Streaking

by Brian Stableford

  “I always thought the title was so much meaningless gibberish,” he said to Bentley. “This is the twenty-first century, for Heaven’s sake.”

  “Yours is a name that commands a great deal of authority, sir,” Bentley told him. “The country is doubtless replete with aristocrats whose credit rating is derisory, but the Earls of Credesdale have a reputation that stretches back further than anyone can remember—and their dealings, though always profitable in the long run, haven’t always been orthodox.”

  It wasn’t just Henri Meurdon who had a powerful computer and a healthy measure of curiosity, Canny realized. He was, indeed, living in the twenty-first century. Seven hundred thousand pounds wasn’t that big a deal, and he wasn’t short of collateral—but the real point at issue was that all four of the men he’d called had heard abundant rumors of the Kilcannon luck, and had the means to investigate its arithmetic. One thing they didn’t know, of course, was that his luck was supposed to be at a low ebb just now—but he didn’t know himself how crucial the rules, or how reliable the superstitious fears, might really be.

  “They all think I’m putting it into some crooked deal, don’t they?” Canny said. “They think it’s all slush fund.”

  “I’m sure they don’t know what to think,” Bentley told him. “But they know better than to make difficulties. They have confidence in you, sir—as have I.”

  “Even though you know it’s simple blackmail?”

  “Simple, sir?” the butler replied, cocking an eyebrow. “I turned a conscientiously deaf ear to everything you said, of course—and the exact nature of your relationship with Mr. Larkin is none of my business—but I can’t quite believe that it’s simple. If I were permitted to speculate, I’d hazard a guess that this has something to do with the other sum of money you recently lost, and I’d feel obliged to ask whether you might be in danger of losing more than mere money.”

  “They already had to fall back on Plan B,” Canny said. “Obviously, that was just a stopgap. The rap on the knuckles they got from the Union Corse didn’t put them off—quite the reverse, in fact. But things will work out. Maybe matters have taken a slight turn for the worse, but they’ll improve. They always do, don’t they? I’m a Credesdale, after all. One of Fortune’s favorites.”

  “Luck sometimes runs out, sir,” Bentley said, baldly—not because he knew anything about the rules, but because he was no more immune to the seductions of proverbial wisdom than anyone else.

  “Yes it does,” Canny agreed. “Even the longest lucky streak in the world has to run out eventually, no matter how carefully you consult the oracles or how often you pass along the road to Damascus. But you can’t live your life with that expectation, can you? You have to play the cards as they’re dealt, the best way you can. And there’s a certain comfort in knowing that the world has so many people in it who are willing to hand over every currency note they have because you, your father, and your grandfather before you, have never let them down.”

  “It might have been exactly that knowledge,” the butler pointed out, “that attracted the wrong kind of people—people, that is, who are selective in paying attention to the many aspects of your family’s reputation.”

  “I have to go to the library now, Bentley,” Canny said. “Then I have to drive to the mill, and then into Leeds. Could you possibly unpack my suitcase for me—it’s on the bed.”

  “Would you like me to come with you, sir?”

  “No,” Canny said. “They’re not going to put up with that, are they? And no, I don’t want a gun. I just want to hand over the money, and get Stevie Larkin out. He says he’ll pay me back, and he means it. With luck, I’ll come out of this without suffering any loss at all—and he’ll still have five more years at the top of his game. It’s just business. There’s no need for any heroics.”

  Bentley nodded, not bothering to issue any further warnings or pleas. By the time Canny had emptied the safe in the inner sanctum, the suitcase on his bed was empty. Canny carefully compared the space he filled with the space that still remained, and figured that he ought to be able to fit the money into the suitcase easily enough, provided that the bills were of sufficiently large denomination.

  It wasn’t until he had cleaned out the safe at the mill and started to drive into Leeds that the silver Toyota settled in behind him. For a few minutes he worried that it might be the police, or someone else that Bentley had altered to his plight, but he put the thought aside. It had to be one of the kidnappers, making certain that he was on schedule.

