The Search Read online

  The strangeness of her story bothered Walker less than the way it challenged his gathering sense of inertia. He had been drifting for months, uncertain what to do, forming vague plans but lacking the resolution to see anything through. He was waiting for a decisive moment – a moment that would impel him to make a decision – but no such moment came. Every morning he had breakfast at the Café Madrid and walked down to the ocean. Every other day he lifted weights. Afternoons he went running along the beach. Evenings he drank. His growing addiction to this regime of fitness – and the drinking it served to offset – was one of a number of small details that made him postpone any commitment to change. He had so little to do that even minor chores like going to the bank became major events in his day. The more he pondered things the more restless he became, floundering in a sea of impulses. He had no responsibilities, no obligations, and so found himself paralysed by choice, waiting to see what came his way. Now something had come his way – a challenge, she had said – and he balked at the prospect, longed instead for his current life to continue indefinitely and without interruption.

  Tracking: he turned the word over in his mind, taking the measure of his feelings. After Brandon’s death he’d sworn – not sworn, to swear not to do something always seemed like an incitement to do it – he’d resolved not to get involved in anything like that again, especially now, now that it was illegal, dangerous.

  Six years previously tracking had been an industry virtually. It started as a response to rewards being offered for information regarding the whereabouts of prominent figures who had gone missing. One case attracted a lot of publicity when the man claiming the reward called himself a professional tracker. The term caught on and the numbers of people disappearing, it seemed to Walker, increased in order to keep pace with the growing numbers of people calling themselves trackers. It got to the point where, like lights left on in an empty house, a pile of clothes left on a beach was taken as a sign not of accidental drowning but of an inadequate attempt to disguise a disappearance. Whenever anyone disappeared there was always somebody who had a vested interest in finding him or her again. Anyone with a taste for adventure was lured into the idea of tracking; the classified pages of small-town papers always included a few ads from trackers offering their services. Even the government department responsible for missing persons – Finders to themselves and everyone else – was getting in on the act. A number of officers were alleged to have located a missing person and then sold the information to a private concern. Finders keepers, it was commonly joked, was the motto of the Missing Persons’ Department. Lured by the prospect of big money, anyone in the department with ambition and initiative went solo after a few years. The government moved quickly: missing persons, it ruled, had to be investigated by the government department only. Tracking was illegal without a licence – and a licence became impossible to obtain. The move backfired: putting trackers beyond the law meant that a lot of people living outside the law got in on tracking. Many trackers had been less than reliable or scrupulous in their methods, but now that they were firmly outside the law their methods became increasingly ruthless. Like trafficking, tracking became one of the standard activities of the underworld. And this was the world Walker was being lured back into.

  The day after Rachel’s visit he walked along the beach, hearing the freeway roar of the ocean, feeling the fling and reach of spray. He picked a curve of brown glass from the sand. Sea-lions were clowning in the breaking waves. A dog scampered after a chewed husk of ball. Clumps of kelp, driftwood.

  Later, when the light was turning hazy, he called her from a telephone on the boardwalk. He had not known what he was going to say when he dialled her number but hearing her voice he decided on impulse. Yes, he said, he’d do it.

  They spent a day together, sitting outside in the first warm sun of the year. Rachel was wearing a pale dress and a cardigan, one button missing. Walker asked her to tell him everything about Malory, the people he knew, his business contacts, his habits. Whenever he asked for more details she paused and answered his questions patiently. Walker made notes, so intent on watching her speak that at times he did not hear what she was saying. He drifted, thinking of the happiness that might lie in wait for them. Then he was jolted back to the present. Rachel was telling him of the allegations of corruption that had come in the wake of Malory’s winning a huge bridge-building contract.

  ‘You didn’t hear about it?’

  ‘No. Sorry. Like I said, I never read papers.’

