by Jack Harvey
Funny thing was, next time he was in Singapore and went back to the brothel, one of the girls complained that his friend had given her herpes. So Bolter or Boulter had left something behind. Everybody did.
Jay liked the life he had now, a life he’d carved out for himself-sometimes literally-in America. It hadn’t been easy. In fact, it had been fucking hard-especially those first weeks in South America. On the run, a one-man slaughterhouse. He’d killed three Argentine soldiers that first night, one for each man who’d died on the glacier, but it hadn’t been enough to erase the memory of that doomed mission. Jay had seen something on that glacier, his eyes peering into the whiteout. He’d seen the bland white face of Death. It was an absence, an uncaring void, and the more chilling for that, the more hypnotic. He’d stared at it for a long time, not bothering with goggles. When they’d lifted him onto the helicopter, he’d been snow-blind. But when the blindness receded, there was a clearer vision in its place, a knowledge of helplessness and the will to power. It had taken him all the way through Tierra del Fuego and into Chile.
He’d killed one poor bastard because he needed civvy clothes, and another for his motorcycle, which duly packed up after thirty miles, forcing him to walk for a while. Big fucking country Chile -north to south anyway. He’d stuck to the west coast, killing some bearded Australian backpacker for his passport. Jesus, backpacking in fucking Chile: that was asking for trouble.
He’d crossed into Peru, smiling for the border guards like the man in the picture in the passport, rubbing his chin and laughing, to show he’d shaved a lot of his beard off since the photo had been taken. They stayed somber throughout but let him go. The backpacker’s body would never be found, not while it had skin on it, though one day the skeleton might be found. He bypassed Ecuador and went into Colombia. People in Peru had told him not to do it, but he didn’t see why not-and it was lucky he didn’t heed their warnings, because Colombia turned out to be a great place, and the site of his first civilian job. He’d met up with some hard cases in Cali and ran a few errands for them. He got to know the kingpin, Edouard, and Edouard told him there was always work for those willing to undertake personal risk.
“I’ve taken more risks than you’ll ever know,” Jay had said, though in fact he’d already told Edouard most of the Rio Grande story, exaggerating somewhat and turning Reeve into an early corpse.
Eventually, Edouard had given Jay a job which involved liaison with some Americans. The Americans took him with them to Venezuela and from there to Jamaica, where he decided to stay awhile and was duly passed to yet another new employer. He was learning fast what his employers wanted, and how to know if a proffered fee was a rip-off or not. He stayed in Jamaica more than a year and saved enough to buy an American identity. Later on, homesick, he bought himself a new British passport, too, and now he had a Canadian one as well-all in different names of course, none of them his own.
When the Jamaican police started asking questions about a headless, handless corpse that had been dragged out of a trash dump on the edge of Kingston, Jay left the island, not without regrets, and headed to the USA, feeling immediately at home in Miami. Jesus, what a madhouse. It was in Miami that he found himself talking like an American, even though most people he spoke to still mistook him for an Australian. Jay set up his stall in Miami, but found work hard to come by. It was all organized, mostly along clan lines: he wasn’t Cuban, so the Cubans didn’t want him; he wasn’t Puerto Rican, so the PRs wouldn’t take him. They had their own firepower, and if they needed freelancers, there were a hundred kids on the street, each one with something to prove and nothing to lose.
Jay got in touch with Edouard, who put him in touch with an old friend. Edouard had been good to Jay, and Jay had liked him. There was an affinity between them, two men who only ever liked to be called by a single name. The only hit Jay had ever turned down had been on Edouard.
Edouard’s old friend brought Jay to L.A. The man’s name was Fessler, and Jay had worked for Mr. Fessler-that was what you had to call him, Mr. Fessler; Jay sometimes thought even Fessler’s wife called him that-for three years before setting up on his own. He liked the regular income, but itched to be his own boss. It was tough at first, but got easier after the first couple of jobs. In fact, the money got so good, Jay developed a nose-talc habit which he broke only with the aid of a lot of booze. A lot of booze. The booze had put some weight on him which no amount of workouts seemed able to shift, but he thought he carried it well enough, and in a baggy suit no one noticed, right?
