by Ian Rankin
And he’d already seen what they would do at close range. They’d saw your fucking head off and leave it for a surprise.
‘What kind of shit am I getting into?’ he asked himself, starting his car up and heading towards the south.
Part Three
18
We flew into Boston. I always try to do that, avoid JFK. The place is more like a cattle market than an airport, and they do more checks there than anywhere else. We flew as Michael Weston and Belinda Harrison, since our real passports were the only ones we had. I knew we’d taken a calculated risk. Airlines keep computer records, and anyone can access computer data. That was another reason for flying into Boston: it was a long way from our ultimate destination. At the airport, I found us a hotel room in town, and we took a taxi. Bel was still disoriented from the flight. It was tough on a beginner, flying backwards through time. We hadn’t touched any alcohol on the flight; alcohol stopped you retuning yourself. We watched the films and ate our meals and took any soft drink we were offered. Bel was like a child at first, insisting on a window seat and peering out at the clouds. She made me tell her some things about the USA. She’d never been there before, and only had a passport at all because Max and she had taken a couple of foreign holidays. He never took her with him on business trips.
‘His wasn’t a very honourable profession, was it?’ she said suddenly, causing me to look up from my newspaper. I thought of a lot of answers I could give her, the standard one being something about guns never killing anyone, it was only people who did that.
‘More honourable than mine,’ I said instead. Then I went back to my reading. Bel was coping in her own way. We’d talked about Max, of course, edging around the actual discovery of his mutilated corpse. Bel had gone through a few transitions, from hysterical to introspective, hyperactive to catatonic. Now she was putting on a good act of being herself. It was an act though. When we were together in private, she was different. I tried not to show how worried I was. If I needed her to be anything this trip, I needed her reliable.
It was a good flight. There were a couple of babies on board, but they were up at the bulk-head and didn’t cry much anyway. Some children nearer us went through a bored stage, but their parents and the aircrew were always prepared with new games, toys, and drinks.
It would have been a good time for me to do some thinking, but in the event I didn’t think too much about what we were doing. I had a very vague plan, and maybe if I thought it through too hard it would begin to look mad or full of holes. So instead I read old news, and did some crosswords, showing Bel how you worked out the answers from cryptic clues. That part was easy: the flight, getting past customs and immigration (tourists didn’t even need proper visas these days), finding a hotel... it was all easy.
But by the time we reached the hotel, just off Boston Common, I realised I was mentally exhausted. I needed rest and relaxation, if only for a few hours. So I closed the curtains and undressed. Bel had slept a little on the plane, and wanted to go out exploring. I didn’t argue with her.
She woke me up a couple of hours later and told me how she’d walked around part of the Common, and seen where they used to make some TV series, and then walked up and down some beautiful cobbled streets, and seen inside a gold-domed building, and wandered into the Italian part of town...
‘You must walk fast,’ I said, heading for the shower. She followed me into the bathroom. I hadn’t heard half of it. I’d given her fifty dollars and she’d used some of it to buy herself a meal and some coffee.
‘I had a hot dog and some Boston baked beans.’
‘Yum yum.’
She deflated only slowly. When I came back from the shower she was flicking channels on the remote TV, finding episodes of Star Trek and other old reruns, plus the usual talk shows and sports, and the cable shopping and Christ channels.
‘Can you turn the volume down?’
‘Sure.’ She seemed to enjoy the shows just as much without the sound. ‘There are a lot of adverts, aren’t there? I mean, they even put them between the end of the programme and the closing credits.’
I looked at her and tried out a sympathetic smile, but she was back watching TV again. I knew what she needed; she needed a period of calm, reflective mourning. The problem was, we couldn’t afford that luxury. We had to keep moving.
I was making a phone call. Somewhere in Texas, I got an answering machine. I decided to leave a message.
‘Spike, it’s Mike West. I’m here on a brief trip. This is just to warn you I have another shopping list. I’ll be there in a couple of days, all being well.’ I didn’t leave a contact number.
