by M Mayle
“Where’s the bike now?” Colin continues. “Did he leave it behind, like the one in New Jersey? What about the camping gear?”
“The bike was gone and the room was clean of everything but his fingerprints. No one’s found that especially significant, however, so why’re you making such a big deal of it? Am I missing something?” Nate says.
“No big deal, you’re not missing anathing. I just want a better idea of what I’m running from. Helpful, this knowing I’ve only gotta outdistance a cyclist loaded down with camping gear.”
Colin’s suggestion of a smirk earns him a sharp look from Laurel that he returns along with a sharp rejoinder. “Save the reproachful look, baby girl. I’m not makin’ light of this. Not at all. Not after what I ordered done this morning.” He then aims at Bemus, “Go ahead, explain what all’s being done.”
The bodyguard, as newly instated security chief of all venues, recites a list of newly authorized security measures surpassing anything Nate ever hoped to see in place.
“Sam’s coordinating the overall project,” Bemus says at the finish. “In fact, that’s where he is now, puttin’ some hustle into the outfit that’s gonna have a crew here soon as tomorrow. And that’s where Tom and I oughta be, given’ him a hand, so if you’ll excuse—”
“By all means.” Colin waves Bemus and Tom Jensen on their way and turns to Nate. “Before you do your victory dance, there’s this small detail you’re not gonna like but you’ll have to live with.”
“Can’t imagine what that could be. You seem to have covered every eventuality,” Nate replies.
“But I haven’t covered every bleedin’ bloke that’s gonna be involved in these multiple installations. No time for background checks—there’ll be none of the usual vetting—not if the work’s to be started tomorrow.”
“Understandable.” Nate tries not to frown. Then he tries not to smile when Colin goes on to say that the oasthouse conversion has been placed on indefinite hold.
If another life had not just been sacrificed to the Jakeway monster, Nate would be tempted to raise a glass to Colin’s compliance. To everyone’s compliance. He’s conducted countless staff meetings with untold numbers of veteran employees who didn’t cooperate this well under lesser stresses.
“Coupla more details if you don’t mind.” Brownie rejoins the discussion. “I’m not clear on what took you to the guest house this morning,” he says to Nate. “And is it true you and the wife made the scene as well?” he directs at Colin.
Nate explains the second thoughts that erupted the night before, the frustration with the haphazard phone system at the guest house, the concern that he might not be able to stop Grillo in time.
“And I sloped off for the same basic reasons, actually . . . but unbeknownst to Nate,” Colin puts in.
“And I went after Colin because he left by himself, without security,” Laurel adds.
“And you knew exactly where he was going because . . .”
“Because given another half hour to get dressed and collect my wits, that’s where I would have been going,” Laurel says.
“So what I’m getting here is that you all wanted Grillo stopped from making his presentation to the Yard. That right so far?” Brownie says.
“It is, and you may include me with those who decided at the eleventh hour that discretion might be the better part of valor in this matter—if that’s the right expression,” Amanda says.
Nate nods that it is and summarizes with the obvious conclusion that Scotland Yard and the rest of the world will never know what really happened to Rayce Vaughn. “Unless, of course, you . . .” Nate targets Brownie.
“Rayce who?”
The writer’s snappy reply could again tempt Nate to raise a glass to compliance and to lapse into idiomatic speech far less suitable than Amanda’s. “All for one, one for all,” comes to mind in all its clichéd corniness and quickly fades from mind as Emmet’s closing comments take hold.
Emmet points out that the assailant has to know he’s a wanted man. “Why else the assumed identity and modified appearance?” the lawyer postulates. “But I believe it’s also apparent and infinitely more important to note that the blighter now seems not to care if he’s apprehended. A bit contradictory, that—his disguising himself, then leaving fingerprints just everywhere—his spotlighting his disappearance by leaving the guest house during the night—his leaving without troubling to check out—his ruthless slaughter of an officer of the law who he somehow had to have known was an officer of the law, else why the slaughter? This tells me—I’m sorry to be the fearmonger—but this tells me the bloke’s gone recklessly dangerous, that he’s now prepared to proceed at all costs.”
“And on a bicycle, can you believe?” Colin says.
— FORTY-ONE —
Late afternoon, September 30, 1987
The first full day after the bad business at the guest house, Hoop emerges from the campsite that was set up after a lot of inner arguing. For safety’s sake, it’s far enough from the Wheelwright Road that someone wouldn’t just happen onto it. But it’s so far from the road a person can’t know for sure what’s going on out there, what the reactions are, what measures are being taken after yesterday’s hullabaloo.
He leaves the bike where it is—slung from the lower branches of another one of those trees they hold holy in this part of the world—and moves to a place opposite the driveway spanned by those tall gates that say “Terra Firma” along the top.
Keeping a thickness of undergrowth between him and the road, he sizes up this territory, tries several watching posts before stumbling on the remains of a stacked stone wall like the one at the church burying ground. Half overgrown with brambles, what’s left of the wall is high enough to hide him from the road if he stays on his knees or haunches for the most part. He tries it out now, rakes together a cushion of leaves sodden from the too-regular rainfall, and hunkers down to see what he can see.
