Текст книги "The Driver"

Автор книги: Mark Dawson

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10

Milton made his way towards the house that Madison had run to last night, the one with the old man who had threatened to call the police. It was another big place, a sprawling building set within well tended gardens and fronted by a stone wall topped with ornamental iron fencing. Milton buzzed the intercom set into the stone pillar to the right of the gates and waited. There was no answer. He tried again with the same result. He was about to leave when he saw the old man. He came out of a side door, moving slowly and with the exaggerated caution of advanced age. Behind him was a wide lawn, sloping down to the shore. A collie trotted around the garden with aimless, happy abandon, shoving its muzzle into the flowerbeds in search of an interesting scent.

“Can I help you?”

“I hope so,” Milton said. “Could I have a word?”

Milton assessed him as he approached. He was old: late eighties, he guessed. He was tall but his frame had withered away with age so that his long arms and legs were spindly, sharply bony shoulders pointing through the fabric of the polo shirt that he was wearing.

“What can I do for you?”

“I was here last night.”

The man thought for a moment, the papery skin of his forehead crinkling. He remembered and a scowl descended. “This morning, you mean?”

“That’s right.”

“She woke me up, all that racket, my wife, too. You with her?”

“No, sir. But I drove her out here.”

“So what are you? A taxi driver?”

“That’s right.”

“What’s your name, son?”

“John Smith. And you?”

“Victor Leonard.”

“Sorry about all the noise, Mr. Leonard. The disturbance.”

“What the hell was she so exercised about?”

“I was hoping you might be able to tell me – did she say anything?”

Milton watched through the bars of the gate as he pursed his withered lips. “Didn’t make a whole heap of sense. She was in a terrible panic. Just asking for help. I’ve no idea what she wanted help for. She had her cell phone out and kept trying to make a call but it didn’t look like she was getting through. I could see she needed help so I told her she could come in. My wife, Laura, she sleeps downstairs because she’s just had her knee replaced, she was up too, all that noise. I got her inside but then she got a whole lot worse. Couldn’t make any sense out of her. Laura picked up the phone and started talking to the dispatcher, ‘this girl here is asking for help, can you send someone to help her,’ and as she finished the call and turned to her and told her to sit down and relax, the police were on their way, as soon as she said that, out the door she went.”

“And?”

“And nothing much. Police came around half an hour later. It was a single officer, he had a look around the place. Said he looked around the whole neighbourhood but he couldn’t find her anywhere. They asked me the questions I guess they ask everyone: what did she look like, what was she wearing, what did she say, all that. I told them what I could remember.” He paused. “I’ve got six kids, Mr. Smith, and I’m sure one or two of them could probably tell you more about drugs than I could. But, you ask me, that girl was pretty well drugged up. She had her hand on the sideboard to help her stay upright. Big eyes – pupils practically as big as saucers. She almost fell over twice while I was talking to her. And she wasn’t making any sense. If that’s not someone under the influence of something or another, I don’t know what is. You ask me, whatever she thought her problems were, they were in her mind – hallucinations or whatever you want to call them.”

“Did you see where she went?”

“Over the fence. Straight into Pete Waterfield’s garden, I guess because he had his security light on, looked like maybe he was in. She pounded on his door but he’s off on vacation with his grandkids and when she didn’t get an answer she kept on going – into his back garden and then away.”

“That leads down to the cliffs?”

“Sure does. You see the boat he’s got parked down there? Behind the car?” Milton said that he did. “She crouched down there, between the two, as if she was hiding from something. I saw her try and make a call on her phone again but I guess it didn’t get anywhere, like the others, because she upped and made a run for it. And that’s the last time I saw her.”

“Yes,” Milton said. “Me too. The cliffs are fenced off there?”

“Around the house, sure they are. But not further down.”

“You think she might have gone over the edge?”

“I hope not. That’s a fifty foot drop right onto the rocks.” He paused. “What’s it got to do with you, anyway? She’s just a customer, right?”

“I’m worried.”

“Ain’t like no taxi drivers I know, get worried about the people they drive.”

“I think something bad has happened to her.”

“Nothing bad happens around here, Mr. Smith.”

“I don’t know about that.” Milton took a business card for his taxi business from his pocket. “I appreciate you talking to me. Maybe I am worrying too much, but maybe I’m not. The police won’t even treat this as a missing person enquiry until she’s been gone a couple more days and, even then, it’s not going to be very high up their list of priorities. I wonder, if you think of anything else, or if you hear anything, or if anyone says anything to you, could you give me a call?”

