Maps of Hell

Twenty-Nine

I stepped back from the window and checked my weapons. I had the two pistols and the combat knife in my belt, and extra clips in my pockets. The M16 would make the cops keep their distance, even if I ran out of ammunition. I didn’t want to get into a firefight; I was pretty sure that wouldn’t be up to me, but I wouldn’t shoot first. I looked through the slats of the blind again, screwing up my eyes. I could make out officers with rifles crouching behind the vehicles. Mary Upson was no longer on the boardwalk. It was time I made a move.

I went to the bathroom, keeping the light off. There was a small window that I reckoned I could get through. I opened it and looked out. There was very little light at the rear of the building. If the local commander knew what he was doing, he’d have deployed men at the rear. I sincerely hoped the FBI had not been called in yet. They would have covered all the angles.

“Matt Wells?” The loudspeaker distorted the man’s voice. “Come out with your hands up! Leave all your weapons in the room!”

Obviously Mary had told them about my mini-armory. I couldn’t blame her. If I had any self-control, I wouldn’t have let myself succumb to her charms. As it was, I had done the worst thing that a man could do to a woman-reject her at the moment of sex. Never mind “Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned”-hell hath no fury like a woman unfulfilled.

“Matt Wells! This is your final warning! Come out with your hands up now!”

I forced myself to concentrate on the siege. I had to give escaping a try. I was no use to Karen and our unborn son in a cell. They were alive-I had to believe that. They were alive.

Then there was a rattle of automatic rifle fire and the window disintegrated. The blinds flew about the room in small pieces. At least that saved me breaking the window. From the back of the room, I aimed my rifle above the roofs of the cruisers and loosed a sustained burst. That emptied one of my clips. I slapped in the last one, ducking down as more rounds blasted into the room. I took a deep breath and fired off half of the clip. Then I ran back to the bathroom, bending double as another hail of fire came in. Plaster dust filled the air and made breathing difficult.

I flicked on the M16’s safety and threw it out of the window. To my intense relief, no one fired from the back of the motel. I stuck my head and shoulders out. For a few seconds I panicked, unable to get a grip on the window frame. Then I succeeded, propelling myself into the chill air. I hit the ground awkwardly and winded myself. The butt of the assault rifle was by my face. Gasping for breath, I got to my feet, picked up the M16 and stumbled forward. The ground was covered in some kind of prickly bush that tugged at my trousers. I drove my knees up and down, getting a flash of rugby training. Then the vegetation cleared and I found myself in a dip, the ground ahead sloping up to a fence. To my rear, the firing had finally stopped. Any second now, the cops would be in the room and would find me gone. My time was running out.

I clambered over the wooden fence. There was an asphalt road beyond, not much wider than a track and without traffic on it. I peered through the dawn mist and made out a barn about a hundred yards to my right. I slung the rifle over my shoulder and sprinted down the road, feeling the pistol grips jab into my belly. I slowed as I approached the building. A cow was by the fence. It stopped chewing, its large wet eyes on me.

Looking round the corner of the barn, I saw a two-story house close by. There were lights on inside, people round a table. The farming folk had got up early, but they either hadn’t heard the gunfire or it somehow passed for normal around here. I glanced back and saw no sign of pursuit; an ominous silence hung in the damp air. I unslung the M16 and headed toward the building. There was a pickup parked beyond the front door. I would be in full view of the family, but I had no option. I kept to the dark spots in the yard as much as I could and made it to the vehicle without attracting attention.

I saw that the passenger-side door lock was up, but the keys weren’t in the ignition. I opened the door quietly, sliding the rifle to the floor. Then I moved over to the driver’s seat. My American friend Andy’s face swam up in front of me. He’d been in a gang in New Jersey when he was kid and he’d learned all sorts of useful tricks, one of which was hot-wiring cars. I remembered some lessons he’d given me back in London, but it was one thing hot-wiring your own car with no pressure and an expert beside you, quite another a few yards from where the owner was eating and a posse of armed police about to come down the road.

