by Ian Rankin
Dreyfuss was impressed by the performance. Parfit had assumed the brisk but awkward walk of the busy businessman, and even his face seemed to have grown new worry lines, his eyes proclaiming a head filled with spreadsheets and data analysis. There was no doubt about it: at the law firm, Parfit was the one who looked after the accounts. More, he made sure everybody paid.
Dreyfuss was no actor, however. He watched the other travellers intently, seeking out the potential assassin or arresting officer. There were video cameras trained on every angle of the building’s interior. Somewhere in the security room, someone would be watching him. He prayed they wouldn’t recognise him. His photograph had been in all the newspapers, hadn’t it? They were sure to spot him.
They had joined the queue at their chosen airline’s London check-in desk. The people in front of them looked innocent enough: businessmen mostly, one elderly couple, two young men travelling together. The young men had short hair and wore checked shirts and denims. They didn’t have much luggage, either. But it was the haircuts that worried Dreyfuss. They looked like regulation down-to-the-wood cuts, the kind only an armed forces barber could perfect. Dreyfuss knew; he’d been there.
When the crew cuts got to the front of the queue, he tried to listen in on their conversation with the smiling clerk. It all seemed normal. Small talk. They wanted smoking seats, and there seemed to be a problem about this. At last, their seat numbers having been allocated, they headed off in the direction of the departures lounge, watched by Dreyfuss.
‘Stephen?’
It took a moment for him to realise that Parfit was speaking – speaking to him. He was Stephen Jackson. But who was Parfit again? James Pardoe? Farlow? Yes, Farlow: James Farlow.
‘What is it, James?’ he said. He was perspiring now, and could hear his heart thumping through his inner ear. Parfit smiled at him, his eyes warning him not to panic.
‘You need to put your suitcase in here.’ He pointed to a gap in the desk where a set of rollers waited to send their suitcases hurtling down towards the baggage loading area. Dreyfuss nodded embarrassedly and handed over his case. ‘There aren’t any window seats left,’ Parfit said. ‘Is that okay?’
‘I don’t mind where I sit,’ Dreyfuss blurted. The clerk was staring at him now. Dreyfuss attempted a grin, which seemed to frighten her further.
‘Fear of flying,’ Parfit explained to her, accepting the two boarding cards. ‘He’ll be fine once we’re up.’
They walked towards the departures lounge, Dreyfuss on legs made of drinking straws filled with putty, Parfit looking a little less confident than before.
‘Hang on in there,’ he hissed.
‘I’m trying,’ Dreyfuss said. He was breathing deeply, trying to calm himself. Not much longer, he was thinking. Then I’ll be home. Home and dry. ‘What about the agents you said would be here to cover us? I haven’t seen them.’
‘They wouldn’t be doing their job if you could recognise them. Don’t worry, they were back there near the desk.’
‘But we’re on our own now, aren’t we?’ Dreyfuss whispered noisily.
‘We can manage.’
Their tickets and boarding cards were checked again, and their briefcases put onto a conveyer belt that transported them through an X-ray machine. A man in a suit, a large plastic ID badge clipped to his breast pocket, gestured for them to walk through the metal-detecting gateway, after which he ran a hand-held, more sensitive detector over them. Then his assistant – an only-too-willing assistant, Dreyfuss thought – slid his hands down each man’s suit, under the jacket collar and lapels, down the back, smoothly over the trousers and up along the inside legs.
‘Thank you, sir,’ he said to Dreyfuss with the hint of a smile. Dreyfuss did not smile back.
‘I don’t know about you,’ Parfit said as they picked up their cases and walked on, ‘but I need a drink.’
‘Count me in,’ said Dreyfuss. He was feeling calmer now. The worst was over, wasn’t it? Then it struck him: the last time he had flown had been on a private jet, and the time before that … on Argos. His legs lost their rigidity again.
‘Do you want anything in duty-free?’ asked Parfit, pointing towards the glossy spending mall. Dreyfuss shook his head. ‘I can never resist the malt,’ Parfit said. ‘Coming?’
‘I think I’ll just give my face a splash of water first,’ Dreyfuss said, nodding towards where a door proclaimed itself the gents’ toilets.
‘Fine, I’ll come with you.’
‘People will begin to talk,’ said Dreyfuss.
