Solomon Creed. Simon Toyne

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ a new contact and dialled.

      His old man had driven a Buick when he’d worked the roads, hawking office supplies then pharmaceuticals all over the Midwest. Mulcahy must have been only, what, ten or eleven at the time? Mom had been long gone, so it can’t have been much earlier. His pop would get him to wash and wax the car every Sunday afternoon in exchange for five bucks that had to last him through the week. He would drive him to school in the shiny car on a Monday morning then take off, heading for different states and places that sounded exotic to an eleven-year-old kid who didn’t know any better: Oklahoma City; Des Moines; Shakopee; Omaha; Kansas City. His old man would always come back late on a Friday, pick him up from his aunt’s or, later on when it was clear Mom wasn’t coming back, some girlfriend or other, and the Buick would always be covered in dust, exactly like the Verano parked outside.

      The phone connected, his dad’s voice this time. ‘Leave a message. I’ll call you.’

      ‘Pop, it’s me. Listen, if you’re not at the house then stay away. Don’t go back there for a while, OK? Call me when you get this. Everything’s fine, just … call me.’

      He hung up. Everything was not fine. This was not how it was supposed to go. Someone had changed the script and now his father was missing. He checked the time. Tío would be wondering why he hadn’t called. Most likely he already knew. He should have told his father to go on a trip, get him out of the way, in case something like this happened, only Tío’s men would have been watching and they would have grabbed him anyway. About a year back one of Tío’s lieutenants had been turned by the Federales. He’d promised to give them a large shipment and several key players in Tío’s organization in exchange for immunity and a new life. The day before the shipment, the lieutenant had sent all his family away somewhere – and Tío had been watching. The Federales found the lieutenant and his whole family a week later, lined up and headless in a ditch along the border. The message was clear: I am watching. You will be loyal or you will be dead, and so will anyone you hold dear. So Mulcahy had left his father where he was. And now the plane had crashed and he couldn’t get hold of him and everything was fucked and he had to un-fuck it and fast.

      Sunlight flashed on the passenger window of the Cherokee as Javier threw it open and escaped from the oven of its interior. He looked furious. Carlos got out too, head down, eyes jumping. They shambled towards the door, doing the most piss-poor impersonation of two people trying not to look suspicious Mulcahy had ever seen. He selected a new contact from the Skype menu and raised the phone back to his ear just as a heavy knock thudded on the other side of it.

      ‘It’s open,’ he called out and Javier burst in.

      ‘The fuck’s up with that, leaving us out in the car like a pair of motherfuckin’ dogs?’

      The phone clicked as it connected. ‘Tío,’ he said, as calmly as he could manage but loud enough for Javier to hear. ‘It’s Mulcahy.’

      Javier stopped dead in the doorway, so suddenly that Carlos bumped into him from behind.

      ‘There was a problem at the pick-up.’ Mulcahy was looking at Javier but talking into the phone. ‘The plane never showed. We didn’t collect the package. We don’t have your son.’

       13

      Solomon walked quickly, keeping to the shadows of the boardwalk and out of the sun, feeling the warm, worn timbers beneath the soles of his bare feet. He didn’t look back at the hospital. He would hear if anyone was following him.

      He took deep breaths to try to calm himself, and smelled the town all around him, paint and dust and tarpaper and decay. He felt calmer now he was out of the confines of the ambulance with its sickening movement.

       Why did he dislike confinement and crave freedom so strongly?

      Maybe he had been incarcerated, even though he hadn’t shown up on the NCIC. Perhaps he had been imprisoned another way.

      Ahead of him the church glowed, as if lit from within, and towered over the surrounding buildings: a town hall; a museum; and a grand house partly visible behind a screen of jacaranda trees, its roof clad in copper like the church and similarly aged, suggesting it had been built at the same time. The rest of the buildings making up the street and lining the boardwalk were all variations on the same theme, souvenir shops selling the same things: flakes of gold and copper floating in snow globes; treasure maps with ‘Lost Cassidy Riches’ written on them in old-style block letters; T-shirts with the name of the town printed in a similar style; and Jack Cassidy’s memoir stacked high in every window.

      Solomon pulled his own copy from his pocket and flicked through the pages, hungry to see what else was written inside, hoping something might spark a new memory. Apart from the dedication the only other thing he found was a single passage at the end of the book that had been underlined:

      I had always suspected the book contained a clue that would lead me to riches, but by the time I found it and understood its meaning it was too late for me and so I resolve to take the secret of it to my grave.

      More secrets, but none that interested him. He turned back to the dedication and studied the handwriting, neat and smooth and written with a wide-nibbed pen. It appeared formal and old, but he didn’t recognize it. Maybe there were clues in the printed words. He flicked to the first page and started to read:

      It is, I suppose, a curse that befalls anyone who finds a great treasure that they must spend the remainder of their life recounting the details of how they came by it …

      He carried on reading, sucking in Jack Cassidy’s story as fast as he could turn the pages, his head filling with all the images and horrors Jack Cassidy had encountered on his odyssey through the desert. The memoir was ninety pages long and he had finished it by the time he was halfway to the church. He turned to the photo on the cover again and wondered why James Coronado might have given this book to him. Perhaps he hadn’t. Perhaps he wasn’t even Solomon Creed. Except he felt that he was. The name fit and so did the jacket. That had his name in it too.

      He slipped the book in his jacket and read the label stitched inside his pocket: Ce costume a été fait au trésor pour M. Solomon Creed – This suit was made to treasure for Mr Solomon Creed.

      This suit …

      So where was the rest of it? Why did he only have the jacket? Where were his shoes? And how in Jesus’s name could he read French? How could he read English so fast, for that matter?

      ‘Je suis Solomon Creed,’ he said, and the language felt comfortable in his mouth, his accent smooth and slightly thick and syrupy – southern French, not northern Parisian.

      Southern French! How did he even know that? How could he speak French and know the origin of his accent and yet have no memory of learning it or speaking it before or of ever being in France? How much of himself had he lost?

      Some smaller writing was stitched on the edge of the label: Fabriqué 13, Rue Obscure, Cordes-sur-Ciel, Tarn.

      The Tarn. Southwestern France. Cathar country. Formed in 1790 after the French Revolution. Capital Albi. Birthplace of Toulouse-Lautrec. Fine medieval cathedral there, larger even than the church he was now walking towards. Built of brick not stone.

      He hit himself on the side of the head to silence the noise.

      ‘Shut up,’ he said aloud, realizing how СКАЧАТЬ