Past Echoes

by Graham Smith

  Sharon has a good heart and I know she’ll understand. Mother, on the other hand, will use it as a stick to beat me. Mother is a narcissist who’s never encountered a topic she couldn’t make about herself. I know she’ll rant about how I’m being insensitive and inconsiderate – for a few hours – before she concedes that I’m doing the right thing.

  Alfonse pushes his keyboard forward and gets to his feet. ‘How’d you get on?’

  I shake my head.

  ‘I’m sorry, man.’ He nods. I know he’ll leave my feelings alone unless I tell him how the news has affected me. ‘How did John take it?’

  ‘Like he didn’t expect good news. There is another option though.’

  Alfonse studies me and wipes an imaginary crumb from his polo shirt. ‘Your father?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  There’s not a lot else to say. Alfonse is the one person in the world, other than Sharon, who I’ve shared my real feelings about my father with.

  ‘I thought it might come to this if you weren’t a match.’ He looks me in the eye and holds my gaze. ‘Whatever you need, buddy, I’m here.’

  I don’t need to thank him any more than he needs to hear the words. He and I are tight. We’ve had each other’s backs since the days when a bookish nerd helped a lazy Scot pass exams, and a lazy Scot stopped a bookish nerd getting his ass kicked.

  ‘Let’s recap the case first, then we can discuss what needs to be done to find Father.’

  ‘Fair enough.’ Alfonse lifts a sheet of paper from his printer and hands it to me.

  He knows I absorb things better if I read, rather than hear, them.

  His report is as brief and blunt as ever.

  Alfonse has checked the usual sources and come up blank. For the last five years, Halvard Weil has been living at no fixed abode. His last address is a few hundred yards from the one Ms Rosenberg gave us.

  His social security number showed him as being employed by a small pawn shop in Brooklyn, but when Alfonse called them, they said he’d quit some years ago.

  It’s possible he’s slipped through the cracks in the system, but not probable. I don’t know what to make of it, and judging by his defeated expression neither does Alfonse.

  All along we’ve thought it would be a simple case of tracking down Halvard, and either calling him or sending him a letter to request that he contacts Pauline. Now that he can’t be easily found, we’ll have to take other measures. The first of which, will be a visit to the pawn shop.

  It will be me who’ll travel to New York. Alfonse’s skills are with a computer, whereas I’m better at questioning people and getting information from them.

  ‘What about the clues Ms Rosenberg left us? Where have you got with them?’

  ‘Nowhere. I looked at them all ways, and have as much idea now as I did when I started.’

  I’m not considering the clues she’s left us as a priority, and I’m only asking as I know that Alfonse will have tried to crack them.

  When I think about them a little more, I realise they maybe should be higher up our list of priorities. Alfonse and I agreed that the safety deposit box key she’d left in envelope 2, was most likely for a box held in a New York bank. The clues would tell us which bank.

  If I am going to New York to track Halvard, it would make sense to locate the bank, and claim the box’s contents, when I am in town.

  ‘I’ll take a look at them. See if I get anywhere.’

  ‘Cool. I’ll get you booked on a flight to New York tomorrow morning.’

  ‘Don’t book it just yet.’ I swallow before continuing. ‘Taylor’s going to a wedding in New York in a couple of days. I wasn’t going to go, but if I’m going to be in New York …’

  He chuckles at my discomfort. Taylor is my girlfriend, and all the signs are there that she’s going to be around longer than the usual three months my relationships last. For the first time in my life I’ve done the whole meet-the-parents thing. Both ways.

  Within ten minutes of meeting Taylor, Mother had produced my baby pictures and started discussing possible names for the grandchildren she wanted Taylor and me to supply her with.

  My cheeks had burned for the whole evening, and I only managed to refrain from drinking myself into a stupor by focussing on the fact that I should never share the same space as hard liquor.

  Always a step ahead, Alfonse hands me a notepad, pen, and the phone from his desk. Letting Taylor know I can join her in New York will be easy; asking Grandad about Father, not so much.

  9

  It’s good to hear Grandad’s voice. He’s the one who taught me how to look after myself. Not in a metaphorical way, more physically.

  Before Mother, Sharon and I left Glasgow, when Neill’s new job relocated him to Casperton, Grandad took me into the back garden and spent an afternoon teaching me the fighting skills he’d learned in the Clyde shipyards.

  None of the methods he showed me could be considered fair, moral or anything other than dirty, but he taught me that fair fighters are rarely victorious fighters.

  I explain to him about John and hear his breath catch. It catches again when I tell him that neither Sharon nor I are matches.

  ‘That’s not a good thing to hear, son.’

  Despite all the miles between us, I can picture him sitting in his chair with his back ramrod straight and his eyes fixed on a point in the distance. It’s how he reacts to bad news. Grandad isn’t a man who shows his emotions. Like all Glasgow’s sons, he frowns upon lavish praise. If Grandad tells you that you look “no’ too bad”, or that you “didnae dae ower bad efter a’”, you’re getting his equivalent of a ticker tape parade.

