Page 93 of The Angel Maker

He was silent for a time.

“Thank you,” he said finally. “But actually, you’re wrong about one thing. The paintingwasfinished.”

“What about the empty spaces?”

“You got what the picture meant, right?”

“I think so. It was you and Chris in the present, made up of people and places from your pasts. The things that made you bothyou. All the things that brought you together.”

“That’s right. And do you know what I was going to call it?”

“Unfinished?”

He laughed despite himself.

“No,” he said. “Hope.”

She left it a couple of seconds.

“Go on.”

“Hope that actually you’remorethan just that.” He shook his head against his hands. “The strange thing is I actually started the paintingbeforeI read about Jack Lock. But when I did, everything there chimed with me. The whole idea of determinism. If every detail of the past is set then everything in the future must be too. It’s the laws of physics. And so life just…” He trailed off.

“Continues down its set track?” she said.

He nodded, still staring at the ceiling.

“When I started the painting, I was planning to fill every single one of those spaces. All the things in the past—good and bad—that brought Chris and me to being happy now. But then I thought: how depressing is that? The idea that everything we are, everything we have, has all just been set out for us. That there’s no free will or room for chance in what happens. That everything has been preordained from the beginning of the universe.”

She didn’t reply.

“And sothat’swhy I left the empty spaces,” he said. “I wanted to cling on to a belief that things could have been different. That we actually have some kind of power or control over what happens in the future. The ability tochangeour paths. Because otherwise… I mean. What’s the fucking point?”

Again, she remained silent for a moment. She had no answer to his question. But it raised one of her own. Talking about the painting reminded her that the mystery of Nathaniel Leland had been coded into it, and while that might not have been her mother’s story to tell, perhaps James Alderson was close enough to her brother for it to be his.

“There was a little boy there,” she said. “In Chris’s part of your painting. Nathaniel Leland. Who is he?”

Alderson stared at her for a moment.

And just as he was about to answer, his phone vibrated on the table. They both started at the noise, and then Katie snatched it up quickly. It was a message sent from Chris’s phone, appearing beneath the threat she’d sent earlier.

I will be in touch. Talk to the police and I’ll kill him.

She stared at that for a moment, her heart beating a little harder.

Then the phone vibrated again as a second message arrived directly below.

Burn the book and I’ll kill you too.

Thirty-six

Leland stared down at the message.

Burn the book and I’ll kill you too.

It wasn’t enough.

The knowledge that his father’s book was in his brother’s hands had tormented him for decades. That it was now in the possession of someone who might destroy it was intolerable. His father’s writing was the word of God. If it was destroyed, Leland would do far worse than kill the person responsible. Even the suggestion of damaging it demanded punishment and suffering beyond imagination.

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