The Wrath of Angels

head enabled her to keep functioning for the present. Her tiny head sat on massive folds of fat where her neck had once been, and her arms appeared absurdly small for her body. She was like a melting snowwoman. She wore a pair of black horn-rimmed glasses on a chain. Through them she watched the Collector but said nothing, and her face showed no feeling beyond that of a general weariness at a life lived too long, and in too much pain.

The Brother took the Collector by the hand, a curiously intimate gesture to which the Collector did not object, and walked him into a closet space barely big enough for the two of them. Here there was a giant safe, built by the Victor Safe & Lock Company of Cincinnati, Ohio, at the turn of the last century, virtually an antique in itself. The safe was open, and inside were blocks of bills, and gold coins, and old jewelry boxes containing the store’s most valuable pieces. Such an apparently casual attitude to security might not have been considered wise in this day and age, and it was true that the pawn shop had been burgled once, back in 1994. The burglars had beaten the Sister badly, although she presented no threat to them. The attack, more than any other factor, had precipitated her massive gain in weight, and her reluctance to explore an outside world capable of producing such individuals.

The Collector had found those men. They were never seen again.

Actually, this was not entirely true.

Parts of them were seen again.

After that incident, the business of the Sister and the Brother remained untroubled by crime or the fear of crime. Why, then, was there still a need for security cameras? Well, for the same reason that a deserted building at the other end of the street, unoccupied and apparently not for sale or lease, had small, discreet cameras hidden behind bulbs on its facade, and the liquor store down the block operated two surveillance systems running in parallel: because, between them and the cameras in Eldritch’s now ruined building, they offered a full panorama of the street.

Just in case.

Now, on a small computer beside the safe, the Collector logged on to the digital recording system linked to the computer, found the feeds for the two cameras on the pawn shop’s building, and split the screen between them. He used the mouse to move the cursor back to the minutes before the explosion – and now here was the man, his head down, walking toward the camera, looking over his shoulder, turning, raising his hand. Suddenly a flash, and twin bursts of interference on the screen as the explosion shook the cameras. When the pictures cleared, the man was running, his head no longer down, and he vanished from one screen, then the other.

The Collector rewound and slow-forwarded, back and forth, over and over, until he had one image on the screen. He enlarged it, adjusted the area under examination, and enlarged again. The Brother stood behind him, taking it all in.

‘There,’ said the Brother.

‘There,’ said the Collector.

The man’s features were revealed to him. The Collector leaned forward, and touched the face on the screen with his fingertips.

I know you.

41

Later that mornng, Angel, Louis and I traveled to Falls End with two intentions: the first was to find out if there was anything more that Marielle Vetters could tell us about the location of the plane, anything that she might have remembered, however irrelevant it might seem. If she could not help us further, then there was someone else I might ask, although it would mean leaving Falls End temporarily. Marielle had not returned my call from the previous night, but I had not yet started to worry.

Second, we had to plan for the eventual expedition into the woods. With that in mind, I’d called Jackie Garner and asked him to head up to Falls End as soon as possible, because Jackie knew the woods. Andy Garner, Jackie’s old man, had left his wife when Jackie was just a kid. There were irreconcilable differences between them: she thought Jackie’s old man was the biggest asshole who ever lived – a serial screwer of women, a deadbeat who had never met a steady job he liked, and an oxygen thief – and he disagreed, but he’d continued to be a part of his son’s life until he died, and his wife had continued to love him, despite her better judgment. Andy Garner had that rare gift of charm, a charisma that enabled him to skate over the pain his failings caused others, and inspired a degree of tolerance, and even forgiveness, in those whom he hurt. Jackie’s mother, who knew his weaknesses better than anyone, had sometimes been known to take him back into her bed after they had divorced; it was she who had nursed him during his final illness, and she remained his widow in all but name.

Andy Garner kept his head above water by working as a guide in the Great North Woods during hunting season. He was a premium hire, with regular sports who came back to him year after year. They were wealthy businessmen and bankers, and Andy always ensured that they returned to their city lives content with their hunt, and boasting of the animals they had killed. In lean years, where others struggled to find bear or trophy bucks for their clients, Andy Garner would break records, and his bonuses would increase. He was a man who was only truly happy when he was in the forest, a man profoundly in tune with nature but lost in cities and towns. Away from the woods, he found solace in alcohol and women, but during hunting season he was sober and celibate, and happier than at any other time.

As soon as his son was old enough, Andy began taking him into the woods with him, trying to pass on what he knew and develop the instincts for the forest that he was sure lay in the boy. He was right, to a degree: Jackie had his father’s understanding of, and empathy with, the natural world, but he was softer than his father, and cared little for hunting.

‘You’ll never make money from nature walks,’ his father would tell him. ‘It’s hunting that will put bread on your table.’

Jackie Garner found other ways to put bread on his table, some legal and some illegal, but he still returned to the woods whenever he could, sometimes just to escape his mother, who had always been a very demanding woman. He had that in common with his buddies, the Fulcis. It was probably part of the reason why the three of them got on so well together.

Jackie didn’t have a camp of his own in the woods, but relied on the generosity of friends. When that was not forthcoming, he was happy to pitch a tent. When I called him from my car and asked him to join us in Falls End, he jumped at the chance. I did not tell him what we were looking for, not yet. That could wait.

‘How’s your mom doing?’ I asked. We still had not yet had the chance to talk properly about her illness.

‘Not so good. I ought to have told you about her before but, you know, I think I was in denial.’

‘About what exactly, Jackie?’

‘I can’t even pronounce it, and I’ve heard it often enough in the last month: Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease. Does that sound right to you?’

I told him that I didn’t know. I’d heard of the illness, but I wasn’t familiar with its symptoms, or its prognosis. Unfortunately, Jackie now was.

‘She’d been acting strange,’ he explained. ‘Well, stranger than normal. She was getting angry for no reason, and then she’d forget that she’d been angry to start with. I thought it might be Alzheimer’s, but the doctors came back to us a couple of weeks ago with a diagnosis of this Creutzfeldt-Jakob thing.’

‘How bad is it?’

‘She has a year, maybe a little longer. The dementia is progressive, and her vision is starting to suffer. Her legs and arms are spasming. She has to go into a home, and we’ve started looking at places. Look, Charlie, there’s money for this job, right? I need to get some cash together. I have to make sure that she’s cared for right.’

Epstein had agreed to cover all expenses. I’d make sure that he paid well for Jackie’s guide skills.

‘You’ll have no complaints, Jackie.’

‘And it’s a short job?’

‘Two days at most, once I get the information that we need. We’ll have to be ready to spend a night in the woods if we have to, but I’m hoping it won’t come to that.’

‘Then I’m good to go,’ said Jackie. ‘Some time out in the woods will help me to clear my head.’

I told him where to meet us, and the call came to an end. I felt a deep pity for Jackie. He might have been a little screwed up, and with an excessive fondness for homemade munitions, but he was unswervingly loyal to his friends. While he had complained about his mother more than any man I’ve ever met, he loved her too. Her illness