Ли Чайлд - Past Tense

‘What happened?’

‘Bill showed up in Ryantown, like he often did, out of nowhere, and for his first night we came down here, to the jazz lounge. There was a band we liked. They usually let us in. We were walking back to where we hid our bikes, and then all of a sudden the kid came walking towards us. He ignored Bill and started tormenting me on my own. Because he knew me. He was probably starting up again where he left off the last time. But Bill was hearing this stuff for the very first time. He couldn’t believe it. I got it to where we could walk away, but Bill didn’t come with me. The bomb went off. He took the kid apart.’

‘Then what?’

‘Then it became a different story. The kid put out a kind of death warrant. Bill started carrying brass knuckles. There were a couple of incidents. A couple of would-be friends, trying to make their bones. We figured rich kids got that a lot. Bill kept the emergency room busy. He sent the would-be friends their way. Then it was a background thing for a while. Bill was in and out of Ryantown. Then it blew up again. One night they ended up all alone, face to face. The first I knew about it was Bill showing up later, asking for a favour.’

‘He wanted to borrow your birth certificate, to join the Marines.’

Stan nodded.

‘He needed to bury the name William Reacher. He felt he had to do it. He needed the trail to go cold. It was a homicide, after all.’

‘And he needed to be a year older than he really was,’ Reacher said. ‘That’s what was wrong with the story he told. He said he ran away and joined the Marines at seventeen. No doubt that’s true, in and of itself. But he couldn’t have done it if the Marines knew he was seventeen. They wouldn’t have taken him. Not then. They already had too many people. It was September 1945. The war was over. They wouldn’t want a seventeen-year-old. Two years earlier, sure, no problem at all. They were fighting in the Pacific. They needed to keep the conveyor belt going. But not any more. On the other hand, an eighteen-year-old was always entitled to volunteer. So he needed your ID.’

Stan nodded again.

‘We thought it would make him safe,’ he said. ‘And it did, I guess. The cops gave up. I left Ryantown soon afterwards. I went birdwatching in South America and stayed there forty years. When I got home I had to sign up for all kinds of new things. I used the same birth certificate. I wondered what would happen if the system said the name Stan Reacher was already taken. But it all worked out fine.’

Reacher nodded.

‘Thank you for explaining,’ he said.

‘What happened to him?’ Stan said. ‘I never saw him again.’

‘He became a pretty good Marine. He fought in Korea and Vietnam. He served in all kinds of other places. He married a French-woman. Her name was Josephine. They got along. They had two boys. He died thirty years ago.’

‘Did he have a happy life?’

‘He was a Marine. Happy was not in the field manual. Sometimes he was satisfied. That was about as good as it got. But he was never unhappy. He felt he belonged. He had a structure he could rely on. I don’t think he would have chosen anything different. He kept on birdwatching. He loved his family. He was glad he had it. We all knew that. Sometimes we thought he was crazy. He wasn’t sure of his birthday. Now I understand why. Yours was July, and his was originally June. He would remember that, because of the birthday cards. I guess sometimes he got confused. Although he did fine with the name. I never heard him slip. He was always Stan.’

They talked a while longer. Reacher asked about the motel, and their theoretical relative Mark, but Stan had no information beyond a vague old family story about some other distant cousin getting rich during the postwar boom, and buying real estate, and then having a cascade of offspring, all kinds of children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren. Presumably Mark was one of them. Stan said he didn’t know, and didn’t want to. He said he was happy with his photo albums, and his memories.

Then he said he needed to nap for an hour. That was how it went, he said, with his kind of insomnia. He took hour-long naps whenever he could. Reacher shook his ice-cold hand once more and let himself out of the house. Dawn was coming. The morning sun was not far away. Burke and Amos were sitting together, in Amos’s car, on the kerb, at the entrance to the alley. They saw him step out. Burke buzzed his window down. Amos leaned over to listen. Reacher checked the sky again, and bent down to talk.

He said, ‘I need to go to Ryantown.’

Burke said, ‘The professor won’t be there for hours.’

‘That’s why.’

Amos said, ‘I need to think about Carrington.’

‘Think about him in Ryantown. It’s as good a place as any.’

‘Do you know something?’

‘We should be looking for Elizabeth Castle just as much as Carrington himself. They’re very romantic. They counted their morning coffee break as their second date. They’re almost certainly together.’

‘Sure, but where?’

‘I’ll tell you later. First I want to go to Ryantown again.’

THEY WENT IN Amos’s unmarked car. She drove, and Burke sat neatly beside her. Reacher sprawled in the back. He told them everything Stan had told him. They asked how he felt. It was a short conversation. He said nothing had changed, except a very minor historical detail. His father had once been called by a different name, way back long ago, when he was a kid. First he was Bill, then he was Stan. Same guy. Same bomb waiting to go off. But disciplined. If you did the right thing, he left you alone. A good fighter, and brave as a lunatic.

He loved his family.

A birdwatcher all his life.

Often with the naked eye, for a bigger picture.

‘Did your mother know?’ Amos asked.

‘Great question,’ Reacher said. ‘Probably not. It turned out she had secrets of her own. I think neither of them knew. I think they allowed for things like that. A clean slate. No questions. Maybe that’s why they got along.’

‘She must have wondered why he had no parents.’

‘I guess.’

‘Do you wonder now?’

‘A little bit. Because of the birthday cards. That has a certain flavour. It feels like an obscure department of a government agency. It takes care of things while you’re away. It makes sure your rent gets paid. Or else they were in prison. I would have to know the return address.’

Burke said, ‘Are you going to try to find out?’

‘No,’ Reacher said.

On their right the sky was streaked with dawn. The car was filled with low golden light. Amos found the turn to Ryantown. The gentle left, through the orchards. The sun burned around behind them, until it was low and dead centre in the rear windshield. Amos shaded her eyes from the mirror, and came to a stop at the fence.

‘Five minutes,’ Reacher said.

He got out of the car and stepped over the fence. He walked through the orchard. The dawn light was on his back. His shadow was infinitely long. He stepped over the next fence. The Ryantown city limit. The darker leaves, the damper smell. The sunless shadows.

He walked down Main Street, like before, between the thin trees, on the tipped-up stones, past the church, past the school. After that the trees grew thinner, and the sun crept higher. Dappled sunbeams twinkled in. The world was new.

He heard voices up ahead.

Two people talking. Lightly, and happily. About something pleasant. Maybe the sunbeams. If so, Reacher agreed. The place looked great. Like an ad for an expensive camera.

He called out, ‘Hey guys, officer on the floor, coming in, make yourselves decent and stand by your beds.’