A Book of Bones

by John Connolly

  In 1783, the city’s gallows was moved to Newgate Prison, just south of Smithfield, and its sacrifices were buried beneath the flagstones of Birdcage Walk. And busy was the Newgate tree in those early years: more than five hundred men and women set to dancing from it before the end of the eighteenth century alone, which meant more than five hundred bodies sent to rot under the flags. The squalor of the gallows further infected a district already filthy with the blood and shit of cattle, their entrails clogging the drains as they were slaughtered and gutted. The air smelled rank, and typhus was rife within the prison walls. Each year, more necks were broken, more bodies laid down. Six hundred, seven hundred, a thousand, eleven hundred, the total slowing until, finally, George Woolfe brought it all to an end in 1902, when his was the last neck to snap.

  And St. Bart’s watched over it all, and watches still.

  * * *

  PARKER APPROACHED ST. BART’S and entered through the west door. The desk was unattended, and when he peered into the nave, he could see no sign of a guide or caretaker. He left the admission fee in coin, and entered. The interior smelled musty, and there was a darkness and intimacy to its spaces, a sense of deep antiquity alien to North American houses of worship. He felt himself to have been mistaken in coming here—not because of any threat, but the opposite: for a few moments, he experienced a sense of peace, almost of consolation. To his left stood a covered grand piano, and an area for private prayer and reflection. He passed both, and moved into the heart of the church.

  A door closed, the sound so soft as to be barely noticeable. He waited, but no other visitor appeared.

  He moved along the pews, pausing to examine the engraved stones in the floor marking the graves of those buried beneath: Dyson and Leafe, Rags and Tornell, North and Sorrell and Cobbold, among them the names used by Mors, if Glenmore was to be believed. She had been here. She had walked these aisles.

  High on the southern wall, he thought he saw movement behind the glass of the oriel window, a kind of enclosed stone gallery built for the prior, that he might check on his monks from a place of concealment, but it could simply have been the play of light. The murk of the church seemed to thicken. Footsteps sounded either above or behind Parker, the stone of the walls and floors making the source difficult to establish. He headed back down the aisle to the door, his own steps quickening—

  And stopped.

  He had not been mistaken. They had meant for him to come here. This was where they planned to kill him.

  A naked figure, unnaturally bright, stood high on a stool. Parker had barely noticed it upon entering, taking it to be simply another religious icon, albeit one of more than usual luminosity. Now he realized how wrong he had been.

  Saint Bartholomew, the martyr, in gilded bronze.

  Saint Bartholomew, a pair of shears in his raised right hand, and draped over his right arm, his own flayed skin.

  Saint Bartholomew, a smear of blood on his shining cheeks, because the sockets of the statue were no longer hollow, and instead held two corporeal eyes.

  For an instant, Parker was once again in a kitchen in Brooklyn, staring at the ruined, excoriated remains of his wife and child. He was outside a Louisiana shack, where a man named Tee Jean Aguillard had been turned into a human écorché, grasping a flap of his own skin to reveal the redness of his interiority. He was inside that same shack, looking down on Tee Jean’s mother, Tante Marie, split from sternum to groin. All the work of the Traveling Man, all the creations of one who would have seen beauty in this statue. Quayle had chosen well the location of the trap. He had wanted Parker to see this before he died.

  “Remind you of anyone?”

  Parker turned. The man before him, whom Parker had glimpsed once or twice on the way to the church, was of average height and build, his face neither particularly handsome nor repellent, his thinning hair a nondescript brown. Only the weapon in his hands rendered him remarkable. This, too, was familiar to Parker. He had seen a similar armament in the hands of the Traveling Man: a tranquilizer pistol, loaded with an aluminum-bodied syringe. The needle would hurt when it struck—Parker could remember that much about the experience—but the pain would be much less than what would follow. Hanging from the man’s belt was a small, sharp knife, the kind used to skin animals.

  “Who are you?” Parker said.

