Retribution (#3)

by M. M. Mayle

  — FORTY-SIX —

  Afternoon, October 8, 1987

  After shivering through another long wait, Hoop stirs from his hiding place on the upper floor of the barn. The maintenance workers are long gone and no sounds have reached him from the nearby road in an hour or more.

  He creeps down a sturdy well-canted stairs and does a quick catfooted inspection of the ground floor and the three attached round buildings without figuring out what crop it was they milled and bagged here. Maybe milled’s not the right word, though, because he hasn’t seen grindstones anywhere and the press he saw on the upper floor of the barn looked like it was just for bagging. And maybe he’s wrong thinking it was grain they processed because no cereal grass he ever heard of had to be roasted before it went to market. That was a job for Kelloggs of Battle Creek; that was for the Post Toasties people to take care of.

  But the roasting he’s sure about; each of the three cone-topped buildings has a fire chamber—or, in the one instance, a hearth where a fire chamber used to be—and with the one exception, openwork platforms above for whatever was roasted by the heat sucked up through those cones that work as chimneys.

  He does most of his poking around on the main floor of the barn. Enough light’s stabbing through the slatted window openings for him to discover a supply of gunny sacks in one corner and several large bags of charcoal in another. Dilapidated shelves on an inside wall hold an assortment of tools that look for all the world like the ones Big Bill used for making snow shoes and fancy cribbage boards.

  In amongst the tools are a couple of kerosene lanterns and a bundle of kitchen matches wrapped in oilcloth—for all the good either would do him because the only fuel cans he comes across are marked “paraffin.” He wastes no time wondering why anyone would keep canning wax in a barn and reminds himself it’s food and water he should be looking for, not curiosities.

  With that thought uppermost, he bypasses the oldest tractor he’s ever seen and ignores for now the large assortment of old-fashioned farm implements, wagon parts, and horse gear taking up most of the floor space. If he’s stuck here even half as long as he was holed up in the woods, he’d better find something to eat right away and something to catch rainwater in, saying there’s no water to be had by other means.

  He slips out the same partially-open door he came in through and notices what he didn’t earlier, when hiding himself was the only thing on his mind. To one side of the flat track door there’s a stone drinking trough for the horses that pulled those farm implements. And at the far end of the trough, there’s a rusted hand pump that might still work if he can come up with enough water to prime it and some way to grease its parts.

  Beyond the trough, on another side of the barn, he finds a thick hedge of rhubarb that’s about done for the year. If worse comes to worse, he can probably gnaw some sustenance out of the woody stalks. That discovery braves him to venture a little deeper into the unmowed, untilled surroundings with an eye out for chickweed, soup nettles, dandelions, sunchokes, ramps, burdock, lamb’s lettuce—any of the edibles snubbed by most white men.

  Exchange spring for fall, and Michigan’s U.P. for Kent, England, and he’d be able to find all those plants and more. He’d find the special spongy mushrooms that come to life in the secret place near the dead elm, and collect tight-coiled fiddleheads from the fern patch outside the shed. And he’d know just where to look for wild asparagus and the first strawberries. The hollyhocks would be started; morning-glory seed would be in the ground. The first growth of cress would be greening the edges of the creek and the cattail marshes would be alive with fresh new . . .

  He stops the remembering with a dizzying shake of his head. He’s got about as much chance of revisiting any of that as he has stumbling across a Blimpie sandwich and two-liter jug of Coke on these untended grounds. Game is what he’ll have to rely on. Any kind, including the kind even his people don’t eat anymore. And he’d better be ready to eat it raw unless he wants to attract attention by building a fire in one of those chimney-houses.

  Slinking back to the shelter of the buildings, he’s as dizzy as he was when he tried to shake memory out of his head and as hungry as he’s ever been in his life. Steadying himself at the bed of past-its-prime rhubarb, he cuts a couple stalks—just in case—and then stops at the horse trough, where he gives the pump handle an experimental push. It’s froze up, as expected, and the inch or two of rainwater in the bottom of the trough is full of sludge, as expected. From cupped hands, he drinks as much brackish water as he dares and reenters the barn with plans to follow it with as much woody rhubarb as his shrunken stomach will tolerate.

