Death Trance (6 page)

Randolph picked his way out of the ruins. Orbus was standing so that his swollen, sallow face was half hidden by the brim of his hat.

'It pains me to see this, Randolph,’ he said. His voice was as high and as clear as a young boy's. Somebody had once told Randolph that Orbus could sing soprano solos from Verdi's operas capable of bringing tears to your eyes provided you were not required to look at him while he sang.

'Still,’ Orbus continued, 'there's always insurance, isn't there? Insurance is better than ointment.’

'I lost three good men here, Orbus,’ Randolph retorted. 'Neither insurance nor ointment will bring any of them back. Now, if you'll forgive me, I have work to do.’

Orbus thrust his pig's-trotter hands into his sagging coat pockets and raised his head so he was squinting at Randolph from underneath the brim of his hat, one-eyed.

'You're not the man your daddy was, you know,’ he remarked provocatively.

'I know that,’ Randolph replied equably.

'Your daddy was always an independent kind of man. Free-thinking, free-spirited. But he respected the cottonseed business, and he respected the people who make their living at it.’

'I hope this isn't yet another invitation to join the Cottonseed Association,’ Randolph told him. 'Believe me, I have enough clubs to go to. Useful, interesting clubs, where I do useful, interesting things, like playing squash. I have no interest at all in spending my evenings in smoke-filled rooms manipulating people and prices.’

'Well, you sure paint a lurid picture of us,’ smiled Orbus. 'Maybe you should remember the kidney machines the Cottonseed Association bought last year for the Medical Centre and the vacations we gave to those crippled kids.’

'I'm sure you didn't forget to enter those charitable donations on your tax returns,’ Randolph said. 'Now, please, I just came back from Canada and I'm very pushed for time.’

'You just wait up one minute,’ said Orbus. 'What you've been doing these past three years, playing the market, selling
what
you choose to
whom
you choose at whatever
price
you choose, well, that was understandable to begin with. Your daddy had been letting Clare Cottonseed stagnate, hadn't he? For quite a long spell. Me and my fellow members of the Association, we were prepared to some extent to let you re-energize your business, reinvest, build it up again to what it was. That's why - even though we expressed our disapproval - we didn't lean on you too hard. If Clare flourished, we thought it would be good for all of us.’

Orbus licked his lips and then, as slowly and menacingly as a waking lizard, opened his other eye.

'Point is
now,’
he said, 'that you've gone way beyond re-energizing, way beyond rebuilding. Point is
now
that you're undercutting the rest of us on major contracts and that you've built up the processing capacity to handle them, the last straw that broke the camel's back being Sun-Taste.’

Neil Sleaman broke in. 'You listen here, Mr Greene. Clare Cottonseed has every legal right to sell cottonseed oil to whomever it likes and at whatever price it likes. So kindly butt out. Mr Clare has urgent business to attend to.’

Randolph raised his hand. 'Hold on a moment, Neil. Don't let Orbus get under your skin. I want to hear what he's got to say.’

Orbus smiled fatly. His minders smiled too, in vacant imitation of their boss's smugness. Orbus said, 'You're going to be pushed to the limit to meet your contractual obligations to Sun-Taste after this fire, aren't you? Don't deny it. Well, just let me tell you this: no member of the Cottonseed Association is going to help you out. You won't even get one single cupful of oil out of any of us, not at any price. You wanted to stand on your own. You were prepared to steal our profits from under our noses. Now you're going to have to learn what standing on your own really means.’

Randolph laid his hand on Orbus's shoulder. Orbus did not like to be touched; his body chafed him enough as it was, and one of his minders stepped forward warningly. But Orbus, with an odd kind of whinny, instructed the man to stay back and he tolerated Randolph's hand with his eyes closed and his teeth clenched.

'Orbus,’ Randolph said, 'I've
always
understood what standing on my own means. My father made me stand on my own from the day I could first stand up. There's only one thing I'm going to say to you in reply, and that is if any more of my factories happen to meet with explosions or fires or unprecedented accidents, that's when I'm going to stop believing that they
are
accidents and I'm going to come looking for the person or persons who caused them.’

Orbus kept smiling in spite of the hand on his shoulder. 'You know something, Randolph?’ he said. 'You would have made a fine cowboy actor.
High Noon in Memphis.
how about that? And who knows, you might even have wound up President.’

'Get off my land, Orbus,’ Randolph told him quietly and firmly.

