Kevin Moon felt that he had strayed from the gloaming into a deeper tenebrosity. A voice that sounded like his own, but spoke from anomalous processes, assumed his part in the conversation.
“Would it have ended differently if he had?
“You mean, would I have spared him?” A moment passed. “I like to think so, but maybe I’m lying to myself.”
“I’m sorry for your loss.”
“And I for yours.”
“Is that why you came here?”
“In part, because I understand your pain, or some complexion of it. I didn’t expect to meet you, or talk with you. I just wanted to pay my respects from a distance.”
“How did you know I’d be here?”
“Yesterday I was with Douglas Hood, the farmer who found Romana’s body. The police have stayed in touch with him, and one of them mentioned to him that your daughter would be returned to you this morning.”
“Are you a friend of Hood’s?”
“I’d never met him before yesterday.”
“Do you know something that might help the police find whoever killed my daughter?”
“No, or not yet.”
“Then why were you on the moors?”
“Because not long ago, the descendants of the people who once lived and worshipped there tried to have me killed.”
Kevin Moon now knew more about the Familists than he ever could have wished. He’d read about them on the Internet while trying to understand how his daughter should have come to breathe her last in such a desolate place.
“Were you the one that blew up their church?”
“No, I was otherwise occupied at the time. Some friends took care of the church on my behalf.”
“They knew what they were doing.” Moon had seen photographs of the crater they’d left behind. It looked like a bomb had been dropped there. “Do you think a Familist murdered Romana?”
“Perhaps.”
“Have you spoken to the police about it?”
“No.”
“Will you?”
“Yes, once I know more.”
Moon took in passing cars, and passing people. He took in life, and was reminded that his daughter had none of it.
“I should tell them you were here.”
“You should.”
“You won’t hinder them, will you? The police, I mean. Whatever you’re doing, it won’t get in their way? It won’t make it harder for them to find whoever killed my daughter?”
“No.”
Moon nodded. His throat was tightening, so he had to force out the words that came next.
“What happens?” he said.
“When?”
“Later. After.” He gestured at the building behind him, and the body within. He gestured at time, and the dead days to come. He gestured at loss, grief, and guilt. He gestured at the ghost of a girl.
“You set aside that part of her,” said Parker. “You lay it in the ground, or place it in an alcove in a wall, and try to hold on to what’s left. Nothing is ever the same again, but it’s tolerable, after a while. You’ll find time passes differently for you. It becomes sluggish. Joy is rare. The temptation is to suffer and grieve alone, to cut yourself off from others. For some, it’s the only way, and it kills them in the end. They die inside, and they don’t even know they’re dead. Better to learn to live with the pain. If you can, work to ease the pain of those around you. Try to decrease the sum of their grief. It will make it easier for you as well. Not by much, but it will enable you to go on.”
Kevin saw a car approach.
“My other daughter’s here,” he said.
“I’ll go.”
“Thank you for coming, and for talking.”
“Sure.”
“I—”
Parker waited.
“Could you have done anything to save them?” said Kevin.
“I once believed I could, but I was wrong. Had I been there, I’d have died alongside them. For a while, I thought that might have been preferable, but not anymore.”
“I find myself wondering if there was something I might have done to save Romana,” said Kevin. “I keep trying to discover if there was a mistake I made, way, way back, that caused her to take that path, the one that led to the moors, or if there was something I could have said, some advice I could have given her, that would have helped her when…” He still couldn’t bring himself to say the words, and so settled for “when she found herself out there.”
“There isn’t anything,” said Parker. “Someone else made the decisions that led to her death, not you or your daughter. Were you close?”
“She was my Romana, always was. Couldn’t do a thing wrong in my eyes. Used to drive her mother mad.”
“Then it was you she thought of at the end. You were with her. She didn’t die alone.”
The car pulled up, and a woman who resembled an older, fuller version of Romana Moon got out.
“Dad?”
Kevin hugged his daughter and held her close. As he did so, something broke inside him. He buried his face in her hair, and stayed that way until he had recovered himself.
When Kevin eased himself from her embrace to introduce her to the detective, Parker was gone.
* * *
HYNES ARRIVED JUST AS Kevin Moon and his daughter separated. He also had failed to notice Parker’s departure, although he had registered the presence of the stranger in conversation with Moon while searching for somewhere to park.
“A friend of yours?” he asked Moon, as they entered the building.
“No,” said Moon, “not a friend, but maybe something more.”
And he told Hynes of the private investigator.
CHAPTER XCIX
The British Library was the largest such repository in the world, if judged by catalogued items. Its name was redolent of a certain antiquity, but it had only been in existence since 1973, when it was established to combine acquisitions from a variety of sources, including the British Museum and the old India Office. These collections were entrusted to the new institution only to be scattered to the four winds once again, since the British Library in its nascent form was spread over a number of distinct locations, including buildings in Holborn, Aldwych, and Blackfriars, most of them ill-suited to the storage and preservation of rare maps, documents, and books. It was not until 1982 that work commenced on a permanent home for the library on London’s Euston Road, and another fifteen years would pass before it finally opened its doors to the reading public. But many older patrons retained a greater fondness for the original Reading Room at the British Museum, with its tiered shelves of old volumes, and iconic domed ceiling.
