Blood Hunt

EIGHT

LONDON SEEMED EVERY BIT as alien to him as San Diego.

He actually found himself carrying out evasion procedures at Heathrow. After depositing his single bag in Left Luggage, he went down to the Underground terminal and moved along the platform, watching, waiting. There were good reasons for not taking his car into London of course, reasons anyone would understand: he was only going into town for a short while; his destination was close to a Tube stop; he’d have to be crazy to drive through London, especially jet-lagged. But also he wanted to know if he was being followed, and this was more easily accomplished on foot.

When a train pulled in, he walked onto it, then came off again, looking to left and right along the platform. Then he stepped in again as the doors were closing. The other passengers looked at him like he was mad. Maybe he was. He looked out of the window. There was no one on the platform. No one was tailing him.

He’d been the same on the airplane. His fellow fliers must have thought there was something wrong with him, the number of times he got up to walk the aisles, visiting the bathroom, or going back to ask the stewardesses for drinks he didn’t really want. Just so that he could study the passengers.

Now he was on his way into London, with keys in his pocket he had taken from his brother’s motel room. The train ran on the Piccadilly Line and would take him all the way to Finsbury Park. But he came off two stops short on the Holloway Road and took his time finding a taxi, then watched from the back window as the driver talked football at him. He got the driver to take him past Jim’s flat and drop him off at the end of the road.

The street looked quiet. It was nine-thirty in the morning. People had gone to work for the day. There was a line of cars on one side of the street, and he looked into each one as he passed. Farther along, workmen were digging a hole in the pavement. They were laughing and trading Irish-accented obscenities.

He dismissed them, then checked himself. Nobody could ever be dismissed entirely. The one-armed beggar could be hiding an Uzi up his sleeve. The innocent baby carriage could be booby-trapped. Dismiss nothing and no one. He would stay aware of them, though they were a low priority.

He’d been to the flat before. It was carved from a four-story house which sat just off the top of Ferme Park Road and almost had a view of Alexandra Palace. Jim had laughed about that when he bought the flat. “The estate agent told me as part of his pitch-nearly has a view of Ally Pally! Like that was somehow better than being five miles away! Those bastards’ll turn anything into a selling point. If the roof was leaking, they’d say it was a safety feature in the event of a fire.”

Reeve tried the mortise key in its lock, but it was already unlocked. So he tried the Yale, and that opened the door. The garden flat had its own front door at the bottom of half a dozen steps, but the ground floor and first and second floors were reached via the main door. In the vestibule, there were two more solid doors. Jim’s was the ground-floor flat.

“This was probably a nice family house at one time,” he’d told Gordon when showing him around. “Before the cowboys moved in and carved the place up.” He’d shown him how a large drawing room to the rear had been subdivided with plasterboard walls to make the kitchen and bedroom. The bathroom would once have been part of the main hallway, and the flat’s designer had taken an awkward chunk out of what was left of the living room, too.

“It’s ugly now, see?” Jim had said. “The proportions are all wrong. The ceilings are too high. It’s like standing shoe boxes on their ends.”

“So why did you buy it?”

Jim had blinked at him. “It’s an investment, Gordie.” Then they’d opened the back door so that Jim could show him that the so-called garden flat had no garden, just a concrete patio. “Besides,” said Jim, “this area is in. Pop stars and DJs live here. You see them down on the Broadway, eating in the Greek restaurant, waiting for someone to recognize them.”

“So what do you do?” Reeve had asked.

“Me?” his brother had replied with a smirk which took years off him. “I walk right up to them and ask if I can reserve a table for dinner.”

“Jesus, Jim,” Reeve said now, unlocking the flat door.

There were sounds inside. Instinctively, he dropped to a crouch. He couldn’t identify the sounds-voices maybe. Could they be coming from the flat below or above? He didn’t think so. And then he remembered the hall. There’d been no mail sitting there awaiting Jim’s return. Jim had been gone awhile; there should have been mail.

He examined the short hall in which he stood: no places of concealment; no weapons to hand. The floor looked solid enough, but might be noisy underfoot. He kept to one side, hugging the wall. Floors were usually strongest there; they didn’t make so much noise. He clenched his hands into fists. Running water, a clatter of dishes-the sounds were coming from the kitchen-and a radio, voices on a radio. These were domestic sounds, but he wasn’t going to be complacent. It was an easy trick, lulling someone with sound. He recalled a line from Nietzsche: shatter their ears, and teach them to hear with their eyes. It was good advice.

The kitchen door was open a fraction, as were the other doors. The living room looked empty, tidier than he remembered it. The bathroom was in darkness. He couldn’t see into the bedroom. He approached the kitchen door and peered through the gap. A woman was at the sink. She had her back to him. She was thin and tall with short fair hair, curling at the nape of her neck. She was alone, washing her breakfast dishes. He decided to check the other rooms, but as he stepped back into the hall he hit a floorboard which sank and creaked beneath him. She looked around, and their eyes met.

Then she started screaming.

He pushed open the kitchen door, his hands held in front of him in a show of surrender.

“It’s all right,” he said. “I’m sorry I gave you a fright…”

She wasn’t listening. She had raised her hands out of the water and was advancing on him. Soap suds fell from her right hand as she lifted it, and he saw she was holding a bread knife. Her face was red with anger, not pale with fear, and her screams would bring people running if they could be heard above the workmen outside.

He waited for her to lunge at him. When she attacked, he would defend. But she seemed to know better. She stopped short, bringing the knife down and turning it from a hacking weapon into something she could stab with.

When she stopped screaming for a second to catch her breath, he spoke as quickly as he could: “I’m Jim’s brother. Gordon Reeve. We look alike. Maybe he’s mentioned me. Gordon Reeve. I live in Scotland. I’m Jim’s brother.” He shook the keys at her. “His keys. I’m his brother.” And all the time his eyes were half on her, half on the knife, and he was walking backwards into the hall as she kept coming forwards. He hoped he was getting through.

“His brother?” she said at last.

Reeve nodded, but said nothing. He wanted it to sink in first. One concept at a time. She was pumped with adrenaline, and her survival instincts had taken hold. There was fear there, too, probably-only she didn’t want him to sense it. And at the back of it all, there would be shock, just waiting for its chance to join the party.

“His brother?” she repeated, like it was a phrase in some new language she’d only just started learning.

He nodded again.

“Why didn’t you ring the bell?”

“I didn’t think anyone would be here.”

“Why didn’t you shout? You sneaked up, you were spying on me.” She was working herself up again.

“I thought the flat would be empty. I thought you were an intruder.”

“Me?” She thought this was funny, but she wasn’t lowering the knife. “Didn’t Jim tell you?”

“No,” he said.

“But you’re telling me he gave you the keys? He gave you the keys and he didn’t say I was living here?”

Reeve shook his head. “The reason I’m here,” he said quietly, weighing up the effect this would have on her, “is that Jim’s dead. He died in San Diego. I’m on my way home from the funeral.”

San Diego seemed to click with her. “What?” she said, ap-palled.

He didn’t repeat any of it. He was dealing with porcelain now-knife-wielding porcelain, but fragile all the same.

“I’m leaving,” he told her. “I’ll sit outside. You can call the police or you can call my wife, verify who I am. You can do whatever you want. I’ll be waiting outside, okay?”

He was at the door now. A dangerous moment: he’d have to half-turn from her to work the lock, providing her with a moment for attack. But she just stood there. She was like some awful statue as he pulled the door closed.

He sat in the vestibule for ten minutes. Then the door opened and she looked out. She wasn’t carrying the knife.

“I’ve made some tea,” she said. “You better come in.”

Her name was Fliss Hornby, and she was an ex-colleague of Jim’s-which was to say, she still worked for the paper from which he had resigned.

“He didn’t really resign,” she told Reeve. “I mean, he did resign, but then he reconsidered-only Giles Gulliver wouldn’t unaccept his resignation.”

“I had a policeman friend that happened to,” Reeve said.

“Jim was furious, but Giles said it was for his own good. I really think he meant it. He knew Jim would be better off going freelance. Not financially better off, but his stuff wouldn’t get spiked so often. He’d have more freedom to write what he liked. And to prove it, he commissioned a couple of pieces by Jim, and took a couple of stories from him which ended up on the inside news page.”

They were eating an early lunch in an Indian restaurant on Tottenham Lane. There was a special lunchtime businessmen’s buffet: large silver salvers with domed covers, blue flames licking beneath each. But they were just watching their food, rearranging it with their forks; they weren’t really eating. They simply needed to be out of the flat.

Reeve had told Fliss Hornby about Jim’s death. He’d meant to keep it simple, lying where necessary, but he found the whole story gushing out of him, a taste of bile at the back of his throat, like he’d been puking.