  When he founders into the gunny sacks he spotted earlier, it’s not because he couldn’t make it all the way to the stairs and up the stairs to the better hiding place above; it’s because the sacks might wick some of the chill out of his bones. “Yes, that’s why,” he mumbles against the rumbling of his innards and the darkness closing in on all sides at five-something in the afternoon.

  Was it the gripes within his gut that woke him or something from without? He won’t know till he figures out where he is and why he’s gripping a gnawed-on stalk of rhubarb like it’s his most valuable possession. But before he can get his bearings, a greater need takes hold. He scrambles to answer that need in an old rusted bucket and remains squatted over it till the worst of the cramping passes and there’s a good chance he won’t soil himself when he uncoils from that position.

  Returned to the bed of gunny sacks, he now recognizes where he is and how much time has passed. According to his watch and the angle of the light piercing the window slats, more than fourteen hours have gone by—hours when he can’t be sure he was asleep or dead to the world of other causes. He can’t say for sure how much of the rhubarb he ate or if that’s what brought on the botheration of his bowels. No, it can’t have been the rhubarb, he’s tougher than that; he’s had a lot worse to eat than that, so it must have been the dirty water.

  This starts him thinking what all he’d do with unlimited clean water besides drink it. He’d wash himself and wash his clothes; he’d make a calming soup of whatever natural ingredients he could find; stew whatever game he could catch and rebuild his strength.

  He’s sinking into darkness again when scratching-tapping sounds jerk him back to the light. The sounds come in fits and starts, fade in and fade out like whatever’s causing them is playing with him—mocking him from a safe distance.

  With what strength he has left, Hoop struggles into a low crouch, arms himself and readies for a struggle. The struggle, when it comes, is with the rooster that showed him the way under the fence. And it’s not much of a struggle. Its head comes off with one smooth slash of the blade—one symbolic slash of the blade, a person could say.

  He grabs for the body before it can stagger far, takes a deep energizing draught of the blood spurting from its neck before stripping feathers off in haphazard handfuls and biting into the tough muscular breast of the bird. His jaws soon tire; he’ll have to stop for awhile, but the benefits of this savagery are already coursing through him; his thinking’s already improved to the extent he now recalls that charcoal doesn’t give off any smoke to speak of.

  — FORTY-SEVEN —

  Early morning, October 9, 1986

  “Place has a certain charm hasn’t it?” Emmet says as they lay claim to a round table on the banquette side of the Richoux Tea Room and Restaurant.

  “I hadn’t noticed.” Nate says, taking the inboard seat rather than recall an unnerving experience by sitting where he did the last time he breakfasted here. “Convenience and low profile are all I’m looking for these days.” He lays out several pages of notes and a pen.

  Emmet lights a cigarette, an obvious stall and not his usual style unless something’s forthcoming that could rival Brownie Yates’s revelations of a month ago.

  “We can save time and avoid repetition if you fill me in on what you’ve been told of Chris’s find.” Emmet eyes the stack of notes.r />
  “I’ve plenty of time and I don’t mind some overlap. You first. From the beginning.”

  Not given to dramatic gestures, a forceful exhalation of smoke is another indication of Emmet’s reluctance to proceed. But once started, he pauses only to order coffee and toast from a hovering waitress and to butt the unfinished cigarette. With minor embellishment, he describes what’s already known,—what’s already included in Nate’s notes—that Chris Thorne made a sobering find yesterday that could change the very nature of the ongoing crisis.

  For the sake of corroboration, Nate pretends to be vague about exactly where this discovery took place. “They’re saying it was some distance from the road and strictly a hideout. Did I understand that correctly?”

