"Is there any reason, Inspector," said a sharp voice, "why such poor results on your part could not have been communicated over the telephone?"

McLennan stared at the Viscount for a second, dropping his gaze only when he suspected that this might be construed as verging upon impertinent. Shifting his notepad around on the pretext of cogitation, he looked back up once more and studied the man now glaring at him like a schnauzer with incipient attack in mind.

Viscount Scarsdale had turned out to be a lean, wiry sixty-year old with a neat goatee beard that was only just tending to grey. He had agreed to travel to London with, McLennan considered, palpably bad grace. However, police procedure had made it necessary to secure certain details in person. Not that this had had much effect upon the Viscount's simmering temper, but it had at least calmed McLennan's nerves to be able to pass the buck in this manner.

"Apologies, your Lordship," he said, soothingly. "As I explained, to protect your security of information it was essential that you brought the paperwork to us in person."

"Yes, yes," the Viscount snapped, passing over a slim plastic folder with several A4 photocopies slipped inside it. Passing his eye over the very top copy, McLennan noted the elegant De Beers letterhead, and then set it aside for the moment.

"This is the complete list?" he asked. There was an impatient nod from across the desk, accompanied by a small, nasal sigh.

"It is. There were seventy-two diamonds in that shipment and each one was marked at source. These marks are now in your hands, Inspector, so if you have everything you need from me, I'll be taking my leave."

McLennan showed his guest out into reception, pondering all the way downstairs as to why it was that the nobility felt that they had, by virtue of their position, unlimited liberty to be rude, condescending and short-tempered without having to apologise for it at any point. As if to make this perfectly clear, the Viscount did not deign to shake hands; he merely nodded bluntly at McLennan and stalked out of the main doors towards his Bentley and its waiting driver.

Finch was just walking in the door. He stood aside as the Viscount brushed past him with a snort of irritation, and then rolled his eyes at the man's retreating back.

McLennan waited until Finch drew alongside him, and then explained matters as they went back upstairs. Finch interrupted at only one point.

"So, the old goat didn't think it was worth it to invest in personal markings?" he said, sourly.

"Apparently not," McLennan replied, shrugging. "I wish I could afford to take a relaxed approach to nigh on half a million quid."

"He doesn't look very relaxed at the moment," commented Finch, as he pushed into the office. McLennan handed him the list that the Viscount had dropped off, and then wandered over to the drinks machine. By the time he turned back with two cups of mediocre coffee, Finch was nose-deep in the photocopies, his normally morose countenance now folded up in studied concentration. He looked up briefly, accepted the coffee, and returned to his perusal.

McLennan was picking at a stray thread on his shirt cuff when Finch grunted, closed the folder and laid it on the desk in front of his superior. "Now there's odd," he said, evenly.

"Sorry? What is?" asked McLennan, looking up in genuine bewilderment, his coffee cup halfway to his mouth. He set it down again as Finch folded his arms before continuing.

"Didn't you notice, sir?"

"Notice what?" said McLennan, now faintly irritated.

Dragging another chair over, Finch straddled it and opened the folder again, turning it around. He poked at the list of serial numbers on the paper, running his fingertip down the figures.

"They're in numerical order," he explained, patiently, "but they're not sequential." The inspector wrinkled his nose, leaned back expansively and sighed.

"So I see," he said, calmly, "but what of it?"

"If you'll remember, sir, the shipping notes indicated a brand new consignment from De Beers." When McLennan continued to frown, Finch straightened up and went on. "If that were the case, they'd have sequential numbers," he finished, then lapsed into an uneasy silence.

God in heaven, McLennan said to himself, battling a sudden, overbearing urge to beat his own head against the desk. It was as clear as day now, and the only reason he hadn't spotted this glaring error himself was due to the fact that he'd been rattled by the Viscount's spiky, acerbic manner. He gulped at his coffee, wincing as he burned his tongue slightly, and sat forward.

"It looks like there's a little more to this than we first thought," he observed blandly, studying the photocopies once more.

He was about to continue with this growing development of consciousness when his desk phone rang on an internal line. Snatching it up, he barked into the receiver.

"Yes?" He listened, continued to listen, and Finch watched in puzzlement as the inspector's brows furled in confusion for a moment. This expression lasted for a few seconds before it was replaced by a twisted look of whey-faced incredulity. "Right, we'll be straight round," he said flatly, and dropped the receiver back into its cradle with a soft click.

