Bleeding Hearts (41 page)

‘Thank Christ for that,’ I said. Then I switched on the torch and found my pistol, sticking it back into my trousers. I considered burying the body, but knew it wouldn’t be easy. At least leaving him here, any coroner might be persuaded of a bizarre accident. It certainly didn’t look like murder. I shone the torch into his face, and saw the resemblance to his brother immediately.

‘Hello, Nathan,’ I said.

I was shaking as I drove back to the campsite. I hadn’t been so close to death before. I’d never seen that much fresh blood close up. I’d seen Max of course, but Max’s corpse hadn’t been warm. The picture of Nathan Kline would stay with me long after my victims’ had faded. I didn’t think liquor and a holiday would ever wipe out Nathan’s staring face.

Clancy and Bel were still awake, awaiting my return. When they saw me, they knew something had gone badly wrong. One side of my face was swollen, bruising nicely. My chest hurt, and I was still limping from the kick to my thigh. My hair was tangled with sweat, and my clothes were smeared with earth.

‘I need to get to a hospital,’ I said.

‘There might be something at Port Angeles.’

‘This is sort of specialised,’ I said.

‘Michael’s got haemophilia,’ Bel explained.

‘It’ll have to be Seattle or Tacoma,’ Clancy decided.

So we packed everything up by torchlight. Or rather, they did while I stayed in the car. A couple of campers complained about the noise, until Bel explained that we had an emergency and had to get someone to hospital. I’d been hoping she wouldn’t say anything. Now we had campers out looking at me like I was a zoo exhibit. I kept my head bowed so they wouldn’t see the bruises. I knew most of the campers would be gone by morning, when Nathan’s body would be found. But the police could find them elsewhere in the park and ask them about tonight. And now they’d be able to tell all about a man with his head hidden from them, a sudden need to break camp in the middle of the night.

Things, I thought, had taken a very bad turn.

We got out of there and Bel apologised.

‘I just didn’t think,’ she said.

‘That’s okay.’

Clancy was driving. There were no ferries that he knew of, not this late, so we headed south on 101 and picked up I-5 through Tacoma to Seattle. There was a hospital not too far from our hotel. We had to go through the usual American bureaucracy, details taken, disclaimers and waivers signed, and of course they wanted to know how they’d get paid, before a doctor took a look at me. He wasn’t a haemophilia specialist, his first few questions were all about what had happened.

‘A fight outside a bar,’ I told him.

‘You’re not supposed to get into fights.’

‘That’s what I told the guy who hit me.’

Eventually he gave me a dubious all-clear, but told me to come see a specialist in the morning. I paid cash back at the desk and Clancy drove us back to the hotel.

The night staff didn’t say anything when Bel asked for the room key. Maybe they’d seen wasted-looking people before, turning up in the wee small hours wearing hiking outfits.

We broke into a bottle of tequila Bel had bought, and I put some ice into a towel for my bruises.

‘I still don’t get it,’ said Clancy. ‘You say his name’s Nathan
Kline?’

‘That’s what it said on his file.’

‘You think he’s some relation of Kline’s?’

‘There were facial similarities.’

He shook his head. ‘Jesus,’ he said.

‘And whatever he was, he wasn’t my idea of a “disciple of love”. He knew unarmed combat like I know rifles. I’m lucky we were fighting at night. In daylight he’d have killed me.’

‘So what does that make him?’

‘Ex-military, something like that. Maybe CIA or NSC. All I know is that it makes him dead.’

Bel was staring at me, so I turned to her.

‘I don’t feel great about it, Bel, but this time it was him or me. And I didn’t kill him, a tree-branch did. But I
would
have killed him. And he’d have killed me.’

‘I know,’ she said quietly. ‘I’m glad he’s dead.’ Then she went back to her drink.