  Gathering the cash proved to be no trouble at all. Its suppliers looked at him inquisitively, but not one of them asked him whether anything was wrong, or when they might expect to get their money back. They were all men for whom discretion was not merely a habit but a necessity; not one of them gave the slightest indication that there was anything particularly unusual about handing over six-figure sums in cash at a couple of hours notice. Perhaps, he thought, it really was the kind of thing they were likely to do twice or three times a month. If so, the black economy must be a great deal larger than he had ever dared to imagine.

  When he had accumulated the whole million, he wasted no time phoning the number again, while the Bentley was still sitting in the employees’ car park underneath the bank.

  “I’ve got it,” He said.

  “Of course. Take the A58. When you get to Collingham, ring again for further instructions. Are you being followed?”

  Canny didn’t hesitate. “Yes,” he said. “A silver Toyota. Nothing to do with me. Do you want me to lose it?”

  “No. It’s ours.” The line went dead.

  The rush hour traffic was just beginning to build up, but Canny got on to the A58 without any difficulty. He didn’t see the silver Toyota again until the Roundhay roundabout, but after that it stuck to his tail like glue as he went past Scarcroft and through Bardsey. Its windscreen was slightly shadowed but he had a clear enough view in his rear-view mirror to see that it only had one occupant: a tall person wearing a baseball cap.

  He rang the number again as soon as he reached Collingham, before getting to the junction with the A659. There would, he knew, be three main routes to choose from at that point—one leading west to Harewood, one east to Boston Spa and the third north to Wetherby.

  He was ordered to take the western route, but only as far as the golf course, where there was a second turn-off to Wetherby. Once on that road he was directed to turn left towards Sicklinghall. Between Sicklinghall and Harrogate, he knew, there was a great deal of open country, all relatively low-lying.

  At least, he thought, the kidnappers had been polite enough to stash Stevie in Yorkshire, instead of making him drive all the way to Nelson or Clitheroe.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  There were far lonelier spots up on the windswept moors than any available between Kirkby Overblow and Spofforth, but Canny figured that the Bentley wouldn’t be nearly as conspicuous in this relatively prosperous territory. The foot-and-mouth epidemic hadn’t hit as badly here as it had further East, but there were farms here, as there were almost everywhere else, that had never been restocked because their broken-hearted proprietors had found better things to do with the ministry’s compensation.

  It was to one such abandoned farm that Canny was guided by the blandly sinister voice. The windows of the house had been boarded up, but the barn, emptied of its contents after disinfection, had probably never been locked. The door stood ajar, and as Canny guided the Bentley up the long curving drive someone came out to watch him approach.

  The silver Toyota followed him no further than the gate, in which it paused so as to block the entrance—or, from Canny’s point of view, the exit.

  The waiting man pulled the barn door open and waved the Bentley through.

  There was plenty of room inside for Canny to park the car without getting too close to the pale blue Datsun that was discreetly tucked away under the rim of the hayloft, beside a row of empty stalls. The place seemed uncannily tidy; a
ll the straw that must have been strewn around it when it was a hive of activity had been swept away and burnt. There was a certain amount of clutter up in the loft—he could see planks of old wood; a few large drums, some of which were still wound around with fragments of fencing-wire; an ancient water-butt; and a couple of oil drums—but everything that had been worth taking away must have been removed.

  Canny switched off the engine. He could see Stevie Larkin sitting in the back seat of the Datsun, alone. The footballer was gagged, and he was shifting awkwardly, clearly unable to raise a hand to reply to his reassuring salute. Canny deduced that his hands were secured behind his back.

  There was a second person standing by the blue car, dressed in a loose-fitting sweater and jeans, wearing a ski-mask—but the man who was now closing the door that he had opened to let the Bentley through was not masked in any way. He would be easily recognizable if Canny—or Stevie—ever bumped into him again.

