‘You know they can trace all those searches back to our computer?’ Erin told Harry when she learned of what Bryan was doing. Her quilting bag was on the bed behind her, ready for use. They were whispering. They spent most of their days in near silence now because of their unwanted houseguest. It was like living in some kind of religious retreat.

‘It doesn’t matter,’ said Harry. ‘It’s all just smoke anyway.’

‘Well, I still don’t like it. It makes the computer seem dirty. I won’t feel the same about using it.’

Give me strength, thought Harry.

‘The computer won’t be coming with us,’ he said. ‘I’ll buy you a new one when we get—’

‘Get where?’ she asked.

‘Get to wherever we’re going,’ he finished.

‘When?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘When?’ she repeated. There were tears in her eyes. ‘I can’t do this for much longer. I can’t stand having Bryan Joblin around. I hate the smell of him, the sound of him. I hate the way he looks at me.’

‘Looks at you? What do you mean?’

‘Jesus, you see nothing. Nothing! It’s like you can’t imagine that another man might find me attractive.’

And with that she stormed out to start work on the great quilt. Harry had watched Erin as she walked to her car, Bryan Joblin trailing behind her. Of course she was still a good-looking woman. He knew that better than anyone. It shouldn’t have surprised him that Joblin might appreciate her too.

Now he placed the section of baseboard on the carpet and reached into the space revealed. His hands came out holding a red fireproof box, a smaller version of the one in which he and Erin kept their passports and valuable documents. The key was in the lock. He had no fear of anyone finding the box, and he didn’t want Erin coming across the key by accident and asking what it was. They didn’t have many secrets from each other, but this was one of them.

Harry opened the box. Inside were five thousand dollars in tens and twenties: it was Harry’s emergency fund. He had resisted dipping into the cash until that week, even when his business was at its lowest. Harry didn’t know how long five thousand dollars would last once he and Erin started running, but their main priority would be to put some distance between themselves and Prosperous. After that he’d make some calls. He still had friends beyond Prosperous.

The box also contained a letter written and ready to mail. The letter was addressed to Hayley Conyer, and its contents could be summarized as a promise to keep quiet about Prosperous if he and Erin were left in peace. Even after all that had occurred, Harry continued to remain loyal to the town. He didn’t want to betray its secrets.

The final item in the box was a handgun, a five-shot Smith & Wesson 638 with a concealed hammer, a barrel length of less than two inches, and a weight of just fourteen ounces when empty. It had been acquired for him by one of his subcontractors, a plumber with a string of convictions who owed Harry because Harry gave him work when nobody else would. Harry had been afraid to purchase a legal firearm. He was worried that word would get back to Chief Morland, and then questions would be asked, and with questions came suspicions. The gun ft easily into the pocket of his favorite jacket, and was powerful, accurate and easy to fire, even for a neophyte like him. Erin didn’t approve of guns and wouldn’t tolerate them in the house. If she’d discovered that he had the S&W, he’d have found a fast use for the box of self-defense round nose loads that sat alongside the pistol.

Now he transferred the entire contents of the box to a small black canvas sack and hid it on the top shelf of the closet behind a stack of old T-shirts. He hadn’t told Erin, but preparations for their departure were almost complete. He had spoken to a used car dealer in Medway and arranged a trade-in, with some cash on the side, for his truck. One morning, while Bryan Joblin was watching Erin, Harry had driven to the T. J. Maxx in Bangor with a list of his wife’s measurements and bought various items of underwear and casual clothing and sneakers, along with a pair of cheap suitcases. He didn’t need to buy much for himself: he’d hidden a plastic garbage bag filled with jeans, shirts and a new pair of boots in the spare tool box on his truck, and these he added to one of the suitcases. He then went to the Walgreens on Broadway, and replicated as many of the toiletries and cosmetics that he had seen in their bathroom and on his wife’s dressing table. When he was done, he paid a quick visit to Erin’s sister and asked her to take care of the cases for him. To his surprise, she hadn’t asked any questions. It made him wonder how much she already knew, or suspected, about Prosperous.

Harry restored the empty box to its space behind the closet, and replaced the baseboard. It seemed to him that by removing the cash and the gun he had made his decision. There was only one final step to take. After that, there could be no going back.

Harry drove to the post office and, after only a slight hesitation, mailed the letter to Hayley Conyer.

32

Hayley was playing with him, Morland knew, trying to put him off guard and make him ill at ease. He had seen her do this more than once with those who displeased her, and his father had warned him about it when it came time for his son to take over as chief of police.

‘She’s a clever one, you mark my words,’ his father said. ‘You watch yourself around her, and never turn your back on her. She’s crossed swords over the years with a lot of men and women who thought they were smarter than she is, and she’s left them all lying dead in the ground.’

Even then, Morland had wondered if his father was speaking literally or metaphorically.

Now Morland made himself as comfortable as possible in the creaky old dining chair, and did his best to keep his temper in check as Hayley baited him. Almost an hour had gone by, and she had not yet even alluded to the detective. She was building up to it, allowing the tension in the room to coalesce around Morland, constraining him so that when at last they came to the issue at hand he would be both wound tight internally and compressed by her implied disapproval of his actions, although he did not know how else he might have reacted to the detective’s interest in the missing girl. What did she expect – that he should kill anyone who so much as glanced curiously in the town’s direction? Perhaps so: she had always been paranoid, although she tried to justify it by claiming that the fate of the town, and the responsibility for its citizens, lay in her hands. What was that line about power corrupting? Whatever it was, it was true, but also incomplete: power didn’t just corrupt. After a time, it could also drive a person mad.

So it was that, over the last hour, Hayley had ignored Morland’s interjections, even when it was clear that she had left space in the discussions for him to offer an opinion. If he remained silent, she asked him to contribute and then ceased to listen almost as soon as he began speaking until finally, while he was still in mid-flow, she would begin to talk over him, or turn to another for an alternative view or simply change the subject altogether, leaving Morland to wind down slowly into silence. It was humiliating, and Morland was certain that Hayley’s ultimate intention was to drive him from the meeting entirely, but he refused to be forced into giving her what she wanted. It was crucial that he remain present. He guessed what she was planning to do, and he had to stop her. She had not met the detective, and did not fully understand the danger that he represented. Even Warraner, who had twice encountered Parker, was guilty of underestimating him, but that was a function of Warraner’s own misplaced sense of superiority. Morland had watched him with the detective in the chapel, behaving like some glorified tour guide, almost inviting Parker to make assumptions about hidden knowledge that might or might not be true. But the detective was subtler and more cunning than Warraner had first assumed, and by the time Warraner came to that realization – with the detective’s questions about the Familists and Vitel – it was too late.