Thunder in the Blood

by Hurley, Graham

  We hardly spoke at all on the journey back to Dallas. Priddy had found some aftershave from somewhere and the smell of it filled the car, a thick curtain drawn across the day’s events. Neither of us felt much like a post-mortem, and instead I found myself trying to work out the real reason for our abrupt departure. One moment, he’d forbidden me to leave. Next minute, he was telling me to get in the car. So what had happened in the mean time? What had made him change his mind? These weren’t the kind of questions Priddy would ever welcome, but by the time the long smudge of Dallas appeared over the horizon, I thought I had the answer.

  ‘That Jaguar,’ I said, ‘whose was it?’

  ‘That what?’

  ‘Jaguar. The car. At the ranch. You must have seen it. I know you did.’

  ‘Ah,’ he nodded, ‘the Jaguar.’

  ‘So who does it belong to? An English guy? Blond? Young? Good looking?’

  Priddy glanced across. ‘Are you telling me, or asking me?’

  ‘Asking you.’

  ‘Then I’ve no idea.’ He smiled. ‘Should I?’

  I looked at him for a long moment, knowing he was lying. ‘You didn’t expect him to be there, did you?’ I said at length.

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘Our English friend … bit of a surprise, wasn’t it?’ I paused. ‘He said he’d come on the offchance, but he knows Beckermann. Must do. Uses his phone. Calls him Harold. Friends, probably. Partners, even.’

  Priddy was studying the mirror, playing dumb. ‘This could have been very simple,’ he said at last.

  ‘What?’

  ‘You and me.’

  ‘And Beckermann?’

  ‘No. Just you and me.’ He paused. ‘A couple of days on our own. Away from it all.’

  ‘All what?’ I looked at him, half expecting an answer, getting nothing more than a faintly reproachful smile. ‘Listen,’ I began, ‘the English guy I met. You know who he is. Just give me a name. That’s all I want.’ I looked at him. He didn’t even bother to shake his head. I shrugged. ‘There are other ways of finding out,’ I said quietly, ‘as you well know.’

  Priddy nodded, looking at me across the car. ‘Then I suggest you use them,’ he said, ‘if it’s that important.’

  Priddy dropped me at the motel half an hour later. After a long, hot shower, I phoned Stollmann. In London, it was nearly Sunday.

  ‘News for you,’ I said, when the number answered. There was a long silence. When Stollmann finally remembered my name, it sounded like he’d forgotten to put his teeth in.

  ‘Sarah?’

  ‘Me.’

  ‘Long time,’ he said, more coherent, ‘no hear.’

  ‘I’ve been away. With Priddy.’

  ‘That’s hardly the point.’

  I waited for guidance, but it never came. I knew he wanted to scold me for not phoning sooner, but somehow he couldn’t put it into words. Instead, I told him briefly about Priddy, where we’d been, who we’d met.

  ‘Beckermann?’ he said.

  ‘Yes. And someone else. Someone English. I never got the name. Drives a Jaguar. Blue thing.’

  ‘Harold Beckermann?’ he said again. ‘The one you mentioned? From the paper?’

  I recognized a lift in the voice, a new tone, the closest Stollmann ever gets to excitement. ‘Yes. Harold J. Runs Extec. Priddy knows him well. As of this week.’

  ‘Is that a joke?’

  ‘Not really. It’s what Priddy says. If we believe him.’

  ‘And do we believe him?’

  I hesitated a moment. ‘Yes,’ I said at last, ‘I think I do.’

  ‘You ask him about this friendship of theirs? This relationship?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And what did he say?’

  ‘Not much. He just said they’d met on Monday and now they were good friends. That kind of thing happens in America.’ I paused. ‘There was this English guy, too. I got the impression Priddy wasn’t keen on me meeting him.’

  ‘You seeing Beckermann again?’

  ‘Not if I can help it.’

  ‘What?’

  I frowned. The miracle of satellite technology wasn’t doing much for me and Stollmann.

  ‘This English guy I mentioned,’ I began again.

  ‘Have you upset him?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Beckermann.’

  ‘I don’t know.’ I thought about our abrupt departure, wondering whether men like Beckermann took that kind of thing personally. ‘Maybe,’ I said at last, ‘but that’s not the point. The point is this English guy—’

  ‘Sarah?’ Stollmann was insistent now, his voice raised, a rare event.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Listen to me. Did Priddy take you back tonight? Drop you off? Wherever it is you’re staying?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘OK. So what’s the time? Your end?’

