by Ian Rankin
Of course, he knew of side effects. He kept up with the latest scientific papers and media scare stories. He knew there were kids out there who weren’t being vaccinated against measles because the original vaccine was produced after research on tissue from unborn fetuses. Stories like that made him sad. Not angry, just sad. Humanity had a lot still to learn.
Some tourists wandered past, a young couple with two children. They looked like they’d been out for a boat ride; rosy-cheeked, windblown, grinning. They ate fresh food and breathed clean air. The kids would grow up straight and strong, which might not have been the case a hundred and fifty years before.
Good chemicals, that was the secret.
“Mr. Kosigin?”
Kosigin turned, almost smiling. He didn’t know how the Englishman could sneak up like that every time. No matter how open the terrain, he was always nearly on Kosigin before Kosigin saw him. He wasn’t built to hide or be furtive: he stood six feet four inches, with a broad chest and thick upper arms, so that his lower arms didn’t quite touch his sides when he let them hang. His legs looked powerful, too, wrapped in tight faded denim, with Nike running shoes on the feet. His stomach was flat, ripples of muscle showing through the stretched black cotton T-shirt. He wore foldaway sunglasses, with a little pouch for them hooked on to his brown leather belt, the buckle of which was the ubiquitous Harley-Davidson badge. The man had wavy blond hair, cropped high on the forehead but falling at the back past the neck of the T-shirt. The tan on his face was pink rather than brown, and his eyebrows and eyelashes were as blond as the hair on his head. He seemed proud of the large indented scar which ran down his right cheek, as though a single blemish were needed to prove how perfect the rest of the package was.
To Kosigin, admittedly no authority, he looked like one of those TV wrestlers.
“Hello, Jay, let’s walk.”
That’s all the man had ever been to Kosigin: Jay. He didn’t even know if it was a first or second name, or maybe even an initial letter. They walked south towards the piers, past the wares of the T-shirt and souvenir sellers. Jay didn’t so much walk as bound, hands bunched in his denim pockets. He looked like he needed to be on a leash.
“Anything to report?”
Jay shrugged. “Things are taken care of, Mr. Kosigin.”
“Really?”
“Nothing for you to worry about.”
“McCluskey doesn’t share your confidence. Neither does Perez.”
“Well, they don’t know me. I’m never confident without good reason.”
“So Cantona isn’t a problem anymore?”
Jay shook his head. “And the brother’s flight is out of here tomorrow.”
“There’s been an alteration,” Kosigin said. “He’s not taking the body back with him. There’s to be a cremation tomorrow morning.”
“I didn’t know that.”
“I’m sorry, I should have told you.”
“You should always tell me everything, Mr. Kosigin. How can I work best if I’m not told everything? Still, the flight out is tomorrow afternoon. He hasn’t changed that, has he?”
“No, but all the same… he’s been asking awkward questions. I’m sure he doesn’t believe the story Perez threw him.”
“It wasn’t my idea to involve Perez.”
“I know,” Kosigin said quietly. Jay always seemed able to make him feel bad; and at the same time he always wanted to impress the bigger man. He didn’t know why. It was crazy: he was richer than Jay would ever be, more successful in just about every department, and yet there was some kind of inferiority thing at play and he couldn’t shake it.
“This brother, he doesn’t exactly sound your typical grieving relative.”
“I don’t know too much about him, just the initial search Alliance did. Ex-army, now runs an adventure-vacation thing in Scotland.”
Jay stopped and took off his sunglasses. He looked like he was staring at the million-dollar view, only his eyes were unfocused and he had the hint of a smile on his lips. “Couldn’t be,” he said.
“Couldn’t be what?”
But Jay stayed silent a few moments longer, and Kosigin wasn’t about to interrupt again.
“The deceased’s name was Reeve,” Jay said at last. “I should have thought of it sooner.” He threw his head back and burst out laughing. His hands, however, were gripping the guardrail like they could twist the metal back and forth on itself. Finally, he stared at Kosigin with wide greeny-blue eyes, the pupils large and black. “I think I know the brother,” he said. “I think I knew him years ago.” He laughed again, and bent low over the rail, looking for an instant as though he might throw himself into the bay. His feet actually left the ground, but then came down again. Passersby were staring.
I’m in the presence of a madman, Kosigin thought. What’s more, for the moment, having summoned him from L.A., I’m his employer. “You know him?” he asked. But Jay was scanning the sky now, stretching his neck to and fro. Kosigin repeated the question.
Jay laughed again. “I think I know him.” And then he pursed his lips and began to whistle, or tried to, though he was still chuckling. It was a tune Kosigin thought he half-recognized—a children’s melody.
And then, on the seafront in San Diego, with tourists giving him a wide berth, Jay began to sing:
Row, row, row your boat,
Gently down the stream.
Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily,
Life is but a dream.
He repeated the tune twice more, and then suddenly stopped. There was no life, no amusement in his face. It was like he’d donned a mask, as some wrestlers did. Kosigin swallowed and waited for more antics, waited for the giant to say something.
Jay swallowed and licked his lips, then uttered a single word.
The word was good.
