Page 15 of The Angel Maker

The lawyer’s words from earlier. They made Laurence consider the circumstances leading up to Hobbes’s murder and the actions the old man had taken.

Dismissing all his staff.

Arranging for Gaunt to turn up the next morning.

Almost as if he was waiting for his killer to arrive, his murder simply another appointment that had to be met.

Laurence slid the laptop across and performed a search for Hobbes at the university. The page loaded slowly, so while he waited he opened the online case file. It included a list of all the employees registered as working for Alan Hobbes. Updates were gradually being added as each one was spoken to, and Laurence scanned a few of the reports that had arrived after he left the office. There were several still unaccounted for, but so far everyone interviewed had confirmed what Gaunt had told them.

Laurence leaned back in his chair and rubbed his mouth thoughtfully.

The obvious question waswhyAlan Hobbes had surrendered his life without a fight. He seemed to have accepted his death was coming—as though, after a life of good fortune and luxury, a debt had come due and he had been resigned to paying it.

Like he made a deal with the devil, Laurence thought.

Not literally, of course. Laurence was not a religious man. Even if he had been, he suspected such a deal would be functionally impossible—that the devil would most likely end up exasperated, throwing his little red hands in the air at the flood of applications. Butfigurativelythere was somethingthere. Especially when Laurence remembered the look of pain and sadness etched on the dead man’s face.

Laurence’s cell phone rang.

It was still in his jacket pocket. He fumbled for it, saw it was Pettifer, then accepted the call and held the phone to his ear.

“Hello there,” he said. “You have reached your boss. Please leave a message after the—”

“You’re not my fucking boss, Laurence.”

“Technically no, but we both know the truth deep down.”

“Working hard?”

“Of course,” he said. “Yourself?”

“Not only working hard but workingsmart,” she said. “Check your in-box.”

“Hold the line. Your call will be answered as soon as—”

“Just do it, Laurence.”

With the phone still pressed to his ear, he reached for the laptop and scrolled through until he found the email. When he opened it, he read the message twice and then looked down at the attachment.

Hobbes had a camera installed inside his apartment.

Laurence opened the footage Pettifer had sent him.

The security camera in Hobbes’s apartment had been located high up above the door. He supposed that was some consolation for him not having spotted it at the time—and, of course, for all her talk of smartness, Pettifer hadn’t noticed it then either.

Nevertheless.

He was still kicking himself a little.

When the video opened, he noted the time stamp on the bottom. Assuming the information was accurate, the clip had been recorded the day of the murder, beginning a little before eight o’clock at night and running for approximately five minutes. Pettifer had explained it was the last availablefootage that could be retrieved from the camera. Which gave Laurence pause. It seemed a step beyond the capabilities of modern technology to imagine the surveillance system had simply winked out of existence at the same time as its owner.

All will be revealed, he told himself.

He pressed play.

He was presented with a grainy black-and-white image, the recording disappointingly low-resolution. The angle was decent enough, at least, taking in most of the main room. Hobbes was already in situ, lying in the bed where he had been found today. But he was alive here. The quality was just good enough for Laurence to make out the covers moving gently over the old man’s chest. He appeared to be sleeping, with his head tilted back a little and his mouth slightly open.

Laurence watched as a line of static rolled slowly up the screen. When it reached Hobbes, it seemed to make his body convulse as it passed over him, his expression momentarily twisting into something else before the static moved on, leaving just his peaceful, sleeping face again.

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