by Ian Rankin
He didn’t really need this information. What he did need was to feel like a soldier again. Because soon he’d be coming up against Jay, one way or another, and he had to be mentally sharp. At short notice, there wasn’t much he could do to bolster his fitness or physique—the years had taken their toll. From what he’d seen of Jay, the man would be stronger than him: fighting him physically would be a lost cause. What Reeve needed to do was become strong mentally; he needed to hone his attitude and his instincts. He needed proper planning and procedure, starting right now.
Knowing the roads as he did, he made good time to the house. He could have shaved minutes off by crossing country, but he’d have been more likely to get lost, and running on a road was easier on the muscles than running over rough terrain.
He took his time approaching the house.
He did one full circuit around it at a distance of half a mile, then closed in and circled it again. If anyone was watching for him, they were well concealed. He knew policemen, and knew they weren’t trained that way. For one thing, they liked their creature comforts; for another, they didn’t have the necessary patience. There might be a presence inside the house, but he’d swear there was no one out here with him.
Silently, he entered the compound, crouching low, keeping to the shadows along the walls. There was an added advantage to staying close by the walls: the drive itself was gravel and noisy underfoot, but there was a two-foot border of earth between the driveway and the walls, a concession to Joan, who had planted small flowers and climbers there. Reeve crushed them underfoot in silence.
He had the keys he needed in his free hand, the keys to the killing-room door. But the police had been there first. They’d taken a sledgehammer to the door, which looked like it had re-sisted their onslaught bravely. The door swung inwards to the touch. He wondered what they’d thought when they’d found the room, with empty cartridge casings on the floor and shop-window dummies acting as hostages. He knelt down in front of the baseboard and shone the flashlight against it. It looked undisturbed. Reeve pulled it open and reached in, touching the oiled rags, feeling the metal bulk beneath their wrapping.
And he smiled.
He unwrapped the Beretta and found the right pack of ammo for it, filling his pockets as well as the gun. Pushing his hand back into the wall, he pulled out a package of plastic explosive with all the trimmings. The material itself was fairly fresh; he’d been using it to rig up explosions some weekends, to keep his soldiers on their toes. Reeve checked for detonators, wire, and wire cutters; everything he needed was in the package, including the crocodile clips, which acted as triggers. He put everything in his holdall, then replaced the baseboard and made sure he’d left no footprints.
He crossed the courtyard, moving slowly on the gravel and pebbles. Peering through the kitchen window, he saw nothing. He circled the house, looking in the windows on all four sides: still nothing. He couldn’t tell about upstairs. It was just possible that a guard could be asleep in one of the bedrooms. The curtains in Allan’s room were closed, but maybe he’d just forgotten to open them the morning they’d been cleared out.
Reeve unlocked the front door and entered the hall. He didn’t need to disable the alarm: the police must already have done that. He wondered how long it had rung before they’d found a way to silence it. Not that it mattered out here; the nearest croft wasn’t within hailing distance.
He double-checked the downstairs rooms then made for the stairwell. The second step from the bottom was the creaky one, so he avoided it, just as he avoided the middle of the third step from the top. He didn’t use the banister for fear of a warning sound. On the landing, he held his breath and listened. There was no noise. He waited there three full minutes: when someone’s asleep, they usually make some sort of sound every three minutes or so. Reeve suspected that a policeman would have some regard for property, so any guard would probably choose to sleep in the guest room. He opened the door slowly and pointed his pistol through the crack. The curtains weren’t closed, and moonlight filled the room. The bed was made up, with several throw pillows and costume dolls arranged on it. Joan’s work. She’d spent a lot of time lovingly decorating a room nobody ever came to stay in.
He turned and crossed the landing, opening Allan’s bedroom door. The room was a mess: bedclothes thrown onto the floor, pajamas draped over the end of the bed, comics everywhere; the computer’s power light shone lemon-yellow in the gloom. Either Allan had left it on, or the police had checked it and forgotten to turn it off. Reeve left the room and quickly checked the main bedroom and even the bathroom.
