A Book of Bones

by John Connolly

  “Not personally.”

  His voice sounded odd, so he cleared his throat in the hope that this might help restore it to normality.

  “Lionel Maulding’s lawyer, right?” she said. “Unlikely you’d be acquainted with him, really. He’s long dead.”

  “Yes,” said Johnston, “he must be.”

  “You don’t sound convinced.”

  “Says the woman with a ghost in her living room.”

  “I told you: it’s not a ghost.”

  “Semantics.”

  “It’s my living room. I’ll decide what is and isn’t a ghost. What about him?”

  She tapped an index finger against the drawing of Quayle. Johnston half expected it to flinch in response, and was grateful when it didn’t.

  “Definitely not a ghost,” said Johnston. “But now I know that the man we’re looking for comes from the same bloodline.”

  He closed the album and returned it to the carrier bag. He would take a longer, more detailed look at it later.

  “What will you do when you find him?” Bellingham asked. “Call the police?”

  Johnston thought of Parker, and of Angel and Louis.

  “Only,” said Johnston, “if he’s lucky.”

  7

  Out of the ash

  I rise with my red hair

  And I eat men like air.

  —Sylvia Plath, “Lady Lazarus”

  CHAPTER LXVII

  Cornelie Gruner made it back to his roost just as the rain began to fall. He had managed to reach the buildings he owned without being disturbed by any more visions, hallucinations, or whatever one chose to call them. Damn Quayle. Damn his Atlas. Damn them all.

  The moisture made Gruner’s hands slippery. He fumbled his keys.

  Gruner found the correct one and inserted it into the keyhole.

  * * *

  ANGEL HAD STRUGGLED TO gain entry to Cornelie Gruner’s rooms, but not because the security or the locks were particularly sophisticated—quite the opposite, in fact. He’d slipped past the bartender easily enough, the man being more concerned with watching a soccer match on his iPad than worrying about customers, and made his way up the stairs without encountering anyone else along the way. According to what De Jaager had told Louis, Gruner occupied the entirety of the top floor, accessed via a single door with two locks. The first was a simple Yale, which Angel took care of easily enough, but his problems began with the second, which had a keyhole reminiscent of those found in medieval cathedrals, and a mechanism to match: stiff and unyielding, like the most austere of clerics. At one point, Angel began to despair of ever getting the door open, a feeling not helped by his own physical and mental weakness. He hadn’t been forced to concentrate on a lock for months, and the effort brought on sweating, nausea, and a filthy headache. When he finally heard the tumblers click, he almost wept with relief and satisfaction. The antique mirror at the end of the hall, surrounded by an ornate gold frame, reflected his feelings back at him.

  Gruner’s quarters consisted of a large living area, a bedroom, a bathroom, and a small, galley-style kitchen that smelled of boiled vegetables. Access to each room was via a narrow channel that wound through canyons of books and papers, the lowest of which came up to Angel’s waist, and the highest to his chest. They grew taller as they neared the oak banker’s desk that formed the centerpiece of the accommodations, like the foothills on the approach to some great mountain. He was at once gratified and disappointed to find everything entirely free of dust: gratified because it meant that he would leave no trace as he searched, but disappointed because it offered no clue as to what might most recently have been occupying Gruner’s attention, beyond whatever lay on the desk. Also, if Gruner had a safe hidden behind some of those books, it would be a bitch to find.

  Angel started with the desk itself. He stepped back, took a small digital camera from a pocket of his jacket, and photographed everything, first from a distance, then as a series of separate, closer images. It was an old habit. The best robberies were those that took a while to notice, and the longer the gap between the theft and the reporting of it, the more time available to dispose of the proceeds. Equally, it required a certain degree of care and skill to toss a room without making it look like it had been tossed. Finally, Angel wanted to record as many of the titles as possible. He had no idea what books might be important, but De Jaager would know, or maybe crazy Bob Johnston.

  When he was done, he checked the position of the chair on the floor, and saw that it had worn four deep holes in the fabric of the old rug on which it stood. He sat down slowly, doing his best not to disturb the chair’s position. He placed his gloved hands flat on the rectangular leather space that constituted Gruner’s entire work area, the rest of the desk being a smaller simulacrum of the book-canyon floor, and breathed deeply in the hope that it might help to clear some of the remaining nausea. There was no point in going to considerable lengths to conceal the fact of his intrusion only to spoil it all by throwing up on the man’s possessions.

  But for the first time in many months, perhaps even since he had received the original cancer diagnosis, Angel was happy. He had dealt with the lock. He had gained access to Gruner’s chambers. He was more or less upright, physically if not morally. He had a purpose. He was still useful.

  He was alive.

  When he was certain that the dizziness had passed, he set to work. Proceeding from left to right, he began sorting through the papers on the desk, opening manila folders and box files—Gruner’s preferred methods of storage, if the desk and surrounding shelves were anything to go by—in order to examine their contents. The thick drapes were already drawn when he entered the apartment, which made things easier; he didn’t have to worry about lamplight alerting any interested parties passing on the street below.

