Turquoiselle (7 page)

Six

Once
the sun set, Carver took his position in the spare room.

Downstairs
he had switched on the porch light, but not the security. The nearest (distant)
streetlamp was out, and so would stay out. The rest of the house, upstairs
included, he also left to the darkness. Like a conscientious or impoverished
light-saving citizen. Or like Donna, when she was trying to make some point
about his latecomings.

He
sat near the window in the upright chair that was comfortable enough not to
cause unnecessary movement, unrelaxing enough it did not tempt sleep.

He
had set a sandwich and a flask of coffee on the small table next to him, and a
couple of other things that might prove helpful.

Afterglow
and English dusk filled the woods beyond the garden wall. In the distance,
about two hundred and fifty metres off along the lane, he could, when they came
on, make out the narrow dim illuminations of Robby Johnston’s cottage. By ten
or earlier they would be dead again, although now and then, much later, one or
two might reappear, generally starting in the upstairs bedroom. This indicated
one of Robby J’s insomniac nights, as he called them, when he sat up reading,
and occasionally meandered downstairs for tea or a whisky. He did not employ
lighting to visit the lavatory.

Carver
would prefer tonight was not an insomniac for Robby. Everything needed to be
back as dark as it could be, so nothing out in the woods might be disturbed.

As
the evening ebbed he heard bell-ringing from the old church at the far end of
the village. This did not, any more, happen very often. The village had
complained, it seemed, about the noise. Later he heard two or three people, and
next saw them, as they negotiated the lane, headed doubtless for The Bell pub.
Somewhere around midnight they would return by the same route, unless there was
a lock-in, which could last until sunrise, if everybody was in the mood.

Really,
Carver knew he had set up his sentry post very early. But who could predict
what preliminaries might go on, or if they did not, that too could be an
indication.

Time
passed, now fast, now slow, relative to itself, or perhaps to him.

Johnston’s
lights came on late, at half past six. (He had been out? Or asleep.)

Every
hour Carver got up and went to check from the windows of the other upstairs
areas, the main bedroom and en suite and the ‘playroom’ to the front; the
second bathroom, and the annexe at the opposite side by the boiler cupboard, to
the rear.

Nothing
unusual was apparent. No car drove through the lane, as rarely they did. When
he opened the bathroom windows about nine, the air was much dryer and more
cold. There was a smell of woodsmoke from some banked bonfire, and the
indefinable odour of dying leaves.

He
ate half the sandwich.

He
gave no thought to Maggie, and none to Donna. She especially was now
irrelevant, as so often, legitimate only though her absence. He did not even
think of Silvia Dusa, or even of Latham in the room with the vodka and the
recording of voices, Carver’s saying what he had not said at all.

Between
eleven and a quarter to midnight the vocal people who had gone to the pub waltzed
back with a torch flickering like a giant firefly, laughing and careless, and
disappeared into the farthernesses of night.

Johnston’s
lights were all out again for now. There would be no moon. And anyway the sky was
once more overcast, only the splintery rhinestone of Jupiter intermittently
visible. The vague lit aura of the village, also detectible from here, had sunk
too, as it did not always do as yet. Though the shed, of course... a faint
sheen, the reflection on the birches, nearly not there at all.

At
twenty-five minutes past one he began to use the night glasses. He had kept
them from a stint a year ago, as other Mantik employees often did. They were
not very strong, the I/R by now not up to much. He detected a fox, however,
trotting between the trees, a vaporous incoherent green, and a while after a
rabbit or big rodent sprang through like a firework. It was 2 a.m.

Carver
lowered the glasses, and closed his eyes for a scatter of seconds to clear
them.

When
he looked again, firstly without the visual aid, a figure, clearly man-shaped,
was standing about fifteen paces outside the wall of his garden.

Just
as Robby J had had it, Carver too was not sure which way the figure was facing.
It seemed to
have
no face, nor
any back or front. Even scanning it again through the erratic I/R the
impression, if now haloed green, was of something less than human, featureless,
yet having a head, two long legs and two long arms and a long thin torso, and
all of these sheathed in a liquid rubber of blackness.

With
extreme care Carver put down the glasses, and edged closer to the side of the
window.

The
faceless figure had not seemed to arrive, not even to evolve – as some CGI
contrivance might have in a supernatural movie... It was
not
there, then it
was
.

And
it did not stir.

