He says, “Oh, you’ve come.” As if he knows me. As if this were inevitable: that he expected me all along.
But he can’t. He can’t know about Karla.
Does he misread the silence as a different denial? He says, “You think I don’t know who you are?” Fear and sadness and a sort of bitter irony.
“Who do you think I am?”
Trick question. He doesn’t answer that.
He says, “What have you got? A gun? A knife?” A little wobble on that last word “knife.”
“I haven’t got anything.”
“You’re lying.” Then, “You found me: how?”
“Graves phoned you here. I traced the call.”
“And when I phoned him back it was you who answered, wasn’t it?” And then, rapidly, on a rising wave of anger and despair: “Why did you do it? Why did you kill him? He was just a friend, doing me a favor. He knew nothing—”
“I didn’t kill him.”
A whiplash savagery: “Got someone else to do your dirty work?” He draws himself upright, lifts his head, fills his lungs. I cut him off.
“I didn’t kill him. I found him; he was already dead. Whoever did it didn’t hesitate. I’m guessing they’re also after you, that’s why you’re hiding here—Mr. Hamilton, if I’d come to kill you, what am I waiting for? No one’s watching.”
He says, “You won’t do anything to me until you’ve found out where she is.”
“But I already know. She’s in the Program.”
I cannot see his face, but I can see his body, the way the convulsion hits him. And I can hear the sound he makes—a groan, a sob?—out of frustration and grief and something that opens up at my feet, so deep that I can’t begin to measure it.
He masters it. But something about him is now stooped, as if in two sentences I’ve aged him a decade—more—and suddenly he’s a very old man.
I press on, hardening my voice this time. He has to understand that he must talk.
“I didn’t kill your friend, Mr. Hamilton. I don’t know what half of this is about. But I know Catherine Gallagher’s in there because she killed a man and it was bad—”
“She’s in there because I put her there.” He pulls himself up a fraction. “Don’t you know who I am?”
Out it comes, from memory, as if by magic; or as if Craigie’s voice is in my head: William Arthur Hamilton, ex-director of collaborative ventures at Hopeland, the medical giant—he was a middleman, an intermediary, lining up big corporate and government jobs—
And Hopeland has the health-care contract for the Program.
Not Hopeland by name; a wholly owned subsidiary. But they staff the Emergency Medical Center, outside the wall; they run the armored ambulances.
And Hamilton was the contracts man; he pulled the strings, knew everyone—he could spin some line just like I have to get Johanssen in there, quote National Security, pull rank, skip procedures, cut through red tape, and not leave a trace. That’s the how.
The why is something else.
“Yes,” I say. “I know who you are.”
“And you know what she did,” he says. “What are you? Police? A journalist?”
I could lie. It’s what I do. Try to persuade him I’m on his side, on Catherine’s side … But the lie fails me; or maybe there just isn’t time. “It doesn’t matter what I am. But I’ve been on the trail of the people behind this for weeks, ever since I learned there was a contract out on her life. I know what she did, but that’s only the half of it. I thought Graves could tell me the rest, but I was too late. So now I’ve come to you. Mr. Hamilton, who’s behind this?”
He says, “You mean you don’t know?” Then: “What do you think will happen, if I tell you?”
“I can get this stopped.”
I say it with every ounce of confidence I’ve got, but he laughs, sick and bitter. “You can’t stop them. Why do you think I put her in the Program? You think I did that lightly? You think I don’t know what it’s like in there?”
Another silence. When he speaks again his voice is flatter but also gentler. “She turned up on my doorstep, in the middle of the night—December the thirteenth, a year ago—and she told me everything. Everything. So I know exactly what she did. I have no illusions there. But her father was a friend of mine, I’ve known her since she was a child, I couldn’t let them—” He stops, gathers himself, goes on. “It was the only place she’d be safe from them—the only place they wouldn’t look.” He pauses; turns his head slightly, as if he might see me out of the very corner of his eye. “If I tell you what this is all about, they’ll do to you what they did to Ian Graves.” Then he says, “And if they find out where she is, they’ll kill her, too.”
