never as a team exactly, but we know the situation and we know the ground.’

‘No,’ she said to him, ‘you don’t, I do. I’ve been out there, I’ve been in the fucking compound! And you expect me to sit here knitting you scarves for winter while you go scurrying off to play your little game? No way.’

‘Bel,’ he said, ‛I know you know about guns, but can you actually use one?’

There was a silent stare between them. Bel was first to speak. ‘You son of a bitch.’ She turned it back into four words, where for most Americans it was one. Not sumbitch but son of a bitch. Then she stood up, left the table, and went outside.

I followed, curious to see what she’d do. What she did was find a switch on the wall outside. I suppose she’d noticed it before. Bright white light filled the clearing. I thought I caught a glimpse of a young deer melting back into the woods. There were lamps at ground level and up in the trees. It was like watching a stage-set. Spike joined me on the porch, handing me my wine glass. Bel got into the pick-up and started its engine.

‘What’s she up to?’ he said.

‘I think I’ve got an idea.’

She drove the pick-up to the far edge of the clearing and parked it. Then she started looking around her. I took the empty wine bottle from Spike and headed down the stairs. By the time I reached her, she’d found a couple of large stones and an empty Coke can. I handed her the wine bottle. She smiled and placed it on the bonnet of the pick-up. Then she reached into the cab and emerged with some weapons.

Spike had come down the stairs too. Even he knew what was going on. Bel walked back towards the house and turned to face the pick-up. It was standing side-on to her, the targets all in a row along its bonnet. She chose a handgun first. Expertly she checked and reloaded the clip, then held it out one-handed, closed her left eye, and let off three shots. She hit the can and two of the stones, sending them sliding across the bonnet. I replaced the stones and the can, by which time she’d got to know the small service-style revolver. Three more shots from that, all finding their target.

Spike started clapping, spilling wine from his glass. ‘Okay,’ he said, ‘another good point. Message received.’

But she wasn’t about to take that. She got the Varmint from the camper and loaded it, then fired off six elegant shots, each one on target. She hadn’t nicked the pick-up’s paintwork. For her final shot, she smashed the wine bottle to pieces.

Spike was clapping and whistling again. She turned to face him.

‘I can shoot,’ she said. ‘I just don’t like it. And I especially don’t like it when innocent people get hurt.’

‘Okay,’ said Spike, arms open in conciliation. ‘Give us another plan.’

‘I’ve got a plan for you,’ I said. ‘It’s in the form of a question. How do you sort out the good guys from the bad?’

They both shook their heads, so I supplied the answer. ‘You see who runs away. Now come on, the next drink is on the house.’

But we had coffee instead of wine, and we sat on the ground outside while Spike spread out his wares. He laid everything out on a couple of old blankets.

‘You ever see that film,’ he said, ‘where all the guns are laid out on the bed, and De Niro’s buying? Man, I can’t wait to see their faces when we turn up toting this little package.’ Spike’s grin was halogen-white.

I thought I saw Bel shiver, but then it was getting late. I felt a little shivery myself.

27

And still there were decisions.

For instance, should we check Provost’s house, see if he really had gone to Lake Crescent?

Should we visit the house on Hood Canal first? That way, we might take out possible reinforcements. We didn’t want to lay siege to the cabins only to have a vanload of newly-summoned heat creep up on us from behind.

Should we take the pick-up, the V-Dub, or both? They’d be looking out for the camper, but then they’d also be on the lookout for a crazy pick-up driver with dents in his cattle-bar.

One thing we knew: it was too dangerous to cross on to the peninsula by ferry. They’d almost certainly be watching Bremerton. In fact, there weren’t nearly enough roads into the Olympic Peninsula for my liking. For an area measuring roughly ninety miles by sixty, it boasted only two routes into it. There was just the one main road, the 101, circling the perimeter of the National Park and National Forest. Using as few as maybe half a dozen men, they’d have advance warning of any approach we might make.

There were other possibilities, but they were time-consuming. One had us take a boat to Victoria, British Columbia, and then another boat back from there to Port Angeles. The two crossings would take a total of several hours, and as Spike pointed out, Kline would already have considered this. If he was agency or government, he’d have an order put out for all sailings to be watched.

‘What you’re saying,’ said Bel, ‘is that there’s no way in there without them knowing about it?’

Spike nodded, but I had an idea. It was just about my craziest notion yet, but my partners went for it. After that, things started slotting into place.

Since the authorities weren’t on the lookout for Spike, we rented a car in his name in North Bend. It was a bland family model, and Spike decried the loss of his beloved stick-shift. But it gave us the confidence to head back into Seattle. We stopped at Ed’s Guns and Sporting Goods. I asked Archie if anyone had been asking questions. He shook his head.

‘What’re you looking for this time, son?’

‘Balaclavas and warpaint,’ I informed him.

It was when I said this that it all hit home, the sheer madness of it all. I was way out of my league; I was playing a different game altogether. I should have been scared shitless, and I was. I could hardly stop my hands shaking — not exactly a good sign in a professional sniper. My heart was thumping and I kept thinking I was going to be sick. But at the same time it was like being a little drunk, and Bel and Spike felt the same. We kept grinning at each other and collapsing into fits of nervous giggling. I burst out laughing in Archie’s shop. He gave me a look, and smiled like he got the joke.

‘There’s no joke,’ I told him. And there wasn’t. There was just the euphoria of fear. I was pushing myself towards the confrontation as though each step had to be taken in thicker and deeper mud. It was the slowest day of my life. For all the activity and movement, it was slower than all the days I’d spent in hotel rooms, waiting for my hit to arrive in town, all the days I’d sat by windows, working out firing angles and distances. Archie seemed disappointed at the size of the sale.

‘I see your friend’s going to be all right.’

‘What?’

He smiled. ‘Don’t worry, I won’t tell anybody. They had a photo of him on TV. I recognised him straight off.’

‘What’s the latest?’

‘He’s awake. The police are talking to him. So far it’s as one-sided as staging The Price is Right in a convent.’

I nodded, relieved. ‘Archie,’ I said, ‘could you go to the hospital, say you’re a friend of his?’

‘You want me to go see him?’

‘If you give your name and address, I think he’ll agree to see you.’

‘Well, hell, what am I supposed to say?’

‘Tell him we’re fine. Tell him today’s the day. It might help cheer him up.’

