Blood Hunt

FOUR

AS HE DROVE SOUTH, Gordon Reeve tried to remember his brother, but the phone call kept getting in the way.

He could hear the operator telling him he had a call from the San Diego Police Department, then the detective’s voice telling him it was about his brother.

“Very unfortunate circumstances, sir.” The voice had betrayed no emotion. “It appears he took his own life.”

There was a little more, but not much. The detective had wanted to know if he would be collecting the body and the effects. Gordon Reeve said yes, he would. Then he’d put the phone down and it rang again. He was slow to pick it up. Joan had been standing beside him. He remembered the look on her face, sudden shock and incomprehension mixed. Not that she’d known Jim well; they hadn’t seen much of him these past few years.

The second phone call was from the British Consulate repeating the news. When Reeve told them he already knew, the caller sounded aggrieved.

Gordon Reeve had hung up the phone and gone to pack. Joan had followed him around the house, trying to look into his eyes. Was she looking for shock? Tears? She asked him a few questions, but he barely took them in.

Then he’d got the key to the killing room and gone outside.

The killing room was a single locked room attached to the outbuildings. It was fitted out as a cramped living room. There were three dummies dressed in castoff clothes-they represented hostages. Reeve’s weekend soldiers, operating in teams of two, would have to storm the room and rescue the hostages by overpowering their captors-played by two more weekend soldiers. The hostages were to come to no harm.

Reeve had unlocked the killing room and switched on the light, then sat down on the sofa. He looked around him at the dummies, two seated, one propped upright. He remembered the living room of his parents’ home, the night he’d left-all too willingly!-to join the army. He’d known he would miss Jim, his older brother by a year and a half. He would not miss his parents.

From early on, Mother and Father had led their own lives and had expected Jim and Gordon to do the same. The brothers had been close in those days. As they grew, it became clear that Gordon was the “physical” one, while Jim lived in a world of his own-writing poetry, scribbling stories. Gordon went to judo classes; Jim was headed to university. Neither brother had ever really understood the other.

Reeve had stood up and faced the standing dummy. Then he punched it across the room and walked outside.

His bag packed, he’d got into the Land Rover. Joan had already called Grigor Mackenzie who, hearing the circumstances, had agreed to put his ferry to the mainland at Gordon’s disposal, though it was hours past the last sailing.

Reeve drove through the night, remembering the telephone call and trying to push past it to the brother he had once known. Jim had left university after a year to join an evening paper in Glasgow. Gordon had never known him as a serious drinker until he became a journalist. By that time, Gordon was busy himself: two tours of duty in Ulster, training in Germany and Scandinavia… and then the SAS.

When he saw Jim again, one Christmas when their father had just died and their mother was failing, they got into a fight about war and the role of the armed forces. It wasn’t a physical fight, just words. Jim had been good with words.

The following year, he’d moved to a London paper, bought a flat in Crouch End. Gordon had visited it only once, two years ago. By then Jim’s wife had walked out, and the flat was a shambles. Nobody had been invited to the wedding. It had been a ten-minute ceremony and a three-month marriage.

After which, in his career as in his life, Jim had gone freelance.

All the way to the final act of putting a gun in his mouth and pulling the trigger.

Reeve had pressed the San Diego detective for that detail. He didn’t know why it was important to him. Almost more than the news of Jim’s death, or the fact that he had killed himself, he had been affected by the means. Anti-conflict, anti-army, Jim had used a gun.

Other than stopping for diesel, Gordon Reeve drove straight to Heathrow. He found a long-term parking lot and took the courtesy bus from there to the terminal building. He’d called Joan from a service station, and she’d told him he was booked on a flight to Los Angeles, where he could catch a connecting flight to San Diego.

Sitting in Departures, Gordon Reeve tried to feel something other than numb. He’d sometimes found an article written by Jim in one of the newspapers-but not often. They’d never kept in touch, except for a New Year’s phone call. Jim had been good with Allan, though, sending him the occasional surprise.

He bought a newspaper and a magazine and walked through duty-free without buying anything. It was Monday morning, which meant he’d no business to take care of at home, nothing pressing until Friday and the new intake. He knew he should be thinking of other things, but it was so hard. He was first in line when boarding time came. His seat on the plane was narrow. He discarded the pillow but draped the thin blanket over him, hoping he would sleep. Breakfast was served soon after takeoff; he was still awake. Above the clouds, the sun was a blazing orange. Then people started to pull down the shutters, and the cabin lights were dimmed. Headsets clamped on, the passengers started to watch the movie. Gordon Reeve closed his eyes again, and found that another kind of film was playing behind his eyelids: two young boys playing soldiers in the long grass… smoking cigarettes in the bathroom, blowing the smoke out of the window… passing comments on the girls at the school dance… patting arms as they went their separate ways.

Be the Superman, Gordon Reeve told himself. But then Nietzsche was never very convincing about personal loss and grief. Live dangerously, he said. Hate your friends. There is no God, no ordering principle. You must assume godhead yourself. Be the Superman.

Gordon Reeve, crying at thirty thousand feet over the sea. Then the wait in Los Angeles, and the connecting flight, forty-five minutes by Alaska Airlines. Reeve hadn’t been to the USA before, and didn’t particularly want to be here now. The man from the consulate had said they could ship the body home if he liked. As long as he paid, he wouldn’t have to come to the States. But he had to come, for all sorts of jumbled reasons that probably wouldn’t make sense to anyone else. They weren’t really making sense to him. It was just a pull, strong as gravity. He had to see where it happened, had to know why. The consulate man had said it might be better not to know, just remember him the way he was. But that was just so much crap, and Reeve had told the man so. “I didn’t know him at all,” he’d said.

The car-rental people tried to give him a vehicle called a GMC Jimmy, but he refused it point-blank, and eventually settled for a Chevy Blazer-a three-door rear-drive gloss-black wagon that looked built for off-roading. “A compact sport utility,” the clone at the desk called it; whatever it was, it had four wheels and a full tank of gas.

He’d booked into the Radisson in Mission Valley. Mr. Car Rental gave him a complimentary map of San Diego and circled the hotel district of Mission Valley.

“It’s about a ten-minute drive if you know where you’re going, twenty if you don’t. You can’t miss the hotel.”

Reeve put his one large holdall into the capacious trunk, then decided it looked stupid there and transferred it to the passenger seat. He spotted a minibus parked in front of the terminal with the hotel’s name on its side, so he locked the car and walked over to it. The driver had just seen a couple of tourists into the terminal and, when Reeve explained, said “sir” could follow him, no problem.

So Reeve tucked the Blazer in behind the courtesy bus and followed it to the hotel. He unloaded his bag and told the valet he didn’t need any help with it, so the valet went to park his car instead. And then, standing at the reception desk, Reeve nearly fell apart. Nerves, shock, lack of sleep. Standing there, on the hotel’s plush carpet, waiting for the receptionist to finish a telephone call, was harder than any thirty-six-hour pursuit. It felt like one of the hardest things he’d ever done. There seemed to be fog at the edges of his vision. He knew it must be exhaustion, that was all. If only the phone call hadn’t come at the end of a weekend, when his defenses were down and he was already suffering from lack of sleep.

He reminded himself why he was here. Maybe it was pride that kept him upright until he’d filled in the registration form and accepted his key. He waited a minute for the elevator, took it to the tenth floor, finding his room, unlocking it, walking in, dumping the bag on the floor. He pulled open the curtains. His view was of a nearby hillside, and below him the hotel’s parking lot. He’d decided on this hotel because it was the right side of San Diego for La Jolla. Jim had been found in La Jolla.

He lay down on the bed, which seemed solid and floating at the same time. He closed his eyes, just for a minute.

And woke up to late-afternoon sun and a headache.

He showered quickly, changed his clothes, and made a telephone call.

The police detective was very obliging. “I can come to the hotel if you like, or you can come down here.”

“I’d appreciate it if you could come here.”

“Sure, no problem.”

He took the elevator back down to the ground floor and had some coffee in the restaurant, then felt hungry and had a sandwich. It was supposed to be too early for food, but the waitress took pity on him.

“You on vacation?”

“No,” he told her, taking a second cup of coffee.

“Business?”

“Sort of.”

“Where you from?”

“ Scotland.”

“Really?” She sounded thrilled. He examined her; a pretty, tanned face, round and full of life. She wasn’t very tall, but carried herself well, like she didn’t plan to make waitressing a career.

“Ever been there?” His mouth felt rusty. It had been a long time since he’d had to form conversations with strangers, social chitchat. He talked at the weekenders, and he had his family-and that was it. He had no friends to speak of; maybe a few old soldiers like him, but he saw them infrequently and didn’t keep in touch between times.

“No,” she said, like he’d said something humorous. “Never been outside South Cal, ”cept for a few trips across the border and a couple of times to the East Coast.“

“Which border?”

She laughed outright. “Which border? Mexican, of course.”

It struck him how ill-prepared he was for this trip. He hadn’t done any background. He thought of the seven P‘s, how he drilled them into his weekenders. Planning and preparation. How much P &P did you need to pick up the body of your brother?

“What’s wrong?” she said.

He shook his head, not feeling like talking anymore. He got out the map the car-rental man had given him, plus another he’d picked up from a pile at reception, and spread them on the table. He studied a street plan of San Diego, then a map of the surrounding area. His eye moved up the coast: Ocean Beach, Mission Beach, Pacific Beach, and La Jolla.

“What were you doing here, Jim?”

He didn’t realize he’d spoken out loud until he saw the waitress looking at him. She smiled, but a little uncertainly this time. Then she pointed to the coffeepot, and he saw that he’d finished the second cup. He nodded. Caffeine could only help.

“Mr. Reeve?” The man put out his hand. “They told me at reception I’d find you here. I’m Detective Mike McCluskey.”

They shook hands, and McCluskey squeezed into the booth. He was a big fresh-faced man with a missing tooth which he seemed to be trying to conceal by speaking out of the other side of his mouth. There were shoots of stubble on his square chin where the razor hadn’t done its job, and a small rash-line where his shirt collar rubbed his throat. He touched his collar now, as though trying to stretch it.

“I’m hellish sorry, sir,” he said, eyes on the tablecloth. “Wish I could say welcome to San Diego, but I guess you aren’t going to be taking too many happy memories away with you.”

Reeve didn’t know what to say, so he said thanks. He knew McCluskey hadn’t been expecting someone like him. He’d probably been expecting someone like Jim-taller, skinnier, in less good all-around shape. And Reeve knew that if the eyes were the window on a man’s soul, then his eyes were blackly dangerous. Even Joan told him he had a killer’s stare sometimes.

But then McCluskey wasn’t what Reeve had been expecting either. From the deep growl on the telephone, he’d visualized an older, beefier man, someone a bit more rumpled.

“Hell of a thing,” McCluskey said, after turning down the waitress’s offer of coffee.

“Yes,” Reeve said. Then, to the waitress. “Can I have the bill?”

“We call it a check,” McCluskey told Reeve when they were in the detective’s car, heading out to La Jolla.

“What?”

“We don’t call it a bill, we call it a check.”

“Thanks for the advice. Can I see the police report on my brother’s suicide?”

