The Wrath of Angels (36 page)

But the man involved in that case had been a serial abuser and killer of young women, with no intention of ever releasing them. Kidnappers were different. Through Louis, I had once met a man named Steven Tolles, who was a hostage negotiator employed by a leading private security firm. Tolles was a ‘sign of life’ expert, called in to consult on cases of which not even the FBI or the police ever had any awareness. His primary concern was to ensure the safe return of the victim, and he was very good at his job. It was for others to catch the perpetrators, although Tolles, in his debriefing of victims, often drew from them crucial clues as to the identities of those involved: stray smells and sounds could be as useful as momentary glimpses of houses, woods and fields, sometimes even more so. From Tolles I learned that the instances of murder in kidnapping cases were comparatively rare. Kidnapping was a crime of greed: those who committed it wanted to pick up the ransom and vanish. Murder upped the ante, and ensured that the victim’s relatives would involve law enforcement in the aftermath. There was a very good reason why most instances of kidnapping never made the news: it was because terms were negotiated and ransoms paid without anyone beyond the family and the private negotiators employed by them ever learning anything about what had occurred, and that frequently included the police and the feds.

But if what Epstein was telling me was true, then the people responsible for abducting Arthur Wildon’s daughters – and there must have been more than one kidnapper, for two young girls would be difficult for one person to handle – had deliberately set out to extort money when there was no hope of the victims ever being returned alive. Indeed, it appeared that there had never been any intention to release them unharmed, given that they were killed so soon after their abduction. It was possible that something might have gone wrong, of course: one or both of the girls might have seen the faces of those involved, or caught sight of something guaranteed to give away the identity of a captor, in which case their kidnappers could have felt that they had no option but to kill them in order to protect themselves.

But to bury them alive? That was an appalling death to visit on two children, regardless of the ruthlessness of the kidnappers. There was sadism involved here, which suggested that the money was almost an afterthought, or a secondary motivation, and I wondered if Arthur Wildon or someone close to him was being punished for some unspecified offense through the dark suffocation of two little girls.

‘Mr Parker?’ said Epstein. ‘Are you still there?’

‘Yes, I’m here. Sorry, I was distracted by my own thoughts.’

‘Is there anything that you feel compelled to share?’

‘I was considering what the principal motive for the kidnapping might have been.’

‘Money. Isn’t that what kidnapping is always about?’

‘But why kill the girls?’

‘To leave no witnesses?’

‘Or to torment Wildon and his family.’

Epstein exhaled deeply, then said: ‘I knew him.’

‘Wildon?’

‘Yes. Not well, but we shared certain interests.’

‘Any that
you
feel compelled to share?’

‘Wildon believed in fallen angels, just as I do, and just as you do too.’

I wasn’t sure that was entirely true, despite anything to the contrary I may have said to Marielle Vetters. Most people who talked about angels seemed to picture a fusion between Tinkerbell and a crossing guard, and I remained reluctant to put that name to the entities, terrestrial or otherwise, that I had encountered. After all, none of them had sprouted wings.

Not yet.

‘But he also believed that they were infecting others,’ continued Epstein, ‘acquiring influence through threats, promises, blackmail.’

‘For what purpose?’

‘Ah, there Wildon and I differed. He talked of the End Times, of the last days, a peculiar mix of millenarianism and apocalyptic Christianity, neither of which I found personally or professionally appealing.’

‘And what do you believe, rabbi?’ I asked. ‘Isn’t it time that you shared that with me?’

‘Truly?’ He laughed: a hollow rattle. ‘I believe that somewhere, on earth or below it, an entity waits. It’s been there for a long, long time, either by its own will, or, more likely, by the will of another; trapped, perhaps even slumbering, but waiting nonetheless. The worst of these others, these creatures formed in its image, are seeking it. They have always been seeking it, always looking, and while they search they prepare for its coming. That is what I believe, Mr Parker, and I admit that it may well be proof of my madness. Does that satisfy you?’