He screwed shut one eye. ‘Does this make me an accessory?’

‘What’s the crime?’

‘Well...’ He scratched his head. ‘I can’t close up the shop till six.’

‘This evening would be fine. It’d be perfect.’

I tried handing him a twenty for his trouble, but he wouldn’t take it.

‘Be careful out there,’ he told me.

‘I will, Archie, I will.’

‘I hate this car,’ said Spike. ‘This is the most boring car I’ve ever sat in in my life. Period.’

We were parked at the top of the hill, a hundred yards from Provost’s house. We’d been sitting watching for a while, Spike drumming his fingers on the steering-wheel.

‘I say we switch to my plan.’ Spike’s plan was simple. He’d walk up to Provost’s front door and ring the bell.

‘Just like the Avon lady,’ he said.

The plan depended on two things: the fact that Provost, Kline and the others didn’t know Spike, and that Spike could manufacture some bullshit excuse as to why he was ringing the bell in the first place.

We took a vote: it was two to one in favour. I was the lone dissenter. So Spike got out of the car and jogged his way down the hill.

‘What’s wrong?’ Bel asked.

‘I can’t help feeling we’re playing our joker a bit early.’ She didn’t get it, so I explained. ‘Spike’s our secret weapon. If they rumble him, we’re back to square one.’

She smiled. ‘Aren’t you mixing your card games and your board games?’

I gave her a sour look, like I’d just bitten on something hard and was checking my molars for damage. Then I watched through the windscreen for Spike’s return.

It wasn’t long before he came jogging back up the hill again. He cast a look back to see if anyone was watching him, then got into the car and turned the ignition.

‘The place is empty,’ he said. ‘I took a look around, nothing. They’ve got curtains over the windows, but even then I could tell nobody was home.’

‘Then he’s gone to the peninsula,’ said Bel.

‘Looks like. Either that or he’s off to Costco for his month’s groceries.’

This was it then. We were headed out to confront Provost and Kline. I felt weary, and leaned my head against the back of the seat, happy to let Spike do the driving. He turned on the radio and found a rock station. Springsteen: Born in the USA. Spike turned the volume up all the way and sang his heart out to the distorted song.

We already knew we were taking the long route to the peninsula, south through Tacoma and then north again.

‘Spike,’ I said, ‘we really appreciate you helping us.’

‘Man, I’m not helping you, I’m on vacation.’

‘How’s it been so far?’

‘More fun than Epcot, I’ll tell you that.’

‘I’m not sure that’s a recommendation.’

He was grinning with his near-perfect teeth. ‘It is, believe me. We should all go to EPCOT when this is over.’

‘Who knows?’ I said quietly. We drove into Port Angeles and then out again in the direction of Pioneer Memorial Museum.

We stopped on the southern edge of town, not far from the Park Headquarters. Then we put my plan into action.

Bel managed to get the attention of two park wardens who’d just driven their car out of Park HQ. She brought them over to our car, where Spike and I smiled and nodded a greeting.

‘What’s the problem here?’ the first of them asked pleasantly.

‘This,’ said Spike, pointing the Ingram at the man’s chest. The man, to give him credit, saw the problem immediately. It wasn’t our problem, it was his. We took him and his partner in the Chrysler, while Bel drove the Park Service car. A little further out of town, we pulled off the road on to a track in the woods and stripped the wardens of their clothes.

‘Jesus, why did you have to pick on Laurel and Hardy?’ Spike complained to Bel. He was having trouble getting his uniform on, while mine fell off me like washing on a clothes-horse. We’d already tried swapping, but it had been worse.

We tied the wardens up thoroughly, and left one of them lying in the front of the Chrysler, the other in the back. We transferred our stuff to their car, and Bel got into the back, lying down across the seat and covering herself with a tartan travel-rug.

‘National Park Service,’ said Spike, getting into the driving seat. ‘Here to serve and protect the wildlife.’ He laughed. ‘We’ll show them what a wild life really means.’

Then he reversed all the way back on to the road. We took the 101 west. Five miles out of town, the road forked, but we kept heading west on 112. Just after the branch-off, we saw them.

There was a 434 parked by the side of the road, and two men standing beside it. They were as obvious a lookout as we could have hoped for. We debated stopping and confronting them — Spike said it would be a test of our disguises if nothing else. But I prevailed, and we drove past. If we’d put them out of action, their absence might be spotted. And we needed time to set things up. So we left them there, knowing that if they were summoned to the Disciples’ HQ, it would still take them half an hour to get there. I didn’t think we’d need more than half an hour. The way Spike saw it, if we went along with his plan we wouldn’t need more than five minutes.

If you’ve ever seen the napalm attack in Apocalypse Now, you’ll get some idea of the scale he was thinking on.

I crouched in the woods and watched the world through my night-vision scope. Strange things were happening in the Disciples’ compound.

Or rather, nothing was happening.

And that was strange.

It wasn’t that everyone had retired for the night. I got the feeling that most of the cabins were devoid of life. Spike and Bel had gone on a recce and come back with the news that they couldn’t see any vehicles anywhere. Well, I could see one: Kline’s Lincoln. It was squeezed in between two cabins, supposedly out of sight. But I couldn’t see any other cars.

Only one explanation made sense: someone had sent the Disciples away. Now why would they do that? Obviously, because they weren’t wanted. It meant one thing to me: the Disciples didn’t know what was going on, and Kline and his men didn’t want them to know what was going on.

I was concentrating not on the original cabin, the one where I’d been disturbed by Nathan, but on the smaller cabin next to it. This was where the light was burning. It looked like an oil-lamp or something powered by gas, and gave off a halo of yellow light. The pow-wow was taking place in this cabin. I was waiting for the braves to emerge.

Meanwhile I scanned the rest of the compound. It was pitch black, but to my right eye the world was a red filter with a black cross-sight. It was still and quiet. Sound carried a long way out here, and I actually heard a distant rattle as the cabin door opened.

I moved the scope back to the cabin and watched as a man appeared in the doorway. He was one of Kline’s men, and he was smoking a cigarette. Other men filtered out on to the porch and lit up. Provost must be a non-smoker. They’d been in a room with him, and were now desperate. There were six of them. Three I thought I recognised from Oban, and three I didn’t. Provost and Kline must still be in the cabin. The door opened again and someone stepped out.

A woman.

