Jon Grimwood - End of the World Blues

“So you killed him.”

“That was later,” Pat said. “When I realised he’d brought his shit into my life.”

“What?”

“He arrived with a Chinese lacquer trunk he’d found Mary for Christmas. Asked me to store it until they made up again, lying little fuck. I gave him about ten minutes, to make sure he wasn’t coming back, and then hacked the lock. You know what I found?”

“Heroin.”

Pat nodded. “So I called him up and said I knew where Mary was, but we needed to talk before I told him.” The old man’s face was a cold mask in the moonlight. “He came bouncing back, all smiles, promising to make everything right. And then he saw the open trunk…”

Two men were leading a small plane out of the hangar, one of them walking ahead. The plane had both its engines going and was inching forward, running without lights. As Kit watched, it angled itself along a darkened runway.

“You should go,” said Pat.

“Say goodbye to Neku for me. And tell her I’ll see her soon.”

“Of course.”

Looking away, Kit said, “You never told me how you made yourself mutilate Ben Flyte. What drove you, was it anger?”

“No one got tortured,” said Pat. “We had a whisky while Ben waited for me to tell him where to find Mary. Only his glass was loaded with my painkillers. I put him in the freezer and hacked him up later, when he’d frozen. It was meant to make his body hard to identify.”

“It worked,” Kit said. “And the drugs?”

“Into the river.” Pat looked sad. “That was my big mistake,” he said. “They killed the fish.”

The waters of the English Channel were dark beneath the plane. A sheet of oxidised lead hammered flat by moonlight and wind. A bank of tiny diodes on a console were the only lights in the cabin. Kit was pretty certain that flying dark was illegal but he kept his mouth shut and watched sullen lead turn into wild grass instead.

Dawn was an hour away. Which would give Kate’s pilot time to land in France, turn around, and be back over Kent before the sun clipped the horizon. A feat quite within the Beechcraft’s capabilities, according to a tatty leaflet Kit had been reading before take off.

The Air King E90 was a turbo prop, once popular with air charter companies. It could stay airborne for six hours and was designed to seat eight, two pilots, four passengers in club chairs, and two bodyguards, chauffeurs, or junior staff in seats at the back.

In the plane they used, someone had long since ripped out the leather seats and replaced the carpet with sheet steel, unless that was the original floor. Over the steel had been taped polyethylene, now badly scuffed and somewhat torn. Whatever this plane usually carried it was unlikely to be Business Class passengers, or their assorted hangers on.

The pilot was a young Asian called Tony. At least that was how he’d introduced himself at the small airfield, where Kit had been dropped by Pat, who turned out to drive almost as quickly as Brigadier Miles.

“Calais…right?” It was the first thing Tony had said since take off.

“Apparently.”

“Okay, I’m to give you this.”

The padded envelope contained euros, two credit cards, an EU driving licence, one of the new ID cards, and a passport, all made out in a name Kit didn’t recognise. Kate O’Mally had obviously spent the last half hour before Kit left pulling in favours. It said something for her reputation that the fakes were good.

“Computers,” said Tony, glancing across. “Just drop in the photograph and hit print.”

The licence and ID looked perfect. The back pages of the passport, when Kit examined them in the light, seemed slightly ruffled.

“If anyone queries you,” Tony said, “say you got caught in the rain.” He shrugged. “And remember, the credit cards are only for show. Your boss said use cash.”

My boss? Kit laughed.

The wild grass gave way to French fields and finally to a small airstrip trapped between empty railway lines and the edge of a vast farm, one of those industrial outfits with tractors the size of small houses and pig pens the size of railway stations.

“You known Kate O’Mally long?” Kit asked.

“Never heard of her,” said Tony, adjusting the joystick to slide the Air King E90 between a narrow strip of lights. “Never heard of you either. I’m not even here.”

There were slow trains to Paris from Calais, express trains, and even a Eurostar, which stopped to take on passengers at a dedicated station nearby. A plane ticket was already waiting for Kit at Aeroport Charles de Gaulle. All the same, Paris, the ticket, and Kit’s flight to Tokyo would have to wait. There was somewhere else Kit needed to go first. He got there by truck.

“Good for you I was passing.”

They’d been through this. It was good Philippe had been passing and even better that he stopped when Kit stuck out his thumb. So now Philippe wanted paying in English conversation and Kit was doing his best to oblige.

“It’s a clear morning.”

The driver peered intently through his windshield and then nodded agreement. “Very clear,” he said.

“And the sea is blue.”

“Very blue. Also grey.”

Kit sighed. It was 370 kilometres from Calais to Amsterdam and so far they’d managed 50 of them. If Philippe was to be believed, his cargo was going the whole way. Although Kit had a feeling his original question might have been misunderstood, he’d find out in a while.

“Your hand it is hurt?”

This was a fair guess, given Kit was wearing a finger shield and had tape holding what remained of his smallest finger to the ring finger next door. “An accident,” said Kit, folding his hand out of sight.

“Nasty,” Philippe said. “You walking?”

“No,” said Kit. “I’m in a truck with you.”

Philippe laughed. “I mean, are you holiday walking ? Lots of the English visit Pas de Calais to walk. Also Amsterdam, where they hire bicycles.”

“Not walking, or planning to hire a bike in Amsterdam.”

“But you’re visiting the city on holiday?”

“Yes,” said Kit. “And I’m late.”

Philippe frowned. “How late?” he asked.

At least fifteen years, thought Kit, but he kept the words to himself.

There were cities where Kit barely knew one place from another outside the area in which he’d lived. The squalor of a ghetto in Istanbul, an arid little suq in a town Sudanese rebels called their capital. Even Tokyo—where Kit could have told Roppongi from Shinjuku blindfolded by street noise alone—largely remained a mystery to him.

And yet the city about which Kit knew most was the one he’d never visited. Empires had squabbled over it and Protestants besieged Catholics to claim its muddy, flood-threatened streets. Home to Rembrandt van Rijn, the place where Descartes linked identity indelibly to thought, the city had fought against the British, French, and Spanish, given England a king and been ruled by one of Napoleon’s brothers.

Its canals were famous, it had two of the most famous churches in Europe, and yet all most tourists knew it for was brothels, endless bicycles, and cafés where it was still legal to smoke dope.

Amsterdam had been Mary’s idea. Although it was Kit who bought the map and found the first guide book. Mary was the one who bought the postcards, five in total from a charity shop in Newbury. All black and white, and showing views of a city that probably didn’t exist even then. The Prinsengracht canal, Anne Frank’s house, and a solemn-looking Rijksmuseum, Rembrandt’s Night Watch, and last of all a typical Dutch square overlooking a narrow canal.

Tulips grew in wooden tubs, an old man in clogs sat smoking a pipe…a girl in a dark coat and a young man with a beret pushed a pram beneath a row of poplars.