"All of us are deeply shocked," he said. He looked about thirty, wearing a polyester suit. He had the sort of face you forget even while you're looking at it and had introduced himself as Luke. " But if there's anything we can do…."
"What will happen?" Leon asked for the second time that day.
"You don't have to worry," Luke said. "The bank will take care of everything. That's my job. You leave everything to me."
The day passed Leon killed a couple of hours knocking a few balls on his father's snooker table and felt vaguely guilty whenever Kate caught him doing it. But what else was he to do? His entire future looked so uncertain now that his father was gone what will he do if Kate goes back to south America He is only fourteen. But he preferred not to talk about it at all.
And then the day of the funeral arrived and Leon found himself dressed in a dark jacket and cords, preparing to leave in a black car that had come from nowhere surrounded by people he had never met. Mark Hunter was buried in Christine cemetery on William road, just in the shadow of the clover-town soccer field, and Leon knew preferred to be on that warm Wednesday afternoon. About thirty people had turned up, but he hardly recognized any of them. A grave had been dug close to the lane that ran the length of the cemetery, and as the service began, a black Mercedes Benz drew up, the black door opened, and a man got out. Leon watched him as he walked forward and stopped. Leon shivered. There was something about the new arrival that made his skin crawl.
And yet the man was ordinary to look at. Gray suit, gray hair, gray lips, and gray eyes. His face was expressionless, the eyes behind the square, gunmetal spectacles, completely empty. Perhaps that was what had disturbed Leon. Whoever this man was, he seemed to have less life than anyone in the cemetery. Above or below ground.
Someone tapped Leon on the shoulder and he turned around to see Mr.Luke leaning over him. "That's Mr. Ian," he whispered, "He's the chairman of the bank."
Leon's eyes traveled past Ian and over to his car. Two more men had come with him, one of them driving. They were wearing identical suits and although it was a bright day, sunglasses. Both of them were watching the funeral with the same grim faces. Leon looked from them to Ian and then to the other people who had come to the cemetery. Had they really known Mark Hunter? Why had he never met any of them before? And why did he find it so difficult to believe that they really worked for a bank?
He was a good man, a patriotic man. He will be missed."
The vicar had finished his graveside address. His choice of words struck. Leon never knew his father as patriotic. That meant he loved his country but a far he knew Mark Hunter spent most of his time not in it. Certainly not the one for waving the American flag or any flag of the sort. He looked around hoping to see Kate but saw Ian making his way towards him, stepping carefully around the grave.
"You must be Leon." The chairman was a little taller than him. Up close, his skin was strangely unreal. It could have been made of plastic. "My name is Ian Creek," he said. "Your father often spoke about you."
"That's funny," Leon said. "He never mentioned YOU."
The gray lips twitched briefly. "We'll miss him. He was a good man."
"What was he good at?" Leon asked, "He never talked about his work."
Suddenly Luke was there. "Your father was the oversees manager. Leon," he said. He was responsible for our foreign branches. You must know that."
I know he traveled a lot, Leon said and I know he was very careful about things like seat belts
"Well, sadly, he Wasn't careful enough." Ian's eyes, magnified by the thick lenses of his spectacles, lasered into his own, and for a moment, Leon felt pinned down, like an insect under a microscope.
"I hope we'll meet again," Ian went on. He tapped the side of his face with a single gray finger. "Yes …" Then he turned and went back to his car. That was when it happened. As Ian was getting into the vehicle, the driver leaned down to open the back door and his jacket fell open, revealing a stark white shirt underneath. There was a black shape lying against it and that was what caught Leon's eye.
The man was wearing a leather holster with an automatic pistol strapped inside. Realizing what had happened, the driver quickly straightened up and pulled the jacket across. Ian had seen it too. He turned back and looked again at Leon. Something very close to an emotion slithered over his face. Then he got into the car, the door closed, and he was gone. A gun at a funeral, Leon thought. Why? Why should bank managers carry guns? "Let's get out of here." Suddenly Kate was at his side. "Cemeteries give me the creeps."
"Yes. And quite a few creeps have turned up," Leon muttered. They slipped away quietly and went home. The car that had taken them to the funeral was still waiting, but they preferred the open air. The walk took them fifteen minutes and as they turned the corner onto their street, Leon noticed a moving van parked in front of the house, the words CLEVER MOVERS painted on its side.
"What's that doing…." he began
At the same moment, the van shot off, the wheels skidding over the surface of the road.
Leon said nothing as Kate unlocked the door and let them in, but while she went to the kitchen to make some food. He quickly looked around the house. A letter that had been on the hall table lay on the carpet. A door that had been half-opened was now closed. Tiny details, but Leon's eyes missed nothing. Somebody had been in the house. He was almost sure of it.
But he wasn't certain until he got to the top floor. The door to the office. Which had always, been locked. Was now unlocked. Leon opened it and went in . the room was empty. Mark Hunter had gone and so everything else….anything connected to the dead man's work had been taken. Whatever the truth was about his father's past, someone had just been wiped out.