There was a knock on the door. A uniformed officer stuck his head in, and addressed Woodful.
“I think we need you outside, ma’am.”
* * *
A BLACK MAN IN his sixties was sitting in the reception area of the station. Beside him was a woman perhaps ten years younger than he, and probably his wife. She was holding his right hand in her left. A uniformed policewoman stood between them and the door, just in case one or both experienced any sudden change of heart and tried to escape into the night.
The man looked up as Woodful approached.
“Mr. Campbell?” she said.
He stood, and the woman stood with him.
“Nobody calls me Mr. Campbell,” he said. “Mostly, they just call me Glenmore.”
CHAPTER CXXV
It was after ten by the time Parker, Angel, and Louis were permitted to walk free from the station, although they were instructed not to leave the city, or the jurisdiction, without first informing the City of London Police. Parker had even been permitted to keep his cell phone, once the recording from St. Bart’s had been retrieved from it. Canton remained with them throughout. Woodful offered to have them driven back to their hotel, but they declined. Instead, the four men shared a taxi to Soho, where Canton dropped them off.
“Bob Johnston hasn’t returned to Hazlitt’s,” Canton told them, as the taxi waited for him by the curb. “A Rosanna Bellingham left messages at the hotel. It seems he was supposed to meet her for dinner, but never showed. We’ve traced his physician in Portland, and should have copies of his medical records by now. From there, we can work on finding out if the samples taken from the church give us a match on his blood type. In the meantime, try to get some sleep. I’ll see you at your hotel at seven-thirty tomorrow morning.”
They watched him drive away.
“What happens at seven-thirty?” said Angel.
“Nothing,” said Parker, “but at eight the police are going to raid the offices of Lockwood, Dodson and Fogg. They’ve already started watching them, not to mention quietly arresting the principals.”
“And you want to be there?”
“That’s what I told Canton.”
But Parker’s mind was already elsewhere. Three bodies left at the Sellars house: the mother first, killed by a single bullet to the chest, followed by the two detectives, also shot dead. But the Sellarses’ neighbors had heard no gunfire, and the police had found no shell casings at the scene.
Who uses a suppressor? Who picks up the brass after a shooting?
A professional.
Who finishes off an injured woman, having first dragged her from the hallway back to the kitchen after she apparently tried to escape?
A sadist. Mors.
But why take the children?
For the same reason that Quayle had instructed Sellars, and at least one other man, Gary Holmby, to abduct and kill young women: because their deaths might be enough to bring the Atlas’s reality into being. Sellars believed that Quayle was just one step away from completing his task, and now Mors had two children to offer. Sellars had been set up. If he managed to kill Parker, so much the better, and if Parker killed him, it would be one more loose end tied off; but what really mattered was that Sellars should be drawn away from his children so that Mors could abduct them.
But to take them where? There could be only one place. Johnston had said it himself: “Everything comes down to that old church.” The Sellars girls would be brought to Fairford, and if what their father had suggested was true, it would probably be that night. Mors couldn’t risk holding on to the children for long, especially if there was a possibility that Sellars might manage to kill Parker before attempting to return to his family. Sellars might have been a fanatic, but was he fanatical enough to sacrifice his own children? Somehow, Parker doubted it.
He could inform the police, of course, and let them swarm Fairford—assuming they bought into his reasoning, and managed to organize themselves quickly enough. But Mors and Quayle would pick up on a large police presence, no matter how cleverly it was disguised. Once they did, they’d dispose of the children before waiting to try again. More people would die; more women, more children.
Or so Parker told himself, but the truth was that he wanted Quayle and Mors for himself.
The church, he knew from Johnston’s maps, was at one end of the town, but still close enough to the ebb and flow of the community that any attempt to gain access to it while carrying two children would almost certainly be noticed. Quayle and Mors would have to wait until the bars and late-night food joints were closed, and all was quiet.
Fairford was two hours from the center of London. There was still time.
He hailed a cab, and told the driver where he wanted to go.
“And whatever the fare is, you can add another hundred to it,” he said.
“It’s your money,” said the driver.
Parker turned to Angel and Louis.
“I guess we’re leaving.”
“Without guns?”
“Without much of anything, except hope.”
Louis shook his head, but climbed in the cab nonetheless, Angel behind him.
“We,” said Louis mournfully, “are running on fumes.”
CHAPTER CXXVI
De Jaager sat in an apartment on Amsterdam’s Lijnbaansgracht. The woman before him was old, but then, so was everything else in her home. A slice of boterkoek had crumbled to dust in his mouth, and the coffee tasted of cheap beans long past their prime. She had money, this one, or so it was said, but elected not to spend it on making her life more comfortable. But who was he to judge? Perhaps she was frightened. In his experience, miserliness and fear went together. The old all had the same dreads: injury, illness, and death. Throw in loneliness and one had a perfect quartet of misery, the only assurance being that mortality would finally bring a close to all. Money wouldn’t help the old woman to dodge the grave, but might be of some use in easing the pain that would probably precede it.
