He woke from a nightmare on a sweat-soaked shout, still naked, and was so disoriented that he looked around for Ronaldo Suarez, before remembering that a lot of muddied water had passed under the bridge since the giant detective had watched him sleep in another motel room a thousand miles away.
Tom lay on his back and blinked at the illuminated face of his watch. It was nine p.m. in LA. His nakedness reminded him of how vulnerable he’d felt in the barn.
A soft knock on the door made him flinch and rise quickly from the bed. He peered warily through the spyhole and saw the maid with his clothes. As he opened the door, he remembered he was naked and grabbed one of his galoshes to cover himself. The girl blushed and Tom patted his ass before he remembered he didn’t have his jeans on; he had to back away from the door to get a tip off the dressing-table, despite her stammered protest that it really didn’t matter, that it was her fault for coming back so late but she knew ‘you din’t have no other clothes to put on, sir’.
Tom finally managed to tip her without committing an arrestable offence but it was a close thing.
When she’d hurried away, he buried his face in his clean clothes, wondering when last he’d felt and smelt so clean. It made him think of a fresh start, and all the pleasure leaked from the feeling.
He didn’t want a fresh start: he just wished he’d done better with the start he’d already made.
*
The rain had only got worse and Tom was glad he hadn’t skimped on the raingear. What had seemed needlessly bulky when he’d pulled it on four hours ago now seemed like the most sensible purchase he’d ever made.
Even though the trees gave him some cover, rain plopped loudly onto his breathable Gore-Tex hood and the peak of the cap he wore under it. The strip of woodland was untended and overgrown, and Tom wondered what the hell it was doing between the acres of corn all around. He used a light metal pole to prod about in the stands of whippy new hazel and tired old thorns between the patchy yellow grass that was slowly sinking into the fresh, unaccustomed mud.
He had bags, tags and flags in the pack slung over his shoulders, but all he’d found so far was a paperback of The Da Vinci Code, open and face-down in the mud. He’d flagged it anyway, in case prints matched a passenger, and moved on, treading carefully, his eyes sweeping slowly around, up and down, adjusting to the dull light seeping through the canopy, and readjusting to the darkness of the undergrowth, as he criss-crossed the strip with a grinding patience that made him want to throw down the pole and run around shouting.
In the next hour, he found two seat cushions, a twist of metal and rubber he recognized as cabin window framing and, sitting atop an old stump, like a mythical woodland offering, a single-serving utensil bag containing plastic knife, spork, salt, pepper, sugar, paper napkin and toothpick. Tom didn’t know what time it was – peeling back the layers of waterproofing was too much hassle just to look at his watch – but he figured it was a sign to have lunch. He squatted on the trunk of a downed tree and did just that, opening the utensil bag with his teeth so he could use the salt on the tasteless gas-station sandwich he’d bought, which turned to mush in the rain faster than he could eat it.
The afternoon passed in the same excruciatingly slow way. He added a suitcase to his list of booty, tan leather, with a businessman’s array of shaving kit and carefully filed paperwork inside. He found a child’s T-shirt with ‘Princess’ on it in glitter; he found seven mini-cans of Coke and one of 7-Up; he found a hand and part of a forearm. The forearm had freckles and pale, curly hair on it, and a twenty-four-hour Swatch was still strapped to the wrist. Tom noticed that it was almost five p.m. The light would be going soon; he’d come back tomorrow. He photographed the arm, making sure that the watch could be easily identified, then sealed it carefully inside a bag to prevent predation, flagged it and entered its location on the GPS.
As he stood up, he caught a flash of red between the trees.
With anticipation rising in him as the red thing grew in his obstructed vision, Tom dropped into a gully, jumped what had become a little stream, and slipped and slithered up the other muddy side. He skidded near the top of the bank and scraped his injured leg against a root. ‘Fuck!’ The pain flared. He gripped a branch and stood on one leg for a long second, doubled over, panting at the dirt.
He straightened up slowly and stopped dead, his harsh breaths frozen in his chest.
In a small clearing, four people were sitting in a block of airline seats.
As if in a dream, Tom moved towards them – no longer aware of the rain or the mud – hearing only the ticking of his pulse in his ears.
They looked so alive.
That was impossible. Wasn’t it? They had to be dead. And yet there they were, each sitting upright, the one closest to him in a red sweatshirt. From that angle – behind them – they looked as if they were waiting for the in-flight movie to start.
Tom reached the seats, his heart bumping so wildly in his chest that it made the strip of Oklahoma trees into a jungle filled with warring natives.
He took a breath, as if he was about to dive into a deep pool, and looked down.
They were all dead, of course.
The young, dark-haired man closest to him – the one in the red sweatshirt – had his head twisted to one side and his mouth open, as if he was asleep and snoring. There was blood around his mouth and nose where his lungs had imploded upon the sudden loss of pressure.
The older man beside him had lost an arm below the shoulder but his face was unperturbed.
Tom took a pace forward and looked across at a chubby man, whose head had dropped so far forward that he appeared to be closely examining the twin stumps his legs had become just above the knees. Two bits of shiny blue-white bone protruded rudely from the meat and the tattered remains of his beige old-man slacks.
The girl who sat beside him was Lucia’s sister.
Tom grunted as that certainty hit him like something physical.
Candice Holmes had been pretty in the same soft, unassuming way her sister still was. Her hair was pulled back in two neat clips and the leaves and pieces of twig that decorated it looked deliberate, rather than the result of her 120 m.p.h. fall through the forest at the end of a 27,000-foot drop. Her head was thrown back against the rest, and her golden-brown eyes were open and filled with rain that spilled over and ran, like little rivers of tears, across her cheeks. A smear of blood at one corner of her mouth had been almost washed away by the rain.
Tom sat down heavily beside Candice, feeling the cold wet earth tug at him, suddenly aware once more of the sound of the rain dropping through the trees around him. The girl’s slim brown arm hung gently beside her seat, a silver bracelet with a single charm on it falling over the back of her delicate hand. The charm was of a penguin. He reached out and touched it, the backs of his fingers sliding against her hand. Her skin was cold, but so was his in the unseasonable rain.
Tom let go of the penguin, then sat for a while and held the dead girl’s hand while the rain dripped from the peak of his cap, and cried from her eyes.
*
As soon as the progress meeting was over, and Munro and Ryland had gone to speak to the press and families, Tom went back to his room and called Lucia on the phone he’d picked up at the airport. He’d also taken out insurance, feeling smug that he would almost certainly be claiming at some point. He called three times, twice hanging up before the phone could start ringing in LA. Finally he found his balls.
‘Lucia?’
‘Yes?’
‘It’s Tom Patrick.’
Silence. Then, ‘Oh. Hello.’ Cold but polite.
‘I’m in Oklahoma.’
Instantly, the coldness left her, along with the strength, and when she spoke again it was with the voice of a frightened child already on the edge of tears. ‘Yes?’
Tom felt like a shit: Lucia had obviously thought he might be calling for more selfish reasons, even at a time like this. Apparently she thought he was that big an asshole.
‘Did Candice wear a silver bracelet, Lucia?’
