by Ian Rankin
The tank was nearly empty, so he stopped in a gas station, filled up, and added a newspaper to his purchase. He sat flicking through, looking for a news story from France, finding nothing. He wondered how long it would take the French authorities to link the torched car to its owner. He guessed a couple of days max, which gave him today and maybe tomorrow. Maybe, but not for certain. He had to get moving.
He only had the one plan: advance. He’d tried a tactical retreat last night, and it had cost several lives, including, for all he knew, that of Marie Villambard. Now that he knew he was up against Jay, he didn’t want to hide anymore, and didn’t think he could hide—not forever. Not knowing Jay was out there. Therefore, the only tactic left was to advance. A suicide mission maybe, but at least it was a mission. He thought of Joan and Allan. He’d have to phone Joan; she’d be worried about him. Christ, what lies would he concoct this time? He couldn’t possibly tell her about Marie Villambard. But not to tell her might mean that the first she’d hear of it would be the police knocking at her sister’s door, asking his whereabouts. She’d hear their side of it, but not his.
Marie Villambard… Marie had said Jim would’ve kept copies of his working notes. He wouldn’t have entrusted all his information to disks alone. He wondered if Marie herself had kept an extra set, maybe with another journalist. Would someone else pick up her baton? A safe place, she’d said: maybe a friend’s flat or a bank vault. Reeve turned back and headed to Pete Cavendish’s. Cavendish couldn’t believe it.
“This is a nightmare,” he said. “I told you to stick the key through the letterbox.”
“I did that,” Reeve said, pointing to the spot on the floor where the key lay.
“What then?”
“It’s just, my brother trusted you with his car. I wondered if you were keeping anything else safe for him.”
“Such as?”
“I don’t know. Some files, a folder, papers…?”
Cavendish shook his head.
“Maybe he told you not to tell anyone, Pete, but he’s dead and I’m his brother—”
“He didn’t give me anything, all right?”
Reeve stared into Cavendish’s eyes and believed him. “Okay, sorry,” he said starting back down the path.
“Hey!” Cavendish yelled after him.
Reeve turned. “What?”
“How’s the motor running?”
Reeve looked at the idling Saab. “Sweet as a nut,” he said, wondering how soon he could ditch it.
Tommy Halliday lived in Wales, because he thought the air and drinking water there were better; but he didn’t have much affection for the Welsh, so lived as close to the border with England as he could while remaining near a funny place-name. Halliday lived in Penycae; the funny place-name was Rhosllanerchrugog. On the map it looked like a bad batch of Scrabble tiles, except that there were way too many letters.
“You can’t miss it on the map,” Halliday had told Reeve, the first time Reeve was planning a visit. “They always like to put Rhosllanerchrugog in nice big bold letters, just to show what silly fuckers the Welsh are. In fact, everybody around here just calls it Rhos.”
“What does it mean?” Reeve had asked.
“What?”
“The word must mean something.”
“It’s a warning,” Halliday had said. “It says, the English are coming!”
Halliday had a point. Penycae was close to Wrexham, but it was also within commuting distance of Chester, Liverpool, even Stoke-on-Trent. Consequently, English settlers were arriving, leaving the grime and crime behind, sometimes bringing it with them.
All Halliday had brought with him were his drug deals, his video collection, and his reference books. Halliday hated films but was hooked on them. Actually, more than the films themselves he was hooked on the film critics. Barry Norman was god of this strange religion, but there were many other high priests: Maltin, Ebert, Kael; Empire, Premier, and Sight & Sound magazines. What got Reeve was that Halliday never went to a movie. He didn’t like being with other people, strangers, for two darkened hours. He rented and bought videos instead. There were probably six or seven hundred in his living room, more elsewhere in the semidetached house.
For Halliday, films were not entertainment. His tussle with the movie form was like a student tackling some problem of philosophy. It was as though, if Halliday could work out films—why some were good, others bad, a few works of genius—then he would have solved a major problem, something that would change his life for the better and for always. When Reeve turned up at the house, Halliday was in a tizzy. He’d just found an old Guardian review by Derek Malcolm panning Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction.