I recognised her by her shape. She was Alisha, Provost’s lieutenant and lover. She accepted a cigarette and stood talking to the men.

They spoke in undertones, but even so I could hear the noise they made, even if I couldn’t hear the words. The men were wearing suits. There would be handguns under the suits, but they were more prepared than that. Two of them had rested their M16s against the wall of the cabin while they smoked. They kept looking into the distance, mostly towards me. But from where they were, I knew they couldn’t see anything. All they could see was movement, and the only things moving were the branches of the trees as the breeze passed over them.

I waited, but Kline and Provost didn’t come out. Nor did they pass in front of the window. I adjusted the scope a fraction, and felt better. The scope was attached to the Varmint, and the Varmint was loaded with its full five rounds. I didn’t have any padding against my shoulder. I didn’t mind if I bruised. Bruising seemed the least of my problems.

I heard movement behind me.

‘Well?’ Spike whispered.

‘I count six men so far. I haven’t seen Provost or Kline, but there’s one woman. So that’s a total of nine.’

‘And seven of those we can take out straight away,’ Spike said.

‘I’d like Kline alive... at least until he’s talked to me.’

‘Then we’d better get a car battery and a couple of electrodes. I mean, he’s not going to talk for the fun of it.’

He had a point. Bel had moved more quietly than Spike. She was the other side of me. All three of us were wearing balaclavas and face-paint: green and black. Just in case they had a lighting system rigged up somewhere. So far, they were relying on darkness. But they could always change tactics and light the forest up. If they lit us up, of course, they also lit themselves up. And we’d be camouflaged. We were wearing green and black jackets and green trousers. We certainly looked the part, even if we didn’t feel it. Spike was in his element, but the markings on Bel’s face only hid the fact that she had lost all colour. Even her lips were bloodless.

As for me, I’d lost the shakes, but I still wanted to play it cautious. This was all new. I wasn’t a mercenary, though I’d hung with them. I wasn’t Action Man or GI Joe. I wasn’t Spike.

‘What about all the regular hippies?’ he asked.

‘They’ve shipped out.’

‘That’s perfect. That’s beautiful.’ He fixed his eyes on me. ‘I got them here, man,’ he whispered. He was holding four short, fat cylinders.

‘So you keep saying.’

‘When are we going to do it?’

I looked to Bel, who nodded. ‘We’re doing it now,’ I said.

‘Well, all right then,’ said Spike, disappearing back into the gloom.

Bel and I stared at one another for a while. I wanted to kiss her, and I think she knew it. But she just smiled and nodded again, then squeezed my shoulder and started creeping away in the opposite direction from Spike.

It was my play now. I rested the Varmint’s stock against my shoulder again and took a look. I knew I had to give Spike and Bel a minute or two. The guards had finished their cigarettes. They were kicking their heels. I liked the way they were lined up on the porch like targets on some fairground rifle-stall. I heard the static crash of a radio, and saw one of them lift a walkie-talkie out of his pocket. I was glad now that we hadn’t hit the men at the checkpoint. It would have meant a welcoming committee.

But then at least a welcoming committee would have prompted action.

I counted up to thirty. Then I did it again.

When I reached twenty-nine for the second time, I started firing. I’m no speed-shooter, remember, but I knew I had to knock down as many of these guards as I could. I wasn’t concentrating on any clever shots, I just aimed to hit the targets anywhere I could.

I’d fired off two shots before they located me. That’s the problem with shooting at night with no flash-hider. They saw the second blast of fire from my barrel. Not that it helped them, not at this distance. They were still firing at shadows, and I was picking them off. Two bodies had gone down when the first of Spike’s flares landed in the compound. To get it so near the cabin, he must’ve crept up suicidally close. He chucked a couple more flares. They burnt orangey-pink and let off a lot of smoke. I fired off the final three shots from my clip before the smoke got too bad. They’d tried retreating back into the cabin, but were being ordered to spread out across the compound.

Which was just what we’d expected. That’s why Spike was way over one side of the compound and Bel, armed with two handguns, was over the other. The guards were firing now, spraying automatic rounds. From somewhere, I heard the unmistakable sound of Spike’s Ingram firing back. I took off the night-sight, put down the Varmint, picked up my Colt Commando, and waded in.

The compound was all smoke and circus lights now, but the breeze was dispersing the smoke as rapidly as it formed. I decided to frighten whoever was left in the cabin, so let off a few rounds at it. The walls were thin wood planks over wood studding. In films, walls like that could stop bullets, but not in real life. I drilled into the walls until I could see light coming out through them. Then someone turned the lamp out. I’d been firing high, guessing anyone scared would be ducking or lying flat. I hoped I hadn’t hit anyone I didn’t want hit. Then I realized something.

I realized I was the only target the guards had. A bullet from a handgun flew past my head. I squatted down and let off a burst with the Colt. I hit the gunman three times across his chest, sending him flying backwards into the dirt. I could hear Bel now, firing in quick bursts the way she’d been taught. One-two-three, one-two-three, like dance steps. And Spike, Spike was back on the range in Texas, wasting bullets but making plenty of noise. They must’ve thought there was an army coming at them. And it was working, the guards were firing but retreating at the same time. If you fire a gun while you’re moving, forget about accuracy. I held my ground and fired another burst from the Colt. It was fitted with a thirty-round clip. I had a few more clips in my pocket.

Then the cabin window shattered and someone started firing through it. I heard a dull thwump and realized they were firing grenades. I dived sideways, thudded into the ground, and started moving. The explosion was way behind me and over to one side, but it still lifted me off the ground. I felt the earth swell beneath my chest, like the planet was taking a deep breath, and the blast kicked my legs up into the air.

I lay flat facing the cabin and started firing, only to have the magazine die on me. It took a few seconds to reload, by which time another thwump had signalled a fresh grenade. I crawled again. The blast was a lot closer this time. It closed off my eardrums and rattled my head. I rolled and kept rolling, bits of earth and tree-bark raining down on me. There was nothing but a mute hissing in my ears, and somewhere behind it the distant firing of guns.

I tried to shake my head clear, and realized something had hit me. A rock or something. My left arm felt numb from the impact. I bit my fingers, trying to force some sensation back into them. Then got on to my feet and started firing again. There were bodies in front of me, three of them. They were lifeless. Two I had hit on the porch, and another hit since then, I couldn’t say by whom.