Then he breathed a sigh of relief.
Downstairs he found milk in the fridge, but it was sour. There was an unopened carton of orange juice, and he cut it open with scissors, then gulped from it. There was an unopened packet of ham in there, too, so he peeled it open and lifted out two slices, rolling them up and stuffing them into his mouth. Back in the living room, he assessed the visit by the police. They had dusted. Probably they wanted his fingerprints for the file they were opening on him. It looked like they’d shifted everything and put it back not quite in the right place. Searching for clues, he supposed. He unscrewed the telephone handsets. The bugging devices had been removed. He suspected this had been done by Dulwater rather than the police.
He didn’t suppose anyone would be listening in, so he went upstairs and took a quick hot shower, thanking God for the in-stantaneous water heater. He left the light off in the bathroom, though he couldn’t say why. Perhaps it was because it felt like procedure.
He dried himself off and searched for clean and, above all, warm clothes. There were a few other things he needed, but they were in his workshop. He walked into Allan’s room again, restless, unable to sit down. The yellow light caught his attention. The screen was black, but when he nudged the mouse it came to life, showing him the games menu from the hard disk. There were a couple of good games there, and some which must have been new from the last time he and Allan had played together.
Then Reeve saw the game Allan had loaded from the disk sent to him by Jim. The game Allan couldn’t get on with. It was called Prion.
“Jesus,” Reeve whispered. Prion, as in PrP, as in the bad chemicals which had started this whole nightmare. His hand was fairly steady as he moved the pointer onto Prion and double-clicked to load the game.
When the title screen came up though, it wasn’t called Prion at all. It looked like a fairly straight arcade game called Gumball Gulch, which is what Allan had called it, Reeve recalled. Which screen was it Allan had said he couldn’t get past? Five? Six?
It took Reeve a while to follow the instructions and get into the game. As far as he could tell, he was a turtle in the Wild West, just made sheriff of the town of Gumball Gulch. In screen one, he rode into town and was voted sheriff after killing the three bad guys who had just shot the sheriff to bust their comrade out of the jail. In screen two, there was a bank robbery to foil. The graphics, so far as Reeve could judge, were pretty good, as were the sound effects, complete with voices.
After maybe half an hour, he was in screen four. In screen three he’d had the option of taking as deputy a one-legged drunk. Reeve had accepted “Stumpy,” who now guarded the villains from the bank robbery.
Suddenly Reeve paused. “What the hell am I doing?” he asked himself. But he kept on going.
Screen four was a difficult one. Reelection time was coming up, and Reeve’s popularity was only 40 percent, two of the bank robbers having escaped, and one innocent bystander having been gunned down during the shoot-out. Reeve granted a new license to the Brawlin’ Barroom, which pushed his popularity to 50 percent. But then the rowdiness factor increased, and soon the cells were bursting. Reeve opted to take another deputy, a fresh-faced young kid.
“This is Rio Bravo,” he muttered.
The real trouble started on screen five. There was a mass breakout attempt at the jail. Stumpy had the place locked tight with himself inside. He wasn’t let
ting anyone in, the sheriff in-cluded, which left Reeve outside with one kid deputy, a restless populace, and a possible lynch mob. In a little while, the escaped bank robbers would be coming into town intent on revenge. Reeve’s guns and ammo, of course, were in the jail.
And Stumpy was asking for the password.
Reeve tried a few obvious things, some only a Rio Bravo buff would know. Then he sat back, arms folded, and did some thinking. Jim had changed the name of the game to Prion. Why? Suddenly it became clear. As Marie Villambard had said, Jim was a journalist from his head to his toes. He would have kept files. He would have kept backups, and kept them well hidden.
Reeve knew now the purpose of the password. He typed in CWC, but it didn’t work. He tried Co-World, then PrP, then Prion—to no avail. He tried Killin and Preece. Nothing.
So then he tried Kosigin.
