Delivering Caliban (10 page)

Seventeen

Outside Charlottesville, Virginia

Monday 20 May, 11.10 pm

Pope had asked for the fastest car the rental firm had available, short of a sports vehicle. He’d chosen a Mercedes E-class saloon.

His preferred means of travel, the train, wasn’t an option because there were no more running that night. Neither could he take a bus, because speed was of the essence.

He veered through the snarl of North Virginia traffic, reaching interstate 95 within an hour. She had an hour’s head start on him. At this rate he would make Washington by midnight, around the time her Greyhound was due to arrive.

He’d done a quick scout of the station to see if she was there waiting for a bus or a train, then checked the schedules. No trains since this afternoon, so she wouldn’t have left that way.

At the bus station ticket office he said, ‘I’m looking for my girlfriend. I think she may have taken a bus this evening.’

The woman behind the screen eyed him with distaste. He smiled.

‘Yeah, I know what you’re thinking. She’s running away and I’m stalking her.’ He held up his phone. Onto it he’d loaded a photo of Ramirez for recognition purposes, one he’d taken in her flat. It showed her with her grandmother, grinning at the camera. He held the phone out, her photo showing on the screen. ‘Her phone. She’s left it behind. I think she went to Washington and she’ll be going insane knowing she’s left this behind. If she’s gone there, I need to catch up with her.’

The woman looked at the picture, then at him. She smiled back. Pope wondered if she’d need stitches.

‘Yeah, she was here. Bought a ticket for the nine o’clock ’Hound to Washington. Should be around one third of the way there now.’

He beamed. ‘Thanks so much.’

The rental place was down the road.

*

Pope wondered as he drove how the girl would react. She’d be terrified, no doubt. But someone who could keep their cool and escape from a murder scene with a purposeful journey in mind, someone who was a civilian and not accustomed to the sordid arts of death, had to have something about them that was tough. He had no fears that she’d be difficult to subdue or keep under control; but she might make life a little more difficult than he’d been expecting.

Of more concern to him now was the fact that there had been a murder or murders from which she’d had to flee. Either she’d killed somebody who’d been following her - unlikely, he thought - or someone else had got caught in the crossfire. Either way, it suggested some other party was pursing her. He couldn’t think of a reason at the moment, and it nagged at him.

There’d been one mention of her as a girl on the recording he’d listened to and committed to memory. He didn’t like to submerge himself in the remembered diary while he was driving, for obvious reasons, but he did want to explore that mention of her again. It would have to wait.

A flash of inspiration hit him, a thought so blindingly obvious that he was astonished at himself. He turned on the car radio. In an age when all news was assumed to be obtainable solely online, he’d forgotten about the tried and tested medium of local radio.

The stations were unfamiliar and he flicked through them at random. Loud rock music was followed by sickly country fiddles. A talk show host ranted, an evangelist roared. He settled on a quiet-sounding political debate programme and waited for the news broadcast.

It came after fifteen minutes. Police had been called to an apartment in Greenbrier, Charlottesville, after neighbours had reported sounds of a struggle and shots fired. Two individuals had been identified as having been shot dead, their names not yet released. The Charlottesville PD would like to speak to a Ms Nina Ramirez in connection with the shootings. A description followed.

Two people dead. She definitely hadn’t killed them. Friends, then, probably, who’d got in the way.

But in the way of whom? 

*

He was on Interstate 95 passing the town of Dumfries when it happened.

The news had ended but he kept the radio on at a low volume, in case of updates. He’d been thinking about something else that had been bothering him but hadn’t risen to his full consciousness until now: why was she going to Washington, anyway?

The blacktop curved leftwards, the lights arcing through a light patina of drizzle on his windscreen. Traffic was still steady, but lighter than it had been nearer Charlottesville. He suspected it would begin to thicken as he neared the capital.

The bus was fifty yards ahead of him round the curve, stopped on the hard shoulder at a slant so that it blocked half of the outermost lane. Its hazard lights were flashing. Cars swerved irritably into the adjacent lane to avoid it. Even from a distance Pope recognised the Greyhound markings on the side visible to him.

He eased the brake down, slowing and at the same time shifting towards the hard shoulder.

A car was parked behind the bus, a nondescript saloon, its headlights on. The streetlights cast the bus’s windows into shadow so that Pope couldn’t detect any movement through them.