I didn’t answer. Instead I asked, ‘Are they close to finding it?’

‘Closer than ever before. So many of them emerging in recent years, so much hunting and killing; they are like ants set in motion by the queen’s pheromones. And you are involved, Mr Parker. You know this to be true. You
feel
it.’

I stared out of my window at the shapes of trees and the silver channels of the marshes, the pale specter of myself floating against them.

‘Did Wildon own a plane?’

‘No, but a man named Douglas Ampell did. Ampell went missing around the same time that Wildon disappeared. Ampell and Wildon were acquainted, and Wildon used Ampell’s aviation services on an occasional basis.’

‘Did Ampell file a flight record in July 2001?’

‘None.’

‘So if that was Ampell’s plane, and Wildon was on it, then where was he heading?’

‘I think he was trying to reach me. There had been some contact between us in the months before his disappearance. He had followed up on hundreds of rumors, and was convinced that there was a record in existence of those who had been corrupted. He believed that he was close to finding it, and it seems that he might have done so. I think he was bringing that list with him when the plane went down.’

‘And not just the list. Who was the passenger? Who was cuffed to a chair in that plane?’

‘Wildon was obsessed with finding those responsible for killing his daughters,’ said Epstein. ‘It destroyed his marriage, and his business, but he became convinced that he was drawing closer to them. Perhaps on that plane was the man who killed Wildon’s daughters: a man, or something worse than a man. You must find that plane, Mr Parker.
Find the plane
.’

D
arina Flores learned of the deaths of Becky Phipps and Davis Tate shortly before she and the boy moved against Marielle Vetters. Darina had been concerned when she had not immediately heard back directly from Phipps; they had been searching for a definite clue to the location of the plane for so long, yet hours went by with no contact. Darina, always cautious in such matters, was reluctant to disseminate what she had learned any wider than was necessary, but preparations needed to be made.

While she debated what further action to take, she received confirmation from Joe Dahl that he was ready to move when she was. Dahl had been hers for a long time: she and her agents ensured that the inveterate gambler was permitted to fall deeper and deeper into debt until everything he owned was effectively theirs.

And then they let him keep it all: his car, his house, what little of his business remained, all of it. They simply held onto the paper on his debt, and waited. It didn’t take long. Dahl was an addict, and he had not yet been cured of his addiction. On the evening that he tried to use his car as security on a cash loan so he could hit Scarborough Downs, Darina paid him a visit, and Joe Dahl was cured of his gambling vice forever. Darina had kept him in her pocket ever since, ready to be used once they had solid information about the plane. Unlike the others, she had not gone on random searches of the woods, chasing wisps of information that dissipated like morning mist in the sunlight. She considered such ventures unwise: they risked drawing attention to the object of the search, and she believed that it was better to wait until a solid lead emerged. True, the plane and its secrets represented a ticking device that could go off at the moment of discovery, but while it remained lost its danger was potential, not actual, and even the list itself was meaningless unless it found its way into the right hands. The mystery of the passenger and his fate troubled her more. He shared her nature, and he was lost.

Grady Vetters, gagged with a scarf and bound with plastic ties, woke just as daylight was fading. He was bleary, but his head began to clear when he took in the boy staring at him from the couch, and the woman cleaning her gun at the kitchen table, and he smelled Teddy Gattle, even through the closed bedroom door. Darina could see Vetters weighing his options. She preferred to keep him alive for as long as possible, but if he proved difficult she would be forced to do without him.

Darina slipped the magazine into the little Colt and approached Grady. He tried to squeeze himself further into the corner of the room, and said something unintelligible through the gag. Darina didn’t care to hear what it was, so she left the scarf in place.

‘We’re going to pay a visit to Marielle,’ she said. ‘If you do as we tell you, you’ll live. If you don’t, you and your sister will die. Do you understand?’

