Джон Коннолли: The Dirty South

Contents

About the Author

Also by John Connolly

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

How to Use this eBook

Part I

Now

Chapter 1

Then

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Part II

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

Chapter 44

Chapter 45

Chapter 46

Chapter 47

Chapter 48

Chapter 49

Chapter 50

Chapter 51

Chapter 52

Chapter 53

Chapter 54

Chapter 55

Part III

Chapter 56

Chapter 57

Chapter 58

Chapter 59

Chapter 60

Chapter 61

Chapter 62

Chapter 63

Chapter 64

Chapter 65

Chapter 66

Chapter 67

Chapter 68

Chapter 69

Chapter 70

Chapter 71

Part IV

Chapter 72

Chapter 73

Chapter 74

Chapter 75

Chapter 76

Chapter 77

Chapter 78

Chapter 79

Chapter 80

Chapter 81

Chapter 82

Chapter 83

Chapter 84

Chapter 85

Chapter 86

Chapter 87

Chapter 88

Chapter 89

Part V

Chapter 90

Chapter 91

Chapter 92

Chapter 93

Chapter 94

Chapter 95

Chapter 96

Chapter 97

Chapter 98

Chapter 99

Chapter 100

Now

Chapter 101

Acknowledgments

About the Author

John Connolly was born in Dublin in 1968. His debut EVERY DEAD THING swiftly launched him right into the front rank of thriller writers, and all his subsequent Charlie Parker novels have been Sunday Times bestsellers. BOOKS TO DIE FOR, which he edited with Declan Burke, was the winner of the 2013 Anthony, Agatha, and Macavity Awards for Best Non-fiction. He was the first non-American writer to win the US Shamus award, and the first Irish writer to be awarded the Edgar by the Mystery Writers of America.

www.johnconnollybooks.com

Also by John Connolly

The Charlie Parker Stories

Every Dead Thing

Dark Hollow

The Killing Kind

The White Road

The Reflecting Eye (novella in the Nocturnes collection )

The Black Angel

The Unquiet

The Reapers

The Lovers

The Whisperers

The Burning Soul

The Wrath of Angels

The Wolf in Winter

A Song of Shadows

A Time of Torment

A Game of Ghosts

The Woman in the Woods

A Book of Bones

Other Works

Bad Men

The Book of Lost Things

he : A Novel

Short Stories

Nocturnes

Night Music: Nocturnes Volume II

The Samuel Johnson Stories (for Young Adults)

The Gates

Hell’s Bells

The Creeps

The Chronicles of the Invaders (with Jennifer Ridyard)

Conquest

Empire

Dominion

Non-Fiction

Books to Die For: The World’s Greatest Mystery Writers on the World’s Greatest Mystery Novels (as editor, with Declan Burke)

Parker: A Miscellany

Midnight Movie Monographs: Horror Express

www.hodder.co.uk

First published in Great Britain in 2020 by Hodder & Stoughton

An Hachette UK company

Copyright © Bad Dog Books Limited 2020

The right of John Connolly to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library

eBook ISBN 9781529398311

Hardback ISBN 9781529398298

Trade Paperback ISBN 9781529398304

Hodder & Stoughton Ltd

Carmelite House

50 Victoria Embankment

London EC4Y 0DZ

www.hodder.co.uk

For Carolyn Mays

How to Use this eBook

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I

Vengeance and retribution require a long time; it is the rule.

Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities

NOW

1

The tide rolled in, erasing the first of the footprints in the sand, like the memory of a presence gradually being excised from the history of the beach. The marks were small, as of those left by a child, except no child had walked there, or none that Parker had noticed; yet when he looked up from his book, the evidence was before him. Bare feet: he could discern the marks of the toes, and the rounded indentations of the soles and heels. The footprints ended within a few yards of the tree against which he sat, as though the visitor had regarded Parker for a time before moving on.

But the prints progressed only in one direction, and seemed to ascend from the sea: an emergent ghost, arrived unnoticed, come to bear witness in silence.

Parker removed his glasses, cursing – not for the first time – the necessity of them. His optometrist had suggested progressive lenses, which struck Parker as just a fancier name for bifocals. It was an error she was unlikely to make again, Parker regarding progressives as a short step from adopting pince-nez, or wearing spectacles on a gold chain while smelling of cheap sherry. Now, nonprogressive lenses in hand, he looked left and right, but it was an instinctive response and nothing more, because he did not really expect to glimpse her: this lost daughter, this revenant being.

‘Jennifer.’

He spoke her name aloud, and let the wind carry it to her. He wondered what had drawn her here. She would not have returned to him without cause.

He closed his book and stood to brush the sand from his trousers. He was reading Louis L’Amour’s Education of a Wandering Man , and thought he might have enjoyed meeting the writer. He had devoured L’Amour’s Westerns as a boy, because his grandfather’s shelves were filled with copies, but he hadn’t returned to them in the years since. Parker supposed he’d underestimated L’Amour because of the nature of his novels, and their association with the games of cowboys and Indians played when he was young, or the TV shows that had once obsessed him: The Virginian, Casey Jones, The Adventures of Champion . Now it turned out that L’Amour had read more of the great works of literature than anyone Parker had encountered, either in life or in print. He had spent time as a hobo on the Southern Pacific Railroad, as a deckhand on Atlantic vessels, as a boxer, as a writer, and always with a book close at hand. Parker felt as though he had encountered a kindred spirit in L’Amour, albeit one much wiser than he would ever be.

The fall leaves were turning, the woods slowly transforming from green to red and gold, their colors like a smokeless conflagration. A chill had crept into the air as the day progressed: not so much as to make sitting by Ferry Beach uncomfortable, but sufficient to rouse a man from his reading and cause him to seek shelter at last.