The Spy I Loved (4 page)

She was
trying not to think too much about Mister Liam Kimball, and he kept
popping up in her thoughts. What would those strong hands feel
like, touching her all over, as he whispered sweet nothings in her
ear.

What sort
of things might he say…but this was fruitless territory. She was
rarely tempted or even attracted by a guest. Not since she’d
fallen, a hopeless crush, on a college-age boy named Neill all
those years ago.

She had
been fifteen at the time, and what a horrible thing it was,
too.

It was a
terrible cliché, but Neill hadn’t even known of her
existence.

Even now,
she thought of him from time to time…in a wistful kind of
self-loathing.

But it
really was stupid.

Chapter Three

Lindsey
tossed and turned. It was predictable enough. One too many cups of
coffee, even though she usually stopped drinking any sort of
caffeinated beverage well before nine p.m.,

She’d had
all sorts of plans for her summer at home. As soon as she laid eyes
on the place, she knew it was nonsense. It was wishful thinking all
the way. And yet, she’d sort of hung back, dating a bit, but not
plunging into the sexual vortex that was college life. She’d had
one fling, a guy named Eric. He was nice enough and everything, but
she had the impression, and that’s all it was, that Eric was still
seeing someone when he went home for weekends and Christmas. Other
than that, he wasn’t terribly ambitious. All he seemed to want out
of life was to drink, smoke pot and party. She was more of an
accessory. He treated her all right. He seemed gentlemanly and
solicitous, but not all that sincere at times. He went through the
motions to satisfy her—to keep her.

She
couldn’t recall one serious conversation that they had ever had,
and any talk of the future was laughed off the agenda. Not once had
they ever opened up to each other. It was purely superficial, a
thing of convenience.

After a
while, she’d figured it out.

Eric
quickly found someone else.

She
hadn’t.

But this was a kind of purgatory, this place. She’d get a day
and a half off a week—and it would either be spent right here at
home, or in Espanola, or maybe a day (drum roll please) spent on
the lake, in a boat, fishing or swimming or waterskiing or
whatever. But even
those
boys—some of them could perhaps be called men by
now, most of them were in college or university. The nature of
their interests of their careers or their interests, or perhaps it
was just luck, had conspired to take them to other places for their
summer employment. She had her little list of names of course. Guys
she would go out with and guys that she wouldn’t.

All women
had such a list.

Hers
wasn’t all that extensive.

The town
was that small.

She knew
all the prospects.

The best
things in life were already taken.

With the
best and the brightest gone, that didn’t leave much. A friend of
hers had married a guy three years younger, and at the time Lindsey
had wondered why.

It had never occurred to her that just getting through summer
without going mad would be an achievement, and that getting back to
school would be a relief. In that sense, Toronto really had become
her home. It was hard to say if she still felt that way…looking
back from
here.

Hopefully the landlord would keep a promise and her room
would be available. If she wanted better than
that,
then she would need some real
money…

Her mind
wouldn’t stop going. This was typical of the first big weekend of
the season, where every deficiency in planning or preparation was
revealed, every problem that might manifest itself had already done
so—for example the pop cooler breaking down and leaking refrigerant
all over the place.

With the
blankets on, she was too hot, when she threw them aside, she was
too cold. No matter how she fluffed up or curled up and plumped-up
her pillows, she could not get her neck right. She was
uncomfortable on her back, her side, and the other side. Finally
she kicked the covers off and sat up on the edge of the bed. The
luminous numbers of her bedside clock showed that it was about
twenty after two in the morning. If only she could drop off right
now. Of course it wouldn’t be so. Watching TV in the living room,
where Dale might even now be ensconced in his chair, smelling of
booze, old socks, and snoring loudly, somehow didn’t appeal to
her.

Thank God
he had his own bathroom. Cleaning it was one thing, sharing it was
another.

There was
the hint of thunder in the air, off to the southwest she
thought.

There was
a branch scratching away at the eaves-trough in the light breeze.
Tree-trimming. Another chore to put on Mark’s list. She wouldn’t
trust Dale on a ladder these days.

“
Ugh.” Shivering, she quickly found a thin sweater, a
turtleneck, and slipped into her baggy old sweat pants.

She
grabbed a baseball hat to control her hair and pulled on a faded
jean jacket. She stepped into her loosely tied runners. One of the
compensations of living in a camp all summer had always been those
impromptu little adventures. Why then, the moisture in her
eyes?

The night
was clear, and there were probably a million stars out there.
Solitude wasn’t necessarily the same thing as aloneness.

You just
had to teach yourself to believe it.

Lindsey
left the room, seeking peace.

The call
of a loon far out on the lake came as she gently closed the patio
door behind her. Not unexpectedly, there was the dim glow of one or
two fires. They were fifty or seventy-five metres away, back in the
little circle of cabins and their access track. With a few lit
windows and the reflections from reflectors and shiny vehicles, the
beams of ruddy light straggled up and back, following the irregular
contours of the hillside.

She
wandered down to the docks. The water was mirror-like in its black
stillness and the pin-pricks of the stars reflecting on water meant
for a moment that she stood on the edge of an abyss.

“
Oh, my.” She let out a big breath.

It made
up for a lot, although a proper night’s sleep would have been
preferable. For a moment she debated taking a boat out for a proper
look. She’d often thought of taking some night photos out on the
lake, but she didn’t know much about it. The odds were she wouldn’t
get anything anyway. The odds were she’d go over and drown. Nice
thought that was, yelling and yelling for help and by the time
anyone came—if anyone even heard or bothered to investigate, she’d
be gone.

