by Peter May
The Man With No Face
Also by
Also by Peter May
FICTION
The Lewis Trilogy
The Blackhouse
The Lewis Man
The Chessmen
The China Thrillers
The Firemaker
The Fourth Sacrifice
The Killing Room
Snakehead
The Runner
Chinese Whispers
The Enzo Files
Extraordinary People
The Critic
Blacklight Blue
Freeze Frame
Blowback
Cast Iron
Stand-alone Novels
Runaway
Entry Island
Coffin Road
I’ll Keep You Safe
NON-FICTION
Hebrides (with David Wilson)
Copyright
New York • London
© 1981 by Peter May
Jacket design: www.headdesign.co.uk
Jacket photograph © Alamy
First published in the United States by Quercus in 2019
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by reviewers, who may quote brief passages in a review. Scanning, uploading, and electronic distribution of this book or the facilitation of the same without the permission of the publisher is prohibited.
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e-ISBN 978-1-63506-124-6
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: May, Peter, 1951– author.
Title: The man with no face / Peter May.
Description: New York ; London : Quercus, 2019. | Identifi ers: LCCN 2018044839 (print) | LCCN 2018046234 (ebook) | ISBN 9781635061246 (ebook) | ISBN 9781635061253 (library ebook) | ISBN 9781787472570 (HB) | ISBN 9781787472587 (TPB) | ISBN 9781635061222 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781635061239 (paperback)
Classification: LCC PR6063.A884 (ebook) | LCC PR6063.A884 M3 2019 (print) | DDC 823/.914—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018044839
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Hachette Book Group
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New York, NY 10104
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, institutions, places, and events are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons—living or dead—events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
www.quercus.com
Dedication
For Bryan
Epigraph
The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid; and the calf and the young lion and the fatling together; and a little child shall lead them.
Isaiah 11:6
Contents
INTRODUCTION
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
CHAPTER THIRTY
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
INTRODUCTION
First published in 1981, The Man With No Face was only my third book to go into print. I wrote it almost forty years ago during my last couple of years working as a journalist in Glasgow.
When my editor at Quercus suggested we republish, I read it again for the first time in decades and was struck by just how topical the subject matter and setting were in the context of today’s world.
The story takes place in the winter of 1979. The setting is Brussels. The backdrop is a British general election, and a political debate about Britain’s membership of the European Union.
I was struck, too, by its sense of noir (not dissimilar to the Scandi Noir of today), of murders in the bleak midwinter of a snowbound city, as well as cultural observations that belonged to their time and have long since passed into history. I am speaking of milk bottles on doorsteps. Of typewriters rather than computers. Of a pre-internet, pre-mobile-phone age when the flow of information was infinitely slower.
The political landscape has changed, too. In 1979 the apartheid government in South Africa was regarded as an international pariah, with sanctions imposed upon it by the United Nations. So, too, the illegal régime of Ian Smith in neighbouring Rhodesia, which was soon to become the independent state of Zimbabwe.
One of the characters in the book is an autistic child. In the forty years since it was written there have been many advances in the understanding and treatment of this condition. What appears in the book is a reflection of prevailing opinion at the time.
I undertook what I would describe as a light revision of the text ahead of publication, and found myself having a dialogue with my 27-year-old self. I am sure that the younger me might have taken issue with some of the (very minor) changes I made, but in the end forty years of life and writing experience took precedence.
Finally, I have to say that I am delighted with The Man With No Face, and I very much hope that you will enjoy it, too.
Peter May
France, 2018
CHAPTER ONE
Kale watched the train through the rain-spattered glass and thought, this time will be the last. But even as the thought formed in his mind it clotted and he knew he would kill again.
He twirled his cigarette nervously between nicotine-stained fingers and sipped the sour dregs of his coffee. The coffee machine on the counter hissed and issued steam, and with the rain beginning to fall outside the window was misting over. The first drops of condensation formed and ran clear lines through it.
An old man sat in the corner making his coffee last so he could remain in the warmth, and a hard-faced woman behind the counter sat smoking a cigarette and watching Kale. She had seen the likes of him before. A place like this was a constant stream of men and women who had seen better days. There was the familiar suit, perhaps expensive once, but now fraying at the cuffs, crumpled, baggy, shiny at the elbows and the seat of the pants. The old blue overcoat, rubbed and coffee-stained down the front, dandruff on the col
lar. The clothes hung loosely on his lean frame. She had seen worse, but maybe this one was just starting out.