"We've got a murder to attend to," he told Finch, his eyes still dull with apprehension. "Several murders, in fact," he added, wearily. "Let's get going."


The pair headed north under a surprisingly strong sun, and Finch eventually wound the window down a little as he negotiated the eternally snarled mess of traffic in Regent Street. McLennan wondered fleetingly whether they ought to use the siren, and then thought better of it. It wasn't as if they were attending an emergency. Dead bodies didn't usually get any deader. Besides, every available whiff of space on the road had apparently been filled; nobody would be able to get out of their way even if they'd been inclined to.

Finch swung the car into Wimpole Street, and it was at this point that McLennan groaned inwardly. A number of reporters were already converging on the scene, although so far they were being shepherded back by a phalanx of uniforms while a constable began to cordon the scene off, winding a strip of tape around a parking meter and running it out off the spool. He felt a heartening stab of pride at the efficiency of the Met, and then turned to Finch as the sergeant drew the car to a halt on the far side of the road.

"You get along inside and see what's what," he said, hearing the tiredness in his own voice as he spoke, "and I'll deal with that lot. Okay?"

"Right you are, sir," Finch said, shortly, and climbed out of the car, crossing the road at an angle, giving the press a vastly wide berth, although they didn't seem to be too bothered by him. McLennan watched him show his warrant card to the officer at the entrance to the alley, and then disappear around the corner. Only when Finch was lost to sight did McLennan make his own entrance.

The press displayed far more interest in the Chief Inspector than they had in his subordinate, and surged forward in a tide of muttered arguments and elbowing. McLennan had time to ponder that it might only be reporters' inborn tendency against cooperation that stood between the world and a slow death by media intrusion, and then turned to face the advancing horde, hands clasped behind his back.

"Chief Inspector?" called a voice that McLennan was dismayed to recognise. "Alan Kennedy, Sun. What's going on here, please?" He watched Kennedy push his way to the front of the crowd, leading the way by virtue of his physical size and his naturally belligerent personality, and step up in front of McLennan with an artificially enforced smile plastered across his face. McLennan did not return this.

"Good afternoon, Mr. Kennedy," he said, not bothering to keep the ice from coating his tone. "We're here to investigate a report of a death or deaths, and that's all I'm at liberty to say for the time being, I'm afraid." Kennedy flipped his notebook up with an air of professionalism that told a slew of lies about the man that lay behind it, and scrawled this down.

"Thank you," mumbled Kennedy, still writing. Finally, he looked up again. "I wonder if you have a comment about the rising levels of violent crime in London, Inspector?"

Only that you're not helping me to investigate it, you useless vermin, McLennan thought, although he bit down on his tongue to stop these words on their way to his mouth, painfully conscious that there were things a prudent Chief Inspector never, ever said to someone with a pen in their hand. Instead, he readjusted the set of his shoulders and adopted a very carefully neutral expression before he responded.

"You may reassure your readers that crime of all kinds is well under control in this city, Mr. Kennedy," he said, far more smoothly than he would have done if he'd allowed himself free rein with his feelings, "and that we will investigate this report with all due efficiency and diligence. Good day to you," he finished, and swung around, putting a definite end to the conversation, although he swore that he could feel the reporter smirking at his back as he walked away.

The officer at the alley straightened his back as the inspector approached, although McLennan felt obliged to observe proper procedure, especially as he was still well within sight of the press. He fished his wallet out and showed the officer his ID, then ducked beneath the tape and wandered down the narrow, grimy thoroughfare.

He wondered why there wasn't a second officer stationed at the door to the property, until a quick glance around showed him that this was a blind turning with no other entrance and only one door leading out into it. He turned the handle, hearing the subtle squeak of neglected hinges, and negotiated the dimly lit hallway with no small amount of trepidation.

Elbowing the inner door aside, he started down the steps, and then pulled up short as the smell wrapped itself around him and crawled up into his nostrils. He turned his head, but not before he'd taken in the sight of the bodies – and various component parts thereof – decorating the room as if he were attending the aftermath of the world's most morbid party.

He saw, as he backed up a step, that Finch was engaged in a quiet conversation with one of the scene of crime investigators. The sergeant wrapped his hand around a small plastic bag, glanced up, and studied his superior officer with evident concern.

