Ormsby paused at the door to the living room. The drapes were drawn, and it was dark inside. He didn’t want to risk having the child run at him. There was any number of heavy objects in the room – cut-glass vases, lamps, bronzes. Even a glancing blow from one of them might be enough to lay him flat on the ground, and once he was down he would be vulnerable to further attack.
‘Missy, are you in there?’ he called.
He received no reply, but he thought he could hear a small snuffling sound.
‘Look, I’m sorry I hurt you, but I did warn you, and I’m a man who keeps his word. I don’t want to cause you any more pain, honest I don’t.’
He tried to come up with some excuse for what was happening that might be acceptable and understandable to a child.
‘I need some money, that’s all,’ he said. ‘I’m going to send a message to your mom and dad, they’ll pay me what I want, and then I’ll let you go. They love you, right? If they love you, they’ll pay up, and pretty soon this will all be over. In the meantime, you can watch TV, and eat whatever you like. I’ve got a full larder, and all kinds of movies. There’s even a computer you can play games on. How about that? So you show yourself, then we can get you comfortable and set about returning you to your family. What do you say? We got a deal?’
Something cold touched the side of his neck. He didn’t have to see it to know it was a gun.
‘No,’ said a male voice, and Ormsby recognized it from the exchange at the front door only minutes earlier. ‘I don’t think that deal will be acceptable at all.’
Ormsby considered trying to bring his pistol into play, but it was in his right hand and the man was slightly to his left. Ormsby would be dead before he could use it. Still, he didn’t panic. The Gray Man wasn’t the kind to do so.
‘Are you police?’ he asked.
‘What do you think?’
‘If you’re police, then you’ve entered my home illegally.’
‘You a lawyer?’
‘No, but I know the law.’
‘Watch a lot of TV, huh?’
‘I read.’
‘Good for you.’
‘Don’t patronize me.’
The barrel of the gun nudged Ormsby gently.
‘Frankly, Mr Ormsby, I can do whatever I please, and you’ll do whatever I tell you to, beginning with dropping that gun in your hand.’
Ormsby did as he was told.
‘You’re no cop,’ he said.
‘Took you long enough to figure that out.’
‘So what do you want?’
‘You, Mr Ormsby. We want you.’
We?
A light went on in the living room, and the muzzle guided Ormsby inside. He saw the girl sitting in an armchair, wrapped in the big wool blanket that Ormsby sometimes used to keep out the cold. There was some bruising to her face, but she didn’t look frightened. Ormsby wondered why she wasn’t scared, until he saw the man standing behind her.
He was unshaven, and of indeterminate age, so that he might have been anywhere between forty and sixty. He wore a green combat jacket that was old and battered enough to have seen service in Vietnam. Ormsby’s first thought was that he looked like a homeless person, and therefore his house was in the process of being burgled. It led him to believe, however briefly, that he might yet be able to talk his way out of this. He had some valuables, and a little hard cash. Depending on how unscrupulous these men were, they could be reasoned with. If their tastes ran in a particular direction, he might even be in a position to offer them the girl herself. It didn’t matter much to Ormsby how she died, just that she died. He could deal with the men later, just as soon as he managed to get his hands on another weapon. He had plenty stored around the house, just in case.
Then Ormsby saw that the man’s left hand was hanging over the top of the armchair, and the girl was holding on to it with her right, so that their linked arms hung across her body like a protective shield. She appeared to be deriving strength and consolation from his presence. She trusted him. He was watching Ormsby with the dead gaze of a farmer about to behead a snake that has threatened one of his herd. If he was a burglar, then he wasn’t the kind to hurt a child. Ormsby felt some of his hope ebb. All was not yet lost, but he’d have to be clever. It did not even cross his mind that they might have come for the girl herself. He had been so careful for so long that he found it almost impossible to conceive of being caught; or, if such an eventuality ever troubled him, it always involved men in uniform, and detectives with badges, and these were neither.
‘Sit down,’ said the voice from behind, and Ormsby took a second armchair, which now allowed him to see the one with the gun. He was tall, black, and bald, with the faintest of gray goatees. Unlike the other, he appeared faintly amused: if the first man would have beheaded Ormsby with a single blow, granted the opportunity, this one gave the impression that he might first prefer to toy with his prey.
Even as Ormsby watched them, assessing the odds, the Gray Man was trying to figure out how they had got in. It wasn’t too hard, once he set his mind to it. The jamming of the garage door had been no malfunction: these men had somehow overridden his own control, and because the door remained up the alarm system had effectively been disabled. When the black man rang the doorbell as a distraction, the other must have raised the door, entered the garage, taken the girl, then continued into the house, keeping her quiet when Ormsby returned to his car, before opening the front door to admit his colleague.
But then Ormsby heard footsteps approaching from the hall. The figure that appeared in the doorway was of average height, with a build that was just on the heavier side of slight. He moved slowly, and took in his surroundings as though faintly appalled by all that he was seeing. And although Ormsby had heeded him coming, and seen with his own eyes how he stepped into the open doorway, still it was as though this man had descended upon him, alighting in his home like a bird of prey landing by wounded quarry. He paused on the threshold of the living room, enshadowed, taking in Ormsby, then the girl. Ormsby saw his head tilt, and once again he was reminded of the movements of a hawk. He remembered what he had been told many years before.
