John Connolly - The Wrath of Angels

The door to his wife’s room was slightly ajar. He knocked gently upon it before entering, even though he had been told that she was sleeping. He was more conscious now than ever before of maintaining her privacy and her dignity. He knew the distress that a sudden invasion of her space could cause her, particularly if she was having one of her bad days when she failed to recognize him at all.

His wife’s eyes were closed when he entered, her face turned to the door. He noticed that the room was cold, which surprised him. They were very careful about ensuring that the patients did not get too cold in winter or too warm in summer. The main windows were kept locked and could only be opened with special keys, mostly to prevent the more disturbed patients from climbing out and injuring themselves, or running away. The smaller top windows could be opened slightly to let some air in, but Harlan could see that they were all sealed shut.

He stepped further into the room, and the door slammed behind him. It was only then that he smelled the man. When Harlan turned he was standing against the wall, smiling a dead smile, the swollen purple goiter at his throat like a huge blood blister waiting to burst.

‘Take a seat, Mr Vetters,’ he said. ‘It’s time we had a talk.’

It was strange, but now that the worst had happened, Harlan found he was not afraid. Even as he hoped that it might not be true, he had always known that someone would come, and sometimes, in those dark dreams, a man had appeared on the periphery of the pursuit, his profile deformed by his own obesity and a terrible growth that distorted his already bloated neck. This was the form that vengeance would take when it came.

But Harlan was not about to confess, not unless he was given no other option. He assumed the role that he had always determined he would play if this moment came: the innocent. He had practiced it well. He could not have said why, but he believed it was important that this man did not discover the location of the airplane in the Great North Woods, and not just because of the money that Harlan and Paul had taken. The ones who had come looking for it over the years – because, once he and Paul had come to understand their purpose, they grew better at spotting them, better at recognizing them from the tales told by bemused guides – bore no resemblance to one another: some, like Darina Flores, were beautiful and some, like this man, were profoundly ugly. Some looked like businessmen or schoolteachers, others like hunters and killers, but what they all had in common was a sense that they meant no good for God or man. If they wanted something from that plane (and Harlan had a fixed memory of those papers with their lists of names) then it was the duty of right-thinking men to ensure that they didn’t get it, or so Harlan and Paul told themselves in an effort to make some small recompense for their larceny.

But neither were they so naive as to believe that their theft of the money might be allowed to go unpunished, that, if they revealed what they knew of the plane’s location to Darina Flores or someone like her, the truth would be enough to buy them peace in their final years. Even the knowledge that the plane existed might be enough to damn them because they’d both examined that list, and some of those names were fused in Harlan’s brain. He could recite them, if he had to. Not many of them, but enough. Enough to see him dead.

Then again, if the man was here, it was probably because of the money. The money would have drawn him. Perhaps Harlan and Paul had not been as careful as they thought.

‘What are you doing in my wife’s room?’ he asked. ‘You’re not supposed to be here. It’s for family and friends only.’

The man wandered over to where Harlan’s wife lay, and stroked her face and hair. His fingertips trailed across her lips, then parted them obscenely. Angeline mumbled in her sleep, and tried to move her head. A pair of pale fingers entered her mouth, and Harlan saw the tendons flexing in the man’s hand.

‘I told you to sit down, Mr Vetters. If you don’t, I’ll tear out your wife’s tongue.’

Harlan sat.

‘Who are you?’ he asked.

‘My name is Brightwell.’

‘What do you want with us?’

‘I think you know.’

‘Well, sir, I don’t. I want you gone from here, so I’ll do my best to answer any questions you might have, but you’ll have had a wasted trip by the end.’

The sleeve of Brightwell’s coat fell back from his arm as he continued to stroke Angeline’s hair, and Harlan saw the mark upon the man’s wrist. It looked like a trident.

‘I understand that your wife has Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s?’

‘That’s right.’

‘It must be very difficult for you.’

There was no trace of sympathy in his voice.

‘Not as difficult as it is for her.’

‘Oh, I don’t believe that’s true.’

Brightwell glanced down at the sleeping woman. He removed his fingers from her mouth, sniffed them, then licked at their tips with a tongue that was almost pointed. In texture and color it reminded Harlan of a piece of raw liver The man allowed his other hand to rest on Angeline’s brow. Her mutterings grew louder, as though the pressure of his hand troubled her, yet still she did not wake.

‘Look at her: she barely knows who she is anymore, and I guess that, most of the time, she doesn’t know who you are either. Whatever you loved about her once is long gone. She’s just a shell, a hollow burden. It would be a mercy for you both if she simply . . . slipped away.’

‘That’s not true,’ said Harlan.

Brightwell smiled, and his hard, dark eyes looked at and into Harlan, and they found the place where Harlan hid his worst thoughts, and even though Brightwell’s lips did not move, Harlan heard the word ‘liar’ whispered. He could not hold Brightwell’s gaze, and he felt shame as he bent his face to the floor.

‘I could make it happen,’ said Brightwell. ‘A pillow over the face, a little compression on the nose and mouth. Nobody would ever know, and then you’d be free.’

‘You stop talking like that, mister. You don’t dare say that again.’

Brightwell tittered. It was a strangely effeminate sound. He even covered his mouth with his free hand while he did so.

‘I’m just playing with you, Mr Vetters. To tell you the truth, somebody would find out if she died under, um, unusual circumstances. It’s easy to murder, but it’s harder to get away with murder. That, of course, is true of most crimes, but particularly so with killing. You know why that is?’

Harlan was keeping his head down, and his focus fixed on his shoes. He was afraid that this man might stare into his eyes again, and see his guilt. Then he began to feel concerned that this might be taken as the aspect of a guilty man, that he was, in effect, admitting the crime before he had even been accused of it. He composed himself, and forced himself to look up at this loathsome intruder.

‘No,’ said Harlan. ‘I don’t know.’

‘It’s because murder is one of the few crimes that is rarely committed by practiced criminals,’ said Brightwell. ‘It’s a crime of rage or passion, and so is usually unplanned. Murderers make mistakes because they’ve never done it before. They have no experience of killing. That makes them easy to find, easy to punish. There’s a lesson to be learned from that: crime, of any kind, is a pursuit best left to professionals.’

Harlan waited. He tried to keep his breathing under control. He was grateful for the cold in the room. It stopped him from sweating.

‘Such sacrifices you’ve made for her,’ said Brightwell, and his hand began stroking Angeline’s hair again. ‘You can’t even afford new shoes.’