McCluskey turned his gaze from the windshield. “I guess,” he said. “It’s on the backseat.”

Reeve reached around and picked up the brown cardboard file. While he was reading, a message came over McCluskey’s radio.

“No can do,” McCluskey said into the radio at the end of a short conversation.

“Sorry if I’m taking you away from anything,” Reeve said, not meaning it. “I could probably have done this on my own.”

“No problem,” McCluskey told him.

The report was blunt, cold, factual. Male Caucasian, discovered Sunday morning by two joggers heading for the oceanfront. Body found in a locked rental car, keys in the ignition, Browning pistol still gripped in the decedent’s right hand…

“Where did he get the gun?”

“It’s not hard to get a gun around here. We haven’t found a receipt, so I guess he didn’t buy it at a store. Still leaves plenty of sellers.”

Decedent’s wallet, passport, driver’s license, and so forth were still in his jacket pocket, along with the car rental agreement. Rental company confirmed that male answering the de-scription of James Mark Reeve hired the car on a weekend rate at 7:30 P.M. Saturday night, paying cash up front.

“Jim always used plastic if he could,” Reeve said.

“Well, you know, suicides… they often like to tie up the loose ends before they… uh, you know, they like to make a clean break…” His voice trailed off. Suicides; the next of kin. McCluskey was used to dealing with howling uncontrollable grief, or a preternatural icy calm. But Gordon Reeve was being… the word that sprang to mind was methodical. Or businesslike.

“Maybe,” Reeve said.

Decedent’s motel room was located and searched. No note was found. Nothing out of the ordinary was found, save small amounts of substances which tested positive as amphetamine and cocaine.

“We’ve had the autopsy done since that report was typed,” McCluskey said. “Your brother had some booze in his system, but no drugs. I don’t know if that makes you feel any better.”

“You didn’t find a note,” Reeve stated.

“No, sir, but fewer suicides than you might think actually bother to leave a note. It looked like there’d been a message of some kind left on the mirror of the motel bathroom. He, uh… looks like it was written with toothpaste, but then wiped off. Might indicate the state of mind he was in.”

“Any obvious reason why he would commit suicide?”

“No, sir, I have to admit I can’t see one. Maybe his career?”

“I wouldn’t know about that, I was only his brother.”

“You weren’t close?”

Reeve shook his head, saying nothing. Soon enough they arrived in La Jolla, passing pleasant bungalow-type houses and then larger, richer residences as they neared the oceanfront. La Jolla ’s main shopping street had parking on both sides of the road, trees sprouting from the sidewalk, and benches for people to sit on. The shops looked exclusive; the pedestrians wore tans, sunglasses, and smiles. McCluskey pulled the car into a parking bay.

“Where?” Reeve asked quietly.

“Two bays along.” McCluskey nodded with his head.

Reeve undid his seat belt and opened the car door. “I’ll be fine on my own,” he told the detective.

There was a car in the second space along. It was a family model, with two kids playing in the back. They were boys, broth-ers. Each held a plastic spaceman; the spacemen were supposed to be battling each other, the boys providing sound effects. They looked at him suspiciously as he stared in at them, so he went and stood on the sidewalk and looked up and down the street. Jim’s body had been found at six o’clock Sunday morning, which meant two o’clock Sunday afternoon in the UK. He’d been on the moor, chased by a group of weekend soldiers. Playing sol-diers: that’s how Jim had summed up his brother’s life. At 2:00 P.M. it had been raining, and Gordon Reeve had been naked again, clothes bundled into his rucksack-naked except for boots and socks, crossing the wetland. And he hadn’t felt a thing; no twinge of forewarning, no sympathetic gut-stab at his broth-er’s agony, no fire in the brain.

McCluskey was standing beside him. Reeve turned his back and rubbed at dry, stinging eyes. The boys in the car had stopped playing and were looking at him, too. And now their mother was coming back with a young sibling, and she wanted to know what was happening. Reeve walked quietly back to McCluskey’s unmarked car.

“Let’s go,” he said.

“Deal,” said McCluskey.

They drank one drink apiece in an overpriced hotel bar. Reeve insisted on paying. The detective wanted a beer, and though Reeve knew he wasn’t supposed to touch alcohol, he ordered a whiskey. He knew he must be careful; his medication was back in Scotland. But it was only one whiskey, and he deserved it.

“Why La Jolla?” he asked.

McCluskey shrugged. “I don’t have an answer to that, except maybe why not. Guy rents a car, suicide on his mind. He drives around, and the world looks beautiful to him-so beautiful it makes him sad, which he hadn’t been expecting. And he decides, fuck it, why not now?” He shrugged again.

Reeve was staring at him. “You almost sound like you’ve been there yourself.”

“Maybe I have. Maybe that’s why I take the suicides. Maybe that’s why I like to spend some time with the still-living.” Then he shut up and sipped the beer.

“No note,” Reeve said. “I can’t believe it. The one thing in his life Jim ever loved was words, especially printed ones. I’m sure he’d‘ve left a note; and a long one at that. A manuscript.” He was smiling. “He wouldn’t have wanted to go quietly.”

“Well, he created a news story in La Jolla. Maybe that was his way of saying good-bye, a final front page.”

“Maybe,” Reeve said, half-believing, wanting to believe. He finished the whiskey. It was a large shot, easily a double. He wanted another, so it was definitely time to leave.

“Back to the hotel?” McCluskey suggested.

“The motel,” Reeve corrected. “Jim’s motel.”

The room was as it had been.

They hadn’t bothered to clean it up and relet it, McCluskey said, because James Reeve had paid until the middle of the week, and they knew his brother was coming and would take all the stuff away.

“I don’t want it,” Reeve said, looking at the clothes spilling from the suitcase. “I mean, there may be a couple of things…”

“Well, there are charities who’ll take the rest of it; leave that side of things to me.” McCluskey toured the room with hands in pockets, familiar with the place. Then he sat down on the room’s only chair.

“Jim usually stayed in better than this,” Reeve said. “Money must have been tight.”

“You’d make a fine detective, Mr. Reeve. What line of work are you in?”

“Personnel management.”

But McCluskey wasn’t fooled by that. He smiled. “You’ve been in armed forces though, right?”

“How could you tell?” Reeve checked the bedside table, finding nothing but a copy of Gideon’s Bible.

“You’re not the only detective around here, Mr. Reeve. I know Vietnam vets, guys who were in Panama. I don’t know what it is… maybe you all have the same careful way of moving, like you’re always expecting a trip wire. And yet you’re not afraid. I don’t know.”

Reeve held something up. It had been lying beneath the bed. “AC adapter,” he said.

“Looks like.”

Reeve looked around. “So where’s whatever goes with it?”

McCluskey nodded towards the suitcase. “See that carrier bag there? Half hidden under those trousers.”

Reeve went over and opened the bag. Inside were a small cassette recorder, microphone, and some tapes.

“I listened to the tapes,” McCluskey said. “Blank, mostly. There are a couple of phone calls, sounded like your brother wanted to talk to some people.”

“He was a journalist.”

“So it says on his passport. Was he here covering a story?”

“I don’t know. Haven’t you found any notes? There must be a notebook or something.”

“Not a damned thing. I wondered if maybe that was another reason for the trip to La Jolla.”

“What?”

“To ditch all those kinds of things in the ocean. Clean break, see.”

Reeve nodded. Then he held up the cable and the recorder. “It doesn’t fit,” he said. And he showed the detective that the adapter wouldn’t connect with the small machine. “It just doesn’t fit.”

After the detective had dropped him back at his hotel, Reeve went upstairs to wash. He thought of telephoning Joan, but checked himself. In Scotland, it was the wee small hours of the following morning. He could phone her at 11:00 P.M. his time, but not before. He wasn’t sure he’d still be awake at 11:00 P.M. He turned on the TV, looking for news, and found everything but. Then he made his way back downstairs. He used the stairs rather than the elevator, feeling the need for some exercise. At the bottom, he felt so good he climbed back up to the tenth floor and then descended again.

In the restaurant, he had soup, a steak, and a salad. He looked in at the bar, but decided against a drink. The hotel’s gift shop was still open, though, and he was able to buy a detailed street map of San Diego, better than the tourist offerings he’d so far been given. Back in his room, he found a couple of bulky phone books in one of the dresser drawers, took them to the table, and started working.

FIVE

THE NEXT MORNING, REEVE WOKE UP early but groggy, and went to the window to check. The strange car wasn’t there.

He’d seen it yesterday evening, outside Jim’s motel, and had the feeling it followed McCluskey’s car back here to the hotel. He thought he’d spotted it in the parking lot; a big old American model, something from the sixties or early seventies with spongy suspension and faded metallic-green paint that looked like a respray.

It wasn’t there now, but that didn’t mean it hadn’t been there before.

He showered and telephoned Joan, having fallen asleep last night without fulfilling his own promise to himself. They spoke for only a couple of minutes, mostly about Allan. She asked a few questions about the trip, about Jim. Reeve’s replies were terse; Joan would call it denial-she’d read some psychology books in her time. Maybe it was denial, or at least avoidance.

But there wouldn’t be much more avoiding. Today he had to look at the body.

He ate breakfast in a quiet corner of the restaurant. It was buffet-style, with the usual endless coffee. There didn’t seem to be many overnight guests, but a bulletin board in the reception area warned that the hotel would be playing host to a convention and a couple of large-scale civic meetings during the day. After three glasses of fresh orange juice and some cereal and French toast, he felt just about ready. Indeed, he felt so good he thought he might get through the day without throwing up.

He went out to the parking lot, not bothering to have the car brought out front for him. He wanted a good look around. Satisfied, he got into the Blazer and put his map on the passenger seat. He’d marked several locations-today’s destinations. The biggest circle was around his own hotel.

The green car was sitting at the exit ramp of a lot next to the hotel’s. It slid out behind him, keeping too close. Reeve tried to see the driver in his rearview, but the other car’s windshield was murky. He could make out broad shoulders, a bull’s neck, and that was about it.

He kept driving.

The funeral parlor was first. It was out in La Jolla, not too far from where the body had been found. The vestibule was cream satin and fresh flowers and piped music. There were a couple of chairs, one of which he sat on while he waited to be shown through to the viewing room. That was what the quiet-spoken mortician had called it: the viewing room. He didn’t know why he had to wait. Maybe they kept the bodies somewhere else and only hauled them up and dusted them off when somebody wanted to see them.

Finally, the mortician came back and flashed him that closed-lipped professional smile, no hint of teeth. Pleasure was not a factor here. He asked Reeve to follow him through a set of double doors, which had glass panes covered with more cream satin material. All the colors were muted. In fact, the most colorful thing in the place was James Reeve’s face.

There was a single open coffin in the room, lined, naturally, with cream satin. It stood on trestles at the end of the red-carpeted walkway. The corpse was dressed only in a shroud, which made it look bizarrely feminine. The shroud came up over the corpse’s scalp. Reeve knew his brother had swallowed the Browning, angling it up towards the brain, so probably there wouldn’t be much scalp there.

