A Game of Ghosts

by John Connolly

  At the rear of the cottage was a small extension. The single window was high and narrow, and couldn’t be opened. Ventilation came from a grill in one corner, although the room was also wired for electricity. The door was made of oak, with metal panels on either side. It had a single big keyhole, with another grill at face level, but Parker saw holes in the metal and in the wood of the frame, as though a bolt had been removed at some point. Parker checked the lock. It was scuffed on the outside, but not the inside. He smelled the lingering odor of bleach, and got down on his knees to examine the concrete floor. It didn’t take him long to pick out the marks left by a metal bed frame, and what might have been a table and chair. He’d seen rooms like this before, most recently in a place called the Cut. This wasn’t somewhere to stay willingly, but somewhere to be held.

  He returned to the kitchen and looked at the photographs pinned to the corkboard on the wall. One of them was a replica of the photograph on Eklund’s office desk: the investigator smiling beside his ex-wife. He had not picked up on the resemblance before now. It wasn’t obvious, not at first. If it hadn’t been for the room at the back of the cottage, he might never have made the connection.

  Claudia Sansom looked not unlike a younger version of Eklund’s ex-wife.

  Parker thought of Eklund’s befriending of Oscar Sansom, his offers of help, his desire to stay in touch with the progress of the case. He recalled the details of Claudia Sansom’s discovery, the signs of possible neglect, and the mystery of how a woman could vanish for years and then be laid to rest in a shallow grave.

  Eklund.

  He heard Louis call his name, but could not bring himself to move. He continued to stare at the picture of Eklund’s wife, and wondered how one could even begin to distinguish love from hate in such circumstances.

  Louis appeared in the kitchen doorway. He was holding an ancient laptop in his hand.

  ‘Man in there looked real unhappy when I found it …’

  100

  Parker sat at Eklund’s kitchen table, the laptop in front of him. Even without Kirk Buckner to tell him the password, he might have guessed it: Milena, the name of Eklund’s ex-wife. The home screen appeared. It contained about twenty files, but only one of them had Parker’s name on it.

  He opened the file. It contained photographs. Some were of him, but most were of his daughter, and none was more than two months old.

  Ten minutes later, Parker returned to the living room. Kirk Buckner was seated against a wall, in almost exactly the same position that his late wife had occupied overnight. He seemed to want to look anywhere except at her body.

  ‘This was Jaycob Eklund’s,’ said Parker.

  ‘I don’t know who you’re talking about.’

  ‘I’m not a cop. Nothing you say here is admissible in court. For now, this is between us. I’ll try again: Jaycob Eklund. They found his body in a wrecking yard owned by one of your relatives.’

  ‘It’s nothing to do with me.’

  ‘Did you kill him?’

  Kirk held Parker’s gaze.

  ‘No.’

  And Parker believed him.

  ‘If the police find this laptop, all your denials will come to nothing. It ties you to Jaycob Eklund.’

  Buckner appeared puzzled. He opened his mouth to say something before closing it again with whatever it was that he was about to say remaining unspoken. Kirk Buckner might have been a lot of things, but dumb wasn’t one of them. He was in enough trouble as it was. Possession of the laptop would only add to his problems.

  ‘You know,’ he said, ‘I don’t recall any laptop at all.’

  Parker stood and left the house. When he returned, he was no longer carrying the laptop, and the police were on their way.

  101

  The room in which Mother and Parker had first met was now almost entirely devoid of furnishings, just like the rest of the house. Only Mother remained. She did not interrupt Parker as he told her what he knew, or as much as he wanted her to know. She understood that he was keeping some details from her. She would have expected nothing less. If there was some deeper truth to all that had occurred, she was not sure that even he fully grasped it. Yet she was impressed that he had returned to pay her the courtesy of an explanation, however partial and unsatisfactory it might be.

  ‘A ghost story,’ she said, when he had concluded.

  ‘Perhaps.’

  ‘And do you believe in ghosts, Mr. Parker?’

  ‘Only my own. But what I believe isn’t important. The Brethren believed, and all the harm that followed came from their belief.’

  Mother nodded.

  ‘Then we’re done. I’d like to make some contribution toward your efforts.’

  ‘I don’t want your money.’

  ‘Because you think it’s dirty?’

  ‘Because I know it is.’

  ‘You have some very old-fashioned ideas, Mr. Parker.’

  ‘I like to think so.’

  He moved to leave, and she spoke.

  ‘You haven’t asked about my son.’

  Parker looked down at her. His face was studiedly neutral.

  ‘I hear he went away,’ he said.

  ‘It was for the best.’

  ‘I’m sure you must miss him greatly.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Mother, ‘I really do.’

