“Now, I have to admit, Inspector, this was a first for me. But I’ve done stranger things.”
“Like what?”
“Oh, stuff I can’t tell you about.”
“Are you trying to tell me you’re with Intelligence?” says Daniel. “You’re a secret agent or something?”
Rhuari thinks about it. “Well, yes,” he allows. “And then again, no.”
Daniel stands up. “I think we’ll continue this conversation when you’ve decided to stop telling fairy stories.”
Rhuari grimaces. “Ah, sit yourself down and stop interrupting, Inspector,” he says amiably, and Daniel finds himself sitting down again without the slightest memory of having done it. He stares at the young man on the other side of the table.
“Now then,” Rhuari muses, “where were we? Oh, right. Yes. Fairy stories. Well, there are times when it’s useful for my employers to send me and my friends to do a job here. But to be honest with you, it’d be counterproductive to have us stay here all the time. We’re sort of high-maintenance. No, for the everyday stuff, the meat-and-potatoes stuff, the occasional odd-job, they like to recruit native talent. And that’s where Mr Mitchell comes in.”
It has become very still in the interview room. Spode is writing on his notepad… No, now Daniel looks more closely, Spode is doodling on his notepad, like an absent-minded professor sitting in on a particularly dull lecture. Daniel glances at Paweł, who is staring at the wall above Rhuari’s head with a faraway thoughtful expression on his face. Neither Paweł nor Spode seems interested in the conversation. Or even aware that a conversation is going on. Daniel feels a prickle of apprehension in his stomach.
“Mr Mitchell was a bad man,” Rhuari continues. “But my employers, well, their general rule of thumb is that morality’s just something that happens to other people. Over the years, Mr Mitchell did some useful work for them. So when he had his little contretemps a few years ago and asked my employers for asylum, they agreed to grant it him.” He leans forward a little and lowers his voice conspiratorially. “Actually, between you and me and the gatepost, he paid them for it. My employers aren’t stupid. And they’re easily as venal as the next man.” He sits back again. “What you have to keep in mind is that time in the place where my employers live isn’t quite the same as it is here. You could live there forever and always be young. Yes, Inspector, you’ve heard of that place, haven’t you? People still tell stories about it and sing songs, and that really is rather sweet, you know?”
Rhuari’s musical voice, the rhythm of his story, the strange sense that some of the details of the case — the dead man’s address, for example — are starting to get hazy, are all combining into a strange, soothing state of mind. It does not occur to Daniel to disbelieve anything Rhuari is telling him.
He makes an effort and says, “His daughter.”
“Well, yes.” For a moment, Rhuari looks disapproving. “Mr Mitchell thought of himself as a feudal warlord, really. And he thought his association with my employers made him superhuman. Which it did in the end, I suppose. All he thought about was his own survival. He never even asked for asylum for the rest of his family. Not that my employers would have granted it. But he never even asked.”
“He came back,” says Daniel.
Rhuari nods. “And we may never know why. Someone else, I would have said he had second thoughts or he wanted to see his daughter, but as I said, Mr Mitchell wasn’t wired that way. Possibly there was something here that he wanted.” He shrugs. “He was warned what would happen if he came back. My employers told him that as soon as he was here the years would catch up with him very quickly.”
“They don’t seem to be catching up with you,” Daniel says dreamily.
Rhuari nods. “Yes, well, I’m a lot younger than Mr Mitchell,” he says. “And of course, I’m not human, strictly speaking.”
Daniel makes another effort. “No one is ever going to believe this,” he says.
Rhuari shrugs again. “By this time tomorrow there won’t be anything for them to believe.” He glances at Spode, looks at Paweł, both of them lost in their own reveries. Away with the fairies, Big Sam used to say when Daniel was daydreaming as a boy. Rhuari looks at Daniel and smiles. “People don’t want to remember, in general. It’s an effort — so much stuff to try and keep track of, some of it not very nice. Much easier to forget.”
“Particularly if someone helps.”
Rhuari sighs. “Sometimes there are situations which need… tidying up. Things which might be problematical for my employers but don’t warrant their direct intervention. Direct intervention is rare — and really you ought to be grateful for that. Most of the time, it falls to people like me to tuck in the loose ends.”
“There are documents,” says Daniel. “Computer files.”
Rhuari holds up his hands and wiggles his fingers. “We always move with the times.”
Daniel looks at Paweł and Spode and wonders what’s going on in their heads at the moment. He says, “Why are you telling me all this?”
Rhuari grins. “Because I have something you need.”
“You’ve got nothing I need.”
“Ah, now.” Rhuari leans forward. “Think about that a little, Inspector.”
“So who killed him?” Daniel asks.
“Who?” says Rhuari.
Daniel jerks his thumb towards the back of the van.
“Oh.” Rhuari smiles. “Well, from what I can gather, Mr Mitchell was admirably circumspect for the first couple of weeks after he came back. My employers told him where to find his daughter, and he moved in with her and kept his head down. But Mr Mitchell was not the sort of man to hide himself away. He wanted to have a look at his old kingdom, and while he was out and about someone recognised him.”
“Gordon Cope.”
Rhuari takes his hands off the steering wheel and claps, and while he does so the van slows down, brakes, waits to let an oncoming bus pass, and then makes a right turn, all on its own. It’s not actually a van at all, Rhuari told him when they left Ballymena Street. It’s more of a metaphor for a van. Daniel has decided, in order to maintain his sanity, that he’s going to keep thinking of it as a van.
“So the old man let Cope into the house? Why would he do that?”
Rhuari takes hold of the steering wheel again. “I think you’re going to have to resign yourself to never solving this case, Inspector,” he says. “One of the people involved is dead, and the other one can’t remember anything about it. This time tomorrow it’ll be as if it never happened.”
“What about the daughter? Have you visited her?”
Rhuari looks sad. “I’m afraid Mrs Wright isn’t going to regain consciousness.” He glances at Daniel. “No, that doesn’t have anything to do with me, Inspector. That’s just life.”
They’re having this conversation around Big Sam Snow, who’s sitting between them in the front seat of the van staring out through the windscreen with the same look of distant concentration with which he used to look out of the window of his ward.
Daniel looks at his father and says, “We’re Jewish.”
“Ah,” Rhuari says with a wink, “but are you Catholic Jews or Protestant Jews?” He chuckles and shakes his head. “Why do you think it matters?”
“Aren’t we the wrong religion or something?”
Rhuari gives an astonished little bark of laughter. “At least you believe in something, Inspector. Your average little fecker these days can’t even be bothered.” He looks out through the windscreen. The buildings are thinning out now; they’re passing through one of the city’s modest little suburbs. Tidy houses with tidy gardens. “You’re an outsider, Inspector, and we work best with outsiders. You’re a policeman, you’re Jewish, your Dad’s a Brit, you’re not married. All you do is work and sleep, and if you’ll excuse me saying so, I don’t think you sleep a lot. I wasn’t sent here to recruit people, I was sent to tidy up the mess Mr Mitchell left behind. But I made a command decision; we don’t often interact with people in your position and you might come in handy. Don’t let yourself think we’re doing this out of the goodness of our hearts. You will wind up paying for this, one day.” He glances over at Daniel. “Ach, don’t look like that, Inspector. We do you a favour, you do us a favour. How can that hurt?”