Then I saw another figure darting through shadow. I put the night-sight to my eye and made out Spike. He knew I could see him, and gave an OK sign with thumb and forefinger. Not that he could see me, but he gave it anyway. I fired another spray towards the cabin. There were no more thwumps, which meant that Kline only had the two grenades. Now I could hear a woman shrieking, and hear two men shouting. I checked over to my right with the night-sight, but there was no sign of Bel.

Then the cabin door flew open, and Alisha came stumbling out.

‘Don’t shoot!’ she yelled. ‘I’m not armed or anything!’ She was wailing, and holding her arm. It looked like she’d been winged.

‘Everybody else out of the cabin!’ I called. My voice sounded firm enough, from what I could hear of it. ‘Out of the cabin now!’

Spike had come forward and was yelling Bel’s name. There was no answer.

‘Go find her,’ I ordered, trying to keep the panic out of my voice. I took a slow-burn flare out of my pocket, stuck it in the ground, and lit it, moving away immediately. Spike was moving towards the side of the cabin. A man appeared at the cabin door. It was Jeremiah Provost. He had his hands up. Now that the flare was lighting up the scene, I saw he had blood on his white shirt. But it was a smear, nothing more, and I guessed it to be not his blood but Alisha’s.

‘Lie on the ground, Alisha,’ I ordered. ‘Why don’t you join her, Provost?’

‘Who are you?’ He wasn’t moving. ‘What do you want?’

There was a sudden pistol shot, and Spike slumped to the ground. I moved towards him, then realized my mistake. I half-turned in time to see Alisha drawing a gun from beneath her. I shot her in the head with the Colt. One shot was all it took.

Then I turned again, and saw Kline stepping over Spike’s body. He had his pistol pointed at my head. I ducked down, firing as I did so. His body fell forwards and landed on the ground. From behind him stepped Bel. Wisps of smoke were rising from the barrel of her pistol. The back of his head was matted with blood where she’d hit him.

She collapsed to her hands and knees and threw up on the ground.

‘Are there any of them left, Bel?’

She managed to shake her head. I turned the Colt to Provost. He’d come down the cabin steps and was kneeling over Alisha.

‘Why?’ he said, repeating the word over and over again. I left him there and checked the cabin. It was empty. The back window Kline had climbed out of stood wide open. Smells of forest and cordite were mixed in the air. I walked back out, and found Bel sitting on the ground next to Spike. She was stroking his forehead.

‘He’s alive,’ she said. ‘Should we move him?’

‘We may have to.’

I took a look. There was warm sticky blood all over his chest. He’d taken a clean hit in the front and out the back. If he’d been a little further away, the bullet might have stuck or burst open inside him. I didn’t know whether he’d live.

‘You got a stretcher here?’ I said to Provost. He looked up at me with tears in his eyes, and mouthed the word Why?

‘I’ll tell you why. Because she had a gun. Why did she have a gun? Because she wasn’t a Disciple of Love, she was working for Kline, the way Nathan was. Did you know Nathan was Kline’s brother? Did you know he was Nathan Kline? No?’ Provost shook his head. ‘It’s in the files in your own office. How come your beloved Alisha didn’t tell you? Work it out for yourself, but first tell me if you’ve got a first aid kit and a fucking stretcher!’

He stared at me. ‘No stretcher,’ he said. ‘There’s first aid stuff in the office.’

I turned to Bel. ‘Go fetch it.’ Spike was breathing in short painful gasps, but he was breathing. I went over to him again. His eyes were closed in concentration. He was concentrating on sticking around.

‘Spike,’ I said, ‘remember, you can’t afford to die. I suppose I better tell you the truth, Spike. There aren’t any guns in heaven.’

He almost smiled, but he was concentrating too hard.

I went back to Provost and stood over him.

‘Time to talk,’ I said.

‘Talk? We could have talked without this.’

‘Not my choice, Provost, Kline’s choice. Your man’s choice.’

‘My man?’ He spoke like his mouth was full of bile. ‘Kline wasn’t my man.’

‘Then who was he?’

‘He used to work for the NSC. Have you heard of them?’

‘A bit.’

‘They retired him after an accident. I was the accident.’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘You will.’ He stood up. ‘You really think Alisha was working for Kline?’

‘It doesn’t mean she didn’t love you.’

He glowered at me. ‘Don’t patronise me, Mr West. Kline told me about you. He said you were coming after me. He failed to specify why.’

‘Questions, that’s all.’

He turned away from me and sat on the cabin steps, holding his head in his hands. ‘Fire away,’ he said without looking up.

Fire away? I hardly knew where to begin. Bel had returned with the first aid kit and was starting to staunch Spike’s bleeding. I walked over to the steps and stood in front of Provost. I’d taken Sam Clancy’s recording walkman from my pocket, and switched it on.

‘A woman was killed in London,’ I said. ‘Her name was Eleanor Ricks. She was a journalist, investigating the Disciples of Love.’

‘I don’t know anything about it.’

‘You didn’t sanction her killing?’

‘No.’

‘Then Kline acted alone.’

Now he looked up at me. ‘You killed her?’

‘Yes.’

‘Then answer me a question. Why would Kline need to pay someone to do the job when he had his own hired army?’

It was a good question. So good, in fact, that I didn’t have an answer...

‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘You tell me.’

Provost smiled. ‘I can’t tell you. I can only tell you what Kline told me. He doesn’t know why you’ve been snooping around. He didn’t order any assassination, and he, too, was wondering who did. When you started asking questions, you became a threat.’

‘He’s had journalists killed, hasn’t he? He had Sam Clancy shot.’

‘Kline didn’t have much of a conscience, if that’s what you’re saying.’

‘But what was he trying to protect? Why was he shielding you?’

‘Money, Mr West, what else? Oh, I don’t mean I was paying him. I mean he paid me, and he’s been paying for that mistake ever since.’ He glanced down at Kline’s body. ‘He paid most dearly tonight.’

‘I still don’t get it.’

‘Kline worked for a part of the NSC involved with funding the Nicaraguan Contras. This was back in the eighties. He managed to wheedle ten million dollars out of... I don’t know, the Sultan of somewhere, some Middle Eastern country. At this time, I had a little money. Elderly relatives kept dying. I got bored attending so many funerals. I liked to keep my money my own business, so I held an account in Switzerland.’

‘Go on.’

