Geoff Dyer - The Search

‘According to this,’ he said, ‘the car was checked in at a rental firm in Kingston — not one of our offices — a small firm we have an agreement with. Our cars can be left with them and they get ’em back to us.’

‘How long ago was that?’ said Walker. ‘When was it checked in?’

‘Couple a months ago,’ said the guy, unwrapping a stick of gum, feeding it between his teeth.

Kingston was another long haul, on the edge of the Southern Wetlands. Walker drove for two days, weather coming and going, birds. Power lines rising and dipping alongside him. Sometimes overtaking the same car three times in a day.

The last three hundred miles ran flat through the swamp. Trees were the same colour as the road, as the sky. Moss drifted from swamp maples. Here and there were splashes of dull red, either in the trees or in the road, the smear of hit animals. Rain spotted his windshield, hardly even rain.

The rental office was a run-down place near the railroad. A sign on the counter said: ‘If You Don’t Smoke I Won’t Fart’. The guy behind the counter was chewing on a sandwich. The reception area smelled of chicken; maybe a cigarette had recently been smoked there. Walker leant his elbows on the counter, waiting for the guy’s mouth to empty.

‘I’m trying to find out about a car that was checked in a couple of months ago.’

‘What car?’

‘A blue Mustang. Licence 703 6GH. It was dropped off here by a man named Malory.’

The guy wiped his fingers, screwed the serviette into a ball and chucked it away. ‘Let’s see. What was the date exactly?’

Walker told him and he hauled a wad of oil-smudged papers out of a drawer, sniffed, began thumbing through them.

‘Yeah, it was checked in here.’

‘Do you happen to know anything about the person who checked it in? Where he went or anything like that?’

‘Let’s see. I was working that day.’ Walker waited for him to go on but instead the guy scrutinized him and said, ‘You a cop?’

‘No.’

‘Tracker?’

‘No.’

‘Finder?’

‘No.’

‘Then what you want him for?’

‘He’s a friend.’

‘Yeah?’

‘Yes.’

‘And what’s he supposed to have done, this friend of yours?’

‘Nothing. I just want to find him.’

With small variants Walker would have this same conversation many times in the months that followed. Strangely, the subsequent willingness to help of whoever he was talking to bore no relation to whether they believed him or not. The dialogue was an elaborate form of greeting, a formality. People couldn’t care less what answers he gave but no one wanted to forgo this little introductory exchange.

The guy nodded, satisfied: ‘Let’s see, only a few cars were checked in that day. If I remember right, if it’s the person I’m thinking of, he asked about a hotel.’

He paused, waited. This was another feature of the conversations of the next months: they all fancied themselves as Scheherazade, needed prompting before they would part with the next crumb of information.

‘And you recommended one to him?’

‘The Metropolitan.’

It was five minutes away, one of those places that had always looked like it had seen better days. Walker took a room there and chatted to the clerk, a boy in his teens who let him look back through the register, happy to oblige. Sure enough, Malory had stayed there, just one night.

Walker was too tired to pursue things further. He trudged up to his room and called Rachel. The machine was on. He listened to the message and hung up. Then he redialled. He listened to her voice again, asked her to call him at the hotel.

He drank a beer and flicked through the channels on TV. He watched part of a programme about the lost city of Atlantis and the latest attempts to establish its historical authenticity. The noise of aqualungs was making him fall asleep. He flicked off the TV and dreamed he was still driving, driving through places he’d never been, places that didn’t exist, sunken cities whose streets were filled with waving reeds and darting fish.

In the morning he persuaded the clerk to dig out Malory’s bill. A waiter spilt a tray of tea nearby and Walker moved aside to study the bill while a cleaner wiped the floor. All the details of Malory’s stay were itemized: how much he’d spent on dinner and drinks; even an account of long-distance calls. Malory had made two calls, both to a number in Meridian. He tried calling from the reception phone but the number had been disconnected. He made a note of the number and thanked the clerk. As he made his way from the desk someone touched his elbow.

‘Walker?’

‘Yes.’

‘I’d like to speak to you for a moment.’

They walked away from the desk, stood near a plant offering a version of shade.

‘You’re looking for Malory.’

‘I didn’t catch your name.’

‘Carver.’ There was no handshake. Walker had never met him before but felt certain he recognized him from somewhere. Glancing down he saw that Carver had left a trail of dark V-patterned footprints from the spilled tea.

‘Like I said, you’re looking for Malory.’ Knowing that some kind of response was called for, Walker did nothing, waited for him to continue. ‘I’ll put it differently. I know you’re looking for Malory.’ He waited but Walker waited longer. ‘Do you know where he is?’

‘If I knew where he was I wouldn’t be looking for him.’

‘But you are looking for him?’

‘I just wanted to clarify a point of logic.’ Carver looked at him patiently.

‘Do you know where he is?’ he asked at last.

‘Why do you want to know?’

‘You have any idea where he is?’

‘You haven’t answered my question.’

‘If you hear anything, call this number,’ he said, pulling a battered playing card from his pocket — a ten of spades. He scribbled on the card and handed it to Walker. Walker kept his hands in his pockets. Carver tucked the card into his breast pocket. Walker began to move away. Carver blocked his path.

‘I’m talking to you.’

‘No you’re not.’ Walker moved around him but Carver gripped his arm, hard. They were the same height.

‘Did you hear what I said?’

‘No.’ Walker tugged his arm free.

‘Let me give you a piece of advice, Lancelot. Everything she said to you was shit. Everything you hoped she was saying was shit. You think you have to go through all this shit just so you can fuck her?’

Walker concentrated on not moving, on letting nothing show.

‘You want to learn the hard way, don’t you?’ said Carver.

‘I don’t even want to learn.’

This time Carver let him walk away. He had only gone a couple of steps when Carver called out after him, ‘Hey, Lancelot!’

Walker kept moving and a second later something landed quietly in front of him. He looked down and saw a thin chain coiled up on the floor like a silver snake. He was able to check the urge to pick it up but, involuntarily, he reached up to his neck to check that his own chain was still there. Then walked towards the lift, the chain like grit beneath his foot.

Back in his room he crammed Carver’s words to the back of his mind, concentrated instead on the question of how he had known who and where he was. It was possible that he had just been followed here — but it was more likely that Rachel’s phone had been tapped. And the chain. . Abruptly he remembered why he had recognized Carver: the party, the guy he had bumped into. He picked up the phone to call Rachel and put it down again immediately. He could feel sweat trickling down his ribs, a nerve twitching in his jaw. All this shit just so he could fuck her. He hurled the phone across the room. Looked around for something else to smash but instead sat down abruptly. Forced himself to stay perfectly still, slowly emptying his mind of everything. He remained like that until he had lost any sense of time, began to lose any sense of being the agent of his thoughts. Then, in the ensuing vacancy, he allowed his thoughts to re-form, focusing purely on the practicalities of picking up Malory’s trail, on nothing else.