Текст книги "The Wolf in Winter"

Автор книги: John Connolly

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5

They saw the cars pull into their drive and knew that they were in trouble.

Chief Morland was leading, driving his unmarked Crown Vic. The dash light wasn’t flashing, though. The chief wasn’t advertising his presence.

The chief’s car was followed by Thomas Souleby’s Prius. A lot of folk in Prosperous drove a Prius or some other similarly eco-conscious car. Big SUVs were frowned upon. It was to do with the ethos of the town, and the importance of maintaining a sustainable environment in which to raise generations of children. Everybody knew the rules, unofficial or otherwise, and they were rarely broken.

As the cars pulled up outside the house, Erin gripped her husband’s hand. Harry Dixon was not a tall man, nor a particularly handsome one. He was overweight, his hair was receding and he snored like a drill when he slept on his back, but he was her man, and a good one, too. Sometimes she wished that they had been blessed with children, but it was not to be. They had waited too late after marriage, she often thought, and by the time it became clear that the actions of nature alone would not enable her to conceive, they had settled into a routine in which each was enough for the other. Oh, they might always have wished for more, but there was a lot to be said for ‘enough’.

But these were troubled times, and the idyllic middle age they had imagined for themselves was under threat. Until 2011, Harry’s construction company had weathered the worst of the recession by cutting back on its full-time employees and paring quotes to the bone, but 2011 had seen the company’s virtual collapse. It was said that the state had lost 4800 jobs in March of that year alone, which contributed to making Maine the nation’s leader in lost jobs. They’d both read about the arguments between the Maine Department of Labor and the Maine Center for Economic Policy, the latter basing its figures on higher Bureau of Labor Statistics job loss figures that the former refuted. As far as the Dixons were concerned, that was just the state’s Department of Labor trying to sweep the mess under the carpet. It was like telling a man that his feet are dry when he can feel the water lapping at his chin.

Now Harry’s company was little more than a one-man operation, with Harry quoting for small jobs that he could complete with cheap labor, and bringing in skilled contractors by the hour as he needed them. They could still pay their mortgage, just about, but they’d cut back on a lot of luxuries, and they did more and more of their buying outside Prosperous. Erin’s halfsister Dianne and her surgeon husband had helped them out with a small lump sum. They were both hospital consultants, and were doing okay. They could afford to lend a hand, but it had hurt the couple’s pride to approach them for a loan – a loan, what was more, that was unlikely to be discharged anytime soon.

They had also tapped the town’s discretionary fund, which was used to support townsfolk who found themselves in temporary financial trouble. Ben Pearson, who was regarded as one of the board’s more approachable members, had taken care of the details, and the money – just over $2000 – had helped the Dixons out a little, but Ben had made it clear that it would have to be paid back, in cash or in kind. If it wasn’t, then the board would start delving more deeply into their situation, and if the board stared snooping it might well find out about Dianne. That was why the Dixons had agreed, however reluctantly, to keep the girl. It would serve as repayment of the loan, and keep their relationship with Dianne a secret.

Erin had only discovered her halfsister’s existence some three years earlier. Erin’s father had left Prosperous when she was little more than an infant, and her mother had subsequently remarried – to a cousin of Thomas Souleby, as it happened. Her father hadn’t been heard from again, and then, at the end of 2009, Dianne had somehow tracked Erin down, and a tentative if genuine affection had sprung up between them. It seemed that their father had created a whole new identity for himself after he left Prosperous, and he never mentioned the town to his new wife or his child. It was only following his death, and the death of her mother, that Dianne had come across documents among her father’s possessions that explained the truth about his background. By then she was on her second marriage – to a man who, coincidentally or through the actions of fate, lived in the same state that had spawned her father, and not too far from the town and life that he had fed.

Erin had professed complete ignorance of the reasons why their father might have gone to such lengths to hide his identity, but when Dianne persisted Erin hinted at some affair with a woman from Lewiston, and her father’s fear of retribution from his wife’s family. None of it was true, of course – well, none of the stuff about the affair. Her father’s fear of retribution was another matter. Nevertheless, she made it clear to Dianne that it would be for the best if she kept her distance from Prosperous, and didn’t go delving into the past of their shared father.

