The Hunted, page 11
‘I’m sorry,’ Julia said. ‘It’s the way we are. We’re all totally unique and individual, sure, but that’s a full hundred per cent of our DNA. But over ninety-nine per cent of it, we share with other people. Why, ninety per cent of our make-up we even share with other animals. These names are the closest matches we have for you.’
Tarrin’s stomach knotted up with the sickness of disappointment. ‘But how can I ever get through all these names?’ he said. ‘How can I? It’s just impossible. I just can’t do it.’
‘Can’t you try . . . maybe one of them . . . maybe if you chose at random . . .’
But Tarrin just stood there, not listening to her, hopeless, despairing.
It was just another lie. The advert had said they could trace your folks. That was what they said. Match you up and trace your folks. But they didn’t say there would be that many relatives, so distant and so numerous. It was another lie, just another lie.
‘I’m sorry . . . look . . . maybe you just expected . . .’
Too much, yes, too much.
‘I was hoping for you. Hoping there might just be a few. There are sometimes. No more than two or three pages. I was hoping it would be like that.’
Tarrin turned away from her and stared out at the street.
‘It doesn’t matter,’ he said. ‘It doesn’t matter.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘It doesn’t matter.’ He tried to fight back the tears. ‘I’ll never find them now,’ he said. ‘Never.’
But he wasn’t really talking to the woman, just thinking out loud.
‘I’ll never find them, never find them or know them or see them. Never know who they were or where I came from and where I belong. I’ll never know. I hate this world. I hate what everyone’s done to it. I hate them all for all wanting to live and never to die and let someone else live and have the life that they had. I hate them. I hate them. Why do they all have to live so long? Why can’t they give someone else a turn? Why?’
She had come from behind the counter. She stood by him and looked out of the window too. He could see her reflection there with his own.
‘No one wants to die, I guess,’ she said. ‘When it comes to it. Nobody wants to die. And nobody does now, not for a long time.’
‘And nobody gets born . . . the world’s revenge.’
‘What?’
‘The world’s revenge. Only why does it have to avenge itself on me? I didn’t do anything. I never did anything to anyone. All I ever wanted was to go home. But how can I, when I don’t know where that is.’
She saw that there was nothing she could do. She did all that she could, which was simply to stand there with him, staring out into the night.
At length he rubbed the tears from his face with the sleeve of his shirt.
‘I’d better go back,’ he said. ‘Or Deet might come home.’
‘Do you want to take this?’ she said, indicating the sheaf of paper with all the printed names.
‘How can I? He’ll find it. What use is it anyway? All those names. It’s hopeless. It’s no use.’
Without saying anything more, Tarrin opened the door and hurried from the shop.
Julia remained at the window and watched as the boy disappeared along the street.
Tarrin plunged on into the night. He hurried, but he didn’t run. If he ran, it might attract attention to him, which he didn’t want. He just had to get back before Deet did, that was all. He had no idea how Deet might react if he came back to find him missing. He would assume the worst, that he had been taken, that Deet’s lifetime meal ticket had gone. And then for his meal ticket to walk back in through the door, just as Deet was about to start hunting for him, well, he might be moved to tears of relief and gratitude, or on the other hand he might erupt like a volcano.
Deet had never raised his hand to him ever, not once. Not even when full of beer. Drink had the tendency to make him meek and maudlin and sentimental about himself. No, Deet was a waster, but he was wasn’t a violent man.
But there was no telling what even the meekest of men might do when he feared that he had lost his meal ticket.
A voice called from the shadows.
‘Hey, kid. What you doing out on your own there? Hey, kid, it’s you I’m talking to.’
Tarrin hurried on, back the way he had come, back past the neon-fronted theatre which was home to Miss Virginia Two Shoes.
‘Animal crackers in my soup . . .’ she sang.
The vents of the fan pulsed closed again. Her song was momentarily curtailed.
