The Bach Manuscript

Chapter 48

The nav coordinates Ulysses had given Madison to locate Zarko Kožul’s remote hideaway were over ninety kilometres from Belgrade, a short helicopter ride but too far to drive in a car whose bullet-chewed rear end was all too likely to attract police attention. Ben had her call the rental agency’s 24-hour customer hotline from the supermarket cafeteria to report the Octavia stolen.

‘Whoops. Not happy,’ she said when she’d finished making the call.

‘They’ll get over it.’

‘What are we going to do for transport?’

‘That won’t be a problem.’ He pointed at the table menu. ‘You want to eat something now, or would you rather wait until breakfast? We’re in no rush.’

‘I thought you wanted to go to Kožul’s place.’

‘It can wait. Kožul probably isn’t even at home right now. My guess is he’d have flown into town to check out the damage to his operation, and won’t be back there till morning. Some heads will have to roll for what happened tonight. One or two of his people will probably end up in the crusher.’

‘You really got that crusher on the brain, haven’t you?’

‘We’ll wait for the dust to settle, let him get home and let off steam. Then we’ll hit him in the afternoon, when he’s not expecting it.’

‘So what do we do until then?’

‘What normal people do, get some rest. It’s been a long day and tomorrow will be longer.’

They walked outside into the night. The mist had blanketed itself more thickly over the city, and the temperature had dropped another degree. They left the supermarket car park without a glance at the Octavia, and set off up the road at a brisk pace.

‘A damn sight colder than Colorado this time of year, that’s for sure,’ she said, rubbing her hands together.

‘Is that where your home is now?’

She laughed. ‘When you hunt fugitives for a living, you can forget having anything much of a home life. Grand Junction was my last job. The next one, I don’t know yet. Could be someplace down in New Mexico, could be way up in Alaska.’

He nodded. ‘I used to live that way, moving around all the time. Sometimes I used to forget where to go back to afterwards.’

‘Settled now?’

‘In theory.’

‘Married?’

He shook his head. ‘You?’

She gave a shrug. ‘They say Maddie Cahill always gets her man. But that’s one guy who’s escaped me, so far.’

‘I’m sure the White Knight will come along eventually. As long as you don’t shoot his kneecaps out on the first date, it could be the start of something beautiful.’

‘Geez, now I realise where I’ve been going wrong all this time.’

They walked on in silence. After a few kilometres, they were in a low-grade suburban residential area inland from the river. The streets and houses were dark, with the darker silhouettes of cars in driveways and dotted along the kerbsides. Ben stopped outside a driveway, walked a few steps towards the house, glanced at the darkened windows, and whispered, ‘This one will do.’

‘This what?’ she whispered back, but he was already too busy examining the vehicle he’d picked out to reply. An old-model Range Rover. Four-wheel drive. Minimal security. Not in the best condition. Easy to break into, cheap to replace. Within two minutes, he was inside and working on the ignition wiring. The house was still in darkness.

Madison poked her head in the open door and hissed, ‘Car theft? You can’t be serious.’

Ben removed the fat wad of Serbian banknotes that was overstuffing his wallet. He plucked out a sheaf that felt about the right thickness and gave it to her. ‘Go and post this through the letterbox.’

‘You’re crazy.’

‘But I’m not a car thief.’

Madison stared at him, then scampered up to the house, shoved the cash through the front door and came running back to jump inside the Range Rover as Ben got the engine fired up and the rasp of the engine broke the silence of the night. An upstairs light came on. A man’s silhouette appeared at the window, looking out in alarm at his car skidding backwards out of his driveway. There was a shout. Then the Range Rover was screeching away down the street in a cloud of diesel smoke, and was gone.

Five kilometres away, Ben switched the plates for ones he removed from a rusted-out Lada, and dropped the originals down a drain. ‘You’ve done this once or twice before, I see,’ Madison dryly observed.

‘Practice makes perfect. Now let’s go and find a place to hole up for the night.’

‘Like normal people,’ she replied.

On the far edge of town, they spotted a motel with a vacancy sign and pulled in. The old fat guy in reception was fairly drunk, but still mostly coherent, and spoke better English than Ben spoke Serbian. He looked surprised when Ben told him he wanted to book two rooms, but before he could answer Madison nudged Ben’s arm and cut in, ‘Why splash out for two rooms when one will do fine? We just spent most of our cash on a car, remember?’

Ben looked at her. ‘Our cash?’

‘In any case, we only have one room available,’ said the old fat guy.

‘We’ll take it,’ Madison said, then turned to Ben. ‘Pay the man.’

‘Whatever you say,’ Ben said, and paid the man.

The room was small, with a ramshackle double bed covering most of the worn carpet and just enough space to walk around it. The en-suite bathroom was as functional as most military latrines Ben had encountered. ‘I’ll sleep on the floor,’ he said.

Madison clucked her tongue. ‘There you go again.’

‘There I go again what?’

‘Pandering to the little woman. You think this chivalry thing is cool, or something? I’m as happy sleeping on the floor as the next guy. You take the bed.’

‘Do what you like, but I told you I’m having the floor and that’s that,’ Ben said, grabbing a pillow from the left side of the bed and tossing it down on the carpet.

‘Dumb as a rock and twice as stubborn,’ she muttered. She grabbed the other pillow and dropped down out of his sight to stretch out on the floor on the other side. A hand came up and yanked a blanket down off the bed to cover herself with.

‘Look who’s talking. I thought Roberta Ryder was the most obstinate female I’d ever meet.’

She craned her head upward to peer at him over the bed. ‘Who’s Roberta Ryder?’

‘Good night, Madison.’

Ben clicked off the sidelight, then lay down, closed his eyes and was dreaming within a minute. In the middle of the night, he awoke, heard Madison Cahill’s soft, regular breathing as she slept nearby, and realised she’d climbed up into the bed after all.

He smiled and went back to sleep.