'I'm not the kind to outstay my welcome,’ Orbus replied and then turned to his minders and uttered another one of his whinnies. This one evidently meant 'Let's go.’

Randolph and Neil stood watching them walk back to Orbus's black limousine, OGRE 1, where one of the men opened the specially widened passenger door while the others heaved Orbus onto the back seat. The suspension dipped and bucked.

'What do you think?’ Randolph asked as the limousine disappeared down the magnolia-strewn driveway.

Neil said, 'He wasn't responsible for this. Leastways I don't think so. Even Orbus Greene wouldn't have the nerve to visit the scene of the crime so soon after it happened.’

'Don't underestimate his capacity to gloat,’ Randolph remarked. 'Orbus is one of the world's great gloaters. I think he's glad it happened even if he didn't actually set it.’

'Maybe we ought to rethink our policy a little,’ Neil suggested.

'What do you mean?’

'Well… I'm not saying that we should think of giving up our independence. But maybe we've been acting a bit too aggressive for our own good. Men like Orbus Greene don't take very kindly to being outsmarted, especially when it comes to big money.’

'That's business,’ Randolph replied firmly. 'Besides, I wouldn't change my policies for any fat toad like Orbus.’

'Don't underestimate him,’ Neil warned.

'Underestimate him? I'm not even thinking about him. I've got dead to bury and a factory to rebuild. That's all that worries me.’

Neil said, 'You're one-hundred-per cent determined, aren't you, sir?’

Randolph nodded, although for some reason he felt that Neil was asking him a far more fateful question and that this single nod of agreement somehow set into motion some kind of dark and secret roller-coaster ride that he would never be able to stop.

CHAPTER TWO

Lac aux Ecorces, Quebec

They were sitting on the veranda overlooking the lake, with the moths stitching patterns around the lamp, talking quietly and. eating potato chips, when they heard the first noise. It was an extraordinary crackle, seemingly close but so unexpected they could not believe they had actually heard it.

'Now
that
was something,’ John said.

'Moose probably,’ said Mark, who was afraid of few things.

'Are mooses dangerous?’ asked Issa.

'What's the plural of moose?’ their mother wanted to know. 'It can't be mooses, can it?’

'Well, it isn't mice and it isn't moosen, so it must be mooses.’

They sat quietly, listening. Mark crunched on a potato chip and they shushed him. But for a long time there was no sound other than the cool summer wind, blowing southwesterly across the silver surface of the lake and sighing in the trees like the saddest of abandoned women. The moon had only just disappeared behind the saw-toothed pine trees on the horizon, but it had left behind an unnatural glow in the sky, as if there were an alien city somewhere beyond the hills.

Marmie Clare held out her glass and said to John, 'Pour me some more wine, would you, darling?’ She watched with a smile as John carefully picked up the bottle of Pouilly-Fuisse and attended to her glass with the same slow care his father would have taken.

At the age of forty-three, Marmie felt that she was beginning to blossom again, just like the magnolias down in Memphis. She was a tall, well-boned woman with deep-set brown eyes, a straight nose and a strong jawline. Her chestnut-coloured hair was streaked with grey now, but whereas three years ago that used to horrify and depress her, she took it today as a mark of her newfound maturity and poise.

When she reached thirty-seven, Marmie had been frightened. The fear had started with the sudden realization that she was no longer young and that what she had then considered to be the best part of her life was behind her. She had stared hard at herself in the mirror, knowing that the tiny wrinkles beginning to appear around her eyes would never disappear. Then she had wondered what her life had been for, this brief, bright life that seemed now to be nearly ended before it had even reached its stride. It had hardly, seemed worth the effort to make herself look attractive when the only man she had been trying to arouse was her husband of seventeen years. And why should she try to excel at anything else - at tennis, or music or swimming - when she was already too old to be the very best?

It was the death of Randolph's father that had changed her attitude towards herself. When Ned died and Randolph took over Clare Cottonseed, Randolph had been rejuvenated; it was a powerful and responsible job and a hair-raising challenge. Over the previous six or seven years, his father had allowed the Clare processing plants to collapse in a welter of lax discipline and obsolescent equipment, and he had relied for his dwindling income on long-standing 'gentlemen's agreements' with cotton-plantation owners as conservative and decrepit as himself. Randolph had shaken the company like a dusty rag, from boardroom to loading bay, and during that time, he had relied on Marmie to be everything he had married her for: charming, elegant, patient, beautiful, tireless, cooperative, opinionated, warm and supportive.