‘Old towns have long memories,’ Erin told Dianne. ‘They don’t forget slights.’

And Dianne, although bemused, had consented to leaving Prosperous to its own business, aided in part by her halfsister’s willingness to share with her what she knew of their father’s past, even if, unbeknownst to Dianne, Erin had carefully purged all that she offered of any but the most innocuous details.

So Erin and Harry were the poor relatives, bound to Dianne and her husband by the shade of a father. They were content to play that role, though, and to keep the existence of Dianne and her husband hidden from the citizens of Prosperous. Unspoken between them was the fact that they might have need of Dianne at some point in the future, and not only for money, for the Dixons wanted nothing more than to leave Prosperous, and that would be no easy task. The board would want to know why. The board would investigate. The board would almost certainly find out about Dianne, and the board would wonder what secrets Erin Dixon might have shared with her halfsister, the daughter of a man who had turned his back on the town, who had stolen its money and, perhaps, whispered of the deal it had made to secure itself.

Keeping all their fears from Dianne and her husband was not easy. To further complicate matters, Harry and Erin had asked for the money to be paid in cash. She could still remember the look on Dianne’s face: puzzlement, followed by the dawning realization that something was very wrong.

‘What kind of trouble are you two in?’ she asked them, as her husband poured the last of the wine and gave them the kind of disapproving look he probably reserved for patients who neglected to follow his postoperative advice and then seemed surprised when they started coughing blood. His name was Magnus Madsen, and he was of Danish extraction. He insisted on the pronunciation of his first name as ‘Maunus’, without sounding the ‘g’, and had resigned himself to correcting Harry’s literal pronunciation whenever they met. Harry just couldn’t seem to manage ‘Mau-nus’, though. That damned ‘g’ kept intruding. Anyway, it wasn’t as if Magnus Madsen was fresh off a Viking longship. There were rocks that hadn’t been in Maine as long as the Madsens. His family had been given plenty of time to learn to speak English properly, and drop whatever airs they’d brought with them from the old country.

‘We’d just prefer it if people in Prosperous didn’t know that we were having serious difficulties,’ said Harry. ‘It’s a small town, and if word got out it might affect my chances of bidding successfully for work. If you pay us in cash, then we can make pretty regular lodgments into our account until we find our feet again, and nobody will be any the wiser.’

‘But surely any dealings you have with your bank are entirely confidential,’ said Magnus. ‘Couldn’t you ask your bank manager for an extended line of credit? I mean, you’re still working, and you must have paid off the bulk of your mortgage by now. That’s a nice house you have, and it’s worth a fair sum, even in these difficult times. It’s hardly like asking for an unsecured loan.’

There was so much that Harry wanted to say at that point, but it could have been summarized as ‘You and I do not live in similar worlds’. Those words ‘unsecured loan’ bit at him as well, because that was precisely what they were asking of Magnus and Dianne, but mostly he knew that Magnus had no conception of the way in which the town of Prosperous worked. If he did, it would turn his hair white.

And shortly after that, he’d be dead.

Magnus and Dianne gave them the money in the end, and Harry used it to pump up the deposits being made at the bank, but the borrowed cash was almost gone now, and he didn’t think that his in-laws could be tapped again. In any normal situation, Harry and Erin would have sold up and moved on. Sure, they’d take a bit of a hit on the house, but with a little luck they might come out of it with a high five-or low six-figure sum once the mortgage was paid off. They could start again, maybe rent for a while until the economy recovered.

But this wasn’t a normal situation. They knew that they probably weren’t the only ones in the town who were suffering; there were rumors, and more than rumors. Even Prosperous wasn’t entirely immune from the vagaries of the economy, just as, throughout its history, it had never been completely protected from conflict or financial turmoil or the anger of nature. Yet it had always been better protected than most. The town took steps to ensure that was the case.

‘What do you think happened?’ Erin now whispered to her husband, as they watched the men approach. ‘Did she get away?’

‘No,’ said Harry. ‘I don’t believe she did.’

