Blood Hunt

  “Evening, Manny,” said Reeve. “Half of whatever’s darkest, please.”

  “An ungrateful sod of a patron like you,” said Manny, “you’ll take what I give you.” He began pouring the drink. Reeve looked around at faces he knew. They weren’t smiling at him, and he didn’t smile back. Their collective stare was supposed to drive away strangers and outsiders, and Reeve was most definitely an outsider. The surliest of the local youths was playing pool. Reeve had noticed some of his mates outside. They weren’t yet old enough looking to fool Manny, so would wait at the door like pet dogs outside a butcher’s shop for their master to rejoin them. The smell of drink off him was their vicarious pleasure. In Inveraray, there wasn’t much else to kill the time.

  Reeve walked over to the board and chalked his name up. The youth grinned at him unpleasantly, as if to say, “I’ll take anybody’s money.” Reeve walked back to the bar.

  Two more drinkers pushed open the creaking door from the outside world. Their tourist smiles vanished when they saw the sort of place they’d entered. Other tourists had made their mistake before, but seldom stayed long enough to walk up to the bar. Maybe these ones were surprisingly stupid. Maybe they were blind.

  Maybe, Reeve thought. He still had his back to them. He didn’t need to see them to know they were the two from the car. They stood next to him as they waited for Manny to finish telling a story to another customer. Manny was taking his time, just letting them know. He’d been known to refuse service to faces he didn’t like.

  Reeve watched as much as he could from the corner of his eyes. From the distorted reflection in the beaten copper plate that ran the length of the bar behind the optics, he saw that the men were waiting impassively.

  Manny at last gave up. “Yes, gents?” he said.

  “We want a drink,” the one closest to Reeve said. The man was angry already, not used to being kept waiting. He sounded English; Reeve didn’t know which nationality he’d been expecting.

  “This isn’t a chip shop,” said Manny, rising to the challenge. “Drink’s the only thing we serve.” He was smiling throughout, to let the two strangers know he wasn’t at all happy.

  “I’ll have a double Scotch,” the second man said. He was also English. Reeve didn’t know whether it was done on purpose or not, but the way he spat out “Scotch” caused more than a few hackles in the bar to rise. The speaker purported not to notice, maybe he just didn’t care. He looked at the door, at the framed photos of Scottish internationals and the local rugby team—the latter signed—and the souvenir pennants and flags.

  “Somebody likes rugby,” he said to no one in particular. No one in particular graced the remark with a reply.

  The man closest to Reeve, the one who’d spoken first, ordered a lager and lime. There was a quiet wolf whistle from the pool table, just preceding the youth’s shot.

  The man turned towards the source of the whistle. “You say something?”

  The youth kept quiet and made his next shot, chalking up as he marched around the table. Reeve suddenly liked the lad.

  “Leave it,” the stranger’s companion snapped. Then, as the drinks were set before them: “That a treble.” He meant the whiskey.

  “A double,” Manny snapped. “You’re used to sixths; up here we have quarters.” He took the money and walked back to the register.

  Reeve turned conversationally to the two men. “Cheers,” he said.

  “Yeah, cheers.” They were both keen to get a good look at him close up, just as he was keen to get a look at them. The one closest to him was shorter but broader. He could’ve played a useful prop forward. He wore cheap clothes and had a cheap, greasy look to his face. If you looked like what you ate, this man was fries and lard. His companion had a dangerous face, the kind that’s been in so many scraps it simply doesn’t care anymore. He might’ve done time in the army—Reeve couldn’t see Lardface having ever been fit enough—but he’d gone to seed since. His hair stuck out over his ears and was thin above his forehead. It looked like he’d paid a lot of money for some trendy gel-spiked haircut his son might have, but then couldn’t be bothered keeping it styled. Reeve had seen coppers with haircuts like that, but not too many of them.

  “So,” he said, “what brings you here, gents?”

  The taller man, Spikehead, nodded, like he was thinking: Okay, we’re playing it like that. “Just passing through.”

  “You must be lost.”