  ‘Television?’ ‘Only sport.’ ‘Not films even?’ ‘Not really.’ ‘Alex –’ ‘If I find him,’ Walker interrupted, ‘you just want me to get those documents signed?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You don’t want me to bring him back?’

  ‘I think you’re not being quite honest again, Mr Walker.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I think you do watch films. Old ones. And no, all I want are the documents.’

  ‘Did he have affairs?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘You mean if he did you don’t know?’

  ‘I don’t see the distinction.’

  ‘What about you?’

  ‘What about me?’

  ‘Did you? Have affairs?’

  ‘No.’ Then, business-like again, she said, ‘Shall I go on?’ Walker crossed his legs, preparing to resume his note-taking.

  That evening he cooked dinner for them both. They ate outside, drank wine. He lent Rachel a sweater, which she draped around her shoulders. Earlier in the day he had seen her handwriting for the first time. Now, for the first time, he was watching her eat. Seeing things for the first time. Relationships last for as long as there are still things to see for the first time. Walker thought of the future when they would look back to the moment they first saw each other. She was eating lettuce with her fingers. A drop of dressing glistened on her lips. She dabbed her mouth with a napkin, blue. Her mouth.

  They took the plates inside. Walker made coffee. Rachel had her back against the wall. She had discarded his sweater. He moved over to her, leant one hand against the wall, level with her shoulder. She took a dark gulp of wine, aware of his arm like the low branch of a tree she would have to duck under. Sleeves rolled above his elbows, veins in his forearm.

  ‘That’s a lovely dress,’ he said.

  ‘You like it?’

  ‘Yes.’ He moved his other arm so that it too was pressed against the wall on the other side of her shoulders and she was enclosed by the cage of his body, the hoop of his arms. The movement brought his face lower, a few inches closer to hers. Their lips were almost touching.

  ‘You know what kind of dress that is?’

  ‘The kind you can buy anywhere.’

  ‘It’s the kind of dress I want to put my hand up.’

  She pressed back against the wall. Their hearts were beating faster.

  ‘You know what kind of line that is?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I think you do.’

  ‘And that’s not all,’ said Walker. ‘There’s something else.’

  ‘What?’ The air felt heavy around them.

  ‘It’s the kind of dress . . .’ Walker said, freeing the words from the coarseness in his throat, ‘the kind of dress I want to pull up over your hips. the kind of dress where you raise your arms and I pull it over your head.’

  ‘To do that the zip would have to be undone.’ Walker moved one hand from the wall to her legs, below the hem of her dress.

  ‘After the zip was undone, then I would pull it over your head. Then –’

  ‘And then I would undo the buttons of your shirt, your belt.’

  Walker moved his hand up between her thighs, feeling her skin become softer and softer until it attained that softness that can never be remembered because it is impossible to imagine anything so soft, because there is nothing to compare it with, to store it alongside. Their lips touched for a moment. Then Walker felt her hand on his wrist, pushing it a
way from between her legs.

  ‘No,’ she said, ducking beneath his other arm, smoothing down her dress. In prison he had heard stories like this many times, stories that ended in rape and hate. Walker took up the position Rachel had occupied, leaning back against the wall, his hands hanging by his side. She came towards him, kissed him on the lips.

  ‘You understand?’ she said.

  ‘No, yes. No.’

  ‘But you understand?’

  ‘No,’ he said.

  Malory lived – ‘as far as he lives anywhere’ – in a beach house a couple of hundred miles up the coast. Rachel gave Walker a set of keys and he drove there the next day. A storm was building, the sun flinching in and out of clouds. The house was sparse and expensive, built mainly out of windows. Rugs on wood floors, white walls.

  Despite everything Rachel had told him it was difficult to form an impression of Malory from the evidence of his home. There was furniture, a few records, books – not enough of either to suggest any passion for music or reading. There were a few pictures on the walls, none of which he paid much attention to – except for a framed Victorian photograph. It was of a man sitting in a chair, wearing a heavy sepia suit, eyeglasses. Walker wondered who it was and moved closer to read the small caption in the right-hand corner: ‘Unknown Self-portrait’. Walker stepped back and gazed at the face of this strange ghost, captivated by the closed logic of the picture. Who was he? A man who looked like this . . . But who was he?