  “You did. The campsite was deep into the wooded area of Chris’s acreage, too far removed for Jakeway to monitor activity on the road. But once they were summoned to the scene, the police determined that someone—allegedly Jakeway—had a watching post adjacent the road. A beaten-down spot behind a dry-stone wall, it was, and just opposite the Terra Firma gates.”

  “Jesus,” Nate mutters even though he’s heard this before.

  “The constable who briefed you last evening, did he go into detail about what was found at the campsite?” Emmet says.

  “Depends on what you mean by detail.” Nate refers to his notes for the corresponding entry. “I was told the bike and the bundled items found in the tree definitely belonged to Jakeway, as substantiated by clerks at the Middlestone sporting goods store and by personnel at the Weald Guest House.”

  “Were you told that Jakeway left behind all his possessions in the manner of the previous abandonment—to include current means of transportation, camping equipment, money, spare clothing, and elements of disguise? Oh, and they tell me there was a journal of sorts and some sort of purchased souvenir item, neither of which have been properly analyzed as of yet. But all signs would indicate he’s scrapped the Hector Sandoval persona, much as he did his true identity at the New Jersey venue.”

  “What are we talking about here? He dumped another set of documents? What’s the significance? What else am I missing?” Nate uncaps the pen, adds these details to his deficient supply.

  “We’re talking about whether or not he’ll attempt morphing into someone or something else because yes, he did dump the phony passport and driving license. Amongst the senior constables, that action holds tremendous significance. They suggest he’s gone wholly rogue at this juncture.”

  “How the hell much more rogue can he get?” Nate scribbles these salient points along a margin.

  “I’ve wondered that myself despite having predicted same after he so recklessly waxed Detective Grillo.”

  “Waxed? Where’d that come from? Who’ve you been talking to?”

  “Detective Helowicz of the Glen Abbey Police in New Jersey. You’ll remember him as Grillo’s former partner. He’s volunteered his services.”

  “He’s here, here in the UK?” Nate drops the pen, pushes the notes aside.

  Emmet nods, chews on a piece of toast.

  “Why haven’t I heard about this until now?”

  “Didn’t seem all that important till now. When he showed up, his appearance was viewed as a courtesy call, a compassionate gesture to his slain mate and treated as such. No one expected him to become actively involved in the investigation. But he did. On his own, he did. Followed up on his own pet theories and a few of wee Amanda’s I shared with him.”

  “Don’t ever let her hear you call her that or she’ll have your—”

  “Sorry. Slip of the tongue. As I was saying . . . When I met with Helowicz the first time—that would have been day before yesterday, Wednesday afternoon it was—his whole bent was towards discovering the whys and wherefores that got Grillo a place on Jakeway’s hit list. I was inclined to believe—as Amanda did and the Middlestone constabulary did not—that the bloody bastard somehow stalked Grillo—the lot of us, for that matter—to the St. Margaret’s churchyard—to the church itself—and somehow picked up on what was said there the day of the burials.”

  “You said was inclined to believe. Something happen to change your mind?”

  “You might say. I’m no longer just inclined, I’m fully committed to that belief because Helowicz followed through where the locals were disinclined to go. He’s effectively scooped these blokes much as Grillo scooped the FBI by being first to discover Jakeway’s cache of horrors over in Jersey.”

  “Jesus . . . Did Helowicz find something at the church, additional evidence?”

  “No, no physical evidence, just the say-so of a gravedigger who had a chat with a cyclist fitting the Hector Sandoval description on the day before the burials, and the word of the sexton who welcomed a church visitor also fitting the Sandoval description on the day of the burials. They both took Jakeway for just another tombstone fancier come to do rubbings and have a look at a fourteenth-century house of worship.”

  “Have you got another cigarette?” Nate asks.

  Emmet produces a pack of Marlboros and a lighter, offers them without comment.

  Nate lights up, inhales deeply, wallows in the cheap buzz. “I’m guessing the gravedigger gave it away.”

