She heard another small plane rise off the runway.
‘Well?’ Kelloway asked.
She raised her face and watched the craft, a dwindling gleam of quicksilver in the sun. The sound of the engine dropped a half-tone. She put her sunglasses on and the gloss of the day dimmed to an acceptable level. She looked at Kelloway, who was less harsh, less predatory, in reduced light. Then she stared at Bascombe for a long time. That bland face, that bad wig.
‘What do you think, Lew?’ she asked.
‘I think you should go for it, Amanda,’ he said.
‘Just like that,’ she said.
Bascombe said, ‘I’ve already agreed to co-operate one hundred per cent with Dan to get this whole goddam business cleared up. I believe you should do the same.’
The same, she thought. Christ, she was weary, weary. She wanted a bed and clean sheets and a cool dark room. Above all else she wanted Rhees to be safe. She looked at Bascombe and remembered Willie Drumm. ‘Tell me, Lew. Did you ever get around to checking on Dansk?’
Bascombe said, ‘Of course I did.’
‘And?’
‘Nothing,’ he said. ‘He wasn’t employed by Justice. He wasn’t employed by the Marshals Service. He came out of nowhere.’
Zero, she thought. A mystery. Now he was dead and she should begin the process of imposing amnesia on herself. She saw a State police car enter the parking-lot.
‘Is that our transportation, Kelloway?’
‘Only if you accept,’ he said.
She glanced at Rhees again. He made an indeterminate movement of his head. She knew what it meant: I’m in too much pain to think.
‘What about my father?’ she asked. ‘He’s going to wonder. I owe him a call.’
‘Later, when you’re relocated, we’ll arrange for you to phone him. We’re not talking for ever, Amanda. Three months, six, it depends on what I find. I might get lucky sooner, you never know.’
She closed her eyes against the light and finished the last of her soda. She thought of Morgan and his hacienda in the hills, Morgan waiting to hear from her. Later, like Kelloway had said.
Life was going to become a series of postponements and abdications. She removed the sunglasses and blinked.
‘There’s a notebook you’re going to need,’ she said.
77
Kelloway watched the state police car drive out of sight. Neither Amanda nor Rhees looked back at him. He turned to Bascombe and said, ‘Where the hell did Loeb dig up a psycho like Dansk? What was the old clown dreaming of? He must’ve known the risk he was running trusting a guy like that. OK, so Dansk was a US Marshal with special undercover status, big deal, but Loeb should’ve checked on his mental stability, for Christ’s sake.’
Kelloway picked up an empty soda container from the table and crumpled it in his hand. ‘Then, lo and behold, Loeb changes tack and decides he wants Dansk dead because the guy’s outta control and it’s panic stations, and all the evidence has to get swept under the nearest rug immediately, and Scholes goes home happy and content because she imagines her personal nightmare’s finished … A dying man finds some mercy in his heart. You think it was something like that with Loeb? Or did he just lose his nerve?’
‘It doesn’t matter much now,’ Bascombe said.
Kelloway had a hard purposeful quality in his expression. ‘No more fuck-ups. No more of Loeb’s misbegotten judgements. No more Dansk.’
Bascombe smiled, a humourless effort. ‘This wide-ranging investigation of yours. When does it begin?’
Kelloway said, ‘What investigation?’
‘I’m sorry for the woman, kind of,’ Bascombe said.
‘Save your sympathy, Lew. She got herself into this. She had her chances to back out. More than a few times.’
‘Her father …’
‘Tough one,’ Kelloway said. ‘But you can’t have guys like Dansk doing this work. He fiddled around and he blew it, and along the way some unhappy sacrifices had to be made. Jesus, I hate losing men. It’s a total waste.’ He was silent a time, staring towards the trees. ‘OK, I figured Dansk was deranged enough and determined enough to get through to the cabin, but fuck, I really missed out on Loeb’s misguided charity. Maybe the old fart saw Scholes’s reprieve as an act of atonement or something, or maybe all the death just sickened him to the heart, which I could understand, believe me.’
‘Who knows,’ Bascombe said.
‘Sometimes I get depressed and I think this operation’s too much. The pressure-cooker syndrome. The whole act you have to go through: containment, keeping secrets, all the lies. Then I swing the other way and it looks good again, it feels right, it’s running like a well-oiled clock and God’s got a grin on his face. You think I need Prozac maintenance, Lew?’
‘Drugs don’t keep a man’s head clear.’
‘Whatever,’ Kelloway said. ‘She’s all mine.’
‘I don’t have to ask what you intend to do with her, do I?’
A sparrow landed on the table.
Kelloway stretched a hand out and said, ‘Boo,’ and the frightened bird flew upward in a nervy flapping of wings and disappeared like a puff of woodsmoke or a dead soul in the direction of the freeway.
About the Author
Campbell Armstrong (1944–2013) was an international bestselling author best known for his thriller series featuring British counterterrorism agent Frank Pagan, and his quartet of Glasgow Novels, featuring detective Lou Perlman. Two of these, White Rage and Butcher, were nominated for France’s Prix du Polar. Armstrong’s novels Assassins & Victims and The Punctual Rape won Scottish Arts Council Book of the Year Awards.
Born in Glasgow and educated at the University of Sussex, Armstrong worked as a book editor in London and taught creative writing at universities in the United States.
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1997 by Campbell Armstrong
Cover design by Angela Goddard
ISBN: 978-1-5040-0419-0
This edition published in 2015 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
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