And suddenly he wasn’t in Gumball Gulch anymore. The bottom of the screen told him he was reading page one of twenty-eight. The print size was small; Jim had crammed a lot in. Single-spaced, too. At the top was a message in bold:
I’ll let you get back to the game soon, Gordon. I’m assuming it’s you reading this, and if you are reading it then I’m most probably dead. If I am dead and if you are reading this, then you’ve probably been sniffing around and I thank you for your concern. The following may be of help. I’d dearly love to get it published. A friend called Marie in France may help; I’ll give you her address at the end. But first, I have a story to tell you . . .
And what a story. Reeve already knew it, of course, but Jim had more information than anyone had suspected. There was the stuff about Preece’s history, his “revolutionary” shock-sex therapy, and Kosigin’s hiring of Alliance Investigative to dig up the details. Kosigin’s blackmail of Preece had been implicit, but Jim’s report made it explicit by actually interviewing two ex-investigators at Alliance who had worked on the job, as well as members of the original research team headed by Preece.
Including a Dr. Erik Korngold.
Jim had had two very cordial meetings with Korngold. It was Korngold who had admitted the blackmail. Preece had spoken to him about it at the time. But then Dr. Korngold had turned up dead, leaving Jim pretty well stuck unless he could get corrobo-ration. The only other scientist he knew of from the original research team was Dr. Killin. So he’d started pestering Killin, and Killin had gone to Kosigin.
And Kosigin had decided the reporter had to be taken out of the game.
Jim’s research was impressive—and scary. He detailed countries around the world where neurological diseases were on the increase, and showed how these increases correlated to the introduction of CWC herbicides and pesticides onto those countries’ farms. There were snippets of interviews with farmers and doctors, agrichemical experts and environmentalists. Farmers everywhere were getting more and more ill. Stress, the skeptics had said. But Jim had found out different. And when the police did start to get curious about pesticide side effects, CWC simply shifted spheres, concentrating on third world countries.
Jim found a correlation with tobacco companies who, as western markets contracted after health scares, merely opened up new unsuspecting markets—Africa, Asia . . . CWC was doing the same thing with chemicals. What was more, Jim had been getting, at the time of writing, inklings of crooked deals to introduce pesticides into third world countries. Deals were done with governments, regimes, and dictators, money slipped into secret bank accounts, and import barriers suddenly disappeared. Jim hinted at links between CWC and the CIA, since the CIA wanted a presence in countries that CWC was opening up. It was a global conspiracy, encompassing governments, the scientific community, and everyone who had to eat.
Jim had worked hard and fast building up his case. He did so for a simple reason, one he stated towards the end of the file: “I think some people would kill to keep this secret, because while bits and pieces are well-enough known, certainly among the environmental pressure groups, no one has really been able to link it globally. They say you are what you eat. In that case, we’re poison.”
At the end, Jim gave Marie Villambard’s address, and beneath that were some instructions. They told Reeve where he would find the “hard evidence.” Jim had hidden all the documents—transcripts, notes, archive material, and tapes of interviews. They were in a box at Jilly Palmer’s farm outside Tisbury. Jilly Palmer: Reeve remembered her long braid of chestnut hair, her rosy-red cheeks. Jim had been introduced to her by Josh Vincent, and had trusted her from the off. He’d asked her to store a large box for him, and to say nothing to anyone about it unless they told her they’d read about it on the disk.
“I’m keeping copies of some of the stuff with me,” Jim concluded, “so that if any burglaries suddenly and mysteriously occur, they’ll think they got what they came for.”
Then a final message: “To access the next game level, press Ctrl+N. To quit, press Esc.”
Reeve hit the Escape button and shut down the computer. The story had been here all the time, here under his own roof. His legs weren’t the steadiest as he got to his feet. He couldn’t think, couldn’t concentrate on anything but his brother. He got down to the kitchen somehow and made himself a hot drink, then sat at the table sipping it, staring at nothing.
The mug was one-third empty when he started to cry.
He planned to call Jay’s hotel that evening, which gave him a full day to prepare. High on his list was sleep, but first he had to re-turn to the boat.
