A Game of Ghosts

  The other course of action was to enter Parker’s house and see what he could scavenge, but he quickly dismissed this as foolhardy in the extreme. After the attack that had almost taken his life, Parker’s home would now be protected in every imaginable way. The Collector doubted he could even set foot on the property without activating some form of alarm, which would draw Parker, the police, or – worst of all – Angel and Louis. No, he would try Eklund’s home, and see what might be revealed there.

  His father stopped speaking. His eyes were fixed on his son.

  ‘I heard voices,’ said Eldritch.

  ‘You imagined them. There is no one here but us.’

  Eldritch looked around the room, seeking the speakers in the shadows, as though doubting the truth of his son’s statement.

  ‘Don’t leave,’ he said.

  ‘I won’t. I’ll stay with you until you sleep.’

  ‘I meant don’t go. Let the mystery of this man Routh remain unsolved. Allow whatever he was hiding to remain concealed.’

  The Collector brushed a stray hair from his father’s forehead.

  ‘You don’t have to be concerned. The nurse will take care of everything, and there is a physician on call in Rehoboth. He’s being paid well. If he’s needed, he can be here in minutes. You’ll be well looked after in my absence.’

  Eldritch pushed his son’s hand away in irritation, and the spark ignited something of his old fire. The Collector could see it in his eyes.

  ‘I’m not worried about myself. It’s you I fear for.’

  ‘Me?’ The Collector almost laughed. He was the one to be feared.

  And just as soon as it caught, the flame went out again. Eldritch frowned, and put the fingers of his left hand to his dry lips, like one experiencing a moment of doubt.

  ‘Don’t you hear them?’ he said. ‘They’re whispering.’

  ‘Who? Who is whispering?’

  ‘The Hollow Men,’ Eldritch replied.

  The Collector leaned forward. Eldritch knew of them – his son had told him – but he had never seen them, and never would. Even had the old man committed the worst of sins, the Collector would never have delivered him to these scavengers. And they were silent: death had taken their tongues. The Collector was sure of it.

  Wasn’t he?

  ‘What do they say?’ he asked.

  ‘They’re speaking your name. And that sound …’

  ‘What is it? Tell me!’

  ‘I think – I think it’s laughter.’

  60

  Parker woke shortly after seven thirty a.m. His bag was packed, and the drive to Natick would take only a couple of hours. He had called ahead to inform Oscar Sansom that he was coming. Sansom sounded weary, but agreed to meet Parker at his home. His tiredness wasn’t surprising. Parker knew that he would have been juggling police, the media, and lawyers ever since the discovery of his wife’s body. Although Sansom now at least knew for certain that she was dead, which would bring some small, conditional peace, the mystery of her missing years, the trauma of the retrieval of the remains, and the lingering grief of mourning would prove a drain on the energies of the strongest of men.

  Parker made a small pot of coffee, put some bread in the toaster, and walked down to retrieve the newspapers from the box by the road. He read them at the kitchen table, then checked his e-mail, and wrote some checks to mail along the way. Finally he made a call to the Natick PD, identified himself, and was put through to a detective named Dawna Hall, who had been involved in the Sansom case since the beginning. He told Hall that he was looking into the possible disappearance of Jaycob Eklund, and would be speaking with Oscar Sansom later that day. The call was as much a search for information as an act of professional courtesy on his part: he wanted to find out what he could about the progress of the investigation. Hall told him that she’d call him back, so Parker waited at the table while the detective did a background check on him, and was speaking with her again within a half hour. There wasn’t much she could give him, except to confirm that wherever Claudia Sansom had been for those three years, she wasn’t living rough. The autopsy could find no evidence of malnutrition, or not the kind of mistreatment and suffering that came from a life on the streets. Only her teeth were in poor condition.

  ‘Her teeth?’

  ‘Untreated cavities, and evidence of an abscess. She must have been in a good deal of pain toward the end of her life.’

  ‘So either she couldn’t afford to see a dentist, or—’

  ‘Yeah. Or.’

  Neither of them needed to say anything more about it. A woman being held against her will couldn’t be permitted to see a doctor or dentist.

  ‘Anything else?’ Parker asked.

  ‘Her body was stripped and cleaned before it was put in the ground, and by “cleaned” I mean soaked in bleach. Officially, we’re following a number of lines of inquiry. Unofficially, we’re banging our heads against a wall. We’re going to be reduced to monitoring the funeral service, just in case someone can’t resist being a spectator at the end.’

  ‘And Oscar Sansom?’

  ‘Opinions differed at the start – I never made him for it, others did – but those missing years mean that even the diehards have pretty much admitted he couldn’t have had anything to do with what happened to his wife.’

  Parker thanked her for her time, and promised to inform her if he found out anything useful in the course of the Eklund investigation.

  His inquiries into the more recent killings of May MacKinnon and her son had to be more discreet, but he was helped by Ross, who provided him with all relevant material courtesy of the taxpayer. If the Sansom investigation was floundering, the MacKinnon one was dead in the water. The only DNA discovered in the bedroom came from May and Alex MacKinnon. Footprints were found outside the house, but they revealed no make of shoe, or even an imprint that could be checked later. A small fragment of blue plastic was found caught on a stone, suggesting that the killer might have been wearing boot coverings or overalls, and marks on one of the locks indicating entry through the back door, but that was the sum total of the evidence for now.