Tarrin walked on, checking that he wasn’t being followed. He wasn’t. It was OK. There was nobody there. He’d be all right. Deet wouldn’t be back yet. He’d still be in the bar, drinking. Tarrin glanced at his watch. Deet never got back this early. Never.
He retraced his steps, passing the same shops, the same continental grocery stores. One shopkeeper was starting to take the fruit in from the outside displays, getting ready to close the place up. He passed the small Italian restaurant, and hurried on.
He didn’t see the man at the window table who was gazing out into the night, sipping at a double espresso as the finishing touch to his meal.
The instant he saw the boy walk by, the man swallowed the dregs of his coffee and, without even waiting for the bill, threw a sum of money down upon the table, which he rightly felt would be enough to cover the cost of the meal and then some.
Before anybody could even attempt to stop him, or wish him goodnight, he was out of the door.
‘Hey, son. Hey, hold up there. Don’t rush there. I need a word.’
Tarrin heard, he turned, saw the man following, put his head down, walked faster, pressed on.
‘Hey, son. Just a minute, please. Just a word now. I don’t mean any harm.’
Sure you don’t. Kiddernappers never did. Never meant you any harm at all, until you stopped, and then they grabbed you and the chloroform patch was over your mouth and your nose and you were breathing in unconsciousness and the next thing you knew you didn’t know anything.
He speeded up. The man kept pace with him, but he didn’t get nearer or close the gap.
Deet. Deet would help. He’d run into the bar or bang on the window. He could explain why he’d left the motel room later. He’d think of some excuse. None of that mattered. Deet would make the man go. Tarrin knew he would. Of the two evils, the one ahead of him and the one behind, Deet was the lesser.
‘Come on now, son. I just want to talk to you. I just need to see your face.’
Kinane could have grabbed him right there and then, but there were people around, too many people. It was too much of a risk. Some have-a-go hero would intervene and before you knew it the cops would be there.
If he could just get the boy alone.
They came to an intersection. The boy ran across against the lights. Car horns blared, drivers shouted.
‘What are you doing, kid! Trying to get yourself killed?’
No, no. No, no. Quite the opposite.
Kinane ran too. He got the same treatment. Car horns and squealing brakes and people shouting.
The boy had increased the distance between them. He kept on running. He sprinted a few hundred metres but then slowed and seemed to hesitate outside some bar. He appeared to look inside but, not finding what he wanted there, he began to run again.
Kinane was gaining. He was maybe not as young or as fast, but he had stamina and strength. His hands were large, his fingers thick and strong, like a farmer’s. He had stamina. He wouldn’t give up.
He drew level with the frontage of the bar the boy had stopped by. Curiosity impelled him to slow down too and to glance inside and wonder what the boy had been looking for. Nothing he could see. Nothing special at all. Just a bar like any bar.
When he looked up the road again . . .
The boy had gone.
Vanished.
In that fraction of a second. The time it had taken him to glance into the bar and then to look back again. He had gone.
Kinane ran on. He stopped by an alleyway, looked down it, investigated. It was a dead end. The boy wasn’t there. He went back to the road, taking his time now. If the boy was hiding, he would find him. But if he had truly run on, he wasn’t going to catch him.
Not tonight anyway.
But that didn’t matter. He had seen him, that was the thing. At least now he knew where to look.
‘Goodnight, boy,’ he whispered. ‘Maybe I’ll catch up with you tomorrow. I’ll find you. You stay around much longer and I’ll find you.’
But staying around much longer wasn’t in Deet’s plans.
Deet’s plans were for moving on.
But then again maybe that didn’t matter, for everybody who moved on left some traces of their going behind them. If there were two things that Kinane knew something about, it was patience and hunting; they just seemed to go together. Kinane was the kind of man who knew how to wait – a long, long time.
Moving On
Tarrin slid the key card into the lock and, as he entered the room, he felt fear in the pit of his stomach; he was all but resigned to the inevitable sound of Deet’s voice demanding, ‘And where the hell do you think you’ve been, kid?’
