Blood Hunt

by Ian Rankin

“Thanks anyway.”

  She looked like she had something awkward to say, her eyes avoiding his. “You know, you are welcome to stay here tonight.”

  He smiled. “Thanks, but I think I’ll head off.”

  “You are sure?” Now she looked at him. She didn’t look like an executive anymore; she looked lonely and tired, tired of solitude and stroking Foucault, tired of long wakeful nights wondering if the sky would suddenly burst open with halogen. Tired of waiting.

  “I’ll see how I feel after dinner,” he conceded. But he loaded the box of files into the trunk anyway.

  “Shall we take my car?” she asked.

  “Let’s take mine. It’s blocking yours anyway.” He helped her on with her coat. “It looked like a very nice restaurant.” Making conversation didn’t come easily. He was still getting over the feeling of being flattered that she wanted him to stay. She locked the door after them.

  “It is an excellent restaurant,” she said. “And a very good reason for moving here.”

  “It wasn’t sentimentality then?” He opened the passenger door for her.

  “You mean because the house belonged to my grandparents? No, not that. Well, perhaps a little. But the restaurant made the decision easy. I hope they have a table.” Reeve started the engine and turned the car around. “I tried calling, but the telephone is acting up again.”

  “Again?”

  “Oh, it happens a lot. The French system . . .” She looked at him. “You are wondering if my phone is tapped. Well, I don’t know. I must trust that it is not.” She shrugged. “Otherwise life would be intolerable. One would think oneself paranoid . . .”

  Reeve was staring ahead. “A car,” he said.

  “What?” She turned to look through the windshield. There was a car parked fifty or sixty yards away—French license plate; nobody inside.

  “Merde,” she said.

  Reeve didn’t hesitate. He slammed the gearshift into reverse and turned to navigate through the back window. There was a logging trail behind him, and another car darted from it and braked hard across the road.

  “Gordon . . . ,” Marie said as he stopped the Land Rover. It was the first time she’d used his name.

  “Run for it,” Reeve said to her. He released both their seat belts. The men in the rear car were reaching into their jackets, at the same time opening their doors. “Just get into the woods and run like hellfire!” He was shouting now, pumping himself up. He leaned across her, pushed open her door, and thrust her out of the car. “Run!” he yelled, at the same time hitting the accelerator with everything he had and pulling his foot off the clutch. The wheels spun, and the car started to fly backwards, weaving crazily from side to side. The men were halfway out of the car when Reeve hit them with everything his own vehicle had. One of the men slipped, and Reeve felt his back wheels bump over something that hadn’t previously been on the road. The other man slumped back into the car, either dazed or unconscious.

  Reeve looked out of his windshield. Men had appeared beside the car in front. They’d been hiding in the woods. He checked to his left and saw Marie scurrying away. Good: she was keeping low. But the men in front were pointing towards her. One of them headed back into the trees, the other two took aim at Reeve’s car.

  “Now,” he told himself, ducking and opening his door. He slipped out of the car and started crawling towards the trunk just as the first shots went off. There was a body lying under the car, between the front and back wheels. Most of it was intact. Reeve patted it down but found no gun. It must have been thrown during the collision. He couldn’t see it anywhere nearby. Another shot hit the radiator grille. Would they hear shots at the neighboring farm? And if they did, would they think them suspicious? The French were a nation of hunters—truffles not their only prey.

  The collision had thrown open the back of the Land Rover. He couldn’t hope to carry the box of papers, but snatched his overnight bag. They were closing on him, walking forward with real purpose and almost without caution. He could try the other car, there might be guns there. He was on the wrong side of the track to follow Marie, and if he tried crossing over they’d have a clean shot at him. His first decision had to be right. He knew what standard operating procedure was: get the hell away from the firefight and regroup. If you had to go back in, come from a direction the enemy would least expect.