  I peered at the bedside clock. ‘Six twenty-seven.’

  ‘Good. Then move. Change hotels. Cities, if possible. Doesn’t matter how. Just do it.’ He paused again. ‘Do you have access to a weapon?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Then take it with you. And for God’s sake make sure it’s loaded.’

  I looked at the phone, speechless, a thousand questions forming in my pea-brain. By the time I’d got as far as putting the first one into words, Stollmann had gone. Hotels? Cities? I shuddered, thinking of the afternoon again, the hot muddy smell of the creek, the men’s faces pressed to the wire, the death throes of the dog I’d wanted to shoot, the taste of the bourbon in my mouth.

  I reached for the Rand McNally, then changed my mind and dialled another UK number. When it answered, I listened for perhaps half a minute, hearing Wesley’s voice, the latest recorded message. Then I smiled.

  ‘Nice idea,’ I said slowly, leaving a message of my own.

  19

  It took me two days to drive from Dallas to Washington.

  I went by car for two reasons. First, I was keen to get my head into some kind of order, and second, I was even keener to hang on to Wallace’s automatic. Flying to Washington was obviously the quickest way, but trying to smuggle a handgun on to an American airliner was a high-risk occupation. Chances were, I’d get caught by the X-ray machine or the body-search, with the subsequent loss of the gun. The Beretta, I’d begun to suspect, was now more important than ever. Thus, thanks to Stollmann, the thousand-mile drive.

  I spent the first night in a motel in Arkansas. After dark, America becomes a succession of roadside neon lights, but by the time I finally pulled in they’d thinned considerably, miles of nothing but the interminable pale grey asphalt. The motel I found was seedy – the middle of nowhere – and the rooms were even worse. The carpet was cratered with cigarette burns and the nylon sheets had seen a great deal of action, and when I turned off the light and tried to sleep, the air conditioning kept cutting in, whining and squeaking. I looked everywhere for a plug or a switch but found nothing. Finally, numb with exhaustion, I severed the only lead I could find with a pair of nail scissors. The rubber soles on the Reeboks I’d slipped on took the worst of the shock and I left at eight next morning, before the owner had a chance to talk compensation.

  By Sunday evening, exhausted again, I was six hundred miles further north-east, an hour or so into West Virginia. The day had seemed like one long Country and Western festival, and I’d set the cruise control to 55 m.p.h., letting the endless ribbon of freeway unwind before me, singing along to Dolly Parton and Tammy Wynette, watching the landscape slowly soften. In Tennessee, for the first time, it was visibly autumnal, the trees flame-red at the roadside, and as I crossed into Kentucky, I could see the first blue shadows of the Appalachian Mountains up ahead. By the time I got to West Virginia it was dark again, and I peeled off the interstate at a place called Friendship. Washington, according to the roadside boards, was still three hundred miles away, a six-hour drive which would take most of tomorrow.

  I phoned Wesley’s friend from the first motel I found. It was
a tiny place, smaller even than last night, but there were fresh flowers in the lobby and someone had bothered to give the room a proper airing. I dumped my bags beside the bed and started on a six-pack of Michelob I’d bought from a store up the road. Later, if I was still awake, I’d find a place to eat. For now, while I was still coherent, I’d introduce myself to Wesley’s friend.

  On the message he’d left on the answerphone tape, Wesley had told me very little. All I knew was that the man was a working journalist, a specialist on defence affairs, and that Wesley rated him very highly indeed. He knew the industry inside out. He knew who was hot, and who wasn’t. He knew where most of the bodies were buried. And, most important of all, he’d managed to keep his distance from the lobbyists and the free lunches that had corrupted so many others. Quite how he’d done this, Wesley hadn’t explained. But it was, he’d said, the key to the man. He had what few of us ever achieve: real independence. That, at least, was Wesley’s version.

  McGrath answered the phone while I was still emptying the first can of Michelob. He had a deep voice, richly American, but with a strange, slightly breathless intonation. I was still apologizing for phoning so late when he interrupted me.

  ‘You’re Sarah,’ he said. ‘Wesley Keogh’s friend.’

  ‘Yes,’ I nodded, impressed, ‘I am.’

  ‘You’re coming to see me tomorrow?’