I felt beneath the steering wheel and wrenched out the wires. I could make out the colors in the lights that were shining out from the house, but I wasn’t sure they were the same in the U.S. Shit, my fingers were twitching like a kid’s on a first date. I took a deep breath and tried to remember what Andy had shown me. Fortunately, that strand of my memory seemed to be working perfectly. I stripped the ends of the wires with my fingernails, then twisted a few together. The starter motor gave a dull hum and then the engine turned over. I hit the gas, engaged Reverse, and shot away from the farmhouse. As I moved toward the road, I saw an elderly man in a plaid shirt come out of the farmhouse, waving and shouting.

Looking to the right, I saw a group of police officers in Kevlar jackets, carrying a mixture of rifles, shotguns and pistols. They were about fifty yards away but didn’t seem to notice I was the truck’s driver. I swerved to the left and floored the gas pedal, keeping my pursuers in sight in the mirror. It struck me that a smart operator would have blocked the road in both directions. Then again, a smart operator would have stationed personnel at the rear of the motel.

As I drove, I fumbled under the seats for a road map. No such luck. The farmer would have known his way around blindfolded. Then I remembered the compass. I took it out of my shirt pocket and oriented myself. As soon as possible, I needed to head south, or better, southwest. That much my memory was capable of supplying. There was another junction ahead, with a sign to Interstate 87. I decided to take the smaller road that hugged it for a while and then go for a vehicle upgrade.

A few minutes later, I reckoned the time had come. There was a clump of trees to the right of the road, with a narrow track leading there. I made the turn and drove up the rough surface. There was good cover in the trees and I left the pickup in the most out of sight place I could find. If the farmer found it before the cops did, he could have the M16 with my compliments, though I threw away the half-empty ammunition clip. I made sure the pistols were secure under my belt and jogged back to the road. There was very little traffic and no sign of pursuit yet. I ran onward to the right, the interstate entrance ramp about half a mile ahead in the rapidly brightening dawn. It was touch and go. If an obliging driver passed, maybe I had a chance.

I got to the road that led to the interstate, my lungs straining and my knee beginning to protest. I stuck out my thumb and, to my amazement, the first vehicle slowed and then stopped. It was an eighteen-wheeler carrying a forty-foot container. I stepped up and grabbed the door handle on the nearside.

“’Morning,” said the bearded figure at the wheel. “Cold enough to break a polar bear’s balls.” He grinned at me, running his eyes over me. “You one of those jogger assholes?” He engaged first gear and hauled the load up the incline toward the interstate.

“Uh…no,” I said, putting on an accent that I hoped would pass for Canadian. “Just in a hurry.”

“Where you heading, man?”

I decided to go for broke. “Washington.”

“Well, I can take you as far as Baltimore. That do?”

“Certainly will.” I remembered taking a day trip to the city from D.C. when I was at the crime conference. Joe Greenbaum and I had ended up in a waterside restaurant, eating crab and drinking a ridiculous amount of beer. Which reminded me. I needed to get in touch with Joe.

The driver extended a huge hand and grinned. “Name’s Derek. But you can call me Bo.”

“A perfect ten,” I said, with a laugh, remembering the movie. My memory was behaving more strangely by the minute.

“You got it.”

I decided to play safe in case he tuned into the local radio-station news. “I’m Pete,” I said, suddenly having a glimpse of a completely bald man-my gay friend Peter Satterthwaite.

“You a Canuck?”

“Yeah,” I said, taken aback that my attempt at an accent had hit gold.

“So you gotta like Neil Young.” Bo’s expression had turned grave. There were some things you didn’t joke about.

“Oh, yeah,” I replied.

“Gimme your top five songs.”

This guy was serious about his music. I thought I was going to have to kick-start my memory, but it had things well under control.

“Let’s see. ‘Thrasher,’ ‘Cortez the Killer,’ ‘Ohio,’ ‘Powderfinger’ and ‘Heart of Gold.’”

“Yeah!” Bo shouted, holding up an open hand. “Four out of five ain’t bad.”

I made the high five and grinned. “No points for ‘Heart of Gold,’ eh?”

He grunted. “Middle-of-the-road bullshit.”

I thought of the blonde woman called Karen. “The girlfriend likes it,” I said.

“Oh, that’s all right, then,” Bo said with a grin. “Whatever the little lady wants…”

I swallowed a laugh. If Karen had heard herself described in those terms, the bearded man would have been wondering where his reproductive organs had suddenly gone.

