The Driver

1

The grey September mist had rolled in off the Bay two days earlier and it hadn’t lifted yet. It softened the edges of objects within easy sight but, out beyond ten or fifteen feet, it fell across everything like a damp, cold veil. June was often the time when it was at its worst — they called it June Gloom for a reason — but the fog was always there, seeping down over the city at any time, without warning, and often staying for hours. The twin foghorns — one at either end of the Golden Gate Bridge — sounded out their long, mournful, muffled ululations. John Milton had been in town for six months and he still found it haunting.

It was nine in the evening, the streetlamps glowing with fuzzy coronas in the damp mist. Milton was in the Mission District, a once-blighted area that was being given new life by the artists and students who swarmed in now that crime had been halted and rents were still low. It was self-consciously hip now, the harlequinade of youth much in evidence: long-haired young men in vintage suits and fur-trimmed Afghans and girls in short dresses. The streets looked run-down and shabby. The girl Milton had come to pick up was sitting on a bench on the corner. He saw her through the fog, difficult to distinguish until he was a little closer. He indicated right, filtered out of the late evening traffic and pulled up against the kerb.

He rolled the passenger-side window down. The damp air drifted into the car.

“Madison?” he called, using the name that he had been given.

The girl, who was young and pretty, took a piece of gum out of her mouth and stuck it to the back of the bench upon which she was sitting. She reached down for a rucksack, slung it over her shoulder, picked up a garment bag and crossed the pavement to the Explorer. Milton unlocked the door for her and she got in.

“Hi,” she said in a lazy drawl.

“Hi.”

“Thanks for being so quick. You’re a lifesaver.”

“Where do you want to go?”

“You know the McDonalds in Balboa Park?”

He thought for a moment. Six months driving around San Francisco had given him a decent grasp of local geography. “I know it.”

“That’s where we’re headed.”

“Okay then.”

Milton changed into first and pulled back out into the sparse traffic. The rush hour had dissipated. He settled back into his seat and nudged the car up to a steady forty-five. He looked in the mirror at his passenger: Madison had opened her rucksack and taken out a book. It looked thick and substantial; a text-book, he thought. The dispatcher had told him to look for a blonde when she had relayed the booking although her skin was a very dark brown, almost black. Her hair was light and straightened and Milton wondered whether it might be a wig. She was curvaceous and small and dressed in jeans and a chunky sweater. Definitely very pretty. She read her book in silence. Milton flicked his eyes away again and concentrated on the road.

They passed through Mission Bay, Potrero Hill and into Balboa Park. The McDonalds, a large drive-thru, was in the grid of streets south of Ocean Avenue. There were advertisements for three-for-two on steak burritos and cups of premium roast coffee for a dollar.

“Here you go,” he said.

“Thanks. Is it okay to wait?”

“What for?”

“A call. We’re just stopping here.”

“Fine — but I’ll have to keep the clock running.”

“That’s okay. I got to wait until the call comes and then we’ll be going someplace else. Is that okay with you?”

“As long as you can pay, we can stay here all night.”

“I can pay,” she said with a broad smile. “How much do I owe you?”

Milton looked down at the meter. “Twenty so far.”

“Twenty’s no problem.” She took a purse out of her bag, opened it and took out a note. She reached forward and handed it to him. It was a hundred.

He started to feel a little uncomfortable.

“That should cover it for a couple of hours, right?”

Milton folded it and wedged it beneath the meter. “I’ll leave it here,” he said. “I’ll give you change.”

“Whatever.” She nodded at the restaurant, bright light spilling out of the window onto the line of cars parked tight up against it. “I’d kill for a Big Mac,” she said. “You want anything?”

“I’m fine, thanks.”

“You sure?”

“I ate earlier.”

“Alright.”

She got out. He clenched and unclenched his fists. He rolled the window down.

“Actually,” he said, “could you get me a coffee? Here.”

He reached in his pocket for a dollar bill.

She waved him off. “Forget it. My treat.”

Milton watched as she crossed the car park and went into the restaurant. There was a queue and, as she slotted into it to await her turn, Milton undid his seat belt and turned around so that he could reach into the back. She had left her bag on the seat. He checked that she was facing away and quickly unzipped it, going through the contents: there was a clutch bag, two books, a mobile phone, a bottle of vodka, a box of Trojans and a change of clothes. He zipped the bag and put it back. He leant back against the headrest and scrubbed his forehead with the palm of his hand.

He had been very, very stupid.

The girl returned with a bagged up Happy Meal, a tall soda and a large coffee. She passed the Styrofoam cup through the open window, slid into the back seat, took the bottle of Stolichnaya from her bag, flipped the plastic lid from the soda and poured in a large measure.

“Want a drop in your coffee?”

“No thanks,” he said. “I don’t drink.”

“Not at all?”

“Never.”

“Wow. What is that, like a lifestyle choice?”

He wasn’t about to get into that with her. “Something like that,” he said vaguely.

“Suit yourself.”

She put the straw to her mouth and drew down a long draught.

“Madison,” Milton said. “I need you to be honest with me.”

She looked up at him warily. “Yeah?”

“There’s no delicate way to put this.”

She stiffened, anticipating what was coming next. “Spit it out.”

“Are you a prostitute?”

“You’re a real charmer,” she said.

“Please, Madison — no attitude. Just answer the question.”

“I prefer ‘escort.’”

“Are you an escort?”

“Yes. You got a problem with it?”

“Of course I do. If we get pulled over I could get charged with promoting prostitution. That’s a felony.”

“If that happens, which it won’t, then you just tell them that I’m your friend. How they gonna say otherwise?”

“You make it sound like it’s happened to you before.”

“Hardly ever, and, whenever it has, it’s never been a big deal.”

“No,” Milton said. “I’m sorry. It’s a big deal for me.”

“Seriously?”

“I don’t need a criminal record. You’re going to have to get out. You can call another cab from here.”

“Please, John,” she said. He wondered for a moment how she knew his name and then he remembered that his picture and details were displayed on the laminated card that he had fixed to the back of his seat. “I can’t afford this right now.”

“And I can’t take the risk.”

“Please,” she said again. He looked up into the mirror. She was staring straight at him. “Come on, man. If you leave me here I’ll never get a ride before they call me. I’ll miss the party and these guys, man, this agency I work for, they’ve got a zero tolerance policy when the girls no-show. They’ll fire me for sure and I can’t afford that right now.”

“I’m sorry. That’s not my problem.”

“Look, man, I’m begging you. I’ve got a little kid. Eliza. She’s just two years old — you’ve got no idea how cute she is. If I get fired tonight then there’s no way I’m going to be able to pay the rent. Social services will try to take her away from me again and that just can’t happen.”

Milton stared out at the queued traffic on Ocean Avenue, the glow of a hundred brake lights blooming on and off in the soupy fog as they waited for the junction to go to green. He drummed his fingers on the wheel as he turned the prospect over in his mind, aware that the girl was looking at him in the mirror with big, soulful, hopeful eyes.

He knew he was going to regret this.

“On one condition: no drugs.”

“Sure thing. No drugs.”

“You’re not carrying anything?”

“No, man. Nothing, I swear.”

“No cocaine. No pills. No weed.”

“I swear it, on my daughter’s life, I haven’t got a thing. I’m already on probation. I got to pee in a cup twice a week, man. If I get caught with anything in my system, they take her away from me just like that. People say a lot of things about me, John, but one thing they don’t say is that I’m stupid. It’s not worth the risk.”

He watched her answer very carefully. She was emphatic and convincing and he was as satisfied as he could be that she was telling the truth.

“This is against my better judgment,” he said, “but, alright.”

“Thanks, John. You don’t know how much I appreciate that.”

He was about to answer when her cellphone buzzed. She fumbled for it in her bag and put it to her ear. Her tone became deferential and compliant. He didn’t catch any names but it was obviously about where they were headed next. The conversation was short. She put the phone back into her bag.

“You know Belvedere?”

“Don’t get up there very often.”

“Full of rich folks.”

“I know that. That’s where we’re headed?”

“Please.”

“You got an address?”

She gave it to him and he entered it into the sat nav slotted into a holder that was suction-cupped to the windshield. The little unit calculated and displayed the best route.

“The 101 up to the bridge,” he said, reading off the screen. “It’s going to take forty minutes. That alright?”

“Perfect.”

“You going to tell me what’s out there?”

“Like I say, rich folks throwing a mad party. That’s where it’s at.”

2

Madison was talkative as they drove north through Sunset, Richmond and Presidio, hanging a left at Crissy Field and joining the 101 as it became the Golden Gate Bridge. She explained how the business worked as they drove north. She met her driver at a prearranged spot every night. She said he was called Aaron and that he was twitchy but, generally, a stand-up kind of guy. He had let her down badly tonight. They were supposed to have met at eight at Nob Hill but he hadn’t showed and, when she finally got through to him on his cell he said that he was unwell and that he wouldn’t be able to come out. There was a number for a taxi firm on the back of the bench she had been sitting on. She called it. It was one of the firms that sent jobs Milton’s way. The dispatcher had called him with her details and he had taken the job.

She wasn’t shy about her work. She explained how she got jobs through an agency with the rest coming from online ads she posted on Craigslist. The agency gigs were the easiest: they made the booking and all she had to do was just show up, do whatever it was that needed to be done, collect the cash and then go. The money was split three ways: the driver got twenty percent and the rest was split equally between the agency and the girl. Milton asked how much she made and she was a little evasive, saying that she did okay but skimping on the detail. There was a moment’s silence as he thought of the flippant way that she had given him the hundred. He concluded that she was probably earning rather a lot and then he chastised himself for his credulity. The story about the struggle to find the rent suddenly seemed a little less likely. He wondered whether there even was a little girl. Probably not. He chuckled a little as he realised that he had been well and truly suckered.

The Bridge was lit up rusty gold as they passed across it, the tops of the tall struts lost in the darkness and the sterling-grey fog.

He heard the sound of a zipper being unfastened. He looked into the mirror and saw her taking a black dress from the garment bag.

“I need to get changed,” she said. “No peeking, John, alright?”

“Of course.”

“Don’t be a pervert.”

He concentrated on the gentle curve as the bridge stretched out across the Bay but he couldn’t resist a quick glance up at the mirror. She had removed her jumper and now she was struggling to slip out of her jeans. She looked up into the mirror and Milton immediately cast his eyes back down onto the road ahead; she said nothing but when he flicked his eyes back up again there was a playful smile on her lips.

They crossed over into Sausalito and then Marin City.

“Done,” she said. “You can look now.”

He did. Milton knew very little about women’s clothes but the simple black cocktail dress she was wearing had obviously been purchased in an expensive boutique. It was sleeveless, with a plain design and a deep collar that exposed her décolletage.

“You look very pretty,” he said, a little uncomfortably.

“Thank you, John.”

It was coming up to ten when Milton took the ramp off the interstate at Strawberry and negotiated the traffic circle around the tall brick spire that marked the turning onto Tiburon Boulevard. It was a long, narrow stretch of road that cut north to south right along the coast. White picket fences marked the boundaries of vast paddocks where million-dollar horses grazed. The lights from big houses that commanded impressive estates glowed from the crowns of the darkened headland to the left. They reached Belvedere proper and turned up into the hills. The fog was dense here and as they drove on the vegetation closed in on both sides, the beams of the headlights playing off the trunks and briefly lighting the deep darkness within. Milton could only see fifty feet ahead of them. The flora grew a little wilder and less tended. To the left and right were thickets of bayberry and heather, a thick jumble of branches that tumbled right up to the margins of the road. There was poison ivy, as tall as two men and thick as the branches of a tree. There was shining sumac and Virginia creeper and salt hay and bramble. Light reflected sharp and quick in the eyes of deer and rabbits. The road was separate from the houses that sat at the end of their driveways and, that night, the darkness and the fog enveloping the car like a bubble, Milton knew that they were alone.

“You know where we’re going?” he asked.

“Turn onto West Shore Road. There’s a private road at the end.”

He looked into the mirror. Madison had switched on the courtesy light and was applying fresh lipstick with the aid of a small mirror. She certainly was pretty, with nice skin and delicate bones and eyes that glittered when she smiled, which was often. She was young: Milton would have guessed that she was in her early twenties. She was small, too, couldn’t have been more than five-three and a hundred pounds soaking wet. She looked vulnerable.

The whole thing didn’t sit right with him.

“So,” he said. “You’ve been here before?”

“A few times.”

“What’s it like?”

“Alright.”

“What kind of people?”

“I told you — rich ones.”

“Anyone else you know going to be there?”

“Couple of the guys,” she said. Was she a little wistful when she said it?

“Who are they?”

She looked into the mirror, into his eyes. “No-one you’d know,” she said, and then he knew that she was lying.

He thought she looked a little anxious. They drove on in silence for another half a mile. He had been in the area a couple of times before. It was a beautiful location, remote and untroubled by too many visitors, full of wildlife and invigorating air. He had hiked all the way down from Paradise Beach to Tiburon Uplands and then turned and walked back again. Five miles, all told, a fresh autumnal afternoon spent tracking fresh prints into the long grass and then following them back again in the opposite direction. He hadn’t seen another soul.

He looked in the mirror again.

“You mind me asking — how long have you been doing this?”

“A year,” she said, suddenly a little defensive. “Why?”

“No reason. Just making conversation.”

Her temper flickered up. “As long as you don’t try and tell me I should find something else to do, okay? If you’re gonna start up with that then I’d rather you just kept quiet and drove.”

“What you do is up to you. I’m not in any place to tell you anything.”

“Fucking A.”

“I’m just thinking practically.”

“Like?”

“Like how are you getting back?”

“I’ll call another cab.”

“Back to the city?”

“Sure.”

“That’s if you can find someone who’ll come out this late at night. The fog as bad as this, and supposed to get worse? I know I wouldn’t.”

“Lucky I’m not calling you then.”

He spoke carefully. He didn’t want to come over like some concerned father figure. He guessed that would put her on the defensive right away. “You got no-one to look out for you while you’re here?”

She hesitated, looking out into the gloom. “My guy usually waits and then drives me back again. Keeps an eye on things, too, makes sure I’m alright.”

“I can’t do that for you.”

“I wasn’t asking.”

“I’ve got a day job. I need to get back to sleep.”

“I told you — I wasn’t asking. Jesus, man! This isn’t the first time I’ve done this. I’ll be alright. The men are okay. Respectable types. Bankers and shit. A frat party, maybe I’m a little concerned to be out on my own. But here? With guys like that? Nothing to worry about. I’ll be fine.”

The GPS said the turn was up ahead. Milton dabbed the brakes and slowed to twenty, searching for the turnoff in the mist. He found it; it was unlit, narrow and lonely, and the sign on the turnoff read PINE ESTATE. He indicated even though there was no-one on the road ahead or behind him and then slowed a little more.

He looked at the clock in the dash: the glowing digits said that it was half-ten.

The road ran parallel to West Shore Road for half a mile or so and then Milton saw lights glowing through the trees. It turned sharply to the left and then was interrupted by a eight-foot brick wall and, in the midst of that, a majestic wrought iron gate that looked like it belonged on a southern plantation. A white gatehouse was immediately ahead. Beyond the gate, on the right hand side of the road, a blue wooden sign had been driven into the verge. The sign said PINE ESTATE ASSOCIATION in golden letters that sloped right to left. There was a model lighthouse atop the gate. Milton considered it: a private community, prime real estate, close enough to the city and Silicon Valley not too far away. It all smelt of money.

Lots and lots of money.

“Through there,” she said.

“How many houses in here?”

“Don’t know for sure. I’ve only ever been to this one. Twenty? Thirty?”

“How do we get in?”

“They texted me the code.” The glow of her cell phone lit up her face as she searched for the information she needed. “2-0-1-1.”

He nudged the car forwards and lowered his window. The low rumble of the tyres on the rough road surface blended with the muffled chirping of the cicadas outside. He reached out to the keypad and punched in the code. The gate opened and they passed along a long driveway enclosed on both sides by mature oaks. Large and perfectly tended gardens reached down to the road. There were tree allées, expansive lawns, follies, knot gardens, boxwood parterres.

They reached the first house. It was a large modern building set out mostly on one level with a two storey addition at one end. It spread out across a wide parcel of land. There were two separate wings, each with floor to ceiling windows that cast oblongs of golden light that blended away into the grey shroud that had fallen all around. A series of antique lamps cast abbreviated, fuzzy triangles of illumination out across the immaculate front lawn. There was a motor court verged by espalier fruit trees. Milton reversed parked in a space; there was a Ferrari on one side and the new Tesla convertible on the other. Two hundred thousand dollars of peerless design and engineering. His Explorer was old and battered and inadequate in comparison.

Milton switched off the engine. “You weren’t kidding,” he said.

“About what?”

“There’s money here.”

“Told you.” She unclipped her safety belt, put her hand on the handle but then paused for a moment, as if unwilling to open the door.

“Are you alright?”

“Sure. It’s just—”

“You’re nervous? I could take you back if you want.”

She shook her head. “I’m not nervous.”

“Then what?”

“I’m here to meet someone except I haven’t seen him for a while and he doesn’t know I’m coming. The last time I saw him it — well, let’s say it didn’t go so well, didn’t end well for either of us. There’s probably a very good chance he tells me to get the fuck out as soon as he sees me.”

“I’m going back into the city. It’s not a problem.”

“No. I don’t have any choice. I want to see him.”

“It’d be no trouble. No charge.”

“I’m fine. Really. It’s completely cool. I’m just being stupid.”

She opened the door and got out, reaching back inside for her coat and bag.