He would be around thirty-nine or forty, hair thinning, greased back. A hollow face with high cheekbones; clear, pale, slightly yellow skin, remarkably unlined. It was his eyes that interested her, if it was possible to say that she was interested in anything. They were dark, deep-sunk eyes, set too close, and they burned with a bleak intensity that she had not seen before. There was something sullen in his face, but it was not the face of defeat as was the face of the old man in the corner – as were most of the faces that came in here to stare morosely into endless cups of coffee.
Kale caught her watching him and she looked quickly away, becoming aware for the first time that she was actually afraid of those eyes . . . almost intimidated by them. You’re letting your imagination run away with itself, Nance, she told herself without conviction.
‘Oi, you!’ she shouted with a voice as hard as her face at the old man in the corner. A Cockney voice, a long way from home. ‘You’ve ’ad yer coffee. Now clear aht!’
The old man looked up with resignation. He had learned to accept such things. You grew used to them, as you grew used to the constant gnawing pain of an ulcer. He pushed back his chair, rising slowly with what might have been an attempt at dignity, and shuffled past the counter and out into the wet. Nance had only done it to take her mind off Kale, but now she realized her folly. She had left herself alone with him. She stubbed out her half-smoked cigarette and lit another between thin, painted lips, crossed to the jukebox and punched two plays. The noise would make her feel more secure, and still she wished she could have called the old man back.
But she need not have worried, for Kale had barely noticed his going, and was only mildly irritated when the jukebox began belting out a scratchy hit record. And Nance was of no interest to him. He was thinking about his meeting with Swinton in a dingy London tearoom three days earlier.
Swinton was a small, fat, busy man. He had sat across a wooden table from Kale. One of those people who perspire constantly.
‘It’s a big one, Kale,’ he had said with an air of confidentiality, leaning across the table and breathing garlic at the other man. ‘Big money this time. You could retire. Where you been anyway? The boys was thinking you was maybe dead or something. The word’s been out for over a week.’
Kale had felt uncomfortable there, surrounded by elderly ladies drinking tea from china cups. But Swinton had insisted they should not meet at the usual pub. ‘How much and who’s paying?’
Swinton’s smile widened. ‘Oh, come on, Willy boy. You know me. Even if I knew I wouldn’t tell you who. But truth is, this time I don’t even know myself.’ He paused and sat back as a waitress scurried by with a pile of empty cups and saucers clinking on a tray, and then leaned forward again. ‘It’s not the usual form. You’ll deal direct. I’ll get my commission for finding you, but honest to God I don’t know who’s paying.’
‘How much?’
‘A hundred thousand smackers, Kale. A hundred thousand! Jesus, I’d do it myself for a quarter of that, but I’m not in your class. No one’s in your class, mate.’
Kale toyed with his cup, the undrunk tea cold now, milk solids forming a scum on the surface. He was not happy. If he had not needed the money . . .
‘Tell me.’
*
Nance was relieved when Kale pulled up his collar and pushed back his chair. She watched him out the door then crossed to his table to collect the empty cup and found twenty pence under the saucer. Funny, she thought, how some of them never lose the habit. Maybe he wasn’t as bad as he seemed.
Kale crossed the railway yard, asphalt crunching under his feet, the January rain stinging his face. The locomotive had shunted three coal trucks into a siding and was chugging back towards the depot. Ahead of him this small industrial township rose up the hillside, a jumble of blackened brick terraces. The tall chimneys of the mills belched smoke into a heavily laden sky away to his right, and he could hear children playing somewhere behind a wall that ran alongside the road down to the station. The cobbled street shone in the wet, reflecting the grim poverty of the place. On the station wall a fly-blown poster urged a vote for Labour, its red vivid against the grey, a smile on the candidate’s face above the slogan – FOR A BETTER BRITAIN.
He crossed Church Street to the newsagent’s on the corner and stood looking out across the town square with its black memorial statue, hands sunk deep in the pockets of his coat. For three days he had come to this spot every morning and every afternoon, checking all the routes that led to and from the square. He knew this town now as well as anyone could who had walked every street. Each road leading out of it was marked in red on the map in his pocket, each identifiable by some feature that could not be seen, but might be felt or heard. He had been relentless and thorough, and yet he was still far from satisfied. He shuffled uneasily and watched the traffic carefully. Three days, he told himself, was not enough. The clock on the church tower showed three but did not chime. The minutes ticked past slowly and the rain stopped, leaving only the chill wind to sweep across the square.
