Evolution of Fear (5 page)

‘No question at all, Mister Greene. The words were very clear, well spelled out, as if they had taken their time. They used a brush.’

‘Did you say
brush
?’

‘A paint brush, yes. They left it in the room.’

It was an hour short of dawn when he reached the outskirts of Falmouth on Cornwall’s south coast. The first morning commuters painted the roads with sleepy headlights. Clay knew that with each minute his chances of being detected grew. He needed to get rid of the car, quit this cold, damp place. He left the motorway, turned towards the sea and worked his way along the coast road, scanning the warehouses and shops that cluttered both sides of the road, grey brick walls, fenced yards choked with machinery, chandleries, glimpses of the broad estuary opening up on his left as the sky lightened. After a few miles, the first boatyard, full of gleaming white fibreglass craft bobbing in ordered ranks within a dockwork lattice, the freshly paved parking area dotted with expensive German cars, and then, a few minutes later, another marina, well-tended and prosperous.

Clay drove on.

After a while, the buildings began to age noticeably, brickwork faded and crumbled, the first bruised Fords and rusty Hillmans appeared. Twenty minutes later he slowed and followed a narrow laneway down towards the water. At the end of the cul-de-sac was a stretch of clapboard fence about fifty metres long. The boards sagged between listing posts. Grass and weeds choked the verge. A few corroded aluminium masts poked above the fence. To the right, beyond a tangle of bare trees draped with bramble and ivy, a chainlinked equipment yard, rusty machinery, stacks of wooden shipping pallets. To the left, an old brick warehouse building, windowless, empty-looking. Clay slowed the car and approached what looked to
be the entranceway to the place. The sign, hanging from a bar over the gate, looked decades old, grey, peeling lettering on a once-blue background. It read simply:
Pearson & Son. Vessels bought and sold
. It was worth a try.

Clay turned the car around and tucked it tight beside the brambles at the far end of the fence. The dashboard clock showed five fifty-eight. He turned off the engine, opened the door, stood and stretched. The air was heavy with that dead smell of the sea, of things recently expired, washed ashore. He closed the door and walked along the verge to the gate, scanning the laneway back to the coast road. There was no one about. The gate was wire link with tarpaulin stretched behind, ragged and torn. A rusty, padlocked chain held the gate closed. Clay peered through the gap between the gate and the fence post. A gravelled lot, brambles thick on all sides, an asbestos-roofed shack, a few dilapidated sail boats up on blocks, the grey fibreglass hulls of land-ridden power boats, stacks of weathered lumber, a few drums, the flat, grey estuary in the background. The whole place had that marginal, break-even look. Clay looked back down the still-deserted laneway, wedged the toe of his boot into the fence, grabbed the wire, pulled himself up and over, and landed with a smooth flex of both knees.

He looked at his watch. 06:07. The boat ramp was quiet, the haul half out of the water as if someone had forgotten to pull it out after a launch. There was no wind. Half a dozen craft dozed on buoys under a close, grey sky. Gulls cried low across the glassy estuary, wingtip perfect. Clay stood for a moment and looked out across the muddy water towards the sea.

‘Buying or selling?’

Clay turned towards the voice, startled.

A man stood on the boat ramp. He was short, not much over five feet, clad in a grey wool jumper, faded, loose-fitting jeans and black lace-up boots. He was clean-shaven, the skin lined, weathered. His hair was spiked, straight-up punk, platinum. He looked Clay up and down, fixed for a fraction of a second on his stump.

‘Both,’ said Clay.

Punk shuffled down to where Clay was standing and stood, hands on hips, looking up into his eyes. ‘Bit early for boat buying, innit?’

‘Couldn’t sleep.’

Punk glanced at Clay’s shoulder, narrowed his eyes. ‘I can see that.’

Clay raised his hand to his arm. The sleeve was wet with blood. ‘Clumsy.’

Punk’s mouth curled into a thin approximation of a smile. ‘I’m not buying.’

‘What about a trade?’