Parfit looked surprised. ‘You just made a joke!’ he said. ‘That’s more like it. Now come on, and stop looking so damned worried all the time.’
Only one cubicle was in use when they entered the toilets. Parfit gestured towards it and winked, reminding Dreyfuss not to break their cover. Dreyfuss nodded and, while Parfit went to the urinals, stood in front of the gleaming row of washbasins, examining his features in the splashed mirror. He looked fairly dreadful, like some old cancer patient: face pasty grey, eyes dark, cheeks hollow, and sweat cloying his hair. Another man came in and hurried into a cubicle, slamming the door shut after him. Dreyfuss heard him unbuckling his belt.
He ran some cold water and rested his hands in it for a few moments before starting to wash his face. He felt better almost immediately. Parfit was standing behind him, zipping himself.
‘Ready?’
‘Just give me a minute,’ Dreyfuss said. ‘I’ll catch you up in duty-free.’
‘Well …’ Parfit looked dubious, but a glance at his watch told him they didn’t have very long before they would be boarding. He could visualise that bottle of Glenlivet sitting waiting for him …
The door of the first cubicle, the one that had been occupied when they came in, snapped open. A teenager came out, his face flushed, and made for the exit, his eyes to the floor.
‘Wonder what he’s been up to,’ said Parfit with a wink. He checked his watch again. ‘Don’t be long,’ he pleaded.
‘Two minutes,’ Dreyfuss said, watching in the mirror as Parfit left. Alone, he relaxed a little more. He let the water out. As it gurgled down the plughole, a man in his forties pushed open the door and entered the toilets, nodding towards Dreyfuss as he made for the urinals.
‘Helluva day,’ he commented, but Dreyfuss wasn’t sure whether the man was talking to him or to himself. He ran more water. The man came to the basin next to him, gave his hands a quick rinse and rubbed them vigorously beneath the fan dryer. Then he left, the dryer still whirring away noisily. Dreyfuss splashed his face again, rubbing at his eyes this time, pressing fingers to sockets. He spat some water back into the basin and re-examined himself in the mirror. A toilet was flushing, and the cubicle door behind him opened. A squat man wearing spectacles and a shirt too small at the neck came waddling out. Dreyfuss smiled into the mirror, and the man seemed to smile back, but kept on coming …
Dreyfuss saw the cheese wire. It was twisted around the man’s pudgy little hands, wads of cloth stopping it cutting into the pulpy skin. It took no more than a second for the man to hoist it over Dreyfuss’ bowed head and pull tight. But in that second, Dreyfuss managed to prise his fingers between the wire and his unprotected throat, so that when the wire tightened, it cut into finger joints rather than neck. But it hurt like hell, and kept on digging, rending the tissue, sending blood trickling down Dreyfuss’ right hand. He watched in horror in the mirror as his eyes began to bulge, his tongue to twitch. The man was pulling him backwards, putting him off balance. With his free hand, Dreyfuss lashed out, finding first the man’s glasses, then his eyes, gouging at them. The man cried out, but the noise was all but masked by the greater noise of the cubicle finishing its flush and the dryer finishing its cycle.
When both stopped, there was an eerie silence, punctuated only by the choking sounds from Dreyfuss, the squeaking noise his shoes made as he sought purchase on the floor, and the shrill breath of the small man who was slowly but steadily murder
ing him. Dreyfuss’ whole head felt aflame, his eyes watering, ear canals singing like the sea. His chest felt tight as a drum skin. The thought of dying in this antiseptic place was appalling.
A picture flashed in his mind: Hes Adams’ fingers around his throat. The picture gave him strength, and he lashed out again, but with his left foot this time, sending it backwards with a donkey kick into the small man’s knee. The man gasped in pain but did not release his grip on the wire. Dreyfuss tried again, his eyes blurrily fixed to the mirror, hypnotised by the blood that was now dripping from his hand onto his shirt. His lips were drawn back from his teeth, the grin of a monkey. Monkeys grinned when they were terrified. This time the kick landed high on the man’s soft thigh, causing no reaction. Dreyfuss tried to cry out but couldn’t. He was losing strength, his whole body tingling with electricity. Movement was becoming difficult. Inside his head, someone opened the door of the furnace. He was on fire, and hell-bound. But he’d take the little bastard with him. He threw himself backwards, slamming the killer against the hard partition edge between two cubicles. Then he reached a hand around again. The hand was becoming numb, and it scrabbled over the man’s clothes like a tiny blind animal, finding the crotch. He used the last of his strength to squeeze. The killer howled.
