Chapter Eighteen

It was raining heavily as Laurence and Pettifer drove north out of the city, retracing the journey they had made yesterday afternoon. This time, he was driving. When they left the department, Pettifer had moved straight to the passenger side without discussing the matter, which Laurence had taken as a subtle reflection of their respective levels of enthusiasm for the journey ahead.

Water lashed the windshield, growing in intensity as they went. By the time they were into the countryside, it felt like angry fistfuls of rain were being flung at the car, blearing the glass in front of him faster than the squeaking wipers could clear it away.

"We could have sent someone else to do this," Pettifer said.

"And miss this delightful view?"

"When you put it like that, I become even more right."

She left it at that, the grumble more what was expected of her than a genuine complaint. A lot had happened that afternoon, and they both knew that, wherever else they might be right now, relaxing at home with their feet in front of the fire was not one of the options. But Laurence was aware Pettifer was doubtful about their pursuit of this particular angle.

She took out her phone and scrolled the screen with her finger.

He gave her a moment.

"Anything?"

"Just more fucking security footage."

He understood her frustration, but took a slightly different perspective on matters. They wanted to know where Christopher Shaw was, of course. But Laurence thought knowing where he was not might also be useful in its own small way.

Pettifer had done good work today. Tracing Christopher Shaw's bank account had granted them a handful of glimpses of him, the footage all taken from cameras close to the ATMs he had used. Until recently, that had mostly been confined to an area west of the city, and Laurence was willing to bet that was close to wherever Shaw had been calling home. But his behavior had changed last week. Subsequent footage came from cameras in apparently random streets in the city center. The coverage was better there, and they had been able to follow him from street to street, even if they always lost him eventually.

For some reason, Christopher Shaw had altered his routine.

Even better was the footage they had from the last withdrawal, yesterday morning, which showed Shaw and another young man walking down the street together. They looked a little unkempt, and both were carrying heavy backpacks. While they disappeared off-grid quickly—annoying Pettifer immensely—the sighting made Laurence happy, because it provided them with more information. They now knew that Shaw had a companion. And that the two of them appeared to be on the move.

Pettifer sighed.

"What do you make of this?" she said.

He risked looking away from the rain-drenched road for a second and realized she had the results of Alan Hobbes's postmortem report open on her screen. Upon first viewing the body yesterday, Laurence had imagined it obvious that the savage injury to the old man's throat would be the cause of death—and indeed, the pathologist had confirmed that was the case.

But the story had turned out to be not so simple.

Not so simple at all.

Laurence looked ahead again, turning the wheel gently.

"I don't know yet," he said. "We will see."

The trees packed tightly on either side of the dirt road that led to Hobbes's house provided some respite from the weather, but the car tires rolled and squelched in the mud, and then the rain redoubled its fury when they emerged into the clearing at the end. Laurence heard a sound like snapping kindling as he parked up on the pebbled area by the front doors. The scene was due to be released tomorrow morning. For now, a single police car remained in place, an officer sheltering against the elements within it.

Laurence stared out of the window at the house.

The building had appeared grand to him yesterday, but he found himself reevaluating this in light of what he had learned since. Those enormous wooden doors seemed smaller now, and the empty wings to either side appeared desolate and sad. But most of all there was the stretch of charred, fractured brickwork high above—the room where Alan Hobbes's infant son had perished in a fire, and which had not been repaired in the three decades that followed. Right then, the house seemed as saturated by grief and sorrow as it was by the downpour.

Alan Hobbes had been wealthy. He could have lived wherever he liked. And so Laurence found himself thinking about his own apartment—carefully organized to reflect his needs—and wondered what choosing to remain in this property said about Alan Hobbes.

After showing their IDs to the officer in his car, they hurried into the house. Laurence turned on the flashlight he'd brought, illuminating the chessboard-patterned floor and the twin staircases that lay ahead. The officer had taken them up the stairs on the right-hand side yesterday, and so for some reason he chose the left-hand side this time. It led them to the same landing, of course.