La-La Land, that was what Jay called Los Angeles. He’d come across it in a book about snuff movies. The appellation stuck in his mind, and he pretended he’d made it up, even to people who knew he hadn’t.
He liked La-La Land. He liked being his own boss. Above all, he liked working for big companies. Big companies paid well and let you get on with it. They didn’t want to know the details, the procedures-they just wanted the job done. And they paid on the nail. No fuss, no mess, minimum paperwork. Jay’s cover was as a “corporate restructuring adviser,” and he’d even read books on the subject. Well, articles anyway. He bought the Wall Street Journal sometimes, too, and he was an avid reader of some bits of Time. He had letterheaded paper and knew a guy who could type up an expense sheet or an account if the employer really wanted one. These pieces of paper were art forms, full of terms like “workstation projection analyses” and “capital fluidity advisement,” stuff Jay didn’t understand, but the guy who did the typing swore they meant something.
Kosigin wasn’t like anyone Jay had ever worked for. For a start, he wanted to know everything-every detail. And he would make Jay tell the story several times over. Jay was never sure if Kosigin was looking for him to make a mistake in the retelling, or if the guy just got off on the stuff Jay told him. Certainly, no matter how exaggeratedly gruesome Jay made the details, Kosigin never winced, never showed any emotion. He’d just stand there at his office window, or sit at his desk with his hands together as if in prayer, the tips of his fingers just touching his chin. The fucker was creepy, no doubt about that. No doubt at all.
But Jay reckoned he could learn a few things about deportment from Mr. Kosigin. He liked Kosigin’s style. Kosigin was Brooks Brothers for work and L.L. Bean for casual moments, as buttoned-down as an oxford shirt. He would never feel right in Armani, even if it was original. He was aloof, but that just made him seem stronger. Jay liked to visit him in his office. He liked to study him.
It was like a message, when Kosigin gave him the job which led to Reeve being delivered unto him. It was like a dream. Jay could have taken Reeve out a dozen times since, any number of different ways, but he wanted a face-to-face. He wanted to know what had happened to Reeve, and what he’d told the brass. Just for his own personal satisfaction.
Then he’d kill him.
And if Reeve wouldn’t tell, or made any rash first move… well, Jay would drop him without a second’s hesitation.
“Where’s this fucking bulletin board?” he murmured, walking through the packed concourse. It was like a demolition derby of luggage carts and parties of elderly couples, all with walkers and umbrellas and bags of golf clubs and raincoats folded over pencil-thin liver-spotted arms. Umbrellas in La-La Land! It was a madhouse, and the lunatics had been in charge so long that nobody bothered to question the system anymore.
“I love this town,” he said out loud, maneuvering past the latest obstruction. He finally saw the information kiosk, though it was doing its best to blend in with the scenery. He passed a couple of his guys without acknowledging their presence, but when he got to the board, he stopped and turned on his heels, checking all around, studying the scene through the plate-glass window-a jam of cabs and minibuses and a frantic cop windmilling his arms at them. The cop had a whistle in his mouth, referee-style. Jay remembered that moment in the scrape, when he knew he had to jump and fight or he’d implode, he’d been lying there so long and so quiet. He knew that in technical parlance, he h
ad “cracked”-but fuck that. Reeve was so tight-arsed he’d have lain there and let a bomb detonate between his cheeks. If Jay hadn’t got up and run, very probably neither of them would still be alive. That was something else he wanted to tell Reeve; he wanted Reeve to thank him for getting him out of that situation. He reckoned he was owed a little respect.
He looked around him again, and up towards the ceiling, and nothing he saw looked like a trap.
