A Door in the River

He ate a salad, a piece of blueberry pie, and drank a coffee for di

Darkness would give him more cover than a pair of glasses and a ballcap would. The most important part of a disguise was that it didn’t look like cover. Just something subtle. People look like each other all the time. A skillfully applied black moustache and a good quality hat were all he needed. Even to himself, he only looked like someone he’d once met. He had his cellphone on him, but it was on vibrate.

He walked into the Eagle at nine o’clock, confirming first that Feldman’s cab was waiting at its post. He kept his distance from the counter, browsing the magazine rack. He’d gotten a decent look at the cabbie behind the wheel as he walked in. The man’s head was lowered to a newspaper. This was Thurlow. He looked to be a white man in his fifties, with a circle of bare scalp surrounded by a fringe of hair. One arm hung out of his window with a cigarette dangling from the fingers. Inside the shop, Wingate thumbed through a car-buyer’s guide. He waited five minutes, and then his phone rang on schedule and he picked it up and said hello.

“In place?” came Hazel’s voice.

“Yes.”

“We’ll be on with you the whole time. We’re tracking you as you go, so if anything goes wrong, ask for a cigarette in a clear voice and we’ll be there as soon as we can.”

He was out of the store. He walked directly to the cab, pretending to talk to someone on the other end, and got into the back seat. “I told you, Ro

“What?”

“Aren’t you Clemons?” He talked into the phone. “No, I’m not talking to you, you fucking idiot.”

The driver had turned around to look at Wingate. “Sir?”

“Hold on a second,” he said into the dead phone. “This guy looks as confused as you are. Are you Clemons?”

“No,” said the driver. “Who are you?”

He snatched the ID back. “I showed you who I am. Where the hell is Clemons?”

“Honestly, sir, I don’t know.”

“Well, whoever you are, let’s get going.”

“Where?”

Wingate glared at him. He said into the phone. “I’ll be there in less than ten minutes. Don’t start without me.” He said to the driver: “You know where I’m going.”

“I don’t.”

“What’s your name?”

“Thurlow.”

“Well, Thurlow,” he said, digging into his pocket, “this is where.” He tossed him the Sparrow’s chip. Thurlow studied it. His discomfort was evident.

“I’m sorry, but I can’t, uh –”

“Where is Feldman, then? I know Feldman will take me there.”

“I’m sorry, sir, I don’t know where Feldman is.”

“But you know ’im.” He stared at Thurlow in the mirror. “Fine,” he said. He pretended to dial again. He put the phone against his ear. “Put Ro

“No, it’s okay.”

“Well then, drive. Before I lose my composure. I was supposed to be there fifteen minutes ago.”

“Fine, okay,” said Thurlow, and he pulled out of his spot. Wingate watched the door of the Eagle as Thurlow made his right-hand turn onto RR26. No one emerged from the building.

“Good,” Hazel said to him on her end. “Just pretend to make a couple more phone calls. Talk to a few more people.” She and Forbes were listening to Wingate’s progress from a speakerphone in the community policing office in Dublin. They’d made it their headquarters. There were only two people here from nine in the morning to five at night, and only six days a week. Someone had to come down and open the door for her. They’d set up and tested the phone, tested the tracking signal, a signal that was being emitted by a device the size of a matchbook under the insole of one of Wingate’s shoes. There were eight hours of battery life in the phone, and the high-test trace was good to about seven metres underground. They were lucky, too: there was a tower in Dublin. The relay was only eight kilometres from the field. “Be nice to someone now,” she said.

In her ear, Wingate said, “I’ll be back in the morning, sweetheart. You know Daddy sometimes has to travel for business. That’s right. Kiss Daddy goodnight now.”

Obviously he was someone higher up, a VIP no one had ever told Thurlow about. The cabbie drove slightly faster than he needed to: he was frightened of his passenger now, and he had excuses to fall back on if he got into any trouble. No one wanted to talk to Ro

“I know this is it.” He dug into his pocket for the American twenty they’d decided would be the tip, something unexpected to keep Thurlow inside the illusion that Lupertans was some kind of fat cat or out-of-town boss. Wingate handed it over to him and the man thanked him.

“Good luck,” he said.

“I don’t rely on luck, Mr. Thurlow. Now keep your mouth shut. Only Ro

“Okay, sir,” said the driver, and Wingate stepped out of the cab.

] 22 [

James Wingate walked into the trees. He put the phone against his ear and whispered, “You there?” and heard her faint reply from the other end:

“We’re here.”

He slipped the open phone into his pocket so she could continue to listen to his progress. Immediately he stepped into the shade, and he saw that the copse had more trees in it than appeared from the road. Three metres in, it swallowed him whole. A scrap of old deciduous forest, untouched because once a river had flowed here and people had used it and they had not cleared the land. Instead, they brought the boulders they dug up in their fields and put them here, among the trees and in the riverbed. Eventually, the river had disappeared. You could see the history of the place in it.

Apart from trees and boulders, there was nothing here, though. He walked in deeper. Behind him, he heard Thurlow’s car pulling away, and his skin horripilated. Sticks and last year’s leaves cracked and tore under his feet and he imagined that the sounds were booming out to the ears of whoever was going to find him here and, perhaps, put an end to his meddling.

There was no one here. He saw no structures at all.

Wingate stood in the midst of it and turned in a slow circle. He looked up and saw only the trunks of trees, pouring upwards into a dimming sky.