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

by John Connolly

  ‘The rest of Eklund’s caseload is pretty much what you’d expect,’ said Parker, ‘which doesn’t mean there might not be aspects of it capable of causing resentment. He took on divorce work, fraud investigations, embezzlement, skip tracing. It all looks mundane, but any part of it could be the potential source of a grudge. There are no small cases, not for the people involved in them. But Eklund was fixated on the Brethren, and the Sansom woman’s file was on his desk when we searched his house, so he’d obviously returned to that recently.’

  Ross didn’t take any notes. He didn’t need to. In Parker’s experience, Ross had a good memory for bad news.

  ‘Could the two cases be related?’

  ‘There’s nothing to suggest Eklund thought so, and he was meticulous in his research.’

  ‘So how do you propose to proceed?’ he asked.

  ‘I’d like to talk to Oscar Sansom, if only because he’s just a few hours’ ride from here. It makes no sense to start chasing old ghosts farther afield before trying to establish if the clue to Eklund’s disappearance lies with the Sansoms.’

  ‘Agreed,’ said Ross. ‘Anything else?’

  ‘There is one other detail, relating to the Brethren,’ said Parker. ‘Hardly worth mentioning, really.’

  ‘Why do I feel you’ve been saving the best until last? Go on.’

  ‘Guess whose brother turned up in one of Eklund’s case files?’

  ‘You have me on tenterhooks.’

  ‘Caspar Webb’s.’

  Ross’s eyes widened minutely in a manner that Parker could only think of as satisfying.

  ‘Maybe you need to order another glass of wine,’ said Parker, ‘while I tell you about Mother …’

  53

  Sam was searching for a stapler. She was putting the finishing touches to a school project on mountains, which involved collecting photos and maps, and adding drawings of her own alongside whatever facts and figures she and her grandfather assembled from books and the Internet. Her grandfather had enjoyed the project more than Sam, who thought it was kind of dumb. She was supposed to be working on it with Stacie Mayer, but they fell out over who got to write about Mount Everest. Their teacher, Ms. Howard, decided – with Solomonic wisdom, or that was how Sam’s grandfather described it, once the nature of the rift became clear – that the two girls might be better off working alone, and both could include Everest in their projects. Sam believed that Stacie Mayer should have been prevented from any involvement with Mount Everest due to her being a dork, and had set out to provide the final word on the mountain. The result was that her project now consisted of ten pages on Everest and a couple of paragraphs on various peaks of lesser interest.

  She wasn’t allowed in her mom’s office without permission, but her mom was out with Sam’s grandmother, her grandfather was taking a nap, and Sam really, really wanted to get the stupid project finished so she could play games on her iPad. She knew where her mom kept the stapler anyway, so it wasn’t a big deal.

  With her project under one arm, she opened the correct drawer, found the stapler, and was about to get to work when her eye was caught by her name on a letter poking from a file on her mom’s desk. She put the stapler down and checked instinctively behind her to make sure that her mom or anyone else had not mysteriously manifested in the room without her noticing before pulling out the paper.

  The letter came from a law firm. Sam didn’t understand a lot of the words, but she didn’t have to. She knew what custody meant, and she kind of knew what restrict and access meant, too. She looked at the letter for a while longer before returning it to the file. Then quietly, calmly, she stapled her project, put the stapler away, and left the office, closing the door behind her.

  Back in her room, she sat on the edge of her bed, her chin on her hands, her face turned to the smaller of the two windows. Her grandparents had ordered it made especially for her. It was clear in the center, but the edges were stained-glass squares of various colors, and as the sun moved through the day, it cast beads of variegated light along the walls of her room.

  Sam stared hard at the window, and one by one the panes of glass began to crack.

  54

  The first of the vehicles started arriving at the Buckner house shortly after four p.m. It was a freezing day, and few people were outside. Had a photograph captured the sky and the houses below, it would have been impossible to tell if one were looking at a picture of summer or winter without recourse to a glimpse of bushes and trees, because a flawless expanse of blue stretched across the horizon. But step outside and the answer would immediately have presented itself: the air was painfully cold, the chill rendered more agonizing still by a wind that appeared to direct itself with particular ferocity at the nose, the ears, and the fingertips, and caused eyes to water in a simulacrum of grief.