‘It was quite a coup for Kline, getting so much money for the Contras, but he didn’t exactly know what to do with it. Someone at the NSC, I’m not saying it was Colonel Oliver North, suggested holding it in a bank account until it could be disposed of as intended.’

‘A Swiss bank account?’

‘The NSC held just such an account. Only the gods of fate and irony stepped in. Kline copied the details of the account down wrongly. I can’t recall now exactly why I decided to check the state of my account, but I telephoned Switzerland one Thursday morning their time, and was told the exact amount I had on deposit. It seemed larger than I remembered, about ten million larger. I asked my account manager how much notice I had to make of a large withdrawal.’

Provost stopped there.

‘You took out the whole ten mil?’

‘No, in the end I merely transferred it to a new account.’

‘Christ.’

‘It was Kline’s mistake. He was sent to reason with me — no matter how discreet Swiss banks are, the NSC has ways of tracking people down. We came to a compromise. I handed back half the money. The other half I kept.’

‘And he went along with that?’

‘He didn’t have much choice.’

‘He could have killed you.’

Provost smiled. ‘The NSC weren’t mentioned in my will, Mr West. He still wouldn’t have gotten the money. Besides which, his superiors were furious with him. They couldn’t possibly sanction something so messy.’

‘So they booted him out?’

‘No, they booted him into the shadows. His remit was to make sure no one ever got to learn about the whole thing.’

‘And that meant stopping reporters from snooping too deeply?’

‘Exactly.’

‘Which is why Eleanor Ricks had to be stopped.’

He shook his head. ‘I’ve already told you, Kline denied it. And he went on denying it.’

‘Then it doesn’t make sense.’

‘Maybe someone else hired your services.’

‘Yes, but I’ve...’

He saw what I was thinking. ‘You’ve come all this way and killed all these people, and you’re no further forward?’

I nodded. My mind was reeling. I’d got most of my hearing back, but it didn’t matter, I could hardly take any of it in.

‘Two digits, that’s what did it,’ Provost was saying. ‘Kline wasn’t much of a typist. He transposed two of the digits on the account number. And in doing so, the NSC paid for the Disciples of Love. That, Mr West, is why they had to keep it quiet. They’d funded a religious cult, and the interest on their money is still funding it.’

‘Where’s the proof?’

‘Oh, I have proof.’

‘Where?’ I wasn’t sure I believed him, not completely. There had to be something more. He looked to be having trouble with his memory, so I tickled his chin with the Colt.

‘Remember what I do for a living, Provost.’

‘How can I forget? There are papers in my wall safe, and copies with my lawyer.’

Maybe it was the word lawyer that did it. I almost felt something click in my head.

‘You’re going to open your safe for me.’

‘It’s not here, it’s in my home in Seattle.’

‘Fine, we’ll go there.’

‘I want to stay here. The combination’s easy to find. I can never remember it myself, so I keep it written on a pad beside the telephone. It’s marked as an Australian telephone number.’

I knew I had to see it for myself. I had to hold some proof of his story in my hands. Even then, it wouldn’t be enough. I’d come through all this, and dragged Bel and Spike with me, and still there was no answer, not that Provost could provide.

A shot rang out. I spun round with the Colt. The guard had crawled from where Spike must have left him. There was blood all down his front. I didn’t make things much worse by snuffing out what life he had left. I’d robbed him of a few minutes, that was all.

But when I turned back to Provost, I saw that he’d taken a shot to the heart. The guard had been aiming at him, not me. Suicide orders from Kline, no doubt. I eased the body on to the ground. Bel barely glanced up from her work. She’d patched Spike up as best she could.

‘He’s still losing blood,’ she said. After feeling for Provost’s pulse and finding none, I walked over to her. Then I saw the car between the cabins. Its rear windscreen had been shattered, but when I went to look, it had its tyres intact. I felt in Kline’s pockets and drew out the keys, then reversed the car into the clearing.

With Bel’s help we got Spike into the back of the car. He groaned and winced a little, so I repeated my warning to him about gun heaven. Then we got in the car and drove off.

‘What are we going to do?’ Bel asked.

‘Get Spike to hospital.’

‘But after that? I heard what that man said back there. He was telling us we’d come all this way for nothing. He was saying all those people died... and my father died... for nothing.’

I looked at her. She was crying. ‘Maybe he was lying. Maybe... I don’t know.’

We passed a car on the road, hurtling towards Crescent Lake. It was the lookout. They didn’t even give us a second glance. I took a detour back to where we’d left the wardens. They seemed terrified to see us. I pulled them out of the Chrysler and left them propped back to back on the ground.

‘You take Spike to hospital,’ I said.

‘Where are you going?’

‘Provost’s house.’

She looked at me. ‘Do you think you’ll find what you’re looking for?’

‘I don’t know what I’m looking for, Bel. Look after Spike, eh?’ Then I kissed her and got into the Chrysler.

On the road back into Seattle, I managed to put America out of my mind. Instead, I thought back to London, right to the start of this whole thing and to Scotty Shattuck. Why hadn’t I hung around until he’d turned up again? He was the key to the whole thing. My impatience had led me the wrong direction. I’d been going wrong ever since.

Maybe I was still going wrong, but I kept on driving.

28

I was prepared to kick down Provost’s door.

But it wasn’t necessary. The door was unlocked. I eased the Smith & Wesson 559 out of my waistband and crept into the house. Someone had been there before me. The place had been turned over in what looked like robbery, except that nothing obvious was missing. The TV, video and hi-fi were still there, as was some women’s jewellery scattered over the floor in the master bedroom. It had to be Alisha’s jewellery. I didn’t feel too guilty about killing her. She’d have killed me. But seeing the jewellery, plus her clothes, plus smelling her perfume... I had to rest for a moment and control my breathing.

And that’s when he found me.

I felt the cold muzzle of the gun against the back of my neck. It froze my whole body for a moment.

‘Toss the gun over there.’

I did as I was told, and then was frisked from behind.

‘Walk into the living room.’

I did so. I recognised the voice. I knew who was behind me.

‘Now turn around.’

I turned around and was face to face with Leo Hoffer.

‘Sit down,’ he said. ‘Take the weight off. You look like you’ve had a heavy night.’

‘It’s been heavy.’ I sat down on the sofa, but I rested on its edge, ready to spring up if I got the chance.

