He smiled to reassure her.
“Toast’s fine,” she said, only the slightest tremble evident in her voice. She cleared her throat and pointed at him. He had foreseen this, and found the sheet.
I’LL BE FINE. I JUST NEED TO TALK TO A FEW PEOPLE.
She looked doubtful, so he smiled again and bent forward to kiss her.
“That better?” he asked.
“Better,” she said.
I’LL PHONE YOU AT YOUR SISTER’S. YOU CAN CALL HER ON YOUR WAY THERE, LET HER KNOW YOU’RE COMING. DON’T COME BACK HERE UNTIL I TELL YOU IT’S ALL RIGHT. I LOVE YOU.
She jumped to her feet and hugged him. They stayed that way for a full minute. Her eyes were wet when he broke away.
“Toast and tea it is,” Reeve said.
He was in the kitchen, trying to hum a tune while he made breakfast, when she walked in. She was carrying a notepad and pen. She looked more together now that she was dressed, now that she’d had time to think. She thrust the notepad into his face.
WHAT THE FUCK’S THIS ALL ABOUT?
He took the pad from her and rested it on the counter.
IT’D TAKE TOO LONG. I’LL EXPLAIN WHEN I PHONE.
He looked up at her, then added a last word.
PLEASE.
THIS IS UNFAIR, she wrote, anger reddening her face.
He mouthed the words I know and followed them with sorry.
“Had your shower already?” he asked.
“Water wasn’t hot enough.” She looked for a second like she might laugh at the absurdity of it all. But she was too angry to laugh.
“Want me to cut some bread?” she asked.
“Sure, thanks. How’s Allan?”
“Not keen on getting up.”
“He doesn’t know how lucky he is,” Reeve said. He watched Joan attack the loaf with the bread knife like it was the enemy.
Things were easier when Allan came down. Both parents talked to him more than usual, asking questions, eliciting responses. This was safe ground; they could be less guarded. When Joan said maybe she’d have that shower after all, Reeve knew she was going to pack. He told Allan he was going to get the car out, and walked into the courtyard, breathing deeply and exhaling noisily.
“Jesus,” he said. He circled the property again. He could hear a tractor somewhere over near Buchanan’s croft, and the drone of a light airplane overhead, though the morning was too overcast to see it. He didn’t think anyone was watching the house. He wondered how far the transmitters carried. Not very far by the look of them. There’d be a recorder somewhere, buried in the earth or hidden under rocks. He wondered how often they changed tapes, how often they listened. The recorder was probably voice-activated, and whoever was listening was only interested in telephone calls.
Or maybe they just hadn’t had time to bug the house properly.
“Bastards,” he said out loud. Then he went back into the house. Joan was coming downstairs with a couple of traveling bags. She took them straight out to her car and put them in the trunk. She motioned for him to join her. When he did, she just stared at him like she wanted to say something.
“I think it’s okay outside,” he said.
“Good. What are you going to do, Gordon?”
“Talk to a few people.”
“What people? What are you going to talk to them about?”
He looked around the courtyard, his eyes alighting on the door to the killing room. “I’m not sure. I just want to know why someone has bugged our telephones. I need to get hold of some equipment, sweep the place to make sure it’s clean apart from the two I found.”
“How long will we have to stay away?”
“Maybe just a couple of days. I don’t know yet. I’ll phone as soon as I can.”
“Don’t do anything…” She didn’t complete the sentence.
“I won’t,” he said, stroking her hair.
She brought something out of her pocket. “Here, take these.” She handed him a vial of small blue pills-the pills he was supposed to take when the pink mist descended.
The psychiatrist had wondered at pink. “Not red?” he’d asked.
“No, pink.”
“Mmm. What do you associate with the color pink, Mr. Reeve?”
“Pink?”
“Yes.”
“Gays, cocks, tongues, vaginal lips, little girls’ lipstick… Will those do for a start, Doctor?”
“I get the feeling you’re playing with me, Mr. Reeve.”
“If I were playing with you, I’d‘ve said red mist and you’d’ve been happy. But I said pink because it’s pink. My vision goes pink, not red.”
“And then you react?”
Oh, yes, then he reacted…
He looked at his wife now. “I won’t need these.”
“Want to make a bet?”
Reeve took the pills instead.
Joan had told Allan they were taking Bakunin to the vet. The cat had resisted being put in its carrier, and Allan had asked what was wrong with it.
“Nothing to worry about.” She’d been looking at her husband as she’d said it.
Reeve stood at the door and waved them off, then ran to the roadside to watch them leave. He didn’t think they’d be followed. Joan drove Allan to school every morning, and this was just another morning. He went back inside and stood in the hallway.
“All alone,” he said loudly.
He was wondering if they would come, now that he was alone. He was hoping they would. He had plans for them if they did. He spent the day waiting them out, and talking to them.
“She’s not coming back,” he said into the telephone receiver at one point. “Neither of them is. I’m on my own.” Still they didn’t come. He went through the house, organizing an overnight bag, making sure he had the list of emergency telephone numbers. He ate a slice of bread and butter for lunch, and dozed at the kitchen table for an hour (having made sure all the doors and windows were locked first). He felt better afterwards. He needed a shower or bath, but didn’t like the idea of them coming in on him when he was in the middle of lathering his back. So he just had a quick wash instead, a lick and a spit.
By late afternoon, he was going stir crazy. He checked the windows again, set the alarm, and locked the house. He had his overnight bag with him. He went to the killing room and unpadlocked and unbolted both sets of doors. Those doors looked ordinary enough from the outside, but were paneled inside with beaten metal, an extra deterrent to intruders. In the small hallway outside the room proper, he knelt down and pulled at a long section of baseboard. It came away cleanly. Inside, set into the wall, was a long narrow metal box. Reeve unlocked it and pulled the flap down. Inside was an assortment of small arms. He had large-bore weapons, too, but kept those in a locked cabinet in what had been the farmhouse’s original pantry. He picked up one of the guns. It was wrapped in oiled cloth. What use was a killing room without weapons? In his Special Forces days, they’d almost always trained with live ammo. It was the only way you came to respect the stuff.
Reeve had live ammo for the handguns. He was holding a 9mm Beretta. Guns were always heavier than people expected. He didn’t know whether that was because most people equated guns with childhood, and childhood meant plastic replicas, or because TV and cinema were to blame, with their blithe gun-toting goodies and baddies, guys who could fire a bazooka and still go ten rounds with the world-champion warlord-whereas in real life they’d be checking into the emergency room with a dislocated shoulder.
The Beretta was just heavy enough to warn you it was lethal. In the killing room they used blank ammunition. Even blanks could give you powder burns. He’d seen weekend soldiers scared shitless, frozen with the gun in their hand like someone else’s turd, the explosion echoing in the chambers of their heart.
Maybe he needed a gun. Just to scare these people. But you could only scare someone if you were serious and if they could see exactly how serious you were by the look in your eyes. And he wouldn’t be serious if the gun wasn’t loaded…