  David Ferrier, being a sensible man, was not outside. He was sitting at his desk, trying to remember which sonnet rhyming scheme was Petrarchan and which was Shakespearean. He could just have looked it up on the Internet, but that would have been an admission of failure. Also, like many who considered themselves cerebral individuals, he lived in fear of losing his memory, although his physician had advised him not to be overly concerned about forgetting facts and names, and he should begin to worry only if he stopped noticing that he couldn’t remember them – if, in essence, he forgot that he was forgetting. Ferrier didn’t bother to point out the logical flaw in this particular piece of advice, since he was sure that Dr. Cyr had spotted it long before now, and if he hadn’t, then he had no business advising anyone on anything.

  Ferrier rummaged in the attic of recollection for a line of Shakespearean poetry, and dredged up something about chimney sweepers and dust, and ‘dust’ rhyming with ‘must’, which meant that a Shakespearean sonnet went AB-AB-CD-CD-EF-EF-GG. He tapped his pen triumphantly against his notebook and was about to start work on another poem that no one else would ever read when he saw the van pull into the Buckners’ drive. It wasn’t an RV, but a commercial vehicle that had been adapted to provide accommodation in back, with drapes on the windows. The paintwork was green, but obviously a spray job, and an amateur one at that, rendered even less appealing by the spots of rust and Bondo. It didn’t look like anything in which Ferrier would have wanted to spend a night, but then he was unique among his peers in never having taken his family camping, on the grounds that he wouldn’t force his wife and children to do something he wouldn’t have wanted to do himself. And even when his kids had commenced asking him to consider a camping vacation, or even just a weekend away under canvas, he decided that they had been spending too long in the hot sun, and ignored them until, after some years, their urge to punish him in this way passed.

  A pair of fiftysomethings stepped from the van. They looked to Ferrier like they ate bad food to match their bad taste in clothes and wheels. The woman’s hair was dyed an unnatural shade of red, while the man could have dyed his in every color of the rainbow and it still wouldn’t have cost him more than a few bucks for all that he had left on his head. Both wore loose blue jeans, matching fleeces, and white sneakers.

  Rubes, thought Ferrier.

  Sally Buckner came out to greet them, her husband appearing at the door seconds later. Sally hugged the woman, then the man, but there was something almost consoling about the way they embraced, like mourners at a funeral. Sally led them inside, one arm around the woman’s waist, or as much of it as she could encompass, which Ferrier reckoned was about fifty percent, give or take. Kirk shook hands with the man, kissed the woman on the cheek, and the door closed behind them, although not before Ferrier caught Kirk glancing over in his direction, even though the net drapes helped conceal anyone inside the Ferrier home from view.

  All thoughts of poetry were now set aside, not only because this was one of the rare times Ferrier could recall seeing anyone enter the Buckners’ home apart from the couple themselves, but also because he’d always taken Sally for a cold fish. He found it hard to imagine her let
ting Kirk anywhere near her body, even fully clothed, never mind anyone else, yet here she was hugging and touching someone, and – hell – acting almost like a regular human being.

  Over the next hour, three more vehicles arrived at the Buckners’. Two of them disgorged couples, both in their midforties. From the last emerged three younger people – two girls and a guy – who might have been siblings. More hugs, more handshakes: it was a regular outpouring of emotion.

  Just as the kids were about to head inside with Kirk and Sally, Ferrier’s wife turned onto the street in her Subaru. She stopped and rolled down her window, and she and Sally spoke for what might have been a minute before Etta moved on and parked in the drive.

  Her husband was waiting for her when she entered the house.

  ‘What’s all that about?’ he asked.

  ‘All what?’

  ‘The thing with the Buckners. Are they having some kind of party over there?’

