Lynch (2 page)

‘I shall get straight down to business,’ María said. ‘I have a flight to catch this afternoon and the sooner things are moving, the sooner we can all start to see a profit.’ She continued as he fumbled with a teapot. ‘You have long had relations with some friends we have in common,’ she said.

‘Unfortunate business with Mr Bernhard,’ he said, adding three sugar cubes to his cup. ‘I expect you didn’t know that I was a member at the Belgrave. Truth be told, I had plans to be there that very evening. Believe me, I have never been so grateful in my life for digestive problems.’

‘You have had correspondence from Alberto Ramirez?’ she asked, hurrying the conversation along.

‘I don’t much care for the cloak and dagger effect but, yes, I have received some words from him.’

‘You understand this “cloak and dagger effect” is quite necessary?’

‘Primitively,’ Walter said. ‘Mr Ramirez is a most trusted colleague.’

‘He will be grateful to hear that,’ María said. ‘Then I won’t bore you with the detail.’ She opened her leather folder and withdrew a business card. ‘I will be your new contact. I will oversee operations ad hoc and can be called upon at any time.’

‘Oversee operations?’ Walter said. ‘It’s my understanding that some of these…operations, as you call them, can be somewhat muddy in nature.’

‘You will see,’ María said, ‘in our ongoing relationship, that I am not averse to getting muddy.’

‘Clean palm, dirty neck,’ Walter said.

‘Excuse me?’

‘An old shot-putting term I learned, many years ago. Quite before your time, no less.’

‘With all due respect, Mr Walter, I do have a flight to catch.’

Walter smiled, clasped his fingers together on the desk in front of him, and assumed a formal, businesslike manner. ‘Then let’s get down to it.’

‘The first shipment will be a large one,’ María said. ‘We have a lot of ground to make up. It will be arriving in
UK
seas one week from tomorrow. The shipment won’t dock; it will be transported to a new carrier in open waters and taken from there to the Krambatangi port in the Faroe Islands—we have a contact there who will process the shipment for a small fee and place it in a clean container before it makes its way by sea to Scotland and from there to its eventual destination in England.’

‘And the cargo?’ Walter asked.

‘A Merkava Mark IV, imported from Latrun in
Israel
.’

‘A bloody tank?’ Walter laughed. ‘Who’s the buyer?’

‘The buyer prefers anonymity,’ María said.

Walter nodded slowly. ‘No doubt,’ he said. ‘What do you need from me?’

‘Cash flow for this initial shipment is not an issue,’ María said. ‘Our buyer has been forthright in his contributions to carriage. Our problem is more of a land-transportation nature. I’m given to understand you are friends with the Secretary of State for Transport? A battle tank won’t go unnoticed on
Britain
’s motorways.’

‘Tennis buddies,’ Walter said. ‘She plays, I watch. I have bent her ear once or twice before. Have the planned route sent to me in the same manner Mr Ramirez prefers his other correspondence sent and I shall see our cargo is unhampered.’

‘There is one other thing,’ María said, her voice flat.

Thomas Walter bowed theatrically. ‘I am always at your service.’

‘You are no doubt aware of Interpol Officer James Dixon.’

‘He was in the papers after that unfortunate business last year. He couldn’t possibly pose a problem, could he?’

‘It seems he has an issue with Mr Bernhard’s wife,’ María said.

‘She’s serving a sentence for the murder of her husband, is she not?’

‘Intelligence suggests she has undergone witness protection with the young man who was also involved that evening.’

‘She’s a threat?’ Walter asked.

‘Insofar as Mr Dixon sees it.’

Walter nodded. ‘Leave it with me. I have some contacts.’ He took a pen and wrote on a notepad. ‘David Bernhard was a friend. What was her first name?’

‘Margaret,’ she told him.

‘And the young man she was involved with?’

María said, ‘His name is Kane Rider.’

Chapter 2

Scott Lynch woke from an apocalyptic nightmare and rolled out of bed onto his knees, breathing deeply, scrabbling for his watch in the dark to check the time. The world had come to an end and the sky had been as red as the landscape around him. The staccato of violent gunfire echoed in his head as he got to his feet and felt for the light switch on the wall. It was six o’clock and already light outside, but the heavy curtains in his room had shut out the day like an unwanted guest.

