Page 19 of The Angel Maker

No reply from Sam.

She wasn’t sure what to read into that silence. Maybe he was pissed off at having to put Siena to bed himself. More likely, though, he was concerned about her. He would be worried about what her brother coming back into their lives meant. Certainly, if he knew where she was right now, he would very much want her to turn around and drive away.

She looked up at the dark apartment again and wondered if perhaps she should do exactly that. Her mother might have felt it was her job to be here, but if therewassomething terrible waiting inside the apartment, she had no obligation to see it. And if Chris was in some kind of trouble, it wasn’t her duty to risk her own safety by getting involved. Especially when he had made it clear he wanted nothing to do with her.

For a moment she felt torn between what Sam and her mother wanted from her, in the same way she remembered her brother being caught between her and their parents outside the Mill.

Forget about them for a minute, she told herself.

What doyouwant to do?

She thought back to that day at the Mill again—how her brother’s smilehad made the resentment waft away, like the sun cutting through a cold morning’s mist. And then she remembered, a few years later, crying at the sight of him in the hospital when they had been finally allowed to visit. While her brother had survived the attack, Michael Hyde had left him with so many scars. The one that ran prominently down his face; the ones on his body that were less visible; the ones in his mind that only he could see. And while nothing is ever so clear-cut and simple, it had always seemed to her that their paths colliding that day had knocked Chris off course and set him on the path he had followed since.

The guilt from that had never left her.

She remembered how she had felt as she ran toward the police cordon, and it seemed to her now that what shewantedto do was the wrong question. What mattered far more was what she would be able to live with herself for not doing.

So she took a deep breath.

Then slipped the phone into her jacket pocket and got out of the car.

Seven

Katie shivered. Night had fallen properly now, and it was cold, but this whole area seemed rough, and she felt vulnerable outside the car. There was noise coming from farther up the street: the sound of people outside a pub, an angry edge to the echoing laughter. She glanced across the street behind her. A forbidding metal block of public toilets rested on a grass shoulder there, and a skinny man, bald and shirtless, was pacing back and forth on the sidewalk, talking to himself and gesticulating with his thin arms.

She turned to Chris’s door and rang the bell.

There was no response, but the apartment above her was so dark and silent that she hadn’t expected one. She tried the key in the lock, a part of her hoping it wouldn’t turn.

But it did.

She stepped inside and closed the door behind her.

There was a thin set of stairs directly ahead, leading up to a dark landing above. She stood still and listened for a few seconds, but everything was quiet aside from the thud of her heartbeat. Nobody was here. You can tell when a place is empty; the silence just has a different quality.

But, of course, that didn’t mean Chris wasn’t here.

She found a light switch, and then made her way up the stairs tothe landing above, breathing slowly and carefully the whole time. The air smelled slightly stale, but—mercifully—no worse than that. It didn’t take long to explore the apartment. There were only four small rooms: a living room, a kitchen, a bathroom, and a bedroom. She steeled herself as she stepped into each one, but there was no sign of her brother.

Katie stopped on the landing.

She felt slightly out of breath—she hadn’t realized how much she had been bracing herself to find something terrible. And so on one level she was relieved. But there was also space for a little anger to creep in. For the worry and concern Chris had caused their mother through his behavior.

Just as he had done so often in the past.

But the apartment was far nicer inside than she would have guessed from the street outside. The carpets were all new; the walls had been freshly painted; and while the furniture was sparse and functional, each piece had clearly been carefully chosen. As an adult, she had become used to Chris finding the cheapest lodgings on offer, using them up until there was nothing left, and then moving on. But this place felt different. It had more of a settled feel to it, as though he’d found a house and made an effort to transform it into a home.

She couldn’t remember him ever doing that before.

She walked back into the front room and looked around. There was a television on a stand, a couch and an armchair, and two small shelves stacked with a random selection of secondhand paperback books.The Death House. The Stand. The Doll Who Ate His Mother.She found a few bits of personal debris scattered on top of the shelves—a faded library card; a spread of small change; a couple of half-burned tea-light candles—and at one end, a hundred-sided die.

Katie picked that up and ran it between her fingers. It was one they’d played with together—part of the set she’d saved up and bought for his birthday. But it was so old now that it had the polished feel of a pebble, and so many of the numbers had rubbed away that it would be impossible to use. Even so, it brought a pang of nostalgia and sadness. She wonderedwhy Chris had kept it. As a reminder, perhaps, of simpler, happier times. Or maybe of the more serious games he had spent his life playing and losing since.

She put it down again.

There was a cheap cell phone next to the television. It was out of charge, and so she assumed this was the phone her mother had tried to call. Which raised the question of why it was here when Chris wasn’t, and why it had been left to run out of power. There had been a time when a cell phone, however inexpensive, would have been good currency for him. But she didn’t recognize the model, and there was no sign of a charger.

The bedroom was small. There was just enough space for a double bed with a wardrobe on one side of the headboard, and a small table on the other. The bed was unmade, and there were clothes scattered across it. She opened the wardrobe. While a few clothes remained, it was filled mostly with empty wire hangers.

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