Eleven

 

Hammond's real house was over on Avocado, a big two-storey set back from the road. Not overly flashy, nor a showy neighbourhood, but certainly not a hovel. I got the address from Vent, who has a list he bought from a cop. A car I borrowed from outside the bar got me there fast: I ditched it half a mile from the house, in a brightly lit lot where it probably wouldn't get trashed, and ran the rest of the way.

I slowed to walk past the house on the other side of the road, covertly checking it out. I'd realized on the journey that I had no idea of Hammond's domestic situation, or whether someone might still be living inside. There were no uniforms standing guard outside the house, and no obvious unmarked cars within two hundred yards either side. A light glowed from within what looked like the living room, but the rest of the windows were dark. When after two passes the street remained deserted, I hurried across the road and walked straight up to the front door. There's no point messing about in these circumstances. You want to look like Joe Citizen calling on a friend, not like you're expecting to be felled by a marksman.

I rang the bell, waited. No reply. Rang it again, and leaned on it for a further ten seconds straight. No response, and no sound of movement from within, which tallied with what I was expecting. Most people, when they're in, have more than one light on. Sure there are oldsters and environmental fanatics who turn off the light in every room as they leave, but most people don't. Night means ‘leave the lights on, godammit, give me a flame to gather round’. The chances were high that the living room light was on a timer or internal security system. Either that or any inhabitants were utterly deaf, which would work to my advantage in any case.

I made my way round the side of the house, shielded from the neighbours by a high hedge which ran along the boundaries of the property. All the windows had locks, which peered at me as I passed, little orange eyes swivelling to follow my progress. I kept my face turned away, in case they had strong views on the likenesses of people who were allowed to prowl around the house at night, and made it to the back without incident.

The yard was compact and tidy, a big tree in the centre and an old cable drum in place for use as a table. I scoped out the back door: one major lock, no sign of wires round the edges. I jacked the organizer into it, and told it to get to work. Lights flickered on the organizer's display, and streams of numbers rocketed back and forth and up and down across the screen. I'm sure that's not entirely necessary, and that the organizer just does it to make sure I know it's doing something hard.

After thirty seconds it told me that it couldn't break the lock, but that it might be susceptible to a bribe. I tapped in the deceased Walter Fitt's bank details and let the lock transfer two hundred bucks into itself. God knows what it was intending to do with it, but after a few seconds there was a click and the door opened.

I found myself in a short back corridor, with a doorway off over to one side. I shut the outer door, stood and listened for a moment in the darkness. My heart lurched when I heard a soft and rhythmic shuffling sound, but a second later I had an idea what it might be. I padded over to the doorway and looked inside.

It was the kitchen, designed free range, and the appliances were on the move. The fridge and microwave were trudging heavily in opposite directions along the far wall, and a coffee machine and food processor were walking a circle together in the middle of the floor. A large chest freezer stood against the other wall, rocking back and forth.

‘Hi,’ I said, quietly. Everything except the freezer stopped moving. ‘Anybody home?’

‘No,’ whispered the food processor. ‘We're a little worried.’

‘How come?’

‘Well, we haven't seen Mr Hammond for days,’ the coffee machine said confidingly, walking up to stand at my feet. ‘And then last night Monica – that's Mrs Hammond – just left, without saying where she was going, and we haven't seen her since.’

‘Was she carrying a bag?’

‘Yes. Only a small one though.’

‘Well,’ I said, trying to be reassuring, ‘maybe she's just gone to stay with a friend for a couple of days.’

‘You think so?’ asked the freezer, stopping its rocking for a moment.

‘Bound to be,’ I said. ‘Otherwise she'd have taken you guys.’

‘Maybe you're right,’ the freezer said, sounding relieved. ‘Thank you.’

‘You hungry?’ asked the fridge. ‘Got some cold chicken in here.’

‘Maybe later,’ I said, and backed out into the hallway again.

So Hammond had a wife, and up until today she'd been in residence. I guess I could probably have discovered that from an intelligent perusal of the last week's papers, but I hadn't gotten round to it. The fact that she'd gone explained why there were no cops outside. The fact she'd been here, probably guarded, could mean something else: whoever had tossed Hammond's other residence might not have had a chance to do the same thing here.