‘Get comfortable,’ he said. ‘Go on, sit right back.’

I sat right back. The sofa was like marshmallow. I knew it was almost as good as restraints. I wasn’t going anywhere in a hurry.

‘Yeah, it’s a bitch, isn’t it?’ Hoffer was saying. ‘I sat in it earlier on while I was figuring out what to do. Took me five fucking minutes to get out of it. It’s a regular Venus fly-trap. So, Mr Wesley-Weston-West, what’re you doing here?’

‘The same as you probably.’

‘Well, I hope you’ve got some tools with you, because that safe isn’t budging.’

He was pointing in the direction of the far wall. He’d taken down a large seascape painting to reveal a small wall safe. Even from here I could see he’d had a go at it. The wall all around it was scraped and gouged, and the metal surface of the safe was scratched and dented.

‘I can open it,’ I said.

‘That’s good. Because I want to stick your head in it then push my pistol up your ass.’

‘That’s class, Hoffer.’

‘I’ll tell you what class is, class is leading me on this fucking chase halfway across the world and back. That’s so classy I’m going to blow you away.’

I felt tired suddenly. I mean, dog-tired. There was no steam left in me, no fight. I rubbed at my forehead.

‘I want a drink,’ I said.

‘Provost hasn’t got a damned drop in the house.’ He reached into his jacket and pulled out a half bottle. ‘That’s why I had to go fetch this.’ He tossed the bottle on to the couch beside me. It was Jim Beam, a couple of inches missing from the top. I unscrewed the cap and took a good deep gulp. Afterwards, I didn’t feel quite so tired.

‘How did you find me?’

He came close enough to me to take back the bottle, then retreated again. He took a slug, keeping his eyes and his Smith & Wesson 459 on me. He didn’t bother recapping the bottle, but left it on the mantelpiece.

‘Don’t forget,’ I said, ‘your prints are on that.’

‘And yours,’ he said. ‘I’ll wipe it before I go. You look like you’re ready for another shot already.’

But I shook my head. ‘Any more and I’ll fall asleep, no offence.’

He smiled. ‘None taken. But I don’t want you asleep. I’ve never killed a man while he’s sleeping. In fact, I’ve never killed anyone, period, not even in anger, never mind anyone defenceless. I’m not like you, man. I don’t kill the innocents. You fucked up big when you hit Walkins’s daughter.’

‘I know.’

‘Yeah, and I bet you still lose sleep over it. I bet you lose sleep over all of them, man, all your victims. Well, I’m going to enjoy killing you.’

‘Killing isn’t as easy as you might think. Maybe you should hide me away till your client can come and help. I’m sure he wouldn’t mind firing off a round or two.’

‘You’re probably right, but then he hasn’t worked for that privilege the way I have. How did I find you? I didn’t. You found me. I was waiting outside to see who turned up. I was expecting Provost or Kline.’

‘You know Kline?’

‘I’ve met him.’

‘He’s dead.’

‘I’m pleased to hear it. He was about as evil a fuck as has ever given me indigestion. I hate indigestion at breakfast, it stays with me the rest of the day. Heartburn, you know.’

I nodded. ‘Provost’s dead, too.’

‘You’ve been busy. So what the fuck was it all about?’

I shrugged. ‘Listen,’ I said, ‘I want to thank you for something.’

He narrowed his eyes. ‘What?’

‘Covering up Max’s head the way you did. His daughter found him.’

‘Well, those sick fucks left the head teetering on the body.’

‘I know, and thanks.’

‘Is she still around?’

‘She’s... she’s still around.’

‘Don’t worry,’ he said, ‘I’ve got no grudge with her.’

‘Yes, I know.’

‘This is you and me, Mikey, the way it was always supposed to be. Oh hey, your folks say hello.’

It was like a blow to the head. ‘What?’

‘I had this army guy check haemophilia cases. It was a short list, and one of the names was Michael Weston. I found your mom and dad. They say hello. That’s why I was so long getting here. Sidetracked, you might say. But I know a lot about you now, and that’s nice, seeing how we’re not going to be able to get acquainted the normal way.’ He saw something like disbelief on my face. ‘Your father’s called John, he’s retired now but he’s still army through and through. Your mother’s called Alexis. They live in Stock-port.’ He smiled. ‘Am I getting warm?’

‘Fuck it, Hoffer, just kill me.’

‘What’s in the safe, Mike? Get me interested.’

‘Huh?’

‘You came here for whatever’s in that safe. I want to know what it is.’

‘Proof,’ I said. ‘This whole shitty deal is down to Kline and a bloody typing error.’

I had his interest now, which was good. It kept me from being killed. I told him the story, taking my time. I decided I didn’t want to die. I didn’t want anyone else to die. Not today, maybe not ever.

‘That sounds,’ Hoffer said, finishing the hooch, ‘like a crock of twenty-carat gold-plated shit.’

‘There are papers in the safe.’

‘And you can open it?’ I nodded. ‘Go on then.’

He followed me to the telephone. There were a lot of scribbles on the message-pad, a lot of numbers and letters. I found what I wanted and tore the top sheet off, taking it with me to the wall-safe.

‘Bullshit,’ Hoffer sneered disbelievingly as I read from the sheet and started turning the dial. I pulled on the handle and opened the safe slowly.

I looked inside, knowing if he wanted to see, he’d have to come right up behind my back. I could feel him behind me. He was close, but was he close enough? If I swung at him, would I connect with anything other than air? Then I saw what was in the safe. There were papers there, and a tidy bundle of banknotes. But there was also a snub-nose revolver, a beautiful little 38. I took my decision, but took it too late. The butt of a gun connected with the back of my head, and my legs collapsed from under me.

I woke up cramped, like I’d been sleeping in a car. I blinked open my eyes and remembered where I was. I looked around. The pain behind my eyes was agony. I wondered if Hoffer had been in there and done some DIY surgery while I’d been out. Maybe a spot of trepanning.

I was in a bright white bathroom with a sunken whirlpool bath and gold taps. I was over by the sink, sitting on the cold tiled floor with my arms behind me. My arms were stiff. I looked round and saw that they were handcuffed round a couple of copper water pipes beneath the sink. My feet had been tied together with a man’s brown leather belt.

Most disconcerting of all, Hoffer was sitting on the toilet not three feet away.