‘You thinking perhaps that nice new BMW out front?’

Clay smiled. ‘Could be. Depends.’

‘Shame about the window.’

Clay said nothing, insides tumbling.

‘What’re you after?’

‘Something sea-going. Sturdy.’

Punk sniffed the air, looked out across the estuary. ‘If you’re in a hurry to go out there,’ he jutted his chin towards the sea, ‘you should think again. Storm coming. You an experienced yachtsman?’

Clay pointed to a powerboat moored about fifty metres out. It looked sleek and powerful, with twin inboard-outboard engines. ‘What about that one?’ He had about thirty thousand pounds cash left. That was it.

‘Not for sale.’

There were a couple of old-style boxwork cabin cruisers that looked as if they hadn’t moved in decades, an open whaler and a compact sloop with an aluminium mast – too slow, too light and small to make the crossing. Nothing else back in the yard had looked even remotely seaworthy. Clay turned and started walking back to the car. He would have to try somewhere else.

‘Where you going?’ said Punk.

Clay kept walking.

‘Ey there, guv, what you want for the car?’ Punk called after him.

Clay stopped, looked down at his boots, at the oiled gravel of the boat ramp.

‘Don’t worry,’ Punk continued. ‘I can clean it. I have friends.’

‘I’m happy for you.’ All mine are dead or in deep shit. Clay stood, not looking back. He had a decision to make. And he had to make it now. Trust the guy, or leave. Problem was, he was running out of time. Time and options.

Punk was alongside him now. ‘Let me show you something,’ he said. ‘Come with me.’

Punk led him to a steel door in the warehouse wall, through a darkened loading bay and out through another door. He walked slowly, deliberately, with a pronounced limp, as if one leg was shorter than the other. They were on a raised wharf, looking out over the water.

Punk pointed to a boat swinging on a mooring about a hundred metres out. ‘She’s old, but sturdy,’ he said. ‘France?’

‘No.’

Punk nodded. ‘Good. France is too obvious.’

Clay glanced at the guy, looked away.

‘Full set of sails, working diesel engine, charts, even food on board. I never manage to get out in her anymore. My life’s story.’

A crossing to Normandy by sail would take three days. Punk was right. France was too easy. Medved, the cops, Crowbar’s mercenary friends, they would all be watching. ‘Straight swap,’ said Clay.

Punk took in a short breath and laughed. ‘You’ll have to do better than that. My friends are good, but they take a big premium.’

‘I can give you ten grand more. Cash.’

Punk turned away and started back to the building. ‘Make it twenty.’

Clay considered this. He didn’t have much choice. ‘Done,’ he said.

‘I’ll unlock the gate. Bring it in quick. We can get to work cleaning that blood from the front seat.’

Clay’s heart lurched, hung up an instant, restarted. He stared down at the crumbling concrete of the disused wharf. Without looking up he said, ‘Once I’m gone, give me a three-day head start. I don’t care what you do after that.’

They moved the BMW inside the compound and hid it behind one of the wrecked cabin cruisers at the back of the yard. Cleaning out the car didn’t take long. Punk had done this before. Afterwards, he led Clay to a small, brick cottage nestled in a riot of elm and brambles behind the corrugated asbestos office building. The rain was falling now, thick sheets of it, winter oblique, cold. Punk stamped the wet from his clothes, slicked up his hair and closed the door behind Clay. Inside it was warm and dry. A coal fire burned in an open hearth. The walls of the small lounge were covered in guitars, polished wood acoustics, electrics of every shape and colour, even an old banjo.

Punk looked up at Clay. ‘You play?’

Clay raised his hand, his stump. ‘I listen.’

Punk frowned, reached down and hiked up his right trouser leg almost to the knee, revealing a polished metal prosthetic, structure only, jammed into a boot. ‘I watch football.’

Clay smiled.

‘You should get yourself one, amazing what they’re doing with titanium these days.’ Punk dropped his trouser leg.

‘I prefer the natural look.’

