The Search (3 page)

Back at his own apartment he called the rental company and asked if they had any information about a car rented three months ago by –

The woman cut him off there and said she couldn’t possibly deal with queries like that on the phone. As soon as he put the phone down it rang beneath his hand: Rachel. Her voice.

‘Did you find out anything?’

‘Not really. What about this secretary – could I speak to her?’

‘No point at all. She’s been with him for fifteen years. He likes her because she never asks any questions. He won’t have told her anything about where he is. Like I told you,
he’s a very secretive man. Pathological. You almost had to use the Freedom of Information Act to get his birthday out of him.’

‘Yes.’

‘So what will you do next?’

‘I suppose I’d better start looking for him.’

‘Meaning?’

‘The only lead we have is that rental firm. I guess I’ll head to Durban.’

‘When will you leave?’

‘As soon as I can.’

‘But I’ll see you before you go?’

‘I hope so,’ he said.

They met later that night, in a bar with candles and no music. Walker ordered beer, bought one for a guy he knew who was sitting at the bar. Rachel drank red wine that looked thick and sleepy in
the candlelight. In the curved darkness of her glass Walker saw a reflection of both their faces, dancing, swaying, settled. She handed him the documents that she needed Malory to sign. Walker
glanced through them.

‘About money,’ Rachel said.

‘We can take care of that when I get back.’

‘You’re sure?’

‘The money is no problem.’

Rachel finished her wine. ‘Let’s pay and go down to the sea,’ she said.

They walked to the beach, listening to the crash of waves. In places the receding tide had left still pools of water that reflected the stars so perfectly it seemed they were breaks of clear sky
in a beach of cloud. Jumping across them was like leaping over the sky itself. Every now and then headlights from the coast road probed out to sea. In the distance they could see the hazy spars of
the Bay Bridge. Clouds slipped past a moon that was barely there. They threw a few stones into the sea, listening out for the faint splashes. A ship’s lights blinked in the middle of the
darkness and then disappeared.

‘And nothing is but what is not,’ said Rachel.

‘Was that a quote?’

‘Shakespeare. I forget which one.’

‘William probably,’ said Walker.

They sat and waited, looking out at the dark ocean. Rachel said she should be getting back. Walker turned towards her.

‘I have a present for you,’ she said. ‘Here.’ She held out her fist and dropped a thin silver chain into Walker’s palm.

‘Maybe it will bring you luck,’ she said. ‘Keep you safe.’ Walker remembered a comic strip he had read as a kid: ‘Kelly’s Eye’. As long as Kelly wore
this jewel around his neck he was indestructible. Each week ended with him walking out of an incredible explosion or twenty-car smash-up, naked except for the stone around his neck and a tattered
pair of shorts which were also indestructible.

‘Let me put it on for you.’

Walker bent his head and felt her arms reach around his neck, fiddling with the clasp. Her mouth was near his. This was the moment when they could have kissed but it passed.

‘Do you like it?’

‘Yes. Sorry, I never know what to say when I’m given a present.’

She smiled – ‘Let’s get going’ – and they began making their way back up the low cliff to her car.

‘There’s something else as well,’ she said when she had unlocked the car door. She reached over to the passenger seat and handed Walker an envelope. In it was the photo that
had been taken at the party. Or part of it anyway: it had been cut in two and the half he held showed Rachel, almost in profile, holding the wine glass in both hands as if she were praying.

‘To remind me you exist?’ Walker said.

‘Maybe.’

‘What about the other half?’

‘I keep that. To remind me that you do,’ she said. ‘Can I give you a lift?’

‘No. It’s five minutes from here, that’s all.’

They were both eager to be on their own now, wanting the leaving to be over with, knowing that everything between them would have to wait.

‘Is there anything else I can do?’ Rachel said finally, standing by the open door of the car.

‘No. I’ll call you.’

‘Be careful, won’t you?’

Walker said yes, yes he would. He watched her drive off and waited for the tail lights to disappear from sight before heading home himself.

It was a three-day drive to Durban and Walker set off the next day. He crossed the Bay Bridge and headed up the coast. He had just passed Malory’s house when a white mist
rolled in from the sea, enveloping the road. He slowed to a crawl, winding down the window and feeling the air clinging damp to his skin. The mist thinned and he looked out at a zinc sky, pale sea
rolling calmly on to white sand, grey-white gulls dotting the beach. When the mist closed in again, all he could see was the lighthouse glow of cars heading towards him.