  That evening, in the bar of the Langham Hotel in Boston, SAC Edgar Ross of the Federal Bureau of Investigation also used the term ‘ghost story’, but seemed less inclined to be dismissive of it than Mother had been. Nevertheless, it was the other tale that interested him more: the tale of Jaycob Eklund.

  ‘You think he abducted Claudia Sansom and held her for years in a room at his cabin?’ he said.

  ‘I don’t know if she was there for all that time,’ Parker replied. ‘He might have moved her around, but I think she ended her days in that cell.’

  ‘You’ve no proof.’

  ‘I’m sure that if someone searched Eklund’s cottage and its surroundings long and hard enough, proof could be found.’

  ‘Are you suggesting that’s what should be done?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Eklund is dead. Oscar Sansom is leaving for Europe, and the truth won’t bring his wife back. Milena Budny, Eklund’s ex-wife, has a new husband and three stepchildren. The truth won’t make their lives any easier, and might even destroy them.’

  Ross sipped his drink.

  ‘And,’ Parker added, ‘if an investigation occurs, it could expose Eklund’s involvement with you, and you don’t want that.’

  ‘No,’ said Ross.

  ‘Did you know?’ asked Parker. ‘About Eklund, and what he might have done to Claudia Sansom?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Did you suspect?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Then what was Eklund doing for you that was so delicate you needed me to find him?’

  ‘I don’t think that’s any of your business,’ said Ross.

  ‘I guess I’m just curious.’

  ‘Don’t be. It’s not always healthy, not even in your line of work.’

  Ross called for the check.

  ‘About your friend, Angel,’ he said. ‘Unsurprisingly, my superiors are uncomfortable with the idea of making a formal representation on his behalf, but we won’t raise any objection to the sealing of his records. We have made that clear, unofficially, to the relevant parties in the state of New York, and to the judge assigned to the hearing. I doubt that any problems will arise.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Don’t thank me. It would have been better for both Angel and Louis if they had never come to my attention, but they, like me, will have to live with the consequences. I’ve also arranged for a bonus to be paid to you via Mr. Castin. You may be glad of it. I hear that you also have a court hearing coming up, something involving your daughter?’

  Parker didn’t reply. If Ross felt awkward about raising the subject, he showed no sign. The check came. Once again, Ro
ss paid in cash.

  ‘There’s still no sign of Eklund’s laptop,’ he said, as he rose and took his coat from the chair beside him. ‘Kirk Buckner claims to have no knowledge of it.’

  ‘Is the laptop important?’

  Ross shrugged.

  ‘It might be. I’d be suitably grateful if it was found.’

  ‘I’ll bear that in mind.’

  Ross regarded Parker for a moment.

  ‘Do that.’

  Parker and Ross walked together to the door. They did not shake hands as they said farewell. A car was waiting for Ross. He opened the door himself, and the car pulled away. Parker watched it go. When it was out of sight, Angel and Louis materialized, as though they had formed themselves from shadows and night.

  ‘Well?’ asked Angel.

  ‘I think he hired Eklund to spy on my daughter.’

  ‘Then why send you to retrieve the laptop?’

  ‘Because I’m good at what I do. If I found it and handed it over without accessing its contents, then no harm would have been done. If I didn’t find it at all, the result would have been the same.’

  ‘And if you did find it, and you decided to look at the contents?’

  ‘Then Ross would have sent a message to me.’

  ‘Which is?’

  ‘That he knows, or suspects, something about Sam.’

  ‘Sometime,’ said Angel, ‘we all need to have a long talk about that little girl …’

  102

  Rachel was sitting at her office desk, the latest communication from her lawyer before her, when Sam appeared by her side. Her daughter had been especially solicitous toward her since she’d returned home from the hospital. What happened to her mother appeared to have affected Sam deeply.

  Rachel was tired. She had not slept well the night before. She’d been dreaming.

  Dreaming of Charlie Parker’s first daughter.

  In her dream, Rachel was standing by the shore of a great lake. On a rock sat Jennifer Parker, dropping stones into the water. A cairn of rocks and pebbles stood next to her, but no matter how many of them she consigned to the depths, the pile never grew smaller.

  Rachel looked out over the lake. No wind blew, yet the surface rippled and swelled, as though disturbed from above or below, and she heard a susurration, as of the whispering of many voices.

  Jennifer handed her a stone. It had a white line running through it.

  here

  take it

  Rachel accepted the stone.

  ‘Should I throw it?’

  keep it

  as a memento

  And then Rachel woke up.

  She touched her fingers to the letter from the Family Division of the Vermont judiciary informing her of the court date for the custody hearing. She did not try to hide it from her daughter.