Punk grinned, huffed something Clay couldn’t make out, and led him to a small kitchen. ‘Have a seat.’

Clay sat on the only chair. Punk put the kettle on and stepped back out into the lounge. Clay looked out of the kitchen window across the rain-swept estuary and heard the click-click dialling of an old rotary phone, Punk’s voice.

When Punk returned, the kettle was whistling on the stove.

‘My friends will be here by ten,’ Punk said, handing Clay a steaming mug of tea. ‘They’ll have that thing dismantled and on its way to Russia before tomorrow morning. When they put it back together, it’ll be a brand-new car. Impossible to trace. Incredible what these blokes can do.’

Clay looked at his watch. If Punk had called the cops, they’d be here in five minutes, less. There was still time to get out. But where to? He looked at Punk, watched him fussing over the stove, decided to trust this man. He didn’t have much choice.

It was just gone seven in the morning, nine in Cyprus.

‘When can I get out to the boat, check her out?’ This was all going to take a lot longer than Clay had hoped.

‘How about some breakfast?’ Punk pulled off his sweater to reveal a still-muscled torso clad in a frayed singlet that looked like it hadn’t been washed in years. His arms were heavily tattooed; a thick gold chain hung from his neck.

Clay nodded. He hadn’t eaten since the previous afternoon. ‘Mind if I use your phone? I can pay.’

Punk swung a cast-iron frying pan from a hook on the wall and pointed to the front door. ‘Phone box on the main road, towards town.’

Clay stood, slung his pack. ‘I’ll be back in a bit.’

‘Breakfast in twenty minutes. You like eggs?’

‘Hundreds,’ said Clay, starting to like this old guy. ‘See you in twenty.’

Outside, the lane was still quiet. Clay started walking towards the main road, a red-and-white blur of streaming lights about half a kilometre distant. About two hundred metres along, a clutch of ragged hawthorn and wild-sown elms sprouted like adolescent fuzz from the side of the warehouse. He stopped alongside the copse, looked back along the lane to Punk’s yard, a part of him expecting Punk to be standing there, watching him, but the lane was empty. Clay pushed through the rain-bent branches and pressed himself into the angle
of one of the brickwork buttresses that ran like whale ribs along the building’s Victorian wall. Protected against the rain, hidden from the road, he waited.

It was going to take him at least six days, more like ten, to reach Rania. Nicosia, two weeks ago – that’s all Madame Debret had said. Clay knew the place well, had lived there for almost three years, would still have had an apartment and a business there if he hadn’t died, been resurrected as Declan Greene, been forced to leave that life behind. There were only three or four decent hotels in the city. He had to try.

Fifteen minutes later, satisfied that Punk hadn’t called the cops, Clay pulled his hood around his face, left his hiding place and walked to the intersection. The rain was coming down harder now, slowing the traffic. He stood on the pavement with the cars flying by, peered through the road spray, and scanned the road for the phone box. Nothing. He started walking towards town. This was the last place he wanted to be, in full view of a steady train of eyes, soaked to the skin already, conspicuous. Then he saw it though the traffic, across the road, about a hundred metres away, an old red phone box. He put his head down and trudged along the pavement, checking over his shoulder for a gap in the traffic. After a sprint he was across, into the dry cocoon of the phonebox. He pushed in the phone card and dialled, looking out at the river of cars.

The phone clicked and a female voice answered. His Cyprus accountant’s secretary. He’d known her for years, a sweet old woman with a pure heart. Clay disguised his voice, brought it up half an octave and tried to put on a neutral English accent. Within a few minutes she had read out the phone numbers of the four Nicosia hotels he’d asked for. He jotted down the numbers in his notebook, thanking her in Greek. The traffic had slowed. Clay watched the cars, the people staring ahead through streaked windscreens and flailing wiper blades. He was about to dial the first number, the Holiday Inn near the Green Line, when something he saw made him stop. By the time it registered, the car was past, gone in the rain. It had been more than a glimpse, a good two
or three seconds, more than enough to be sure. The Afrikaner from the cottage, the pale-eyed Boer who’d knifed him then escaped, disappeared at the cliff edge. In the passenger seat of a big Mercedes.