She was a good listener. She had listened through her tears and got up only once-to fetch a box of tissues from the bedroom. Then it had been her turn to talk, and she told Reeve how she’d met up with Jim and a load of other journalists one night in Whitehall. She’d told him that things weren’t going well with her, that her boyfriend had become her ex-boyfriend and had threatened her with violence.

“I mean,” she told Gordon, “I can look after myself-”

“I’ve noticed.”

“But it was more the atmosphere. It was disrupting my work. Jim said he was going to the States for a month, and suggested I look after his flat. Lance might get bored knocking on the door of an empty flat in Camden. And in the meantime, I could get my head together.”

“Lance, that’s the boyfriend?”

“Ex-boyfriend. Christ, boyfriend-he’s in his forties.”

Fliss Hornby on the other hand was in her late twenties. She’d been married some time in her past, but didn’t talk about it. Everyone was allowed one mistake. It was just that she kept making the one mistake time after time.

They’d demolished a bottle of white wine in the restaurant. Or Fliss had; Reeve had had just the one glass, plus lots of iced water.

She took a deep breath, stretching her neck to one side and then the other, her eyes closed. Then she settled back in her chair and opened her eyes again.

“So what are you going to do?” she asked.

“I’m not sure. I was planning to search the flat.”

“Good idea. Jim filled the hall cupboard with all his stuff, plus there are a couple of suitcases under the bed.” She saw the look on his face. “Would you like me to do it?”

Reeve shook his head. “He didn’t tell you why he was going to the States?”

“He was always a bit hush-hush about his stories, especially in their early stages. Didn’t want anyone nicking his ideas. He had a point. Journalists don’t have friends-you’re either a source or a competitor.”

“I’m a source?”

She shrugged. “If there’s a story…”

Reeve nodded. “Jim would like that. He’d want the story finished.”

“Always supposing we can start it. No files, no notes…”

“Maybe in the flat.”

She poured the last of the wine down her throat. “Then what are we waiting for?”

Reeve tried to imagine anyone threatening Fliss Hornby. He imagined himself hurting the threatener. It wasn’t difficult. He knew pressure points, angles of twist, agonies waiting to be explored. He could fillet a man like a chef with a Dover sole. He could have them repeat the Lord’s Prayer backwards while eating sand and gravel. He could break a man.

These were thoughts the psychiatrist had warned him about. Mostly, they came after he’d been drinking. But he hadn’t been drinking, and yet he was still thinking them.

More than that, he was enjoying them, relishing the possibility of pain-someone else’s; maybe even his own. Sensations made you feel alive. He was probably never more alive than when consumed by fear and flight at the end of Operation Stalwart. Never more alive than when so nearly dead.

He telephoned Joan from the flat to let her know what was happening. Fliss Hornby was pulling stuff out of the hall cupboard, laying it along the floorboards so it could be gone through methodically. Reeve watched her through the open door of the living room. Joan said that Allan was missing his dad. She told him there had been potential clients, two of them on two separate occasions. He’d already had her cancel this weekend’s course.

“Phone calls?” he asked.

“No, these were personal callers.”

“I mean have there been any phone calls?”

“None I couldn’t deal with.”

“Okay.”

“You sound tense.”

He had yet to tell Joan what he’d just sat and told a complete stranger. “Well, you know, I’ve got all his things to sort through…”

“I can come down there, you know.”

“No, you stay there with Allan. I’ll be home soon.”

“Promise?”

“I promise. Bye, Joan.”

By the time he got through to the hall, the cupboard was half empty.

“You start looking through that lot,” Fliss said, “while I haul the rest out.”

“Sure,” Reeve agreed. Then: “Shouldn’t you be at work or something?”

She smiled. “Maybe I am at work.”

An hour later, they’d been through the contents of the cupboard and had found nothing relevant. Fliss Hornby had burst into tears just the once. Reeve had thought it best to ignore her. Besides, his mind was on his work. They drank herbal tea and then went into the bedroom. At some point, Reeve couldn’t work out when, Fliss had tidied the room. When he’d first glanced into it, the bed had been strewn with clothes, the floor with books and magazines. Now everything had been hidden.

She pulled two suitcases out from beneath the bed and lifted the first one onto the bed. It wasn’t locked. There were clothes inside. Reeve recognized some of them: a gaudy striped shirt, a couple of ties, a Scotland rugby shirt, saggy, the way all rugby shirts seem to go after the very first wash. The second case contained paperwork.

They spent a lot of time flicking through files, bundles of paper-clipped news cuttings, an old-fashioned card index. Then Fliss found half a dozen computer disks, and waved them at Reeve.

“I may be able to read these here.”

Her PC was set up on the desk in the living room. Reeve studied the bookshelves while she booted up.

“These all yours?” he asked.

“No, most of them are Jim’s. I didn’t bring much from my flat, just stuff I didn’t want burgled.”

There were a couple of philosophy books. Reeve smiled, picking one out. David Hume’s An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals. He flicked through, and found a couple of lines had been underlined on one page. He knew which lines they’d be, but read them anyway.

A man, brought to the brink of a precipice, cannot look down without trembling.

He’d spouted philosophy at Jim during a couple of their meetings. He’d quoted Hume at him, this very passage, comparing it with Nietzsche: “If you gaze into the abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.” More melodramatic than Hume, probably less factual-but much more powerful. Jim had been listening. He’d appeared bored, but all the time he’d been listening, and he’d even bought a couple of the books. More than that, he’d read them.

Fliss Hornby was sliding the first disk home. It contained correspondence. They read through some of the letters.

“This feels weird,” she said at one point. “I mean, I’m not sure we should be doing this. It’s almost like desecration.”

The other disks dealt with stories Jim Reeve had been working on at one time or another. Reeve was glad Fliss was there; she saved him time.

“Giles used that one,” she said of one story. “This one I think turned up unattributed in Private Eye or Time Out. This one I haven’t come across before, but it looks like he hit a dead end with it.”

“We’re looking for a chemical company, Co-World Chemicals, headquarters in San Diego.”

“I know, you told me.” She sounded impatient. She tried another disk. It was labeled 1993 and proved to be all old stuff. The other disks were no more helpful.

“Nothing current,” she said. “He probably took the current disks with him along with his laptop.”

Reeve remembered something she’d said, about journalists only having sources and competitors. “He wouldn’t have left any of his notes here anyway,” he stated. “Not with another reporter on the premises.”

“Where else would he have left them?”

“Could be anywhere. A girlfriend’s, a drinking mate’s…”

“With his ex-wife?”

Reeve shook his head. “She disappeared a while back, probably left the country. Jim had that effect on women.” He’d tried contacting her, to tell her the news. Not that she’d have been interested; not that he’d tried very hard.

Reeve remembered something. “We’re also looking for the name Agrippa.”

“Agrippa? That’s classical, isn’t it?” Fliss slid a CD into the computer’s CD-ROM slot. “Encyclopedia,” she explained. She went to Word Search and entered “Agrippa.” The computer came up with ten articles, the word appearing a total of twenty times. They scanned all ten articles, but remained none the wiser about what Agrippa had meant to Jim. Fliss tried a few reference books, but the only additional Agrippa she found was in the Oxford Companion to English Literature.

“Dead end,” she said, slamming shut the last book.

“What about mail?” Reeve asked. “Has he had any letters while he’s been away?”

“Plenty. He told me he’d phone and give me an address I could redirect them to, but he never did. Last I spoke to him was when he handed me the front-door keys.”

“So where’s the mail?”

It was in the cupboard above the sink in the kitchen. There was a teetering tower of it. Fliss carried it to the kitchen table while Reeve cleared a space, moving cups, sugar bowl, and milk bottle. He couldn’t hear the pneumatic drill anymore. He looked at his watch, surprised to find it was nearly five o’clock-the best part of the day had gone, used up on a hunt which had so far failed to turn up anything the least bit useful.

The mail looked similarly uninspired. Much of it was junk. “I could have just binned it,” Fliss said. “But when I come home after a trip, I like there to be a big pile of letters waiting for me. Makes me feel wanted.”

“Jim was wanted all right,” Reeve said. “Wanted by double-glazing firms, clothes catalogs, the football pools, and just about every fund management scheme going.”

There was a postcard from Wales. Reeve deciphered the spidery handwriting, then handed it to Fliss. “Who’s Charlotte?”

“I think he brought her to the pub once.”

“What about his girlfriends? Anyone come to the flat looking for him? Anyone phone?”

She shook her head. “Just Charlotte. She called one night. Seems he hadn’t said he was going to the States. I think they were supposed to be going to Wales together.”

Reeve considered this. “So either he was an unfeeling bastard who was giving her the big hint she was being ditched…”

“Or?”

“Or something suddenly came up in the States. When did he tell you you could move in?”

“The night before he flew out.”