He saw the van come in from the north side and watched it as it drove past him, along the top end and back round again. This time it stopped, a white Ford Transit. Kale saw the fresh mud splashed along the side from the front wheels, and took a mental note of the registration, though he doubted if that would prove useful. Still, every scrap of information might help. A slight smile curled his lip. Others would not have gone to such lengths.
A short, thickset man stepped from the van, his crop of white, wiry hair catching in the wind above a brown leathery face. He wore a heavy tweed coat and was not what Kale had been expecting. His blue eyes incongruously honest.
‘Kale?’ he said. Kale nodded. ‘Into the back of the van then, lad.’ He rounded the van and opened the doors for Kale to climb in. ‘Here, stick this over your head. And don’t think you can whip it off when we get moving. I’ll be watching you in the mirror.’
Kale pulled the black cotton hood over his head and squatted down on a rug on the floor as the driver shut the doors. There were dog hairs on the rug and there had been fresh mud on the man’s brogues. Despite the good coat and shoes, his hands were those of a working man. Heavy, hard-skinned, calloused hands. His accent was northern, and he had a weathered outdoor air about him, uncomfortable in his expensive city gear. Kale adjusted his senses to the darkness, pressing his back up against the side of the van. He smelled dog and stale cigarette smoke.
They seemed to have been driving around the town for an eternity. Several times Kale had lost his bearings, but always he picked up their position again. The hoot of a train as it approached the station, the steep cobbled climb up Cotton Street, the quarter-hour chime of the church clock on the edge of the new housing estate – the only chiming clock in the town. They were leaving the town now, he was certain. The roundabout on the north side with roads leading north and west. The sound of a pneumatic drill, and a slight delay at temporary traffic lights erected for roadworks. They had taken the A road west. It was a road Kale had checked on his first day.
The driver stuck to the A road for what must have been nearly twenty minutes. That would take the time to around three forty. Kale would check the time when they stopped. Another seven or eight minutes perhaps, and then the van turned off the main road. Kale heard the click, click of the indicator before they slowed to take the corner, tight, the driver forced to crunch into first gear. It would be a narrow road, maybe a farm track. The van bounced and clattered over the uneven surface. Kale heard the splash of mud along the side. Then they stopped, and above the idling engine Kale could hear a man’s voice and the sound of hooves, the lowing of cattle. He strained to catch more. The scraping of a wooden gate, again a man’s voice calling, cattle retreating, and they were moving again, very slowly. Up a sharp incline and then suddenly down. A bridge?
Over water? Yes, he could hear the water. The driver had rolled down the window. And now they were picking up speed, the surface a little better, the swish, swish, swish of fence posts or perhaps trees along the route. Slowing again, the clatter of a cattle grid, and then the crunch of gravel beneath the tyres. They stopped. The driver cut the ignition and climbed out.
‘Just keep yer hood on, lad.’ The back doors opened and Kale felt the working man’s hands help him out. Even in his enclosed darkness he could sense the presence of trees and a building. Stone. Something big, impressive. Up steps and into a hall, a great sense of space around them. A flagstone floor, or tiles maybe. The man with the white hair and the big rough hands felt the tension in Kale’s arm. ‘Okay, lad. Take it easy.’ Kale was surprised by the odd friendliness of the voice, its inappropriate innocence. This man could know nothing of what Kale was about. It’s strange, he thought, how much a voice can tell you about a man when you cannot see his face. ‘In ’ere.’ The big hands guided him across the hall and through a doorway. ‘You can take yer hood off when I’ve shut the door. There’s a bell press below the light switch when you’re ready to go.’ The door closed, the key turned in the lock, and the sound of the man’s heavy tread receded across the hall.
Kale removed the hood and screwed up his eyes against the sudden glare of electric light. It took nearly half a minute for his eyes to adjust fully. He checked his watch. It was just after four. Then he looked around. This was a small room. No windows, no fireplace, cream-painted walls, bare floorboards. A smell of dust and age. Perhaps a storeroom. But there were no clues, the room completely bare save for a wooden bench against the far wall. Kale’s eyes fixed on the bench. Towards one end of it lay a briefcase, a heavy black phone placed beside it. He was startled by the sudden loud ring of the phone – a short, single ring. He crossed the room and lifted the receiver, checking the dial as he sat. It was not an outside line, but an internal phone with only an extension number. Four.
‘Kale?’ a voice rasped in his ear.