Thurston nods and pushes through the door before she goes any further.
He feels Lou’s eyes on his back all the way to his room.
Chapter 29
Lou was right about the storm.
Less than an hour after Thurston checks in he watches from his corner window as the edges of the town blur. After a while all he can see through the thickening blizzard is the neon glow from Frenchie’s down the street. Thurston puts on his boots, grabs his down jacket and a beanie, and steps out into the motel corridor. Before he leaves he wedges a sliver of matchstick under one of the door hinges; an old trick, almost a reflex.
Outside, the temperature has dropped ten degrees. Thurston trudges across the parking lot and gets a burger at the otherwise deserted diner. When he leaves, the owner, a deadpan old boy with a lined face that puts Thurston in mind of someone who’s just drunk a cup of vinegar, begins switching off the lights before the door closes.
Thurston takes a right. As he turns the corner onto Main Street he cops a face full of snow and flashes back to the night three weeks ago on his way to The V down Hackney Road. Heading toward Frenchie’s, the memory is a reminder to him to watch his step and to remember why he’s here.
He opens the door to a warm blast of air and the sound of country music and conversation. A long bar is lined with customers, many of them watching the bank of six TVs, all showing sports.
“Close the goddamn door, man,” someone yells.
Lou hadn’t been kidding about everyone in Talbot turning up at Frenchie’s.
From what Thurston can see there are more people inside the bar than he’d have believed lived in the town.
Thurston’s arrival doesn’t cause so much as a ripple. He’d worried the place might stop dead at the sight of a stranger and feels a little foolish when absolutely nothing happens.
There’s no space at the packed bar but Thurston finds a spot at a single table in a corner. He orders a beer from the waitress and sits back, glad to be in the warmth of a bar in full flow without any of the responsibilities of working. Thurston takes a pull on his drink and thinks again about Sofi and Barb. It occurs to him that Janie and Lenin and some of the regulars might have heard he was responsible for the fire and the deaths, and hot anger at Miller flares up once more. He hopes Janie and Lenin won’t believe what they hear but he’s not certain. They—
“You mind?”
Thurston looks up to see a good-looking blond woman standing in front of him. She’s indicating the empty chair across from Thurston. It takes a few seconds for him to place her before realizing she’s the woman he saw talking to Lou at the motel. With her hair down and a touch of lipstick she looks different. What was her name? Jerry? Toni?
“This ain’t a come-on or nothing,” she says, “but I’m not about to spend the night standing up. I been doing that all day. No offense.”
“Sure. Be my guest,” says Thurston. “I was, uh, miles away.”
He waves a hand at the chair. The woman takes off her coat and sinks back.
Thurston calls over the waitress.
“Can I get you something to drink?” he says. “This ain’t a come-on or nothing.”
The woman smiles. “I’ll have what he’s drinking, Darla,” she says to the waitress. Thurston sees a brief flash of something—approval?—pass between the two.
“Same again, for me,” he says.
“Terri,” says the woman as Darla weaves back toward the bar. She holds out a hand and, when they shake, her grip is firm, her touch still cold from outside.
“Mike,” says Thurston. “We met, kind of, at the motel earlier?”
“Are you asking me? Or is that the way you speak? What is your accent?”
“It’s a long story,” says Thurston as Darla arrives back at the table with the beers. When she’s gone, Terri leans forward and props her hand on her chin. “I like long stories,” she says.
Chapter 30
A good night.
Thurston had forgotten how they felt.
He and Terri talk and drink some beer and then talk and drink some more. He’s thinking about asking her to dance, then sees a cop come in and exchange a look with Terri. He taps a finger to his snow-dusted hat and walks toward the bar.
“Who’s that?” says Thurston.
Terri rolls her eyes. “Sheriff Riggs.” She takes a sip of beer and runs her fingers through her hair.
“He seems to like you,” says Thurston.