If you’re lucky, and careful, you’ll die in your own bed, and no one will ever learn of what you’ve done. But if the odds change – and the odds always change, it’s just a question of how much – then the hunters may find you, and if that happens you will tell them nothing about us.
Because there are worse things than being caught.
The stranger stepped into the room, the light catching the white markings in his hair before losing itself in the cold fire of his eyes.
And deep inside Roger Ormsby, the Gray Man whispered the hunter’s name, and tried to find a hiding place in the disused hollows of his heart.
6
Back, back through the years, to a younger Ormsby, and the first warning that the hunter might someday come …
Ormsby wouldn’t have called it blackmail, exactly. Oh, the threat was there, and it was made explicit to him by the woman who had arrived at his door shortly after he’d killed a boy named Joseph Slocum, who’d made the mistake of running off to sulk in a culvert near his home after an argument with his mother. The smell of his burning still lingered in the basement, and a new game was about to begin.
Ormsby had been surprised by how much the woman knew about him: she didn’t have all the names, just two, but her information was enough to damn him, especially since it included photographs of him snatching the boy. They looked like they’d been taken through darkened glass, and Ormsby vaguely recollected a van parked nearby when he’d taken Slocum.
But the woman didn’t want to give what she had to the police. Instead, she offered Ormsby a deal: her silence in return for a favor, should it be asked of him, and he had acquiesced because, really, what choice did he have? Five years went by, and Ormsby had begun to believe that the debt might never be called in when the woman contacted him again. This time, she gave him the name of a child ??
? a girl – and the time and place at which she would be most vulnerable. The woman would even arrange for the girl’s mother to be otherwise occupied – a fire in a trash can, nothing serious – to give Ormsby the time he needed.
Ormsby did as he was asked. He didn’t even need to know the reason why the child had to disappear, because he could guess it. He wasn’t a fool. The parents of a missing child have no time for any concerns other than their own, and, handled correctly, such a disappearance guaranteed a lifetime of distraction. This particular girl’s parents – campaigners, proselytizers, do-gooders – just needed to be turned aside from their mission. So Ormsby took the girl and began a fresh game, and the woman never contacted him again, except to give him that warning about luck and care, and the importance of remaining silent.
And now the test was about to begin.
Parker walked past Ormsby without giving him another glance and approached the girl. He saw her grip tighten instinctively on Angel’s hand. Parker went down on one knee before her, like a man paying homage to the image of a saint.
‘You’re Charlotte, right?’ he asked.
She nodded.
‘But your family calls you Charlie.’
Another nod.
‘That’s my name, too.’
She looked dubious, but Angel squeezed her hand and said, ‘It’s true.’
‘So, may I call you Charlie, as one to another?’
She looked to Angel, and he nodded.
‘Yes,’ she said.
‘Thank you. In a few minutes, Charlie, we’re going to contact your parents, and the police, and we’ll tell them to come get you. But first, we need to talk with this man here – his name is Ormsby, although you don’t need to worry about that – because we don’t think you’re the first child he’s taken, and out there are other mommies and daddies who’ve lost sons and daughters to him. We can’t bring their children back, but we can give their moms and dads a little peace by letting them know the truth.
‘But I understand what you’ve been through, and it may be that you don’t want to wait. So if you ask it, we’ll make the call to your parents right now, and hope that the police can get what they need from Mr Ormsby back at the station. My guess, though, is that Mr Ormsby will tell them nothing. You see, we got to him just a little too late, otherwise we’d have stopped him from taking you. But unless someone saw what happened, then it’s possible that he might be able to lie his way out of this. People like him are very good at lying. If that happens, then he’ll get away not only with what he did to you, but what he did to all those other children.
‘So it’s your choice, Charlie. Can we have the time that we need?’
She thought long and hard, so long that, for a moment, Parker believed she might refuse, and he would have kept his word to her if she had. But instead she said, ‘Yes, you can talk to him.’
Parker thanked her, then rose. He reached into his pocket and handed her a cell phone.
‘Angel will take you into the kitchen to wait while Louis and I stay here with Mr Ormsby, if that’s okay. Do you know your mom’s number, or your dad’s?’
‘I know both.’
‘Then pick one, and put it into that phone. If you get frightened, or worried, or feel that we’re taking too long, you just press the green button. Nobody will try to stop you, and no one will be angry. We’re just grateful for the chance you’ve given us.’
Charlie looked past him to where Ormsby sat, and the purity of her hatred for him shone from her face.
‘I’ll wait until you tell me to call,’ she said.
Angel continued to hold her hand as she climbed from the chair, and accompanied her to the kitchen, leaving Ormsby alone with Parker and Louis. Once she was safely out of the room, Parker placed an upright chair directly opposite Ormsby.
‘Do you know who I am?’ Parker asked.
‘An intruder in my home,’ said Ormsby. ‘A pedophile who broke in here with his deviant friends after I rescued that little girl from them.’
‘My name is Parker.’