If she had escaped, then these others wouldn’t be here on their doorstep. There were only two possibilities. The first was that the girl had been captured before she could leave Prosperous, in which case the chief was going to be mad as hell with them for failing to keep her locked up, and they could only hope that the girl had sense enough to keep any suspicions about the ease of her escape to herself. The second possibility was that she was dead, and Harry found himself wishing that the latter was true. It would be easier for all of them.

They didn’t give the chief time to knock on the door. Harry opened it to find Morland with his fist raised, and he flinched instinctively in anticipation of the blow. There was a doorbell, but it wouldn’t have been like Lucas Morland to use it under the circumstances. A sharp knock was much more psychologically effective.

Harry opened the door wide to admit them, the chief with his face set hard and Thomas Souleby looking more disappointed than angry, as though Harry and Erin were teenagers who had failed some crucial parental test.

‘We know why you’re here,’ said Harry.

‘If you know why we’re here,’ said the chief, ‘then why didn’t you call us to tell us about the girl?’

‘We only just found out she was gone,’ said Erin. ‘We were about to call, but—’

She looked to her husband for help.

‘But we were frightened,’ he finished for her.

‘Frightened of what?’

‘That we’d let you down, that we’d let the whole town down. We knew you’d be angry.’

‘Did you try looking for her?’

‘Sure,’ said Harry. ‘I mean, no, not yet, but we were about to. See, I’d put my boots on.’ He pointed down at his feet, which were, indeed, booted. He never wore footwear in the house – Erin bitched about the carpets – but he’d put his boots on that night, just in case it all went to hell. ‘I was ready to head out when you arrived.’

‘Did you find her?’ said Erin. ‘Please tell me that you found her.’

She was good, Harry gave her that. It was just what she should have said, just what the chief would have expected to hear.

Morland didn’t reply. He was leaving them to stew for a while, waiting to see what they might reveal to him. They’d have to step carefully now. What would the girl have said when she was caught? What would she have told them?

Nothing, Harry figured. She’d have kept quiet. That was why he and Erin had simply left the doors mostly unsecured, and gone about their business. If the girl were caught, they’d have deniability.

Morland leaned against the kitchen table and folded his arms.

‘How did it happen?’ he asked.

‘It was my fault,’ said Erin. ‘I left the door unlocked. I didn’t mean to. Sometimes, if I knew she was asleep, I’d just shoot the bolt and let the shackle hang loose on the mechanism. I was tired, though, and I think I may have forgotten to put the padlock on, and the bolt wasn’t properly in place. She must have worked the bolt free from the inside. I found a piece of cloth on the floor that she could have used. Maybe she tore it from her nightgown.’

‘How did she know that you hadn’t locked the door?’ asked Souleby.

Damn you, thought Harry. I always felt you were too smart for anyone’s good. Souleby, the miserable bastard, reminded Harry of an old stork, all beak and limbs.

‘I don’t know,’ said Erin. ‘My guess is that she never gave up trying to escape. She probably tried the door every time I left the room, and this time she just got lucky.’

‘Got lucky, huh?’ said Morland.

He permitted himself a little smile.

‘Show me the door,’ he said. ‘Explain it all to me again.’

They went down to the basement, and Erin showed him the cell, and the bolt, and the padlock. Just as she had told him, there was a piece of white material on the floor, stained with grease from the bolt. The chief examined it, and toyed with the bolt and padlock for a while.

‘Get inside,’ he said to Erin.

‘What?’

‘Go on. Get inside that cell.’ He handed her the strip of cloth. ‘And take this with you.’

She did as she was told. The chief closed the door on her and slid the bolt, but did not secure it with the padlock.

‘Now,’ he said, ‘open it.’

The saliva dried up in Harry’s mouth. He would have prayed, but he had long since stopped believing in God. The continued existence of Prosperous was one of the strongest arguments he could come up with against the possibility of a benevolent deity watching over humankind.

After a couple of attempts, Erin managed to get the cloth through the gap between the door and the frame, and over the bolt. There was, though, no way that she could pull the other end back in. Harry closed his eyes. This was it.