He turned inland ten miles later and the mist cleared, the landscape becoming gradually flatter. That night he slept for a few hours in the car before pressing on, stopping only for food and
gas. At first he listened to music continuously, but soon the radio began to irritate him and he drove in silence.

By now the landscape was flat and featureless, almost an abstraction, existing only as distance. A hundred years ago there had been no road, only emptiness; now there was a four-lane freeway but
the road altered nothing, not the sky yawning over it or the land stretching away to the horizon. It occurred to him that horizontal was derived from horizon. Where words came from, where they were
going: horizon. If walking was a form of thinking, then driving was a form of meditation or self-hypnosis which, instead of concentrating the mind, encouraged it to float. The residue of
concentration required to keep the car on the road lent these drifting thoughts a sense of urgentless purpose.

Often, glancing in the driving mirror, he expected to see Rachel’s face looking back at him.

He spent the second night in a motel and arrived in Durban late the following afternoon. The rental agency was on the edge of town. It felt strange, walking in after so long bent up in the car.
There were no other customers and the man he spoke to had no objection to finding out about the car rented three months ago by Malory. He rifled through a filing cabinet, squinting through glasses
that seemed to do his eyes no good at all, and came back with a sheaf of photocopied papers.

‘According to this,’ he said, ‘the car was checked in at a rental firm in Kingston – not one of our offices – a small firm we have an agreement with. Our cars can
be left with them and they get ’em back to us.’

‘How long ago was that?’ said Walker. ‘When was it checked in?’

‘Couple a months ago,’ said the guy, unwrapping a stick of gum, feeding it between his teeth.

Kingston was another long haul, on the edge of the Southern Wetlands. Walker drove for two days, weather coming and going, birds. Power lines rising and dipping alongside him.
Sometimes overtaking the same car three times in a day.

The last three hundred miles ran flat through the swamp. Trees were the same colour as the road, as the sky. Moss drifted from swamp maples. Here and there were splashes of dull red, either in
the trees or in the road, the smear of hit animals. Rain spotted his windshield, hardly even rain.

The rental office was a run-down place near the railroad. A sign on the counter said: ‘If You Don’t Smoke I Won’t Fart’. The guy behind the counter was chewing on a
sandwich. The reception area smelled of chicken; maybe a cigarette had recently been smoked there. Walker leant his elbows on the counter, waiting for the guy’s mouth to empty.

‘I’m trying to find out about a car that was checked in a couple of months ago.’

‘What car?’

‘A blue Mustang. Licence 703 6GH. It was dropped off here by a man named Malory.’

The guy wiped his fingers, screwed the serviette into a ball and chucked it away. ‘Let’s see. What was the date exactly?’

Walker told him and he hauled a wad of oil-smudged papers out of a drawer, sniffed, began thumbing through them.

‘Yeah, it was checked in here.’

‘Do you happen to know anything about the person who checked it in? Where he went or anything like that?’

‘Let’s see. I was working that day.’ Walker waited for him to go on but instead the guy scrutinized him and said, ‘You a cop?’

‘No.’

‘Tracker?’

‘No.’

‘Finder?’

‘No.’

‘Then what you want him for?’

‘He’s a friend.’

‘Yeah?’

‘Yes.’

‘And what’s he supposed to have done, this friend of yours?’

‘Nothing. I just want to find him.’

With small variants Walker would have this same conversation many times in the months that followed. Strangely, the subsequent willingness to help of whoever he was talking to bore no relation
to whether they believed him or not. The dialogue was an elaborate form of greeting, a formality. People couldn’t care less what answers he gave but no one wanted to forgo this little
introductory exchange.

The guy nodded, satisfied: ‘Let’s see, only a few cars were checked in that day. If I remember right, if it’s the person I’m thinking of, he asked about a
hotel.’

He paused, waited. This was another feature of the conversations of the next months: they all fancied themselves as Scheherazade, needed prompting before they would part with the next crumb of
information.

‘And you recommended one to him?’

‘The Metropolitan.’