McLennan struggled with his rebellious stomach, swallowing several times to stem the tide of searing bile that was threatening to climb up his gullet. Finally acknowledging defeat, he turned around and stumbled back up the narrow passage, wanting fresh air, even if that air was tainted with London's perpetual, tangible background odour of fast food and traffic fumes. Anything to wash the reek of congealing blood and spilled entrails from his sinuses.

He burst out into the weak sunlight once more, found a low, crumbling brick wall and sat down heavily, his head in his hands. His mouth filled with a flood of loose, stringy saliva, and he swallowed once again, clearing his throat desperately.

The door inched back behind his shoulder and Finch slipped out, blinking in the unaccustomed light. He shook his head, linked his hands behind his back and studied McLennan for a quiet moment.

"You okay, sir?" he said, eventually. McLennan pulled himself up a little, and nodded.

"Yes," he said, slowly, "it just took me by surprise, that's all. I'll be all right."

"No shame in it," Finch replied, with, McLennan thought, surprising gentility for a hard-shelled Northerner. "We've all been there. You've not seen a murder scene before?"

"No, I have, of course I have, but not..." here he turned and waved a vague hand at the door, "...not like that."

"I'm sorry about that," said Finch, as he reached into his pocket. "I ought to've warned you. The coroner hasn't been round to pick up yet. Anyway, they haven't quite polished up in there, but they did find something interesting..." Finch's voice tailed off as he handed over the plastic bag that he'd taken from the investigator.

Taking it wordlessly, McLennan held it up to the light, his brow furrowing as he studied the contents. They gleamed joyfully at him even through the plastic: three gorgeous brilliant diamonds, shifting against one another as he tilted the bag from one side to another. Something slotted into place in his memory, and he stared up at Finch, his eyes widening slightly.

"Are these...?"

"Not sure yet, we'll have to see if they're marked," said Finch, lowering his voice a notch, "but I'd say it's looking like a possibility."

"Right," said McLennan, distractedly. "Okay, so what else have we got so far?"

"A right bloody mess...no pun intended," Finch told him. "Five bodies – four male, one female. No ID on the blokes, but we have several likely leads on the woman. Causes of death will have to wait but, so far, it all looks fairly obvious.

"Whoever did this certainly wasn't trying to be subtle, sir. One broken neck, two disembowellings, one severed femoral artery plus several deep wounds to the chest and neck, and one poor bugger had his hand nailed to the table..." he paused uncomfortably here, waiting until McLennan had finished wincing, "...before the killer cut his throat."

McLennan had been staring levelly at the ground as this short, nasty recital flowed over him. He raised his head now and directed a hopeless stare at Finch.

"What did I do to deserve all of this on my watch?" he asked. He watched the sergeant shift and shrug, and then went on. "Never mind. Rhetorical question," he said, handing the diamonds back and hauling himself up off the wall with a light sigh.

"It'll be a while before we can get a result on the prints and find out who this lot are," Finch volunteered. "All we can do for now is trace the woman. We recovered a mobile. Of course, it might not be hers, but working on the assumption that it is, I'll get a call log from the network."

"Good man," McLennan said, finding that he meant it. He was finally beginning to develop a faint liking for Finch. Although they were apparently polar opposites in just about every aspect, be it social, intellectual or cultural, the fellow seemed to be fairly intelligent, naturally observant and far more conscientious than most.

"Have we got enough officers to look after things?" he said, after a pause for thought. Finch nodded.

"We've got plenty of our lads out front, and they know full well they're not to let the press anywhere near the place."

"In that case, let's get back," said McLennan, decisively. "I assume all the portable evidence has already been moved?"

"Yes, sir."

With that, McLennan led the way back up the alley to the street, lifting the tape a little to allow them to duck beneath it. The pavement had also been cordoned off on the nearside, and several police cars were parked along the kerb to reinforce the point. Nevertheless, the citizenry, with that ancient, universal and unerring instinct for a free show, were gathering on the far side of the road, some pointing, but most content merely to gawk. McLennan experienced a mild twinge of world-weariness at this sight.

"You can't change people, can you?" said Finch from behind his shoulder, as if he'd received a telepathic broadcast of the inspector's current thought process.

"No," McLennan admitted, "although you have to wonder if they'd be half as nosy if they knew what it looked like in there."

