Page 5 of The Angel Maker

“I guess so. But if you had as much money as that, wouldn’t you?”

“I honestly don’t know how much money he had.”

“No, well.” Pettifer ducked her head slightly, peering out of the windshield at the winding track ahead. “Clearly enough to get away from other people. Which I have to say has always been an enduring dream of mine.”

“And of all the people who know you.”

The world suddenly brightened as the dark trees fell away, curling off to either side to form a black perimeter around a large, sunlit clearing. The dirt track beneath the car became an immaculately maintained driveway of pale gravel that led in a straight line across an expanse of neatly trimmed grass.

The house was about three hundred feet ahead—although, Laurence thought, leaning forward himself now,housebarely did the structure justice. There was a three-story building at the center, and taller wings stretching out on either side, every visible edifice topped with towers and turrets. His gaze moved over the face of the property. There were almost too many windows to count. Some were aligned in neat rows, while others appeared to be just randomly placed dark squares. Taken as a whole, the building looked like a curve of jawbone, inverted and pressed into the land.

Two police vans were parked out front.

A few officers dotted around.

Thehouse—he needed to think of it as something—loomed ever larger as they approached. Looking up, Laurence noticed that a part of the roof in the middle was more jagged than the rest. Whatever room had once been up there was now partially exposed to the air, and he could see a few blackened struts of wood sticking up. An old fire. The bricks below were scorched, and the window directly beneath had shattered and not been repaired.

The tires crackled as Pettifer brought the car to a halt behind one ofthe vans at the entrance. One of the uniformed officers approached the vehicle.

Laurence held out his ID.

“Detective Laurence Page,” he said. “Detective Caroline Pettifer.”

“Yes, sir. Ma’am.”

They got out of the car. Laurence looked at the entrance before them: two enormous wooden doors beneath a stone arch. They were far wider and taller than any human would require.

“Good Lord,” he said. “You could ride a horse through there.”

Pettifer walked around the car and stood beside him, hands on her hips, looking up.

“Told you so,” she said. “The other half.”

A sergeant led them inside to the scene.

Through the doors, there was a large reception area, the floor made of cracked black and white tiles. Laurence looked up as they walked; the ceiling was two stories above. Ahead of them, separated by a vast mirror, two wooden staircases curled upward. There were no windows, and dust hung visibly in the air, and yet there was the hint of a breeze coming from somewhere.

He and Pettifer followed the officer up one of the staircases—which joined the other on a small landing. Another pair led up from there, curving around each other like a figure eight, so that they turned back on themselves again as they ascended. The arrangement seemed pointless to Laurence—whichever route they chose, they ended up in the same place—but eventually they emerged into a large area he estimated must have been above the entrance hall. Despite the solid floor beneath his feet, he was aware of a vast distance stretching away below him, and it felt like if he fell he would be falling forever.

“This way, sir.”

“And ma’am,” Pettifer said.

“Yes, ma’am. Sorry.”

A thin corridor led away to the left with an open door at the far end. As they approached it, Laurence could see officers moving in the room beyond. He was expecting another grand, ornate space, but his expectations were confounded. He and Pettifer followed the officer into a small area that, in some ways, reminded him of the modest confines of his own apartment. Looking around, he saw little in the way of furnishings: a single bed against one wall, on which the victim was still lying; a cart of medical equipment beside it; an old television on a stand, angled toward the bed. He looked to his left. There was a small, open-plan kitchen area there, and a closed door next to it that he assumed led to a bathroom.

And at the far end of the room, an archway.

He stared at that for a moment. It clearly led away into some deeper chamber of the house, but the blackness there was impenetrable. Laurence could hear the faintest rush of air emerging from it, and the sound reminded him of something breathing.

He stepped over to the bed and looked down at the victim.

Breathingwas clearly not a sound Alan Hobbes would be making again. The old man’s lower body was still beneath the covers, but he was exposed from the waist up. His head was tilted at an unnatural angle, all but severed by a vicious knife wound.

The cause of death, at least, was clear.

But Laurence also scanned the man’s exposed, scrawny torso, taking in the additional stab wounds there. The bedsheets below the body had once been white but were now saturated with blood. Whoever had murdered Alan Hobbes had taken their time in doing so, and the old man had clearly been too weak and feeble even to begin to fight them off.

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