“Yeah, well. That’s as may be. The feeling ain’t mutual. The guy gives me the creeps if you want to know the honest truth of it.” Terri sits back and regards Thurston. “Y’know, if I was a gambling woman—which is a great name for a country song, right?—I’d bet you was some sort of cop.”
Thurston shrugs.
“Real estate?” says Terri. “I can’t see that. But you’ve got some cop thing.”
“I was in the military,” says Thurston. He’s aware he’s stepping out farther than he wants to, like a man inching onto a frozen lake. “Maybe that’s it.”
“Maybe. You in the military for long?”
“Let’s change the subject. Is that okay?” Thurston smiles to let Terri know there’s no offense taken. “I did a few years.”
“And you don’t like talking about it?”
“Something like that.”
The conversation seems to signal a shift in the atmosphere between them.
“Listen,” says Terri. “I better go. I’ve got to work in the morning and I don’t want to get there in bad shape.”
She stands and puts on her coat. Thurston scratches his head.
“Something I said?” he says. He notices Riggs look up from his conversation with the bar owner and smirks. Thurston gets the idea that Riggs is not unhappy Terri’s given him the brush-off.
Terri smiles. “Good night, Mike.”
When Terri has gone, Thurston can’t help but feel disappointed. Not that he’d been expecting anything exactly, but things had looked to be going well. He likes Terri and he’d thought she’d liked him.
You’re losing your touch, buddy, says a voice in his head. Like you ever had it, comes the response.
Thurston waits ten minutes before leaving. He doesn’t want to look like he’s chasing Terri.
He walks back to the motel through four inches of snow piled on the sidewalk. The cold sobers him up although, truth be told, he hasn’t had much. And he’d gotten some useful information about Isle de Rousse at Frenchie’s. About how there was one road in and one road out. About the way “the folks” up there didn’t come into town much and when they did they didn’t leave a real good impression. Nothing concrete, but Thurston is building a picture of what he’s up against.
The Top o’ the Lake Motel is mostly dark when Thurston gets back. He lets himself in the lobby door and heads past the empty desk toward 205.
Thurston is at the door, key in hand, when he freezes. He looks down and bends to pick up an object off the thin corridor carpet.
The sliver of match he’d placed in the doorjamb earlier.
Thurston pulls the hunting knife from his belt and places an ear softly against the thin veneer of his room door.
Nothing.
He glances up and down the deserted corridor. The place is like a morgue.
He pads the few steps to room 206 and puts his ear to the door.
Again, he hears nothing. Thurston bends to the lock and, using the knife as a lever, pops it with a soft snick. He waits a few seconds but hears nothing from inside.
As Lou had told him, the room is empty. Thurston moves silently to the window and slides it open. A cold wind slices through the opening and Thurston steps out onto the small balcony, trying to force back memories of stepping out onto the balcony at The V. This one is separated from the balcony outside 205 by nothing more than a chest-high piece of blockwork.
Thurston puts one foot on the icy rail and hauls himself up and over the wall and drops onto the neighboring balcony. He press
es his back up against the stucco and peeps into 205 through a narrow gap in the curtains.
He sees nothing except darkness.
Feeling a little foolish, and more than a little cold, Thurston’s mind replays the number of ways the match fragment may have dropped clear of the door. He slides the blade of his knife into the gap between window and frame and lifts the latch. Growing more confident by the second, he slips into 205.
He’s taken one step inside when he senses movement to his left and turns as someone smashes a table lamp across the back of his neck.
Chapter 31
Miller’s phone rings twice and then goes dead.
He puts down the beer he’s working on, looks up from the Canadiens’ hockey game on TV, and sighs. Even though two rings is what he’d agreed to with the guy on the other end of the call, it still bugs him when he has to do this James Bond secret code shit.
Miller digits a number and waits for the connection.
“It’s me,” he says, and then listens a while.
“Tell me what Frenchie said about this guy’s accent, again,” he says. “In detail.”
When Miller hangs up he stands for a minute looking at the figures on the ice and then dials another number.
Viktor needs to know about this.
