Текст книги "The Wolf in Winter"

Автор книги: John Connolly

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Текущая страница: 19 (всего у книги 27 страниц)

38

The house, larger than most of its neighbors, lay on a nondescript road midway between Rehoboth Beach and Dewey Beach on the Delaware coast. Most of the surrounding homes were vacation rentals or summer places used by Washingtonians with a little money to spend. Transience was the norm here. True, a handful of year-round residents lived on the road, but they tended to mind their own business, and left others to mind theirs.

A significant number of the homes in the area were owned by gay couples, for Rehoboth had long been one of the east coast’s most gay-friendly resorts. This was perhaps surprising given that Rehoboth was founded in 1873 by the Reverend Robert W. Todd as a Methodist meeting camp. Reverend Todd’s vision of a religious community was short-lived, though, and by the 1940s the gay Hollywood crowd were carousing at the DuPont property along the ocean. Then came the Pink Pony Bar in the 1950s, and the Pleasant Inn and the Nomad Village in the 1960s, all known to be welcoming to DC’s more closeted citizens. In the 1990s, some of the town’s less tolerant residents made a vain attempt to restore what were loosely termed ‘family values’, in some cases by beating the shit out of anyone who even looked gay, but negotiations among representatives of the gay community, homeowners and the police largely put an end to the unrest, and Rehoboth settled gently into its role not only as the ‘Nation’s Summer Capital’, but the ‘Nation’s Gay Summer Capital’.

The big house was rarely occupied, even by the standards of vacation homes. Neither was its care entrusted to any of the local realtors, many of whom boosted their income by acting as agents for summer rentals, and taking care of houses over the winter months. Nevertheless, it was well kept, and local rumor suggested that it had either been bought as part of some complicated tax write-off, in which case the fewer questions asked about it the better, especially in an area swarming with Washingtonians who might or might not have connections with the IRS; or as a corporate investment, for its ownership apparently lay with a shelf company, itself a part of another shelf company, on and on like a series of seemingly infinite matryoshka dolls.

And now, with the final hold of winter upon the land, and the beaches largely empty and devoid of life, the house at last was occupied. Two men, one young and one old, had been noticed entering and leaving, although they did not socialize in any of the local bars and restaurants, and the older gentleman appeared somewhat frail.

But two men, of whatever vintages, living together was not so unusual in Rehoboth Beach, and so their presence went largely unremarked.

Inside the house, the Collector brooded by a window. There was no view of the sea here, only a line of trees that protected the house and its occupants from the curiosity of others. The furnishings were largely antiques, some acquired through clever investment but most through bequests, and occasionally by means of outright theft. The Collector viewed such acquisitions as little more than his due. After all, the previous owners had no more use for them, the previous owners being, without exception, dead.

The Collector heard the sound of the lawyer Eldritch coughing and moving about in the next room. Eldritch slept more since the explosion that had almost cost him his life, and which had destroyed the records of crimes both public and private painstakingly assembled over decades of investigation. Even had the old man not been so frail, the loss of the files would have seriously curtailed the Collector’s activities. He had not realized just how much he relied upon Eldritch’s knowledge and complicity in order to hunt and prey. Without Eldritch, the Collector was reduced to the status of an onlooker, left to speculate on the sins of others without the evidence needed to damn them.

But in recent days, some of Eldritch’s old energy had returned, and he had begun the process of rebuilding his archive. His memory was astonishing in its recall, but his recent sufferings and losses had spurred him still harder to force it to relinquish its store of secrets, fueled by hatred and the desire for revenge. He had lost almost everything that mattered to him: a woman who had been both his consort and his accomplice, and a lifetime’s work of cataloging the mortal failings of men. All he had left now was the Collector, and he would be the weapon with which Eldritch avenged himself.

And so, where once the lawyer had been a check on the Collector’s urges, he now fed them. Each day brought the two men ever closer. It reminded the Collector that, on one level, they were still father and son, although the thing that lived inside the Collector was very old, and very far from human, and the Collector had largely forgotten his previous identity as the son of the ancient lawyer in the next room.

