Dead Men's Harvest (24 page)

His comments had shut down my line of conversation, and I sat there ruminating for a moment. It got me thinking on how earlier I’d have preferred if Rink had been the one covering my back, and now I felt a little ashamed of myself. ‘Harve.’

He glanced over at me, inclined his chin.

‘I’m sorry I got you into this.’

‘Anything for a friend.’

That made me feel worse. ‘You do realise that we’re probably going to go to prison for a long time.’

Harvey bit down on his bottom lip. ‘There’s always the possibility we’ll get away with it. I’ve taken precautions. The rifle can’t be traced to me. I had my gloves on when driving the car we dumped.’

These days the science of forensic investigation was more sophisticated than looking for fingerprints. And even if that’s all they went by, the police wouldn’t go with the obvious. Harvey hadn’t been wearing gloves when we were in the hotel room, so they could find plenty of evidence there. Identifying Harvey would be a piece of cake for any investigator. Christ, all they had to do was look at my known associates and the first black man to jump out at them would be Harvey. Not only that, but if Walter had been responsible for betraying us, the police had arrived at the scene with prior knowledge of who was assisting me. Of course, if I was to be captured, they wouldn’t get his name from me.

‘I think it’s time I finished this alone.’

Shaking his head adamantly, Harvey said, ‘I started this with you, I’m gonna finish it with you.’

‘Not a good idea, Harve.’

‘Has anything we’ve done been a good idea?’ He considered his words, then added, ‘With the exception of saving Rink and killing the bad guys, that is?’

‘There are still two bad guys out there. Baron I’m not worried about, but this won’t end until Tubal Cain’s finally in his grave. No, scratch that. A grave couldn’t hold him last time. This time I’m going to have to make sure there isn’t enough of him left to put in a coffin.’

‘That’s the big problem. How do we find him?’

‘We set a trap.’ I dropped the subject of going it alone. Jesus, if I suggested as much, Rink would likely hand me my arse on a platter. ‘That’s why I wanted to speak to John. To see if he was prepared to help us.’

‘You’d use your brother as bait?’

‘I’d have made sure that he was never in any physical danger. But that’s moot now. I don’t know how to contact him.’

‘I thought Walter was setting that up for you?’

I hadn’t yet shared my suspicions with Harvey, but it looked like it was time. ‘Who do you think sent the cops after us, Harve?’

‘I don’t know Walter the way you guys do, but I find it hard to believe that he’d turn you in.’

‘Walter plays a constant game; one where he’s only interested in being the winner.’

‘Could have been someone else,’ Harvey pointed out. ‘Baron escaped. Could have been him who directed the police to us.’

It was plausible, I supposed. When I thought about the slimy bastard, Baron had made his escape in a vehicle. It was possible that he’d followed us as we got away from Hendrickson’s estate, and had tried to have us captured by the police. I thought that Walter had been stalling in order to triangulate my mobile phone, and had then sent a car to keep an eye on us. But, the omnipotent eye of the CIA wasn’t as all-powerful as made out in movies: what were the chances that he could have located us and dispatched a car to our location in such a short time? Pretty slim.

I tried to picture the scene outside the Tudor hall. I have trained myself to take snapshot images that I compartmentalise for future use. But it’s one thing when consciously deciding to save an image for later, quite another when concentrating on something else. I couldn’t bring to mind the makes and models of the vehicles in the small fleet arranged on the gravel parking space. One of them could have been a dark sedan with tinted windows. Perhaps the blame had been wrongly targeted at my old friend. I felt a trickle of relief, but then it was pushed aside by a different concern. If Walter hadn’t set us up, then why had he stalled over John’s unavailability?

I used the satellite phone to call Walter.

‘Walt, it’s me, Joe.’

‘Hunter, I’m glad you called.’

‘Really?’

‘Yes, really. I told you to leave phoning me for a few hours. Big mistake! I’ve been frantic to get a hold of you since.’

‘You didn’t hear about Richmond yet?’

