Down Among the Dead Men

by Ed Chatterton

  Neither of them is anxious to take that day trip to Kandahar.

  Now Frank and Koop are sitting at stools in a late-night diner. Koop's got his laptop open and they both have coffee on the go.

  Just after eleven Angie walks in and they recognise her from the photo on Noone's wall. He waves and she nods.

  'Angie? Frank.'

  She sits down. A punked-up waitress arrives at the table and pulls out a pad. Angie orders tea, Frank and Koop get more coffee.

  'I like your accent,' Angie says to Frank. 'Cute.'

  'What about mine?' says Koop. Angie gives Koop a glance and smiles pityingly.

  He's been weighed, measured, and found wanting, all inside the three seconds it's taken to say the sentence. Koop sits back and lets Frank take the lead. It's been a long day.

  'I have a confession,' Frank starts. He lowers his voice and beckons Angie closer. He takes out his wallet and shows her his Merseyside police ID. 'I'm not a friend of Ben's, Angie. Far from it.'

  Angie inspects Frank's badge and pulls back, wary.

  'You're in a great deal of danger, Angie,' says Frank. 'Ben Noone has killed six people in England, and myself and my colleague are here to investigate further. I strongly suspect that he's killed one of my investigators already.'

  'No,' says Angie. 'Ben wouldn't do that.'

  'Yes. He would.' Frank takes out the case file and lays some images of Nicky Peters' body taken in the metal box inside the Williamson tunnels. 'He and an accomplice imprisoned this boy underground and let him die. After they'd fucked him and filled him full of coke.'

  Angie looks like she's going to be sick. Tears are in her eyes. It's an old trick but Frank's got no time to come up with anything clever. His main aim is to shock Angie into giving up what she knows – if she knows anything – and do it as quickly as possible.

  'He killed the boy's parents,' says Frank, and shows her a photo from the blood-soaked bedroom in Birkdale. Angie puts her hand to her mouth. Frank pushes on. He places a photo of Dean Quinner on the mud at Garston and another of the charred corpses of Terry and Alicia Peters. He explains in a low, urgent voice what he believes Noone to have done. By the end of it, Angie is silently weeping. The waitress looks over, attitude on her face, but Frank's dark-eyed glare is so intense that she retreats behind the relative safety of the counter.

  'Angie,' says Frank. 'I need to know anything that might help me. And I think that if you're being honest with yourself, there's part of you that knows that what I'm saying about Ben could be true. In fact I'm willing to bet that's the case. If you think there's absolutely no chance that Ben Noone could kill anyone then just walk away now. I won't stop you and I won't bother you again. But before you do, ask yourself this: did Ben Noone request anything from you related to the presidential fundraiser?'

  Angie's head jerks upright. 'What?'

  'The fundraiser. Did he want anything from you? Do you have anything to do with the fundraiser?'

  'Yes,' says Angie. 'Well, sorta. I know one of the guys who is organising something.'

  A case that Frank and Koop felt had gone forever is suddenly back on track.

  'What do you mean?' says Frank.

  'Ben was very interested that I knew this lawyer on the organising committee. Said he was going to go to the fundraiser too. Showed me the ticket and everything so I thought it was all right.' She looks at the two men. 'I haven't done anything wrong, have I?'

  Frank pats Angie's arm. 'No, Angie. You're doing fine. Tell us what Ben wanted off you.'

  'Well that's what's so weird about all this,' says Angie. 'He wanted to see the guest list.'

  'And you had that list?' Frank's surprised. A list like that would surely be more closely guarded.

  'Well, there was no real secret about it,' says Angie. 'I mean it's supposed to be kept confidential but there's no way you can do that. Not with an event that big. And it's not like it was the list for the party that the president is going to or anything.'

  'What's the list for?' says Koop.

  'The fundraiser, of course.' Angie looks at them both as if they're crazy.

  'Wait,' says Koop, holding up a hand. 'I'm confused. Ben Noone wanted to see this guest list, right? Ben Noone bought a ticket for the event. The president's going to be there.'

  Angie shakes her head. 'Uh, no. He's not. This friend of mine who works for the fundraising committee? He's not doing the presidential event in Hollywood. He's doing the other one.'

