Chapter Twenty-four

I CAN’T DENY that the feeling had been growing on me for days. I am not in the bag for fate or destiny, but not long after I had left Battleboi and was walking home through Manhattan’s darkened streets, I had an overwhelming sense that some force of nature was coming to meet me.

I entered my small loft with its chronic undertow of loneliness and began to search through the bags that I had brought from Paris. No sooner had I said goodbye to Battleboi than I decided that the only way to deal with the hundreds of government announcements that were threatening my life was to ask Ben and Marcie to hand over what they had found. Frankly, I didn’t think that either the hacker or myself would have the time or the skill to duplicate their work. At last I found what I was looking for: the jacket I had been wearing at the Plaza Athé né e the night I met them. Inside the pocket was the business card Marcie had given me and which I had taken with such reluctance.

It was too late to phone them that night but early the following evening I put a call through. It was Marcie who picked up.

‘This is Peter Campbell, ’ I said quietly. ‘We met in Paris. ’

‘It didn’t take you long to call, ’ she said, overcoming her surprise. ‘Nice to hear from you. Where are you? ’

‘In New York for a while, ’ I told her, cautious as ever. ‘I was wondering if you and your husband might be willing to let me have the research material on Scott Murdoch that he told me about. ’

‘Ben’s not at home … but sure, I don’t see why not. ’

‘Thank you, ’ I said, relieved. ‘Can I come and get it? ’

‘Not tonight – I’m meeting him for a movie, and tomorrow we have dinner with friends. What about Friday, around seven? ’

A delay of two days was a lot longer than I wanted, but I wasn’t in a position to object. I thanked her, made a note of the address and hung up. Being a highly experienced professional, a man skilled in the tradecraft of the clandestine world, a person who – as I think I mentioned – had been trained to survive in situations where others might die, it would be reasonable to assume that I would see an ambush coming. But not me – the high-school teacher raised in Queens played me off a break and I didn’t even suspect it until I stepped into the apartment.

The lights were low, ‘Hey Jude’ was playing on the stereo, the room was filled with the smell of home cooking and a table was set for three: I had been invited for dinner. I guessed the whole evening would be devoted to pressuring me to change my mind about Bradley’s seminar, but there was no way out, not when people have spent months compiling a dossier on your life and you’re a beggar for their files.

‘You shouldn’t have gone to so much trouble, ’ I said, doing my best imitation of a smile.

‘The least we could do, ’ Marcie replied, ‘considering all the trouble we have caused you. ’

Bradley appeared, hand extended, asking me what I’d like to drink. As it happened, I was in one of my periodic ‘cease and desist’ phases: I had decided New York would be a fresh start, a perfect opportunity to try to get clean, and it wouldn’t be just lip service this time – I’d even got the schedule of the local Narcotics Anonymous meetings. Being an addictive personality, however, I couldn’t do anything in moderation – not even sobriety – so I had also sworn off all alcohol. This was going to be a long evening.

Bradley returned with my Evian. While Marcie went to check on dinner, Bradley took a shot of his liquor and guided me towards the white room at the end of the universe. Except it wasn’t that any more – the kilim was on the floor, the drapes rehung and the only evidence of the desperate drama that had played out within its walls was the physiotherapy equipment in the corner.

Dozens of file boxes were standing next to it. Bradley pointed and smiled. ‘This is your life, Mr Murdoch. ’

As I bent and glanced through them, I was shocked at the extent of their research – the boxes were filled with computer print-outs, data-storage disks and copies of everything from Caulfield Academy yearbooks to the annual reports of UN agencies. I took a folder at random – it was their master list of the aliases I had used – and the names brought a rush of memories.

Bradley watched as I turned the pages. ‘Marcie and I have been talking, ’ he said. ‘Do you mind if we call you Scott? ’

‘What’s wrong with Peter Campbell? ’ I asked.

‘I just thought … at least between ourselves, it’d be easier to use your real name. That’s how we’ve always thought of you. ’

I looked at him. ‘Trouble is, Ben, Scott Murdoch’s not my real name either. ’

Bradley stared, trying to compute it. Was I lying, trying one last gambit to throw them off the track they had followed so assiduously, or was this my poor attempt at humour?