Clay thought back, brought up the image. Profile only, the square jaw, the big Dutch forehead, the swollen nose. He was sure he hadn’t been seen, but Jesus Christ, how had they caught up to him so quickly? Was Koevoet guiding them? It had to be that. He still couldn’t believe it, fought against it, this betrayal. But it was Koevoet who had told him not to fly. On the long drive to Cornwall two months ago they had spoken of getting out by sea. Falmouth had been the obvious choice. Damn it. They were here, and they were looking for the Beemer, looking for him.

Clay took a deep breath, punched in the next number and enquired after a registered guest, name Lise Moulinbecq. No such person. Again, the Intercontinental this time. No luck. He was down to less than ten pounds on the card now. Rain pounded like fists on the phone box. Cars swept by. He tried the Hilton. Hiss, click. Wait. Lise Moulinbecq? One minute please, Sir. Money flowing, numbers flickering, a countdown. Connecting you now, Sir. Adrenaline surge. A big one.

The phone system churned through to her room. Nine-thirty there, no way she was still in this late. He let it ring, imagined the device pealing on her bedside table, the bed perhaps still unmade, the cast of her body pressed into the mattress, her smell in the weave of the sheets, the down of the pillow, that finely evolved chemistry.

‘
Allo?
’ She was out of breath, as if she’d just burst into the room. It sounded like sun, like warmth.

‘Hello, beautiful.’ He felt dizzy.

The line was silent for a moment. He could hear her breathing, imagined the rise and fall of her chest, the delicate whisper of her lips near the mouthpiece.

‘Claymore? Is that you?’

‘I don’t have long, Rania. Please listen.’

It always seemed to be this way with them. Never enough time: a precious few days in the chalet in the Alps, both of them broken,
needing the other’s strength; and before that, in Yemen, caught up in a spiral of death and vengeance, just those two nights before they’d been torn apart, flung in different directions. One dark evening alone on the Cornish coast he’d calculated that they’d spent no more than a hundred hours together, ever. Nothing. Not enough to feel like this, heart racing at the sound her voice, the thought of her touch. But it was fear now that coursed through him, thick and heavy, a cholera of doubt.

‘You have to get out of there, Rania,’ he said. ‘Now. Leave Cyprus, go back to the chalet and keep quiet, out of sight.’

He could hear her taking this in, thinking about it.

‘Rania?’

Nothing.

‘Rania, please. We don’t have long.’

‘I have not heard a word from you in nine weeks,’ she said. Her tone was strained. She was crying.

Clay steadied himself. ‘Do you understand what I’m saying, Rania?’

‘Was it you, Claymore? Did you kill Rex Medved?’ Her sexy Algerian French accent was tainted with fear.

‘We don’t have time for this now. Listen to me, please.’

‘No time? After two months not knowing if you are alive or dead, you tell me that you do not have time? Answer me, Claymore. I want to know.’

Clay watched the time running away. Where did it go, he wondered, drifting again. He fought back to now.

‘Yes,’ he said.

She didn’t reply. It sounded like she was holding her breath.

‘They’ve found me. Tracked me down. Medved’s people.’

She gasped.

‘They know who I am, Rania. They know who you are, too. You’re in danger. I want you to get out now. Go home. I’ll be there soon. Then we can disappear. Together. Go to Africa like we planned.’ He still had the tickets to Cape Town in his pocket.

‘Do
not
tell me what to do, Claymore.’ Her tone was stern, a cleric’s.

Time disappeared. ‘Look, I’m sorry, Rania. Just go home, please.’

A pause, seconds vanishing, and then, her voice breathless, ‘Things have changed, Claymore. What we talked about in London, what we did, it was … it was premature.’

Clay said nothing, waited, sank.

‘I have work to do here. I know you want to go back to Africa. Go, Claymore. Do whatever you have to do. Make peace with yourself.’