It might also go some way to explaining why Laura had chosen to gun Hammond down in Culver City: and to suggesting what the nature of the relationship between them had been.

I walked quickly down the corridor, keeping an eye out for security devices. The front of the house consisted of a reasonable-sized open space in front of a staircase, which led up to the second floor. Either side were doorways. I poked my head in the room with the light, saw that it was indeed the living room; then peered through the other door. Dining room, and not terribly interesting. Or sumptuously furnished: the Hammonds' tastes ran a little austere, though what little there was looked expensive.

I ran lightly up the staircase and along the upper hall, finding nothing but bedrooms on the right-hand side. The biggest showed signs of recent occupancy – and also that someone had left it in a hurry. Women's clothes were spread over the bed, and the wardrobe doors were open. I turned the light on for a moment, snouted round in the bottom. All I could see was shoes, and plenty of them. What is it with women and shoes? I can understand needing different colours to go with different outfits, but like most of her sex Mrs Hammond had seven pairs in burnt umber alone. On impulse I checked the labels of some of the clothes left on the bed. Fiona Prince, Zauzich, Stefan Jones. Ready-to-wear, admittedly, but far from cheap. I wondered if Travis had seen any of this when he came to interview the widow, and whether he'd come to the same conclusion I was reaching: Hammond had been on the take.

I turned the light back off and checked out the other side of the upper hallway. A bathroom, shelf above the basin in mild disarray. Not a panicky departure, exactly, but one where time had been of the essence. Some key female accessories were still in place, however, implying she was probably coming back. Then another small room, empty, purpose unclear. Maybe a nursery in the architect's original design, but clearly not used for one now.

One more room remained, at the front of the house. The door was shut. I took a deep breath and turned the handle, sincerely hoping it wasn't alarmed. It turned, nothing went off, and I pushed the door open gently.

Beyond was Hammond's study. A desk up against the front window, and the outline of a big chair. A wall full of books, and another lined with filing cabinets. My heart sank. If there was anything hidden in here, finding it was going to take days.

Then the light went on, and the chair swivelled to reveal a man in a dark suit sitting there.

‘Hello, Hap,’ he said. ‘Nice to see you again.’

I blinked, discovered Deck's gun was already in my hand, and pointed it at the man. It didn't make me feel much better, or seem to worry him unduly. I kept pointing it anyway.

The man held up a small electronic notebook. ‘Are you looking for this?’

‘I've no idea,’ I said petulantly. ‘What is it? And who the fuck are you?’

Then I recognized him, and answered the question myself. It was the guy from the diner, the one who'd been sitting down at the end of the counter, apparently deep in post-alcohol stress. The one who'd spoken to me after my phone conversation with the man at Laura's house: who'd looked a little out of place, and yet had been sitting there, opposite Laura's hotel – almost as if waiting for someone.

‘My name,’ said the man, screwing up his eyes for a moment, ‘is Hap.’

‘No it's not,’ I said steadily. ‘That's my name. Try again.’

The man frowned. ‘You're absolutely right, of course. Sorry. My name is Travis.’

‘Stop being an asshole,’ I suggested, ‘and tell me who the hell you are. And turn off the light, for Christ's sake.’

‘What light?’

The light switch, in keeping with common practice, was on the wall behind me, next to the door. He couldn't have reached it from where he was sitting. The light had an unusual quality, almost tangible: as it might appear if I was swimming in clear water at night and someone turned on a powerful searchlight overhead. It didn't seem to reach into the corners of the room, or to display objects in the usual manner, as if its role wasn't actually visual.

Keeping the gun trained firmly on the man in the chair, I reached behind and flicked the switch. The overhead light came on, and the room suddenly looked more normal, full of edges and a little dusty. Though not any brighter.

The man winked. ‘And the gates of it shall not be shut at all by day,’ he said, ‘for there shall be no night there.’

‘I really am running out of patience,’ I said.

The man rolled his eyes, reached into his pocket and brought out a small torch-like object. ‘Ambient light projector,’ he said. ‘You can get them at Radio Shack.’

‘Great. I'll look out for one. Now, for the last time: what are you doing here?’