  It made sense, only it meant leaving Marie. I can’t help her dead, he thought. So he took a deep breath and, crouching low, made for the trees. He was like a figure in a shooting gallery to the two gunmen, but they only had handguns and he was mov-ing fast. He reached the first line of trees and kept running. It was nearly dark, which was both good and bad: good because it made it easier to hide; bad because it camouflaged his pursuers as well as himself. He ran jaggedly for three minutes and was still surrounded by oaks. He hadn’t been trying to run stealthily or silently, he just wanted distance. But now he paused and looked back, peering between the trees, listening hard. He heard a whistle, then another—one way over to his right, the other to his left, much closer. Only two whistles; only two men. He was getting farther and farther away from Marie. It could take him hours to circle back around to her. He was doing something he’d vowed to himself he’d never do again: he was running away.

  He held out his hands. They were shaking. This wasn’t one of his weekend games; his pursuers weren’t using blanks. This was real in a way that hadn’t been true since Operation Stalwart. Return or retreat: those were the options facing him now. He had seconds to decide. He made the decision.

  He looked down at his clothes. His pullover was dark, but the shirt beneath was white and showed at the cuffs and neck. Quickly he tugged off the pullover and took off his shirt, then put the pullover back on. Trousers, shoes, and socks were dark, too. He put the shirt back in his bag, then unwrapped Lucky 13. He used the damp and mud beneath the leaves to cover his face and hands and the meat of the dagger’s blade. They might have flashlights, and he didn’t want a glint of metal to give him away. The dark was closing in fast, the tree cover all but blocking out the last light of day. Another whistle, another reply. They were far enough apart for him to walk between them. They’d hardly be expecting him to double back.

  But he was going to do just that. He left the bag where it was and set off.

  He took slow, measured paces so as not to make noise, and he went from tree to tree, using each one as cover so he could check the terrain between that tree and the next. He had no landmarks to go by, just his own sense of direction. He’d left no tracks that he could follow back to the road, and didn’t want to follow tracks anyway: they might belong to a truffle hunter; they might belong to a pursuer.

  But the whistled messages between his two pursuers were as good as sonar. Here came the first call . . . then the response. He held his breath. The response was so close he could hear the final exhalation of breath after the whistle itself had ended. The man was moving slowly, cautiously. And very, very quietly. Reeve knew he was dealing with a pro. His fingers tightened around Lucky 13.

  I’m going to kill someone, he thought. Not hit them or wound them. I’m going to kill them.

  The man walked past Reeve’s tree, and Reeve grabbed him, hauling him down by the head and gouging into his throat with the dagger. The pistol squeezed off a single shot, but it was wild. Still, it would have warned the others. Even dying, the man had been thinking of his mission. Reeve let the body slump to the ground, the gaping wound in the neck spurting blood. He took the pistol from the warm, pliant hand and looked at the man. He was wearing camouflage, black boots, and a balaclava. Reeve tore off the balaclava but couldn’t place the face. He did a quick search but came up with nothing in the pockets.

  It was time to go. Another whistle: two sharp staccatos. Reeve licked his lips and returned it, knowing it wouldn’t fool his adversary for longer than half a minute. He set off quickly now, hoping he was heading towards the cars. But he knew his direction was off when he came out into a clearin
g he knew. There was the house, sitting in darkness. He looked up but couldn’t see any halogen lamps hidden in the trees. Maybe the enemy had disabled them.

  Had they taken Marie back to the cottage? It looked unlikely, there were no lights in there. He walked forward to check . . . and now there was a burst of halogen, lighting the scene like a stage-set in a darkened theater.

  “Drop the gun!”

  A shouted command, the first words he’d heard for a while. It came from the trees. Reeve, standing next to the cottage window, knew he hadn’t a chance. He pitched the automatic pistol in front of him. It landed maybe six feet away. Near enough for him to make a dive to retrieve it . . . if there was anything to shoot at. But all he could see were the trees, and the halogen lamps pointing at him from high up in the oaks. Great security, he thought—works a treat. And then a man walked out from the line of trees and came towards him. The man was carrying a pistol identical to the one on the ground. He carried it very steadily. Reeve tried to place the accent. American, he thought. The man wasn’t saying anything more though. He wanted to get close to Reeve, close to the man who had slaughtered his comrade. Reeve could feel the blood drying on his hands and wrists, dripping off his forearms. I must look like a butcher, he thought.