  “How’s that?”

  “To end up here. It’s not exactly on the main road.”

  “Well, you know . . .” The man was running out of lies already, not very professional.

  “We just felt like a drink, all right?” his partner snapped.

  “Just making conversation,” Reeve said. The edge of his vision was growing hazy. He thought of the pills in his pocket but dismissed them instantly.

  “You live locally?” Spikehead asked.

  “You should know,” Reeve answered.

  Spikehead tried a smile. “How’s that?”

  “You’ve been following me since Oban.”

  Lardface turned slowly towards him, fired up for confrontation or conflagration. A pool cue appeared between them.

  “You’re up,” the youth said.

  Reeve took the cue from him. “Mind my drink, will you?” he asked Lardface.

  “Mind it yourself.”

  “Friends of yours?” the youth asked, beer glass to his mouth as they walked to the pool table.

  Reeve looked back at the two drinkers, who were watching him from behind their glasses the way men watched strippers—engrossed, but maybe a little wary. He shook his head, smiling pleasantly. “No,” he said, “just a couple of pricks. Me to break?”

  “You to break,” the youth said, wiping snorted beer foam from his nose.

  Reeve never really had a chance, but that wasn’t the point of the game. He stood resting his pool cue on the floor and watched a game of darts behind the pool table, while the youth sank two striped balls and left two other pockets covered.

  “I hate the fuckin’ English,” the youth said as Reeve lined up a shot. “I mean a lot of the time when you say something like that you’re having a joke, but I mean it: I really fuckin’ hate them.”

  “Maybe they’re not too fond of you either, sunshine.”

  The youth ignored the voice from the bar.

  Reeve looked like he was still lining up his shot; but he wasn’t. He was sizing things up. This young lad was going to get into trouble. Reeve knew the way his mind was working: if they wanted to fight him, he’d tell them to meet him outside—outside where his pals were waiting. But the men at the bar wouldn’t be that thick. They’d take him in here, where the only backup worth talking about was Reeve himself. There were a couple of drunks playing darts atrociously, a few seated pensioners, Manny behind the bar, and the road sweeper with the bad leg on the other side of it. In here, the two Englishmen would surely fancy their chances.

  “You see,” the youth was saying, “the way I see it the English are just keech . . .” He said some more, but Lardface must have understood “keech.” He slammed down his drink and came stomping towards the pool table like he was approaching a hurdle.

  “Now,” Manny said loudly, “we don’t want any trouble.”

  Spikehead was still at the bar, which suited Reeve fine. He spun from the table, swinging his cue, and caught Lardface across the bridge of his nose, stopping him dead. Spikehead started forward, but cautiously. Reeve’s free hand had taken a ball from the table. He threw it with all the force he had towards the bar. Spikehead ducked, and the ball smashed a whiskey bottle. Spikehead was straightening up again when Reeve snatched a dart out of one player’s frozen hand and hefted it at Spikehead’s thigh. The pink haze made it difficult to see, but the dart landed close enough. Spikehead gasped and dropped to one knee. Reeve found an empty pint glass and cracked it against a table leg, then held it on front of Lardface, who was sprawled on the floor, his smashed nose str
eaming blood and bubbles of mucus.

  “Breathe through your mouth,” Reeve instructed. It barely registered that the rest of the bar had fallen into stunned silence. Even Manny was at a loss for words. Reeve walked over to Spikehead, who had pulled the dart from his upper thigh. He looked ready to stab it at Reeve, until Reeve swiped the glass across his face. Spikehead dropped the dart.

  “Christ,” gasped Manny, “there was no need —”

  But Reeve was concentrating on the man, rifling his pockets, seeking weapons and ID. “Who are you?” he shouted. “Who sent you?”

  He glanced back towards Lardface, who was rising to his feet. Reeve took a couple of steps and roundhoused the man on the side of his face, maybe dislocating the jaw. He went back to Spikehead.

  “I’m calling the polis,” Manny said.

  Reeve pointed at him. “Don’t.”