He had his trousers on though. And he’d put the toilet lid down so he’d be more comfortable. He had my money belt slung over one shoulder, and he was leafing through some documents.

‘Well, Mike,’ he said, ‘looks like you were right, huh? Some fucking business, handed five mil by the government. Thank you very much and shalom. Jesus.’ He patted his jacket pocket. ‘Yet the scumbag only kept five thou in his safe. Still, it’ll buy a few lunches. And thanks for your donation.’ He tossed the money-belt towards me. ‘I’ve left you the traveller’s cheques. I don’t want to get into any forgery shit. Not that they accept traveller’s cheques where you’re headed.’

I rattled the handcuffs.

‘Good, aren’t they? New York PD issue. Before they went over to plastic or whatever shit they use now. Look, I’ll leave the key over here, okay?’ He put it on the floor beside him. ‘There you go. It’ll give you something to do while you’re dying. Of course, you may already be dying, huh? I whacked you pretty good. There could be some internal haemorrhaging going on. See, I know about haemophilia, I did some reading. Man, they’re this close to a cure, huh? Genetics and stuff. Fuck all those liberals trying to stop laboratory experiments. Mike, we need more of those lab animals with holes drilled in their scrotums and wires running through them like they’re circuit-boards or something.’

‘Circuit-boards don’t have wires, Leo. At least, not many.’

‘Ooh, pardon me, professor.’ He laughed and rubbed his nose. I knew he’d done some drugs since I’d last been conscious, but I couldn’t tell what. He was feeling pretty good though, I could see that. Good enough to let me live? Well, he hadn’t killed me yet. He stood up and opened the medicine-cabinet.

‘All this organic shit,’ he muttered, picking out bottles and rattling them. He half-turned towards me. ‘I get fucking earache when I fly. And it’s all your fault I’ve been doing so much flying of late.’

‘My heart bleeds.’

Now he grinned. ‘You can say that again. So Kline set you up, huh?’

‘Provost says he didn’t.’

‘Well, somebody did. As soon as I heard you’d been asking the producer and the lawyer what clothes Eleanor Ricks usually wore, I knew the road you were going.’

‘Then you’re cleverer than me.’

‘Whoever paid you knew what she’d be wearing, didn’t they?’

‘Yes.’

‘Well, Mike, that kind of narrows things down, doesn’t it?’

It struck me, the problem was I hadn’t let myself narrow it down enough. Too late now, way too late...

‘So,’ I said, ‘you know I’m a haemo. And you’re right, a simple knock on the head might just do it.’

‘But I know something that’d do it a lot better.’ He stood up and came over, crouching in front of me. He had something in his hand. When he unfolded it, I saw a short fat blade. It was a damned pocket-knife.

‘Beautiful, isn’t it? Look, there’s a serpent running down its back. That’s the trademark. Talk about Pittsburgh steel, man, this is a piece of steel.’

‘What are you going to do?’

‘You know what I’m going to do, D-Man. I’m going to demolish you. The death of a thousand cuts. Well, maybe just a dozen or so.’

I started to wriggle then, pulling at the pipes, trying to wrench them away from the wall. Kicking out with my tied-together legs. He just crouched there and grinned. His pupils were pinpoints of darkness. He swiped and the first cut caught me across the cheek. There was nothing for a second, then a slow sizzling sensation which kept on intensifying. I felt the blood begin to run down my face. His second slice got my upper arm, and a short jab opened my chest. I was still wrestling to get free, but it was useless. He hit my legs next, more or less cutting and stabbing at will. He wasn’t frenzied. He was quite calm, quite controlled. I stopped struggling, hard though it was.

‘Leo, this isn’t any way to settle it.’

‘It’s the perfect way to settle it.’

‘Christ, shoot me, but don’t do this.’

‘I’m already doing it. Slice and dice. And... voilà!’ He stood back to admire his work, wiping the blade on some toilet roll. I couldn’t count the number of cuts on my body. There were over a dozen. They all hurt, but none was actually going to bleed me dry, not on its own. But all together... well, all together I was in deep shit. My shirt was already soaked in blood, and there was a smear of red beneath me on the tiles.

‘Leo,’ I said. Something in my voice made him look at me. ‘Please don’t do this.’

‘The magic word,’ Leo Hoffer said. Then he walked out of the bathroom.

‘Leo! Leo!’

But he was gone. I knew that. I heard the front door close quietly. Then I saw the handcuff key. I stretched my feet towards it, but was a good ten to twelve inches shy. I slid down on to the floor, nearly taking my arms out of their sockets, and tried again, but I was still an inch or two away from it. I lay there, exhausted, pain flooding over me. Haemophiliacs don’t bleed faster than other people, we just don’t stop once we’ve started. I was a mild case, but even so there was only so much clotting my body could do for me. Leo must’ve known that. He knew so much about me.

‘You son of a bitch!’

I sat up again and twisted the chain linking my cuffs. Every chain had its weakest link, but I wasn’t going to find it, not like this. I looked up. Resting on the sink were a toothbrush and tube of toothpaste, and a small bar of soap, like something you’d lift from your hotel room. Soap: maybe I could grease my wrists and slip off the handcuffs. Except that there was no give at all in the cuffs. I’ve always had skinny wrists, much skinnier than my hands. No way this side of the grave was I going to be able to slip my hands out, soap or no soap.

I sat back against the wall and tried to think. I thought of a lot of things, all of them brilliant, and in the movies one of them would have worked. But this was a bathroom floor in Seattle, and all I was doing here was dying.

Then the front door opened.

‘Hey!’ I yelled. ‘In here!’

Who did I expect to see? Bel, of course. I’d half expected she’d follow me here, once she’d got Spike to the hospital.

‘In here!’ I yelled again.

‘I know where you are, dummy,’ said Hoffer. He stood in the doorway, hands on hips. He was a big bastard, but not as big as he looked on TV. He gave me a good look, like I was a drunk cluttering up the hall of his apartment building. He was deciding whether to kick me or throw me a dime.

He threw me the dime.

Rather, he stepped on the key with the tip of his shoe and slid it closer to me.

‘Hey,’ he said, ‘what’s life without a bit of fun? Now I want you to do me a favour.’

‘What?’

He was fumbling in his pocket, and eventually drew out a small camera. ‘Look dead for me.’

‘What?’

‘Play dead. It’s got to convince Walkins, so make it good. The blood looks right, but I need a slumped head, splayed legs, you know the sort of thing I mean.’

