A Book of Bones Page 6

  God, he hadn’t thought of Woolworth’s in years, yet now he could almost taste the food in his mouth, the juiciness of the sausages and the smell of the frying fat. Strange the tricks memory played.

  But the Arndale: even now he could remember the explosion, like a fist from the heavens impacting on the earth. At least the IRA had given a warning, which was something. Previously they hadn’t bothered with such niceties. Mind you, for all their bombs they’d still never managed to kill anyone in Manchester; they’d injured a few, which was bad enough, but nobody died. Fleet of foot, your Mancs. Have to be quick to nail one.

  He and his mum had been at Marks & Spencer when the announcement came that everyone was to evacuate the area, the police and security guards hustling folk away from the shops, sending them outside the cordon that had been formed about a quarter of a mile from the van.

  And then what had the people done?

  Well, they’d all stood and watched, which was what you did, he clinging tightly to his mum’s right hand, because it wasn’t often that you got to see something explode in real life. Except, of course, no one knew just how much explosive was in the van, and even had someone been able to confirm that estimate of three thousand pounds, most people wouldn’t have had the slightest notion of what kind of blast this might cause—except maybe the ones who had lived through the Blitz, who could have told you that three thousand pounds of high explosive represented more than twice the destructive power of the largest bomb dropped by the Germans during the war, and that bomb had razed entire streets. In other words, no one had any business being within a quarter of a mile of the van when it went up.

  No one.

  It was shortly after 11 a.m. when the bomb squad started running from the scene, and 11:17 a.m. when the van exploded. He had never heard a sound like it, not before and not since. It struck his body with physical force, and might even have lifted him off his feet for a moment, because he was only a little lad back then. His ears rang, and his eyes hurt. A great cloud of smoke and debris rose a thousand feet into the air, and—

  Of course, what goes up must come down. His mum realized that quicker than most. She was always a smart one, his mum. She lifted him into her arms and began to put as much distance between her and the bomb crater as she could, although it still wasn’t enough because glass and wood and brick and dust and bits of plastic began to descend upon them. Suddenly, he and his mum were on the ground, and he was crying because she’d landed on top of him, knocking the wind from his lungs. She rolled off, and he saw that her hair was spangled with crystals of glass, and her coat was covered in dirt, and then blood began to flow down her face from all the little cuts in her scalp, and he cried harder, even as she picked him up again and continued on her way, tottering because she was in shock and didn’t know it, not until a woman came out of a drapery shop with a blanket in her arms, which she put over his mum as she guided her gently inside and made her sit down. The woman’s name was Daphne, he remembered. She’d made them both a cup of tea, and cleaned the blood from his mum’s face. She even managed to get most of the glass out of his mum’s scalp, too, using a pair of tweezers and a bottle of TCP antiseptic.

  His mum was gone now. She’d died nine years back. Heart attack at 10 a.m. Apparently, most heart attacks occur between nine and eleven in the morning. He hadn’t known that until his mum died. She was slap bang in the middle of the scale. Mrs. Average. Story of her life: extraordinary only in her ordinariness, extraordinary only because she was his mum.

  He wondered what she’d think of him now. She hadn’t lived to see him get married, and produce two girls of his own, seven and six, Kelly and Louise, although their mum, Lauren, had chosen the names, not him. He’d get to name the boys, if they ever had any more kids. That was the deal. He wasn’t sure they would, though. He and Lauren weren’t getting along so well. They bickered, and when they weren’t bickering they were giving each other the silent treatment. There were arguments over the kids, her family, and the time he spent on the road. Small things, mostly, but they added up. The marriage was tottering now, like a boxer on his last legs, waiting for the final strike to put him down. Wouldn’t take much, just a glancing blow.

  Oh, and he’d started killing women: there was that as well. Obviously, Lauren didn’t know anything about this—it wasn’t the kind of pastime a husband generally discussed with his wife—although she’d probably sensed some change in him, because it was a difficult thing to do, killing a woman, without being altered by it. It had to affect a man somehow. Only made sense. Lauren probably thought he was having an affair, but he wasn’t. He’d been unfaithful to her in the past, but that was all behind him now. Anyway, his sex drive had begun to dwindle since the first murder. He’d half-expected it to grow stronger, because he’d read that some killers of women got sexual gratification from their actions, but it wasn’t like that for him. He wasn’t in it for the kicks. It was more like a job—no, a vocation, and one that he wanted to perform as best he could. He’d always been that way, ever since he was a kid. He liked things to be done right.

  He wanted to return to the northeast. He wanted to visit the sleeping god, the god of the Familists. He’d try to find a way to get back there soon. He’d just tell Lauren that a pickup was going to require an overnight stay, and use the extra time to make a pilgrimage. Yes, that was it. He was a pilgrim, and pilgrims made sacrifices. They offered things up to their gods: their own suffering and, in his case, the sufferings of others.

  He wished he’d been able to kill that last one himself, the one in North-

  umbria, but Mors had convinced him it would be a bad idea, and he always listened to Mors, because not listening to her would also be a bad idea.

  A very bad idea.