“You should see the reviews in Empire and Premiere,” he said irritably. “They loved that film.”
“What did you think of it?” Reeve waited in the hall while Halliday triple-locked the reinforced front door. He knew Halliday’s neighbors thought the reason his curtains were always closed was that Halliday was busy watching films. There was a rumor Halliday was writing a film of his own. Or that he was some En-glish director who’d made a fortune in Hollywood and decided to retire young.
He looked younger than his years, with thinning short red hair, a faceful of freckles, and tapering ginger sideburns plus dark red mustache. He was tall and lanky, with arms that seemed to be controlled by someone else. He flapped them as he led Reeve down the short hall into the living room.
“What did I think of it? I agreed with Empire.”
Halliday seldom had an opinion of his own—only what he’d gleaned from the reviewers and the theorists. There was a homemade bookcase, precariously angled, which held his store of film knowledge. There were library books and books he’d bought or lifted from shops. There were bound volumes of magazines, scrapbooks full of reviews from newspapers and magazines. He had video recordings of several years’ worth of Barry Norman and the other film programs. He slumped into his large easy chair and jerked a hand towards the sofa. There was, of course, a film playing on the TV.
“Going through your Scorsese period?” Reeve asked. He recognized the film as Mean Streets. “How many times have you watched this one?”
“About a dozen. There are a lot of tricks he does here that he uses again in other films. Look, this slo-mo run through the bar. That’s in Goodfellas. Later there’s a good bit with Harvey Keitel pissed. How come Keitel plays Catholics so often?”
“I hadn’t noticed he did.”
“Yeah, I read that somewhere…” Halliday’s eyes were on the screen. “Music, too, the way he uses music in this film, like he does in Goodfellas.”
“Tommy, did you get the birdy?”
Halliday nodded. “You’re not going to like it.”
“How do you mean?”
Halliday just rubbed his thumb and forefinger together.
“Not cheap, huh?”
“Not cheap. The Colombians I used to deal with, they aren’t around anymore. They worked for the Medellin cartel, but the Medellin people got shafted by the Cali cartel. So now I seem to be dealing with Cali, and they’re not quite so—I don’t know—friendly. Plus, as you know, this stuff is thick on the ground in Colombia but thin on the ground over here…” He looked at Reeve and smiled. “Thank God.”
“So what did it cost?”
Halliday told him.
“What, did I buy the whole fucking crop?”
“You bought enough to get you into bed with the Dagenham Girl Pipers.”
Looking around the living room, or indeed the rest of the house, you would not suspect Tommy Halliday of being a dealer in everything from drugs to arms. That was because he kept absolutely nothing incriminating on the premises. Nobody knew where the cache was hidden, but Reeve guessed it was another reason for Tommy’s choice of this part of Wales. There was a lot of countryside around, mountains and forests frequented by hikers and picnickers—a lot of potential hiding places in those sorts of terrain.
No, the only things about Tommy’s hou
se that might make someone suspicious were the antisurveillance devices and the mo-bile phone. Tommy didn’t trust British Telecom, and in the house he used the phone with a portable scrambler attached. The scrambler was U.S. Intelligence Corps standard, and Reeve guessed it had been “lost” during the Iraqi war. A lot of armed forces equipment had been lost during the campaign; a lot of Iraqi gear had been picked up quietly and tucked away for resale back in Britain.
Most of the arms Tommy dealt in, however, were eastern bloc: Russian and Czech predominantly. He had a consignment of Chinese stuff for a while, but couldn’t give it away it was so unreliable.
Halliday glanced at his watch. “Wait till this film’s over, all right?”
“I’ve got all the time in the world, Tommy,” Reeve said. He didn’t mean it, but he found that the time spent in the living room was time well spent. He cleared his mind and relaxed his muscles, did a little bit of meditation, some breathing exercises Joan had shown him. He gathered himself. And when he’d finished, there was still half an hour to go.
