A Game of Ghosts: A Charlie Parker Thriller: 15. From the No. 1 Bestselling Author of A Time of Torment

by John Connolly

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Part I

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Part II

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Part III

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Part IV

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Part V

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  Chapter 64

  Chapter 65

  Chapter 66

  Chapter 67

  Chapter 68

  Chapter 69

  Chapter 70

  Chapter 71

  Chapter 72

  Chapter 73

  Chapter 74

  Chapter 75

  Chapter 76

  Chapter 77

  Chapter 78

  Chapter 79

  Chapter 80

  Part VI

  Chapter 81

  Chapter 82

  Chapter 83

  Chapter 84

  Chapter 85

  Chapter 86

  Chapter 87

  Chapter 88

  Chapter 89

  Chapter 90

  Part VII

  Chapter 91

  Chapter 92

  Chapter 93

  Chapter 94

  Chapter 95

  Chapter 96

  Chapter 97

  Chapter 98

  Chapter 99

  Chapter 100

  Chapter 101

  Chapter 102

  Chapter 103

  Acknowledgments

  Also by John Connolly

  www.hodder.co.uk

  First published in Great Britain in 2017 by Hodder & Stoughton

  An Hachette UK company

  Copyright © Bad Dog Books Limited 2017

  The right of John Connolly to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead is purely coincidental.

  A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library

  ISBN 978 1 473 64188 4

  Hodder & Stoughton Ltd

  Carmelite House

  50 Victoria Embankment

  London EC4Y 0DZ

  www.hodder.co.uk

  For Lucy Hale

  I

  Indeed, as things stand for the present, the Land of Spirits is a kind of America … filled up with Mountains, Seas, and Monsters.

  Joseph Glanvill, A Blow at Modern Sadducism (1668)

  1

  A new fall of snow had settled upon the old, like memories, like the years.

  It would freeze too, according to the weathermen, adding another layer to the ice that blanketed the city, and another day or two to the slow thaw that must inevitably come, although any release from the cold seemed distant on this February evening. Still, at least the latest snowfall, the first in more than a week, hid beneath it the filth of earlier accumulations, and the streets of Portland would look fresh and unsullied again, for a time.

  Although the air was chill, it held no clarity. A faint mist hung over the streets, creating penumbrae around the streetlights like the halos of saints, and making a dreamscape of the skyline. It lent the city a sense of duplication, as though its ways and buildings had been overlaid imperfectly upon some earlier version of itself, and now that shadow variant was peering through, the people of the present within touching distance of those of the past.

  Charlie Parker walked up Exchange Street, his head lowered against the rawness of the dark so that he progressed like a ram between sidewalk drifts. He didn’t need NBC to tell him that winter was tightening its grip. Some ancient personification of the season seemed to sense the approach of spring, even if no one else could, and was determined to cling to its white kingdom for as long as it was able. Parker could feel it in his bones, and in his wounds. His left hand was curled into a ball of hurt in his pocket, and the scars on his back felt tight and uncomfortable. His head ached, and had anyone asked, he could have pointed to the scattering of odd markings in his hair, silver-gray along the lines cut through his scalp by the shotgun pellets, and ascribed a locus of agony to each.

  Older injuries troubled him too. Many years before, he had thrown himself into a frigid lake in the far north of the state rather than face the guns that would otherwise surely have ended his life. He had still taken a bullet for his troubles, although the pain of the strike was dulled by the greater shock of immersion in freezing water. He should have died, but he did not. Later, the doctors would throw an array of medical terms in his direction – hypothermia, hypotension, hypovolemia, high blood viscosity – none of which was of any great benefit to the human body, or its prospects of immortality, but all of which applied, at some point, to him.

  On top of being shot, he had then violated just about every piece of post-immersion medical management by continuing to fight his tormentors, and that was before someone tried to kick his teeth in. One of the attending physicians, a specialist in maritime medicine, wanted to write a paper on him, but Parker had politely declined the offer of free ongoing treatment and therapy in exchange for his cooperation. It was a decision he sometimes regretted. He often thought that his body had never quite recovered from the trauma it had endured, because he had since felt the cold in winter with an intensity he could not recall from youth or young manhood. Sometimes, even in a warm room, he would be struck by a fit of shivering so violent that it would leave him weak for hours after. Even his teeth would hurt. Once, they chattered
so hard that he lost a crown.

  But hey, he was still alive, and that was good, right? He thought of the old commonplace about how giving up vices didn’t make you live longer, but just made it feel as though you were living longer. Nights like these made him feel as though he had been in pain all his life.

