They've ordered food from the Strathspeld Arms; the same food the funeral guests would have eaten. A bunch of us eat in the dining room. I'm handcuffed to one of the London burlies now and we both have to eat with one hand. I'd kind of been hoping they'd take the cuffs off me altogether by now but I suppose they're thinking that the body in the shaft doesn't prove anything by itself, and that Andy could still be dead, or he could be alive and he — or somebody else — could have kidnapped Halziel and Lingary to provide cover for me.
McDunn comes in as I'm chasing bits of quiche around my plate with my fork.
He comes up to me, nods to the burly and unlocks the cuffs.
"Come here," he tells me, putting the handcuffs in his pocket. I wipe my lips and follow him to the door.
"What is it?" I ask him.
"It's for you," he says, striding across the hall towards the phone, where the handset's lying on the table and an officer is attaching a little device like a sucker to the phone; a wire leads from the sucker to a Pro Walkman. The officer starts the machine recording. McDunn glances back at me before stopping at the phone and nodding down at it. "It's Andy."
He hands me the phone.
CHAPTER 11 — SLAB
"Andy?"
"Hello, Cameron."
It is his voice, urbane and controlled; until this moment some tiny part of me still believed he was dead. I get the shivers, and the hair on the nape of my neck prickles. I lean back against the wall, looking at McDunn, who's standing with his arms crossed a metre away. The young officer who turned on the Walkman hands McDunn a pair of earphones plugged into the machine. McDunn listens in.
I clear my throat. "What's going on, Andy?"
"Sorry to drop you in it, old son," he says in a conversational sort of way, as though apologising for some thoughtless remark or landing me with a mismatched blind date.
"Yeah? Are you?"
McDunn makes a circular waving motion with one hand; keep going. Oh, Christ, here we go again. They want me to keep him talking so they can trace him. One more betrayal.
"Well, yes," Andy says, sounding as though he's a little surprised to find he actually is sorry, albeit only slightly. "I feel a bit bad about that, but at the same time I felt you deserved it. Not that I thought you'd go to prison for it; wouldn't inflict that on you, but… well, I wanted you to suffer for a while. I take it they found that card I left in the woods near Sir Rufus's place."
"Yes, they did. Thanks, Andy. Yeah; great. I thought we were friends?
"We were, Cameron," he says, reasonably. "But you did run away, twice."
I give a small, despairing laugh, glancing at McDunn again. "I came back the second time."
"Yes, Cameron," he says, and his voice is smooth. "That's why you're still alive."
"Oh, thanks very much."
"But anyway, Cameron, you're still part of it. You've still played your part in it. Like me; like all of us. We're all guilty, don't you think?"
"What is this?" I ask, frowning. "Original sin? You becoming a Catholic or something?"
"Oh, no, Cameron; I believe we're born free of sin and free of guilt. It's just that we all catch it, eventually. There are no clean rooms for morality, Cameron, no boys in bubbles kept in a guilt-free sterile zone. There are monasteries and nunneries, and people become recluses, but even that's just an elegant way of giving up. Washing one's hands didn't work two thousand years ago, and it doesn't work today. Involvement, Cameron, connection."
I shake my head, staring at the little window in the Walkman where the tape spindles are patiently revolving. The strange thing is, it is like talking to a dead man, because he sounds like the Andy I used to know. Andy the mover and shaper, the Andy from before Clare's death, before he gave it all up and became a recluse; it's that voice, calm and untroubled, that I'm hearing now, not that of the man I knew from that dark, decaying hotel, flat with resignation or audibly sneering with a kind of cynical despair.
McDunn's looking impatient. He's writing something on his notebook.
"Listen, Andy," I say, swallowing, mouth dry. "I told them about the guy in the woods; they've been down the air shaft. They found him."
"I know," he says. "I saw." He sounds almost regretful. I close my eyes. "They almost caught me, actually," he says conversationally. "That'll teach me to break my own rules and attend the funeral of one of my victims. But then it was supposed to be my own, after all. Anyway, you told them, did you? Kind of thought you might, one day. That a weight off your mind, is it, Cameron?"
I open my eyes as McDunn nudges me and shows me the two names he's written on his notebook.
"Yes," I tell Andy. "Yes, it is a weight off my mind. Listen, Andy, they want to know what's happened to Halziel and Lingary."
"Oh, yes." He sounds amused. "That's why I called."
McDunn and I exchange looks. "Look, Andy," I say. I laugh nervously. "I kind of think you've made your point, you know? You've scared a lot of people —»
"Cameron, I've murdered a lot of people."
"Yeah, yeah, I know, and a lot more are terrified to open their doors, but the point is you've done it, man; I mean you might as well let these guys go, you know? Just… just let them go, and, and, and you know; I'm sure if we can just talk about this, you know, talk about —»
"Talk about this?" Andy says, laughing. "Oh, stop gibbering, Cameron." He sounds so relaxed. I can't believe he's talking this long. He must know they can trace calls really quickly these days. "What next?" he asks, sounding amused. "Are you going to suggest I give myself up and I'll get a fair trial?" He laughs again.
"Andy, all I'm saying is let those guys go and just fucking stop all this."
"All right."
"I mean… what?"
"I said all right."
"You'll let them go?" I look at McDunn. He's raised his eyebrows. A uniformed cop comes in the front door and whispers something to McDunn, who takes one of the earphones out to listen. He looks annoyed.
"Yeah," Andy says. "They're a boring couple of farts and I guess they've suffered enough."
"Andy, are you being serious?"
"Of course!" he says. "You'll get them back unharmed. Can't vouch for their mental state, of course; with any luck the bastards'll have nightmares for the rest of their lives, but…"
McDunn looks pained. He makes the waving keep-going signal again.
"Listen, Andy; I mean, I guessed you were Mr Archer —»
"Yes, I used a voice synthesiser," Andy says patiently.
"But all that Ares stuff; was it all…?"
"A diversion, Cameron, that's all. Hey," he laughs, "maybe there was some heinous plot linking those five dead guys, but if so I've no idea what it was, and as far as I know there's no link between them and Smout and Azul. Pretty neat conspiracy theory, though, don't you think? I know you hacks just love that sort of thing."
"Oh, yeah, had me fooled." I smile weakly at McDunn, who motions me to keep talking.
"But how did you…?" I have to swallow again, fighting my nausea. I feel like I've got a coughing fit coming on, too. "How did you know those IRA code-words? I never told you."
"Your computer, Cameron; your PC. You had them in a file on your hard disk. Made everything a lot easier when you got that modem. Don't think I ever told you I'd become a bit of a hacker in my spare time, did I?"
Christ.
"And that time I rang the hotel and you phoned back, when you must have been in Wales…?"
"Yes, Cameron," he says, sounding indulgently amused. "Answer-machine at the hotel, linked to a pager; called up the machine, heard your message, rang you back. Easy-peasy."
"And you were on the same plane as me to Jersey?"