Requiem (77 page)

As she drew up behind him she tweaked the sun visor for maximum shadow, and instantly regretted what must be an obvious gesture. But if Maynard had seen her tell-tale movement, if he had recognized her, he gave no sign.

The lights changed, Maynard lurched to the right across the junction, she followed. The road, not one she knew, was relatively clear of traffic, and Maynard accelerated away. She let him pull ahead a little, content just to keep him in sight. She was gripping the wheel so tightly that her nails were digging into her thumbs. Slow, take it easy. It’s going well.

Even as she thought it, she drew a mental map and realised they had performed a loop and were now heading south. Perhaps Maynard wasn’t sure of his way, perhaps he’d lost his sense of direction. In most people that would have been believable – this part of north London was enough to defeat most map readers – but for some reason she was certain Maynard knew exactly where he was going.

The thought made her pull back further.

‘Still with me?’

The walkie-talkie gave a loud crackle, then Biggs’ voice came through, gruff and terse. ‘Affirmative.’

Hillyard gave a sharp sigh, intended for transmission. If Biggs’ police jargon had once had novelty value, it had long since lost its power to amuse. Hillyard asked with heavy sarcasm: ‘Does that mean yes?’

A silence. ‘Affirmative.’

‘Right. Close in. Make it snappy. I won’t want to hang about.’

‘Received and out.’

Hillyard braked hard and, keeping the radio to his ear, swivelled the wheel with the heel of his free hand and took the car round the corner into a dead-end street that led between banks of dismal council flats.

He continued to the end of the road, where there was a more recent though equally grim development, a series of concrete blocks with slit-like windows and peeling murals, partly raised on concrete stilts and connected by webs of poorly lit footways, halls and flights of high-walled steps.

Hillyard, who had been here before, bypassed the designated parking area and stopped the car under a raised block, between a massive concrete stilt and the blank wall of a service shaft. He parked unhurriedly, taking his time to slip the walkie-talkie into the inner pocket of his trainer jacket before getting out and locking up.

Resisting the urge to look over his shoulder, he sauntered past a sombre light and along the front of the building before disappearing into the shadows of a covered footway.

Daisy parked some way back. This was the sort of place you read about, where grannies locked themselves up at night and women didn’t take their babies out for fear of thugs. The ten-storey blocks were ribbed with external galleries lit by row after row of dim bulbs, many not functioning. Several of the ground-level flats were deserted and boarded up, abandoned to the vandals. The wide concrete verges were speckled with litter.

She tucked her bag out of sight under the seat and got out and locked the door. Somewhere high up in one of the buildings, a thin shout echoed along a long empty space.

Ahead, in the dark area under one of the buildings, she saw the lights of Maynard’s car go off. A moment later, he emerged from the shadows and strolled along the front of the building. He wasn’t looking around him, he wasn’t hurrying. He turned and disappeared into some sort of passageway. She waited for a minute to see if he would reappear, then wandered uncertainly forward. She wasn’t about to follow him into the maze of walkways – she wasn’t mad – but it might be worth taking a quick look at the car.

On the other hand she might just wait right here until he came out again.

You’re frightened.
Yes, I know I’m frightened
.

Yet, as at so many times in the past, her old doggedness stirred, she was unable to let the idea go. Maybe it was the memory of Maynard at the Waldorf, his hamster cheeks full of cucumber sandwiches, maybe it was the idea of him poking around in her flat, but she set off along the pavement towards the towering end block, towards the shadows where the Rover was parked. Approaching, she kept an eye on the passageway in case Maynard should reappear, then ducked her head down to look in the rear window.

The back seats were in deep shadow: impossible to see anything. She moved to the front and put her eye closer to the glass.

The roaring snapping mouth reared up at her out of the darkness, aiming at her nose. She jumped back with a cry.

The mouth yapped frantically at the window, its teeth clacking against the glass.

‘
Jesus!
’

She stood still, her heart racing.

