She stood facing me, then I saw her shoulders sag.
‘Don’t worry,’ I went on, ‘you’ll get your revenge. But let’s plan it first, okay?’ I waited till she’d nodded. ‘Besides,’ I added, ‘you’ve forgotten something.’
‘What?’
‘Bullets.’
She saw that this was true, and managed a weak smile. I nodded to let her know she was doing okay.
‘You don’t need guns just now,’ I went on. ‘You need your brain. Your brain... and your passport.’
‘My passport?’
‘Just in case,’ I said. ‘Now go pack yourself some clothes. Are there any more sub-machine guns down there?’
‘I’m not sure. Why do you ask?’
‘I need some practice, that’s all.’ I started down the steps until I was surrounded by guns, cocooned in oiled black metal. It was like being in a chapel.
It took us some time to straighten things out. We knew we couldn’t call the police, inform the proper authorities, anything like that. I did propose that Bel stay behind, a proposal she angrily rejected. So we did what we had to do. The soil in the field nearest the farmhouse was workable. Even so, it took until dark and beyond to dig the grave. It wasn’t a very adequate hole. I knew the reason you dug down six feet was that much short of this and you’d get soil disturbance, the ground above the body rising eventually rather than staying flat. But we’d dug down only three or four feet. We could always rebury him later.
‘Sorry, Dad,’ Bel said. ‘I know you were never much of a Christian, but you probably wanted something better than this.’ She looked at me. ‘He fought that cancer for years. He was ready for death, but not the way it happened.’
‘Come on,’ I said, ‘let’s keep busy.’
It wasn’t hard. We had to finish packing and then lock up the house. We couldn’t do much about the living room, so just left it. Bel couldn’t think of anyone who’d come to the house anyway. Their mail was held by the post office and picked up whenever they were in town.
‘It might be a while before we’re back,’ I warned.
‘That’s fine.’
I was never far from the MP5. I knew they could come back at any minute. I would be ready for them. I’d considered stocking up from Max’s cache, but knew it didn’t make any sense. So I locked the cellar again and covered its doors with straw. The house was locked now, a timer controlling the lights. I walked through the yard to the field wall, and found Bel there, standing over the closed grave.
‘Time to go, Bel,’ I said.
‘He hated this place,’ she said quietly. I put a hand on her shoulder. She took a deep breath and exhaled. “Bye, Dad. I’ll be home again soon.’ Even to my ears, she didn’t sound like she meant it.
We got on to the A1 and stopped at the first hotel we found. I didn’t suppose either of us would get much sleep, but we were exhausted and dirty and our sweat-stained clothes needed changing. We shared a room, as we’d known we would. Bel took the first bath. I soaped her back and shoulders in silence, then toweled her dry. She went through to the bedroom while I changed the bathwater. I was lying back, eyes closed, when she came back.
‘Hurry up, Michael, I need you,’ was all she said.
We made love hungrily at first, and then with more tenderness than I’d ever thought possible. She cried a bit, but when I tried to ease away from her she held me tight, not wanting to let me go. The only light drifting into the room came from a lamp outside the hotel. I ran my hands over Bel’s back, feeling her vertebrae. For a little while there, my hands didn’t feel like the hands of a killer.
We rose early and didn’t bother with breakfast.
On the road south, she asked me what we were doing. I told her. She didn’t know if it made sense or not, but she wasn’t in a state to offer ideas of her own. The traffic into London was like sludge easing into a drain. Bel was wearing a scarf and sunglasses. I knew her eyes were red, like she was suffering hay fever. Hay fever could be the excuse if anyone asked. When we got to London, we left the Maestro in a long-stay car park and got our cases out of the boot.
I left the MP5 in the boot but took my raincoat.
We took a taxi with our luggage to Knightsbridge. ‘I’ll be about five minutes,’ I told the driver when we arrived. Then, to Beclass="underline" ‘Wait here.’
She watched me go into the bank like she’d never see me again.
Inside the bank there were the usual security procedures before I was led into a small room. The room contained a table and two chairs. There were framed prints on the wall showing Victorian London, and a few brochures to read. These offered further bank services. Eventually, the employee who had led me into the room returned with my safe deposit box. I let him leave again before opening the box.
Inside were a passport, a bundle of cash, and some traveller’s cheques, about $25,000 in total. I scooped the lot into my pockets, then took out a pen and piece of paper. Hurriedly I scribbled a note outlining events so far. It wouldn’t make sense to anyone outside the case. I folded the note and addressed it to the one man I knew could make sense of it: Leo Hoffer at Hoffer Investigations, New York City. Then I placed the letter in the box.
As insurance policies go, it was among the worst and most hastily conceived and executed. But it was all I had.
I thanked the assistant, left the bank, and got back into the taxi.
‘Where to now?’ the driver asked.
‘Heathrow Airport,’ I told him. Then I sat back, took Bel’s hand, and gave it another squeeze.
17
The problem was, Hoffer couldn’t find a room in Ripon, or anywhere else for that matter. So he’d decided to keep driving. Then he’d pulled into a parking area to relieve his bladder, and found three lorries there, their drivers having a break and thinking about sleep. Hoffer got talking to them and one of them broke out a bottle of whisky. After which he’d returned to his car, put the seat back as far as it would go, and fallen asleep.
He slept badly, and woke up with stiffness, headache and raging thirst. He was also freezing, and had certainly caught a cold, if not something more serious. He drove to the nearest service station to chow down and have a wash. Then he got back in the car and started driving again.
The map book was a godsend, without it he wouldn’t have stood a chance in hell of finding Oban. He parked by the dockside, got out feeling like shit, asked a local about accommodation, then went into the hotel, where they didn’t have any rooms left but the bar was open and boasted an open fire.
Hoffer sat beside it with a large malt and wondered how he’d find the Disciples of Love. He asked the barman, but the barman said he’d never heard of them.
‘Well, they live here, a whole posse of them.’
But the barman stuck to his story. So, revived by the drink, Hoffer went walkabout. He found a shopkeeper who did business with the Disciples and drew him a map on an empty brown-paper bag. Hoffer got so far, but then found his way barred by a padlocked gate. He looked around him, then fired off a couple of shots at the padlock, busting it open. He was damned if he was going to walk any further.
He’d been annoyed by a sudden realisation that he’d missed his TV appearance. And it looked like everyone in Oban had missed it too, judging by the lack of interest in him.
‘Fucking backwoods,’ he complained, driving up the track.
After nearly a mile, he came upon habitation, a series of shanty-town shacks more suited to animals than people. There were people about. They stopped what they were doing and stared at him as he drew up. When he got out, they kept on staring. A big bearded man came out of one of the shacks.