‘Don’t worry. Right now a higher power is judging his crimes. Where he’s heading, it’ll be worse than any hell-hole that the courts could send him to.’
‘I never took you for the religious type,’ Walter said.
‘You know what they say: there’s no atheists in trenches, Walt.’ Though I didn’t pray that regularly, I’d often taken the Lord’s name in vain. Maybe I should’ve got down on my knees and begged for forgiveness otherwise, when it was my time, I might be heading to the same hell-hole as Hendrickson and all the other evil men I’d killed. I told Walter what had gone down at Hendrickson’s house.
‘So you’ve no idea where Cain is,’ he summed up.
‘Drawn a blank,’ I said. ‘So it’s even more important that both John and Imogen are out of harm’s way.’
Anticipating my next question, Walter confirmed, ‘Imogen was collected by Hartlaub and Brigham. She’s out of Cain’s reach. There’s no one left who he can use to get to John, so you needn’t worry.’
‘I’m not sure about that. Walt, I need to speak to my brother.’
Walter’s silence gave me a sense of foreboding.
‘Walt?’
‘Uh, I’m just figuring on how best to arrange that, son.’
‘What’s the problem, Walt, and please… none of your usual bullshit.’
Walter coughed into the handset, then must have twisted away because I didn’t catch his next mumbled words.
‘Walter.’
‘I’m here, OK. Look, this won’t be easy to set up. We have him in deep hiding. It’s going to be a bitch getting you to see him without your involvement throwing problems our way.’
‘Seeing as I’m just a fucking crazy vigilante and all?’
‘There is that.’ He tried to temper his words so they sounded like a joke, but he meant them. ‘I’ll see what I can do. In the meantime I suggest you get some rest, recharge your batteries, you’ve been on the go for… what? Two days now?’
‘I’m fine,’ I lied. The truth was, now that the thrill of battle had subsided, I could have slept for a month. ‘Just arrange things for me, Walt. I want to speak to John.’
‘Get some sleep. Give me a call back in a few hours, OK.’
Walter hung up and I must have looked at the phone strangely. Harvey, currently sprawled on one of the beds, was watching me. His usually bright eyes were rheumy, like I wasn’t the only one in need of a nap. ‘There a problem, Hunter?’
‘I’m not sure…’
Placing the phone on the floor, I crushed it under my heel. Then I disassembled it further, separating the battery, the guts and the SIM card and tossing them into a waste basket.
‘Destroy your phone,’ I told Harvey. ‘Then we’re getting out of here.’
‘I need to sleep, man.’
‘Trust me, Harve, we need to get going.’
While he dismantled his handset, I went to the window that overlooked where our cars were parked. There was nothing unusual out there. So maybe the nasty feeling I’d just felt was wrong; but the niggling thought persisted that Walt was up to something. I crossed the room and opened the door. A narrow corridor led back into the hotel one way and to the car park the other. Going to a window, I peered out across the hotel lot on to the main road. Traffic regulations meant that stopping on the highway wasn’t allowed, but there were plenty of places where they could pull off the road and into one of the hotel courtyards across the way. A hundred yards up, its front end peeking out from behind a stand of trees, I spotted a navy-blue sedan with tinted windows.
Returning to the room, I said, ‘Harvey, we have to go now!’
We fast-walked out of the room, along the corridor and out through a revolving door into the car park. The rifle was still inside the first rental car but we had no time to fetch it. We hurried over to the second car and Harvey bleeped it open. He drove again, with me riding shotgun. We only made it as far as the exit ramp when the first police cruiser screeched up the ramp towards us, its lights flashing balefully.
Chapter 30
Tubal Cain watched a young girl leading a smaller boy by the hand. The boy couldn’t have been much more than five years old, the girl a little older. She had the reddish hair and slightly upturned nose inherited from her mother, but the boy was definitely his father’s son. Cain could even detect a little of his Uncle Joe in the boy. Those bluish-green eyes with a hint of brown at the outer edge of the irises must have been a trait from his grandmother’s side of the family, as Tubal Cain knew that John Telfer and Joe Hunter had different fathers. The boy even had that same straight-backed shoulders-held-high walk as the brothers; maybe that was inherited as well and not a stick- up-the-ass attitude they carried with them.
They were too young to be walking these streets alone, so it was no surprise to find that Jennifer was a few paces behind them, deep in conversation with another young mother whose brats trailed in their wake. Jennifer puffed on a cigarette between sentences. Every so often she glanced up, checking the progress of her offspring. She must have gone out to collect the kids while he was sampling the delights of the tea shop.
Cain watched Jennifer say her goodbyes to her friend, then she hurried the few steps to catch up to her children and ushered them through the entrance to their building. She wasn’t laden down by grocery bags this time, and Cain noticed that she used the stairs, sending the kids off at a gallop ahead of her. In no major hurry to follow, Cain hung back in the alley that had become his surveillance point. While he waited for the Telfer family to settle in he studied the graffiti. Why do all ignorant people have a fascination with genitalia? he wondered. Someone had daubed the legend manu for the cup in bright red paint. A different artist, but equally industrious, had scored through the final word and written the word chop. Under it in even larger letters they’d added city rules! Cain was unfamiliar with soccer, but even he knew that there was a rivalry in this city where wearing the wrong-coloured jersey could get you a whupping.
The floor of the alley was littered with a filthy collection of debris, including broken glass, crushed drinks cans, cardboard and other things he didn’t care to imagine. The carcass of a rat had rotted down to the skeletal bones, but they held no interest for him. Cain looked up to the window of Jennifer’s flat. He could detect movement there. Good. Hands in his coat pockets, he walked out of the alley and on to the road. From his left three figures emerged. They were dressed like the bicycle-riding kids he’d seen this morning, their hoods pulled up, and their sneakers whitened to a gleam. It didn’t matter what colour jersey you wore, these were the kind of youths who were going to kick your ass just for being different. Already he’d noted their posture had changed. There was a lot of hand-flicking going on, gruff expletives exchanged that he couldn’t understand. Cain didn’t have the inclination to waste time with these punks.
They moved close, enclosing him in a three-sided box.
Ordinarily it would have been a fatal error to allow them to shut down his options like that, but Cain didn’t fear them. In fact, if it weren’t for the fact that it might draw unwanted attention he would quite happily butcher them.
‘Hey, mate, you got the time?’ The elected leader postured in front of Cain, bouncing loosely on the balls of his feet. Another of the boys fiddled with a cellphone, as though engrossed, but really readying himself to sucker punch Cain from the side. All he was waiting for was the nod from the leader. The third youth was standing at the leader’s shoulder, ready to leap on board as soon as Cain was hurt.
‘No, but I’ve got some of these.’ Cain drew the Recon Tanto from one pocket, then the box-cutter from the other. The youths took a step back, but they were used to dealing with sharp-edged weapons. Nevertheless some of the cockiness had gone. Now they were trying to decide if this was such a good idea. Cain gave them even more to think about. He slipped the box-cutter away, snaked his hand under the tail of his coat and pulled out his Bowie. ‘Then there’s this motherfucking brute!’
Subtly the distance between them had widened again.
‘And if that’s not enough…’ Cain put away the Tanto and pulled out the Walther P99. ‘There’s always this.’