  The man kept looking at those hands, too, fascinated by the blood. He gestured with the pistol, and Reeve raised his hands. The man stooped to retrieve the other automatic, and Reeve swung an elbow back into the window, smashing the glass. The man stood up quickly, but Reeve stood stock-still. The man grinned.

  “You were going to jump through the window?” he said. Definitely American. “What, you think I couldn’t’ve hit you? You think maybe the telephone’s working? You were going to call for help?” He seemed very amused by all these suggestions. He was still advancing on Reeve, no more than three feet from him. Reeve had his hands held up high now. He’d cut his elbow on the glass. His own blood was trickling down one arm and into his armpit.

  The man held his gun arm out straight, execution-style, the way he’d maybe seen it done on the Vietnam newsreels. Then he heard the noise. He couldn’t place it at first. It sounded motor-ized, definitely getting closer.

  Reeve dived to his right as Foucault flew out through the window, sinking his jaws into the man’s face. The force of the dog knocked him flat on his back, the dog covering his whole upper body. Reeve didn’t hang around to watch. He snatched up the pistol and ran back towards the track. A few hundred yards would take him to the cars. He heard another vehicle in the distance, something bigger than a car. Maybe it’s the cavalry, he thought, someone from the farm.

  But now there was another whistled command. Three low and long, two higher and shorter. Repeated five or six times. Reeve kept on moving forwards. Van doors closing. Engine revving. As he turned a bend he saw the car he’d smashed into and his own vehicle. He couldn’t see anybody lying under the Land Rover, and there was nobody in the smashed car.

  There was a sudden explosion. It threw him backwards off his feet. He landed heavily but got up quickly, winded but still aiming his pistol at whatever the hell had happened. His Land Rover was in flames. Had they booby-trapped it maybe? Then he saw what they’d done. They were disabling it—that was all—so it would be here when the police arrived. The police would find evidence of a firefight, maybe bodies, certainly blood, and a missing journalist. They would also find a British car . . . a car belonging to Gordon Reeve.

  “Sons of bitches,” Reeve whispered. He moved past the burning wreckage and saw that the front car had gone, along with whatever vehicle had turned up towards the end. He kept hearing that whistled command. It sounded like the opening of a tune he recognized . . . a tune he didn’t want to recognize. Five beats. Dahh, dahh, dahh, da-da. It was the opening to “Row, row, row your boat.” No, he was imagining it; it could have been another song, could have been random.

  He wondered about checking the woods for Marie Villambard’s body. Maybe she was alive, maybe they’d taken her with them. Or she was lying somewhere in the woods, and very dead. Either way, he couldn’t hope to help. So he set off the other way until he recovered his bag. He had a landmark this time though. The corpse with the cut throat was still lying slumped on the ground.

  Row, row, row your boat. He detested that song, with good reason.

  Then he froze, remembering the scene outside the crematorium in San Diego: the cars turning up for the next service, and a face turning away from him, a face he’d thought was a ghost’s.

  Jay.

  It couldn’t be Jay. It couldn’t be. Jay was dead. Jay wasn’t alive and breathing anywhere on this planet . . .

  It was Jay. That was the only thing, crazy as it seemed, that made sense.

  It was Jay.

  Reeve was shaking again as he headed back to the cottage. There was a body cooling on the ground next to the window, but no sign of Foucault. Reeve looked into Marie Villambard’s Xantia and saw that the keys were in the ignition. Car theft probably hadn’t been a problem around here. Nor had warfare and murder, until tonight. He got in and shut the door. He was turning the key when a vast bloodied figure pounced onto the hood, its face framed by pink froth, growling and snarling.

  “Got a taste for it, huh?” Reeve said, starting the engine, ignoring the dog. He revved up hard and started off, throwing Foucault to the ground. He watched in the rearview, but the dog didn’t follow. It just shook itself off and headed back towards the cottage and what was left of its supper.

