This is the only pub for miles, lad, the farmer at the bar had said. Why else do you think it's so crowded?
"Are they there, do you think?" Reacher asked.
Jackson said, "If they stopped in Fenchurch Saint Mary first and then aimed for Bishops Pargeter afterward, then that's the only place they could have passed. But they could have gone north. Nearer Norwich there are a lot of places."
"Can't buy guns in Norwich," Reacher said. "Not if you had to call Holland."
"Shotguns up there," Jackson said. "Nothing heavier."
"So they probably didn't go there," Reacher said. He recalled the motoring atlas. The city of Norwich had been shown as a dense stain in the top-right corner of the bulge that was East Anglia. The end of the line. Not on the way to anyplace else.
"I think they stayed close," he said.
"Then the Bishop's Arms could be it," Jackson said.
Five miles, Reacher thought. On foot, that's a three-hour round trip. Back by midnight.
"I'm going to check it out," he said.
He detoured via the mud room and collected two spare magazines for his G-36. Found Pauling's purse in the kitchen and borrowed her little Maglite. Folded the map and put it in his pocket. Then he huddled with the others in the dark outside the front door and agreed on a password. He didn't want to get shot at when he arrived back. Jackson suggested Canaries, which was the Norwich soccer team's nickname, for its yellow uniforms.
"Are they any good?" Reacher asked.
"They used to be," Jackson said. "Twenty-some years ago, they were great."
Them and me both, Reacher thought.
"Take care," Pauling said, and kissed him on the cheek.
"I'll be back," he said.
He started by walking north behind the house. Then he turned west, staying parallel to the road, about a field's width away. There was a little leftover twilight in the sky. Just the last remnant. Torn and ragged clouds with pale stars beyond. The air was cold and a little damp. There was a knee-high blanket of thin mist clinging to the earth. The dirt was soft and heavy underfoot. He carried his G-36 by its handle, left-handed, ready to swing it up into position when needed.
Reacher, alone in the dark.
The Grange Farm boundary was a trench ten feet across with a muddy bottom six feet down. Drainage, for the flat land. Not exactly canals like in Holland, but not anything easily cleared, either. Not anything to just step across. Reacher had to slide down the near bank, struggle through the mud, and then climb up the far bank again. A mile into the trip his pants were a real mess. And he was going to have to invest some serious shoeshine time on the trip home. Or else deduct the price of a new pair of Cheaneys from Hobart's compensation. Maybe he could detour to the source. The motoring atlas had shown Northampton about forty miles west of Cambridge. Maybe he could talk Pauling into a two-hour shopping expedition. He had let her insist on Macy's after all.
Two miles into the trip he was very tired. And slow. Behind schedule. He changed course and moved slightly south and west. Came closer to the road. Found a tractor route through the next farmer's fields. Huge tires had beaten the earth into hard ruts either side of a grassy center hump. He wiped his shoes on the grass and sped up a little. Found that the next ditch was crossed by an improvised trestle made of old railroad ties. Strong enough for a tractor, strong enough for him. He followed the tire tracks until they turned abruptly north. Then he struck off through the fields again on his own.
After four miles the clock in his head told him that it was ten-thirty at night. Twilight had gone completely but the rags of cloud had cleared a little and the moon was bright. The stars were out. Far away to his left he could see occasional cars passing by on the road. Three had gone west and two had gone east. Bright lights, sedate speeds. Theoretically the two heading east could have been Lane's guys, but he doubted it. Ten and eleven in the evening was no kind of a time to attack. He guessed rural roads saw a minor traffic peak right around then. Pubs letting out, friends going home. Too many witnesses. If he knew it, then Lane knew it, too. Certainly Gregory knew it.
He kept on going. The spare magazines in his pocket were bruising his hip. Five minutes before eleven o'clock he spotted the glow from the pub's sign. Just an electric brightness in the misty air, because the sign itself was hidden by the bulk of the building. He could smell woodsmoke from a chimney. He looped around toward the light and the smell, staying well to the north of the road, just in case Lane had watchers out. He kept to the fields until he was facing the back of the building from four hundred yards away. He saw small squares of harsh white fluorescent light. Windows. Undraped and unglamorous. Therefore kitchens and bathrooms, he guessed. Therefore frosted or pebbled glass. No view out.
He headed south, straight for the squares of light.
Chapter 71
DIRECTLY BEHIND THE pub the parking lot had been closed off and turned into a service yard. It was full of crates of bottles and stacks of metal beer kegs and big commercial-sized trash receptacles. There was a broken-down old car with bricks wedged under its brake drums. No wheels. Another old car, humped under a stained tarpaulin. Behind it the building had a rear door, inconspicuous among all the chaos, almost certainly unlocked during business hours to allow easy access from the kitchen to the trash pile.
Reacher ignored the door. He circled the building in the dark, clockwise, thirty feet out from the walls, well away from the spill of light from the windows.
The small bright rooms in back were clearly bathrooms. Their windows blazed with the kind of green-tinged light that comes from cheap tubes and white tile. Around the corner in the end wall to the east of the building there were no windows at all, just an unbroken expanse of brick. Around the next corner in the front wall east of the entrance there were three windows into the public bar. From a distance Reacher peered in and saw the same four farmers he had seen two nights previously. On the same stools. And the same bartender, busy as before with his beer pumps and his towel. The lighting was dim, but there was nobody else in the room. None of the tables was occupied.
Reacher moved on.
The front door was closed. The parking lot had four cars in it, haphazardly slotted side by side. None of the cars was new. None of them was the kind of thing a Park Lane rental company could have produced in a hurry. They were all old and dirty and battered. Bald tires. Dented fenders. Streaks of mud and manure. Farmers' cars.
Reacher moved on.
West of the entrance were three more windows, into the saloon bar.
Two nights previously the saloon bar had been empty.
It wasn't empty anymore.
Now a single table was occupied.
By three men: Groom, and Burke, and Kowalski.
Reacher could see them clearly. On the table in front of them he could see the long-dead remains of a meal and half a dozen empty glasses. And three half-full glasses. Pint mugs of beer, half-gone. It was a rectangular table. Kowalski and Burke were shoulder to shoulder on one side and Groom was opposite them, alone. Kowalski was talking and Burke was listening to him. Groom had his chair tipped back and was staring into space. There was a log fire burning in a soot-stained grate beyond him. The room was lit up warm and bright and inviting.
Reacher moved on.
Around the next corner there was a single window in the end wall to the west and through it Reacher got a different version of the same view. Groom, Burke, and Kowalski at their table. Drinking. Talking. Passing time. They were all alone in the room. The door to the foyer was closed. A private party.