by Ian Rankin
McCluskey was suggesting that drink when his pager beeped. He went to a pay phone and called the station. He looked annoyed when he returned.
“I’ve got to go, Gordon. Sorry.”
“Not your fault.”
McCluskey put out his hand, which Reeve felt duty-bound to shake. McCluskey could feel it was of a different quality from their first handshake. Reeve wasn’t putting anything into it.
“Well,” the detective said, “have a nice flight back. Come see us again sometime.”
“Right,” Reeve said, turning away. He saw the board pointing him towards his gate, and headed for it. McCluskey waited till he was out of sight, then watched for another minute or so. Then he went out to his car. He was worried about Reeve. He didn’t think Reeve knew much, but he did know something was wrong. And now he had Agrippa. McCluskey had considered telling Kosigin that Reeve now held that one word, but that would mean admitting that he’d missed the scrap of paper in the dead man’s pocket. Kosigin didn’t like mistakes. McCluskey intended to keep quiet about the whole thing.
Jay was leaning against McCluskey’s car like he owned not only the car but the whole parking lot, and maybe everything else in the city, too.
“Scratch the paint, I’ll kill your whole family.”
“My family are all dead,” Jay said, lifting his weight from the wheel well.
McCluskey unlocked his door but didn’t open it. He squinted into the glare as an airplane lifted into the blue, hanging sky. “Think we’ve seen the last of him?” McCluskey asked. “I certainly fucking hope so. I didn’t like him. I don’t think he liked me. I wasted a lot of effort on that fuck.”
“I’m sure Mr. Kosigin is grateful. Maybe you’ll have a bonus this month.”
McCluskey didn’t like Jay’s insolent smile. But then he didn’t like his reputation either. He pulled open the driver’s door. “You didn’t answer my question.”
“I wasn’t listening.”
“I asked if you thought we’ve seen the last of him.”
Jay grinned. “I think you’ve seen the last of him.” He was waving something. It looked to McCluskey like an air ticket. “Mr. Kosigin thinks I should take a vacation… back to the old homeland.” He paused. “I think he saw me.”
“What?”
“Back at the crematorium, I think he got a sideways glance. It would make things more interesting if the Philosopher knew I was around.”
McCluskey frowned. “What the fuck are you talking about?”
But Jay just shook his head, still grinning, and walked away. He was whistling something, a tune the detective half-recognized.
It bugged him for days, but he never did place it.
Jeffrey Allerdyce was entertaining a corporate client in the penthouse dining room of Alliance Investigative in Washington, DC.
This meant, in effect, that Alliance’s senior partners were entertaining, while Allerdyce looked on from his well-upholstered office chair, which had been brought up one flight to the penthouse by a pair of junior partners (who naturally played no other part in the affair).
Allerdyce did not enjoy entertaining, and didn’t see why it was expected of a company. To his mind, if you worked well for a client, that should always be enough. But as one senior partner and a host of accountants had told him, there needed to be more these days. Clients needed to feel wanted, cherished, cosseted. They needed, the senior partner had had the temerity to declare, to feel loved.
As if Allerdyce were entertaining them because he actually liked them. The only human being Jeffrey Allerdyce had ever loved was his father. The list of people he had liked in his long life wouldn’t have filled an address label. He liked dogs—he owned two—and he liked an occasional gamble. He liked pasta with fresh pesto sauce. He liked the Economist and the Wall Street Journal, though neither as much as he once did. He liked Inspector Morse on TV, and the music of Richard Wagner. He would travel far for a live concert, if he could be assured of the quality of the artists involved.
He held the belief that his very distrust and dislike of people had made his agency the success it was. But success had bred the need for further success—bringing with it the necessity for corporate entertainment. He watched with a beady eye from his chair as the hired staff made sure plates were full. They were under instructions not to approach him. He would make his needs, if any, known to a senior partner, and food would be brought to him accordingly.
