Whirlwind

by Hilary Norman

  ‘You wrote something about proving Donald Cromwell’s innocence. Which is ancient history.’

  ‘Not to your mother.’

  Anger surged again. ‘What do you know about my mother?’

  ‘That she was a good person who died too young. That her troubles might not have existed but for that history.’ He paused. ‘Even now, you’re still suffering its consequences.’

  ‘So what are you claiming? You can’t change the past. If you have evidence, why not take it to the cops?’

  ‘They wouldn’t help,’ the other man said. ‘Whirlwind could.’

  ‘Even if that’s true, what’s in it for you and your team?’

  ‘Whirlwind would benefit us all,’ Reaper said. ‘You need to have faith, Isaiah.’

  ‘I stopped having faith a long time ago.’

  ‘As we all did. Until Whirlwind.’ Reaper paused.

  ‘Jesus,’ Michael said, frustrated because they were going around in circles, and because he wasn’t certain what he was more afraid of now: getting dragged into whatever the hell this was or shrinking back into his own darkness. And even that familiar bleakness seemed suddenly muddied, and he had questions to ask, all of which would stay unanswered if he left.

  If they even intended to let him go.

  ‘You want me to jump off a cliff because you say it’s going to be good for me.’

  ‘And for your family name,’ Reaper said.

  ‘My family is dead,’ Michael said.

  ‘Your grandmother isn’t dead.’

  ‘Shit.’ Michael’s fists clenched.

  ‘Isn’t posthumous justice better than none? Take a leap of faith, Isaiah.’

  Michael was silent.

  ‘After all, what else do you have left?’

  Nothing.

  Suddenly, the same longing that had hit Michael after he’d received that last email shook him again, its intensity shocking. Because the truth was he did want what this stranger seemed to be holding out to him.

  Faith. In the possibility of justice.

  And wasn’t anything better than the non-life he’d been living?

  There was something on offer here, an alternative, perhaps a way forward. And all he needed, it seemed, was to grab hold.

  His head was spinning.

  Grab hold, or go back into the dark.

  ‘I’m offering you my hand, Isaiah,’ Reaper said softly. ‘I’m offering you friendship and justice.’

  Michael felt a deep, jagged shudder of need pass through him.

  He had nothing left to lose.

  He sighed.

  ‘It has to be now, Isaiah,’ Reaper said. ‘Are you in or out?’

  Michael swallowed hard and took the leap.

  ‘In,’ he said.

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  Four days after Whirlwind had pulled him off the street, on the evening of Monday, December 22, Michael was lying on his bed, his right forearm across his eyes, when his cell phone rang.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Revelation’ – the codename for Whirlwind’s ‘D-Day’ – minus two days, and it seemed that his heart had hardly stopped hammering since Thursday night, and this was all happening too damned fast.

  He and Reaper had met twice since then. First on Saturday evening in a bar less than a half-mile from Michael’s room. Second time yesterday in a busy Starbucks – kids’ noise keeping their conversation private – where Reaper had bought him a ham-and-Swiss.

  The man was tall and thin, his hair iron-gray, short and sparse, his eyes gray too, couched in wrinkles behind small oval spectacles. His nose was small and mottled, his mouth narrow, his face lined. He wore an old tailored topcoat and black wool scarf, and he walked with a black cane, and Michael thought he might have arthritis, had noticed flickers of discomfort, though the other man had not complained. His age was hard to determine, probably mid-sixties, and he appeared stoic and sane.

  Despite the ‘mission’ he’d outlined on Saturday, which had sounded totally crazy to Michael and scared him half to death.

  Now only four days since he’d jumped off that cliff, and no question he was being pulled headfirst into a major crime. If it actually came to pass, which, right now, Michael hoped it would not.

  Two all-too-real items had been delivered by courier on Sunday morning before he’d left to meet Reaper – both seeming to confirm that, in criminal terms, Whirlwind was the real deal. A credit card and driver’s license, both in the name of Michael Rees (maybe a real person someplace, maybe deceased, he didn’t want to know) complete with signature and PIN to enable him to purchase anything he might need in the run-up to Revelation.