I stared at him. Was he playing with me? Hard to tell. His eyes were dark, mostly unfocused. He looked like he could burst into song or tears. He looked a bit confused.

I let my head slump against my chest. He fired off a few shots from different angles, and even clambered up on to the toilet seat to take one. The noise of the camera-motor winding on the film seemed almost laughably incongruous. Here I was bleeding like a pig while someone took snuff photos from a toilet seat.

‘That’s a wrap,’ he said at last. ‘Hey, did I tell you? Joe Draper’s going to make a documentary of my life. Maybe we’ll talk about my charity work, huh?’

‘You’re all heart, Leo.’

‘Yeah, yeah.’

He turned to walk away, but then thought of something. He kept his back to me as he spoke.

‘You going to come gunning for me, Mikey?’

‘No,’ I said, not sure if I meant it. ‘I’m finished with that.’ I found to my surprise that I did mean it. He glanced over his shoulder and seemed satisfied.

‘Well,’ he said, ‘I’ve done some thinking about that, too. See, I could break your hand up a bit, take the fingers out of the sockets, smash the wrist. But the body has a way of repairing itself.’

‘I swear, Leo, I’m not—’

‘So instead of that, just in case, I’m putting contracts out on your parents. If I buy it, they buy it too.’

‘There’s no need for that.’

‘And your friend Bel, too, same deal. My little insurance policy. It’s not exactly all-claims, but it’ll have to do.’

He made to walk away.

‘Hoffer,’ I said. He stopped. ‘Same question: are you going to come gunning for me?’

‘Not if you stay dead. Get a fucking day job, Mike. Stack shelves or something. Sell burgers. I’m going to tell Walkins I stiffed you. I’m hoping he’ll go for it. I’m losing my best client, but this ought to help.’ He patted his pocket again, where the money was. ‘I may tell a few other people too.’

I smiled. ‘You mean the media.’

‘I’ve got a living to make, Mike. With you dead, I need all the publicity I can get.’

‘Go ahead, Hoffer, shout it from the rooftops.’

‘I’m going.’

And he went. I got the key, but even so it was hell unlocking the cuffs. How did Houdini do it? Maybe if you could dislocate your wrist or something... Eventually I got them off and staggered out of the bathroom, only to fall to my knees in the hallway. I was crawling towards the door when it opened again, very slowly. I saw first one foot, then the other. The feet were dressed in shitkicker cowboy boots.

‘Michael!’ Bel screamed. ‘What happened?’

She took my head in her hands.

‘Got a Band-Aid?’ I asked.

29

Hoffer went back to New York with nine and a half grand in his pocket and Provost’s papers in his case.

He didn’t know if he’d ever do anything with those papers. They were worth something, no doubt about that. But they were dangerous too. You only had to look at the D-MAN to see that.

The press were going to town on the Seattle story. Shoot-out at the home of the Disciples of Love. Hoffer could see there was a lot the authorities weren’t saying. Even so, it didn’t take long for the majority of the bodies to be identified as serving and ex-employees of the security services. The explanation seemed to be that Kline, an embittered ex-employee, had somehow persuaded some serving staff to work for him, and the whole lot of them were involved in some dubious way with the Disciples of Love. Sure, and the tooth fairy lives on West 53rd.

Nobody was mentioning the ten mil or the Middle East.

Hoffer didn’t go to the office for a couple of days, and when he did he thought better of it after half a flight of stairs. After all, heights gave him earache. So he retreated instead to the diner across the street. The place was full of bums nursing never-ending cups of coffee. They’d discovered the secret of life, and they were tired of it. A couple of them nodded at Hoffer as he went in, like he was back where he belonged.

Donna the waitress was there, and she nodded a greeting to him too, like he’d been there every day without fail. She brought him coffee and the phone, and he called up to his secretary.

‘I’m down here, Moira.’

‘Now there’s a surprise.’

‘Bring me the latest updates and paperwork, messages, mail, all that shit. We’ll deal with it here, okay?’ He put down the phone and ordered ham and eggs, the eggs scrambled. Outside, New York was doing its New York thing, busy with energy and excess and people just trying to get by if they couldn’t get ahead.

‘More coffee?’

‘Thanks, Donna.’

She’d been serving him for a year, best part of, and still she never showed interest, never asked how he was doing or what he’d been doing. He’d bet she didn’t even remember his name. He was just a customer who sometimes made a local call and tipped her well for the service. That was it. That was all he was.

Jesus, it was going to be hard getting by without the D-MAN.

The parents, he should never have talked to the parents. They’d made the guy too real, too human. They’d stripped away all the cunning and the menace and had confronted him with photos of a gangly awkward youth with skinny arms and a lopsided grin. Photos on the beach, in the park, waving from the driving seat of Pop’s car.

He should never have gone. He hadn’t explained what he was doing there. He’d mumbled some explanation about their son maybe being witness to a crime, but now nobody could find him. They didn’t seem to care, so long as he wasn’t hurt.

No, he wasn’t hurt, not much. But he’d done some damage in Washington State.

Hoffer knew the parents weren’t the only reason, but they were an excusable one. He didn’t really know why he hadn’t killed the D-Man. Maybe he didn’t want another death on his hands. He’d told Michael Weston he’d never killed anyone. That wasn’t strictly true.

Hoffer had been killing himself for years.

The papers, of course, did not connect the D-Man to any of the stuff about Kline and Provost. Hoffer could have done that for them, but he chose not to. Instead he was biding his time. He was waiting for a lull in the news, when empty pages and screen time were screaming out to be filled. That was the time for him to step forward with his story and maybe even his photos, all about tracking down the D-Man and killing him. There was no body to show, of course, so Hoffer must’ve disposed of it in some way.

He’d think of something.

Meantime, he fed on the newspapers, on fresh twists about a man admitted to a local hospital with a gunshot wound. Of a mystery woman who dumped him there. Then there was Provost’s luxury Seattle townhouse. How to explain the blood on the bathroom floor or the pair of metal handcuffs hanging around a water pipe?

‘Better than the movies,’ he said to himself, just as Donna arrived with his food.

‘You say something?’

‘Yeah,’ said Hoffer, ‘I said would you go to the movies with me some night?’

‘In your dreams, sweetheart,’ she said, ‘in your dreams.’