‘Waiting for you,’ he said, standing. ‘You're later than I expected, and I've got to go. Things to do. Anyway – it's here.’ He placed the notebook on the chair, winked at me again. ‘You'd never have found it on your own. It was taped under the corner of the desk.’

‘Which is the first place I would have looked,’ I said irritably. ‘For whatever it is.’

The man smiled and walked towards me. He stopped about a yard away, with my gun almost touching his chest, and waited patiently. I didn't know what to do. Shooting him seemed excessive, but I didn't know whether I should just let him go. In the end I let the gun drop. I was panting slightly, tired and strung out and empty. The guy had to be either a cop or someone else connected with Hammond, and he was obviously several steps ahead of me.

‘What's going on?’ The question spilled out of me like a final breath. I felt like I could do with some clues, maybe a password to help me up to the next level.

The man pulled out a wallet and handed me a card. ‘I wouldn't hang around,’ he said. Then he just walked past me out the door, and I let him go.

It was a moment before I thought to look at the card, to turn it over in my hands. Both sides were blank.

I ran out the door, round the hallway and down the stairs, but he was gone. I dithered about whether to chase after him, then remembered the notepad was still upstairs, that time wasn't on my side – and also that Deck could probably do with some support. I went back up to the study, made it dark again. I was intending to just pocket the notepad and go, but on impulse I found the back-lighting switch and turned it on.

A screen full of numbers, separated by commas. There didn't seem to be any discernible pattern, just row after row of figures. I leafed through a few other pages of the notebook, but they were all blank. Hammond had used a fifty-dollar device to store just one page of stuff: ergo it was probably important. Or maybe it was his golf scores. Worry about it later.

Before I went I cast an eye over the shelves of books. For a cop he had a hell of a lot of them. Criminology texts, history, novels, spines battered and used. Also religious books, interpretations of the bible, one hundred and one ways to be a happy camper: rows of the fuckers, looking newer than most of the other books. I picked a book out at random from the non-religious section, opened it. Street light was just sufficient for me to see that the page showed a number of pictures of gunshot wounds. Not very nice, but quite interesting. It was certainly a better deal to see them by opening a book rather than looking down at your own shoulder. Not for the first time I wondered whether it might have been a better career decision to have been a cop, rather than a criminal. I was thinking about it, at one stage. As usual I decided that I'd probably had better pay and working conditions, and enjoyed slightly higher social status. Being a cop got you a nice uniform, on the other hand – and presumably people didn't arrest you the whole time and say dispiriting things. Didn't make much odds: probably a little late to apply to the Academy anyhow.

As I put the book back on the shelf I noticed something. The next book along had a piece of paper stuck in it, a tiny corner protruding above the height of the pages it was sandwiched between. I pulled the book out, opened it.

And knew I'd found something important.

The page was about five inches by three, and laserprinted almost edge to edge. The text was nonsense, a jumble of letters with no spaces. A code. As I looked more closely I realized that the letter ‘x’ appeared far more times than it should, even if it was standing in for ‘e’. Chances were it was doubling as a space character, in which case the text was printed in word-shaped chunks.

There was no printer on the desk, which meant maybe that the sheet was a product of Hammond's activities in his other apartment. In other words, that it was a backup of whatever information the people who'd cleaned that place out were looking for. Two of the edges were slightly uneven, suggesting it had once been part of a larger sheet. You could probably have got four out of a normal piece of paper – implying there might be more?

I put the book back, pulled out another from a higher shelf. No paper, nor in the next two I tried. There were hundreds of books on the shelves, and I knew it had to have been the coincidence shot which enabled me to find the first one straight off. Searching all the books would take the rest of the night, so I decided to just quickly toss one column.

It still took over half an hour, but netted me three more pieces of paper. The letters on each were different, but otherwise they looked the same. Two words in bold at the top, maybe a name. Then a solid block of impenetrable text.

What could be secret and important enough that a cop would go to all this trouble both to hide the information and also to back it up? Not official business, that's for sure.

I slipped the sheets in my pocket and left the house, pausing only to take a piece of fried chicken from the fridge and wish the appliances good luck.

