A Book of Bones

by John Connolly

  “How did you get the photo?” said Uddin, as Lottie Stoller brought Hynes a mug of tea. He thanked her, but she left the room without acknowledging him, although she did cast a cold eye on Uddin. Hynes doubted that any non-white person had ever previously been permitted to cross the threshold of the flat.

  “It was e-mailed to me.”

  “From?”

  “A Gmail account composed of random numbers and letters.”

  “And what made you think it was a genuine picture of Romana Moon?” said Hynes.

  Stoller grinned.

  “Because,” he replied, “it wasn’t the only one.”

  CHAPTER LXXX

  Sam sat in her bedroom’s rocking chair, an open book on her lap now ignored. Lazy sunlight shone through her window, its pane a combination of stained panels at the edges and a clear panel at the center. It was the colored glass that had caught her attention. There were patterns on it that she could not recall seeing before, as though previously unnoticed flaws in the material had suddenly been made apparent by the angle of the sun’s rays.

  She set the book down and walked to the window. The voice of her half sister spoke from the room behind.

  don’t touch it

  Sam hated it when Jennifer sneaked up on her like this. She could see Jennifer’s reflection in the glass, her blond hair hanging long over her shoulders, concern on her face. This was Jennifer as she was on the other side, but had Sam turned around, she would have seen her as the Traveling Man had left her on this one: blinded, bloodied, faceless.

  Dead.

  “Why not?”

  look closer

  Sam did, and discovered that the patterns were not random. They formed figures, and faces. They were nightmares given substance. And farther back, Sam detected a shimmering, as of twin suns concealed by mist and cloud.

  “They’re in the glass,” she said.

  yes

  “Does our father understand this?”

  i don’t know

  “Why not?”

  it’s harder for me to see him while he’s across the water

  “I’ll ask Mom if I can speak to him. I’ll tell him.”

  good

  “But why can’t I touch it?”

  because they’ll sense you if you do

  “Who will?”

  you know who

  Sam caught the glow of the suns, like bright eyes staring back at her.

  “Yes,” she said, “I think I do.”

  CHAPTER LXXXI

  Angel and Louis sat with De Jaager, waiting for Cornelie Gruner to be brought to them.

  “The one you’re looking for,” said De Jaager. “Quayle.”

  “Yes?” said Louis.

  “Could he have killed Eva?”

  “He has a woman called Mors who does that kind of work for him. It’s possible that he might have sent her here, but Gruner probably only became aware of us late yesterday, so Mors would have been forced to move fast. Even then, why kill Eva?”

  “Maybe because she was watching Gruner, and whoever killed her didn’t want to be seen,” said Angel.

  “But seen doing what?” De Jaager asked.

  His cell phone rang. He checked the display.

  “It’s Paulus,” he told them.

  He took the call, and received the answer to his question.

  * * *

  HYNES WAS STANDING OUTSIDE the Stollers’ flat, speaking on the phone to Priestman.

  “Stoller received ten photographs,” he said. “If there was ever any doubt about the identity of the woman in the first picture, it’s gone now. It’s definitely Romana.”

  Stoller possessed pictures of Romana on her back, her arms and legs splayed in a crucifixion pose; a close-up of her face; a side profile in which, a single bloodstain apart, she might have been mistaken for a sleeping woman; four images of the wounds to her body; and finally, two of the misbaha at the very back of her throat.

  “So why didn’t he post them all?” asked Priestman.

  “The sender advised him not to. Stoller was given instructions to post the picture with the misbaha first, and then wait.”

  “For what?”

  “For us to come along and ask him about it.”

  “Seriously?”

  “Seriously. After that, he was free to post the rest. If he did as he was told, he was promised more pictures.”

  “Of Romana?”

  “The sender didn’t say.”

  “He can’t post those other photos. The situation is bad enough as it is.”

  “We’re working on that.”

  “Seize everything if you have to. Empty his flat of anything with a screen.”