He stopped behind the car and killed the engine. Waited a moment, winding down the window to listen. All he could hear was road sounds: distant truck horns, cars steaming past through the thin rain.

Pope stepped out.

As he did so the hazard lights of the bus switched to a single blinking indicator and its exhaust billowed. With a rumble it pulled away on to the road.

Pope’s impulse was to dive back into his seat and fire the engine but a stronger instinct made him approach the car, his posture slightly stooped and loping. He peered in. There was nobody inside.

A yell hit his ear on the right. A man’s shout.

Pope straightened and stared in its direction. Beyond the safety rail on the side of the road, a bank sloped down into darkness. There was some kind of scrubby field below the Interstate, undeveloped land.

His night vision was still impaired by the brightness of the headlights he’d been facing for the last couple of hours; but if he couldn’t make out details, he could still see the outlines of the figures moving at a clip across the ground.

The one in front was a woman.

Pope vaulted over the railing and half slid, half scrambled down the slope.

Eighteen

Between Charlottesville, Virginia and Washington D.C.

Monday 20 May, 11.25 pm

An hour into the bus ride, Nina began to notice the car behind, and wonder if it was following her. Half an hour later she was convinced.

It was a dark grey sedan, with the Toyota symbol on the front. Nina didn’t know much about cars - didn’t drive, herself - so that exact make wasn’t clear. Sometimes it was right behind the Greyhound, sometimes it dropped back a car or two; but always it was there. When the bus driver put on an unaccustomed burst of speed and overtook a truck ahead of them, the Toyota followed suit and swung into place at their rear.

Nina couldn’t see through the windshield in the darkness. This wasn’t surprising, but the blackness of the glass seemed sinister, as though there was an added veil of secrecy about the vehicle.

Glad that she’d chosen the rearmost seat, she nonetheless felt nervous about turning and staring back through the window. Surely the occupants of the Toyota would see her waxen face peering through the glass at them? But then it didn’t matter; they knew she was on the bus, and whether she’d spotted them or not would be of no relevance.

A road sign loomed as the bus slowed temporarily:
Washington D.C., 42 miles
.

Nina made her decision.

Barely trusting her legs to support her, she wove to her feet, lifted the violin case and picked her way down the aisle towards the front, brushing newspapers and barging jutting elbows and knees. As she neared the bulging glass face of the bus she saw the driver’s eyes in the mirror, wide and wary.
A crazy
, he’d be thinking. He’d have had experience of them. Of the likes of her.

When she got close enough to make herself heard without violating his personal space, she said, low and shakily: ‘Please stop the bus. I need to get off.’

For a moment she thought he hadn’t heard, and she cleared her throat to repeat herself when he said, ‘Miss, I need you to sit down. Right now.’

His voice was low and warning, as though he’d had to deal with this kind of scenario before. She took a step back to show she wasn’t a threat, wasn’t going to seize the wheel from his hands.

‘There’s somebody following this bus. I need to get off.’

‘
I said, you need to sit down. Or I’ll call for a police escort.’

The idea struck her that this might be a good idea, and she suppressed a laugh. Then she remembered that she couldn’t be sure the police weren’t in on it.

‘Please,’ she said. ‘Stop the bus, let me off, and go on your way. I’ll be out of your hair.’

‘
I’ll also be in breach of the rules.’ He was a tired-looking fifty. In profile she could see he hadn’t shaved since at least that morning. His expression said:
I don’t need this
.

Nina wavered, turning to look back down the aisle. The passengers nearest her were either asleep or lost in private worlds of sound embedded in their ears. One or two people gazed incuriously at her.

She considered wandering back to her seat. Then she thought of the headlights behind, picking out her silhouette against the rear window.

She hefted the violin case and leaned forward and muttered, as menacingly as she could manage: ‘I’ve got a gun. Stop the bus.’

In the mirror the man’s eyes darted to hers, then to the case. He huffed a laugh. ‘Honey, that’s a musical instrument.’

‘
That’s what it looks like.’ She touched the end against the back of his neck. This time in his eyes she saw, not fear, but resignation.
A genuine crazy. At least I’ll be able to say I was forced, get danger pay.