Chapter 32
Thurston gets his forearm up quick enough to take some of the sting out of the attack. Even so, the heavy base of the lamp drops him to his knees. Before the next blow lands he manages to twist and scissorkicks the legs from under his attacker. Thurston hears a body land on the carpet. He flips over to straddle his opponent and brings his knife up—
The table lamp blinks on and Thurston finds himself looking down at a naked Terri, her mouth set in an animal snarl.
“What the fuck?” says Thurston.
Terri twists out from under him and grabs a sheet from the bed.
“You always come in through the fucking window?” she snarls. “And what’s with the knife?”
“You break into everyone’s motel room?” says Thurston. “And you’re lucky I didn’t have a gun.” He rubs the back of his neck. “You pack a wallop.”
“Good,” says Terri. “I hope it fucking hurts.” She groans and rubs her leg. “I think you broke my leg.”
Thurston gets to his feet and holds up his palms in a conciliatory way.
“Let’s start over, okay?”
“Maybe.”
“How did you get in?” says Thurston, and then holds up a hand again. “Wait. You work at the motel. You have keys. Dumb question, right?”
“About as dumb as it gets.”
“Okay. Next one. Why are you here?”
Terri raises her eyebrows.
“That’s possibly even dumber. Maybe I did hit you too hard.”
She steps off the bed and lets the sheet drop.
“Ah,” says Thurston.
“Right,” says Terri. “Ah.”
Chapter 33
Viktor Delamenko drives carefully out of Southie—no sense in getting pulled over when the trunk of the Range Rover’s rattling with enough hardware to invade Canada. It’s an easy four-hour pull up to Isle de Rousse, even in the snow. Miller had told them to take it easy, no panic. So long as the job was done in the next twenty-four hours everything would be copacetic.
And Viktor’s inclined to drag the thing out a little, make Miller sweat.
The simple fact of Miller bringing in Viktor and his boys in the first place is a little victory in itself. Viktor wouldn’t necessarily say it to Nate Miller’s face, but sub-contracting this wet work, even to a sub who’s a business partner, isn’t a good look when his own boys are right there. Miller can justify it all he wants about not shitting in your own backyard, but it’s all Delamenko can do to keep the smile off his face.
“They say why?” asks the man in the passenger seat, Dmitri Puli, Viktor’s second in command.
Puli’s ex–Spetsgruppa A—Alpha Group—a Kremlin True Believer who, after one too many blood and shit details in Chechnya, stopped believing and swapped sides. Seeing his old colleagues back in Moscow cleaning up while he had his ass on the line in the North Caucasus tipped him into this line of work. Puli’s a thin man who looks like a civil servant.
In the backseat, looking at his phone, is the youngest of the three, Boris Spetzen, a classic Moscow “bull” cleaned up and put into a suit. Delamenko still checks Spetzen’s not wearing running shoes every time they go out on a job. Spetzen’s there if they need any heavy lifting done but has about as much class as you’d expect from someone who’s fended for himself from the age of eight.
Delamenko shrugs. “Miller doesn’t want anything traced back to his place. Says this guy might be connected.”
“To who?”
“He didn’t say. Does it matter?”
Now it’s Puli’s turn to shrug. “No, I guess not.”
Delamenko takes the ramp onto 93 and settles back.
Chapter 34
It’s been a while.
Two months to be exact. With Sofi, one night after they’d both had a few too many shots. It had been Lenin’s birthday and a lock-in at The V after hours.
Thurston sinks back into the bed and crooks an arm behind his head. He lets out a long, slow breath. Next to him, Terri does the same, running a hand through her hair.
She gets up and walks toward the bathroom. Thurston watches her. They’d left the broken lamp lying on the floor and it makes Terri’s shadow dance across the ceiling. At the door, aware of his gaze, Terri flicks out a hip like a showgirl exiting the stage.
Two months.
Sofi Girsdóttir. Thurston lets the name run through his mind and doesn’t like where it takes him.
