And minutes later there were sirens and flashing blue lights all over Lavender Close and Dec Maddon standing there in the middle of it all screaming what’s happened? What’s happened?
Chapter Forty-One
Seymour Finch was in the gazebo, staring across Crowmoor Hall’s grounds at the river beyond and deep in thought, when he felt the presence and turned to see the young police inspector walking across the lawn towards him.
‘What a surprise, Inspector. I didn’t think we’d be seeing you again quite so soon. I’ve just been talking to the valuation people at Sotheby’s, by the way. You can expect to receive our invoice for damages shortly.’
‘Enough crap, Finch.’ Joel strode up the gazebo steps and looked the man in the eye. ‘You and I are going to have a talk.’
Finch’s gaunt face crinkled into a dry smile. ‘Splendid. And what will the topic of our conversation be?’
‘You’re going to tell me the truth,’ Joel said. ‘You’re going to show me how you open that hidden passage in the ballroom. And then you’re going to take me down to the crypt. I know it’s there.’
Finch’s smile widened to a grin, and then he gave a mirthless laugh, like the sound of sawing wood. ‘You do have a vivid imagination, Inspector. I thought the police only concerned themselves with the facts.’
‘Start talking.’
Finch shrugged. ‘Very well. If that’s what you want.’ He motioned down the gazebo steps. ‘This way, please.’
Joel looked warily at the man for a second or two, then started down the steps.
He hadn’t even reached the lawn before the flash of white light filled his head and he felt the wind explode from his lungs. The impact was like being hit by a train.
The ground suddenly rushed up to meet his face, and then he felt nothing more.
The first thing Joel registered as the smudged blur of unconsciousness slowly faded back into light was the familiar, concerned face of Sam Carter peering down at him. The second thing he saw was the police officers and paramedics milling about the lawn.
And then he saw Finch.
Joel did a double-take.
Finch was sitting on the steps of the gazebo with a paramedic crouched by him, mopping blood off his face. He looked like he’d been in a serious fistfight, one eye blackened and puffy, lips split open, his teeth rimed with red, blood smeared over his bald crown.
‘You’ve really done it this time, haven’t you, Solomon?’ Carter muttered out of everyone else’s earshot.
‘I didn’t do anything.’
‘Love to say I believed you, Joel, but look at the guy. Have you lost your mind?’
‘I didn’t touch him.’
‘Then how did he get like that?’
‘I don’t know — someone else did it. Or he did it to himself.’
‘He says you attacked him. Says he had to defend himself and got lucky.’
Joel shook his head in protest, wincing at the pain that lanced through his skull.
He felt as if he’d gone ten rounds with a heavyweight champ. It seemed impossible that Finch could have done this to him. And that was the whole problem, because there was no way anyone could see Finch as anything but the victim here.
‘No. I just came to ask him some more questions.’
Carter sighed. ‘You’re in deep shit. You know who Finch works for, don’t you?’
‘Yeah, yeah, I know who he works for.’
Finch looked like a frail old man as the paramedics escorted him into the ambulance. Joel watched as it drove away, and then it was him being escorted to the waiting police car.
Chapter Forty-Two London docks
1.15 p.m.
Alex had to retrace her steps three times up and down the quayside before she felt certain of what she was seeing.
She hadn’t quite known what she was going to find when she returned to the wharf where the Anica was moored: the place swarming with police and forensics teams, maybe, everything sealed off with crime scene tape, dozens of people running around talking on radios. Or maybe the vessel would be much as she’d last seen it the night before — a floating graveyard of dismembered corpses that might, just might, offer up some kind of clue about the vampire attackers who’d ambushed them here, maybe even a lead that could guide her all the way back to the mysterious Gabriel Stone. She knew that might be too much to hope for. Stone seemed like a guy who’d had a lot of practice in covering his tracks.
But she hadn’t expected to find this.
An empty space where the Anica had been just the previous night. The ship was just gone.
‘Who’s helping you, Stone?’ she asked herself out loud as she gazed at the vacant mooring. ‘How are you making all this happen?’
The rathouse pub that was Paulie Lomax’s and his cousin Vinnie’s watering hole of choice wasn’t more than a fifteen-minute walk from the dock. Alex stepped inside the door to be greeted by the surly stares of a bunch of severely nicotine-stained, tattooed, hard-drinking individuals. There were a couple of wolf whistles as she made her way up towards the bar and one of the card players in the corner yelled out something obscene. She wondered whether it would be witty and appropriate just to take out the
44 Smith and blow the top of his head off; maybe, but that wasn’t going to help with the business at hand. Without turning round, she gave him the finger instead. She ignored the whooping and cheering, and walked up to the bar.
In a London that was almost completely homogenised by the inexorable rise of the plastic middle class and the sterile health-and-safety culture that seemed to be taking hold everywhere, she almost relished the spit and sawdust, sweat and grime of a place like this. It reminded her of the old days. You just didn’t want to be a woman back then.
The guy behind the bar was battered and grizzled and looked like he’d served his time in the boxing ring and lost just about every fight he’d been in. He grinned wolfishly and leaned on the pitted wood as she approached.
‘All right, darling. What can I do you for?’
‘I’m looking for Paulie Lomax.’
The grin dropped. ‘Paulie Lomax?’
‘Guy they call Four-Finger. And his friend Vinnie. You know them?’
‘Maybe I do. Maybe I don’t. One thing I do know, love, is that I don’t know you.’
‘Maybe you’ve heard of Rudi Bertolino?’ she said, returning his stare. ‘He’s a friend of mine.’
The barman shrugged. ‘You need to talk to Cheap Eddie. Through there.’ He motioned at a door in the corner.
On the other side was a dingy corridor. It was lit by a naked bulb encrusted with last summer’s dead bluebottles. There was another door at the end of the passage, and she went through it without knocking. Inside the room, a morbidly obese guy of about sixty was sitting on a worn armchair, reading a rumpled copy of the Racing