The voice that spoke to him in his dream had been both familiar and strange, a disembodiment that swarmed like maggots inside his brain as it said, ‘It is over. It is death.’ It had been his own voice, and yet it had been somebody else’s.

He closed his eyes and concentrated on the rhythm of his heart thumping in his chest, waited for it to slow—
hoping
it would slow. He puffed up his cheeks and breathed a measured, long exhale.

The gunfire continued, but it was different now, no longer inside his head, the chatter of a machinegun that promised blessed release.

When he realised the sound was not a warped strand of unconscious dream memory, he stood and walked on weak legs to the bedroom door. He also knew it wasn’t machinegun fire.

He found Katherine in the kitchen, standing in her dressing gown with her back to him, completely absorbed in her smoothie making, the blender chattering and drilling away. A plate of toast looked cold and unappetising on the table.

‘You drink too many of those,’ Scott said.

She looked round and smiled. ‘It keeps me busy,’ she said. ‘Did I wake you? I just boiled the kettle.’ She looked at the clock on the wall above the range. ‘Well, maybe you should boil it again.’

On the table was a notepad with a stack of pages torn from it in a neat pile, covered in Katherine’s pristine handwriting. ‘What’re you writing?’ Scott asked as he flipped the kettle on and got two fresh mugs from the cupboard.

‘Memories,’ she said.

‘Like memoirs?’ he asked. He made coffees and they sat down at the table together.

‘I’m not writing a book,’ she said. ‘Just memories. Then I burn them. You should try it.’

Katherine pushed her reading glasses back up her nose and picked up her pen. Scott watched the concentration on her face, noting the deep crow’s feet at the corners of her eyes and the darkening circles under them. She had been sleeping less and less.

As she ripped the page from the notepad and added it to her pile, she said, ‘Aren’t you getting ready for work?’

‘It’s Friday,’ Scott said. ‘I don’t start till ten.’

‘That’s good,’ she said, not really paying attention, already writing on a clean page.

‘How long have you been awake?’ he asked, hugging his mug of coffee and yawning.

Katherine shrugged, looking back at the previous page to pick up the strand of what she had been writing. ‘Couple of hours, maybe.’

‘You should have woken me.’

‘Nonsense. A young buck like you, you need your sleep.’

‘And an old dear like you doesn’t?’

‘I can still beat you upside the head,’ Katherine said, exaggerating her words in a southern American drawl.

‘I think I’m still dreaming,’ Scott laughed.

‘In that case,’ Katherine said, ‘magic me up some croissants and a muscled young man to butter them for me—like that new guy at your work.’

‘That new guy,’ Scott said, ‘is probably more likely to butter my croissants than yours.’ He picked up a slice of Katherine’s cold toast and bit into it. ‘And besides, what happened to the rule we made? No more men, for either of us.’

As the phone in the front hall began to ring, Katherine said, ‘Rules are meant to be broken.’

Scott walked from the kitchen to the hallway, stuffing more toast in his mouth and saying, ‘You’re a floozy and don’t you forget it.’ He picked the receiver up, sucking congealed butter from his thumb, and said, ‘Hello?’

‘Scott Lynch?’ the female voice said. And he recognised it immediately. It had been eighteen months since he heard her voice, but he knew who it was with a rush of certainty. He turned, stared back at Katherine as she rose with the aid of her walking cane and stood in the kitchen doorway.

‘Yes?’ he breathed.

‘We need to talk,’ the voice said. ‘In person.’

They sat on the sofa, holding hands, Katherine’s walking cane propped against the cushion beside her, her pale skin looking, for all its fifty-one years, like it was paper-thin and translucent. The last eighteen months had not been kind to her.

‘What does she want?’ she asked.

Scott shook his head. ‘She didn’t say.’

‘But she’s coming here?’

‘Tomorrow,’ Scott said. ‘Which means there’s nothing to worry about. If it was urgent, she could be here in a few hours.’

‘She wouldn’t be coming at all, if it wasn’t urgent,’ Katherine said.