The affair had been arranged meticulously. A senior partner was allocated someone from the client company. They had to entertain that person, make any necessary introductions, check that glasses were replenished. Allerdyce almost sneered his contempt. One balding man in an expensive suit which hung from him like a dishrag from its peg was gulping at the champagne. Gulping it, swallowing it down, getting it while he could. Aller-dyce wondered if anyone knew, or even cared, that it was Louis Roederer Cristal, 1985. The champagne of czars, an almost unbelievably beguiling wine. He had allowed himself one glass, just to check the temperature was correct.
A senior partner, nominally in charge of “the floor,” came over and whispered into Allerdyce’s ear. It gratified Allerdyce to see that members of the client company, even the CEO, glanced over at the conversation with something like fear—as well they might. The CEO called him J. Edgar behind his back. It was al-most a compliment, but was probably said with a certain amount of nervous, defensive laughter. The nickname was apposite be-cause, like Hoover, Allerdyce craved information. He hoarded the stuff, from tidbits to full-scale secret reports. Being at the hub of Washington, and especially at the hub of Washington’s secrets, Allerdyce had collected a lot of information in his time. He used very little of it in any physical way. It was enough that he knew. It was enough that he could shake the CEO’s hand, stare into his eyes, and let the man know with that stare that he knew about the male prostitute the CEO kept in a suite only four blocks from the White House.
That was why they glanced over nervily at the whispered exchange—all of them, all the ones with secrets to hide. When in fact the partner’s message had been “Dulwater’s outside,” and Allerdyce’s reply had been “I’ll be a few minutes.”
As Allerdyce got up slowly from his chair, feet shuffled forward, showing their owners were only too willing to help him to his feet should their help be needed. And when he walked across the floor, the various conversations lost their thread, or trailed off, or became more hushed. And when the door had closed behind him, they all felt the need for another drink.
Dulwater was sitting in a chair near the single elevator. Only one of the building’s several elevators had access to the penthouse. The chair he sat in was reproduction Louis Quatorze, and looked like it might break at any moment. Dulwater was quick to rise when his employer appeared. Allerdyce pressed the button for the elevator, and Dulwater knew enough to be silent till it had arrived, they’d entered it, and the doors had closed again. Allerdyce turned his access key, quickly pressed some digits on the small keypad with dexterity, so Dulwater couldn’t recognize the code, and stood back. They began the descent to the basement.
“Well?” Allerdyce asked.
“I’m not sure what it adds up to,” Dulwater began.
“That’s not your concern,” Allerdyce snapped. “I merely ask for your report.”
“Of course.” Dulwater swallowed. There was nothing on paper—his employer’s instructions—but he knew it by heart anyway, or hoped he did. There was perspiration on his upper lip, and he licked it away. “Kosigin had brought in some muscle from Los Angeles, an Englishman. They twice had meetings outside the CWC building: once in a downtown café, once on the waterfront. Even with the long-range mike I had trouble picking up the conversation.”
From the way Dulwater was speaking, Allerdyce knew he was curious to know why Alliance was now spying on its employers. He admired the younger man’s curiosity. He knew, too, that no answer he could give would be satisfactory.
“Both were good choices,” Allerd
yce mused. “Café… waterfront… A babble of background noise, other voices…”
“And on the waterfront they kept moving. Plus there was tourist traffic.”
“So, you’ve told me what you did not learn…”
Dulwater nodded. “There was a death, an apparent suicide of the reporter who’d been looking into CWC and whom we had been asked to investigate. The man’s brother came to town. That seemed to bother Kosigin. You know Kosigin has a detective in his pocket?”
“Of course.”
“The detective tailed the brother. Looked like he was calling favors from half the department.”
“And the muscle from L.A., as you so described him?”
Dulwater shrugged. “I don’t have a name, not yet. I’ll get one.”
“Yes, you will.” The elevator reached the basement, which housed an underground parking garage. The limos the guests had arrived in were parked in neat rows, their liveried drivers enjoying a smoke and a joke.
