The Sleepless (35 page)

‘Aw, come on, Michael,’ Joe protested. ‘Have you seen the media so far? It’s all Tragic Accident Kills Youngest Supreme Court Justice. That’s all they want to know. So Sissy O’Brien was washed up on Nahant seashore. So what? She could have floated out of the wreck: she could have jumped out before it hit the ground. Who knows? She’s dead now. She’s not going to say anything: she can’t. And nobody else can find out.’ 

‘How do you account for her torture?’ Victor asked him. 

‘Who knows?’ said Joe. ‘Anybody could have picked her out of the bay. Maybe she wasn’t really tortured at all. She’d been in the sea for quite a long time, hadn’t she? You know what predators can do. Sharks, crabs, they’re none of them fussy what they lunch on.’ 

There was a long silence between them. Eventually Joe couldn’t take the silence any longer and lifted up his hands in exasperation and said, ‘W
hat
?’ 

Michael was trying hard to control his temper. ‘What you don’t know, Joe, is that Sissy O’Brien was tortured with cigarettes, with weird iron instruments, with knives, with fish hooks, with all kinds of things you don’t even want to think about. The ultimate torture was a stray tom-cat, bound up tight in razor wire, and inserted by force in the same damn place that you and Edgar Bedford are talking out of.’ 

Joe’s lips were white. He clung onto the wooden banister rail to steady himself. ‘Jesus,’ he whispered. ‘I’m sorry.’ 

‘So what’s this all about, Joe?’ Michael wanted to know. ‘All these excuses, all these phony post-mortems and all these hoked-up accident reports?’ 

‘I don’t honestly think we need to know,’ Joe told him. ‘The word from the top is that the O’Brien investigation has been satisfactorily closed, accidental death, and that Plymouth Insurance is going to pay out. That’s all I came here to say.’ 

Michael took hold of his arm. ‘Joe?’ he said, suddenly worried. 

‘It’s okay, it’s fine. It’s all under control. Listen – why don’t you come to the car, and I’ll give you Dr Moorpath’s report. Then we can call it a day.’ 

‘Joe –’ 

Joe twisted around, quite violently, and Michael heard the underarm seam of his coat ripping. His face was sweaty and contorted, more like a puppet’s than a man’s. 

‘For Christ’s sake, Michael, I know it’s a crock. You don’t have to make it more difficult for me than it already is.’ 

‘Then why?’ 

‘Because survival sometimes comes before glory, that’s all.’ 

‘What about truth?’ 

‘Truth? Hah! That’s a good one. You and me, we work in insurance, don’t we? In insurance, there’s a pretty un-affordable premium on truth.’ 

Michael realized that there was very little more he could say. He had never seen Joe like this before – humourless, worried,
shifty.
 

‘Okay ... ‘ he said. ‘If that’s the way it is.’ 

Joe walked across to his car. Michael hesitated for a moment and then followed him. Joe opened the door, reached across to the passenger seat, and picked up a green cardboard file marked
O’BRIEN.
 

‘Use your head, Michael,’ he said. ‘This thing is way too big for the likes of you and me. If somebody didn’t hesitate to total an influential and well-connected guy like John O’Brien, do you think they’re going to bat an eyelid about doing the same to us?’ 

‘You’re trying to tell me this is all a set-up?’ 

‘I’m not saying nothing. I’m trying to tell you to use your head, is all.’ 

He was just about to hand over the post-mortem report when something caught his eye, across the street. Michael looked up, too. A black Camaro was parked on the wrong side of the road, next to the Anstruthers’ front yard. Its bodywork was streaked with dust and its windshield was smudged with fly-spots. All the same, Michael could see that two young men were sitting in it, their eyes concealed behind dark glasses. 

‘You know those guys?’ he asked Joe. 

Joe said, ‘Unh-hunh, just checking. You can’t be too careful, if you know what I mean.’ He reached inside his coat and undipped his pencil. ‘Here – this is my mobile number, if ever you need me.’ 

