by Mick Herron
Zoë hadn’t seen Joe dead, but she’d buried him . . .
‘You should go,’ she said suddenly.
‘You what?’
‘It’s like you said, they’ll be after me. Sure. But they’re not after you. They don’t even know you’re here.’
Zoë nodded. ‘Probably not.’
‘So go. You think, when they find me, they’ll let whoever I’m with disappear? When they find me, they’ll find you too.’
‘But they haven’t done that yet. Sarah. I’m not gunna make a big thing of this. But I can’t just walk away. That would make me bad as them.’
‘Better than being dead as me.’
‘You’re not dead yet, you silly bitch. You’ve done all right so far. Would you walk away and leave Dinah be?’
‘If I’d done that, I’d not be in this mess.’
‘But you didn’t. So shut up. Look.’ She spread the map out in front of them: the wind tugged at its corners, making a paper earthquake of the landscape. ‘No islands.’
‘Maybe we’re on the wrong stretch of coast. Michael –’
‘Michael might have been wrong, sure. But if he was, and we’re somewhere else entirely, then at least nobody will think of looking for us here. And if he was right, then the island’s out there. It’s just not on the map. Okay?’
‘Can I have another cigarette?’
‘Help yourself. So, first thing we do is, find a boat.’
‘A boat?’
‘Unless you were thinking of swimming. Or flying. Whatever. But personally, I think a boat. For crossing water, it’s traditional.’
‘You want to go find it?’
‘Quickest way of finding Dinah. And you can bet that’s where Michael’s headed. He’s already spilled blood on this one, Sarah. I doubt he’s the type to give up.’
‘No. He isn’t.’
‘The harbour’s the other side of the bay. There’s boats, they’re common in harbours. We should be able to hire one.’
‘If the island’s there, if Dinah’s there, it’s because she’s the bait in a trap.’
‘I know. But the trap’s been set for an ex-soldier, not a couple of innocent tourists. I don’t think shoot-to-kill’s an across-the-board policy yet. And you don’t look like Sarah Trafford any more, you know? You look a lot sharper. Someone else entirely.’
‘Thanks.’
‘Hey. You’re still a mess. You want a light for that?’
‘I’m not sure yet.’
‘Well, give it back. They’re not cheap.’ Zoë took it from Sarah’s mouth and put it in her own. ‘You okay?’
‘I think so.’
‘Come on then. Harbour’s that way.’
She packed the map, the gun and the bottle back in her bag, and stood up. This thrilled the gulls, who wheeled into the air again in a noisy pack: their yammering, Sarah thought, could give a girl a headache. But it wasn’t the loudest noise she’d hear in the near future. She stood up too, and followed Zoë back down the path. That red jumper could give you a headache too. You could pick Zoë out of a crowd, no sweat.
VI
The helicopter bucked again on its second pass over the Farm, and Howard nearly lost his lunch. He was certain the pilot was doing this deliberately. At Howard’s feet sat a briefcase (mostly full of electric doodads); round his neck his usual tie – he was an obvious suit, and yahoos like helicopter pilots hated suits. All he could manage in return was a piece of fake nonchalance: ‘I can’t see anybody down there,’ he shouted.
The pilot, who didn’t give a fuck about suits, yelled, ‘They’re not supposed to come out and wave, are they? Nobody’s supposed to know they’re there.’
Which was true, as far as it went, but didn’t mean they weren’t all, in fact, dead.
‘You’d better put me down.’ Howard didn’t want to be put down. Howard wanted to go home, lock his door and start looking for another job, because while he was pretty sure he’d beaten Amos Crane to the Farm, that didn’t alter the reports about a stolen motor boat the local cops had logged that morning . . . He was pretty sure that had to have been Downey. Howard didn’t want to meet him either. But going home and locking his door wasn’t an option. Amos Crane, after all, walked through locked doors, and Howard didn’t want to be on the other side of one after putting Amos to that kind of trouble . . . Fuck. If he hadn’t sent those talent-free bozos to whack Amos, he wouldn’t be here now.