“No smoking in the building!” Allerdyce barked before letting the elevator doors close again. He keyed in the penthouse. “Interesting,” he said to Dulwater, his voice a dull ripple once more.
“Should I continue?”
Allerdyce considered this. “Where is the brother?”
“Our agents report he’s heading out today.”
“Do you think we’d learn anything more in San Diego now that he’s gone?”
Dulwater gave the answer he thought was expected. “Probably not, sir.”
“Probably not,” Allerdyce echoed, tapping a finger to his thin, dry lips. “They were watching the brother because they perceived in him some threat. The threat of discovery. Now that he’s flown home, does he still pose a threat?”
Dulwater was stuck for an answer. “I don’t know.”
Allerdyce seemed pleased. “Exactly. And neither do they. Under the circumstances, Kosigin might just want to know more about the brother, more than we’ve already been able to tell him.”
“We weren’t able to find out much about him,” Dulwater confessed.
“Kosigin is a careful man,” Allerdyce said. It was part of the man’s attraction. Allerdyce had not managed to build up much of a dossier on Kosigin, though he knew just by looking at the man, just from a casual conversation with him, that there were secrets there to be discovered. He was a challenge.
And, of course, one day Kosigin might rise to the very pinnacle of CWC. He was already close, and still so young. “I’m not a chemist,” he’d told Allerdyce, as though imparting some confidence, and so perhaps hoping to satisfy Allerdyce’s celebrated curiosity. “I don’t have to be to know how to run a company. To run a company, I need to know two things: how to sell, and how to stop my competitors selling more than me.”
Yes, he was a challenge. That was why Allerdyce wanted him, wanted a nice fat dossier of secrets with Kosigin’s name on it. Kosigin had made a mistake coming to Alliance again. Allerdyce had known that CWC employed its own security department. Why hadn’t Kosigin used them? Why the need for an outside agency to follow the English journalist? Allerdyce was beginning to form an answer: Kosigin had something to hide from his superiors. And Alliance had worked for Kosigin once before. Allerdyce knew now that the two cases were connected, even if he didn’t know why.
The elevator arrived at the penthouse. While Dulwater held the doors, Allerdyce keyed for the elevator to return to the lobby. Then he stepped out, leaving the young man inside, still holding the doors, awaiting instructions.
“This intrigues me,” Allerdyce said. “Is your passport up to date?”
“Yes, sir,” Dulwater said.
“Then come to my office tomorrow morning at seven. We’ll have a further discussion.”
“Yes, sir,” said Dulwater, releasing the doors.
Allerdyce walked back to the dining-room door but did not open it, not immediately. Instead he pressed his ear to the wood, the way he used to when he was a young boy, tiptoeing downstairs from bed to listen at the living-room door or at his father’s study. Listening for secrets, for things that could not be said in front of him. Happiest then—when nobody knew he was there.
PART THREE
MAIN LINES
EIGHT
LONDON SEEMED EVERY BIT as alien to him as San Diego.
He actually found himself carrying out evasion procedures at Heathrow. After depositing his single bag in Left Luggage, he went down to the Underground terminal and moved along the platform, watching, waiting. There were good reasons for not taking his car into London of course, reasons anyone would understand: he was only going into town for a short while; his destination was close to a Tube stop; he’d have to be crazy to drive through London, especially jet-lagged. But also he wanted to know if he was being followed, and this was more easily accomplished on foot.
When a train pulled in, he walked onto it, then came off again, looking to left and right along the platform. Then he stepped in again as the doors were closing. The other passengers looked at him like he was mad. Maybe he was. He looked out of the window. There was no one on the platform. No one was tailing him.
He’d been the same on the airplane. His fellow fliers must have thought there was something wrong with him, the number of times he got up to walk the aisles, visiting the bathroom, or going back to ask the stewardesses for drinks he didn’t really want. Just so that he could study the passengers.