  He shifted Louise on his chest, because one of her elbows was digging into his ribs. She was all sharp edges, that child. Lauren said that giving birth to her had been like forcing out a bag of tools. She didn’t sleep well, either—not like Kelly, who had slept through right from the start. No, Louise seemed to exist in a constant state of disturbance. For a while he’d been worried that there might be something wrong with her, but the doctors couldn’t find anything amiss. She was probably just one of those kids, they said. She’d settle down in time. He wished she’d hurry up, though. He didn’t want to make a habit of sitting with her in the dead of night, watching fucking cartoons. Not that he could complain on this occasion, because Lauren had done duty on the previous three nights, and by now was so tired that she couldn’t have risen from her bed even if she’d wanted to, which she most certainly did not.

  Louise grew still at last. Sellars found the remote, muted the television, and lay with his daughter in his arms.

  He’d have to kill another woman soon. Time was pressing. Mors had told him so. He didn’t mind. He was doing it for a god.

  His god.

  CHAPTER XII

  Skal and Crist were waiting for Parker when he emerged from the sheriff’s office. They’d put in a hell of a long day, but neither of them betrayed any signs of tiredness. Even their suits looked fresh. Parker, by contrast, was dead on his feet, and dozed all the way to Phoenix, where a room was waiting for him at the Westin downtown. He would have gone straight to bed, if that had been possible, but Ross had asked to meet later in the bar. According to Crist, Ross was about half an hour behind them, which meant that Parker would have just enough time to shower and change into a fresh shirt.

  “Are Ross and I the only ones staying here?” Parker asked, as Crist held open the door of the Chevy. This time, Parker didn’t bother to complain. He was only a breath, and some dignity, away from asking Crist to carry him upstairs and tuck him into bed.

  Crist shuffled awkwardly.

  “I don’t believe the Westin is one of our approved hotels,” he said.

  “Then who’s covering the tab?”

  “SAC Ross said he’d take care of it.”

  Parker had heard some of the rumors about Ross: that he was in
dependently wealthy, and wasn’t shy about using it to make his life more comfortable. Parker had been careful about delving too deeply into Ross’s affairs, since the FBI man had a sixth sense when it came to inquisitiveness on the part of others, but in recent years Parker had learned more about him through careful inquiry. The money came from investment banking, dating back to the growth of the “Yankee houses” at the end of the nineteenth century, and the dominance of the American oligarchs—J. P. Morgan; Kuhn, Loeb; Brown Brothers; Kidder, Peabody—in the early decades of the twentieth. Ross’s family was no longer involved in finance, mostly because there was no family left to be involved; Ross was the last of the direct line, and could therefore have lived comfortably off the proceeds of various funds without doing anything more arduous with his days than selecting a suitable wine for dinner. Instead, he had carved out his own idiosyncratic enclave in a corner of Federal Plaza, from which he continued to involve himself in Parker’s affairs. At least, on this occasion, Parker was benefiting from Ross’s attentions in the form of a nice room.

  “So where are you guys?” Parker asked.

  “The Red Roof Inn, just west of here,” said Crist.

  “Red Roof Plus,” Skal reminded him. “We get a bigger TV.”

  Parker thought about tipping them, just to see how they might react, but settled on thanking them for the ride.

  “We’ll be back to pick you up in the morning,” said Crist. “You’re booked on the seven-fifteen a.m. American Airlines flight to Houston. We’ll swing by around five-thirty.”

  Then they were gone. Parker checked into the Westin, although he didn’t need to hand over a credit card since everything was covered. While he was at the desk, he asked the concierge to have a bottle of good champagne, a six-pack of beer, and a couple of pizzas delivered to Skal and Crist at the Red Roof Plus, and charge it all to the Westin account—oh, and the concierge should add a thirty-dollar tip for himself. Parker would have thrown in some flowers as well, but didn’t think a florist would be open so late. This done, he went to his room and showered, resisting the urge to lie down and take the phone off the hook. The shower made him feel marginally more human, and gave him a burst of energy that he knew wouldn’t last longer than an hour.

  He thought about Adrienne Barbonne, the dead woman in the freezer. According to Newton, her parents lived in Magdalena, just northwest of San Antonio. Soon, police officers or federal agents would arrive at their home to notify them that a body had been found, and ask for DNA samples in order to assist in identifying the remains. For now, the Barbonnes remained the parents of a missing daughter, still retaining some hope that she might be returned safely to them. In a few hours, they would be mother and father to a dead child, all because their offspring bore a passing resemblance to the wrong woman.

  The phone in his room rang. He answered, and heard Ross’s voice.

  Parker said he’d be right down.

  2

  Dawn-sniffing revenant,

  Plodder through midnight rain,

  Question me again.

  —Seamus Heaney, “Casualty”

  CHAPTER XIII

  Quayle took to the streets of London while most of its inhabitants were still in their beds. A heavy rain was falling, sluicing the byways of filth and detritus, and keeping downcast the heads of the few people he passed, which suited him greatly. This was his London, just as it had been for centuries, yet he felt less secure here than ever before.

