Amagansett

Hartwell snorted, amused by the notion.

‘Hey, slow down,’ said Abel. ‘Wait for me.’

‘Are you scared?’ asked Hartwell.

‘Damn right I am. I’ve been in enough woods at night to know there’s better places for a man to be.’

Now Hollis felt bad. He had seen Abel’s photos of Hurtgen Forest and it hadn’t even occurred to him.

‘We’re almost there.’

‘You said that half a mile back.’

Hollis stopped. Ahead of him, the ground dipped steeply away. He trained the flashlight on the paper, his scrawled instructions from Labarde.

‘Correction,’ he said. ‘We are there.’

They skirted the rim of the depression. It looked like some kind of quarry scooped out of the hillside, long since abandoned and reclaimed by nature. The sides were thick with vegetation, impossible to descend through to the area of clear ground at its heart. The only way to enter was via a dirt track that approached through the trees from the south.

On spotting the track, Abel wondered aloud why they’d just spent twenty minutes pushing their way through the undergrowth from the north. He got his answer a few moments later with the sound of a vehicle. It was moving along in a low gear, the sweep of its headlights plucking the forest out of the night.

‘Over here,’ said Hollis, leading them to a thick screen of bushes. ‘Stay low.’

‘What are we going to do?’ hissed Abel.

‘You’re not going to do anything. That was the deal, remember?’

‘Okay, what are you going to do?’

‘He didn’t say.’

Labarde had been very specific in every other regard: about where exactly to park the car, where to walk and when to arrive. His timing was a little off, though. According to Hollis’ watch they still had fifteen minutes in hand before anyone showed up.

Hollis recognized the car the moment it crept into the quarry. He’d taken a shaving of paintwork off its rear fender earlier in the week.

It wasn’t possible to make out the faces of the two people inside, but he figured one to be Manfred Wallace. Wondering if he had brought a goon along with him, Hollis found himself unholstering his gun.

The car pulled to a halt, its engine idling, and Hollis shifted his position to get a better view through the undergrowth. Manfred Wallace was the first person to get out of the car. He was followed closely by Richard Wakeley.

The two men huddled together in discussion, then Wakeley got back behind the wheel and turned the car round so that it faced towards the mouth of the quarry.

Hollis, Abel and Hartwell screwed their faces into the dirt, the light raking their hiding place, pinning them down. And that’s how they remained, anticipating their discovery at any moment, until Labarde arrived.

Only one of the headlights on his truck was working, but it was enough to illuminate the two men waiting for him, to get them squinting.

Hollis crawled to his left, edging closer. He needed to hear what was said.

Labarde took a few steps into the no-man’s land between the vehicles. He had a large buff envelope in his hand.

‘How do we know you’re alone?’ demanded Wakeley.

‘I could ask you the same thing.’

‘Are you armed?’

‘Are you?’

‘No.’

‘And him?’

‘No,’ said Manfred Wallace.

‘Me neither,’ said Labarde as if that settled it. ‘Where’s the money?’

It was some kind of exchange, but what exactly? What was in the envelope?

‘We need to know you’re not armed,’ said Wakeley.

‘The man you sent to kill me made me strip, just to be sure. It didn’t help him, so why don’t we just drop it?’

‘What man?’ asked Wakeley.

Hollis asked himself the same question, his head reeling. Was he really so far behind the field?

‘Think straight,’ said Labarde. ‘If I wanted you dead, you’d be dead by now. I just want my money. Where is it?’

Wakeley removed an attache case from the rear seat of the car. He handed it to Manfred, who didn’t look too pleased at the prospect of having to draw any closer to Labarde.

‘Open it first.’