The house was one of the newest of the Collector’s property acquisitions, but also one of the best concealed. Curiously, he owed its existence to the detective, Parker. The Collector had arrived in Rehoboth as part of his exploration of the detective’s history, his attempt to understand Parker’s nature. It was an element of Parker’s past – a minor one, admittedly, but the Collector was nothing if not meticulous – and therefore worthy of examination. The house, modest yet handsome, drew the Collector. He was weary of sparsely furnished hideouts, of uncarpeted rooms filled only with mementos of the dead. He needed a place in which to rest, to contemplate, to plan, and so it was that, through Eldritch, he acquired the house. It remained one of the few in which he still felt secure, particularly since the detective and his friends had begun tracking him, seeking to punish him for the death of one of their own. It was to Delaware that the Collector had spirited the lawyer away once his wounds had healed sufficiently to enable him to travel, and now the Collector too was sequestered here. He had never known what it was to be hunted before; he had always been the hunter. They had come close to trapping him in Newark: the recurrent pain from the torn ligaments in his leg was a reminder of that. This situation could not continue. There was harvesting to be done.

Worse, when night came the Hollow Men gathered at his window. He had deprived them of life, and returned their souls to their maker. What was left of them lingered, drawn to him not only because they erroneously believed that it was he alone who had caused their suffering – the dead being as capable of self-delusion as the living – but because he could add to their number. That was their only comfort: that others might suffer as they did. But now they sensed his weakness, his vulnerability, and with it came a terrible, warped hope: that the Collector would be wiped from the Earth, and with his passing might come the oblivion they desired. At night they gathered among the trees, their skin wrinkled and mottled like old diseased fruit, waiting, willing the detective and his allies to descend upon the Collector.

I could kill them, thought the Collector. I could tear Parker apart, and the ones called Angel and Louis. There was enough evidence against them to justify it, enough sin to tip the scales.

Probably.

Possibly.

But what if he were wrong? What might the consequences be? He had killed their friend in a ft of rage, and as a result he was now little better than a marked animal, running from hole to hole, the ring of hunters tightening around him. If the Collector were to kill the detective, his friends would not rest until the Collector was himself buried. If the Collector were to kill Parker’s friends yet leave him alive, the detective would track him to the ends of the earth. And if, by some miracle, he were to kill all three of them? Then a line would have been crossed, and those who protected the detective from the shadows would finish what he had started and run the Collector down. Whatever choice the Collector made would end the same way: the hunt would continue until he was cornered, and his punishment meted out.

The Collector wanted a cigarette. The lawyer did not like him to smoke in the house. He said that it affected his breathing. The Collector could go outside, of course, but he realized that he had grown fearful of showing himself, as if even the slightest moment of carelessness might undo him. He had never yet been so frightened. The experience was proving unpleasantly enlightening.

The Collector concluded that he could not kill the detective. Even if he were to do so and somehow escape the consequences of his actions, he would ultimately be acting against the Divine. The detective was important. He had a role to play in what was to come. He was human, of that the Collector was now certain, but there was an aspect to him that was beyond understanding. Somehow, in some way, he had touched, or been touched by, the Divine. He had survived so much. Evil had been drawn to him, and he had destroyed it in every instance. There were entities that feared the Collector, and yet they feared the detective even more.

There was no solution. There was no escape.

He closed his eyes and felt the gloating triumph of the Hollow Men.

The lawyer Eldritch turned on his computer and returned to the task in hand: the reconstruction of his records. He was progressing alphabetically for the most part, but if a later name or detail came to him unexpectedly, he would open a separate file and input the new information. The physical records had been little more than aides-mémoires: everything that mattered was contained in his brain.

His ears ached. His hearing had been damaged in the explosion that killed the woman and destroyed his files, and now he had to endure a continuous high-pitched tinnitus. Some of the nerves in his hands and feet had been damaged as well, causing his legs to spasm as he tried to sleep, and his fingers to freeze into claws if he wrote or typed for too long. His condition was slowly improving, but he was forced to make do without proper physiotherapy or medical advice, for the Collector feared that if he showed himself it might draw the detective down upon them.

Let him come, thought Eldritch in his worst moments, as he lay awake in his bed, his legs jerking so violently that he could almost feel the muscles starting to tear, his fingers curling so agonizingly that he was certain that the bones must break through the skin. Let him come, and let us be done with all this. But somehow he would steal enough sleep to continue, and each day he tried to convince himself that he could discern a diminution in his sufferings: more time between the spasms in his legs, like a child counting the seconds between cracks of thunder to reassure himself that the storm was passing; a little more control over his fingers and toes, like a transplant patient learning to use a new limb; and a slight reduction in the intensity of the noise in his ears, in the hope that madness might be held at bay.