She shut the door.

She paused.

She turned back to him. “Thanks for driving me,” she said into the open window. She smiled shyly and suddenly looked very young indeed. The chic dress and stratospheric heels looked out of place, like a schoolgirl playing dress-up. She turned towards the house. The door opened and Milton noticed a male face watching them through the gloom.

Milton wondered, again, how old she was. Nineteen? Twenty?

Too young for this.

Her footsteps crunched through the gravel.

Dammit, Milton thought.

“Madison,” he called through the window. “Hang on.”

She paused and turned back to him. “What?”

“I’ll wait.”

She took a step closer to the car. “You don’t have to do that.”

“No, I do. You shouldn’t be out here on your own.”

She liked to keep her face impassive, he could see that, but she couldn’t stop the sudden flicker of relief that broke over it. “Are you sure you’re okay with that? I could be a couple hours — maybe longer if it goes well.”

“I’ve got some music and a book. If you need me, I’ll be right here.”

“I’ll pay extra.”

“We’ll sort that out later. You can leave your bag if you want.”

She came back to the car and took a smaller clutch bag from the rucksack. She put the condoms inside and took a final swig from the bottle of vodka. “Thanks. It’s kind of you.”

“Just — well, you know, just be careful, alright?”

“I’m always careful.”

3

Milton got out of the car and stretched his legs. It was quiet with just the occasional calls of seals and pelicans, the low whoosh of a jet high above and, rolling softly over everything, the quiet susurration of the sea. A foghorn boomed out from across the water and, seconds later, its twin returned the call. Lights hidden in the vegetation cast an electric blue glow over the timber-frame of the building, the lights behind the huge expanses of glass blazing out into the darkness. Milton knew that the house was high enough on the cliffs to offer a spectacular view across the Bay to Alcatraz, the Bridge and the city but all he could see tonight was the shifting grey curtain. There was a certain beauty in the feeling of solitude. Milton enjoyed it for ten minutes and then, the temperature chilled and dropping further, he returned to the Explorer, switched on the heater, took out his phone and plugged it into the dash. He scrolled through his music until he found the folder that he was looking for. He had been listening to a lot of old guitar music and he picked Dog Man Star, the album by Suede that he had been listening to before he picked Madison up. There had been a lot of Brit-pop on the barrack’s stereo while he had slogged through Selection for the SAS and it brought back memories of happier times. Times when his memories didn’t burden him like they did now. He liked the swirling layers of shoegazing and dance-pop fusions from the Madchester era and the sharp, clean three-minute singles that had evolved out of it. Suede and Sleeper and Blur. He turned the volume down a little and closed his eyes as the wistful introduction of ‘Stay Together’ started. His memories triggered: the Brecon Beacons, the Fan dance, hours and hours of hauling a sixty pound pack up and down the mountains, the lads he had gone through the process with, most of whom had been binned, the pints of stout that followed each exercise in inviting pubs with roaring log fires and horse brasses on the walls.

The credentials fixed to the back of the driver’s seat said JOHN SMITH. That was also the name on his driving licence and passport and it was the name he had given when he had rented his nine-hundred-dollar-a-month single room occupancy apartment with no kitchen and shared bathroom in the Mission District. No-one in San Francisco knew him as John Milton or had any idea that he was not the anonymous, quiet man that he appeared to be. He worked freelance, accepting his jobs from the agencies who had his details. He drove the night shift, starting at eight and driving until three or four. Then, he would go home and sleep for seven hours before working his second job from twelve until six, delivering boxes of ice to restaurants in the city for Mr. Freeze, the pseudonym of a cantankerous Ukrainian immigrant Milton had met after answering the Positions Vacant ad on an internet bulletin board. Between the two jobs, Milton could usually make a hundred bucks a day. It wasn’t much in an expensive city like San Francisco but it was enough to pay his rent and his bills and his food and that was all he needed, really. He didn’t drink. He didn’t have any expensive habits. He didn’t have the time or the inclination to go out. He might catch a movie now and again, but most of his free time was spent sleeping or reading. It had suited him very well for the six months he had been in town.

It was the longest he had been in one place since he had been on the run and he was starting to feel comfortable. If he continued to be careful there was no reason why he couldn’t stay here for even longer. Maybe put down some roots? He’d always assumed that that would be impossible, and had discouraged himself from thinking about it, but now?

Maybe it would be possible, after all.

He gazed out of the window. He could see the glow from other houses further down the road. The nearest was another big building with lights blurring through the murk. As he watched, a sleek black town car turned into the driveway and parked three cars over from him. The doors opened and two men stepped out. It was too dark and foggy to make out anything other than their silhouettes, but he watched as they made their way to the door and went into the house.

The dull thump and drone of bass was suddenly audible from the house. The party was getting started. Milton turned up the stereo a little to muffle it. He changed to The Smiths. Morrissey’s melancholia seemed appropriate in the cloying fog. Time passed. He had listened to the whole of ‘Meat is Murder’ and was halfway through ‘The Queen is Dead’ when he heard a scream through the crack in the window.

His eyes flashed open.

He turned down the stereo.

Had he imagined it?

The bass throbbed.

Somewhere, footsteps crunched through the gravel.

A snatch of angry conversation.

He heard it again: clearer this time, a scream of pure terror.

Milton got out of the car and crossed the forecourt to the front door. He concentrated a little more carefully on his surroundings. The exterior was taken up by those walls of glass, the full-length windows shining with the light from inside. Some of the windows were open and noise was spilling out: the steady bass over the sound of drunken voices, conversation, laughter.

The scream came again.

A man was standing with his legs apart on the front porch.

“You hear that?” Milton said.

“Didn’t hear nothing.”

“There was a scream.”

“I didn’t hear anything, buddy. Who are you?”

“A driver.”

“So back to your car, please.”

The scream sounded for a fourth time.

It was hard to be sure but Milton thought it was Madison.

“Let me in.”

“You ain’t going in, buddy. Back to the car now.”

Milton sized him up quickly. He was big and he regarded Milton with a look that combined distaste and surliness. “Who are you?”

“I’m the man who tells you to go and fuck off. Like already, okay?” The man pulled back his jacket to reveal a shoulder holster. He had a big handgun.

Milton punched hard into the man’s gut, aiming all his power for a point several inches behind him. The man’s eyes bulged as the pain fired up into his brain and he folded down, his arms dropping to protect his groin. Milton looped an arm around his neck and yanked him off the porch, dragging him backwards so that his toes scraped tracks through the gravel, and then drove his knee into the man’s face. He heard the bones crack. He turned him over, pinning him down with a knee into his gut, reached inside his jacket and took out the gun. It was a Smith & Wesson, the SW1911 Pro Series. 9mm, ten rounds plus one in the chamber. A very good, very expensive handgun. Fifteen hundred bucks new. Whoever this guy was, if he bought his own ironwork he must have been getting some decent pay.

Milton flipped the S&W so that he was holding it barrel first and brought the butt down across the crown of the man’s head. He spasmed, and then was still.

The scream again.

Milton shoved the gun into the waistband of his jeans and pushed the door all the way open. A central corridor ran the length of the building with doors and windows set all along it. Skylights were overhead. The walls were painted white and the floor was Italian marble. The corridor ended at a set of French doors. Vases of orchids were spaced at regular intervals across the marble.

He hurried through into the bright space beyond. It was a living room. He took it all in: oak parquetry floor inlaid with ebony and a gilded fireplace that belonged in a palazzo as the focal point of the wall; rich mahogany bookshelves and fine fabric lining one wall; the rest set with windows that would have provided awesome views on a clear day. The ceiling was oak and downlighters in the beams lit the room. The furnishings were equally opulent with three circular sofas that would each have been big enough to accommodate ten or eleven people. The big windows were ajar and gleaming white against the darkness outside. A night breeze blew through the room, sucking the long curtains in and out of the windows, blowing them up toward the ceiling and then rippling them out over a rust-coloured rug.

Milton took in everything, remembering as much as he could.

Details:

The DJ in a baseball cap mixing from two laptops set up next to the bar.

The lapdancing pole with two girls writhing around it, both of them dressed as nuns.

The girl dancing on the well-stocked bar wearing a mask of President Obama.

The music was loud and the atmosphere was frantic. Many of the guests were drunk and no attempt had been made to hide the large silver salvers of cocaine that had been placed around the room. Milton watched a man leading a half-naked woman up the wide wooden staircase to the first floor. Another man stuffed a banknote into the garter belt of the girl who was dancing for him.

The scream.

Milton tracked it.

He made his way farther inside. The windows at the rear of the room looked out onto wide outdoor porches and manicured grounds. He could just see through the fog to the large illuminated pool, the spa, the fire flickering in an outdoor fireplace. He passed into a library. Silk fabric walls blended with painted wainscoting. There was a private powder room and a large wood-burning fireplace. A handful of guests were there, all male.

Madison was cowering against the wall. Slowly rocking backwards and forwards.

There was a man next to her. He put his hand on her shoulder and spoke to her but she pulled away. She looked vulnerable and frightened.

Milton quickly crossed the room.

“Are you alright?”

She looked right through him.

“Madison — are you alright?”

She couldn’t focus on him.

“It’s John Smith.”

Her eyes were glassy.

“I drove you here, remember? I said I’d wait for you.”

The man who had been speaking to her faded back and walked quickly away. Milton watched him, caught between his concern for her and the desire to question him.

“They want to kill me,” she said.

“What?”

“They want me dead.”

Another man appeared in the door and came across to them both. Another guard.

Milton turned his head to look at him. “What’s going on?”

“Nothing.”

“Look at her. What’s happened?”

He snorted out a derisive laugh. “She’s tripping out, man. Look at her! They said she went into the bathroom and when she came out she was like that. But you don’t need to worry. We’ll look after her. We’re going to drive her back to the city.”

“She says someone wants to kill her.”

“You want me to repeat it? Look at the state of her. She’s off her head.”

Milton didn’t buy that for a moment. Something was wrong, he was sure of it, and there was no way he was going to leave her here.

“Who are you?” the man asked him.

“I drove her out here. You don’t need to worry about another car. I’ll take her back.”

“No you won’t. We’re taking care of it and you’re getting out of here. Right now.”

“Not without her.”

Milton stood slowly and turned so that they were face-to-face. The man was about the same height as him but perhaps a little heavier. He had low, clenched brows and a thick, flattened nose. He had nothing in common with the well-dressed, affluent guests next door. Hired muscle in case any of the guests got out of hand. Probably armed, too, like his pal with the broken nose and the headache outside. Milton took another deep breath. He stared forward with his face burning and his hands clenching and unclenching.

“What?” the man said, squaring up to him.

“I’d be careful,” Milton advised, “before I lose my temper.”

“That supposed to be a threat, pal? What you gonna do?”

Milton’s attention was distracted for just a moment and he didn’t notice Madison sprint for the door. He shouldered the man out of the way and gave chase but she was quick and agile and already halfway across the library and then into the living room beyond. Milton bumped into a drunken guest, knocking him so that he toppled over the back of the sofa and onto the floor, barely managing to keep his own balance. “Madison!” He stumbled after her, scrambling through the room and into the foyer and then the cool of the night beyond.

He could barely make her out as she headed up the driveway.

He called out to her. “Madison! Wait!”

She crossed the driveway and kept going, disappearing into the bushes at the side of the gardens.

She vanished into the fog.

The man outside was on his knees, still dazed, struggling to get to his feet.

Milton started in pursuit but came to a helpless stop. He clenched his teeth in frustration. He couldn’t start crashing across the neighbours’ properties. They would call the police and then he would be arrested and they would take his details. He had probably stayed too long as it was. Perhaps they had already been called. Bringing attention to himself was something that a man in his position really couldn’t afford.

He rolled the car up the road. He turned right, further into Pine Shores, and, as the headlights raked through the murky gloom, he saw Madison again, at the front door of the next house, knocking furiously. He watched as the door opened and an old man with scraps of white hair and an expression that flicked from annoyance to concern came out and spoke with her. She shrieked at him, repeating one word — “help” — before she pushed her way into the house. Milton stepped out of the car and then paused, impotent, as the sounds of an argument were audible from inside. Madison stumbled outside again, tripping down the porch steps, scrambling to her feet as Milton took a step towards her, the old man coming outside after her, a phone in his hand, calling out in a weak and uncertain voice that he had called 911 and she needed to get off his property. He saw Milton, glared at him, and repeated that he had called the cops. Milton paused again. Madison sprinted to the old man’s fence and clambered over it, ploughing through a flower bed and a stand of shrubs, knocking on the front door of the next big house, not waiting to have her knock answered and continuing on down the road.

Milton heard the growl of several motorcycle engines. Four sets of lights blasted around the corner, powerful headlamps that sliced through the fog. He turned and looked into the glare of the high beams. The shape of the bikes suggested big Harleys. The riders slotted the hogs in along the side of the road. The engines were killed, one by one, but the headlights were left burning.

A car rolled up alongside them. It was difficult to make it out for sure but it looked like an old Cadillac.

He got back into the Explorer and drove slowly up the road after Madison. It was poorly lit, with dense bushes on the left. He couldn’t see where she had gone. He dialled the number she had used to book him earlier. There was no answer.

Another set of headlights flicked on behind him, flashing across the rear-view mirror. The town car from before had pulled out of the driveway to the party house. Milton redialled the number as he watched its red taillights disappear into the fog, swerving away behind the shoulder of dark trees at the side of the road.

He turned around and went through the gate in case she had doubled back and tried to make her way back up towards West Shore Road. The vegetation was dark and thick to either side, no light, no sign of anyone or anything. No sign of her anywhere. He parked. After five minutes, he heard the engines of the four motorbikes and watched as they looped around in a tight turn and roared away, heading back out towards the road, passing him one after the other and then accelerating sharply. The Cadillac followed. Five minutes after that he heard the siren of a cop car. He slid down in the seat, his head beneath the line of the window. The cruiser turned through the gate and rolled towards the house. He waited for the cruiser to come to a stop and then, with his lights off, he drove away. He had already taken more risks than was prudent. The cops would be able to help her more than he could and he didn’t want to be noticed out here.

That didn’t mean that he didn’t feel bad.

He flicked the lights on and accelerated gently away.

4

Milton stirred at twelve the next day. His first waking thought was of the girl. He had called her cell several times on the way back to the city but he had been dumped straight to voicemail. After that he had driven home in silence. He didn’t know her at all and yet he was terribly worried. He made his bed, pulling the sheets tight and folding them so that it was as neat as he could make it, a hang-up from a decade spent in the army. When he was done he stared out of the window of his room into the seemingly never-ending shroud of fog in the street beyond. He feared that something dreadful had happened.

His apartment had a shared bathroom and he waited until it was unoccupied and then showered in the lukewarm water. He ran his right hand down the left-hand side of his body, feeling for the broken ribs that he had suffered after Santa Muerte had stomped him in the dust and dirt outside Juárez. There had been no time to visit a doctor to fix them but they had healed well enough. It was just another fracture that hadn’t been dealt with properly and he had lost count of the number of times that that had happened. He took his razor and shaved, looking at his reflection in the steamy mirror. He had short dark hair with a little grey. There was a scar on his face, running horizontally from his ear lobe, across his cheek, and terminating just below his right nostril. He was even-featured although there was something ‘hard’ about his looks. He looked almost swarthy in certain lights and, now that he had shaved away the untidy beard that he had sported while he travelled north through South America, his clean, square, sharply defined jaw line was exposed.

His day work was physically demanding and hefting the weighty boxes from the depot into the back of the truck had been good for his physique. His old muscle tone was back and he felt better than he had for months. The tan he had acquired while he was in South America had faded in the grey autumnal gloom and the tattoo of angel’s wings on his back and neck stood out more clearly now that his skin was paler. He dried himself and dressed in jeans and a work shirt, locked the door and left the building.

TOP NOTCH BURGER was a one room restaurant at the corner of Hyde and O’Farrell. Milton had found it during his exploration of the city after he had taken his room at the El Capitan. It was a small place, squeezed between a hair salon and a shoe shop, with frosted windows identified only by the single word BURGER. Inside, the furniture was mismatched and often broken, the misspelt menu was chalked up on a blackboard and hygiene looked as if it was an afterthought. The chef was a large African-American called Julius and, as Milton had discovered, he was a bona fide genius when it came to burgers. He came in every day for his lunch, sometimes taking the paper bag with his burger and fries and eating it in his car on the way to Mr. Freeze and, on other occasions, if he had the time, he would eat it in the restaurant. There was rarely anyone else in the place at the same time and Milton liked that; he listened to the gospel music that Julius played through the cheap Sony stereo on a shelf above his griddle, sometimes read his book, sometimes just watched the way the man expertly prepared the food.

“Afternoon, John,” Julius said as he shut the door behind him.

“How’s it going?”

“Going good,” he said. “What can I get for you? The usual?”

“Please.”

Milton almost always had the same thing: bacon and cheddar on an aged beef pattie in a sourdough bun, bone marrow, cucumber pickles, caramelized onions, horseradish aioli, a bag of double-cooked fries and a bottle of ginger beer.

He was getting ready to leave when his phone rang.

He stopped, staring as the phone vibrated on the table.

No-one ever called him at this time of day.

“Hello?”

“My name’s Trip Macklemore.”

“Do I know you?”

“Who are you?”

Milton paused, his natural caution imposing itself. “My name’s John,” he said carefully. “John Smith. What can I do for you?”

“You’re a taxi driver?”

“That’s right.”

“Did you drive Madison Clarke last night?”

