were right! Do you think we stand a chance against them?'
'Take it easy,' Church said calmly. 'Why did Maurice come to see you?'
'He knew they were back! He'd seen them too. He knew they were biding their time, but they'll be making their move soon-they won't wait long. The doors are open!'
'Did Maurice say-'
'He wanted to know what to do! He was so frightened. So frightened. He knew they wouldn't let him have the knowledge for long … they'd get to him. But who could he tell? The bastards put me in here!'
Church sat back in his chair in disappointment; he was getting nowhere. Was Gibbons as crazed as Kraicow, or were his visits some kind of altruistic act? He glanced at Ruth, about to take his leave, but Kraicow grabbed his shirt and dragged him forward.
'Remember the old legend: In England's darkest hour, a hero shall arise. It's there. It's been written.' He took a deep breath and some degree of normalcy returned to him. 'You don't believe me, do you?'
'I'm sorry-
'No, no, it's crazy talk. I've spent too long breathing in those paint fumes.' He chuckled throatily. 'Look in the top drawer.'
Curiously Church followed his nod to the bedside cabinet. In the drawer was an envelope; an address was scribbled on the front. 'That's my studio. You go there, you'll see.'
'I can't-'
'You'll find what you're looking for. Peace of mind. Direction. You'll know what happened to Maurice. It's up to you now.' He pushed Church away roughly and rolled over. 'Go!'
Church glanced at the envelope one more time, then reluctantly took it. At the door, he silenced Ruth's questions with a simple, 'Later.' Downstairs was in darkness. In the gloom, Church felt eyes on his back although he knew the place was empty, and he didn't feel safe until they were outside, dialling a cab on Ruth's mobile.
Kraicow's studio was at the top of a Victorian warehouse in one of the many unredeemed backstreets that formed the heart of Clerkenwell. From the outside it seemed almost derelict: smashed windows filthy with dust, graffiti and posters for bands that had long since split up. Unidentified hulks of machinery were scattered around the ground floor, which stank of engine oil and dirt. But when they climbed out of the service lift at the summit, Kraicow's room presented itself to them in a burst of colour and a smell of oil paint and solvent. An enormous, half-completed canvas was suspended over the centre of the floor, but it was impossible to tell from the splashes of colour exactly what it would eventually be. Other canvases of all sizes were stacked against various walls. The floor was bare boards, but clean, and there was a small camp bed in one corner where the artist obviously snatched a rest during his more intense periods of work. On an uneven table was a collection of tubes of oil, dirty rags, a palette and a jar filled with brushes.
'Do you ever get the feeling you're wasting your time?' Ruth said as she looked around at the disarray.
'You were the one who insisted we go down every avenue, however ridiculous,' Church replied. 'Personally, I think you've been reading way too much Sherlock Holmes.'
Ruth began to search through the stacked canvases. 'What are we looking for?'
'God knows.' Church busied himself with an investigation of a pile of rags and empty paint pots near the window. On the top was a sheet of sketch paper where Kraicow had written El sueno de la Razon Produce monstruos. Church read it aloud, then asked, 'What does that mean?'
Ruth paused in her search and dredged her memory for a translation. '`The sleep of reason brings forth monsters.' It's the title of-'
' a painting by Goya. Yes, I remember.'
Ruth leaned on the canvases and mused, 'It's strange, isn't it? We go about our lives thinking the world is normal and then we stumble across all these people who obviously have a completely different view of reality, indulging in their paranoid fantasies.'
'Are you including the vicar in that?'
Ruth laughed. 'The UFO guy and Kraicow and obviously Gibbons, all feeding each other. And obviously Mrs. Gibbons had no idea what was going on in her husband's head.'
Church moved on to another collection of canvases, older, judging by the thick layer of dust that lay on the top. 'Well, paranoia's like a fire. It quickly gets out of control and suddenly the norm looks weird and the weird becomes perfectly acceptable.'
'You'd know, would you?' Ruth Jibed. Church didn't respond.
Their search continued for fifteen minutes more, becoming increasingly aimless as the futility of the task overcame them. Church, for his part, was afraid to stop; he didn't want to return to his empty flat with its bleak memories. Their hunt for meaning in their experience had released a whole host of emotions with which he hadn't had time to come to terms.
Ruth let the final canvas drop back with a clatter. 'We should call it a day,' she said. Church noted a hint of gloom in her voice. After a second she added morosely, 'I don't think we're getting anywhere and I'm afraid if we don't sort out what happened I'm never going to get back to who I was. That morning was so destabilising I feel like every support for my life has been kicked away.' She wandered over to the window and hauled up the blind to look out over the city.
'I know exactly what you mean,' Church said, remembering the morning after Marianne's terrible death with an awful intensity. 'Sometimes you never get straight again.' He checked the final canvas, a surreal landscape with hints of Dali. 'Nothing here. I don't know what Kraicow was talking about. Serves us right for listening to the views of a mental patient. So what do we do next?'
There was no reply. Church turned slowly. Ruth was standing at the window with her back to him, so immobile she could have been a statue. 'Did you hear me?'
Still no answer. He could tell from her frozen body something was wrong. A hum of anxiety rose at the back of his head, growing louder as he moved towards her. Before he had crossed the floor, her voice came up small, still and frightened. 'He was right.'
Church felt his heart begin to pound; somewhere, doors were opening.
When he came up behind her, he could see what it was that had caught her attention. On the window ledge was a small sculpture in clay, rough and unfinished, but detailed in the upper part. It was a figure with a face so hideous in its deformity and evil they could barely bring themselves to look at it.
And it was the perfect representation of the devil they had recalled during Delano's therapy session. Kraicow had seen it too.
It existed.
Chapter Three
For the rest of the night they sat in Ruth's lounge, talking in the quiet, clipped tones of people who had suffered the massive shock of a sudden bereavement. The discovery of the desperately crafted statue left them with nowhere to turn. Suddenly the shadows were alive, and life had taken on the perspective of a bottle-glass window.
'What the hell's going on?' Ruth looked deep into the dregs of her wine. She had drunk too much too quickly, but however much she told herself it was an immature reaction, she couldn't face up to the immensity of what the statue meant and what they had truly seen that night. For someone immersed on a daily basis in the logic and reason of the law, it was both too hard to believe and impossible to deny; the conflict made her feel queasy.
Church rubbed his tired eyes, at once deflated and lost. 'We can't walk away from it-'
'I know that.' There was an edge to her voice. 'I never thought one moment could change your life so fundamentally.' She walked over to the window and looked out at the lights of the city in the pre-dawn dark. 'We're so alone now-nobody knows what we know. It's a joke! How can we tell anybody? We'll end up getting treated like Kraicow.'
'And what do we know? That there's some kind of supernatural creature out there that looks like a man one