  “You guess right. According to Helowicz, the bloke didn’t state any names, only told Jakeway the graves were being opened at request of the same celebrity who tied the knot there at St. Margaret’s back in August—at the big affair that brought in motor coaches and hot-air balloons and no end of foolishness—secondhand quote, that is.”

  Second, third, or fourth-hand, the message would be the same: Jakeway has extraordinary good luck and knows how to use it. Parenthetical: Amanda has extraordinary good instincts and knows how to get any job done. But that’s not news. And Amanda won’t gloat over having another of her theories proved right. Like him, she’ll only wonder what it’s going to take to break Jakeway’s lucky streak.

  Emmet could be wondering the same. He appears lost somewhere between resolve and resignation, but it’s disapproval he registers when he picks up the thread. “You’ll want to know that the same crackerjack police officials dismissive of the church angle and hesitant to muddy their boots with a thorough search of the land opposite Terra Firma, are now swarming the area. Large presence they are, very high profile, and of very little use now that the horse has fled the barn. Face-saving rubbish, that’s all it is.”

  Nate responds to this sarcastic outpouring the way he answered Amanda’s much broader condemnation of law enforcement agencies: “I think they’re doing the best they can.” He repeats the platitude as preferable to stating his true beliefs and requests a summary before Emmet can pick up on the hollowness of the statement.

  “. . . and that’s everything as of an hour ago when I last spoke with a deputy chief constable,” Emmet concludes the three minute wrap-up. “You know everything I know and Colin knows everything except that last bit about the input from the church personnel. You can fill him in on that at your own discretion.”

  Implying that Colin needn’t be told. Never a good idea. The only thing Colin needn’t be told is Nate’s absolute conviction that Jakeway will not be captured by conventional means.

  Emmet wins the ritual struggle for the guest check and Nate leaves without further delay.

  The urge to go over fresh information with Amanda has never been stronger. Realizing she won’t be available until noon, three-plus hours from now, elevates urge to a craving that stays with him all the way to the King’s Road offices and permeates everything he attempts to accomplish there.

  When it’s finally late enough to set out for their lunch meeting at a popular pub near Tower Bridge, he damn near trips over himself in the effort to seem unhurried about leaving the office.

  Amanda is there when he arrives at the pub ten minutes early. Her obvious eagerness is confined to telling him about the office accommodations she just previewed in a newly developed area of nearby St Katherine’s Docks.

  “A five
minute walk from the townhouse you liked best,” Amanda enthuses, “with three executive suites, four conference rooms, generous bullpen space, multi-functional reception area, water views, the visual impact you want, and all kinds of support services close at hand—shops, restaurants, gated parking, easy access to Tower Hill Tube Station, the brand new Docklands Light Rail connection with Canary Wharf and the other—”

  “Slow down. You don’t have to sell me the area. That’s a done deal. So’s the townhouse. I made the offer we put together earlier in the week. They’ll be fools not to accept.”

  “The offer that includes a slip at the marina?”

  “Yeah, that one.”

  “Are you really gonna buy a boat?”

  “Why not? You don’t have anything against boats do you?”

  “I don’t know. Never had the chance to find out.”

  “Then it’s time to find out.”

  “What’s your background with boats? Do you even know how to drive a boat?”

  “No, but I can learn, can’t I?”

  The banter about possible boat names ends when a waitress comes for their order. The lighthearted interval wouldn’t have lasted much longer anyway—not with the usual subject on standby, ready to flood their joint consciousness.

  Nate holds off until their drinks arrive—ale for him, tea for her—then hurries through a condensed version of the breakfast meeting with Emmet. As anticipated, Amanda takes no satisfaction from having been proved right about Jakeway’s presence at the church. Her only reaction is to shiver a little and then feign interest in an environment themed to events that took place at the Tower of London—mainly executions.

  Shit. What was he thinking when he chose this place? Low profile of course; a tourist establishment he wouldn’t be expected to patronize. But did it have to be decorated with fake medieval weaponry and references to beheadings?