The direct approach. A variant.
"How much?" Kemp asked.
"It's usually a percentage."
"What farms?" Kemp asked.
"You tell us. Generally we look for tidy well-run places that might have issues with ownership stability."
"What the hell does that mean?"
"It means we want good places that were recently bought up by amateurs. But we want them quick, before they're ruined."
"Grange Farm," Kemp said. "They're bloody amateurs. They've gone organic."
"We heard that name."
"It should be top of your list. It's exactly what you said. They've bitten off more than they can chew there. And that's when they're both at home. Which they aren't always. Just now the chap was left alone there for a few days. It's far too much for one man to run. Especially a bloody amateur. And they've got too many trees. You can't make money growing trees."
"Grange Farm sounds like a good prospect," Reacher said. "But we heard that someone else is snooping around there, too. He's been seen, recently. On the property. A rival, maybe."
"Really?" Kemp said, excited, conflict in the offing. Then his face fell, deflated. "No, I know who you mean. That's not a bloody rival. That's the woman's brother. He's moved in with them."
"Are you sure about that? Because it makes a difference to us, how many people we have to relocate."
Kemp nodded. "The chap came in here and introduced himself. Said he was back from somewhere or other and his wandering days were over. He was posting a packet to America. Airmail. We don't get much of that here. We had quite a nice chat."
"So you're sure he's going to be a long-term resident? Because it makes a difference."
"That's what he said."
Pauling asked, "What did he post to America?"
"He didn't tell me what it was. It was going to a hotel in New York. Addressed to a room, not a person, which I thought was strange."
Reacher asked, "Did you guess what it was?"
Dave Kemp, the farmer in the bar had said. Nosy bugger.
"It felt like a thin book," Kemp said. "Not many pages. A rubber band around it. Maybe he had borrowed it. Not that I squeezed it or anything."
"Didn't he fill out a customs declaration?"
"We put it down as printed papers. Don't need a form for that."
"Thanks, Mr. Kemp," Reacher said. "You've been very helpful."
"What about the fee?"
"If we buy the farm, you'll get it," Reacher said.
If we buy the farm, he thought. Unfortunate turn of phrase. He felt suddenly cold.
Dave Kemp had no take-out coffee so they bought Coke and candy bars and stopped to eat them on the side of the road a mile west, where they could watch the front of the farmhouse. The place was still quiet. No lights, the same thin trickle of smoke catching the wind and dispersing sideways.
Reacher said, "Why did you ask about the airmail to the States?"
"An old habit," Pauling said. "Ask about everything, especially when you're not sure about what's important and what isn't. And it was kind of weird. Taylor just got out, and the first thing he does is mail something back? What could it have been?"
"Maybe something for his partner," Reacher said. "Maybe he's still in the city."
"We should have gotten the address. But we did pretty well, overall. You were very plausible. It fit very well with last night. All that false bonhomie in the bar? Assuming Kemp spreads the word, Taylor's going to put you down as a conman looking to make a fast buck buying farms for fifty cents on the dollar."
"I can lie with the best of them," Reacher said. "Sadly."
Then he shut up fast because he caught a glimpse of movement a half-mile away. The farmhouse door was opening. There was morning mist and the sun was on the other side of the house and the distance was at the outer limit of visibility but he made out four figures emerging into the light. Two big, one slightly smaller, one very small. Probably two men, a woman, and a little child. Possibly a girl.
"They're up," he said.
Pauling said, "I see them, but only just. Four people. The bird scarer probably woke them. Louder than a rooster. It's the Jackson family and Taylor, right? Mommy, Daddy, Melody, and her loving uncle."
"Must be."
They all had things on their shoulders. Long straight poles. Comfortable for the adults, way too big for the girl.
"What are they doing?" Pauling asked.
"Those are hoes," Reacher said. "They're going out to the fields."
"To dig weeds?"
"Organic farming. They can't use herbicides."
The tiny figures grouped together and moved north, away from the road. They dwindled to nothingness, just faint remote blurs in the mist that were more ghostly illusion than reality.
"He's staying," Pauling said. "Isn't he? He must be staying. You don't go out to hoe weeds for your sister if you're thinking about running."
Reacher nodded. "We've seen enough. The job is done. Let's get back to London and wait for Lane."
Chapter 62
THEY HIT COMMUTER traffic on the road to London. Lots of it. It seemed like for hundreds of miles England was one of two things: either London or a dormitory serving London. The city was like a gigantic sprawling magnet sucking inward. According to Reacher's atlas the M-11 was just one of twenty or so radial arteries that fed the capital. He guessed they were all just as busy, all full of tiny flowing corpuscles that would get spat back out at the end of the day. The daily grind. He had never worked nine to five, never commuted. At times he felt profoundly grateful for that fact. This was one of them.
The stick shift was hard work in the congestion. Two hours into the ride they pulled off and got gas and he changed places with Pauling, even though he wasn't on the paperwork and wasn't insured to drive. It seemed like a minor transgression compared to what they were contemplating for later. He had driven in Britain before, years earlier, in a large British sedan owned by the U.S. Army. But now the roads were busier. Much busier. It seemed to him like the whole island was packed to capacity. Until he thought back to Norfolk. That county was empty. The island is unevenly packed, he thought. That was the real problem. Either full or empty. No middle ground. Which was unusual for Brits, in his experience. Normally Brits fudged and muddled like champions. The middle ground was where they lived.
They came to the M-25 beltway and decided that discretion was the better part of valor. Decided to hit it for a quarter-circle counterclockwise and then head down to the West End on an easier route. But the M-25 itself was pretty much a parking lot.
"How do people stand this every day?" Pauling said.
"Houston and LA are as bad," Reacher said.
"But it kind of explains why the Jacksons escaped."
"I guess it does."
And the traffic moved on slowly, circulating like water around a bathtub drain, before yielding to the inexorable pull of the city.
They came in through St. John's Wood, where the Abbey Road studios were, past Regent's Park, through Marylebone, past Baker Street, where Sherlock Holmes had lived, through Marble Arch again, and onto Park Lane. The Hilton hotel was at the south end, near the truly world-class automotive insanity that was Hyde Park Corner. They parked in a commercial garage underground at a quarter to eleven in the morning. Maybe an hour before Lane and his guys were due to check in.