They
might never find the body either.

There
were canoes and paddles right there. She didn’t feel like going
back inside for the keys and getting a lifejacket out of Mark’s
little dockside service kiosk. To hell with it. She stood on the
narrow sandy beach, hugging herself to keep in the warmth and
looking up at the blazing northern sky.

She
turned to the right, picking her way carefully in the darkness. The
light thrown from further up the bank made for impenetrable black
shadows under the rim. Dead logs showed up pale and there were
glimmers of the lighter boulders a few metres off from the beach.
Out on the water there was a brighter line of bleach bottles used
as marker buoys along the deepest approach to the camp.

There was
a scrabbling noise up the bank, and at first she thought it was a
raccoon. Big, bold and inquisitive as all hell, they were a
constant problem. All of the camp’s garbage receptacles were steel,
with stiff spring-latches on the lid. She was just near the small
sandy strip behind Cabin Seven, where Liam had a deck chair
stationed for the daylight hours. The snapping of a large dry twig
caught her attention and then it came again. It was very near, and
Cabin Seven was closest to the water.

The sound
of hard breathing sent a chill of fear go through Lindsey. She
froze in place, a tingling wave of adrenalin sweeping over her.
There was a straggle of brush along the shoreline and whoever, or
whatever it was, might not know she was there. Until she knew what
it was, it was so much better that way.

She held
her breath, the pounding of her heart loud in her ears.

A dark
figure stepped away from near the back door of Cabin Seven. The
dark hole where their face would have been if they weren’t wearing
a hoodie turned her way, and then they lunged into the far shadows
and disappeared from sight. A couple of quick thuds, running
footsteps on a thin layer of turf lying on solid rock, indicated
that they had gone around the building and up the hill.

That
quick slithering sound was someone forcing their way through the
thin screen of brush between cabins.

***

The man
known as Liam Kimball stood well back in the room. He had been
lying in bed, maybe even fast asleep. Something had awoken him.
There were sounds of course, for example the wind noise from the
tops of the tall white pines which overhung the entire camp. The
sound penetrated all but the thickest walls when the wind got
up.

He’d
heard another sound, and something about that one made his hair
prickle. It was an odd little crack, down low and just on the other
side of his bedroom wall. He had gotten silently out of bed, going
to have a look out the back door. Some atavistic element of caution
had held him back from going straight up to the door, popping it
open and having a look. He’d hung back just long enough to see a
dim shadow cross in front of the glass. There came a couple of good
snaps and then he had the impression something big went up the east
side of the cabin.

When he
stepped to the door it was already too late to catch a
glimpse.

That was
when he saw the pale figure on the beach. It was unmistakeably the
girl, Lindsey.

The light
was all wrong and she would never see him in the darkened kitchen
doorway.

He
watched as she turned and headed back down the sandy strip, heading
for the dock and the lodge. Liam was pretty sure she couldn’t have
quite done it. She couldn’t have gotten from his back door to the
shore in that short a time. She had been facing this way. He
wondered what she might have seen, or heard, or been doing out at
all, for that matter. He glanced at his watch.

“
Hmn. I wonder what that was all about.” And someone had been
in his car earlier.

There was
a two-foot wide concrete apron around the cabin. Considering the
nature of the terrain, mostly huge shelves and ledges of rock,
interspersed with a little moss and dirt, he wondered if there
would be any kind of sign in the morning. He shrugged it off. It
was a camp, and people wandered everywhere. He had a little
knowledge, but he wasn’t a born tracker.

It was
also a camp that required reservations well ahead of
time.

It was
all
fresh tracks around the camp. Bringing in a hound would be a
giveaway and probably just lead to a couple of underage drinkers or
a boy and his girl…

The girl,
now, that was interesting.

There was
the beginning of a small knot forming in his stomach, although he
rarely allowed that sort of thing to upset his
equilibrium.

What was even more interesting was how someone had entered
his locked cabin, picked the expensive lock of his case, then the
(allegedly) cheap little one on his laptop computer without
breaking it—no mean feat in itself, and
then
turned it on and attempted to
hack into it. They had abandoned the attempt, putting it all away
again. They had known
something,
and they were also quite good about shutting
things down and locking everything back up on their way out. They’d
even wiped the machine and everything else they’d touched during
their little courtesy-call.

However, there were certain indications. He had no doubt
about what had happened. He was even pretty sure
who.

Checking
him out was a bit of a mistake on their part.

***

With
twenty-four cabins, all of them occupied, Lindsey’s attention was
fully engaged. If there was something vaguely disturbing about the
two dark foreign men getting into a boat shortly after Liam had
gone up the river, it escaped her. The men were in Cabin Eleven. It
was right across from his in the crazy hodgepodge that was The
Pines. They didn’t look much different from anyone else. Just like
anyone else, the one on the back was hunched over the motor. The
one in front sat facing the rear, his pale face standing out
against the green windbreaker. The only thing was that it had a
hood. Most of them did as the weather was notoriously fickle and
fishermen were out in all weathers.

Dale
floated about from dawn until late, between the dock and the store.
Mark worked straight days, six days a week all summer long. Mark or
Dale fixed anything that was broken, within reason, which saved
them from calling in expensive service people from town. Mark,
nearing forty now, a perennial bachelor and scrupulously polite
with Lindsey at all times, had somehow managed to never become a
part of the family.