  ‘Yes.’ I hesitated. ‘Will that be OK?’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘You won’t be out?’

  There was a moment’s silence. Then I heard him laughing. ‘No,’ he said at last, ‘I won’t be out.’

  He told me to get a pencil, and gave me directions while I scribbled on the back of the phone directory. Then he told me to read them back. I did so, picking my way through Washington’s northern suburbs. When I got to the top of his road, he told me to stop.

  ‘Van outside,’ he said. ‘Big red camper. Ring the doorbell at the front of the house. And don’t let Nghien fool you. He understands everything.’

  ‘What?’ I said, hearing the line go dead. ‘Who?’

  Next morning, none the wiser, I left Friendship and rejoined the interstate. A good night’s sleep had done wonders for my nerves and I spent infinitely less time inspecting the rear-view mirror. After three years at Curzon House, I knew a great deal about surveillance and I was absolutely certain that since Dallas, I’d left no tracks worth following. If they found me now, whoever they were, it would be pure luck. By noon, a hundred or so miles south of Washington, I was even confident enough to slip the automatic into the glove compartment, rather than leaving it under a fold of newspaper on the seat beside me. The traffic, after all, was light. The sun had burned off the last of the morning mist. The mountains were glorious. Why let my baser instincts wreck it all?

  Washington is circled by a multi-lane racetrack called the Beltway. I left it at the junction with Interstate 95, following McGrath’s instructions. Ten minutes later, I was on the northern edges of Silver Spring, easing the Chrysler through the endless suburban sprawl, looking for Marion Street. When I found it, I pulled in for a moment, surprised by the small, single-storeyed clapboard houses, the weeds greening the cracked asphalt, the air of faint decay. McGrath’s house was at the end, the red camper parked beside it. The street was a cul-de-sac and I stood on the sidewalk for a moment or two, savouring the air. There was little warmth in the pale autumn sunlight, and for the first time since I’d arrived, I could smell the coming of winter.

  I ducked inside the car and retrieved Wallace’s files. These, I’d decided, would shape our afternoon. If McGrath was the expert Wesley had described, then I wanted – above all – a second opinion. I pushed through the gate and walked to the front door. Beside the step was a concrete ramp. I was still wondering about it when the door opened. Half expecting McGrath, I found myself looking at a small, middle-aged Asian. He was wearing denim cut-offs and a very old T-shirt. The T-shirt was splattered with blood. He had a cleaver in one hand and a kettle in the other. He was grinning.

  ‘You Sarah?’

  I nodded. ‘Yes,’ I said.

  ‘Come.’

  I followed him into the house. It smelled, at once, like Wesley’s place: bleach and antiseptic, plus flowers of some kind, maybe honeysuckle. At the end of the narrow hall was an open door. Beyond the door was a tiny kitchen.

  ‘Please?’

  The Asian gestured me into the kitchen. There was more blood on the floor and feathers everywhere. In the washing-up bowl was a half-plucked chicken. Its head, newly severed, lay on the draining board beside a rack of plates. I side-stepped the biggest pool of blood, remembering the phone conversation, trying to recall the name.

  ‘Nghien.’ The Asian beamed, pouring the contents of the kettle over the chicken, then wiping his hands on his T-shirt. ‘Please … with me.’

  We left the kitchen again. Down the hall, on the left, was another door. Nghien went in without knocking. The smell of bleach became stronger. I waited a moment in the hall, hearing another voice inside, an American voice, slightly breathless, the voice on the phone.

  ‘Sarah?’

  I went into the bedroom. It was bigger than I’d expected, and very bright, the sunshine flooding in through a huge window. There was a skylight, too, and a hanging basket overflowing with flowers. Beneath the skylight was a bed. In the bed, propped up on several pillows, lay a man of about forty, maybe older. His head was turned towards me, and a smile was spreading upwards from his mouth as he listened to Nghien. The Asian was speaking in a low, urgent voice, a foreign language I didn’t recognize. At length, still watching me, the man in the bed nodded.

  ‘You don’t mind chillis?’ he said to me. ‘With fresh chicken?’

  ‘Delicious.’

  His eyes turned back to Nghien and he said something brisk in the same language. Nghien hesitated perhaps half a second, then darted past me. I heard the kitchen door slam shut, then, seconds later, a furious chopping. I still had the files. I looked at the face on the pillow.

