A Book of Bones

by John Connolly

  And against the last stars in the universe, the girl stood silhouetted.

  close your eyes

  Even in his fear, Coppinger did as she asked. He closed his eyes, and waited for the encroaching darkness to smother his own light, but it did not. The chill left his fingers, the pressure upon him eased, and when he opened his eyes again he was just a man alone in a field, standing before all that was left of an old priory.

  But no, not entirely alone: in the remains of the Well Garden, he thought he could still see the shape of the girl, although he could not be certain that it was not just the dappled play of light and shade, because a fresh breeze had arisen to caress the branches. He stepped through the arch without thinking, and was relieved to find himself safely on the other side, not drifting through a vacuum in the face of an encroaching tenebrosity.

  He reached the garden. The girl was both present and gone. Absent the shadow of her, but the body extant, or some relic of it. Coppinger stood by one of the smaller wells that gave the garden its name. Its iron cover was secured with loops of green wire, but moved easily with a nudge of his foot. Coppinger squatted, and peered at the water. He could see by the marks on the wall that the level had fallen recently. Thin, blond strands of weed floated on the surface, a pale presence suspended beneath them.

  The body of Kathy Hicks had been revealed at last.

  CHAPTER CVI

  Quayle and Mors sat in the former’s chambers, those nebulous regions that had not been graced by natural light for so long. Quayle was picking at the carcass of a roast chicken, brought to him by Mors. He was using only his fingers, and grease gleamed upon them in the candlelight. Beside his plate stood a bottle of Meursault, and a half-filled glass.

  “So, Parker is here at last,” said Quayle. “It’s almost a relief.”

  “He will not have come alone.”

  “No, I don’t believe so.” Quayle now knew of Bob Johnston’s connection to Maine, but he doubted that Parker had arrived in London accompanied only by a book dealer. There would be others.

  “Did Parker, or one of his people, execute Gruner in Amsterdam?” asked Mors.

  “I doubt it. They may be killers, but not of unarmed booksellers.”

  Mors looked puzzled. “Then who did? Perhaps someone who wanted to prevent Gruner from telling tales?”

  “But that would be us, and unless I’m gravely in error, we didn’t murder him. No, Gruner was silenced not to stop him from helping Parker, but to stop him from helping us. It was an effort to avert the restoration of the Atlas.”

  The Backers, thought Mors, seeking to protect themselves. Why spend generations amassing wealth and power, only to see it vanish with the Atlas’s completion?

  “What will you do?” she asked.

  “Nothing. The Backers can’t prevent what’s coming. They can’t even delay it. Killing Gruner was like the crazed sting of a dying wasp.”

  And even if Quayle was wrong, Mors would take care of the Backers in her own time, and her own way. She especially liked the idea of anatomizing the Principal Backer limb by limb, organ by organ.

  “Parker is the main threat,” said Quayle. “Without him, the others will falter. But—”

  Mors waited. She thought she could hear the muffled cries of a man from deep in the heart of Quayle’s refuge, as of one immured there. She had never seen what lay behind those walls, but Quayle had told her of it in their more intimate moments together. She wished she could witness it just once, those men and women trapped like flies, sequestered from time and space, from living and dying.

  “We should probably kill them all,” Quayle concluded.

  Mors was pleased. She owed the Negro for the gunshot wound she had suffered in Maine. She would pay him back for it, with interest.

  “When?”

  “Very soon. Let me think on it.”

  “Lockwood is worried,” said Mors. “She’s afraid Parker will return.”

  “Why?”

  “Because he was curious about this place.”

  She spread her arms to indicate the rooms in which they stood, insulated by old brick walls, protected by a thick sheet of glass, and lodged in the courtyard of Lockwood, Dodson & Fogg.

  Quayle, hiding in plain sight.

  “Then perhaps,” he said, “we should invite him to visit.”

