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  He said, ‘They need another forty thousand dollars.’

  His wife closed her eyes and clamped her hands over her face.

  Reacher said, ‘Who needs?’

  ‘Not Fisnik,’ Shevick said. ‘Not the Ukrainians, either. Not any of them. This is the other end of the issue entirely. This is the reason we had to borrow money in the first place.’

  ‘Are you being blackmailed?’

  ‘No, nothing like that. I wish it was that simple. All I can say is there are bills we have to pay. One just came due. Now we have to find another forty thousand dollars.’ He glanced at the envelope again. ‘Some of which we’ve already got, thanks to you.’ He worked it out in his head. ‘Technically we need to find another eighteen thousand nine hundred dollars.’

  ‘By when?’

  ‘Tomorrow morning.’

  ‘Can you?’

  ‘We couldn’t find another eighteen cents.’

  ‘Why so quick?’

  ‘Some things can’t wait.’

  ‘What are you going to do?’

  Shevick didn’t answer.

  His wife took her hands away from her face.

  ‘We’re going to borrow it,’ she said. ‘What else can we do?’

  ‘Who from?’

  ‘The man with the prison tattoo,’ she said. ‘What choice do we have? We’re maxed out everywhere else.’

  ‘Can you pay it back?’

  ‘We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.’

  No one spoke.

  Reacher said, ‘I’m sorry I can’t help you more.’

  Mrs Shevick looked at him.

  ‘You can,’ she said.

  ‘Can I?’

  ‘In fact you’ll have to.’

  ‘Will I?’

  ‘The man with the prison tattoo thinks you’re Aaron Shevick. You have to go get our money for us.’

  SEVEN

  They discussed it thirty minutes more. Reacher and the Shevicks, back and forth. Certain facts were established early. The fixed points. The dealbreakers. They absolutely needed the money. No question. No debate. They absolutely needed it by morning. No leeway. No flexibility.

  They absolutely would not say why.

  Their life savings were gone. Their house was gone. They were newly into an old-person’s mortgage arrangement, whereby they were allowed to live there the rest of their lives, but the title had already passed to the bank. The lump sum they had gotten was already spent. No more could be raised. Their credit cards were maxed out and cancelled. They had borrowed against their Social Security cheques. They had cashed in their life insurance and given up their land line telephone. Now that their car was gone they had sold everything of value. All they had left were personal trinkets. Between their own stuff and family heirlooms they had five nine-carat wedding bands, three small diamond rings, and a gold-plated wristwatch with a crack in the crystal. Reacher figured on the happiest day of his life the most warmhearted pawnbroker in the world might have given them two hundred bucks. No more than that. Maybe less than a hundred on a bad day. Not even a drop in the bucket.

  They said they had first used Fisnik five weeks previously. They had gotten his name from a neighbour. As an item of gossip, not as a recommendation. Some kind of a scandal. Some lurid story about some other neighbour’s nephew’s wife’s cousin borrowing money from a gangster in a bar. Name of Fisnik, imagine that. Shevick had narrowed the search radius based on detail and rumour, and he had started checking every bar within that predicted area, one by one, blushing, embarrassed, stared at, asking every barman if he knew a guy named Fisnik, until at his fourth stop a fat man with a sarcastic manner jerked his thumb at the corner table.

  Reacher said, ‘How did it work?’

  ‘Very easy,’ Shevick said. ‘I approached his table, and stood there, while he inspected me, and then he signalled me to sit down, so I did. I guess at first I beat about the bush a bit, but then I just came out and said, look, I need to borrow money, and I understand you lend it. He asked how much, and I told him. He explained the terms of the contract. He showed me the photographs. I watched the video. I gave him my account number. Twenty minutes later the money was in my bank. It was wired in from somewhere untraceable via a corporation in Delaware.’

  ‘I pictured a bag of cash,’ Reacher said.

  ‘We had to make our repayments in cash.’

  Reacher nodded.

  ‘Two things in one,’ he said. ‘Both at the same time. Loansharking and money laundering. They wired dirty electrons and in return they got random clean cash from the streets. Plus a healthy rate of interest on top. Most money laundering involves losing a percentage, not gaining one. I guess those boys weren’t dumb.’