  ‘I’m going to ask that the hearing be postponed,’ said Rachel. ‘You know what that means?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Sam. ‘Is that why Grandpa is mad today?’

  ‘Possibly.’

  ‘For how long?’

  ‘We’ll see.’

  Sam hugged her mother.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Sam, ‘for the things I said.’

  ‘I know.’

  Rachel kissed her daughter, and held her face against her cheek.

  ‘Sam?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Who do you talk to, when you’re alone in your room?’

  Rachel counted the silence. One, two, three—

  ‘No one.’

  ‘It’s just that I’ve heard you sometimes, in passing. Do you have, you know, a friend?’

  ‘Like an imaginary friend?’

  Sam sounded relieved.

  ‘Yes, like an imaginary friend.’

  But Rachel put particular emphasis on the second word.

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘Is it another little girl?’

  The silence again.

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘Is she—’

  But Sam pulled away before she could finish, and began dancing in circles.

  ‘I have lots of imaginary friends,’ she said, and Rachel could not tell if her cheerfulness was real or forced. ‘I have a pony, and a unicorn, and a rabbit, and a fairy.’

  ‘Sam—’

  The dancing ceased. The smile vanished.

  ‘Mommy.’ Sam took her mother’s hand. ‘I’m not a little girl.’

  And then she was gone.

  Rachel added the letter to a folder marked ‘Legal’. She opened her desk drawer and slipped the folder inside before locking it, pausing for only a moment to look again at the stone with its single white striation, the stone she had discovered in her closed hand when she woke that morning.

  103

  Angel buttoned his shirt and put on his sweater. He slipped into his sneakers and tied the laces. He walked through the waiting room and down the corridor. He stepped into the winter sunlight and closed his eyes against the glare.

  Everybody dies, he told himself. Everybody.

  But not I.

  Not today.

  Acknowledgments

  This odd book – if mine are not all odd books – is as much a product of a lifetime of reading ghost stories as it is any specific research, but two books of recent vintage proved particularly useful: Ghosts: A Natural History by Roger Clarke (Penguin, 2013) and Paranormality: Why We See What Isn’t There by Professor Richard Wiseman (Macmillan, 2011). I’m also grateful to Brian Showers of the Swan River Press, who knows more about ghost stories than is quite possibly healthy, and whose enthusiasm for Irish writers of supernatural fiction provided me with some of the quotations used in the novel. Seth Kavanagh, meanwhile, answered my idiot tech questions without even once losing his temper.

  My thanks, as always, to Emily Bestler, my editor at Atria/Emily Bestler Books, and all at Atria and Simon & Schuster, including Judith Curr, Lara Jones, and David Brown; to Sue Fletcher, my editor at Hodder & Stoughton, and Kerry Hood, Swati Gamble, Carolyn Mays, Lucy Hale, Alasdair Oliver, Breda Purdue, Jim Binchy, Ruth Shern and everyone at Hodder and Hachette Ireland; and to those editors and publishers who have released my work in translation over the years, thus bringing it to a new readership and permitting me to see a little more of the world along the way. I continue to be fortunate in having Darley Anderson as my agent, and his staff as my supporters, even if I do occasionally forget to sign all the paperwork. Thanks, too, to Steve Fisher at APA; Ellen Clair Lamb for keeping me on the straight and narrow; and Madeira James at xuni.com for enabling me to pretend that I understand the Internet; and Michelle Souliere of Portland, Maine’s wonderful Green Hand Bookshop for allowing me to use her name. My love to Jennie, Cameron – to whom I owe particular gratitude for one of the incidents in this book – and Alistair.

  Also by John Connolly

  The Charlie Parker Stories

  Every Dead Thing

  Dark Hollow

  The Killing Kind

  The White Road

  The Reflecting Eye (Novella in the Nocturnes Collection)

  The Black Angel

  The Unquiet

  The Reapers

  The Lovers

  The Whisperers

  The Burning Soul

  The Wrath of Angels

  The Wolf in Winter

  A Song of Shadows

  A Time of Torment

  Other Works

  Bad Men

  The Book of Lost Things

  Short Stories

  Nocturnes

  Night Music: Nocturnes Volume II

  The Samuel Johnson Stories (For Young Adults)

  The Gates

  Hell’s Bells

  The Creeps

  The Chronicles of the Invaders (with Jennifer Ridyard)

  Conquest

  Empire

  Dominion

  Non-Fiction

  Books to Die For: The World’s Greatest Mystery Writers on the World’s Greatest Mystery Novels (as editor, with Declan Burke)

&n
bsp; Parker: A Miscellany