  Reeve edged the Citroën past the two wrecked, smoldering cars. There was black smoke in the night sky. Surely somebody would see that. He scraped the Xantia against tree bark and blistered metal, but managed to squeeze past and back onto the road. He allowed himself a cold glint of a smile. His SAS training told him never to leave traces. When you were on a deep infiltration mission, you’d even shit into plastic bags and carry them with you. You left nothing behind. Well, he was leaving plenty this mission: at least two corpses, and a burned-out Land Rover with British plates. He was going to be leaving a stolen car somewhere, too, with blood on its steering wheel. And these, it seemed to him, were the very least of his problems.

  The very, very least.

  He drove north, heading away from a horror he knew would surely follow.

  His arms and shoulders began to ache, and he realized how tense he was, leaning into the steering wheel as if the devil himself were behind him. He stopped only for gas and to buy cans of caffeinated soft drinks, using them to wash down more caffeine tablets. He tried to act normally. In no way could he be said to resemble a tourist, so he decided he was a businessman, fatigued and stressed-out after a long sales trip, going home thankfully. He even got a tie out of his bag, letting it hang loosely knotted around his throat. He examined himself in the mirror. It would have to do. Of course, the driver of a French car should be French, too, so he tried not to say anything to anyone. At the gas stations he kept to bonsoir and merci; ditto at the various péage booths.

  Heading for Paris, he caught sight of signs for Orly. He knew either airport, Orly or Charles de Gaulle, would do. He was going to ditch the car. He figured the ports might be on the lookout for a stolen Xantia. And if the authorities weren’t checking the ports, he reckoned his attackers almost certainly were. In which case they’d be checking the airports, too. But he had a better chance of going undetected on foot.

  He drove into an all-night parking garage at Orly. It was a multistory, and he took the Xantia to the top deck. There were only two other cars up here, both looking like long-stayers or cars which had been ditched. The Xantia would be company for them. But first of all he knew he needed sleep—his brain and body needed rest. He could sleep in the terminal maybe, but would be easy meat there. He reckoned there’d be no planes out till morning, and it wasn’t nearly light yet. He wound the car windows open a couple of inches to help him hear approaching vehicles or footsteps. Then he laid his head back and closed his eyes . . .

  He had a dream he’
d had before. Argentina. Grassland and mountain slopes. Insects and a constant sea breeze. Two canoes paddling for shore. In the dream, they paddled in daylight, but really they’d come ashore in the middle of the night, faces painted. Supposedly in silence, until Jay had started singing . . .

  The same song he’d sung when they landed on the Falklands only a week before, taken ashore by boat on that occasion. Splash-ing onto the beach, meeting no resistance. And Jay humming the tune he’d been ordered to stop singing.

  Row, row, row your boat

  Gently down the stream.

  Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily,

  Life is but a dream.

  A dream? More like a nightmare when Jay was around. He was supposed to be a good soldier, but he was a firing pin short of a grenade, and just as temperamental.

  Just as lethal.

  They’d sent for them after that firefight in the Falklands. They wanted to mount a two-man mission, deep surveillance. They were briefed onboard HMS Hermes. Their mission would be to keep watch on Argentinian aircraft flying out of Rio Grande. (Reeve was told only afterwards that another two-man unit was given the same brief with a different location: Rio Gallegos.) Nobody mentioned the words suicide mission, but the odds on coming back alive weren’t great. For a start, the Argentinians on the Falklands had been equipped with direction-finding equipment and thermal imagers; there was little to show that the same equipment wouldn’t be available on the mainland.

  Therefore, their radio signals out would be monitored and traced. Meaning they would have to stay mobile. But mobility itself was hazardous, and the possibility of thermal imagers meant they wouldn’t even be able to rest at night. Getting in would be easy, getting out a nightmare.

  Jay only demurred when his request for a few Stinger shoulder-launched antiaircraft missiles was rejected out of hand.

  “You’re going in there to watch, not to fight. Leave the fighting to others.”

  Which was just what Jay didn’t want to hear.