She wore spectacles, she informed him, but only to read. She could still see almost perfectly at a distance. To prove this, she called out the license numbers of cars parked on the other side of the canal, and read from the signs in the windows of the stores.
“There,” she said. “I am no liar.”
Her accent was one De Jaager associated with North Holland, towns like Blaricum and Laren. It was the voice of wealth and privilege. He did not hold it against her. He had wealth of his own, and privilege of a kind. Hers had brought her at last to this place, a realm of scuffed wood and faded rugs, of ticking clocks and stale boterkoek. Were he curious enough, he might have delved into her history, but he wanted to hear only what she could tell him about the night of Eva Meertens’s death.
The woman was lost in the big armchair at the window, dwarfed by its red leather immensity, and perched on a cushion because she had no flesh of her own to act as a bolster. A tiny, ossified creature: pick her up, and she would rattle in one’s arms; a wrinkled bird, fallen from the nest, clothed as part of some strange child’s game.
“You have the money?”
De Jaager showed it to her, the bills counted and banded in a bag. She took one of the bundles in her left hand, eked some spittle from her wasted glands, and wet her right thumb before using it to flick the edges.
“One has to be sure,” she said. “I don’t trust men.”
“No?”
“Nor women, either.”
She moved to lodge the cash in the space between her cushion and the arm of the chair, but De Jaager extended a hand to intercept her.
“I have often thought the same myself,” he said, and reclaimed the money, if only temporarily.
The old woman scowled, but voiced no objection.
“Tell me what you saw,” said De Jaager.
“I was dozing in my chair,” she said. “I sometimes sleep here through the night, if it’s too much trouble to get to my bed. I have a blanket, and a stool for my feet.”
/> She gestured to both nearby.
“And a pispot for my needs,” she added, although mercifully for De Jaager, this remained hidden.
Her words brought to mind an old Dutch tongbreker: Als een potvis in een potvissenpispot pist, heb je een potvissenpispot vol potvissenpis. If a sperm whale pisses in a piss-pot, you’ll have a piss-pot full of sperm-whale piss. He had many such tongbrekers. He would recite them for his own amusement, and to test the state of his memory. Eva Meertens used to laugh at him for it. He took the recollection as a good omen.
“And?” he said.
“I heard a splash, like something heavy being thrown into the canal.”
“What time was this?”
“It was nine-twenty-five. I remember looking at the clock on the mantelpiece.”
“What did you do then?”
“My drapes were open, but I had no lights burning. I could see it all through the gaps in the blinds.”
“You could see what?”
“Ripples on the water, and a woman getting into a car. For a moment, I glimpsed her from head to toe.”
“Why didn’t you inform the police?”
“I thought I should wait.”
“For what?”
“For someone to offer a reward for information—or for a man like you to start asking questions, with the promise of greater profit to come.”
“Some might view that as callous.”
“The girl is dead. That is not about to change.”
This much, at least, was inarguable.
“Describe the woman you saw.”
She did, with precision, including her hair and mode of dress. De Jaager did not interrupt. When she was done, she also gave him the color of the car.
“What about the license number?” he said.
“What about it?”
“Did you see that as well?”
“As plain as the money in your possession.”
He reached into the bag and removed two bundles of euros. She took them, and caused them to vanish before reciting the number from memory.
“Well?” she said.
“Perhaps,” he replied.
“What more do you require?”
“Certainty.”
From the inside pocket of his jacket, De Jaager produced a photograph. Paulus had taken it with a zoom lens, and from some distance, but the image was clear.
“I want to know if this is the woman.”
She stretched out a claw, but De Jaager held on to the picture for a moment longer.
“Understand me,” he said. “You can have the money anyway, for the help you have offered, only don’t lie. If this is not the same woman, you must say so.”
“I may be a kut,” she said, “but I am not a liar.”
De Jaager blinked at the obscenity, and handed over the photograph. The old woman examined it carefully before returning it.
“Yes,” she said. “That’s the one.”
Armitage, the legat.
Now, at last, he was sure.
De Jaager stood, leaving the bag on the chair.
“Do you know who I am?” he said.
“Yes, of course I—”
“Do you know who I am?” he repeated.
The bird head wobbled a denial.
“How,” she replied, “can I know someone I have never met?”
13
There are other places
Which also are the world’s end, some at the sea jaws,
Or over a dark lake, in a desert or a city−−
But this is the nearest, in place and time,
Now and in England.
—T. S. Eliot, “Little Gidding,” from Four Quartets
CHAPTER CXXVII
It was after midnight when Parker and the others reached Fairford. Most of the buildings in the center of the town were dark, but lights still burned in the bar of the Bull Hotel on the market square. Parker experienced a moment of panic, even despair, when he caught signs of activity at the old schoolhouse by the churchyard, but it was only the winding down of a local event that had clearly run late. He and Louis watched from the square as a small group of older men and women dispersed and drove away, while Angel secured a pair of rooms at the Bull. It would give them an excuse to be in the town should the local police find them on the streets at a late hour; and should Quayle and Mors fail to show, they would have somewhere to stay while they waited a second night. They would not remain in Fairford for a third; if there was no sign of their quarry by that time, it would mean Parker had been wrong about the church, and the Sellars children were already dead.