The Collector had set up a series of highly secure e-mail drop boxes for Eldritch, with five-step verification and a prohibition on any outside access. Telephone contact was forbidden – it was too easy to trace – but the lawyer still had his informants, and it was important that he remain in touch with them. Now Eldritch opened the first of the drop boxes. There was only one message inside. Its subject line was in case you did not see this, and it was only an hour old. The message contained a link to a news report.

Eldritch cut and pasted the link before opening it. It took him to that evening’s News Center on NBC’s Channel 6 out of Portland, Maine. He watched the report in silence, letting it play in its entirety before he called to the man in the next room.

‘Come here,’ said Eldritch. ‘You need to look at this.’

Moments later, the Collector appeared at his shoulder.

‘What is it?’ he said.

Eldritch let the news report play a second time.

‘The answer to our problems.’

39

Garrison Pryor was on his way to the chef’s table at L’Espalier on Boylston when the call came through to his personal cell phone, the one that was changed weekly, and for which only a handful of people had the number at any time. He was particularly surprised to see the identity of the caller. Pryor hit the green answer button immediately.

‘Yes?’ he said.

There would be no pleasantries. The Principal Backer didn’t like to linger on unsecured lines.

‘Have you seen the news?’

‘No, I’ve been in meetings all day, and I’m about to join some clients for a late dinner.’

‘Your phone has Internet access?’

‘Of course.’

‘Go to Channel Six in Portland. Call me when you’re done.’

Pryor didn’t argue or object. He was running late for dinner, but it didn’t matter now. The Principal Backer didn’t make such calls lightly.

Pryor hung up, and found a spot against the wall by the entrance to the Copley T station. It didn’t take him long to find the news report to which the Principal Backer had been referring. He went to the Portland Press Herald’s website, just in case it had further details, but there were none.

He waited a moment, gathered his thoughts, then called the Principal Backer.

‘Are you at home?’ asked Pryor.

‘Yes.’

‘But you can talk?’

‘For now. Was it one of ours?’

‘No.’

‘You’re certain?’

‘Absolutely. Nobody would have made a move like this without consulting me first, and I would have given no such authorization. It was decided: we should wait.’

‘Make sure that we weren’t involved.’

‘I will, but there’s no doubt in my mind. The man was not short of enemies.’

‘Neither are we. There will be consequences for all of us if we’re found to be anywhere near this.’

‘I’ll send out word. There will be no further activity until you say otherwise.’

‘And get somebody to Scarborough. I want to know exactly what happened at that house.’

‘I’ll make the call now.’

There was silence on the other end of the line, then:

‘I hear L’Espalier is very good.’

‘Yes.’ It took Pryor a second or two to realize that he had not told the Principal Backer where he was eating that night. ‘Yes, it is.’

‘Perhaps you should inform your clients that you won’t be able to make it to dinner after all.’

The connection was cut off. Pryor looked at the phone. He’d only had it for two days. He removed the battery, wiped it with his gloves, and tossed it in the trash. As he walked on, he broke the SIM card and dropped the pieces down a drain. He crossed Boylston, heading for Newbury. He stepped into the shadows of Public Alley 440, put the phone on the ground, and began grinding it beneath his heel, harder and harder, until finally he was stamping furiously on fragments of plastic and circuitry, swearing as he did so. Two pedestrians glanced at him as they passed down Exeter, but they did not stop.

Pryor put his forehead against the wall of the nearest building and closed his eyes.

Consequences: that was an understatement. If someone had made an unauthorized hit on the detective, there was no limit to how bad things might get.

In an apartment in Brooklyn, the rabbi named Epstein sat before his computer screen, watching and listening.

It had been a long day of discussions, arguments and something resembling slow progress, assuming one took a tectonic view of such matters. Epstein, along with two of his fellow moderate rabbis, were trying to hammer out compromises between the borough of Brooklyn and the local Hasidim on a lengthy series of issues, including the separation of the sexes on city buses and religious objections to the use of bicycles, mostly with little success. Today, for his sins, Epstein had been forced to explain the concept of metzitzah b’peh – the practice of oral suction from a baby’s circumcision wound – to a disbelieving councilman.

‘But why would anyone want to do that?’ the councilman kept asking. ‘Why?’

And, to be honest, Epstein didn’t really have an answer or, at least, not one that would satisfy the councilman.