  Angel had expected most of the handwritten notes to be in Dutch, but Gruner worked principally in English. Either he was assembling material to be read by someone outside the Netherlands, or he just preferred it that way. Then again, everyone Angel had met so far in Amsterdam seemed to speak better English than he did, so maybe it wasn’t too surprising.

  It didn’t take Angel long to find the first reference to the Atlas, contained on the second page of five separate leaves of closely written script. Gruner’s handwriting was so small as to resemble ants on the paper, and Angel struggled to make sense of it, even with his spectacles on. He settled for photographing the relevant contents of each file before restoring it to its rightful place and moving on to the next. He continued in this way for half an hour, until he came to a folder marked “Carenor.” Inside was a sheaf of lined pages detailing payments going back to the previous decade, entered in Gruner’s hand but using different colored inks over the years, and marked either Verzameling or Levering. A quick Google search revealed that the former was the Dutch word for “Collection,” which meant that the latter was probably “Delivery,” but Angel sought a translation anyway, just to be sure. Finally, he came to a more recent addition that obviously represented some form of cross-checking of those earlier entries.

  Angel googled Carenor, and found the company website. So Gruner was in the habit of using a British courier firm specializing in the transportation of delicate or valuable objects, particularly art. This made some sense, given the various paintings on the walls of his rooms, and in the bar below, but why did the file not contain any formal documentation from Carenor? It suggested that services were being supplied off the company’s books, but why then employ a seemingly respectable courier to begin with—unless Carenor wasn’t respectable, despite appearances to the contrary in the form of a classy website, and testimonials from galleries and institutions of which even the notably philistine Angel had heard.

  He looked again at the list of dates and payments, the latter representing monies paid or received. They were considerable sums for a courier company: nothing less than €4,000, while some were considerably greater. Carenor seemingly charged a premium for its services,
and Gruner was also being paid well for his own. Angel didn’t know what a clean passport might cost, but another quick search provided him with an answer: up to €3,000 for a Dutch version on the Darknet, and €2,000 for a German. The Darknet had made fakes easier to acquire, which might have suppressed the price in recent years. But what if one didn’t want to work through unknown agents, or preferred the kind of guarantee of quality that came from using a man like Cornelie Gruner, and the security of transportation assured by a firm like Carenor, either officially or unofficially?

  Angel placed the two lists side by side, and had just finished photographing each in turn when he heard a noise at the door.

  * * *

  CORNELIE GRUNER STEPPED INTO his old bookshop, which was as much a home to him as his rooms above the Oak, if not more so. He locked the door, hung his coat on a stand, and shuffled to the little toilet next to the register, where he relieved himself of the wine he had drunk. He felt safe in this place, with the blinds drawn on the main window and the bolts thrown on the front door. Just to be certain, he created a gap between blind and glass using a finger and thumb, and checked the street to left and right. There was still no sign of De Jaager’s spies—or, mercifully, of anything worse.

  Gruner was tired, and considered taking a nap in his chair, but wanted to verify one or two details from the day’s efforts. The works he required were in the back room of the store, which functioned as an extension of his personal library. He opened the door, and smelled an unfamiliar perfume before his eyes found the source.

  “Welcome, mijnheer Gruner,” said the woman. “Please sit.”

  And Gruner did, because she was holding a gun, and it was aimed at him.

  CHAPTER LXVIII

  Angel had been a thief for most of his life. He had not always been a good thief, although he had definitely improved as the years went on. One skill he had cultivated was the ability to listen and work at the same time, so that a portion of his attention was always fixed on unseen stairways and doors, alert to the possible return of a residence’s rightful occupant. The stairs leading from the bar to Gruner’s chambers had felt old and solid beneath his feet, but Angel had still kept to the side nearest the wall, where the wood was less likely to creak. He, though, had reason to want to ascend unnoticed. If this was Gruner returning home, he had no cause to mask his approach, not unless Angel’s presence had somehow been detected, which seemed unlikely: he’d been working undisturbed for some time now, and Gruner’s rooms appeared devoid of any form of electronic surveillance or motion sensors. More important, De Jaager had assigned people to follow Gruner, and give ample warning to Angel should the old book dealer head for home, but no message had come through to his cell phone. Either De Jaager’s employees had lost Gruner—and it didn’t say much for their abilities if an elderly man could get away from them—or someone else was trying to gain entry.

  The light from the lamp extended little farther than the perimeter of the desk itself, so Angel didn’t think it could be seen under the door. He killed it as a precaution, and the room was instantly plunged into almost total darkness. To alleviate the gloom, he leaned back and opened the drapes a crack, enough to permit the streetlamp beyond to offer some illumination. If he had to move quickly, he didn’t want to break an ankle, or anything else, by falling over a pile of books.

  He waited for the sound of a key turning, but it did not come. Instead he heard what sounded like scratching at the wood and lock. Did Gruner have a cat? Angel hadn’t seen a litter tray or food bowl, and he’d been through the entire apartment. He listened for any hint of an animal’s cry, but heard nothing resembling one. The scratching grew more persistent, and the door moved in its frame as whatever was outside placed its full weight against it. If this was a cat, Angel thought, it was the kind kept in zoos, and that fed on hunks of raw meat. A dog? If so, why wasn’t it barking?

