A Book of Bones

by John Connolly

  CHAPTER XXVIII

  Nicola Priestman sat in the corner of the dining room reserved as her home office space. She had a small desk, with a filing cabinet beside it. The family rarely used the dining room, except at Christmas or on those rare occasions when Priestman and her husband invited friends over for dinner, so most of the time she could leave her area as messy as she liked. The kids knew better than to go near it, and her husband, too. She didn’t have many rules, but that was one of them.

  It was 6 a.m., and Priestman hadn’t slept a lot the night before, but she was already dressed, and drinking coffee. The kids would be up soon, but Steve would take care of breakfast, make sure they didn’t forget their lunches, and check that Robbie had his gym gear. She’d have a quick word with them before she left, but she’d be gone before they were.

  Her laptop was open in front of her. She was trying to find out as much as she could about the Familists. There wasn’t much, or not enough for her liking. In a strange way, she wished Hood had been wrong about where the girl was killed. The newspapers and the Internet crazies would be all over this sect stuff, and next thing, they’d have idiots shouting about covens and devil worship, because nothing was guaranteed to bring out the fringe element more than talk of the occult. The investigators would have to live with it now, though.

  Thanks to Hood’s instincts, they’d been able to preserve the scene, although the press officer said he’d already had some environmental group complaining about damage to the moors. Priestman had wanted to get the site under cover before the rain came down, which meant she couldn’t wait for the forensic team to trudge over with their gear. She’d authorized them to use their vehicles, and they’d left gouges on the landscape that could probably be viewed from space. Even Hood hadn’t been happy about it, although he’d kept his mouth shut. But she’d seen it on his face, as though she’d somehow disappointed him by betraying his trust in this way.

  She rubbed the back of her neck, because it ached something awful. She would happily have accepted another few hours in bed, but she wasn’t likely to enjoy any lie-ins for the foreseeable future. If she was lucky, she’d grab an early night to make up for it, but then she wouldn’t see much of the kids. They understood why this sometimes happened, and Steve was very good about it as well, but it was one of the few aspects of her job that made her feel guilty. She knew the male officers didn’t suffer familial guilt in the same way. It was a maternal thing. You couldn’t fight it, so you just had to accept it. What couldn’t be cured had to be endured, but women seemed to do a lot more enduring than men.

  This brought her back to the body on the moors. They had a definite ID: Romana Moon, a teacher, originally from Arbroath in Scotland, but currently working at a primary school in Middlesbrough—or no longer working, Priestman thought. No longer working, breathing, sleeping, eating, yearning, loving. She’d missed two days at work, and on the afternoon of the second the principal sent someone around to check on her. When there was no reply, the principal called her parents in Scotland, and they notified the police. Two days later, Romana’s body had been found on the Hexhamshire Moors.

  Priestman closed the window on the Familists and pulled up a map of the moors. Beyond the fact of her murder, the circumstances of Romana’s death were troubling. Judging by the amount of blood found at the old chapel site, that was definitely where she’d met her end. Her hands had been bound behind her back, but they’d have to wait for the autopsy report to establish how long she’d been restrained; in other words, whether it was done far in advance of her murder, or closer to the end. This would, in turn, indicate whether she’d been transported to the location with the intention of killing her, or had perhaps been on the moors of her own volition, where she stumbled into the path of her murderer.

  But if she just happened to be out there, perhaps on a solitary hike—unlikely, but possible—and was unfortunate enough to have encountered whoever killed her, then how did she get to Hexhamshire? Her car was still parked outside her flat in Acklam, so they’d have to check with public and private bus companies to see if any of their drivers could recall picking Romana up, or dropping her off in the vicinity of the moors. It was possible that she’d gone out there with someone she knew or had recently met, and the assignation had gone horribly wrong. They’d find out later that day if she’d been raped or otherwise sexually assaulted, which might give them some DNA with which to work. According to Romana’s father and sister, who had already made a formal identification of the body, there was an ex-boyfriend, Simon Harris, in the background. He and Romana had broken up about three months earlier, at her instigation. Harris was due in for questioning later that day. Hynes was taking care of the arrangements. With his bluffness and hail-fellow-well-met demeanor, he had a way of putting people at their ease, but he was hard underneath, like a steel bar concealed in cotton wool.

  Romana’s sister had suggested that Romana might have begun seeing someone else since breaking up with Harris. She didn’t know if it was serious, and Romana had been reluctant to share any details while the relationship was still in its nascent stages, but it was another avenue to explore. She also said that Romana wasn’t the outdoor type, and, to her knowledge, didn’t even own a pair of decent walking boots.

  Which left the question of how Romana Moon had died at such an isolated spot. She might have been drugged, just enough to make her compliant, but they’d be waiting weeks for the toxicology report. Then there was the matter of the plastic sheeting, which was new, and of a type sold at any number of home improvement stores. If it had been brought out to the moors by Romana Moon’s killer, then it was possible that he—or she, or even they, but Priestman decided to stick with “he” for the time being—might have wrapped her in it and carried her over his shoulder, fireman style, to the chapel site, before—

  Before killing her while she was naked—the blood pattern indicated that much—and then wrapping her in the plastic again to carry her away, which would have made no sense at all had it not been for the previous existence of the chapel. It was the setting that was important, lending further weight to a ritual aspect. Romana’s killer wanted her life to end in that place, which meant he had no option but to transport her to the location.

