Jigsaw (9 page)

Streik picked up his glass. ‘I keep to myself, kid. I don't exactly ooze the milk of human kindness.'

The German looked puzzled. ‘Milk?'

Streik said, ‘I'm a sociopath.'

The kid stubbed out his cigarette. Jacob Streik seemed to represent some form of challenge for him, a conversational hurdle. ‘Ah. You have been drinking more than a little. I understand.'

‘You understand nothing,' said Streik.

‘No, I have been many times drunk myself. I understand.'

‘OK. So you understand. Leave it at that. You're overflowing with understanding. Fine. Great.' Streik stared at the kid and wondered if those blue eyes concealed a murderous intent. They might. How could you be sure? He needed something more fortifying, something with more bite than this rotgut.

He went to the bar, ordered a cognac, carried it back to his table. He was well down the road now. He was on his way. Soon he could become garrulous, even sentimental. When you had too much to drink you couldn't predict the outcome. Morosity or good cheer – it was too close to call. He looked at the kid and heard himself say, ‘Listen. I got my worries.'

‘We all have our worries,' said the German. ‘Tomorrow is always another day, yes?' The young man smiled at Jacob Streik and then, as if encouraged by the American's sudden slight softening of manner, moved closer to Streik's table.

‘A philosopher,' Streik remarked. ‘Heavy.'

‘I think a great deal.'

‘You and me both.'

‘What occupies your thoughts?'

‘Death,' Streik said. He heard the word coming out of his mouth, a sound ferried on a fissure of stale air, and he couldn't believe he'd embarked on a conversation with a stranger. But it happened, and it had happened before, and sometimes he was powerless to stop it. Drink was a slipstream and you were carried along on it and you had times when it made you babble. Haywire.

‘The great mystery,' said the German.

‘Mystery shit. You die and that's it. Welcome to the worm factory.'

‘There is no afterlife for you?'

‘Who needs another life?'

Streik downed the cognac. He was dogged by the feeling he should get up and split. He looked inside his empty glass. Should he have another? The German answered the question for him by buying him a second cognac.

‘Here's to you,' Streik said, raising the glass.

‘Tell me this. Why do you dwell on death when life is all around us?' The young man waved a hand airily. ‘So much is good. So much is worth living for. These are exciting times in Europe.'

‘Yeah? You tell me what's worth living for, kid. You got Serbs and Croats mutilating each other. You got Nazis in Germany. You got this ethnic group choking that ethnic group, you got total corruption in Italy, you got the problems in Ireland.' Streik ticked off each of these with a finger upon his sturdy thumb.

‘There are problems, I admit,' said the German. ‘But they will be overcome in time.'

‘Yeah. Onward to glory.' Streik wondered if he was talking too loud. ‘You'll lose the Pollyana outlook when you get older. When you look right in death's eye, you'll see it differently.'

Streik was overwhelmed by the urge to get in touch with Bryce. Bryce understood things, Bryce would know the way he felt. Harcourt had that gift of making you pause and take an inventory. Jacob, he'd say. You're yielding to fear. There's too much fear around.

Streik stared at the young man, who was scratching his beard. His suspicions flared up afresh.

‘Are you the one?'

‘Sorry. I do not understand the question,' the German said.

‘Why not? It's simple enough. Have you been sent?'

‘Sent by what?'

‘You know what I'm talking about.'

‘No. I am sorry.'

‘Right. Skip it, skip it.' Streik felt outside of himself again, as if there were two Jacobs, the one who drank too much, the other a phantom who saw things in a critical light. Stop drinking, the phantom would say. You need a clear head. This sober puritanical Streik, this vigilant
doppelgänger
, watched in absolute horror as the drunken wayward Jacob took out the pistol and showed it to the young German and said, ‘I carry this. OK? If you get any funny thoughts. OK?'

‘Funny thoughts? I am sorry. I am not following you.'

‘I don't have to explain.'

‘Americans and their guns,' the German said sadly. ‘It is a long destructive love affair.' He appeared not to be shocked by the sight of the pistol, which Jacob Streik had already tucked back in his jacket.