“I drove a Madison. She didn’t tell me her second name. How do you know that?”

“She texted me your number. Her usual driver wasn’t there, right?”

“So she said. How do you know her?”

“I’m her boyfriend.”

Milton swapped the phone to his other ear. “She hasn’t come home?”

“No. That’s why I’m calling.”

“And that’s unusual for her?”

“Very. Did anything happen last night?”

Milton paused uncomfortably. “How much do you know—”

“About what she does?” he interrupted impatiently. “I know everything so you don’t need to worry about hurting my feelings. Look — I’ve been worried sick about her. Could we meet?”

Milton drummed his fingers against the table.

“Mr. Smith?”

“Yes, I’m here.”

“Can we meet? Please. I’d like to talk to you.”

“Of course.”

“This afternoon?”

“I’m working.”

“After that? When you’re through?”

“Sure.”

“Do you know Mulligan’s? Green and Webster.”

“I can find it.”

“What time?”

Milton said he would see him at six. He ended the call, gave Julius ten bucks and stepped into the foggy street outside.

The Business had its depot in Bayview. It was located in an area of warehouses, a series of concrete boxes with electricity and telephone wires strung overhead and cars and trucks parked haphazardly outside. Milton parked the Explorer in the first space he could find and walked the short distance to Wallace Avenue. Mr. Freeze’s building was on a corner, a two-storey box with two lines of windows and a double-height roller door through which the trucks rolled to be loaded with the ice they would deliver all around the Bay area. Milton went in through the side door, went to the locker room and changed into the blue overalls with the corporate logo — a block of motion-blurred ice — embroidered on the left lapel. He changed his Timberlands for a pair of steel-capped work boots and went to collect his truck from the line that was arranged in front of the warehouse.

He swung out into the road and then backed into the loading bay. He saw Vassily, the boss, as he went around to the big industrial freezer. His docket was fixed to the door: bags of ice to deliver to half a dozen restaurants in Fisherman’s Wharf and an ice sculpture to a hotel in Presidio. He yanked down the big handle and muscled the heavy freezer door open. The cold hit him at once, just like always, a numbing throb that would sink into the bones and remain there all day if you stayed inside too long. Milton picked up the first big bag of ice and carried it to the truck. It, too, was refrigerated and he slung it into the back to be arranged for transport when he had loaded them all. There were another twenty bags and by the time he had finished carrying them into the truck his biceps, the inside of his forearms and his chest were cold from where he had hugged the ice. He stacked the bags in three neat rows and went back into the freezer. He just had the ice sculpture left to move. It was of a dolphin, curled as if it was leaping through the air. It was five feet high and set on a heavy plinth. Vassily paid a guy fifty bucks for each sculpture and sold them for three hundred. It was, as he said, “a big ticket item.”

Milton couldn’t keep his mind off what had happened last night. He kept replaying it all: the house, the party, the girl’s blind panic, the town car that only just arrived before it had pulled away, the motorcycles, the Cadillac. Was there anything else he could have done? He was embarrassed that he had let her get away from him so easily when it was so obvious that she needed help. She wasn’t his responsibility. He knew that she was an adult, but he also knew he would blame himself if anything had happened to her.

He pressed his fingers beneath the plinth and, bending his knees and straining his arms and thighs, he hefted the sculpture into the air, balancing it against his shoulder. It was heavy, surely two hundred pounds, and it was all he could manage to get it off the floor. He turned around and started forwards, his fingers straining and the muscles in his arms and shoulders burning from the effort.

He thought about the call from her boyfriend and the meeting that they had scheduled. He would tell him exactly what had happened. Maybe he would know something. Maybe Milton could help him find her.

He made his way to the door of the freezer. The unit had a raised lip and Milton was distracted; he forgot that it was there and stubbed the toe of his right foot against it. The sudden surprise unbalanced him and he caught his left boot on the lip too as he stumbled over it. The sculpture tipped away from his body and even as Milton tried to follow after it, trying to bring his right arm up to corral it, he knew there was nothing he could do. The sculpture tipped forwards faster and faster and then he dropped it completely. It fell to the concrete floor of the depot, shattering into a million tiny pieces.

Even in the noisy depot, the noise was loud and shocking. There was a moment of silence before some of the others started to clap, others whooping sardonically. Milton stood with the glistening fragments spread around him, helpless. He felt the colour rising in his cheeks.

Vassily came out of the office.

“What the fuck, John?”

“Sorry.”

“What happened?”

“I tripped. Dropped it.”

“I can see that.”

“I’m sorry.”

“You already said that. It’s not going to put it back together again, is it?”

“I was distracted.”

“I don’t pay you to be distracted.”

“No, you don’t. I’m sorry, Vassily. It won’t happen again.”

“It’s coming out of your wages. Three hundred bucks.”

“Come on, Vassily. It doesn’t cost you that.”

“No, but that’s money I’m going to have to pay back. Three hundred. If you don’t like it, you know where to find the door.”

Milton felt the old, familiar flare of anger. Five years ago, he would not have been able to hold it all in. His fists clenched and unclenched but he remembered what he had learnt in the rooms — that there were some things that you just couldn’t control, and that there was no point in worrying about them — and, with that in mind, the flames flickered and died. It was better that way. Better for Vassily. Better for him.

“Fine,” he said. “That’s fine. You’re right.”

“Clean it up,” Vassily snapped, stabbing an angry finger at the mess on the floor, “and then get that ice delivered. You’re going to be late.”

5

Milton drove the Explorer back across town and arrived ten minutes early for his appointment at six with Trip Macklemore. Mulligan’s was at 330 Townsend Street. There was a small park opposite the entrance and he found a bench that offered an uninterrupted view. He put the girl’s rucksack on the ground next to his feet, picked up a discarded copy of the Chronicle and watched the comings and goings. The fog had lifted a little during the afternoon but it looked as if it was going to thicken again for the evening. He didn’t know what Trip looked like but he guessed the anxious-looking young man who arrived three minutes before they were due to meet was as good a candidate as any. Milton waited for another five minutes, watching the street. There was no sign that Trip had been followed and none that any surveillance had been set up. The people looking for him were good, but that had been Milton’s job for ten years, too, and he was confident that they would not be able to hide from him. He had taught most of them, after all. Satisfied, he got up, dropped the newspaper into the trash can next to the seat, collected the rucksack, crossed the road and went inside.

The man he had seen coming inside was waiting at a table. Milton scanned the bar; it was a reflex action, drilled into him by long experience and reinforced by several occasions where advance planning had saved his life. He noted the exits and the other customers. It was early and the place was quiet. Milton liked that. Nothing was out of the ordinary.

He allowed himself to relax a little and approached. “Mr. Macklemore?”

“Mr. Smith?”

“That’s right. But you can call me John.”

“Can I get you a beer?”

“That’s alright. I don’t drink.”

“Something else?”

“That’s alright — I’m fine.”

“You don’t mind if I do?”

“No. Of course not.”

The boy went to the bar and Milton checked him out. He guessed he was in his early-twenties. He had a fresh complexion that made him look even younger and a leonine aspect, with a high clear brow and plenty of soft black curls eddying over his ears and along his collar. He had a compact, powerful build. A good looking boy with a healthy colour to his skin. Milton guessed he worked outside, a trade that involved plenty of physical work. He was nervous, fingering the edge of his wallet as he tried to get the bartender’s attention.

“Thanks for coming,” he said when he came back with his beer.

“No problem.”

“You mind me asking — that accent?”

“I’m English.”

“That’s what I thought. What are you doing in San Francisco?”

Milton had no wish to get into a discussion about that. “Working,” he said, closing it off.

Trip put his thumb and forefinger around the neck of the bottle and drank.

“So,” Milton said, “shall we talk about Madison?

“Yes.”

“She hasn’t come back?”

“No. And I’m starting to get worried about it. Like — seriously worried. I was going to give it until ten and then call the police.”

“She’s never done this before?”

“Been out of touch as long as this?” The boy shook his head. “No. Never.”

“When did you see her last?”

“Last night. We went to see an early movie. It finished at eightish, she said she was going out to work and so I kissed her goodnight and went home.”

“She seemed alright to you?”

“Same as ever. Normal.”

“And you’ve tried to call her?”

“Course I have, man. Dozens of times. I got voicemail first of all but now I don’t even get that. The phone’s been shut off. That’s when I really started to worry. She’s never done that before. She gave me your number last night—”

“Why did she do that?”

“She’s careful when she’s working. She didn’t know you.”

Milton was as sure as he could be that Trip was telling the truth.

The boy drank off half of his beer and placed the bottle on the table. “Where did you take her?”

“Up to Belvedere. Do you know it?”

“Not really.”

“There’s a gated community up there. She said she’d been up there before.”

“She’s never mentioned it.”

“There’s a couple of dozen houses. Big places. Plenty of money. There was a party there. A big house just inside the gate. She didn’t tell you about it?”

He shook his head. “She never told me anything. Can’t say it’s something I really want to know about, really, so I never ask. I don’t like her doing it but she’s making money, thousand bucks a night, sometimes — what am I gonna do about that? She makes more in a night than I make in two weeks.”

“Doing what?”

“I work for the electric company — fix power lines, maintenance, that kind of thing.”

“What does she do with the money?”

“She saves it.”

“She have a kid?”

“No,” he said.

Milton nodded to himself: suckered.

“She’s saving as much as she can so she can write. That’s her dream. I suppose I could ask her to stop but I don’t think she’d pay much attention. She’s strong-willed, Mr. Smith. You probably saw that.”

“I did.”

“And, anyway, it’s only going to be a temporary thing — just until she’s got the money she needs.” He took another swig from the bottle. Milton noticed his hands were shaking. “What happened?”

“I dropped her off and then I waited for her to finish.”

“And?”

“And then I heard a scream.”

“Her?”

“Yes. I went inside to get her.” He paused, wondering how much he should tell the boy. He didn’t want to frighten him more than he was already frightened but he figured he needed to know everything. “She was in a state,” he continued. “She looked terrified. She was out of it, too. Wouldn’t speak to me. I don’t even know if she saw me.”

“Out of it? What does that mean?”

“She ever do drugs?”

“No way,” Trip said. “Never.”

“That’s what she told me, too.” Milton frowned. “I went in to see her and, look, if I had to say I’d say one way or another then I’d say she was definitely on something. She said everyone was trying to kill her. Very paranoid. Her eyes wouldn’t focus and she wasn’t making any sense. I’m not a expert, Trip, I’m not a doctor, but if you asked me to testify to it I’d say she was definitely on something.”

“Maybe her drink was spiked?”

“Maybe,” Milton said. But maybe not. He thought it was more likely that she was doing drugs. A job like that? Milton had helped a girl in the Balkans once during the troubles over there and she had worked up a ferocious heroin habit. The way she had explained it, she’d needed something to deaden herself to the things she had to do to stay alive and that had been as good as anything else. And Madison had kept the details of her hooking away from Trip, so wasn’t it likely that she’d keep this from him, too? Didn’t it stand to reason? No sense in pushing that now, though.

“What happened after that?”

“She ran. I went after her but she was too quick for me and, to be honest, I’m not sure what I would’ve done if I’d caught her anyway. I got in the car and drove up and down but there wasn’t any sign of her. I called her cell but didn’t get anywhere. In the end, I waited as long as I could and then I came back. I was hoping she might have found her way home.”

Trip blanched with worry. “Fuck.”

“Don’t panic,” he said, calmly. “It’s only been a day. There might be a reason for it.”

“I don’t think so. Something’s wrong.”

Milton said nothing. He pushed Madison’s rucksack along the floor with his foot. “Here,” he said. “She left this in the car. You better take it.”

He picked up the bag, put it on his lap, opened it and idly picked out the things inside: her book, the bottle of vodka, her purse. “What do I do now?”

“That’s up to you. If it was me, I wouldn’t wait to call the police. I’d do it now—”

“—but you said.”

“I know, and the chances are that there’s a perfectly good explanation for what’s happened. She’ll come home and you’ll just have to explain to them that it was a false alarm. They won’t mind — happens all the time. But if something is wrong, if she is in trouble, the sooner you get the police onto it the better it’s likely to be.”

“How do I do that? Just call them?”

“Better to go in.”

“Yes,” he said, nodding vigorously. “I’ll go in.”

“You want some backup?”

“What — you’ll come too?”

“If you like.”

“You don’t have to do that,” he said, although his relief was palpable.

It was the right thing to do. The way he saw it, they would want to speak to him and it would save time if he was there at the same time. It would show willing, too; Milton was a little anxious that there might be questions about him driving a prostitute to a job and he thought it would be better to front it up right from the start. He would deny that he knew what was going on — which was true, at least up to a point — and hope for the best. And, he thought, the boy was becoming increasingly anxious. He thought he might appreciate a little moral support.

“Come on,” he said. “You drive here?”

“I don’t have a car. I got the bus.”

“I’ll give you a ride.”

6

They were met in the reception area by a uniformed cop who introduced himself as Officer Francis. He was an older man with the look of a long-standing veteran. His hair was shot through with streaks of grey, his face was creased with lines and he sat down with a sigh of contentment that said that he was glad to be off his feet. He wasn’t the most vigorous officer that Milton had ever seen but he wasn’t surprised by that: with something like this, why waste the time of a more effective man? No, they would send out one of the older guys, a time-server close to his pension, someone who would listen politely and give them the impression that they had been given the attention that they thought their problem deserved and then he would send them on their way.

“You’re Mr. Macklemore?”

“That’s right.”

“You’re the boyfriend.”

“Yes.”

“And you, sir?”

“John Smith.”

“How are you involved in this?”

“I’m a taxi driver. I dropped Madison off last night.”

“You know Mr. Macklemore?”

“We just met.”

“So you’re here why?”

“I’d like to help. I was one of the last people to see Madison.”

“I see.” He nodded. “Alright, then, Mr. Macklemore. Why don’t you tell me what’s happened and then we can work out what to do next.”

Trip told the story again and Detective Francis listened quietly, occasionally noting down a detail in a notebook that he took from his breast pocket. When Trip was finished Francis asked Milton a few questions: how had Madison seemed to him? Did he have any idea why she had run off the way she did? Milton answered them all honestly.

“You know she was hooking?”

“I didn’t,” Milton said.

“Really?”

“No. I didn’t. Not until we got there. It was just another job for me. I know the law, detective.”

“And you’ve come here without being asked,” he said, pursing his lips.

“Of course. I’d like to be helpful.”

“Fair enough. I’m happy with that. What do you think happened?”

“I don’t know. Whatever it was, she was frightened.”

“Who’s party was it?”

“I’m afraid I don’t know that.”

“A lot of rich folks up there,” Francis mused. “I can remember when you could buy a place with a nice view of the Bay for a hundred grand. You wouldn’t get an outhouse up there for that these days. Plenty of the tech guys have moved in. Driven up the prices like you wouldn’t believe.”

Francis closed the notebook and slipped it back into his breast pocket.

“Well?” Trip said.

“I gotta tell you, Mr. Macklemore, this isn’t what we’d call a classic missing persons case. Not yet, anyway. She’s only been gone a day.”

“But it’s totally out of character. She’s never done anything like this before.”

“That maybe, sir, but that don’t necessarily mean she’s missing. She’s young. From what you’ve said it sounds like she’s a little flighty, too. She’s got no history of mental illness. No psychiatric prescriptions and you say she wasn’t on drugs. Just because you can’t find her, that don’t necessarily mean that she’s missing, you know what I mean?”

“No,” Trip said. “I don’t agree.”

“Not much I can do about that, sir,” Francis said, spreading his hands.

Milton shook his head. “I agree with Mr. Macklemore, detective. I’m not sure I’m as relaxed about it as you are.”

The policeman looked up at Milton with a look of mild annoyance. “What do you mean?”

“You didn’t see the state she was in last night.”

“That maybe — I’m sorry, what was your name again?”

“Smith.”

“That maybe, Mr. Smith, but she wouldn’t be the first working girl I’ve seen freak out then check out for a bit.”

“Not good enough,” Trip complained angrily. “It’s because she’s a hooker you’re not going to assign someone to this, right? That’s the reason?”

“No. That’s not what I said.”

“But it’s what you meant.”

He stood and held out his hands, palm first. “Take it easy, son. If she’s still not back tomorrow, you give us another call and we’ll see where we are then. For now, I’d go back home, make sure your phone’s switched on and try and relax. I’ve seen plenty of cases like this. Plenty. Seriously. I’m telling you, ninety-nine times out of a hundred, they come back, a little embarrassed about the whole thing, and everything gets explained.”

“And the other time?”

“Not going to happen here, Mr. Macklemore. Really — go home. She’ll turn up. You’ll see.”

They made their way outside and onto the street.

“What the fuck was that?”

“Take it easy,” Milton said.

“You think he was listening to a word we said?”

“Probably not. But I’m guessing that’s standard operating procedure. And he’s right about one thing: it’s been less than a day.”

“You agree with him?”

“I didn’t say that. And no, I don’t. Not with everything.”

Milton had expected a reluctance to get involved and part of him could accept the logic in what the officer had said: it was still early, after all. But, the more he thought about what had happened last night, the more he had a bad feeling about it.

The way she had looked.

The way she had run.

The car speeding away.

The bikers. What were they doing at a high-end party like that?

Milton had made a living out of relying on his hunches. Experience told him that it was unwise to ignore them. And they were telling him that this didn’t look good.

Trip took out a packet of Luckies. He put one into his mouth and lit it. Milton noticed that his fingers were trembling again. “That was a total waste of time. Total waste. We could have been out looking for her.”