  “My name is Sellars. You killed my god.”

  “And what god was that?”

  “The Green Man.”

  “You’re a Familist?”

  “I am the last Familist. Our church lies in ruins, and our god is no more. All because of you.”

  “Your god was a dead tree.”

  “If so, they hung your Christ from one of his limbs.”

  “And now you’ve been sent by Quayle to do his dirty work.”

  “Quayle wants you to die here. I’m happy to oblige. He’s one step away from completing his work, but a drop more blood won’t hurt. Did you see the eyes in the statue?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you recognize them?”

  “No.”

  “They’re your friend’s eyes. They’re Johnston’s eyes. You killed him. By bringing him here, you led him to his death.”

  Parker took the blow without reacting. He breathed deeply, until he could trust himself to speak again. He forced Bob Johnston from his mind. Grief wouldn’t help, not now.

  “How many others did you kill?” he said. “All those women left with beads in their mouths?”

  “Some of them.”

  “Why?”

  “Because in serving other deities, I also served my own. Now I’m going to send you to meet them. You’re going to die like your whore wife and your whore child, butchered and flayed.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  Sellars leveled the pistol.

  “The doors are locked,” he said. “No one can get in. No one is coming to save you.”

  “I know,” said Parker. “That’s because they’re already here.”

  * * *

  GACKOWSKA DUG HER FINGERS into a gap in the floorboards, and used it to drag herself nearer the front door. Her right hand was clutched against her side, but the wound kept bleeding, and vital fluids streamed in her wake.

  She glanced into the living room; its door, closed on their arrival, now stood open. The body of a woman lay sprawled against the fireplace. Her white blouse bore a mark like an Oriental poppy: dark at the center, and a lighter red beyond. Upstairs, the children had stopped crying. The pale woman had gone to see to them, just after she’d shot Hynes in the neck and chest, and Gackowska in the back and head. Gackowska had looked into the muzzle of the gun, and everything had gone black. When the light returned, her head was filled with pain beyond description, and she was blind in one eye.

  But somehow, she was still alive.

  She shifted her grip, her fingers seeking new purchase. One of her nails snapped, and the immediacy of the pain shocked her, even amid the greater suffering, but she did not pause. She found purchase, bent her arm, and inched forward. She could see the front door. Soon, she’d be able to touch it.

  She’d had to crawl through Hynes’s blood to get this far, pushing past his body to get to the hall. It was he who had spotted the plastic gloves behind a flowerpot, the material speckled faintly with red; he who had quickly sent a text to Nabih Uddin as the woman led them to the kitchen, requesting a copy of Lauren Sellars’s photograph from her driving license; he who had tapped his own wedding ring to alert Gackowska to the absence of a similar ring on the woman’s finger; and he who had died for his cleverness, when the woman spun, gun suddenly in hand, and fired, killing him almost instantly before turning the weapon on Gackowska.

  She heard sounds from above her head, and redoubled her efforts. Three or four more feet, and she would be at the door. After that would come the challenge of standing, but she’d made it this far with two bullets in her, and enduring agony unlike any she had ever imagined…

  So Gackowska didn’t
stop reaching for the door, not even when the feet of the pale woman appeared beside her, and a voice whispered, “Now, where are you going?”; and not even when she was dragged back to the kitchen through her own blood. Gackowska stopped reaching only when the pale woman placed the warm tip of the suppressor against the back of her head, and pulled the trigger of the pistol.

  Only then.

  * * *

  SELLARS REACTED TO THE noise behind him. He turned to see two men approaching from the west side of the chapel, the first tall and black, the second shorter and of indeterminate ethnic origin, with the demeanor of a homeless person. In their hands they carried not guns, but heavy church candlesticks. They wanted him alive, Sellars realized; he was no use to them dead, because a dead man couldn’t lead them to Quayle. Between the two men, crouching by one of the pews, Sellars glimpsed a young woman whom he took to be the church attendant. She was talking on a phone, probably to the police. He’d been surprised to discover the desk abandoned when he’d followed Parker into the church. Now he knew why.