‘I just thought you should know, kid.' Streik felt good about showing the weapon even as the voice in his head told him it was foolhardy.

‘And am I meant to be impressed?'

‘Yeah. You should be.' Streik shut his eyes a second. There was some kind of discordant music going through his skull. The wine and cognac chorus. The shrieking sisters, the sirens.

‘Very well. If you wish. Then I am impressed.'

‘Good.' Streik felt he'd settled something, some vague dispute. Then, filled with thoughts of Bryce, good old Bryce, he wondered if there was a phone in this joint. Clumsily shoving his chair back, he stepped toward the bar. He looked at the patron and mimed somebody on a telephone, inscribing circles in the air with his index finger and holding a clenched fist to his ear.

‘A telephone,' said Streik. ‘You know?'

The man pointed to an alcove at the other side of the room. Streik clattered into a table on his way. He was aware of the patron and the German chatting in French behind his back. He caught a word here and there. They were saying something about Americans, and it didn't sound complimentary. They both laughed, and Streik wheeled round to look at them. They were staring at him.

‘What's your problem?' he asked. He tried to make eye contact with the pair, but he was having visual difficulties. Eventually he managed to focus on the German. The kid smiled at him.

‘There is no problem,' the German said.

‘Yeah, well.' Jacob Streik let the matter drift. If they wanted to badmouth Americans, hey, that wasn't his worry. He could criticize Europeans just as well. But he had other things on his mind. He turned away, went into the alcove, picked up the telephone. He spoke to an operator who had a masterly command of English. He gave her two numbers – his credit card and Harcourt's number in London.

He heard Bryce Harcourt's voice. ‘At the sound of the tone, leave your name and number. Thank you.'

Goddam machines, Streik thought. ‘Bryce. This is Jake Streik. Listen. Listen. If you're there, pick up. OK. I need to talk with you. How are things holding up at your end? I got problems. Listen. I'll get back to you later tonight if I can. You want my advice, get the fuck outta London. Get away from The Undertakers, understand? Walk away from all that shit. If you don't you're a dead man … Bryce? You there? Bryce?' He shrugged and put the receiver down. He was disappointed. You needed a human being and what did you get instead – a bunch of electronic impulses.

He didn't leave the alcove at once. He looked at the two men in the bar. The patron was idly staring out into the street. The German kid was doing the same. In a distorted kind of way, it struck Streik that they had the tense attitude of men waiting for something to happen. There was a conspiratorial quietness in their bearing.

Maybe the German
was
the one. Maybe the German had followed him here. And somehow the patron was involved, even though this was an association even Streik couldn't really make.

He moved out of the alcove. The kid was looking at him now. Streik heard something go off inside his head. A blown fuse. A firework. The kid was it. He had to be. All those questions. That superficial friendliness. None of that rang true. They'd sent a killer with a backpack.

He returned to his table with as much careful dignity as he could summon. He sat down, picked up the remains of his cognac, turned the glass round in his fingers. Get it straight, Jake. The German might be nothing more than a student doing Europe on the cheap. But why take chances? Why run risks you don't have to? He patted the pistol and felt its comforting weight against his chest. He'd get up, walk back to the Saab, drive away. If the German followed him outside, then that would prove his suspicion justified. He finished his drink and stood up. His balance was a delicate thing. He felt like an overweight stork one-legged on a tightrope.

‘Right. I'm outta here,' he said.

The German got up. ‘It has been interesting to talk.'

Streik backed toward the door. Then he was out in the street. The mist had dissolved and a white sun hung behind grey clouds. It was cold, bitterly so. He walked past the post office. He was hurrying now. I can't trust anybody, he thought.

Just as he reached the corner of the lane where he'd left the Saab he heard the kid coming behind him. He didn't look back, he kept going, and when he reached the car the kid was coming up the lane toward him.

‘You want something?' Streik said.

The German looked apologetic. ‘I am hesitant to ask this. You may find my request impolite. But I am wondering if there is a chance of a lift.'

‘A lift,' Streik said.

‘I have no particular destination in mind.'

