Lee Child - The Hard Way

Reacher led Pauling to a table on the other side of the room from Taylor and sat with his back to the wall and watched the farmers turn back to the bar. They did it one by one, slowly. Then the last one picked up his glass again and the atmosphere in the room settled back to what it had been before. A moment later the bartender reappeared. He picked up a towel and started wiping glasses.

Reacher said, “We should act normally. We should buy a drink.”

Pauling said, “I guess I’ll try the local beer. You know, when in Rome.”

So Reacher got up again and stepped over to the bar and tried to think back ten years to when he had last been in a similar situation. It was important to get the dialect right. He leaned between two of the farmers and put his knuckles on the bar and said, “A pint of best, please, and a half for the lady.” It was important to get the manners right too, so he turned left and right to the four farmers and added: “And will you gentlemen join us?” Then he glanced at the bartender and said: “And can I get yours?” Then the whole dynamic in the room funneled toward Taylor as the only patron as yet uninvited. Taylor turned and looked up from his table as if compelled to and Reacher mimed a drinking action and called, “What can I get you?”

Taylor looked back at him and said, “Thanks, but I’ve got to go.” A flat British accent, a little like Gregory’s. Calculation in his eyes. But nothing in his face. No suspicion. Maybe a little awkwardness. Maybe even a hint of dour amiability. A guileless half-smile, a flash of the bad teeth. Then he drained his glass and set it back on the table and got up and headed for the door.

“Goodnight,” he said, as he passed by.

The bartender pulled six and a half pints of best bitter and lined them up like sentries. Reacher paid for them and pushed them around a little as a gesture toward distribution. Then he picked his own up and said, “Cheers,” and took a sip. He carried Pauling’s half-sized glass over to her, and the four farmers and the bartender all turned toward their table and toasted them. Reacher thought: Instant social acceptance for less than thirty bucks. Cheap at twice the price . But he said, “I hope I didn’t offend that other fellow somehow.”

“Don’t know him,” one of the farmers said. “Never saw him before.”

“He’s at Grange Farm,” another farmer said. “Must be, because he was in Grange Farm’s Land Rover. I saw him drive up in it.”

“Is he a farmer?” Reacher asked.

“He don’t look like one,” the first farmer said. “I never saw him before.”

“Where’s Grange Farm?”

“Down the road apiece. There’s a family there now.”

“Ask Dave Kemp,” the third farmer said.

Reacher said, “Who’s Dave Kemp?”

“Dave Kemp in the shop,” the third farmer said, impatiently, like Reacher was an idiot. “In Bishops Pargeter. He’ll know. Dave Kemp knows everything, on account of the post office. Nosy bugger.”

“Is there a pub there? Why would someone from there drink here?”

“This is the only pub for miles, lad. Why else do you think it’s so crowded?”

Reacher didn’t answer that.

“They’re offcomers at Grange Farm,” the first farmer said, finally completing his earlier thought. “That family. Recent. From London, I reckon. Don’t know them. Organic, they are. Don’t hold with chemicals.”

And that information seemed to conclude what the farmers felt they owed in exchange for a pint of beer because they fell to talking among themselves about the advantages and disadvantages of organic farming. It felt like a well-worn argument. According to what Reacher overheard there was absolutely nothing in its favor except for the inexplicable willingness of townsfolk to pay over the odds for the resulting produce.

“You were right,” Pauling said. “Taylor’s at the farm.”

“But will he stay there now?” Reacher said.

“I don’t see why not. Your big dumb generous American act was pretty convincing. You weren’t threatening. Maybe he thought we’re just tourists looking at where our dads were based. They get them all the time here. That guy said so.”

Reacher said nothing.

Pauling said, “I parked right next to him, didn’t I? That farmer said he was in a Land Rover and there was only one Land Rover in the lot.”

Reacher said, “I wish he hadn’t been in here.”

“This is probably one of the reasons he chose to come back. English beer.”

“You like it?”

“No, but I believe Englishmen do.”

Their sandwiches were surprisingly good. Fresh crusty home-made bread, butter, rare roast beef, creamy horseradish sauce, farmhouse cheese on the side, with thin potato chips as a garnish. They ate them and finished their beers. Then they headed upstairs to their room. It was better than their suite in Bayswater. More spacious, partly due to the fact that the bed was a full, not a queen. Four feet six, not five feet. Not really a hardship , Reacher thought. Not under the circumstances . He set the alarm in his head for six in the morning. First light. Taylor will stay or Taylor will run, and either way we’ll watch him do it .

THE VIEW OUTthe window at six the next morning was one of infinite misty flatness. The land was level and gray-green all the way to the far horizon, interrupted only by straight ditches and occasional stands of trees. The trees had long thin supple trunks and round compact crowns to withstand the winds. Reacher could see them bending and tossing in the distance.

Outside it was very cold and their car was all misted over with dew. Reacher cleared the windows with the sleeve of his jacket. They climbed inside without saying much. Pauling backed out of the parking space and crunched into first gear and took off through the lot. Braked briefly and then joined the road, due east toward the morning sky. Five miles to Bishops Pargeter. Five miles to Grange Farm.

They found the farm before they found the village. It filled the upper left-hand square of the quadrant formed by the crossroad. They saw it first from the southwest. It was bounded by ditches, not fences. They were dug straight and crisp and deep. Then came flat fields, neatly plowed, dusted pale green with late crops recently planted. Then closer to the center were small stands of trees, almost decorative, like they had been artfully planted for effect. Then a large gray stone house. Larger than Reacher had imagined. Not a castle, not a stately home, but more impressive than a mere farmhouse had any right to be. Then in the distance to the north and the east of the house were five outbuildings. Barns, long, low, and tidy. Three of them made a three-sided square around some kind of a yard. Two stood alone.

The road they were driving on was flanked by the ditch that formed the farm’s southern boundary. With every yard they drove their perspective rotated and changed, like the farm was an exhibit on a turntable, on display. It was a big handsome establishment. The driveway crossed the boundary ditch on a small flat bridge and then ran north into the distance, beaten earth, neatly cambered. The house itself was end-on to the road, a half-mile in. The front door faced west and the back door faced east. The Land Rover was parked between the back of the house and one of the standalone barns, tiny in the distance, cold, inert, misted over.

“He’s still there,” Reacher said.

“Unless he has a car of his own.”

“If he had a car of his own he would have used it last night.”

Pauling slowed to a walk. There was no sign of activity around the house. None at all. There was thin smoke from a chimney, blown horizontal by the wind. A banked fire for a water heater, maybe. No lights in the windows.