Meanwhile, some of the young Hasidim apparently regarded Epstein with little more affection than they did the goyim. He even heard one of them refer to him behind his back as an alter kocker – an ‘old fart’ – but he did not react. Their elders knew better, and at least acknowledged that Epstein was trying to help by acting as a go-between, attempting to find a compromise with which both the Hasidim and the borough could live. Still, if they had their way the Hasidim would wall off Williamsburg from the rest of Brooklyn, although they’d probably have to fight the hipsters for it. The situation wasn’t helped by certain city officials publicly comparing the Hasidim to the Mafa. At times, it was enough to make a reasonable man consider abandoning both his faith and his city. But there was a saying in Hebrew, ‘We survived Pharoah, we’ll survive this, too.’ In the words of the old joke, it was the theme of every Jewish holiday: They tried to kill us, they failed, so let’s eat!

With that in mind, he was hungry when he arrived home, but all thoughts of food were gone now. Beside him stood a young woman dressed in black. Her name was Liat. She was deaf and mute, so she could not hear the news report, but she could read the anchorman’s lips when he appeared on screen. She took in the images of the police cars and the house, and the picture of the detective that was being used on all of the news reports. It was not a recent photograph. He looked older now. She recalled his face as they had made love, and the feel of his damaged body against hers.

So many scars, so many wounds, both visible and hidden.

Epstein touched her arm. She looked down at his face so she could watch his lips move.

‘Go up there,’ he said. ‘Find out what you can. I will start making inquiries here.’

She nodded and left.

Strange, thought Epstein: he had never seen her cry before.

40

It was Bryan Joblin who told them the news, just as he was running out the door. His departure at that moment, leaving them alone, seemed like a godsend. Harry and Erin had been growing increasingly fractious with Joblin as his perpetual presence in their lives began to tell on them, while he had settled happily into his role as their watcher, houseguest, and sometime accomplice in a crime yet to be committed. He still pressed Harry to find a girl, as if Harry needed to be reminded. Hayley Conyer herself had stopped by the house that morning while they were clearing up after breakfast, and she had made it very clear to the Dixons that they were running out of time.

‘Things are going to start moving fast around here pretty soon,’ Conyer said, as she stood at the front door, as though reluctant even to set foot once again in their crumbling home. ‘A lot of our problems are about to disappear, and we can start concentrating again on the tasks that matter.’

She leaned in close to the Dixons, and Harry could feel the warmth of her breath, and smell with it the sour stink that he always associated with his mother’s dying, the stench of the body’s internal workings beginning to atrophy.

‘You should know that there are folk in Prosperous who blame you for what happened to our young men in Afghanistan, and to Valerie Gillson and Ben Pearson too,’ she said. ‘They believe that, if you hadn’t let the girl go’ – Conyer allowed the different possible interpretations of that conditional clause to hang in the air for a moment – ‘then four of our people might still be alive. You have a lot of work to do to make up for your failings. I’m giving you three days. By then, you’d better produce a substitute girl for me.’

But Harry knew that they wouldn’t be around in three days or, if they were, then it would probably be the end of them. They were ready to run. Had Bryan Joblin not told them of what had occurred, then left them for a time to their own devices, they might have waited for another day, just to be sure that everything was in place for their escape. Now they took his news as a sign: it was time. They watched him drive away, his words still ringing in their ears.

‘We hit the detective,’ Joblin told them. ‘It’s all over the news. That fucker is gone. Gone.’

And within twenty minutes of Joblin’s departure, the Dixons had left Prosperous.

Harry made the call on the way to Medway. The auto dealership closed most evenings at six, but Harry had the dealer’s cell phone number and knew that he lived only a couple of blocks from the lot. He’d told the guy that, if it came down to the wire, he might have to leave the state at short notice. He had spun him a line about a sick mother, knowing that the dealer couldn’t have given a rat’s ass if Harry’s mother was Typhoid Mary, just as long as he paid cash alongside the trade-in. So it was that, thirty minutes after leaving Prosperous, the Dixons drove out of the lot in a GMC Savana Passenger Van with 100,000 miles on the clock, stopping only at the outskirts of Medway to call Magnus and Dianne and let them know that they were on their way. The van was ugly as a mudslide, but they could sleep in it if they had to, and who knew how long they might be on the road, or how far they might have to travel? They couldn’t stay with Harry’s in-laws for long. Even one night would be risky. In fact, the closer Harry got to the home of Magnus and Dianne, the more he started to feel that perhaps he and Erin shouldn’t stay with them at all. It might be wiser just to pick up their stuff, arrange some way of remaining in contact, and then find a motel for the night. The more distance they put between themselves and Prosperous, the better. He expressed his concerns to Erin, and was surprised when she concurred without argument. Her only regret, as far as he could tell, was that they hadn’t managed to kill Bryan Joblin before they left Prosperous. She might have been joking, but somehow Harry doubted it.