‘There’s something over there.’
‘What?’
‘Something. Can’t make it out. Might just be a rock, the place is made of bloody rocks . . . I’ll put you down close as I can.’
Take me far away instead, thought Howard. But shouted nothing: just clung for the rest of his life to the strap across his chest, while the bucking chopper – that’s why they call them choppers! – dipped dangerously close at an extraordinary angle to the very hard surface of the island: it was indeed made of rock . . . But the machine levelled out for the final few seconds, and touched down more or less evenly, for Howard to more or less fall out.
The pilot made some gestures: his thumb, his watch, the sky. Probably, Howard decided, meaning something about how he was flying away now, but would be back in a certain amount of time . . . Right at that moment, Howard was too glad of the ground beneath his feet to sort out whether this meant an hour, a day, a week: he nodded, waved back, and watched the chopper swing round clumsily like a drunken dragonfly, and lift away into the wild grey yonder. As it droned into the distance, became the size of a pea, Howard felt very alone, very much the deskman, and he reached down and patted his briefcase nervously, as if it were an odd-shaped plastic dog.
It was a while since he’d been on the island. The Department had inherited it years ago; every so often he’d lie awake wondering what would happen if some wide-eyed auditor questioned why the Ministry for Urban Development numbered a deserted Scottish island amongst its acquisitions . . . Some miles away, he had no idea how many, lay another government-owned island, which had been used for testing an anthrax bomb during the war. It still wasn’t safe to visit. At least no actual testing had taken place here, so it was still safe to . . .
Safe to what, his mind refused to supply. Howard had reached the ‘something’ the pilot had seen, and it was a body.
Afterwards, he was quite impressed with his own cool. He had placed his briefcase on the ground, knelt for a closer look. He wasn’t an expert, but this was a pretty muscular specimen. Many of these muscles were largely intact, but the back of the head was smeared with what looked like its recent contents . . . Another thing that impressed Howard afterward was that this didn’t finish the job the helicopter ride had started; all expectations to the contrary, he held on to his lunch.
He straightened up; had hardly realized how low he’d been bending. Violent death. He’d sometimes been tempted to think there was no other kind: that even the gentlest quietus was a wrench. We’re all dragged kicking and screaming from the planet in the long run. Peg out immobile in your own bought bed, and there’s still a spark in your brain death stamps on to put out. However. Looking at this mess, brain tissue smeared on rock, Howard knew he’d been wrong to think like that. Not all deaths were violent. This one proved it, by being just that.
Hey-ho, he thought.
Leaving the body where it lay, Howard set off for the Farm. Stupid name: doesn’t matter. There were no paths to guide him, but he knew it lay nearby; the island, anyway, was too small to get seriously lost on, if not so small you couldn’t die here . . . That doesn’t require a lot of space, a small voice insisted. Anywhere precisely the size of your own body will do, and no one’s been anywhere smaller than that . . .
Yes, all right, thank you, shut up. He nearly said this aloud.
He found the second body just outside the Farm. A man, blond, and still wearing the spectacles he’d needed when he could see. He lay on his back, one arm across his chest, the other outstretched as if he were still reaching for the apple which la
y on the ground just beyond his grasp . . . Or not just beyond his grasp, amended Howard. Absolutely and beyond all comprehension unattainable forevermore. That was the idea, anyway. He wasn’t sure how this one was supposed to have died, and didn’t feel like asking. Presumably went quietly, though; if he’d been armed with just the one apple, it couldn’t have been that pitched a battle.
Hey-ho, he thought again.
The body twitched.
Enough of this. Briefcase in hand, he left and approached the low stone building of the Farm. It had been built into a depression, or else a hollow had been dynamited out of the rock; he could never lay eyes on it without thinking he’d been thrown back into medieval times . . . One thing, though: he did not belong here, and that was the truth. His job was pulling strings. A step up, it occurred to him now, from bringing about a man’s death. Arranging the fix so the man had never lived: that was the ideal. In Howard’s world, that was perfection. But even as the thought was forming, he felt a disturbance in the air around him, and for a brief moment – but long enough for his mind to travel whole continents of fear – he thought it was over; that he had failed some fundamental test, and that Downey – or Crane: nothing’s impossible – was still there, was behind him now, ready to wrap the red ribbon round what was left of his life. Just a brief moment. And then the door in front of him, the door to the Farm, opened, and instead of Downey, or even Crane, there was a woman standing in front of him, an attractive woman with dark curly hair, wearing a big bright jumper, pillar-box red.
