Joe Country полностью

Snow had blurred the boundaries between road and verge, casting all it covered in a strange new light. Louisa parked at the top of a lane running down to a crossroads, fields in all directions, and before her headlights died noted that the fenceposts they illuminated were the aftermath of battle: a row of spears, protruding from graves. And then just fenceposts again. With the car quiet the world became huge, and mostly dark, though a dark blanketed by soft white numbness. There’d been no traffic on the road. Locals knew better than to venture out in this.

Earlier, she’d called Emma from a pub on Pegsea’s High Street. Emma, it would be fair to say, hadn’t been delighted with her updated request.

“You want me to talk to him again?”

“You can do it on the phone this time.”

“That’s still talking. You get that, right? That talking to someone on the phone is still talking?”

“But it beats being up close and personal.”

“You’re actually in Wales now?”

“Yep.”

“You’re insane. I heard on the radio they were expecting another six inches.”

“Probably a man said that. In which case it’ll be more like two.”

“What’s it doing now?”

She’d looked out of the window. “You ever see The Day After Tomorrow?”

“God.”

“Look, I know Roddy. If he tracked this thing for you last night, he’ll still be tracking it now. It’ll take him like five seconds to update the coordinates. Five seconds. Max. And I need this, Emma. The kid’s not at the cottage. Doesn’t look like he’s been there.”

“God,” said Emma again. Then: “Two spa days. And you come with me.”

“Deal.”

“I’ll need both,” Emma grumbled. “Just to get the feel of his eyes off my skin.”

She called back within the hour. Roddy Ho, Louisa surmised, was keen to impress Emma Flyte.

“Okay,” Emma had said. “Did we say four spa days?”

“Cumulatively,” Louisa agreed. “He manage it?”

“You got a pencil?”

The coordinates Emma gave her were for Lucas Harper’s Fitbit, in real time.

“And he’s pretty static.”

“Hope he’s not dead in a ditch.”

There was a pause.

Emma said, “Is that a likely scenario?”

“Just a turn of phrase.”

“What are you getting into here?”

“Nothing. He’s a missing kid, that’s all. I’ve never even met him.”

“And yet there you are, in Wales.”

“Like I said. I knew his father.”

The numbers squiggled on the scrap of paper in front of her meant nothing by themselves. Were meaningless, without a map to make them solid.

“Call me later,” Emma said. “When you find him.”

“Okay.”

“Or if you don’t. Call me anyway. Nine o’clock.”

“Nine o’clock,” Louisa agreed.

And now she was here, an hour short of that deadline; her map app—map app, she liked that; it looped in her mind: map app, map app—having pinpointed the Fitbit as being within a couple of hundred yards. She’d been expecting a building, a pub most likely, but there was nothing; just a junction at the foot of a slope, around which some trees had gathered. More woodland lay across the snow-covered fields. And somewhere beyond them was the sea.

A crossroads in the dark. An insignificant junction: what on earth was Lucas Harper doing there? And where was he, anyway? Emma’s words came back to her, What are you getting into? That Lucas didn’t want to be found was a given, else why would he leave his phone behind? But even so, this was a strange hiding place. It looked like somewhere you’d arrange a handover, or an ambush. Maybe better to approach on foot, as quietly as she could manage. And maybe better not to be totally unprepared.

From the boot she took her tiny backpack and her all-purpose tool: a monkey wrench, once used in battle by Shirley Dander. And as long as she was being careful, best not to stride down the middle of the road. She’d walk by the fenceposts, where the snow was deeper, but a scraggly runt of a hedge offered cover. But as she made her way down the slope, something snagged at her: fuck!—her new ski jacket. A triangular tear on the right breast now, a flap of fabric hanging loose. This was what you got, doing favours for strangers. Damn it to hell, she thought. Damn it to hell.

Wrench in hand, and thoroughly pissed off, Louisa Guy made her way down the slope to the tree-marked junction below.

When his buzzer buzzed, breaking sleep, River assumed it was a malfunction. His buzzer never buzzed. Buzzers were for friends he didn’t have; maybe bringing a bottle, or asking if he fancied a walk. For a life in which he’d throw sticks for dogs and wear a loosely-knotted scarf, like in a movie montage. But before he could get his head any further round that, his buzzer buzzed again.