They’d given James’s face the only tan, fake or otherwise, of its life, and there looked like rouge on the cheeks, maybe a little coloring on the thick, pale lips. He looked absurd, like a waxwork dummy. But it was him all right. Reeve had been hoping for a fake, a monstrous practical joke. Maybe Jim was in trouble, he’d thought, had run off, and had somehow duped everybody into thinking he’d killed himself. But now there could be no doubt. Reeve nodded his head and turned away from the coffin. He’d seen enough.

“We have some effects,” the mortician whispered.

“Effects?” Reeve kept walking. He didn’t want to be in the viewing room a second longer. He was angry. He didn’t know why, perhaps because it was more natural to him than grief. He screwed his eyes shut, wishing the mortician would stop whispering at him.

“Effects of your brother’s. Just clothes, really, the ones he was wearing…”

“Burn them.”

“Of course. There are also some papers to sign.”

“I just need a minute.”

“Of course. It’s only natural.”

Reeve turned on the man. “No,” he snarled, “it’s highly unnatural, but I need that minute anyway. Okay?”

The man went paler than his surroundings. “Why… uh, of course.” Then he walked back into the viewing room, and seemed to count to sixty before coming out again, by which time Reeve had recovered some of his composure. The pink mist was shifting from in front of his eyes. Jesus, and his pills were back in Scotland.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

“Quite…” The man swallowed back the word natural, and coughed instead. “Quite understandable. When will you want the body released?”

That had been taken care of. The coffin would travel to Heathrow on the same flight Reeve himself was taking, then be transported to the family plot in Scotland. It all seemed so ludicrous-burying a brother, traveling thousands of miles with the physical remains. How would Jim have felt? Suddenly Reeve knew exactly what his brother would have wanted.

“Look,” he said in the vestibule, “is there any way he can be buried here?”

The mortician blinked. “In La Jolla?”

“Or San Diego.”

“You don’t want to take the remains back?”

“Back where? He left Scotland a long time ago. Wherever he was at any given point, that was his home. He’d be as well off here as anywhere.”

“Well, I’m sure we could… burial or cremation?”

Cremation: the purifying fire. “Cremation would be fine.”

So they went through to the office to fix everything, including the expenses to date. Reeve used his credit card. There were forms to sign, a lot of forms. A bell sounded, signaling that someone else had come in. The mortician went to his office door and looked out.

“I’ll be just one moment,” he called, “if you’d take a seat…”

Then he came back to his desk and was briskly businesslike. First, he got the details from Reeve and canceled the cargo reservation from LAX to LHR. He called the transport company in England, and caught someone just as they were about to leave for the night, so was able to cancel that, too. Reeve said he could take care of the rest when he got back to Scotland. The mortician was obviously used to having to do these things, or things like them. He smiled again and nodded.

Setting up the cremation was like setting up a dental appointment. Would he want the ashes in an urn, or scattered? Reeve said he’d want them scattered to the four winds, and let them blow where they may. The mortician checked the paperwork, and that was that.

Plastic made these financial transactions so much easier.

The mortician handed over a clear cellophane bag-Jim’s effects.

They shook hands in the vestibule. Reeve noticed that the new client wasn’t anywhere to be seen, then just as he was leaving, the double doors to the viewing room opened and the man came out.

He was broad across the chest and neck, with legs that tapered to pencil-thin ankles. Reeve ignored him and stepped outside, then hugged the wall beside the door. He looked along the street, and there was the green car, not twenty feet from him. It was an old Buick. He was still standing to one side of the door sixty seconds later when the man came out. Reeve grabbed for a hand, wrenched it up the man’s back, and marched him across the pavement to the car, where he slammed him onto the hood.

The man made complaining noises throughout, even as Reeve started searching his jacket pockets. Then he made out a few words, punctuated by gasps of pain.

“Friend… his friend… Jim’s… your brother’s.”

Reeve eased the pressure on the arm. “What?”

“I was a friend of your brother’s,” the man said. “Name’s Eddie Cantona. Maybe he mentioned me.”

Reeve let the man’s hand go. Eddie Cantona lifted himself slowly from the hood, as though checking the damage-to both himself and the car.

“How do you know who I am?”

Cantona turned towards him and started rubbing his elbow and wrist. “You look like him,” he said simply.

“What were you doing out at La Jolla?”

“You saw me, huh?” Cantona kept manipulating his arm. “Some gumshoe I’d make. What was I doing?” He rested his bulk against the wheel well. “Same as you, I guess. Trying to make sense out of it.”

“And did you?”

Cantona shook his head. “No, sir, I didn’t. There’s only one thing I know for damned sure: Jim didn’t commit suicide. He was murdered.”

Reeve stared at the stranger, and Cantona returned the look without blinking.

“I liked your brother a hell of a lot,” he said. “Soon as I saw you, I knew who you were. He mentioned you to me, said he wished you could’ve been closer. He was mostly drunk when he talked, but they say drunk men speak the truth.”

The words rolled out like they’d been rehearsed. This was what Reeve wanted, someone who had known Jim towards the end, someone who might help him make sense of it all. But what had Cantona said…?

“What makes you think,” Reeve said slowly, “my brother was murdered?”

“Because he’d no need to rent a car,” Eddie Cantona said. “I was his driver.”

They sat in a bar two blocks from the funeral parlor, and Reeve told Cantona what McCluskey had told him-how suicides like to make a break.

“If he was going to commit suicide, he wouldn’t‘ve wanted to do it in your car,” Reeve said.

“Well, all I know is, he didn’t kill himself.” Cantona shot back his second Jose Cuervo Gold and sipped from his iced glass of beer.

Reeve nursed his orange juice. “Have you talked to the police?”

“Sure, soon as I heard about it on the news. That fellow you were with, McCluskey, he took a sort of statement from me. Leastways, he listened to what I had to say. Then he said I could go, and that was the end of it, haven’t heard from the police since. Tried phoning a couple of times, but I never catch him.”

“Did my brother ever tell you what he was working on?”

Cantona shrugged his huge rounded shoulders. “Talked about a lot of things, but not much about that. Usually when he was talking he was drunk, which meant I was drunk, too, so maybe he did talk about his work and I just didn’t take it in. I know it was to do with chemicals.”

“Chemicals?”

“There’s a company out here called CWC, stands for Co-World Chemicals. It was to do with them. I drove Jim out to talk to someone who used to work there, a scientist sort of guy. But he wouldn’t say anything, wouldn’t let Jim over the door. Second time we tried, the guy wasn’t at home. On vacation or something.”

“Where else did you take him?”

“Well, there was another scientist, only this one wasn’t retired. But he wasn’t talking either. Then I used to take him to the library downtown, that’s where he’d do his research. You know, take notes, all that.”

“He took notes?”

“Yes, sir.”

“You saw his notebooks?”

Cantona shook his head. “Didn’t have anything like that. Had a little computer, used to fold open, with a little bitty screen and all. He’d put these disks in there, and he was all set.”

Reeve nodded. Now the cable made sense: it was to recharge the battery on the computer. But there was no computer, and no disks. He ordered another round and went to use the telephone next to the toilets.

“Detective McCluskey please.” His call was put through.

“McCluskey here.” The voice sounded like it was stifling a yawn.

“It’s Gordon Reeve. I’ve been talking with Eddie Cantona.”

“Oh, yeah, him.” There was a pause while the detective slurped coffee. “I meant to tell you about him.”

“Why didn’t you?”

“You want the truth? I didn’t know how you’d feel finding out your brother had spent his last few days on earth rattling around every seedy joint in San Diego with a bum at the steer-ing wheel.”

“I appreciate your candor.” A rustling noise now; a paper bag being opened. “And I apologize for disturbing your breakfast.”

“I had a late night; it’s no problem.”

“Mr. Cantona says my brother had a laptop computer and some disks.”

“Oh, yeah?”

“The cable in his room was an adapter so he could charge the battery.”

“Uh-huh?”

“Am I boring you?”

McCluskey swallowed. “Sorry, no. It’s just, like, what do you want me to say? I know what that old bum thinks; he says your brother was killed. And now he’s got you listening to his story… and would I be right in thinking you’re calling from the pay phone in a bar?”

Reeve smiled. “Good detective work.”

“Easy detective work. And would I further be right in thinking you’ve already laid a few drinks on Mr. Cantona? See, Gordon, he’ll tell you any damned story he can come up with if it keeps a glass of hooch in front of him. He’ll tell you your brother met Elvis and they rode off together in a pink Cadillac.”

“You sound like you know something about that state of mind.”

“Maybe I do. I don’t mean any disrespect, but that’s how I see it. There’s no secret here; there’s no cover-up or conspiracy or whatever you want to call it. There’s just a guy who gets tired of it all one day, so he tidies up his life and gets himself a gun. And he does it in private, away from family and friends, and doesn’t leave a note. It’s a tidy way to go.”

“Unless you’re the hire company with a car that needs cleaning.”

“Yeah, agreed, but those fuckers can afford it.”

“All right, McCluskey. Thanks for listening.”

“Name’s Mike. Let’s talk again before you leave, okay?”

“Okay.”

“And don’t go buying Mr. Cantona too many more drinks, not if he’s driving.”

Detective Mike McCluskey put down the receiver and finished his pastry, washing it down as best he could with the scalding liquid that passed for coffee from the vending machine down the hall. While he chewed, he stared at the telephone, and after he’d swallowed the last mouthful, he tossed the paper bag into the trash (making eight first attempts out of ten for the week, which was not bad), then reached again for his phone, checking first that there was no one in earshot.

“Fucking Cantona,” he snarled, trying to recall the number.

Back in the bar, Reeve sat on his stool and took a mouthful of orange juice. He studied Eddie Cantona, who was studying the cocktail menu and looking like he was settling in for the day. Yes, Eddie looked like a boozer, but not a liar. But then a lot of people were real pros when it came to lying. Reeve knew; he was one of them. He’d had to lie to a lot of people about his real position in the army; he never said SAS or Special Forces, not even to other army careerists. He kept his mouth shut when he could, and lied when he couldn’t. Lying was easy, you just said you were in the regiment you’d been in before you joined Special Forces. Some people took pride in their lies. But nothing Cantona had said so far struck Reeve as anything other than accurate. It made sense that Jim would own a portable computer. But then it also made sense that he might ditch it…

No, it didn’t. He’d been writing a story. He’d have wanted that story published in some form, even after death. He’d have wanted his monument.

“Eddie,” Reeve said, waiting till the man had turned away from the menu, “tell me about my brother. Tell me everything you can.”

Cantona drove them to the car rental firm. Reeve had memorized the salient details of McCluskey’s report, and knew which firm to go to. He’d found the address in the telephone book. He was thinking about his own expensive rental car, the Blazer, and how it was spending more time at rest than in motion.

“You got a wife, Gordon?”

“Yes.”

“Kids?”

“A son. He’s eleven.”

“Jim used to talk about a nephew, would that be him?”

Reeve nodded. “Allan was Jim’s only nephew.” He had the side window open, his head resting into the airflow.

“You got any photos?”

“What?”

“Your wife and kid.”

“I don’t know.” Reeve got out his wallet and opened it. There was an old photo of Joan, not much bigger than a passport shot.