“So he crammed all his stuff into the cupboard in the hall and the suitcases under the bed and off he went.” Reeve gnawed his bottom lip. “Maybe he knew they were going to move the scientist.”

“Scientist?”

“Dr. Killin-he worked at CWC. Jim went to see him once. Next time he tried, Killin had gone on vacation and the house was under surveillance.”

“I got the feeling he’d only had a few days’ notice that he was making the trip. He complained at the price of the airfare. It wasn’t APEX. What’s the matter?”

Reeve was studying an envelope. He turned it over in his hands. “This is Jim’s handwriting.”

“What?” She gazed at the envelope.

“It’s his handwriting. Postmarked London, the day before he flew to the States.” He held the envelope up to the light, shook it, pressed its contents between thumb and forefinger. “Not just paper,” he said. He peeled apart the two glued flaps. He would never use ready-seal envelopes himself; they were too easy to tamper with. He pulled out a sheet of A4 paper, double-folded. A small key fell out of the paper onto the table. While Fliss picked up the key, Reeve unfolded the paper. The writing was a drunken scrawl.

“Pete’s new address-5 Harrington Lane.”

He showed it to Fliss. “What do you reckon?”

She fetched her street guide. There was only one Harring-ton Lane in London-just off the upper Holloway Road, near Archway.

“It’s not that far,” said Fliss. Her car was being fixed at a garage in Crouch End, so they called for a cab.

“Yeah,” said Pete Cavendish, “like Jim said, you can’t be too careful. And I had the garage gutted out, sold my car and my motorbike. I’ve gone ecology, see. I use a bicycle now. I reckon everybody should.” He was in his late twenties, a photographer. Jim Reeve had put work his way in the past, so Pete had been happy to oblige when Jim asked a favor.

Reeve hadn’t considered his brother’s car. He’d imagined it would be sitting in some long-term car lot out near Heathrow-and as far as he was concerned they could keep it.

Cavendish put him right. “Those places cost a fortune. No, he reckoned this was a better bet.”

They were walking from 5 Harrington Lane, a terraced house, to the garage Pete Cavendish owned. They’d come out through his back door, crossed what might have been the garden, been shown through a gate at the back which Cavendish then repadlocked shut, and were in an alley backing onto two rows of houses whose backyards faced each other. The lane had become a dumping ground for everything from potato chip bags to mattresses and sofas. One sofa had been set alight and was charred to a crisp, showing springs and clumps of wadding. It was nearly dark, but the alley was blessed with a single working streetlight. Cavendish had brought a flashlight with him.

“I think the reason he did that,” Cavendish said, meaning Jim’s letter to himself, “was he was drunk, and he hadn’t been to my new place before. He probably reckoned he’d forget the bloody address and never find me again, or his old car. See, Jim had a kind of dinosaur brain-there was a little bit of it working even when he’d had a drink. It was his ancient consciousness.”

Pete Cavendish spoke with a hand-rolled cigarette in his mouth. He had a ponytail and gray wizened cheeks. The holes in his jeans weren’t there by design, and the heel was loose on one of his sneakers. Reeve had noticed some cans of Super Lager on the kitchen counter. He’d seen Cavendish swig from one before they set off. Ecology and dinosaurs. If Cavendish kept drinking, he’d be seeing green dinosaurs in his dreams.

They passed seven garages before coming to a stop. Caven-dish kicked away some empty cans and a bag of bottles from the front of his own private garage, then took the key from Reeve that Jim had mailed to his own home. He turned it in the lock, pulled the handle, and the garage door groaned open. It stuck halfway up, but halfway was enough. The streetlight barely penetrated the interior gloom.

Cavendish switched on the flashlight. “Doesn’t look as though any of the kids have been in here,” he said, checking the floor and walls. Reeve didn’t ask what he’d thought he might find-glue, spray paint, used vials of crack?

There was only the car.

It was a battered Saab 900 of indeterminate color-charcoal came closest-with a chip out of the windshield, the fixings for side mirrors but no actual mirrors, and one door (replaced after a collision) a different color from the rest of the body. Reeve had never let his brother drive him anywhere in the Saab, and had never seen Jim drive it. It used to sit outside the flat with a tarpaulin over it.

“He spent a grand getting it done up,” Cavendish said.

“Money well spent,” Reeve muttered.

“Not on the outside, on the inside: new engine, transmission, clutch. He could’ve bought another car cheaper, but he loved this old tank.” Cavendish patted it fondly.

“Keys?” Reeve asked. Cavendish handed them over. Reeve unlocked the car and looked inside, checking under the seats and in the glove compartment. He came up with chewing gum, parking tickets, and a book of matches from the same Indian restaurant where he’d eaten lunch.

“The boot?” Fliss suggested. Reeve was unwilling; this would be it, the very last option, their last chance to move any further forward. He turned the key and felt the trunk spring open. Cavendish shone the flashlight in. There was something nestling there, covered with a tartan traveling rug. Reeve pulled off the rug, revealing a large cardboard box advertising its contents to be twelve one-liter bottles of dishwashing liquid. It was the kind of box you picked up from supermarkets and corner shops. He opened its flaps. There were papers inside, maybe half a boxful. He pulled out the top sheet and angled it into the failing flashlight.

“Bingo,” he said.

He lifted the box out, and Fliss locked the trunk. The box was awkward rather than heavy.

“Can we call for a cab from your phone?” Reeve asked Cavendish.

“Yeah, sure.” They left the garage, and Cavendish locked it tight. “Just one thing,” he said.

“What’s that?”

“What’s going to happen to the car?”

Reeve thought about it for all of two seconds. “It’s yours,” he told Cavendish. “Jim would have wanted it that way.”

NINE

January 13

I suppose if this turns into a story, I’ll have to credit Marco with the genesis-though he’d probably stress he’s more of a Pink Floyd fan. He wears a T-shirt which must date back to Dark Side of the Moon. It’s black with the prism logo on it-only he says it’s a pyramid. Sure, but light doesn’t enter a pyramid white and come out the seven colors of the rainbow. It only does that with prisms, so it must be a prism. He says I’m missing the point, maaann. The point is, the album’s a concept album and the concept is everyday madness. Pure white light into a myriad of colors. The everyday gone mad.

But then why is it a damned pyramid? Why not a teacup or a toaster or even a typewriter? Marco laughs, remembering that party of his and how I looked at a poster on his wall and thought it was sailing boats on a rippling blue sea, pictured near sunset with some heavy filtering.

And it wasn’t. It was pyramids. It was the poster that came with Dark Side of the Moon and I was sober when I mistook it. Sober as a judge. Later, I was drunk as a lord and trying to get my hand up Marco’s girlfriend’s kilt until she reminded me, her mouth shiveringly close to my ear, that Marco had done a bit of judo in his time and part of his left ear was missing. So, fair enough, I retracted my hand. You do, don’t you?

Where the fuck was I? The story. The story.

It’s about madness, too: that’s why I used the Pink Floyd reference. I could use it as a lead into the story proper. “Tales of Everyday Madness.” Was that a book or a film? Did someone give me that at charades one time? Absolutely impossible. Yes, charades, at Marco’s party. And Marco’s team was making half its titles up. The bastard even dumped in some that were in Italian.

Marco is Italian, and that is also relevant to the story. This is a story he told me last night in the Stoat and Whistle. I said to him, why haven’t you told me this before? Know what he said? He said, this is the first serious (not to mention intelligible) conversation we’ve ever had. And when I thought about it, he was probably right. What’s more, he only got round to telling his story because we’d run out of Tottenham jokes. Here’s the last one we told. What’s the difference between a man with no knob and a Spurs player? A man with no knob’s got more chance of scoring.

See, we were desperate.

“Anything?” Fliss asked. She had her own sheaf of paper in front of her, as well as a second mug of coffee.

“I think he was drunk when he typed this.”

“Full of spelling mistakes?”

“No, just full of shit.”

They were back in the Crouch End flat. They’d brought a carry-out back with them-Chinese this time, with some lagers and Cokes bought from the corner shop. The tin trays of food sat half-uneaten on the living room’s coffee table.

“What about you?” Reeve asked.

“Photocopies mostly. Articles from medical and scientific journals. Looks like he was calling up anything he could find on mad cow disease. Plus on genetic patents. There’s an interesting article about the company that owns the patent on all genetically engineered cotton. Might not be relevant.” She gnawed on a plastic chopstick. The chopsticks had been fifty pence a pair extra. Reeve rubbed his jaw, feeling the need for a shave. And a bath. And some sleep. He tried not to think about what time his body made it; tried to dismiss the eight hours he’d wound his watch forward, and the sleep he hadn’t taken on the plane.

He started reading again.