  Sellars backed away, moving the muzzle of the pistol between Parker and the others—for all the good it would do, one dart for three men—until finally he came to the altar, and could retreat no farther.

  “It’s over,” said Parker.

  “Is it?”

  “You have a blade, and an air pistol with a single tranquilizer. Quayle should have armed you better, because soon you won’t have either of those weapons. One way of losing them will hurt, and the other won’t. You should choose the easier way.”

  “And then?”

  “You tell us what you know, and the police, too. You show us where to find the body of our friend. You take us to Quayle.”

  Through the walls came the sound of the first sirens.

  “I don’t think so,” said Sellars. “But you’re right: it’s all over. By tomorrow, this world will have changed. In the meantime, I believe there’s a third option.”

  And Parker understood.

  “Don’t do it,” he said, too late.

  Sellars raised the pistol, pressed it hard against his left ear, and shot the aluminum syringe into his brain.

  CHAPTER CXXIV

  Parker sat in the interview room, a cup of coffee cooling beside him. Angel and Louis were elsewhere in the City of London Police station in Bishopsgate. Parker wasn’t sure why they had been taken to this particular location, and he didn’t care. He was thinking of Bob Johnston. They should have protected him. One of them should have been with him at all times. Parker should have made sure of it.

  As for the confrontation with Sellars, Parker and the others had done nothing wrong, beyond Parker using himself as bait. He had picked up on Sellars’s pursuit of him near Lincoln’s Inn, and remained on foot for fear of losing him. He kept his cell phone link to Angel open all the time, the microphone lead hooked to the lapel of his jacket. His initial thought was that Sellars was following him to make sure he was headed to St. Bart’s, where Mors would be waiting to take him. But Sellars had been the sole threat: when Angel and Louis arrived at the church minutes ahead of Parker, they discovered it to be empty apart from Dora Coyne, the young woman behind the admissions desk. It had taken them a minute to persuade Coyne that trouble might be on its way, and it would be better for her if she were not at her post when it arrived, but they now had her as an independent witness to all that had transpired.

  Parker—speaking also on behalf of Angel and Louis—declined to answer any questions until the U.S. embassy in London had been informed of their situation. He identified himself as a licensed private investigator from the United States, and a paid consultant to the Federal Bureau of Investigation. He also threw in Ross’s name for good measure, and suggested that the embassy be asked to send a legal attaché as a matter of urgency. He was then left to wait, brood, and mourn. Within the hour, an assistant legat named Paul Canton arrived, but by then Parker had become aware of a change of mood in the station. He could sense urgency, and something like fury. He just hoped it wasn’t directed at him or his friends.

  Canton was in his mid-thirties, and basketball-player tall. He asked for a few minutes alone with Parker before any questioning could commence, put his briefcase on the table, and said:

  “What the hell is this?”

  “What do you know?”

  “I spoke with SAC Ross. He asked if you’d killed anyone, and seemed relieved to learn that you hadn’t. He told me you’re engaged in an independent investigation, but one that might impact favorably on Bureau interests. You had therefore agreed to keep the Bureau informed of your progress in return for a certain degree of facilitation, which sounds like ass-covering of the highest order on Ross’s part. So how about you give me the short, accurate version?”

  Parker decided that he liked Canton. He was probably using the FBI as a stepping-stone to a more interesting and lucrative career in the private sector, but at least he’d be good at whatever he ended up doing. Parker offered him a brief but detailed history of the events that had brought the four men to Europe, including the meeting with Hendricksen in Belgium, at which Sellars’s name had first come up, and Parker’s dealings with Lockwood, Dodson & Fogg, which he believed were directly related to what had occurred at St. Bart’s. He concluded with a pair of eyes lodged in the sockets of a gilded statue, and what Sellars had said about the death of Bob Johnston.