He offered the packet to Milton. “It wasn’t,” he said, taking a cigarette and accepting Trip’s light. “At the very least, he’ll file a report that says that you came in tonight and said she was missing. Now, when you call them back tomorrow, they’ll have something to work with. And the clock will have started. I wouldn’t be surprised if they treat it more seriously then.”

“So what do I do now? How long do we have to wait before they’ll do something? Two days? Three days? What’s the right time before they accept that something is wrong?”

“If she’s not back in the morning I’d call again. I’d make a real nuisance of myself. You know what they say about the squeaky hinge?”

“No.”

“It gets the oil. You keep calling. Do that until ten or eleven. If it doesn’t work, and if she’s still not back by then, go back to the precinct and demand to see a detective. Don’t leave until you’ve seen one. Authority’s the same the world over: you give them enough of a headache, eventually they’ll listen to you even if it’s just to shut you up.”

“And until then? It’s not like I’m gonna be able to sleep.”

“There are some things you can do. Do you know anything about the agency she was working for?”

“No. She never said.”

“Never mind. Google all the Emergency rooms in a twenty mile radius. There’s one in Marin City, another in Sausalito, go as far north as San Rafael. That’s the first place to look. If something’s happened to her, if last night was some sort of episode or if she’s hurt herself somehow then that’s probably where she’ll be. And when you’ve tried those, try all the nearby police stations. Belvedere, Tiburon, the Sheriff’s Department at Marin. You never know. Someone might’ve said something.”

“Okay.”

“Does she have a laptop?”

“Sure.”

“There might be emails. Can you get into it?”

“I don’t know. There’ll be a password. I might be able to guess it.”

“Try. Whoever booked her is someone we’ll want to talk to. The police will get to it eventually, assuming they need to, but there’s nothing to stop us having a look first.”

He looked at him, confused. “Us?”

“Of course.”

“What — you’re going to help me?”

He was almost pitifully grateful.

“Of course I’m going to help.”

“But you don’t even know us. Why would you do that?”

“Let’s just say I like helping people and leave it at that, alright?”

His time in A.A. had taught him plenty of things. One of them was that it was important to make amends; recovering alcoholics considered that almost as important as staying away from the first drink. It wasn’t as easy for him to do that as it was for others. Most of the people that he would have had to make amends to were already dead, often because he had killed them. He had to make do with this. It wasn’t perfect, but it was still the best salve he had yet discovered for soothing his uneasy conscience.

7

Governor Joseph Jack Robinson II was a born talker. It was just what he did. Everyone had a talent: some men had a facility for numbers, some for making things, some for language; hell, others could swing a bat and send a ball screaming away to the fences. Governor Robinson was a speaker and Arlen Crawford had known it within five seconds of hearing him for the first time. That was why he had given up what could have been very a profitable career in law, turned down the offer of a partnership and the millions of dollars he would have been able to make. He had postponed the chance to take an early retirement and the house on the coast he and his wife had always hankered after. The Governor’s gift was why he had given all that up and thrown in his lot with him. That was back then, two years ago, back when Robinson was governor, just starting out on this phase of his political career, but he had never regretted his decision, not even for a second. It could have gone wrong, a spectacular flame-out that took everyone and everything around him down too. But it hadn’t, and now J.J.’s star was in the ascendant, climbing into the heavens, streaking across the sky.

Arlen Crawford had seen nothing to make him think that he had misjudged him.

He took his usual place at the back of the room and waited for the Governor to do his thing. There had been plenty of similar rooms over the course of the last few months all the way across the country from the Midwest to the coast of the Pacific: school gymnasia, town halls, factory dining rooms, warehouses, anywhere where you could put a few hundred seats and fill them with enthusiastic voters who were prepared to come and listen to what the candidate had to say. It was like that today: they were in the gymnasium where the Woodside Cougars shot hoops, a polished floor that squeaked when he turned his shoe on it, a banked row of seats where moms and pops and alumni and backers of the school would gather to cheer on the kids, a scoreboard at one end that said COUGARS and AWAY, the neon numerals set to zero. A lectern had been placed against the wall that faced the bleachers with enough space for six rows of folded chairs to be arranged between the two. A poster that they had fixed to the lectern said AMERICA FIRST. A larger banner that they had fixed to the wall behind it read ROBINSON FOR PRESIDENT. The room was full: Crawford guessed there were five hundred people inside. There were a few curious students, not Robinson’s normal constituency, but Crawford had insisted: it made him look more hip, helped in his campaign to broaden his appeal to a younger audience. He knew, too, that the Governor was occasionally prone to phoning it in if the room was too friendly; it did him no harm at all to think that there was the possibility of awkward questions in the Q&A that would follow his speech. The rest of the audience were naturally right-leaning voters from the area, all of them given a little vim and vigour by the dozen or so backers that the campaign brought with them on the bus. They were doing their thing now, hooting and hollering as they watched a video of the Governor’s achievements as it played on the large video screen that had been fixed to the wall.

The video ended and Robinson walked through a storm of applause to the lectern.

“Thank you, Woodside. Thank you so much. The sign over there that says, “Thank you, Joe,” no, I thank you. You are what keeps me going, keeps so many of us going. Your love of country keeps us going. Thank you so much. Woodside, you are good people. You are all good people. Thank you.”

Crawford looked around the room: five hundred avid faces, hanging on every word.

“So, what brought us here today? Why aren’t we catching a game, the 49ers or the Raiders, grilling up some venison and corn-on-the-cob, maybe some steak with some friends on this Labor Day weekend? What brought us together is a love of our country, isn’t it? Because America is hurting. You know it. I know it. We all know it. And we’re not willing to just sit back and watch the demise of the greatest country on Earth. We’re here to stop that demise and to begin the restoration of the country that we love. We’re here because America faces a crisis and this crisis will rage until we restore all that is free and good and right about America. It’s not just fear of another recession. It’s not the shame of a credit downgrade for the first time in U.S. history. It’s deeper than that. More fundamental. This is a crisis due to failed policies and incompetent leadership. That may be hard to admit but we can’t afford to be polite. We’re going to speak truth today because we need to start talking about what hasn’t worked, and we’re going to start talking about what will work for America.”

Robinson stopped. He waited. One of the women in the audience called out, “We’re listening!”

He grinned. “Some of us saw this day coming. I delivered the same message when I gave my acceptance speech after I was re-elected as Governor. And in my speech I asked: ‘When the dust has settled and when the great speeches have been forgotten … what exactly is the President’s plan?’ His answer has been to make government bigger, to take more of your money and to reduce the strength of America’s military in a dangerous world. I warned against that back then, you’ll remember it, but not as many people were listening to me then as are listening today. So I’m going to repeat that message, and I’m going to say it as loud as I can: the President is destroying our country. You’ve seen the proof yourself. He rode in on a cloud of hope and rhetoric and he didn’t have a record, but, my goodness, he has a record now. We know what he promised. He promised a lot of things. He promised to transform America and, for all the failures and the broken promises, that’s the one thing he has delivered on, and I wish that he hadn’t. He has transformed us from a country of hope to one of anxiety and fear. People are poorer now than they were before. Some are on food stamps. Unemployment is up. Mortgages are underwater. Some places are suffering worse than they did in the Great Depression. The President promised to get rid of the deficit but instead he tripled it. You know that our national debt is growing at $3 million a minute? That’s $4.3 billion a day. Mr. President, I’m here to tell you that this will not stand. The American people will not stand for this any longer. You told us it was all about change, and it is. I’m going to bring real change. Lasting change. With the support of all these good people, I pledge to turn this country around and restore all that is good about it once again. We can make America better. We will make America better.”

He went on in the same vein for another ten minutes. It was a bravura display, yet again. In his two years as Robinson’s Chief of Staff, Crawford had probably heard him speak a thousand times, and that, right there, was another in a long line of brilliant speeches. It wasn’t so much the content. That didn’t matter, not at this stage of the game. It was the way he effortlessly connected to his audience, made them feel like he was one of them, the kind of fellow you could imagine having a beer with, shooting the breeze and setting the world to rights. That was what summed up the man and made him so exciting. He measured his audience so well and connected so precisely and, more incredible even than that, was the fact that he did it all so effortlessly. It wasn’t a conscious thing, a talent he calibrated and deployed with care and consideration; it was totally natural, so much so that he didn’t even seem to realise what he was doing. It was an impressive bit of politics. He stepped away from the lectern and made his way along the front row of the folding chairs, pumping offered hands, sometimes taking them in both of his and beaming that brilliant megawatt smile. They were all over him, clapping his back, hugging him. He didn’t back off or fend them away, the way that some politicians would; instead, he hugged them back, seeming to get as much satisfaction from touching them, draping his big arm over their shoulders, as they got from him.

Crawford watched and smiled and shook his head in admiration.

No doubt about it: Joseph Jack Robinson was a natural.

He stayed with them for half an hour, listening to their stories, answering their questions and signing autographs. The principal pitched him about the need for more money to fix a leaking roof and the Governor said that increasing funding for education was one of his campaign priorities; that was news to Crawford, who tapped out a note in his phone to remind himself to look into that later. Then they all followed him back downstairs, and out to the campaign bus. Crawford and Catherine Williamson, the press manager, trailed the crowd. Catherine looked at Crawford and raised her manicured eyebrow, an inverted tick of amusement that the Governor had done it again. Crawford looked back at her and winked. J.J. did that, now and again, surprised even the staffers who had been with him the longest. It seemed to be happening more often these days. As the speeches got more important, as the television crews that tailed them everywhere grew in number, as his polling numbers solidified and accrued, Robinson pulled the rabbit out of the hat again and again and again.

It was why they were all so excited.

This felt real.

It felt like they were with a winner.

Crawford followed the Governor up the steps and onto the bus.

“Great speech,” he told him as he opened his briefcase and took out the papers he needed for the trip.

“You think?”

“Are you kidding? You had them eating out of your hand.”

Robinson shrugged and smiled. Crawford found that habit of his a little annoying, the aw-shucks modesty that was as false as the gleaming white veneers on his teeth. The Governor knew he was good. Everything was done for a reason: every grin, every knowing wink, every handshake and backslap and beam of that radiant smile. Some of the rivals he had crushed on the way had been good, too, but not as good as him. They had a nagging sense of the ersatz that stuck with their audiences and curdled over time, seeds of doubt that grew into reasons why the voters chose Robinson instead of them when they finally got to the polling booths. The Governor didn’t suffer from that. He was a good man, completely trustworthy, honest to a fault, or, more relevantly, that was what they thought. The greatest expression of his genius was to make the whole performance look so effortlessly natural.

“Those questions on immigration,” Robinson began.

“Go vague on the numbers. We don’t want to get caught out.”

“Not the numbers. The message. It’s still holding up?”

“People seem to agree with you.”

“Damn straight they do. If I can’t say it like it is, what’s the point?”

“I know — and I agree.”

“These fucking wetbacks,” he said with a dismissive flick of his wrist, “taking jobs that belong to Americans, damn straight we should be sending them back.”

Crawford looked around, making sure they weren’t overhead. “Easy,” he advised.

“I know, I know. Moderation. I’m not an idiot, Arlen.” He dropped down into the chair opposite and unbuttoned the top button of his shirt. “Where next?”

“Radio interview,” Catherine said. “And we’re already an hour late already.”

Robinson was suddenly on the verge of anger. “They know that?” he demanded.

“Know what?”

“That we’re gonna be late.”

“Don’t worry. I told them. They’re cool.”

They were all used to his temper. He switched unpredictably, with even the smallest provocation, and then switched back again with equal speed. It was unnerving and disorientating for the newest members of the entourage who had not had the opportunity to acclimate themselves to the vagaries of his character but, once you realised was usually a case of bark over bite, it was just another vector to be weighed in the calculus of working for the man.

She disappeared further up the bus.

“No need to snap at her,” Crawford said.

“You know I hate being late. My old man used to drill it into me—”

“You’d rather be thirty minutes early than a minute late. I know. You’ve told me about a million times. How’s the head?”

“Still pretty sore. You should’ve told me it was time to go.”

“I did.”

“Not early enough. We should have left about an hour before we did. You didn’t insist.”

“Next time, I will.”

“We probably shouldn’t even have been there.”

“No,” he said, “we should.”

The party had been a little more raucous than Crawford would have preferred but it was full of donors and potential donors and it would’ve been unseemly to have given it the bum’s rush or to have left too early. The hour that they had been there had given the Governor plenty of time to drink more than he should have and Crawford had spent the evening at his side, a little anxious, trying to keep him on message and making sure he didn’t do anything that would look bad if it was taken out of context. It had been a long night for him, too, and he knew he would have to find the energy from somewhere to make it through to the end of the day.

“You get the Secret Service if you have to. Tell them to drag me out.” He paused theatrically. “Do I have a detail yet?”

“Not yet,” Crawford said, playing along.

“You know what I’m looking forward to most? The codename. You know what they called Kennedy?”

“No, sir.”

“LANCER. And Reagan?

“No, sir.”

“RAWHIDE? What do you reckon they’ll call me?”

“You want me to answer that? Really?”

“No,” he grinned. “Better not.”

8

Crawford settled back in his seat as the bus pulled out of the school car park, closed his eyes and allowed himself to reminisce. They had come a long way. He remembered the first time he had met J.J.. God, he thought, it must have been at Georgetown almost twenty years ago. He had been involved in politics ever since he’d arrived on campus, standing for various posts and even getting elected to a couple of them. J.J. had been the same. They had both been in the same fraternities — Phi Beta Kappa and Kappa Kappa Psi — and they had served on the same committees. Eventually, they stood against each other for President of the Students’ Association. After a convivial two week campaign, Robinson had defeated him. But defeated was too polite a word: it had been an annihilation. A good old-fashioned straight-up-and-down slobberknocker. Crawford knew the reason. Joe had always been a handsome boy, something of a surfer dude back in those days, and the aura of charisma that clung to him seemed so dense as to be able to deflect all of Crawford’s clever thrusts. It was like a suit of armour. The campaign was civil enough so as to require them to temper their attacks, but the list of deficiencies in his opponent that he had hoped to exploit — his vanity, his privileged background, the suspicion that he was doing this for his résumé rather than from a spirit of public service — were all neutralised the moment he switched on his smile and dazzled his audience with a serving of his West Coast charm. They had debated each other twice, and, both times, even the most biased of observers would have had to admit that Arlen had destroyed J.J. on the issues at hand. It didn’t seem to make the slightest scrap of difference: J.J.’s election victory was the largest landslide in college history.

It was a good lesson learned: style trumped substance every single time. It was ever thus.

Crawford retired from student politics with good grace. He was better as the man in the background, the overseer with the long view to better plot strategy and tactics, and he was happy to cede the spotlight to characters like J.J.. They had both become friendly during their jousting, despite the occasional low blow, and Crawford had agreed to work with him to make his term of office productive and useful. By and large, it was. They stayed in loose touch as they went their separate ways on graduation.

Crawford was always going to go into the law. His father was an attorney and he had known that he would follow in his footsteps since he was young. He made a career for himself in property and taxation, esoteric subjects that were complicated enough to be remunerative for the few who could master them. His firm served the nascent technology industry in Silicon Valley, and his roster of clients included Microsoft and Apple. He did well. There was the big house in Palo Alto, the BMW in the driveway and a boat. The trophy wife who wouldn’t have looked twice at him if they had met at college. Two healthy and happy kids. And it still wasn’t enough. Law was never what he would have described as fun or even satisfying, even though he was good at it. Eventually, each month became a long and depressing slog that was made bearable only by the massive pay check at the end of it.

He stayed at the firm more than long enough for it to lose its lustre. Stuck in a rut. Law had been the easy decision out of school, cashing in his degree for the easy money despite the nagging suspicion that he would have been better satisfied doing something else: academia, perhaps, or something where he could write. And then he turned forty and he realised, with a blinding flash of self-awareness that was frightening in its certainty, that he was wasting his life. He quit the next day, called an old friend at Georgetown and asked him for a job.

The man had obliged. He had been teaching the legislative process to keen young up-and-comers for three years when two very different offers came at the exact same time: the first was the offer of millions as a partner at a lobbying firm in Washington; the second was J.J. Robinson inviting him out to dinner.

He had watched his old opponent’s career with a strange mixture of jealousy and relief that it wasn’t him. Robinson had run for the House of Representatives as a twenty-eight year old Republican but had been handily defeated by the incumbent. Instead, he had switched his target to the Attorney Generalship and, after defeating a host of minor opponents, he had been elected at the age of thirty. Two years later, he defeated the Democratic Governor of California and finally took the high office that he had always craved. He had managed to hold onto his youthful appearance, a fact that gave his opponents something to latch onto when they laid into him; he was routinely derided as the ‘Boy Governor’ and not to be taken seriously. He lost popularity over misjudged taxation and immigration policies and was ousted by his Democratic challenger after just one term of office. He licked his wounds in a lobbying practice for a short while before winning the governorship again, this time serving for ten years.

Crawford had taken up his offer of dinner. He remembered the conversation. There had been some small talk, nothing consequential, until Robinson explained the reason for getting back in touch. He was forty-six now, a political veteran, and he was looking for a new challenge.

He was running for President.

And he wanted Crawford to be his Chief of Staff.

The bus pulled up outside the campaign office and the entourage duly decamped. The office was the same as the other ones, all the way across the country. It was entirely generic. It didn’t seem to matter where they were, everything looked the same. There was some comfort to be had in that, Crawford thought. There was the usual clutch of pollsters working the phones, entering data into laptops, pecking at the platter of sandwiches from the deli around the corner, the cellophane wrapper still halfway across. Empty soda cans were stacked on desks. Some wore headphones, nodding their heads to the music that seeped out. Crawford knew some of them from the convention last year but most were new recruits, drawn into the candidate’s orbit by the tractor beam of his charisma, offering their time for free.