“Sure I can.”

Milton passed the card through the bars of the gate.

“One more thing,” he said. “The house over there” – he pointed to the house he had just been inside – “do you know who owns it?”

“The company place?”

“What do you mean?”

“It’s owned by a company, one of the tech firms down in Palo Alto. Was on the market last year. Ten million dollars. What do you think of that?”

Milton made a show of being impressed.

“Good for the rest of us, too. They send executives there to stay – guys they’ve just hired before they can find a place of their own. None of them ever make much of an effort round here with the rest of us. Not unreasonable, I suppose. Why would they? They’re only stopping on the way to something else.”

“Know who’s in there now?”

“Afraid not. It’s empty, I think.”

“Apart from last night.”

“You can say that again.”

Milton thanked him and the old man went back to his front door. Milton turned back to the big house again. The place was quiet, peaceful, but there was something in that stillness that he found disturbing. It was as if the place was haunted, harbouring a dark secret that could only mean bad things for Madison.

11

Milton pressed the buzzer on the intercom and then stepped back, waiting for it to be answered. It was early, just before nine, and the sun was struggling through thinning fog. The brownstone was in Nob Hill, a handsome building that had been divided into apartments over the course of its life. Rows of beech had been planted along both sides of the street twenty or thirty years ago, and the naked trees went some way to lending a little bucolic charm to what would otherwise have been a busy suburban street. The cars parked beneath the overhanging branches were middle-of-the-road saloons and SUVs. The houses looked well kept. Both were good indications that the area was populated by owner-occupiers with decent family incomes. Milton thought of Madison and her reticence to talk about the money she was making. It must have been pretty good to be able to live here.

“Hello?”

“It’s John Smith.”

The lock buzzed. Milton opened the door and climbed the stairs to the second floor.

Trip was waiting for him inside the opened door.

“Morning, Mr. Smith.”

“Anything?”

He shook his head.

Milton winced. “Two days.”

“I know. I’m worried now.”

He led the way into the sitting room.

“You’ve spoken to the police?”

“About ten times.”

“What did they say?”

“Same – they won’t declare her missing until this time tomorrow. Three days, apparently, that’s how long it has to be. It’s because of what she does, isn’t it?”

“Probably.”

“If this was a secretary from Sacramento they would’ve been out looking for her as soon as soon as someone says she’s not where she’s supposed to be.”

Milton gestured to indicate the apartment. “Do you mind if I have a look around? There might be something you’ve missed. The benefit of fresh eyes?”

“Yeah, that’s fine. I get it.”

“Could you do me a favour?”

“Sure.”

“Get me a coffee? I’m dying for a drink.”

“Sure.”

That was better. Milton wanted him out of the way while he looked around the apartment. He would have preferred him to have left the place altogether, but if he worked quickly he thought he would be able to do what needed to be done.

The place was comfortably sized: two bedrooms, one much smaller than the other, a bathroom, a kitchen-diner. It was nicely furnished. The furniture was from IKEA but it was at the top end of their range; Milton knew that because he had visited the store to buy the things he needed for his own place. There was a sofa upholstered in electric blue, a large bookcase that was crammed with books, a coffee table with copies of Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar and a crimson rug with a luxurious deep pile. A plasma screen stood on a small unit with a PlayStation plugged in beneath it and a selection of games and DVDs alongside. There was a healthy-looking spider plant standing in a pewter vase.

Milton went straight to the bedroom. It was a nice room, decorated in a feminine style, with lots of pastel colours and a pretty floral quilt cover. He opened the wardrobe and ran his fingers along the top shelf. He opened the chest of drawers and removed her underwear, placing it on the bed. The drawer was empty. He replaced the clothes and closed the drawer again. Finally, he took the books and magazines from the bedside table. He opened the magazines and riffled their pages. Nothing. Once again, beyond the detritus of a busy life, there was nothing that provided him with any explanation of what might have happened to her in Pine Shore.

He went back into the sitting room. A MacBook sat open on the coffee table.

“Is this hers?”

“Yes.”

“Did you have any luck?”

“No. Couldn’t get into it.”