  Parker had done this to him. Quayle had underestimated the private investigator, initially dismissing him as merely a jumped-up colonial, another mongrel in a nation replete with them. Even as Quayle had left the United States behind, barely escaping with his life, he persisted in regarding the detective as a temporary inconvenience, one that would not trouble him again. After all, Quayle had returned home with the final pages of the Atlas in his possession, or so he believed. With those pages now restored, the Atlas could finish reordering the world in its image, and Quayle would be given his reward: nothingness, oblivion. He would be permitted to die at last, to sleep without waking.

  But the Atlas remained unfinished. Despite all Quayle’s research, all his years of hunting, it appeared that more than two leaves had been missing. Could Parker be in possession of the additional contents? It was possible, Quayle felt, but unlikely. All his studies had led him to believe that the copy of Grimm’s Fairy Tales contained only those two leaves, which he now possessed. The Atlas should already have been a tome entire, but it was not.

  If this had not been sufficient to discompose Quayle, there was the matter of Parker himself. At the end of March, a series of clues had appeared in the cryptic crossword of The Times, the solutions to which had created a pattern that read CHARLIE PARKER HUNTING QUAYLE. Placing the clues had been quite an achievement, Quayle thought, even as he resented their impact on one of his greatest pleasures, since he could now no longer enjoy the newspaper’s crossword. Thus had Parker given notice of his intention to come after Quayle, but as yet there was no sign of his presence in London. Quayle suspected this to be a deliberate strategy on the part of the investigator: to sound the horn for the hunt but delay the release of the hounds, leaving the silence to whittle away at the quarry’s peace of mind, waiting to see how it would respond, and where it would choose to run. But Quayle would not run, not unless given no other option. He had come close to being trapped before, and had survived. He knew how to play this game. Still, it was a disconcerting position in which to be placed after all this time.

  And Parker was different. He carried about him a numinous aspect, and a knowledge of liminal spaces. Quayle was not yet ready to accept that Parker might be more than mortal, but he was prepared to concede his singularity.

  Mors wanted to kill Parker, but she could not return to the United States to do so. She had always been distinctive in appearance, but had learned from Quayle certain modes of concealment, a practiced unobtrusiveness. But recent events in Indiana and Maine, and the bodies left behind, meant that even the shadows were now inimical to Mors. It had been her decision to use the remains of another woman to throw the police off the scent, but ultimately it would not keep Parker from these shores.

  Quayle had tried to explain all this to Mors, because he was beginning to understand the dilemma faced by all those who came into conflict with the investigator. Yes, one could try to kill him, but if one failed, one would face retribution, just like those who had failed in the past; and even if one were somehow to succeed in the endeavor, there were Parker’s allies to consider. They might not have been as exceptional as he was, but the more Quayle found out about them, the greater the threat they represented—and those were only the ones Quayle could identify, because Parker had other confederates, protectors in the highest echelons of law enforcement. He would not otherwise have been allowed to operate as a free agent, not with his record of lethality.

  “But what,” Mors had suggested, “if we were to threaten his family?”

  She was naked beside him, offering her warmth. He could have entered her if he wished, but it was enough for him to have her skin against his, to draw heat from her. She would not be able to tolerate this intimacy for long, though. Quayle’s coldness was the kind that bred pain in the bone, freezing the marrow.

  “Do you really think threats would dissuade him? One might as well provoke a wolf and expect it not to bite.”

  “We could abduct his daughter.”

  “Then what: Hold her indefinitely? Return her to him piece by piece, a little for every month he keeps his distance from us?”

  Quayle had pulled away from her then, wearied by her foolishness. He noted signs of relief on her part, a wince at the release.

  “So we should just wait and see if he comes?”

  “He will come,” said Quayle, “whether we choose to wait or not. But here we have the advantage. He will be on unfamiliar ground, far from home. This is our ground, my ground.”

  Whatever Parker’s strangeness, he could h
ave no real conception of time, or not of the kind possessed by Quayle. Parker had not lived as long, and so could not comprehend how the ruins of a Roman garrison might provide the foundations for a Saxon settlement, that settlement give way to a Norman fortress, the fortress to a medieval town, and the town to a city, the old apparently succumbing to the new, yet always with the persistence of the past. Each cycle left its mark, the ancient lingering in the umbrous folds of the modern, all its pain and fury, its bloodshed and grief, still present at the periphery of consciousness. When he landed at last, Parker would not only be facing Quayle and Mors. He would be pitting himself against the weight of the past, a creature of the New World trespassing carelessly on the Old.

  I am not afraid of you.

  “What did you say?” asked Mors, and Quayle realized he had whispered the words loudly enough for her to hear.

  “I said that it is he who should be afraid,” said Quayle, and Mors let her doubt go unremarked because Quayle was returning to her side, and when he entered her she thought that he had never felt so cold, but she tolerated it because it was this man’s essence, and she loved him in her way, and now he was in her and of her, and she of him, but as he moved deep inside her the pain grew sharper and fiercer, and the chill gripped her innards, spreading from her groin to her belly and into her chest so that it seemed set to still her heart, and she wanted to beg him to stop but all speech was frozen, each syllable a fragment of ice that could not be joined to another, and she cried but her tears turned to crystals in her eyes and on her cheeks, and her very soul was rimy.