Angel returned with the keys to the rooms, which also gave them access to the hotel after hours. By now the lights were going off in the bar, and they were the only people on the square. A couple of cars passed, but no one showed any interest in their presence. Louis produced a battered pack of cigarettes. None of them smoked, but it was enough that they were holding lit cigarettes in their hands; another reason to be outdoors, although they couldn’t remain there indefinitely. Somewhere secure was needed from which to watch the church. They left this to Angel, who headed toward the schoolhouse. Within minutes, Parker’s cell phone vibrated once, and he and Louis joined Angel inside the old limestone building, entering through a far doorway, out of sight of the main street. The windows on the second floor looked out over the churchyard, and the main entrance porch to St. Mary’s on the southern wall.
“I checked out the church,” said Angel. “Three doors, all locked: the main one, another on the west wall under the big window, and a third on the north wall. The main door has a security camera in the porch, but the other two are unwatched.”
“Can you open one of them?”
“Probably.”
“Do it.”
Angel left them for a second time. Moments later, they saw him darting between the gravestones before he faded from view.
“What are you thinking?” said Louis.
“You and Angel stay outside, one watching from the school, the other from those trees to the west. I’ll wait inside.”
“You figure they’ll kill them in the church? Why not in the churchyard?”
“Because there’s less risk of being seen, but mostly because the windows are the key, and the windows and the church are one. If they try to harm the children in the cemetery, you and Angel can stop them, but I think Quayle will want to get inside. Whatever happens, it makes sense to have one of us in there.”
“Maybe Quayle won’t come himself. Maybe he’ll just send Mors.”
“He’ll come,” said Parker. “This is the final act.”
From the pocket of his jacket, Louis produced a tiny DoubleTap tactical pistol, twin-barreled; a little over five inches in length, and less than an inch wide.
“Two spare rounds in the grip,” said Louis.
“You had this all along?” said Parker. “Even at the police station?”
“That’s right.”
“Where did you keep it hidden?”
“You don’t want to know.”
Parker eyed it doubtfully.
“I don’t suppose you have a wet wipe?”
CHAPTER CXXVIII
De Jaager met the couple in a room above a shuttered restaurant off Prinsengracht, the building still smelling of grease and Chinese food a year after the departure of the last tenants. He was close to securing a buyer for the premises, which would reduce his portfolio to three properties, one of them his own home. De Jaager no longer had any desire to be involved in real estate, or in business of any kind, legal or illegal. He had already commenced activating the machinery of his retirement when Louis appeared, seeking his assistance. Had it been anyone else, De Jaager would have refused. That decision had cost Eva Meertens her life, and confirmed De Jaager in his wish to be done with it all. Now his final criminal act would be to contract out the killing of an American legat.
The two women before him were of early middle age, with dark hair, dark eyes, and souls to ma
tch. They were known only as Lotte and Chris, after a pair of actresses in a Dutch soap opera, and were utterly morally bereft. They did not come cheap, but then, the best people rarely did.
“She must vanish without a trace,” said De Jaager.
A body would bring down a different type of investigation by the Americans, one that De Jaager would rather not risk. Disappearances were another matter. He had hoped to punish Eva’s killer himself, but under the circumstances it seemed wiser to leave the job to specialists.
“We understand,” said Lotte, the elder of the two. She was attractive in a matronly way, as long as one didn’t look too hard. Upon closer inspection, her bone structure became too apparent, like a death’s-head concealed by a layer of silk.
“There will be a premium,” said Chris. Her face was entirely without blemish, wrinkle, or any defining feature that might have made it memorable. It resembled the head of a doll, or a character sketched on the shell of an egg.
“Of course.” These women would be required to evanesce in the aftermath of the killing.
“Do you want her to suffer?” said Chris. De Jaager could barely detect the movement of her mouth as she spoke.
“Is there a premium for that as well?”
He meant it as a jest.
“No, that’s part of the service.”
Retirement, thought De Jaager, could not come soon enough.
* * *
ARMITAGE WOKE ON A sweat-soaked sheet. Her skin itched unbearably, and even the interior of her mouth felt swollen—her tongue too large, her cheeks and gums tingling unpleasantly, as in the hours following a difficult dental procedure. Snatches of a song played on repeat in her mind, like a malfunctioning jukebox.
It took a great effort to lift her head from the pillow, and a greater one still to keep it from falling back down. Her eyesight was blurred, but her hand wouldn’t rise when she tried to use it to clear her vision. Briefly, she feared that she’d been tied to her bed while sleeping, until she managed to get her right hand moving, then her left. It followed reluctantly, but only after a sharp sting to her forearm, as though she had disturbed an insect in the process of feeding.
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