The Search

CHAPTER THREE

He was woken by the alarm of bird calls, a wet sun squinting through branches. He opened the door and pissed yellow into the trees. All around was the slow drip of last night’s rain. His mouth was dry and he cupped a few drops in his hand to moisten his tongue.

He touched the loose ignition wires and the engine came to life immediately, heaving clear of the suck of mud. Back on the road the sun shone hard through the windshield. In the distance was a blue line of mountains.

A sign said MERIDIAN 120 MILES. The highway glistened.

Meridian, as the thickness of the phone book had suggested, was a big city. He drove downtown and parked the car beneath the track of the Elevated Train. It was a perfect spot to leave the car: abandoned vehicles were strewn all around, many already stripped down to rusty frames as if picked clean by vultures. Walking away he looked into the back of a burnt-out station wagon and noticed the remains of a road atlas: a core of red highways, smoke-grimed, becoming charred, leading to ashes.

He bought coffee and a street plan. Rampart Street was eight stops along the line but after so long in the car he preferred to walk. He followed the El, walking beneath the giant concrete legs that strode through the city. The sun streamed through the track, cross-hatching the ground with shadows. Patches of sky blazed through the angles of wood and metal. Every ten minutes a train thundered overhead, obliterating everything. In his childhood the future had been depicted in terms of white capsules zipping noiselessly along rails suspended over the efficient life of a gleaming city. What had actually resulted was graffiti-mottled trains rattling over a landscape of rusting vehicles that no one wanted.

Rampart was a dilapidated street running parallel to the El, a couple of blocks to the south, number seventeen a faded one-storey place. A green-and-yellow FOR RENT sign added colour. He tried the bell and waited. A bird, bright as a goldfish, was perched on the phone line. Walker clambered over a fence and made his way round the back. Wooden steps led up to a door which opened when he tried it. He looked around and moved inside, shutting the door behind him, eyes adjusting. A tap dripping. He walked through the kitchen and into the hallway. Mail was piled up by the front door, junk mostly, a couple of letters and — he recognized the handwriting instantly — a card from Malory. Two lines: ‘Hope this reaches you before you move. Thanks for everything.’ Unsigned, postmarked Iberia, the date too smudged to read.

There was nothing in any of the ground-floor rooms. Upstairs, the bathroom cabinet was empty except for a yellow beaker. His face in the mirror was pimpled with mould. There were two bedrooms, one with a bare double, the other with a single and an old desk. When he opened a closet metal hangers jangled briefly. A tingle of déjà vu. He shut the door and opened it again, hoping he could define the sensation more exactly but this time there was nothing.

The desk drawers smelled of graphite. Paper-clips, a broken pencil, blank pages of paper. He sat on the bed, forearms resting on his legs, hands dangling between his knees, one foot tapping out the pulse of a thought. He lowered his head, ran his fingers through his hair. As he did so he noticed, behind his feet, almost under the bed, a micro-cassette case. There was a tape inside but, except for the manufacturer’s label, no indication as to what was on it. He pocketed the tape and peered beneath the bed on his hands and knees. The only thing there was a dusty magazine open at an article about the cathedral in Nemesis, a photo of a stained-glass window.

He went through the house again, unable to form any idea of what Malory might have been doing here. Tightened the tap as hard as he could, stopping the drip. Then let himself out of the back door, locking it behind him.

Out on the street a dog padded by. Its tail, balls and ears had all been clipped off, giving it the wicked, harmless look of a medieval gargoyle. From a pay-phone on the corner Walker called the number of the realtors on the sign. Thinking he was considering renting the place — ‘the property’ — they were very friendly until he asked if they had any information about the previous tenant. They lost interest immediately and Walker had to move quickly to hang up before they did.

Near the El station he stood indecisively in the sunshine. Hitched his bag over his shoulder and said, quietly, to himself, ‘So. . What shall I do?’

Cars glinted past. What could he do?

He bought a ticket and walked up to the platform as the El train pulled in. It rattled past crumbling verandas, painted stoops, the open windows of kitchens and bedrooms. Water towers were visible in the middle distance. On old walls, the faded ghosts of advertisements.