Deck was sitting at the table, looking stressed. Laura was lying on the sofa with a large drink in her hand. Though she was stretched to cover its entire length, she didn't look relaxed either. She looked angular and jumpy, and was clearly in a strange mood. She was dressed in woman's jeans and a baggy sweater, presumably an outfit left in Deck's closet by some special person who'd decided to go be special to someone else. They were far too big for her, and she looked like a pretty scarecrow dressed in its Sunday best. She'd pulled the sleeves of the sweater up, and the scars on her wrists looked raw. The fear in her eyes had got worse, like someone who knew she was going to start pounding her head against the wall again, but was powerless to stop herself.

‘Yo, Hap,’ she said. ‘The prodigal loser returns.’ The sentence came out like someone trying to speak Dutch with a speech impediment, and I raised an eyebrow at Deck.

‘You try stopping her,’ he said.

I perched on the arm of the sofa. She craned her neck to look up at me. Her eyes were holding, but only just. ‘Hi Hap,’ she said. ‘How you doing?’

‘Not as well as you, by the look of it. You think maybe it's time for that coffee yet?’

‘Hmm. Do I want a coffee?’ She mimed deep thought, a performance slightly marred by missing her chin with her index finger. Then suddenly she shouted, ‘No of course I don't want a fucking coffee.’

‘Laura, it's going to be really hard for us to talk if you have any more to drink.’

‘We're going to talk, are we? How nice. What about?’

‘Whatever you want. About what's going on with you. About what we can do to help.’

‘What are you going to do, save me?’

Abruptly I felt tired and worn out and not in the fucking mood. ‘Laura, do try to remember that people other than you have problems. I've spent the entire afternoon in a police cell. That incident I told you about? It's back on the database, and Travis knows it. To stop myself from going down on a recall rap as well I have to help him catch the psychos who are after you, because he thinks they killed Hammond, and my sole payment for doing that is the freedom of my ex-wife – about whom I have complicated feelings, not least because Travis let it slip that she may be hoping to cash in on a lucrative whack which has been laid on my head. By anybody's standards that's a lousy afternoon, so what say you give me a break?’

She giggled. ‘Why did you split up with your wife?’

‘Because our cat died,’ I snapped. ‘Now are you going to have a coffee or what?’

‘No, but I'll accept a massage.’

‘Excuse me?’

‘My neck hurts,’ she said, pulling herself laboriously upright on the sofa, ‘and it might help if you would massage it.’

‘We're not going to have sex, are we?’

She blinked at me, looking mildly sober for a moment. ‘Er, no.’

Deck sniggered in the background, went through into the kitchen. He knew what was coming. He's heard it before. I explained, at some length, my feelings on the subject of massage. That I disliked having it done to me, that I found it both boring and irritating, and why. I also explained my views on the sneaky and underhanded way that women had got massage redefined as foreplay, so men had to do it to them more often. After centuries of it being something you did to athletes, or if you'd sprained something, suddenly all the good sex advice – propagated either by women or bearded idiots who do what they're told – said that massage was an essential element of making love. And so now, not only did men have to ensure that women had orgasms (their right, to be sure, and a pleasurable task, but ladies – have you tried it? It's either very easy or like playing pool with the lights off: never anywhere in between. I think every woman should have to try giving another woman an orgasm. We'd hear a bit less on the subject then, I fancy) but suddenly bone-crushingly dull and detumescing things like massaging someone's foot are now part of the whole sexual ritual, and if a man doesn't spend half an hour happily kneading his girlfriend's calves then he's some kind of sexual caveman. Men haven't suddenly come up with some whole new thing, have they? Some new sexual hoop for their partners to jump through? They haven't decreed that being nice about their jokes and serving them beer and pretzels are now essential parts of the sexual enterprise, or that they simply can't get nicely relaxed and in the mood unless you watch the ball game together beforehand.

It's just not fair, dammit – and I for one am not standing for it. Or taking it lying down. Whichever.

I went on a bit, I have to admit. Intentionally. After the first couple of minutes Laura's shoulders started to slump, and when Deck brought her a cup of coffee she took it without a murmur.

‘I'm not surprised your wife left you,’ she said, curling her legs up beneath her. ‘Sounds like you were kind of a drag.’

Deck spoke quietly: ‘You don't really think Helena's going to clip you?’