So then he studied the bulletin board, both sides, and he smiled at the clerk at the information desk, just in case he had something to do with it. Then he turned his attention to the notices again, especially the folded paper napkin with the name JAY written on it. He touched it with a finger, ran the palm of his hand down it, feeling for a bump, maybe some tiny explosive device which would take off a couple of fingers or blind him in one eye. That sort of magnitude.
But there was nothing. He lifted one corner of the napkin, but the layers started to peel, and he had to take off another layer before he could make out that there was writing there. So then he licked his lips and hauled the napkin off the board in a single swift movement, so that the clerk looked at him quizzically. “All clear here,” Jay said, as if to himself. Then he unfolded the note, the note telling him to fly to London. It gave the name of a hotel, and said a message would arrive there for him in the name of Rowe.
Rowe: that was a nice touch.
One of his hired hands came up, removing his earpiece as he approached. “So?”
“So nothing, just a fucking note.”
They’d been all wound up. They’d been told of Reeve’s rep. Jay had wanted them ready for anything. They were going to go away frustrated, pent-up, needing to unwind.
“Everyone to the cars,” Jay said. “We’ll go back to the gym, maybe hit a bar later. I just got to make a call first.”
He went to the public pay phones and called Kosigin.
“Well?” Kosigin demanded.
Jay read the note out to him. “What do you want me to do?” he asked when he’d finished.
“Personally,” Kosigin said, “I want you to follow the instructions.”
“And what if I’m walking into a trap?”
“I thought you were clever enough to avoid traps?”
“I am, but I also don’t believe in walking into them in the first place.”
“Then what do you suggest?”
“I’ll go, but I want to take some men with me. It won’t be cheap.”
“It never is.”
“You want to come along for the ride?”
“Absolutely not.”
“You still want me to go?”
“Absolutely,” Kosigin said before hanging up.
Their conversation had gone exactly as Jay had known it would.
He looked around him for a sales desk, then walked over to the information kiosk.
“Which carriers fly to London?” he asked. He might have to try more than one. Could be difficult to make a block booking at such short notice…
PART NINE. BLOOD HUNT
TWENTY-THREE
THERE WERE POLICE ON DUTY at Heathrow, a lot of uniforms. Reeve would bet there were some plainclothes detectives around, too. Maybe they were looking for him. At this point, he could only trust to luck. Everyone deserved one lucky break per mission. They might have a description of him, but it would be pre-haircut. They couldn’t have a recent photograph; ever since his days in the SAS, Reeve had been camera-shy. The weekend soldiers sometimes wanted photographs, and he didn’t refuse. But before posing for their cameras, he would don a balaclava and dark glasses. The weekend soldiers loved it.
Reeve had a lot of planning to do. He wasn’t too happy about returning to Jim’s Saab, which he had parked in a long-term parking lot only a courtesy bus ride away from the Heathrow terminals. He didn’t know how clever the police would be; he didn’t think they would trace him as far as the Saab, but he couldn’t be sure. To add to this, the car was a liability, and might break down at any minute. But he had very little alternative. He didn’t want to rent a new car. That would mean handing over his credit card, and he guessed the police would be tracking its use. (They probably didn’t know about his secret bank account, and even if they did they might not want to freeze it: if he accessed cash or wrote a check they’d have another way of tracking his movements.)
The people at the parking lot, on the other hand, knew only the false name he’d given them. He’d paid cash up front-so probably there wouldn’t be a problem. But Reeve didn’t enter the single-story office straightaway. First he took a look around the lot. He could see the Saab. It wasn’t hard for him to spot among the shiny new Jags and BMWs and Rovers. The company had hemmed it in behind more expensive cars, reckoning them a better ad to potential customers. Reeve didn’t blame them-he was actually relieved the Saab had been hidden from view during his time away.
He walked into the office.
“Had a good trip?” the girl behind the desk asked.
“Yes, thanks,” he said. There was complimentary coffee on a table nearby, and he helped himself to a cup. There was powdered milk only, so he took it black. It was bitter, but it woke him up a bit.