As they ascended farther, he breathed in and noticed odors he had missed upon their first visit: damp and mold; old wood and spilled ink. When they reached the first landing, he heard a noise behind them, and turned quickly, swinging the flashlight's beam round to point back down the staircase.

Nothing but mist swirling there.

Beside him, Pettifer flicked her own flashlight on under her chin and pulled a frightening face at him.

"A genuine improvement," he said.

With their flashlights bobbing, they made their way up the rest of the stairs, and then down the corridor that led to Hobbes's apartment. The door at the end was closed but not locked, and when Laurence opened it, the space beyond was filled with a darkness the beam of his flashlight seemed to disappear into. Pettifer stepped past him and reached around the frame, her fingers groping across the wall until they found the light switch.

Laurence blinked at the sudden brightness, then clicked off the flashlight and followed her into the apartment. The main room was more or less as he remembered it but felt emptier than before, in a way the lack of people did not fully account for. The bed had been stripped down and resembled a hospital gurney now, the bloodstains on the wall somehow uglier in contrast to its bare metal frame. He glanced behind him and saw the camera above the door, hanging limply from its broken plastic casing.

Then he turned his attention to the archway at the end of the room.

Once again, the light in the room didn't penetrate much farther than a foot or so into the old stone corridor. Beyond that, there was just a green-black darkness.

But he could feel the same cold breath coming from it as he had yesterday.

A light flicked on to his left.

Pettifer had already moved into the small bathroom that led off from the main room, and he followed her in. It was a small, utilitarian area—just enough space to fit the basic necessities. Pettifer put on a pair of gloves and opened the cabinet on the wall above the sink, and then began working methodically through the various plastic bottles that were lined up inside. Hobbes had been on a great deal of medications. Some of the bottles rattled as she picked them up, but others did not, and it was those she paid closest attention to, holding them up to the light and peering at the labels. Some she returned; others she placed on the back of the sink. By the time she finished, there were six of those.

"So," she said. "There we are."

Laurence bent at the waist to read the labels.

Here was the anomaly the pathologist had noted in his report. The severe blood loss indicated Alan Hobbes's heart had still been beating when the knife wound was administered to his throat, and that was judged to be the cause of death. But Hobbes had already swallowed enough prescription painkillers to euthanize a horse. Had he not been murdered, he would have been dead within an hour regardless.

"I assume," Pettifer said, "we're not suspecting the killer force-fed him?"

"Alan Hobbes was not Rasputin. He only needed killing once."

"Self-administered, then."

"I suppose we can't be certain," Laurence said. "But yes, I think so."

He leaned back up again.

"We thought it was strange, didn't we, that Hobbes would dismiss all his staff—as though he knew his killer was coming and had resigned himself to his fate. And so perhaps this is our explanation. He wasn't expecting to be murdered at all. He was planning to take his own life and did not wish to be disturbed."

"But then he was."

"Yes."

"Which can't be a coincidence."

Laurence considered that. Coincidences did happen, after all, and perhaps there really was an element of that here. But he, too, suspected there were connections they weren't seeing yet and that, when they did, they would revolve around Christopher Shaw. Because while Laurence still didn't understand why, he was sure that the man's presence here would turn out to be key.

And also the item Shaw had removed from the property.

Tell me about this book…

Laurence turned away and headed back into the main room.

Close to, the air that seemed to be breathing steadily out from the archway felt colder, and the darkness before him seemed even more impenetrable. Both sensations were unpleasant, but the latter could be dealt with. Laurence reached out, searching for a light switch on the wet wall beside him, and found what felt like one. He flicked the switch, and pale light flared from a bare bulb hanging down. The rush of air from ahead was joined by a humming from above.

The corridor ahead was made of old, rough stone, dotted with green in places. It reminded him of a narrow passage below the ground in some ancient castle. But it was short. It ended in another archway only a short distance away, which appeared to open up into another room that was lost mostly in darkness for the moment.

Laurence stepped into the corridor.