He saw Sidney Packard standing to one side, a half-eaten sandwich in one hand and his phone in the other. It was pressed to his ear and he had an expression of deep concentration on his face. Packard was older, bald-headed and wrinkled, and, when he moved, his limbs flowed with a lazy confidence. He had been in the police before and, before that, there was talk of the army. He was head of the security detail and he had been working with the Governor for the last ten years. It was an interesting job. Crawford watched him speaking and, eventually, the other man noticed that he was looking at him and gave him a single, curt nod. Crawford interpreted that as good news, went to the nearest platter of sandwiches and loaded up a plate.

The radio crew had already set up their gear in the conference room and so Crawford went looking for the Governor. He opened the door to the bathroom and there he was; he was buttoning his shirt and fastening his belt. He recognised the young staffer, too. She was adjusting her clothes in the stall behind the Governor.

“I’m sorry,” Crawford said.

The woman seemed confused. Robinson drew her out and put his arm around her. “This is Karly Hammil,” he said. “She’s working for us now.”

“Yes,” Crawford replied. “I know. I hired her. Hello, Karly.”

She seemed to brace herself against the washbasin and just about managed a shy smile, an attempt to maintain the appearance of propriety that was redundant in the circumstances. Robinson, on the other hand, did not appear to have the capability of being embarrassed. It was as if he had just come out of the stall after using the toilet. Nothing unusual. Nothing out of order. It was an act he had, no doubt, perfected over many years. My God, Crawford thought, there had been plenty of practice. He had seen that shit-eating grin many times since he had started working for him.

“Well, then,” Robinson said. “We ready?”

“We are,” Crawford said.

Robinson winked at Crawford as he stepped outside and moved over towards the food.

Crawford followed behind him.

“You can’t keep doing this,” he said, and the note of resignation he heard in his voice made him feel even more pathetic.

“Relax.”

“How many times do I have to tell you?”

“No lectures today, Arlen.”

“If just one of them tells their story, you do know what’ll happen, right? You do understand?”

“Arlen—”

“I’m just checking because I don’t think you’ve thought about it.”

“No-one’s saying anything, are they?”

He bit his lip. “If they did that’ll be the end of it for you. End of the road. That kind of thing — Jack, I’m telling you, you need to listen to me. This isn’t the 60s. You’re not JFK.”

“Not yet.”

Arlen clenched his teeth; the man was infuriating. “It’s toxic,” he protested.

Robinson took Crawford’s right hand in his and squeezed it tight. Depending on his mood and what was required, the Governor had several ways of shaking hands. He might place his left hand by the elbow or up around the biceps or take your hand in both of his. That meant that he was especially interested, underscoring a greeting and making the recipient feel as if they were the most important person in the room. Other times, he would squeeze the shoulder or, for those he really wanted to bring within the dazzling aura of his personality, he might loop the arm across the shoulders and bring them in for a hug. He did this now, releasing Crawford’s hand, draping his arm around his shoulders and squeezing him tight.

“I’m keeping a lid on it,” he said. “You need to stop worrying. You’ll get an ulcer.”

Crawford felt like sighing at the sheer boring predictability of it and the frustration that despite it all — despite increasingly doom-laden warnings of what would happen to the campaign if any of his indiscretions were to be aired in public — that the Governor would just not listen to him.

9

Milton drove back to Belvedere. It was a little after eight as he drove the Explorer out of the city, heading north out of the Mission District until he picked up the 101 and then passed through Presidio. He paid more attention this time, orientating himself properly and memorising as much of the landscape as he could. Newly formed whitish fog filtered through the harp strings of the Bridge and then puffed out its chest as though pleased with its dramatic entrance; its only applause was the regular blare of the two foghorns, the lapping of the waves as they disappeared under the silent mass and the constant hum of the traffic. He passed turnoffs for Kirby Cove Campground and the Presidio Yacht Club, continued on after Southview Park and Martin Luther King Jr Park, the big cemetery at Fernwood and then, as he turned east and then back south, Richardson Bay Wildlife Sanctuary and McKegney Field with the placid waters of Richardson Bay off to the west. The darkness, and the fog — deep and thick — reduced visibility to a handful of yards. Milton drove carefully.

The price of living down here on the coast was high but the benefits were valuable, too: clean air, untamed beauty and, weather allowing, incredible views. If that was the kind of thing you wanted, you would be hard-pressed to find a better example of it anywhere on this side of the continent.

Milton had done a little internet research before setting out. Pine Shore was governed by a residents’ association, with an executive board that was elected from residents who became eligible after living in the area for ten years. The presidency of the board had transferred over the years from Vera Schulman, a lawyer, to Pauline Bridges, an artist, to, most recently, Harvey Dell, another lawyer. It was a precarious kind of place. The thirty houses had been built on land that did not belong to the residents. Towards the end of the nineteenth century a Presbyterian pastor named Peter Rogers Casey had negotiated a seventy-year lease from the nearby town of Tiburon, which owned the land of Pine Shore. The original purpose was to build a retreat for sailors who had fallen upon hard times. Those plans grew and the months passed and, soon afterwards, the pastor’s flock constructed a community building that was sufficient to seat five-hundred people. Five years later and Tiburon was persuaded to grant a ten-year lease to the Pine Shore Residents’ Association. In return for two hundred dollars a year, they would be permitted to build houses on the land. The lease had been renewed throughout the years, each extension for another ten years and each, as it neared its expiry, carrying the threat that the townsfolk would exorcise their perpetual jealousy of the people who made their homes there and the city dwellers who made the place their summer retreat, and either inflate the rent to uneconomic amounts or refuse to renew it. That kind of tenuous year-to-year existence could only be tolerated by a small slice of the population and, as a result, you would only find a particular kind of person in Pine Shore: very rich, upper middle-class, usually white. It also generated something of a siege mentality.

Milton turned off the coast road and continued to the gate. The radio was on and tuned in to a talk radio channel; the presenter was speaking to one of the candidates for the Republican nomination for the Presidential election. He sat for a moment, half listening to the conversation: immigration, how big government was wrong, taxation. The man had a deep, mellifluous voice, accented with a lazy West Coast drawl. Milton had heard of him before: the Governor of California, seen as a front-runner in the race. Milton had little time for politicians but this one was convincing enough.

He counter-clockwised the dial to switch the radio off, lowered the window and entered the code that Madison had given him last night.

2-0-1-1.

The final number elicited a buzz and the gate remained closed.

The code had been changed.

Milton looked at the gate and the community beyond and thought. Why had it been changed? He tried the combination a second time and, as the keypad buzzed at him again, he noticed the dark black eye of a CCTV camera pointed at him from the gatehouse. He hadn’t noticed that being there last night.

He put the car into reverse and the camera jerked up and swivelled as it tracked him. He turned around and drove slowly back down the drive until he was around the corner and out of sight. He killed the lights and then the engine and reached into the back for the black denim jacket he had stuffed into the footwell. He had a pair of leather gloves in the glove compartment and he put them into the pockets of the jacket. He took the S&W 9mm that he had confiscated from the guard outside the house and slipped it into the waistband of his jeans. He put the jacket on, opened the door and, keeping within the margin of the vegetation at the side of the road, made his way back towards the gate again.

About fifteen yards from the gate, a wooden pole carried the high tension power cabling from the substation into the estate. Three large cylindrical transformers were rigged to the pole, twenty feet in the air, and the wire crossed over to a corresponding pole on the other side of the wall. From there, individual wires delivered the current to the houses. Milton took out the S&W and racked a bullet into the chamber. There were better ways to disable a power supply — Mylar balloons filled with helium would have shorted it out very nicely — but he was working on short notice and this would have to do. He took aim at the ceramic insulators that held the wire onto the pole. It was a difficult shot: the insulators were small targets at reasonable distance, it was dark and the fog was dense. He fired, once, but the shot missed. He re-sighted the target, braced his right wrist with his left hand and fired again. The insulator shattered and the wire, sparks scattering into the gloom, swept down to earth in a graceful arc.

The light above the gate went out.

Milton cut into a dense copse of young fir that crowded close to the left of the road and, using it as cover, moved carefully to the wall. It was made of brick and topped with iron spikes. He reached up and dabbed a finger against the top, feeling for broken glass or anti-climb paint. All he could feel was the rough surface of the brick. Satisfied, he wrapped each gloved hand around a spike and, using them for leverage, hauled himself up, his feet scrabbling for purchase. He got his right foot onto the lip of the wall and boosted himself up until he was balancing atop it. The vantage offered an excellent view of the community beyond. He could see half a dozen big houses in the immediate vicinity and, as the road turned away to the east, the glow of others. There was no-one in sight. He stepped carefully over the spikes and lowered himself down.

The big house where the party had been held was quiet. All the windows were dark. Milton moved stealthily into the cover of a tree and, pressing himself against it, scoped out the road. It was empty in both directions. There was no-one visible anywhere. He ran quickly across, vaulting the low fence and making his way through the large garden to the back of the house. He remembered the layout from the quick glimpse through the window last night: the T-shaped swimming pool with the underwater lamps; the series of terraces on different levels; trees and bushes planted with architectural precision; the fire pit; the dark, fogged waters of the bay. A redwood platform abutted the house here, a sheer drop down the cliff to the rocks below on the right-hand side. The surf boomed below, crashing against the cliff, and the air was damp with salty moisture.

Milton followed the platform.

He pressed himself against the back wall and risked a glance through the windows. The living room beyond was very different now from how it had been the previous night. It was empty. The furniture had been returned to more usual positions around the room. The DJ equipment was gone. The bar, which had been strewn with bottles and glasses, was pristine. The salvers of cocaine that had been so ostentatiously left on the tables had been removed. The room was cool and dark and quiet. The windows were still open a little at the tops and the curtains shivered in and out on each breath of wind, the only movement that Milton could see.

It was as if the party had never even happened.

Milton flitted quickly across the window to a door that was set into a long extension that had been built across one side of the house. He tried the door. It was locked. Taking off his gloves, he took a pair of paperclips from his pocket and bent them into shape. He slid one into the lower portion of the keyhole, used it to determine which way the cylinder turned, applied light tension and then slid the other clip into the upper part of the keyhole and felt for the pins. He pressed up and felt the individual pins with the tip of the clip, finding the stiffest one and pushing it up and out of the cylinder. He repeated the trick for the remaining four pins, adjusting the torque for each. He turned the cylinder all the way around and the door unlocked.

Milton scrubbed the lock with the sleeve of his shirt, put the gloves back onto his hands and went inside. It was a utility room. He closed the door behind him, leaving it unlocked, and then paused for a moment, listening carefully. He could hear nothing. He was confident that the house was empty. He walked quickly into a huge kitchen with wide windows, then a hallway, then into the living room. It was gloomy, but there was just enough suffused moonlight from outside for him to see his way. He checked the downstairs quickly and efficiently. There was another formal living room with a large, carved stone mantel. A secret doorway in the bookshelves led to a speakeasy-style wet bar. The dining room looked like it was being used as a conference room, with a speakerphone in the middle of the table and videoconferencing equipment at the other. A spiral staircase led down to a wine cellar that had been built around crouching monk corbels that had been turned into light fittings; there were hundreds of bottles, thousands of dollars’ worth of wine, but nothing of any obvious interest.

He found the stairs and climbed to the first floor. There were four bedrooms, all with en-suite bathrooms. He climbed again to the second floor: three more bedrooms, all enormous. He searched them all quickly and expertly. There were no clothes in the closets and no products in the bathrooms. No signs of habitation at all.

It looked as if the house was vacant.

Distantly, down the stairwell, two storeys below, Milton heard the sound of the front door opening.

He froze.

Footsteps clicked across the wooden floor.

“Power’s out,” the voice said.

“The fuck?”

“Whole road from the look of things.”

“Place like this, millions of dollars, and they lose the power?”

“Shit happens.”

“You say so.”

“I do.”

“You got a flashlight?”

“Here.”

There was a quiet click.

“You know this is a waste of time.”

“It’s gotta get done.”

“What we looking for?”

“Just make sure everything looks the way it should.”

“What would look like the way it shouldn’t?”

“Anything that looks like there was a crazy-ass party here.”

“Looks clean to me.”

“Had professionals in — everything you can do, they did.”

“So what are we doing here?”

“We’re making sure, okay? Double checking.”

Milton stepped further back, to another door. He moved stealthily. He could hear footsteps down below. He opened the door; it led to another bedroom. The footsteps downstairs were hard to make out. Was that somebody walking up the stairs to the floor below, the first floor? Or somebody walking through the foyer on the ground floor? He couldn’t tell but, either way, he was stuck. If he crossed the landing there he would have to go past the stairwell and then he might be visible from below for a certain amount of time.

“You ever seen a place like this? Look at all this shit. This is where the real money’s at.”

“Concentrate on what you’re doing.”

They were definitely up on the first floor now.

“Go up there. Check it out.”

“Just gonna be more bedrooms.”

“And crazy ass parties end up in the bedroom, so go up and check them all out.”

“What about you?”

“I’m calling the boss.”

Milton could hear scuffed footsteps coming up the stairs: it was the unenthusiastic, resentful one of the pair. That was probably fortunate.

He dropped to the floor and slid beneath the bed.

“It’s me,” the other man was saying, his voice muffled now by the closed door. “We’re at the house. Yeah — looks good. Clean as a whistle. Power’s out, though. Alarm was off. Whole neighbourhood. I don’t think that’s anything to bother us. One of those things.”

Milton held his breath as the door to the bedroom opened and heavy footsteps sounded against the boards. A flashlight swept the room. The bed was low down, the boards and the mattress snug against his back, and he couldn’t see his feet; he thought they were beneath the valance but he couldn’t be completely sure. He felt horribly vulnerable and suddenly cursed himself for picking the bed over the walk-in cupboard he could have sheltered in. He could have pulled the gun in there, too. If the man saw him under here, there would be nothing he could do. It was a rookie mistake. He was trapped.

He turned his head to the right and looked through a gap between the fabric and the floor. He saw the soles of a pair of boots: heavy treads, worn and scuffed leather uppers, lots of buckles.

The boots made their way from one end of the room to the other.

A door opened, creaking on rusty hinges, and then closed again.

The man downstairs was still on the phone. “Up to you, obviously, but I say we check the garden, then get out of here. Alright? Alright. Sweet. We’ll see you there.”

The flashlight swept across the floor, the light glowing through the thin cotton valance.

The boots came closer, shoes on polished wood. He saw them again, closer this time. He could have reached out and touched them.

The boots moved out of sight, away to the door, steps sounded going away again.

“Nothing up here,” the man said.

“You sure? They want us to be absolutely sure.”

“Check yourself if you don’t believe me.”

“If you say it’s okay, it’s okay. Take it easy.”

Milton slid carefully out from under the bed and stayed low, crouching, listening. He heard steps, a pause, more steps, a door opening downstairs, then closing, then another door, a heavier door, then closing, and then silence.

He moved quickly but quietly out onto the landing, gently pulled the door closed and then descended, treading on the sides of the steps as he made his way down to minimise the risk of putting weight on a creaking board. He did the same on the next set of stairs. He was halfway down the final flight, facing the big front door and about to make the turn to head back along the long hall to the kitchen and the rear door, when he heard the sound of a key in the front door’s lock.

He froze: too late to go back up, too late to keep going down.

The door didn’t open.

He realised what it was: they had forgotten to lock it.

The fresh, cool evening air hit his face as he opened the rear door and stepped out into the garden. He breathed it in deeply. He heard the sound of two powerful motorcycle engines grumbling and growling into life, the sound fading as they accelerated away. He shut the door behind him and walked carefully and quickly to the road.

10

Milton made his way towards the house that Madison had run to last night, the one with the old man who had threatened to call the police. It was another big place, a sprawling building set within well tended gardens and fronted by a stone wall topped with ornamental iron fencing. Milton buzzed the intercom set into the stone pillar to the right of the gates and waited. There was no answer. He tried again with the same result. He was about to leave when he saw the old man. He came out of a side door, moving slowly and with the exaggerated caution of advanced age. Behind him was a wide lawn, sloping down to the shore. A collie trotted around the garden with aimless, happy abandon, shoving its muzzle into the flowerbeds in search of an interesting scent.

“Can I help you?”

“I hope so,” Milton said. “Could I have a word?”

Milton assessed him as he approached. He was old: late eighties, he guessed. He was tall but his frame had withered away with age so that his long arms and legs were spindly, sharply bony shoulders pointing through the fabric of the polo shirt that he was wearing.

“What can I do for you?”

“I was here last night.”

The man thought for a moment, the papery skin of his forehead crinkling. He remembered and a scowl descended. “This morning, you mean?”

“That’s right.”

“She woke me up, all that racket, my wife, too. You with her?”

“No, sir. But I drove her out here.”

“So what are you? A taxi driver?”

“That’s right.”

“What’s your name, son?”

“John Smith. And you?”

“Victor Leonard.”

“Sorry about all the noise, Mr. Leonard. The disturbance.”

“What the hell was she so exercised about?”

“I was hoping you might be able to tell me — did she say anything?”