He tapped a key to kill the screensaver and the log-in screen appeared. He thought of the specialists back in London. Breaking the security would have child’s play for them but his computer skills were rudimentary; he wouldn’t even know where to start.

“The police will be able to do it if they have to.”

“You think that’ll be necessary?”

“Maybe.”

Trip had left a cup of coffee next to the laptop. Milton thanked him and took a sip.

“So,” he said. “I went back to Pine Shore last night.”

“And?”

“It was quiet. Peaceful. I had a look in the house—”

“You went in?”

“Just looked through the window,” he lied. “It was clean and tidy, as if nothing had ever happened.”

“Who lives there?”

“One of the neighbours told me it belongs to a company.”

“Which one?”

“I don’t know. It was sold last year. I looked it up online. It was bought by a trust. The ownership is hidden but the deal was for ten million, so whichever company it was has plenty of cash.”

“A tech firm. Palo Alto.”

“I think so.”

“Apple? Google?”

“Someone like that.”

“You get anything else?”

“I spoke to one of the neighbours. She ran into his house. He said she was out of it, didn’t make much sense. He called the police and that was when she ran off again. He’s not going to be able to help much beyond that.”

The boy slumped back. “Where is she?”

He took a mouthful of coffee and placed the cup back on the table again. “I don’t know,” he said. “But we’ll find her.”

“Yeah,” he said, but it was unconvincing.

“You know what – you should tell me about you both. Could be something that would be helpful.”

“What do you want to know?”

“Everything you can think of. Maybe there’s something you’ve overlooked.”

He sparked up a cigarette and started with himself. He was born and raised in Queens, New York. His father worked as a janitor in one of the new skyscrapers downtown. His mother was a secretary. His father was Irish and proud of it and it had been a big family with three brothers and six sisters. The children had all gone to Dickinson, the high school on the hill that drivers passed along the elevated highway connecting the New Jersey Turnpike to the Holland Tunnel. Trip explained that he was a bad pupil – lazy, he said – and he left without graduating. The area was rough and he found himself without a job and with too much time on his hands. He drifted onto the fringes of one of the gangs. A string of petty robberies that passed off without incident emboldened him and the others to go for a bigger score. Guns were easy enough to find and he had bought a .22 and helped hold up a fast food joint on Kennedy Boulevard. They had gotten away with a couple of hundred dollars but they hadn’t worn gloves and they left their prints all over the place.

The police had taken about three hours to trace them.

Trip was sentenced to three years in a juvenile facility. He served most of the time at the New Jersey Training School for Boys in Jamesburg. He did thirty months, all told, most of it spent in boot camp, living in barracks with fifty other young convicts. He was twenty when he finally came out. He had relatives in San Francisco, moved west to get out of the way of temptation and enrolled at community college to try and round out a few qualifications so that he could fix himself up with a job. He found out that he had an aptitude for electronics and he took a course in electrical engineering. He parlayed that into an apprenticeship and now he was employed fixing up the power lines.

He met Madison while he was out celebrating his first pay packet. She had been at the bar on her own, reading a book in the corner and nursing a vodka and coke. He introduced himself and asked if he could buy her a drink. She said he could and they had started to get to know each other. She was a big talker, always jawing, and he said how it was sometimes impossible to get a word in edgeways. (Milton said he had noticed that, too.) She was living out of town at the time, taking a bus to get into work. She said she was a secretary. Trip figured out the truth by the time they had been on their third date and he had been surprised to find that it didn’t bother him. If he didn’t think about it, it was bearable. And, of course, the money was great and it was only ever going to be temporary. He always tried to remember that. She had big plans and she was just escorting until she had saved enough to do what she wanted to do.

“She wants to write,” Trip said. “A journalist, most likely, but something to do with words. She’s always been into reading. You wouldn’t believe how much. All these” – he pointed at the books on the bookcase – “all of them, they’re all hers. I’ve never been into reading so much myself but you won’t find her without a book. She always took one when she went out nights.”

Milton looked at the bookcase, vaguely surprised to see so many books, always a clue to a personality. They were an odd mixture: books on astrology and make-up, novels by Suzanne Collins and Stephanie Meyer. Some books on fashion. The Collected Poems of Ralph Waldo Emerson. Milton pulled it out to look at the cover. Several pages had their corners turned down. Not what he would have expected to find. He slipped it back into its slot on the shelf.