But it didn’t come. Deet hadn’t been in the bar, but he hadn’t returned yet either. He must have gone on somewhere else.
Tarrin quickly undressed. He went to the bathroom and brushed his teeth, then got into bed and turned off the light. But he couldn’t sleep. It was the thought of the other man, the stranger, the one who had come after him, and the sound of his soft, friendly voice, intoning, ‘Come on now, son. I just want to talk to you. I just need to see your face.’
He’d never seen a Kiddernapper before, not a real live one. He’d been warned about them more times than he could remember, and he’d heard about them even more, but it was the first time he had come face to face with one and the threat had turned into actuality. The most astonishing thing about the man was how human he was. He had hardly seemed like a monster at all. But maybe that was the lure, the clever enticement, the trickery of it all.
Tarrin also couldn’t sleep because of his disappointment. His hopes of finding his family had gone. He kept thinking of the names, the page after page of them, and the printer spitting them out, one after the next, all the great long list of impossibility. He had naively expected two names or so. He thought he would just get the names of his parents, right then and there, just like that, culled from the database, maybe even with a current address and a telephone number, or, failing that, at least a time and a date and the place of his birth.
Nothing so easy.
Then he remembered something he had seen in the bureau. He had to smile to think of it, the irony of it was so bitter and cruel and yet so funny too.
It was one of the names on the list. He had seen it as it had slid out of the printer.
It was Deet.
Charles Randolph Deet.
He shared a partial DNA profile with somebody called Deet.
It was laughing or crying time. Take your pick. Or time for both maybe. He could barely believe it. What if it was the same Deet? And they were somehow related. Two leaves on different branches of the same immense family tree.
What if he told Deet? What would he say? ‘I always knew it, kid, I always knew we had a bond. Didn’t I always tell you I was looking out for you, just like a father, didn’t I say that?’
Yes, it would be just one more fine feeling for Deet to take advantage of.
‘All the more reason for us to stick together, kid, all the way to the end, to set up as real partners – in a “family business” as it were. All the more reason to get the PP implant, kid, and then we’ll be walking our way down easy street the rest of our days.’
Tarrin heard voices out in the corridor. He listened. It was Deet, whispering something, and then there was a woman’s voice. She laughed softly at whatever he had said.
Tarrin heard the door to Deet’s room being opened, then he heard the voices murmuring to each other and people making the sort of sounds they do when they are trying too hard to be quiet.
He saw the light come on under the door. Then he heard Deet say, ‘I’ll just check on the kid, make sure he’s still in there and hasn’t gone walkabout with no Kiddernappers.’
The door opened a fraction, Deet’s head peered round, his face silhouetted by a sliver of light. Tarrin shut his eyes tight and kept his breathing soft and slow. He heard the interconnecting door click shut before he opened his eyes again.
‘He’s OK,’ he heard Deet whisper. ‘Like a babe. In fact . . . come to think . . . you’re quite a babe yourself.’
The woman giggled. ‘Oh, Deet – you’re so charming, you know. You’re so . . . I don’t know . . . such a gentleman.’
Tarrin almost sat up in surprise. Deet? Charming? And a gentleman? Maybe they were both drunk, maybe that was it.
He closed his eyes and put his fingers in his ears. When he took them out again, the room next door had fallen silent. He felt tired now, more than tired, shattered and exhausted, tired out by the fear of the Kiddernapper and the disappointment of the DNA test.
‘I’ll never find them now,’ Tarrin thought again. ‘Never, never find them.’
He felt himself sink into sleep. He began to dream of the green fields again, and the long summer lane. He saw the white-painted fence and the branches blowing in the wind, and the clouds and the blue patches of sky. He heard the buzz of the insects and felt the warmth of sunlight on his face. Then he felt himself rocking, and there was a sweet, clean smell in the air, and a woman’s voice singing.