‘I don’t care.’
‘How many others have you taken?’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
‘Elizabeth Keynes.’
Of all the possibilities, it had to be that one: the favor, the debt.
‘Never heard of her.’
‘You’re lying. The cries of dying children echo in this house.’
‘I don’t even understand what language you’re speaking. It’s just noise to me.’
‘Aren’t you afraid of what we might do to you?’
‘You mean kill me?’ Ormsby laughed. ‘You won’t do that.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because if you kill me, you lose. You get nothing.’
‘We could torture you.’
Ormsby stared hard at the man who sat across from him.
‘No, you won’t do that either. It’s not in you.’ Ormsby inclined a chin toward Louis. ‘Maybe it’s in your friend here, but I don’t believe you’d let him do the kind of harm that you wouldn’t be willing to inflict yourself.’
‘So you do know who I am?’
‘Like I told your friend, I read a lot. I’ve seen your picture. I know what you are.’
‘What do you think will happen if we hand you over to the police?’
‘I’ll tell my story of how I found the girl wandering, and brought her home. Maybe they’ll believe me, maybe they won’t, but a good lawyer will sow enough doubt to get me off. The law will probably go poking into my past, trying to tie me to whatever you or someone else says I may have done, but they’ll find nothing. I’ll move on, and those kids you keep speaking about will remain missing, and their parents still won’t know whether to mourn them or continue praying for their return. I’m not a young man. Death will come for me soon, and the earth will swallow up every secret I’ve ever kept.’
‘And what if I don’t hand you over to the police?’
‘You mean you just walk away from here with the girl? Yes, I suppose you could do that, but you’ll get nothing in return. This is a seller’s market, Mr Parker, and I’m not selling to you, not for any price.’
Parker stood. Ormsby couldn’t help flinching, but the detective simply walked away from him and stood at the picture window at the rear of the house. The drapes were drawn. He opened them.
‘Mr Ormsby,’ he said, without turning round. ‘Would you come here, please?’
‘You heard him,’ said Louis. ‘Get up.’
Ormsby rose from the chair and joined Parker at the window. He saw a man standing on the back lawn, smoking a cigarette, but that wasn’t what drew Ormsby’s immediate attention, or caused him to sway on his feet. It was a woman, as close to the glass on the outside of the house as Ormsby was to the pane inside. She wore a tattered red dress, soiled with blood and dirt. Her skull was entirely hairless, and the sockets of her eyes were empty. Her skin was gray, and wrinkled around the mouth like the surface of an apple long past its best. She opened her lips, and Ormsby saw the exposed roots of her teeth where her gums had receded. She reached out her left hand and the glass squeaked as she drew her fingers down the pane, leaving behind flakes of tissue like the residue of dead moths.
Behind her, more figures appeared, male and female, crowding around the man who smoked his cigarette and regarded Ormsby calmly and coldly.
‘I won’t give you to the police,’ said Parker. ‘I’ll give you to the ones that you’re seeing.’
Ormsby stepped back from the glass, from the dreadful longing of the woman beyond it. Somehow, he found his tongue.
‘What are they?’
‘They’re hollow, and without mercy, and that’s all you need to know, for now. When they take you, you’ll discover the rest.’
‘And the one with them?’
‘Summary justice: the instrument that will send you to join them.’
Ormsby felt as though he had wandered into a dream trap.
??
?It’s not possible.’
‘You can tell him that yourself. I’m sure he’ll be fascinated to listen to your theory.’
And it seemed that the one on the lawn heard him, for from the folds of his coat he produced a knife that shone in the moonlight.
‘You’ll just let him kill me?’
‘If I have to, but that’s only where your troubles will begin. There is no oblivion. The punishment goes on, and in time you’ll find yourself on the other side of a glass, staring at someone just like you.’
Even in this moment of abject fear, and confronted with the reality of his own damnation, Ormsby tried to bargain.
‘Why should I give you what you want, if this is what waits for me?’
‘Because now you know. Now you have time.’
‘For what?’
‘For repentance. To make amends. But the moment I hand you over to the one with the blade, that chance will be gone.’
Ormsby retreated from the window, and sat back down in his chair. He was the Gray Man, and the Gray Man was him, and both sides feared what waited beyond the glass.
‘I agree,’ he said, for what choice did he have?
‘You’ll confess all to the police?’
‘Yes.’
‘If you renege, he’ll come for you,’ Parker warned.
‘I won’t renege.’
‘I believe you.’ Parker gave his attention to Louis. ‘Call Ross. Tell him we have another one.’
Parker turned back to the window of Ormsby’s house. The Collector was alone in the garden now, still smoking his cigarette. Parker shook his head, and the Collector threw the cigarette on the ground in disgust before stalking off into the dusk.
II
Oh! how many torments lie in the small circle of a wedding-ring!
Colley Cibber (1671–1757), The Double Gallant
7
The one who stood in the fall sunshine, disoriented by his first moments of freedom, was already damaged when he entered Maine State Prison, and the years inside had not served to repair the fractures to his mind and soul. Instead they had added physical injury and emotional turmoil to his list of burdens, and a desire simply to fade away.