  ‘Not in our experience.’

  ‘You think the Ukrainians will be better or worse?’

  ‘Worse, I expect. The law of the jungle seems to be proving it already.’

  ‘So how are you going to pay them back?’

  ‘That’s tomorrow’s problem.’

  ‘You have nothing left to sell.’

  ‘Something might show up.’

  ‘In your dreams.’

  ‘No, in reality. We’re waiting for something. We have reason to believe it will come very soon. We have to hang tough until it does.’

  They absolutely would not say what they were waiting for.

  Twenty minutes later Reacher stepped down the far kerb unencumbered, and crossed the street in four fast strides, and stepped up the near kerb, and pulled the bar door. Inside it felt brighter than before, because it was darker outside, and it was a click noisier, because there were more people, including a group of five men all squeezed around a four-top table, all reminiscing about something or other.

  The pale guy was still in the far back corner.

  Reacher walked towards him. The pale guy watched him all the way. Reacher dialled it back a little. There were conventions to follow. Lender and borrower. He walked what he thought of as his friendly walk, pure unselfconscious locomotion, no threat to anybody. He sat down in the same chair he had used before.

  The pale guy said, ‘Aaron Shevick, right?’

  ‘Yes,’ Reacher said.

  ‘What brings you back so soon?’

  ‘I need a loan.’

  ‘Already? You just paid me off.’

  ‘Something came up.’

  ‘I told you,’ the guy said. ‘Losers like you always come back.’

  ‘I remember,’ Reacher said.

  ‘How much do you want?’

  ‘Eighteen thousand nine hundred dollars,’ Reacher said.

  The pale guy shook his head.

  ‘Can’t do it,’ he said.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘It’s a big jump up from eight hundred last time.’

  ‘Fourteen hundred.’

  ‘Six hundred of that was fees and charges. The capital sum was eight hundred only.’

  ‘That was then. This is now. It’s what I need.’

  ‘You good for it?’

  ‘I always was before,’ Reacher said. ‘Ask Fisnik.’

  ‘Fisnik is history,’ the pale guy said.

  Nothing more.

  Reacher waited.

  Then the pale guy said, ‘Maybe there’s a way I can help you. Although you got to understand, I would be taking a risk, which would have to be reflected in the price. You comfortable with that scenario?’

  ‘I guess,’ Reacher said.

  ‘And I have to tell you, I’m pretty much a round-figures guy. Can’t do eighteen nine. We would have to call it twenty. Then I would take eleven hundred off the top as an administration fee. You would get the exact amount you need. You want to hear the interest rates?’

  ‘I guess,’ Reacher said again.

  ‘Things have moved on since Fisnik’s day. We’re in an era of innovation now. We operate what they call dynamic pricing. We pitch the rate up or down, depending on supply and demand and things like that, but also on what we think of the borrower. Wi
ll he be reliable? Can we trust him? Questions of that nature.’

  ‘So what am I?’ Reacher asked. ‘Up or down?’

  ‘I’m going to start you off way up there at the very top. Where the worst risks are. Truth is, I don’t like you very much, Aaron Shevick. I’m not getting a good feeling. You take twenty tonight, you bring me twenty-five, a week from today. After that, interest continues at twenty-five per cent a week or part of a week, plus a late fee of a thousand dollars a day, or part of a day. After the first deadline, all sums become payable in full immediately on demand. Refusal or inability to pay on demand may expose you to unpleasant things of various different types. You have to understand that ahead of time. I need to hear you say so, in your own words. It’s not the kind of thing that can be written down and signed. I have photographs for you to look at.’

  ‘Terrific,’ Reacher said.

  The guy dabbed at his phone, menus, albums, slideshows, and he handed it over sideways, like a landscape, not a portrait, which was appropriate, because all the subjects of all the pictures were lying down. Mostly they were duct-taped to an iron bedstead, in a room with whitewashed walls gone grey with age and damp. Some had their eyeballs popped out with a spoon, and some had been grazed by an electric saw, deeper and deeper, and some had been burned with a smoothing iron, and some had been drilled with cordless power tools, which were left in the pictures as if in proof, yellow and black, top heavy and wobbling, their bits two-thirds buried in yielding flesh.

