shuffled off to talk to the members of the crime lab. Tombstone whistled. Nelson tapped his foot. They shared a quick conspiratorial grin.
Church was turning back to the car when a realisation struck him with astonishing lucidity. Oakes really didn’t see the boy on the CCTV footage. There were only two people in the world that the Void and its servants the spiders couldn’t see: the two Keys.
‘Show me again,’ he said, unable to hide his eagerness.
Nelson’s eyes narrowed, but he nodded to Tombstone to replay the footage. The boy had blond hair and a strong, honest face. The car was being driven by a large man with a wide-brimmed hat, but Church couldn’t make out his features, and there was somebody else in the back. But those two didn’t matter. The boy was the Key.
‘Can you trace that car?’ he asked.
‘Why would we want to trace the car?’ Nelson said.
‘I think it might be something to do with the homicide.’
Tombstone tapped his head. ‘That’s, what, intuition? Or is the word … insanity?’
Nelson didn’t respond. ‘Jude Law here knows something.’
Tombstone shrugged, and returned to the footage to get the licence plate number.
7
Accompanied by the constant crackle of the police radio, they drove south, past steaming manhole covers turning the after-hours people into ghosts, surrounded by the slow, constant movement of the sleepless city.
At one point, Nelson’s phone bleeped with an incoming text. Tombstone eyed him with weary sympathy. ‘Gina?’
‘Yeah. Guess I’ll have some time on my hands this weekend.’ Church sensed sadness, but Nelson’s face gave nothing away. ‘You got a girl, Jude Law?’
‘Yeah …’ The hesitancy in Church’s voice was as clear to Nelson as it was to him.
‘I know how it is.’ Nelson looked out of the side window thoughtfully. ‘I know how it is.’
They ended their journey near Washington Square Park in the Village. The smart buildings of New York University surrounded the large open space, the arch in the centre glowing spectrally in the gloom. Oakes pulled up behind them, watching every movement with an unblinking stare.
The owner of the car from the CCTV footage was a twenty-one-year-old Latino with an asymmetric haircut wearing sunglasses despite the hour. He was thin and small and clearly not the person who had been driving the car.
A hint of unease troubling his usually implacable face, Nelson returned after questioning him and two others from the video store where he worked. ‘Guy says the car hasn’t been out tonight. Engine’s cold. Confirmed by two witnesses.’
‘Lying?’ Tombstone asked hopefully.
‘Don’t think so.’
Church instantly knew the recording on Tombstone’s BlackBerry would no longer show the car, or the boy hanging out of the rear window. The notion struck Nelson and Tombstone at the same time.
‘Getting a little creeped-out now, Jude Law,’ Nelson said. ‘Time to start putting my mind at rest.’
‘I can’t,’ Church said.
‘Don’t talk to him,’ Oakes interjected. ‘He’ll only lie.’
‘Agent Oakes, do you have a take on this?’ Nelson asked pointedly.
‘There’s some glitch in the system, that’s all. Recordings don’t change. Just focus on the crime, Detective. You have a serial killer. Catch him.’
‘A serial killer who doesn’t fit any FBI profile. Three random homicides in rapid succession by a cannibalistic sociopath. Doesn’t happen.’
‘So it’s a first. Make a name for yourself.’
‘Don’t listen to him,’ Church said. ‘He isn’t who you think he is.’
‘Shut up,’ Oakes snarled, sweat beading on his forehead. He noticed that Nelson and Tombstone were no longer trying to hide their suspicions. ‘I’m taking him back,’ he said. ‘You two can keep pretending you’re in Fairyland for as long as you like.’ Oakes tried to drag Church towards the car.
‘Now hang on …’ Tombstone began.
Oakes shrieked. A raven bigger than any Church had ever seen was clinging onto Oakes’s head as it pecked furiously at his eyes.
Church saw his moment. With Nelson and Tombstone gripped by the bizarre sight, he raced through the slow-moving traffic into a side street. He heard Tombstone yell, the threat that he would be shot, but as he anticipated, there was no gunfire. When Nelson and Tombstone dropped out of direct sight, he ducked into a convenience store. The Korean owner watched him suspiciously as he made his way to the back amongst the frozen goods and the day’s special offer.
He wasn’t alone. A tall, big-boned man with long, wiry hair and beard, once black, now turning grey and white, loaded staple goods into his basket: a two-gallon carton of milk, two loaves of bread, several cans of beans. He had the florid face and burst capillaries of a heavy drinker, but it was the wide-brimmed hat that struck Church. There could have been thousands like it in the city, but he was acutely aware of the pile-up of coincidences; he was sure it was the same hat he had seen on the man driving the car in the CCTV footage.
Church pretended to inspect a box of Froot Loops. From outside, he heard loud voices and running feet as Tombstone, Nelson and a lumbering Oakes passed by.
Anxiously, he watched as the man in the hat paid for his goods and left. Church followed him across the road and down another street until he entered a door next to a club where punks and goths congregated on the sidewalk, smelling of patchouli, hair-dye and make-up. After a moment, Church followed him inside.
The building was a former commercial premises and appeared close to being condemned: broken floorboards, graffiti, the stink of damp and mould. Yet it was clearly occupied: Church could smell fried food and dope smoke. His quarry’s footsteps echoed on the stairs.
Church passed several rooms all missing doors, obviously squats with bedrolls laid out on the bare floors. He came to the floor where he estimated the man in the hat had ended his journey. There were three closed doors.
As he approached the first door, he heard movement in the shadows behind him just before a knife was pressed beneath his right eye.
‘One move and I take it out.’ It was a girl’s voice, with the perfect, clipped vowels of an expensive English private education.
‘I’m not moving.’
‘Why are you following Crowther?’
‘I’m looking for someone. A teenage boy, blond hair-’
‘What are you? Immigration? Social Services? Police?’
‘Nothing like that. I’m trying to help you. There are people looking for you who might want to hurt you-’
The knife dug deeper. Blood dripped down Church’s face.
‘Is it Creed? Is it?’ she shouted.
‘No!’
‘I’m not joining his little gang!’ She put her hand around the base of Church’s head and smashed his forehead against the wall.
‘Jack! Prof!’
Church rolled onto his back, purple flashes darting across his vision. The girl was no older than sixteen, black, her features hard.
From a door further along the corridor emerged the man in the wide-brimmed hat and the boy, maybe a year older than the girl. He had the most piercing eyes Church had ever seen.
‘Good Lord!’ Crowther exclaimed. ‘Can’t I leave you alone for one minute? Who have you attacked this time?’