  “I don’t think that’ll do much good. You’ve heard of the Cloud, boss? Very popular, the Cloud. Stoller can simply access his material from another machine.”

  “Then arrest Stoller.”

  “We could do that,” said Hynes, but his tone made it clear that he didn’t think this was the best of ideas. He waited for Priestman to follow the logic.

  “He’s our point of contact with whoever took those pictures,” she said, eventually.

  “Yes. And Stoller may be unpleasant, but he’s not stupid. If he posts the worst of those images, he’ll be open to accusations of exploiting the death of a young white woman even more than he already has, and of possible collusion with her murderer. At least, I’ve made it clear to him that this is how we’ll paint it when we talk to the media. He and his sister will be burned out of their flat, and Nabih and I will be out here selling bags of popcorn for the show.”

  “And is Stoller willing to cooperate?”

  “Up to a point. He’s prepared to give us enough information to help trace the e-mail back to its source, and in return we’re supposed to acclaim him as the great British patriot that he is. We’ll also allow him to use one more image online, the least explicit of them, without kicking up a fuss.”

  There was silence while Priestman contemplated the deal. They could tell Stoller to go to hell, but that would entail spending hours emptying his flat of its electronics, and days trying to gain access to the information they required, because Stoller would surely lock it down, assuming he didn’t just delete it all out of spite.

  “What do you know about tracing a Gmail message?” she said.

  “Only what Nabih and Stoller have told me. They’re getting along surprisingly well, incidentally, which is either heartening or worrying, depending on your perspective. With some assistance from Google and the service provider, we can determine the location from which the e-mail was sent, and even the computer that was used to send it, because Google places identifiers in the browser of any device that accesses its services. Obviously, we won’t know who sent it, but we’ll know everything else, and it’ll be enough to get us a warrant.”

  A group of older teenagers had gathered by the stairs to the left of the Stollers’ flat. One of them was doing circles on a BMX bike, and eyeing Hynes’s phone with obvious intent. Hynes reached into his pocket to display his warrant card.

  “I’ll have that and all,” said the boy.

  They were on the fourth floor. Hynes wondered if the boy’s bike could fly.

  “Does Nabih understand enough about computers not to have Stoller pull the wool over his eyes?” said Priestman.

  Uddin wasn’t one of the constabulary’s forensic experts, but only because he didn’t want to spend the rest of his career indoors, damaging his eyesight.

  “I think Nabih should have been a spy, so probably.”

  “All right,” said Priestman. “Tell Stoller we’ll allow it.”

  “But we won’t, will we?”

  “Of course we won’t. As soon as you have what you need, I want Stoller rendered harmless. Don’t forget that you’re on West Yorkshire’s patch, though. They’ll want to be there once you stop playing nice. They have some scores to settle with Harry Stoller.”

  “Are they near?”

  “If you stand on your toes
, I reckon you should be able to see them.”

  The warrant allowed the police to seize all computers and associated media in the flat, and Uddin was familiar with the requirements for the preservation and logging into custody of that kind of equipment. They had tamperproof tags and clear bags in the car, but they’d need something bigger to accommodate the entire contents of Stoller’s office. It wouldn’t hurt to include West Yorkshire, Hynes thought, once Uddin started packing things up. They might even be willing to help with a bag or two, because the lifts weren’t working.

  “Stoller’s place looks like you could launch satellites from it,” said Hynes. “All that stuff won’t fit in the back of the car.”

  “Consider a van on its way.”

  “And I can’t carry stuff. I have a bad back, so we’ll need willing bodies.”

  “Noted.”

  She ended the call, and Hynes stored his phone safely in his pocket.

  “Did Adolf Hitler do something wrong?” shouted the boy on the bike, indicating Stoller’s flat.

  “He invaded Poland,” said Hynes.

  “Bastard,” said the boy, although whether he was referring to Stoller, Hitler, or Hynes himself, the detective could not say.