He
waited, not taking his eyes off it, preferring them now to the fluctuating
glasses. And minutes ticked themselves antlike along his watch, more than
audible in the unbreathing quiet. The shape was male, Carver decided. But that
was all. It had no giveaways, offered no movement, was like some construct
approximating a man – that in one or two seconds had slotted itself through
from nowhere, and was now fixed forever.

Out
along the lane a pair of cats began a yowling battle song. Carver did not
change position or lose concentration. Did not blink, and so saw the figure
after all come slowly and jerkily alive. Like a toy, whose faulty mechanism had
already abruptly re-engaged, it pivoted, and the faceless black blob of its
head rotated in the direction of the sound.

After
which it took a single step. Only one. And again, it was gone. Even the glasses
could not find it then. Had it dropped, smeared itself flat to the earth? Had
it passed behind a solid partition which had only
seemed
the openwork patches of trees and
shadow, but which could not be, so thoroughly did they now conceal?

Carver
did not move.

He
waited.

Nothing.

The
cats shrieked a crescendo and ceased their argument.

When
next he looked at his watch it was two forty-three.

At
two forty-five a light burst inside Johnston’s upper window, and soon struck
the lower ones, like a thrown egg of fire. Bits of the fire-yolk dripped out
also on to the woods. They revealed nothing significant.

When
presently Carver checked from the rest of the house windows, back and front, up
and down, nothing at all seemed about.

A
motorbike snarled in the distance. But as a getaway vehicle it would be
attention-seeking and unlikely. And he had not heard it before.

Around
an hour after, all the lights went off again in Johnston’s cottage. The theatre
curtain had come down on the scene. Carver could feel this: instinct or
training, either, both.

Despite
that he watched until the sky began to pale and push higher, before he left the
window, finished the coffee, and lay down on the bed.

He
would sleep one hour. Then take a walk in the woods.

Seven

After showering,
he checked the games key Icon of his iPhone. It was routine to do so.
Clue Up
, it read,
One down
. And at another
touch:
Any
Judge’s Main Verdict
. Holding steady on Dusa then,
the
same
letter-numerals. He touched the screen again, for Today’s Lucky Stone. It was
Emerald
. The alert had
heightened, from blue to green. Nothing had come up on the radio, TV or other
legitimate news outlets, which he had also been checking fairly regularly. This
afternoon his new schedule began, and he was due back in Trench Street around 9
a.m. tomorrow. He considered contacting Latham now. But if Latham had decided
there should be contact, it would probably have happened, and had not. And
first thing this morning, even before going out, Carver had again run through
the existing files on his computer, particularly the file on
The Third Scar
. Everything was
there, nothing seemed altered or obscured, in any way. He retained therefore
his permit, and could study and work on them as normal. Which implied he was
not, then, (was he?) suspect.

Carver
went down to the kitchen and put bacon in the steel pan to fry. His body was
hungry and the smell pleased it, although his mind moved uneasily elsewhere.

The
woods, an hour and a half after dawn, had been empty of anything unusual, let
alone informative. He had not really anticipated much else. The image of the
black-camouflaged man, however odd it had appeared, had been real, concrete, a
fact. Its behaviour, its apparent
tricks
of visibility and vanishment might even
be due to some coincidental, quirky but logical happenstance. For could it –
he – have been certain anyway he was under surveillance? The intruder was most
probably a nobody up to nothing at all.

But
should Carver inform Latham of the man in the woods?

It
seemed more prudent, and less edgy, to tell Latham in person tomorrow.

Carver
would need though to drop in on Robby J, say that he
had
kept an eye
out, and
had
noted somebody around.
But Carver thought he would add the man was most likely a wildlife-spotter.
(Maybe he even was.) The main thing in any case was to deter Johnston from
calling in the police, which could cause muddle, some kind of cluttering up,
either of the perfectly innocuous – that might then turn resentful (the
wildlife-fan becoming nasty and summoning  his mates once the law had gone) – or,
if the source were other, untidy any genuine evidence.

Carver
knew, despite the untampered-with files, despite his being let go, free it
seemed as air after Latham had played him the surreal recording, that all
curious follow-up events could well have their source in Mantik.

Without
quite being shown it at first, a leash might be on Carver now. Loose fitting
enough it felt he could do as he wanted. Yet just now and then, almost to be
glimpsed from the corners of his eyes,
felt
as it tapped, gentle, noose–like, on his
neck.