  It was the first day of February. Parker could recall arguing with his grandfather about the months of winter, shortly after the old man had taken in the boy and his mother, permitting them to escape New York and the ripples from his father’s death. For Parker, those winter months were December, January, and February, but his grandfather, who had roots in another continent, always thought in terms of the old Gaelic calendar in which November was the first month of winter, and so for him February meant the start of spring. Even decades spent enduring the grimness of Maine winters, and the icy darkness of February in particular, had not shaken him in his conviction. As time went on, Parker came to suspect that the old man might have been wiser than his grandson realized. By embracing February as the birth of a new season, instead of the slow death of the old, his grandfather was demonstrating a degree of psychological acuity that enabled him to tolerate one of the worst months of the year by regarding it as the harbinger of better times to come.

  Parker stopped outside Crooners & Cocktails. The bar was Ross’s choice. Parker wasn’t sure why. It wasn’t as though the FBI man was intimate with Portland’s restaurant scene. Then again, Parker had come to accept that Edgar Ross was more attuned to unfamiliar rhythms than might be considered advisable, even for someone directly involved in matters of national security.

  Actually, Parker kind of liked Crooners & Cocktails. The name might have been a bit hokey, but the interior was a throwback to another era, and the food and drinks were good. He stared through the glass, fogged by the heat inside, and thought he could make out Ross’s figure at the back of the room. The agent had a half-filled glass in front of him, and what looked like a tray of oysters. Parker hated oysters. As for his feelings about Ross, the jury was still out.

  Parker turned away from the window. He could hear music drifting up the street from Sonny’s, and across from him figures moved in the bar of the Press Hotel, a building that had housed the Portland Press Herald until the newspaper relocated to One City Center back in 2010. He’d only been in the hotel once to take a look around and meet Angel and Louis for a drink. He thought it might be an okay place to stay, even if, like Crooners & Cocktails, it was a carefully cultivated exercise in nostalgia. Then again, maybe nostalgia was an understandable response to a world that appeared to be going all to hell, as long as everyone remembered that the past was a nice place to visit but nobody should want to settle in it.

  One of the cars parked opposite was a black Lexus. Two men sat in the front. To avoid conflict, they would be listening to something neutral, Parker guessed: Classic Vinyl or Deep Tracks on Sirius. Both would be armed. He had informed them that Ross was coming. They were curious, just as Parker was. Ross rarely ventured so far north.

  Parker’s cell phone rang. He answered, and Angel spoke.

  ‘He arrived in a limousine,’ said Angel, ‘but not one with government plates. The car dropped him off at this place, then left. I stayed with Ross, and Louis followed the car. It’s parked down on Middle Street. Private hire, but nothing flashy. The driver’s in Starbucks, playing games on his cell phone.’

  Parker hung up and adjusted the pin on his tie. He hated wearing ties.

  ‘You still hearing me?’ he asked.

  From the passenger seat of the car, Angel showed him an upraised thumb. At least, Parker hoped it was a thumb. With Angel, one could never be sure.

  With that, Parker entered the bar.

  It struck him, as he was escorted to the table, that he knew almost nothing about Ross. Was he married? He didn’t wear a ring, but Parker was aware of men and women in risky professions who chose not to advertise their marital ties. He could be separated, or divorced. Given his work, that would make sense. Did he have children? Parker thought not, but he’d been wrong about such matters before. Children mellowed some men, but made no difference at all to others beyond adding to their burdens. He’d read an interview with a novelist whose estranged daughter traveled thousands of miles to somewhere in Africa in order to mend their broken relationship, only to have the door slammed in her face. The novelist justified his actions on the grounds that he was not trained to deal with ‘problem children’, but Parker didn’t know of any parent who was trained to deal with children, problematic or not. Actually, that wasn’t entirely true: he knew a couple of child psychologists – one in particular – and they were terrible parents.

  Ross stood to shake Parker’s hand. He had spilled Tabasco sauce on his shirt; just a speck, like a pinprick of blood. Parker didn’t comment on it, but he would find his eye drifting repeatedly toward it over the course of the evening, as though it represented an aspect profound that otherwise refused to reveal itself.

  Parker handed his coat to the hostess but kept his jacket on.

  ‘I figured you wouldn’t mind if I ordered some oysters before you arrived,’ said Ross, once they were both seated. ‘I know how you feel about seafood.’

