They pulled up in the driveway of the house. The lights were on inside, and Harry could see Magnus watching TV in the living room, the drapes open. He saw his brother-in-law stand as he heard the sound of the engine. He waved at them from the window. They were still getting out of the van when Magnus opened the front door.

‘Come in,’ he said. ‘We’ve been worrying ever since we got your call.’

‘Where’s Dianne?’ said Erin.

‘She’s in the bathroom. She’ll be right down.’

Magnus stood aside to let Harry and Erin enter.

‘Let me take your coats,’ said Magnus.

‘We’re not staying,’ said Harry.

‘That’s not what you told us.’

‘I know what I told you, but I think it’s better if we just keep driving. They’re going to come looking for us once they find out that we’ve gone, and it won’t take them long to make the connection to you and Dianne. We need to put ground between Prosperous and us. I can’t tell you why. We just have to leave the town far behind.’

Magnus closed the front door. Harry could feel a draft on his face, though. It was coming from the kitchen. A gust of wind passed through the house. It blew open the dining room door to their left. Inside they saw Dianne seated in the dark by the table.

‘I thought you were—’ said Erin, but she got no further.

Bryan Joblin sat across from Dianne. He held a gun in his right hand, pointing loosely at her chest. Behind him was Calder Ayton. He too held a gun, but his was aimed at the head of Dianne’s daughter, Kayley.

Harry’s hand slid slowly towards the gun in his jacket pocket, just as Chief Morland appeared from the living room. He laid a hand on Harry’s arm.

‘Don’t,’ said Morland, and his voice was almost kindly.

Harry’s hand faltered, then fell to his side. Morland reached into Harry’s pocket and removed the Smith & Wesson.

‘You have a license for this?’ said Morland.

Harry didn’t reply.

‘I didn’t think so,’ said Morland.

He raised the gun and touched it to the back of Erin’s head. He pulled the trigger, and the cream walls of the house blushed crimson. While Harry was still trying to take in the sight of his wife’s body collapsing to the floor, Morland shot Magnus in the chest, then advanced three steps and killed Dianne with a single bullet that entered her face just below the bridge of her nose.

It was Kayley’s screams that brought Harry back, but by then it was all too late. Morland swept Harry’s feet from under him, sending him sprawling to the floor beside his dead wife. He stared at her. Her eyes were closed, her face contorted in a final grimace of shock. Harry wondered if she’d felt a lot of pain. He hoped not. He’d loved her. He’d loved her so very much.

Morland’s weight was on his back now. Harry smelled the muzzle of the gun as it brushed his face.

‘Do it,’ said Harry. ‘Just do it.’

But instead the gun disappeared, and Harry’s hands were cuffed loosely behind his back. Kayley had stopped screaming and was now sobbing. It sounded like there might have been a hand across her mouth, though, for the sobs were muffed.

‘Why?’ said Harry.

‘Because we can’t have a multiple killing without a killer,’ said Morland.

He lifted Harry to his feet. Harry stared at him glazedly. Morland’s features formed a mask of pure desolation.

Calder Ayton and Bryan Joblin emerged from the second entrance to the living room, carrying Kayley between them. They walked through the kitchen to the back door. Shortly after that, Harry heard the trunk of a car closing, and then the vehicle drove away.

‘What’s going to happen to her?’ he asked.

‘I think you already know,’ said Morland. ‘You were told to find us a girl. It looks like you did your duty after all.’

Bryan Joblin reappeared in the kitchen. He smiled at Harry as he approached him.

‘What now?’ said Harry.

‘You and Bryan are going to take a ride. I’ll join you both as soon as I can.’

Morland turned to leave, then paused.

‘Tell me, Harry. Did the girl really escape, or did you let her go?’

What did it matter, thought Harry. The girl had still died, and soon he would join her.

‘We let her go.’

The use of the word ‘we’ made him look down at Erin, and in doing so he missed the look that passed across Morland’s face. It contained a hint of admiration.

Harry felt as though he should cry, but no tears would come. It was too late for tears anyway, and they would serve no purpose.

‘I’m sorry it’s come down to this,’ said Morland.

‘Go to hell, Lucas,’ said Harry.

‘Yes,’ said Morland. ‘I think that I probably will.’

41

A day passed. Evening descended. All was changed, yet unchanged. The dead remained dead, and waited for the dying to join their number.

On the outskirts of Prosperous a massive 4WD pulled up by the side of the road, disgorging one of its occupants before quickly turning back east. Ronald Straydeer hoisted a pack on to his back and headed for the woods, making his way toward the ruins of the church.

42

The two-story redbrick premises advertised itself as BLACKTHORN, APOTHECARY, although it had been many years since the store had sold anything, and old Blackthorn himself was now long dead. It had, for much of its history, been the only business on Hunts Lane, a Brooklyn mews designed originally to stable the horses of the wealthy on nearby Remsen and Joralemon Streets.

The exterior wood surround was black, the lettering on and above the window gold and its front door was permanently closed. The upstairs windows were shuttered, while the main window on the first floor was protected by a dense wire grill. The jumbled display behind it was a historical artifact, a collection of boxes and bottles bearing the names, where legible at all, of companies that no longer existed, and products with more than a hint of snake oil about them: Dalley’s Magical Pain Extractor, Dr Ham’s Aromatic Invigorator, Dr Miles’ Nervine.

Perhaps, at some point in the past, an ancestor of the last Blackthorn had seen ft to offer such elixirs to his customers, along with remedies stranger still. A display case inside the door contained packets of Potter’s Asthma Smoking Mixture (‘may be smoked in a pipe either with or without ordinary tobacco’) and Potter’s Asthma Care Cigarettes from the nineteenth century, along with Espic and Legras powders, the latter beloved of the French writer Marcel Proust, who used it to tackle his asthma and hay fever. In addition to stramonium, a derivative of the common thornapple, Datura stramonium, which was regarded as an effective remedy for respiratory problems, such products also contained, variously, potash and arsenic. Now long fallen from favor, they were memorialized in the gloom of Blackthorn, Apothecary, alongside malt beverages for nursing mothers, empty bottles of cocaine-based coca wine and heroin hydrochloride, and assorted preparations of morphine and opium for coughs, colds and children’s teething difficulties.

By the time the final Blackthorn was entering his twilight years – in a store that, most aptly, eschewed sunlight through the judicious use of heavy drapes and a sparing attitude toward electric illumination – the business that bore his family name sold only herbal medicines, and the musty interior still contained the evidence of Blackthorn’s faith in the efficacy of natural solutions. The mahogany shelves were lined with glass jars containing moldering and desiccated herbs and various oils that appeared to have survived the years with little change. A series of ornate lettered boards between the shelves detailed a litany of ailments and the herbs available to counteract the symptoms, from bad breath (parsley) and gas (fennel and dill) to cankers (goldenseal), cancer (bilberry, maitake mushroom, pomegranate, raspberry) and congestive heart failure (hawthorn). All was dust and dead insects, except on the floor where regular footfalls had cleared a narrow path through the detritus of decades. This led from a side entrance beside the main door, through a hallway adorned with photographs of the dead, and amateur landscapes that bespoke a morbid fascination with the work of the more depressive German Romantics bordering on mental illness, and into the store itself by way of a door with panels decorated by graphically rendered scenes from the Passion of Christ. The path’s final destination was obscured by a pair of black velvet drapes that closed off what had once been old Blackthorn’s back room, in which the apothecary had created his tinctures and powders.