Going back
through the wooded lane, heading for Johnston’s cottage about 10 a.m., Carver
found automatically he still scanned from side to side. But of course there
was nothing, as there had been nothing valid detectable by him during his
initial search. If available, he would have found it then. Instead he had noted
the slight disturbance created by animals and birds, and further along one of
the pub returnees, who had piddled up a tree then lost his footing and broken
some branches, leaving a thread from trousers or jacket snagged there. The ground,
aside from the area by the peed-on tree, was unmoist, and had taken no imprint
of footware. Leaves were down everywhere also, covering and artistically
blending. Even where the male figure had stood immobile for such a long while,
over twenty-five minutes, no notable impression marked the earth. Nor had
he
broken a single
twig. Not even with that one impressive step that sequentially and utterly hid
him.

Robby
J was up and making tea in his kitchen.

“Hi,
Car. Can I offer you some of this disgusting brew? No. Wise choice. Christ
knows what they put in these T-bags now. Dung and senna pods from the taste.”

Carver
relayed the edited version of last night’s vigil, and the verdict (hardly ‘Any
Judge’s Main’ one) of an obsessive badger-botherer.

“Well,”
said Robby, “it could be, could be. I heard him about again last night, you
know. Woke me, the devil, I was having one of my good nights, curled up a-snore
in my cosy roost. Hadn’t even had to visit the lats. And then crash-blunder
right under my bedroom window. Just before three, when I focussed on the clock.”
(This conformed with the cottage lights having gone on at two forty–five, as
did Robby J’s next statement.) “Put all the lights on, no messing. Didn’t like
the sound of it, all that thumping about, as if he was off his head on drugs,
and/or
meant
to wake
everybody up. I tell you, I wouldn’t have minded a shotgun and the US shooter culture
to go with it. But you know what it’s like now, if some burglar pillock breaks
in and stabs you, he can sue you for snapping his fucking blade on your ribs.”

“Did
you see him?” Carver asked, having given the complementary acquiescing nod.

“No.
That was the odd part, in its way. The racket the chap made, I expected a
grandstand view of him sprawled in the front garden, or what serves for it,
throwing his guts up or eating a squirrel or something. But not a sign. And by
the time I got downstairs it was Silent Night again.”

“Nothing
looks disturbed outside,” Carver said. It had not.

“Lucky,
I suppose,” said Robby. ‘‘Y’know, I even wondered if it was old Ted from The
Bell, Book and Candlegrease. Someone told me he’s started seeing fairies in the
woods. Perhaps they were only the old-fashioned kind, the ones with old-school
ties. God,” he said sharply, “my leg’s playing up this morning.’ His face
settled to a wry amused rancour. “Bloody tea makes it worse, I reckon. Too
acid, and I’m addicted to the muck, you know. Ten or twelve mugs a day. Need a
whisky to wash it through. Can I tempt you?”

“Not
today, worse luck. Work to do.”

“Oh
well. I’ve got the advantage of ending up a senile old cripple. Something for
you young ones to look forward to, in a hundred years. Take care of yourself,
Car.”

The dinner with
Latham at the steakhouse off the Maidstone road, had been a ‘decoy’ meal, one
of a group, involving altogether eleven Mantik employees. Spread out at various
locations, Guildford and Cornwall being the farthest venues, false trails were
laid by two separate pairs, one separate foursome, and three individuals
driving and eating alone. Carver certainly had no idea what strategic meeting
he and Latham, not to mention the rest, had been drawing attention away from.
Obviously, there had been similar outings in the past.

This
afternoon Carver had to undertake a drive, ultimately heading into Tunbridge
Wells. This also was a decoy run, but was freelance in as much as he might stop
as and when he wanted, if at least twice. The car he must use he would find in
a by-lane near Lynchoak. Returning, there would be a ‘cab’ at Tenterden.

The
indication was that if any ‘interest’ were shown in him, he should expect it in
the vicinity of Tunbridge Wells. He did not need to try to lose it, of course,
and later the ‘cab’ driver could slough anything that still clung on.

Carver
drove to Lynchoak, stowed his car, and was in the new vehicle heading south-west
by around five minutes to two. Within six more minutes, long before any mooted
feasible connection, he was very sure a tail had already attached itself.

It
was a shabby Merc, cadaverous grey in colour.