I don’t reply. I don’t know how to tell him. I only realize he’s measured my silence when it’s too late—when he says, faintly through the patter of the rain, “But they already know, don’t they?”
“They do.”
For a second I think he’s going to ask me if I’m sure. But he’s heard my voice, and he doesn’t.
“Then it’s over.” He bows his head.
The rain is falling on him, soaking his shirt, plastering his thin gray hair to his skull, exposing his scalp, raw and pink and frail.
“Tell me what this is about. Tell me who they are.” I’m leaning toward him, as if that might make a difference, persuade him to talk.
“Why? You—can’t—stop—them.”
“Do you think not knowing will make me safe? It didn’t work for Graves.”
Cruel, that. He hesitates, but not for long. “I’m going in now.”
“Mr. Hamilton—”
“Be grateful that I haven’t seen your face. So if they ask I can’t tell them who you are, no matter what they do.” He pauses on a thought. “Unless they’re watching now?”
A silence: simultaneously our heads go up, both of us straining through the rain for something beyond it, as if we might be able to hear them, whoever they are—as if by listening we would know they’re there.
Of course, there’s nothing.
Then he takes one, deep, steadying breath, and walks back into the kitchen, closing the door behind him. The kitchen blind goes down.
I’m standing by the laurels, soaking wet.
I should go to that door. I should hammer on it, until he lets me in. But he won’t, will he? He won’t.
That’s when I realize:
Someone deleted that phone record. It wasn’t Hamilton—he hasn’t the resources—and it wasn’t us. That only leaves the client.
They have exactly the same information as I did.
They can trace him here.
And again, I’m listening to the rain. What if I’m not the only one who’s watching?
I slip back into the shrubbery and away.
It takes me twenty-five minutes to work my way back to the car, looking over my shoulder all the way. Then I drive to Staines—antisurveillance drills again—and park on a street, and phone Craigie.
“Hamilton,” I say. “We have a problem.”
A silence. Then Craigie says tightly, “You’re on a mobile. You know we can’t talk—”
I make it cut and dried: “Hamilton put Catherine in the Program. She’s not being punished in there, she’s hiding. And whoever wants her dead is on his trail. Craigie, he’s blown. They can track him down the same way I did. Get him out of there—”
A silence from Craigie. But then he says, quietly, “All right. Where are you?”
“I’m on my way back—Craigie? Be careful.”
I’m light-headed with tiredness and hunger now. In a café I buy a takeout coffee, a bacon roll, and a bar of chocolate. I’m soaked to the skin. The girl who takes my money gazes at me pityingly. “You should try to get warm,” she says, as if she’s wondering whether I’ve got a home to go to. I try to smile at her, but my face feels frozen. She gives me more change than I’m owed. I’m climbing back into the car when I find a twig in my hair.
I du
mp two packets of sugar into the coffee and gulp it down: it burns the inside of my mouth. I swallow half the bacon roll too fast and then can’t face the rest of it. I eat the chocolate instead. It gets me halfway back to Docklands before my energy levels crash again. I eat the rest of the bacon roll as I drive, one-handed. I feel nauseous.
More antisurveillance drills. Am I being followed?
I hit roadworks, then a major accident: the police hold the traffic in a queue while they clear the road. In all it takes me three hours to get to the garage block. The image of Hamilton, and everything he said, loops in my head all the way.
December thirteenth: it had all just happened then, and she was running …
Five days had passed since that final sighting, captured on CCTV: Catherine Gallagher walking out of her life. I looked at that image, and I thought, This woman’s killed, and it’s caught up with her; this is the getaway. But I was wrong. Maybe the woman in the hallway in her coat is still untainted: maybe there’s no blood on her hands just yet. But she’s walking into a future where all the bad things will happen. I wonder if she knows.
