Page 44 of The Angel Maker

Silence on the line.

“Sorry,” he said. “Of course what I meant was that’sexcellent work.”

“That’s better. And how are you doing?”

Laurence glanced at Gaunt.

“I’m not sure yet,” he said. “I’ll let you know shortly.”

He ended the call and then stepped back over, joining the lawyer by the graves and staring down at them for a moment. Two were filled withthe victims of terrible tragedies. One was waiting to be with the victim of an equally horrific murder.

And all because of what?

Laurence looked up at Gaunt.

“Tell me about this book,” he said.

Sixteen

Katie had time to kill after she left James Alderson’s art studio.

She couldn’t go home without letting Sam know she hadn’t been at work that day, and yet she had no further leads to follow in terms of finding Chris. All she could do now was hope he would see the message she’d left and call her. Unable to think of anywhere else to go, she drove at random, ending up in an area of the city she didn’t know well and then found an anonymous café, in which she did her best to make a sandwich and two cups of coffee last as long as she could.

It gave her an opportunity to think.

Which was not necessarily a good thing. Her phone was on the table. There had been no contact from Sam all day, and a part of her was relieved about that. After all, he thought she was at work; if he texted her now, then any reply she sent would be a lie. And, of course, shehadended the call brusquely that morning. At the same time, he often texted her during the day—just little connections, perhaps even especially after arguments—and so a different part of her was upset not to hear from him. Even if there was no reason for it, it felt like the events of the last twenty-four hours had exacerbated troubles that had been lying just beneath the surface of their relationship for a while now.

Money, of course.

She usually tried not to think about that, but she forced herself to do so now. She knew how important music was to Sam—in all the forms he pursued it—but increasingly it felt like he was chasing a dream they both knew was unrealistic. Of course, there was much more to a relationship—a life together—than the money you brought to it, but there had been lean times recently, and perhaps she didn’t always reassure him as convincingly as she should.

And yet neither of them was able to acknowledge that openly, and so instead the tension had started to come out in little asides and oblique references, never resolving itself. Sometimes she thought he was ashamed, which she hated. But at other times he would overcompensate almost bullishly, so that she’d come home to find he’d effectively done nothing all day, and all the chores and housework were waiting for her. At times like that, it was almost as though he was trying to provoke her.

But she never took the bait. And while it bothered her that they were keeping things from each other right now, perhaps the worst thing was that it didn’t bother her as much as itshouldhave. A part of her accepted that it was just who they were now. That they had started sleepwalking in different directions, and if they weren’t careful, then one day they were going to wake up in different rooms.

Katie looked at her phone.

She could have texted himherself, of course.

But she didn’t want to, and that was part of the problem. Instead, she took the newspaper clipping out of her pocket and put it on the table, smoothing out the creases and then looking down at the little boy in the picture.

Nathaniel Leland, seven months, remains missing.

This child was a mystery to her, but he was in the composite painting and so, clearly, Chris considered him part of his history—as important on some level as the photographs of her and their parents. She picked up her phone and opened the internet, and then searched for variations on thename. There were plenty of hits, but none seemed obviously relevant. There was nothing about a missing child.

But in the afternoon light, the paper appeared even more old than it had before. Whatever had happened to Nathaniel Leland, it had obviously been a long time ago. And while every missing child was newsworthy to someone, the sad truth was that people could disappear from history just as easily as they did from life.

She closed the browser and put the phone down. Just as she did, it vibrated and the screen lit up. She was picking it up when the waitress approached.

“Another cup of coffee, love?”

Katie checked the screen. A text from Sam.

Hi there. Just a reminder I have a gig tonight in case there’s a danger of you “working late” again! Love you.

She stared at the message for a couple of seconds, breathing slowly, wondering what it was about it that annoyed her the most. The exclamation mark? The quotation marks, which seemed designed to diminish her concerns about her students? The lack of the usual kisses at the end?

Perhaps it was all of these.

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