He opened the back of the post-mortem folder and quickly scribbled. Then he handed the folder to Michael, slammed the door of his car, and started up his engine. 

‘You’ll be back in the office tomorrow?’ he asked. 

Michael nodded. ‘Round lunchtime, if that’s okay. I just have one more session with the shrink.’ 

Joe waved, and then pulled away from the house, and along the street towards South Mashpee. Michael stood in his front yard watching him disappear around the corner. Almost immediately, the dusty black Camaro started up its engine, a deep, aggressive burble, and set off in the same direction. 

Something wrong here,
thought Michael. He turned back to the house and Victor was still standing at the top of the steps, watching him. 

‘Trouble,’ said Michael, as he reached the landing. 

‘Is that the post-mortem?’ Victor asked him. 

Michael gave it to him, and Victor flicked through it. ‘This is bullshit,’ he said, running his finger down the report on John O’Brien. ‘
“Mr O’Brien was decapitated by the horizontal guillotine action of the sheared aluminum bulkhead immediately behind his seat.”
Oh, come on, Dr Moorpath, who are you trying to kid? I’ll tell you something, Michael, those faxes you showed me were pretty indistinct, but you could clearly see that the bulkhead was still intact. And even if his head
had
been cut off when he was sitting upright, his collar and coat would have been drenched in blood. As it was, he was bent forward in his seat
before
he
was decapitated, must have been, because all of the blood spurted out in front of him, onto the floor. His collar was spotless, his shoulders were spotless. Somebody executed him, for God’s sake.’ 

‘The trouble is,’ said Michael, ‘the powers that be don’t want us to say that somebody executed him. The powers that be want us to accept that this was all an accident.’ 

‘What about Sissy O’Brien?’ 

‘Oh, don’t you worry about Sissy. They’ll find a way to explain that, too. Hauled from the sea by a fishing-boat, accidentally snagged her lips on a row of fish hooks, accidentally fell over and burned her eyelids in an ashtray, then accidentally sat on a cat. I can see it all now.’ 

Victor quickly leafed through the rest of the post-mortem report in disgust. But when he reached the back cover, he suddenly stopped, and frowned. 

‘Did Joe write this?’ he asked. 

‘It’s his mobile phone number, in case I need him in a hurry.’ 

‘I don’t think so. Here.’ 

Victor raised the folder, and Michael peered at the hastily-pencilled lettering. It wasn’t a telephone number at all. It simply said,
Mushing December ‘91.
 

Michael frowned at it.
Mushing December ‘91}
Why on earth had Joe written that? And why on earth had he been so insistent that he used it only in an emergency? 

‘Don’t you have any idea at all?’ asked Victor. ‘I mean, you’re the great mushing expert.’ 

‘It’s a magazine, that’s all.’ 

‘Do you have a copy?’ 

‘I don’t know. I may do.’ 

‘Why don’t we take a look?’ 

They went back up to Michael’s study. When he had first moved in here, Michael had put up two long bookshelves across the back wall, and these were now crammed with books and scientific journals and coffee mugs that he should have taken back to the kitchen. 

‘You look up on the top shelf, I’ll take the lower shelf,’ Michael suggested. 

Even with both of them looking, it took over ten minutes before Victor suddenly tugged out a copy of
Mushing
magazine and triumphantly held it up. ‘December ‘91 ... special feature on disciplining your dog team.’ 

He handed the magazine to Michael and as he did so, a large manila envelope dropped out onto the floor. Michael picked it up and turned it over. It was sealed, and there was nothing written on it except the pencilled word
Parrot.
 

‘Joe must have hidden this here,’ said Michael. ‘I wonder what the hell it is?’ 

‘There’s an easy way of finding out.’ 

Michael carefully tore open the envelope. Inside, he discovered more than a dozen photostats of black-and-white photographs, most of them blown up to the very limits of clarity. Most of them showed a group of people, men and women, standing in front of a fence, some of them out in the sunlight, others shaded by trees. 

