Free Night Vision by Jane A. Adams Page B

looks as though our assailant tried to retrieve whatever it was, but a torn fragment got left behind. Cindy here’s been trying to get it off the carpet without it falling to bits.’
    Alec fought the desire to go closer. ‘Any idea what it is?’
    Addison shook his head. ‘Whoever it was, they escaped out of the window,’ he said.
    Alec nodded. He had surmised as much.
    â€˜They left blood smears; likely, they were covered in it. Someone will have seen them. We’ve got people looking at the CCTV footage now. The way I see it, Travers left you at, what, six thirty?’
    â€˜More like six fifteen. I arrived at the restaurant at seven ten. I deliberately got there a few minutes early. I waited twenty minutes or so then thought – then thought bugger him, I’m hungry even if he isn’t, and assumed he wasn’t going to show. I ordered, ate and then came here.’
    â€˜What time would that have been?’
    â€˜I looked at my watch when I left the restaurant. It was twenty past eight.’
    Eddison nodded. ‘So, we’ve got a window of about two hours, give or take, though likely later rather than earlier. He had to have let them in. Smears of blood on the window lock indicate they unfastened it on the way out, so we can assume it was fastened when his attacker arrived. Did he say he was expecting anyone?’
    â€˜No,’ Alec said. ‘He mentioned a phone call he had to make.’
    â€˜He say who to?’
    Alec shook his head. ‘I think it might have been a personal call,’ he said, suddenly reluctant to report the content of his last conversation with Travers to the man Trav had virtually accused of blackmailing him. His affair with Michelle Sanders could have no bearing on this. Surely.
    â€˜Right. Parks is in the lobby. The two of you go and get a cup of coffee, and you make your statement, then find that receptionist and the three of you start looking at the CCTV cameras in the lobby for the relevant period. Hopefully, she’ll be able to tell you for certain who is a guest and who she doesn’t recognize.’
    â€˜It might have been a guest,’ Alec said absently.
    â€˜In which case, they’ll still be here. Which I doubt.’
    Ten o’clock, and Alec’s phone vibrated. He glanced at the text as he walked back to the lobby to find Parks. It was from Patrick.
    Alec paused to look at the pictures Patrick had sent of a long space that Alec recognized as the college assembly hall, now broken into discreet sections by large wooden screens. Patrick’s display was on the wall at the far end. His pictures stood out from the rest, inspired in part by the graphic novels he loved so much, but with additions that Alec had not seen before. Alec scrolled through the images, glad of the momentary distraction, paying particular attention to these new scenes. There were two large landscapes, or, rather, cityscapes. One was vaguely familiar, but it took a moment or two to realize that this was a pastiche of Hopper’s Nighthawks, the usually empty street now crammed with a procession of strange characters in carnival dress. It was painted not in Patrick’s usual graphic style, but with a freedom and exuberance of brushstrokes that seemed to echo Hopper’s.
    The second was a place Alec recognized. A local view of the canal basin close to where Patrick and Harry lived and Naomi had grown up. The warehouses and quay were roughly as Alec remembered them, but the narrowboats usually docked in the safe harbour had been replaced by strange, ghostly seagoing galleons and tall ships, all crewed by what looked at first glance to be figures in historic costume. It was hard to tell from the rather low-resolution images on his mobile phone, but Alec was sure that, on closer inspection, none of the figures looked exactly human.
    For a long time, Harry had worried about his son, seeing his somewhat weird art as unnatural and even an