Quayle was not among them. The collation into one central archive of documents from so many sources had expedited his search for the missing pages of the Atlas. Consequently, he had made more progress in the previous two decades than he had since the incomplete volume had first come into his possession in the 1920s. His most recent researches at the library had left him only a few steps behind the late but unlamented Vernay, the sorry individual who had originally managed to lose the book of fairy tales containing what Quayle had mistakenly believed to be the final, concealed pages of the Atlas. Quayle was now convinced that his error lay in sources held either at the Theosophical Society or, more likely, the British Library.
The library retained about 45 percent of its stock in London, with the rest kept in storage in Yorkshire. Each day, a van made the journey back and forth between the two locations according to the demands of readers. Thankfully, the documents and books required by Quayle all dated from before 1800, some even from medieval times, which meant they were held on-site in London: martyrologies, books of hours, early maps of the New World, even a thirteenth-century plan of waterworks from Waltham Abbey. In the past, he had been careful not to order too many of these works at once out of concern that a pattern might be noted, since the library retained a record of all requests submitted by readers. True, he was not registered under his o
wn name, but he had no desire to attract attention to his efforts. As a result, his researches were slow but steady, and sometimes months, even years, passed between requests to view essential materials. Meanwhile, Quayle would order items that had no connection to the Atlas, or books that had previously proven to be dead ends or false trails, in order to put others off the scent. But now he had run out of patience and time. He was so near the end, so near to closing his eyes and embracing nonexistence, but the hunters were circling, and he had to remain ahead of them.
Quayle arrived at the library shortly after lunch, and submitted to the mandatory search of his bag. It contained only The Times, his notebooks, and some pencils, ink being forbidden in the reading rooms. He found a terminal, and from memory began entering his requests: a twelfth-century martyrology from the priory of Christ Church, Canterbury; a mid-thirteenth-century book of hours, to which two later owners, Mysterys Felys and Christopher Colston, had added coded references to the Atlas; a set of geomancy diagrams from 1490, probably intended for Henry VII; and an early medical dissertation from the Dutch university of Leiden, part of an assemblage of vellum documents curated by the physician and naturalist Sir Hans Sloane, whose collection was bequeathed to Britain following his death in 1753 at the remarkable age of ninety-two, albeit in return for the then no less remarkable sum of £20,000, to be paid to his executors. Sloane was of particular interest to Quayle because he had acquired part of the monumental library of Cardinal Filippo Antonio Gualterio, papal nuncio to the court of King Louis XIV of France at the beginning of the eighteenth century. Gualterio’s collection contained two pages of the Atlas, concealed in the bindings of separate natural history volumes. Quayle did not believe this to be a coincidence, and was convinced that Sloane had been aware of the Atlas’s existence.
Somewhere in the library, a child was crying, and a party of tourists was gazing at the book collection of King George III stored in a vast multistory glass case in the foyer, the only physical indicator of the building’s purpose, since no other volumes were visible to visitors without access to the reading rooms.
The martyrology, the first item sought by Quayle, came up as being in use. So, too, did the book of hours, and the geomancy diagrams. Only the medical dissertations were available. Quayle might have accepted the absence of one source as unfortunate, but not three. He logged out of the system, and began to hunt.
The British Library contained more than twelve hundred desks scattered across eleven reading rooms, but the age of the documents sought by Quayle meant they would have been delivered to the Manuscripts Room, probably by hand. Whoever was examining them would be found there. Quayle showed his pass and entered. He proceeded directly to a reference shelf and removed one book, then another, taking his time. He found an empty desk at the back of the room, laid down the tomes, and sat. He detected no sign of any interest in his presence. After a few minutes, he stood and made his way along the rows, his keen eyes taking in the volumes and papers on each desk.
In the fourth row sat a man in his late sixties, poring over the geomancy diagrams. Beside him were the book of hours, and the martyrology, along with a yellow legal pad on which he was making notes. He was lost in his labor, and did not notice Quayle return to the far desk, collect his satchel and reference works, and relocate to a space closer to his quarry. There Quayle remained, and did not move until the other man rose, probably to go to the bathroom, leaving his books and papers behind. When he was gone, Quayle rose and strolled past the desk. Each volume requested by a visitor to the library contained a slip with the reader’s name upon it. Poking from the pages of the martyrology was a slip bearing the name Bob Johnston.
Quayle returned to his spot and waited for Johnston to return. He ordered the medical dissertations to pass the time. They arrived within the hour, the library being quiet, and Quayle worked his way through them. The references to the Atlas were concealed in the form of a Vigenere Cypher based on the Dutch words verloren ziel, or “lost soul,” and soon Quayle, too, was immersed in his task, but not to the extent of ignoring Johnston.
Who are you? Quayle wondered.