At the garage I don’t have a change of clothes, only a spare coat that I slip over my wet clothing. The damp has wicked right through to my skin now; I’m freezing. I try to tidy my appearance in the hatchback’s rearview mirror. My hair’s dried badly, and when I put on lipstick my skin looks as white as paper.
I pick up a taxi two streets away from the garage and get it to drop me at London Bridge. I take the Jubilee Line back to Canary Wharf.
I walk the last half mile head down, praying I’ll meet no one I know.
In the bathroom I strip off my wet clothes and step into the shower: the hot water pummels my chilled skin. I stand there for ten minutes, then scrub myself half dry and pull on my robe.
Craigie can’t just walk into that safe house; not if someone’s watching. How long will it take him—to pull a team together, get them into position, get the area swept for other interested parties …?
But things are happening. Hamilton knows what Catherine did, and Hamilton will talk—Craigie’s ruthlessness will see to that. A matter of hours, and we’ll know everything.
The phone is ringing: the concierge. I have a visitor.
Craigie arrives buttoned into his overcoat, clutching his briefcase as if it might afford some protection. He looks harassed. This isn’t the routinized contact he was looking for.
But still, he couldn’t resist. He’s sent his team off after Hamilton, and now he’s come here, to find out what this is all about. That’s what this business drills into you: the insatiable hunger for information, the endless need to know.
“William Hamilton,” he says. “How did you track him down?”
“You put him in a house near Wentworth. The call Graves made before he died? Finn got hold of the deleted record: it was made from that house.”
“You’ve been there?”
“Spoke to him—he didn’t see my face. He’s the one who put Catherine Gallagher in the Program. Got Graves to provide the suicide story as cover. Craigie, she’s not in there to be punished. She’s hiding.”
He says, “That phone record: we didn’t delete it.”
“I know. And Hamilton doesn’t have the resources. Has to be the client—making sure they got to him before we did. They go for Catherine, they go for Ian Graves, they go for anyone who’s helped her—”
“So why didn’t they go for him straightaway? You said that they could trace him to that house. Why wait?”
“I don’t know. Just tell me he’s out of there now.”
“Oh, he’s out of there,” he says, but grimly, and something in me lurches.
“I sent someone in to ring the bell—a delivery driver with a package, no big deal. He was just going to make sure Hamilton was okay, look out for surveillance. The door was on the latch. The lights were off. Our man went in—”
And Hamilton was gone.
No sign of disturbance or a violent struggle. No sign of Hamilton’s wallet or passport either. Hamilton just grabbed a few things and left, alone. The CCTV recordings showed him leaving.
And it was me who triggered it—appearing in that garden, telling him I’d traced the call. Making him think the safe house wasn’t safe at all. That’s why he’s fled.
Perhaps he doesn’t realize he’s put himself in the open—
No: I think again of the way his head bowed, when he said, It’s over. He simply doesn’t care.
Craigie leaves to supervise the ongoing search for Hamilton. I check my messages. Still Johanssen hasn’t phoned.
Monday, late morning, Johanssen went back to the workshop. A final check, I thought. It’s Tuesday afternoon now, gone four o’clock, the day dipping into evening. He should have called by now. Why hasn’t he?
Suddenly an old clip flickers across my vision: Johanssen in the street, the blond smiling man—a message, a threat, a kiss …
My spine prickles. No one’s watching the surveillance feeds today.
So phone him.
I pull up the contact number, the one he gave me for the clinic. Already I’m trying to get the words straight in my head: the Program lines are monitored, someone could be listening. But it’s not as though I have anything to tell him. I just want to hear his voice.
I dial.
It rings—once, twice, three times.
It’s still daylight. The clinic will be shut, but Johanssen’s close, only half asleep nearby—
Someone picks up.
Three seconds of sound, maybe four. That’s all I get.
Male voices baying in a nearby room.
A man screams.
The connection cuts.
