Page 14 of The Angel Maker

Even after all this time, her mother couldn’t bring herself to say the nameMichael Hydeout loud. Nobody had been able to explain why Hyde had attacked Chris that day, beyond the fact he had a history of mental health issues and had been experiencing spiraling delusions in the days leading up to it. Hyde seemed to have been cruising the streets at random that afternoon. In a different universe, the victim might have been someone else. In this one, it had been Chris.

That monster.

A part of Katie wanted to tell her mother that Hyde was just a man. That it was all in the past now and he was no longer any kind of threat to Chris.

But her daughter’s words from earlier began echoing in her head.

Red car, Mommy.

Red car.

Five

Laurence left work precisely on time that day.

Which was not to say that he stopped working. Even as he drove home, his mind was on the case and not on the route. He understood the necessity of the workplace, but it did not suit him. Noise and bustle; too many people; too muchdistraction. While he liked and respected his colleagues—and Pettifer especially—the truth was that he did his best work on his own. While he had never sat down and crunched the numbers, he thought it entirely possible he had put in more hours alone in his apartment than he had at his desk in the department.

And what an apartment! Nobody could accuse it of being large, even for a single man, but equally, nobody could deny its efficiency. As Laurence opened the door, the soft light in the front room turned on in recognition of his arrival, revealing the clean floor, the matching furniture, the state-of-the-art stereo system. The alcoves were lined with neat rows of books, separated by a couch that faced the large plasma screen mounted on the opposite wall. An open alcove led through to a kitchen that hummed with soft blue light. Like the rest of the apartment, everything through there was top of the range, so that the room would not have looked out of place in a spaceship.

Laurence was not a rich man, and he was frugal; he spent money onlyon the things that mattered to him, and those things were few. At the top of that list was the place he lived, which he had spent both years and considerable amounts of money makingjust so. Everyone had different priorities, of course, but to Laurence’s mind your home was where you started and finished the day. If it didn’t make you happy—if it didn’t fit you as best you could make it—then you were at as much of a disadvantage in life as you would be going to bed or work hungry.

The apartment also knew him well. As Laurence walked into the kitchen and put the bundle of papers he’d brought with him on the table, the arrival of the Bluetooth connection in his phone had already started the coffee machine working. He set up his laptop and connected it to the department’s intranet. By the time he’d set some gentle music playing in the front room, the coffee was ready. He poured himself a cup, then sat down at the table and sighed happily to himself.

And then he set to work.

When he was a child, his father had often sat him down for serious talks. Laurence remembered many of them, but one in particular had always resonated with him.

“Laurence,” his father said, “you are born with advantages and disadvantages in this life. We do not all share the same starting line. Now, one of your disadvantages is the color of your skin. People will judge you forwhatyou are rather thanwho, and that means you will sometimes have to work twice as hard and twice as smart as them in order to be considered half as good.”

Laurence had nodded dutifully.

Then his father winked at him.

“And oneadvantageyou have is this will not be hard for you.”

He read methodically through the paperwork beside him now. He remained convinced that Alan Hobbes’s murder had been motivated by financial concerns—but if that somehow turned out not to be the case, he would have wasted only thirty minutes. And he favored a holistic approach to these matters; it was always better to have as much information as possible.

To understand the ailment, first understand the organism.

And so, within half an hour, he had a decent if rudimentary understanding of Hobbes’s career and business interests.

There had been some surprises within the material. From the house he had visited that afternoon, he had assumed Alan Hobbes had been born into a rich family—that he wasold money—and had then spent his life idling. Not so. Hobbes appeared to have been raised in relative poverty, and had made his fortune in his twenties through a series of extremely shrewd investments. Over the years, he had bought shares in a vast web of lucrative companies, and held an extensive portfolio of properties.

And yet he had not really been abusinessmanat all.

It turned out that Alan Hobbes had actually beenProfessorAlan Hobbes. He had been a senior professor in the philosophy department of the city’s university, where he had received his doctorate close to fifty years ago, and then worked until his retirement a decade earlier. Which was curious. The man’s financial investments had provided him with exponentially more money than his teaching; there had been no need for him to work to support himself. Which made it clear to Laurence where the man’s heart had been, and implied the money he’d made elsewhere had been a means to that end.

And it was not obvious that Hobbes had cared about money beyond that. Before Laurence now were details of the man’s numerous charitable donations and quiet philanthropic gestures—so many, in fact, that, at the time of his murder, Alan Hobbes had been worth far less than his grand house would have suggested to an outsider. In the years since his retirement, the man had given away more money than most people could dream of earning in a lifetime.

Laurence poured himself a fresh cup of coffee and pondered.

Who would have wanted to hurt Alan Hobbes? He gave every appearance of having been a good and decent man. Laurence looked again at the man’s business dealings. There was nothing obviously suspicious there, but you never knew what deals might have been done behind the scenes,and what resentments might have ended up simmering as a result. And when it came to investments, there was Hobbes’s rate of success to consider. The man seemed to have had an uncanny knack for being in the right place at the right time.

Until, of course, he hadn’t.

It’s like he knew.

Like he knew this was coming and was ready for it.

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