I indicated the list of aliases. ‘It’s like all the rest. Just another false identity – a different time, a different place, a different name. ’ I shrugged. ‘It’s been my life. ’

‘But … you were Scott Murdoch at school … just a kid … That was years before the secret world, ’ he said, even more perplexed.

‘I know. Nobody would have chosen what happened – but that’s the way it turned out. ’

I watched the investigator’s mind race – the child’s name that was no real name at all, my absence from either of the funerals, the fact I didn’t seem to have inherited any of the Murdochs’ wealth. He looked at me and realized: I was adopted, I wasn’t Bill and Grace’s natural child at all.

I smiled at him, one of those smiles that has no humour in at all. ‘I’m glad you didn’t try to go back any further than Scott Murdoch. Everything before Greenwich is mine, Ben – it’s not for anyone else to see. ’

There was no doubt he understood it was a warning. The three rooms on the wrong side of 8-Mile, the woman’s features which had faded in my memory with every year, the real name she gave me – they were the very core of me, the only things I owned that were indisputably mine.

‘Who cares about a name? ’ Bradley said at last, smiling. ‘Pete’s fine. ’

Marcie called out, and the evening headed down a track I would never have expected. For a start, she was a superb cook, and if excellent food doesn’t put you in a good mood you’ve probably been supersized one time too many. In addition, they didn’t mention the seminar and I had to admit that signing me up didn’t appear to be on their minds. I started to relax, and the idea occurred to me that they knew so much about my background that, for them at least, it was like having dinner with an old friend.

Bradley had scores of questions about the book and the cases it dealt with and Marcie took obvious delight in watching her clever husband try to pin me down on details I was forbidden to talk about. During one particularly torrid session she laughed and said she had never seen him so pissed off in her life. I looked at her and couldn’t resist joining in.

When someone makes you laugh, when they’ve invited you into their home and tried their hardest to make you welcome, when they’ve given you boxes of material that just might save your life, when they’ve hauled them down into the street and helped you load them into a cab, when you’re standing under a street light in Manhattan and all that’s waiting for you is an apartment so cold you call it Camp NoHo, when you’re lost in your own country and the world’s promises haven’t amounted to very much, when you have the inescapable sense you are waiting for some future which might not be very pleasant, when they smile and shake your hand and thank you for coming and say they have no way of contacting you, you’ve got a hard choice to make.

I paused, all my tradecraft and experience telling me to write down a fake phone number and drive away with their research. What did I need them for now? But I thought of the warmth with which they had greeted me, Bradley’s joy in the music he had chosen for the evening and, I’m sorry, I couldn’t do it. I took out my cellphone, pulled its number up on the screen and watched Marcie write it down.

In the weeks that followed they would call, and we would catch a movie or go to a club and listen to the old blues-men that Bradley loved, jam the night away – always just the three of us. Thank God they never tried to set me up on a date or went off piste and mentioned Bradley’s seminar.

During that time Bradley underwent a battery of physical and psychological tests and, much to his relief, was passed fit to return to work. He still limped a little and, because of that, he was on lighter duties than normal but sometimes, usually late at night, he would get hold of me and ask if I wanted to drop by a crime scene where he thought there was some element which might interest me. On one particular evening he left a message while I was attending one of my regular twelve-step meetings. By this stage, I had switched my patronage to AA – as Tolstoy might have said, drug addicts are all alike, whereas every alcoholic is crazy in his own way. This led to far more interesting meetings, and I had decided that, if you were going to spend your life on the wagon, you might as well be entertained.

The meeting – held in a decaying church hall on the Upper West Side – came to an end, and I left my fellow outcasts milling about the foyer. I walked east, enjoying the unseasonably warm evening, and it wasn’t until I saw the Gothic towers of the Dakota that I thought to check my phone for messages. I saw Bradley’s number and figured he must have turned up another one of his rock ’n’ roll ghosts, so I was surprised when I clicked play and heard him, for the first time since we had met, ask for help.

‘I’ve got a murder case that’s very strange, ’ he said on the message. Explaining nothing more than the fact that it concerned a young woman, he then gave me the address of a sleazy hotel where he wanted me to meet him.

It was called the Eastside Inn.