“Can I see?” Cantona took the photograph from him and studied it, holding it between thumb and forefinger as he rested both meaty hands on the top of the steering wheel. He turned the photo over, revealing a line of Scotch tape. “It’s been torn in two,” he said, handing the photo back.

“I get a temper sometimes.”

“Tell my arm about it.” Cantona rolled his shoulder a couple of times.

“They tried treating me,” Reeve said all of a sudden, not knowing why he was telling a stranger.

“Treating you?”

“For the violence. I used to get angry a lot. I spent some time in a psychiatric ward.”

“Oh, yeah?”

“Now I have pills I’m supposed to take, only I don’t take them.”

“Mood-controllers, man. Never take a pill that screws with your mind.”

“Is that right?”

“Take it from one who knows. I was in Monterey in the sixties, then Oakland. I was twenty, twenty-one. I saw some action. Chemical action, if you know what I mean. Came out of it with a massive depression which lasted most of the seventies, started drinking around nineteen eighty. It doesn’t cure anything, but other drunks are better company than doctors and goddamned psychiatrists.”

“How come you still have a driving license?”

Cantona laughed. “Because they’ve never caught me, pure and simple.”

Reeve looked out through his open window. “Drinking’s one of the things that seems to start me off with the violence.”

Cantona said nothing for a minute. Then: “Jim told me you were ex-military.”

“That’s right.”

“Seems to me that might explain things. You see any action?”

“Some.” More than most, he might have added. Row, row, row your boat, Gently down the stream… He cut that memory off at the pass.

“I was in Vietnam for a tour,” Cantona continued. “Took some shrapnel in my foot. By that time, I was just about ready to do myself an injury to get me out of there. So you still get these spells?”

“What spells?”

“The violence.”

“I’ve tried self-help. I’ve read a lot of books.”

“What, medical stuff?”

“Philosophy.”

“Yeah, Jim said you got to like that stuff. Castaneda’s about my limit. What stuff do you read?”

“Anarchism.”

“Anarchism?” Cantona looked disbelievingly at him. “Anarchism?” he repeated, as though trying the word out for size. Then he nodded, but with a quizzical look on his face. “Does it help?”

“I don’t know. Maybe.”

“What do the doctors say?”

“They say I’m on my last warning. One more outburst, they’ll section me. I think they mean it.” He stared at Cantona. “Why am I telling you this?”

Cantona grinned. “Because I’m listening. Because I’m harmless. Besides, it’s a damned sight cheaper than therapy.” Then he laughed. “I can’t believe I’m sharing my car with a goddamned anarchist.”

The rental place looked like a used-car lot, dusty cars ranked behind a high fence. There was a metal gate, a chain and padlock hanging off it, and behind it a single-story prefabricated office. Reeve could tell it was the office because there was a big painted sign above it stating just that. Garishly colored notices in the window offered “the best deals in town,” “extra-special weekend rates,” and “nice clean cars, low mileage, good runners.”

“Looks like Rent-A-Wreck before they went upscale,” Cantona commented.

They knocked and opened the office door. There was a single room inside with a couple of doors leading off, both open. One showed a storeroom, the other a toilet. A man in shirtsleeves was seated behind the desk. He looked Mexican, in his fifties, and he was showing teeth around a long thin cigar.

“My friends,” he said, half rising. “What can I do for you?” He gestured for them to sit, but Reeve stayed standing by the window, occasionally looking out, and Cantona stayed there with him.

“My name’s Gordon Reeve.”

“Good morning to you, Gordon.” The Mexican wagged a finger. “I seem to know you.”

“I think you rented a car to my brother on Saturday night.”

The smile melted. The man slipped the cigar out of his mouth and placed it in the overspilling ashtray. “I’m sorry. Yes, you resemble your brother.”

“Was it you who dealt with my brother?”

“Yes, it was.”

“Do you mind if I ask a few questions?”

The Mexican smiled. “You sound like a policeman.”

“This is just for my peace of mind.” Then Reeve spoke to the man in Spanish, and the man nodded. Family, he was saying, I have to take these memories back for the family. The Spanish understood these things.

“See,” he said in English, “I’m trying to understand my broth-er’s state of mind on that night.”

The Mexican was nodding. “I understand. Ask your questions.”

“Well, one thing I don’t quite yet understand. My brother was last seen drinking in a downtown bar, then it seems he came here. A cab picked him up from the bar. But to get here, he had to pass three or four other car hire firms.” In his hotel room, with map and telephone book, Reeve had done his work.

The Mexican opened his arms. “This is perhaps easily explained. For one thing, we have the lowest rates in town, you can ask anyone. Being blunt, if you only need a car so you can drive somewhere quiet and put an end to your life, you do not need a Lincoln Continental. For a second thing, I open later than the other places. You can check this. So maybe they were closed already.”

Why would I want to “check this”? Reeve thought, but he nodded his head. “My brother had been drinking,” he said. “Did he seem affected by drink to you?”

But the Mexican’s attention was on Cantona, who was leaning against the noisy air conditioner. “Please,” he said. “It breaks easily.”

Cantona got up from the unit. Reeve noticed that the machine was dripping water into a bowl on the floor. He repeated his question.

The Mexican shook his head. “I would not have done business with him if I thought he’d been drinking. I have nothing to gain by seeing my cars wrecked or messed up.”

“Speaking of which, where is the car?”

“It is not in the lot.”

“That’s not what I asked.”

“It has gone for repair and… detailing. The police smashed the driver’s side window to effect entry. Remember, the car was locked from within.”

I know that, thought Reeve, but why are you telling me? “Before renting the car to my brother,” he asked, “did you take a look at his driving license?”

“Of course.”

Reeve stared at the man.

“What is it?” the Mexican asked, his grin looking queasy.

“He held a UK driving license, not valid over here.”

“Then I should not have rented him one of my automobiles.” The man shrugged. “A mistake on my part.”

Reeve nodded slowly. “A mistake,” he repeated. He asked a few more questions, trivial ones, just to put the Mexican more at ease, then thanked him for his help.

“I am truly sorry about your brother, Gordon,” the Mexican said, holding out his hand.

Reeve shook it. “And I’m sorry about your car.” He followed Cantona to the door. “Oh, you forgot to say which garage is fixing the car.”

The Mexican hesitated. “Trasker’s Auto,” he said at last.

Cantona started chuckling the moment they were outside. “I thought he was going to swallow that cigar,” he said. “You really had him going.”

“He wasn’t a very good liar.”

“No, he surely wasn’t. Hey, where did you learn to speak Spanish?”

Reeve opened the car door. “There was a time I needed to know it,” he said, sliding into the passenger seat.

Daniel Trasker ran what looked like four parts wrecking operation to one part repair. When Reeve explained who he was, Trasker went wide-eyed with shock.

“Hell, son, you don’t want to see that car! There’s stains on the-”

“It’s okay, Mr. Trasker, I don’t want to see the car.”

Trasker calmed a little at that. They’d been standing outside the wood-and-tin shack that served as Trasker’s premises. Most of the work was done in the yard outside. Trasker himself was in his well-preserved early sixties, clumps of curling silver hair showing from beneath an oily baseball cap. His walnut face showed deep laugh lines around the eyes, with oil and dirt in-grained. He wiped his hands on a large blue rag throughout their conversation.

“You better come in.”

In the midst of the shack’s extraordinary clutter, it took Reeve a while to work out that there was a desk and chair, and even a PC. Paperwork covered the desk like so much camouflage, and there were bits of engines everywhere.

“I’d ask you to sit,” said Trasker, “but there’s nowhere to sit. If someone’s writing me a check, I sometimes clear some space for them, but otherwise you stand.”

“Standing’s fine.”

“So what is it you want, Mr. Reeve?”

“You know my brother was found in a locked car, Mr. Trasker?”

Trasker nodded. “We got the car right here.”

“Police smashed the window to get in.”

“That they did. We got the replacement part on order.”

Reeve stood close beside the older man. “Is there any way someone could have locked the car afterwards? I mean, after my brother died?”

Trasker stared at him. “What’s your point, son?”

“I’m just wondering if that’s possible.”

Trasker thought about it. “Hell, of course it’s possible. All you’d need’s a spare set of keys. Come to think of it…” Trasker’s voice trailed off.

“What?”

“Let me go check something.” He turned and left the shack. Reeve and Cantona followed him outside, but he turned back to them, holding up his hands. “Now, let me do this by myself. That car’s not something you should be seeing.”

Reeve nodded, and watched Trasker go. Then he told Cantona to stay where he was, and began to follow the old man.

Around the back of the shack, and past heaps of wrecked cars, Reeve saw that there was another low-slung building, double-garage size. Half a dozen tall gas cylinders stood like metal sentries outside a wide door, which stood open. There was a car jacked up inside, but Trasker squeezed past it. Reeve looked around him. He was five or six miles outside San Diego, inland towards the hills. The air was stiller here, not quite so fresh. He had to decide now, right now. He took a deep breath and made for the garage.

“What is it?” he asked Trasker.

The old man shot up from his crouching position and swiveled on his heels. “Nearly gave me a damned heart attack,” he complained.

“Sorry.” Reeve came forward. Trasker had opened the door of the car and was studying it. The car James Reeve had died in. It was smarter than Reeve had expected, a good deal newer, as good certainly as anything in the Mexican’s lot. He approached it slowly. The seats were leather or Leatherette, and had been wiped clean. But as he bent down to peer inside, he could see stains against the roof. A rust-colored trajectory, fanning out towards the back of the car. He thought of touching the blood, maybe it was still damp. But he tore his gaze away from it. Trasker was looking at him.

“I told you to stay put,” the old man said quietly.

“I had to see.”

Trasker nodded, understanding. “You want a moment to yourself?”

Reeve shook his head. “I want to know what you were looking at.”

Trasker pointed to the interior door-lock on the driver’s side. “See there?” he said, touching it. “Can you see a little notch, low down on the lock?”

Reeve looked more closely. “Yes,” he said.

“There’s one on the passenger door-lock too.”

“Yes?”

“They’re sensors, son. They sense a beam from a remote-control key ring.”

“You mean you can lock and unlock the doors from a distance?”

“That’s right.”

“So what?”

“So,” said Trasker, digging into his overall pockets and pulling out a key on a chain, “here’s what came with the car. This is the key that was in the ignition when the police found the car. Now, this is obviously the spare key.”

Reeve looked at it. “Because there’s no button to activate the locks?”

“Exactly.” Trasker took the key back. “You only usually get the one remote-control key ring with a car like this. The spare key they give you is plain, like the one I’m holding.”

Reeve thought about it. Then, without saying anything, he walked back to Cantona’s car. Cantona was standing in the shade provided by the shack.

“Eddie,” Reeve said, “I want you to do something for me.”

By the time Daniel Trasker caught up with Reeve, Cantona’s car was already reversing out of the yard.

“I want to wait here a few minutes,” Reeve said.

Trasker shrugged. “Then what?”

“Then, if I may, I’d like to use your phone.”

Carlos Perez was sucking on a fresh cigar when his telephone rang. It was the brother Gordon Reeve again.