A thin shaft of broken wood poked through the gap, caught

the strip of cloth, and pulled it back through to the other side of the cell door. Slowly, Erin began to twist it back and forth. The bolt moved: not by much, but it moved. With some perseverance, it would only be a matter of time before Erin managed to unlock the door from the inside, just as she claimed the girl had done.

Morland stared at Harry. Despite what he had witnessed, Harry knew that the chief still didn’t quite believe what he had been told. If he was expecting Harry to crack, though, he was going to be disappointed, not unless he resorted to torture, and even Morland was probably above that.

‘Let her out,’ he told Souleby, and Souleby pulled the bolt.

Erin stepped out of the cell, flushed but triumphant.

‘Where did you get the wood?’ said the chief.

‘It was on the floor by the girl’s bed,’ she said. ‘I saw it when I was trying to figure out how she did it.’

She handed him the fragment of pine. The chief tested it with his finger, then went to the bed and found the spot from which it had been taken.

‘Looks new,’ he said.

‘She hasn’t been gone but an hour,’ said Erin.

‘Uh-huh.’ Chief Morland took the stick in both hands and snapped it. It was the first outward demonstration that he had given of the rage he was feeling.

‘You still haven’t told us if you found her,’ said Harry.

‘Oh, we found her all right,’ said the chief.

‘Where is she?’

‘In the trunk of my car.’

‘Is she—?’

‘Is she what?’

‘Is she … dead?’

The chief didn’t answer immediately. He closed his eyes and wiped his face with his right hand. His shoulders sank. That was when Harry knew that they were okay, for now.

‘Yes, she’s dead,’ said Morland finally. ‘Just not the right kind of dead. You got a shovel?’

‘Sure,’ said Harry. ‘In my toolshed.’

‘Good,’ said the chief. ‘Because you’re going to help me bury her.’

6

I had a ticket for the 8:55 PM fight with US Airways out of Philadelphia, if I chose to use it, but I realized that I would either kill myself trying to make it, or end up with a ticket for speeding. Neither possibility particularly appealed to me, so I changed my fight to 9:30 AM the following morning and checked into a motel off Bartram Avenue. I had dinner in a bar that was one step up from eating food off the street, but I didn’t care. Once the adrenaline had stopped flowing after the events in Newark, I had experienced a comedown that left me shaking and nauseous. It didn’t matter what I ate: it would have tasted foul anyway, but I thought I needed something in my stomach. In the end, I left most of the food on the plate, and what I ate didn’t stay in my system for long once I was back in my room.

In truth, such reactions were becoming increasingly common as the years went on. I suppose I had always been frightened as I faced situations like that night’s – anyone who has found himself looking down the barrel of a gun, or confronting the possibility of injury or death, and claims to have done so without fear is either a liar or insane – but the more often you do it and survive, the more aware you become that the odds are inevitably swinging against you. If cats could count, they’d start getting nervous around the time they put paid to their fifth life.

I also wanted to watch Sam, my daughter, grow up. She was long past those early years when children, though cute, don’t do a whole lot except babble and fall over, much like a certain type of really old person. I found her endlessly fascinating, and regretted the fact that I was no longer with Rachel, her mother, although I didn’t think Rachel was about to move back in just so I could spend more time with Sam. Then again, I didn’t want Rachel to move back in, so the feeling was mutual. Still, with Rachel and Sam in Vermont, and me in Portland, arranging to spend time with my daughter took some planning. I supposed that I could always move to Vermont, but then I’d have to start voting Socialist, and finding excuses to secede from the Union. Anyway, I liked Portland, and being close to the sea. Staring out over Vermont’s Lake Bomoseen wasn’t quite the same thing.

I checked my cell phone messages as I lay on the bed. There was only one, from a man in Portland named Jude. He was one of a handful of the local street folk who’d proved helpful to me in the past, either by providing information or the occasional discreet surveillance service, as people tended not to notice the homeless, or pretended not to. Naturally there was no callback number for Jude. Instead, he had suggested leaving a message with the folk at the Portland Help Center or on the bulletin board at the Amistad Community on State Street to let him know when I might be available to meet.