Marco is a journalist. He’s over here for a year, more if they like his reports, as London correspondent for some glossy Milan rag. They keep faxing him to say they want more royal family, more champagne balls, more Wimbledon and Ascot. He’s tried telling them Wimbledon and Ascot come once a year, but they just keep sending the faxes to their London office. Marco’s thinking of chucking it. He used to be a “serious” journalist, real hard copy, until he sniffed more money in the air. Moved from daily to weekly, newspaper to magazine. He said at the time he was just sick of journalism; he wanted easy money and a break from Italy. Italian politics depressed him. The corruption depressed him. He’d had a colleague, a good friend, blown up by a parcel bomb when he tried to zero in on some minister with Mafia connections. Ba-boom, and up and away to the great leader column in the sky. Or maybe the elevator down to the basement, glowing fires and typing up the classifieds.

Marco told me about some of the scandals, and I was matching him conspiracy for conspiracy, chicanery for chicanery, payoff for payoff. Then he told me he covered the Spanish cooking oil tragedy. I recalled it only vaguely. 1981, hundreds died. Contaminated oil-yes?

And Marco said, “Maybe.”

So then he told his side of it, which didn’t quite tally with the official line at the time or since. Because according to Marco, some of the people who died hadn’t touched the oil (rapeseed oil it was-memo to self, get clippings out of library). They hadn’t bought it, hadn’t used it-simple as that. So what caused the deaths? Marco’s idea-and it wasn’t original, he got it from other researchers into the area-was that these things called-hold on, I wrote it down-Jesus, it’s taken me ten minutes to track it down. Should’ve known to look first on my fag packet. OPs, that what it says. OPs were to blame. He did tell me what they are, but I’ve forgotten. Better look into it tomorrow.

“OPs,” Reeve said.

“What?”

“Any mention of them in the stuff you’re reading?”

She smiled. “Sorry, I stopped reading a while back. I’m not taking it in anymore.” She yawned, stretching her arms up, hands clenched. The fabric of her sweater tightened, raising the profile of her breasts.

“Shit,” said Reeve, suddenly realizing. “I’ve got to get a room.”

“What?”

“A hotel room. I wasn’t planning on being here this late.”

She paused before answering. “You can sleep where you are. That sofa’s plenty comfy enough; I’ve fallen asleep on it a few times myself. I’ll just check out Newsnight if that’s all right, see what I’ve missed today and what I can expect to read tomorrow, and then I’ll leave you to it.”

He stared at her.

“It’s all right, really it is,” she said. “You’re perfectly safe with me.”

She had blue eyes. He’d noticed them before, but they seemed bluer now. And she didn’t smell of perfume, just soap.

“We can read the rest over breakfast,” she said, switching on the TV. “I need a clear head to take in half of what I’m reading. Bovine spongiform encephalopathy: it doesn’t exactly trip off the tongue, does it? And nor does it trip off the eyeballs. Bloody boffins just refuse to call it mad cow disease. I hope to God that’s not what this is all about, the beefburgers of the damned-and bloody John Selwyn Gummer stuffing one down his poor sodding daughter’s throat. Do you remember that photo?”

“Why do you say that?”

She was engrossed in the TV. “Say what?”

“That you hope it’s not about bovine spongy whatsit.”

She glanced at him. “Because it’s been covered, Gordon. It’s old news. Besides, the public are physically repelled by scare stories. They’d rather not know about them. That’s why they end up in the Grauniad or Private Eye. You’ve heard of the right to know? Well, the good old British public has another inalienable right: the right not to know, not to worry. They want a cheap paper with some cartoons and funny headlines and a good telly section. They do not want to know about diseases that eat their flesh, meat that makes them mad, or eggs that can put them in casualty. You tell them about the bow doors on ferries, they still troop on and off them every weekend, heading for Calais and cheap beer.” She turned to him again. “Know why?”

“Why?”

“Because they don’t think lightning strikes twice. If some other bugger has died that makes it so much less likely that they will.” She turned back to the TV, then smiled. “Sorry, I’m ranting.”

“You have a low regard for your readers?”

“On the contrary, I have a very high regard for my readers. They are discriminating and knowledgeable.” She turned the sound up a little, losing herself in the news. Reeve put down the sheets of paper he was still holding. Sticking out from below the sofa was a newspaper. He pulled it out. It was the paper Fliss worked for.

“Isn’t he a dish?” she muttered, a rhetorical question apparently. She was talking to herself about the news presenter.

Reeve went through to the kitchen to boil some more water. He knew he should call Joan again, let her know the score, but the telephone was in the living room. He sat down at the kitchen table and spread out the paper which he’d brought through with him. He started examining each page, looking for the byline Fliss Hornby. He didn’t find it. He went through the paper again. This time he found it.

He made two mugs of instant decaf and took them back through to the living room. Fliss had tucked her legs beneath her and was hugging them. She sat forward ever so slightly in her chair, a fan seeking a better view, though there was nothing between her and her idol. Then Reeve was in the way, handing her the mug.

“You work on the fashion page,” he said.

“It’s still journalism, isn’t it?” Obviously she’d had this conversation before.

“I thought you were-”

“What?” She glared at him. “A proper journalist? An investigative journalist?”

“No, I just thought… Never mind.”

He sat down, aware she was angry with him. Tactful, Gordon, he thought. Nil out of ten for leadership. Had he told her he appreciated all she’d done today? She’d halved his workload, been able to explain things to him-bits of journalist’s shorthand on the disks, for example. He might have been there all day, and spent a wasted day, instead of which he had something. He had the genesis; that’s what Jim had called it. The genesis of whatever had led him to San Diego and his death. It was a start. Tomorrow things might get more serious.

He kept looking at Fliss. If she’d turned in his direction, he’d have smiled an apology. But she was staring unblinking at the screen, her neck taut. Reeve seemed to have the ability to piss women off. Look at Joan. Most days now there was an argument between them; not when Allan was around-they were determined to put up a “front”-but whenever he wasn’t there. There was enough electricity in the air to light the whole building.

After Newsnight was watched in silence, Fliss said a curt good night, but then came back into the room with a spare duvet and a pillow.

“I’m sorry,” Reeve told her. “I didn’t mean to imply anything. It’s just that you never said anything, and you’ve been acting all day like you were Scoop Newshound, the paper’s only investigative reporter.”

She smiled. “Scoop Newshound?”

He shrugged, smiling also.

“I forgive you,” she said. “First one up tomorrow goes for milk and bread, right?”

“Right, Fliss.”

“Good night, then.” She showed no sign of moving from the doorway. Reeve had pulled off his blue cotton sweater and was wearing a long-sleeved white T-shirt. She appraised his body for a moment, and gave a smile and a noise that was halfway between a sigh and humming, then turned and walked away.

He found it hard to sleep. He was too tired; or rather, he was exhausted but not tired. His brain wouldn’t work-as he discovered when he tried carrying on with Jim’s notes-but it wouldn’t be still either. Images flitted through his mind, bouncing along like a ball through a series of puddles. Snatches of conversations, songs, echoes of the two films he’d watched on the flight, his trip on the Underground, the taxicabs, the Indian restaurant, surprising Fliss in the kitchen. Songs… tunes…

Row, row, row your boat.

He jerked from the sofa, standing in the middle of the floor in his T-shirt and underpants, trembling. He switched on the TV, turning the sound all the way down. Nighttime television: mindless and bright. He looked out of the window. A halo of orange sodium, a dog barking in the near distance, a car cruising past. He watched it, studied it. The driver was staring straight ahead. There were cars parked outside, solid lines of them on both sides of the street, ready for tomorrow’s race.

He padded through to the kitchen on bare feet and switched on the kettle again. Rooting in the box of assorted herbal tea bags, he found spearmint and decided to give it a try. Back in the hallway, he noticed that Fliss’s bedroom door was ajar. More than ajar in fact: it was halfway open. Was it an invitation? He’d be bound to see it if he used the kitchen or the bathroom. Her light was off. He listened for her breathing, but the fridge in the kitchen was making too much noise.

He waited in the hall, holding the steaming mug, until the fridge switched off. Her breathing was more than regular-she was snoring.

“Morning.” She came into the kitchen sleepy-faced and tousling her hair. She wore a thick tartan dressing gown and fluffy pink slippers.

Reeve had been out and purchased breakfast and newspapers. She slumped into a chair at the table and grabbed a paper.

“Coffee?” he asked. He’d bought a packet of coffee and some paper filters.

“How did you sleep?” she asked without looking up.

“Fine,” he lied. “You?”

As she was folding a page, she glanced up at him. “Soundly, thanks.”

He poured them both coffee. “I’ve found out what OPs are.”

“Oh?”

“I’ve been doing some more reading.”

“You were up early. So, what are they?”

“Organophosphorus treatments.”

“And what are those when they’re at home?”

“Pesticides, I think. Marco and others think the Spanish cooking oil thing was all to do with pesticides.”

