The Bureau’s attention was irritating and an inconvenience, but little more than that. Pryor Investments had learned from past mistakes, and was now entirely scrupulous in its dealings. Of course, the company was merely a front: a fully functioning and lucrative one, but a front nonetheless. The Backers’ real machinery had been hidden so deeply, and for so long, in established companies, in banks and trusts, in charities and religious organizations, as to be untraceable. Let the FBI and its allies expend their energy on Pryor Investments. Admittedly, it was unfortunate that the private detective in Maine had become interested in Pryor Investments to begin with. It was a piece of bad luck, and nothing more. But he had clearly spoken to others of his suspicions, which was why the FBI had ended up on Pryor’s doorstep. But they would find nothing, and eventually their attention would turn elsewhere.

Now, in the quiet of the museum, he spoke on the phone with the Principal Backer.

‘Who killed this couple in Asheville?’

‘We don’t know for sure’, said Pryor, ‘but we believe it was Parker’s pet assassins.’

‘They did well to find what we could not.’

‘We were close,’ said Pryor. ‘The Daunds’ blood was still pooling on the floor of their house when I got their names.’

‘So they saved us the trouble of killing the Daunds ourselves.’

‘I suppose they did. What now?’

‘Now? Nothing.’

Pryor was surprised. ‘What about Prosperous?’

‘We let Parker’s friends finish what they started. Why should we involve ourselves when they will do the job for us?’ The Principal Backer laughed. ‘We won’t even have to pay them.’

‘And then?’

‘Business as usual. You have mines to acquire.’

Yes, thought Pryor. Yes, I have.

53

Lucas Morland felt as though he had aged years in a matter of days, but for the first time he was starting to believe that Prosperous might be free and clear, at least as far as the law was concerned. The MSP had not been in touch with him in forty-eight hours, and its investigators were no longer troubling his town. A certain narrative was gaining traction: Harry Dixon, who had been depressed and suffering from financial problems, killed his wife, her halfsister, her husband and, it was presumed, his niece, before turning his gun on himself. Extensive searches of the town and its environs had failed to uncover any trace of Kayley Madsen. The state police had even done some halfhearted exploring in the cemetery under Pastor Warraner’s watchful eye. The only tense moment occurred when some disturbance to the earth near the church walls was discovered, but further digging exposed only the remains of what was believed to be an animal burrow of some kind – too narrow, it seemed certain, to allow for the burial of a young woman’s body.

Then there was the matter of the detective. The hit on him had been botched, and, just as Morland had warned, the attack had brought with it a series of convulsive aftershocks, culminating in the killing of the Daunds. Morland didn’t know how the couple had been tracked down. Neither did he know if they had kept silent as they died or confessed all to their killers in an effort to save themselves or, more likely, their son, who had been held captive while his parents were shot dead in their own home. At best, those who were seeking to avenge the shooting of the detective were now only one step away from Prosperous. He had tried to get Hayley Conyer and the others to understand the danger they were in, but they refused to do so. They believed that they had acted to protect the town, and the town, in turn, would protect them. Why wouldn’t it? After all, they had given a girl to it.

Now he was back in Conyer’s house, sitting at that same table in that same room, sipping tea from the same cups. Sunlight flooded through the trees. It was the first truly warm day in months. The air was bright with the sound of snow and ice melting, like the dimly heard ticking of clocks.

‘You’ve done well, Lucas,’ Conyer told him as she sipped her tea. Morland had barely touched his. He had begun to resent every minute he was forced to spend in Conyer’s presence. ‘Don’t think the board doesn’t appreciate all of your efforts.’

He was there only because that old bastard Kinley Nowell had finally given up the ghost. He had died that morning in his daughter’s arms. It was a more peaceful passing than he deserved. As far as Morland was concerned, Kinley Nowell had been severely lacking in the milk of human kindness, even by the standards of a town that fed young women to a hole in the ground.

But Nowell’s death had also provided him with what might be his final chance to talk some sense into Hayley Conyer. The board would need a replacement, but she had vetoed the suggestion that the young lawyer Stacey Walker should be Nowell’s replacement, despite the majority of her fellow board members being in favor. Instead Conyer was holding firm on Daniel Cooper, who wasn’t much younger than Nowell had been when he died, and was among the most stubborn and blinkered of the town’s elders, as well as an admirer of Conyer’s to the point of witlessness. Even after all that had occurred, Conyer was still attempting to consolidate her position.

‘We just need to stand together for a little while longer,’ Conyer continued, ‘and then all this will pass.’

She knew why he was here, but she wasn’t about to be dissuaded from her course. She’d already informed Morland that she felt Stacey Walker was too young, too inexperienced, to be brought on to the board. Hard times called for old heads, she told him. Morland couldn’t tell whether she’d just made that up or if it was an actual saying, but he rejected it totally in either case. It was old heads that had gotten them into all this trouble to begin with. The town needed a fresh start. He thought of Annie Broyer, and a question that had come to mind after he and Harry Dixon had spent a cold night burying her.

What would happen if we stopped feeding it?

Bad things, Hayley Conyer would have told him had she been there. She would have pointed to the misfortunes that had blighted Prosperous so recently – the deaths of those boys in Afghanistan, of Valerie Gillson, of Ben Pearson – and said, There! See what happens when you fail in your duty to the town?

But what if this was all a myth in which they had mistakenly chosen to believe? What if their old god was more dependent on them than they were on it? Their credence gave it power. If they deprived it of belief, then what?

Could a god die?

Let the town have its share of misfortunes. Let it take its chances with the rest of humanity, for good or ill. He was surprised by how much Kayley Madsen’s fate had shaken him. He’d heard stories, of course. His own father had prepared him for it, so he thought he knew what to expect. He hadn’t been ready for the reality, though. It was the speed of it that haunted him most, how quickly the girl had been swallowed by the earth, like a conjurer’s vanishing trick.

If Morland had his way, they would feed this old god no longer.

But Hayley Conyer stood in his way: Conyer, and those like her.

‘We have to put old disagreements behind us and look to the future,’ said Conyer. ‘Let all our difficulties be in the past.’

‘But they’re not,’ he said. ‘What happened to the Daunds proves that.’

‘You’re making assumptions that their deaths are linked to their recent efforts on our behalf.’

‘You told me yourself that they worked only for the town. There can be no other reason why they were targeted.’

She dismissed what he had said with a wave of her hand.

‘They could have been tempted to take on other tasks without our knowledge. Even if they did not, and they were somehow tracked down because of the detective, they would not betray us.’