  * * *

  DOUGLAS HOOD RETURNED FROM the moors with Jess at his heels. The previous night, he’d enjoyed his first peaceful rest since the discovery of Romana Moon’s body. He had slept through without dreaming or waking, and even the morning light on the land appeared different to him when he rose, as though he were seeing the moors anew. At lunchtime, he met with three other landowners at the Dipton Mill Inn, and over a plowman’s lunch, followed by syrup sponge and custard as a treat, an agreement was reached that the time had come to rid the moors of the last residue of the Familists. The memory of them had blighted the land for long enough. After the deliberations had concluded, Hood bought some shrubs to bring color and life back to his garden: cape figwort for the western wall, and hibiscus, hydrangea, and Michaelmas daisies. He’d plant them over the next day or two, and they’d flower between now and October.

  Hood turned on the light in the kitchen, and set the kettle to boil. Beside him, Jess growled. Her hackles were raised as she stared into the living room. She barked once, and a man’s voice spoke.

  “Leave the dog outside if you don’t want it killed.”

  He was standing by the stairs, where he could clearly see both Hood and Jess. Hood did not recognize him. He held a pistol in his right hand, less like a handgun than the kind of weapon vets used to tranquilize animals.

  “Who are you?”

  “My name is Sellars.”

  “What do you want?”

  “First, the dog. I won’t warn you again.”

  Hood grabbed Jess by the collar and dragged her to the door. As he opened it, Sellars said, “Don’t try to run. It won’t do you any good.”

  “I won’t,” said Hood, and he didn’t. He put Jess into the yard, and closed the door. Instantly, she commenced scratching at the wood.

  “Come here,” said Sellars. “Take a seat.”

  Hood entered the living room, and sat on the harder of the two chairs by the fire, facing the intruder. He wondered how the man had reached the farm, because he had seen no sign of a vehicle nearby. Perhaps he had walked all the way from the road, but why?

  “I saw you on the news,” said Sellars. “You were the one that found the girl.”

  Hood hadn’t spoken to the reporters and the TV people, but they’d filmed him nonetheless, even if it was only to capture him declining to comment before walking away. He’d watched himself on the screen, and thought he looked older and odder than he really was.

  “Yes,” he said, “I found her.”

  “I probably should have taken care of her myself,” said Sellars. “If I had, none of this would have happened. I wouldn’t be here, and you’d still be safe.”

  As the sum of his years increased, Hood had sometimes considered how he might die. He hoped it would be out here, in sight of his beloved moors, perhaps on the very land itself. He’d always feared cancer, or dementia, the kind of death that stole away body or mind, piece by piece. He would start to weaken, and a doctor would come, or some do-gooder from social services, to declare him incapable of looking after himself any longer. He would be consigned to a hospice or care home, without the company of Jess, or whatever dog might follow in her stead should he live so long.

  Now he realized that this speculation was about to become reality, and he was to be granted his wish: he would die in his home on the moors. It was like one of those old folktales, the kind in which a man makes a deal with the devil and gets what he wants in return, but not how he might have wished it to be. The devil twists the bargain, because that’s what the devil does.

  The Pattersons, his nearest neighbors, would take in Jess, he knew. She wouldn’t be destroyed. That was some c
onsolation.

  A hissing came from the stove.

  “Kettle’s boiling over,” he said.

  “Let it.”

  Hood could hear Jess whining, and the scratching at the door grew more urgent. Hood willed her to run away. She wasn’t the kind to attack someone, although he had no doubt that she would have done so had he been under threat, but he didn’t want this Sellars to reconsider, and shoot her out of fear. Jess was a good dog. They’d all been good dogs, every one.

  “They’re saying on the television that a man named Holmby killed Romana Moon,” said Hood.

  “He did.”

  “On your orders?”

  “I don’t give orders. I only encouraged him.”

  “Is that what you do: ‘encourage’ other men to murder women?”

  “He was the first, but I’ve cut a few throats myself in my time, and I’ll probably cut more before I’m done with this life. Maybe I’ll cut yours. I’ve never done a bloke before.”

  “Not even Karl Holmby?”