‘Probably not,’ I said. ‘She saved me at the Café. She brought the machine back here. And probably it was her who was in my apartment and turned the sheets back: a message I was just a bit too dense to get.’

‘Which implies she's been looking out for you for a few days.’

‘Big fucking deal,’ I said. ‘Too little, too late.’

‘Hap, if she really wanted to kill you …’

‘Yeah, I know,’ I said irritably, ‘I'd be dead already. Do you have any idea what it was like to have a significant other who's universally acknowledged to be tougher than you are?’

‘No, but then I've never been married.’

‘Very droll. You get that off a cereal box?’

‘I might have done if I could read.’

‘Jeez,’ said Laura, ‘I'm amazed you guys ever go out. You can have so much fun just staying in talking.’

‘Laura,’ I said, ‘what happened to you? This morning your company was almost bearable. Now it's like eating a ground glass enchilada. You want to talk about that?’

‘Oh God,’ she sneered, ‘Doctor Hap is back in session.’

‘What's the problem?’ I said, for the hell of it. ‘Feeling bad about Monica Hammond?’

I don't know what reaction I was expecting. Maybe a realization on Laura's part that I knew slightly more about her life than she thought. Perhaps just shutting her up for a moment.

That wasn't what I got. She went absolutely berserk.

She launched herself off the sofa, already screaming. I fell backwards awkwardly and landed with her on top of me. I was so surprised that it was a few moments before I could even put up a defence, by which time I was seeing stars. Laura was completely frenzied, beating at my face with her hands and shouting words I couldn't hear. I tried to grab her hands but they were moving too fast and too unpredictably.

Then Deck was behind her, and managed to get hold of her shoulders. He pulled her backwards until her fists were out of range, at which point she started kicking at me instead. Deck got an arm fairly gently round her neck, and eased her back far enough for me to drag myself away. Laura was still shouting, but more slowly, her voice dropping in pitch to somewhere near its normal range. I still couldn't make out what she was rasping, though it sounded like four words being repeated over and over.

‘What the fuck,’ I panted, ‘was that all about?’

Deck's arm was still around her neck, but her body was shaking less. He had his head in close to hers, and was stroking her hair with his other hand. Laura's eyes stayed locked on me, heavy with fury and shame.

She kept repeating the words, like an automaton wearing down, until finally I understood what she was saying.

‘Monica is my mother.’

She wouldn't say any more. We all sat in our places for a few minutes, catching our breath, feeling the fire in the room gutter out. Then Laura struggled out of Deck's grip and went into the bathroom, shutting the door loudly behind her. Deck and I looked at each other and couldn't find anything to say. He used a cushion to mop up the cup of coffee which had gone supernova. I went back into the kitchen to make some more.

A few minutes later I heard Laura emerge from the bathroom. She muttered an apology, then sat back down on the sofa. I kept out of sight, manufacturing hot drinks so slowly I almost went into a Zen trance. I heard Deck ask Laura a question, something uncontroversial, and after a long pause she answered. Slowly he started telling her about some of the stuff on his walls. I didn't get the sense it was an excitement explosion for her, but she seemed to be listening at least.

I decided to stay in the kitchen a little longer. Deck is one of those people you can't help liking. I'm not. People find it enormously easy. Some of them don't like me several times a day, just to keep their average up.

I perched on a stool and had a cigarette. My face hurt, and when I wiped my finger under my nose it came away lightly smeared with blood. Also I thought she might have cracked one of my ribs. I hoped not, because cracked ribs are a pain in the ass. I have a couple on my right side which are weak now, and each time they get rebroken you're looking at about four weeks of significant discomfort, without even anything to show people.

To pass the time, I wondered how long it would be before Travis tracked me down. As far as I was concerned losing the tail wasn't breaking the terms of our agreement, but he'd probably feel different. I also thought about my chances of making bail on the bank job, and cut the odds at less than nothing. I drank my coffee slowly, and felt my heart rate return to normal. I listened to the murmur of Deck's voice, Laura's occasional grunts.

Then I heard a sound, coming from the front of the house. At first I didn't know what it might be, then I got where I recognized it from.

It sounded like a car, driven fast, roaring down the road towards the house. Maybe more than one car, in fact. Maybe three.

