Page 50 of The Angel Maker

Alan Hobbes had been wealthy. He could have lived wherever he liked. And so Laurence found himself thinking about his own apartment—carefully organized to reflect his needs—and wondered what choosing to remain in this property said about Alan Hobbes.

After showing their IDs to the officer in his car, they hurried into the house. Laurence turned on the flashlight he’d brought, illuminating the chessboard-patterned floor and the twin staircases that lay ahead. The officer had taken them up the stairs on the right-hand side yesterday, and so for some reason he chose the left-hand side this time. It led them to the same landing, of course.

As they ascended farther, he breathed in and noticed odors he had missed upon their first visit: damp and mold; old wood and spilled ink. When they reached the first landing, he heard a noise behind them, andturned quickly, swinging the flashlight’s beam round to point back down the staircase.

Nothing but mist swirling there.

Beside him, Pettifer flicked her own flashlight on under her chin and pulled a frightening face at him.

“A genuine improvement,” he said.

With their flashlights bobbing, they made their way up the rest of the stairs, and then down the corridor that led to Hobbes’s apartment. The door at the end was closed but not locked, and when Laurence opened it, the space beyond was filled with a darkness the beam of his flashlight seemed to disappear into. Pettifer stepped past him and reached around the frame, her fingers groping across the wall until they found the light switch.

Laurence blinked at the sudden brightness, then clicked off the flashlight and followed her into the apartment. The main room was more or less as he remembered it but felt emptier than before, in a way the lack of people did not fully account for. The bed had been stripped down and resembled a hospital gurney now, the bloodstains on the wall somehow uglier in contrast to its bare metal frame. He glanced behind him and saw the camera above the door, hanging limply from its broken plastic casing.

Then he turned his attention to the archway at the end of the room.

Once again, the light in the room didn’t penetrate much farther than a foot or so into the old stone corridor. Beyond that, there was just a green-black darkness.

But he could feel the same cold breath coming from it as he had yesterday.

A light flicked on to his left.

Pettifer had already moved into the small bathroom that led off from the main room, and he followed her in. It was a small, utilitarian area—just enough space to fit the basic necessities. Pettifer put on a pair of gloves and opened the cabinet on the wall above the sink, and then began working methodically through the various plastic bottles that were lined up inside. Hobbes had been on a great deal of medications. Some of thebottles rattled as she picked them up, but others did not, and it was those she paid closest attention to, holding them up to the light and peering at the labels. Some she returned; others she placed on the back of the sink. By the time she finished, there were six of those.

“So,” she said. “There we are.”

Laurence bent at the waist to read the labels.

Here was the anomaly the pathologist had noted in his report. The severe blood loss indicated Alan Hobbes’s heart had still been beating when the knife wound was administered to his throat, and that was judged to be the cause of death. But Hobbes had already swallowed enough prescription painkillers to euthanize a horse. Had he not been murdered, he would have been dead within an hour regardless.

“I assume,” Pettifer said, “we’re not suspecting the killer force-fed him?”

“Alan Hobbes was not Rasputin. He only needed killing once.”

“Self-administered, then.”

“I suppose we can’t be certain,” Laurence said. “But yes, I think so.”

He leaned back up again.

“We thought it was strange, didn’t we, that Hobbes would dismiss all his staff—as though he knew his killer was coming and had resigned himself to his fate. And so perhaps this is our explanation. He wasn’t expecting to be murdered at all. He was planning to take his own life and did not wish to be disturbed.”

“But then he was.”

“Yes.”

“Which can’t be a coincidence.”

Laurence considered that. Coincidences did happen, after all, and perhaps there really was an element of that here. But he, too, suspected there were connections they weren’t seeing yet and that, when they did, they would revolve around Christopher Shaw. Because while Laurence still didn’t understand why, he was sure that the man’s presence here would turn out to be key.

And also the item Shaw had removed from the property.

Tell me about this book…

Laurence turned away and headed back into the main room.

Close to, the air that seemed to be breathing steadily out from the archway felt colder, and the darkness before him seemed even more impenetrable. Both sensations were unpleasant, but the latter could be dealt with. Laurence reached out, searching for a light switch on the wet wall beside him, and found what felt like one. He flicked the switch, and pale light flared from a bare bulb hanging down. The rush of air from ahead was joined by a humming from above.

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