by Ian Rankin
“Is that it?” Joan asked. “Aren’t you going to tell me the rest?”
He started towards her, just able to make out her shape in the shadows of the curtained room—curtained despite the blackness outside and the isolation of the house. “I don’t want to make you a target.”
Then he padded downstairs as quietly as he could. He looked around, turning on lights, not touching anything, then stood in the living room thinking things over. He walked over to the TV and switched it on, using the remote to flick channels.
“Usual rubbish,” he said, yawning noisily for the benefit of anyone listening. He knew how sophisticated surveillance equipment had become. He’d heard of devices that could read computer screens from a distance of yards, without there being any physical connector linking them to the computer. He probably hadn’t heard half of it. The technology changed so quickly it was damn near impossible to keep up. He did his best, so he could pass what he knew on to his weekend soldiers. The trainee bodyguards in particular liked to know about that stuff.
He first checked that there were no watcher devices in the house. These were not so easy to hide: after all, if they were going to view a subject, they couldn’t be tucked away under a chair or a sofa. They also took a lot longer to fit. Someone would have had to access the house while Joan was out or asleep. He didn’t find anything. Next he put his jacket on and went outside, circling the house at a good radius. He spotted no one, certainly no vehicles. In the garage, he slid beneath both Land Rovers and found them clean—well, not clean, but lacking bugs. Before going back indoors he unscrewed the front panel from the burglar alarm. The screws were hard to shift, and showed no signs of recent tampering—no missing paint or fresh-looking scratches. The alarm itself was functioning.
Joan had said she’d let the new clients in as far as the hall. And he would guess she’d probably let the van driver in as far as the kitchen. He took a lot of time over both areas, feeling beneath carpets and behind curtains, taking the cookbooks off the bookshelf in the kitchen.
He found the first bug in the hall.
It was attached to the inside of the telephone.
He went into the kitchen and switched on the radio, placing it close to the phone extension. Then he unscrewed the apparatus and found another bug identical to the first one. Both had the letters USA stamped into their thin metal casing. He wiped sweat from his face, and went through to the living room. Despite an hour-long search, he found nothing, which didn’t mean the room was clean. He knew he could save a lot of effort by getting hold of a locating device, but he didn’t have the time. And at least now he knew—knew his family wasn’t safe, knew his home wasn’t secure.
Knew they had to get out.
He sat on the chair beside the dressing table in their bedroom. A morning ray of sun had found a chink in the curtains and was hitting Joan’s face, moving from her eyes to her forehead as she twisted in her sleep. Like a laser sight, Reeve thought, like an assassin taking aim. He felt tired but electric; he’d spent half the night writing. He had the sheets of printer paper with him on the chair. Joan rolled over, her arm flopping down on the space where he should have been. She used the arm to push herself up, blinking a few times. Then she rolled onto her back and craned her neck.
“Morning,” she said.
“Morning,” he answered, coming towards her.
“How long have you been up?” She was blinking her eyes again in an attempt to read the sheet of paper Reeve was holding in front of her.
“Hours,” he said with a lightness he did not feel.
DON’T SAY A WORD. JUST READ. NOD WHEN YOU’RE READY. REMEMBER: SAY NOTHING.
His look told her he was serious. She nodded, sitting up farther in bed, pushing the hair out of her eyes. He turned to the next sheet.
THE HOUSE IS BUGGED: WE CAN’T SAY ANYTHING IN SAFETY. WE’VE GOT TO PRETEND THIS IS JUST ANOTHER DAY. NOD WHEN YOU’RE READY.
She took a moment to nod. When she did so, she was staring into his eyes.
“So are you going to lie there all day?” he chided, turning the page.
“Why not?” she said. She looked frightened.
YOU’VE GOT TO GO STAY WITH YOUR SISTER. TAKE ALLAN. BUT DON’T TELL HIM. JUST PACK SOME THINGS INTO THE CAR AND GO. PRETEND YOU’RE TAKING HIM TO SCHOOL AS USUAL.
“Come on, get up and I’ll make the breakfast.”