Then, from the corner of his eye, he saw the door swing open and Parfit enter. From then it was as if everything was happening in slow motion. Parfit approached the man from the side and gripped him by his furthest shoulder, pinning him against his own body sideways on. Then he brought his arm back in a straight line and sent it thudding towards the man, heel of palm connecting with ear. The man’s head whipped to one side and there was a horrifying snap, as though a dog had bitten into a bone. The hold on Dreyfuss tightened further still, then relaxed.
He realised that Parfit was holding the small man – now a dead man – upright while he attempted to ease the cord away from Dreyfuss’ throat. He did his best to help, then, suddenly released, staggered to the basin, gripping its edge with his left hand while he stared at his crippled and bloodied right hand. He ran more water and held the fingers beneath the cold spray. As he stared in the mirror at his purple face, the colour of a newborn baby, he felt his stomach wrench, sending a spume of vomit into the basin.
Parfit had eased the corpse to the floor. He was staring at it as though it were something unbelievable, something out of his ken. But the way he had dealt with the man proved to Dreyfuss that it very much was not out of his ken. It was what he did, when necessary, as part of his job description.
‘Are you okay?’ Parfit came to the basin and examined Dreyfuss’ neck, then his bleeding hand. ‘Run more cold water. Keep it under the tap.’ He went over to the corpse again. ‘We need to get rid of this bastard before somebody wants to use the facilities.’
There was only one sensible hiding place. He heaved the body upright in one swift movement and walked with it into the furthest cubicle, where he dumped it unceremoniously onto the pan. Closing the cubicle door, he examined the lock. It was a simple thing, made simple so that no one could stay locked in. He brought a coin from his pocket and inserted it into the screw thread next to the ‘engaged’ indicator. Holding the door closed, and turning the coin in the thread, he moved the indicator from green to red: the cubicle was locked.
He allowed himself a moment’s pause, then turned back to examine the rest of the interior. There were drops of blood on the floor, but they couldn’t be helped. What worried him more was Dreyfuss’ injured hand, and the fresh bloodstains on his shirt. He checked his watch, wondering if they could last out the time until boarding. If the body was found before then … or if Dreyfuss’ wound was too deep …
‘I’ll be all right,’ Dreyfuss said, then gagged. His throat was like fire. Hadn’t he been through this before and survived?
‘You’ve got more bloody lives than a cat,’ Parfit acknowledged, smiling. Then, seriously: ‘But this was my fault, and I’m sorry.’
‘Don’t be,’ whispered Dreyfuss – the least painful way of talking. ‘I’m beginning to enjoy strangulation.’
‘How’s the hand?’
He lifted it from beneath the water. The cuts on each joint were clean and deep. He tried flexing the fingers. Blood began to pour again.
‘Fine,’ he whispered. ‘What do we do now?’
‘What do you want to do?’
Dreyfuss thought it over. What choice was there? ‘Get on the plane,’ he said.
‘Then that’s what we’ll do. But first I have to make a phone call, and this time you’re coming with me.’
‘What made you come back?’ asked Dreyfuss.
‘They’d run out of Glenlivet,’ said Parfit, attempting levity. ‘Now let’s see that hand.’ He inspected the damage. ‘It’s bad,’ he said, ‘but I don’t suppose I need to tell you that, since it’s so bloody obvious.’
‘And bloodily obvious.’
‘Another joke,’ Parfit said appreciatively. ‘You’re tougher than I thought, Major.’
‘The name’s Stephen,’ said Dreyfuss, ‘and don’t you forget it.’
They wrapped wads of toilet paper around each finger, then Parfit’s handkerchief around the whole hand.
‘We’ll get some sticking plasters at the sky shop,’ he said. ‘The hand will keep bleeding, but you probably won’t die before we land. If we get ice with our drinks, we’ll make up a pack with the cubes and you can press that against it. Okay?’
‘Never better,’ said Dreyfuss, his voice laryngitic. ‘Who are we going to telephone?’
‘There’s only one person I can think of right now. Frank Stewart.’
The telephone was one of a row of four. Parfit brought a paper napkin from his pocket. The napkin was from the café, and on it Stewart had scrawled a telephone number.