‘Spike?’ Bel said.
‘That’s his name.’
She went back to her TV stupor. A little later she fell asleep, lying on the bed, her head propped up on the pillows. The remote was still in her hand.
I felt a little better, though my nose was stuffy. I went out and walked around. My brain told me it was the middle of the night, but in Boston it was mid-evening. I found a bar with the usual shamrocks on the wall and draught Guinness. Everyone was watching a baseball game on the large-screen TV. There was a newspaper folded on the bar, so I read that and sipped my drink. Drive-by shootings had gone out of fashion; either that or become so prolific they weren’t news any more. News so often was fashion. Car-jackings were still news, but it had to be a particularly nice model of car to make a story.
Gun stories were everywhere. People were trying to ban them, and the National Rifle Association was giving back as good as it got. Only now even the President was pro-legislation to curb gun ownership, and a few states had made it an offence for minors to carry handguns. I had to read that sentence twice. In some cities, it turned out, one in five kids took a gun to school with them, along with their books and lunch-box. I closed the paper and finished my drink.
I knew what Spike would say: Welcome to gun heaven. The barman was asking me if I wanted another, and I did want another. He took a fresh glass from the chiller and poured lager into it, only here it was called beer, and dark beer — proper beer — existed only sparsely, usually in trendy bars near colleges. I couldn’t remember how easy it was to buy beer in Boston. I didn’t know whether off-licences existed and were licensed to sell at night. Legislation differed from state to state, along with rates of tax and just about everything else. There were no off-licences, for example, they were called package stores and were government run. At least, that seemed right when I thought it. But my brain was shutting down transmissions for the night. I was trying to think about anything but Bel. In seeing her grief, I was face to face with a victim. I’d killed so many people... I’d always been able to think of them without humanising them. But they were drifting around me now like ghosts.
I drank my drink and left. There was a beer advert pinned to the door of the bar as I opened it. It read, ‘This is as good as it gets’.
I thought about that on the way back to the hotel.
Next morning we went to the Amtrak Station and took a train to New York. Bel got her window seat and became a child again. She was actually well prepared for some aspects of ‘the American experience’, since back in the UK she watched so much American TV. She knew what ‘sidewalk’ and ‘jay-walking’ meant. She knew a taxi was a ‘cab’, and that chips were ‘fries’ while crisps were 'chips’. She even knew what Amtrak was, and squeezed my arm as, nearing the end of the trip, she started to catch glimpses of the Manhattan skyline behind the dowdier skyline of the endless suburbs. Upstate New York had just been countryside, and she could see countryside anywhere. She couldn’t always see Manhattan. Our hotel in Boston was part of a chain, and I’d already reserved a room at their Manhattan sister. We queued for a boneshaker yellow cab and tried not to let it damage our internal organs. The hotel was on 7th and 42nd Street. Outside, spare-change hustlers were being told where to get off by merchants trying to sell cheap trinkets, scarves and umbrellas. The sun was hazy overhead. More men shuffled around or st
ood in doorways, oblivious to the traffic and pedestrians speeding past. I practically had to push Bel through the hotel door.
The reception area was like a war zone. A coach party had just arrived and were checking in, while another consignment of tourists attempted to check out. The two groups had converged, one telling the other useful tips and places of interest. We took our luggage through to the restaurant.
‘Two coffees, please,’ I told the waitress.
‘You want coffee?’
‘Please.’
‘Anything with that?’
‘Just milk for me,’ said Bel. The waitress looked at her.
‘Nothing to eat, thanks,’ I told her. She moved off.
‘Remember,’ I said to Bel, ‘we’re only here the one night, so don’t start going tourist on me. If you want to see around, fine, I’ll do my bit of business and we can go sightseeing together. What do you fancy: museums, galleries, shopping, a show, the World Trade Center?’
‘I want to take a horse and carriage around Central Park.’