The mouth subsided for an instant, revealing bulbous eyes, a flat squashed-back nose, a mane of pale hair, then started its screaming again, yelping maniacally, crashing itself blindly at the window.

She retreated, her pulse still pumping in her ears, and headed back towards the Beetle.

Voices, loud and shrill, reverberated suddenly from the block to her right, and a group of youths spilled out from a doorway, jostling each other in aggressive horseplay. She kept her head down, aiming straight for the car. She sensed them catching sight of her, exchanging remarks. One of them called out something, though she didn’t hear what it was. She caught it second time, though. It was the sort of graphic sexual invitation that yobs like to yell at women to make them feel threatened. She slowed a little and tipped her head up to show she wasn’t going to be impressed. At the same time she was relieved to see someone coming along the pavement towards her, a man with a coat flapping round his knees: the sort of thin raincoat worn by clerks and insurance salesmen and other safe people.

She reached the Beetle just ahead of the man in the raincoat and thrust into her pocket for the keys. As she went round to the driver’s side and bent to open the door, she was aware that the man in the raincoat was no longer on the pavement, that he had achieved some mysterious vanishing act. Then, by some instinct she couldn’t name, she realized that he had moved around behind her, and realizing it, she instantly rationalized it: he was coming to ask her something, coming to ask if she was all right. She sensed his sudden approach as much as heard him, or maybe she glimpsed a brief flicker of movement, but either way she was turning when he hit her, which was probably why the weapon missed the back of her skull, where it could have been aimed, and caught her on the side of her head, above the ear and across the width of her cheekbone.
Thwack!
The weapon was both soft and enormously hard: she felt its soft edge, she felt its immense force. Even as it cannoned into her cheekbone, she thought:
He shouldn’t be hitting me in the face. No one gets hit in the face.

The blow threw her sideways and she felt herself sprawling untidily against the car. At some point two of her fingers got caught up somewhere and mangled, possibly in the door hinge, and at about the same time she must have sunk to the ground, where she was eventually found, but at that moment all she was aware of was a vast shock, a loud ringing in her ears, and a sensation that felt like drowning.

‘Didn’t tell you to brain her,’ Hillyard sighed.

‘You didn’t tell me not to either,’ said Biggs, with his usual mindless logic.

Hillyard straightened up and took a quick look around. ‘Brought it on herself,’ he commented waspishly. ‘Trying to switch cars like that. Trying to be clever.’

‘Didn’t see it was her when she got on to you,’ said Biggs. ‘Just saw the car. That van’s no good for gettin’ a view, y’know. Can’t see a bleedin’ thing.’ He gestured down at the girl. ‘What shall we do with her?’

‘A mugging victim, isn’t she?’

They went through the contents of her shoulder bag, then the car itself, examining each item before either pocketing it or putting it back in the bag. Hillyard gave a grunt of satisfaction at finding one piece of paper, but otherwise he was not at all pleased. He had still not found what he had been looking for in that flat.

D
UBLENSKY SAT OVER
the newspaper and idly marked off the ball games that were showing on TV later in the day. Although it was ten he wasn’t yet dressed and still wore a towelling robe over his shorts. His unclad feet were cold on the floor, his coffee in need of a refill, but indolence made him heavy, and he couldn’t summon the energy to move.

The phone rang, a long sombre sound. Gathering his robe around him, Dublensky rose and shuffled over to the wall phone.

The voice wrenched Dublensky back to the past with a speed that left his mind stumbling.
Reedy?
But there was no mistaking the hearty tone, the sheer force of that voice. And then the name itself, announced with warmth and an extraordinary note of expectation, as if they were long-lost college friends due for a congenial reunion.

Dublensky managed: ‘How are you, Don?’

‘Never better! Never better! I’m in the Big Apple, John! Arrived yesterday. Attending a weekend meeting of the Institute. Dinners, lectures – you know, everyone applauds your speech then secretly tears it apart later.’ He chuckled: ‘You know the kind of thing.’