Clancy didn’t go home. He slept in a chair, while Bel and I took the beds. We talked some more, and finally settled down to sleep as the sun was rising. I probably slept for an hour, maybe a little more. Then I went into the bathroom, closed the door and turned on the light. I looked like I’d been in an accident with a timber-lorry. My chest and thigh were purple with shades of mauve and black. My eye had closed up a little as the flesh below it swelled. It was tender to the touch, but at least I hadn’t lost any teeth.

I didn’t think I was going to die. Haemophiliacs rarely die these days, not if they look after themselves. But I’d go back to the hospital anyway and have a proper check done.

I went down to the lobby and out into the fresh air of a new day. Only in my head it was still the middle of the night and I was out in the woods, being taken apart by a crazed jungle-fighter. I tried not to limp as I walked. I’d changed into some clean clothes. There were a few early risers about, driving to work, or shuffling through the streets examining garbage. I headed for the waterfront to do some thinking.

I didn’t doubt that Nathan was Kline’s brother, which tied the Disciples of Love very closely to the NSC. But a question niggled: did anyone at the Disciples know Nathan’s real identity? And come to think of it, what was so important that Nathan would go undercover for nearly eight years to protect it? They might have discovered his body by now. They might be contacting the police. If they
didn’t
contact the police, that would be a sign of the whole cult’s complicity. I knew I had to go back to the peninsula to be sure.

I also wanted to investigate Nathan’s house on Hood Canal. If I wanted to do it, I’d have to do it fast, before Kline got to hear of his brother’s all-too-suspicious demise.

‘Great day for it,’ a woman told me as she pushed a supermarket shopping-trolley over the train lines. A train had just crept past, holding up the few cars. It carried wood, thousands of planks coming south from Canada. We’d both watched it roll inexorably past.

‘Great day for it,’ she said again, waving to me as she moved away.

We went out for breakfast and ate huge blueberry muffins, washed down with strong coffee. I told Clancy and Bel I wanted to go back to the peninsula.

‘You’re out of your mind,’ Clancy said.

We’d listened to the early-morning radio news, and there’d been nothing about Nathan’s death. And only a few minutes ago, Clancy had phoned a colleague at the newsdesk and asked if any reports had come in of ‘anything’ happening in the park. The colleague’s reply had been negative.

‘First,’ Bel said, ‘you’re going to go back to that hospital. I don’t want you keeling over on me, Michael.’

‘And we need to change cars,’ Clancy added. He had a point. It would be a lot safer heading back to the peninsula in a new car. The campers had seen me sitting in a VW Rabbit, which was a world away from a Trans-Am. ‘Look,’ he said. ‘Why don’t I drop the two of you off at the hospital, go fetch the Trans-Am and pick you up again afterwards?’

‘Sounds good to me,’ said Bel.

So that was agreed. We checked that the car was ready and that my hospital appointment was confirmed. I checked we’d left nothing in the Rabbit before we left the hotel.

The car worried me. All it needed was for one camper to remember the licence plate and reel it off to the police, and they would track it instantly by computer to the repair shop, where the owner knew Clancy. And once they knew about Clancy, that would be the end of it.

I had to trust to luck that no one would remember the plate. And I hated trusting to anything other than myself.

Bel and I sat in the hospital for a while. She remarked how bright and new it seemed, how well equipped. She was just making conversation, that was all.

‘Wait till you see what they charge,’ I told her, ‘then you won’t be surprised.’

We were getting through the money. I didn’t like to think about how I’d go about earning some more.

‘I wish I’d been there when you killed him,’ Bel said quietly.

‘I didn’t kill him,’ I reminded her. ‘And for God’s sake, why would you want to be there?’

She turned to me and smiled a humourless smile.

I saw the doctor and everything seemed to be all right. He insisted on a few blood tests, since he wanted to be ‘on the safe side’, even though I objected I’d be flying back to England in a few days.

After all of which, I parted with some cash. The person behind the desk pointed out that they couldn’t know yet how much everything would cost, since the blood tests were done at an independent lab, so they’d bill me later. I gave my fake address again, the same one I’d given the previous night, and walked out of the hospital knowing I’d saved a few dollars at least.