It was five minutes away, one of those places that had always looked like it had seen better days. Walker took a room there and chatted to the clerk, a boy in his teens who let him look back
through the register, happy to oblige. Sure enough, Malory had stayed there, just one night.

Walker was too tired to pursue things further. He trudged up to his room and called Rachel. The machine was on. He listened to the message and hung up. Then he redialled. He listened to her
voice again, asked her to call him at the hotel.

He drank a beer and flicked through the channels on TV. He watched part of a programme about the lost city of Atlantis and the latest attempts to establish its historical authenticity. The noise
of aqualungs was making him fall asleep. He flicked off the TV and dreamed he was still driving, driving through places he’d never been, places that didn’t exist, sunken cities whose
streets were filled with waving reeds and darting fish.

In the morning he persuaded the clerk to dig out Malory’s bill. A waiter spilt a tray of tea nearby and Walker moved aside to study the bill while a cleaner wiped the
floor. All the details of Malory’s stay were itemized: how much he’d spent on dinner and drinks; even an account of long-distance calls. Malory had made two calls, both to a number in
Meridian. He tried calling from the reception phone but the number had been disconnected. He made a note of the number and thanked the clerk. As he made his way from the desk someone touched his
elbow.

‘Walker?’

‘Yes.’

‘I’d like to speak to you for a moment.’

They walked away from the desk, stood near a plant offering a version of shade.

‘You’re looking for Malory.’

‘I didn’t catch your name.’

‘Carver.’ There was no handshake. Walker had never met him before but felt certain he recognized him from somewhere. Glancing down he saw that Carver had left a trail of dark
V-patterned footprints from the spilled tea.

‘Like I said, you’re looking for Malory.’ Knowing that some kind of response was called for, Walker did nothing, waited for him to continue. ‘I’ll put it
differently. I know you’re looking for Malory.’ He waited but Walker waited longer. ‘Do you know where he is?’

‘If I knew where he was I wouldn’t be looking for him.’

‘But you are looking for him?’

‘I just wanted to clarify a point of logic.’ Carver looked at him patiently.

‘Do you know where he is?’ he asked at last.

‘Why do you want to know?’

‘You have any idea where he is?’

‘You haven’t answered my question.’

‘If you hear anything, call this number,’ he said, pulling a battered playing card from his pocket – a ten of spades. He scribbled on the card and handed it to Walker. Walker
kept his hands in his pockets. Carver tucked the card into his breast pocket. Walker began to move away. Carver blocked his path.

‘I’m talking to you.’

‘No you’re not.’ Walker moved around him but Carver gripped his arm, hard. They were the same height.

‘Did you hear what I said?’

‘No.’ Walker tugged his arm free.

‘Let me give you a piece of advice, Lancelot. Everything she said to you was shit. Everything you hoped she was saying was shit. You think you have to go through all this shit just so you
can fuck her?’

Walker concentrated on not moving, on letting nothing show.

‘You want to learn the hard way, don’t you?’ said Carver.

‘I don’t even want to learn.’

This time Carver let him walk away. He had only gone a couple of steps when Carver called out after him, ‘Hey, Lancelot!’

Walker kept moving and a second later something landed quietly in front of him. He looked down and saw a thin chain coiled up on the floor like a silver snake. He was able to check the urge to
pick it up but, involuntarily, he reached up to his neck to check that his own chain was still there. Then walked towards the lift, the chain like grit beneath his foot.

Back in his room he crammed Carver’s words to the back of his mind, concentrated instead on the question of how he had known who and where he was. It was possible that he had just been
followed here – but it was more likely that Rachel’s phone had been tapped. And the chain . . . Abruptly he remembered why he had recognized Carver: the party, the guy he had bumped
into. He picked up the phone to call Rachel and put it down again immediately. He could feel sweat trickling down his ribs, a nerve twitching in his jaw. All this shit just so he could fuck her. He
hurled the phone across the room. Looked around for something else to smash but instead sat down abruptly. Forced himself to stay perfectly still, slowly emptying his mind of everything. He
remained like that until he had lost any sense of time, began to lose any sense of being the agent of his thoughts. Then, in the ensuing vacancy, he allowed his thoughts to re-form, focusing purely
on the practicalities of picking up Malory’s trail, on nothing else.