“Now, Mr. Fleming, you didn’t specify a return date, so we’ve not been able to valet your car.”
“No problem. The dirt is the only thing holding it together.”
She smiled and filled in the rest of the form, which he had to sign at the bottom. He couldn’t recall what first name he’d given, but saw it printed at the head of the sheet. Jay. He’d called himself Jay Fleming.
“And here are your keys,” the receptionist said, handing them over.
“I think you’ll need to move a few of the other cars.”
“Oh, you’re blocked in. I’ll get Tom to see to it.”
Tom was outside, drinking tea from a flask. He wore overalls, a slicker, and Wellingtons, and was without doubt the valet. Reeve watched as he started up and moved a gleaming red BMW 635 and a silver Rover 200. He thanked him and trundled the Saab out of the parking lot and into the lanes of traffic. It was the start of what was going to be a long twenty-four hours.
He headed north, stopping only for gas and coffee and to read all the newspapers. He cursed the Saab’s lack of a radio-he needed to know whether the police had connected him to the Marie Villambard killing. McCluskey had mentioned Interpol interest, but that could have been a bluff. But when he stopped near the border and bought some Scottish newspapers, he caught his first mention of the story, relegated to an inside page. Police, it said, were “anxious to contact Scots climbing instructor Gordon Reeve.” There was no description, but they could have published one in a previous day’s edition. He stopped at a Little Chef to replenish his caffeine level, and telephoned Joan’s sister. Joan herself answered the phone.
“Joan, it’s Bob Plant here, any sign of Gordon?”
She recognized his voice immediately. There was a slight pause as she came to understand what was going on. (She’d had a crush on Robert Plant of Led Zeppelin at one time.) “Bob,” she said, “sorry, I’m not thinking straight.”
“Are you all right, Joan?”
“I’m fine. It’s just been a shock, with the police and everything.”
“They’ve been asking you questions?” He sounded like a solicitous friend.
“Well, they just want to know where Gordon is. You know they found his car in France, near where three bodies were found, one of them a woman’s.”
“Gracious.”
“They’re keeping watch on the house here, just in case he shows up.”
“They think he had something to do with the murders?”
“Well, Bob, what would you think if you were them? Gordon’s Land Rover burned out and no trace of him anywhere.”
“I suppose you’re right.”
“Bob, I’m worried about him.”
“Gordon can take care of himself, Joan.”
“Yes, I know, but-”
“Might
he go back to the island?”
“I don’t know. There are police watching the ferries.”
“A real manhunt, eh?”
“They may even be watching the house.”
“Ach, unlikely he’d head back there.”
“Yes, I suppose so. But where else would he be? Where could he go?”
“You know him better than I do, Joan.”
“Well, I thought I knew him, Bob.”
Silence on the line.
“Joan,” Reeve said, looking in at the diners-families mostly, “he’ll be all right. I’m sure he’s done nothing wrong.”
“Try telling the police that.”
“Maybe he needs evidence first, I mean before he can come back.”
“Evidence?”
“Of his innocence.”
Joan sniffed. He could tell she was crying.
“I’ll phone again,” he told her.
“I’m sorry,” she said, wiping her nose.
“Maybe I shouldn’t have called.”
“No, I’m glad you did. It’s been a while, Bob.”
“Yes, it has. Is Allan all right?”
“Missing his dad. But at the same time-I know this is wrong-he seems to quite like the idea of having a father who’s a wanted man.” She laughed.
Reeve smiled, and blinked back tears. At one table, a father was admonishing his son, who still had a full plate of food in front of him. The kid was nine, maybe ten. The man spoke in a low voice, but his eyes were blazing.
“Bye, Joan,” he said.
“Good-bye, Bob.”
He kept the receiver to his ear after she’d put down the phone, and heard a double click and what sounded like a stifled sneeze. The bastards were listening in, just as he’d suspected. Not Jay or Kosigin this time, but the police. He ran through the conversation again, satisfied he hadn’t given anything away. And he’d learned so much.