  Walker moved away from the sad old photograph and went round the rest of the house. It was a place dominated by the absence of everything except light and places to sit or move around. In the study he went through Malory’s files and desk. Rachel had said that if he was away his secretary came in once a week to take care of all his personal affairs, and in a desk drawer he found credit card statements and bills. From these he was able to trace his movements up until three months ago; since then there was nothing. The last payment was to a car rental firm in Durban. Walker made a note of the company’s name and went round the house once more. No flowers or ornaments, only the vista windows looking out over the ocean heaving silently.

  Back at his own apartment he called the rental company and asked if they had any information about a car rented three months ago by –

  The woman cut him off there and said she couldn’t possibly deal with queries like that on the phone. As soon as he put the phone down it rang beneath his hand: Rachel. Her voice.

  ‘Did you find out anything?’

  ‘Not really. What about this secretary – could I speak to her?’

  ‘No point at all. She’s been with him for fifteen years. He likes her because she never asks any questions. He won’t have told her anything about where he is. Like I told you, he’s a very secretive man. Pathological. You almost had to use the Freedom of Information Act to get his birthday out of him.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So what will you do next?’

  ‘I suppose I’d better start looking for him.’

  ‘Meaning?’

  ‘The only lead we have is that rental firm. I guess I’ll head to Durban.’

  ‘When will you leave?’

  ‘As soon as I can.’

  ‘But I’ll see you before you go?’

  ‘I hope so,’ he said.

  They met later that night, in a bar with candles and no music. Walker ordered beer, bought one for a guy he knew who was sitting at the bar. Rachel drank red wine that looked thick and sleepy in the candlelight. In the curved darkness of her glass Walker saw a reflection of both their faces, dancing, swaying, settled. She handed him the documents that she needed Malory to sign. Walker glanced through them.

  ‘About money,’ Rachel said.

  ‘We can take care of that when I get back.’

  ‘You’re sure?’

  ‘The money is no problem.’

  Rachel finished her wine. ‘Let’s pay and go down to the sea,’ she said.

  They walked to the beach, listening to the crash of waves. In places the receding tide had left still pools of water that reflected the stars so perfectly it seemed they were breaks of clear sky in a beach of cloud. Jumping across them was like leaping over the sky itself. Every now and then headlights from the coast road probed out to sea. In the distance they could see the hazy spars of the Bay Bridge. Clouds slipped past a moon that was barely there. They threw a few stones into the sea, listening out for the faint splashes. A ship’s lights blinked in the middle of the darkness and then disappeared.

  ‘And nothing is but what is not,’ said Rachel.

  ‘Was that a quote?’

  ‘Shakespeare. I forget which one.’

  ‘William probably,’ said Walker.

  They sat and waited, looking out at the dark ocean. Rachel said she should be getting back. Walker turned towards her.

  ‘I have a present for you,’ she said. ‘Here.’ She held out her fist and dropped a thin silver chain into Walker’s palm.

  ‘Maybe it will bring you luck,’ she said. ‘Keep you safe.’ Walker remembered a comic strip he had read as a kid: ‘Kelly’s Eye’. As long as Kelly wore this jewel around his neck he was indestructible. Each week ended with him walking out of an incredible explosion or twenty-car smash-up, naked except for the stone around his neck and a tattered pair of shorts which were also indestructible.

  ‘Let me put it on for you.’

  Walker bent his head and felt her arms reach around his neck, fiddling with the clasp. Her mouth was near his. This was the moment when they could have kissed but it passed.

  ‘Do you like it?’

  ‘Yes. Sorry, I never know what to say when I’m given a present.’

