“Don’t you think that’s odd?”Marcus asked.“He portrays himself as this evil genius, but he sticks to the same two modes of entry.”
Kate popped a mint, thoughtfully.“He sticks with them because they work, I guess.And he’s not interested in the entrance; that’s just admin, as far as he’s concerned.He wants to get to the show.”
She lingered by the window, looking down four stories to the city’s empty arteries.“Bartholomew Yang,” she said, half to herself.“Unusual name.Memorable.”
“Yeah.So?”
“So back at the church,” she said slowly, “Rodrigues made a whole performance out of suddenly remembering it.‘Oh,thatwas on the tip of my tongue…oh, if only I’d recalled it in time.’What’s the name of those awards they give out?Like the Oscars but for really bad acting?”
Marcus shot her a look.“The Razzies.What’s your thinking?He was bluffing?You think we should go back and put the thumbscrews on Tommy?”
“In the morning,” Kate replied, distractedly.“There’s nothing more we can achieve right now.”
Marcus looked at her closely.“You okay, Vee?”
“Just… I’m just beat, that’s all.Out of options.”
“I know. But tomorrow’s another day.Well…”
She smiled faintly.“You mean, a few hours of patchy, interrupted sleep later and it willseemlike another day.”
“Something like that.Listen, Vee, I can wrap up here.Why don’t you get a ride back with the PD?I’ll wake you at, what, seven?”
She nodded, gratefully.Outside, in the sterile marble corridor, she took out her phone.There was something she badly needed to ask her mom.But calling her at this hour would only frighten her. And then, her sluggish, over-stimulated brain seemed to stir a little, and she realised she didn’t need to bother her mother at all.A quick google search would tell her what she needed to know.
After completing it, she stood on the empty street, phone still in her hand, the silence pressing in.All this time they’d been chasing churches—crosses, altars, pews and pulpits.And Cox had been telling them, over and over, exactly where to look.
That H on Yang’s shirt had nothing to do with holiness.
Hardly subtle, but she couldn’t blame him for that.They’d just taken a ridiculously long time to realise what Cox was spelling out in blood. And now, at last, not long before dawn, it had dawned on her.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Saturday 1stMarch
Dr.Catherine Valentine woke to the discomfort of her bladder and a low, uneasy noise from her dogs downstairs.The clock on her bedside table read 3:30 a.m.—the hour, she’d been told, when most people die in hospital.She swung her legs over the side of the bed and winced at the cold of the floorboards, listening.
Her dogs—Sapir and Whorf—were not barking.They were pacing, nails clicking rhythmically on the parquet, making that low growl halfway between warning and doubt.Catherine pulled her robe around her shoulders and padded out onto the landing, every step accompanied by the quiet, resentful sigh of old stairs.
“Hey,” she called softly, not wanting to wake the neighbours or herself too completely.“What’s up with you two?”
The pair of red setters paused when they saw her at the foot of the stairs, then turned toward the front window again, muscles taut beneath their coats.Whorf let out a single, frustrated whine that seemed to vibrate through the hallway.Catherine followed their gaze, half annoyed, half unsettled.
Through the sheer curtain, the street looked as it always did at that hour—washed-out, skeletal, the streetlight turning frost on the car roofs into dull silver.Except tonight, there was a car she didn’t recognise parked opposite, its windshield a dark mirror.As she looked, a light inside—small, dim, like a reading lamp or the flare of a match—blinked out.
She blinked, too, as though she might have imagined it.
“Probably just someone lighting a cigarette,” she murmured to herself, voice firmer than she felt.“Delivery driver.Rideshare.Nothing unusual.”
A rideshare at half-past three?Delivery of what, exactly, at stupid o’clock?She heard her daughter’s sceptical voice in her head, and the hair on the back of her neck prickled.The dogs didn’t buy her theory; they stayed by the window, hackles up, staring into the dark.Catherine sighed, ran a hand through her sleep-tousled hair.She looked again at the car.Darkness.
“Fine,” she said, the word a weary concession.“Come on, gang.Upstairs.Just this once.”
They bounded up after her, nails skittering on the stairs.She shut the bedroom door behind them, the small act of closing it somehow comforting.The two dogs circled twice at the foot of the bed before climbing up beside her, filling the room with the warmth and smell of living things.
“This is a total one-off,” she told them sternly, as Sapir flopped across her feet and Whorf wedged himself against her hip.“Tomorrow, you’re back in your own beds.Understand?”
They didn’t believe her, of course, but the sound of her voice seemed to ease them.Within minutes, their breathing steadied, soft, rhythmic.Catherine lay staring at the ceiling, wide awake, her pulse still humming from that glimpse of light across the street.