There’s a green land far away,
Going to get there one fine day.
One fine day.
Then he was asleep.
When Tarrin woke, Deet was in the room, pulling back the curtains and letting the light stream in.
‘OK, kid? So who’s the sleepyhead? It’s nine o’clock, kid. Let’s get some breakfast.’
Tarrin sat up and rubbed his eyes. ‘Deet . . .’
‘Yeah?’
‘Is there someone else here?’
Deet looked at him, tense, suspicious, then he relaxed. ‘No. Just us. Why?’
‘I thought I heard someone, during the night.’
‘Did we wake you? I just had a friend come back for coffee.’
‘Oh.’
‘But they’ve gone now.’
‘Oh, OK.’
Then he noticed that Deet was taking the suitcases out and was starting to pack.
‘What are you doing, Deet?’
‘We’re moving on, kid, we’re moving on.’
‘Again? But–’
‘It’s all worked out here, kid. We’ll come back another day, but it’s all worked out for now.’
‘But–’
‘But what, kid?’
‘I don’t want to move again, Deet. We’re always moving.’
‘Why not, kid? One place is as good as another. So let’s go see it. And besides . . .’
‘What?’
‘There’s better opportunities . . . elsewhere.’
‘What do you mean, Deet?’
‘You’ll see, kid. I’ve got plans. Ain’t I always telling you that I’m looking out for you and that I’ve got plans? Well, they’re working out, kid. As you’ll see.’
‘But, Deet . . .’
‘Come on, kid.’
He threw his clothes at him. ‘Get clean, get dressed, get packed, get fed and then let’s get moving.’
‘But, Deet . . .’
‘What?’
Tarrin wondered if he should tell Deet about last night, about the man who had come after him, the Kiddernapper. But to do that would have meant confessing that he had gone out, and that would need an explanation as to why. Unless he lied, concocted some story, said the Kiddernapper had come to the door of the room while Deet had been out, or had peered in through the window. No. It would all get too complicated. It would get all tangled up like a ball of string. It was best to tell the whole truth or say nothing. So nothing it was.
As Tarrin dressed, Deet’s mobe rang in the other room. He answered it and Tarrin could hear his voice rising with indignation.
‘No way, lady! No way! I don’t like your tone, ma’am. I have to tell you that I don’t like your tone! Well, you do that. Yes. You do.’
The call ended and Deet came back into the room.
‘You hear that!’ he said. ‘Accusing us of stealing! A five-hundred-unit note gone missing from her bag she says, and accuses us of taking it. It makes me sick, kid, I don’t mind telling you. People like that with all that gravy. Got so much they couldn’t even count it all if they tried. Ringing up accusing a person of dipping his bread in the sauce. And they wouldn’t even know what a hard day’s work was if it fell on their heads.’
Tarrin felt that was equally true of Deet, but said nothing.
‘They make all this song and dance about a simple five hundred that must have fallen down the back of a drawer somewhere. Accusing poor people who’re just trying to make an honest living.’
Tarrin wasn’t too sure about the ‘honest’ either.
‘Well, I told her kid, I told her. Told her just what to do!’
Tarrin felt guilty, yet relieved too that Deet had stuck up for him and did not suspect him. Deet would never have stolen from a customer himself, Tarrin knew that. Overcharged, diddled, deceived and conned, maybe. But blatantly steal, no. It would have been too risky, too much of a chance of permanently losing his reputation, and all his customers along with it.
‘Told her what to do. Told her!’
Deet threw a few more clothes into his suitcase and he was packed.
Kinane woke in his room that morning to find himself lying on top of the covers, still dressed and in his boots. He rubbed a hand across the stubble on his chin but didn’t bother to shave it. Instead he went straight out and returned to where he had last seen the boy the previous night, carefully retracing his steps. He hung around the area for a while, and he explored the nearby streets. Quite what kind of clue he was looking for, he didn’t know, but he would recognize it when he found it.