“I’ll take a shower.”
“Okay.”
WE CAN’T SAY WHERE YOU’RE GOING. WE CAN’T LET ANYONE KNOW. THIS IS JUST AN ORDINARY MORNING.
Joan nodded her head.
“Will toast do you?” he asked.
I DON’T THINK WE’RE BEING WATCHED, JUST LISTENED TO.
He smiled to reassure her.
“Toast’s fine,” she said, only the slightest tremble evident in her voice. She cleared her throat and pointed at him. He had foreseen this, and found the sheet.
I’LL BE FINE. I JUST NEED TO TALK TO A FEW PEOPLE.
She looked doubtful, so he smiled again and bent forward to kiss her.
“That better?” he asked.
“Better,” she said.
I’LL PHONE YOU AT YOUR SISTER’S. YOU CAN CALL HER ON YOUR WAY THERE, LET HER KNOW YOU’RE COMING. DON’T COME BACK HERE UNTIL I TELL YOU IT’S ALL RIGHT. I LOVE YOU.
She jumped to her feet and hugged him. They stayed that way for a full minute. Her eyes were wet when he broke away.
“Toast and tea it is,” Reeve said.
He was in the kitchen, trying to hum a tune while he made breakfast, when she walked in. She was carrying a notepad and pen. She looked more together now that she was dressed, now that she’d had time to think. She thrust the notepad into his face.
WHAT THE FUCK’S THIS ALL ABOUT?
He took the pad from her and rested it on the counter.
IT’D TAKE TOO LONG. I’LL EXPLAIN WHEN I PHONE.
He looked up at her, then added a last word.
PLEASE.
THIS IS UNFAIR, she wrote, anger reddening her face.
He mouthed the words I know and followed them with sorry.
“Had your shower already?” he asked.
“Water wasn’t hot enough.” She looked for a second like she might laugh at the absurdity of it all. But she was too angry to laugh.
“Want me to cut some bread?” she asked.
“Sure, thanks. How’s Allan?”
“Not keen on getting up.”
“He doesn’t know how lucky he is,” Reeve said. He watched Joan attack the loaf with the bread knife like it was the enemy.
Things were easier when Allan came down. Both parents talked to him more than usual, asking questions, eliciting responses. This was safe ground; they could be less guarded. When Joan said maybe she’d have that shower after all, Reeve knew she was going to pack. He told Allan he was going to get the car out, and walked into the courtyard, breathing deeply and exhaling noisily.
“Jesus,” he said. He circled the property again. He could hear a tractor somewhere over near Buchanan’s croft, and the drone of a light airplane overhead, though the morning was too overcast to see it. He didn’t think anyone was watching the house. He wondered how far the transmitters carried. Not very far by the look of them. There’d be a recorder somewhere, buried in the earth or hidden under rocks. He wondered how often they changed tapes, how often they listened. The recorder was probably voice-activated, and whoever was listening was only interested in telephone calls.
Or maybe they just hadn’t had time to bug the house properly.
“Bastards,” he said out loud. Then he went back into the house. Joan was coming downstairs with a couple of traveling bags. She took them straight out to her car and put them in the trunk. She motioned for him to join her. When he did, she just stared at him like she wanted to say something.
“I think it’s okay outside,” he said.
“Good. What are you going to do, Gordon?”
“Talk to a few people.”
“What people? What are you going to talk to them about?”
He looked around the courtyard, his eyes alighting on the door to the killing room. “I’m not sure. I just want to know why someone has bugged our telephones. I need to get hold of some equipment, sweep the place to make sure it’s clean apart from the two I found.”
“How long will we have to stay away?”
“Maybe just a couple of days. I don’t know yet. I’ll phone as soon as I can.”
“Don’t do anything…” She didn’t complete the sentence.
“I won’t,” he said, stroking her hair.
She brought something out of her pocket. “Here, take these.” She handed him a vial of small blue pills—the pills he was supposed to take when the pink mist descended.
The psychiatrist had wondered at pink. “Not red?” he’d asked.
“No, pink.”