  “Not even him. That was someone else. You’re lucky you’ll never meet her. She’s a bad one. She has a soft spot for animals, though. Doesn’t like to see them hurt. Call it a sentimental streak. That’s why your dog has to live.”

  Hood looked around him, taking in his home for the last time. He’d been born under this roof, an only child, and it was proper that the same spot should mark both his beginning and his end, but still he was frightened, and sad, and strangely weary. The latter emotion surprised him, being almost narcotic in its profundity. He had always been stubborn, and a fighter in his way, but if he tried to fight now, he’d be shot. He was going to die anyway, admittedly, but if he stayed where he was, he might at least find out why.

  “You still haven’t told me what you want,” he said.

  “I want to know,” said Sellars, “who killed my god.”

  CHAPTER CVII

  Priestman wrapped up the late briefing just as it was growing dark. The meeting, which included representatives of the other forces involved in the investigation, had been long: two hours of analysis and discussion of forensic reports, interview transcripts, statements, photographs, and video footage from each of the jurisdictions. The rapidity with which they were accumulating information was both heartening and daunting. Under ordinary circumstances, questions would have been raised about forces burning through their budgets in order to get faster results, but the Home Office had made it clear that any exceptional expenses incurred in this inquiry would be covered, and without caviling about overtime, manpower, or the use of multiple private laboratories.

  And the investigators were making headway: in addition to the fractured ankle, Gary Holmby’s height corresponded to that of Romana Moon’s killer, based on the angle of the wounds, and his prints were the only ones on the knife. But Gary Holmby was now dead. If he had killed Romana Moon, someone had either avenged her death, or was cleaning up loose ends.

  Already, the “Misbaha Murders,” as the tabloid press was referring to them, had resulted in a first retaliatory killing: a Muslim named Zahid Sulemani, beaten to death in Newport, Wales, by a gang of youths, the youngest of whom was only thirteen. Zahid himself was just seventeen. The reports of Muslims coming together to protect their communities, and clashing with bands of white males, were becoming almost routine. The revelation that the knife used to kill Romana Moon had been found in the apartment of Gary Holmby, a white Anglo-Saxon, had done little to stem the violence, with right-wing extremists accusing the police of fabricating evidence in order to protect Muslims and hide the truth. The confirmation that his fingerprints were those on the murder weapon wouldn’t do much to change their minds.

  But Gary Holmby, Gary Holmby…

  The deeper they dug, the clearer it became that he could not have been working alone. His phone might have been missing, but the police had obtained details of his movements from Google through location tracking, and from the phone company through triangulation. Gary Holmby had clearly loved his iPhone, because he kept it with him constantly, but Google showed the phone in the apartment block on the night Romana Moon was killed. Holmby, they decided, had probably left it there deliberately so as not to be tracked, or even as part of the creation of an alibi.

  But the tracking and triangulation, combined with witness statements, also revealed that Gary Holmby had been nowhere near Bury when Eleanor Hegarty was abducted; nor had he visited the Wittenham Clumps during the period in which she had probably been interred; and they had already established that he was on the Continent when Helen Wylie vanished, and in Glasgow when Kathy Hicks disappeared from Bristol, at the other end of the United Kingdom. They had him in the center of Middlesbrough in the weeks before Romana Moon died, though, which was something, although a check of the tracking on her phone did not show her and Holmby in close proximity on any occasion during that time.

  Which meant that Gary Holmby was the prime suspect for Romana Moon’s murder, but not for any of the others. If that was the case, he had been in collusion with at least one other person, each of them marking kills with a misbaha. It was now a question of establishing the points of contact between Holmby and this unknown other, but Holmby’s e-mails were all on his laptop, leaving them only with his Gmail account, which he appeared to use solely for mundane communications. They were working their way through the messages, but if Holmby had been using Gmail to stay in touch with another killer, he had hidden it well.

