Dead Men's Harvest

by Matt Hilton

  Cain scowled, his anger directed internally. He loathed degrading himself, lowering himself to their base level, but ‘when in Rome’. These young thugs understood only one language. They were sufficiently cowed to stay out of his way, so that was one bonus. He looked up at Jennifer’s flat. It was time to get on with something more productive.

  Settling his clothes over his weapons, he walked through the glass doors and into the foyer. Having experienced the foul-smelling stairwell once today, he elected to call the elevator. A dull groan announced it was on its way down. Under his heels Cain could feel the grime adhering to the tiles. Unmoved as he was by gore, the thought of germs gave him the creeps, made him feel unclean. He shivered.

  The doors shuddered open and Cain stepped aboard. The doors juddered to, then the lift set off for the designated floor. It was a short ride and he found himself in the hallway along from Jennifer’s flat.

  He recalled a conversation with John Telfer in which the thieving asshole had bemoaned the fact he’d let down his wife and children. It was clear from the way in which he’d delivered his words that Jennifer and the kids still meant an awful lot to him: not so much as to stop him going on the lam to the USA, but enough. John was the type who’d come running if he knew they were in danger, and if not John, then Uncle Joe certainly would.

  Cain opened his wallet and slipped out a plastic card.

  He shook out the last feelings of revulsion, and knocked on the door.

  Voices chimed from within; the kids announcing to their mom that they had a visitor. He waited, heard Jennifer tell the kids to go to some other room, then the sound of footsteps. A chain rattled and the door swung inward a couple of inches. Jennifer peered through the gap at him. She didn’t say anything, just stared at him with suspicion.

  Cain held up the plastic card identifying him as Special Agent Kenneth Myers of SOCA. The Serious and Organised Crime Agency was something that most Brits were still unfamiliar with, as it had only been in existence a few years. Joe Public knew that it was akin to the FBI in the US, but then they rarely had any idea what the FBI’s remit was. Cain was relying on the fact that the acronym would hold enough authority to get him inside without resistance.

  ‘What do you want?’ Jennifer wasn’t the type to fold at the first suggestion of officialdom.

  Cain feigned a glance back over his shoulder. ‘I’m here on official business, Ms Telfer. It’s not something I’d care to share with your neighbours.’

  Jennifer craned her neck, listening. ‘There’s no one else around.’

  ‘Ms Telfer,’ Cain said in a hushed voice, ‘I’m here with news about John.’

  ‘What trouble is he in this time?’ Jennifer’s tone was exasperated, but she couldn’t prevent the sudden widening of her pupils at the mention of John’s name. ‘I have no idea where he is.’

  ‘Like I said, it’s official . . .’ Cain glanced around once more. ‘But also very personal. To you.’

  Jennifer turned her attention away from him, possibly checking where the children were, or if they were listening. While she was distracted he could have easily kicked the door in, but that wasn’t his purpose. He waited patiently for her to come back to him. When she did, she was frowning, ‘What’s this all about? You’re an American, aren’t you?’

  Cain didn’t flinch. ‘I’m an American, yes. I’m a liaison officer, seconded to SOCA to combat international crime that affects both our countries. Look,’ he turned the card over, indicating a telephone number, ‘if you’d like to confirm my identification, you can call this number. They will verify that I’m who I say I am.’

  Jennifer took the card from him, studied it for a few seconds, turning it over again to the photo ID and official governmental seal. It was a gamble: if she should deem it necessary to call the number it would only go to a dead line. But it appeared that his bluff worked, because she handed back the card.

  ‘Thank you, Ms Telfer,’ Cain said.

  ‘Mrs. John and I were never divorced.’

  Cain nodded, accepting her correction, the way an official would under the circumstances. He waited while she closed the door, heard her unlatching the security chain. She opened the door and waved him inside. Cain entered, politely wiping his feet on the welcome mat.

  ‘Don’t bother,’ Jennifer said. ‘I haven’t had a chance to clean up yet.’