  Hynes was about to go back into the flat when he heard Uddin call his name, and had just closed the door when Uddin added:

  “We’ve got another e-mail.”

  CHAPTER LXXXII

  Angel and Louis sat in the back of Paulus’s car, with De Jaager in the front passenger seat. They were driving out of Amsterdam toward the Belgian border, and ultimately Brussels, from where Angel and Louis would fly to London. Anouk had packed their bags as soon as she was informed of Gruner’s death, and Paulus had collected them before picking up the three men from Café Hoppe.

  “It seems you were right,” De Jaager told Angel. “The smart move was to kill Gruner.”

  “And Eva was in the way,” said Louis. “I’m sorry for bringing harm to one of your people.”

  “I told you already,” said De Jaager. “The blame lies not with you but with whoever killed her. But Gruner might have contacted someone in the city once he realized he was being followed, and that call could have led to his death as well as Eva’s. Perhaps he had even been forewarned you might come, and recognized you at the Rijksmuseum.”

  De Jaager believed it to be unwise for Angel and Louis to stay in the city any longer. It wasn’t just that both Gruner and Eva were dead: the Dutch police would already be asking questions of the staff at the Oak, and Angel had been on the premises the previous night. He might not have been seen emerging from Gruner’s apartments, but he had certainly been noticed by at least one of the bartenders, and could have aroused his suspicions. De Jaager wasn’t certain how crooked Gruner’s staff might be, but if they were working for him then they were probably just crooked enough, and under no illusions about their employer’s sanctity, or lack thereof. It would be better, therefore, if Angel and Louis departed Amsterdam with all possible speed, and also avoided leaving for the United Kingdom via a Dutch transport hub, just in case.

  Louis watched old Amsterdam become new as they passed into the suburbs. Could Quayle and Mors, or someone aligned with them, really have moved so quickly to silence Gruner? But who else knew that Angel and Louis were in the Netherlands? Only Ross, and the local feds, represented by Armitage. Louis was no cheerleader for the FBI, but even he had to admit that the Bureau wasn’t in the habit of dumping the bodies of young women in canals, or murdering elderly book dealers.

  City turned to countryside, flat but not featureless, an otherworldly landscape to him. Europe had always made Louis feel like an interloper, an arriviste, with its Babel of tongues and a history with which he had no connection beyond the fact that, centuries earlier, someone from this continent had forced his ancestors into slavery.

  To his right, Angel appeared to be dozing. The radio was tuned to a Dutch channel, NPO1, which De Jaager was monitoring for developments, translating anything interesting for Louis’s benefit. Commentators were speculating on a possible link between the deaths of Gruner and Eva Meertens, if only because the police had refused to rule it out. Louis thought this might be the reason De Jaager had decided to accompany them as far as the Dutch border: contacts worked both ways, and there might well be those in the Dutch security services who were aware that Eva Meertens had sometimes worked for the old man. Being out of the city would give De Jaager time to think, and enable him to establish all he could about the circumstances of Eva’s death before he was faced with any awkward questions from the authorities. Louis noticed that De Jaager was rejecting all but a handful of the many calls he was receiving.

  De Jaager caught his eye in the mirror.

  “Anouk will be sorry not to have been able to say goodbye,” said De Jaager. “She was always fond of you, as am I, but I do not think you will be returning here. At least, I would advise against it.” He checked the screen on his phone. “Did Angel damage the door of Gruner’s apartment while entering?”

  “No, that’s not his style.”

  Angel opened his eyes upon hearing his name.

  “Someone tried to force a way inside while I was there,” he said.

  “Why didn’t you mention it before now?” said De Jaager.

  “It didn’t seem important. It might have been, if whoever it was had got in, but that didn’t happen.”

  “The police,” De Jaager continued, reading the message on his screen, “believe that whoever killed Gruner may also have tried to gain access to his private rooms. That’s unfortunate for Angel.” He turned to Paulus. “More haste, I think.”