  'The other one?'

  'There're about four fundraising events this week. All sorta linked to the big one but the one that my friend is helping organise is out of town. This one's for the CCC. The Children's Climate Community – they're a charity?' Angie says this as though it's a question. 'It's a picnic. Like, a big one?'

  'Where is it, Angie?'

  'Mount San Jacinto,' says Angie. Frank and Koop look at her blankly.

  'Palm Springs,' says Angie. 'That's the one Ben was asking about.'

  Forty-Two

  'A dummy,' says Frank. 'The devious fucker.'

  'What?'

  Frank looks at Koop. 'Noone buying the ticket. He sold us a dummy. Thirty grand gets him a clear run. He never intended that his ticket would be used. Whatever he's got going on is going to happen out at . . .' Frank looks at Angie. 'What's the name of that mountain again?'

  'Mount San Jacinto. Nice place. Got a cute cable car running up the side of it.'

  'I thought it was desert out there?'

  'They have hills too,' says Angie. 'Do you think we should call someone? The cops. I mean, like, our cops?'

  'We will,' says Frank. 'We just want to check the details first.' He doesn't tell Angie that Dennis Sheehan has already ensured that all official routes are effectively blocked. The lines are blurred between the public and private here in a way that is not reassuring for an outsider like Frank. Ashland and Baines, for example. Frank wouldn't like to guess where their desks are. And, what's more, he'll probably never know.

  The list Angle's got, the one Noone asked for, was in an email, which is why she still has a copy.

  'Will I get in trouble?' she says. 'Showing Ben the list, I mean. Part of my friend's job was to forward this on to the media. Ben could've got it somewhere else.'

  'That's OK, Angie,' says Frank. 'You're fine.'

  Koop thinks of something. 'It's mid-summer. Won't it be too hot for a picnic? Out in the desert?'

  Angie frowns. 'No. The picnic's up at the top of the mountain. It's like, cooler up there? I mean, way cooler. They get snow sometimes all year.'

  Koop opens the park details up on the laptop. 'It's more than eight thousand feet,' he says. Photos show an almost Alpine wilderness in stark contrast to the desert below. There are streams and pine trees and squirrels. The park is reached by a cable car rising up from just above Palm Springs to the ranger station at the top. From there, hiking trails fan out into the park itself.

  'I don't get it,' says Frank. 'Why would Noone be interested in a picnic at the top of a mountain?'

  Angie shakes her head in disbelief. 'The First Family, of course,' she says, looking at Frank and Koop as if they are mentally impaired. 'It's being hosted by the president's wife.'

  Angie downloads the guest list from her email account using Koop's laptop.

  'There,' she says, and rotates it towards Frank. Despite her initial disbelief about Noone, Angie seems to now regard herself as one of the team. Frank wonders if she thinks this is an episode of CSI. In LA it can be hard for some people to know the difference between reality and TV.

  Frank runs his eye down the long list looking for something to jump out. There are approximately four hundred names on the list. Most of them, judging by the school name following their own, are children from the Palm Springs area. Frank disregards those. On a first pass through the rest there's nothing he can see. Representatives of fundraising committees, local dignitaries, veterans associations. Then a number of addresses strike a memory.

  Twentyni
ne Palms.

  Warren had lost Noone on the highway before Twentynine Palms. Frank's assumption for the last half-hour since he'd found out about the San Jacinto fundraiser had been that any trip Noone was making out there was to look at the mountain.

  'Get Twentynine Palms up there,' he says to Koop.

  Koop gets the map onscreen and Frank looks at the distance between San Jacinto and Twentynine Palms. The two places are more than eighty kilometres apart.

  Noone must have had a good reason to go there. From what Warren had said it wasn't a tourist spot – other than a jump-off point for Joshua Tree National Park – and Frank has a hard time seeing Noone as a hiker.

  There are twelve names on the list of people who live at Twenty-nine Palms. Four are women and six of the others, Frank guesses, might be military veterans. The six names are followed by a rank.

  'Let's see what we can get on these guys,' says Frank.

  'Can I go?' says Angie. 'You guys look like you're gonna be here all night.'