Then we waited for Clancy. We waited a long time. At last we gave up and took a cab back to the hotel.

The receptionist remembered something as Bel and I stood waiting for the elevator.

‘Oh, Mr West? Did your friends get in touch?’

‘Sorry?’

‘There were a couple of calls for you yesterday evening. I said you were out.’

‘Did they leave a name?’

‘I’m sorry, sir, they just said you were expecting them to call.’

Well, in a way this was true. I walked back to the desk.

‘We’ll be checking out,’ I said.

She looked surprised. ‘Nothing wrong, I hope?’

‘I’ve got to go back to England. You can see I’ve been in an accident ...’

‘Well, I wasn’t going to say anything, but — ’

‘And the medical costs here are too high. We’re just going up to our room to pack. Could you make up our bill?’

‘Yes, of course.’

The elevator had arrived. I followed Bel into it. She waited till the doors had closed before she asked what was wrong.

‘Everything,’ I said. ‘Someone knows we’re here. It had to happen, we’re just lucky we got this warning.’

We packed quickly. I kept the Colt Commando near the top of my bag, and put the pistol in my waistband. If you see someone in the US with his shirt hanging outside his trousers, think gun.

I paid our bill and the receptionist hoped she’d see us again. I wasn’t laying bets on it as I went outside and found a cab. Only when he’d pulled up to the hotel door did I signal for Bel to come out. We loaded our bags into the boot, as well as a carrier bag belonging to Clancy. Inside it were a camera, film, and a small cassette recorder.

‘Sea Tac?’ our driver asked. But I gave him the address of the car repair shop instead.

We passed close by the hospital and stuck to the main route. But the road ahead was cordoned off, and a police officer was waving traffic on to other streets.

‘Musta been an accident,’ the driver said.

‘Can you pull over?’ I asked him. He did. ‘Wait here, I’ll only be a minute.’ I told Bel to stay put. I think she knew what was going through my mind. She bit her lip but nodded.

I walked back towards the cordon. There were sightseers standing beside it. A car was standing at traffic lights, officials milling around it. An ambulance was there, but mostly I saw people who looked like detectives. Some of them were taking photographs.

The stalled car was our white Trans-Am. There were splashes of blood on the windshield. A sightseer asked what was going on. A veteran at the scene was eager to supply details.

‘A drive-by shooting. Probably pushers, it’s getting as bad here as LA. Guy’s dead. They sprayed him all over the inside of the car. Looks like strawberries in a liquidiser, the cops told me.’

‘Strawberries, huh?’

I walked away with deadened feet. Bel didn’t need to ask. I told the driver there was a change of destination. He took us out on to Aurora until we found a cheap motel with a red-neon vacancy.

It reminded me of the first motel we’d stayed in after buying the Trans-Am: gaudy colours and infrequent maid-service. I went out to the ice machine while Bel unwrapped the ‘sanitised’ plastic tumblers she’d found in the bathroom.

We drank tequila. Bel finished her second one before collapsing on the bed in tears. I stood at the window and looked out through the slats in the blind. I’d specified a room round the back of the motel, not sure how much safer this made things. My view through the window was of the parking area, strewn with litter, and behind it a narrow street with junkyard housing, hardly meriting the description ‘bungalows’.

‘What do we do now?’ she said.

‘Same as we would have done,’ I replied. ‘Only now we know they’re close to us. Forewarned is forearmed.’

‘Yes, and cleanliness is next to godliness. It doesn’t mean anything, Michael.’

‘Bel.’ I went to the bed and pulled her up, hugging her close. I ran my hands down her hair. I kissed her wet cheeks. I didn’t know how long we’d be safe in this motel. A couple of days maybe, but it could be less. There were dozens, maybe hundreds of motels on Aurora. But I was sure Kline or his men would search each one. The quicker we went to work the better.