Who. Are. You?
CHAPTER C
Parker made it to Newcastle Airport just in time to get on his flight to Heathrow. He caught the Express into central London, and took a taxi to Hazlitt’s. The driver, softened into cooperation by the promise of a decent tip, waited while he ditched his bag, before driving him to Chancery Lane.
“What do you think of this serial killer business, then?” the driver asked, as they approached Trafalgar Square. “Muslim bloke, they reckon.”
Parker looked at his boots, which still bore traces of Hexhamshire mud. No Muslim had killed Romana Moon on those moors. And if she wasn’t the victim of a Muslim killer, then neither was Kathy Hicks, the woman whose body was still being displayed on Internet sites for all to see; nor Helen Wylie, murdered at Canterbury, and whose connection to the other killings had only recently been revealed by police; nor Eleanor Hegarty, a student from Bury, whose remains, gnawed by an animal, had just been found at somewhere called the Wittenham Clumps, also with a misbaha in her mouth.
“Who are ‘they’?” said Parker.
“The police,” said the taxi driver. “Everyone.”
“Then everyone is wrong.”
“Yeah?”
“Yes.”
The driver looked at him in the rearview mirror.
“You with the police?”
Parker wondered how long it would be before someone from the murder team found a means to get in touch with him. He’d wait to find out, because he had no intention of making the first approach. He had already given them the scent by speaking to Kevin Moon. Let them work their way toward him.
“No.”
“Do you know something they don’t?”
“Nothing worth knowing.”
“Well, then.” The driver, having thus dismissed Parker’s opinion as worthless, turned onto the Strand. “I won’t have them in my cab.”
“Who?”
“Muslims. Not since Seven-Seven.”
July 7, 2005—7/7—had witnessed a series of coordinated suicide attacks on London’s transport system by four young Muslims, resulting in the deaths of fifty-six people, including the bombers themselves. Parker thought it odd that the bombings should later have been named in an echo of 9/11, as though the tragedy required the connection in order to render it more significant. It struck him as strangely competitive.
“You can let me out here,” said Parker.
“Not at Chancery Lane yet, mate.”
“I’ll walk the rest of the way. The fresh air will do me good.”
Parker added five pounds to the total on the meter, and placed it on the cash tray. After all, a promise was a promise. The driver shrugged, and pulled over.
“This is summer in London, mate: there is no fresh air. But please yourself.”
Parker got out, and started to walk. Near the Roman Baths on Strand Lane, a man was handing out copies of the Evening Standard. Pictures of the dead women dominated the front page, with Eleanor Hegarty’s larger than the rest. Already her private life was being dissected just as assuredly as her body, the word “prostitute” figuring more frequently than “student.”
This city seemed to be closing in on Parker. He wanted to be back in Maine. He did not belong here. Yet he carried what had once been Familist soil on his boots, and the scars left by the Familists’ hired killers on his body.
He might not belong in this place, but he was meant to be here.
Now was the time for the hunt to begin in earnest.
Now was the time to bait the trap.
* * *
SELLARS LAY ON HIS bathroom floor, knees to his chest, arms curled around his shoulders in grief. The girls were at school, and Lauren was at work, so there was no one to hear his sobs.
He had felt it during the night, a dying deep within himself. He had thought it a nightmare, until he woke to the pain.
/> The Green Man was no more. His god was extinct.
He called in sick to work once again, and heard the skepticism in his manager’s voice. Questions would be asked, but he did not care, not now. Let it all come to an end. Let the Atlas be made complete. He would do whatever was required to hasten it.
But first, he would find whoever had killed his god.
* * *
PARKER ENTERED THE LOBBY of Lockwood, Dodson & Fogg. It smelled of vanilla, and the floors were very clean. Behind the reception desk sat a trio of conservatively dressed women—one older, two younger—and a security guard. None of them made an effort to appear particularly welcoming, but then Parker didn’t look like the kind of person who might be bringing business to the firm, or not the kind it desired.
Parker approached the senior receptionist, since it was likely that the other two were subordinates who would defer to her anyway. The woman was particularly stony-faced. Her makeup appeared to have been applied by a team of laborers on a break from plastering walls.
“I’d like to see Ms. Lockwood,” said Parker.
“Do you have an appointment?”
“No.”
“As one of the senior partners, Ms. Lockwood is very busy. Her diary is filled weeks in advance.”
“Well, I guess Ms. Dodson will have to do, then. I’d have given Mr. Fogg as my third choice if he wasn’t indisposed, but my guess is he was just making up the numbers for the gender quota anyway. This place strikes me as a bastion of female leadership. Which is a good thing,” he added. “Obviously.”
“May I inquire as to your business?”
“I’m sorry, but that’s private.”
“Then I’m afraid we can’t help you. I’ll have to ask you to leave, and make an appointment in writing, or through our switchboard.”
“Darn it,” said Parker. “I’ve come a long way.”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” the receptionist lied.
“Maybe I could just take a seat and wait, in case a slot opens up in someone’s schedule?”
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