Milton watched through the bars of the gate as he pursed his withered lips. “Didn’t make a whole heap of sense. She was in a terrible panic. Just asking for help. I’ve no idea what she wanted help for. She had her cell phone out and kept trying to make a call but it didn’t look like she was getting through. I could see she needed help so I told her she could come in. My wife, Laura, she sleeps downstairs because she’s just had her knee replaced, she was up too, all that noise. I got her inside but then she got a whole lot worse. Couldn’t make any sense out of her. Laura picked up the phone and started talking to the dispatcher, ‘this girl here is asking for help, can you send someone to help her,’ and as she finished the call and turned to her and told her to sit down and relax, the police were on their way, as soon as she said that, out the door she went.”

“And?”

“And nothing much. Police came around half an hour later. It was a single officer, he had a look around the place. Said he looked around the whole neighbourhood but he couldn’t find her anywhere. They asked me the questions I guess they ask everyone: what did she look like, what was she wearing, what did she say, all that. I told them what I could remember.” He paused. “I’ve got six kids, Mr. Smith, and I’m sure one or two of them could probably tell you more about drugs than I could. But, you ask me, that girl was pretty well drugged up. She had her hand on the sideboard to help her stay upright. Big eyes — pupils practically as big as saucers. She almost fell over twice while I was talking to her. And she wasn’t making any sense. If that’s not someone under the influence of something or another, I don’t know what is. You ask me, whatever she thought her problems were, they were in her mind — hallucinations or whatever you want to call them.”

“Did you see where she went?”

“Over the fence. Straight into Pete Waterfield’s garden, I guess because he had his security light on, looked like maybe he was in. She pounded on his door but he’s off on vacation with his grandkids and when she didn’t get an answer she kept on going — into his back garden and then away.”

“That leads down to the cliffs?”

“Sure does. You see the boat he’s got parked down there? Behind the car?” Milton said that he did. “She crouched down there, between the two, as if she was hiding from something. I saw her try and make a call on her phone again but I guess it didn’t get anywhere, like the others, because she upped and made a run for it. And that’s the last time I saw her.”

“Yes,” Milton said. “Me too. The cliffs are fenced off there?”

“Around the house, sure they are. But not further down.”

“You think she might have gone over the edge?”

“I hope not. That’s a fifty foot drop right onto the rocks.” He paused. “What’s it got to do with you, anyway? She’s just a customer, right?”

“I’m worried.”

“Ain’t like no taxi drivers I know, get worried about the people they drive.”

“I think something bad has happened to her.”

“Nothing bad happens around here, Mr. Smith.”

“I don’t know about that.” Milton took a business card for his taxi business from his pocket. “I appreciate you talking to me. Maybe I am worrying too much, but maybe I’m not. The police won’t even treat this as a missing person enquiry until she’s been gone a couple more days and, even then, it’s not going to be very high up their list of priorities. I wonder, if you think of anything else, or if you hear anything, or if anyone says anything to you, could you give me a call?”

“Sure I can.”

Milton passed the card through the bars of the gate.

“One more thing,” he said. “The house over there” — he pointed to the house he had just been inside — “do you know who owns it?”

“The company place?”

“What do you mean?”

“It’s owned by a company, one of the tech firms down in Palo Alto. Was on the market last year. Ten million dollars. What do you think of that?”

Milton made a show of being impressed.

“Good for the rest of us, too. They send executives there to stay — guys they’ve just hired before they can find a place of their own. None of them ever make much of an effort round here with the rest of us. Not unreasonable, I suppose. Why would they? They’re only stopping on the way to something else.”

“Know who’s in there now?”

“Afraid not. It’s empty, I think.”

“Apart from last night.”

“You can say that again.”

Milton thanked him and the old man went back to his front door. Milton turned back to the big house again. The place was quiet, peaceful, but there was something in that stillness that he found disturbing. It was as if the place was haunted, harbouring a dark secret that could only mean bad things for Madison.

11

Milton pressed the buzzer on the intercom and then stepped back, waiting for it to be answered. It was early, just before nine, and the sun was struggling through thinning fog. The brownstone was in Nob Hill, a handsome building that had been divided into apartments over the course of its life. Rows of beech had been planted along both sides of the street twenty or thirty years ago, and the naked trees went some way to lending a little bucolic charm to what would otherwise have been a busy suburban street. The cars parked beneath the overhanging branches were middle-of-the-road saloons and SUVs. The houses looked well kept. Both were good indications that the area was populated by owner-occupiers with decent family incomes. Milton thought of Madison and her reticence to talk about the money she was making. It must have been pretty good to be able to live here.

“Hello?”

“It’s John Smith.”

The lock buzzed. Milton opened the door and climbed the stairs to the second floor.

Trip was waiting for him inside the opened door.

“Morning, Mr. Smith.”

“Anything?”

He shook his head.

Milton winced. “Two days.”

“I know. I’m worried now.”

He led the way into the sitting room.

“You’ve spoken to the police?”

“About ten times.”

“What did they say?”

“Same — they won’t declare her missing until this time tomorrow. Three days, apparently, that’s how long it has to be. It’s because of what she does, isn’t it?”

“Probably.”

“If this was a secretary from Sacramento they would’ve been out looking for her as soon as soon as someone says she’s not where she’s supposed to be.”

Milton gestured to indicate the apartment. “Do you mind if I have a look around? There might be something you’ve missed. The benefit of fresh eyes?”

“Yeah, that’s fine. I get it.”

“Could you do me a favour?”

“Sure.”

“Get me a coffee? I’m dying for a drink.”

“Sure.”

That was better. Milton wanted him out of the way while he looked around the apartment. He would have preferred him to have left the place altogether, but if he worked quickly he thought he would be able to do what needed to be done.

The place was comfortably sized: two bedrooms, one much smaller than the other, a bathroom, a kitchen-diner. It was nicely furnished. The furniture was from IKEA but it was at the top end of their range; Milton knew that because he had visited the store to buy the things he needed for his own place. There was a sofa upholstered in electric blue, a large bookcase that was crammed with books, a coffee table with copies of Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar and a crimson rug with a luxurious deep pile. A plasma screen stood on a small unit with a PlayStation plugged in beneath it and a selection of games and DVDs alongside. There was a healthy-looking spider plant standing in a pewter vase.

Milton went straight to the bedroom. It was a nice room, decorated in a feminine style, with lots of pastel colours and a pretty floral quilt cover. He opened the wardrobe and ran his fingers along the top shelf. He opened the chest of drawers and removed her underwear, placing it on the bed. The drawer was empty. He replaced the clothes and closed the drawer again. Finally, he took the books and magazines from the bedside table. He opened the magazines and riffled their pages. Nothing. Once again, beyond the detritus of a busy life, there was nothing that provided him with any explanation of what might have happened to her in Pine Shore.

He went back into the sitting room. A MacBook sat open on the coffee table.

“Is this hers?”

“Yes.”

“Did you have any luck?”

“No. Couldn’t get into it.”

He tapped a key to kill the screensaver and the log-in screen appeared. He thought of the specialists back in London. Breaking the security would have child’s play for them but his computer skills were rudimentary; he wouldn’t even know where to start.

“The police will be able to do it if they have to.”

“You think that’ll be necessary?”

“Maybe.”

Trip had left a cup of coffee next to the laptop. Milton thanked him and took a sip.

“So,” he said. “I went back to Pine Shore last night.”

“And?”

“It was quiet. Peaceful. I had a look in the house—”

“You went in?”

“Just looked through the window,” he lied. “It was clean and tidy, as if nothing had ever happened.”

“Who lives there?”

“One of the neighbours told me it belongs to a company.”

“Which one?”

“I don’t know. It was sold last year. I looked it up online. It was bought by a trust. The ownership is hidden but the deal was for ten million, so whichever company it was has plenty of cash.”

“A tech firm. Palo Alto.”

“I think so.”

“Apple? Google?”

“Someone like that.”

“You get anything else?”

“I spoke to one of the neighbours. She ran into his house. He said she was out of it, didn’t make much sense. He called the police and that was when she ran off again. He’s not going to be able to help much beyond that.”

The boy slumped back. “Where is she?”

He took a mouthful of coffee and placed the cup back on the table again. “I don’t know,” he said. “But we’ll find her.”

“Yeah,” he said, but it was unconvincing.

“You know what — you should tell me about you both. Could be something that would be helpful.”

“What do you want to know?”

“Everything you can think of. Maybe there’s something you’ve overlooked.”

He sparked up a cigarette and started with himself. He was born and raised in Queens, New York. His father worked as a janitor in one of the new skyscrapers downtown. His mother was a secretary. His father was Irish and proud of it and it had been a big family with three brothers and six sisters. The children had all gone to Dickinson, the high school on the hill that drivers passed along the elevated highway connecting the New Jersey Turnpike to the Holland Tunnel. Trip explained that he was a bad pupil — lazy, he said — and he left without graduating. The area was rough and he found himself without a job and with too much time on his hands. He drifted onto the fringes of one of the gangs. A string of petty robberies that passed off without incident emboldened him and the others to go for a bigger score. Guns were easy enough to find and he had bought a .22 and helped hold up a fast food joint on Kennedy Boulevard. They had gotten away with a couple of hundred dollars but they hadn’t worn gloves and they left their prints all over the place.

The police had taken about three hours to trace them.

Trip was sentenced to three years in a juvenile facility. He served most of the time at the New Jersey Training School for Boys in Jamesburg. He did thirty months, all told, most of it spent in boot camp, living in barracks with fifty other young convicts. He was twenty when he finally came out. He had relatives in San Francisco, moved west to get out of the way of temptation and enrolled at community college to try and round out a few qualifications so that he could fix himself up with a job. He found out that he had an aptitude for electronics and he took a course in electrical engineering. He parlayed that into an apprenticeship and now he was employed fixing up the power lines.

He met Madison while he was out celebrating his first pay packet. She had been at the bar on her own, reading a book in the corner and nursing a vodka and coke. He introduced himself and asked if he could buy her a drink. She said he could and they had started to get to know each other. She was a big talker, always jawing, and he said how it was sometimes impossible to get a word in edgeways. (Milton said he had noticed that, too.) She was living out of town at the time, taking a bus to get into work. She said she was a secretary. Trip figured out the truth by the time they had been on their third date and he had been surprised to find that it didn’t bother him. If he didn’t think about it, it was bearable. And, of course, the money was great and it was only ever going to be temporary. He always tried to remember that. She had big plans and she was just escorting until she had saved enough to do what she wanted to do.

“She wants to write,” Trip said. “A journalist, most likely, but something to do with words. She’s always been into reading. You wouldn’t believe how much. All these” — he pointed at the books on the bookcase — “all of them, they’re all hers. I’ve never been into reading so much myself but you won’t find her without a book. She always took one when she went out nights.”

Milton looked at the bookcase, vaguely surprised to see so many books, always a clue to a personality. They were an odd mixture: books on astrology and make-up, novels by Suzanne Collins and Stephanie Meyer. Some books on fashion. The Collected Poems of Ralph Waldo Emerson. Milton pulled it out to look at the cover. Several pages had their corners turned down. Not what he would have expected to find. He slipped it back into its slot on the shelf.

“That’s one of the things I love about her, Mr. Smith. She gets so passionate about books. She writes, too. Short stories. I’ve seen a couple of them, the ones she doesn’t mind showing me. And I know I’m no expert and all that and I don’t know what I’m talking about but the way I see it, I reckon some of her stuff’s pretty good.”

“What’s she like as a person?”

“What do you mean?”

He searched for the right word. “Is she stable?”

“She gets bad mood swings. She can be happy one minute and then the whole world is against her the next.”

“You know why?”

He screwed the cigarette in the ashtray and lit another.

“Family.”

He explained. Madison had been born and raised in Ellenville. The place was up in the foothills of the Catskills, right up around Shawangunk Ridge, and it was on its uppers: the local industry had moved out and Main Street had been taken over by dollar stores and pawn shops. Madison had two sisters and a brother; she was the oldest of the four. Her father had left the family when she was five or six. Her mother, Clare — a brassy woman full of attitude — told the children it was because he was a drunk but Madison had always suspected that there was something else involved. She had no memories of her father at all and, whenever she thought of him she would plunge into one of her darker moods. Clare moved a series of increasingly inappropriate men into the house and it was after one of them started to smack her around that the police were called. He had been sent to jail and the children had been moved into foster care. Clare got Madison’s sisters and brother back after a year once she was able to demonstrate that she could provide a stable environment for them but she had left Madison with the family who had taken her in. She would run away to try and get back home and then be taken back into the foster system. There was a series of different places, several well-meaning families, but she never settled with any of them.

“Have you spoken to her mother?”

“Last night. She hasn’t seen her. Same goes for her sisters and brother.”

“Does she get on with them?”

“They used to go at it all the time but I think it’s better now than it was.”

“Why?”

“The others got to grow up at home and she didn’t. She hates that. She said felt like no-one wanted her. Always on the move and never where she wanted to be.”

“Why didn’t her mother take her back?”

“She never said. I think Madison was a little wild when she was younger, though. Maybe they didn’t know what to do with her. She has triggers like we all do, I guess — she’ll go off if she thinks somebody has lied to her, or if we’re running low on money, or if she’s having one of her arguments with her mom or her sisters. If she feels like she’s being ignored or rejected it all comes back again, and then, you know” — he made a popping noise — “look out.”

“Could that be a reason for what’s happened? Something’s upset her?”

“No,” he said. “She’s been really good with her mom for the last couple of months. They’ve been speaking a lot. Now she’s got money she’s been buying things for them — for her mom, her sisters, for her nieces and nephews, too. I’ve tried to tell her she shouldn’t need to do that but she likes it. They never had much money growing up and now she has some she likes to spread it around, I guess.”

“Alright,” Milton said. “Go on.”

He did. Around the time of seventh grade, Madison moved across country to live with her aunt in San Diego. The woman was young and Madison felt that they had something in common. It was a better town, too, with better schools, and she was encouraged to work hard. That was where her love of reading and writing found expression and she started to do well. For the first time in her life, he said, she felt wanted and useful and she started to thrive.

“Have you spoken to her? The Aunt?”

“No. I don’t have her number.”

Milton’s cellphone vibrated in his pocket. He scooped it up and looked at the display. He didn’t recognise the number.

“John Smith,” he said.

“Mr. Smith, it’s Victor Leonard from Pine Shores. We spoke last night.”

“Mr. Leonard — how are you?”

“I’m good, sir,” the old man said. “There’s something I think you should know — about the girl.”

“Yes, of course — what is it?”

“Look, I don’t want to be a gossip, telling tales on people and nonsense like that, but there’s a fellow who’s been saying some weird things about what happened up here the other night. You want to know about it?”

Trip raised his eyebrows: who is it?

“Please,” Milton said.

12

Milton was getting used to the forty-minute drive to Pine Shores. Trip was in the passenger seat next to him, fidgeting anxiously. Milton would have preferred to go alone but the boy had insisted that he come, too. He had been quiet during the drive but the mood had been oppressive and foreboding; Milton had tried to lighten it with some music. He had thumbed through his phone for some Smiths but then, after a couple of melancholic minutes, realised that that hadn’t been the best choice. He replaced it with the lo-fi, baggy funk of the Happy Mondays. Trip seemed bemused by his choice.

Milton drove to the address that Victor Leonard had given him and parked. It was eleven in the morning. They walked toward the house, a Cape-style cottage, raised high with a carport at ground level. Milton climbed up a set of steps that rose up beyond the level of the sidewalk and rapped the ornate iron knocker three times. There was a vertical panel set into the side of the door and Milton gazed inside: he made out the shape of a telephone table, a flight of stairs leading up to the first floor, a jumble of shoes against the wall, coats draped off the banister. It looked messy. A man turned out a doorway to the left of the lobby and came towards the door; Milton stepped away from the window.

The door opened.

“Dr. Brady?”

“Yes? Who are you?” Andrew Brady was very tall, with a plump face, greasy skin and a pendulous chin. His hair was chestnut streaked with grey and his small eyes had retreated deep into their sockets. He was unshaven and, despite his height, he was overweight and bore his extra pounds in a well-rounded potbelly. He was wearing a fuchsia-coloured windbreaker, a mesh cap and a pair of wading boots that were slicked with dried mud up to just below his knees.

“My name is John Smith. This is Trip Macklemore.”

“I’m sorry, fellas,” he said. “I was just going out. Fishing.” He indicated the waders and a fishing rod that was propped against the wall behind him.

“Could we speak to you? It would just take a moment.”

He glared out from the doorway at them with what Milton thought looked like an arrogant sneer. “Depends on what about.”

“The commotion around here the other night.”

“What commotion?”

“There was a girl. You didn’t hear?”

“The girl — oh, yes.”

“I understand you spoke to her?”

Brady’s eyes narrowed suspiciously. “Who told you that?”

Milton turned and angled his face towards the house diagonally opposite. “Mr. Leonard. I spoke to him earlier. Is it true?”

“No,” Brady said. “It isn’t.”

“Do you think we could have ten minutes of your time? It’s important.”

“What do you both have to do with her?”

“I’m her boyfriend,” Trip explained.

“And you, Mr. Smith?”

“I’m a taxi driver. I drove her up here the night she went missing. I’d like to see that she gets home safely again.”

“How honourable,” he said with a half-smile that could have been derisory or amused, it was difficult to tell. “A knight of the road.” The bluster was dismissed abruptly and Brady’s face broke out into a welcoming smile. “Of course, of course — come inside.”

Milton got the impression that this was a man who, if not exactly keen to help, liked people to think that he was. Perhaps it was a doctor’s self-regard. He bent down to tug off his boots and left them against the wall amidst the pile of shoes. As he led the way further into the house Milton noticed a small, almost imperceptible limp. He guessed he was in his early fifties but he might have been older; the greasy skin made it difficult to make an accurate guess.