‘Richmond? No, I’ve been too busy dealing with what else has happened.’

‘What
has
happened? Is it John? Does Cain have him?’

‘It’s worse than that, son.’

‘What could be worse than Cain capturing my brother?’

When he told me, he was right. It was much worse.

Chapter 32

Over in Manchester, my old home town, three boys had
innocently
enquired of the time from a stranger. Mistaking them for thugs, he’d threatened them with a collection of knives and a gun. Upset by the incident they’d debated whether to telephone the police, but it seemed that the one mobile phone between them had a flat battery, and public telephone kiosks – those that hadn’t been vandalised – were as rare as chicken’s teeth in their neighbourhood. Instead they’d decided to spy on the stranger and see what he was up to. He’d allegedly gone into a block of flats, where shortly afterwards a Ford Transit van had arrived. The youths then swore that the stranger and driver had carried the body of a woman to the van and placed it inside. The van drove away and they’d come out of hiding and immediately ran to a friend’s house where they’d alerted the local police. The police officer dispatched to investigate their claim soon discovered my niece and nephew, Beatrice and Jack, unharmed and safely locked inside their bedroom. But of Jenny there was no sign. My parents had gone to the kids’ rescue, taking them home out of the hands of the social workers. The street on which the Telfer family had lived was now a major crime scene while the police tried to determine what had happened.

That Jenny’s abductor was Tubal Cain was obvious. I didn’t need the boys’ description of the fair-haired Yank with a scar on his throat for confirmation. The knives did it for me.

If it wouldn’t have sent Harvey and me plummeting to our deaths, I’d have turned the cockpit of the Jetranger inside out. That was the level of my rage. No, it was worse than that: it was the measure of my sense of
futility
. I was thousands of miles away, and Jenny was in danger.

I lost track of things after that, and rode the chopper with intense dread gnawing at my insides. I tried not to conjure the nightmare scenario of Jenny eviscerated, her skeletal remains displayed as an insane trophy, but it was there. Closing my eyes made it worse, so I stared straight ahead, trying to bury the horrific image behind the clouds.

Things were totally out of control.

For years now, I realised, I’d been very lucky in that the events I’d chosen – or been manipulated – to involve myself in had been resolved with the back-up and resources of a certain friend. But this time, trying to fix things without the benefit of Walter’s sanction made me understand how ineffective it was for one man to try to combat the evil of the world. It was always a demanding mission I’d set myself, but it was one thing punishing a low-life criminal, quite another to take on an entire network of world-class villains. Petoskey was dead, and so was Hendrickson. So what? What exactly had I achieved if it meant that Jennifer might also be slaughtered? There was no balance in that. I could kill a hundred, a thousand gangsters, and their lives would be nothing compared to that of one innocent woman.

I’d been a soldier most of my adult life. I’d been trained by the best and had served with the best. But I was no Superman. I was a human being and I suffered the same weaknesses and frailties as any man when faced by a situation beyond my control. I wanted to scream and shout and rail at the world. And God – though at that moment I couldn’t believe that a benign all-powerful being could allow such an injustice to occur – I wanted to wring His fucking neck!

Despite all that, I kept my peace. Violence, rage, anger pointlessly directed wouldn’t help anyone. Luckily Harvey could still think clearly enough to have a destination in mind. He’d had the chopper refuelled while at the heliport in Richmond, so we were good for the trip to the north. Somewhere along the way I fell asleep. Mentally exhausted, I didn’t wake again until Harvey shook me gently and I unglued my eyes and peered over at Walter Conrad’s fishing retreat.

My first sight of the cabin brought everything crashing down on me again. The last time I’d been here was to witness the deranged work of Tubal Cain. I didn’t want to be reminded of it, when in place of Bryce Lang and the bodyguards I superimposed the face of Jenny. It took me a few seconds to get a grip of myself, and yet when I did it was with a new resolve. The cabin horrified me, but I’d always been one for facing my fears. There’s an old adage I subscribe to:
If you are afraid of what lies within the cave, walk in
. No matter what kind of monster lurked in the darkness, running away didn’t diminish your fear of it. You have to face it and – if needs be – rip the fucker’s throat out with your teeth.