So we took a ride around Central Park.
But first, there was my business. My safe deposit box was held in discreet but well-protected premises on Park Avenue South, just north of Union Square. I telephoned beforehand and told them I’d be coming. Bel insisted that we walk it, either that or take the subway. We did both, walking a few blocks and then catching a train.
At Liddle Trusts & Investments, we had to press a door buzzer, which brought a security guard to the door. I told him who I was and we were ushered inside, where my passport was checked, my identity confirmed, and we were led into a chamber not unlike the one in Knightsbridge. Bel had to wait here, while the assistant and I went to the vault. It took two keys, his and mine, to open my safe. He pulled out the drawer and handed it to me. I carried it back through to the chamber and placed it on the table.
‘What’s inside?’ Bel asked.
The drawer had a hinged top flap, which I lifted. I pulled out a large wad of dollar bills, fifties and twenties. Bel took the money and whistled softly. I next lifted out a folded money-belt.
‘Here,’ I said, ‘start putting the money into this.’
‘Yes, sir. What else have you got?’
‘Just these.’
The box was empty, and I held in my hand a bunch of fake American documents. There was a passport, social security card, medical card, various state gun and driving licences, and a few other items of ID. Bel looked at them.
‘Michael West,’ she said.
‘From now on, that’s who I am, but don’t worry about it, you won’t have any trouble.’ I smiled. ‘My friends still call me Michael.’
She packed some cash into the belt. ‘No guns or anything? I was expecting at the very least a pistol.’
‘Later,’ I said.
‘How much later?’
I looked at her. ‘Not much.’
‘Good.’
I sat down beside her. I could see that Manhattan’s charms had failed to take her mind off the fact of Max’s murder. I took her hands in mine.
‘Bel, why don’t you stay here?’
‘You think I’d be safer?’
‘You could do some sightseeing, have a bit of a break. You’ve been through a lot.’
Her face reddened. ‘How dare you say that! Somebody killed my father, and I want to look them in the face. Don’t think you can leave me behind, Michael, because you can’t. And if you try it, I’ll scream your name from the chimney-pots, so help me.’
‘Bel,’ I said, ‘they don’t have chimney-pots here.’
She didn’t grace this remark with a reply.
We took a cab back towards Central Park. The driver reckoned we could find a horse and carriage near Columbus Circle. Bel had bought a tiny foldaway map of the island. She kept looking at it, then at the real streets, her finger pointing to where we were on the map.
‘It’s all so crammed in, isn’t it?’
This was before she saw Central Park.
The park was looking at its best. There were joggers, and nannies pushing prams, and people walking their dogs, and throwing frisbees or baseballs at one another, and arranging impromptu games of baseball and volleyball, and eating hot dogs while they sat on benches in the sunshine. She asked me if I’d ever walked all the way round the park.
‘No, and I doubt anyone else has. Further north, the park hits Harlem.’
‘Not so safe?’
‘Not quite.’
Our coach-driver had asked if we wanted a blanket or anything, but we didn’t need one. Our horse didn’t scare easily, which was a blessing, considering the number of cars and cabs crossing town through the park. Bel squeezed my hand.
‘Tell me something, Michael.’
‘What sort of thing?’
‘Something about yourself.’
‘That sounds like a line from a film.’
‘Well, this is like living in one. Go on, tell me.’
So I started talking, and there was something about the sound the horse’s hooves made on the road, something hypnotic. It kept me talking, made me open up. Bel didn’t interrupt once.
I was born near an Army camp in England. My father was an Army officer, though he never rose as far as he would have liked. We moved around a lot. Like a lot of forces kids, I made friends quickly, only to lose them again when either they or I moved. We’d write for a little while, then stop. There was always a lot to do on the camps — films, shows, sports and games, clubs you could join — but this just set us apart from all the other children who didn’t live on or near the camp. I used to bruise easily, but didn’t think anything of it. Sometimes if I bumped myself, there’d be swelling for a few weeks, and some pain. But I never told anyone. My father used to talk about how soldiers were taught to go ‘through the pain barrier’, and I used to imagine myself pushing against it, like it was a sheet of rubber, until I forced my way through. Sometimes it would take a few plasters before a cut knee or elbow would heal. My mother just thought I picked off the scabs, but I never did. My father had to take me to the doctor once when I bit the tip off my tongue and it wouldn’t stop bleeding.