‘Don't take this personally,' Streik said. ‘I don't want company.'

‘I have not found the hitch-hiking around here very easy,' said the kid. He had his backpack hanging by a strap from one shoulder. ‘I was hopeful of hospitality. American hospitality. Forgive me.'

‘Yeah. You're forgiven.'

The kid smiled and said, ‘I have the strange impression you think I am somebody else, yes?'

‘Maybe,' said Streik.

‘Somebody you are in no hurry to meet.'

Streik stared at the young man. He was confused. His mind was in a state of collapse.

‘Allow me to reassure you,' the kid said. He put a hand in the pocket of his coat. Streik had a rush of disconnected images, the kid's fine-boned fingers, the flight of a rook from a bare wintry tree, a broken stone wall some feet away, the tang of cognac in his mouth – everything was infused with menace. The kid plunged his hand into his pocket and Streik pulled out the pistol. The young German had an astonished look.

‘There is no need,' he said.

Streik fired once into the kid's chest. The German dropped to the ground and lay with his face pressed against the backpack, which had been dragged from his shoulder by the motion of his body. Streik looked at how the kid's open mouth touched a triangular cloth badge embroidered with the word
Copenhagen
, a strange kiss of sorts. Streik quickly unlocked the car. He had to get away from this place. Fast. But even as he moved he had a feeling of slow motion, of suspension.

He opened the door on the driver's side then looked down at the German. There was blood on the guy's blond beard. Something had spilled out of the coat pocket, a black eelskin wallet. Streik bent, picked it up, knowing at one level of awareness that he didn't have time to go fishing through the contents of a wallet, but he was curious. He saw a laminated ID card with the name Mueller, W., and a bug-eyed mug-shot of the kid. The card had been issued by the University of Utrecht. Streik dropped the wallet, got in the car, drove until the lane joined a narrow road where there were signs of place names that meant nothing to him. Just drive. Just drive and drive. OK. So the kid had a student ID card. But that was plastic. And Streik knew you could make plastic say anything. Anything you liked.

When he'd driven twenty miles or so he stopped the car and ran a hand across his clammy face and wondered what he'd done.

SEVEN

LONDON

D
OWN IN THE TUNNEL,
SOME HUNDRED YARDS FROM THE PLATFORM,
arc-lights had been rigged up, illuminating the ruins of the carriage. The photograph Pagan had seen in Dublin hadn't prepared him for the reality. The carriage, disengaged from the others that made up the train, lay on one side, crumpled, gashed, windowless. It might have been picked up and crushed in some massive iron fist. It resembled an insane sculpture, the work of a madman armed with blowlamps and dynamite. Rails, buckled in the blast, had been cut back by firemen; here and there you could see the stumps of twisted metal that remained.

Openings had been burned in the bodywork of the carriage, hatches through which the dead could be brought and carried back to the platform. Pagan had seen the body-bags laid out in depressing rows. He'd seen men examining the remains. There was a distinctive smell he didn't want to identify: sickening and constant, deathly.

He put his hands in the pockets of his coat and shivered. It was cold and damp in the tunnel. He tried to picture the rush-hour crowd hurrying into the carriage, the suddenness of death. Would there have been an instant of recognition, a split second of shock? Or had the doomed passengers been engulfed before they realized anything? He shivered again. Forensic experts, those archaeologists of death, sifted the debris.

John Downey emerged from shadows. ‘I understand all this is your baby now,' Downey said.

Pagan looked at Downey, at the absurd little moustache. Downey was a clod in Pagan's book, a plodder with a nasty streak. He wore a drab overcoat and a dun scarf.

‘How many dead?' Pagan asked.

‘A hundred and seven.'

‘And no survivors.'

Downey said, ‘Look at the bloody thing. How could anyone have lived through that?'

Pagan stepped closer to the carriage. ‘How's identification going?'

‘Mainly we're relying on people who think they had relatives on this train. Otherwise ED would be practically impossible. We're talking about some serious burn victims. Also dismemberment.'

Dismemberment, Pagan thought. He considered how Downey had added the word almost as an afterthought.