  Pretty bad.

  But not the worst things Reacher had ever seen.

  Maybe the worst things all on one phone, though.

  He handed it back. The guy dabbed through his menus again, until he got where he wanted to be. Serious business now.

  He said, ‘Do you understand the terms of the contract?’

  ‘Yes,’ Reacher said.

  ‘Do you agree to them?’

  ‘Yes,’ Reacher said.

  ‘Bank account?’

  Reacher gave him Shevick’s numbers. The guy typed them in, right there on his phone, and then he dabbed a big green rectangle at the bottom of the screen. The go button.

  He said, ‘The money will be in your bank in twenty minutes.’

  Then he dabbed through more menus, and suddenly raised the phone in camera mode, and snapped Reacher’s picture.

  He said, ‘Thank you, Mr Shevick. A pleasure doing business. I’ll see you again in one week exactly.’

  Then he tapped his bristly head with his bone-white finger, the same gesture as before. Something about remembering. Some kind of a threatening implication.

  Whatever, Reacher thought.

  He got up and walked away, out the door, into the dark. There was a car at the kerb. A black Lincoln, with an idling engine, and an idling driver behind the wheel, leaning back in his seat, head on the cushion, elbows wide, knees wide, like limo guys everywhere, taking a break.

  There was a second guy, outside the car, leaning on the rear fender. He was dressed the same as the driver. And the guy inside the bar. Black suit, white shirt, black silk tie. Like a uniform. He had his ankles crossed, and his arms crossed. He was just waiting. He looked like the guy at the corner table would look, after about a month in the sun. White, not luminescent. He had pale hair buzzed close to his scalp, and a busted nose, and scar tissue on his eyebrows. Not much of a fighter, Reacher thought. Obviously he got hit a lot.

  The guy said, ‘You Shevick?’

  Reacher said, ‘Who’s asking?’

  ‘The people you just borrowed money from.’

  ‘Sounds like you already know who I am.’

  ‘We’re going to drive you home.’

  ‘Suppose I don’t want you to?’ Reacher said.

  ‘Part of the deal,’ the guy said.

  ‘What deal?’

  ‘We need to know where you live.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Reassurance.’

  ‘Look me up.’

  ‘We did.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘You’re not in the book. You don’t own real estate.’

  Reacher nodded. The Shevicks had given up their land line telephone. The title to their house had already passed to the bank.

  The guy said, ‘So we need to pay a personal visit.’

  Reacher said nothing.

  The guy asked, ‘Is there a Mrs Shevick?’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Maybe we should visit a little with her too, while we’re looking at where you live. We like to keep our customers close. We like to make a family’s acquaintance. We find it helpful. Now get in the car.’

  Reacher shook his head.

  ‘You misunderstand,’ the guy said. ‘This is not a choice. It’s part of the deal. You borrowed our money.’

  ‘Your milky-white friend inside explained the contract. He went through all the terms, in considerable detail. The administration fee, the dynamic pricing, the penalties. At one point he even introduced visual aids. After which he asked if I accepted the terms of the contract, and I said yes I did, so at that point the deal was done. You can’t start adding extra stuff afterwards, about a ride home and meeting the family. I would have to agree to that, ahead of time. A contract is a two-way street. Subject to negotiation and agreement. It can’t be done unilaterally. That’s a basic principle.’

  ‘You got a smart mouth.’

  ‘I can only hope,’ Reacher said. ‘Sometimes I worry I’m just pedantic.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You can offer me a ride, but you can’t insist that I take it.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You heard.’

  ‘OK, I’m offering you a ride. Last chance. Get in the car.’

  ‘Say please.’

  The guy paused a long, long moment.

  He said, ‘Please get in the car.’

  ‘OK,’ Reacher said. ‘Since you asked so nicely.’