  He’d already learned a good deal about the ‘mission’ in that bar. More than enough to ensure his close attention. More to follow on Sunday and, finally, at the chosen time.

  During Revelation itself.

  ‘So,’ Reaper had said in Starbucks after outlining the plan. ‘What do you think?’

  That he wanted out.

  ‘Are you saying I still have a choice?’

  ‘There are always choices.’

  ‘You’d let me walk away?’

  ‘Of course.’ The older man had smiled. ‘I’m not sure how far.’

  A threat, plainly. No great surprise given how much Michael now knew.

  He’d asked when he would meet with the team.

  ‘Probably not until D-Day.’

  They’d had a brief conversation about justice.

  Nearly forty years overdue.

  Except there had to be better ways, had to be.

  ‘Why not just go to the cops?’ Michael had asked again.

  Reaper had smiled. ‘First, if I went near the cops, that would be the end. Second, your cause is not the only one crucial to Whirlwind.’

  ‘What if I’d refused?’

  ‘You’d have missed out. The operation would still have gone ahead.’

  ‘I still don’t know what exactly is in this for you,’ Michael had said. ‘I’m taking it that yours is the other “cause” that’s crucial to Whirlwind?’

  ‘I won’t answer that yet,’ Reaper had said. ‘Other than to say that our causes – yours and mine – are much more closely linked than you could possibly imagine.’

  Tantalizing as that answer had been, it had still not felt like enough to Michael, not nearly enough, leaving him with the certainty that he needed to get out, run, maybe catch a Greyhound someplace – just get lost.

  Though the old loneliness and bleakness would travel with him.

  And then, later, back in his shitty room, the sense of isolation had become so intense again, the grindingly relentless absence of motivation …

  Whirlwind was dangling its promise of something.

  Reaper had been totally straight with him about one thing.

  ‘It may all go wrong,’ he’d said. ‘Badly wrong.’

  ‘That seems like a given.’

  Reaper had said nothing.

  ‘So a good chance of prison,’ Michael had said. ‘Or worse.’

  The man called Reaper had smiled his thin smile.

  ‘Depends on your outlook,’ he’d said.

  By Monday evening, two more things had arrived. A padded envelope containing keys and a note informing him that a gray Toyota Corolla was waiting for him around the corner, a bag in the trunk. A car, delivered by persons unknown – maybe in the team, maybe not.

  Hell, this was no team, this was a gang, and he was a part of it now.

  A criminal.

  And nothing trivial.

  Hard to believe he’d come to this, because he’d thought of himself, in the distant past, as a decent person. Had still harbored a hope that he might, some day, be able to return to feeling that way about himself.

  It would never happen now. Not after this.

  Which was painful to bear.

  The bag in the trunk had contained clothing, scale drawings, a flashlight and a MacBook. And something else in the padded envelope: a USB flash drive containing
a kind of home movie ‘Who’s Who in Shiloh, Rhode Island?’ narrated by Reaper.

  Michael had played it with deep interest.

  No one there he actually knew, though there were names he was familiar with. His grandfather’s name repeated several times.

  And now, this phone call.

  ‘Isaiah?’ Reaper’s voice said.

  Michael was getting almost accustomed to being called that, though the other alias worried the hell out of him: initials the same, but having to practice forging the signature on the license and credit card, knowing he’d have to turn around when someone called him ‘Rees’.

  Major Felony 101.

  ‘Did you find the car and contents?’

  ‘I did.’

  ‘Computer work OK?’

  ‘Fine,’ Michael said.

  ‘Clothes fit?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And you’ve watched my little movie.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Feeling all right?’ Reaper asked.

  ‘I guess.’

  ‘Questions?’

  ‘A thousand, but not right now.’

  ‘So you’re all set?’

  Michael shut his eyes.

  ‘As I’ll ever be,’ he said.

  In the armchair in his room at the Red Door Inn, Reaper keyed in another number on his phone, and waited.

  ‘Yes,’ the voice at the other end answered.

  Its tone keen and sharp.