She drank greedily from her mug and exhaled. “So what now?”

He shrugged.

“Are you going to talk to Marco?”

Reeve shook his head. “He’s got nothing to do with it. He’s just a catalyst. Jim wasn’t researching the Spanish incident, he was looking at BSE.”

“Bovine spongiform thingy.”

“Encephalopathy.”

“How did he make the leap from cooking oil to BSE?”

“He remembered something he’d heard.”

So I phoned Joshua Vincent, and told him he probably wouldn’t know me. He said I was correct in that assumption. I explained that some time ago the paper had received a press release from his organization, the National Farmers’ Union, concerning BSE. He told me he wasn’t working for the NFU anymore. He sounded bitter when he said it. I asked him what had happened.

“They sacked me,” he said.

“Why?”

“Because of what I said about BSE.”

And I began to sniff my story. Now if only I can persuade Giles to fund me…

“So what are you doing today?” Fliss asked. She’d had a shower, dried her hair, and was dressed.

“Trying to find Joshua Vincent.”

“And if you can’t?”

Reeve shrugged again; he didn’t want to consider failure, though really it should be considered. With any plan, there should be a fallback position.

“You could talk to Giles Gulliver,” she suggested, dabbing crumbs of toast from her plate.

“That’s an idea.”

“And then?”

“Depends what I learn.”

She sucked at the crumbs. “Don’t expect too much from Giles, or anyone like him.”

“What do you mean?”

She grabbed the newspaper and opened it to a full-page ad-vertisement, placed by Co-World Chemicals. “Don’t bother read-ing it,” she said. “It’ll put you back to sleep. It’s just one of those feel-good ads big corporations make up when they want to spend some money.”

Reeve glanced at the ad. “Or when their consciences are bothering them?”

Fliss wrinkled her nose. “Grow up. Those people don’t have consciences. They’ve had them surgically removed to make room for the cash-flow implants.” She tapped the paper. “But as long as Co-World and companies like them are throwing money at advertising departments, publishers will love them, and the publishers will see to it that their editors never print anything that might upset Sugar Daddy. That’s all I’m saying.”

“Thanks for the warning.”

She shrugged. “Will you be here this evening?”

“I don’t know. Maybe. I’ll have to see how it goes.”

“Well, I’ll probably be late. There’s a second Giannini’s opening in Covent Garden and I’m invited.”

“Giannini’s?”

“The designer.”

“Hold the front page,” he said. She scowled and he held up his hands. “Just a joke.”

“I want to know what you find, no matter what. Even if it’s only a phone call from Scotland, let me know.”

“Sure, it’s the least I can do.”

She left the kitchen and returned again wearing a coat and carrying a briefcase. She made show of adjusting the belt on the coat. “Just one thing, Gordon.”

“What’s that?”

“What are you going to do about the flat?”

He smiled at her. “It’s yours for as long as you want it.”

Finally she looked at him. “Really?” He nodded. “Thanks.”

Maybe he’d found his fallback position. If he didn’t get any further with Jim’s story, he could always track down her ex-boyfriend and make a mess of the rest of his life. She came over and pecked him on the cheek.

Which was payment enough in itself.

He found a telephone number for the NFU, but nobody could give him a forwarding address for Joshua Vincent. A woman who had tried to be helpful eventually passed him on to someone who had more questions than answers, wanting to know who he was and what his connection was with Mr. Vincent.

Reeve put down the telephone.

Maybe Vincent lived in London, but there were several Vincent J’s listed in the phone book. It would take a while to talk to them all. He went to Jim’s notes again. They were a hodgepodge of the detailed and the rambling, of journalistic instinct and alcoholic excess. There were jottings on the backs of some sheets. He hadn’t paid them much attention, but laid them out now on the living-room floor. Doodles, circles, and cubes mostly, and a cow’s warped face with a pair of horns. But there were names and what looked like times, too, and some telephone numbers. There were no names beside the numbers. He tried the first one and got a woman’s answering machine. The second just rang and rang. The third turned out to be a bookmaker’s in Finsbury Park. The fourth was a central London pub, the one Fliss and her journalist colleagues used.

The fifth was another answering machine: “Josh here. Leave your message and I’ll get back.”

An evasive message. Reeve severed the connection and wondered what to say. Eventually he dialed again.

“Josh here. Leave your message and I’ll get back.”

He waited for the tone.

“My name’s Gordon Reeve, and I’m trying to locate Joshua Vincent. I got this number from my brother’s notes. My brother’s name was James Reeve; I think Mr. Vincent knew him. I use the past tense because my brother is dead. I think he was working on a story at the time. I’m hoping you can help me. I’d like to find out why he died.”

He gave the flat’s telephone number and put down the receiver. Then he sat down and stared at the telephone for fifteen minutes. He made more coffee and watched it for another fifteen minutes. If Vincent was home and had listened to the message straightaway, even if he wanted to check James Reeve had a brother, he would have been back by now.

So Reeve telephoned Fliss’s paper, spoke to Giles Gulliver’s assistant, and was put through to the editor at last.

“Good God,” Gulliver said. “I can’t believe it. Is this some sort of joke?”

“No joke, Mr. Gulliver. Jim’s dead.”

“But how? When?”

Reeve started to tell him, but Gulliver interrupted. “No, wait-let’s meet. Is that possible, Mr. Reeve?”

“It’s possible.”

“Just let me check my diary.” Reeve was put on hold for the time it took him to count to sixty. “Sorry about that. We could have a drink at midday. I’ve a lunch appointment at one, so it would make sense to meet at the hotel. Would that suit you? I want to hear everything. It’s quite ghastly. I can hardly take it in. Jim was one of-”

“Where’s the hotel, Mr. Gulliver?”

“Sorry. The Ritz. See you there at midday.”

“Good-bye, Mr. Gulliver.”

And still Joshua Vincent didn’t call.

In Jim’s notes, Giles Gulliver had always been “the old boy” or “the old duffer.” Reeve was expecting a man in his sixties or even seventies, a newspaperman of the old school. But when he was shown to Gulliver’s table in the Ritz bar, he saw that the man half-rising to greet him from behind a fat Cuban cigar could only be in his early forties-not much older than Reeve himself. But Gulliver’s actions were studied, like those of a much older man, a man who has seen everything life has to throw at him. Yet he had gleaming eyes, the eyes of a child when shown something wondrous. And Reeve saw at once that the phrase “old boy” was perfect for Giles Gulliver. He was Peter Pan in a pinstripe.

“Good man,” Gulliver said, shaking Reeve’s hand. He ran his fingers through his slicked hair as he sat back down again. They had a corner table, away from the general babble of the bar. There were four things on the table: an ashtray, a portable telephone, a portable fax machine, and a glass of iced whiskey.

Gulliver rolled the cigar around his mouth. “Something to drink?” Their waiter was standing ready.

“Mineral water,” said Reeve.

“Ice and lime, sir?”

“Lemon,” said Reeve. The waiter retreated, and Reeve waited for Gulliver to say something.

Gulliver was shaking his head. “Hellish business. Surprised no one told me sooner. I’ve got a sub working on the obit.” He paused, catching himself. “My dear chap, I’m so sorry. You don’t want to hear about that.”

“It’s okay.”

“Now tell me, how did Jim die?”

“He was murdered.”

Gulliver’s eyes were hidden by the smoke he’d just exhaled. “What?”

“That’s my theory.”

Gulliver relaxed; he was dealing with a theory, not a story.

Reeve told him some of the rest, but by no means all of it. He wasn’t sure of his ground. On the one hand, he wanted the public to know what had happened in San Diego. On the other, he wasn’t sure whose life he might be endangering if he did go public-especially if he went public without proof. Proof would be his insurance. He needed proof.

“Did you know Jim was going to San Diego?” Reeve asked.

Gulliver nodded. “He wanted three thousand dollars from me. Said the trip would be worth it.”

“Did he tell you why he was going?”

Gulliver’s phone rang. He smiled an apology and picked it up. The conversation-the side of it Reeve could hear-was technical, something to do with the next day’s edition.

Gulliver pressed the Off button. “Apologies.” He glanced at his watch. “Did Jim tell me why he was going? No, that was one of the irritating things about him.” He caught himself again. “I don’t wish to speak ill of the dead…”

“Speak away.”

“Well, Jim liked his little conspiracy; and he liked to keep it his own secret. I think he thought it gave him more power: if an editor didn’t know what the story might be, he couldn’t come straight out and say no. That’s how Jim liked to play us. The less he told, the more we were supposed to think he had to tell. Eventually, he’d give you the story, the story you’d shelled out for, and it was seldom as meaty as you’d been led to believe.”