The early-morning waters were calmer, and the dawn made navigation easier. He made good time back to Mallaig. He could tell Creech had been sleeping, but he was awake now, looking miserable. Even so, he studied the boat carefully as Reeve brought her home.
“Not a scratch on her,” Reeve said, clambering out with his stuff. He checked Creech’s wrists. They were red-ringed, the skin broken at a couple of points. “Trying to escape, eh?”
“Wouldn’t you?” Creech snarled. Reeve had to agree. “Man my age and condition, trussed like a Christmas turkey.” Reeve untied him and told him to put the kettle on. When Creech came back, Reeve was laying out bank notes on the workbench.
“What’s that for?” Creech tried not to sound too interested.
“I need your help, Kenneth. I’m sorry I had to tie you up, but to be honest I’d very little option. If I’d taken you with me, you’d’ve had to walk from Loch Eynort to Stoneybridge and back. But now I’d like you to help me. If you do, you pocket this money for starters.”
Creech eyed the money. “How do you mean, starters?”
“I’ll give you some passengers. They’ll pay you whatever you ask. They’ll just want to take one of your boats, perhaps both. Like I say, you can name your price.”
The kettle was boiling. Creech didn’t go to switch it off.
“What do I have to do?” he said.
There were old wooden boards lying around the place. It wasn’t difficult to find two or three the right size, along with some fixing poles. They used the taupe paint to put a few words on the boards and, when it was dry, used a hot-air gun to peel some of it back off. Creech got some earth and rubbed it into the boards. In the end, they looked fairly authentic.
Then Reeve dipped into his bag and brought out a packet of red powder he’d brought from his workshop. It was like powdered paint, but mixed with a little water, it produced a thick bubbly liquid which looked just like blood. He used it some weekends, laying a fake trail for his soldiers. He didn’t tell Creech what it was, or what it was for.
They stopped for more tea. Creech kept asking about these men who’d want to hire his boats. How did Reeve know about them? When would they come?
“I’ll tell you later,” Reeve said, standing up. “First though, I’m going to borrow your mattress for an hour or two. Okay?”
Creech nodded vigorously. Reeve lifted the Beretta out of the bag, waved it at Creech, and took it and his tea with him to the mattress.
Creech decided not to move from the table until Go
rdon Reeve awoke, no matter how long that took.
Reeve took Creech with him when he went to make the telephone call. Not because he didn’t trust Creech, but because Creech didn’t trust him. Creech wanted to hear him make the call.
They squeezed into a telephone box at the end of a farm road, and Reeve made the call.
A hotel receptionist answered, and Reeve asked to be put through to Mr. Rowe’s room. Jay answered on the first ring.
“It’s me,” Reeve said icily.
“Who else? I want to thank you, Philosopher. I’ve always wanted an excuse to come back home. And all-expenses paid, too.”
“Kosigin’s a generous man. You weren’t worried I’d sic the regiment onto you?”
“I don’t think that’s what you want.”
“You’re right.”
“So when and where do we meet?”
“An island. Not far from my home.”
“You want home advantage, eh? Well, I’d do the same. Give me the details.”
“Head to Mallaig.” Reeve spelled it out. “Just north of the town, there’s a boathouse with an old Saab parked outside. You’ll see it easily enough. The boathouse is owned by a man called Creech.” He spelled this, too. “He’ll hire you a boat.”
“A boat? Hey, do I get to row it, like in the song?”
Reeve ignored this. “Will you need just the one boat?”
Jay laughed. “It’s just you and me, Philosopher.”
“I’ll bet. Creech will know where you’re to go. He’ll give you directions. Naturally, he’ll want paying for the hire.” Reeve watched Creech’s tongue flick momentarily from his mouth.
“Naturally. I’m looking forward to seeing you again. We’ve got a lot to catch up on.”
Reeve blinked away the pink fog. Soon, he thought. Soon. But he mustn’t let the anger get the better of him. He had to control it.
“Kosigin must really want those tapes,” he said.
Jay just laughed. “Come on, Philosopher, we both know this isn’t about the tapes. Screw the tapes. Screw Kosigin. This is about you and me, am I right?”