  ‘Jeremiah?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Ready to go?’

  ‘You bet,’ Jeremiah said.

  Reaper cut off the call, made another, then waited briefly.

  ‘Luke?’ he said.

  ‘Why did you talk me into going?’ Liza asked Ben just before he left that evening on his way to pick up Gina, his girlfriend, to drive to her parents’ in New Jersey for the holidays.

  ‘I didn’t. That was your conscience speaking.’

  ‘They’re forecasting snow,’ Liza told him. ‘Be careful.’

  ‘You too. Leave early, allow extra time.’

  ‘Maybe I should stay here.’ Liza flopped onto the couch.

  ‘Don’t start again.’ Ben bent, pulled out a gift-wrapped package from under his desk and tossed it to her. ‘Not to be opened till Christmas morning.’

  Liza felt it. ‘Soft. Yours is by the front door.’ She squished her gift. ‘What is it?’

  ‘Something you might need in Shiloh,’ Ben said.

  ‘It’s too big to be Valium,’ Liza said.

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  Michael had received only two Christmas cards: one from Jake Bollino, the other from his former parole officer. The latter stood on his windowsill, the former packed in his duffel bag. For luck, he’d figured, but now, abruptly, he changed his mind and took it out, put it on the table. Last thing he wanted was to bring trouble to Jake.

  Ready to go. Tuesday, December 23, six a.m.

  Revelation minus one day.

  He was leaving earlier than necessary. It was still dark outside but he hadn’t really slept, and if he hung around here any longer he was afraid he might chicken out.

  He’d left his cell phone as instructed, pulled on comfortable clothes – turtleneck sweater, jeans, old boots – but he was already jangling with tension.

  ‘Time to go,’ he said, picked up his jacket and walked slowly toward the front door, passing the small square mirror on the wall, where he paused, took a long look.

  A goodbye kind of a look.

  And then he shrugged on the jacket, picked up the duffel and the bag he’d found in the trunk of the Toyota, checked his keys, turned out the light, let himself quietly out and walked down the stairs to the street.

  It was snowing.

  The gray car was common and pretty nondescript, though white, Michael thought now, if the snow forecast was accurate, might have been a better choice.

  He got in the car, organized himself, felt his pulse speed up.

  Told himself to settle down.

  Started the engine.

  Liza could have chosen to leave Snow Hill Street at dawn and beaten the holiday rush, but then she’d have arrived in Shiloh at breakfast time, and comparing the prospect of a little bad-tempered gridlock on the highways with another whole day around her grandfather …

  No contest.

  Which was why she’d waited until noon, and it was good to be getting out of the city in her little blue Honda, even if it was a shame about the destination.

  ‘You’re such a drama queen,’ Ben had said last night. ‘Your granddad’s probably just a sweet old guy.’

  ‘More like Dr Seuss’s inspiration for the Grinch,’ she’d said.

  ‘That’s getting tired,’ Ben had said.

  Light snow was already falling as she got in the car, but nothing disruptive yet, so Shiloh here she came, and she reminded herself that there might just be a decent story in the trip. Not that anyone in the village was likely to want to talk to her about missing persons until Friday or Saturday, which meant she could have waited till tomorrow to go.

  ‘Change the script, Liza,’ she told herself.

  And edged out of her space.

  TWENTY-NINE

  There were only two people inside St Matthew’s just after half-past noon: Patty Jackson, the cleaner, polishing pews, and the vicar himself, Reverend Simon Keenan, sitting in his small office in the undercroft – the vaulted chamber beneath the church which also housed archives, restrooms and a basement parish hall.

  Upstairs, the church was looking festive, had been decorated the previous Sunday by volunteer parishioners; and come Christmas Eve, with candles aglow, incense burning, voices raised in carols and hymns and the kind of atmosphere that usually made the hairs on the back of Keenan’s neck prickle, St Matthew’s would be, he hoped, at its absolute best.

  All it needed now, he thought, still struggling with sermons for the coming days, was a vicar to do it justice – and perhaps some good news, too: the safe reappearance of Thomas Pike to share with the congregation.