Then one day I had to have a dental extraction. The dentist plugged the cavity afterwards, but I just kept on bleeding, not profusely, just steadily. The dentist tried putting some sour stuff on my gums, then tried an adrenaline plug, and finally gave me an injection. When that didn’t work — I was on my fourth or fifth visit by now — he referred me to a specialist, whose tests confirmed that I was a mild haemophiliac. At first this gave me a certain stature within my peer group, but soon they stopped playing with me. I became an onlooker merely. I read up on haemophilia. I was lucky in two respects: for one thing, I was a mild sufferer; for another, I’d been born late enough in the century for them to have made strides in the treatment of the disease. Factor VIII replacement has only been around since the early 1970s, before that you were treated with cryo. Acute sufferers have a much harder time than me. They can bleed internally, into joints, the abdomen, even the brain. I don’t have those problems. If I’m going for an operation or for dental treatment, they can give me an injection of a clotting agent, and everything’s fine. It’s a strange sort of disease, where women can be carriers but not sufferers. About one man in 5,000 in the UK is a haemophiliac, that’s 9,000 of us. Not so long ago, nobody bothered testing blood donors for HIV. That led to over 1,200 haemophiliacs being treated with a lethal product. Over 1,200 of us, men and boys, now HIV positive and doomed.
A similar thing happened in France. They gave contaminated clotting factors to children, then tried to hush it up. I was in such a rage when that happened, such a black rage. I almost went out and picked off those responsible... only who was responsible? It was human error, no matter how sickening. That’s one reason I won’t do a hit in a Third World country, not unless the money is very good. I’m afraid I might be injured and treated with contaminated Factor VIII. I have dreams about it sometimes. There are rigorous
checks these days, but does every country check, does every country screen and purify? I’m not sure. I can never be sure.
I carry my works with me everywhere, of course, my syringes and powdered clotting factor and purified water. I’m supposed to visit a Haemophilia Centre when I need a doctor or dentist, and for a yearly check-up. The blood products we haemophiliacs use can contain all sorts of contaminants, leading to liver damage, hepatitis, cirrhosis ... Then there’s the bleeding, which can lead to severe arthritis. (Imagine an assassin with arthritis.) Between five and ten percent of us develop inhibitors, antibodies which stop the Factor VIII from working. Like I say, it’s a strange disease. We can’t have intramuscular injections or take aspirin. But things are always getting better. There’s DDAVP, a synthetic product which boosts Factor VIII levels, and now there’s even properly synthetic Factor VIII, recombinant Factor VIII they call it. It’s like 8SM and Monoclate P, but created in the lab, not from blood. No contaminants, that’s the hope.
Meanwhile, there is a cure for haemophilia: liver transplant. Only at present it’s more dangerous than the disease itself. There will come a cure; it’ll come by way of genetic research. They’ll simply negate the affected chromosome.
As you can tell, haemophilia has had a massive impact on my life. It started as soon as the disease was diagnosed. My parents blamed themselves. There was no family history of the disease, but in about a third of cases there never is; there’s just a sudden spontaneous mutation in the father’s sperm. That’s how it was with me. My parents, especially my mother, treated me like a china wedding present, as though I could only be brought out on special occasions. No more rough games with the other boys — she made sure the other parents knew all about haemophilia. My father spent more time away from me, at the shooting range. So I followed him there and asked him to teach me. A pistol first, and later a rifle. To stop me bruising my shoulder, he had my mother make a little cushion to wedge behind the stock. I still use that cushion.