The coroner's van passed them as they drove back to Scotland Yard. As he craned his neck to watch it go by, McLennan couldn't help but wonder whether anyone had told the crew to bring a few extra bags.


The small hours, and the early chill that they brought with them, tightened their grip upon the city until it squeaked. Gordon lifted the curtain back an inch, gazing out at the slow, insidious fog that was filling the street outside and curling over his hedge like the tail of a prowling tomcat.

He jumped as something bumped against his thigh, then remembered the whisky bottle that he still held in his hand and, raising it, took a generous draught before dropping the curtain once more. He'd tried to catch up on the sleep that had eluded him the previous night, but with a singular lack of success, and had ultimately decided to resort to tried and tested means of achieving oblivion.

The radio was turned to Classic FM and currently issuing some tranquil notes from Debussy, although this did little to disrupt the visual symphony of maiming and slaughter that was still echoing in Gordon's memory. Even while his eyes were open, he was assailed by distressing mental clips, short but brutal in the extreme. What they'd be like if he ever managed to dream again, he didn't dare contemplate.

The doorbell cut through both the peace of the radio and the ghoulish reminiscence it seemed to be fast blending itself with, and Gordon shivered violently in a way that bypassed his higher brain centres and issued straight from his cerebellum. Knowing who would be at the door, knowing that all he could expect from answering that summons was to be plunged back into the horror he'd been trying to escape for the past twenty-four hours, he experienced a simple desire to hide under his bed until it went away.

His unconscious, however, understanding that the world was not nearly as simple as it was often made out to be, carried him out into the hall and put his hand on the latch.

V stepped through the door and swung it closed behind him as Gordon backed away in spite of his every effort to remain outwardly calm and composed. His eyes fell to the knives at V's belt, now resolutely cleaned and polished, but his mind's eye had them coated with the fresh blood that had bedewed them just the previous night. He twitched, and only with a Herculean presence of mind did he drag his gaze up to meet that clean white countenance and those empty eye sockets.

There was one split second when the mask tilted down, and Gordon felt V's stare fall upon the whisky bottle, but he apparently reserved both comment and judgement and merely folded his hands together.

"Good evening, Gordon," he said, his voice lilting gently. "I wished to see that you were all right. I would have accompanied you home last night, but there was much I had to do."

Gordon's mind stuttered for a moment, and when he spoke he was certain that his speech would reflect this, but to his surprise he managed to convey a great deal of clarity.

"I'm all right," he replied. He then looked down at his feet and, for an unexplored reason, changed direction. "No, I'm not, not really. I'm very far from all right, in fact."

"I'm sorry to hear that."

Are you? Gordon asked himself. He wasn't at all certain of it. He was tired and distressed and, right now, a shade drunk, but something perched itself upon his shoulder and pointed out, in a small yet insistent voice, that nothing about V's tone conveyed any more sorrow or regret than the man could very easily dismiss if it suited him to do so.

And I looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him.

Gordon tightened his grip upon the neck of the bottle as that verse slithered through his mind, although nothing he could do would remove it from his consideration now that it had taken root there. He struggled with a passing, surreal experience that, for a second, lent the mask in front of his eyes a skull-like quality.

Finding that this jolt had dwindled and that he could now breathe somewhat more freely, Gordon waved a hand across the hall.

"Please," he said, weakly. "Come in. We need to talk, and if it's not dealt with now then I don't think it ever will be."

"As you wish," V breathed, and followed Gordon into the living room. Gordon sank onto the sofa, although V remained standing, not far inside the door, and Gordon was hit with the sudden, piercing impression that everything he was about to say had, in a sense, already passed between them quite without the need for mere words. Even so, he cleared his throat, set the whisky aside and twined his hands nervously around one another.

"Firstly," he began, "I want you to know that I'm very grateful to you for saving my life last night."

"That is not necessary," V said in response, gesturing somewhat cryptically as he did so. "I shall only say to you what your father said to me: that gratitude is neither necessary nor meaningful where obligation runs above the simple exchange of favours and owes itself, instead, to the far more binding accords of duty."

"I understand," said Gordon, although he knew that he didn't, not fully. "However, with that in mind, you need to appreciate that I haven't taken any decisions lightly."

"I have never believed otherwise," V returned, and then fell silent once more, waiting patiently for continuation. Gordon stared upward for long moments, and then looked back at the mask, which was now radiating some cool, miasmic quality that he couldn't identify, though something about it settled on him like a light mist and suggested that he needn't be afraid of what he was trying to communicate.