  Paulus accelerated. Louis took out his phone and called Parker.

  “We’re coming to join you today,” said Louis.

  “That was sooner than expected.”

  “Well, we wore out our welcome sooner than expected. I’ll explain when we see you.”

  It had been agreed between them that Louis and Angel would stay near Parker and Bob Johnston, but not at the same hotel, so rooms had been reserved for them at the Soho, ready to accommodate them whenever they chose to arrive.

  “I’ll let Bob know,” said Parker. “I won’t be there to greet you personally.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “North. I’ll explain when I see you.”

  “Touché,” said Louis, and hung up. He tried to stretch out. His wounds were troubling him.

  Angel closed his eyes again. The rest of the journey passed in silence, and only a sign marked the divide between the Netherlands and Belgium.

  At a truck stop in Meer, just over the border, a man was waiting: De Jaager’s last service to them, and to a missing woman who had not been forgotten.

  CHAPTER LXXXIII

  Hynes stood behind Harry Stoller, examining the images on the screen. Hynes couldn’t help noticing that Stoller had begun to salivate excessively. When he spoke, his spittle flecked the keyboard and the display, and he had resorted to wiping his mouth at regular intervals with a cloth handkerchief.

  There was no doubt they were looking at pictures of a different woman. Her dark hair bore a faint blue tint, and was cut in a bob. Her build was heavier than Romana Moon’s, but only because Romana had been so slight. She was unclothed except for purple underwear, and it was clear that her throat had been cut. A red misbaha dangled from her open mouth.

  “Same sender,” said Stoller, indicating the e-mail address. “Same prayer beads. Same Muslim bastard. We’ll drive them into the sea for this, you mark my words.”

  The e-mail contained only the images of the dead woman. This time, no additional instructions regarding their use had been included.

  “Why would a Muslim killer send photos of a dead white girl to a man like you?” Hynes asked.

  “What?” said Stoller.

  “You heard me.”

  “Who knows how those animals think?”

  Stoller seemed to have forgotten that Nabih Uddin was one of “those animals,�
� or perhaps he had fallen back on baiting him after the initial détente. But so excited was Stoller by what he was seeing, and the possibilities for mayhem it presented, that Hynes suspected he had ceased to pay much attention at all to Uddin, who had quietly gone about placing a USB stick in Stoller’s second, linked computer, and was copying the e-mail information for Priestman.

  “My view,” Stoller continued, “is that they want a war of race and religion more than we do. If that’s the case, we’ll give it to them.”

  He cracked his knuckles hard, and his fingers moved back toward the keyboard, ready to fire the next round of virtual shots in the escalating conflict. Uddin checked the screen, and nodded once to Hynes, who pulled Stoller’s chair back from his desk before stepping swiftly in front of him and slipping a cuff on his right wrist.

  “Up you come,” he said, lifting Stoller none too gently by the collar of his shirt. Hynes heard fabric rip, but by then he was already turning Stoller around.

  “Put your left hand behind your back,” Hynes instructed.

  “You can’t do this,” said Stoller. “I’ve done nothing wrong!”

  “Other hand,” said Hynes.

  “No. Absolutely not.”

  Hynes forced Stoller to the floor, and with Uddin’s assistance got him cuffed.

  “It’s for your own good,” Hynes told Stoller. “That evidence has to be preserved, and I wouldn’t want you to get in trouble for pressing the wrong button.”

  “People have a right to know about the second victim,” said Stoller. “You can’t hide the truth from them.”

  Hynes leaned in close to Stoller’s ear.

  “Listen to me,” he said. “That woman is someone’s daughter, someone’s sister, someone’s wife. If you think I’m going to let you post pictures of her corpse online just so you can make a name for yourself, you’re beyond salvation.”

  “Lottie,” Stoller cried, “call the lawyers!”