  Just in time for tomorrow evening would be perfect.

  Something extra to lift the soul and give thanks for.

  Snow was falling steadily on Glocester, Rhode Island as a rented gray Honda Accord pulled off Putnam Pike and parked outside the Casey Motel, the driver getting out of the vehicle, looking up at the sky, then over at the motel.

  The man known by Whirlwind as Luke was thirty-two years old, five-nine, stocky, with short dark hair, and the scarring on his face was the kind that some people shrank from while others openly stared or occasionally jeered at.

  ‘Looks OK,’ he said as his passenger opened her door.

  The woman codenamed Nemesis was forty-one, slim, her face lean with high cheekbones and a mouth taut with tension. Her brunette hair was cut in a bob, and in her dark straight slacks, stone-colored parka and ankle boots she looked like a sales rep or manager, the picture of convention.

  She regarded the entrance, its Christmas wreath hung on the door, and nodded.

  ‘Let’s go,’ she said.

  He popped the trunk and they unloaded together, Luke taking his own backpack and a long, bulky bag, Nemesis taking out two backpacks and closing the lid.

  They went to check in.

  In his second-floor room at the Shiloh Inn, the man called Reaper stood at the window, leaning on his cane, looking down at the snow-covered garden, at its prettily decorated fir tree and at Main Street itself.

  Not many more people around than when he’d walked the street almost three weeks ago. A pair of tourists at the far end photographing St Matthew’s, the shops seeming quiet, most last-minute Christmas shoppers presumably doing battle in the big malls closer to the cities.

  A figure was moving slowly along the street, coming this way. An old woman planting her boots carefully, using a carved wooden cane, wary of slipping. Reaper knew who she was, was aware that he was standing in the very building that she had once ruled as head teacher of Shiloh
Elementary School. Betty Hackett, who, once upon a time, many years before, had found the body of a young murdered child.

  The soft sound from the open MacBook on the table behind him announced that he had new mail. He turned, picked up the computer, sat down on the chintz-covered armchair, placed the laptop on his knees and saw that it was one of those he’d been waiting for.

  Opened it and nodded.

  Minimal words, as arranged.

  LUKE AND NEMESIS CHECKED IN.

  He opened another window, exposing a Google Earth map.

  Shiloh Village at the heart of the predominantly green map.

  Glocester to the north.

  Using the touch pad, he moved a yellow pushpin to the approximate location of the Casey Motel, then typed ‘Luke and Nemesis’, clicked it and their names appeared on the map.

  He smiled at the magic of it, then sighed.

  ‘Small things,’ he said.

  Outside the Foster Inn near the town of the same name, the man codenamed Joel took a moment before getting slowly out of the white Ford Focus allocated to him by Whirlwind.

  The former doctor was five-ten, aged fifty-four, his silver-gray hair cut very short, twenty pounds lighter than he had been prior to getting himself in shape for Reaper and their mission: all that Joel was living for now.

  Which was not to say that he did not fear it.

  He’d have given a lot to turn and run.

  If he’d had anyplace or anyone worth running to.

  He reached into the well behind his seat for his bag and coat, looked up briefly into the iron-gray sky, felt big cool flakes land on his cheeks and melt.

  He shivered, pulled on the coat, and then, head down, he walked toward the inn.

  At the Shiloh Inn, Reaper read the new email, saw that Joel had checked in, brought up the map, located Foster, south-east of Shiloh, found the yellow pushpin, slid it down to the location, typed ‘Joel’, clicked, then sat back again.

  His hand trembled a little and he clenched it.

  ‘Not now,’ he told it, and willed it away.

  The tremor ceased.

  It was snowing steadily too now over the state line in Putnam, Connecticut, as the men known as Amos and Jeremiah retrieved their bags from the rear of a white Ford Explorer (leaving three more bags concealed beneath the lining in the cargo space), locked up and headed into the Five Mile Inn. Amos was middle-aged, heavy set, shaven-headed and intimidating looking, Jeremiah a decade younger, tall, fit and trim with buzz-cut dark hair and brown, darting, suspicious eyes.