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

‘Put it away,’ Zandt suggested.

‘Fuck you.’ The agent held the gun in both hands. Meanwhile Nina climbed out of the other side of the car, stepping carefully to avoid the mud. ‘I’m telling you,’ Fielding said evenly. ‘Back off.’

‘It’s okay,’ Nina said. ‘Shit. There go the shoes.’

‘Fuck it is. He tried to force us off the road.’

‘He probably just wanted to talk. It can get lonely out here.’

‘He can talk to my dick,’ Fielding said. ‘You – put your hands on the car.’

Zandt remained where he was until Nina made it round the front of the Lexus and onto the road.

‘Are you sure it’s him?’ he said.

‘You think I’d come all this way otherwise?’

‘I never understood a single thing you did. At any stage. Just answer the question.’

‘Will you just get your hands the fuck on the hood of the car?’ Fielding shouted. There was the soft, mechanical sound of a safety being flicked off.

Zandt and Nina turned to look at him. The agent was full-on furious. Nina glanced up the road, where a large white Ford that shrieked ‘rental’ was headed toward them, driving slowly so the inhabitants could get a good view of the lake in what remained of the light.

‘Easy,’ she suggested. ‘You want to explain a friendly-fire incident to your SAC?’

Fielding glanced over his shoulder. Saw the car pull over into a vantage point, about a hundred yards away. He lowered the gun. ‘You going to tell me what the hell is going on?’

Nina shook her head curtly, then turned back to Zandt. ‘I’m sure, John.’

‘So why are you here instead of there?’

She shrugged, a habitual motion. ‘Actually, I don’t know. Shouldn’t be, and I most certainly shouldn’t be talking to you. You want to walk on me, or shall we go someplace and talk?’

Zandt looked away, across at the flat surface of the lake. Parts of it were black, others a frozen grey. On the other side was a little clearing and a wooden holiday home, with plenty of cords of wood stacked up against the side. The structure didn’t look prepackaged or catalogue-bought: more like someone, or two someones, had sat for many evenings somewhere hectic and sketched it out on pads brought home from the office, desperate for some other story to be in. Not for the first time, Zandt wished he was someone else. Maybe the guy living in that house. Or one of the tourists up the way, who were now standing in a clump by the water and looking across at the trees, their brightly coloured anoraks making them look like a small herd of traffic lights.

Eventually he nodded. Nina walked across to Fielding, and spoke to him for a while. Within a minute, the agent’s gun was back where it should be. By the time Zandt turned away from the lake Fielding was back in the car, face composed.

Nina waited for Zandt at his car, a large file under her arm. ‘I told him I’d be going with you,’ she said.

As Nina got in his car, Zandt stepped over to the Lexus. Fielding looked up at him through the window with an unreadable expression, and started the engine. Then he pressed a button and wound the window down.

‘Guess I’ll let it go, this time,’ he said.

Zandt smiled. It was a thin smile, and bore little resemblance to anything caused by merriment. ‘There is only this time.’

Fielding cocked his head. ‘And that’s supposed to mean what?’

‘That if we meet again and you pull a gun on me, some pretty lake is going to have little scraps of Fed floating in it. And I don’t give a shit if it fucks up the ecosystem.’

Zandt turned away, leaving the agent open-mouthed.

Then Fielding reversed rapidly, kicking a shower of grit into the air. He gunned the engine and sped past, pausing only to lean across to display the middle finger of his right hand.

When Zandt got into his car he saw Nina was sitting watching, arms folded and one eyebrow raised.

‘Your people skills just keep on getting better,’ she said. ‘Maybe you should teach a course or something. Write a book. I’m serious. It’s a gift. Don’t fight it, share it. Be everything you can be.’

‘Nina, shut up.’

He drove in silence back up to Pimonta. Nina sat with the file on her lap. By the time they got back to the village it was dark, and a few more residents’ cars had appeared. Lights were on in many of the windows. He parked up in front of the inn, turned off the engine. He made no move to open his door, so Nina stayed as she was.

‘Do you still want to eat?’ she asked, eventually.

The car was getting cold. Two couples had already wandered past the car, on their way to the main building, their faces round with the contented prospect of food.

He stirred, as if returning from a long distance. ‘Up to you.’

She tried for cheerful: ‘I’m easy.’

‘Not out here you’re not. Supper’s six-thirty until nine. We eat now or in the morning. Breakfast’s seven until eight. And small.’

‘What – there’s nowhere you can get a burger in between? Or this place can’t lay on a sandwich a little later?’

Zandt turned his head, and this time his smile looked almost real. ‘You’re not from around here, are you?’

‘No, thank God. Neither are you. Where we come from you can eat when you want. You hand over money and they give you food. It’s modern and convenient. Or have you been in the country so long you’ve forgotten?’

He didn’t answer. Abruptly she dropped the file in the foot well and opened the door. ‘Wait here,’ she said.

Zandt waited, watching out of the windshield as she marched purposefully toward the main building. The hunger he’d felt after the day’s walking was long gone. He felt chilled, inside and out. He was unaccustomed to dealing with someone who knew him, and felt awkward, his thoughts and feelings out of sync. He had spent a long time on the move, as background texture: the man at the counter who was due for a refill; the guy who was working out the back for a couple days; someone at a wind-swept gas station, staring at nothing over the top of his car as he filled it up, and who then pulled back out onto the road and was soon gone. For long periods he had thought of almost nothing at all, aided by a complete absence of any hooks into his past existence. Nina’s presence changed that. He wished he had moved on a day earlier, that she had arrived to find him gone. But Zandt knew more about her doggedness than most people, and knew she would have kept on going once she’d set her mind to find him.

He looked at the file lying in the foot well. It was thick. He felt no desire to touch it, still less to see what was inside. Most of it he knew too well already. The rest would be more of the same. The feelings it inspired were a rank mixture of numbness and horror, razor blades wrapped in cotton wool.

He heard the sound of a door closing, and looked up to see Nina walking back from the main part of the inn. She was carrying something in one hand. He got out of the car. It was much colder now, the sky leaden. Snow.

‘Jesus,’ she said, her breath clouding around her face. ‘You weren’t kidding. Food on a need-to-eat basis only. I got this though.’ She held up a bottle of Irish whiskey. ‘Said it was needed in evidence.’

‘I don’t really drink any more,’ he said.

‘I do,’ she said. ‘You can sit and watch.’ She opened the door and retrieved the file. Zandt caught her checking its position on the floor, as if to see whether he’d taken a look in her absence.

‘Nina, why are you here?’

‘Come to save you,’ she said. ‘Welcome you back into the world.’

‘And if I don’t want to come back?’

‘You’re already back. You just don’t know it yet.’