“So,” he said, passing another container truck, “what you got on in D.C.?”

I shrugged. “Meeting up with some friends.”

“What is it you do, Pete?”

I went with what made the real Pete his first million. “Computers.”

Bo glanced at me. “Is that right? I hate the fucking things.”

That was good. He wasn’t going to catch me out on techie particulars. “Yeah, well, I guess you don’t have much call for them in your line of work.”

“True,” he said, almost wistfully. “I just sit here all day driving other people’s stuff, a slave to the machine.”

I looked at him. I hadn’t expected to come across a revolutionary in the cab. He deserved encouragement. “You need to make a stand, Bo. What’s in the box?”

“Lobsters,” he said, shaking his head. “Rich folks’ chow.”

“You could always turn the heating up.”

He laughed bitterly.

I smiled. When he slid a CD into the player, I sat back in the comfortable seat as the unmistakable chords of Neil’s Rust Never Sleeps rang out. In a few seconds, I was miles away. Way across the Atlantic, in fact…

…watching Gavin Burdett as he comes out of the investment bank where he works in the City of London and heads to Bank underground station. He’s wearing one of those deeply untrendy gray coats with a black collar. The heels of his highly polished and doubtlessly ridiculously expensive shoes ring out on the pavement. I take up position about five yards behind him and start the tail.

I’m doing it for two reasons. The first is that effective tailing requires regular practice. Ever since Sara’s first threat, I’ve acquired as many useful skills as I can. The second is that Gavin Burdett is the chief suspect in Karen’s current major case-but she’s run up against the buffers with him, stymied by his lawyers and the care he’s taken to obscure his activities. I’ve been writing articles on transnational financial crime, so I have my own interest in nailing him. But I want to help my lover out, too. She’s confined by the parameters within which the police have to work. I have no such problem. Of course, if I do anything to bring Karen’s case into jeopardy, she’ll tie my intestines round my neck. That adds to the challenge.

Besides, everything I’ve found out about Gavin Burdett suggests that he’s a major-league scumbag. He has a reputation in his company for treating subordinates like dirt; his wife divorced him after she caught him with his dick in the Filipino maid; and one of his former business partners put his head under a train rather than face the charges Burdett had set him up for. Tailing a bastard like that will surely reveal something interesting.

Burdett sits down in the only available seat in the Tube carriage, beating a heavily pregnant woman to it and resolutely avoiding her outraged glare. I raise a newspaper and watch him surreptitiously. He takes a magazine from his briefcase. The multimillionaire investment banker gets down to Big Babes on the Bounce, indifferent to the scandalized looks on other passengers’ faces.

“Pillock,” I say under my breath, then get ready to leave the train when my target stands up.

Burdett comes out on street level at Bethnal Green and looks around. The bastard is handsome in a slightly raddled way, his hook nose, sallow skin and the thick black hair brushed back from his forehead giving the impression of a practiced lothario. I wonder if he is on his way to some woman-maybe he likes a bit of rough, something that wouldn’t be hard to find on the Roman Road. But instead, he starts walking north up Cambridge Heath Road. I keep a discreet distance. Then he slows as he approaches a row of shops. He goes into the second one.

I stop about twenty yards away. This is interesting, but not in any way that I’d have guessed. Gavin Burdett has gone into an establishment called Black As Night. According to the door the shop supplies “Candles, Tarot Cards, Caribbean Herbs and Roots, Occult Books-Everything Wild, Wicked and Witchy.”

Burdett comes out half an hour later with two heavily loaded plastic bags. I’d never have put him down as a devotee of black magic. Then again, he’s about as satanic-looking an individual as I’ve ever come across. And that includes the White Devil and the Soul Collector…

“Hey, Pete, you still alive?”

I came round to the sound of Bo’s voice and blinked away the vision of Gavin Burdett. “Where are we?”

“Between Philly and Baltimore. Some dream you were having, man.” A radio presenter was rattling away in the background.

I nodded, my mouth dry. “Haven’t been sleeping well lately.”

“Not much sleep to be found down in D.C., neither.”

I looked at him. “What do you mean?”

Bo grinned. “You know those occult killings?”

I felt a stab of unease in my gut. “Yeah?”

“Well, there’s been another one.”