  The counterbalance to this is a conversation I once overheard him having with a neighbour. He was praising Sharon and me to the rooftops, with one endorsement after another. While he’d never give compliments to your face, he was your biggest champion when you weren’t there to hear the pride in his voice.

  ‘I can only think of one other person who might be a match.’

  The line is silent for so long I think he’s hung up on me. ‘Yer faither?’

  ‘Aye.’ As always, when speaking to Grandad or Granny, I’ve slipped into Scottish terms and slang. ‘Or possibly his other children, if he has more I don’t know about.’

  ‘Naw. There’s jist the four of you.’ I can hear his breath rasp down the phone as he composes his next sentence. ‘I expect you’ll be wanting to ken where he is?’

  ‘Aye.’

  One word seems to be all I can manage. This is a conversation I’d promised myself I’d never have. Yet here I am, having it.

  The fight with the compass points last night was a doddle compared with this. Physical pain is something I can handle and am used to. Emotional hurt is something else altogether.

  What’s making it worse is that I know it’s not just me who’s suffering. Grandad will be too. He never liked the way my father had walked out on us, and would have liked it even less when he did it to John and Sarah’s mother.

  My call will bring it all to the surface. Worse than that is the news I’ve given him about John. People don’t expect to outlive their children, let alone their grandchildren. It’s the natural order of things, and here I am upsetting the balance of his life.

  I hear a hearty sniff and remember Grandad’s misshapen nose. What makes my heart ache is that there’s no trace of a cold in Grandad’s voice.

  ‘I’m sorry, son. I dinnae ken where he is. He calls when it’s oor birthdays and at Christmas, but he never gies me a number I can call him on.’

  ‘Thanks. I’ll be honest, Grandad, I expected as much. Did he say where he is living?’

  ‘I asked him last Christmas. He said he was in the States and wouldnae be more specific.’

  ‘I’m sorry I can’t remember, but when are your birthdays?’

  ‘They’re past for this year, son. Next call will be Christmas.’

  Christmas is three months away. Three months is a long time when you’re dying
from blood cancer. John can’t wait three months for someone who may only be a possible donor.

  ‘What dates are your birthdays, Grandad?’ He tells me and I write them down. The more information I can give Alfonse, the better he’ll know where to start looking. ‘Can I speak to Granny?’

  ‘Of course you can, son. Jist dinnae say oot aboot your brother. There’s nae point worrying her aboot things she cannae dae onything aboot.’

  I spend a pleasant few minutes letting Granny tell me all about what’s happening in her neighbours’ lives, and promise to call her more often.

  We both know the promise is made with the best of intentions and the worst of odds.

  It’s not that I don’t enjoy speaking to them, it’s that every time I plan to call them something gets in the way, and by the time I clear the obstruction another week or month has passed.

  10

  I stretch my legs as much as the seat in front allows and focus on the sheet of paper in my hand for what seems like the thousandth time.

  No matter which way I look at it, I can’t make sense of Ms Rosenberg’s clues. The names and numbers do not speak to me in any way.

  Alfonse has managed to book me on the same flight as Taylor, but we aren’t sitting together, and all the seats around us are occupied by families so we are unable to swap.

  It’s not too much of a bad thing. I need to solve Ms Rosenberg’s puzzle and Taylor has the ability to distract me with nothing more than a flick of her hair.

  I’ve thought long and hard about Ms Rosenberg’s chosen pseudonym and the way she hid behind it. I now know she was scared that she might be tracked down by whoever forced her out of New York, but another thought about her pseudonym has stayed with me.

  It’s the surname Noone. When someone tries to hide, they become faceless and blend in. They choose a place where nobody knows them, and they do their best not to draw attention to themselves. They don’t fulfil their potential, nor do they strive to become famous. Rather, they try to be no one. Or, in Ms Rosenberg’s case, Noone.

  While Ms Rosenberg was well known in Casperton, nobody living fifty or more miles away would be aware of her. Rather than pursue any dreams of journalistic stardom and Pulitzer prizes, she’d hidden herself away in a backwater town and settled for being a mid-sized fish in a small pond.

  I’m sure the choice of pseudonym has something to do with a professional writer’s love of words. Maybe it was her extending a middle finger to those who’d driven her out of New York. She was still successful, she’d just been unable to publicly accept the acclaim that came her way.

  The other thing that’s distracting me is the conversation I’d had with Mother. She’d pursed her lips, scowled, and proceeded to insult my intelligence when I’d told her that I was going to find Father. When she’d finally stopped railing on me, I’d asked her if she thought I was doing it for any reason beyond a desperate attempt to save John’s life.

  She hadn’t known how to answer, and had sat staring at me, making no effort to hide the tears in her eyes.

  I’d tried to reassure her that, once Father had agreed to help John, I would leave them to it and have no further contact with him. She’d shaken her head with a vehemence I had never seen before, and told me that if my father wanted to reconnect with me, he’d find a way of persuading me to do it.

  In the end, it had been Neill who’d settled Mother, and got her to see what I was doing was for John’s benefit, rather than my own.

  Mother had insulted me a little more before telling me she couldn’t add to what I already knew.

  I had relayed her answers to Alfonse who, with his typical grace, had told me to worry about tracking down Halvard Weil and to leave finding Father to him.