But Dublensky didn’t know. He’d never belonged to the organization that he assumed Reedy was referring to, had never made a speech, nor torn anyone else’s apart.

What did this show of brotherhood mean? When they had last spoken – it was back in March, shortly before he was fired from Allentown – it was to exchange bitter words over the Silveron affair. The memory of that conversation still had the power to shrink Dublensky’s heart.

‘What can I do for you, Don?’ he asked tentatively.

‘John …’ Reedy lingered over his name, giving another chuckle. ‘I thought we could meet. It’s been a long time. How about dinner tonight? There’s a conference event I’ll be glad to skip. Can you make it? Say you can. It would be really great to see you.’

Dublensky fought for a reply.

‘Would it be easier if I came down to you?’ said Reedy, cutting into the silence. ‘I could grab a hire car and get down by six thirty.’

This willingness to travel seemed to cast Reedy’s invitation in a new light. Maybe the forced joviality hid a desire to make amends. Maybe he had come to apologize.

Not entirely free of suspicion, Dublensky found himself asking: ‘Er, what is it you want to talk about exactly?’

‘Why, nothing, John. I just wanted – ’ Reedy paused suddenly, as if he had thought better of this approach, and murmured: ‘John, you know how it is, there are things you can never talk about over the phone. I mean, like it’d be real nice to
see
you, John.’

‘Is it Morton-Kreiger business?’

‘What?’ He sounded genuinely shocked. ‘Oh no, John, no. This isn’t business, this is entirely my idea!’

Dublensky knew then that he would agree. His curiosity was too great, his suspicions too sharp to leave it alone.

It was only after they had arranged to meet at a local inn and Dublensky was back at the table with a fresh cup of coffee, that it occurred to him that Reedy must have gone to a lot of trouble to track him down to this corner of New Jersey. In Allentown only two neighbours had known where he and Anne were moving to, and he certainly hadn’t told anyone at the chemical works. Had Reedy traced him through his employers then? And if so, were Dalton now fully informed of Dublensky’s background? Were they even now preparing to fire him? The thought filled him with new trepidation.

But then it was probably foolish to imagine that the mandarins of MKI were not aware of the fact that he worked for Dalton. Now and again it had even occurred to him that, incredible though it seemed, MKI might actually have fixed up this job in order to keep an eye on him.

Speculation, increasingly wild and torturous, filled Dublensky’s mind until the evening when, telling an uninterested Anne he had a business meeting, he went to meet Reedy.

From the shadowy corner of the inn’s bar area, Reedy rose with a smile that sent his chins creasing into the folds of his neck.

‘John,’ he sighed, taking Dublensky’s hand and overlaying it with a fond pat. ‘John.’ He stood back and surveyed him like a parent eyeing a prodigal child. ‘Hey, but it’s good to see you.’

By the time they had finished their drinks and moved through to the dining area, Reedy had asked him about life in the town, about Tad and his schooling, about Anne. He did not enquire after Dublensky’s work.

His tone was avuncular, though Dublensky thought he could detect a trace of briskness, as if he was anxious to keep the conversation moving at some predetermined pace.

Dublensky, needing to assert himself, if only modestly, made an abrupt interruption. ‘What’s happening at MKI?’ he asked.

Reedy laughed at the question and tipped his fingers into space. ‘Oh, you know. Unchanging. The monolith rolls on. Although – ’ He shot Dublensky a slyly modest look. ‘For some reason they have seen fit to kick me up a step. As of next month I become Executive Vice President, Research.’

‘Congratulations.’

‘Means getting my arse kicked more often.’ He assumed a long-suffering look that wasn’t designed to convince anyone.

The food came and they paused to apply relish and sauces to their steaks. Reedy talked again, but more generally now, touching on everything from the national debt to bankruptcy among Iowa farmers. It was a screen of words, Dublensky realized, delivered both as a means of controlling the conversation and of giving himself time to prepare. But for what? There was something coming, of that Dublensky was certain. A formal non-aggression pact? An olive branch? A monetary deal?