Listening to Gulliver, especially as the whiskey did its loosening, Reeve could hear hard edges and jagged corners that were a long way away from the public school image Gulliver presented to the world. There was street market in those edges and corners. There was street smart. There was city boy.

The fax bleeped and then started to roll out a page. Gulliver examined the sheet and got on the telephone again. There was another technical discussion, another glance at the Piaget watch, a tug at the crocodile wristband.

“He didn’t tell you anything?” Reeve persisted, sounding like he didn’t believe it.

“Oh, he told me snatches. Cooking oil, British beef, some veterinarian who’d died.”

“Did he mention Co-World Chemicals?”

“I think so.”

“In what connection?”

“My dear boy, there was no connection, that’s what I’ve been saying. He’d just say a couple of words, like he was feeding an infant egg from a silver spoon. Thinking he was stringing one along…”

“Someone killed him to stop the story.”

“Then prove it. I don’t mean prove it in a court of law, but prove it to me. That’s what you want, isn’t it?” Gulliver’s eyes seemed clearer than ever. He leaned across the table. “You want to finish what Jim started. You want an epitaph which would also be a revenge. Isn’t that right?”

“Maybe.”

“No maybe about it. That is what you want, and I applaud you. I’ll run with it. But I need more than you’ve given me, more than Jim gave me.”

“You’re saying I should finish the story?”

“I’m saying I’m interested. I’m saying keep in touch.” Gulliver sat back and picked up his glass, washing the ice with the amber liquid.

“Can I ask a question?” Reeve said.

“We only have a minute or so.”

“How much does CWC spend a year on advertising in your paper?”

“How much? That’s a question for my advertising manager.”

“You don’t know?”

Gulliver shrugged. “CWC’s a big company, a multinational. They own several subsidiaries in the UK and many more in Europe. There’s UK production and some importation.”

“A multimillion-pound industry, with a proportionate advertising budget.”

“I don’t see-”

“And when they advertise, they do it big. Full-page ads in the broadsheets and-what?-maybe double-color spreads in the financial glossies. TV as well?”

Gulliver stared at him. “Are you in advertising, Mr. Reeve?”

“No.” But, he might have added, I was well briefed this morning by someone on your fashion page. The fashion page, apparently, was a sop to certain advertisers.

Another glance at the watch, a rehearsed sigh. “I have to go, unfortunately.”

“Yes, that is unfortunate.”

As Gulliver rose, a hotel minion appeared and unplugged his fax. Fax machine and telephone went into a briefcase. The cigar was stubbed into the ashtray. Meeting most definitely over.

“Will you keep in touch?” Gulliver implored, touching Reeve’s arm, letting his hand rest there.

“Maybe.”

“And is there any good cause?” Reeve didn’t understand. “A charity, something like that. You know, for mourners to make donations to, as a mark of respect and in memory.”

Reeve thought about it, then wrote a phone number for Gulliver on the back of a paper napkin. “Here,” he said. Gulliver waited for elucidation. “It’s the number of a bookie’s in Finsbury Park. They tell me Jim owed them a ton and a half. All contributions gratefully received.”

Reeve walked out of the hotel thinking he’d probably never in his life met someone so powerful, someone with so much influence, a shaper and changer. He’d shaken hands with royalty at medal ceremonies, but that wasn’t the same.

For one thing, some royalty were nice; for another, some of them were known to tell the truth.

Giles Gulliver on the other hand was a born-and-bred liar; that was how you worked your way up from market stall to pinstripe suit. You had to be cunning, too-and Gulliver was so slippery you could stage ice dancing on him and still have room for the curling rink.

The phone was ringing as he barged into the flat. He willed it to keep ringing and it obliged. His momentum took him onto the sofa as he snatched the receiver. He lay there, winded, trying to say hello.

“Is that Gordon Reeve?”

“Speaking.”

“My name’s Joshua Vincent. I think we’d better meet.”

“Can you tell me what my brother was working on?”

“Better yet, I think I can show you. Three stipulations.”

“I’m listening.”

“One, you come alone. Two, you tell nobody where you’re going or who you’re going to meet.”

“I can accept those. And number three?”

“Number three, bring a pair of Wellies.”

Reeve wasn’t about to ask questions. “So where are you?”

“Not so fast. I want you to leave Jim’s flat and go to a pay phone. Not the nearest one. Try to make it a pub or somewhere.”

Tottenham Lane, thought Reeve. There are pubs along that stretch. “Yes?”

“Have you got a pen? Take down this number. It’s a call box. I’ll wait here no longer than fifteen minutes. Is that enough time?”

Reeve thought so. “Unless the telephones aren’t working. You’re taking a lot of precautions, Mr. Vincent.”

“So should you. I’ll explain when we meet.”

The line went dead, and Gordon Reeve headed for the door.

Outside in the street, just before the corner where the quiet side road connected with Ferme Park Road, there was a dull-green British Telecom box, a metal structure three feet high which connected the various landlines into the system. A special key was used by technicians to open the box’s double doors. The key was specialized, but not difficult to obtain. A lot of engineers kept their tools when they left the job; an ex-BT engineer could open a box for you. And if he’d moved to a certain line of work, he could fit a call-activated recorder to any of the lines in the box, tucking the recording device down in the base of the structure, so that even a normal BT engineer might miss it.

The tape kept spooling for a few seconds after the call had ended. Then it stopped, awaiting retrieval. Today was a retrieval day.

TEN

IT WAS A TWO-HOUR TRIP from London. Reeve didn’t bother going out to Heathrow to retrieve his car. For one thing, it would have taken time; for another, Vincent wanted him to travel by public transport. Reeve had never heard of Tisbury. As his train pulled in, he saw beyond the station buildings a country town, a narrow main road snaking uphill, a soccer field turning to mud under the feet of the children playing there.

It had been raining stair rods the whole journey, but now the clouds were breaking up, showing chinks of early-evening light. Reeve wasn’t the only one getting off the train, and he studied his fellow travelers. They looked tired-Tisbury to London was a hell of a distance to commute-and had eyes only for the walk ahead, whether to parking lot or town house.

Joshua Vincent stood outside the station with his hands in his Barbour pockets. He was quick to spot Reeve; no one else looked like they didn’t know quite where to go.

Reeve had been expecting a farming type, tall and heavy-bodied with ruddy cheeks or maybe a sprouting beard to match the wild hair. But Vincent, though tall, was rake-thin, clean-shaven, and wore round, shining glasses. His fair hair was thinning badly; more scalp showing than follicles. He was pale and reticent and could have passed for a high-school science nerd. He was watching the commuters.

“Mr. Reeve?”

They shook hands. Vincent wanted them to wait there until all the commuters had left.

“Checking I wasn’t followed?” Reeve asked.

Vincent gave a thin smile. “Easy to spot a stranger at this railway station. They can’t help looking out of place. I’m so sorry to hear about Jim.” The tone of voice was genuine, not overwrought the way Giles Gulliver had been, and the more affecting for that. “How did it happen?”

They walked to the car while Reeve started his story. Through several tellings, he had learned to summarize, sticking to facts and not drawing conclusions. The car was a Subaru 4x4. Reeve had seen them around the farming towns in the West Highlands. He kept on talking as they drove, leaving Tisbury behind them. The countryside was a series of rises and dips with irregular wooded sections. They chased crows and magpies off the rough-finished road, then rolled over the flattened vermin which had attracted the birds in the first place.

Vincent didn’t interrupt the narrative once. And when Reeve had finished, they drove in silence until Reeve thought of a couple of things to add to his story.

As he was finishing, they turned off the road and started bumping along a mud track, churned up by farm machinery. Reeve could see the farm in front of them, a simple three-sided layout around a courtyard, with other buildings dotted about. It was very much like his own home.

Vincent stopped in the yard. A snapped command at a barking untethered sheepdog sent it padding back to its lair. A lone lamb bounded up to Reeve, bleating for food. He had the door open but hadn’t stepped out yet.

“I’d put your boots on before you do that,” Vincent warned him. So Reeve opened the bag he’d brought with him. Inside were all Jim’s notes plus a new pair of black Wellingtons, bought in the army surplus store near Finsbury Park Station. He kicked off his shoes and left them in the car, then pulled on the boots. He swiveled out of his seat and landed in a couple of inches of mud.

“Thanks for the tip,” he said, closing the door. “Is this your place?”

“No, I just stay here sometimes.” A young woman was peering at them through the kitchen window. Vincent waved at her, and she waved back. “Come on,” he said, “let’s catch a breath of air.”

In the long barn farthest from the house, two men were preparing to milk a couple of dozen cows, attaching clear plastic pumps to the teats. The cows’ udders were swollen and veinous, and complaints filled the shed. Vincent said hello to the men but did not introduce them. The milking machine shuddered as Reeve passed it. The two men paid him no attention at all.

