Dead Souls by Ian Rankin

Author:Ian Rankin
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, azw3
Published: 2011-10-18T13:52:24+00:00

26

‘Start any time you’re ready.’

Jim Stevens’ room was beginning to look messy and lived-in, just the way he liked. But they weren’t in Stevens’ room, they were in Oakes’s, and it looked like its occupant hadn’t spent any time there at all. There were two chairs at a small circular table by the window. The complimentary book of matches still sat folded open in its ashtray. Two magazines of interest to visitors to Edinburgh sat beside it, and lying on top of them was the guests’ comment card, yet to be filled in, or even perused.

Most people, Stevens guessed, even people who’d spent a third of their life enjoying the facilities of a foreign country’s prison service, would do what he’d done in his own room: explore it, try out and touch everything, flick through every piece of literature.

But not Cary Oakes, who now cleared his throat. ‘Aren’t you curious about what Rebus wanted?’ Stevens looked at him. ‘I just want this finished.’ ‘Lost the old vigour and vim, eh, Jim?’

‘You have that effect on people.’

‘Tracked down any of my old teenage gang?’ Oakes laughed at the look on Stevens’ face. ‘Thought not. Probably scattered to the four winds by now.’

‘Last time we broke off,’ Stevens said coldly, checking the spools were turning, ‘you were crossing America.’

Oakes nodded. ‘I got to a place called, believe it or not, Opportunity, a ratty little truck-stop on the Washington-Idaho border. That’s where I met the trucker, Fat Boy. I never learned his real name; I think even the ID he carried was fake.’

‘What name was on the ID?’

Oakes ignored the question. ‘Fat Boy had these notions about a government conspiracy, told me he kept his home booby-trapped whenever he was working long-distance. He said truckers got a real good view of the world—by which he meant the USA; that’s as far as his world stretched—a real good view from behind the wheel of a truck. He knew a trucker would make a damned good President.

‘So that was Fat Boy. My introduction to him. Opportunity, Washington. Lots of names like that in the States. Lots of Fat Boys, too. We got talking about murder. The radio was on, and every other station had news flashes about unlawful killing. He said the word “unlawful” was a misnomer. There was “wrong” killing and “right” killing, and which was which was down to the individual, not the lawmakers.’

‘And what kind did you do?’

Oakes didn’t like his flow being interrupted. ‘I’m talking about Fat Boy, not me.’

‘How long did you travel with him?’ Stevens was trying to keep the chronology right.

‘Three, four days. We headed south to make a delivery, then back up on to I-90.’

‘What was he carrying?’

‘Electrical goods. He worked for General Electric. Meant he travelled all over. He said that was good, considering his hobby. His hobby was killing people.’ Oakes looked to Stevens. ‘It was supposed to unnerve me, him saying something like that while we’re travelling fifty-five on an interstate. Maybe if it had, that would have been it: he’d have tried skinning me.

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