  The scratching reached such a crescendo that he heard splinters of wood bouncing off the floor outside before the racket ceased, leaving only silence. Angel stood. Very slowly, and very quietly, he navigated his way toward the door, stopping when just a few feet away. He picked up no sound of retreating steps from outside, which meant that a presence still remained in the hall. He stared at the door, aware that, on the other side, a living entity was staring back.

  He reached out a hand against the door—just as, in a living room in London, Bob Johnston had earlier made a similar motion toward a Victorian fireplace before thinking better of it. The sound of music drifted up to Angel from the street below, and he heard a girl shout something in Dutch, and laugh. The wood felt warm to Angel’s touch, and he caught the faintest smell of burning, like a match that had briefly ignited before being snuffed out.

  Angel waited. His illness and subsequent recuperation had taken a great deal from him—confidence, strength, and a length of intestine—but it had also endowed him with more patience than before, and a comfort with stillness that he had previously lacked. One minute went by, then two. After five, he heard movement from the lower floors as someone ascended the stairs. He tensed, but then a door opened in a room directly beneath him, and bottles clinked as a case of alcohol was removed from storage.

  Another skill that Angel had acquired over the years was the knowledge of when to leave a property. Most prison sentences resulted from people staying in the wrong place for too long, and at that moment Angel intuited it would be a very good idea to depart Gruner’s chambers as quickly as possible. The rear of the property overlooked a small yard, accessed from the top floor by a narrow set of external stairs. He could use this stairway to leave, but would then have to find a way back to the street. It wouldn’t necessarily be difficult, but he might attract attention from neighbors on the way down, and he still needed to get to the hallway to do it, because the only access to the stairs was via the window.

  Angel swore. Nothing in this life, he thought, was ever simple.

  He lowered himself to his knees before leaning down to peer beneath the bottom of the door. A bare bulb in the ceiling provided the hallway’s sole illumination, but there was enough light for Angel to see that it was clear of feet, or paws. He also glimpsed fragments of wood on the floor. From his jacket pocket, he removed one of the pistols supplied by De Jaager. It didn’t have a suppressor, so he’d have to move fast to avoid being arrested or shot by Dutch law enforcement if he were forced to use it.

  The door on the floor below slammed shut, and there came the sound of a crate of bottles being set down. The footsteps recommenced, but this time they were climbing to the top level, and Gruner’s rooms. They reached the hall, and a man’s voice called “Hallo?”. Angel held his breath as the steps approached Gruner’s door, and the same voice said “Wat de hel?”, which Angel didn’t need Google to help him translate. He heard a foot brushing against the splinters of wood on the floor, and then a knocking at the door.

  “Mijnheer Gruner?”

  The door handle turned, making Angel glad that he’d locked it again after gaining entry. Finally, the voice said “Fock” loudly, and headed back down the stairs. Angel heard the box of bottles being lifted, and knew that the man would certainly return to the top floor soon, probably with a brush and pan to clean up the mess before Gruner got back, unless he called the police to report an attempted break-in. Angel decided to take his chance. He stepped into the hall, pulling the door closed behind him. He caught his reflection in the gilt mirror on the far wall, his features distorted by oxidization, so that he seemed to be moving through shadow and fog.

  He opened the window, climbed onto the outside stairs, and descended. Rain started to fall, which helped conceal his presence. He had to pause once on the way down, when a man in a bartender’s white shirt and black pants—although not the same one he had passed before—appeared inside with a sweeping brush. Angel waited until the bartender was out of both sight and earshot, and continued to the yard, where two doors faced him: one with a light behind it, leading to the restrooms of the bar,
and the other the entrance to the adjoining building, where Gruner kept his bookshop. Under different circumstances, Angel might have been tempted to explore the latter, but he’d endured more than enough stress for one night, and his headache had returned with a vengeance.

  He tried the door to the bar, and was relieved to find it open. He entered the men’s restroom, and washed his face with cold water before exiting. The bartender from earlier glanced at him with mild curiosity, as though trying to figure out where Angel had come from, or just how long he’d spent in the restroom, and what that might mean when it came time to clean it. Angel simply nodded a good night, and walked down to Singel. He saw a figure illuminated in a nearby car as the engine started: De Jaager’s driver, ready to whisk them away.

  “Any problems?” asked Louis, as Angel got into the back seat beside him.

  “I think someone might have tried to get in while I was there, but they went away again.” Which seemed like the simplest explanation for what had occurred.

  “Not Gruner,” said Louis. “He’s being followed, so we’d have been informed.”

  “When are you planning to speak with him?”

  “Maybe tomorrow, after you tell me what you found in his rooms.”

  “I can do better than that,” said Angel. “I’ll show you, once I hook up my camera to a laptop.”

  Only as they reached De Jaager’s safe house did it strike Angel that the mirror in Gruner’s hall had been clear when he entered the old man’s rooms, yet tarnished when he emerged.

  Tarnished—or polluted.

  But he chose to leave this unremarked.