  He continued to scrub his feet. The door opened directly into a living room. Jennifer’s words weren’t completely accurate, as the carpet looked freshly vacuumed. Perhaps she was just embarrassed at the shabby appearance of her home. The furniture looked well worn, and possibly handed down from previous families. There were a number of DVDs scattered on the floor in front of the TV, some toys left where they’d fallen. Smoke hung in the air, and an ashtray on a dining table was in need of emptying. Jennifer walked past him, heading for an open packet of cigarettes. She sparked a lighter and held it to the end of a cigarette, inhaled.

  ‘Well?’

  Cain indicated the toys. ‘Your children are home?’

  Jennifer pinched her lips around the cigarette. After considering his question, she asked, ‘Why do you need to know where my children are?’

  ‘I have to arrange transportation for the three of you.’

  ‘Hold on a minute! What do you mean? We’re going nowhere.’

  Jennifer was as tense as an alley cat ready to spring at his throat.

  Cain sat down on a couch, defusing the moment. ‘You will no doubt have heard that your husband was involved in a serious incident in America? Since then, he has been under the protection of a federal witness protection scheme, seeing as he is the key witness in the impending trial of a suspected underworld figure. Well, Ms . . . uh, Mrs Telfer, certain complications have arisen whereby you and your children could be in danger. We don’t wish for that to happen, nor, I suspect, do you. I am here to place you into protective custody while we negate the threat to you and your children.’

  There was fear in her face, but not a little resistance. ‘Protective custody? That sounds like prison to me!’

  Cain chuckled. ‘Nothing so dramatic, I assure you. I’m just going to transport you to a safe house that is unconnected to you. We have rooms organised in a five-star hotel, Mrs Telfer. See it as a few days’ luxury on the government’s tab.’

  Cain stood up, took out the cellphone supplied by Hendrickson’s man and jabbed the hot key. ‘Can I organise a pick-up for four passengers?’

  ‘Just hold it!’ Jennifer stubbed her cigarette in the ashtray. ‘I haven’t agreed to anything yet.’

  Cain ignored her, gave the address of her flat and agreed that twenty minutes would be fine.

  ‘What are you doing? You can forget it. I’m not going anywhere with you until I’ve checked things out. Give me your ID card again; I want to phone your bosses!’

  ‘Sure,’ Cain said, closing the phone. He slipped it into his pocket and brought out the SOCA card.

  As Jennifer reached for it, he snapped hold of her wrist and pulled her on to his lowered forehead. His skull connected with her jaw and Jennifer folded at the knees.

  ‘You’ve had things tough these last couple years, Mrs Telfer. For that reason I did try to do this the easy way,’ Cain whispered in her ear. ‘But I’m afraid you’ve left me little option.’

  From the wallet he took a small syringe.

  He jabbed it into the flesh of Jennifer’s throat.

  Then he looked over at the door to the kids’ bedroom.

  Chapter 31

  ‘What do we do now?’

  ‘We get the hell outa here, or we go to prison. Which do you prefer, Harve?’

  My ill-directed sarcasm demanded only one answer.

  Harvey floored the pedal, aiming the rental at the police cruiser.

  Seeing us barrelling towards him, the cop swung the heavier squad car across our path, trying to block us so that his colleagues could arrive and take us down. Harvey didn’t stop. There’s a knack to pushing your way
through a roadblock. You drive at no more than fifteen miles per hour, aim for their front wheel hub with the near corner of your vehicle, and shunt the offending vehicle aside. Of course, what’s good in theory isn’t always so in reality. Harvey pushed our car just a little too fast and the fender struck nearer to the front passenger door. The result was that the cop car was pushed along with us, its tyres juddering and bouncing on the asphalt. The noise was horrendous; the whooping of the siren competed with the scream of metal on metal, the repeated bang as the cop car lifted and fell. Finally, Harvey pulled hard right, caught the front end of the cruiser and shoved it aside. We tore round it, taking off the back bumper of our car in the process.

  ‘There goes my deposit!’ Harvey said.