Now he was on his way into London, with keys in his pocket he had taken from his brother’s motel room. The train ran on the Piccadilly Line and would take him all the way to Finsbury Park. But he came off two stops short on the Holloway Road and took his time finding a taxi, then watched from the back window as the driver talked football at him. He got the driver to take him past Jim’s flat and drop him off at the end of the road.
The street looked quiet. It was nine-thirty in the morning. People had gone to work for the day. There was a line of cars on one side of the street, and he looked into each one as he passed. Farther along, workmen were digging a hole in the pavement. They were laughing and trading Irish-accented obscenities.
He dismissed them, then checked himself. Nobody could ever be dismissed entirely. The one-armed beggar could be hiding an Uzi up his sleeve. The innocent baby carriage could be booby-trapped. Dismiss nothing and no one. He would stay aware of them, though they were a low priority.
He’d been to the flat before. It was carved from a four-story house which sat just off the top of Ferme Park Road and almost had a view of Alexandra Palace. Jim had laughed about that when he bought the flat. “The estate agent told me as part of his pitch—nearly has a view of Ally Pally! Like that was somehow better than being five miles away! Those bastards’ll turn anything into a selling point. If the roof was leaking, they’d say it was a safety feature in the event of a fire.”
Reeve tried the mortise key in its lock, but it was already unlocked. So he tried the Yale, and that opened the door. The garden flat had its own front door at the bottom of half a dozen steps, but the ground floor and first and second floors were reached via the main door. In the vestibule, there were two more solid doors. Jim’s was the ground-floor flat.
“This was probably a nice family house at one time,” he’d told Gordon when showing him around. “Before the cowboys moved in and carved the place up.” He’d shown him how a large drawing room to the rear had been subdivided with plasterboard walls to make the kitchen and bedroom. The bathroom would once have been part of the main hallway, and the flat’s designer had taken an awkward chunk out of what was left of the living room, too.
“It’s ugly now, see?” Jim had said. “The proportions are all wrong. The ceilings are too high. It’s like standing shoe boxes on their ends.”
“So why did you buy it?”
Jim had blinked at him. “It’s an investment, Gordie.” Then they’d opened the back door so that Jim could show him that the so-called garden flat had no garden, just a concrete patio. “Besides,” said Jim, “this ar
ea is in. Pop stars and DJs live here. You see them down on the Broadway, eating in the Greek restaurant, waiting for someone to recognize them.”
“So what do you do?” Reeve had asked.
“Me?” his brother had replied with a smirk which took years off him. “I walk right up to them and ask if I can reserve a table for dinner.”
“Jesus, Jim,” Reeve said now, unlocking the flat door.
There were sounds inside. Instinctively, he dropped to a crouch. He couldn’t identify the sounds—voices maybe. Could they be coming from the flat below or above? He didn’t think so. And then he remembered the hall. There’d been no mail sitting there awaiting Jim’s return. Jim had been gone awhile; there should have been mail.
He examined the short hall in which he stood: no places of concealment; no weapons to hand. The floor looked solid enough, but might be noisy underfoot. He kept to one side, hugging the wall. Floors were usually strongest there; they didn’t make so much noise. He clenched his hands into fists. Running water, a clatter of dishes—the sounds were coming from the kitchen—and a radio, voices on a radio. These were domestic sounds, but he wasn’t going to be complacent. It was an easy trick, lulling someone with sound. He recalled a line from Nietzsche: shatter their ears, and teach them to hear with their eyes. It was good advice.
The kitchen door was open a fraction, as were the other doors. The living room looked empty, tidier than he remembered it. The bathroom was in darkness. He couldn’t see into the bedroom. He approached the kitchen door and peered through the gap. A woman was at the sink. She had her back to him. She was thin and tall with short fair hair, curling at the nape of her neck. She was alone, washing her breakfast dishes. He decided to check the other rooms, but as he stepped back into the hall he hit a floorboard which sank and creaked beneath him. She looked around, and their eyes met.