An hour goes by that feels like three to his knees. He’s about to give up for now when the gates across the way swing open and a commercial van comes out. Then another, followed by a light-duty box truck. All three are lettered with the name and address of a home security outfit from London. That says two things: They’re expecting him, and they’re counting on fancy state-of-the-art electronic gimmicks to keep him out.
He drops all the way down behind the wall. This is where the inflatable ground mat would do the most good, but if he installed it out here he’d have two bivouacs to worry about till he’s ready to make the push forward. And giving in to comfort is the surest way to weaken purpose and resolve. How many times has he told himself that while outlasting one physical trial or another?
As though to demonstrate he’s not getting soft or wavering from intent—while it’s still light and there’s no rain to blur his sight or shield him from view—he sets out to gauge the size and shape of the rock star’s spread and where, along its boundaries, he stands the best chance of getting inside.
He breaks from cover, crosses the road cattycorner from the flaunty gates, and follows fencing glimpsed through sparsities in the foliage. The spiked iron bars go all the way to the next crossroad, where the turning is marked with a stone pillar like the ones either side of the front gates. From there the fencing goes on in the form of barbwire-topped heavy duty cyclone mesh, fronted by dense undergrowth and backed by heavy stands of trees and tall bushes.
This length of fence runs to another crossroad, where another stone pillar marks the turning. The same is true for what he sees as the back stretch of the property that he estimates at a couple of miles in length. At still another stone pillar and another crossroad, the fencing takes a dogleg to stay even with a road that’s come in at an angle. Maybe a half mile along this narrow road, he comes on the only open stretch of fence he’s seen for the whole distance. Through the truck-size gap in the trees and bushes, he sees a large barn with three of those queer witch-hatted silos attached—the only buildings seen so far and not
the kind he’d expect to see on a rock star’s spread. Those buildings don’t fit the picture of how rock stars are supposed to live. They live in gaudy palaces with costly playthings, not barns and silos.
He goes closer to the naked section of fence, where his doubting eyes spot another cluster of buildings. These are a ways away, but not so far he can’t make out a good many of the particulars. None look like barns and none have cone-shaped roofs, so these may not be farm buildings. And the largest of the buildings—the one set apart from the others—has useless looking things jutting from it, big churchy windows, and stonework railings on the roof like some of the great stately houses he visited during the wild-goose chase stage of the search.
Hoop squints at something else on the roof of the large building. It could be made of glass because it’s got some sparkle even on this cloudy day; it could be one of those greenhouse things they call conservatories or one of those places where you go to collect sun in winter. Whatever it is, it convinces him he’s made no mistake, these really are the rock star’s holdings—everything he sees now and everything he’s seen so far.
Who else but a rock star would want a house that big? Or one that’s tricked out to look like a castle—like one of those places people pay to visit? Who else but a rock star would need all this land and all those extra buildings to make him feel like lord of the manor, as the saying goes? And would anybody but a rock star shell out for that much chain-link fencing and barbwire and heavy planting?
Hoop fixes his disapproval on the mesh dividing line. If he tries to get over the fence or under it, will it electrocute him? And if it does, will the folks on the other side see him fry on some kind of private TV system?
The scene needs more study, but he can’t chance staying in the open any longer. He steps back a few paces, gets ready to slip into the shadows again. And just in time because a rooster suddenly flaps into sight with a snake in its beak. The scare this puts into Hoop would have plastered him to the fence if he hadn’t moved back. As it is, he staggers almost to ground, making him notice wheel ruts that go under the fence like this was once the back gate or something.
While he’s figuring out what to make of this find, the snake gets away from the rooster and slips through the fence. The rooster scrapes under the fence through one of the ruts, recaptures the snake right at Hoop’s feet and scuttles across the road with it.
When Hoop’s thinking catches up with the rooster’s actions, he knows that the fence doesn’t carry an electrical charge at this point—or, if it does, it’s not strong enough to slow down a small animal. And he knows why the rooster crossed road when he turns around to see a small flock of hens on the other side, pecking gravel in a driveway he should have noticed before now.
Without going closer to that driveway, he can’t see any gates or fencing of any kind. No houses or barns either. Those may be horses he smells, though, and if that is somebody’s horse farm, it’s none of his concern. Unless this spread turns out to share a common border with the rock star’s land—and that doesn’t look likely seeing how this spread’s on the other side of the road—he can’t think of a reason to care that Colin Elliot has a neighbor.
Under the partial cover of overhanging trees, Hoop maneuvers along a final stretch of boundary that, according to his calculations, will connect to Wheelwright Road. Sure enough, at the turning marked by yet another stone pillar, he recognizes the view. Although he’s seeing it from the opposite end of the road and a utility truck is parked where buses were lined up, it’s the same one memorized from the wedding album picture.