He led them both into the main room of the house, a double-height living room that captured the light from large slanted windows. There was a galley kitchen in the far corner, a breakfast bar with barstools arranged around it. There was a large television tuned to CNN, a shelf of medical textbooks and, on the wall, a picture of a younger Brady — perhaps ten years younger — posing in army uniform with a group of soldiers. The photograph was taken in a desert; it looked like Iraq. He cleared the sofa of discarded remnants of the newspaper so that they could sit down.

“Could I get you something to drink?”

“No thanks,” Trip said, struggling with his impatience.

Milton smiled encouragingly at the boy. “No,” he repeated. “That’s alright. We’re fine.”

Brady lowered himself to the sofa. “So what did Victor have to say about me?”

“Just what he said that you’ve been saying.”

“Which was—”

“That she — the girl, Madison — was here. That she knocked on the door and you took her in. He says you used to specialise in getting kids off drugs and that you run a retreat here. Kids with problems come up here and you help them get clean. That true?”

“Yes, that’s true.”

“And Madison?”

“No, that isn’t true. And I don’t know why he’d say that.”

“It didn’t happen?”

“I heard the clamour — my God, the noise she was making, it’d be impossible not to hear her. She must’ve clambered over the wall at the bottom of the garden and went straight across, screaming for help at the top of her lungs. I was up working.”

“At that hour?”

“I was an Army doctor, Mr. Smith. Served my country in the Gulf, both times.” He indicated the photograph on the wall. “Second time, one of our men ended up with both legs blown off after he stepped on an IED. I went to try and help stabilise him before we got him out. Didn’t notice the second IED.” He closed his hand into a fist and rapped it against his leg; it sounded a hollow, plastic knock. “Gets painful sometimes so that I can’t sleep. It was like it that night. Kept me awake so I thought I might as well make myself useful.”

“I’m sorry,” Milton said.

“No-one notices. That’s the beauty with prosthetics these days. You wouldn’t know unless you’re told. They’re not quite so inconspicuous if you have to wear one, though. But, you know, we’re getting better at it all the time. Another five years…” He spread his arms wide. “It’ll be good as new. You won’t even know it’s there.”

“Nevertheless.”

“I manage.”

He tried to make a connection with him. “I served, too,” he said.

“Iraq?”

“Yes. Both times.”

“Doing what?”

“Just a squaddie the first time. Then special forces.”

“SAS?”

“That’s right.”

“You boys are tough as hell. Came across a few of your colleagues.”

“That right?”

“Helped one of them out. Crashed his jeep. Ended up with a broken leg.”

“You know what,” Milton said, smiling at him. “I will have that coffee.”

Brady smiled. “Not a problem. Young man?”

“No,” Trip said. “I’m fine.”

Brady got up and went to the kitchen. There was a coffee machine on the countertop and Brady made two cups of black coffee. “You been to Afghanistan, too?” he asked.

“Several times,” Milton replied.

“What’s it like?”

“It wouldn’t be on my bucket list, put it like that.”

“Never been out there myself but that’s what I heard from the guys I know who have. Ragheads — you ask me, we leave them to get on with whatever it is they want to do to each other. One thing you can say about them, they know how to fight — right?”

Milton ignored his distaste for the man. “They do.”

“Gave the Russians a bloody nose when they tried to bring them in line, didn’t they? They’ll end up doing the exact same thing to us. If it was my decision, I’d get us out of there as soon as I could. We should never have gone in the first place.”

Brady rambled on for a moment, his remarks scattered with casual racism. Milton nodded and made encouraging responses but he was hardly listening; he took the opportunity to scan the room more carefully: the stack of unpaid bills on the countertop; the newspaper, yellow highlighter all over a story about the Republican primary for the Presidential elections; a precarious stack of vinyl albums on the floor; the textbooks shoved haphazardly onto the shelves; framed photographs of two children and a woman Milton guessed must have been Brady’s wife. Nothing stood out. Nothing out of the ordinary. Certainly nothing that was a reason for suspicion.

“Milk and sugar?”

“No thanks. Black’s fine.”

He passed him a mug of coffee and went back around to sit. “So — the girl.”

Trip leaned forwards. “Madison,” he said.

“That’s right.”

“Did you speak to her?”

“Not really. I went to the door and called out but she didn’t even pause. Kept going straight on.”

“She didn’t come in?”

“No, she didn’t. Like I said, she ran off.”

“Why would Mr. Leonard tell me that you said she did come in?” Milton asked.

“You’ll have to ask him that. Between us, Victor’s an old man. His faculties… well, let’s be charitable about it and say that they’re not what they once were.”

“He’s lying?”

“I’m not saying that. Perhaps he’s just mistaken. It wouldn’t be the first time.”

“Right.”

Brady spoke easily and credibly. If he was lying, he was good at it.

The doctor sipped his coffee and rested the mug on the arm of the chair. “You’ve reported her missing?”

“Of course,” Trip said tersely.

“And?”

“They were useless.”

“Well, of course, in their defence, this isn’t a lost child, is it? She’s a grown-up. I suppose they might be inclined to think she’s gone off somewhere on her own and she’ll come back when she feels like it.”

“She’s missing,” Trip said, his temper up a little. Milton felt the atmosphere in the room change; the boy was angry and the doctor’s air of self-importance would only inflame things. They had got all they were going to get from this visit. It was time to go.

He stood. “Thanks for the coffee. I’m sorry we had to bother you.”

Brady stood, too. “I’ll tell you what,” he said, reaching into his pocket and fishing out a business card. “This is my number. I’ll be happy to help out if you need anything. I’m on the board of the community association here. If you want to speak to anyone else or if you want to put flyers out, that sort of thing, please do just give me a call. Anything I can do, just ask.”

Milton took the card. “Thank you,” he said as they made their way back down the corridor. They shook at the door. Brady’s hands were bigger than his but they were soft and his grip was flaccid and damp, unimpressive. Milton thanked him again and, impelling Trip onwards with a hand on his shoulder, they made their way down the steps to the pavement. Milton turned back to the house and saw Brady watching them from a side window; the man waved at him as soon as he realised that he had been seen. Milton turned back to the car, went around and got inside.

“Bullshit,” Trip said. “One of them is lying, right?”

“Yes,” Milton said. “But I don’t know who.”

13

Milton met Trip in Top Notch Burger at noon the next day. Julius bagged up Milton’s cheeseburger and the Original with jalapeños that the boy had ordered and they ate them on the way back to Pine Shore. Trip had printed a missing person poster overnight and they had stopped at a Kinko’s to run off two hundred copies. The poster was a simple affair, with a picture of Madison smiling into the camera with a paper birthday hat perched on her head. MISSING was printed above the photograph in bold capitals, her name was below the photograph and then, at the foot of the flyer, was Trip’s cellphone number and his email address.

Milton parked outside Andrew Brady’s house and they split up and set to work. He had purchased a stapler and staples from the copyshop and he used them to fix flyers to telegraph poles and fences. He went door-to-door, knocking politely and then, if the residents were home, explaining what had happened and what he was doing. Reactions varied: indifference, concern, a couple of the residents showing mild hostility. He pressed a copy of the flyer into the hands of each and left one in the mailboxes of those who were not home. It took Milton an hour to cover the ground that he had volunteered to take.

He waited for Trip at the car and stared up at the plain wooden door to Andrew Brady’s house. The doctor had been the subject of several conversations with the other residents. He had visited the library that morning and his research, together with the information he was able to glean, enabled him to build up a more comprehensive picture. He was an interesting character, that much was obvious, and the more he learnt about him, the more questions he had.

Brady had moved into Pine Shores in the middle 1990s. There was the doctor himself; his French wife, Collette; and their two young children, Claude and Annabel. Brady was the son of an army general who had served with distinction in Korea. He had followed his father into the military and had apparently enjoyed a decent, if not spectacular, career. Unable to work on the frontline after he lost his leg, he was moved into an administrative role. It had evidently been a disappointment after his previous experience. He gave an interview to the local press upon his appointment as Chief of Surgery at St Francis Memorial Hospital explaining that while he would always love the army, and that his military career had made him the man he was, he was a man of action and not suited to “riding a desk.” He wanted to do something tangible and “make a difference in the community.”

The family appeared to be affluent. Their house was one of the more expensive in the neighbourhood and there was a Lexus and an Audi in the driveway. A couple of the neighbours made awkward reference to his leg; it wasn’t usually obvious that he was lame, a fact that Milton could attest to. He wore shorts in the summer, though, and, then, it was evident. The prosthesis was a cream colour, mismatched with the tan that he always developed from working in his garden. One of the women that Milton spoke with, a blue-rinsed matriarch who was full of spite, said that she found it distasteful that he would put his leg “on show” like that. Milton humoured her and was about to take his leave when she looked at him with a mixture of lasciviousness and conspiracy.

“You know how he lost it? He told you what happened?”

“Yes — a bomb in Iraq.”

She chuckled. “He usually tells people that.”

“There’s another story?”

“It was a car crash,” she said, delivering the news with an air of self-satisfied smugness. “I don’t know all the details, but the story is that he’d been drinking. It was on the army base out there. He got drunk and drove his car into a tree. They had to amputate the leg to get him out.”

There were some who spoke with a guarded warmness about the Bradys. Andrew and Collette were gregarious to a fault, becoming friends with their immediate neighbours. Andrew had been elected to the board of the residents’ association and it appeared that most of the other members were on good terms with him. There was Kevin Heyman, the owner of a large printing business. There was Charles Murdoch, who ran a real estate brokerage with another neighbour, Curtis McMahon. Those families were close, and there was talk of barbeques on the Fourth of July and shared festivities in the winter. The closeness wasn’t shared with all, and for all those who described Brady as friendly and approachable, there were others who described him as the head of a closed and overbearing clique. While some spoke of his kindness, often visiting the sick to offer the benefit of his experience, others saw him as a loud-mouthed braggart, looking down on his neighbours and claiming status in a way that invited resentment.

Apart from suggestion that he might not have lost his leg in Iraq, Milton heard other stories that called his honesty into question. The most troubling concerned his professional reputation. During his time at the hospital there had been a serious road crash on the Interstate outside of San Mateo. A truck loaded with diesel had jacknifed across the 101, slicking the asphalt with fuel so that a series of cars had ploughed into it. The resulting fireball had been hot enough to melt the metal guardrails that ran down the median. Brady had been forced to resign in the aftermath of the crash after local reporters suggested that he had embellished his role in the recovery effort. He had claimed that he had driven himself to the scene of the disaster, and, badging his way past the first responders, he had made his way into the heart of the inferno and administered first aid to survivors as they were pulled from the wreckage of their vehicles. The fire service later denied that he had been present at all, and stated that he would never have been allowed to get as close to the flames as he had claimed. In another incident, Brady recounted the story of being on his boat in Richardson Bay when a yacht had capsized and started to sink. He boasted that he had swum to the stricken boat and pulled a man and his son to safety. It was subsequently found that there was no record of a boat getting into difficulty that day and no father and son to corroborate the story. An anonymous source even suggested that Brady had not even been on the water.

He had not taken another job since his resignation and the suggestion had been made that there had been a large pay-off to get rid of him. He had retreated to Pine Shore and made himself busy. He took it upon himself to act as the resident physician, attending neighbours and offering help that was sometimes not welcome. He rather ostentatiously attached a police beacon to the top of his car and monitored a police scanner for the barest sniff of an emergency so that he could hurry to the scene and offer his help. He had assisted locals with minor ailments and had attended the owner of a chain of delicatessens in the city when he complained of a soreness in his arm and a shortness of breath. He worked hard, seemingly intent on gaining the trust and respect of the community, but continually told tales that were simple enough to debunk and, when they were, they damaged the good that he had done. He suggested that he had worked with the police. He boasted that he was a qualified pilot. He spoke of having obtained a degree in law through distance learning while he was in the army. He seemed almost too eager to resolve any given crisis, no matter how small.

It seemed to Milton that Brady was intent upon making himself the centre of the community. His role as the chair of the residents’ association seemed particularly important to him, and there was grudging acceptance from many that he did good and important work to make Pine Shore a better place to live. But not everyone felt the same way. More than one person confided to Milton that there was bad blood when it came to the committee. The chairmanship was an elected post and it had been contested when the previous incumbent had stood aside.

The other candidate in an election that was described as “pointlessly vicious” was Victor Leonard.

Trip opened the passenger door and slid inside.

“How did it go?” Milton asked him.

“Got rid of all of them.”

“Learn anything?”

“That this place is full of crap. You?”

“The same.”

Milton told him what he had learned about Brady.

“He told others that he worked in Washington after coming out of the army. Homeland Security. He’s full of shit, Mr. Smith. How can we trust anything he’s told us?”

“I’m not sure we can,” Milton admitted.

“So where does that leave us? You ask me, Madison was in there.” He stabbed his finger angrily against the window three times, indicating Brady’s house.

“I don’t know. But we need to find out.”

14

One of the Campaign boosters was a big wine grower, exporting his bottles all over the world for millions of dollars a year, and one of the benefits of that largesse was an executive box at Candlestick Park. Arlen Crawford could take it or leave it when it came to sports but his boss was an avid fan. The 49ers were his team, too, and so the prospect of taking in the game against Dallas was something that had kept him fired up as they approached the end of the week. It wasn’t all pleasure, Crawford reminded him as they walked through the busy stadium to the level that held the luxury suites. Plenty of potential donors had been invited, too, not all of them on board with the campaign yet. They needed to be impressed. Robinson needed to deploy that beguiling grin and his charisma needed to be at its most magnetic.

They reached the door and Robinson opened it and stepped through into the box beyond. There was a long table laden with cold cuts, beers and snacks and, beyond that, an outside seating area. The Governor’s smile was immediate and infectious; he set to work on the other guests, working his way through the room, reaching out to take hands, sometimes pressing them between both of his, rewarding those who were already on the team with jovial backslaps or, for the lucky few, a powerful hug. It took him fifteen minutes to reach the front of the box and the open French doors that allowed access to the outside seats. Crawford stepped down to the front of the enclosure and allowed himself a moment to breathe. The field was brilliant green, perfectly lush, the gridiron markings standing out in vivid white paint. The stadium PA picked up the intensity as the teams made their way out through an inflatable tunnel in the corner of the stadium. Fireworks shot into the air, flamethrowers breathed tendrils of fire that reached up to the upper decks, music thumped, cheerleaders shimmied in formation. The 49ers’ offense was introduced by the hyperbolic announcer, each armoured player sprinting through a gauntlet fashioned by the defense, chest-bumping those that had made the procession before him.

Crawford turned away from the noise and the pageantry to watch the Governor deep in conversation with the multi-millionaire who owned cattle ranches all the way across the south. Two good old boys, Crawford thought to himself. Winning him over would be a slam-dunk for Robinson. They would be drinking buddies by the end of the afternoon and a cheque with a lot of zeroes would be on its way to them first thing in the morning.

Suddenly tired, he slid down into a seat and closed his eyes. He thought about the sacrifices he had made to get them as far as this. Robinson was the main draw, the focus, but without Crawford and the work that he did for him he would just be another talker, high on star-power but low on substance, and destined for the level he was at right now. If Robinson was the circus, Crawford was the ringmaster. You couldn’t have one without the other. It just wouldn’t work.

He opened his eyes as the home team kicked off, the kicker putting his foot through the ball and sending it high into the air, spinning it on its axis all the way to the back of the end zone. The return man fielded it and dropped to one knee. Touchback.

The others settled into their seats. Robinson saw Crawford, grinned and gave him a wink.

He hoped that all this effort was going to be worth it.

15

Tuesday night’s A.A. meeting was Milton’s favourite. He stopped at a 7-11 and bought two jars of instant coffee and three different types of cookies. Yet more mist had risen from the ocean and was beginning its slow drift across the town. It was a soft, heavy night, too cloudy for a moon. The streetlights were dim, opalescent in the mist; there was a slight neon buzzing from the signage of a bar on the opposite side of the street from the church. Milton parked and left the engine idling for a moment, the golden beams of the headlights glowing and fading against the banked fog. He killed the engine, got out and locked the door and crossed the street. He took the key from his pocket, unlocked the door and descended into the basement of the church.

It was a tired room, with peeling beige paint and cracked half-windows that were set far up towards the ceiling, revealing the shoes and ankles of the pedestrians passing by. Milton filled the urn with water and set it to boil. He took the coffee from the cupboard and then arranged the biscuits that he had brought on a plate, a series of neat concentric circles. The mugs hadn’t been washed from the last meeting that had used the room and so he filled the basin and attended to them, drying them with a dishcloth and stacking them on the table next to the urn.

Milton had been coming to meetings for more than three years. London, all the way through South America, then here. He still found the thought of it counter-intuitive, but then the complete honesty that the program demanded would always be a difficult concept for a man who had worked in the shadows for most of his adult life. He did his best. It had been more difficult at the start, in that church hall in West London. There was the Official Secrets Act, for a start, and what would happen to him if it came out that he had a problem. He had hidden at the back, near the door, and it had taken him a month to sit all the way through a meeting without turning tail and fleeing. He had gradually asked a regular with plenty of years of sobriety and a quiet attitude if he would be his first sponsor. He was called Dave Goulding, a musician in his late forties, a man who had been successful when he was younger and then drank his money and his talent away. Despite a life of bitter disappointment he had managed to get his head screwed on straight and, with his guidance, Milton had started to make progress.