On the other side of the milking shed, they came to a wall beyond which were darkening fields, trees silhouetted in the far distance.

“So?” Reeve asked. He was growing impatient.

Vincent turned to him. “I think people are trying to kill me, too.”

Then he told his story. “What do you know about BSE, Mr. Reeve?”

“Only what I’ve read in Jim’s notes.”

Vincent nodded. “Jim contacted me because he knew I’d expressed concern about OPs.”

“Organophosphorous materials?”

“That’s right. Have you heard of ME?”

“It’s a medical complaint.”

“There’s been a lot of controversy over it. Basically, some doctors have been skeptical that it exists, yet people keep coming down with the symptoms.” He shrugged. “The letters stand for myalgic encephalomyelitis.”

“I can see why it’s called ME. The E in BSE stands for something similar.”

“Encephalopathy. Encephalon just means the brain, from the Greek enkephalos, meaning ”within the head.“ I learned that a few years ago.” He stared out over the fields. “I’ve learned a lot these past few years.” He looked back at the farm. “This place is or-ganic. Do you know how BSE is supposed to have started?”

“I read something in Jim’s notes about animal feed.”

Vincent nodded. “MAFF-that’s the Ministry of Agriculture-relaxed their rules in the 1980s, allowing the rendering industry to take a few shortcuts. Don’t ask me why it happened or who was responsible, but it happened. They removed two processes, saving time and money. One was a solvent extraction, the other a steam-heat treatment. You see, the rendering industry was rendering down sheep and cows to feed to other cows. Bits of meat and bone were going into the feed cake.”

“Right.” Reeve buttoned up his jacket, still damp from a dash through the rain to catch the train. The evening was growing chilly.

“Because those two processes had been removed, prions got into the feed cake. Prion protein is sometimes called PrP.”

“I saw it in the notes, I think.”

“It causes scrapie in sheep.” Vincent raised a finger. “Remember, this is the accepted story I’m giving you. So the feed cake was infected, and the cows were being given the bovine form of sheep scrapie, which is BSE.” He paused, then smiled. “You’re wondering what all this has to do with Spanish cook-ing oil.”

Reeve nodded.

Vincent started to walk, following the wall along the back of the milking shed. “Well, the Spanish blamed contaminated cooking oil and left it at that. Only, some of the victims had never touched the oil.”

“And some of the cows who hadn’t eaten the infected feed still caught BSE?”

Vincent shook his head. “Oh, no, the point is this: some farms-organic farms-who had used the so-called infected feed didn’t catch the disease at all.”

“Hang on a second…”

“I know what you’re thinking. But organic farms are allowed to buy in twenty percent conventional feed.”

“So you’re saying BSE had nothing to do with feed cake, infected or otherwise?”

Vincent smiled without humor. “Why use the past tense? BSE is still with us. The ”infected‘ feed cake was banned on the eighteenth of July 1988.“ He pointed into the distance. ”I can show you calves less than six months old who have BSE. Vets from MAFF call them BABs: Born After the Ban. There’ve been more than ten thousand of them. To date, nearly a hundred and fifty thousand cows have died in the UK from BSE.“

They had come back to the farmyard. Vincent opened the Subaru. “Get in,” he said. Reeve got in. Vincent kept telling his story as he drove.

“I mentioned ME a little while back. When it first came to be noticed, it was supposed to have its roots in everyday stress. They called it Yuppie Flu. It isn’t called that nowadays. Now we call it Farmers’ Flu. That’s because so many farmers show symptoms. There’s a man-used to be a farmer, now he’s more of a campaigner, though he still tries to farm when they let him-who’s trying to discover why there’s an increase in the occurrence of neurological diseases like ME, Alzheimer’s, and Parkinson’s.”

“What do you mean, ”when they let him‘?“

“He’s been threatened,” Vincent said simply. “People helping him have died. Car crashes, unexplained deaths, accidents…” He turned to Reeve. “Only four or five, you understand. Not yet an epidemic.”

They were winding down country lanes barely the width of two cars. The sun had gone down.

Vincent put the heater on. “It may just be coincidence,” he said, “that BSE started to appear around the same time that MAFF was telling farmers to protect against warble fly in their cattle by rubbing on an organophosphorus treatment. What some of us would like to know is whether OPs can cause prions to mutate.”

“So these OP chemicals are to blame?”

“Nobody knows. It sometimes seems to me hardly anybody wants to know. I mean, imagine the embarrassment if it turned out a government directive had started the whole thing off. Imagine the claims for compensation that would be put in by the farmers suffering from OP poisoning. Imagine the cost to the agrichemical industry if they had to withdraw products, carry out expensive tests… maybe even pay compensation. We’re talking about a worldwide industry. The whole farming world is hooked on pesticides of one kind or another. And on the other side of the coin, if pesticides had to be withdrawn, and new ones created and tested, there’d be a gap of years-and in those years yields would decrease, pests would multiply, farms would go out of business, the cost of every foodstuff in the supermarket would rocket. You can see where that would lead: economic disaster.” He looked at Reeve again. “Maybe they’re right to try and stop us. What are a few lives when measured against an economic disaster of those proportions?”

Reeve shivered, digging deeper into his coat. He felt exhausted, lack of sleep and jet lag hitting him hard. “Who’s trying to stop you?”

“Could be any or all of them.”

“CWC?”

“Co-World Chemicals has a lot to lose. Its worldwide market share is worth billions of dollars annually. They’ve also got a very persuasive lobby which keeps the majority of farmers and governments on their side. Sweetened, as you might say.”

Reeve nodded, getting his meaning. “So there’s a cover-up going on.”

“To my mind undoubtedly, but then I would say that. I was suddenly fired from my job, a job I thought I was good at. When I began to be persuaded that the feed-cake explanation just wasn’t on, I spoke twice about it in public, sent out a single press release-and next thing I knew my job was being ”phased out.“”

“I thought the National Farmers’ Union was supposed to be on the side of farmers.”

“It is on the side of farmers-or at least, it’s on the side of the majority of them, the ones with their heads in the sand.”

“Where are we going?”

“We’re nearly there.”

Reeve had half-thought he was going to be returned to the railroad station, meeting over. But, if anything, the landscape had grown less populous. They turned up a track and arrived at a high mesh gate topped with razor wire. A fence of similar height, similarly protected, stretched off either side. There were warning notices on the gate, picked out by the 4x4’s headlights, but nothing to say what the fence and razor wire were protecting.

When Reeve followed Vincent out of the Subaru, a smell hit the back of his throat and he nearly gagged. It lay heavy in the air; the smell of dead flesh.

“We have to walk around the perimeter to get a good look,” Vincent said. He turned on his flashlight. “It’s a good job of invisible landscaping. You’d really have to be keen before you got to see what’s inside.”

“There’s something I might as well ask you,” Reeve said. “God knows I’ve asked everyone else. Does the word Agrippa mean anything?”

“Of course,” Vincent said casually. “It’s a small R and D company, American-based.”

“My brother had the word written on a scrap of paper.”

“Maybe he was looking into Agrippa. The company is at the forefront of genetic mutation.”

“Meaning what exactly?” Reeve recalled something Fliss Hornby had said: Jim had been reading up on genetic patents.

“Meaning they take something and alter its genetic code, to try to make a better product. ”Better‘ being their description, not mine.“

“You mean like cotton?”

“Yes, Agrippa doesn’t have the patent on genetically engineered cotton. But the company is working on crops-trying for better yields and resistance to pests, trying to create strains that can be grown in hostile environments.” Vincent paused. “Imagine if you could plant wheat in the Sahara.”

“But if you produced resistant strains, that would do away with the need for pesticides, wouldn’t it?”

Vincent smiled. “Nature has a way of finding its way around these defenses. Still, there are some out there who would agree with you. That’s why CWC is spending millions on research.”

“CWC?”

“Didn’t I say? Agrippa is a subsidiary of Co-World Chemicals. Come on, this way.”

They followed the fence up a steep rise and down into a valley, then climbed again.

“We can see from here,” Vincent said. He switched off his flashlight.

It was a single large building, with trucks parked outside, illuminated by floodlights. Men in protective clothing, some wearing masks, wheeled trolleys between the trucks and the building. A tall thin chimney belched out acrid smoke.

“An incinerator?” Reeve guessed.

“Industrial-strength. It could melt a ship’s hull.”

“And they’re burning infected cattle?”

Vincent nodded.

“Did you bring Jim here?”

“Yes.”

“To make a point?”

“Sometimes a picture is worth a thousand words.”

“You should never tell a journalist that.”

Vincent smiled. “Burning the cattle isn’t going to make it go away, Mr. Reeve. That’s what your brother understood. There are other journalists like him in other countries. I’d guess each one is a marked man or woman. If BSE gets to humans, it’s called Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease. Believe me, you wouldn’t wish it on your worst enemy.”

