The Search

CHAPTER FOUR

In Iberia he booked in at the hotel recommended by a taxidriver. He called Rachel, gave her the hotel’s cable number and half an hour later held a copy of the photo in his hands. It was grainy, blurred and in transmission the image had deteriorated still further. As she had said, it was obviously an enlarged segment of a larger picture and from the few background blurs it was impossible to gain any clue as to when or where it was taken. It showed Malory in three-quarter profile: fortyish, short hair, the down-curving mouth of a man who had to make an effort to smile. Although more or less as Rachel had described him, Walker’s initial reaction was one of surprise: he had not pictured Malory like this, this was not the impression he had built up. Almost immediately, though, his impressions began rearranging themselves in accordance with the image in his hand and the harder he tried to focus on this discrepancy between what he had been led to believe — or what he had come to expect — and what the photo showed, the more difficult it became to disentangle what he had imagined from what was revealed.

Even with the photo he was no better off than before in terms of what to do next. Malory could be anywhere for all he knew — another city, another country. He had nothing to go on. Hunting out the woman with the Tarot cards to see if she could give him a few leads seemed as good an idea as any. Or flip through the phone book for a spiritualist who could offer guidance from beyond the grave.

Absurd though they were, these thoughts marked a turning-point — the beginning of a turning-point — in his search for Malory. From then on the nature of the search began subtly to change and he came to rely less on external clues than on his intuitive grasp of what Malory might have done in similar circumstances. He only understood this later. At the time he simply remembered the taxi-driver saying, ‘All tourists stay there,’ when recommending the hotel. Probably this meant the taxi company had a deal with the place and received a percentage on everyone sent there. There was only one train a day from Meridian; no buses. So if Malory had taken the train he would have arrived at the same time of day as Walker and may have been referred to the same hotel. He went down to reception but they had no record of past guests and too many people passed by for them to recognize Malory’s picture. Walker returned to his room and thought about what Malory would have done if he had been here. Probably he would have lain around like Walker was doing now, turning the TV on and off, getting hungry. Gone out to get a bite to eat, found a bar.

Walker looked out of the window. Dark, beginning to rain. He pulled on his jacket, folded the photo of Malory into his pocket and went out in search of a bar. Outside the hotel it was deserted. Across the way was another street which, from the quantity of neon shimmering through the rain, looked more hopeful. The neon, it turned out, was in the window of a shoe repairer’s, a pharmacy and a travel agency. Walker continued to the end and turned into a street crowded with people and cars. Two blocks along was a subway station and a man selling umbrellas. Feeling rain drip down his neck, Walker splashed across the road and bought one, asked if there was a bar nearby — a place where he could get a drink, something to eat. The umbrella-seller directed him to Finelli’s, a couple of blocks away.

Walker took a seat at the bar and ordered a beer, catching glimpses of himself in the mirror behind tiers of spirits. After another beer he ordered a burger and by the time that arrived he was ready for more beer. A sport he had never seen before was on TV. Mainly it involved fouling members of the opposite team and trudging off to the dugouts at the edge of the arena. As far as he could make out the game was divided not into halves or even quarters but into sixteenths and the score — unless he had misunderstood — was 540 to 665.

Walker turned to the guy next to him and asked about the game. He was thick-set, missing a couple of teeth and wearing a check work shirt, happy to converse in the peculiar idiom of booze — telling and never asking. This was fine by Walker, especially when it turned out that he came to this bar every night after work, regular as clockwork. Hour of overtime and in here by eight o’clock five nights a week.

‘What about the other nights?’

‘Those nights I get here a little earlier,’ he laughed, coughing. They shook hands; the guy told him his name was Branch.

‘Ever been tempted to trace your roots?’ asked Walker. His new drinking companion didn’t bother laughing. Walker bought Branch a beer, still sniggering quietly at his joke. Branch showed no sign of buying him one back so Walker ordered a couple more and asked if he happened to remember speaking to a friend of his who’d come here a couple of months back when he was in town. The friend, as a matter of fact, who’d recommended this bar to him, he said, and went on to describe Malory.

Branch stopped chewing and siphoned off half his beer. Bar conversations were like this: sometimes it was difficult to tell if the person you were talking to was deep in thought or sinking into a stupor.

‘Yeah. Maybe I do recall him.’

‘Actually, I might even have a picture of him. Yeah, here you go. I’ve been carrying this picture around for months and never quite threw it away.’