  She bristled. There was no other word: it was an honest-to-God bristle. If she’d been an animal, her hairs would have been standing on end.

  ‘No, they are not,’ she said. ‘Their great-aunt died, the last of that generation of the family. Sally says it’s like a little bit of their history just faded away. She lived alone, and there’s a whole mess of stuff that needs to be sorted out. She’s called her kin, or the ones who live near enough to make the trip, to mourn the old lady together, and figure out how to get started on what needs to be done. A party! God, I hope you’re even just a little bit ashamed of yourself.’

  Ferrier wasn’t, but he composed his features into a semblance of contrition, if only for a quiet life, and said that he was sorry. His wife’s response was ‘Huh,’ which spoke volumes. She went off to gather together a selection of cookies, wine, candy, and whatever else she could lay her hands on to give to the Buckners. Ferrier watched her bustling around.

  ‘Why are you giving them cookies? The woman’s a damn baker.’

  ‘Oh, keep quiet.’

  ‘And they’re Baptists. Do Baptists even drink wine? I’m pretty sure they don’t.’

  ‘I’m warning you.’

  Ferrier returned to his desk and looked out at the assembled vehicles. He wasn’t an unreasonable man, or an entirely insensitive one, but he still couldn’t bring himself to feel anything for the Buckners or their rube relatives in their time of loss.

  He was still standing by the window when his wife appeared and placed a basket of provisions right on top of his poetry notebook.

  ‘Hey!’ he said. ‘Watch what you’re doing.’

  ‘No, you watch. I’m sick of this. The Buckners have done nothing to offend you but mind their own business. You’re a nosy, uncharitable man, but I’m going to give you this chance to redeem yourself in my eyes, and prove to the Buckners that you’re not a complete jackass. You bring this basket over to them, and offer your sympathies like a decent human being.’

  Ferrier knew better than to argue with his wife when she was in this kind of mood. Slipper appeared at the door and began barking. The dog was overdue a walk anyway. Ferrier could use her as an excuse, so he wouldn’t be forced to show up at the Buckners’ door with a basket of cookies like some weird, gender-conflicted Girl Scout.

  ‘Fine,’ he said. ‘I’ll go.’

  His wife turned on her heel and left him to it.

  Kirk Buckner looked surprised to find Ferrier on his doorstep, and Ferrier could hardly blame him. Since the whole soda/lawn incident years earlier, they’d managed to be civil to each other, but not much more than that. Now Ferrier awkwardly extended the basket to Kirk while trying not to yank Slipper up by the neck in the process. Ferrier could see Sally standing in the kitchen doorway ahead of him, a bowl of chips in her hand, and through the living room door to the left he glimpsed one half of the rube couple with what looked like a beer. Maybe the Buckners weren’t such strict Baptists after all, or their relatives didn’t much care one way or the other.

  ‘Etta told me about your loss,’ said Ferrier. ‘I’m very sorry. We thought these might come in useful – you know, for your guests.’

  Kirk hesitated for a moment before taking the basket.

  ‘That’s real nice of you both,’ he said. ‘We appreciate it.’

  Sally advanced, and Kirk moved aside to make room for her. Once again, Ferrier was struck by who wore the trousers in the relationship, and it wasn’t Kirk.

  ‘Please thank Etta for us,’ she said, and something in her tone, and the way she put the emphasis on his wife’s name, was like a poke in the eye to Ferrier, as though Sally knew that this whole damned basket had been none of his doing.

  ‘I’ll do that,’ he said.

  Fuck you and your shit-heel kin.

  Ferrier turned so quickly that Slipper didn’t have enough time to adjust and gave a small yelp as she was forced to deal with the sudden maneuver. The door closed behind him, but Ferrier didn’t look back. He walked Slipper as far as the golf course, upon which dogs were forbidden to tread, and out of spite let her slip through a gap in the fence and take a crap near the eighteenth hole. By now it was completely dark, so Ferrier turned for home, stopping in front of the Buckners’ along the way. The drapes on the living room window were not quite fully closed, and a sliver of light showed through the gap.