When he reached the second archway, the breeze became much stronger, and he could hear something now. The noise was familiar on some level, but he couldn't quite place it—it sounded a little like chattering teeth. He reached around the archway, searching for a light switch without success. Instead, he clicked on the flashlight and stepped forward.

The floor was made of stone, and from what he could see, the room was large and mostly empty—but not entirely. While the center was clear, a series of bookcases was bolted to one wall, their shelves entirely cleared of all the valuable philosophical texts Alan Hobbes had amassed over the years. Laurence turned his body slightly, moving the beam to the wall beside the empty bookcases. There was a desk and chair there, and a wide wooden display cabinet. Framed prints of some kind hung from nails that had been driven into the stonework above.

He played the flashlight's beam over them but was unable to make out the details from where he was standing. And he found himself reluctant to move closer, as though the air itself had formed a wall that was pushing back at him.

"Laurence?"

Pettifer arriving behind him broke the spell. He shook his head and then walked across to the cabinet. It had drawers and glass panels, a padlock securing each. He could tell there were objects behind the bleary glass, but it was hard to make them out. A pen. An ancient sewing machine. What appeared to be a cat's collar. An old black suit, folded carefully, with the brittle, desiccated remains of a flower resting on top.

Pettifer joined him, moving her own flashlight's beam over the items on the wall above. He raised his own flashlight, illuminating the prints hanging closer to him. They were not pictures but pages of notepaper, small enough to fit four to a frame. The handwriting was smaller still. Even peering closer to the glass, Laurence found it almost impossible to decipher, and all he received for his troubles was the sensation that he was in the presence of evil.

"Jesus," Pettifer said quietly.

"Would not feel at home here," Laurence agreed.

He leaned away.

It appeared that Alan Hobbes had been many things. A professor of philosophy. An astute investor and businessman. A philanthropist. And yet behind that facade he had also been this. A man obsessed with the crimes of the serial killer Jack Lock, and who had dedicated his life to seeking out and purchasing—often illegally—every horrible artifact he could find that was connected to the Angel Maker.

Laurence became aware of the cold breeze again.

The sound of chattering teeth.

"Here," Pettifer said.

She was holding her flashlight steady this time, revealing the open front of one of the display cases. The inside was lined with what appeared to be dark velvet, a patina of dust surrounding a pristine rectangular impression.

"About the right size and shape for a notebook," Laurence said.

According to what Gaunt had told him at the church, legend had it that Jack Lock had spent his life writing down the future as it had been revealed to him. And that the book he had left behind could effectively be used to see into it.

Pettifer kept the beam on the empty case.

"You don't really believe in all that, do you?" she said.

Laurence considered the question.

"Not at all," he said.

Jack Lock had not been a prophet; he had been a deluded child killer. At the same time, Laurence did believe that Lock was also the product of a terrible household. That he had been a child saturated in religious dogma and subjected to physical and emotional abuse by his parents. And to the extent that the writing in his notebook had detailed these early traumas, he supposed that in some ways it did predict the future—because the initial seeds of Lock's atrocities must always have been visible in its pages.

And there was another consideration.

"But it doesn't matter what the two of us believe," he said. "What matters is what other people believe—and what they might have been prepared to do to obtain such an item."

"For example, commit murder."

"Indeed."

Chattering teeth again.

Pettifer seemed to notice it at the same time.

"What the fuck is that noise?" she said.

They both turned around, aiming their flashlights into the darkness at the far end of the room.

In the far corner of the room, strips of charred, soot-stained wallpaper still clung to parts of the stone wall. The brickwork there was shattered, the surrounding plaster scorched and bubbled by the fire that had ripped through this room decades before. The ceiling above and part of the wall were open—the source of the breeze. A span of charred timber formed thick, blacker lines across the dark sky above, and the rain was pouring in past them.

Laurence froze slightly. This was the room in which Alan Hobbes had kept his macabre collection.

But it had once been something else.

The rain spattered down, tapping incessantly against the item that still rested by the base of the wall.

The half-melted metal frame of what had once been a child's bed.

Bolted tightly to the stone floor.