‘Jesus!’ she said. ‘Who –’
Howard took a step back.
‘Can you help? Are you a doctor?’
‘I’m not a doctor,’ he said regretfully.
‘Quickly. Down there.’ Zoë pointed back through the open door. ‘She’s hurt. I think she’s dying . . . I think she’s dead.’
Chapter Seven
Cemetery Road
I
Zoë afterwards decided that thinking Howard was a doctor wasn’t such a wild surmise: he was carrying a briefcase, for Christ’s sake; he was wearing a suit. Not conclusive, okay, but these were hardly exam conditions . . .
She also decided, afterwards, that everything had happened too damn fast.
At the harbour they’d found three crewed boats, if a single man counted as a crew: Zoë had unhesitatingly chosen the youngest, a twenty-something in a thick pullover and three-day beard, who looked like he might be malleable given a bit of vamping and a fair amount of cash. His name was Jed, and Jed had never heard of any islands hereabouts, a bit of a dead giveaway as far as Zoë was concerned: tantamount to not noticing he lived next to the sea. But the way he dressed, the way he grinned toothily at their landlubber accents, he really looked like he thought he knew everything. She was betting he probably did.
‘Only we’ve been told there’s a place worth a visit.’
‘I can’t imagine who told ye that.’
‘So you do know it?’
‘It’s likely just a lump of rock.’ He scratched his bristled chin. ‘There’s better places.’
‘I’m sure there are.’
Sarah pulled Zoë away. ‘Is this getting us anywhere? He’s says he’s never heard of it.’
‘He’s lying.’
‘You can tell?’
‘Trust me.’ She turned back to Jed, who was crouched on the deck of his blue boat, coiling a length of rope into a neat pile. ‘Just give me five minutes.’
‘You’re sure it’ll take that long?’ Sarah whispered harshly, sarcastically, but left all the same; walked the jetty to the end, and stood staring out to sea, possibly in the direction of an invisible island.
Zoë said to Jed, ‘You hire out often?’
‘The boat?’
She laughed. ‘Yes. The boat.’
He considered. ‘Well, there’s tourists. Like yourselves. After the fishing.’
‘We’re not after fish.’
‘An’ there’s some like to see the coast at night. Aye. I’ll do tourists.’
‘And there’s others like to see the islands.’
‘Not much in the way of islands, lady. Just lumps of rock.’
‘But you still get visitors. And they pay you well. And they pay you extra to keep quiet.’
He eyed her thoughtfully. It was always possible, she admitted to herself, that she’d made a right bollocks of this. That was something worth considering, so she considered it as she reached into her bag for her cigarettes. She offered Jed one, but he shook his head. He had his own. She was amused, though not side-splittingly so, to see they were much lower tar than hers.
‘An’ if that were true,’ he said at last, when they were both puffing away, ‘an’ I was paid to keep quiet, I mean.’
‘Yes?’
‘Well, I’d be daft to open my gob. Wouldn’t I?’
She’d been here before. They were past dancing. She blew a big happy cloud of smoke. ‘Well, that’d depend,’ she told him.
‘Oh aye?’
‘On how much you were offered to change your mind.’
He nodded deeply, as if he’d rarely come across a point so well put. Twenty-something going on fifty, Zoë amended. Whatever game they’d just embarked on, he was an expert. This was going to cost.
By the time Sarah rejoined them they were each on their second cigarette, sealing a deal notable mostly for Jed’s refusal to budge from the first sum mentioned: two hundred pounds, significantly more than Zoë carried with her. Possibly more than her bank carried on her behalf. There was going to have to be serious conversation with Sarah before too long. On the other hand, if she did nothing now, Sarah might not be alive before too long. One of those situations it was difficult to put a price on, so probably two hundred wasn’t excessive.