Reeve had got a cab to pick him up from the junkyard. It had taken him to the funeral parlor, where he picked up his rental car. He resisted the temptation of a final look at Jim. Jim wasn’t there anymore. There was just some skin that he used to live inside.
Back in his hotel bedroom, he sat at the window thinking. He was thinking about the missing laptop, the laptop’s disks. He was thinking that anyone could have locked Jim’s body in the car. It added up to something—or nothing. The Mexican had been lying, but maybe he was covering up something else, something trivial like the rental car’s roadworthiness or his own business credentials. Well, Eddie Cantona was tailing the Mexican. All he could do now was wait for a phone call.
He took the cellophane bag out of his jacket pocket and scattered the contents on the round table by the window. Jim’s effects, the contents of his pockets. The police had established his identity, then handed everything over to the funeral parlor.
Reeve flicked through Jim’s passport, studying everything but his brother’s photograph. Then he turned to the wallet, a square brown leather affair with edges curling from age. Twenty dollars in fives, driver’s license, some small change. A handkerchief. A pair of nail clippers. A packet of chewing gum. Reeve peered into the packet. There were two sticks left. A piece of paper had been crumpled into the remaining space. He tore the packet to get it out. It was just the paper wrapper from a used stick of gum. But when he unfolded it, there was a word written in pen on the plain side.
The word was Agrippa.
The call came a couple of hours later.
“It’s me,” Cantona said, “and I hope you feel honored. I’m only allowed one phone call, pal, and you’re it.”
They were holding Eddie in the same police station Mike McCluskey worked out of, so instead of trying to see the felon, Reeve asked at the desk for the detective.
McCluskey arrived smiling like they were old friends.
Reeve didn’t return the smile. “Can you do me a favor?” he asked.
“Just ask.”
So Reeve asked.
A little while later they sat at McCluskey’s desk in the sprawling office he shared with a dozen other detectiv
es. Things looked quiet; maybe there wasn’t much crime worth the name in San Diego. Three of the detectives were throwing crunched-up paper balls through a miniature basketball hoop into the wastebasket below. Bets were being taken on the winner. They glanced over at Reeve from time to time, and decided he was victim or witness rather than perpetrator or suspect.
McCluskey had been making an internal call. He put the receiver down. “Well,” he said, “looks straightforward enough. Driving under the influence, DUI we call it.”
“He told me he was stone-cold sober.”
McCluskey offered a wry smile rather than a remark, and inclined his head a little. Reeve knew what he meant: drunks will say anything. During the phone call, Reeve had been studying McCluskey’s desk. It was neater than he’d expected; all the desks were. There were scraps of paper with telephone numbers on them. He’d looked at those numbers.
One of them was for the funeral parlor. Another was the Mexican at the rental company. Both could be easily explained, Reeve thought.
“You phoned the funeral parlor,” he said, watching the detective very closely.
“What?”
Reeve nodded towards the telephone number. “The funeral parlor.”
McCluskey nodded. “Sure, wanted to double-check when the funeral was. Thought I’d try to come along. Look, getting back to this Cantona fellow, seems to me he palled around with your brother for a few drinks and maybe a meal or two. Seems to me, Gordon, that he’s trying to shake you down the same way.”
Reeve pretended to be following the basketball game. “Maybe you’re right,” he said, while McCluskey slipped another sheet of paper over the telephone numbers, covering the ones at the bottom of the original sheet. That didn’t matter—Reeve had almost memorized them—but the action itself bothered him. He looked back at McCluskey, and the detective smiled at him again. Some would have said it was a sympathetic smile. Oth-ers might have called it mocking.
One of the basketball players made a wild throw. The rebound landed in Reeve’s lap. He stared at the paper ball.
“Does the word Agrippa mean anything to you?” he asked.
McCluskey shook his head. “Should it?”
“It was written on a scrap of paper in my brother’s pocket.”
“I missed that,” McCluskey said, shifting more papers. “You really would make a good detective, Gordon.” He was trying to smile.
Reeve just nodded.
“What was he doing anyway?” McCluskey asked.
“Who?”
“Cantona, Mr. DUI. He telephoned you after his arrest; I thought maybe he had something to tell you.”
“Maybe he just wanted me to put up the bail.”
McCluskey stared at him. Reeve had become Cantona’s accuser, leaving him the defender.
“You think that was all?”
“What else?”
“Well, Gordon, I thought maybe he thought he was working for you.”
“Have you spoken with him?”
“No, but I was just on the telephone doing you a favor by talking to cops who have.” McCluskey cocked his head again. “You sound a little strange.”
“Do I?” Reeve made no attempt to soften his voice. It was more suspicious if you suddenly changed the way you were speaking to comply with the way you thought the listener wanted you to sound. “Maybe that’s because I’m cremating my brother tomorrow morning. Can I see Mr. Cantona?”
McCluskey rounded his lips into a thoughtful O.
“A final favor,” Reeve added. “I’m off tomorrow straight after the cremation.”
McCluskey took a little more time, apparently considering it. “Sure,” he said at last. “I’ll see if I can fix it.”