They pulled up in the driveway of the house. The lights were on inside, and Harry could see Magnus watching TV in the living room, the drapes open. He saw his brother-in-law stand as he heard the sound of the engine. He waved at them from the window. They were still getting out of the van when Magnus opened the front door.

‘Come in,’ he said. ‘We’ve been worrying ever since we got your call.’

‘Where’s Dianne?’ said Erin.

‘She’s in the bathroom. She’ll be right down.’

Magnus stood aside to let Harry and Erin enter.

‘Let me take your coats,’ said Magnus.

‘We’re not staying,’ said Harry.

‘That’s not what you told us.’

‘I know what I told you, but I think it’s better if we just keep driving. They’re going to come looking for us once they find out that we’ve gone, and it won’t take them long to make the connection to you and Dianne. We need to put ground between Prosperous and us. I can’t tell you why. We just have to leave the town far behind.’

Magnus closed the front door. Harry could feel a draft on his face, though. It was coming from the kitchen. A gust of wind passed through the house. It blew open the dining room door to their left. Inside they saw Dianne seated in the dark by the table.

‘I thought you were—’ said Erin, but she got no further.

Bryan Joblin sat across from Dianne. He held a gun in his right hand, pointing loosely at her chest. Behind him was Calder Ayton. He too held a gun, but his was aimed at the head of Dianne’s daughter, Kayley.

Harry’s hand slid slowly towards the gun in his jacket pocket, just as Chief Morland appeared from the living room. He laid a hand on Harry’s arm.

‘Don’t,’ said Morland, and his voice was almost kindly.

Harry’s hand faltered, then fell to his side. Morland reached into Harry’s pocket and removed the Smith & Wesson.

‘You have a license for this?’ said Morland.

Harry didn’t reply.

‘I didn’t think so,’ said Morland.

He raised the gun and touched it to the back of Erin’s head. He pulled the trigger, and the cream walls of the house blushed crimson. While Harry was still trying to take in the sight of his wife’s body collapsing to the floor, Morland shot Magnus in the chest, then advanced three steps and killed Dianne with a single bullet that entered her face just below the bridge of her nose.

It was Kayley’s screams that brought Harry back, but by then it was all too late. Morland swept Harry’s feet from under him, sending him sprawling to the floor beside his dead wife. He stared at her. Her eyes were closed, her face contorted in a final grimace of shock. Harry wondered if she’d felt a lot of pain. He hoped not. He’d loved her. He’d loved her so very much.

Morland’s weight was on his back now. Harry smelled the muzzle of the gun as it brushed his face.

‘Do it,’ said Harry. ‘Just do it.’

But instead the gun disappeared, and Harry’s hands were cuffed loosely behind his back. Kayley had stopped screaming and was now sobbing. It sounded like there might have been a hand across her mouth, though, for the sobs were muffed.

‘Why?’ said Harry.

‘Because we can’t have a multiple killing without a killer,’ said Morland.

He lifted Harry to his feet. Harry stared at him glazedly. Morland’s features formed a mask of pure desolation.

Calder Ayton and Bryan Joblin emerged from the second entrance to the living room, carrying Kayley between them. They walked through the kitchen to the back door. Shortly after that, Harry heard the trunk of a car closing, and then the vehicle drove away.

‘What’s going to happen to her?’ he asked.

‘I think you already know,’ said Morland. ‘You were told to find us a girl. It looks like you did your duty after all.’

Bryan Joblin reappeared in the kitchen. He smiled at Harry as he approached him.

‘What now?’ said Harry.

‘You and Bryan are going to take a ride. I’ll join you both as soon as I can.’

Morland turned to leave, then paused.

‘Tell me, Harry. Did the girl really escape, or did you let her go?’

What did it matter, thought Harry. The girl had still died, and soon he would join her.

‘We let her go.’

The use of the word ‘we’ made him look down at Erin, and in doing so he missed the look that passed across Morland’s face. It contained a hint of admiration.

Harry felt as though he should cry, but no tears would come. It was too late for tears anyway, and they would serve no purpose.

‘I’m sorry it’s come down to this,’ said Morland.

‘Go to hell, Lucas,’ said Harry.

‘Yes,’ said Morland. ‘I think that I probably will.’