"But it will save your career?" He realised there was no unkindness in the question.
"Maybe. That's not important. It will save Alan's reputation. It's the truth, that's all."
He was aware his gaze was bitter as he added: "Strickland killed innocent bystanders on the airplanes. He was hired to do that by big business." The contempt of his tone was venomous, embracing.
"For dollars and pounds and Dmarks." He studied his hands as he spoke.
The things I did, the things I was ordered to do…" He sighed.
"Well, they weren't for the dollar at least, they weren't supposed to be. There seemed to be some point in it." He looked up. I'll find him… then whoever hired him."
Her hand brushed his, then the moment was broken by Blakey's voice.
"You guys want to come see the Incredible Hulk?"
Barbara followed Gant to the long worktable where Blakey was smoothing the huge, photocopied enlargement of the snapshot, as if it was cloth-of-gold. The computer's jigsaw blowups had been made whole again. The creases in the original were like sword cuts across Strickland's body and the sky. Barbara hovered at a slight distance, as if threatened by the man in the photograph.
"He doesn't quite look the part," Blakey offered.
"He never did." Gant leaned forward over the photocopy the size of an airplane blueprint. His fingers traced, as if longingly, the faint vapour trail in the sky, the volcanic peaks retreating northwards, then the dark mass of pines and individual trees.
Blakey's blunt forefinger tapped at some point near Strickland's temple, against the brown squareness of a wooden building perhaps a hunting lodge, a rural motel.
"See?" Gant peered. It wasn't a place name, not even that of a person. On a shingle hung on the eaves of a verandah was the word TACKLE in capitals. Above it was a blurred sign. BUD LITE.
"Here, too," Blakey offered, his hands moving. On the corner of the building, which looked out over the lake from the shore end of the jetty, was a notice. All the print was illegible, even at that magnification, except for two headlining words. FISHING LICENCES.
"Back in the USA," Gant murmured.
"Got to be the Pacific North-West, somewhere Washington state, Oregon, northern California…"
"Can we narrow it down?"
Barbara's breath was warm against his cheek as she leaned between them to look, somehow emboldened by the identification of the place. It wasn't foreign, unknown which made Strickland less dangerous, less impervious.
Blakey, by way of response, collected the relief map and the section from the other table and placed them over the enlarged snapshot.
Three mountains in a kind of line, south to north," he muttered. This has to be a National Park or Wilderness Area, I guess. Give me time to run through the atlas on CD-ROM, see if I can pick out some likely locations. It could also be Canada I'd better check." He looked up at Gant, smiling.
"Hang loose just a little longer, Mitchell. I think we can put ourselves in this guy's back yard!"
"What if he was there on vacation, nothing more?" Barbara asked.
"Let's hope he wasn't."
"Does it seem like his sort of country? You said he had a house in France—"
"He did. That was out of the way, too, in the boondocks.
Strickland likes privacy."
He studied the enlargement once more. Blakey was already hunched over the computer keyboard, scrolling through the vivid images, the colours, contours, highways and mottled towns, of an atlas' computerised maps.
"I think he lives here, Barbara wherever here is."
"Where are we going, Ben?" she demanded.
The night air was cool on her cheeks after the heat, smoke and semi-darkness of the jazz club in a basement under a narrow row of shops. As they emerged from the quiet sidestreet on to the Boulevard
Anspach her patience, rubbed almost raw, vanished. Campbell looked at her as if stung.
"I — er… You didn't seem to be enjoying—" The jazz was fine, Ben. It was the company that was the problem." She positioned herself confrontation ally arms folded across her breasts, purse jutting like a flat weapon, feet planted squarely in the high-heeled shoes that were beginning to pinch. The care with which she had dressed for the reception seemed days earlier.
"Oh, that—" He assayed a grin that a streetlight made into a purpled rictus. His arms flapped in an approximated shrug, as if he had lost all orientation.
It was after one. He had collected her at the Amigo at seven-thirty to take her to the reception, during which he had whispered to her that they must talk, it was vitally important… dinner somewhere, after this? She had nodded vehemently, letting surprise and irritation form all her volition. She had excused herself from a group of colleagues intent on fleshpot-crawling and Campbell had taken her to a supper club, then the jazz cellar.
As they had left the reception together, she had seen David watching them, in company with Roussillon. Her anger had finally determined her. Campbell was the weak link, Campbell must aid her. Then nerve had failed her and she had drunk too much wine, as Campbell had, and they had both seemed to subside into a mutual gloom. The sense of her danger had been dulled. Now, the effects of the wine had gone as certainly as her patience.
"Where next, Ben? Somewhere preordained?" she challenged, her mouth dry with too much alcohol and too many cigarettes. She lit another and puffed angrily at it.
Then she refolded her arms belligerently.
"No…" he sighed. His eyes had seemed to throw back the denial more vehemently before he shrank into a kind of whining schoolboy slouch in front of her.
"What is it, Ben? Why did you ask me out for a date, for God's sake?"
"Don't be stupid!" he snapped, his hand waving her away from him. Cars passed, headlights washing over them and catching the gleam and sparkle of goods in grilled shop windows.
"Why do you have to always be so stupid?" It was the fearful rage of a parent who had recovered a child after hours of anguished absence. He moved closer, drink on his breath, his lips wet. His eyes were narrow, hateful.
"You're always right! You always have to be bloody right! Christ, you've really blown it this time, Marian, my God but you have!"
Candour seemed to momentarily exhaust him and he leaned against a darkened shop window like a sullen drunk. Behind the glass, weary fish swam slowly in a huge tank. Crayfish and bound-clawed lobsters, too.
Revolting and appropriate.
"What have I blown, Ben?" She felt a weakness move up her body.
Instinctively, she glanced around them. There were still a good number of pedestrians, a fair amount of traffic. The boulevard was alive with lights. Her hotel was a ten-minute walk away.
"What?"
"Everything, you stupid bitch!" His voice was a quiet scream.
"Everything… Why do you think I asked you to come to dinner? Because I fancied you?"
"I know the outfit's a bit creased and I'm showing every one of my thirty-eight years, Ben…" The forced humour vanished on her tongue.
"Why, then? Because you loathe me?"
"It's not you, it's the whole bloody thing, woman!"
"Whatthing?"
The traffic noises faded as she ground out her cigarette with the sole of her narrow black shoe. The fish continued to swim slowly, leadenly, the lobsters scrabbling at the bottom of the tank.
"The thing-!"
"What do they want you to do, Ben? When?"
"For Christ's sake, what will they do to me?" he murmured, seeming to catch sight of the captive shellfish for the first time. He rubbed his eyes and forehead furiously, as if he thought himself trapped in a dream. Perhaps he was.
"I wanted to say… couldn't—" He turned to face her, eyes gleaming, his handsome, assured features crumpled like a page torn from a priceless illuminated manuscript.