They brought Eddie Cantona out of the cells and up to one of the interview rooms. Reeve was already waiting. He’d paced the room, seeming anxious but really checking for possible bugs, spy holes, two-way mirrors. But there were just plain walls and a door. A table and two chairs in the middle of the floor. He sat on one chair, took a pen out of his pocket, and dropped it. Retrieving it from the floor, he checked beneath both chairs and the table. Maybe McCluskey hadn’t had enough time to organize a surveillance. Maybe he didn’t care. Maybe Reeve was reading too much into everything.
Maybe Eddie Cantona was just a drunk.
They brought him into the room and left him there. He walked straight over and sat down opposite Reeve.
“We’ll be right out here, sir,” one of the policemen said.
Reeve watched the uniformed officers leave the room and close the door behind them.
“Got a cigarette?” Cantona said. “No, you don’t smoke, do you?” He patted his pockets with trembling hands. “Haven’t got one on me.” He held his hands out in front of him. They jittered like they had electricity going through them. “Look at that,” he said. “Think that’s the D.T.”s? No, I’ll tell you what that is, that is what’s called being afraid.“
“Tell me what happened.”
Cantona stared wild-eyed, then tried to calm himself. He got up and walked around the room, flailing his arms as he talked. “They must’ve started following me at some point. They weren’t at the rental place—I’d swear to that on a Padres season ticket. But I was too busy watching Mr. Mex. First I knew, there was the blue light behind me and they pulled me over. I’ve never been pulled over; I told you that. I’ve been too careful and maybe too lucky.” He came back to the table and exhaled into Reeve’s face. It wasn’t very pleasant, but proved Cantona’s point.
“Not a drop I’d had,” he said. “Not a damned drop. They did the usual drunk tests, then said they were arresting me. Up till that point, I thought it was just bad luck. But when they put me in the back of the car, I knew it was serious. They were stopping me tailing the Mexican.” He stared deep into Reeve’s unblinking eyes. “They want me out of the way, Gordon, and cops have a way of getting what they want.”
“Has McCluskey talked to you?”
“That asshole I talked to about Jim’s murder?” Cantona shook his head. “Why?”
“I think he’s got something to do with it, whatever it is. Where was the Mexican headed?”
“What am I, clairvoyant?”
“I mean, which direction was he headed?”
“Straight downtown, it looked like.”
“Did he seem like the downtown-San Diego type to you?”
Cantona managed a grin. “Not exactly. I don’t know, maybe he was on business. Maybe…” He paused. “Maybe we’re overreacting.”
“Eddie, did Jim ever mention someone or something called Agrippa?”
“Agrippa?” Cantona screwed his eyes shut, trying his hardest. Then he sighed and shook his head. “Does it mean something?”
“I don’t know.”
Reeve stood up and gripped Cantona’s hands. “Eddie, I know you’re scared, and you’ve got cause to be, and it won’t bother me in the least if you lie through your teeth to get yourself out of here. Tell them anything you think they want to hear. Tell them the moon’s made of cheese and there are pink elephants under your bed. Tell them you just want a fresh start and to forget about the past few weeks. You’ve helped me a lot, and I thank you, but now you’ve got to think of number one. Jim’s dead; you’re still here. He’d want you to avoid joining him.”
Cantona was grinning again. “Are we engaged, Gordon?”
Reeve saw that he was still holding Cantona’s hands. He let them go, smiling. “I’m serious, Eddie. I think the best thing I can do for you right now is walk away and keep away.”
“You still flying home tomorrow?”
Reeve nodded. “I think so.”
“What’re you going to do?”
“Best you don’t know, Eddie.”
Cantona grudgingly agreed.
“There’s one last thing I’d like from you.”
“What’s that?”
“An address…” Reeve brought the map out of his pocket and spread it on the table. “And some direction
s.”
He didn’t see McCluskey again as he left the police station; didn’t particularly want to see him. He drove around for a while, taking any road he felt like, no pattern at all to his route. He stopped frequently, getting out his map and acting the lost tourist. He was sure he hadn’t been followed from the actual police station, but he wondered if that might change.
He’d had to learn car pursuit and evasion so he could teach it to trainee bodyguards who’d be expected to chauffeur their employers. He was no expert, but he knew the ground rules. He’d taken a weekend course at a track near Silverstone, an abandoned airfield used for controlled skids and high-speed chase scenarios.
The last thing he’d expected to need this trip were his professional skills.
He looked in the rearview and saw the patrol car draw up behind him. The uniform in the driver’s seat spoke into his radio before getting out, checking his holster, adjusting his sunglasses.
Reeve let his window slide down.
“Got a problem?” the policeman said.
“Not really.” Reeve was smiling, showing teeth. He tapped the map. “Just checking where I am.”
“You on vacation?”
“How could you tell?”
“You mean apart from the map and you being stopped where you’re not supposed to make a stop and your license plate being a rental?”
Now Reeve laughed. “You know, maybe I am a bit lost.” He looked at the map and pointed to a road. “Is this where we are?”
“You’re a few blocks off.” The officer showed him where he really was, then asked where he was headed.
“Nowhere really, just driving.”
