The Straw Men 3-Book Thriller Collection: The Straw Men, The Lonely Dead, Blood of Angels

Nina left the house early, leaving a note saying she’d call. Zandt spent the morning pacing around the patio. Each morning he woke it was less likely that Sarah Becker was still alive. Knowing this did not open any doors.

He went over the theory he’d presented to Nina, and was unable to find fault with it. He knew it was largely speculation, and understood that he had his own reasons for clinging to the idea. If the man he had killed had been responsible for the abduction of the girls, had snatched them to hand them on to someone he knew would kill them, Zandt believed he would find a way of coming to terms with having killed him. The last two years of solitude had taught Zandt one thing, and taught it well: If you can live with yourself, the opinions of others can be withstood. He was aware that The Upright Man probably thought the same, but that didn’t change the fact.

Heavy coffee intake and the view gradually turned his hangover into a generic malaise that he could ignore. The kinks in his neck and back from a night on the couch had gone. The sea could do that for you, even at this distance.

At midday he had spiralled indoors in search of food. Nothing in the fridge. Nothing in the cupboards or the freezer. Zandt didn’t think he’d met a woman who didn’t even have a small pack of cookies in the house, or some bread in the freezer, ready for toasting. It seemed most women would live on toast, if they had the chance. At a loss, he found himself wandering around the living room, looking at the materials on the bookshelves. There were books on serial crimes, both popular and academic; collections of papers on forensic psychology; reams of photocopied case notes, all in folders, organized by state – an outright illegality. A few novels, none of them recent, and most written by people called Harris and Thompson and Connelly and King. Very little that wasn’t concerned with the dark side of human behaviour. It looked familiar, from the afternoons he had spent in the house in 1999, hours during which criminology had been the last thing on his mind. He had made his peace with this a long time ago. Jennifer had never found out, and the affair had affected neither what he felt for her nor the outcome of their marriage.

He took down one of the folders of case notes and absently flicked though it. The first section detailed the activities of a man called Gary Johnson, who had raped and murdered six elderly women in Louisiana in the mid-nineties. A note clipped to the front page recorded that Johnson was currently serving six life sentences in a prison Zandt knew would be a hell on earth: a dungeon full of dangerous men whose small seams of affection were usually reserved for their elderly mothers. It would be a miracle, in fact, if Johnson was still alive. One for the good guys. The next section held information about a case in Florida that, at the time of the most recent entries, had been ongoing. Seven young men missing.

One for the killers. One of many.

He took down another folder.

Two hours later he was sitting in the middle of the floor, surrounded by paper, when there was a knock at the door. He lifted his head, confused. It took another few raps before he realized what the sound was.

He opened the door to find a short man with bad hair standing outside. Behind him was a car that had once been gracious.

‘Cab,’ the man said.

‘I didn’t order a cab.’

‘I know you didn’t. The lady ordered it. She said for me to come here, pick you up. Take you. Everything very fast. At all times.’

‘What lady?’ He felt fuzzy, head full of what he’d been reading. Something within it was pulling at him.

The man grunted impatiently and rooted in his pocket. He pulled out a mangled piece of paper and angled it towards Zandt as he read it. ‘Nina is the lady. She say to tell you to hurry. You maybe found something, or she found something, a righteous man – I don’t understand that part. But we go now.’

‘Where?’

‘The airport, man. She said I do this very fast and she give me triple fare, and I need this money so can we leave now, for please?’

‘Wait here,’ Zandt said. He turned and went back inside. He picked up the phone and dialled Nina’s cell phone.

After two rings she answered. There was a lot of background noise, the hectoring, muffled sound of a voice on a public address system.

‘What’s going on?’ he said.

‘Are you in the cab?’

Her voice was excited, and for some reason he found this irritating. ‘No. What are you doing at LAX?’

‘I got a call from the guy I had monitoring the Web. We got a hit on “The Upright Man”.’

‘It’s three words, Nina. It could be an exhibition of Robert Mapplethorpe photographs. And presumably the Feds are already on the case.’

‘It wasn’t a Fed trace,’ she admitted, annoyed. ‘I did it independently.’

‘Right,’ Zandt said. ‘Figures.’

‘He logged the IP address of the computer that made the search, and hacked out the access line of the call. Come on, John. It’s the first time this has come up in two years. I never handed in the note you got. As far as the world at large is concerned, he’s still called The Delivery Boy.’

There was an explosion of noise from the handset, as someone bellowed another announcement at the other end.

Zandt waited for it to be over, and then said: ‘I told Michael Becker.’

‘The hit’s not from LA,’ Nina snapped.

‘Where, then. Where?’

‘Upstate. Some burg near the border with Oregon. A Holiday Inn.’

‘Have you called the local Bureau?’

‘The nearest SAC hates me. There’s no way he’ll send anybody out for me.’

Right, Zandt thought. And in the unlikely event that this turns out to be more than a wild goose chase, you want to be the one making the arrest. Through the door he could see the cab driver still waiting, hopping from foot to foot.

‘Too risky, Nina.’

‘I’ll get some local cops for an escort. Whatever. Look John, there’s a plane leaving in forty minutes. I’m going to be on it, and I bought two tickets. Are you coming or not?’

‘No,’ he said, and put down the phone.

He went back to the door and told the driver he wasn’t going anywhere, giving him enough money to make him go away.

Then he swore, grabbed his coat and a handful of files, and was able to throw himself in front of the cab before it left the driveway. He told himself that he had enough on his conscience without adding Nina to it.

That it was nothing to do with wanting to protect her.

Chapter 24 (#ulink_476b43d2-3105-5ff9-81f1-054f43a1e81f)

When I woke at nine the next morning, sprawled over the bed as if dropped from a great height, I found Bobby had left a note on the bedside table. It suggested I meet him in the lobby as early as possible. I showered myself into a semblance of humanity and headed down there, shambling along the corridors like a sloth forced to walk on its hind legs, a sloth well past its best. The night’s sleep had made me feel different, though not necessarily better. My thoughts were blurred and sluggish, as if full of crushed ice and an unfamiliar alcoholic drink.

The lobby was mainly empty, just some couple standing over by the desk. Soft music was playing in the background. Bobby was sitting in state in the middle of a long couch, reading the local paper.

‘Yo,’ I mumbled, when I was standing in front of him.

He looked up. ‘You look like shit, my friend.’

‘And you’re as annoyingly spruce as ever. What’s the deal? You climb into an egg each night and emerge reborn? Or is it an exercise thing? Do tell. I want to be just like you.’

Outside the sky was cloudless and bright, and it was all I could do to stop myself from yelping. I limped across the parking lot behind Bobby, shielding my eyes.

‘Your phone’s on? And juiced?’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Though frankly I don’t see the point. Either Lazy Ed hasn’t been home, in which case we’re wasting our time heading out there, or he has and doesn’t want to talk.’

‘You are beink very negative, Vard,’ Bobby observed in a Germanic accent. ‘Hand me the keys. I’ll drive.’