  Canny didn’t know how bad a sign that was, but he was sure that it couldn’t be good. The kidnappers probably intended to leave the country as soon as they could, once they had the cash, but they still had reason enough not to advertise their identities.

  The androgynous figure by the Datsun was toting a gun so heavy that it required the support of a shoulder-strap—some kind of sub-machine gun, Canny guessed. The man at the door only had an automatic pistol, which he carried as if it weighed hardly anything at all. He was a tall man, with light brown hair cut very short—but more like an old-fashioned crew-cut than a modern razor cut—and pale blue eyes. His grey suit looked far from new, but it seemed to have been made to measure. His polo-necked shirt wouldn’t have got him into a high-class restaurant in a conservative county like Yorkshire, even though it was white, but it was neat enough.

  Canny opened the door and slowly climbed out of the Bentley. The heavy gun swung to point at him; the slight figure’s finger was hovering close to the trigger.

  “The money?” said the man by the door, who didn’t bother to make any exaggeratedly threatening gesture with his own weapon. Canny recognized the voice that had guided him.

  “In the boot,” Canny said. “Let Stevie out of the car, will you—I want to make sure he’s all right.”

  “He’s all right where he is,” the man with the pistol assured him. “Open the boot.”

  “It’s open,” Canny said. “Help yourself.”

  The kidnapper opened the boot and looked down at the suitcase. “You open it,” he said.

  Canny shrugged, and went to release the locks on the case, before unzipping it and flipping back the lid to expose the bundles of cash inside. “Three hundred and eighty sterling,” he said. “That just over five hundred and thirty-two thousand Euros. There’s a further two hundred and sixty thousand in actual Euros. There’s also two hundred and twenty-eight thousand US dollars. Grand total, at today’s exchange rates, one million Euros.”

  “It’s always best to do business with businessmen,” the man with the pistol observed, as he stepped up beside Canny to take a look. “They have the means to lay their hands on the money, and they know how easily it comes and goes. Better by far than dealing with loose cannons like sports agents or football clubs. Phone.” As he spoke the last word he put out his hand.

  Canny handed over the mobile phone that had arrived by courier. “Far better,” he agreed. “You can let Stevie go now. Put the cash in the Datsun and drive away. Simple as that.”

  The tall man took the phone and put it in his pocket. Then he ran his left hand over Canny’s pockets, removing Canny’s own mobile. He put that one in his breast pocket, for want of any other convenient place of storage. Then he continued patting Canny down, presumably to make sure that he wasn’t carrying any kind of weapon. When he was satisfied he motioned to Canny to back away from the car, then began probing in the suitcase, riffling through wads of bills at random.

  “It’s all there,” Canny told him. “No bombs, or purple dyes. Just cash. You’ve got what you wanted. It’s over.”

  The tall man didn’t answer; he went on patiently checking the contents of the case for two more minutes before he flipped the lid down again and zipped it up. “For myself,” he said, in the end, “I agree. This is what we wanted. I’m satisfied.” He wasn’t looking at Canny, though—he was looking at his companion.

  Canny felt a prickling sensation in his skin, but he knew that it wasn’t anything supernatural. It was a perfectly natural symptom of fear. The atmosphere in the barn was dark, but that was mostly because its unglazed windows were so small and high-set. There was plenty of light to see by, but it was dull light, almost leaden. It didn’t seem to be laden with any kind of potential—but Canny couldn’t know whether that was any indication of his safety or a symptom of the diminution of his luck.

  He swallowed a lump in his throat, but he felt relatively tranquil. He had acquired the habit long ago of remaining calm in the face of apparent danger. Even if the present danger turned out to be real, the habit was still in force. He was glad of it. He didn’t want to be terrified. He didn’t want to be shot, but he didn’t want to be terrified of being shot whether he ended up dead or not.

  “We’ve met before,” Canny said, to the person in the ski-mask. “In my hotel in Monte Carlo. You made the sensible decision then. You hesitated, but you took the money and left.”