  With that, Parker was ready to leave for Natick. Angel and Louis would make straight for Greensburg that afternoon, where Parker would eventually rendezvous with them prior to approaching Tobey Thayer. He could simply have called Thayer on the phone, but whenever possible Parker liked to conduct interviews in person. Eklund had thought highly of Thayer, according to his notes, and they had been in regular contact. Of all those referenced in Eklund’s records, Thayer was the most interesting.

  But Parker was also curious about the Waterbury-based academic, Michelle Souliere. The previous evening, he’d spoken about her with Ian Williamson, who taught at Bowdoin and knew Souliere from her work there. Williamson liked her, he said, but they had a fundamental difference of approach.

  ‘I believe in lots of things,’ Williamson had told Parker over the phone, ‘and want to give credence to even more. But Michelle, she doesn’t believe in very much at all, feminism apart. To paraphrase Einstein, even if she saw a ghost, she still wouldn’t believe it.’

  ‘I’ll tell her you said hello.’

  ‘Perhaps even give her a playful pinch on the cheek from me.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Absolutely. At least you’ll have a good story to tell about how you lost a hand.’

  Parker was putting his bag in the trunk of his car when his cell phone rang. The caller ID showed Moxie Castin’s name.

  ‘I spoke with Rachel Wolfe’s lawyer,’ he said.

  ‘And?’

  ‘She doesn’t do yoga, and I doubt she wears beads. Look, I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but they’re going to seek an injunction to prevent you from seeing Sam until a judge rules on visiting arrangements. After that, they’ll be pressing for supervised visits with a third party present at all times. If they have their way, you won’t be able to spend time alone with your daughter.’

  Parker slumped ag
ainst his car. He couldn’t find any words. The temperature seemed to drop, the cold entering his bones.

  ‘I’ll get in touch with Rachel,’ he said finally. ‘I’ll try to find out what’s going on.’

  ‘No, don’t do that. Her lawyer and I are still talking. I’m hopeful we can stave off the injunction, and reach a compromise on visitation prior to a hearing. But if you call Rachel now, it could complicate the situation. I’m going to take a ride to Burlington this week, and try to sit down with the lawyer over a drink. Maybe I can find out where this is coming from.’

  ‘It’s not Rachel,’ said Parker. ‘She wouldn’t do this.’

  But even as he said the words, he recalled her rage in the aftermath of Sam’s abduction. When he arrived at the hospital in New Hampshire where Sam was undergoing checks by a pediatrician, Rachel had hit him, slapping his face twice until he gripped her wrists. She’d been too angry and scared and relieved even to cry. She just stared at him as he held her, then turned away when she was released. She apologized later, and he told her that he understood, and didn’t blame her, but nothing between them had been the same since.

  ‘Leave it to me,’ said Moxie. ‘It seems like the end of the world now, but it isn’t. I guarantee it. Go do whatever it is you have to do, but remember what I said: don’t shoot, and don’t get shot. I got this.’

  They said goodbye. Parker put his phone away.

  He wanted to throw up.

  V

  A man is a very small thing, and the night is very large and full of wonders.

  Lord Dunsany

  61

  Sam lay in her bed, the blanket pulled up to her chin. She’d told her mother that she wasn’t feeling good, and Rachel had been in too much of a rush to get to her budget meeting to investigate further. Sam’s grandparents assured Rachel they’d keep an eye on her, but Sam declined their invitation to come to the main house and curl up on the couch, so her grandfather was sitting in the living area of the stable building, reading his newspaper and listening to the radio.

  Sam wasn’t lying when she said she felt sick. Her tummy had been sore since she discovered the letter from the lawyer. She’d had the sense that something was up with her mother, even before she found the letter, but she put it down to work, and her mom’s worry and anger at what had happened to Sam at the end of the previous year. Ever since the bad man had taken Sam from near their home, her mother had been reluctant to let her out of her sight. Sam wasn’t even allowed to play outside unless she stayed close to the house, where one of the three adults could keep an eye on her. Nothing Sam said led to a relaxation of the restrictions. After all, it wasn’t like she was going to be taken again …

  None of them could understand why Sam wasn’t more troubled by the abduction. She didn’t have night terrors. She wasn’t clinging to her mother or grandparents, or refusing to go out alone, or acting up in school. She seemed almost totally unaffected by what she had endured.

  Sam could have told them why. She’d known the man was coming. She’d waited for him – him, and the thing he was carrying inside – and prepared. She’d been a little bit scared when he put her in the trunk of the car, and later when he carried her into the motel room, because he didn’t appear to be growing weaker, but when the blood started flowing from him she knew she’d be safe. She did have some bad dreams in the days and weeks after, dreams in which he’d stayed strong and started to hurt her, but they went away after a while.