  EIGHT

  About the safest way to transport an unwilling hostage in a passenger car was to make him drive with his seat belt off. The guys with the Lincoln didn’t do that. They opted for a conventional second best instead. They put Reacher in the back, behind the empty front passenger seat, with nothing dead ahead for him to attack. The guy who had done all the talking got in next to him, on the other side, behind the driver, and he sat half sideways, watchful.

  He said, ‘Where to?’

  ‘Turn around,’ Reacher said.

  The driver U-turned across the width of the street, bouncing his front right-side wheel up the far kerb, and slapping it down again.

  ‘Go straight for five blocks,’ Reacher said.

  The driver rolled on. He was a smaller version of the first guy. Not as pale. Caucasian for sure, but not blinding. He had the same buzzed hair, golden and glittery. He had a knife scar on the back of his left hand. Probably a defensive wound. He had a spidery and fading tattoo snaking out of his right cuff. He had big pink ears, sticking straight out from the sides of his head.

  Their tyres pattered over broken blacktop and patches of cobblestone. After the five straight blocks they came to the four-way light. Where Shevick had waited to cross. They rolled out of the old world and into the new. Flat and open terrain. Concrete and gravel. Wide sidewalks. It all looked different in the dark. The bus depot was up ahead.

  ‘Straight on,’ Reacher said.

  The driver rolled through the green. They passed the depot. They tracked around, a polite distance behind the high-rent districts. Half a mile later they came to where the bus had turned off the main drag.

  ‘Take the right,’ Reacher said. ‘Out towards the highway.’

  He saw the in-town two-lane was called Center Street. Then it widened to four lanes and was called a state route number. Then came the giant supermarket. The office parks were up ahead.

  ‘Where the hell are we going?’ the guy in the back said. ‘No one lives out here.’

  ‘Why I like it,’ Reacher said.

  The road was smooth. Their tyres
hissed over it. There was no traffic up ahead. Maybe something behind them. Reacher didn’t know. He couldn’t risk a look.

  He said, ‘Tell me again why you want to meet my wife.’

  The guy in the back said, ‘We find it helpful.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘You pay back a bank loan because you’re worried about your credit score and your good name and your standing in the community. But that’s all gone for you. You’re down in the sewer. What are you worried about now? What’s going to make you pay us back?’

  They passed the office parks. Still no traffic. The auto dealer was up ahead in the distance. A wire fence, ranks of dark shapes, bunting that gleamed grey in the moonlight.

  ‘Sounds like a threat,’ Reacher said.

  ‘Daughters are good too.’

  Still no traffic.

  Reacher hit the guy in the face. Out of nowhere. A sudden violent explosion of muscle. No warning at all. A pile driver, with all the speed and twist he could muster in the confined space available. The guy’s head smashed back into the window frame behind him. A mist of blood from his nose spattered the glass.

  Reacher reloaded and hit the driver. Same kind of force. Same kind of result. Leaning over the seat, a clubbing roundhouse right direct to the guy’s ear, the guy’s head snapping sideways, bouncing off the glass, straight into a second jabbing right to the same ear, and a third, which turned the lights out. The guy fell forward on his steering wheel.

  Reacher balled himself up in the rear foot well.

  A second later the car hit the auto dealer’s fence at forty miles an hour. Reacher heard a colossal bang and a banshee screech and the airbags exploded and he was crushed against the seat back in front of him, which yielded and collapsed into the deflating airbag ahead of it, just as the car smashed into the first vehicle for sale, on the near end of the long line under the flags and the bunting. The Lincoln hit it hard, head on into its gleaming flank, and the Lincoln’s windshield shattered and its back end came up in the air, and crashed back to earth, and the engine stalled out, and the car went still and quiet, all except for a loud and furious hiss of steam under the wrecked hood.

  Reacher unfolded himself and climbed up on the seat again. He had taken all the juddering impacts on the flat of his back. He felt like Shevick had looked on the sidewalk. Shaken up. Hurting all over. Regular kind of thing, or worse? He guessed regular. He moved his head, his neck, his shoulders, his legs. Nothing broken. Nothing torn. Not too bad.