  But why not leave her there once he was done? The obvious explanation was that he didn’t want her remains to be found: no body, no murder. So, he wrapped her up and began to carry her, presumably to a vehicle on the road or farm track, but didn’t get that far, and instead left her out in the open, with not even a cursory effort at concealment.

  Why?

  Two possibilities: the first was that he might have been disturbed, maybe by another car, and panicked. While the police were still waiting for a more exact time of death, it was unlikely that Romana had been dead for more than eight hours when she was found by Hood, which meant she had been killed in darkness. That was unsurprising: no one was going to plan a ritual killing—and increasingly, as Priestman considered the evidence, it appeared to have been planned—and carry it out in daylight, even on an isolated moor. She was due to speak to the press at noon, and she’d issue an appeal for anyone driving through the area during the past, say, thirty-six hours to come forward, especially if they could remember a vehicle being parked on the main road near the old Familist settlement. In an ideal world, she’d have preferred not to mention the Familists at all, or not yet, but the media would find out about the connection soon enough, and the ruins were a landmark she could use to jog memories.

  The other possibility was that, as Hood had suggested, the killer had fallen and injured himself while making his way back to the road, leaving him unable to carry the body any farther. The ground was soft and uneven, and she and Hynes had slipped repeatedly while traipsing back and forth from the site in the rain: not badly, but enough to provoke bouts of swearing from Hynes. It would be even more difficult to negotiate the ground in darkness—and the killer might have been reluctant to use a powerful beam for fear of attracting a
ttention. He was also carrying a body, so a headlamp might have been a more useful option. The CSIs were already back out on the moors, looking for trace evidence, although that blasted rain hadn’t done them any favors. The farm track was part stone, and so far it hadn’t yielded anything useful. They’d had more luck in the mud near the body, and at the murder scene, including a couple of clean boot prints that could be checked against the Forensic Science Service’s imprint database, although the prints came from two or three different sources, any one of which might, or might not, have belonged to the killer, or killers.

  But again, if the latter was the case, why dump the victim? If one of the perpetrators became injured, the other could probably have carried the remains for a while, unless the injury was so severe—a broken leg, perhaps—that the first man couldn’t walk without assistance. Priestman would just have to wait and see what the CSIs discovered over the coming days. But whether a single killer, or multiple ones, the clever move would be to dispose of any footwear as soon as possible. And whoever killed Romana Moon was clever: not above risk-taking—because this murder, however well planned, had been fraught with danger—but smart enough not to have left Romana’s clothing at the scene, thereby depriving the police of a great deal of potential DNA evidence.

  She put her laptop in her bag, finished her coffee, and went to say goodbye to her family.

  CHAPTER XXIX

  It was the boredom of the chemotherapy that got to Angel, the slow drip-drip-drip of the poison into his system as he sat in the hospital chair, the quantity of liquid in the bag never seeming to diminish, so that one minute felt like ten, one hour like a waking day, one morning like a week. But there was only so much a man could read, so much he could watch on the screen of an iPad, before he simply wished to be elsewhere, without the toxins, without the tiredness, without the weight loss, without the bruising, without the nausea, without the drip-drip-drip.

  Without the cancer.

  How many cycles now? Three? More?

  How many to come? Too many.

  Angel closed his eyes. At least he was home. He would not have to return to the hospital for a few weeks, to that damned chair, to the drip-drip-drip. And he was stronger than anyone had suspected, himself included. His resilience had surprised them all, although a pharmacy’s worth of medication certainly helped.

  He dozed. When he opened his eyes, Louis was standing beside him.

  “I brought you ice cream.”

  “Thanks.”

  Louis didn’t inquire how he was feeling. Angel had asked him not to, because it was always some variation on weary or nauseated. If his condition suddenly deteriorated, Angel assured him, Louis would be the first to know. Likewise, Angel no longer asked after Louis’s own injuries. The occasional wince at a missed step, and the muttered cussing when he sat down too heavily, or stood up too quickly, said it all.

  “Parker is coming to visit,” said Louis.

  “When?”

  “In a couple of days.”

  Angel looked unhappy.

  “I thought we were going to head up to Portland. I want to get out of the city for a while.”

  “Change of plan.”

  “You could have consulted me first.”

  “Happened too fast.”

  “Is that why you bought me ice cream, because you felt bad about postponing our trip north?”

  “No, I bought you ice cream because you got to eat, and ice cream is the only thing you don’t complain about.”

  Reluctantly, Angel accepted the carton of Ben & Jerry’s Half Baked, and a spoon.

  “They didn’t have Strawberry Cheesecake?”

  “No.”

  “Where’d you go for it?”

  “Doesn’t matter where I went. You know, you sound like an old person.”

  Angel ate a mouthful of the Half Baked.

  “So we’re definitely not going to Portland?”

