Page 26

Twenty-Six

Wednesday noon

A detailed search of Hannibal’s room produced no evidence of a gun, computer or car ownership. His mother insisted that her son couldn’t drive, and had neither gun nor computer. As for the wall art, she simply shrugged, and could not be drawn on when or why the decoration had been done. It was his own business what Hannibal did in his room, she said, with a face as unmoving as stone. She showed no visible sign of being worried about her son, or even particularly resentful at the invasion of her privacy by two police officers. She didn’t like it, but there were none of the protests Charlie was used to. She hadn’t even watched them search. She made no objection when Murphy put police tape across the door to the bedroom.

“Where is Hannibal now?” Charlie asked.

Another shrug.

“Out. At work, probably. Or with a friend. He’s a grown man. You want him, you find him.”

Charlie could see Murphy struggling with his temper.

“Thanks, Miss Deganway,” he said, and with a hand to Murphy’s elbow, led him towards the door.

“She knows when he did those walls,” Murphy growled.

“Perhaps. But she’s not going to tell us. Not without a better reason than we want to know. The person we should ask is Hannibal, and that means we have to find him.” Not that Charlie expected to be able to find Hannibal. Mainly because he wasn’t convinced that Hannibal existed.

“He works not far from here. Shelf-stacking.”

There was a chirp as Murphy unlocked his car doors. The car was black, of a make Charlie didn’t recognise. The interior showed all the signs of a person who spent too long sitting in the driver’s seat: an insulated travel cup by the gearstick, crumpled takeaway wrappers on the passenger seat, and a charging cable hanging from the dashboard. The overwhelming smell was of air freshener from a tree-shaped tag hanging from the rear-view mirror. Charlie thought of the times his own car had been like this. He moved the rubbish to the footwell and got in, glad he was in a seat and not back on the floor.

“Wait,” he said when Murphy began to fasten his seatbelt. “How did you come to be at Hannibal’s flat? Who told you to look there?”

Murphy blushed red. “Tip-off. Anonymous.”

“You’re not finding all this a bit convenient? Suspiciously convenient?”

“It hardly matters how we got the information if it’s good information,” Murphy said.

“How much do you want to bet we don’t find Hannibal at his workplace? Because this stinks, Brody. The glue was hardly dry on those pictures, and you said it yourself, textbook. The question is, who’s trying to fool who here? You need to get your story straight. Either you tracked Hannibal down from his email address, or you got a tip-off.”

* * *

Charlie wanted to believe Murphy was honest, but the evidence wasn’t on Murphy’s side. Again. He berated himself for falling for another of Murphy’s set-ups. “I can see that it might look bad,” Murphy said.

“You think?”

“There’s a turf war going on between the FBI and NYPD. We’re supposed to work together, but it’s not easy. I just go where I’m sent.”

“So, who sent you to look at this set-up? And who told you to bring me along?”

Murphy looked away, out of the window and back towards the apartment building. “I don’t know who got the tip-off, but I got sent because our precinct is the closest to here and to the bookstore. It was my idea to contact you. I thought … I thought it was genuine.”

“If you’d thought that, you’d have called the circus, not me,” Charlie said.

“The circus?”

“Forensics, your FBI contacts, your bosses, I don’t know. You’d have searched the rest of the flat. You’re fucking with me Brody, either willingly or because you’re being made to do it. We’re done here.” Charlie opened the car door to get out.

This time it was Murphy who called, “Wait. Look, I honestly don’t know what’s going on,” he said with a tone of desperation in his voice. “I thought the precinct would send the circus as you call it. I’m sure they will come. I just thought you’d want to see it before they all arrived.”

“But you’re not going to wait for them?”

“I thought finding Deganway was more important.”

“If you say so,” Charlie said and exited the car, slamming the door closed behind him. He still couldn’t decide whether Murphy was an active participant in this farce but either way Charlie wanted to get to the hospital to check on Tom. He also felt the need to talk to someone he did trust in the hope of finding his way through the tangle of stories. Ignoring Murphy in the car following him, Charlie began to walk in what he hoped was the direction of the hospital. If a cab came along, he’d hail it, otherwise he’d just walk. He didn’t recognise any of the street names or numbers, but the grid system told him he was going the right way. There were apparently no taxis in this part of the city, or not at this time of day anyway. He settled into a rhythm, as the streetscape changed from the blank, brick-built facades secured behind chain link, to more familiar tenement blocks, albeit less prosperous than the area around their flat and the hospital. The streets weren’t busy. A few people were walking dogs, or carrying shopping, and there were the ubiquitous oddballs in ill-fitting clothes and broken shoes, or pushing a shopping trolley full of rubbish, or muttering to themselves. The sounds of sirens drifted toward him, along with bursts of music from passing vehicles.

A homeless man was sitting on a step with his possessions around him and a cardboard sign asking for money. Charlie felt for the five-dollar bill he kept in his pocket for just this occasion, pulled it out and leaned over to give it to the man. He saw the man’s eyes widen and his mouth open at the same time as he heard the shot.