  'Thanks, Angie,' says Frank and watches her leave. So does most of the restaurant.

  Forty-Three

  'We shouldn't be involved in something like this,' says Frank after Angie's gone. It's past midnight and the diner's almost empty. 'I'm from Bootle, Koop. People from Bootle don't end up doing this sort of stuff.'

  'Where do people who do this sort of stuff come from?'

  'No idea. But it isn't fucking Bootle.'

  'I'm still not sure what it is exactly that we are doing,' says Koop. 'To be honest.'

  'Me neither. I just think we're going to.' Frank toys with the ketchup bottle on the counter. 'How about the names from Twenty-nine Palms? Did you get anything there?'

  'I don't know,' says Koop. He flicks open some of the information he's got but it's all over the place. Personal blogs, the odd news report, people with the same names, all the internet can spew out. Without access to official databases the six names don't mean much. 'What are we looking for? You think one of those names might be working with Noone?'

  Frank shrugs. 'Maybe. Or a target.'

  Koop doesn't respond. It doesn't sound convincing. They're fishing without bait. Or hooks.

  'We have a day before the picnic,' says Koop. 'I could try Dooley again, see if he can help.'

  'If we try Dooley I think Sheehan will find out.'

  'We could do nothing. Go home.' Koop doesn't expand on where this would be for him. The Northern Rivers don't feel like home now so much.

  'We could do that.' Frank's nodding. He's serious. They could do nothing.

  They should do nothing.

  'In the movies they'd just ride out and fix it. A showdown. High Noon.'

  'How?'

  'No idea. But that's what happens in the movies. Bruce Willis gets on a spaceship armed with a nuke. They act.'

  'I could call MIT,' says Frank. 'See what they say.' He taps a finger on his phone, which is lying on the plastic surface of the table.

  'No Bruce Willis ending?'

  Frank checks his watch and picks up his phone. Past midnight here, morning in Liverpool.

  'Not very Hollywood,' says Frank. 'I'll take this outside.' He leaves and Koop orders a beer.

  Pacing in front of the diner Frank gets through to Charlie Searle. He's in a meeting but Frank insists that it's urgent.

  'Frank,' says Searle. His voice is brisk but not yet hostile. He's going to give Frank some room to explain why he needed to be dragged out of a meeting but Frank can tell there won't be much leeway. 'News?'

  'Something like that, sir.' Frank moves to a quieter area of the street and explains the information from Angie and his feeling that Noone is planning an attack on the fundraiser picnic. '

  'That's it?' says Searle when Frank stops talking. 'That's all you have? A list of invites to a picnic? It's not exactly a smoking gun, is it, Frank? Jesus.'

  'I think he's –'

  'Stop. Just stop, Frank.' Charlie Searle sounds tired. 'I don't want to hear anything else. Here's what's going to happen. I'll call the Americans and forward your concerns – no, wait, don't interrupt – and they can take whatever steps they deem appropriate. Is that clear? Good. You will return home immediately as planned. You will send Koopman back to the colonies. You will not take any action on this, not even calling your liaison. I don't want to turn on the news and see one of my officers being marched into court wearing orange pyjamas.'

  Searle hangs up. He hadn't sworn once. Frank thinks this may be the most disturbing part of the whole conversation. He pockets the phone and goes back inside.

  Koop looks up as Frank sits. There's a beer in front of Frank.

  'Thanks,' he says and takes a pull.

  'So?'

  Frank shrugs. 'He said we should do exactly what I thought the situation required.'

  'And that is?'

  'Do you have any mountain climbing experience?'

  'You have to be kidding.'

  Frank shakes his head and Koop raises his beer. 'Yippee ki-ay, motherfucker.'

  The two of them sit in silence.

  'We're going to need vests,' says Koop.

  Forty-Four

  Ben Noone spends Wednesday doing the things he should be doing. He goes to the gym at Pacific Palisades and talks to people. He acts normal. Afterwards he has lunch in Santa Monica and calls in at his bank. He buys some clothes and gets the shop assistant's phone number. He takes the shop assistant out for an early dinner and cocktails and they spend the night at the Hotel Shangri-La on Ocean Avenue.