  Now I’m sitting on a plane with time to think, I wonder about the searches he’ll run. Alfonse is a master hacker who can penetrate anything he wants. He’s got my father’s full name and date of birth. From those he’ll be able to look in all the government databases, such as social security, immigration, and police files. If Father has been picked up for anything he’s done in the USA, Alfonse will be able to find out.

  The sheet of paper in my hand mocks me with its silent tease. Each word or number is mute against my thought processes.

  Alfonse has tried using the numbers as map references, but there should be six numbers for each reference. Having ten, meant the references were five by five. Regardless of the numbers, without knowing which map to use, the numbers were useless.

  I turn over my sheet of paper and try something else.

  Watson – 1

  Marshall – 7

  Evans – 7

  Devereaux – 3

  Clapperton – 6

  Devereaux – 7

  Boulder – 6

  Devereaux – 2

  Boulder – 2

  Clapperton – 4

  * * *

  Assigning each name with a number from the sequence, I take the corresponding letters and write down what they spell – the first letter of Watson, the seventh letter of Marshall, and so on, until I get to Evans – not enough letters in the name Evans – W L ? V E A E E O P.

  I spend a while trying to rearrange the letters into a word, but I can’t form one that makes sense to me.

  My heart isn’t really in it as I’m not sure I’m on the right track – Evans contains five letters and its corresponding number is seven.

  I try reversing the order of the numbers against the names: C R A U E R E V A S are the letters offered up to me, and as there are ten of them, I’m more confident they will tell me the location of the safety deposit box.

  A flight attendant brings the trolley up the aisle. There’s no grace to her movements and she’s using the trolley as a battering ram against the elbows and feet, which overhang the narrow seats, protruding into the aisle.

  I raise a hand to halt her stampede, and buy a few pieces of over-priced fruit rather than subject myself to the airline’s sorry attempt at a meal.

  While I usually enjoy puzzles, to keep my brain active, I can feel my frustration growing at my failure to assemble the random letters into words or names I recognise.

  The crying toddler two rows in front doesn’t help my mood; neither does the gangly teen surfer-type behind me who keeps bumping the back of my seat.

  There’s nothing I can do about the crying toddler, so I rise from my seat, turn to the teen behind me and lean in close to his ear. When I speak, my Scots accent is thickened to a growl. ‘The next time you bump my seat I may well give in to my growing desire to shorten your nose. Do you understand me?’

  He nods.

  I pat his ridiculous hairstyle and tell him he’s a clever boy.

  By the time I reach the toilets I’m starting to feel the first prickles of guilt for acting like a bully. They disappear when I consider the fact that the teen is old enough to know better than to be an inconsiderate nuisance to other travellers.

  My mood lifts further when I see Taylor walking towards me with a salacious twinkle in her eye.

  11

  A solitary phone call is all it takes for Cameron to break down the barrier between a possible opportunity and a life changing decision.

  The call is made from a public booth at the other side of town. It could have been made from his home phone or his cell, but that would have left a trail. When you’re running off with seven figures of someone else’s money, not leaving a trail is a good idea.

  With a new identity being prepared for him, he is one step closer to having his escape route in place.

  Next on his to-do list is opening a new bank account. The money he plans to appropriate – he doesn’t think of himself as a thief, therefore he won’t be stealing the money – needs a new home. A home that can’t be traced.

  Swiss bank accounts, and those in offshore banks, are very good at refusing the authorities information on their customers. Where they have problems, is in the protection of their employees and their employees’ families. The people
he’s appropriating the money from won’t hesitate to threaten a bank manager’s family to get the information they need.

  This means he needs to be clever with where the money will end up. There’s no point exchanging it for cash or gold. There would be too much to move around without a van.

  Cameron has an idea though. It’s a good one that he knows just how to execute. His employer has shown him a different world and he intends to utilise his knowledge of it to enact his plan.

  The best part is, he’s known to the people who’ll facilitate his deception. He has traded with them on his employer’s behalf in the past and all the correct protocols have already been established. All he needs to do is lie convincingly and all will go well for him.

  It won’t be easy, but earning millions of dollars in a day was never likely to be. His plan to make the money untraceable is a simple one that needs no real brilliance.

  All it needs is a fair amount of organisation, the establishing of some credentials, and a few forged documents.

  These will all be established before he goes to the bar on the corner, for his usual steak dinner washed down with beers and a few whisky chasers.

  Once that part is in place, there will be no way that either he or the money can be traced. He’s even prepared to write off a few hundred thousand as expenses if necessary.

  12

  The pawnbroker’s shop is nothing like my expectations. In my head I had a vision of an over-filled room, crammed floor to ceiling with random objects in a style that was haphazard and precarious. I’d imagined the sign above the door to be faded and that the proprietor would be a bespectacled man with grey hair and a shabby cardigan.

  What I encounter instead is a slick, modern building with glass cabinets, ample lighting and a collection of styled youths behind the counter. There’s music playing through a hidden speaker and, while I don’t recognise the tune, I know it’s not a song that’s likely to achieve classic status before another decade has passed.