  Ferrier had a pen in his jacket pocket. He always kept a pen and paper with him in case he was struck by an idea or, more usually, to remind himself to complete whatever errands his wife had assigned him. Hidden by the dark, and largely shielded by the bulk of the van, he quickly scribbled down the make and license plate number of each of the vehicles in or near the Buckners’ drive. One of them, a beige Chevy Blazer, had a sticker on the trunk that read SUPPORT YOUR LOCAL EDUCATOR, which struck Ferrier as an invitation for some disaffected student to key it or douse it with corrosive.

  ‘Come on, Slipper,’ he said, when he was done. ‘Time to go home.’

  He crossed the street, whistling to himself.

  And from her bedroom window, Sally Buckner watched him go.

  55

  Ross knew of Caspar Webb only by reputation, but his understanding, shared by the bureau, was that Webb’s operations were being wound down, and the resulting fragmentation of his criminal endeavors was probably good news overall. He made some calls from the relative privacy of the bookstore’s performing arts section to confirm a couple of details, then returned to the table.

  The feds, it emerged, had regarded Philip as simply another cog in Webb’s machinery, and Mother as a glorified secretary. Her given name was Lydia Orzel, although Ross’s people weren’t certain that this was genuine, Lydia Orzel seemingly having popped into existence a few decades earlier, fully formed and without a past.

  ‘So much for the FBI’s insights into the criminal underworld,’ said Parker. ‘You guys have really gone downhill since Hoover died.’

  ‘We had no proof that Webb was a criminal at all, only suspicions and guesses. He emerged from the shadows with a degree of wealth, and managed his activities on a cell basis – there were men and women working for him who had no idea he was their ultimate employer – so an infiltration was out of the question for us. He probably had three or four people he kept close, and we can only guess at the degree of trust he placed in any of them.’

  ‘Mother excepted.’

  ‘If she’s to be believed.’

  ‘I didn’t see anyone else stepping up to the plate, and Vincent Garronne is dead.’

  ‘That we knew, and his lieutenant, Terry Nakem, has vanished from sight.’

  ‘Mother mentioned that she’d watched a man being skinned alive, but she didn’t say who it was, or when.’

  ‘Whether Nakem went into the ground skinless or not, that’s almost certainly where he is. Both men had eyes on Webb’s throne. With them out of the way, “Mother” has a clear run to act as she deems fit.’

  ‘You’re forgetting Philip.’

  ‘You’re sure he’s Webb’s son?’

&nb
sp; ‘He has his father’s distinctive good looks, like a badly made crash test dummy. He also smells like a funeral parlor, but that may be incidental.’

  ‘He’s Mother’s problem, not ours. Are they expecting you to report back on the matter of Webb’s brother and his family?’

  ‘My sense was that adhering to Webb’s final wishes, including the matter of his brother, was of importance to Mother, but less so to Philip.’

  Ross finished the last of his wine. Parker still had most of his glass left. He felt pleased with his self-discipline.

  ‘If I were to express a preference, it would be that a channel of communication remain open,’ said Ross. ‘We like predictability. With Webb in place, and the Italians corralled in Boston, the Northeast was mostly in balance. The dissolution of Webb’s interests would mean a redistribution, but along existing lines. It would also offer an opportunity for state and federal authorities to find an entry point and start a process of disruption. Mother’s interest in your investigation could prove useful to this process.’

  ‘Do I get a Junior G-Man badge too?’

  ‘No, just my undying gratitude, and the continued payment of your retainer.’

  There are moments to play a card. This was one, and Parker had been waiting for it.

  ‘I’m not going to try to get information out of Mother just so you can pad out your end-of-term report. You haven’t met her, or her son. Their company isn’t the kind I’d choose to keep. And unless I’m missing something, you’re using agency funds to investigate a disappearance that you don’t want your friends in Federal Plaza to know about. I’m also aware that you’re probably keeping pertinent information about Eklund from me, for reasons I don’t even pretend to understand.’

  Ross’s aspect, already less than warm, grew noticeably colder.