  “That was a mistake.” The voice wasn’t deep, but Canny had abandoned his last suspicion that its owner might be a woman even before the muffled figure reached up with his left hand to pull the ski-mask from his head. The man was young—probably no more than twenty-one or twenty-two—but he had enough five o’clock shadow to leave no doubt as to his sex. His eyes were dark, although his hair was the same mousy shade as his companion’s. The removal of the mask seemed to Canny to be an unmistakably bad sign.

  “No it wasn’t,” Canny said. “It was the right thing to do, once you’d heard that my father was seriously ill. As your friend says, you need to deal with businessmen in a businesslike way. Complications are awkward for everyone.”

  “It got my brother killed,” the young man said, flatly.

  “That was my mistake,” Canny said, readily enough. “When you took the money, I assumed that was what you were after, so I told the casino that someone might be hanging around targeting their customers. I didn’t realize that he was only there to tell you when I left. By the time the casino’s guardians figured that out...I suppose they felt that they ought to set an example anyway. The money did belong to one of their customers, after all. I didn’t know. It’s not as if I hired a hitman. As I said, you have what you wanted. It’s over now.”

  “He was my brother,” the young man said.

  “You don’t want this to get out of hand,” Canny said, addressing the tall man although he was still looking at the other. “This can’t be part of your plan. Just let us go, and go your own way.”

  “In the old socialist days,” the tall man said, “we had discipline, order, hierarchy. Then everything collapsed. Now, the young people don’t know how to take orders any more. They don’t understand that personal sacrifices have to be made for the common good. They’re Westernized—individualists, committed to their own agendas. A tragedy—but what can you do? They’re still our children.”

  “I’m not your son!” the young man retorted, although the words hadn’t been addressed to him. He was still speaking English, though, so that Canny could understand him. “What do you care, whether he lives or dies? You’ve got your money. Anyway, your socialist conscience shouldn’t give you any trouble. He’s a filthy aristocrat as well as a bloated capitalist.”

  “It’s bad for business,” the tall man said—but it was obvious that he didn’t care enough to make any very strenuous effort to prevent his companion from exacting the vengeance due to him. He was staying well clear of the potential line of fire.

  Canny searched in vain for any kind of light; the air was dead and still. For the first time since his father ha
d died, he felt the void that the rules had promised: the absence of any premonition, any inspiration, any crack in the fabric of mechanical causality.

  “This is foolish,” Canny said. “People in your line of work need to avoid publicity. The last thing you need is an Interpol manhunt spurred on by the tabloid press. Even if you restrict yourself to shooting me and let Stevie live, this is the kind of story that’ll rattle round the world. Take the money, and let us go.”

  He could see that the would-be killer was hesitating, just as he had in the hotel room. He really hadn’t made up his mind—not completely. The decision could go either way. All it required was a slight nudge by Lady Luck, a fortunate flip of the decisive coin—but Canny still couldn’t see the kindly light, the small benign spark of momentary deconstruction.

  Shit! he thought. Is this what it’s like to go naked in the world, with no help but human hands? Is this sort of sensation what terrified my ancestors into marriage and paternity, with all that the rules had loaded into them, in the desperate hope of getting back to a more comfortable way of being?

  Until that moment, the young man’s hand hadn’t actually settled on the trigger of the obscenely intimidating gun. Now it did.

  Canny couldn’t bear to look at his would-be assassin any longer. He half-turned to look at the tall man, whose stance was quite relaxed. The automatic pistol was pointing idly at the ground—but the pale blue eyes were utterly bleak and devoid of fellow-feeling. The older and wiser gangster didn’t feel in the least sorry for Canny, or afraid for himself.

  There was a sound like a popping cork.

  The thought sprang into Canny’s mind that it was an absurd noise for such an ugly and powerful weapon to make—but then, as he swiveled his eyes to look for one last time into the eyes of his murderer, he realized that the young man’s finger hadn’t tightened on the trigger.

  Caught up in the residue of his hesitation, the finger didn’t even convulse as the young man’s head was jerked to one side by an oblique impact.