I hadn’t seen Jude around in a while, but then I hadn’t really been looking for him. Like most of Portland’s homeless, he did his best to stay off the streets in winter. To do otherwise was to risk being found frozen in a doorway.

Me, I wasn’t doing so badly. Work had picked up over the winter because I’d developed a nice sideline in process serving. It wasn’t glamorous work, but it paid reasonably well, and occasionally required the exercise of more than a handful of brain cells. The day before I’d headed down to Newark to join Angel and Louis, I’d cashed a check for $2000, including a goodwill bonus payment, for just one job. The subject of the subpoena was an investment analyst named Hyram P. Taylor who was involved in the initial stages of serious and hostile divorce proceedings with his wife, who was represented by my lawyer – and, for the most part, my friend – Aimee Price. Hyram was such a compulsive fornicator that even his own lawyer had privately acknowledged the possibility of his client possessing a penis shaped like a corkscrew, and eventually his wife had just become tired of the humiliation. As soon as she fled for divorce, Hyram set about hiding all records relating to his wealth, and moving said wealth as far from the reach of his wife as possible. He even abandoned his office in South Portland and tried to go to ground, but I tracked him down to the apartment of one of his girlfriends, a woman called Brandi who, despite having a stripper’s name, worked as an accountant in New Hampshire.

The problem was that Hyram wouldn’t so much as pick up a piece of paper from the street for fear that it might be attached to an unseen piece of string ending in the hand of a process server. He didn’t go anywhere without Brandi in tow, and she was the one who paid cash for newspapers, groceries and drinks in bars. Hyram didn’t put his hand on anything if he could help it. He probably had Brandi check him before he peed in the morning, just in case someone had attached a subpoena to his manhood while he slept.

His weakness – and they all have a weakness – was his car. It was how I found him. He drove a six-liter black Bentley Flying Spur Speed: ten miles to the gallon in the city, 0–60 in 4.8 seconds, and $200,000 worth of vehicle, at the very least. It was his pride and joy, which was probably why he stood up so suddenly that he poured coffee over himself when I walked into the Starbucks on Andrews Road and asked if anyone owned a hell of a nice Bentley because I’d just knocked off the wing mirror on the driver’s side.

Hyram wasn’t a slim man, but he could move fast when the need arose, even with hot coffee scalding his thighs. He went past me at full sail and arrived at his car to find that, sure enough, the mirror was hanging on only by wires to the body of the car. It had been harder to knock off than I’d anticipated, requiring two blows from a hammer. The Bentley might have been expensive, but it was clearly built well.

‘I’m real sorry,’ I told him when I arrived to find him stroking the car as though it were a wounded animal that he was trying to console. ‘I just wasn’t looking. If it’s any help, I got a brother who runs an auto shop. He’d probably give you a good deal.’

Hyram seemed to be having trouble speaking. His mouth just kept opening and closing without sound. I could see Brandi hurrying across the parking lot, still trying to struggle into her coat while juggling her coffee and Hyram’s jacket. Hyram had left her in his wake, but she’d be with us in seconds. I needed to hook Hyram before she got here, and while he was still in shock.

‘Look,’ I said, ‘here are my insurance details, but if you could see your way clear to just letting me pay cash to cover the damages, I’d surely be grateful.’

Hyram reached out for the paper in my hand without thinking. I heard Brandi cry out a warning to him, but by then it was too late. His fingers had closed on the subpoena.

‘Mr Taylor,’ I said, ‘it’s my pleasure to inform you that you’ve just been served.’

It said a lot about Hyram P. Taylor’s relationship with his car that he still seemed more upset by the damage to it than he was by being in receipt of the subpoena, but that situation didn’t last long. He was swearing at me by the time I got to my own car, and the last I saw of him was Brandi flinging her coffee at his chest and walking away in tears. I even felt a little sorry for Hyram. He was a jerk, but he wasn’t a bad guy, whatever his wife might have thought of him. He was just weak and selfish. Badness was something else. I knew that better than most. After all, I’d just burned a man’s house down.

I made a note to get in touch with Jude, then turned out the light. The post-adrenaline dip had passed. I was now just exhausted. I slept soundly as, back in Portland, Jude twisted on his basement rope.