The Lazarus Trap (33 page)

Val accepted the keys. “I don't know if I'll ever be able to free myself like she wants—to let go of the hate and the pain. But I want to try. She deserves that much. Even if she won't give me another chance, still she deserves . . .”

Arthur watched him swallow against the tragedy of all he had lost, all he had done wrong, all he had failed to achieve. Arthur said at last, “This is the first good feeling I've had since the police stopped by.”

Val set the portable phone on the bedside table and headed for the door. “I wish I could say the same.”

Tension resided like an expanding bubble at the base of Val's ribcage. He swallowed twice as he descended the stairs, and three more times as he followed the trio out to Bert's van. The other men's grim silence only pushed more air into the bubble. The one sound in the van was the swish of the wipers. Val wondered if he showed the same lie in his own features. He had heard the way the breath caught in their throats whenever they mentioned Audrey's name. The only comfort Val found in that taut and colorless dawn was that they cared for her almost as much as he did.

They dropped Dillon off at the top of the road leading to Arthur d'Arcy's home. The young man solemnly shook hands with each of them before heading down the slope. They sat in tense silence until he unlocked Audrey's Rover and pulled away. There was no sign of unwanted interest. No sign of life along the wet and sleepy street. The remaining three men took a single unified breath of relief and headed out.

They skirted the industrial park and headed along the narrow high road toward Brighton. The early morning traffic was limited to trucks, delivery vans, and a few farm vehicles. Wet sheep huddled against stone troughs and sheltering groves. Cattle stared blankly at the passing cars, unaware of the day's momentous hold.

The airfield was a pair of whitewashed hangars, a stubby concrete tower, and one runway. The windsock was pulled to nervous attention by the gusting wind. They left the van and hustled into a steamy-windowed café that formed the tower's base. Bert took a satisfied breath of the grease-stained air and declared, “Believe I'll have me a fry up.”

Gerald grimaced in disgust. “You best be ready soon as I say.”

“Don't you fret, mate. You give us the word, and Bob's your uncle.” Bert watched Gerald depart with something like fondness. “Just like Dillon, that one. Lad never did have much of an appetite before a job. Mind you, after it was over he could eat a horse and have room left over for the saddle.”

Val followed him over to the corner booth. There was nothing to see outside but traces of rain patterned against the steamed-over glass. “You and Dillon have been together long?”

“Been years now. I claim to have raised him, just to see him do his nut.”

The day was such that Val could ask easily, “You were both thieves?”

“We had our hands in a bit of this and that.” Bert smiled at the waitress. “Hello, love. I'll have the lot. Beans, fried bread, four eggs, chips, rasher of bacon, sausages, what have I forgotten? Oh my yes, and mushrooms. And tea. Oh, and toast. Got to have something to wipe up the grease.”

The waitress turned to Val. “What about you, love?”

“Just tea, thanks.”

Bert smiled his thanks when the waitress returned with their teas. “What were we talking about?”

“You and Dillon.”

Bert took a noisy sip. “Lad's the best second-story man I ever knew.”

“And you?”

“Smash and grab, driving, fence, whatever paid, mate.”

“Where did you meet Audrey?”

“Little place by the name of Wormwood Scrubs.”

“A prison?”

“Worst there ever was.” Bert watched the waitress deposit his plate, his good humor vanished. “Been there for donkey's years. Ghosts rattle around the place at night, ready to suck the breath straight out of your body.” Bert used the scrunchy fried bread as a ladle for his eggs and talked around his food. “Audrey was counseling a mate of mine getting ready for parole. I went on account of any excuse being a fine one if it gave me visiting time with a lady. Took about six months before I realized she was drilling holes in this thick skull of mine. By then it was too late.”

“Wish I'd had your sense.”

Bert used his toast to sop up the grease. “Noticed you take something out and read it from time to time.”

“Audrey wrote me a letter.”

The knife and fork clattered down and he glanced at Val. A quick there-and-gone, nothing behind it. “Not my business to ask.”

Val opened the letter. The creases had worn into soft patterns now. Val scanned the sheet, the biting affection known by heart. “She was just trying to reach me.”

“Audrey has a way of talking,” Bert agreed. “Brings to mind a sentiment I don't deserve.”

Val refolded the pages. “Made me wish I was a better man.”

“I remember once, she was talking to me on death. Death of hope, death of dreams. Watching life take the wrong turn that can't never be made right again.” Bert turned and stared at the window, seeing something neither the rainswept day nor the misted glass could bar from vision. “What we do then is, we hide in our dark little cave and seal it up tight with a boulder of our own making. Before we can ever get out, we have to name the stone for what it is.”

Rage, pain, hatred. Val found the words there waiting for him. All he said was, “I know exactly what you mean.”