  Similarly, they were checking the call and text records for his phone, but if he had been wise enough to leave it at home when he killed Moon, he would not have used it to collude with an accomplice. The likelihood was that he had another phone, a cheap burner. Romana Moon’s phone records revealed a number of calls made to someone identified only as “Matt” on her contacts list. Matt had been added just a few weeks before she died, and the number corresponded to a Lycamobile SIM card bought in Durham shortly before the contact began. Durham was just over twenty miles from Newcastle, and Gary Holmby’s tracking showed that he had been in Durham on the day the SIM was purchased, even if the new SIM had not been activated until three days later, which was also when Romana Moon’s calls to Matt had begun. Confirmation was received from Lycamobile that the Matt number had only ever been used to call Romana Moon’s phone, and the only calls received by it had come from her.

  They had also ruled out the Moon family as suspects in the Holmby murders. The Moons had seemed an unlikely prospect to begin with. Kevin Moon had been at home in Scotland when the Holmbys were being killed, but was perfectly willing to share his movements with police, along with details of all calls made since the death of his daughter. He even admitted to knowing some rough lads in the building trade, but not the kind rough enough to shoot one man before lodging his brother’s corpse in a tree.

  Despite the absence of any signs of religious belief in Gary Holmby’s life, let alone Muslim radicalization, the misbaha angle still could not entirely be ignored, and officers were continuing to interview known radicals about their activities, as well as those inside and outside the Muslim community with an interest in monitoring such individuals. Unbeknownst to his superiors, Nabih Uddin had even met privately with a man calling himself Abdul Hasib, “Slave of the Reckoner,” who was the subject of enough Counter Terrorist Command warning notices to wallpaper a house. Abdul Hasib had been a bad Durham boy in his youth—drinking, pot-smoking, and womanizing—before deciding that what God really wanted him to do was watch beheading videos and brainwash young British extremists into fighting in Syria and Afghanistan. He was also suspected of involvement in a plot to explode a fertilizer bomb near Birmingham’s Bull Ring.

  Abdul Hasib knew every Muslim hatemonger north of London, mainly because he liked to keep an eye on the competition, and informed Uddin that none of them was putting misbaha in murdered white women, because, he said, that would be fusuq—perversity, or evildoing—although he was referring only to the misuse of the misbaha, and not to the killings the
mselves, with which he had no particular problem, being quite content to reap the benefits in the form of increased hostilities between Muslims and unbelievers, and a consequent upsurge in recruits. In that way, Uddin thought Abdul Hasib had more in common with Harry Stoller than either would have cared to admit.

  This, then, was the current state of play: Northumbria Police working on Romana Moon, and the Holmbys; Avon and Somerset searching for the body of Kathy Hicks; Kent continuing to investigate Helen Wylie’s death; and Thames Valley tackling the killing of Eleanor Hegarty, whose movements in the days before her disappearance Greater Manchester Police were helping to map, while also investigating her activities as a prostitute. Hegarty had been using a cheap burner phone for this darker corner of her life, and an Android for the rest. The police had the numbers for both—the burner from her online advertising, and the Android from her pay-as-you-go receipts—but not the phones themselves, and were currently trying to trace the callers to both, but mainly to the burner. Unfortunately, half of them had come from over-the-counter SIMs, and therefore unregistered numbers. Of the remaining callers contacted so far, all had alibis for the night of Eleanor’s disappearance.

  The Misbaha Murders, therefore, were directly tying up resources in at least five police forces around the country, and indirectly affecting every one of the forty other territorial police areas in the United Kingdom because of associated violence and unrest. If, as Hynes had said, the police were being manipulated, it was with an unprecedented level of success.

  When the meeting concluded, Hynes took Gackowska for a drink. Priestman declined to join them, but this wasn’t unusual, and they didn’t hold it against her. Hynes and Gackowska knocked some ideas around, but none amounted to much. Both of them wanted a break from it all anyway, so Hynes listened sympathetically to various tales of woe from Gackowska’s love life, and thought, not for the first time, that if he hadn’t been happily married to Charlotte, he and Gackowska might have made a good match, despite the difference in their ages, until he remembered that marriages between police generally ended up in the divorce courts. Actually, marriages between police and just about anyone often ended up in the divorce courts. Still, one had to persevere.