  The exit ramp twisted to the left, following the line of the hotel wall down to street level. At the bottom another police vehicle screeched to a halt. This time Harvey hit it just right, spinning the back end of the cruiser out of our way. Momentum carried us across the highway and into the oncoming lanes. A large furniture removals van howled like a wild beast as the driver hit the brakes. The van skidded, turned sideways in the road, then flipped on to its side. Grit pounded our car as the van tore up the road surface. Harvey just hauled on the steering so we went up on the pavement at the far side, then around the bulky vehicle. As we passed I saw that the driver, his face an open shout of alarm, looked unharmed. Thank God for that.

  ‘What I said earlier,’ I said, ‘I didn’t mean at the expense of innocent lives.’

  ‘I’ll try not to do anything stupid,’ Harvey replied straight-faced.

  He whipped the car off the kerb, through a gap between a tan Land Rover and a green Toyota. Back on the correct side of the road he hit the throttle and sped along the highway. Behind us, other cop cars took up the chase, sirens whooping.

  ‘If they get an eye in the sky on to us we’re fucked.’

  ‘Best we lose them before they can arrange one, then.’

  Ahead of us a police cruiser shot from a side street. From the passenger seat a cop aimed a shotgun at us. Harvey bit down on his bottom lip, at the same time popping a handbrake skid, taking us into a ninety-degree turn. Side on we caromed into the cruiser, and the cop had to throw himself inside to avoid being crushed. Harvey pressed the throttle, hit another skid and punched our way around the obstacle. The pursuing cars braked to avoid hitting their colleagues, giving us a couple seconds’ respite. Harvey made the most of the time. He pushed the car up to around seventy miles an hour. It felt much faster when weaving between the slower-moving city traffic.

  On our left was a strip mall, and behind it a huge Wal-Mart superstore. Harvey sped past the mall, swung a left and into the superstore parking lot. We streaked between rows of parked vehicles, customers leaping out of our way, abandoning their shopping carts. Our pursuers were too close for us to ditch this car and steal another, but that had never been Harvey’s intention. He went out the other side of the lot and on to a service road that connected to another store, this one an electrical giant. Harvey sent the rental over a grassy strip and we joined another highway, this one heading back towards Richmond.

  We’d given the cops the slip, but that wouldn’t last long. Harvey floored the pedal, while I clung tight to the dashboard. There was a junction ahead. We could take the correct route around the sweeping ramp, or we could be more direct. Harvey chose the latter, pulled into oncoming traffic and across to the hard shoulder. Streaking past the horrified faces of commuters heading out of the city, we tore along the shoulder and on to Route 76. Here the two carriageways were separated by a median, but thankfully there was no crash barrier like on the motorways in the UK. Harvey sent the rental across the lanes, whipping between a Kenworth truck hauling cattle and a fuel tanker. I closed my eyes, expecting an impromptu beef barbecue, but there was no accident this time. When I opened my eyes again, we were on the median and spitting divots of grass and soil in the air.

  Medians are designed to halt out-of-control vehicles, the soft earth catching and holding the tyres firm, but Harvey continued to hammer down on the throttle and the median finally gave up its hold and spat us on to the carriageway on the far side. Thankfully we were now heading in the same direction as the traffic flow. There was no sign of the cops: no way were they going to attempt the insane manoeuvres that Harvey had. They would be trying to catch us, but they were far enough behind for us to have won a minute or so of respite.

  Then unfamiliarity with our terrain struck us a cruel blow.

  ‘Shit. We’re on a goddamn toll road.’

  I looked ahead and saw that the traffic was slowing, moving into lanes to crawl through between the toll booths. Every lane had a red light flashing overhead: the cops had called ahead and had the road closed.

  ‘There,’ I said, pointing at a small housing estate on our right. There wasn’t a road into the residential area – possibly to foil any plans to avoid the toll charge – but all that separated us from escape was a chain link fence and a drainage gully. Harvey didn’t even slow, just aimed the car at the fence and blasted through. We ramped over the gully, then hit the ground hard. The car didn’t make it in one piece, the suspension was shot, but I was relieved to hear the engine continue unhindered. We swept between two rows of houses, trailing wire mesh behind us. At the end of the street, Harvey slowed, took a right and went at a moderate pace along another residential road. A left took us to another junction and across the way we saw another strip mall, this one catering to the discerning diner. There was an Italian restaurant, a Chinese restaurant, a rib shack and something called the Food Lion. Jammed between them was a chemist store: could have been where diners picked up a bottle of Pepto Bismol after their dinner.