I hitched up my jeans as I stepped down from the chopper and led the way to Walter’s front door. Now that it appeared that Tubal Cain was out of the country and Hendrickson no longer a threat, Walter had chosen to return to his cabin. We found him in the living area, supervising a clean-up crew. The air was redolent with the sharp smell of disinfectant, but it couldn’t hide the sickly undertone of the depravity that had gone on here so recently. Walter was chewing on a fat cigar, but had not as yet lit it. He’d been trying to give up the vice of tobacco for years, and had only recently been able to ditch the panacea of the unlit stogie. Still, I couldn’t blame him for grasping at his old habit. He needed the comfort of it, I guessed. The truth be told, I could have smoked a cigarette myself.

Sometimes I forgot how old Walter was. He was now in his late sixties, but looking at his haunted features, I’d have put him at twenty years older again. His normally rotund body was deflated and his jowls, usually plump and full around the stub of cigar, looked like those of a bloodhound. The whites of his eyes were reddened with broken capillaries. His bald pate seemed to be expanding daily. He made me feel my own mortality like a leaden weight.

I touched the old man on the shoulder and watched as he hung his head. He’d lost a dear friend in Bryce Lang, and most likely in his regular bodyguards as well. I felt for him. But more than that, I felt for Jenny.

‘We need to end this fast.’

He nodded silently.

‘I’m a wanted man,’ I went on. ‘There’s no way that I can do things by the regular channels. Even with false documents, I can’t beat the security measures now that they’re watching for me.’

‘I’ll see to it that you’re given immunity,’ he said.

I’d been expecting him to deny me help this time. I was supposed to be on my own. He had to be kept out of the entire fuck-up. But he came across as being more intent on stopping the monster than concerned about protecting his own arse. Maybe he too was feeling his mortality.

‘You know why Cain has done this.’ I wasn’t referring to the splotches of gore the clean-up crew were tackling.

Walter chewed furiously at his stogie, but didn’t answer.

‘He intends using Jenny to bring John out of hiding. He has only one way of making his demands, and that’s through you, Walt. I want to be there, ready for the bastard when he makes the call.’

‘What if he has already killed her?’

‘I’ll make him pay.’ Never in my life had I made a more powerful resolution. ‘I don’t think he will, though. He’ll keep her alive as bait. I need you to play your part in this, Walt. I need you to have John ready to make the exchange. When that happens, I promise you, Cain won’t live a second longer.’

Walter stood there, wouldn’t even look at me. Finally he nodded and said, ‘Best prepare yourself then, son. I think he’ll make contact soon.’

I’d forgotten that Harvey was standing by my shoulder until he stirred uncomfortably. ‘What about me?’

Walter looked up at him like he was a stranger. I turned to Harvey and gave him his answer. ‘I’m doing this part on my own.’

‘Now hold on a minute!’

‘Look, Harvey,’ I said, ‘I’ve already dragged you and Rink through a huge pile of shit, but it ends here. You’re both great friends, and it has to stop. I’ve fucked your lives. It’s about time I let you get back to some sort of normality.’ Before he could argue, I turned to Walter again and I wasn’t going to take no for an answer. ‘Harvey and Rink’s involvement has to be covered, Walter. I don’t care how you do it, how many strings you have to pull or how many favours you have to call in, they weren’t involved. Got it?’

‘I’ll do what I can.’

‘That’s not good enough. I want your word on it. Their inclusion is buried. Full stop.’

‘My power isn’t infinite, son.’

‘I know. Blame everything on me if you have to, but my friends are kept out of this.’

I grew aware of a hush in the room. The cleaning crew had all paused at our raised voices. I shot them each a dark look and they went back to what they were doing. Quieter, I said; ‘You owe them as much as I do, Walt. Make sure that they’re exonerated. And,’ I leaned in close to his ear, ‘make sure that John is ready for when he’s needed.’