Marmie had reached her forty-third year knowing that she was someone special. She was looking to the years ahead, not to the years behind. And her children were just on the verge of proving what an accomplished mother she had been. She had emerged from self-doubt and dissatisfaction like someone newly born, someone who realizes that every human life consists of several different lives and that the arrival of each new one is an event to be welcomed.

Issa said, 'Dad hasn't called.’ Issa resembled her mother except that her hair reached halfway down her back and she had inherited her paternal grandmother's extravagant bosom. Randolph always said there wasn't a boy in Memphis who wouldn't swim the Mississippi for Issa, although she was only thirteen; and Marmie always said that he was jealous, which was probably true. Tonight Issa wore a yellow- and white-striped T-shirt and white jeans, and with her pink-painted toenails and brushed-back hair and summer suntan, she could have been Miss Young America herself.

John said, 'He's probably busy, for Christ's sake.’ John was his father all over again: the same profile, the same mannerisms, the same gentleness mixed with insanely stubborn ethics, the same sudden flares of incandescent, wildly unreasonable temper. And the same deep capacity to love. In fact, he was so much like his father that it was amazing that they got on together. By rights they should have been head-butting, but they rarely did. Most of the time they supported each other, made excuses for each other and were comfortable in each other's company.

Mark, on the other hand, was quiet and introspective. He loved both of his parents but he had his own way of looking at things, his own quirky sense of humour, his own ambitions. In appearance he was more like his mother than his father but he had inherited his father's well-meaning clumsiness. His taste in clothes had always been eccentric; tonight he was wearing a bright green shirt and a pair of indigo-coloured denim shorts.

John said, 'We could take the kayak out tomorrow morning and catch some fish.’

'If you want to,’ Marmie told him.

'Oh, I don't want to fish,’ Mark retorted. 'Fishing's so goddam boring.’

'Mark!’ his mother admonished him.

'Well, it is,’ he grumbled. 'And we never catch anything without Daddy being there.’

Issa said, 'I don't know why we didn't go home with Daddy. We could be back in Memphis now, watching TV.’

'It's beautiful here,’ Marmie replied. 'It's beautiful and we're going to stay, and if Daddy manages to finish his work in time, he'll come back and join us. Come on, I think you're all tired. It's time you went to bed.’

'Sleep, eat, fish, sleep, eat, fish,’ protested Mark in a monotone.

It was then that they heard another crackle. They paused in silence, their heads lifted like caribou.

'Now that was definitely something,’ John said.

'It was probably only a porcupine,’ Marmie reassured him. 'Your father said there are dozens of them around here.’

'What if it's a bear?’ asked Issa.

'Of course it's not a bear. Don't be ridiculous,’ John scoffed. 'Besides, even if it is, we've got the gun.’

There was another crackle, closer this time. Marmie frowned and set down her glass of wine on the wicker table. 'I think we'd better go inside,’ she said. 'You never know.’

'This wouldn't be happening if we were back in Memphis,’ Issa complained.

All the same, Issa gathered up the magazines she had been reading, and John helped Mark drag the chaises back to the side of the veranda, against the cabin wall, and Marmie brushed down her dress and picked up her wine glass and the bowl of potato chips.

They were about to go inside when something dropped to the veranda steps from the roof of the porch with a quick, scrabbling sound and then scurried away. They jumped with fright and Issa screamed. Then they burst out laughing.

'A squirrel, after all that!’ said Marmie.

'My heart's bumping!’ Issa cried out. 'Oh, my God, my heart's bumping!’

'Well, I think it's time we went inside anyway,’ Marmie told them. 'It's getting kind of chilly to sit out here.’

They went into the cabin's spacious living room and closed the door. Randolph's father had discovered the cabin about twenty years earlier, one day when he was fishing. In those days it had been dilapidated and abandoned, a home for martens and squirrels and occasional minks. Ned Clare had bought it from its owners, repaired it and extended it, and now it was a luxurious lakeside cottage which - to Randolph and Marmie, if not to their children - was heaven. The children's principal complaint, of course, was that there was no television, although Randolph had promised on his honour to install a VCR so that at least they could watch old movies.

'Could you stack the fire, please, John?’ Marmie asked, walking across the wide, brown-carpeted living room and through to the kitchen. John went over to the old-fashioned brick fireplace and poked the spruce logs crackling in the grate. Mark followed his mother into the kitchen, obviously on the lookout for something more to eat. Issa sprawled on the tan leather sofa and continued reading her magazines.