“Mmm. What do you associate with the color pink, Mr. Reeve?”
“Pink?”
“Yes.”
“Gays, cocks, tongues, vaginal lips, little girls’ lipstick… Will those do for a start, Doctor?”
“I get the feeling you’re playing with me, Mr. Reeve.”
“If I were playing with you, I’d‘ve said red mist and you’d’ve been happy. But I said pink because it’s pink. My vision goes pink, not red.”
“And then you react?”
Oh, yes, then he reacted…
He looked at his wife now. “I won’t need these.”
“Want to make a bet?”
Reeve took the pills instead.
Joan had told Allan they were taking Bakunin to the vet. The cat had resisted being put in its carrier, and Allan had asked what was wrong with it.
“Nothing to worry about.” She’d been looking at her husband as she’d said it.
Reeve stood at the door and waved them off, then ran to the roadside to watch them leave. He didn’t think they’d be followed. Joan drove Allan to school every morning, and this was just another morning. He went back inside and stood in the hallway.
“All alone,” he said loudly.
He was wondering if they would come, now that he was alone. He was hoping they would. He had plans for them if they did. He spent the day waiting them out, and talking to them.
“She’s not coming back,” he said into the telephone receiver at one point. “Neither of them is. I’m on my own.” Still they didn’t come. He went through the house, organizing an overnight bag, making sure he had the list of emergency telephone numbers. He ate a slice of bread and butter for lunch, and dozed at the kitchen table for an hour (having made sure all the doors and windows were locked first). He felt better afterwards. He needed a shower or bath, but didn’t like the idea of them coming in on him when he was in the middle of lathering his back. So he just had a quick wash instead, a lick and a spit.
By late afternoon, he was going stir crazy. He checked the windows again, set the alarm, and locked the house. He had his overnight bag with him. He went to the killing room and unpadlocked and unbolted both sets of doors. Those doors looked ordinary enough from the outside, but were paneled inside with beaten metal, an extra deterrent to intruders. In the small hallway outside the room proper, he knelt down and pulled at a long section of baseboard. It came away cleanly. Inside, set into the wall, was a long narrow metal box. Reeve unlocked it and pulled the flap down. Inside was an assortment of small arms. He had large-bore weapons, too, but kept those in a locked cabinet in what had been the farmhouse’s original pantry. He picked up one of the guns. It was wrapped in oiled cloth. What use was a killing room without weapons? In his Special Forces days, they’d almost always trained with live ammo. It was the only way you came to respect the stuff.
Reeve had live ammo for the handguns. He was holding a 9mm Beretta. Guns were always heavier than people expected. He didn’t know whether that was because most people equated guns with childhood, and childhood meant plastic replicas, or because TV and cinema were to blame, with their blithe gun-toting goodies and baddies, guys who could fire a bazooka and still go ten rounds with the world-champion warlord—whereas in real life they’d be checking into the emergency room with a dislocated shoulder.
The Beretta was just heavy enough to warn you it was lethal. In the killing room they used blank ammunition. Even blanks could give you powder burns. He’d seen weekend soldiers scared shitless, frozen with the gun in their hand like someone else’s turd, the explosion echoing in the chambers of their heart.
Maybe he needed a gun. Just to scare these people. But you could only scare someone if you were serious and if they could see exactly how serious you were by the look in your eyes. And he wouldn’t be serious if the gun wasn’t loaded…
And what use was a loaded gun if you didn’t intend to use it?
“Fuck it,” he said, putting the Beretta back in its cloth. He rummaged around behind the other packages—he had explosives in there, too; almost every other soldier brought something with them back into civvy life—until he found another length of oiled rag. Inside was a black gleaming dagger, his Lucky 13: five inches of rubberized handgrip and eight inches of polished steel, a blade so sharp you could perform surgery with it. He’d bought it in Germany one time when they’d been training there. Its weight and balance were perfect for him. It had felt almost supernatural, the way the thing molded to his hand. He’d been persuaded to buy it by the two men on weekend leave with him. The knife cost just under a week’s wages.
“For old times’ sake,” he said, slipping it into his overnight bag.