“Yes, Gordon, my friend,” Perez said pleasantly. “Did you forget something?”

“I just wondered about the car key,” Reeve said.

“The car key?” This Reeve was incredible, the way his mind worked. “What about the key?”

“Do you give your customers a spare set, or just the one?”

“That depends on the model of vehicle, Gordon, and other considerations, too.” Perez put his cigar down. It tipped from the edge of the ashtray and rolled off the desk to the floor. He walked around the side of his desk and crouched down, the telephone gripped to his ear.

“Did my brother’s car have remote locking?”

Perez made a noise like he was thinking. The cigar was be-neath his desk. He felt for it, and received a burn on the side of his hand. Swearing silently, he finally drew the cigar out and re-turned to his chair, examining the damage to his left hand.

“Ah,” he said into the telephone, a man who has just remembered. “Yes, that vehicle did have remote locking.”

“And it had the key ring, the push-button?”

“Yes, yes.” Perez couldn’t see where this was leading. He felt sweat glisten on his forehead, tingling his scalp.

“Then where is it now?” Reeve said coldly.

“What?”

“I’m at the garage. There’s no such key here.”

Key, key, key. “I see what you mean,” Perez improvised. “But that key was lost by a previous client. I did not understand you at first. No, there was no remote by the time your brother…” But Perez was speaking into a dead telephone. Reeve had cut the connection. Perez put the receiver back in its cradle and chewed on his cigar so hard he snapped the end off.

He got his jacket from the back of his chair, locked the office and set the alarm, and got into his car. Out on the road, he stopped long enough to chain the gates shut, double-checking the padlock.

If he’d checked everything with the same care, he’d have seen the large green car that followed him as he left.

SIX

KOSIGIN WALKED DOWN TO North Harbor Drive. A huge cruise ship had just docked at the terminal. He stood leaning against the rail, looking down at the water. Sailboats scudded along in the distance, angled so that they appeared to have no mass at all. When they turned they became invisible for a moment; it was not an optical illusion, it was a shortcoming of the eye itself. You just had to stare at nothing, trusting that the boat would reappear. Trust standing in for vision. Kosigin would have preferred better eyesight. He didn’t know why it had been deemed preferable that some birds should be able to pick out the movements of a mouse while hovering high over a field, and mankind should not. The consolation, of course, was that man was an inventor, a maker of tools. Man could examine atoms and electrons. He might not be able to see them, but he could examine them.

Kosigin liked to leave as little as possible to chance. Even if he couldn’t see something with his naked eye, he had ways of finding out about it. He had his own set of tools. He was due to meet the most ruthless and complex of them here.

Kosigin did not regard himself as a particularly complex individual. If you’d asked him what made him tick, and he’d been willing to answer, then he could have given a very full answer indeed. He did not often think of himself as an individual at all. He was part of something larger, a compound of intelligences and tools. He was part of Co-World Chemicals, a corporation man down to the hand-stitched soles of his Savile Row shoes. It wasn’t just that what was good for the company was good for him-he’d heard that pitch before and didn’t wholly believe it-Kosigin’s thinking went further: what is good for CWC is good for the whole of the Western world. Chemicals are an absolute necessity. If you grow food, you need chemicals; if you process food, you need chemicals; if you work at saving lives in a hospital or out in the African bush, you need chemicals. Our bodies are full of them, and keep on producing them. Chemicals and water, that’s what a body is. He reckoned the problems of famine in Africa and Asia could be ended if you tore down the barriers and let agrichemical businesses loose. Locusts? Gas them. Crop yields? Spray them. There was little you couldn’t cure with chemicals.

Of course, he knew of side effects. He kept up with the latest scientific papers and media scare stories. He knew there were kids out there who weren’t being vaccinated against measles because the original vaccine was produced after research on tissue from unborn fetuses. Stories like that made him sad. Not angry, just sad. Humanity had a lot still to learn.

Some tourists wandered past, a young couple with two children. They looked like they’d been out for a boat ride; rosy-cheeked, windblown, grinning. They ate fresh food and breathed clean air. The kids would grow up straight and strong, which might not have been the case a hundred and fifty years before.

Good chemicals, that was the secret.

“Mr. Kosigin?”

Kosigin turned, almost smiling. He didn’t know how the Englishman could sneak up like that every time. No matter how open the terrain, he was always nearly on Kosigin before Kosigin saw him. He wasn’t built to hide or be furtive: he stood six feet four inches, with a broad chest and thick upper arms, so that his lower arms didn’t quite touch his sides when he let them hang. His legs looked powerful, too, wrapped in tight faded denim, with Nike running shoes on the feet. His stomach was flat, ripples of muscle showing through the stretched black cotton T-shirt. He wore foldaway sunglasses, with a little pouch for them hooked on to his brown leather belt, the buckle of which was the ubiquitous Harley-Davidson badge. The man had wavy blond hair, cropped high on the forehead but falling at the back past the neck of the T-shirt. The tan on his face was pink rather than brown, and his eyebrows and eyelashes were as blond as the hair on his head. He seemed proud of the large indented scar which ran down his right cheek, as though a single blemish were needed to prove how perfect the rest of the package was.

To Kosigin, admittedly no authority, he looked like one of those TV wrestlers.

“Hello, Jay, let’s walk.”

That’s all the man had ever been to Kosigin: Jay. He didn’t even know if it was a first or second name, or maybe even an initial letter. They walked south towards the piers, past the wares of the T-shirt and souvenir sellers. Jay didn’t so much walk as bound, hands bunched in his denim pockets. He looked like he needed to be on a leash.

“Anything to report?”

Jay shrugged. “Things are taken care of, Mr. Kosigin.”

“Really?”

“Nothing for you to worry about.”

“McCluskey doesn’t share your confidence. Neither does Perez.”

“Well, they don’t know me. I’m never confident without good reason.”

“So Cantona isn’t a problem anymore?”

Jay shook his head. “And the brother’s flight is out of here tomorrow.”

“There’s been an alteration,” Kosigin said. “He’s not taking the body back with him. There’s to be a cremation tomorrow morning.”

“I didn’t know that.”

“I’m sorry, I should have told you.”

“You should always tell me everything, Mr. Kosigin. How can I work best if I’m not told everything? Still, the flight out is tomorrow afternoon. He hasn’t changed that, has he?”

“No, but all the same… he’s been asking awkward questions. I’m sure he doesn’t believe the story Perez threw him.”

“It wasn’t my idea to involve Perez.”

“I know,” Kosigin said quietly. Jay always seemed able to make him feel bad; and at the same time he always wanted to impress the bigger man. He didn’t know why. It was crazy: he was richer than Jay would ever be, more successful in just about every department, and yet there was some kind of inferiority thing at play and he couldn’t shake it.

“This brother, he doesn’t exactly sound your typical grieving relative.”

“I don’t know too much about him, just the initial search Alliance did. Ex-army, now runs an adventure-vacation thing in Scotland.”

Jay stopped and took off his sunglasses. He looked like he was staring at the million-dollar view, only his eyes were unfocused and he had the hint of a smile on his lips. “Couldn’t be,” he said.

“Couldn’t be what?”

But Jay stayed silent a few moments longer, and Kosigin wasn’t about to interrupt again.

“The deceased’s name was Reeve,” Jay said at last. “I should have thought of it sooner.” He threw his head back and burst out laughing. His hands, however, were gripping the guardrail like they could twist the metal back and forth on itself. Finally, he stared at Kosigin with wide greeny-blue eyes, the pupils large and black. “I think I know the brother,” he said. “I think I knew him years ago.” He laughed again, and bent low over the rail, looking for an instant as though he might throw himself into the bay. His feet actually left the ground, but then came down again. Passersby were staring.

I’m in the presence of a madman, Kosigin thought. What’s more, for the moment, having summoned him from L.A., I’m his employer. “You know him?” he asked. But Jay was scanning the sky now, stretching his neck to and fro. Kosigin repeated the question.

Jay laughed again. “I think I know him.” And then he pursed his lips and began to whistle, or tried to, though he was still chuckling. It was a tune Kosigin thought he half-recognized-a children’s melody.

And then, on the seafront in San Diego, with tourists giving him a wide berth, Jay began to sing:

Row, row, row your boat,

Gently down the stream.

Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily,

Life is but a dream.

He repeated the tune twice more, and then suddenly stopped. There was no life, no amusement in his face. It was like he’d donned a mask, as some wrestlers did. Kosigin swallowed and waited for more antics, waited for the giant to say something.

Jay swallowed and licked his lips, then uttered a single word.

The word was good.

Reeve had got a cab to pick him up from the junkyard. It had taken him to the funeral parlor, where he picked up his rental car. He resisted the temptation of a final look at Jim. Jim wasn’t there anymore. There was just some skin that he used to live inside.

Back in his hotel bedroom, he sat at the window thinking. He was thinking about the missing laptop, the laptop’s disks. He was thinking that anyone could have locked Jim’s body in the car. It added up to something-or nothing. The Mexican had been lying, but maybe he was covering up something else, something trivial like the rental car’s roadworthiness or his own business credentials. Well, Eddie Cantona was tailing the Mexican. All he could do now was wait for a phone call.

He took the cellophane bag out of his jacket pocket and scattered the contents on the round table by the window. Jim’s effects, the contents of his pockets. The police had established his identity, then handed everything over to the funeral parlor.

Reeve flicked through Jim’s passport, studying everything but his brother’s photograph. Then he turned to the wallet, a square brown leather affair with edges curling from age. Twenty dollars in fives, driver’s license, some small change. A handkerchief. A pair of nail clippers. A packet of chewing gum. Reeve peered into the packet. There were two sticks left. A piece of paper had been crumpled into the remaining space. He tore the packet to get it out. It was just the paper wrapper from a used stick of gum. But when he unfolded it, there was a word written in pen on the plain side.

The word was Agrippa.

The call came a couple of hours later.

“It’s me,” Cantona said, “and I hope you feel honored. I’m only allowed one phone call, pal, and you’re it.”

They were holding Eddie in the same police station Mike McCluskey worked out of, so instead of trying to see the felon, Reeve asked at the desk for the detective.

McCluskey arrived smiling like they were old friends.

Reeve didn’t return the smile. “Can you do me a favor?” he asked.

“Just ask.”

So Reeve asked.

A little while later they sat at McCluskey’s desk in the sprawling office he shared with a dozen other detectives. Things looked quiet; maybe there wasn’t much crime worth the name in San Diego. Three of the detectives were throwing crunched-up paper balls through a miniature basketball hoop into the wastebasket below. Bets were being taken on the winner. They glanced over at Reeve from time to time, and decided he was victim or witness rather than perpetrator or suspect.

McCluskey had been making an internal call. He put the receiver down. “Well,” he said, “looks straightforward enough. Driving under the influence, DUI we call it.”

“He told me he was stone-cold sober.”

McCluskey offered a wry smile rather than a remark, and inclined his head a little. Reeve knew what he meant: drunks will say anything. During the phone call, Reeve had been studying McCluskey’s desk. It was neater than he’d expected; all the desks were. There were scraps of paper with telephone numbers on them. He’d looked at those numbers.