Her words ripped through him like hot shrapnel. He stood staring at the raindrops tracking across the phone-box glass, blind sperm flicking their tails in a futile journey to barren ground. All his dreams lay massacred on the wet concrete floor. The line was open. He could feel her there on the other end, hear her breathing.

‘Please, Rania,’ he choked, overcome. ‘You’re in danger.’

‘No one is after
me
, Claymore–’

He interrupted her, spoke over her. ‘They wrote it in blood. On Eben’s hospital room wall after they killed him:
She’s next
.’

But she wasn’t listening, just kept talking back at him. ‘There is something happening … Something big … sinister … getting close. I … a few more days.’ Their words collided across the line, leaving a wreckage of shattered vowels, amputated syllables.

‘A few relics aren’t worth dying for, Rania.’

Silence.

‘I’m serious.’

‘So am I. This goes a lot deeper than religious artefacts. It is theft on a massive scale, cultural genocide. Extinction.’

‘Jesus Christ, Rania. Even more reason to get out. Pass it over to the authorities.’

‘I cannot, Claymore.’

Money clicked away in the display. They didn’t have long, seconds.

‘Why the hell not?’

‘I think the authorities are involved.’

Clay swallowed hard. They were almost out of time. ‘I’ll be at the chalet in ten days, maybe less. Meet me there.’

‘No, Claymore.’

 ‘Okay,’ he snapped. ‘Just promise me you’ll get out.’

‘I will return when I am finished here.’

‘How long?’

‘I do not know. A week perhaps. Maybe longer.’

‘For God’s sake, Rania, please.’

Less than a pound left, the last few pence draining away.

‘Clay…’ she stumbled, broke off. He could hear her crying. ‘You broke…’

The line went dead. The phone card had expired.

Clay smashed down the receiver handle, stood shaking, staring into the winter sea of the phone’s toll screen as if the time could somehow be recaptured, credited to his account, reversed. So much more he needed to say.

After a while he stopped staring at the phone, opened the door and stepped out into the rain. Five minutes later he was back at Punk’s place. The BMW was still where they’d parked it, awaiting its imminent dismantlement and resurrection. He knocked on the door and stepped inside without being asked. The smell of frying bacon and hot toast filled the place. Despite everything, his stomach started working, anticipating.

Punk peered out from the kitchen, a floral-print apron slung over his neck, a spatula in one hand, an H&K nine millimetre parabellum in the other. ‘Make the call you wanted?’ he said.

Clay stopped, staring at the handgun.

‘Found it in the glove box,’ said Punk. ‘Yours?’

‘Keep it,’ said Clay.

Punk put down the spatula, worked the handgun’s action, slid out the magazine, ejected the round from the chamber and put it all on the table.

‘No thanks,’ he said, putting a plate in front of Clay. Fried eggs, bacon, tomato, fried onions, two thick slabs of dark toast, dripping butter.

Clay devoured the breakfast, for those few minutes concentrating
only on the food, on the slaking of his hunger. It had been the same in the bush, even during the worst days: opening the rations, forgetting everything, the blood, the fear, the danger. An animal fulfilling its basest instinct. Survival. He ate quickly, methodically. Did not look up. Did not speak. Ignored the weapon there beside him.

When Clay had finished, Punk tossed something onto the table. It rattled to a stop next to Clay’s plate. Metallic, about the size of a pack of smokes.

Clay looked up at Punk, questioning.

‘Found it in the Beemer. A custom extra.’

Clay turned it over, examining it.

‘It’s a transmitter,’ said Punk. ‘Don’t worry, I’ve disabled it.’

‘Shit.’

‘They’re here, aren’t they?’

Clay nodded. Punk must have killed the signal just before the Boer drove past.

‘How long do you have?’ Punk leaned against the table.

‘Not long.’

‘Let’s get you on your way then, Guv. The tide’s right.’

Clay stood, looked Punk in the eyes. ‘If they come, tell them I forced you.’