This
car seemed to make so little pretence it was not following him that Carver
began to wonder if it was not. It moved behind him along the curving side roads
he had chosen, keeping a barely civilised distance between them. Until,
turning on to a broader thoroughfare, he saw he had lost it. Perhaps naively he
continued to think this until it reappeared, emerging with no warning from a
side-turning, as if it had selected a parallel path solely in order – playfully
– to surprise him.

From
then on, the Merc continued to favour this type of manoeuvre. It would
indiscreetly hug him, then slip aside and vanish for miles – before abruptly
resurfacing out of some often unexpected turning or lay-by, so displaying an
enviable SatNav, or personal acquaintance with the map of local roads. Carver
himself kept doggedly on, as if he was either too dumb to have noticed, or too
stoical to struggle. He had attracted the tail and might as well keep it busy.

He
stopped the first time by driving into the small car park of a pub. The Merc
sailed by and vanished at a twist of the lane. But Carver was ninety-five percent
convinced once he had drunk the non-alcoholic lager, got back in his car and
set off again, the Merc would rejoin him, which indeed it did, at a handy T-junction,
shambling out on to the road with bumpy clumsy enthusiasm.

There
seemed to be only the driver in the vehicle. He was blank-faced and
nondescript, dressed in some sort of woolly jumper, death-grey to match the
car.

They
played this match all that short late-year afternoon, driving between fields,
along narrow, bad, lumpy tracks, past leaning old barns and ruined fences. Now
and then Carver gave them a turn on a trim motorway. He also stopped twice more
before they reached Tunbridge Wells, once at another pub, and once at a farm
shop, which involved a gravelled hiccupping jolt of a pathway, on to which the
Merc did not even attempt to propel itself.

Day
was on its last legs in the sky by the time they got into Tunbridge proper.

Carver
parked near the Royal Ash Tree Restaurant, and getting out, found the Merc had bumbled
off again.

He
idled about for an hour or so, traipsing through the Pantiles, and from force
of habit buying a silver-black and onyx necklace for Donna, in a pillared
burrow with bulging windows.

By
then the dark had opened up and the lighted shops were beginning to close. ‘There
was no more sign of the Merc, or the woolly-jumpered driver.

Carver
caught the train. With a suitable change, it would drop him close to the Tenterden
pickup point, where the other car, the ‘cab’, would be waiting. His own car he
would collect from Lynchoak tomorrow for the drive into London.

The
train was full, buzzy with mobiles, laptops and miniaturised fried music, if
not conversation. When Carver glanced around, he felt a jab of almost inert
shock. The man from the Merc was already installed, only a few feet away among
the seatless and standing commuters. He balanced there, clamped by other
bodies, yet swaying and sore-thumbian, woolly
grey
. He did not look at Carver.

Carver
reviewed the best moves to get shot of him before picking up his transport. If
evasion was out of the question, Carver thought he would have to wait before
heading for the pickup. To let the ‘cabby’ give a vehicle the slip was one
thing, but a direct foot-follower might pose a more immediate threat. Carver
had not been advised either of this possibility, or of how best to tackle it.

He
made a decision. He would get out at the next halt, secure a real cab, and
drive in that over to Tenterden.

The
train was approaching another station. As Carver rose, the coatless jumper man
turned and looked straight at him. The flat stodgy face broke in a wide and
familiarly friendly grin. Carver ignored it. He eased his way towards the
further set of doors. The train had slowed and now stopped. Along with a clump
of uninvolved others he stepped off on to the platform.

Carver
paused a moment then, watching as the train absorbed its new dose of
passenging customers. The man was just visible, no longer smiling, only blank,
and as the train resealed itself he and it glided away, a collective piece of characterised
scenery removed from the stage.

The ‘cab’
dropped him without argument just at the edge of the village, by the church. He
and the driver had exchanged the normal bare minimum of words. A few of them centring
on the driver’s discontent. His engine had started acting up. Carver did not mention
either the Mercedes or the man’s arrival on the train; he could save these
events for Latham tomorrow. Nothing had followed them now.

Walking
up through the village, there were anyway still plenty of people about, lights
on everywhere, (even the church had been lit for some service, or organ
practice), and The Bell was blazing. Carver could see Ted through the window,
dancing what seemed to be a gig. What had that other business been, that take
of Johnston’s on Ted’s seeing ‘fairies’. Johnston had surely misunderstood,
though he had been correct about the figure in the wood, the man with the black
blob for a head.