One of them was for the funeral parlor. Another was the Mexican at the rental company. Both could be easily explained, Reeve thought.

“You phoned the funeral parlor,” he said, watching the detective very closely.

“What?”

Reeve nodded towards the telephone number. “The funeral parlor.”

McCluskey nodded. “Sure, wanted to double-check when the funeral was. Thought I’d try to come along. Look, getting back to this Cantona fellow, seems to me he palled around with your brother for a few drinks and maybe a meal or two. Seems to me, Gordon, that he’s trying to shake you down the same way.”

Reeve pretended to be following the basketball game. “Maybe you’re right,” he said, while McCluskey slipped another sheet of paper over the telephone numbers, covering the ones at the bottom of the original sheet. That didn’t matter-Reeve had almost memorized them-but the action itself bothered him. He looked back at McCluskey, and the detective smiled at him again. Some would have said it was a sympathetic smile. Oth-ers might have called it mocking.

One of the basketball players made a wild throw. The rebound landed in Reeve’s lap. He stared at the paper ball.

“Does the word Agrippa mean anything to you?” he asked.

McCluskey shook his head. “Should it?”

“It was written on a scrap of paper in my brother’s pocket.”

“I missed that,” McCluskey said, shifting more papers. “You really would make a good detective, Gordon.” He was trying to smile.

Reeve just nodded.

“What was he doing anyway?” McCluskey asked.

“Who?”

“Cantona, Mr. DUI. He telephoned you after his arrest; I thought maybe he had something to tell you.”

“Maybe he just wanted me to put up the bail.”

McCluskey stared at him. Reeve had become Cantona’s accuser, leaving him the defender.

“You think that was all?”

“What else?”

“Well, Gordon, I thought maybe he thought he was working for you.”

“Have you spoken with him?”

“No, but I was just on the telephone doing you a favor by talking to cops who have.” McCluskey cocked his head again. “You sound a little strange.”

“Do I?” Reeve made no attempt to soften his voice. It was more suspicious if you suddenly changed the way you were speaking to comply with the way you thought the listener wanted you to sound. “Maybe that’s because I’m cremating my brother tomorrow morning. Can I see Mr. Cantona?”

McCluskey rounded his lips into a thoughtful O.

“A final favor,” Reeve added. “I’m off tomorrow straight after the cremation.”

McCluskey took a little more time, apparently considering it. “Sure,” he said at last. “I’ll see if I can fix it.”

They brought Eddie Cantona out of the cells and up to one of the interview rooms. Reeve was already waiting. He’d paced the room, seeming anxious but really checking for possible bugs, spy holes, two-way mirrors. But there were just plain walls and a door. A table and two chairs in the middle of the floor. He sat on one chair, took a pen out of his pocket, and dropped it. Retrieving it from the floor, he checked beneath both chairs and the table. Maybe McCluskey hadn’t had enough time to organize a surveillance. Maybe he didn’t care. Maybe Reeve was reading too much into everything.

Maybe Eddie Cantona was just a drunk.

They brought him into the room and left him there. He walked straight over and sat down opposite Reeve.

“We’ll be right out here, sir,” one of the policemen said.

Reeve watched the uniformed officers leave the room and close the door behind them.

“Got a cigarette?” Cantona said. “No, you don’t smoke, do you?” He patted his pockets with trembling hands. “Haven’t got one on me.” He held his hands out in front of him. They jittered like they had electricity going through them. “Look at that,” he said. “Think that’s the D.T.”s? No, I’ll tell you what that is, that is what’s called being afraid.“

“Tell me what happened.”

Cantona stared wild-eyed, then tried to calm himself. He got up and walked around the room, flailing his arms as he talked. “They must’ve started following me at some point. They weren’t at the rental place-I’d swear to that on a Padres season ticket. But I was too busy watching Mr. Mex. First I knew, there was the blue light behind me and they pulled me over. I’ve never been pulled over; I told you that. I’ve been too careful and maybe too lucky.” He came back to the table and exhaled into Reeve’s face. It wasn’t very pleasant, but proved Cantona’s point.

“Not a drop I’d had,” he said. “Not a damned drop. They did the usual drunk tests, then said they were arresting me. Up till that point, I thought it was just bad luck. But when they put me in the back of the car, I knew it was serious. They were stopping me tailing the Mexican.” He stared deep into Reeve’s unblinking eyes. “They want me out of the way, Gordon, and cops have a way of getting what they want.”

“Has McCluskey talked to you?”

“That asshole I talked to about Jim’s murder?” Cantona shook his head. “Why?”

“I think he’s got something to do with it, whatever it is. Where was the Mexican headed?”

“What am I, clairvoyant?”

“I mean, which direction was he headed?”

“Straight downtown, it looked like.”

“Did he seem like the downtown-San Diego type to you?”

Cantona managed a grin. “Not exactly. I don’t know, maybe he was on business. Maybe…” He paused. “Maybe we’re overreacting.”

“Eddie, did Jim ever mention someone or something called Agrippa?”

“Agrippa?” Cantona screwed his eyes shut, trying his hardest. Then he sighed and shook his head. “Does it mean something?”

“I don’t know.”

Reeve stood up and gripped Cantona’s hands. “Eddie, I know you’re scared, and you’ve got cause to be, and it won’t bother me in the least if you lie through your teeth to get yourself out of here. Tell them anything you think they want to hear. Tell them the moon’s made of cheese and there are pink elephants under your bed. Tell them you just want a fresh start and to forget about the past few weeks. You’ve helped me a lot, and I thank you, but now you’ve got to think of number one. Jim’s dead; you’re still here. He’d want you to avoid joining him.”

Cantona was grinning again. “Are we engaged, Gordon?”

Reeve saw that he was still holding Cantona’s hands. He let them go, smiling. “I’m serious, Eddie. I think the best thing I can do for you right now is walk away and keep away.”

“You still flying home tomorrow?”

Reeve nodded. “I think so.”

“What’re you going to do?”

“Best you don’t know, Eddie.”

Cantona grudgingly agreed.

“There’s one last thing I’d like from you.”

“What’s that?”

“An address…” Reeve brought the map out of his pocket and spread it on the table. “And some directions.”

He didn’t see McCluskey again as he left the police station; didn’t particularly want to see him. He drove around for a while, taking any road he felt like, no pattern at all to his route. He stopped frequently, getting out his map and acting the lost tourist. He was sure he hadn’t been followed from the actual police station, but he wondered if that might change.

He’d had to learn car pursuit and evasion so he could teach it to trainee bodyguards who’d be expected to chauffeur their employers. He was no expert, but he knew the ground rules. He’d taken a weekend course at a track near Silverstone, an abandoned airfield used for controlled skids and high-speed chase scenarios.

The last thing he’d expected to need this trip were his professional skills.

He looked in the rearview and saw the patrol car draw up behind him. The uniform in the driver’s seat spoke into his radio before getting out, checking his holster, adjusting his sunglasses.

Reeve let his window slide down.

“Got a problem?” the policeman said.

“Not really.” Reeve was smiling, showing teeth. He tapped the map. “Just checking where I am.”

“You on vacation?”

“How could you tell?”

“You mean apart from the map and you being stopped where you’re not supposed to make a stop and your license plate being a rental?”

Now Reeve laughed. “You know, maybe I am a bit lost.” He looked at the map and pointed to a road. “Is this where we are?”

“You’re a few blocks off.” The officer showed him where he really was, then asked where he was headed.

“Nowhere really, just driving.”

“Well, driving’s fine-it’s the stopping that can be a problem. Make sure parking is authorized next time before you settle down.” The cop straightened up.

“Thank you, officer,” said Reeve, putting the car into gear.

And after that, they were tailing him. It looked to Reeve like a two-car unmarked tail with a few patrol cars as backup and lookouts. He drove around by the airport and then took North Harbor Drive back into town, cruising the waterfront and crossing the Coronado Bay Bridge before doubling back downtown and up First Avenue. The downtown traffic wasn’t too sluggish, and he sped up as he left the high towers behind, eventually following signs to Old Town State Park. He parked in a lot adjacent to some weird old houses which seemed to be a center of attraction, and crossed the street into the park itself. He reckoned one car was still with him, which meant two men: one of them would probably keep watch on the Blazer, the other following on foot.

He stopped to take a drink from a water fountain. Old Town comprised a series of buildings-stables, blacksmith’s, tannery, and so on-that might be original and might be reconstructions. The buildings were swamped, however, by souvenir and gift shops, Mexican cafés and restaurants. Reeve couldn’t see anyone following him, and went into the courtyard of one of the restaurants. He was asked if he wanted a table, but he said he was looking for a friend. He crossed the courtyard, squeezing past tables and chairs, and exited the restaurant at the other side.

He was right on the edge of the park and skirted it, finding himself on a street outside the perimeter, a couple of hundred yards from where his car was parked. This street had normal shops on either side, and at the corner stood two taxicabs, their drivers leaning against a lamppost while they chatted.

Reeve nodded to them and slipped into the backseat of the front cab. The man took his time winding up the conversation, while Reeve kept low in the seat, watching from the back window. Then the driver got in.

“ La Jolla,” Reeve said, reaching into his pocket for the map.

“No problem,” the driver said, trying to start the engine.

From the rear window, Reeve saw a man jog to the edge of the sidewalk across the street, looking all around. He was slack-jawed from running, and carried a holster under the armpit of his flapping jacket. He might have been one of the other detectives in McCluskey’s office; Reeve wasn’t sure.

The driver turned the ignition again, stamping his foot on the accelerator. The engine turned but didn’t catch.

“Sorry ‘bout this,” the driver said. “Fuckin’ garage told me they fixed it.” He got on his radio to tell base that he was “fucked again,” and whoever he was speaking to started raving at him for cursing on the air.

The cop was still there, talking into a two-way now, probably liaising with his partner back at the Blazer. Reeve hoped the partner was saying that the suspect was bound to return to his car, so they might as well sit tight…

“Hey, man,” the driver said, turning in his seat. “There’s an-other cab right behind. You understand English? We ain’t going nowhere.”

Reeve handed the man five dollars without turning from the window.

“This is for your time,” he said. “Now shut up.”

The driver shut up.

The cop seemed to be waiting for a message on his radio. Meantime, he lit a cigarette, coughing hard after the first puff.

Reeve was hardly breathing.

The cop flicked the cigarette onto the road as the message came for him. Then he stuffed the radio back into his jacket, turned, and walked away. Reeve opened the cab door slowly, got out, and shut it again.

“Anytime, man!” the driver called to him.

He got into the second cab. The driver was prompt to arrive.

“His engine fuckin‘ up again?” he asked.

“Yeah,” said Reeve.

“Where to?”

“ La Jolla,” said Reeve. The map was still in his hand. He’d folded it so that his destination wasn’t showing. It was something he’d learned during Special Forces training: if you were caught, the enemy couldn’t determine from the way your map was folded your landing point or your final destination. Reeve was glad he still knew the trick and had used it without thinking about it, like it was natural, a reaction.

Like it was instinct.

