The Hard Way (Page 59)

"Grange Farm," he said. "In Bishops Pargeter. Sounds rural."

Reacher asked, "How rural?"

"Not far from Norwich, judging by the postcode."

"Bishops Pargeter is the name of a town?"

The guy nodded. "It’ll be a small village, probably. Or a hamlet, possibly. Perhaps a dozen buildings and a thirteenth-century Norman church. That would be typical. In the county of Norfolk, in East Anglia. Farming country, very flat, windy, the Fens, that kind of thing, north and east of here, about a hundred and twenty miles away."

"Find the name."

"Hang on, hang on, I’m getting there." The guy dragged and dropped the address to a temporary location elsewhere on the screen and opened up a different database. "The electoral register," he said. "That’s always my preference. It’s in the public domain, quite legal, and it’s usually fairly comprehensive and reliable. If people take the trouble to vote, that is, which they don’t always do, of course." He dragged the address back to a new dialog box and hit another submit command. There was a long, long wait. Then the screen changed. "Here we are," the guy said. "Two voters at that address. Jackson. That’s the name. Mr. Anthony Jackson, and let’s see, yes, Mrs. Susan Jackson. So there’s your S. S for Susan."

"A sister," Pauling said. "Married. This is like Hobart all over again."

"Now then," the guy said. "Let’s do a little something else. Not quite legal this time, but since I’m among friends and colleagues, I might as well push the boat out." He opened a new database that came up in old-fashioned plain DOS script. "Hacked, basically," he said. "That’s why we don’t get the fancy graphics. But we get the information. The Department of Health and Social Security. The nanny state at work." He entered Anthony Jackson’s name and address and then added a complex keyboard command and the screen rolled down and came back with three separate names and a mass of figures. "Anthony Jackson is thirty-nine years old and his wife Susan is thirty-eight. Her maiden name was indeed Taylor. They have one child, a daughter, age eight, and they seem to have saddled her with the unfortunate name of Melody."

"That’s a nice name," Pauling said.

"Not for Norfolk. I don’t suppose she’s happy at school."

Reacher asked, "Have they been in Norfolk long? Is that where the Taylors are from? As a family?"

The guy scrolled up the screen. "The unfortunate Melody seems to have been born in London, which would suggest not." He exited the plain DOS site and opened another. "The Land Registry," he said. He entered the address. Hit another submit command. The screen redrew. "No, they bought the place in Bishops Pargeter just over a year ago. Sold a place in south London at the same time. Which would suggest they’re city folk heading back to the land. It’s a common fantasy. I give them another twelve months or so before they get tired of it."

"Thank you," Reacher said. "We appreciate your help."

He picked up the guy’s blunt pencil from the desk and took Patti Joseph’s envelope out of his pocket and wrote Anthony, Susan, Melody Jackson, Grange Farm, Bishops Pargeter, Norfolk on it. Then he said, "Maybe you could forget all about this if the guy from New York calls again."

"Money at stake?"

"Lots of it."

"First come, first served," the guy said. "The early bird catches the worm. And so on and so forth. My lips are sealed."

"Thank you," Reacher said again. "What do we owe you?"

"Oh, nothing at all," the guy said. "It was my pleasure entirely. Always happy to help a fellow professional."

Back on the street Pauling said, "All Lane has to do is check Taylor’s apartment and find the phone and he’s level with us. He could get back to a different guy in London. Or call someone in New York. Those reverse directories are available on-line."

"He won’t find the phone," Reacher said. "And if he did, he wouldn’t make the connection. Different skill set. Mirror on a stick."

"Are you sure?"

"Not entirely. So I took the precaution of erasing the number."

"That’s called taking an unfair advantage."

"I want to make sure I get the money."

"Should we just go ahead and call Susan Jackson?"

"I was going to," Reacher said. "But then you mentioned Hobart and his sister and now I’m not so sure. Suppose Susan is as protective as Dee Marie? She’d just lie to us about anything she knows."

"We could say we were buddies passing through."

"She’d check with Taylor before she told us anything."

"So what next?"

"We’re going to have to go up there ourselves. To Bishops Pargeter, wherever the hell that is."

Chapter 59

OBVIOUSLY THEIR HOTEL didn’t even come close to offering concierge service so Reacher and Pauling had to walk down to Marble Arch to find a car rental office. Reacher had neither a driver’s license nor a credit card so he left Pauling to fill in the forms and kept on going down Oxford Street to look for a bookstore. He found a big place that had a travel section in back with a whole shelf of motoring atlases of Britain. But the first three he checked didn’t show Bishops Pargeter at all. No sign of it anywhere. It wasn’t in the index. Too small, he figured. Not even a dot on the map. He found London and Norfolk and Norwich. No problem with those places. He found market towns and large villages. But nothing smaller. Then he saw a cache of Ordnance Survey maps. Four shelves, low down, against a wall. A whole series. Big folded sheets, meticulously drawn, government sponsored. For hikers, he guessed. Or for serious geography freaks. There was a choice of scales. Best was a huge thing that showed detail all the way down to some individual buildings. He pulled all the Norfolk sheets off the shelf and tried them one by one. He found Bishops Pargeter on the fourth attempt. It was a crossroads hamlet about thirty miles south and west of the Norwich outskirts. Two minor roads met. Not even the roads themselves showed up on the motoring atlases.

He bought the map for detail and the cheapest atlas for basic orientation. Then he hiked back to the rental office and found Pauling waiting with the key to a Mini Cooper.

"A red one," she said. "With a white roof. Very cool."

He said, "I think Taylor might be right there. With his sister."

"Why?"

"His instinct would be to go hide somewhere lonely. Somewhere isolated. And he was a soldier, so deep down he’d want somewhere defensible. It’s flat as a pool table there. I just read the map. He’d see someone coming from five miles away. If he’s got a rifle he’s impregnable. And if he’s got four-wheel-drive he’s got a three-sixty escape route. He could just take off across the fields in any direction."

"You can’t murder two people and steal more than ten million dollars and just go home to your sister."

"He wouldn’t have to give her Chapter and verse. He wouldn’t really have to tell her anything at all. And it might only be temporary. He might need a break. He’s been under a lot of stress."

"You sound sorry for him."

"I’m trying to think like him. He’s been planning for a long time and the last week must have been hell. He must be exhausted. He needs to hole up and sleep."

"His sister’s place would be too risky, surely. Family is the first thing anyone thinks of. We did, with Hobart. We tried every Hobart in the book."