  “No, we’re going to Amsterdam.”

  Angel paused in the act of scooping out some more ice cream.

  “If you feel up to it,” Louis added. “I spoke to the internist. He said you’ll have to be careful about infections on the plane, but you should be okay. We’ll be traveling up front, so, you know, any contagions will probably be high-toned, and I have a list of doctors and clinics in case we need them.”

  “Why are we going to Amsterdam?”

  “Because the bitch that shot me travels on a Dutch passport, and the motherfucker that watched her shoot me also has a Dutch passport.”

  “This from Parker?”

  “From Ross, through Parker.”

  Angel licked the spoon. He looked out the window at the city before him, at cars and people, at the remnants of the previous night’s rain on the sidewalk, at life.

  “You know,” said Angel, “this is pretty good ice cream.”

  CHAPTER XXX

  The call came through as he was making his way gingerly from the bathroom to the kitchen. He didn’t recognize the number, and almost let it go to voice mail before thinking better of it.

  “Hello?”

  “She was supposed to disappear, Holmby,” said Sellars.

  No greetings, just an accusatory tone. Holmby felt aggrieved. After all, he’d broken his foot.

  “I broke my foot,” he said, just to clarify the situation.

  “What?” said Sellars.

  “Actually, my ankle. The fibula. It’s called a lateral malleolus fracture.”

  “Why are you telling me this?”

  “Because it happened on the moors. I slipped, and felt it go.”

  “So?”

  “I had to leave her. I couldn’t walk and carry her.”

  “Why were you carrying her to begin with?”

  “Because I couldn’t drive all the way up to where the chapel used to be. There’s no road. I had to walk her up there, and when I was done, I had to carry her back.”

  He waited for a reply. None came.

  “Are you still there?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  “It’s not a problem.”

  “If it wasn’t a problem, do you think I’d be calling you?” He could hear Sellars breathing deeply, trying to calm himself. “It’s evidence. It leaves clues.”

  “Then leave others.”

  “What?” said Sellars.

  “We knew this might happen. We weren’t going to be able to magic them away. Somewhere down the line, a second body would be found.”

  “But not so soon.”

  “It’s happened now. Can’t be helped. And I did what we agreed. I put one inside her, just as you were supposed to do with yours.”

  “Like I did. No ‘supposed’ about it.”

  “So there we are.”

  “But what about the next ones?”

  “What about them?”

  “I can take care of mine, but you can’t do much with a broken ankle. Do you need surgery?”

  “No, I was lucky. I don’t even have a cast or a splint. They just strapped it up, and gave me cold packs and drugs, as well as one of those weird boots. I also have a crutch, but I don’t want to use it unless I have to. Makes me feel like an invalid. But I’m supposed to rest the foot, and keep it elevated.”

  “How long?”

  “A couple of weeks.”

  “That’s bad, but it could be worse, I suppose.”

  “Yeah.” He still felt guilty, which was a rare experience for him. “I messed up. I’m sorry.”

  Sellars relented in response. “Could have happened to anyone.”

  “Thanks. What will you do now?”

  “I’ll keep going. One more, then leave it for a while, or try to—if they’ll let me.”

  “They’ll have to understand.”

  “Will they?”

  He thought about it. No, they probably wouldn’t. Only Sellars had actually met the ones behind all this. Sellars had said it was better if he didn’t, that he should keep his distance from them. He hadn’t objected. He didn’t l
ike what he’d seen in Sellars’s eyes when he spoke of them, the woman especially. Mors: Sellars didn’t know if it was her real name, or one she’d adopted. Either way, it gave him the creeps.

  “Bait the police,” he advised Sellars. “It’ll confuse them, and give us the space we need to do more. When I’ve recovered, I’ll take care of two in a row.”

  Another long silence. “Maybe,” said Sellars, finally.

  “How many will there be, by the end?”

  “I don’t know,” said Sellars. “As many as are needed. We’ll know when to stop.”

  “How?”

  “Because we’ll be told. Because the world will have changed.”

  “And what will the world be like after?”

  “I don’t know,” said Sellars, again. He hadn’t thought that far ahead. “I’ll be in touch again soon. One last thing, Holmby.”

  “Yes?”

  “Did you find it hard?”

  “Killing her?”

  “Yes,” said Sellars.

  He considered the question. He hadn’t found it difficult to take the life of the Moon girl, but neither had he been aroused by the act. It was more like a practical exercise, a problem to be tackled and solved. It was better not to become emotional, because that led to mistakes. Then again, look at what had happened to him. All the calm in the world, and he’d still managed to crock himself while making his way back to the car.

  He decided to be honest.

  “I’d always wondered about it,” he said. “I thought I’d like to try, because I was sure I had it in me.” Perhaps that’s why he’d been chosen. They’d looked deep inside him, and glimpsed all his secret capacities. “I’d killed animals, but killing Moon was easier. I felt sorry for the animals, but not for her. Physically, though, she was harder than any cat or dog. I had to test her flesh a couple of times before I figured out how it responded to the knife. I hurt her more than I would have liked. I’ll do better next time.”