They stopped a few streets away from the one where Dr. Killin lived. It was only a matter of days since James Reeve had been driven there by Eddie Cantona. Reeve didn’t think the ex-CWC scientist would have returned; though with Jim out of the picture permanently it was just possible.

Cantona had told him about the man who’d been painting the fence. Why get your fence painted when you were going to be away? More likely that you’d stay put to see the job was done properly. It wasn’t like an interior job, where the smell of paint or the mess might persuade you to leave the house while the work was being done. Okay, maybe the painter had just been booked for that time, and wasn’t going to rearrange other jobs just so Killin could be there to oversee the minor work. But as Cantona himself had noted, the fence hadn’t really needed repainting.

The Mexican at the rental company had convinced Gordon Reeve that there was something very wrong about Jim’s death, something very wrong indeed. It wasn’t just murder; there was more to it than that. Reeve was catching glimpses of a conspiracy, a wider plot. Only he didn’t know what the plot was… not yet.

Reeve wanted to know if Killin was back. More, he wanted to know if the house was under surveillance. If it was, then either Jim posed a threat to someone from beyond the grave, or there were others who still posed that threat.

Others like Gordon Reeve himself.

So he had a route he wanted the driver to take, and he went over it with him. They would cross Killin’s street at two interchanges, without driving up the street itself. Only then, if still necessary, would they drive past Killin’s house. Not too slowly, not like they might stop. But slowly enough, like they were looking for a number on the street, but it wasn’t anywhere near the number of Killin’s house.

The driver seemed bemused by his request, so Reeve re-peated what he could in Spanish. Languages: another thing he’d learned in Special Forces. He had a propensity for language-learning, and had specialized in linguistics during his Phase Six training, along with climbing. He learned some Spanish, French, a little Arabic. The Spanish was one reason they’d chosen him for Operation Stalwart.

“Okay?” he asked the driver.

“Is your money, friend,” the driver said.

“Is my money,” Reeve agreed.

So they took the route Reeve had planned for them. The driver went too slowly at first-suspiciously slow-so Reeve had him speed up just a little. As they crossed the intersection he took a good look at Killin’s street. There were a couple of cars parked on the street itself, even though most of the bungalows had garages or parking spaces attached. He saw one freshly painted fence, the color Cantona had said it would be. There was a car half a block down and on the opposite side of the road. Reeve thought he saw someone in it, and that there was a sign on the door of the car.

They drove around the block and came back through an-other intersection, behind the parked car this time. He still couldn’t make out what the sign said. But there was definitely someone in the driver’s seat.

“So what now?” the driver said. “You want we should go down the street or not?”

“Pull over,” Reeve ordered. The driver pulled the car over to the curb. Reeve got out and adjusted the mirror on the passenger side. He got back into the backseat and looked at the mirror, then got out and adjusted it again.

“What’s going on?” the driver asked.

“Don’t worry,” said Reeve. He made another very slight adjustment, then got back in. “Now,” he said, “we drive down the street, just the way we talked about. Okay?”

“Is your money.”

As they neared the parked car with the man in it, approaching it from the front, Reeve kept his eyes on the wing mirror. He was just a passenger, a bored passenger staring at nothing while his driver figured out an address.

But he had a perfect view of the car as they passed it. He saw the driver study them, and seem to dismiss them. Nobody was expecting anyone to turn up in a cab. But the man was watchful. And he didn’t look to Reeve like a policeman.

“Where now?” the driver asked.

“That car we passed, did you see what was written on the side?”

“Yeah, man, it was some cable company. You know, cable TV. They’re always trying to get you to sign up, sign all your money away in exchange for fifty channels showing nothing but reruns of Lucy and shitty soaps. They been to my house three, four times already; my woman’s keen. They can smell when someone’s keen. Not me. So, where now?”

“Turn right, go a block or two, and stop again.” The driver did so. “You better fix your wing mirror,” Reeve said, so the driver got out to change it back. Reeve had a couple of options. One was to confront the man in the car, give him a hard time. Ask him a few questions while he pressed the life out of him. He knew interrogation techniques; he hadn’t used them in a long time, but he reckoned they’d come back to him like riding a bicycle. Just like the map-folding had come back. Instinct.

But if the man was a pro, and the man had looked like a pro-not like a cop, but like a pro-then he wouldn’t talk; and Reeve would have blown whatever cover he still possessed. Be-sides, he knew what he had come to find out. There was still a watch on Dr. Killin’s house. Someone still wanted to know whenever anyone went there. And it looked like there was nobody home.

His driver was waiting for instructions.

“Back to where you picked me up,” Reeve told him.

He paid the driver, tipped him a ten, and walked back the way he’d come. Back into Old Town State Park. He was in a gift shop, buying a postcard and a stamp and a kite that Allan would probably never use-too low-tech-when he saw the cop from the street corner watching him. The guy looked relieved; he’d probably gone back to his partner and then gotten jumpy, decided to look around. The park was full of tourists who had decamped from some trolley tour; it must’ve been a hard time for him. But now he had his reward.

Reeve left the shop and sauntered back to his car. He drove sedately back to his hotel, and only got lost once. He was assuming now that he was compromised; they’d be following him wherever he went. And if he lost them too often, they’d know they’d been compromised. And they’d either get sneakier-homing devices on his car, for example-or they’d have to gamble on direct assault. Maybe even an accident.

He didn’t think it would be a simple DUI.

In his room he wrote the postcard home and stuck the stamp on, then went down to the front desk to mail it. One man was seated in the reception area. He hadn’t brought any reading material with him, and had been reduced to picking out some of the brochures advertising Sea World, the San Diego Zoo, and the Old Town Trolley Tours. It was a chore to look interested in them. So Reeve did the man a favor: he went into the bar and ordered himself a beer. He was thirsty, and his thirst had won out over thoughts of a cool shower. He savored the chill as he swallowed. The man had followed him in and ordered a beer of his own, looking delighted at the prospect. The man was around the other side of the bar from Reeve. The other drinkers had the laughing ease of conventioneers. Reeve just drank his drink, signed for it, and then went upstairs to his room.

Except it didn’t feel like a room now; it felt like a cell.

SEVEN

NEXT DAY, GORDON REEVE saw the ghost.

Maybe it wasn’t so surprising under the circumstances. It was a strange day in a lot of ways. He packed his things away when he woke up, then went downstairs for breakfast. He was the only guest in the restaurant. The breakfast was buffet-style again. He could smell bacon and sausage. He sat in his booth and drank orange juice and a single cup of coffee. He was wearing his dark suit, black shoes and socks, white shirt, black tie. None of the hotel staff seemed to realize he was on his way to a funeral-they smiled at him the same as ever. Then he realized that they weren’t smiling at him, they were smiling through him.

After breakfast, he brought his bag downstairs and checked out, using his credit card.

“Hope you enjoyed your stay with us, Mr. Reeve,” the smiling robot said. Reeve took his bag outside. There was no one watching him in the hotel lobby, so there’d be someone out here, maybe in the parking lot. Sure enough, as he approached his car, the door opened on a car three bays away.

“Hey, Gordon.”

It was McCluskey. He was wearing a dark suit, too.

“What’s up?” Reeve asked.

“Nothing. Just thought you might have trouble finding the… thought you could follow me there. What do you say?”

What could he say-I think you’re a liar? I think you’re up to something? And I think you know I think that?

“Okay, thanks,” Reeve said, unlocking the Blazer.

He smiled as he drove. They were tailing him from in front, tailing him with his own permission. He didn’t mind, why should he mind? His business here was almost done, for the moment. He needed some distance. A good soldier might have called it safe distance. It was a perfect maneuver: look like you’re retreating when really you’re on the attack. He knew he wasn’t going to learn much more in San Diego without wholly compromising himself. It was time to move camp. He’d been taught well in Special Forces, taught lessons for a lifetime; and as old Nietzsche said, if you remained a pupil, you served your teacher badly.

Someone somewhere had once termed the SAS “Nietzsche’s gentlemen.” That wasn’t accurate: in Special Forces you depended on others as thoroughly as you depended on yourself. You worked as a small team, and you had to have trust in the abilities of others. You shared the workload. Which actually made you more of an anarchist. In Special Forces there was less bull about rank than in other regiments-you called officers by their first names. There was a spirit of community, as well as a sense of individual worth. Reeve was still weighing up his options. He could work alone, or there were people he could call. People he’d only ever call in an emergency, just as they knew they could call him.

He knew he should be thinking of Jim at this moment, but he’d thought about Jim a lot the past few days, and he didn’t see how another hour or two would help. It wasn’t that he’d managed to detach himself from the reality of the situation-his brother was dead, maybe murdered, certainly at the center of a cover-up-but that he’d accepted it so completely he now felt free to think about other things. Mr. Cold Rationalist himself. He hoped he’d stay cool at the cremation. He hoped he wouldn’t reach over and thumb McCluskey’s eyeballs out of their sockets.

The ceremony itself was short. The man at the front-Reeve never did learn if he was a priest, some church functionary, or just a crematorium lackey-didn’t know the first thing about James Reeve, and didn’t try to disguise the fact. As he told Gordon, if he’d had more time to prepare he might’ve said something more. As it was, he kept things nice and simple. He could have been talking about anyone.

There was a coffin-not the one Reeve had been shown at the funeral parlor, some cheaper model with not so much brass and polish. The chapel had some fresh cut flowers which Reeve couldn’t name. Joan would have known them-English and Latin tags. He was glad she’d stayed behind with Allan. If she’d come, he wouldn’t have taken such an interest, would never have met Eddie Cantona. He’d have signed for the body, shipped it home, and gone back to life as before, trying now and again to remember two brothers playing together.

There were just McCluskey and him in the chapel, and some woman at the back who looked like a regular. Then there was the man at the front, saying his words, and someone behind the scenes working the piped music and finally, the little electric curtain that closed over the coffin. The hum of the conveyor belt was just barely audible.

McCluskey held Reeve’s arm lightly as they walked back up the aisle; an intimate gesture, like they’d just been married. The woman smiled at them from her pew. She looked to be sticking around for the next service. Guests were already arriving outside.

“You all right?” McCluskey asked.

“Never better,” Reeve said, swallowing back the sudden ache in his Adam’s apple. He almost gagged, but cleared his throat instead and blew his nose. “Shame Cantona couldn’t have been here.”

“He should be out later today. We like to dry the drunks out before we release them back to their bars.”

“Did you see him?”

“No.”

“He wasn’t drunk. He hadn’t touched a drop.”

“Blood test shows different.”

Reeve blew his nose again. He’d been about to say, Why doesn’t that surprise me? Instead he said, “Let’s get out of here.”

“Got time or inclination for a drink?”

“I’m afraid you’d pull me in for DUI.”

“Hell, I wouldn’t do that,” McCluskey said, smiling, “not to a tourist. So where to now? The airport?”

Reeve checked his watch. “I suppose so.”

“I’ll come with you. Maybe we can have that drink there.”

“Why not?” Reeve said, though it was the last thing he wanted. They went to their cars. Other vehicles were arriving, including two large black limos bearing the family of the crematorium’s next client. Other cars had arrived early, and the drivers and passengers were waiting to emerge. It looked like a point of etiquette: the chief mourners should be the first to arrive. Reeve’s eyes almost met those of one mourner, sitting in his car with his hands on the steering wheel. But the man had turned away a second before.