  Manny didn’t. Reeve continued his search of the moaning figure, and came up with something he had not been expecting: a card identifying the carrier as a private investigator for Charles & Charles Associates, with an address in London.

  He shook the man’s lapels. “Who hired you?”

  The man shook his head. Tears were coursing down his face.

  “Look,” Reeve said calmly. “I didn’t do any lasting damage. The cut isn’t deep enough for stitching. It’s just a bleeder, that’s all.” He raised the glass. “Now the next slash will need stitches. It might even take out your eye. So tell me who sent you!”

  “Don’t know the client,” the man blurted. Blood had dripped into his mouth. He spat it out with the words. “It’s subcontracting. We’re working on behalf of an American firm.”

  “You mean a company?”

  “Another lot of PIs. A big firm in Washington, DC.”

  “Called?”

  “Alliance Investigative.”

  “Who’s your contact?”

  “A guy called Dulwater. We phone him now and then.”

  “You bugged my house?”

  “What?”

  “Did you bug my house?”

  The man blinked at him and mouthed the word no. Reeve let him drop. Lardface was unconscious. Reeve regained his composure and took the scene in—the prone bodies, the silence, the horror on Manny’s face . . . and something like idolatry on the youth’s.

  “I could’ve taken them,” the youth said. “But thanks anyway.”

  “The police . . . ,” Manny said, but quietly, making it sound like a request.

  Reeve turned to him. “I’ll see you all right about the breakages,” he said. He looked down at Spikehead. “I don’t think our friends here will be pressing charges. They were in a car smash, that’s all. You might direct them to the nearest doctor, but that’ll be the last you hear about this.” He smiled. “I promise.”

  He drove south until he reached a pay phone, and called Joan to check she was all right. She had arrived safely at her sister’s, but still wanted to know what he was going to do. He remained vague, and she grew angry.

  “This isn’t just about you, Gordon!” she yelled. “Not now. It’s about Allan and me, too. I deserve to know!”

  “And I’m saying that the less you know the better. Trust me on this.” He was still trembling, his body pumping adrenaline. He didn’t want to think about how good he had felt laying into the two private eyes.

  It had felt wonderful.

  He argued a few more minutes with Joan, and was about to plead that he was running out of money when she remembered something.

  “I called an hour or two ago,” she said. “I got the answering machine, so checked it for messages.”

  “And?”

  “There was one there from a woman. She sounded foreign.”

  Marie Villambard! He’d forgotten all about her. He’d left his home telephone number on her machine.

  “She left a number where you can reach her,” Joan said.

  Reeve cursed silently. That meant whoever was bugging his phone would have her number, too. He took down the details Joan gave, told her he had to go, and dug in his pockets for more change.

  “Allo?”

  “It’s Gordon Reeve here, Madam Villambard. Thank you for getting back to me, but there’s a problem.”

  “Yes?”

  “The line was compromised.” Two cars went past at speed. Reeve watched them disappear.

  “You mean people were listening?”

  “Yes.” He looked back along the dark road. No lights. Nothing. The only light, he realized, was the bare bulb in the old-style phone booth. He pulled a handkerchief out of his jacket and used it to disconnect the bulb.

  “It is a military term, compromised?”

  “I suppose it is. I was in the army.” The darkness felt better. “Listen, can we meet?”

  “In France?”

  “I could drive overnight, catch a ferry at Dover.”

  “I live near Limoges. Do you know it?”

  “I’ll buy a map. Is your telephone —?”

  “Compromised? I think not. We can make a rendezvous safely.”

  “Let’s do it then.”

  “Okay, drive into the center of Limoges and follow signs to the Gare SNCF, the station itself is called Bénédictins.”

  “Got it. How long will the drive take from Calais?”

  “That depends on how often you stop. If you hurry . . . six hours.”

  Reeve did a quick calculation. If he didn’t encounter congestion or construction, he might make it to the south coast in eight or nine hours. He could sleep on the boat, then another six hours. Add a couple of hours for sailing, embarkation and disembarkation, plus an hour because France was one hour ahead . . . seventeen or eighteen hours. He’d flown to Los Angeles in about half that. The luminous hands of his watch told him it was a little after eight.

