Page 115 of The Librarians
The suspects, known as Ahmed and Ayesha Khan while in disguise as South Asians, are said to be Russian nationals from the Caucasus region. It is highly likely that they worked as FSB (Russian security agency) contractors. But with funds tied up in the war with Ukraine, they needed an alternative source of income and turned to work as recovery agents, who typically seek stolen artwork and earn a commission when they return the artwork to their rightful owners.
It is also possible that the suspects were lying low in Austin, as sources informThe Statesmanthat the suspects were, under various aliases, wanted in France, Spain, and the UK. The same sources assureThe Statesmanthat European authorities will need to be patient: The NSA and the CIA are vying to interrogate the surviving suspect.
But consuming news about the case makes Astrid feel strangely hollow. Perry is gone. Whatever the infotainment sources have to say about the individuals responsible for his death or the circumstances around it, she can never bring him back.
When she and Hazel had their first good talk and she’d confessed a certain numbness where Perry was concerned, Hazel had told her that she might miss that numbness in the days to come.
Hazel was right. Numbness is infinitely easier on the psyche than the hot burn of shame brought on by the indifference she’d felt toward Perry’s fate. Had she accepted his distressed avowal that there was a reason behind his ghosting, had she let him stay at her place, maybe, maybe he would have been safer. Maybe he’d still be alive.
When the noises in her head and the pain in her heart become too much, she picks up her phone to call Hazel, only to remember that Hazel is currently thirty thousand feet in the air, flying to San Francisco. Singapore police want to interview her again and local law enforcement, after interrogating her all day, has granted the all-clear for her to leave the country.
But Sophie and Jonathan check in and make her feel less alone—as does Hazel, right before she boards her seventeen-hour San Francisco-to-Singapore flight.
The next afternoon, an unexpected text comes from Conrad. He is house-sitting for Hazel’s grandmother, who is on a tour of California wine country with her book club. Would Astrid care to come for tea? He has some information about Perry that she might like to have.
The drive to Hazel’s house is short, but it’s long enough for all kinds of dire possibilities to cross Astrid’s mind.
Conrad welcomes her to a dining table laid out with tea and scones. He pours her a cup of tea and nudges a cream-and-sugar set toward her. “I’m not quite sure how to begin—”
He isn’t as gregarious as Ryan, or as naturally embracing as Jonathan, but there is a stillness to his presence—reminiscent of Hazel’s—which convinces Astrid that she would have to fuck up far worse than she ever has to incur his disapproval. That he’s seen too much to be bothered by blunders like hers, however stupid and unforgivable they may seem to her.
“I really loved him,” she blurts out. “Being with him felt like opening a window in a room that was boarded up for ages. It was all sunshine and spring breezes. But when he left, it was as if that window became bricked over. Then, when he came back, made a beeline for Hazel, and asked her all the same questions he asked me when we first met—even now, knowing why he did that, I still feel this scalding mortification. I really hated him at that moment and wished he would disappear forever.”
Her voice catches. “And he did—and now I keep thinking about everything I could have done differently.”
Conrad, seated across from her, bows his head. “With regard to Perry, I will always carry a measure of guilt. The moment I found out that Hazel was married to Kit Asquith, I threw everything I had into digging up everything about him—and her. And I had far more connections at my disposal than Perry did—I made my friend in cybersecurity stop everything he was doing and put his entire team of hackers on this. Without that we wouldn’t have found the footage of Kit at the library, and withoutthat, Perry would have never set foot in your workplace.”
She tries to imagine what that would have been like—her spring without him, her summer without heartbreak—and cannot.
“But at the time I had no idea how that information would change his life—all our lives. I was away from Austin on his first visit and didn’t pepper him with questions—I figured if he found anything he’d let me know; otherwise I could ask after I returned. But I got a text from Ryan instead. Ryan hardly saw Perry for a week and then came back from work one day to find a note on the kitchen island from Perry saying he’d already packed up and left.”
Perry’s abrupt departure has long been a debilitating secret for Astrid; it’s disorienting to hear it brought up from the perspective of a puzzled friend.
“I texted and rang and got no response. Two weeks later I kicked down the door of his London flat and found him, well, not quite depressed but highly dejected.
“He’d gone teetotal eighteen months before and that was the only occasion I wished I could just pour a few pints down his gullet. It must havetaken the two of us gallons of soda water, six different kinds of chaat, and forty overs of cricket on telly before he confided that he’d received an anonymous text that threatened your safety if he didn’t vacate Austin immediately. The sender included photos taken of you leaving home and arriving at work.”
Conrad’s voice seems to come from a hundred miles away. Here it is, at last, the legitimate reason Astrid has always hoped for. Legitimate and terrible. All the fear and frustration Perry must have felt crowd into her airway. She can barely breathe.
Conrad sighs and pours himself a cup of tea. “That was the first I heard of you. I was not thrilled with his decision to leave you in the dark, but to explain the matter would have involved telling you about the money he lost to Kit Asquith, and that was asorepoint with Perry—he hated that he was exploited, especially since his family and friends had been telling him for years that he was a little on the gullible side.”
“Did you also think of him as gullible?”
Astrid can’t help but feel defensive on Perry’s behalf. Maybe he was gullible, but he was also open and curious. And what is the point of human interaction without at least a modicum of faith?
“I didn’t think of him as overly credulous, more…untested,” answers Conrad, his voice low, his tone contemplative. “He was generous by nature, and from time to time an acquaintance might take advantage of that. But Kit was someone he’d known since he was in nappies. Their mothers served as bridesmaids for each other. He wasn’t conned by Kit; he was betrayed. And he had a really hard time working through that.
“Also, he believed you’d be spooked if you knew someone had locked in on you as a target.”
She would have been. She thought she would die of fright that night, hidden above her utility room, but being left all alone with only her imagination to fill in the void would have been just as bad.
“So there he was,” continues Conrad. “He’d hurt you, he despised himself, he was still out three million pounds—and he couldn’t even drink himself to oblivion. I forced him to take a shower, take a walk, and get some essentials in his fridge, and then I had to leave for work.
“But before I left, I made him promise that he wouldn’t go back to the library again. If someone wanted Kit’s money badly enough to threaten you, then they could just as well harm Perry.”
Astrid bites the inside of her lower lip. “But he came back anyway.”
“He came back anyway.” Conrad excuses himself, leaves the dining room, and returns a minute later with a manila folder and a tablet. He pulls out three sheets of paper from the folder and hands them to Astrid.