He crossed by ferry to Oban, which was where the tail started.
Just the one car, he reckoned. To be sure, he led it a merry dance all the way to Inveraray. Just north of the town he pulled the Land Rover over suddenly, got out, and went to the back, looking in as though to check he hadn’t forgotten something. The car behind was too close to stop; it had to keep going right past him. He looked up as it drew level, and watched the impassive faces of the two men in front.
“Bye-bye,” he said, closing the back, watching the car go. Hard to tell from their faces who the men were or who they might work for, but he was damned sure they’d been following him since he’d hit the mainland: most cars would have stuck to the main road through Dalmally and south towards Glasgow, but when Reeve had headed on the much less popular route to Inveraray, this one had followed.
He started driving again. He didn’t know if they’d have organized a second car by now, of if they’d have to call someone to organize backup. He just knew he didn’t want to be driving anywhere much now that they were on to him. So he headed into the center of town. Close combat, he was thinking as he headed for his revised destination.
The Thirty Arms had a parking lot, but Reeve parked on the street outside. They didn’t hand out parking tickets after six o’clock. Locals called it the Thirsty Arms, but the pub’s true name was a reference to the fifteen men in a rugby side. It was the closest this quiet lochside town had to a “dive,” which was to say that it was a rough-and-ready place which didn’t see many female clients. Reeve knew this because he dropped in sometimes, preferring the drive via Inveraray to the busier route. The owner had a tongue you could strike matches on.
“Go get that red fuckin‘ carpet, will you?” he said to someone as Reeve entered the bar. “It’s been that long since this bastard bought a drink in here I was thinking of selling up.”
“Evening, Manny,” said Reeve. “Half of whatever’s darkest, please.”
“An ungrateful sod of a patron like you,” said Manny, “you’ll take what I give you.” He began pouring the drink. Reeve looked around at faces he knew. They weren’t smiling at him, and he didn’t smile back. Their collective stare was supposed to drive away strangers and outsiders, and Reeve was most definitely an outsider. The surliest of the local youths was playing pool. Reeve had noticed some of his mates outside. They weren’t yet old enough looking to fool Manny, so would wait at the door like pet dogs outsid
e a butcher’s shop for their master to rejoin them. The smell of drink off him was their vicarious pleasure. In Inveraray, there wasn’t much else to kill the time.
Reeve walked over to the board and chalked his name up. The youth grinned at him unpleasantly, as if to say, “I’ll take anybody’s money.” Reeve walked back to the bar.
Two more drinkers pushed open the creaking door from the outside world. Their tourist smiles vanished when they saw the sort of place they’d entered. Other tourists had made their mistake before, but seldom stayed long enough to walk up to the bar. Maybe these ones were surprisingly stupid. Maybe they were blind.
Maybe, Reeve thought. He still had his back to them. He didn’t need to see them to know they were the two from the car. They stood next to him as they waited for Manny to finish telling a story to another customer. Manny was taking his time, just letting them know. He’d been known to refuse service to faces he didn’t like.
Reeve watched as much as he could from the corner of his eyes. From the distorted reflection in the beaten copper plate that ran the length of the bar behind the optics, he saw that the men were waiting impassively.
Manny at last gave up. “Yes, gents?” he said.
“We want a drink,” the one closest to Reeve said. The man was angry already, not used to being kept waiting. He sounded English; Reeve didn’t know which nationality he’d been expecting.
“This isn’t a chip shop,” said Manny, rising to the challenge. “Drink’s the only thing we serve.” He was smiling throughout, to let the two strangers know he wasn’t at all happy.
“I’ll have a double Scotch,” the second man said. He was also English. Reeve didn’t know whether it was done on purpose or not, but the way he spat out “Scotch” caused more than a few hackles in the bar to rise. The speaker purported not to notice, maybe he just didn’t care. He looked at the door, at the framed photos of Scottish internationals and the local rugby team—the latter signed—and the souvenir pennants and flags.
“Somebody likes rugby,” he said to no one in particular. No one in particular graced the remark with a reply.