‘
Jesus. All right, all right, don’t shoot.’ His eyes widened a fraction as though he wondered if he’d goaded her too far. He set the indicator flicking and slowed, peeling off on to the side of the highway. Horns flared past.

The doors hissed and concertinaed open. Nina said, ‘Thank you,’ and stepped down. The driver flinched away, as if she might take the opportunity now that the bus was stationary of doing him genuine violence.

She dropped out into the cold, wet night, not looking back, suddenly gripped with panic. A rail lined the curve of the roadside; beyond it was a slope and darkness. As she hoisted a leg across the rail she glanced back past the end of the bus.

The Toyota sedan had pulled in, lights still on. The doors were opening.

She stumbled on the other side of here rail, feeling stony uneven ground beneath her feet, and began to scramble down. Near the bottom she dropped to her knees and rolled, holding the violin case away from her. The wet grass cloyed at her, trying to snarl her limbs.

The slope levelled to dark, flat waste ground. Nina glanced back, saw two figures vaulting over the rail.

She began to run, the awareness hitting her with the force of a blow that she’d just made a stupid, terrible mistake.

*

The blackness into which she was flinging herself was deepened by the garish orange of the lights along the interstate behind her. Faintly in the distance, much higher than her, she could see a slope leading up to another road. Even if she made it up there, she’d have to be the fastest hitchhiker in history to get a ride before they caught up with her.

Nina hadn’t looked backwards since the first time, when she’d seen them crossing the rail. Two male figures, the details difficult to make out in the dark. Her ragged breathing and the scrabble of her sneakers on the rough ground blotted out all sound, so she couldn’t tell if they were still on the slope or inches behind her, reaching out for her even now…

The bus driver wouldn’t have driven straight off. He’d be phoning his superiors, the police, whoever, to report what had happened. A kind of hijacking, she guessed it was. Again, nobody would arrive in time to help her. She was on her own.

She thought of Rachel and Kyle, their bodies tossed around like dolls.
They have guns. Oh God.
Maybe they weren’t following her, but were simply taking aim. The image pitched her forward at a stoop, as if ducking would save her. But no shots came.

She saw the ditch a couple of seconds before she would have run straight over the edge, and flung herself sideways, unable to arrest her momentum entirely, landing on one knee. It yawned blackly, a gulf in the ground half-filled with stagnant sump water that could probably be jumped with a decent run-up, but she had no time for that now.

It was the end. Nina straightened to a crouch, dared to turn, holding her violin up before her as though its totemic power could offer her some protection.

The men were fifty yards back, following at an unhurried pace, striding rather than running. Two black silhouettes. It made sense: they didn’t need to run, she wasn’t going to be able to get away and it was far more effective to allow her to exhaust herself while they avoided the risk of twisting an ankle on the clumpy ground.

She began to sidle along the ditch, facing the men, keeping away from the edge. The men simply changed the angle of their approach so that they were heading straight for her again.

One called out, his voice carrying clearly though the drizzle: ‘Nina Ramirez. Don’t run. You’re safe with us.’

A laugh escaped the hand she’d clamped over her mouth.
Safe
. Yes. There was a certain security in death.

‘
Come with us now. You’re in danger, but there’s someone looking out for you. We’ve been sent to take you to him.’

If she put enough distance between herself and them, she might – might – be able to run back to the Interstate. She’d be safer there, among the speeding cars and the lights. But she was stumbling sideways, less surefooted than they were, and they were easily closing on her.

As they drew nearer Nina could make out something of their features. One man was the tall, tanned one she’d seen in the campus pavilion that afternoon. The other – she thought – was the one who’d been watching her from the steps of the rotunda a few minutes before. A few hours ago, only, and her life, precarious at the best of times, had dropped off the edge.

The tanned man was the one who spoke. ‘Nina. Seriously. Stop running. Come with us. I swear to you, we mean you no harm.’

She felt a sudden emptiness behind her and her heart lurched as she realised the ditch had curved a fraction so that she’d almost sidled into it. She began moving sidelong away from the edge, back in the direction of the interstate. The men tacked sideways to follow.

Beyond them, blurred by the rain, another figure was visible, high on the slope.

The tanned man said: ‘We’re unarmed.’ He held his arms wide from his body, his palms open.

Behind him, the figure had broken into a run.