Page 84

He started up the stairs—quickly at first, and then more cautiously as he neared the top. For all intents and purposes, it appeared that Hyde had fallen, and he had seen no evidence of knife wounds on the man. But he also remembered the terrible violence that had been inflicted on Alan Hobbes and was aware he was unarmed here.

He stepped onto the landing.

There was what appeared to be a bedroom to the left—the brightly lit room he had observed from the front of the house—but a light was also on in the room directly to his right, and it was from in there that the sound was coming.

“Police,” he repeated—the word the only weapon in his arsenal right now—and then stepped through the doorway.

An old man was standing in the middle of the room. He appeared small and weak and was by no means an obvious threat, but Laurence kept his distance anyway. Appearances could always be deceptive. The man was wearing a tattered dressing gown and leaning on a cane. He was staring back at Laurence, visibly distraught, although whether that was through grief or rage was harder to tell.

“My boy,” he said. “My poor boy.”

Downstairs, Laurence could hear Pettifer talking to emergency services.

“An ambulance is on its way,” Laurence told the old man. “What happened here?”

The man—Hyde’s father, Laurence assumed—did not immediately answer. Whatever emotion was driving him was causing his body to tremble slightly, so that the tip of the cane was scratching against the floorboards. Laurence looked around. It was a bedroom—albeit a sparsely furnished one. Just a bed against one wall, with a table at the end. A closed laptop on that. There was no other furniture or decorations. The walls were bare. Except that, looking at the wall directly across from him, Laurence noted numerous patches of paint missing, as though at some point there had been posters up that had been pulled away quickly and carelessly.

“She murdered him,” the old man said.

Laurence looked back at him quickly.

“What happened here, sir?”

“That bitch.”

The old man’s body was still trembling.

“She came here. And she killed him.”

Thirty-three

Night had fallen properly by the time Katie arrived at the address James Alderson had given her.

It was a place on the run-down edge of the center. After she turned the corner, she found herself driving up a long road lined by dark, derelict buildings that loomed overhead. There were streetlights here, but they were long neglected. The plastic bulbs kept flickering and failing, as though the abandoned properties on either side of the road were blinking at each other.

But one further up was still working consistently, and as she drove closer she saw there was a man standing beneath it. He had a coat pulled tightly around him, one hand pushed down in the pocket, the other holding a cigarette. There were a couple of large backpacks at his feet. She recognized him properly as she pulled in, and without quite knowing why, fear began fluttering in her chest.

What are you doing, James?she thought.

It’s not safe to be standing out in the open like this.

She got out of the car, leaving the door open.

“James?”

He nodded.

“I’m Katie.” She ran her fingers through her hair. “Okay.”

But her voice sounded faint and faraway, as though she were trying to reassure herself rather than Alderson. She glanced around the street. Aside from the two of them, it appeared completely deserted. The only sound was the soft buzzing of the streetlight above.

And yet she had the feeling of being watched.

It’s not safe to be standing out in the open like this.

She looked at Alderson. “What happened?”

“This was where Chris was supposed to meet him.”