  She smiled – ‘Let’s get going’ – and they began making their way back up the low cliff to her car.

  ‘There’s something else as well,’ she said when she had unlocked the car door. She reached over to the passenger seat and handed Walker an envelope. In it was the photo that had been taken at the party. Or part of it anyway: it had been cut in two and the half he held showed Rachel, almost in profile, holding the wine glass in both hands as if she were praying.

  ‘To remind me you exist?’ Walker said.

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘What about the other half?’

  ‘I keep that. To remind me that you do,’ she said. ‘Can I give you a lift?’

  ‘No. It’s five minutes from here, that’s all.’

  They were both eager to be on their own now, wanting the leaving to be over with, knowing that everything between them would have to wait.

  ‘Is there anything else I can do?’ Rachel said finally, standing by the open door of the car.

  ‘No. I’ll call you.’

  ‘Be careful, won’t you?’

  Walker said yes, yes he would. He watched her drive off and waited for the tail lights to disappear from sight before heading home himself.

  CHAPTER TWO

  It was a three-day drive to Durban and Walker set off the next day. He crossed the Bay Bridge and headed up the coast. He had just passed Malory’s house when a white mist rolled in from the sea, enveloping the road. He slowed to a crawl, winding down the window and feeling the air clinging damp to his skin. The mist thinned and he looked out at a zinc sky, pale sea rolling calmly on to white sand, grey-white gulls dotting the beach. When the mist closed in again, all he could see was the lighthouse glow of cars heading towards him.

  He turned inland ten miles later and the mist cleared, the landscape becoming gradually flatter. That night he slept for a few hours in the car before pressing on, stopping only for food and gas. At first he listened to music continuously, but soon the radio began to irritate him and he drove in silence.

  By now the landscape was flat and featureless, almost an abstraction, existing only as distance. A hundred years ago there had been no road, only emptiness; now there was a four-lane freeway but the road altered nothing, not the sky yawning over it or the land stretching away to the horizon. It
occurred to him that horizontal was derived from horizon. Where words came from, where they were going: horizon. If walking was a form of thinking, then driving was a form of meditation or self-hypnosis which, instead of concentrating the mind, encouraged it to float. The residue of concentration required to keep the car on the road lent these drifting thoughts a sense of urgentless purpose.

  Often, glancing in the driving mirror, he expected to see Rachel’s face looking back at him.

  He spent the second night in a motel and arrived in Durban late the following afternoon. The rental agency was on the edge of town. It felt strange, walking in after so long bent up in the car. There were no other customers and the man he spoke to had no objection to finding out about the car rented three months ago by Malory. He rifled through a filing cabinet, squinting through glasses that seemed to do his eyes no good at all, and came back with a sheaf of photocopied papers.

  ‘According to this,’ he said, ‘the car was checked in at a rental firm in Kingston – not one of our offices – a small firm we have an agreement with. Our cars can be left with them and they get ’em back to us.’

  ‘How long ago was that?’ said Walker. ‘When was it checked in?’

  ‘Couple a months ago,’ said the guy, unwrapping a stick of gum, feeding it between his teeth.

  Kingston was another long haul, on the edge of the Southern Wetlands. Walker drove for two days, weather coming and going, birds. Power lines rising and dipping alongside him. Sometimes overtaking the same car three times in a day.

  The last three hundred miles ran flat through the swamp. Trees were the same colour as the road, as the sky. Moss drifted from swamp maples. Here and there were splashes of dull red, either in the trees or in the road, the smear of hit animals. Rain spotted his windshield, hardly even rain.

  The rental office was a run-down place near the railroad. A sign on the counter said: ‘If You Don’t Smoke I Won’t Fart’. The guy behind the counter was chewing on a sandwich. The reception area smelled of chicken; maybe a cigarette had recently been smoked there. Walker leant his elbows on the counter, waiting for the guy’s mouth to empty.