  We abandoned the rental in the mall parking lot, then jogged back to the intersection towards a petrol station on the far side. While we caught our breath, we watched until an old model station wagon pulled up at the fuel pumps. A skinny kid climbed out and headed for the store. Like many at service stations, he hadn’t bothered to lock his car or even remove the keys from the ignition. While he was inside, picking up a newspaper or bar of chocolate or whatever, Harvey and I were in his car and heading out of town.

  The cops arrived, but they were looking for the bashed-up rental car, and we slipped by them, unnoticeable in our equally bashed-up but thoroughly anonymous station wagon. The kid would report his vehicle stolen, but by the time two and two were put together we would be well beyond the cordon.

  A short time later we dumped the station wagon.

  We caught a bus that took us back into town, where we hopped a cab and headed off to where Harvey’s Bell Jetranger waited for us at a small private heliport on the northern fringe of Richmond. The last place a police helicopter would be looking for us, we decided, was in the sky.

  I didn’t know how I felt. The hit on Kurt Hendrickson hadn’t exactly gone as planned. That he was dead and gone was a bonus, but it hadn’t brought me any nearer to finding or stopping Tubal Cain. In fact, if anything, it had made matters worse. Not only was I now a hunted man, probably by every cop in the USA, but it was also likely that the police were being helped along their way by the very person who’d set me on this task.

  Walter Hayes Conrad IV.

  It couldn’t have been a coincidence that the cops just happened to turn up when they did, could it? No one knew where we were, or even who. The fact that I’d telephoned Walter, he’d played a stalling game and then a government car had turned up to scope us out hadn’t escaped me. But: why?

  What purpose did it serve for Walter to betray me?

  Was he disassociating himself, ensuring that his part in our scheme to finish Tubal Cain was never discovered? Or had his role already been revealed and forced him to hand me over?

  I didn’t know; that was the truth of it. Thinking about the possible betrayal made my head hurt. More likely that was down to lack of sleep, and a dump of noradrenalin into my system after the sustained action of the last couple of h
ours. It was a good job that Harvey was at the controls of the chopper, because I was seeing double. I inhaled, shuddered out some of my tiredness. When I looked across at Harvey I could focus again. Harvey had his earphones and microphone in place. I pulled mine on.

  ‘That was some fancy-arsed driving you did back there.’

  Harvey gave me a short, derisive laugh. ‘Fancy-assed? I was crapping my pants, man!’

  ‘Well, you did OK. Did you study defensive driving when you were with the Rangers?’

  He shook his head. ‘I was just winging it. Sheer adrenalin got me through.’

  His comments had shut down my line of conversation, and I sat there ruminating for a moment. It got me thinking on how earlier I’d have preferred if Rink had been the one covering my back, and now I felt a little ashamed of myself. ‘Harve.’

  He glanced over at me, inclined his chin.

  ‘I’m sorry I got you into this.’

  ‘Anything for a friend.’

  That made me feel worse. ‘You do realise that we’re probably going to go to prison for a long time.’

  Harvey bit down on his bottom lip. ‘There’s always the possibility we’ll get away with it. I’ve taken precautions. The rifle can’t be traced to me. I had my gloves on when driving the car we dumped.’

  These days the science of forensic investigation was more sophisticated than looking for fingerprints. And even if that’s all they went by, the police wouldn’t go with the obvious. Harvey hadn’t been wearing gloves when we were in the hotel room, so they could find plenty of evidence there. Identifying Harvey would be a piece of cake for any investigator. Christ, all they had to do was look at my known associates and the first black man to jump out at them would be Harvey. Not only that, but if Walter had been responsible for betraying us, the police had arrived at the scene with prior knowledge of who was assisting me. Of course, if I was to be captured, they wouldn’t get his name from me.