Michael passed one to Victor and Victor examined it closely, but all he could do was shake his head. ‘This doesn’t mean anything to me.’ 

‘Me neither.’ 

‘No – look, wait a minute. There’s something written on the back of this one.’ 

Victor read the long, faintly-pencilled inscription and then he gave it to Michael without a word. Michael read it, too, and then stared at Victor and said, ‘Holy shit.’ 

‘Do you think these are genuine?’ asked Victor. 

‘Joe seems to think they are, and Joe won’t even believe that it’s daytime unless you give him a notarized affidavit.’ 

‘So what are you going to do?’ 

‘I don’t know. Change my name, go into hiding, and make out I never saw them.’ 

Joe had kept his eye on the dusty black Camaro in his rear-view mirror ever since leaving New Seabury. He knew who they were. The same white-faced young men who had walked into his office this morning and handed him the post-mortem folder, with clear instructions that the John O’Brien insurance inquiry was closed, as of now. 

He had started to argue with them, but one of the white-faced young men had asked him in the silkiest of tones how much he enjoyed his wife the way she was. Unmarked, undefiled, untouched by skewer or pliers or blow-torch. 

Shaken, he had called ‘upstairs’ and asked to speak to Mr Bedford. 

Mr Bedford was in a day-long conference, but Mr Bedford had left instructions that the young men from Hillary Underwriters had his complete approval. 

‘They threatened me,’ Joe had protested, to Mr Bedford’s personal assistant. 

Mr Bedford’s personal assistant had replied, ‘Tongue-in-cheek, Joe. Tongue-in-cheek.’ But the tone of his voice had told the whole story.
Keep your mouth shut, Joe, and do what you’re told.
 

He switched on the car radio. A band called the Red House Painters were singing a mournful, West Coast kind of song that made misery sound almost attractive. He checked his rear-view mirror and the white-faced young men in the black Camaro were still there, clinging to his tail with sinister doggedness – not so close that they wanted to overtake him, not so far that they had any intention of letting him go. 

He had originally planned to take 130 to join Highway 6 at Sandwich, and then whack straight back north to Boston. Instead, he turned due west on 151, a winding state highway that would take him south of Johns Pond, through Hatchville, eventually to turn north again on 28. Now he would see if they were really following him or not – and, if they were, how well they could drive. 

He took the first long curve into 151, between a blurred, multi-coloured kaleidoscope of oaks and maples and larches, and as soon as the black Riviera was out of sight, he slammed his foot on the gas so that his Cadillac surged forward through 50 – 60 – 70 – 80. 

With a late-model company automobile, however, he didn’t stand a chance. The Riviera appeared almost instantly in his mirror, and it may have been dusty and beaten-up, but it was powered by a turbocharged 5-litre engine and it was fitted with T-type stiffened suspension and wide-oval tyres. It came after him with all the power and predatory hunger of a mountain lion, and the next time he glanced into his mirror it was right
there,
less than half a car’s length behind his rear bumper, and the white-faced young men were smiling at him, mocking him, and daring him to try driving faster. 

Joe dragged out his handkerchief and wiped the sweat from his face. ‘All right, you bastards, you want to make a race out of it?’ he breathed. He slammed his foot down again, and the Cadillac picked up speed. But not enough. It wasn’t a muscle car: it didn’t have the guts. The next thing he knew, the black Riviera was knocking and nudging at his rear bumper, only lightly, but enough to taunt him, and to send his steering askew. 

Joe swerved from one side of the highway to the other, praying that nobody was coming the other way. The Riviera nudged him again and again, and his tyres screamed like frightened children. 

He tried to slow down, but the Riviera kept on knocking him and knocking him, and in the end he slammed his foot back down on the gas, and tried to outrun them. He’d been driving for thirty years, for Christ’s sake. Okay, his reactions were slower – okay, his cold-blooded nerve had deserted him. But he was skilled, and he was experienced. And there was no young punk in the world who could out-drive Joe Garboden – never, not ever, never.