He dives for deeper cover in case this isn’t a regulation utility truck. With his back practically up against the spiked iron fencing that resumed at the last pillar, and his front lashed by needled branches, he sidesteps along till he draws even with the truck. It’s a big one, the kind with a basket that goes up and down for reaching overhead wires. It’s got the name of an electric company marked on the side, along with an emblem of some kind. He can’t see what the workers are doing, but nothing says it’s not routine maintenance. And nothing says they’re not installing spying devices and stun wires.
After they leave, there’s nothing to learn from the telephone pole they were servicing. Nothing he can see from the ground, nothing he can see with the naked eye. Those parts of the fence that show above the bushes don’t look meddled with either, but that doesn’t mean he’s ready to grab the bars, never mind that the rooster didn’t get sizzled earlier. Same as after leaving the church, he’ll have to write everything down before he knows what to make of it.
Come nearly full circle, he estimates the distance covered was five miles. Give or take. How many acres that comes out to he can’t guess. But whatever the number is, it’s too many to ponder when there’s so much else to puzzle over.
Well ahead of the driveway into Terra Firma, Hoop scoots across Wheelwright Road and into heavy cover on the other side. From there, he approaches his campsite as though it might have been burglar-alarmed while he was away. He listens as much as looks for signs of a bushwhacker before entering the brush heap concealing the tent and all his belongings. He holds his breath while he does a quick accounting of those belongings and finds everything the way he left it, including the valuables wrapped in a sliced-off tent flap and burrowed into the roots of the bicycle tree.
The accounting draws attention to the supply of food and drink taken from the guest house larder. There’s not much left. It won’t last much longer if he doesn’t cut way back on eating and start catching rainwater to drink. That vexation can be thought about after he’s set today’s learnings down on paper.
He squirms deeper into the tent-cave and shines the flashlight on the last pages written in the notebook. The entries here were hardest to put into words. These observations were set down soon after he recognized the voice in the pub—after he could no longer shut out the nagging echoes of what that voice had revealed in the church. This writing represents the true turning point. The beginning of the end, as some would say. The point when he accepted the loss of Audrey along with everything else the FBI was said to have taken from the New Jersey storage unit. The point when he surrendered Hector Sandoval by giving the gravel-voiced cop what was coming to him. The point when he knew he would not be going back to America.
He reads this over with a strange kind of satisfaction, uncaps a pen and adds:
Always strike a blow to the head before using the knife.
After that he takes extra pains writing down everything seen today.
— FORTY-TWO —
Late afternoon, October 3, 1987
Nate sheds the anonymity of a London taxicab at the nearest intersection to the King’s Road offices. Staying with the cab this long represents partial adherence to the new operating procedures; getting out of it a few hundred feet short of destination represents something more characteristic of Colin—a heedless show of independence.
He moves at a brisk pace, head down, coat collar up against the wet, blustery weather. Amanda’s request that they—he, Emmet, Brownie, and herself—maintain lower profiles than usual is not without merit. It stems from the grim observation that if Jakeway could zero in on Detective Grillo, he could zero in on anybody else insanely seen as being in his way. But this creeping around under the radar, garaging the Bentley except for longer trips, and avoiding the underground for the duration, does come at a cost to convenience.
Amanda is at her desk when he reaches the offices. She frowns a little when he breaks one of her place-of-business rules by giving her a quick kiss.
“Sorry” he says and strips off the wet coat before she can see he came part of the way on foot. “Must be the day for it,” he says, breaking another unwritten rule by sitting on the corner of her desk.
“Day for what?” she says without looking up.
“Nothing, nothing at all. What are you so intent on?” He tries without success to decipher what she’s doing.
“No, you first.” She snaps shut
the leather portfolio she’s seldom without. “The meeting with Emmet. How did it go? How was his trip to the States? Did he really see it—Aurora’s head, I mean?” Amanda’s all shivery attention now. “Was it super gross? Sickening? Could he tell anything from it? Could he tell it was her?” she asks.
“He said it looked pretty bad, pretty degraded,” Nate replies.
“But wasn’t it preserved in—”
“According to Emmet, the solution it was in was a type of embalming fluid never meant for long-term preservation, and the container Jakeway kept it in was full of contaminants and wasn’t sealed all that well. Don’t forget, while no one ever really doubted what it was—who it was—positive ID came from dental records because nothing about it was recognizable . . . as her, I should say.”
“Oh, yeah. Right. I did forget. But I have to know . . .” Amanda lowers her voice even though no one else is within hearing, “Did Emmet throw up when they showed it to him? You can tell me, I won’t spread it around.”
“If he did, do you think he’d have told me?”
“Oh. I guess not. Then tell me why he wanted to see it while he was in New York.”
“I’m not sure he wanted to. He may have thought it was expected of him. I did give him a fairly strong nudge in that direction when I reminded him of the marks I saw on Aurora’s neck at the accident scene . . . before the decapitation took place. It’s no secret I was hoping against hope that those tracks were still there to support my claim that she was a last-stage junkie at the end.”
“Were they? The marks, I mean.”
“No, they were no longer visible. Emmet said there was just too much tissue damage. Rot, by another name. Not that it matters now. Enough bad’s already been proved about the heartless fucking cunt to see her through a couple of hells.”