‘We won’t know until tomorrow. You weren’t planning on going anywhere today, were you? I don’t want you leaving the house.’

‘That’s my afternoon marathon out of the question, then.’

‘Is Terri coming today?’ Scott asked. They had employed a cleaner to come in a few days a week to help Katherine out.

‘No, she was here yesterday,’ Katherine said.

‘Then I’ll speak to Sylvia when I get to work. She’ll pop round at lunch time.’

‘I don’t need a babysitter,’ Katherine said.

‘No, but I want to know you’re okay.’

Katherine gripped her walking cane and stood. ‘You’d best get ready for work. I have to finish my memoirs, and besides, you said yourself it’s nothing urgent. I’ll call Terri, see if she can come in first thing tomorrow morning, make sure the place is nice.’

‘I’m on a short shift today,’ Scott said. ‘I’ll be back before you know it.’

When he got to work, he tried to remove all thoughts and memories from his mind, tried to concentrate on the things he had to do today.

The Silverwood Centre was a stable for retired racing horses in Harrogate, north of
Leeds
. They also provided a weekend riding school for beginners and had intermediate classes on Wednesday and Friday afternoons, using ponies. Scott was just a stable hand but Sylvia had been impressed by how much he threw himself into work that she was training him up to help out with the weekend classes, providing backstop on their treks until he could go through formal qualification. He had ridden before, in a previous lifetime, but not often and never faster than a walk. In the year and a half that he’d been here, he had seen himself go from loping cantor to careening gallop as though he was born on horseback.

He found Jesse in the kitchen behind the office, rummaging through the cupboards.

‘Lost something?’ Scott asked.

‘The coffee jar’s empty,’ Jesse said. ‘Do we have any more?’

Jesse had only been with them for three weeks but knew more about horses than Scott ever imagined possible, knew the names of the famous horses in films, knew the age of one just by a quick examination, knew how to calm a spooked horse and how to spur a stubborn one on. He had already earned the name of Whisperer among the other hands.

Scott reached over Jesse, who was stooped at a floor-standing cupboard, and pulled a fresh jar of coffee down from above. ‘It’s the last jar,’ he said. ‘Better write it on the list.’

Jesse stood and smiled, took the jar from him and asked if he wanted a cup.

Scott picked up the notes from this morning’s rounds and scanned over the tasks that were still outstanding. ‘I’ve got ten minutes to get Jewel tacked and ready,’ he said. ‘If Sylvia caught me drinking coffee instead, she’d have kittens.’

He took a juice from the fridge and shook it. ‘This’ll do me for now.’

As he was leaving the room, Jesse said, ‘Say no if you want…’

Scott stopped, turned
.

‘Would you like to go for a drink sometime? Maybe tomorrow night?’ Jesse asked. He turned the coffee jar over in his hands. ‘I mean, just somewhere local. I don’t know many people here yet, you know?’

Scott smiled. He could already hear Katherine’s words in his head.
Rules are meant to be broken
. And now she was saying,
Do it.
‘If I’m alive by then,’ he said, remembering who was coming to visit tomorrow afternoon.

‘Hell,’ Jesse laughed nervously. ‘If you don’t want to go on a date, you don’t have to fake your own death.’

‘So it was a date?’ Scott asked.

‘Was that presumptuous of me?’

Images of an old boyfriend flooded his mind and he tried to push them away. He had made a promise—not to Katherine, but to the memory of that boyfriend. The promise of a lifetime.

Knowing that his peaceful time in
Yorkshire
might soon come to an abrupt end, Scott smiled as warmly as he could, and said, ‘No, I think I’d like that.’

Jesse suppressed a grin and turned away. Scott knew he was only playing dismissive. ‘Great,’ he said. ‘See you later, then.’

‘Yeah,’ Scott said. ‘Later, then.’

He left the building with a smile twitching at the corners of his mouth. Katherine had long said it was time to move on. Everything that happened over a year ago, the heartache they had both endured, would remain with them forever. ‘You’ll never forget him,’ he remembered her saying. ‘But in time it’ll get easier.’

And it had. Even though it felt like only last week, it also felt like a lifetime ago. Somebody else’s lifetime ago.