‘It can wait.’
‘I couldn’t sleep.’
‘Liar. You were creeping off without me.’ She pushed the keys back under her pillow. ‘I’ d’ve hated you forever if you’d done it. That’s why I couldn’t let you do it.’
‘You’d be a lot safer here.’
‘So would you.’
‘Bel, it’s not...’
‘I know what it is, Michael.’ She sat up in bed, drawing her knees up in front of her. ‘And it’s okay, I accept it. But I need to see those bastards blasted off the planet. I need to be there.’
I stood for a moment in the dark, trying to understand. Then I brought my bags back in from the corridor and got undressed again.
I woke again at five. Bel woke up too. She didn’t complain or say anything more about last night. She just got up and showered, then got dressed.
Before she dressed, she gave me a hug, her eyes squeezed tightly shut.
We stayed that way for a long time.
20
Robert Walkins had a house overlooking Chesapeake Bay, between Washington DC and Baltimore and not too far from Annapolis. It was finished in clapboard which had been given a recent coat of brilliant white paint. The picket fence around the house was white too. You couldn’t see much of the place from the road. You had to get out of the car and walk around to what should be the back of the house. In fact, the back of the house was what looked on to the road. The front of the house, naturally enough, looked on to the bay. The downstairs seemed to be mostly workshop, garage, play room. A flight of stairs led up to a columned balcony, and that’s where the front door was. The Stars and Stripes was fluttering from one of the columns. Hoffer blew his nose again before knocking on the door.
While he waited, he turned and looked out across the long narrow lawn which was broken only by a few mature trees as it swept down to the edge of the bay. He knew erosion was a problem for a lot of these waterfront homes. Each year the Bay crept a little closer to your door. There was some wood lying around, either driftwood or part of some scheme to ward off nature’s encroachment. And past it, stretching out on to the Bay, was a plain wooden deck. The day was fine and Hoffer had to squint against the water’s reflections as he peered towards the deck.
There was someone there, sitting on a chair with their feet up on a circular wooden table. They lifted a glass to their lips, then placed the glass down on a smaller table next to the chair. From this distance, Hoffer couldn’t be sure, but he reckoned it had to be Walkins.
As he walked back down the stairs, he didn’t know whether to be relieved or not. He didn’t like sitting in Walkins’s house. The place gave him the creeps, what with there being no photos of the daughter anywhere, and all those photos and paintings of the wife. So he should feel better, more comfortable, talking to Walkins in the fresh air. Only, he wasn’t the outdoors type. He’d sat on Walkins’s deck for a few hours one time, the salt wind whipping across him, and afterwards his skin had stung for days and his lungs had tried rejecting the smoke he sucked into them.
He crossed the lawn, slipping his jacket off and slinging it across one shoulder. He was nervous too. Well, meeting your sugar daddy face to face. It was bound to make you nervous.
‘Sit down,’ Walkins said, eschewing greetings. ‘Drink?’
There was a bottle of J&B on the table, along with a bucket of ice and a spare glass. But Hoffer shook his head. He gave a half-yawn, trying to unblock his ears. The flight had done for him again. Goddamned flying.
‘How was England?’ Walkins asked.
‘Like it had just lost the war.’
‘We took vacations there occasionally. I liked the people.’
There wasn’t much to say to this, so Hoffer stayed quiet. He noticed that Walkins was looking old these days. Maybe it was just that he looked bored: bored of doing nothing all day but waiting for Leo Hoffer to call with news.
‘Is he here?’ Walkins asked.
‘Yeah, he’s here.’ Hoffer was lighting a cigarette. Walkins didn’t mind him smoking out here, so long as he took the stubs home with him. Hoffer never did figure it; the whole of Chesapeake Bay for an ashtray, and he had to take his goddamned stubs home with him.
‘How do you know?’
‘I’m paid to know, sir.’ Hoffer tried to get comfortable on the chair. The thick wooden slats didn’t make things easy. ‘I’ve got contacts: airlines, travel companies, the airports...’
‘Yes?’
‘They flew into Boston. That part was easy. The woman was travelling under her real name, Belinda Harrison. There probably wasn’t time or opportunity enough for them to arrange a fake passport for her.’
‘And him?’ Walkins was nothing if not singleminded.
‘Her travelling companion was called Michael Weston. That’s the third name he’s used so far this time. I’ve got a contact in the FBI, I’ve got him keeping eyes and ears open. If they get into bother, we’ll hear about it.’
‘Good.’
‘Meantime, I’ve sent one of my team up to Boston to check hotels, car rental, that sort of thing.’
Hoffer was on auto-pilot. It gave him a chance to check out Walkins while he filled him in. Walkins had steel-grey hair and deep grooved lines in his face. He was a handsome man, ageing well despite his tragedies. But his eyes were filled to the brim with liquid, the pupils not quite fixed on the world outside. He took another drink of Scotch, but really the whisky was drinking him.
‘This is a damned big country, Hoffer,’ Walkins said at last. He sounded like he was boasting.
‘Yes, sir,’ Hoffer replied.
‘A man could hide forever in a country this size.’
‘Not if someone wants him found.’
‘You believe that?’
‘Yes, sir, I do.’
Walkins stared at him, so Hoffer daren’t blink. He felt his eyes getting as watery as Walkins’s. At last the old man pulled himself to his feet and walked to the rail at the end of the deck, leaning on it as he spoke.
‘What now?’
‘I’ve got a few leads,’ Hoffer said, half-believing himself as he spoke.
‘A few leads,’ Walkins repeated, as though exhausted.
‘You might be able to help, sir.’
‘Oh? How?’
‘Well, I presume you still have friends in positions of seniority?’
‘What if I have?’
‘Maybe one of them could play with a name. The name’s Don Kline. He was in London, and interested in the D-Man. He told me he was agency, but I’m not sure he was. That’s K-l-i-n-e.’
‘I can ask around.’
The state Walkins was in, Hoffer doubted he’d recollect the name half an hour after Hoffer had driven away. He wrote it on the back of one of his cards and walked to the table, where he weighed it down with the lid from the ice bucket. Walkins was watching from the corner of his eye. He nodded towards Hoffer as Hoffer went back to his seat. Then he turned from the rail to face the detective, and took a good deep breath. Ah, at last, thought Hoffer: the floor-show.
‘I want that bastard dead,’ said Walkins, ‘do you hear? I want his ass as cold as a mountaintop, and I want it delivered to me here.’ The voice was growing louder, trembling with anger. Walkins started to move towards Hoffer. ‘And I don’t want a quick death either, it’s got to be slow... slow like cancer, and burning like a fire inside. Do you understand?’
‘Loud and clear.’ It struck Hoffer, not for the first time, but now with absolute conviction, that Robert Walkins was howl-at-the-moon mad. There were white flecks at the edges of the old man’s lips, and his face was all tics and wriggling demons.