Bert said to his window, “Takes me back, that does. First time I heard her say the words, felt like she was tearing a hole in my chest.”

The café's door opened. Gerald called through, “We're ready.”

Val could not have come up with a better scenario to forget how bruised and bone-weary he was. He flew in the copilot's seat of a small single-engine plane. Below him was unmarked blackness. Above him was nothing at all. The windscreen was lashed by rain. The plane was buffeted by roller-coaster winds.

Val shouted above the roars, “Does it rain all the time here?”

“Don't be daft. It was lovely yesterday.” Gerald pointed at the instrument panel with his chin. His complexion was green from the panel's illumination. At least, Val hoped it was the panel lights. “You just keep a sharp eye on the NAVS.”

Bert filled both rear seats to overflow and groaned softly.

Val could not help but notice Gerald's death grip on the stick.

“What's the matter with you?”

Gerald confessed, “I've never done this before.”

“Done what, flown over water? Flown in a storm?”

“Take your pick.”

Bert groaned louder. “Great time you picked to be letting us in on your little secret, mate.”

“You can just ease up.” Gerald never took his eye off the controls. “You heard him same as me. Val needed to get to Jersey without risking contact with the police. The authorities might be watching for him now that the news has broken.”

“The important thing is getting there in one piece,” Bert pointed out.

“Which I'm doing, if a certain somebody would tone it down with the distractions.”

An hour later, Jersey appeared off to their right, a rainswept apparition rimmed by jagged white teeth. Gerald went through the landing protocol with an unseen tower. The voice coming back to them over the plane's loudspeaker spoke absolute gibberish as far as Val could tell. But Gerald altered his direction slightly and began a hard-fought descent. The wind struck them with invisible fists, jamming them about so hard the engine screamed to keep them on track.

They passed over a cliffside manor-hotel and a neighboring golf course. Two men working the first green halted their work, shielded their eyes against the tempest, and watched the plane's unsteady approach. The airfield appeared from the wet gloom. The landing strip looked about two inches wide.

Gerald took aim for the strip only to have a gust shove them brutally toward a neighboring grove of trees. He pulled back on the stick so hard his teeth were bared. The squall caught them full-force and sent them rocketing out and over the cliff. From where Val sat, it appeared they took aim straight for a grey and angry sea. Gerald continued hauling back and finally managed to straighten them out.

He regained altitude, dipped one wing, and circled back over the hotel. “Let's try that one again, shall we?”

“Just land the ruddy thing this time, all right, Gerald?”

Gerald straightened his shoulders, leaned in close to the windshield, and went for the strip. The wind mashed the surrounding grass into a shivering tabletop. The windsock by the tower looked ironed flat.

They hit hard. Bounced. The plane rose and almost touched one wing to the tarmac. They landed again. Gerald slapped the controls. The motor powered back. They stayed down.

When they stopped before the lone hangar, they crawled from the plane like cross-tied marionettes. Val glanced around the rain-swept vista. The workers by the first green had not budged.

TERRANCE SAT IN THE CORNER OF THE SUITE'S PARLOR. HE HELD a plastic hotel laundry bag full of ice to his jaw. The swelling was coming in thick and purple. When the skin stopped burning and turned numb, he switched the bag to his eye.

A newspaper lay beside the silver coffee thermos. The front page was folded back so that one word of the headline stood front and center. It shouted across the room at him.
Insignia
.

Loupe sat at a room-service table set up by the empty fireplace. The two heavies who had accompanied Terrance in the elevator stood before him. The men quaked in terror. Loupe did not raise his voice. Nor did he threaten. “Explain it to me again. I'm trying hard to understand, you see. Describe how it was that two such great hulking brutes could let the very man we've been tracking for two days get by them.”

“Boss, it's like this.” The man swallowed loud enough for the sound to carry across the room. “The bloke was wearing a bellhop's uniform.”

“A uniform.”

“With a hat, boss. We didn't get a clean look at his face, see.”

Loupe turned his attention to his driver. The man stood sentry by the parlor's main doors. “What do you have to say for yourself?”

“I was right here. You called the house and ordered me back. I came.”

Loupe pushed his breakfast plate aside and pulled out a cigar. He made a production of trimming the end and flicking open a heavy gold lighter. He sat back and puffed hard on the cigar, then inspected its glowing end. “A hat,” the boss repeated. “This is the best excuse you can come up with? My so-called finest men?”

“All we saw was this hotel staff bloke carrying a wad of towels, coming down the hall. He wasn't nothing to us but the uniform.”

Wally sat in the parlor's opposite corner, as far from Terrance as she could get. She watched Loupe with a cop's absence of emotion. Terrance wanted to shriek at her to give the signal. But Wally did not even glance his way.

Loupe asked, “What was it, the shiny brass buttons?”

“We just didn't recognize him, is all. Nobody knew who he was.”