  “Late afternoon,” he said, allowing himself a margin.

  “I’ll be waiting in the station at four,” she said. “I’ll wait two hours, best look for me in the bar.”

  “Listen, there’s one more thing. They recorded your call; they know your name now.”

  “Yes?”

  “I’m saying be careful.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Reeve. See you tomorrow.”

  His money was finished anyway. He put down the receiver, wondering how they would recognize each other. Then he laughed. He’d have driven a thousand miles straight; she’d recognize him by the bloodshot eyes and body tremors.

  But he was worried that “they” would know she’d called. He should have destroyed the transmitters as soon as he located them. Instead, he’d tried playing games, playing for time. These were not people who appreciated games. He pushed the lightbulb home and opened the iron-framed door.

  One more thing worried him. The private eyes. They were working for an outfit called Alliance, an American outfit, and he had no idea who’d hired Alliance in the first place.

  Plus, if Lardface and Spikehead hadn’t planted those bugs . . . who had?

  TWELVE

  JEFFREY ALLERDYCE WAS LUNCHING WITH one of the few United States senators he regarded with anything other than utter loathing. That was because Senator Cal Waits was the only clean senator Allerdyce had ever had dealings with. Waits had never had to call on Alliance’s services, and had never found himself under investigation by them. He didn’t appear to be in any corporation’s pocket, and had little time—at least in public—for Washington’s veritable army of slick besuited lobbyists.

  Maybe that was because Cal Waits didn’t need the money or the attention. He didn’t need the money because his grandfather had owned the largest banking group in the Southwest, and he didn’t need the attention because his style in the Senate got him plenty of that anyway. He was a large middle-aged man with a store of homespun stories that he was keen on recounting, most of them very funny, most of them making some telling point about the subject under discussion in the Senate. He was always being quoted, sound-bitten, edited into fifteen seconds of usable television for the
midevening news. He was, as more than one newspaper had put it, “an institution.”

  They ate at Allerdyce’s favorite restaurant, Ma Petite Maison. He liked the crab cakes there; he also had a 10 percent share in the place (though this was not widely known), and so liked to keep an eye on business. Business wasn’t bad, but at short notice Allerdyce had still been able to get a booth, one of the ones at the back usually reserved for parties of five or more. A journalist from the Wall Street Journal had been moved to one of the lesser tables, but would be kept sweet by seeing his eventual tab reduced by 10 percent.

  Allerdyce couldn’t tell Cal Waits that he’d had someone moved. Some luncheon companions would have been impressed, honored—but not Waits. Waits would have protested, maybe even walked out. Allerdyce didn’t want him to walk, he wanted him to talk. But first there was the other crap to be got through, the so-called excuse for their lunch engagement: catching up on family, mutual acquaintances, old times. Allerdyce noticed how some of the other diners stared at them, seeing two scarred old warhorses with their noses in the feedbag.

  And then the main courses arrived—cassoulet for Waits, magret d’oie for Allerdyce—and it was almost time.

  Waits looked at his plate. “The hell with healthy eating.” He chortled. “This health kick we’ve been on for the past—what?—twenty years: it’s killing this country. I don’t mean with cholesterol or whatever new bodily disaster or poison the scientists are coming up with, I mean people aren’t eating for fun anymore. Dammit, Jeffrey, eating used to be a pastime for America. Steaks and burgers, pizzas and ribs . . . fun food. Surf ’n’ turf, that sort of thing. And now everybody looks at you in horror if you so much as suck on a drumstick. Well hell, I told my doctors—you notice you don’t just need one doctor these days, you need a whole rank of them, same thing with lawyers—I told them I wouldn’t diet. I’d do anything else they told me to do, but I would not stop eating the food I’ve been eating my whole goddamned life.”

  He chewed on a fatty piece of ham to prove his point.

  “How much medication are you on, Cal?” Allerdyce asked.