  Noone doesn't sleep well but it's more excitement than nerves. He imagines that all truly great performers feel this way the morning of a career-defining show. You'd have to be a monster not to.

  Leaving the girl asleep Noone leaves the Shangri-La at five and drives the short distance home. By six he's in the Jeep with a backpack containing what he needs in the footwell of the passenger seat and is driving east. Once again he takes care not to attract any unwarranted attention and makes certain he isn't followed. In Culver City he parks the Jeep in a multi-level car park and picks up the white Ford saloon he bought for cash the previous week from a used car lot in the Valley. In recent days his paranoia has increased to the point where he feels precautions like this are required. Daedalus are more than capable of installing tracking devices. If they have they will already know he's been out to Twentynine Palms. In itself, that shouldn't be too much of a problem but Noone doesn't want to take any more chances like that. The Jeep in Culver City will keep them focused there for a while and by then it will be too late.

  The morning traffic builds as Noone crosses the city but he misses the main rush and gets to Kenny Hoy's place around nine.

  He parks the Ford at the back of the mini-van and takes his backpack into the house. He puts the bag down on the kitchen table and heads out to the shed. Hoy's body is still there in the freezer, his features coated with a thin ream of ice, the blood around his eye glittering black. Noone closes the lid, locks the shed and goes back into the house.

  In Hoy's bedroom he selects clothes from the dead man's wardrobe. He and Hoy are close in build and Noone picks out a pair of khakis, immaculately laundered, and an olive-coloured long-sleeve shirt with a vaguely military feel. Hoy only has one tie, a black one, so this is the one that Noone uses. He takes the pants, shirt, tie and a leather flying jacket and lays out the clothes neatly on the bed.

  Hoy's boots are several sizes too small so Noone wears his own. He takes these off and puts them with Hoy's clothes. He takes off the rest of his own clothes and puts them to one side.

  Above the TV set in the living room Hoy has a number of framed photographs. Several show him in uniform, some in formal dress and others taken overseas. In these images Hoy is dressed in the bulky battle-dress of the Marines. There is only one image that shows Hoy in a wheelchair and it's him receiving some sort of award. Noone lifts this photo off the wall and takes it into the bathroom along with his backpack.

  He places the photo of Hoy on
the bathroom cabinet above the mirror and takes out a number of items from a theatrical make-up supplier from the backpack. Hoy's face isn't much like Noone's but he has a beard and long hair. With sunglasses and a cap it'll be difficult for anyone who doesn't know Hoy to tell it's not him. Noone finds a Marine Corps cap on a shelf in Hoy's room.

  Noone looks in the mirror and sees Kenny Hoy staring back at him.

  'Hey,' says Noone, trying to get Hoy's laconic tone. He tries it a slightly different way. 'Hey.' Better. 'Hey, bro. Semper Fi.'

  He dresses carefully in Hoy's clothes and once more inspects himself. For some reason he's not as happy with this but he thinks he knows why. He retrieves the wheelchair from the hallway and sits in it again. This time in the lowset mirror in the living room, Noone sees Kenny Hoy once more. He drives the wheelchair around the house and out a few times using the ramps, getting to know the feel of the machine. He spends a long time working out how the chair gets in and out of the mini-van and how Hoy gets himself in and out. If anyone observes him he wants to make it look at least partway convincing.

  Hoy's phone vibrates and Noone checks the ID. It's a text message from someone called Mike. Nothing important. Since pocketing Hoy's phone yesterday it's only the third call he's received and one of those was a promotional thing from the phone company. Hoy was clearly not someone with a busy social calendar.

  Noone checks his watch. Ten after twelve.

  Time to go.

  Forty-Five

  With over fifteen hundred expected at the Mount San Jacinto picnic, the cable car to the plateau at two thousand metres has been shuttling groups up since seven-thirty. With the First Family in attendance, security is tight at the base station. The event is invitation only.

  The access from the Palm Springs side via the Aerial Tramway can be easily policed. There are no roads past the base station and all access to the peak from the east is by cable car. The existing electronic ticket system in place already does most of the security work: without a ticket, you can't get on the cable car.