Time seemed to slow down, like a pianist doing a melodramatic rallentando. As I slowly swung my head, mouth gathering to shout to Deck to look out the window, the back door to the kitchen was yanked open and someone thrust their head inside.

‘Quick,’ Helena said. ‘Hap, you've got to come with me.’

I stared at her, blinked twice. There was a scream of brakes from the front of the house, the sound of doors being thrown open. I heard Deck leap to his feet and swear inquiringly; then the sound of running feet and the door downstairs being blown off its hinges.

But what I saw was Helena's face. Soft skin over sharp bones, ice-blue eyes and dark brown hair. Maybe a couple more lines, a little more defined. Otherwise exactly the same.

Footsteps running up the stairs to the front door.

I shouted Deck's name, dragging my eyes away. Deck reacted instantly, grabbing Laura by the arm and hauling her off the sofa. As I yanked my gun out I felt a hand grip mine, pull me towards the back door.

Helena hissed: ‘Hap, for fuck's sake – quickly!’

Laura stumbled over a rug and fell onto her knees. Deck turned to help her up. The first shotgun blast hammered into his front door – wood splintered straight off, followed by the sound of an explosive kick. I started to run to help Deck, but Helena wouldn't let go, and pulled me back towards the door. I whirled to face her and she yanked my face close to hers. ‘Come with me, now,’ she said. ‘Or I'm leaving you here.’

I heard Deck and Laura running towards us. Helena turned on her heel. I hurtled after her out onto the platform, and clattered onto the stairs. Deck and Laura were a few paces behind, but Helena was right, as always – I couldn't help them run. They had to do it on their own.

There was an enormous crash as Deck's front door was finally smashed to pieces, then the sound of shouting. I tripped and nearly fell headlong down the stairs, but flailed out and grabbed a rail just in time. Helena was pattering down the metal steps in front of me, lithe and fast, and for an absurd moment all I could focus on was the length of her slim back, and the kick of her hair as it bobbed and swung.

I tumbled onto the ground a few paces after her, and remembered the car I'd stowed behind the building the night before. Helena followed my eyes. ‘Got the keys?’ she asked, racking a cartridge into a gun which had appeared from nowhere. It was bigger than mine, naturally. I shook my head, craning my neck to see that Deck and Laura had only just made it onto the platform above. ‘No time then,’ she said. ‘Just run.’

Obediently I started to stumble backwards, shouting up at the others to hurry. And I saw:

Laura and Deck, frozen in motion. Deck just ahead, but Laura coming on fast, head ducked and face caught between fear and determination. Deck already reaching for the rail, eyes judging the angle to throw themselves at the stairway.

Then, behind them, an explosion of yellow light. At first I thought it was muzzle flare, but the light was too soft and too large and came on far too slowly. Not an incendiary device either – because there was no sound except a deep humming that made my teeth vibrate. Two figures slammed out of the kitchen, the point men in suits. Deck's head turned slowly; I heard the crack of a shot from Helena's gun, which didn't seem to affect anything; a whisper of a scream from Laura, as if heard from the end of a tunnel through the centre of the earth.

The light changed, condensed into a white bulb around Laura and Deck. The top of it scrolled twenty yards up into the sky, until it looked more like a column. Still running backwards, still trying to shout, I tripped and slammed into the ground. As Helena tried to pull me to my feet it happened.

Deck's face changed. At first it just seemed to smooth out, then bits of it faded away. The parts I'd never really noticed disappeared, leaving only his eyes and cheekbones and mouth. The same was happening to Laura, but faster. Within two seconds all I could see was two terrified circles. I felt an odd twist of emotion towards them, something inappropriate and strange – and for a second I thought I saw something in the air above the house, like an empty room formed out of air. The vibration got louder and fatter, pulling at my mind like hooks into memory. The remaining fragments of Deck and Laura's face glowed for a moment, as if glimpsed in a photograph of long ago.

Then they weren't there any more.

The white light disappeared as if turned off at a switch. No further men came out onto the platform, and the first two seemed to have vanished. I turned, looked at the street out front. The cars had gone. All that was left was the back door flapping open in a non-existent breeze, and absolute silence.