Laurence stared at the screen.
There were only a few seconds left of the recording, and he watched as another roll of static began its steady ascent up the screen. Laurence leaned forward and peered more closely as it reached Alan Hobbes.
And then the entire screen was filled with a face.
Laurence pulled back—his heart leaping from the shock. The whole of the footage was white for a couple of seconds, before an eye moved into view, filling the screen, looking this way and that, and then the man leaned away from the camera, his entire face clearly visible now, and stared directly into the lens for the briefest of moments.
And then the screen went black.
His phone rang.
Laurence glanced down, his heart beating hard. Pettifer was calling him back.
“So,” she said when he answered. “What do you think?”
“I think give me a minute.”
“No,” she said. “Please just tell me how good this is.”
He ignored her and played the footage again, pausing it toward the end. The frame gave about as clear an image as it was possible to get. The man in the footage was about thirty years old, with pale skin and earnest-looking eyes. Long hair. A spread of freckles across his nose and cheeks.
And a scar that ran down his face from the side of his eye to his chin.
Tell me how good this is.
“I’ll do you one better,” he said. “I’ll tell you who this is.”
Six
That was a nice day, wasn’t it?
Katie remembered her family going to see her father’s first shop. After toiling for years in the garage, he had been able to rent a small unit in Barton Mill on the outskirts of the city, close to the countryside. Katie was thirteen then; Chris, eleven. The old mill was situated on the bend of a curving hill, with a river churning away below. It appeared impossibly precarious to her: a huge stone edifice half supported by thick, black wooden struts that stretched almost endlessly down to the muddy banks below. When they got out of the car, she walked over to the fence and leaned over the railing, peering down at the water. It was so far below her that for a second she felt dizzy.
“Wow,” she said. “Come and look at this, Chris.”
She heard the chit of his sneakers behind her as he walked across to join her.
“Chris, don’t,” her mother called sharply. “It’s dangerous.”
Katie looked over her shoulder and saw Chris frozen halfway between her and her parents at the car, pulled equally in two directions at once. There was a slightly helpless look on his face, as though he wanted to be brave but knew deep down that he shouldn’t. That he should do as he was told.
Katie watched him deflate a little.
He turned and walked back to their parents.
By then, she was used to them being overprotective of Chris. On one level, she understood it, because she often had the same impulse. Her brother was small, but there was a vulnerability to him that wasn’t simply down to his size. It was something more innate. A sense that he was desperate to find his place in the world but was perpetually at odds with it, like a puzzle piece that didn’t quite fit.
Even so, it didn’t escape her attention that her mother hadn’t called to her just then. That it had been Chris she was concerned about, not Katie.
Never her.
She followed her family inside.
The Mill was a new conversion. Everything smelled of sawed wood and floor polish. A corridor led between units with glass walls, many dark and empty but several already occupied. Their parents wandered farther, but Chris stopped by a unit. This shop was closed and dark, and her brother formed binoculars with his hands and peered in through the window. Katie stopped beside him. Close to the glass, she could see a display of elaborately decorated boxes painted with beautiful, swirling imagery. Dungeons & Dragons; Space Explorer; Dark Knight. There were racks of dice: regular ones, of course, but also ones with ten and twenty and a hundred sides. A little farther in, battalions of tiny, intricately painted figurines were arranged on a sculpted table.
She looked up at the sign above the door.
GODS PLAY DICE.
“What is this?” Chris said.
“Role-playing games,” she guessed.
“What’s that?”
“It’s when people pretend to be elves or soldiers, or whatever, and then they roll dice, and stuff happens depending on the number. A fantasy game. Make believe.”
He was silent for a moment. “It all looks so cool, doesn’t it?”
Katie considered that. She had never played anything like it herself but had a vague conception of the kind of person who did, and cool wasn’t the first word that sprang to mind. But it would have been unfair to say so. Chris seemed hypnotized by the sight in front of him now, and if it turned out he was going to be that type of person, then she didn’t want to be mean about it.
“Yeah,” she said. “It looks really cool.”
He looked at her hopefully. “Maybe we could play it together sometime?”
“Yeah,” she said. “Your birthday’s coming up.”
He smiled at her, and any resentment she’d felt outside disappeared for now. Their mother and father had been arguing a great deal recently—about work; about money; about who did what and who didn’t do enough—and even though they always tried to keep it from them, the atmosphere at home had been tense. Chris was more sensitive than Katie, and had spent more time clinging to her than she was comfortable with. There had been a fair few moments over the last year or so when he’d bugged the hell out of her. But that smile of his always undid the damage. It made him look about half his age, and had the kind of purity that made him seem like a small flame you wanted to cup your hands around and protect.
Of course I’ll play a game with you, she thought.
Because I love you.
“Come on, loser,” she said.
The unit her father had rented was a couple of shops along. A plain sign above the door read WICK’S END, which was a joke she’d had to explain to Chris after having it explained to her first. Her father was unlocking the door as they caught up. When the lights came on, she almost gasped in shock. An enormous rainbow filled the window before her. The plywood shelves within were lined with candles of different shapes and sizes, all arranged by color in a bright, beautiful display that covered almost every square inch of the glass. At first glance, it was impossible to take in the sheer intricacy of it—how each candle came together to build the whole display—and for a moment she was transfixed by it.
“Voilà,” her father said quietly.
Katie looked away from the window and toward her mother.
She was standing by the doorway, one hand cupped under her other elbow, her gaze moving over the sight before her. It was hard to work out what she was thinking.
Inside, the unit was small, but her father had worked hard to maximize the available space. There were the racks and shelves around the walls, and against the window, and the effect of the colors was even more impressive in the shop. Outside, Katie had felt like she was observing a rainbow; in there, it was more like she was standing inside one. To her right was a counter with an old cash register and thin sheets of packing paper. Behind that, a sink unit and counter, the latter covered with pots and pans she recognized from the now-empty garage back home. They looked battered and out of place, but it was equipment that had served her father well over the years.