“Mind if I use the equipment?” he asked.
“You know where it is.”
So he headed upstairs into the spare bedroom, where Tommy kept his weights and a couple of exercise machines. Reeve worked up a sweat. Sweat was the quickest way to void toxins from your body, assuming you weren’t in the mood for sticking two fingers down your throat. From now on there was a regime he would follow: exercise when he could and eat well. Keep his mind and body pure. He would guess Jay had kept fit. He’d recruited from a gym: no mere accident. He probably frequented a few gyms. Reeve had to prepare as best he could. He considered taking steroids, but ruled them out quickly: their effects were short-lived, the side effects long-lasting. There was no “quick fix” when it came to fitness. Reeve knew he was pretty fit; family life hadn’t completely destroyed him, it had just robbed him of a little willpower.
Joan—he should call Joan. When he got downstairs the film was finished, and Halliday was on his computer. The computer was new, and boasted CD-ROM. Halliday was studying some kind of film encyclopedia, open at Mean Streets.
“Look here,” he said, pointing feverishly at the screen. “Maltin gives it four stars, ”a masterpiece‘; Ebert gives it four; Baseline gives it four out of five. Even Pauline bloody Kael likes it.“
“So?”
“So it’s a film about a couple of arseholes, one smarter than the other, but both of them plainly fucked from the start. This is supposed to be great cinema?”
“What did you think of De Niro?”
“He played it the same way he always plays those roles, eyes all over the place, demented smile.”
“You think he’s like that in real life?”
“What?”
“What do you think his background is?”
Halliday couldn’t see where this was leading, but he was prepared to learn. “Street punk, a kid in Brooklyn or wherever, same as Scorsese.” He paused. “Right?”
Reeve shook his head. “Look up De Niro.”
Halliday clicked the cursor over the actor’s name. A biography and photograph came up.
“See?” Reeve said, pointing to the relevant line. “His parents were artists, painters. His father was an abstract expressionist. This isn’t a street kid, Tommy. This is a well-brought-up guy who wanted to be an actor.”
“So?”
“So he made you believe in his character. You got no inkling of his background; that’s because he submerged it. He became a role. That’s what acting is.” Reeve watched to see if any of this sank in. “Can I use your telephone?”
Halliday flapped an arm towards the windowsill.
“Thanks.”
Reeve walked over to the window.
“So you know about films, huh?” Halliday called.
“No, Tommy, but I sure as shit know about acting.” He picked up the telephone and dialed Joan’s sister. While he waited for an answer, he pulled the curtains apart an inch and looked out on to the ordinary lower-middle-class street. He’d parked the Saab outside another house: that was an easy rule to remember. Someone answered his call.
“Hi there,” he said, recognizing Joan’s voice. The relief in her next words was evident.
“Gordon, where are you?”
“I’m at a friend’s.”
“How are you?”
“I’m fine, Joan. How’s Allan?” Reeve watched Halliday get up from the computer and go to a bookshelf. He was searching for something.
“He’s missing you. He’s hardly seen you lately.”
“Everything else okay?”
“Sure.”
“No funny phone calls?”
“No.” She sounded hesitant. “You think they’ll find us here?”
“I shouldn’t think so.” But how difficult would it be to track down the wife of Gordon Reeve, to ascertain that she had one brother and one sister, to locate addresses for both? Reeve knew that if they needed a bargaining chip, they’d resort to anything, including ransoming his family.
“You still there?”
“Sorry, Joan, what did you say?”
“I said how much longer?”
“I don’t know. Not long, I hope.”
The conversation wasn’t going well. It wasn’t just that Halliday was in the room; it was that Reeve was fearful of saying too much. In case Joan worried. In case someone was listening. In case they got to her and wanted to know how much she knew…
“I love you,” she said quietly.