He was back out on the highway, following McCluskey, when he realized who the man had reminded him of. He nearly lost control of the Blazer, and braked hard. A pickup behind him sounded its horn, and he accelerated again.

A ghost. He told himself he’d seen a ghost. It was that sort of day.

At check-in, Reeve got rid of his bag. He had a few small items of Jim’s, but otherwise was taking back practically nothing he hadn’t brought with him. Allan’s kite was safely layered between shirts. Maybe he could get some perfume for Joan on the plane. Not that she ever wore perfume.

McCluskey was suggesting that drink when his pager beeped. He went to a pay phone and called the station. He looked annoyed when he returned.

“I’ve got to go, Gordon. Sorry.”

“Not your fault.”

McCluskey put out his hand, which Reeve felt duty-bound to shake. McCluskey could feel it was of a different quality from their first handshake. Reeve wasn’t putting anything into it.

“Well,” the detective said, “have a nice flight back. Come see us again sometime.”

“Right,” Reeve said, turning away. He saw the board pointing him towards his gate, and headed for it. McCluskey waited till he was out of sight, then watched for another minute or so. Then he went out to his car. He was worried about Reeve. He didn’t think Reeve knew much, but he did know something was wrong. And now he had Agrippa. McCluskey had considered telling Kosigin that Reeve now held that one word, but that would mean admitting that he’d missed the scrap of paper in the dead man’s pocket. Kosigin didn’t like mistakes. McCluskey intended to keep quiet about the whole thing.

Jay was leaning against McCluskey’s car like he owned not only the car but the whole parking lot, and maybe everything else in the city, too.

“Scratch the paint, I’ll kill your whole family.”

“My family are all dead,” Jay said, lifting his weight from the wheel well.

McCluskey unlocked his door but didn’t open it. He squinted into the glare as an airplane lifted into the blue, hanging sky. “Think we’ve seen the last of him?” McCluskey asked. “I certainly fucking hope so. I didn’t like him. I don’t think he liked me. I wasted a lot of effort on that fuck.”

“I’m sure Mr. Kosigin is grateful. Maybe you’ll have a bonus this month.”

McCluskey didn’t like Jay’s insolent smile. But then he didn’t like his reputation either. He pulled open the driver’s door. “You didn’t answer my question.”

“I wasn’t listening.”

“I asked if you thought we’ve seen the last of him.”

Jay grinned. “I think you’ve seen the last of him.” He was waving something. It looked to McCluskey like an air ticket. “Mr. Kosigin thinks I should take a vacation… back to the old homeland.” He paused. “I think he saw me.”

“What?”

“Back at the crematorium, I think he got a sideways glance. It would make things more interesting if the Philosopher knew I was around.”

McCluskey frowned. “What the fuck are you talking about?”

But Jay just shook his head, still grinning, and walked away. He was whistling something, a tune the detective half-recognized.

It bugged him for days, but he never did place it.

Jeffrey Allerdyce was entertaining a corporate client in the penthouse dining room of Alliance Investigative in Washington, DC.

This meant, in effect, that Alliance’s senior partners were entertaining, while Allerdyce looked on from his well-upholstered office chair, which had been brought up one flight to the penthouse by a pair of junior partners (who naturally played no other part in the affair).

Allerdyce did not enjoy entertaining, and didn’t see why it was expected of a company. To his mind, if you worked well for a client, that should always be enough. But as one senior partner and a host of accountants had told him, there needed to be more these days. Clients needed to feel wanted, cherished, cosseted. They needed, the senior partner had had the temerity to declare, to feel loved.

As if Allerdyce were entertaining them because he actually liked them. The only human being Jeffrey Allerdyce had ever loved was his father. The list of people he had liked in his long life wouldn’t have filled an address label. He liked dogs-he owned two-and he liked an occasional gamble. He liked pasta with fresh pesto sauce. He liked the Economist and the Wall Street Journal, though neither as much as he once did. He liked Inspector Morse on TV, and the music of Richard Wagner. He would travel far for a live concert, if he could be assured of the quality of the artists involved.

He held the belief that his very distrust and dislike of people had made his agency the success it was. But success had bred the need for further success-bringing with it the necessity for corporate entertainment. He watched with a beady eye from his chair as the hired staff made sure plates were full. They were under instructions not to approach him. He would make his needs, if any, known to a senior partner, and food would be brought to him accordingly.

The affair had been arranged meticulously. A senior partner was allocated someone from the client company. They had to entertain that person, make any necessary introductions, check that glasses were replenished. Allerdyce almost sneered his contempt. One balding man in an expensive suit which hung from him like a dishrag from its peg was gulping at the champagne. Gulping it, swallowing it down, getting it while he could. Aller-dyce wondered if anyone knew, or even cared, that it was Louis Roederer Cristal, 1985. The champagne of czars, an almost unbelievably beguiling wine. He had allowed himself one glass, just to check the temperature was correct.

A senior partner, nominally in charge of “the floor,” came over and whispered into Allerdyce’s ear. It gratified Allerdyce to see that members of the client company, even the CEO, glanced over at the conversation with something like fear-as well they might. The CEO called him J. Edgar behind his back. It was al-most a compliment, but was probably said with a certain amount of nervous, defensive laughter. The nickname was apposite be-cause, like Hoover, Allerdyce craved information. He hoarded the stuff, from tidbits to full-scale secret reports. Being at the hub of Washington, and especially at the hub of Washington’s secrets, Allerdyce had collected a lot of information in his time. He used very little of it in any physical way. It was enough that he knew. It was enough that he could shake the CEO’s hand, stare into his eyes, and let the man know with that stare that he knew about the male prostitute the CEO kept in a suite only four blocks from the White House.

That was why they glanced over nervily at the whispered exchange-all of them, all the ones with secrets to hide. When in fact the partner’s message had been “Dulwater’s outside,” and Allerdyce’s reply had been “I’ll be a few minutes.”

As Allerdyce got up slowly from his chair, feet shuffled forward, showing their owners were only too willing to help him to his feet should their help be needed. And when he walked across the floor, the various conversations lost their thread, or trailed off, or became more hushed. And when the door had closed behind him, they all felt the need for another drink.

Dulwater was sitting in a chair near the single elevator. Only one of the building’s several elevators had access to the penthouse. The chair he sat in was reproduction Louis Quatorze, and looked like it might break at any moment. Dulwater was quick to rise when his employer appeared. Allerdyce pressed the button for the elevator, and Dulwater knew enough to be silent till it had arrived, they’d entered it, and the doors had closed again. Allerdyce turned his access key, quickly pressed some digits on the small keypad with dexterity, so Dulwater couldn’t recognize the code, and stood back. They began the descent to the basement.

“Well?” Allerdyce asked.

“I’m not sure what it adds up to,” Dulwater began.

“That’s not your concern,” Allerdyce snapped. “I merely ask for your report.”

“Of course.” Dulwater swallowed. There was nothing on paper-his employer’s instructions-but he knew it by heart anyway, or hoped he did. There was perspiration on his upper lip, and he licked it away. “Kosigin had brought in some muscle from Los Angeles, an Englishman. They twice had meetings outside the CWC building: once in a downtown café, once on the waterfront. Even with the long-range mike I had trouble picking up the conversation.”

From the way Dulwater was speaking, Allerdyce knew he was curious to know why Alliance was now spying on its employers. He admired the younger man’s curiosity. He knew, too, that no answer he could give would be satisfactory.

“Both were good choices,” Allerdyce mused. “Café… waterfront… A babble of background noise, other voices…”

“And on the waterfront they kept moving. Plus there was tourist traffic.”

“So, you’ve told me what you did not learn…”

Dulwater nodded. “There was a death, an apparent suicide of the reporter who’d been looking into CWC and whom we had been asked to investigate. The man’s brother came to town. That seemed to bother Kosigin. You know Kosigin has a detective in his pocket?”

“Of course.”

“The detective tailed the brother. Looked like he was calling favors from half the department.”

“And the muscle from L.A., as you so described him?”

Dulwater shrugged. “I don’t have a name, not yet. I’ll get one.”

“Yes, you will.” The elevator reached the basement, which housed an underground parking garage. The limos the guests had arrived in were parked in neat rows, their liveried drivers enjoying a smoke and a joke.

“No smoking in the building!” Allerdyce barked before letting the elevator doors close again. He keyed in the penthouse. “Interesting,” he said to Dulwater, his voice a dull ripple once more.

“Should I continue?”

Allerdyce considered this. “Where is the brother?”

“Our agents report he’s heading out today.”

“Do you think we’d learn anything more in San Diego now that he’s gone?”

Dulwater gave the answer he thought was expected. “Probably not, sir.”

“Probably not,” Allerdyce echoed, tapping a finger to his thin, dry lips. “They were watching the brother because they perceived in him some threat. The threat of discovery. Now that he’s flown home, does he still pose a threat?”

Dulwater was stuck for an answer. “I don’t know.”

Allerdyce seemed pleased. “Exactly. And neither do they. Under the circumstances, Kosigin might just want to know more about the brother, more than we’ve already been able to tell him.”

“We weren’t able to find out much about him,” Dulwater confessed.

“Kosigin is a careful man,” Allerdyce said. It was part of the man’s attraction. Allerdyce had not managed to build up much of a dossier on Kosigin, though he knew just by looking at the man, just from a casual conversation with him, that there were secrets there to be discovered. He was a challenge.

And, of course, one day Kosigin might rise to the very pinnacle of CWC. He was already close, and still so young. “I’m not a chemist,” he’d told Allerdyce, as though imparting some confidence, and so perhaps hoping to satisfy Allerdyce’s celebrated curiosity. “I don’t have to be to know how to run a company. To run a company, I need to know two things: how to sell, and how to stop my competitors selling more than me.”

Yes, he was a challenge. That was why Allerdyce wanted him, wanted a nice fat dossier of secrets with Kosigin’s name on it. Kosigin had made a mistake coming to Alliance again. Allerdyce had known that CWC employed its own security department. Why hadn’t Kosigin used them? Why the need for an outside agency to follow the English journalist? Allerdyce was beginning to form an answer: Kosigin had something to hide from his superiors. And Alliance had worked for Kosigin once before. Allerdyce knew now that the two cases were connected, even if he didn’t know why.

The elevator arrived at the penthouse. While Dulwater held the doors, Allerdyce keyed for the elevator to return to the lobby. Then he stepped out, leaving the young man inside, still holding the doors, awaiting instructions.

“This intrigues me,” Allerdyce said. “Is your passport up to date?”

“Yes, sir,” Dulwater said.

“Then come to my office tomorrow morning at seven. We’ll have a further discussion.”

“Yes, sir,” said Dulwater, releasing the doors.

Allerdyce walked back to the dining-room door but did not open it, not immediately. Instead he pressed his ear to the wood, the way he used to when he was a young boy, tiptoeing downstairs from bed to listen at the living-room door or at his father’s study. Listening for secrets, for things that could not be said in front of him. Happiest then-when nobody knew he was there.