“That’s one of the things I love about her, Mr. Smith. She gets so passionate about books. She writes, too. Short stories. I’ve seen a couple of them, the ones she doesn’t mind showing me. And I know I’m no expert and all that and I don’t know what I’m talking about but the way I see it, I reckon some of her stuff’s pretty good.”

“What’s she like as a person?”

“What do you mean?”

He searched for the right word. “Is she stable?”

“She gets bad mood swings. She can be happy one minute and then the whole world is against her the next.”

“You know why?”

He screwed the cigarette in the ashtray and lit another.

“Family.”

He explained. Madison had been born and raised in Ellenville. The place was up in the foothills of the Catskills, right up around Shawangunk Ridge, and it was on its uppers: the local industry had moved out and Main Street had been taken over by dollar stores and pawn shops. Madison had two sisters and a brother; she was the oldest of the four. Her father had left the family when she was five or six. Her mother, Clare – a brassy woman full of attitude – told the children it was because he was a drunk but Madison had always suspected that there was something else involved. She had no memories of her father at all and, whenever she thought of him she would plunge into one of her darker moods. Clare moved a series of increasingly inappropriate men into the house and it was after one of them started to smack her around that the police were called. He had been sent to jail and the children had been moved into foster care. Clare got Madison’s sisters and brother back after a year once she was able to demonstrate that she could provide a stable environment for them but she had left Madison with the family who had taken her in. She would run away to try and get back home and then be taken back into the foster system. There was a series of different places, several well-meaning families, but she never settled with any of them.

“Have you spoken to her mother?”

“Last night. She hasn’t seen her. Same goes for her sisters and brother.”

“Does she get on with them?”

“They used to go at it all the time but I think it’s better now than it was.”

“Why?”

“The others got to grow up at home and she didn’t. She hates that. She said felt like no-one wanted her. Always on the move and never where she wanted to be.”

“Why didn’t her mother take her back?”

“She never said. I think Madison was a little wild when she was younger, though. Maybe they didn’t know what to do with her. She has triggers like we all do, I guess – she’ll go off if she thinks somebody has lied to her, or if we’re running low on money, or if she’s having one of her arguments with her mom or her sisters. If she feels like she’s being ignored or rejected it all comes back again, and then, you know” – he made a popping noise – “look out.”

“Could that be a reason for what’s happened? Something’s upset her?”

“No,” he said. “She’s been really good with her mom for the last couple of months. They’ve been speaking a lot. Now she’s got money she’s been buying things for them – for her mom, her sisters, for her nieces and nephews, too. I’ve tried to tell her she shouldn’t need to do that but she likes it. They never had much money growing up and now she has some she likes to spread it around, I guess.”

“Alright,” Milton said. “Go on.”

He did. Around the time of seventh grade, Madison moved across country to live with her aunt in San Diego. The woman was young and Madison felt that they had something in common. It was a better town, too, with better schools, and she was encouraged to work hard. That was where her love of reading and writing found expression and she started to do well. For the first time in her life, he said, she felt wanted and useful and she started to thrive.

“Have you spoken to her? The Aunt?”

“No. I don’t have her number.”

Milton’s cellphone vibrated in his pocket. He scooped it up and looked at the display. He didn’t recognise the number.

“John Smith,” he said.

“Mr. Smith, it’s Victor Leonard from Pine Shores. We spoke last night.”

“Mr. Leonard – how are you?”

“I’m good, sir,” the old man said. “There’s something I think you should know – about the girl.”

“Yes, of course – what is it?”

“Look, I don’t want to be a gossip, telling tales on people and nonsense like that, but there’s a fellow who’s been saying some weird things about what happened up here the other night. You want to know about it?”

Trip raised his eyebrows: who is it?

“Please,” Milton said.

12

Milton was getting used to the forty-minute drive to Pine Shores. Trip was in the passenger seat next to him, fidgeting anxiously. Milton would have preferred to go alone but the boy had insisted that he come, too. He had been quiet during the drive but the mood had been oppressive and foreboding; Milton had tried to lighten it with some music. He had thumbed through his phone for some Smiths but then, after a couple of melancholic minutes, realised that that hadn’t been the best choice. He replaced it with the lo-fi, baggy funk of the Happy Mondays. Trip seemed bemused by his choice.