Terri comes back in the room and slides in bed.
“You gonna tell me?” she says.
“Tell you what?”
“What you’re really doing here.” Terri props herself up on an elbow and looks Thurston straight in the eye. “Don’t get me wrong, I don’t blame you for spinning me a line. All the stuff back at Frenchie’s about working in a bar and traveling around—”
“All true,” says Thurston, cutting across her.
“Yeah, okay, maybe I can buy that. But you being here, in East Talbot for Chrissakes. Nobody comes to East Talbot.”
“I did.”
“Hmm. Kind of my point.” Terri rolls onto her back. “Jeez, I wish I smoked at times like this.”
There’s a silence.
“It’s the place out on the lake, isn’t it?” says Terri. “Up at Isle de Rousse. Talbot Chemical. That’s why you’re here.”
Thurston doesn’t reply and rolls over on his side.
He’s not doing the strong silent routine but he doesn’t trust himself not to spill it all to Terri. It’s been a long time since he talked properly to a woman—to anyone—and the temptation is strong. Terri’s one of the good ones, Thurston knows simply by being here next to her. If he told her everything she’d understand. It would be fine. He could leave this thing with Miller, see how it plays out with Terri. Start again.
Instead he says nothing and the silence grows.
After a couple of minutes Terri gets dressed and leaves without another word. As the door closes behind her, Thurston rolls onto his back and looks up at the ceiling.
“Shit.”
Chapter 35
When Thurston wakes, East Talbot sits under a blanket of freezing fog. He showers and dresses quickly before heading downstairs. Lou’s back on reception and gives him the frost. Thurston wonders if she’s pissed because he slept with Terri, or because Terri’s spilled about what a sneaky, lying bastard he is.
Outside it’s colder than a hockey puck’s belly. Thurston hurries across the ghostly parking lot and into the diner for breakfast. He’s working on a second pot of coffee when Sheriff Riggs comes in.
There are about a half dozen customers in the joint but Riggs makes a beeline for Thurston’s booth.
Shit.
Thu
rston knows he should play nice but there’s something about Riggs that rubs him up the wrong way. He feels like Riggs could be from the same cop tree as Hall back in London.
“You mind?” says Riggs. He looms over Thurston and points his finger at the bench opposite.
Thurston looks up.
“Does it matter?”
Riggs smiles without warmth. “Not really. Cold as all hell outside. I need coffee.”
He slides his sizable ass onto the vinyl and scoots along the bench until he’s facing Thurston. Riggs looks across to the counter and raises a finger. Vinegar Face behind the counter must speak Riggs’s sign language because he gets busy right away.
“Riggs,” says the cop. He doesn’t offer a hand, which is fine with Thurston because he flat-out doesn’t like Riggs. He’s seen these guys before.
“Flanagan,” says Thurston.
Riggs smiles. “Okay,” he says. “Flanagan.”
Vinegar Face arrives with coffee and a Danish pastry. He gives Riggs a microscopic glance and treats Thurston like he’s got leprosy.
Thurston drinks his coffee and waits. Riggs doesn’t say anything and Thurston sits there. He knows this bullshit drill backward. Riggs has the look on his face cops have—the kind of look that suggests they know everything about you and don’t like it. It wouldn’t matter a crap whether Thurston is polite. Riggs wants this conversation to be a warning—Thurston can see it in his eyes. The thing is, Thurston’s not the type to respond. He runs a piece of toast around the egg on his plate and eats. He can do silence.
Riggs raises his eyebrows. “You’ve talked to cops before, right?”
“I’ve met ’em.”
“You got the look.”
Thurston drains his coffee cup and reaches into his pocket. He pulls out a ten and puts it on the table. One thing about being way out in the middle of nowhere: it’s cheap.
Thurston slides across the bench seat. As he makes to get up Riggs leans forward and puts a hand on Thurston’s arm. Thurston looks down at Riggs’s pudgy hands.
Bookshots Thriller Omnibus Page 24