Matt Hilton - Blood and Ashes

A third line of defence stood in their way, but clicked open as they approached. Hicks couldn’t see the CCTV cameras monitoring their progress, although they were obviously there. As he stepped through the third door a waft of Tiger Balm washed over him. That was the source of the aroma he’d detected in the hall, only ten times more potent. Hicks’ grey eyes began to water.

The second floor apartment was as stark as any monk’s cell, with a cot pushed up against one wall and a metal footlocker the only furnishings at this end. A door opened into another room further along, where things were a little more ramshackle. Hicks recognised the worn office chair and desk, the computer monitor, the battered sofa in one corner, the throw rug with the beer stains. The stack of boxes teetering in a far corner was a new addition, as were the heavy drapes pulled over the window to thwart spying from the opposite building. Making up for the lack of natural light, a lamp threw a slant of yellow across the workstation and the man sitting in the chair observing the video images on the screen.

The chair swung round and the man peered up at Hicks from under a tangle of long salt and pepper curls. In the man’s lap was a small dog. Chihuahua, Hicks thought.

‘It’s been a while, Carswell. Wasn’t even sure it was you when you knocked on my door. I had to look twice.’

Hicks didn’t tell the man he’d undergone a series of cosmetic procedures in the past few months, because Jim Lloyd could already see the end result. Hicks’ predominant feature had always been his hawk-like nose, but that had been reduced, his thin lips thickened, his hairline adjusted so that he now wore a widow’s peak where he used to be bald. His hair was white, as was his newly acquired goatee beard and strap moustache. For someone allegedly dead, he looked strong and healthy.

On the other hand Lloyd looked like he had ten years before. He was still a shaggy bear of a man, stiff with arthritis and old wounds, and Hicks was certain that the combat trousers and plaid shirt were the same he always wore. A patchwork of wrinkles making a spider web pattern around his eyes counted off the years since last they’d met. At sixty-three years old, Lloyd’s face looked every second his age, but the shoulders swelling his shirt, his thick arms, looked like those of a much younger man.

‘Wasn’t sure I was going to open the door, even after a second look. You don’t look a thing like the Carswell Hicks I used to know.’

It was the first time that the two men had shared space in the last decade, but they’d been in regular communication via email and telephone. Hicks had never found it necessary to send an updated photograph. ‘I’m the same man I always was, Jim, just better looking.’

Lloyd eyed him quizzically. ‘You gotta give me the number for your surgeon, Hicks. What they say ain’t true: you can make a silk purse out of a pig’s ear!’

Hicks smiled, but wasn’t really enamoured of Lloyd’s wit; he was neither silk nor a fucking pig, never had been. He let the slight go, because that was just Lloyd’s way. Any other man would be doing a header into the Hudson, trying to find where Hicks had thrown his balls into the river.

Hicks turned to his minder. ‘Wait in the other room.’

The man didn’t raise an objection, just did what he was told. Hicks pulled the door to. Lloyd stood up from his chair and walked like a tin man across the room to where a bottle of cheap whiskey waited. He placed the chihuahua down and took up the whiskey. He held up the bottle, saw Hicks jerk his head, then chugged a shot from the neck of the bottle. He wiped his mouth with his shirtsleeve. He waggled the bottle at Hicks. ‘Where the muscle-rub fails, this always works.’

Without preamble Hicks asked, ‘You heard about your daughter?’

Lloyd’s jaw firmed a little, but that was all the sign he gave. ‘I always knew the crazy little bitch would get herself in trouble, just not on this trip. I thought that Gant would look after her better’n that.’

‘Gant isn’t responsible, Jim, it’s the prick that she hooked up with that’s to blame.’

‘Vince Everett.’ The way Lloyd breathed the name it was like a curse.

‘Right,’ Hicks said. ‘Except it turns out that isn’t his name at all.’

Lloyd took another shot of whiskey. This time he let the drips fall on his chest. ‘Undercover cop?’

‘FBI,’ Hicks corrected. ‘Special Agent Stephen Vincent was a plant assigned to find me.’

‘You kill that bastard for me, Cars?’

‘Not yet, but I will.’

‘I’d do it myself, but…’

As potent and disabling as his arthritis, agoraphobia had made a prisoner of Jim Lloyd years ago.

‘Leave it to me, Jim. I’ll make sure that Agent Vincent gets paid back everything he’s due.’

Lloyd nodded and then went back at the whiskey again. He finished it this time, but cradled the bottle in his arms like a baby, maybe thinking about what a poor father he’d turned out to be. Sonya Madden had been his only child, and Lloyd hadn’t even had the decency to marry her mother.

Lloyd moved back to his computer but he didn’t relinquish the bottle. He propped his hips against his desk, rocking back and forward, his curls swinging. ‘What about Don Griffiths?’

‘He’s momentarily out of our reach.’

‘Gant fucked that up too?’

‘You sound like you’ve got a hard-on for Gant.’

Lloyd sneered. ‘He’s an asshole. Always was, always will be. Thinks he’s some kind of tough guy; he wouldn’t have lasted two minutes in the jungle.’

Lloyd was full of stories about his days hunting the Viet Cong. In his estimation, anyone who was anything had shared the adventure with him. It was why he respected Hicks but hated his younger lieutenant, whose only experience of war was firing tank shells at pussy rag-heads a mile out in the desert. Hicks happened to know otherwise, but didn’t deem it necessary to put Lloyd straight on Gant’s military record.

Hicks studied his old comrade. Lloyd was a paradox. On the one hand he was a staunch patriot, but on the other he was as keen to disrupt his nation as Hicks was, primarily because he believed that the heroes returning from Vietnam had been fucked over by their own country. Lloyd’s argument: men just like the two of them had been reviled by the liberal fuck-wits who then abandoned them to some corner of history they’d prefer to forget. He pointed out that today’s fighting men were being held up as paragons of virtue, while their old buddies were sitting on street corners begging change for food. He had a point, Hicks agreed, but he didn’t give a damn. Hicks’ hatred of the government went much deeper than that.

‘Where is the goose-stepping little shit anyway?’ Lloyd went on. ‘I thought he’d have come with you.’

‘He’s busy,’ Hicks said.

‘I bet he is. What’s he doing, touching up those ridiculous tats he’s so fond of? Beats me why you let him hang around, Cars. You’ve gone to all this trouble to change your face and he’ll give you away in an instant.’

Hicks ignored the comment. Instead he said, ‘Don Griffiths had help. Gant’s trying to find out who it was.’

‘Probably another feebie,’ Lloyd said.

Shaking his head, Hicks said, ‘From what I hear the guy sounds more like one of our old team. Took out almost everyone Gant sent against him. He even wounded Gant.’

‘Shit, that wouldn’t take much. An eight-year-old girl would be trouble to the kind of assholes that Gant’s pulled around him.’ Lloyd went very quiet very quickly. He moved on. ‘Anyway, it’s probably best he stays out in Pennsylvania. I don’t think our contacts would appreciate him turning up at the meeting.’