  ‘Mr McGrath?’

  ‘Jake.’

  ‘Sarah Moreton.’ I held out my hand. Nothing happened. At length, I withdrew it. ‘I’m sorry about this,’ I muttered. ‘Wesley never told me.’

  ‘Told you what?’

  ‘That you …’ I nodded at the bed. A device of some kind was suspended from the ceiling. It looked like the top half of a music stand, the bit where you put the score. Beside it, on a swinging arm, was a mouthpiece connected to a rubber tube. Quite what you did with it, I didn’t know, but Jake McGrath was plainly no ordinary journalist. ‘I’m sorry,’ I said again, ‘I’m not doing very well, am I?’

  McGrath smiled and then nodded at a chair across the room. I fetched it and sat down, beginning to realize already why it was that Wesley held the man in such awe. He had an instant presence, at once commanding and purposeful, yet relaxed and easy-going as well. He must have handled scenes like this for years. The embarrassment was entirely mine.

  ‘Sunshine too much for you?’

  I began to say no, but the head was already off the pillow, the lips reaching for the mouthpiece. He took three little sips of air, then blew twice, some private signal that the blinds, at least, understood. They clattered down over the window, softening the light in the room.

  ‘Enough?’

  ‘Fine.’

  ‘You too warm? Shall I turn down the heat?’

  ‘No. Truly. It’s fine.’

  ‘OK.’

  The head was back on the pillow, the eyes watching me. I put the files carefully on the bed, where I could reach them, and pulled the chair a little closer. Beneath the thinning hair and the pale complexion, McGrath’s face had a beautiful bone structure, and I was still trying to visualize what he must have once looked like when the door burst open and Nghien returned. He had two glasses with him. Mint tea. I turned back to McGrath. There seemed little point in small talk.

  ‘You’re paralysed?’

  ‘From the nec
k down,’ he nodded, ‘yes.’

  I looked at him a moment, understanding now why his breathing was so shallow, trying to pick my way as tactfully as I knew how. ‘Must be strange,’ I said, ‘everything happening at mouth level.’

  ‘You get used to it.’

  ‘I’m sure.’

  ‘No, you’re not.’

  I looked at him again, startled by his directness. Then I nodded, returning the compliment. ‘You’re right,’ I said. ‘I’m not.’

  ‘Does it upset you? All this?’

  ‘No,’ I said truthfully. ‘It’s just Wesley.’

  ‘What about him?’

  ‘He might have said something. Told me…’ I shrugged. ‘It might have been easier, that’s all.’

  McGrath eyed the mint tea a moment. Then he smiled.

  ‘Wesley lives in outer space,’ he said. ‘To him, I’m probably normal.’

  We talked all afternoon. McGrath had an extraordinary gift for communicating, for reaching out. He did it at once, reducing the situation to eye-contact, stripping away the inessentials – the body-hoist in the corner, the bank of TV monitors, the adapted computer keyboard, the draped trolley beneath the window with its cargo of half-concealed medications. He sensed, with great precision, the exact depth of my embarrassment, or perhaps my curiosity, and told me just enough about himself to put me at my ease.

  Twenty years back, he’d taken a fall on a motorcycle. He’d collided with unmarked repair works on a quiet suburban road and broken his neck. The break, he said, had been high, C4 Quad, and that meant lifelong paralysis below the neck. Apart from his face and his neck, most of his body was dead. He couldn’t feel, or do, anything. In the immediate aftermath of the accident, he’d spent untold months in hospital, and there’d been a year or so of trying to come to terms with it all. His marriage had gone and his youth with it, but as he’d finally begun to adjust, there’d been definite compensations.

  The last fifteen years, with the help of a large damages settlement, he’d been able to buy himself a new life. Money was the bottom line. With money, he said, you could do anything. It had bought him nursing care, transport and a driver who knew the right moves. He’d taken a Master’s in journalism and learned a handful of languages, and for the last five years he’d earned a good living specializing in defence affairs. Anything published in the languages he understood could be delivered to the house. It came in by fax or by post. He had a secretary to load the overhead lectern and there was a neat little electronic device for turning the pages. He had a series of mouthsticks for the computer keyboard, and a database that was now the envy of several newspapers. From his bed and his wheelchair, he was as well placed as any journalist to monitor the follies of a fast-disintegrating world. The last year or so, especially, had almost been scripted for him.