“Same goes,” he managed, finishing the call. Halliday was standing by the bookcases, a large red volume in his hand. It was an encyclopedia. Reeve walked over and saw he had it open at Art History, a section about abstract expressionism. Reeve hoped he hadn’t set Halliday off on some new tangent of exploration.
He touched Halliday’s shoulder. “The birdy,” he said.
Halliday closed the book. “The birdy,” he agreed.
Birdy was their name for burundanga, a drug popular with the Colombian underworld. It used to be manufactured from scopol-amine extracted from the flowers of the borrachero tree, Datura arborea, but these days it was either mixed with benzodiazepine, or else it was 100 percent benzodiazepine, this being safer than scopolamine, with fewer, less harmful side effects.
Reeve followed Halliday’s car. Tommy Halliday was as cautious as they came. He’d already taken Reeve’s money and left it at the house. Reeve had made a large withdrawal in a London branch of his bank. They’d had to phone his branch in Edinburgh for confirmation, and even then Reeve had taken the receiver and spoken to the manager himself. They knew each other pretty well. The manager had come on one of Reeve’s tamer weekends.
“I won’t ask what it’s for,” the manager said, “just don’t spend it all in London.”
They’d had a laugh at that. It was a large amount of money, but then Reeve kept a lot of money in his “sleeper” account; an account he kept hidden from Joan and from everyone else, even his accountant. It wasn’t that the sleeper money was dirty, it was just that he liked to have it as a fallback, the way SAS men often took money with them when they went on missions behind enemy lines—gold sovereigns usually. Money for bribes, money for times of desperate trouble. That’s what Reeve’s sleeper fund was, and he judged this to be exactly the sort of time and occasion it was meant for.
He hadn’t been expecting the birdy to cost quite so much. It would put a big dent in his bankroll. The rest of the money was for contingencies.
It would give the police something else to mull over, too, once they’d connected him to the mess in France. They might well find the account—his bank manager wouldn’t lie about it—and they’d wonder about this large withdrawal, so soon after the killings. They’d be even more suspicious. They’d most definitely be “anxious” to talk to him, as they put it in their press releases.
Well, Tommy Halliday had some of that money now. And once he’d handed over the powder, that would be good-bye. Reeve wouldn’t be al
lowed to return to Halliday’s house, not carrying drugs. So Reeve had asked his questions beforehand. Like, was it scopo, benzo, or a mix?
“How the fuck do I know?” Halliday had replied. “It’s tough to get scopo these days, so my guess is pure benzo.” He considered. “Mind, these Colombians have good stuff, so maybe it’s ten, fifteen percent scopo.”
“Enough to put someone in a psychiatric ward?”
“No way.”
The problem with scopolamine was, there was just the one antidote—physostigmine—and neither man knew how readily available it was to hospitals and emergency departments, supposing they were able to diagnose burundanga poisoning in the first place. The drug was little known and little used outside Colombia; and even when it was used outside that country, it was normally used by native Colombians. No one in the British Army would admit to ever having used it as an interrogation aid. No, no one would ever admit that. But Reeve knew about the drug from his days in the SAS. He’d seen it used once, deep undercover in Northern Ireland, and he’d heard of its use in the Gulf War.
“Is there any physostigmine with it?”
“Course not.”
Tommy Halliday drove into the hills. He drove for half an hour, maybe a little more, until he signaled to pull into the half-full parking lot of a hotel. It was a nice-looking place, well lit, inviting. The parking lot was dark, though, and Halliday pulled into the farthest, gloomiest corner. Reeve pulled up alongside him. They wound their windows down so they could talk without leaving their cars.
“Let’s give it a couple of minutes,” Halliday said, “just to be on the safe side.” So they waited in silence, headlights off, waiting to see if anyone would follow them into the lot. No one did. Eventually, Halliday turned his engine on again and leaned out of his window. “Go into the bar, stay there one hour. Leave your boot slightly open when you go. Does it lock automatically?”