  The other reason she was sick to her stomach was because of the broken window. She shouldn’t have allowed herself to get annoyed. It was important that she kept her temper – and her secrets. The window would be hard to explain. She could tell everyone that she’d broken it with a toy, or the corner of a big book, but then she’d have to offer a reason why. Whatever she came up with, she was certain of two things: first, she’d be in trouble, and second, she’d quickly be back in Ms. Ferguson’s office, sitting in a big chair and being asked about her feelings.

  She didn’t want to do what she was about to, but she couldn’t think of another way out. She pushed back the sheets, walked to the window, and opened the drapes. Birds were flying among the trees at the edge of the back garden. Her grandmother kept them supplied with seeds and nuts in feeders that hung from the bare branches. Sam waited. Eventually, a pigeon came to eat. It was big and plump, and didn’t look like it was starving. It used its claws to cling to the larger of the two feeders while it pecked at peanuts.

  Sam focused on the pigeon, its feathers and its warmth. The bird stopped eating. It flapped its wings and rose into the air, circling for a moment, increasing its velocity.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Sam.

  And the pigeon flew straight into the window.

  Her grandfather stood beside Sam, staring at the damage. The bird hadn’t shattered any of the individual glass panes, but each was cracked all the way across, and a smear of blood marked the point of impact. The pigeon lay dead on the ground below, its neck broken. Sam could see it through the fractures in the glass, although her grandfather told her to stay back in case she accidentally leaned on the window and cut herself. At least it hadn’t suffered. She’d made sure of that.

  ‘It happens,’ said her grandfather. ‘They get disoriented, or mistake their reflections for another bird.’

  ‘Can we bury it?’ she asked. It was the least they could do. She didn’t want it to be thrown in the garbage.

  ‘Sure we can, if it’ll make you feel less sad.’

  He examined the stained glass, but didn’t touch it. Sam held her breath.

  ‘That’s damn strange,’ he said. ‘Every one of those squares has its own crack. Must be to do with how they’re held in place.’

  He took Sam by the hand.

  ‘We’re going to go over to the main house, and I’ll call a glazer. It’ll have to be all plain glass for now, until we can arrange to have another special one made.’

  ‘You don’t have to,’ said Sam.

  She felt guilty. She hadn’t thought about the cost of replacing the whole window.

  ‘Of course we do. It’s Sam’s Window.’

  Together they headed to the main house. Sam hadn’t eaten breakfast, and her grandparents were now even more worried about her than before. She didn’t want them calling a doctor, so she ate most of a soft-boiled egg and some toast. While she was finishing the last of the toast, she began to cry. She didn’t mean to, and tried to hide it, but the tears came too fast, like a flood rising and swallowing her up.

  Her grandmother rushed over from the sink, and gathered Sam up in her arms.

  ‘What’s wrong, honey? What is it?’

  Her grandfather appeared at the kitchen door.

  ‘It’s the dead bird,’ he said soothingly, ‘and she’s under the weather anyway.’

  ‘No,’ said Sam. ‘No, no.’

  ‘Hush …’

  ‘I want my dad,’ said Sam. She sobbed the words out, tripping over them as the breath caught in her throat. ‘I want my dad and you can’t keep me from seeing him.’

  ‘Nobody—’

  ‘I want my dad,’ she repeated – louder, no longer stumbling. ‘I want my dad, I want my dad, I want my dad, I want my dad …’

  Now Sam was screaming, and all the pain that she had convinced herself she didn’t feel, all the fear, all the loss, found a voice at last. She was many things, this child, and would be many more, but most of all she was a little girl whose mother wanted to keep her from her father.

  And that couldn’t happen. She would not allow it.

  ‘I want my dad!’

  62

  Jennifer, the dead daughter, sat on a rock, staring but not seeing as the departed flowed past, an endless river of souls flowing into the waiting sea.

  A little boy was approaching. He was about five years old, and looked scared. The youngest were always the most fearful; still children in spirit and mind, not yet transformed. They grew confused, and tried searching for their parents, and
in doing so some of them went astray. The unlucky ones, the saddest of them, ended up caught between worlds, little bubbles of rage and fear moving through rooms now rendered unfamiliar by the passing of years, too desperate to let go.

  The boy opened his mouth to speak, to ask the way, but Jennifer’s attention was elsewhere. She was listening to her half sister scream.

  And then she was gone.

  The boy remained standing at the foot of the rock, his feet almost touching the water. He regarded the dead, searching the faces for one that might be familiar, but found none. A woman reached out a hand to him, sensing his turmoil, but she was swept away before he could react.

  The boy left the shore and walked into the foothills. For a time he remained visible, a small white presence against the darkness, until the shadows absorbed him and he was lost.

  Sam lay on her side beneath the comforter on her grandmother’s bed. The drapes were drawn, and an untouched glass of warm milk stood on the nightstand. Her mother was on her way home. She’d picked up the message about Sam as soon as she came out of her meeting.

  Sam’s grandmother peered into the room, but neither entered nor spoke. She could see Sam’s lips moving, forming words but not speaking them aloud. Sam would not let anyone come near her, not since they had put her to bed. If they tried, she screamed. All they could do was watch their granddaughter stare into space, speaking to an unseen presence.

  Her grandmother went away.

  Jennifer was sitting against the bedroom wall, talking with her half sister.