‘He’s going to be a bit surprised to get a call so quickly,’ said Dreyfuss.
‘He’s going to be absolutely furious,’ Parfit said, having pressed home the digits, awaiting a response at the other end.
Dreyfuss was intrigued. But he was also full of pain, and couldn’t separate the two. They’d used a packet of cotton wool and a whole box of plasters on his hand, but he could feel the blood soaking through already. They’d also bought aspirin, and he’d swallowed half a dozen. He needed a drink.
‘Stewart? It’s Parfit. Listen, I need some help. No questions, just help. I’ll explain later. What?’ Parfit listened. ‘No, we’re at the airport. Yes, flying out.’ He held the receiver away from his ear as Stewart’s stream of invective flew out. Then, as briskly as it had started, it ended. Parfit returned the receiver to his ear. ‘I couldn’t tell you, Stewart. It would have meant too many other people knowing about it. Anyway, the point is, we’ve encountered a slight problem. That problem has been dealt with in the short term, but some cleaning-up needs to be done.’ He listened again. ‘In the gents’ toilets,’ he said at last. ‘International departures. Last cubicle along.’ There was another pause. ‘How long will it take?’ He nodded and smiled. ‘That’s great, Stewart. What? No, he’s fine. I will. Goodbye.’
He slipped the receiver back into its cradle. ‘Stewart sends his love,’ he said to Dreyfuss.
‘But can we really trust him?’ Dreyfuss asked, his throat raw like sunburn.
‘From the way he was questioning you in that hospital in Sacramento, it was quite obvious he hadn’t a clue what was going on.’ Parfit had started walking, and Dreyfuss walked with him, his whole arm throbbing. They were nearing the long, gleaming bar of the departures lounge. Parfit kept talking as they walked. ‘We’re up against generals, not spooks,’ he said. The barman was ready to serve them. ‘Scotch on its own,’ Parfit ordered. ‘But bring over the ice bucket, will you?’ He turned to Dreyfuss. ‘What’ll you have?’
‘Whisky,’ croaked Dreyfuss. ‘A double.’
The barman nodded and moved off to fix their drinks.
‘Keep talking,’ said Dreyfuss. ‘It might take my mind off the bleeding.’<
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Parfit needed no further prompting. ‘There’s not much more to tell. Stewart will watch Esterhazy like the proverbial hawk.’ He smiled again. ‘It’s a bit like the old days, special relationship and all that.’ The smile faded. ‘Of course, we can’t trust the NSA too far, maybe not very far at all, but Stewart … well, I’ve got a feeling about Frank Stewart.’
The drinks had arrived, and with them the ice bucket. Dreyfuss reached his left hand into the chill centre of the white plastic basin and pulled out a cluster of cubes, which he dropped into his right-hand jacket pocket, packing them around his fingers and his palm. The barman was watching him but had seen worse behaviour in Departures.
‘Cheers,’ said Parfit, glancing towards the toilets. ‘Here’s to absent friends.’
‘Cheers,’ said Dreyfuss, before downing his drink in two hungry gulps.
Three musical notes preceded an address over the tannoy, announcing that their flight was boarding. Parfit patted Dreyfuss’ back.
‘Come on,’ he said. ‘In-flight drinks are gratis, I believe. The first one’s on me.’
Dreyfuss grimaced. ‘Plenty of ice with mine,’ he said, feeling the damp in his pocket and not knowing whether it was evidence of melting ice or of his warm blood soaking through the compress.
‘Plenty of ice it is,’ said Parfit.
27
Hepton had the idea that everyone knew more than they were telling. Fair enough, he thought: probably he knew more than he was telling, too. And it was with this in mind that he asked Jilly if she knew of any restaurants where the public telephone was out of sight of the dining area, and preferably close to the toilets. They were sitting in the Curzon Street building, drinking tea and waiting for Sanders to come and pick them up. The spy chiefs had thanked them for attending the meeting, and had hoped there would be no need to meet again.
‘I’ll second that,’ Jilly had said.
‘I suppose I can think of a few,’ she said now. ‘Why do you want to know?’
‘I want to make a telephone call, but I don’t want Sanders knowing about it. For one thing, I don’t trust him. For another, I don’t want him to know who I’m telephoning. Everyone who gets involved in this thing seems to be in danger.’