Branch held the paper like he was gripping a fellow by the lapels.

‘About two months ago, was it?’

‘Exactly. To the day practically.’

‘Yeah, I remember him.’ He handed back the photo. ‘We spoke a while.’

‘What about — I mean, do you happen to remember what you spoke of?’

‘Pretty much what everybody talks about.’

‘Did he — I don’t suppose he mentioned where he was heading to, did he?’

‘Matter of fact he did — if it’s the fellow I’m thinking of. Or leastways he asked if I knew when the bus to Usfret left.’

‘And you told him?’

‘I told him there was only one every three days and he’d missed that. Told him the best thing he could do was take the bus to Friendship and get a bus from there.’

‘Usfret, right. He must have been on the way to see Joanne, his sister.’

‘Well, I don’t know about that.’

‘Did he say he was going to get the bus like you said?’

‘Didn’t say but he certainly seemed grateful for the information.’ ‘

And did he say how long he was going to stay for or where he might go after that?’ Walker was conscious that he was overplaying his hand, pushing too hard.

‘How come you’re so interested in him?’

‘Oh, I just wanted to catch up with him.’

‘Folks say that, it generally means he owes them money. Either that or they want to kill him.’

Walker laughed unconvincingly. ‘Not me.’

‘You a cop?’

‘No.’

‘Tracker, huh?’

‘No, I’m just a friend. A friend on his way to Friendship,’ said Walker: his second joke of the evening.

‘Shit,’ said Branch, not in anger or derision, just to bring this phase of the conversation to an end. Walker glanced up at the television: the score was up into four figures now. He bought Branch a final beer and hurried back to his hotel.

The desk clerk looked patiently through the bus timetables while Walker breathed beer fumes over him. Unlike Malory, Walker was lucky with the buses — one left straight for Usfret the next morning. He could even book a ticket right there, at the hotel. Walker said yes straightaway, then, when the ticket was half-written, told the clerk to hold on for a while, he had just remembered a couple of things he might have to do.

‘No problem,’ said the desk clerk, tearing the ticket wearily in two.

Back in his room Walker tried drunkenly to organize his thoughts, lurching from one possibility to the next. Getting the express meant that he would gain some time on Malory since obviously, assuming the guy in the bar was right, he had simply gone to Friendship to get the bus to Usfret. Looked at like that there was no point in going to Friendship. But. . But if from now on there were going to be fewer and fewer external clues to go on, then he was going to have to rely more on thinking himself into Malory’s shoes. In that case the more exactly he managed to repeat Malory’s moves the easier it would be to duplicate the choices he had made. Tracking Malory was not going to be like a game of snakes and ladders where he could leap forward five places. He could do that but something he came across in those five missed spaces might prove more important than the one he landed on.

He phoned down to reception, told them to book him a ticket to Friendship. As he was getting ready for bed, sorting through his bag for his toothbrush, he came across the dictaphone and tossed it on to the bed. Lying there a few minutes later, he switched on the tape. Nothing. He flipped the tape over and fast-forwarded, almost to the end, in case there was a brief message tucked into the last minute of the tape. He turned down the volume so that the hiss was less pronounced and let it play noiselessly. Or not quite noiselessly. . He switched off the machine, ejected the tape and inserted the blank cassette that had come with the machine. Pressed Play. He listened for a few moments, ejected that tape and played the other one. Yes, there was nothing to hear but there was a distinct difference in the quality of the silence. It was not a blank tape but a recording in which there was nothing to hear, a recording of silence. He listened intensely and realized that the tape was not as devoid of noise as he had first thought. Certain noises were conspicuous by their absence: it had not been made in the countryside — there was no sound of birds, no hedgerow rustle. Fiddling with the bass and treble controls to minimize hiss but retain clarity of sound, he strained his ears to penetrate the ambient silence and hunt out the faintest hint of other sounds. It was strange and difficult, sitting there, trying to shut out the silence of the room in order to decipher the silence of the tape. Doubly difficult since straining his ears like this made him aware of the obtrusive sounds that composed the silence around him. The machine had come with a small set of headphones and with these he was able to cocoon himself inside the silence of the tape. He could hear a faint rattle, like blinds shifting in a breeze, a bell chiming in the distance, the swish and murmur of traffic, the gurgle of pipes, maybe rain.

He was so immersed in listening that the click of the tape coming to an end sounded like a door slamming.