boys from the Territorial SAS and not entirely disgraced himself. But after just a few yards he realised with a shock that this maniac, even with a large-calibre bullet in his chest, was outpacing him. He willed himself to run faster.
It quickly became clear where Finch was heading. At the bottom of Walton Well Road was an old stone hump bridge, and beyond it was Port Meadow, a vast expanse of open country protected from the developers by ancient common land laws, where the snaking river Thames became the Isis.
Finch reached the bridge and dropped out of sight. By the time Joel had got there, Finch was already sprinting across the grass, aiming for the river. Joel pressed on, forcing all the power he could muster from his legs. His racing feet ripped through the long grass as they neared the water.
Finch was nearly fifty yards ahead of him now. Joel saw him slither down the reedy bank and disappear — a moment later, he saw him again. Finch had boarded a small wooden boat. His muscular fists gripped the oars and his arms moved like pistons.
He was covered in blood, more like some kind of fiendish machine than a man. Water foamed white as the boat surged forward. Joel caught a fleeting glimpse of the notebook lying in the bottom between Finch’s boots. He saw the twisted smile on the man’s lips.
He’s getting away.
But there was one chance. Thirty yards downriver, an iron footbridge spanned the water. Finch had almost reached it.
Joel threw himself into a fast sprint through the long grass. He reached the footbridge and propelled himself up the clanking metal steps four at a time. Raced across until he was right over the water, and looked down over the rail just in time to see the prow of the rowing boat emerge from under the bridge, and the top of Finch’s bald skull gleaming with exertion. Joel clambered over the rail. It was a ten-foot drop.
If he delayed half a second too long, he’d hit the water in the boat’s wake and there would be no hope of catching Finch as he rowed frenetically away.
Joel launched himself into space.
The boat and its occupant rushed up to meet him with frightening speed. Joel had timed it right. He landed squarely on top of Finch with an impact that almost knocked the wind out of him. But the man was too powerful an adversary to give him even a split second’s chance to recover from the shock. Joel pummelled his face and head with blows. Felt his knuckles smashing in the cartilage of his nose. Blood sprayed.
Finch lashed out with his fist and caught Joel above the eye. Joel fell back in the boat.
Finch roared up onto his feet and came at him with a stamping kick that would have crushed his ribs if it had landed. Joel twisted out of the way just in time, and Finch’s boot almost crashed through the bottom of the boat. The ferocity of his kick rocked the little vessel violently. Finch lost his footing and fell with a splash into the water.
Joel dived straight in after him, gasping at the shock of the cold water. He resurfaced to see Finch just two feet away, white foam boiling around him and turning rapidly pink as he struggled back towards the boat. Joel grabbed the bald man brutally by the ears and headbutted him. And again. Finch’s eyes blazed in a mask of blood.
Joel was too terrified to hesitate even for a moment. He punched him three, four, five times in the face, numb to the blows the bald man was landing on him in return. Pain was something to worry about later. He dug his fingers into Finch’s collar, plunged his head under the water and held him there. Finch’s strong hands thrashed underwater, lashed punches at his stomach, grasped for his wrists. Joel gritted his teeth and used every ounce of his strength to keep him under. The man’s head twisted from side to side and Joel could see his bared teeth as he tried to tear into him like an animal.
Ten seconds. Twenty. Bubbles erupted to the surface as Finch flailed wildly for air. Joel hit him again and kept him down. The water was clouded pink around them.
It was a full minute before Finch’s struggles had diminished to nothing. Joel let him go and watched the inert body bobbing on the swell.
The rowing boat had drifted in towards the bank. Joel kicked out towards it, reached up over the side and felt in the bottom. It was half full of water, and, to his horror, his raking fingers found the notebook almost completely submerged. He splashed away from the boat, holding his grandfather’s work clear of the surface, and hauled himself up the bank by fistfuls of reeds. He collapsed on his knees on dry land, spluttering and coughing and feverishly checking the pages of the notebook. It was soaked and bloody.
He heard voices.
Two young women were approaching down the towpath on the opposite side of the river, accompanied by a little girl who was playing on a portable computer game as she walked. Joel pressed himself flat among the rushes and waited breathlessly for them to pass by. They had only to glance to their right, and they’d see Finch’s corpse drifting face-down, spreadeagled in the water, turning a slow horizontal cartwheel as the current eased him away downstream. It was just pure luck that the women were too deep in conversation, and the child too engrossed with her electronic gizmo, for them to spot him floating past.
When they were at a safe distance, Joel let out a long wheezing sigh of relief and shakily got to his feet. Only then did he begin to realise the kind of shit he was in.
It wasn’t enough that he was suspended from duty for harassing and assaulting an innocent man. Now he’d shot that same man in his own home with an illegal handgun, then killed him in broad daylight with his bare hands.
He made it back to his flat without meeting anyone in the street. Safely inside, he carefully laid the soaking wet notebook over the bathroom radiator to dry as he stripped off his dripping, mud-smeared clothes and blasted away the filth and blood under a hot shower.
He knew he couldn’t stay here. Once the sun had gone down and Finch’s vampire master realised his servant wasn’t coming back, Joel would be vulnerable to a far worse visitor than any mortal man. He couldn’t fight them. He was going to have to run and hide, and figure out his next move.
‘You see, Joel, of all the things a vampire fears, this one cross is what they dread most. And the person who wields it — well, that person is the most powerful enemy those monsters have in all the world.’
He could only hope that the old man hadn’t just been clinging to some old myth.
But where to start searching for this mythical cross of Ardaich? Such clues as the notebook offered gave him precious little to go on.
He couldn’t do this on his own.
Someone had said they could help him. Now it was time to call her.
Chapter Fifty-Two
‘Remember me?’ he’d said on the phone earlier that afternoon.
‘The belligerent police inspector,’ she’d replied. ‘Funny, I was just thinking about you.’
‘Can we meet? I need to talk to you.’
‘Can you come to London?’
‘I’m kind of at a loose end for a while. I can go anywhere.’
‘I live in Canary Wharf. Take down this address.’
That was how, just after three in the afternoon, Joel came to be standing inside the luxurious glass lift in his motorcycle leathers, heading for the top floor of the expensive apartment building overlooking the river.
What kind of journalist must this Alex Bishop be, he wondered to himself. You’d have to be rolling in money to live in a place like this. His own meagre police salary wouldn’t buy him a broom cupboard here.
The lift doors glided open and he stepped out into an airy landing filled with exotic plants and the scent of flowers. In one hand he was carrying his crash helmet, in the other the holdall that he’d hurriedly packed full of clothes before escaping from his place in Jericho. He had no idea when he’d be able to return there.
The sweeping view across London was breathtaking. He paused for a moment, gazing out through the tall