  “And those two with you? Ross said it would be better if the City of London Police didn’t delve too deeply into their histories.”

  “They won’t find much if they do.”

  “Ross indicated that might be the problem. Blank slates tend to arouse suspicion.”

  “They haven’t committed any crime. Neither have I.”

  “That’s not the point. Sellars is.”

  “He admitted killing some of those women found with beads in their mouths. We have Dora Coyne as a witness. She heard it all, and I also have it on my phone. I set it to record as soon as I entered the church.”

  “There’s more to the situation than that.”

  “Like what?”

  “Murdered British police. That’s all I know for now.”

  The door of the interview room opened, and two detectives entered: Considine and Woodful. Parker had already been introduced to them.

  “What about our friend Bob?” he said to Canton.

  “We’ll start trying to confirm what we can. We can get blood and DNA from the… tissue left in the church.”

  Throats were cleared, and folders opened.

  It was time.

  * * *

  PRIESTMAN WIPED HER FACE and mouth with a paper towel, and watched the water swirl down the drain. She checked her eyes. They were puffy, but not markedly so. No one would have blamed her for showing signs of grief, but she would have blamed herself. This was not the moment for them. She would mourn for Hynes and Gackowska later. Already the reports were coming in: Lauren Sellars’s car found abandoned off Orange Hill Road in Prestwich, about a quarter of a mile from the scene of the killings; an incident at a church in London; a confession to murder, but not the one Priestman wanted. Someone had slaughtered two of her officers, two of her friends, possibly even the same person who had taken a knife to Douglas Hood in his cottage on the moors.

  She left the bathroom. Nabih Uddin was waiting for her, car keys in hand.

  “Let’s go,” she said.

  Southwest, to look upon her dead.

  * * *

  PARKER TOLD CONSIDINE AND Woodful all that he could, but not all he knew. He spoke of Quayle, Mors, and the myth of the Atlas; of a dead mother and a missing child; of bodies left in Indiana, Maine, and by the Mexican border; of the Familists and their god; and, finally, of Sellars. He also informed them of the existence of a cell phone recording from St. Bart’s, details of which could be corroborated by Dora Coyne. In turn, he learned of the murders of three people at the Sellars home in Prestwich: Lauren Sellars and two Northumbria Police detectives, DS Derek Hynes and DC Li
sa Gackowska. The Sellarses’ daughters, Kelly and Louise, were missing.

  He also discovered that Christopher Sellars was not dead. The needle had entered his brain with force, depositing a massive shot of what was believed to be a strong sedative: the best guess was midazolam or a similar drug, because it would have to be fast-working to take down Parker in seconds. Were Sellars to survive, he wouldn’t be answering questions for some time, if at all, depending on the extent of the damage caused by the metal syringe, which was already in the process of being removed from his head by surgeons.

  Woodful flicked back through her notes.

  “Tell me again when you became certain that Sellars was following you,” said Woodful.

  “Charterhouse Street,” said Parker.

  “And this man, Glenmore, was the one that told you about the link to St. Bart’s.”

  “Yes.”

  “How could he be sure you’d go there?”

  “He couldn’t, and neither could Sellars. If I hadn’t gone to the church, Sellars would probably have tried to kill me somewhere else. But Quayle wanted me to die there. He wanted me to see that statue, and be reminded of my dead wife and child. He has a taste for the sufferings of others.”

  “And you went along with this, even at risk to yourself?”

  “I wasn’t alone.”

  “But all three of you were unarmed?”

  “Yes.”

  A lie, but a minor one. Parker just hoped that no one tried to play the grand piano at St. Bart’s before the guns concealed amid its workings could be retrieved. He didn’t like the skeptical look on Considine’s face, but compared to Woodful, she resembled a picture of credence.

  “Your colleagues are somewhat unusual,” said Woodful.

  Beside Parker, Canton grunted in what might have been agreement.

  “They hear that a lot,” said Parker.

  “And you?”

  “I often get called something stronger,” said Parker.