The Tower: Part Four. Simon Toyne

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СКАЧАТЬ of the road, also open for business. Franklin drove past them both, all pretence of getting food and gas now abandoned.

      ‘When you have kids, everything changes. It’s like taking your heart out of your chest and watching it walk around. You’d do anything for them, anything at all. And if you have a daughter,’ he shook his head, ‘well that’s a whole other ball game. The world suddenly seems ten times more dangerous than it did before, a hundred times, and she is so vulnerable and fragile in it.’

      He slowed down and took a right into a one-lane street lined with neat, single-storey houses with wooden porches and brick chimneys, their front lawns all blanketed in white.

      ‘So you work your ass off to put a roof over her head, give her a good life, protect her from all the crap that you know is out there, the stuff that you see every day. Everything you do takes on new meaning, every bad guy I ever put away was dedicated in some way to my daughter. I did it for her, to make the world a safer place for her, and for her mother.’

      He took another left onto a road lined with bigger houses, some with four-car drives.

      ‘And you try so hard to shut off the darkness you have to deal with but it’s always there, like a stain. So you keep it from your kids by keeping yourself from them, because, in a way, you are the thing you want to protect them from.’

      He brought the car to a halt outside a house with a long sloping roof like a ski jump. Franklin fixed his eyes on it and killed the engine.

      ‘Then one day you realize you don’t know who they are any more, either of them. You’ve spent so long working to give your family a better life that you’re no longer a part of it. You’ve become a stranger in your own home. You can’t talk to them, you can’t understand them, you’re only aware of the distance between you where once there was no gap at all.’ He looked away and Shepherd wondered if the tough old bastard was actually crying.

      ‘I’m sorry I dragged you all the way out here,’ Franklin said, turning back and looking him square in the eye. ‘I kind of convinced myself it was all about the investigation but in the end it looks like it’s all about me.’ He nodded at the sideways house. ‘And you were right about the homing instinct.’

      ‘You don’t have to explain it.’

      Franklin turned to him. ‘You said you didn’t have a home.’

      ‘I don’t, at least not like this. But home means different things to different people.’ He took a breath ready to tell him … about Melisa, about his missing two years, even about how he was using the MPD files to try and find her again. But just then the door of the house opened and a girl of about twenty stepped out.

      Cold air flooded in as Franklin got out of the car. Shepherd watched him walk up the drive towards her, like he was being pulled by an invisible thread. He stopped a few feet short of her and they stared at each other. Then she stepped forward and wrapped her slender arms round his neck and buried her face in his chest. Behind them another woman, an older version of the girl, stepped onto the porch and stared at them for a moment. Then she too came forward, a smile breaking on her face like a sunrise, and Shepherd looked away, feeling uncomfortable about sharing such a private moment even from a distance.

      He stared down the street at the other houses. Some were empty and dark, the drives showing the fading tyre tracks of cars no longer there. Other houses glowed, their festive decorations lighting up the snow like Christmas cards.

      Witnessing the power of the homing instinct and its effect even on someone like Franklin made him realize that the pull to find Melisa and the reckless things it was making him do was simply the same thing working in him.

      The rap of a knuckle on his window snapped him back to the present.

      Franklin was standing outside the car. Shepherd got out, snow crunching beneath his shoes and cold air on his skin.

      ‘You want to come in, grab some lunch?’

      Shepherd looked over at the porch where the two women were standing watching them. ‘I don’t think so. I’d just be in the way.’

      Franklin nodded. ‘Listen,’ he said. ‘When I drove here I thought … well, I don’t know what I thought, but now I’m here I don’t think I can leave again, not for a while at least.’

      ‘It’s OK, I understand. I’ll go on to Cherokee alone, see if I can find Douglas’s place. It’s probably a waste of time anyway, I only ever went there once.’

      ‘Don’t do anything stupid,’ Franklin said, his brow creasing with the difficulty of what he was doing. ‘And if you do find him, don’t approach him on your own. Call me first, OK?’

      ‘He’s my old teacher – what’s he going to do, give me a tough assignment?’

      ‘He’s a wanted terrorist who nearly got you killed in an explosion this morning. Don’t forget that.’

      ‘OK, if I find him I’ll call – I promise. Now get inside that house, Agent Franklin, and spend some time with your family.’

      ‘Ben.’

      ‘What?’

      ‘Name’s Ben, short for Benjamin: it’s not my bureau name, it’s my real one. My old man won a hundred-dollar bill for calling me it when I was born, asshole that he was. He’d probably have called me George if our name had been Washington, just to win a dollar.’

      ‘It’s a fine name, Ben. You wear it well.’ Shepherd held out his hand.

      And Franklin shook it.

       61

      Rosie Andrews crunched through the snow towards the ATM. It was out of service, just like all the others. Nothing was working. Everything was falling apart. She felt tears bubbling up through her growing panic. She had about fifteen dollars in her purse, two maxed-out credit cards, a quarter of a tank of gas and at least a three-hour journey ahead of her. The gas would get her maybe fifty miles out of Asheville, about a third of the way down to her mom’s in Atlanta, maybe even less the way her station wagon was loaded up.

      From somewhere across the parking lot she heard glass shatter followed by a roar of voices that made the hairs bristle on the back of her neck. She turned and hurried back to where she had left the car, parked behind a dumpster on the far side of the lot, away from the large angry-looking crowd she had seen outside the big Petro Express when she had driven in. It all added to the sick feeling that had been growing inside her that made her feel something was terribly wrong. The crowd had been arguing with security staff who were allowing only a few people in at a time to control numbers.

      There was another crash and the roar got louder.

      Sounded like the security guys had lost the argument.

      The noise frightened her. It was the sound of violence and chaos and it made her feel small and vulnerable. She just wanted to get some money and get out of here. She just wanted to get home.

      She rounded the edge of the dumpster, fretting in her pocket for her keys, and saw the man leaning down by the side of the car, his face pressed against the rear window. Rosie felt blood singing in her ears СКАЧАТЬ