Grady didn’t respond immediately. He was no fool: she could tell that he didn’t believe her. It didn’t matter. This was all a game, and he would play his part until an alternative offered itself. The easiest way to ensure that he stayed alive and remained compliant was to make him
want
to stay alive by not doing anything foolish, and so he would do as he was told until they reached Marielle’s house. If he died before they got there, he could be of no help to his sister. Alive, he could always hope.

But there was no hope, not really. Darina’s entire existence was predicated on that belief.

Grady breathed in deeply against the scarf, and his nose wrinkled as he again took in the smell of Teddy Gattle.

‘If it’s any consolation, it wasn’t an act of betrayal on his part,’ said Darina. ‘He thought that he was helping you. If you wouldn’t use your knowledge of the plane to make some money, then he would do it on your behalf. I think he loved you.’ She smiled. ‘He must have, since he died for you.’

Grady glared at her. The muscles in his arms tensed as he tried to force the plastic ties apart. His knees were drawn up to his chest, and she could see him preparing to gather his strength to spring at her. Perhaps she had misjudged him. She pointed the gun at his face, said, ‘Don’t,’ and his body relaxed. Darina kept him under the gun as the boy advanced, the syringe once again in his hand.

‘Not so much this time,’ she warned. ‘Just enough to keep him compliant.’

She waited until Grady’s eyes grew heavy again before making two more calls. The first was to Marielle Vetters’ house to ensure that she was home. When a woman answered the phone, Darina hung up.

The second call she made more reluctantly, not simply because she preferred Becky Phipps to be her primary point of contact, but because the Backers did not like to be drawn into such matters. It was important to them that they should not be linked to acts of blood. It was why they used companies, offshore bank accounts, proxies.

But Phipps always called back within an hour – always, day or night – and so Darina dialed the number of the one that she thought of as the Principal Backer. Darina was not frightened of him; she was frightened of very little to do with men and women, although she found their capacity for self-destruction disturbing, but she was always careful around this Backer. He was so like herself and her kind that sometimes she wondered if he was really human at all, but she could detect no trace of otherness about him. Nevertheless, there was a difference to him, and she had never been able to penetrate his veneer and discover what lay beneath it.

He answered the phone on the second ring. The number was in the possession of only a handful of individuals, and used only when the seriousness of the situation warranted it.

‘Hello, Darina,’ he said. ‘It’s been a long time, but I know why you’re calling.’

Thus it was that Darina learned of how Becky and Davis had met their ends. Becky had sent out a warning before she fled, but Darina’s call had gone to her home number on the assumption that she would still be recuperating: a minor lapse on Becky’s part, and understandable if she was running for her life.

The Collector had never moved against them in this way before. Oh, they knew that he suspected their existence, but the Backers had hidden themselves well, and Darina and the others were comfortable in the shadows. Darina understood then that Barbara Kelly had lied to her before she died. She had admitted to reaching out to the lawyer Eldritch and the old Jew, but she had assured Darina that she had offered only the promise of material, and not the material itself. Even when Darina took out her left eye as punishment for what she had done to her own sight, and threatened to leave her blind by cutting out the right as well, still Kelly denied that she had taken more than the first faltering footsteps toward repentance.

But the Collector could not have targeted Davis Tate without the list. On the other hand, Kelly would not have handed over the entire list to their enemies. It was her only bargaining tool. She would have tempted them with part of it, certainly no more than a page or two: a page to the Jew Epstein, perhaps, and a page to the Collector and his handler.

Just as the Collector had never declared outright war upon them, prevented from doing so by his own caution and their cleverness, they too had kept their distance from him. His was a minor crusade for the most part, a picking off of the vicious and the damned, although his victims had been growing in importance in recent years. The possibility of a strike against him had been mooted, but, as with her ambivalence toward the Principal Backer, the Collector presented a problem. What was he, exactly? What motivated him? He seemed to have knowledge of matters known only to Darina and her fallen brethren, and to share their comfort with the darkness, but he was an unknown quantity. So far, the advantages of removing him from the board had been outweighed by the risk of precipitating a violent reaction, whether from the Collector himself, if he survived such an attack, or from his allies.