'Do you know what it says here, Mommy? It says you should always massage your moisturizer into your cheeks with your knuckles. Can you show me how to do that?’

'If I knew how, I'd tell you,’ Marmie called back with a chuckle.

'I wonder if Daddy's seen the factory yet,’ John said. 'I can't believe that Bill Douglas got killed.’

'Well, he said he would call before midnight,’ Marmie told him.

'Can I have one of these lemon Danishes?’ Mark wanted to know.

'They were supposed to be for breakfast,’ Marmie said. 'But, well, okay, if you're that hungry.’

She came back to the living room. John had stacked more logs on the fire and for the moment, it was subdued and smoky.

'Why don't you use the bellows?’ she suggested.

It was then that they heard three distinct clumping noises outside the front door, as if someone had stepped up onto the veranda. They froze and stared at each other.

'Don't tell me
that's
a squirrel,’ Issa said.

'A squirrel in hiking boots?’ Mark asked.

'John, did you lock the door?’ Unconsciously Marmie laid her hand across Mark's shoulders and tugged at his green shirt to draw him closer.

John said nothing but stepped cautiously towards the door, listened for a moment and then turned the key to lock it.

'Do you think there's anybody out there?’ Marmie asked.

John shook his head slowly. 'Probably one of the chaises fell over.’

'All the same,’ Marmie instructed him, 'go to your father's closet and get the gun and the box of shells.’

John went through to the bedroom and Marmie heard him rattling around among the hiking shoes and tennis rackets and other equipment that always seemed to accumulate at the bottom of Randolph's closet. She had been trying for the whole of their married life to organize Randolph. Tonight she would have given anything to have him here, as disorganized and untidy as he wanted to be.

There was another bump. John came back into the living room carrying the.22 rifle over his arm, the way his father had taught him to carry it when they were out hunting. He looked at his mother with a serious face and put the box of shells on the table.

'Do you know how to load it?’ Marmie asked.

'Sure, Daddy showed me.’

Mark came over and watched as John carefully took the shells out of the carton, one by one, and slid them into the rifle's magazine. 'John's a rotten shot,’ he said with sudden cheerfulness.

'I am not,’ John retorted.

'You are too. You couldn't even hit that duck when it was practically sitting on the end of the barrel.’

'Will you stop arguing?’ Marmie demanded. 'There could be somebody prowling around out there and this could be serious.’

'Maybe we ought to call the ranger station,’ Issa said. There was no telephone of course, but in Randolph's study there was a radio transmitter with which they could summon either the forest rangers or the company that took care of Randolph's seaplane.

'Well, we don't know for sure that it's a prowler,’ Marmie said. 'After all, we're a long way out from anywhere. We haven't heard a helicopter, have we? Or a seaplane? And it's nearly twenty miles to route one sixty-nine. I think maybe we're just letting ourselves get a little jumpy because Daddy isn't here.’

'I think it's spooky,’ Issa said. 'I vote we go back to Memphis tomorrow.’

‘I’ll make some hot chocolate,’ Marmie volunteered.

She had nearly reached the kitchen when there was a sharp, earsplitting crack and the blade of an axe penetrated the outside door close to the lock. Issa screamed and jumped off the sofa. John picked up the rifle and chambered a round with a quick, flustered jerk. Mark stepped back and stared at his mother wide-eyed.

Marmie tried to shout out, 'Who's that? What do you think you're doing?’ but somehow her vocal cords failed to work. The axe blade cracked into the door a second time, then a third.

'John, shoot!’ Marmie gasped. John aimed the rifle at the door and pulled the trigger but nothing happened.

'It's jammed,’ he said desperately. 'It's all jammed up.’

The axe chopped into the door with regular, powerful strokes, as if it were being wielded by a woodsman. Marmie thought wildly of going into the kitchen for a carving knife but a tiny voice of logic and self-protection asked what good that would be against a man carrying an axe and with the strength to chop down a heavy wooden door.

With a hideous, splintering groan, the door was forced open. Four bulky men in white ice-hockey masks and black track suits pushed their way into the living room. One of them was swinging a long-handled axe; the others were carrying sawed-off shotguns. Marmie screeched at them, 'Get out! What do you want? Get out!’ and gathered the children close, but the men took no notice and strutted into the room, systematically kicking over tables, tugging down pictures and overturning chairs. They were faceless and menacing, like malevolent puppets.