Milton drove to the address that Victor Leonard had given him and parked. It was eleven in the morning. They walked toward the house, a Cape-style cottage, raised high with a carport at ground level. Milton climbed up a set of steps that rose up beyond the level of the sidewalk and rapped the ornate iron knocker three times. There was a vertical panel set into the side of the door and Milton gazed inside: he made out the shape of a telephone table, a flight of stairs leading up to the first floor, a jumble of shoes against the wall, coats draped off the banister. It looked messy. A man turned out a doorway to the left of the lobby and came towards the door; Milton stepped away from the window.

The door opened.

“Dr. Brady?”

“Yes? Who are you?” Andrew Brady was very tall, with a plump face, greasy skin and a pendulous chin. His hair was chestnut streaked with grey and his small eyes had retreated deep into their sockets. He was unshaven and, despite his height, he was overweight and bore his extra pounds in a well-rounded potbelly. He was wearing a fuchsia-coloured windbreaker, a mesh cap and a pair of wading boots that were slicked with dried mud up to just below his knees.

“My name is John Smith. This is Trip Macklemore.”

“I’m sorry, fellas,” he said. “I was just going out. Fishing.” He indicated the waders and a fishing rod that was propped against the wall behind him.

“Could we speak to you? It would just take a moment.”

He glared out from the doorway at them with what Milton thought looked like an arrogant sneer. “Depends on what about.”

“The commotion around here the other night.”

“What commotion?”

“There was a girl. You didn’t hear?”

“The girl – oh, yes.”

“I understand you spoke to her?”

Brady’s eyes narrowed suspiciously. “Who told you that?”

Milton turned and angled his face towards the house diagonally opposite. “Mr. Leonard. I spoke to him earlier. Is it true?”

“No,” Brady said. “It isn’t.”

“Do you think we could have ten minutes of your time? It’s important.”

“What do you both have to do with her?”

“I’m her boyfriend,” Trip explained.

“And you, Mr. Smith?”

“I’m a taxi driver. I drove her up here the night she went missing. I’d like to see that she gets home safely again.”

“How honourable,” he said with a half-smile that could have been derisory or amused, it was difficult to tell. “A knight of the road.” The bluster was dismissed abruptly and Brady’s face broke out into a welcoming smile. “Of course, of course – come inside.”

Milton got the impression that this was a man who, if not exactly keen to help, liked people to think that he was. Perhaps it was a doctor’s self-regard. He bent down to tug off his boots and left them against the wall amidst the pile of shoes. As he led the way further into the house Milton noticed a small, almost imperceptible limp. He guessed he was in his early fifties but he might have been older; the greasy skin made it difficult to make an accurate guess.

He led them both into the main room of the house, a double-height living room that captured the light from large slanted windows. There was a galley kitchen in the far corner, a breakfast bar with barstools arranged around it. There was a large television tuned to CNN, a shelf of medical textbooks and, on the wall, a picture of a younger Brady – perhaps ten years younger – posing in army uniform with a group of soldiers. The photograph was taken in a desert; it looked like Iraq. He cleared the sofa of discarded remnants of the newspaper so that they could sit down.

“Could I get you something to drink?”

“No thanks,” Trip said, struggling with his impatience.

Milton smiled encouragingly at the boy. “No,” he repeated. “That’s alright. We’re fine.”

Brady lowered himself to the sofa. “So what did Victor have to say about me?”

“Just what he said that you’ve been saying.”

“Which was—”

“That she – the girl, Madison – was here. That she knocked on the door and you took her in. He says you used to specialise in getting kids off drugs and that you run a retreat here. Kids with problems come up here and you help them get clean. That true?”

“Yes, that’s true.”

“And Madison?”

“No, that isn’t true. And I don’t know why he’d say that.”

“It didn’t happen?”

“I heard the clamour – my God, the noise she was making, it’d be impossible not to hear her. She must’ve clambered over the wall at the bottom of the garden and went straight across, screaming for help at the top of her lungs. I was up working.”

“At that hour?”

“I was an Army doctor, Mr. Smith. Served my country in the Gulf, both times.” He indicated the photograph on the wall. “Second time, one of our men ended up with both legs blown off after he stepped on an IED. I went to try and help stabilise him before we got him out. Didn’t notice the second IED.” He closed his hand into a fist and rapped it against his leg; it sounded a hollow, plastic knock. “Gets painful sometimes so that I can’t sleep. It was like it that night. Kept me awake so I thought I might as well make myself useful.”

“I’m sorry,” Milton said.

