“I have to pack,” said Howard, and he beat a hasty retreat. Lisa followed him up the stairs and stood behind him as he grabbed clean shirts from his wardrobe and dropped them into an overnight bag.
“How long will you be away?” she asked, folding her arms across her chest.
“I’ve no idea,” he said over his shoulder. He had the uneasy feeling that if he looked her in the eye he’d be turned to stone on the spot.
“I don’t know what you think you’re achieving by selling your soul to the FBI,” she said.
“Better the devil I know. .” muttered Howard.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” she said, her voice hard and accusing. “Are you saying that Daddy’s the devil, is that what you’re implying?”
Howard zipped his bag closed. “It’s an expression, Lisa, that’s all. I mean that FBI work is what I do, it’s what I do well. I don’t want to be a lapdog for the great Theodore Clayton. I don’t want him to own me.”
“Own you?” she said, her voice rising in pitch. “Who paid for this house? The car? You think we could live like this if it wasn’t for my father’s money? If it wasn’t for my father you’d still be buried in the Surveillance Department. It’s my father you owe, not the Bureau. Sometimes I think you forget where your loyalties should lie.”
Howard froze and for several seconds he stared at her, unable to believe the cruelty in her voice. “Thank you, Lisa,” he said softly. “Thank you for that.”
He walked by her, down the stairs and out of the front door. Part of him hoped that she’d run after him or call him back, but he wasn’t surprised when she let him go without a word. As he drove away, he could feel her sullen anger, sitting over the house like a storm cloud waiting to break.
It was a hot day and Joker turned up the air-conditioning in the rented Chevrolet Lumina. It was a big, comfortable American car and Joker enjoyed the way it handled. It had been a long time since he’d been at the wheel of a car and he’d forgotten the sheer pleasure it gave him to drive down an open road at speed. His eyes flicked to the speedometer and he braked to keep within the 55 mph speed limit. From his jacket pocket he took a green pack of Wrigley’s chewing-gum and unwrapped it with his left hand before popping the gum into his mouth. He’d picked up a bottle of whisky from a liquor store and had a couple of slugs for breakfast, and if he was unlucky enough to be pulled in by a cop it would be better to smell of spearmint than whisky.
His side still ached where he’d been kicked and when he’d woken up that morning it was to find the flesh a vibrant shade of green. Luckily, it seemed there was nothing broken, but it was going to be painful for some time. The dashboard clock read 13:30. Joker had been up since 8 a.m. and an hour later he’d visited the cuttings library of the Washington Post. He’d asked to see the papers for the week when Pete Manyon had been killed and had drunk a styrofoam cup of black coffee as he’d read the articles detailing the discovery of the body, its identification, and its eventual export back to the United Kingdom. In none of the papers did the story merit more than a dozen paragraphs. Joker had been surprised to find out how violent a city Washington was. He’d assumed that because it was the political heart of the country, it would be one of the safer places to be, but in fact it was the murder capital of the United States with drive-by killings and torture regular occurrences and usually drug-related. When Manyon’s body was first discovered, the police had assumed that he had been involved in the drugs trade because of the way he had been tortured. Practically skinned alive, the paper said, and suggested it had been the work of one of the city’s vicious Jamaican gangs. His fingers had been systematically cut off with a pair of bolt cutters or a very sharp knife and he had been castrated. There were rope burns on his wrists and ankles. According to the paper, Manyon had died from loss of blood.
In the UK such a killing would have been front page news but in the Washington paper it was tucked inside and was one of five murders reported that day. There had been a suggestion from one of the Homicide detectives investigating the case that the fingers had been removed to hinder identification, but Joker knew that wasn’t why Manyon had been mutilated. The first article had carried a photograph of Manyon’s face, no doubt cosmetically tidied up by some helpful undertaker, and several days later a motel manager had come forward saying that one of his guests had disappeared leaving his clothes, and passport, behind. The passport photograph matched the face of the man in the morgue, and Pete Manyon was identified as John Ballantine, a life insurance salesman from Bristol, England, who was on an extended vacation.
The last article appeared ten days after the body had been discovered and detailed the arrival in Washington of Ballantine’s sister and how she had flown back to England with the body. There were no further stories, and Joker assumed that the murder had remained on the Washington police’s unsolved list. It hadn’t been hard for Joker to imagine what Manyon had gone through during the hours he’d been tortured. He’d been in the farmhouse in Northern Ireland when Mary Hennessy had gone to work on Mick Newmarch. Joker rubbed his left wrist as he drove. It still bore the scars he’d made trying to wrench himself free from the handcuffs Hennessy had used to secure him to the radiator. Newmarch had told them everything, of course, no amount of training or spirit could withstand the sort of things Hennessy did with her knife. Joker would never forget Newmarch’s screams, nor the look of pleasure, almost rapture, on Mary Hennessy’s face as she’d used the blade.
A horn sounded behind him like the warning cry of some prehistoric monster and Joker realised he’d been drifting across the lanes of the highway. A huge truck roared by, the name of a meat packer on the side, its massive wheels only inches from his door. His knuckles were almost white, so hard had he been gripping the steering wheel, and he could feel sweat dribbling down his back despite the cold air streaming from the air-conditioning.
The newspaper library also had copies of every telephone directory in the United States, and Joker had gone through the ones for the Washington area, writing down the numbers of all the aircraft leasing companies, flying schools and local airlines. There was no home listing for a Patrick Farrell in the Washington City directory so he widened his search to the surrounding areas: Maryland, Laurel, Anne Arundel, Montgomery and the Greater Baltimore area to the north, and Arlington, Fairfax and Prince Georges to the south. He found only one P. Farrell and that was in a town called Laurel, about midway between Washington and Baltimore. In the Montgomery County Yellow Pages he found a Farrell Aviation listed and he’d smiled to himself, unable to believe his luck. If the surname hadn’t been used in the company name he’d have had to call round about three dozen aviation firms. There was a pay phone in the lobby of the Washington Post and he’d used it to call the company. A bored-sounding secretary had told him that there were two Patrick Farrells, father and son, the father owned the company, the son ran it. She’d given Joker directions to a small airfield some twenty miles north-east of Washington.
As he drove to the airfield, Joker wondered if it was the father or the son that Matthew Bailey had contacted. There was no way of knowing. The son would be nearer Bailey’s age, but the father was more likely to have emigrated to the States from Ireland, giving him stronger connections with the IRA. He was going to have to play it by ear.
In the trunk of the rental car was Joker’s suitcase. He’d checked out of the Washington motel that morning and was planning to find a new place closer to Laurel. He had no definite plan as he drove along the Interstate 95, other than to check out the company and maybe sit outside for a while, on the off-chance that Bailey visited. He’d used the Visa card to buy a pair of powerful binoculars and they were in a plastic carrier-bag on the back seat.