The mainline train to Iberia didn’t leave for an hour. He walked a couple of blocks from the station and saw a massive crane looming over the city. In a cut-price electronics store he bought a micro-cassette recorder. Stepping outside he looked up and saw the crane arm swinging round — though it took him several seconds to express it in these terms for he experienced the movement of the crane as a sensation rather than a perception. In that burst of panic he felt the air reeling — centrifugal, sickening — as if the crane were stationary and the street spinning around it, like a fairground ride or a record on a turntable. Then the correct relationship of stability and motion re-established itself, with the crane arm sweeping above the street. He tried to re-evoke the earlier sensation but now reason was firmly entrenched again and would not be caught off balance by something it knew to be an illusion. The experience disconcerted him all the same. If things could be sent reeling so easily, if momentarily, it would take only a slightly more elaborate arrangement of effects to throw the world more radically out of kilter.

Back at the station he tried the tape he had found earlier. He listened for a few minutes, turning the volume up and then fast-forwarded to a new section of the tape and listened again. Nothing. He fast-forwarded again, pressed Play and listened to the hiss of the tape moving. He fast-forwarded to the end, turned the tape over and listened again. The same. Blank, the tape was blank. Shit.

Still with time to kill, he called Rachel. When she answered he could hear music playing in the background, a cello or double bass.

‘Walker! I’ve been hoping you would call,’ she shouted. ‘Hang on, let me turn the music down.’

The music stopped and she came back a few moments later. ‘That’s better. Now I can hear you.’

‘What was it, the music?’

‘A Bach cello suite. You know it?’

‘I don’t think so.’

‘It’s my favourite piece of music. I’ll play it for you when you come back.’

‘You can play the cello?’

‘I can play the record. We’ll listen to it together.’

Her words triggered a memory that lay far in the future, when they were old and wood-smoke music drifted through the rooms of a home.

‘Meanwhile,’ said Rachel.

‘Meanwhile, any news?’

‘People have been asking for you.’

‘A guy called Carver?’

‘No.’

‘Have you ever come across a man called Carver?’

‘No.’

‘You’re sure?’

‘Of course I’m sure. Why? Should I have done?’

‘No, it’s — it doesn’t matter. What about the people who called round, did they give any names?’

‘No.’

‘Any idea who they were? Trackers? Finders?’

‘I’m not sure.’

‘Did you tell them anything?’

‘No.’

‘What about Joanne Malory?’

‘Joanne? She’s Alex’s sister but he hadn’t seen her in ten years. He had no contact with his family. She could have been dead for all Alex knew. Why, have you found her?’

‘No, not really. .’ Walker paused and heard Rachel say, ‘There is something though. A photo of Alex arrived in the post.’

‘In the post?’

‘Yes. This morning.’

‘Where from?’

‘It could be from anywhere. I mean it’s impossible to say. You know sometimes a letter arrives without being franked? There’s a stamp on it but no postmark.’

‘What about the photo?’

‘It’s strange. Blurred, very grainy. It looks like it’s been blown up from a larger photo.’

‘Any sign of where it was taken? Or when?’

‘None, I’m afraid, But you want to see it, yes?’

‘Yes but. . I’ll have to call again. I’ll try and find a place you can cable it to. I’m going to —’ He stopped himself abruptly.

‘Where are you going?’

‘Listen, I’ll call you again, yeah?’

‘Are you OK?’

‘Yes. Anyway, I’ve got to go.’

‘Be careful.’

‘You too.’

They waited for each other to say goodbye and then hung up.

It was a long, slow journey to Iberia. As the grimy landscape slipped past, Walker tried to take stock of what was happening. He was confused by Malory’s apparently random movements across the country. Unless he was fleeing from someone or searching for something they made no sense — and even then they made little. And the trail ahead was fainter than ever. At first he had had addresses, then a phone number, now only a postmark. What next? The rhythm of the train was making him sleepy. He nodded off and woke painfully twenty minutes later, his head lolling from the edge of the seat like a dog’s tongue. Across the aisle a woman had spread a blanket and a pack of Tarot cards over her lap. As far as Walker could work out she was playing a kind of patience. The nearest card to Walker, the one that caught his eye, showed a tower struck by yellow arrows of lightning. Men and masonry tumbling to the ground. Realizing that he was looking, the woman smiled at him and said, ‘It passes the time.’

Walker smiled back. He shifted uncomfortably in his seat, looked through his reflection at the nothing-happening landscape.