DAY 21: TUESDAY
JOHANSSEN
Three o’clock. He’s crossed and recrossed the Program so many times, and still he keeps coming back to the place where he last saw the man.
The housing here is the worst in the Program: the windows broken, the gutters collapsing, the air sour with raw sewage. Quillan’s men on the corners are fewer and more indifferent, and the patrols pass blank eyed. Today there’s a neat pile of human shit in the middle of the street, and someone’s screaming from a window … He leans against a wall. Behind him, the two men who’ve been following him note his action and pause at the neck of an alleyway. After a minute, two more wander over to join them. Once in a while they glance in his direction, as if he’s an exhibit, an animal in a zoo; as if they, too, are wondering what happens to him next.
He closes his eyes. His head throbs.
Twenty-four hours since their paths crossed in the fog. If Ross were planning to cash in his sudden knowledge with Quillan he’d have done it already, wouldn’t he?
But maybe that’s what he’s doing right now—maybe he’s standing at the compound gate this second, demanding to see Quillan. And Brice. Brice will be there, too, thrusting the ID card into Ross’s face, watching as Ross nods.
So go now. Don’t wait. You’re never going to find him. Phone Whitman, get out. Then go and see Fielding. Tell him what happened.
Already he can feel the shame pooling in his mouth like saliva. He gulps it down.
Deal with it. It’s over.
Someone has come to stand beside him, just a foot or two away. He glances across. It’s Jimmy.
Suddenly he’s more tired than he’s ever been before, and nothing matters.
“Hello, Jimmy,” he says.
Jimmy smiles shyly at the pavement.
“You all right then?”
Jimmy nods.
“That’s good. You look after yourself—”
Jimmy reaches into his jacket one-handed—the dirty sling makes it awkward—pulls out a wad of photos and thrusts them at Johanssen.
“Photos,” Jimmy says earnestly. “Photos.”
He takes them. Why not? The first one’s a snap of a caravan park. The second—a different size—has a small boy in a Man U strip running across a living room toward the camera. The third’s a
wedding lineup.
“Where’d you get these then, Jimmy?” he asks, though he already knows.
Jimmy says proudly, “Mine.”
Johanssen shows him the boy in the Man U strip. “He your lad?”
Jimmy nods happily. He points to another that’s fanned its way out of the stack in Johanssen’s hand. “My house.”
The same house. The house at Marlow.
It’s new but built to look old, three broad gables and a turret behind, an expensive wood-framed conservatory to one side, box hedges and steps going down to a lawn. He’s sure of it, even though he saw it only once, eight years ago and in the dark—even though the shot doesn’t show the river sliding by at the end of the lawn. In the photo a couple is standing on the steps. The woman wears a pale blue dress. She has a sweet face, though the last time he saw her, she didn’t even look at him; she only looked at Sully.
The man beside her in the photo is Charlie Ross.
“You know this man, Jimmy? He a friend of yours?” Jimmy just stares at the photo. “You know where he lives now?” Jimmy’s eyes wander, and he opens his mouth. “You mustn’t tell anyone where he lives. Not me, not anyone. All right?”
Jimmy looks at him uncertainly.
“Here—here.” He thrusts the photos back at Jimmy. “You take care of your photos, now.”
Jimmy nods happily. “My photos.” He takes them, then awkwardly pushes them back into his jacket pocket.
“Bye-bye,” he says and he walks away.
Johanssen watches him go.
Jimmy’s almost out of sight when he stops and for all of ten seconds looks sideways at a building opposite, and his mouth moves, forming words. Mustn’t tell. Then he nods to himself, satisfied he’s got it right, and goes.
Johanssen waits six slow minutes before pushing himself away from the wall. As he does so, the party of onlookers breaks up, the tail peeling off to follow him.
He walks in the opposite direction to Jimmy, then cuts back in a ten-minute loop that will take him to the building where Jimmy stopped.
The Distance: A Thriller Page 31