Though both men, having spent a day in her uninterrupted company, had worked up a comprehensive list of things that bothered Shirley, neither volunteered a probable top ten.
“What bothers me is how come she never called it in. I thought that’s what you did after what you just said. Hostile contact. You call it in before you go dark.”
It had been bothering River too.
If it worried J.K. Coe, he hid it well. “We’re going that way,” he said, pointing down the road. “We split at the next junction.”
River looked at Shirley, who was climbing into Ho’s car. “Be careful.”
“Is that ‘be careful’ as in ‘here, why don’t you take the gun’?”
“No,” said River.
The two men set off down the road on foot, while Shirley executed a four-hundred-point turn. It was snowing again by the time she was headed in the right direction.
So here came Frank, and yes, he made Anton repeat everything he’d just said. And then stood gazing across the landscape: at the little town not far below, blinking into light, and the estuary beyond, on which boats were now bobbing on the rising tide. Earlier, they’d lain on the snow-dusted silt like discarded toys. The whole country, come to that, had the air of a forgotten nursery.
He said, “So they haven’t skipped the area yet.”
“I don’t think so.”
“You don’t think so because thinking so means you’ve screwed up, and screwing up means you don’t get paid.”
“Hey, we’re here, on the ground. We get paid.”
“Yeah, take it to a fucking tribunal. Two nights they’ve been hiding up a tree. You’re supposed to be good at this.”
“There’s a lot of countryside,” said Lars. “And there are only two of us.”
“Where’s Cyril?”
Cyril was still back at the barn. Concussion or not, he was having a laugh.
Frank shook his head. He’d been up all night too, scouting the woods around Caerwyss Hall, holding to the notion that a spooked kid trying to lose himself would head for familiar territory. His own original plan had been simpler: give the kid the cash, and tag the bag. That way they could pick him up soon as they liked. But the decision hadn’t been his to make. That was the trouble with the rich: they looked to stay that way by keeping both hands on their money. Or maybe they just didn’t trust Frank to bring it back afterwards.
It was snowing again. If you stared directly up at the sky, it was like watching a cathedral collapse very slowly.
He said, “Well, if they’d gone to the cops, we’d know about it by now. There’d have been activity. So they’re staying dark, and back-up’s not in a hurry to get here. I haven’t heard any choppers, have you?” They hadn’t. “Like I said, this is Slough House. Maybe the Park figures it’s cheaper to cut ’em loose, save the cost of a pension down the line. But if the cavalry don’t turn up soon they’re gonna figure that out for themselves. That’s when they’ll make their run.”
Anton glanced at Lars, but Lars was paying close attention.
Frank went on, “You lost them in the town last night. They’re not gonna try and head out of town on a footpath, not in this weather. The road only goes two ways. It heads towards the coast, which is basically a dead end, or it heads back towards civilisation. They’ll figure we’ve got that one blocked.”
“The three of us?”
“Oh, pardon me, did you fill in a questionnaire? Because how else would they know how many of us there are?”
Anton didn’t answer.
Frank said, “So let’s try being methodical. You’re on the lam, there’s snow everywhere, you’re up to your fucking eyeballs. Where you gonna hide?”
“Find an empty house.”
“But you get spotted breaking in, that’s like sending up a flare. And you clearly don’t want the cops out, or else that’s where you’d have gone in the first place.”
“Needle in a fuckin’ haystack,” Anton said.
“And you know how to find one of those?”
“Burn the haystack,” Anton muttered.
Frank said, “There’s boats on the estuary. And boats mean boathouses. And there are barns. You found one, right? How hard can it be? They’ve spent last night holed up in a handy barn, and once the roads loosen up, and traffic starts moving, they’ll make tracks. We need to find them before that happens.”
“We need more men.”
“Yeah, and who’s gonna pay them? So stop whining and look at barns and boats. Start from the pickup point and work inland. I’ll do the same, heading towards the coast. Lars, do the estuary. Call in every hour. And call Cyril, tell him to get off his fucking sickbed. That all okay with you?” He was looking at Anton. “Or you got a better plan?”
Anton said, “Let’s just do it, shall we?”