“No-one notices. That’s the beauty with prosthetics these days. You wouldn’t know unless you’re told. They’re not quite so inconspicuous if you have to wear one, though. But, you know, we’re getting better at it all the time. Another five years…” He spread his arms wide. “It’ll be good as new. You won’t even know it’s there.”

“Nevertheless.”

“I manage.”

He tried to make a connection with him. “I served, too,” he said.

“Iraq?”

“Yes. Both times.”

“Doing what?”

“Just a squaddie the first time. Then special forces.”

“SAS?”

“That’s right.”

“You boys are tough as hell. Came across a few of your colleagues.”

“That right?”

“Helped one of them out. Crashed his jeep. Ended up with a broken leg.”

“You know what,” Milton said, smiling at him. “I will have that coffee.”

Brady smiled. “Not a problem. Young man?”

“No,” Trip said. “I’m fine.”

Brady got up and went to the kitchen. There was a coffee machine on the countertop and Brady made two cups of black coffee. “You been to Afghanistan, too?” he asked.

“Several times,” Milton replied.

“What’s it like?”

“It wouldn’t be on my bucket list, put it like that.”

“Never been out there myself but that’s what I heard from the guys I know who have. Ragheads – you ask me, we leave them to get on with whatever it is they want to do to each other. One thing you can say about them, they know how to fight – right?”

Milton ignored his distaste for the man. “They do.”

“Gave the Russians a bloody nose when they tried to bring them in line, didn’t they? They’ll end up doing the exact same thing to us. If it was my decision, I’d get us out of there as soon as I could. We should never have gone in the first place.”

Brady rambled on for a moment, his remarks scattered with casual racism. Milton nodded and made encouraging responses but he was hardly listening; he took the opportunity to scan the room more carefully: the stack of unpaid bills on the countertop; the newspaper, yellow highlighter all over a story about the Republican primary for the Presidential elections; a precarious stack of vinyl albums on the floor; the textbooks shoved haphazardly onto the shelves; framed photographs of two children and a woman Milton guessed must have been Brady’s wife. Nothing stood out. Nothing out of the ordinary. Certainly nothing that was a reason for suspicion.

“Milk and sugar?”

“No thanks. Black’s fine.”

He passed him a mug of coffee and went back around to sit. “So – the girl.”

Trip leaned forwards. “Madison,” he said.

“That’s right.”

“Did you speak to her?”

“Not really. I went to the door and called out but she didn’t even pause. Kept going straight on.”

“She didn’t come in?”

“No, she didn’t. Like I said, she ran off.”

“Why would Mr. Leonard tell me that you said she did come in?” Milton asked.

“You’ll have to ask him that. Between us, Victor’s an old man. His faculties… well, let’s be charitable about it and say that they’re not what they once were.”

“He’s lying?”

“I’m not saying that. Perhaps he’s just mistaken. It wouldn’t be the first time.”

“Right.”

Brady spoke easily and credibly. If he was lying, he was good at it.

The doctor sipped his coffee and rested the mug on the arm of the chair. “You’ve reported her missing?”

“Of course,” Trip said tersely.

“And?”

“They were useless.”

“Well, of course, in their defence, this isn’t a lost child, is it? She’s a grown-up. I suppose they might be inclined to think she’s gone off somewhere on her own and she’ll come back when she feels like it.”

“She’s missing,” Trip said, his temper up a little. Milton felt the atmosphere in the room change; the boy was angry and the doctor’s air of self-importance would only inflame things. They had got all they were going to get from this visit. It was time to go.

He stood. “Thanks for the coffee. I’m sorry we had to bother you.”

Brady stood, too. “I’ll tell you what,” he said, reaching into his pocket and fishing out a business card. “This is my number. I’ll be happy to help out if you need anything. I’m on the board of the community association here. If you want to speak to anyone else or if you want to put flyers out, that sort of thing, please do just give me a call. Anything I can do, just ask.”

Milton took the card. “Thank you,” he said as they made their way back down the corridor. They shook at the door. Brady’s hands were bigger than his but they were soft and his grip was flaccid and damp, unimpressive. Milton thanked him again and, impelling Trip onwards with a hand on his shoulder, they made their way down the steps to the pavement. Milton turned back to the house and saw Brady watching them from a side window; the man waved at him as soon as he realised that he had been seen. Milton turned back to the car, went around and got inside.