  ‘That’s gracious of you,’ said Parker. His general distaste for shellfish and seafood had, he realized, hardened into a phobia. He might have been tempted to see a therapist about it, were he not afraid of what a distrust of bivalves could suggest about his personality.

  ‘What are you drinking?’ he asked Ross.

  ‘A Dewar’s and Disaronno. It’s called a Godfather.’

  ‘I hope you’re being ironic.’

  Parker glanced at the cocktail menu, found a drink he wasn’t too embarrassed to order – a Journalist, mainly Bombay Original and vermouth – and set the list aside. He barely sipped the cocktail once it was in front of him. He still had an aversion to hard liquor, but he’d learned long ago that when in the company of just one other person who was drinking, it paid to have something similar in turn, even if not a drop of it passed one’s lips. Coffee, beer, wine, Scotch, it didn’t matter: the act of ordering relaxed the other party, and that relaxation was important for the eliciting of information. Then again, Ross probably knew this already. If he didn’t, he shouldn’t have been working for the FBI.

  He and Ross made small talk for a time – politics, the weather, Parker’s health – before ordering entrees: monkfish for Ross, steak for Parker, with glasses of Riesling and Malbec, respectively, to go with them. The waitress left them. Music played low, a counterpoint to the hum of conversation.

  ‘So,’ said Parker, ‘why are you here?’

  2

  They were surrounded by people having a good time, cocooned against the cold beyond the glass. Portland eateries were adept at making customers feel cozy in winter. After all, they had a lot of practice.

  Ross sipped his drink.

  ‘Have you ever crossed paths with a private investigator named Jaycob Eklund?’ he asked. ‘That’s Jaycob with a “y”.’

  ‘Out of where?’

  ‘Providence.’

  ‘I don’t believe so. Does he have a specialization?’

  ‘Not officially. He does whatever it takes to make ends meet: errant husbands and wives, bail skips, process serving – a little like you did, before the federal government began contributing to your finances.’

  Only a few months had passed since the retainer had started to appear in Parker’s account, but it was already making a difference to his standard of living and the kind of cases he accepted. The paperwork, though, had taken a while to complete. Parker’s lawyer, Aimee Price, refused to have anything to do with the arrangement, regarding it as an error in judgment on his part, and quite possibly on the part of the FBI as well. Also, Price had finally tied the knot during the summer, after an engagement that had gone on for so long that the ring, although bought new, now practically counted as an antique. She was pregnant with twins, and intended to cut back on her wor
kload, or so she said, but Parker knew that she was more concerned with putting some distance between herself and her most notorious client. As a mother-to-be, she wanted to take no risks with her safety or that of her nascent family. Parker couldn’t blame her, and had transferred his business to Moxie Castin, who had no such qualms.

  Moxie gave the consultancy agreement with the FBI such a reworking that it now bore more resemblance to a monthly charitable donation from the government than any payment for services, current or future. But the words on the page weren’t the issue, and their true meaning lay hidden behind the legalese. Parker understood that he was tied to Ross, and Ross to him. Any favors asked or granted would always come with a price. Now, Parker sensed, he was about to begin earning some of that money.

  ‘And unofficially?’

  ‘Eklund was an occasional recipient of our – of my – largesse,’ said Ross.

  ‘In return for what?’

  ‘Watching. Listening.’ Ross finished his cocktail, washed his mouth out with water, and moved on to wine. ‘Did you think you were the only one?’

  ‘You’re making me feel less special,’ said Parker.

  ‘I suspect that may be beyond my skill range.’

  Parker managed a smile.

  ‘Eklund has gone missing,’ Ross continued. ‘I want him found.’

  ‘You’re the FBI. That’s a little like a miner asking me to help him find coal.’

  Ross didn’t answer. He just sipped his wine and waited. Their food came. It looked good, but neither man touched it, not yet.

  ‘Unless you can’t get the feds to do it,’ said Parker at last, once it became clear that they wouldn’t be able to eat, or move the conversation along, until he demonstrated to Ross his understanding of the situation. ‘You don’t know for certain what Eklund was looking into when he disappeared. If you put him into the system, and he was on your dime, you risk drawing attention both to him and to whatever it is you might currently be cooking up in that cauldron brain of yours.’

  ‘Very good.’

  ‘It’s sad that you don’t have faith in your fellow agents. I mean, if we can’t trust those who spy on their own citizens for a living, who can we trust?’

  ‘You,’ said Ross. He carved a slice of fish, carefully added some lobster and spinach risotto, and forked the combination into his mouth. He nodded his approval. ‘That’s a very fine piece of fish. You really don’t know what you’re missing.’