"I don't know how to say this without giving offence," Gordon said, very tentatively. V took one pace forward now. Gordon, though everything he'd been through in the last several days suggested that he should flinch, did not do so.

"Allow me, then, to come to your aid," said V, as he shook his shoulders to settle his cloak around him. "You need not say a word. I believe I see in your eye that you feel unable to continue our association."

Gordon squeezed his own fingers so hard that he left shockingly white dents in his knuckles, and spoke without looking directly at V.

"Yes," he replied, softly. "That's what I'd been trying to get across."

"Why were you so afraid of saying this?" V asked, and Gordon was stunned to hear what was – or at least what sounded like – genuine and quite profound sadness in that silken tenor. He understood, now, what that reassuring sensation had sprung from.

"Had you forgotten my first parting words to you?" V continued. "If so, let me reiterate. I came to you with an empty hand, with little to offer you in return for your assistance, and I told you that you were beholden to nothing. To nothing, Gordon," he emphasised, slicing one hand through the air to stress this word. "It is as true now as it was then, and it pains me that you could ever have thought that I would make any insistence at all upon your kindness."

V at last fell silent save for a long, soft sigh, the sound given a subtle edge by the mask, and then moved even closer to Gordon, who looked up despairingly.

"I misunderstood," said Gordon, while trying to put an adequate frame around everything that was lining up inside him, clamouring for a stake in his voice. "I couldn't work out whether I was afraid of you or what you'd involved me in, or both, and I suppose that in that unholy mess, I lost sight of what you'd told me."

V nodded in accord. "It is often the way of things," he responded, "that man fails to understand the essential nature of honour.

"Please don't feel that you have any cause for contrition," V went on, head bowing briefly. "You are not the first to find yourself in this same situation, and I will say this aloud so that this time, there can be no misunderstanding: whereas I am driven solely by responsibility, you have passed through this state and into an arena that many will live out their entire lives not knowing, namely, that state of being both willing and able to go beyond what is necessary to balance an equation."

Gordon's head was spinning very, very slowly now. He repeated these words in the privacy of his mind, stumbled over every third one, and then – at some well-guarded border crossing in an otherwise saturated cortex – decided that he would only make sense of them after a long sleep. Their meaning had, nevertheless, filtered through to him, and he stood up uncertainly, caught in rare proximity to V, so close in fact that he could feel warm, honey-scented breath on his cheek.

This small, intimate moment passed, and V retreated, drawing the living room door open. Before he left, however, he turned over his shoulder and delivered one last parting thought.

"I do not believe in coincidence," he said, "but it seems to me that there must be some small component of random chance in this world, if only to provide enough uncertainty to keep us well-stocked with hope. That said, I wonder if you had ever considered which state of affairs you would choose if you were given the power of decision. Leaden fate or blind luck? It is entirely up to you, and you will find more of yourself in your answer than you ever will of me.

"Farewell, Gordon," he added, and drifted out of the room on silent feet.

Gordon sat down once more, hearing the front door open and close, staring at the far wall for a good few minutes afterward. The sound of a single blackbird outside the window roused him from this fugue, and reminded him that dawn couldn't be far behind this enterprising song. He cast a reflexive glance over at the bottle, but was eerily gratified to find that it held not one hundredth of the appeal that it had just a few hours previously.

Still listening to the blackbird, he pushed himself up from the sofa and headed for the hall, meaning to take to his bed and, damning the alarm clock, sleep for as long as his body required of him. Though he felt drained, unglued and turned inside-out by the exchange he'd just had with V, he was also very well aware that he'd gained by the conversation where he'd been expecting only to lose by it.

Get to bed, he told himself as he paused in the midst of this epiphany. Personal revelations can wait; sleep can't.

However, Gordon found himself pausing once more as he climbed gratefully into his bed. He lay down and pulled the blanket up to his chin before he paid full analysis to this last, small occurrence, and he found that there was something curious about it.

The voice had not been the one he'd been accustomed to hearing all his internal monologues delivered through; it had been a soft, insidious whisper that had almost seemed to crawl in from outside his mind. He closed his eyes, pursuing a decent dream, but even as he slipped seamlessly into this long-neglected state of affairs, he heard that sibilance again, repeating itself.

This isn't over.