‘Did you remember an island, then?’ Sarah asked, a shade hostile.
‘I’ll be forgettin’ me own name next,’ said Jed.
‘He’ll be posing for bloody postcards next, more like,’ Sarah told Zoë, who was writing a cheque and ignored her.
‘I’m trusting that won’t bounce,’ Jed said.
‘And we’re trusting that won’t sink,’ Zoë said. ‘So we’re even.’
Jed patted the rail of his boat with affection. ‘I’ve sailed this lady through high waters,’ he said. ‘It’ll get you through a millpond like today.’
Millpond, Zoë was thinking ten minutes later. The Cruel Sea, more like. She could feel her stomach shifting location in counterpoint to the rolling of the waters all around. She was a city girl, a fact which was patently clear: that’s why Jed thought he could get away with pretending this wasn’t a typhoon they were in. But he couldn’t fool Zoë’s stomach. Currently it was hanging on to the railway sandwiches she’d eaten last night, but it was a matter of minutes, that was all, or a matter of moments. The Sea Shall Not Have Them. Bugger that. The sea would get what was coming.
Sarah seemed okay, or at least wasn’t hanging over the edge heaving her guts up. It was hard to get a handle on her, Zoë thought. Joe had liked her, that was for sure. But then, Joe had liked most everybody. It was the single most irritating thing about him.
A sudden dip in the air all around her as the boat fell into a trough. Fuck! But she recovered, at least temporarily. She put her knuckles to her forehead and rubbed, very hard. They came away wet. Seaspray, obviously, but also sweat: she was losing buckets here. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d felt this bad without being drunk. The joke said first you were frightened you’d die, then you were frightened you wouldn’t. Except it wasn’t a joke, feeling this ill. It was very fucking serious indeed.
She tried to dip into her mind for a good memory, something to chase this away. But all her memories were of Joe, for some reason, and though they weren’t all bad, they all ended badly. Joe had ended badly. Nothing she tried to remember, or failed to forget, could change that fact. Joe had ended, his throat cut by a stranger, and if you skipped all the details, that was the reason she was on this b
oat now . . .
Forget about the boat, Zoë.
So she remembered instead, years ago, watching a TV pro-gramme with him: it was about bloodhounds, for Christ’s sake, which was probably the reason they were watching it. ‘That’s me,’ he’d said. It had never mattered how she’d treated Joe, how she’d responded to his dumb enthusiasms or his injured pride, he never failed to open up for her, to give her all the ammunition she could want. ‘That’s me. The archetypal bloodhound. Once I’m on the trail, I never stop.’ Well, sure, Joe. She couldn’t recall how she’d replied, but she remembered well what she’d been thinking. Sure you are, just like a bloodhound: creased and baggy and slinging drool all over the place . . . He was an emotional dribbler, Joe; he slobbered over people. He’d fall in love with total strangers and tell them his life story; worse, he’d want to hear theirs. It had driven Zoë mad and it had driven her away, but here she was years after the bloodhound show trying to follow this trail to its end, because Joe had started off on it, and never got to finish.
It was a long time since she’d imagined they’d actually grow old together. But remembering him now, remembering he’d never grow old at all, she wanted to cry, or shout, or hurt someone. Larkin, she thought. He’d always been fond of Philip Larkin. Give me your arm, old toad; Help me down Cemetery Road . . . He’d been helped down Cemetery Road, all right, but it hadn’t been time for him to go, and he hadn’t expected such help. Maybe the man who did that was dead, like Sarah said, but that didn’t mean there weren’t debts outstanding.
Jesus Christ. Bloody Joe.
There was a sudden upsurge, and an equally sudden upchuck. Before she knew it, her grief was coming up into view like so much lunch: she was spewing it on the waters, though that wasn’t the end of it, everything cast on the waters came back . . . Seasick. And getting so fucking delirious she’d be spouting poetry herself next.
