Laurence poured himself a fresh cup of coffee and pondered.
Who would have wanted to hurt Alan Hobbes? He gave every appearance of having been a good and decent man. Laurence looked again at the man’s business dealings. There was nothing obviously suspicious there, but you never knew what deals might have been done behind the scenes, and what resentments might have ended up simmering as a result. And when it came to investments, there was Hobbes’s rate of success to consider. The man seemed to have had an uncanny knack for being in the right place at the right time.
Until, of course, he hadn’t.
It’s like he knew.
Like he knew this was coming and was ready for it.
The lawyer’s words from earlier. They made Laurence consider the circumstances leading up to Hobbes’s murder and the actions the old man had taken.
Dismissing all his staff.
Arranging for Gaunt to turn up the next morning.
Almost as if he was waiting for his killer to arrive, his murder simply another appointment that had to be met.
Laurence slid the laptop across and performed a search for Hobbes at the university. The page loaded slowly, so while he waited he opened the online case file. It included a list of all the employees registered as working for Alan Hobbes. Updates were gradually being added as each one was spoken to, and Laurence scanned a few of the reports that had arrived after he left the office. There were several still unaccounted for, but so far everyone interviewed had confirmed what Gaunt had told them.
Laurence leaned back in his chair and rubbed his mouth thoughtfully.
The obvious question was why Alan Hobbes had surrendered his life without a fight. He seemed to have accepted his death was coming—as though, after a life of good fortune and luxury, a debt had come due and he had been resigned to paying it.
Like he made a deal with the devil, Laurence thought.
Not literally, of course. Laurence was not a religious man. Even if he had been, he suspected such a deal would be functionally impossible—that the devil would most likely end up exasperated, throwing his little red hands in the air at the flood of applications. But figuratively there was something there. Especially when Laurence remembered the look of pain and sadness etched on the dead man’s face.
Laurence’s cell phone rang.
It was still in his jacket pocket. He fumbled for it, saw it was Pettifer, then accepted the call and held the phone to his ear.
“Hello there,” he said. “You have reached your boss. Please leave a message after the—”
“You’re not my fucking boss, Laurence.”
“Technically no, but we both know the truth deep down.”
“Working hard?”
“Of course,” he said. “Yourself?”
“Not only working hard but working smart,” she said. “Check your in-box.”
“Hold the line. Your call will be answered as soon as—”
“Just do it, Laurence.”
With the phone still pressed to his ear, he reached for the laptop and scrolled through until he found the email. When he opened it, he read the message twice and then looked down at the attachment.
Hobbes had a camera installed inside his apartment.
* * *
Laurence opened the footage Pettifer had sent him.
The security camera in Hobbes’s apartment had been located high up above the door. He supposed that was some consolation for him not having spotted it at the time—and, of course, for all her talk of smartness, Pettifer hadn’t noticed it then either.
Nevertheless.
He was still kicking himself a little.
When the video opened, he noted the time stamp on the bottom. Assuming the information was accurate, the clip had been recorded the day of the murder, beginning a little before eight o’clock at night and running for approximately five minutes. Pettifer had explained it was the last available footage that could be retrieved from the camera. Which gave Laurence pause. It seemed a step beyond the capabilities of modern technology to imagine the surveillance system had simply winked out of existence at the same time as its owner.
All will be revealed, he told himself.
He pressed play.
He was presented with a grainy black-and-white image, the recording disappointingly low-resolution. The angle was decent enough, at least, taking in most of the main room. Hobbes was already in situ, lying in the bed where he had been found today. But he was alive here. The quality was just good enough for Laurence to make out the covers moving gently over the old man’s chest. He appeared to be sleeping, with his head tilted back a little and his mouth slightly open.
Laurence watched as a line of static rolled slowly up the screen. When it reached Hobbes, it seemed to make his body convulse as it passed over him, his expression momentarily twisting into something else before the static moved on, leaving just his peaceful, sleeping face again.
There was no sound.
No other apparent movement in the room.
As another roll of static crept up the screen, Laurence’s attention moved from the old man on the bed to the archway in the wall behind him. On-screen, the blackness there seemed even more absolute than it had while standing in the room. He remembered the faint rush of cold air that had been coming from it earlier.
A figure emerged suddenly from the darkness of the archway.
Laurence paused the video and peered carefully. The figure was little more than a pale smear, like an animal caught on a trail cam, and he imagined most of the frames would yield similar results. There might be better evidence in motion though, and so he restarted the footage.
The figure cautiously stepped out of the darkness of the archway. With the low quality, Laurence could tell that it was a man but not much more than that. He saw what looked like jeans. Some kind of jacket. Dark hair. And he appeared to be holding something. Laurence turned his head to one side but couldn’t make out what it was—only that the man was clasping it between his hands and pressing it to his stomach. Whatever it was, it wasn’t big. It didn’t look heavy. And yet there was something about the way the man was holding it—almost nervously—that suggested it weighed on him in a different way.
The object glinted slightly.
Is anything missing?
Laurence remembered the way the lawyer had glanced at the archway.
I don’t know yet.
He watched as the man stepped over beside the bed and stood there for a few seconds, staring down at Alan Hobbes. Laurence cursed the lack of audio. Was the man talking to Hobbes? He was turned away from the camera, so it was impossible to tell. If so, there was no response from the old man. Hobbes appeared to remain asleep, lying there in the bed with the covers over his chest gently rising and falling.
A line of static rolled over the pair, making them both jitter.
The man turned away from the bed and walked toward the door, his head bowed, his face entirely out of sight.
And then he disappeared from view.
Damn it.
Laurence leaned back. It was perhaps too much to hope that the murder had been caught on camera, but the footage might at least have had the decency to offer a viable view of a suspect. As things stood, he didn’t think they would get anything from it on that score. But. Accentuate the positives. This had been recorded well after members of staff were all supposed to have been dismissed, and even if it was low quality, it might still be good enough to identify one if they had come back.