The first thing he insisted upon was that he attend ninety meetings in ninety days. He had given him a spiral-bound notebook and a pen and told him that if he wanted him to remain as his sponsor, he had to record every meeting he attended in that notebook. Milton did that. After that, a little trust between them developed and they worked on his participation in the meetings. He wasn’t ready to speak at that point — that wouldn’t come for more than a year — but he had been persuaded to at least give the impression that he was engaged in what was going on. Dave called the back row at meetings the Denial Aisle, and had drummed into him that sick people who wanted to get well sat in the front. Milton wasn’t quite ready for that, either, but he had gradually moved forwards. Each month he moved forward again until he was in the middle of the action, stoic and thoughtful amidst the thicket of raised arms as the other alcoholics jostled to speak.

He had found this meeting on his first night in ‘Frisco. It was a lucky find: there was something about it that made it special. The room, the regulars, the atmosphere; there was a little magic about it. Milton had volunteered to serve the drinks on the second night when the grizzled ex-army vet who had held the post before him had fallen off the wagon and been spotted unconscious in the parking lot of the 7-11 near Fisherman’s Wharf. Milton always remembered Dave explaining that service was the keystone of A.A. and since taking care of the refreshments was something he could do without opening himself up to the others it was an excellent way to make himself known while avoiding the conversations that he still found awkward.

He opened the storage cupboard, dragged out the stacked chairs and arranged them in four rows of five. The format of the meeting was the same as all of the others that Milton had attended. A table was arranged at the front of the room and Milton covered it with a cloth with the A.A. logo embroidered on it in coloured thread. There were posters on the wall and books and pamphlets that could be purchased. Milton went back to the cupboard, took out a long cardboard tube and shook out the poster stored inside. It was made to look like a scroll; he hung it from its hook. The poster listed the Twelve Steps.

Milton was finishing up when the first man came down the stairs. His name was Smulders, he worked on the docks, he had been sober for a year and he was the chairman of this meeting. Milton said hello, poured him a coffee and offered him a biscuit.

“Thanks,” Smulders said. “How’ve you been?”

“I’ve had better days.”

“Want to talk about it?”

“Maybe later,” he said, the same thing he always said.

“You know what I’m going to say, right?”

“That I shouldn’t brood.”

“Exactly. Get it off your chest.”

“In my own time.”

“Sure. Mmm-hmm. Good cookies — gimme another.”

Milton had already begun to feel a little better.

It was a normal meeting. The chair arranged for a speaker to share his or her story for the first half an hour and then they all shared back with their own experiences. Smulders had asked one of the regulars, a thirtysomething docker that Milton knew called Richie Grimes, to tell his story. They sat down, worked through the preliminaries, and then Smulders asked Richie to begin.

“My name is Richie,” he said, “and I’m an alcoholic.”

Milton was dozing a little but that woke him up. Richie was a nice guy.

“Hi Richie,” the group responded.

“I’m pleased I’ve been asked to share tonight. I don’t always talk as much as I know I ought to but I really need do need to share something. I’ve been holding onto it for the last six months and unless I deal with it I know I’ll never be able to stay away from coke and the bottle.”

The group waited.

“I’m grandiose, like we all are, right, but not so much that I’d argue that mine is an original problem. You know what I’m talking about — money.” They all laughed. “Yeah, right. Most alkies I know couldn’t organise their finances if their lives depended on it, but if I’m not the worst in the room then I’d be very fuckin’ surprised, excuse my French. I lost my job a year ago for the usual reasons — attendance was shitty and when I did turn up I was either drunk or thinking about getting drunk — and instead of taking the hint I decided it’d be a much better idea to get drunk, every day, for the next month. By the end of that little binge, the savings I had managed to keep were all gone and the landlord started making threats about throwing me onto the street. I couldn’t work, no-one would even look at me not least give me a job, if I got evicted it was gonna get a hundred times worse, and so I thought the only thing I could do was borrow some money from this dude that I heard would give me credit. But he’s not like the bank, you know? He’s not on the level, not the kind of dude you’d want to be in hock to, but it wasn’t like anyone legit was about to give me credit and my folks are dead so the way I saw it I didn’t have much of a choice. I went and saw him and took his money and after I dropped a couple of Gs on a massive bender, the one that took me to rock bottom, then I found the rooms and I haven’t drunk or drugged since.”

A round of warm applause punctuated by whoops from the eager alkies in the front row.

“I know, it’s good, best thing I’ve ever done, but despite it being his cash that allowed me to stay in my place, give me somewhere to anchor myself, the stability I need to try and do all this stuff, he don’t necessarily share the sentiment. He’s not into community outreach, know what I mean? So he sent a couple of guys around yesterday. They made it clear that I’m running out of rope. He wants his money back. With the interest and ‘administration charges’ and all that shit, I’m looking at the thick end of six grand.”

He had laughed at this as if it was a particularly funny joke, then put his head in his hands and started to sob. His shoulders quivered and Milton watched him, awkwardly, until one of the other guys shuffled across the seats and put his arm around him.

There was silence for a moment until he recovered himself. “I got a job now, like you all know about, but even though it’s the best thing that’s happened to me for months it still barely covers my rent and groceries and if I can save twenty bucks a month then I reckon I’m doing well. That don’t even cover the interest on the loan, not even close. I don’t expect any of you to have any clever ways for me to fix this. I just wanted to share it because, I gotta be honest, I’ve felt the urge to go and buy a bottle of vodka and just drink myself stupid so I can forget all about it. But I know that’d be a crazy idea, worst thing I could do and now, especially after I’ve shared, I think maybe I can keep it behind me, at least for now. But I’ve got to get this sorted. The more it seems like a dead end, the more I want to get blasted so I can forget all about it.”

16

Milton was stacking the chairs at the end of the meeting, hauling them across the room to the walk-in cupboard, when he noticed that the woman he knew as Eva was waiting in the entrance hall. She was sitting against the edge of the table, her legs straight with one ankle resting against the other, with a copy of the Big Book held open before her. Milton watched her for a moment, thinking, as he usually did, that she was a good looking woman, before gripping the bottom of the stack of chairs, heaving it into the air and carrying it into the cupboard. He took the cloth cover from the table, tracing his fingers over the embroidered A.A. symbol, and put that in the cupboard, too. He shut the cupboard, locked it, then went through. Eva had stacked all the dirty cups in the kitchen sink.

“Hello,” she said, with a wide smile.

“Hello. You alright?”

“Oh, sure. I’m great. Just thought you could do with a hand.”

“Thanks.”

She stood and nodded down at the table. “Where does that go?”

“Just over there,” Milton said. “I’ve got it.” He lifted the table, pressed the legs back into place, picked it up and stacked it against the wall with the others. He was conscious that she was watching him and allowed her a smile as he came back to pick up the large vat, the water inside cooling now that the element had been switched off. She returned his smile and he found himself thinking, again, that she was very attractive. She was slim and petite, with glossy dark hair and a Latino complexion. Her eyes were her best feature: the colour of rich chocolate, smouldering with intelligence and a sense of humour that was never far from the surface. Milton didn’t know her surname but she was a voluble sharer during the meetings and he knew plenty about her from the things that she had said. She was a lawyer, used to work up in Century City in Los Angeles during clearance work for the networks. Now she did medical liability work at St Francis Memorial. She was divorced with a young daughter, her husband had been an alcoholic too, and it had broken their relationship apart. She had found the rooms, he hadn’t. She shared about him sometimes. He was still out there.

“Enjoy it tonight?” she asked him.

“Enjoy might not be the right word.”

“Okay — get anything from it?”

“I think so.”

“Which other meetings do you go to?”

“Just this one. You?”

“There’s the place on Sacramento Street. Near Lafayette Park?”

Milton shook his head.

“I do a couple of meetings there. Mondays and Fridays. They’re pretty good. You should — well, you know.”

He turned the urn upside down and rested it in the sink.

“How long is it for you?” she asked.

“Since I had a drink?” He smiled ruefully. “One thousand and ninety days.”

“Not that you’re counting.”

“Not that I’m counting.”

“Let’s see.” She furrowed her brow with concentration. “If you can manage to keep the plug in the jug for another week, you’ll be three years sober.”

“There’s something to celebrate,” he said with an ironic smile.

“Are you serious?” she said, suddenly intense. “Of course it is. You want to go back to how it was before?”

He got quick flashbacks. “Of course not.”

“Fucking right. Jesus, John! You have to come to a meeting and get your chip.”

Anniversaries were called birthdays in the rooms. They handed out little embossed poker chips with the number of months or years written on them, all in different colours. Milton had checked out the chip for three years: it would be red. Birthdays were usually celebrated with cake and then there would be a gathering afterwards, a meal or a cup of coffee.

He hadn’t planned on making a fuss about it.

He felt a little uncomfortable with her focus on him. “You’ve got more, don’t you?”

“Five years. I had my last drink the day my daughter was born. That was what really drove it home for me — I’d just given birth and my first thought was, ‘God, I really need a gin.’ That kind of underlined that maybe, you know, maybe I had a bit of a problem with it. What about you? You’ve never said?”

He hesitated and felt his shoulders stiffen. He had to work hard to keep the frown from his brow. He remembered it very well but it wasn’t something that he would ever be able to share in a meeting.

“Difficult memory?”

“A bit raw.”

The flashback came back. It was clear and vivid and, thinking about it again, he could almost feel the hot sun on the top of his head. Morocco. Marrakesh. There had been a cell there, laid up and well advanced with their plan to blow up a car loaded with a fertiliser bomb in the middle of the Jemma el Fnaa square. The spooks had intercepted their communications and Milton had gone in to put an end to the problem. It had been a clean job — three shots, three quick eliminations — but something about one of them had stayed in his head. He was just a boy, they said sixteen but Milton guessed younger, fourteen or fifteen at the outside, and he had gazed up at him and into his eyes as he levelled the gun and aimed it at his head and pulled the trigger. Milton was due to extract immediately after the job but he had diverted to the nearest bar and had drunk himself stupidly, horribly, awfully, dangerously drunk. They had just about cashiered him for that. Thinking about it triggered the old memories and, for a moment, it felt as if he was teetering on the edge of a trapdoor that had suddenly dropped open beneath his feet.

He forced his thoughts away from it, that dark and blank pit that fell away beneath him, a conscious effort, and then realised that Eva was talking to him. He focussed in on her instead, “Sorry,” she was saying, “you don’t have to say if you’d rather not, obviously.”

“It’s not so bad.”

“No, forget I asked.”

A little brightness returned and he felt the trapdoor close.

“It’s fear, right?” she said.

“What do you mean? Fear of what?”

“No, F.E.A.R.” She spelt it out.

He shrugged his incomprehension.

“You haven’t heard that one? It’s the old A.A. saying: Fuck Everything and Run.”

“Ah,” Milton said, relaxing a little. “Yes. That’s exactly it.”

“I’ve been running for five years.”

“You still get bad days?”

“Sure I do. Everyone does.”

“Really? Out of everyone I’ve met since I’ve been coming to meetings, you seem like one of the most settled.”

“Don’t believe it. It’s a struggle just like everyone else. It’s like a swan, you know: it looks graceful but there’s paddling like shit going on below the surface. It’s a day-to-day thing. You take your eye off the ball and, bang, back in the gutter you go. I’m just the same as everyone.”

Milton was not surprised to hear that — it was a comment that he had heard many times, almost a refrain to ward off complacency — but it seemed especially inapposite from Eva. He had always found her to have a calming, peaceful manner. There were all sorts in the rooms: some twitchy and avid, white-knuckling it, always one bad day from falling back into the arms of booze; others, like her, had an almost Zen-like aspect, an aura of meditative serenity that he found intoxicating. He looked at them jealously.

“What are you doing now?” she asked him impulsively.

“Nothing much.”

“Want to get dinner?”

“Sure,” he said.

“Anywhere you fancy?”

“Sure,” he said. “I know a place.”

They were the only people in Top Notch. Julius took their order and set about it with a cheerful smile, and, soon, the aroma of cooked meat filled the room. He brought the burgers over on paper plates and left them to get on with it, disappearing into the back. Milton smiled at his discretion; there would be wry comments when he came in tomorrow. The food was as good as ever and the conversation was good, too, moving away from A.A. to range across work and family and life in general. Milton quickly found himself relaxing.

“How are you finding the Steps?”

“Oh, you know…” he began awkwardly.

“Which one are you on?”

“Eight and nine.”

“Can you recite them?”

He smiled a little ruefully. “‘We made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.’”

“And?”

“‘We made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except where to do so would injure them or others.’”

“Perfect,” she said. “My favourites.”

“I don’t know. They’re hard.”

“You want my advice? Do it in your own time. They’re not easy, but you do feel better afterwards. And you want to be careful. Plenty of people will be prepared to take your amends for you—”

“—and they can, too, if they’re prepared to make my amends.”

“You heard that one before?”

He smiled. “A few times. Where are you? Finished them?”

“First time around. I’m going back to the start again now.”

“Step Ten: ‘We continued to take a personal inventory.’”

“Exactly. It never stops. You keep doing it, it stays fresh.”

Eva was an easy talker, something she affably dismissed as one of her faults, but Milton didn’t mind at all; he was happy to listen to her, her soft west coast drawl smoothing the edges from her words and her self-deprecating sense of humour and easy laughter drawing him in until it was just the two of them in an empty restaurant with Julius turning the chairs upside down on the tables, a hint that he was ready to call it a night and close.

“That was really nice,” she said as they stood on the sidewalk outside.

“It was.”

“You wanna, you know — you wanna do it again next time?”

“I’d love to.”

“Alright, then, John.” She took a step toward him, her hand on his shoulder as she raised herself onto tiptoes and placed a kiss on his cheek. She lingered there for a moment, her lips warm against his skin, and as she stepped back she traced her fingertips across his shoulder and down his arm to the elbow. “Take it easy, alright? I’ll see you next week.”

Milton smiled, more easily and naturally than was normal for him, and watched her turn and walk back towards where she had parked her Porsche.

17

Peter Gleason was the park ranger for the Golden Gate National Recreational Area. He had held the job for twenty years, watching all the communal spaces, making sure the fishermen and water sports enthusiasts observed the local regulations, keeping an eye on the wildlife. Peter loved his job; he was an outdoorsman at heart and there could not have been many places that were as beautiful as this. He liked to say that he had the best office in the world; his wife, Glenda, had heard that quip about a million times but he still said it because it was true and it reminded him how lucky he was.

Peter had been a dog-lover all his adult life and this was a great job to have a hound. It was practically a requirement. He had had four since he had been out here. They had all been Labradors. Good dogs, obedient and loyal; it was just like he always said it, you couldn’t go far wrong with a Lab. Jethro was his current dog. He was two years old and mongrel, part Labrador and part pointer. Peter had picked him out as a puppy and was training him up himself. He had the most even temperament out of all the dogs and the best nose.

It was an early Tuesday morning in December when Peter stopped his truck in the wide, exposed and bleak square of ground that served visitors to Headlands Lookout. It was a remote area, served by a one-track road with the waters of Bonita Cove at the foot of a sheer drop on the left. He stepped carefully; yet another dense bank of fog had rolled in overnight and visibility was down to twenty yards. It was cold and damp, the curtain of solid grey muffling the sound. The western portion of San Francisco was just on the other side of the Bay, usually providing a splendid vista, but it was invisible today. The only sign that it was there was the steady, eerie boom of the foghorns, one calling and the other answering.

There were only two other cars in the lot. Fishermen still visited with reels to try and catch the fluke, bluefish, winter flounder, mackerel, porgy and weakfish that abounded just offshore, and as he checked he noticed that a couple of them had followed the precarious path down the cliff face to get to the small beach. Oystermen came, too, even though the oyster beds, which had once been plentiful, had grown more scarce. There was still enough on the sea bed to make the trip worthwhile: hard-shelled clams, steamers, quahogs, bay scallops, blue-claw crabs and lobsters. Others came with binoculars to watch the birds and the seals. Kayakers, clad in neoprene wetsuits, cut across the waves.

The margins between the road and the cliff had grown too wild in places for a man to get through but the dog was keen to explore today and Peter watched as he forced himself into thickets of bramble. He walked on, following the headland around to the west. He watched the dog bound ahead, cutting a line through the sumac and salt hay that was as straight as an arrow. Peter lived on the other side of the bay, in Richmond, and he had always had a keen interest in the local flora and fauna. He found the rough natural world interesting, which was reason enough, but it was also professionally useful to have some knowledge of the area that you were working in. As he followed Jethro through the salt hay that morning he found himself thinking that this part of the world would not have changed much in hundreds of years. Once you were down the slope a ways, and the city was out of sight, the view would have been unchanged for millennia.

He stepped carefully through the bracken, navigating the thick clumps of poison ivy before breaking into the open and tramping down the suddenly steep slope to the water’s edge. All along the beach were stacks of tombstones brought over from Tiburon. They had been piled into makeshift jetties to help combat the constant erosion and the salty bite of the tide had caused them to crumble and crack. The dog paused for a moment, frozen still, his nose twitching, and then, as Peter watched with a mixture of curiosity and anticipation, he sprinted towards the deep fringe of the undergrowth. He got six feet in and stopped, digging furiously with his forepaws. Peter struggled across the soft, wet sand as the dog started to bark. When he got there, the dog had excavated the sand so that a flap of canvas sacking had been exposed. He called for Jethro to stay but he was young and excited and knew he was onto something and so he kept digging, wet sand spraying out from between his hind legs.

By the time that the ranger had fastened the lead to the dog’s collar, he had unearthed a skull, a collarbone and the start of a ribcage.