“I just don’t know why you Americans don’t—” John started to say.
“Shut up, John,” I said, not as lightly as I might have on a truly full stomach. The one leg of chicken and a few slices of stale bread hadn’t done much to alleviate my stomach’s pissiness. I was about two steps away from opening a can from the pantry described as “Spotted Dick,” because there wasn’t much in there other than that, and the fridge was now bare save for a bottle of HP sauce, which I had honestly contemplated drinking just for the calories. I gave it a sniff and decided it wasn’t worth it. “If you don’t stop shit-talking my country,” I said, giving John my full attention again, “you’re going to see what Merle Haggard called, aptly, ‘The Fightin’ Side of Me.’” His eyes swelled, and he swallowed visibly at that threat, then nodded. “I need a map,” I said, staring him down.
“In the car,” he said.
“Great,” I said. “Cash?”
“Wallet in the bedroom.”
I was ticking through my mental list. “How much?”
“Fifty pounds, maybe?”
That’d do. It would have been better if it had been thousands, but I was beggaring, not choosering. “How full is your gas tank?”
He stared at me curiously for a second, then got it. “It’s about half full of petrol. I should warn you—it’s not a new car.”
“I don’t care,” I said, because I didn’t, insofar as if it moved, I’d work with it. The UK had some sort of rigorous emissions testing standard anyway, so if the car was a giant piece of crap, it probably wouldn’t have passed that, leaving me feeling confident it wasn’t a total garbage bucket. “I’ll try and keep it intact so that the police are able to return it to you whole after I’m done with it.” If he took solace in that, he didn’t give any sign, still looking like a frog I’d squeezed too tight in the holding.
“Are…are you leaving soon, then?” he asked, doing a little fishing when he found his voice.
“Soon enough,” I said, and flipped on the TV in the corner of the living room. It came on to the news, and I was treated to a man staring right into the camera, dressed up in a suit and looking quite coiffed.
“—again, announcing that Police Scotland—” his accent wasn’t too bad “—are seeking assistance with their manhunt for Sienna Nealon.” He paused, looked at the camera and said, “Err…I mean…womanhunt? Personhunt?” He tried ‘em all out, apparently worried about offending someone, presumably not criminal me. He blushed, and went right back to reading.
“Hmph,” I said, paying little attention to what was going on now that he was just blathering. “Let’s hope they don’t find her.” I flipped the TV off and looked at John. Archie came up to my ankle again, breathing heavily. “Does he need food before I go?” I dropped down and gave Archie a good petting on the back of the neck. “Who’s a good boy? You are. Yes, you are.”
“Uh, no, he’s fine,” John said. “You can go anytime, no worries about us.” He smiled, the most forced, plasticine thing I’d ever seen.
“All right,” I said. “You’re sure about that map in the car?”
“It’s in the glove compartment,” John said with a swift nod. I meandered over to him as he talked, and he watched me with a wary eye like I was going to strike him dead or something.
I checked the knots and bindings. “You sit your ass in this chair until Kytt gets home tonight,” I said, yanking a little harder than was strictly necessary on one of the flannel shirts I’d bound his feet to the chair legs with. It was snug; he might have to cut through it, which he’d have a hell of a time doing given his hands were now bound behind him and anchored to the chair independently. I’d used the clothes, and duct tape, trying to achieve some measure of binding that wouldn’t cause him to lose a limb to lack of blood but still keep him tied up for a while as I made my escape from Scotland. “In that time, if I were you, I’d think about how great she is, and how lucky you are to have her, and how many other women in this world are ever so much worse and more fearsome.” I threw that last part in because what the hell, he needed to occupy his mind on gratitude, and drawing a contrast between hellish me and his lovely significant other seemed like a safe way to do so.
“Oh, yes, I’m a lucky man indeed,” he said, nodding his head fiercely.
“Damned right,” I said, and gave Archie another pet as he wobbled up to me. “All right, boy. Stay. Both of you.” And Archie dutifully plopped down next to John as I headed for the exit, grabbing the car keys off the ring by the door as I plunged out into the daylight. “Making friends everywhere I go,” I muttered, mostly to myself, as I swept out into the weak summer sunshine.
9.
John’s car was functional, and that was about it. Another of Europe’s ubiquitous shoe cars, it had the virtue of at least being not too old, I guess, though I suspected from the smell it had been used to haul livestock, however one would manage that with only enough passenger space to carry a lamb if it had been butchered first.
I took the winding roads east, following the map, having found the destination immediately upon getting my hands on it. I’d quickly sketched out the route, which was pretty much back roads the whole way. I had it spread out on the seat next to me, giving myself plenty of time to get where I was going. And it was good thing I did, too, because the airfield was not on this map, so I was basically going by my recollection of what I’d seen on the phone screen before I’d broken it.
That was fine, though; I had time to drive in circles around the area I knew it was in, tracking it down. It was out on a kind of half-ass peninsula north of the Firth of Forth. Bordered to the east by the North Sea, and with St. Andrews up north of it, I had a solid idea of where I was going—roughly. I’d caught the name of the town of Lochty, and the road the airfield was on, and from there I just drove until I got to that locale.
The cloud cover was heavy overhead for most of the trip. I tried to stick to back roads, which slowed my progress but helped me avoid any police entanglements. In fact, I didn’t see a single cop anywhere along my route. Looking at the nature of the car, I didn’t have to worry about GPS tracking or LoJack in the thing, for which I was also grateful. I turned on news radio and tuned it out for the most part, listening to the continuing excitement over the fact that Sienna Nealon was in Scotland, which was apparently the most thrilling thing that had happened since the Haggis disaster of ‘07 or whatever passed for major news around here.
The hilly countryside was pretty, and I was lucky in that although there were a lot of blind corners coming around hillocks, I didn’t run into any police roadblocks along the way. I was slightly tense as I drove, the maddening silence inside my head chipping away at my resolve. Until today, it had been a while since I’d actually driven a car, and I’d never done it on the wrong side of the road.
My mind settled into a steady rhythm as I got on a long straightaway, and finally my thoughts veered into a territory I hadn’t wanted to contemplate: my missing souls.
“Dammit,” I muttered under my breath. This silence was killing me.