But Reeve could picture himself syringing a strain of it into the arm of whoever had killed his brother.

There were other neurodegenerative diseases, too-motoneuron disease, multiple sclerosis-and they were all on the increase. Their conversation on the way back to the farm was all one-way, and all bad news. The more Josh Vincent talked, the more zeal-ous he became and the angrier and more frustrated he sounded.

“But what can you do?” Reeve asked at one point.

“Reexamine all pesticides, carry out tests on them. Use less of them. Turn farms into organic cooperatives. There are answers, but they’re not simple overnight panaceas.”

They parked in the farmyard again. The dog came out bark-ing. The lamb trotted over towards them. Reeve followed Vincent into the kitchen. Once inside the door, they took off their boots. The young woman was still at the sink beneath the window. She smiled and wiped her hands, coming forward to be in-troduced.

“Jilly Palmer,” said Vincent, “this is Gordon Reeve.”

They shook hands. “Pleased to meet you,” she said. She had a flushed complexion and a long braid of chestnut-colored hair. Her face was sharp, with angular cheekbones and a wry twist to her lips. Her clothes were loose, practical.

“Supper’s ready when you are,” she said.

“I’ll just show Gordon his room first,” Vincent said. He saw the surprise in Reeve’s face. “You can’t get back to London to-night. No trains.”

Reeve looked at Jilly Palmer. “I’m sorry if I-”

“No trouble,” she said. “We’ve a bedroom going spare, and Josh here made the supper. All I had to do was warm it through.”

“Where’s Bill?” Vincent asked.

“Young Farmers‘. He’ll be back around ten.”

“Don’t be daft,” said Vincent, “pubs don’t shut till eleven.”

He sounded very different in this company: more relaxed, enjoying the warmth of the kitchen and normal conversation. But all that did, in Reeve’s eyes, was show how much strain the man was under the rest of the time, and how much this whole conspiracy had affected him.

He thought he could see why Jim had taken on the story, why he would have run with it where others might have given up: because of people like Josh Vincent, scared and running and innocent.

His room was small and cold, but the blankets were plenti-ful. He took off his coat and hung it on a hook on the back of the door, hoping it would dry. His dark pullover was damp, too, so he peeled it off. The rest of him could dry in the kitchen. He found the bathroom and washed his hands and face in scalding water, then looked at himself in the mirror. The image of him injecting BSE into a tapped human vein was still there in the back of his mind. It had given him an idea-not something he could put into use just yet, but something he might need all the same…

In the kitchen the table had been laid for two. Jilly said she’d already eaten. She left them to it and closed the door after her.

“She never misses Coronation Street,” Vincent explained. “Lives out here, but has to get her fix of Lancashire grime.” He used oven mitts to lift the casserole from the oven. It was half full, but a substantial half. There was a lemonade bottle on the table and two glasses. Vincent unscrewed the cap and poured carefully. “Bill’s home brew,” he explained. “I think he only drinks down the pub to remind himself how good his own stuff tastes.”

The beer was light brown, with a head that disappeared quickly. “Cheers,” said Josh Vincent.

“Cheers,” said Reeve.

They ate in silence, hungrily, and chewed on home-baked bread. Towards the end of the meal, Vincent asked a few questions about Reeve-what he did, where he lived. He said he loved the Highlands and Islands, and wanted to hear all about Reeve’s survival courses. Reeve kept the description simple, leaving out more than he put in. He could see Vincent wasn’t really listening; his mind was elsewhere.

“Can I ask you something?” Vincent said finally.

“Sure.”

“How far did Jim get? I mean, did he find out anything we could use?”

“I told you, his disks disappeared. All I have are his written notes from London.”

“Can I see them?”

Reeve nodded and fetched them. Vincent read in silence for a while, except to point out where he himself had contributed a detail or a quote. Then he sat up.

“He’s been in touch with Marie Villambard.” He showed Reeve the sheet of paper. The letters MV were capitalized and underlined at the top. They hadn’t meant anything to Reeve or to Fliss Hornby.

“Who’s she?”

“A French journalist; she works for an ecology magazine-Le Monde Vert, I think it’s called. ”Green World.“ Sounds like they were working together.”

“She hasn’t tried contacting him in London.” There’d been no letters from France, and Fliss hadn’t intercepted any calls.

“Maybe he told her he’d be in touch when he got back from San Diego.”

“Josh, why did my brother go to San Diego?”

“To talk to Co-World Chemicals.” Vincent blinked. “I thought you knew that.”

“You’re the first person to say it outright.”

“He was going to try and speak to some of their research scientists.”

“Why?”

“Why? Because of the experiment they had carried out.” Vincent put down the notes. “They tried to reproduce BSE the way it had flared up in the UK, using identical procedures after consultations with MAFF. They brought in sheep infected with scrapie and rendered them down, taking the exact same shortcuts as were used in the mideighties. Then they mixed the feed to-gether and fed it to calves and mature cattle.”

“And?”

“And nothing. They didn’t exactly trumpet the results. Four years on, the cattle were one hundred percent fit.” He shrugged his shoulders. “They’ve got other experiments ongoing. They’ve got consultant neurologists and world-class psychiatrists working on American farmers who show signs of neurodegenerative disease. Bringing in the psychiatrists is a nice touch: it makes everyone think maybe we’re dealing with psychosomatic hysteria, that the so-called disease is actually a product of the human mind and nothing at all to do with what we spray on our crops and stuff into and onto our animals.” He paused. “You want any more casserole?”

Reeve shook his head.

“The beef’s fine, honestly,” Vincent said, smiling encouragement. “Reared organically.”

“I’m sure,” said Reeve. “But I’m full up, thanks.”

Well, it was 85 percent truth.

After breakfast, Josh Vincent drove Reeve to the station.

“Can I contact you on the farm?” Reeve asked.

Vincent shook his head. “I’ll only be there another day or so. Is there somewhere I can contact you?”

Reeve wrote down his home phone number. “If I’m not there, my wife can take a message. Josh, you haven’t said why you’re hiding.”

“What?”

“All these precautions. You haven’t said why.”

Vincent looked up and down the empty platform. “They tampered with my car, too. Remember I told you about the farmer?”

“The one who’s been campaigning against OPs?”

“Yes. A vet was helping him, but then the vet died in a car crash. His vehicle went out of control and hit a wall; no explanation, nothing wrong with the car. I had a similar crash. My car stopped responding. I hit a tree rather than a wall, and crawled out alive. No garage could find any fault in the car.” Vincent was staring into the distance. “Then they bugged the telephone in my office, and later I found they’d bugged my home telephone, too. I think they opened my mail and resealed the envelopes. I know they were watching me. Don’t ask me who they were, that I don’t know. I could speculate though. MI5 maybe, Special Branch, or the chemical companies. Could have been any of those, could have been someone else entirely. So”-he sighed and dug his hands into his Barbour pockets-“I keep moving.”

“A running target’s the hardest kind to hit,” Reeve agreed.

“Do you speak from experience?”

“Literally,” said Reeve as the train pulled in.

Back in London, Reeve returned to the apartment. Fliss had left a note wondering if he’d gone for good. He scribbled on the bottom of it “Maybe this time” and put the note back on the table. He had to retrieve his bag and his car and then head home. But first he wanted to check something. He found the page of Jim’s notes, the one headed MV. On the back were four two-digit numbers. He’d suspected they were the combination of some kind of safe, but now he knew differently. He found a screwdriver in the kitchen drawer and opened up the telephone: apparatus and handset both. He couldn’t find any bugs, so he replaced the screws and returned the screwdriver to its drawer. He got the code for France from the telephone book and made the call. A long single tone told him he’d reached a French telephone.

An answering machine, a rapid message in a woman’s voice. Reeve left a short message in his rusty French, giving his telephone number in Scotland. He didn’t mention Jim’s fate. He just said he was his brother. This was called “preparing someone for bad news.” He sat and thought about what Josh Vincent had told him. Something had been telling Reeve it couldn’t just be about cows. It was laughable, unbelievable. But Josh Vincent had made it both believable and scary, because it affected everyone on the planet-everyone who had to eat. But Reeve still didn’t think it was just about cows, or pesticides, or coverups. There was more to it than that. He felt it in his bones.

He made another call, to Joan, preparing her for his return. Then he gave the rest of the flat a once-over and locked the door behind him.

An engineer was checking the telephone junction box outside. The man watched Reeve go, then lifted the tape out from the recorder and replaced it with a fresh one. Returning to his van, he wound back the tape and replayed it. A thirteen-digit number, followed by a woman’s voice in French. He plugged a digital decoder into the tape machine, then wound back the tape and played it again. This time, each beep of the dialed number came up as a digit on the decoder’s readout. The engineer wrote down the number and picked up his cell phone.