The room had been utterly and comprehensively wrecked.
McLennan stood just inside the door, in one of the few areas that wasn't littered with shattered glass, random splashes of developer and cascades of spilled paperwork, and surveyed the scene with more broken despondency than he'd ever felt in his entire career.
"I was right," he muttered under his breath, shaking his head gently.
"Sorry, sir, what was that?" said Finch, angling through the doorway. McLennan flinched, turned and managed a wry smile.
"Nothing," he said, slightly more loudly than he'd intended to. "Just talking to myself. Have we got any eyewitnesses on this one?"
Finch shuffled around the inspector, craning his neck to take in the full view of the devastated room. Noticing the scene of crime officer still painstakingly bagging shards of glass, he lowered his voice and swung around to close the gap between himself and McLennan.
"Only one," he said. "A security guard. He's only been working here a couple of weeks. He said he went to investigate a disturbance out the back, saw a bloke in a long black cloak, and then he got clobbered. He was out of it for the next hour and a half."
"What about the CCTV?" McLennan asked, his tone now containing just a faint hint of pleading. He watched as the sergeant shook his head apologetically.
"Nothing," said Finch, his shoulders sagging. "The whole system was disabled. The cables were cut. From the looks of the marks on the wall, I'd say it was done with a very sharp knife. We do have one lead," Finch continued, although McLennan watched him back up a step as he did so, "but you're not going to like it. The security station logged the ID card that was used to gain access."
"Let me guess," said McLennan, faintly, his hand plastered to his forehead in an attempt to counter a sudden, nagging ache. "Patricia Garnet's?"
"Yes, sir. This is her department. Someone was in a hurry to find something, all right."
"I wonder if they did?" McLennan asked, softly. He then shook his head, distracted. "Never mind. Has the room been printed?"
Despite their admittedly brief association, McLennan nevertheless fancied that he'd become a fairly accurate judge of Finch's body language, and the attitude he saw taking shape before his eyes was one of turbid unease, accompanied by much in the way of shuffling and fidgeting.
"Yes," said Finch, slowly, "and I made sure to get it pushed through. We found five right-hand prints on the door handle, in some kind of oil. They're Roger Wright's."
"Are you finished in here?" asked Finch, very wearily. McLennan was on the verge of replying when he saw that the question had not been directed at him. The SOCO glanced up, sealing one last zip-lock bag, nodded, and left the room. McLennan turned, gently closed the door behind him, and then faced Finch down with his hands clasped tightly behind his back.
"Okay," he breathed, "let's just say that I'm now curious enough to ask in full. What's your theory about all this?"
For a moment, the question hung in the air between them like the proverbial elephant in the room, and Finch, for one second, reverted to his customary habit of tugging at his earlobe. Once that was done with, he returned the inspector's steady gaze and cleared his throat.
"The train robbery was a lucky guess, if you ask me," Finch began, uncertainly, but McLennan held his tongue and allowed the sergeant to continue. "And I don't think Wright killed anyone. He's a coward; anyone can see that from his record."
"Armed robbery? Assault?" said McLennan, though as gently as he could, more to keep the ball rolling than to cast an immediate damper on Finch's tentative speculation.
"Yes, sir, I know. But he never pulled anything off without heavy backup, and as for the assault...he got eighteen months for beating up a seventeen year old girl. As I say, he's a coward. He got his face carved up while he were in for that, by the way."
Both men paused as a pair of footsteps passed the closed door at that point, and beneath this they caught the tinny crackle of police radios. When the room was quiet once more, McLennan pinched the bridge of his nose, blinked hard, and turned back to Finch.
"If Wright didn't kill his mates, then who did?" he asked. "Where is he now? How did his prints end up in here?"
Finch's mouth was already open to frame a response, when his mobile phone vibrated in his pocket. Restraining a curse, he pulled it out and answered the summons, raising one eyebrow at his superior as he listened carefully.
"Yep...oh, right? Good. Hold on a sec," said Finch, flatly, and then tucked the phone into his shoulder as he pulled his notebook and pen out of his overcoat pocket. "Right, fire away," he continued, and began to write as he listened, his frown deepening. Finally, muttering a curt "thanks," Finch hung up and put both phone and notebook away and then stuffed his hands into his pockets.
"To answer your questions," he said, perfectly placidly, "I have no idea who killed Demirkan's gang, or why. I think Wright is dead, and probably has been for some time. As to how his prints ended up on that door handle..." Finch paused for several seconds, cogitating, but eventually raised his chin once more, "...I don't know. That's where I slip up, to be honest with you, sir."
McLennan turned around, opening the door once more and inserting himself into the gap. As he did so, he leaned back toward Finch and dropped his voice.
"Sergeant," he said, and glanced around into the corridor, just once, to check that they were reasonably alone, "you're a good thinker. I won't deny that. I just wish that thinking was all it took to make it in the force."
With that, he led the way back out into the passage, and they made their way to Finch's waiting car. Several uniformed officers regarded them curiously as they passed, but it wasn't until they were halfway back to the Yard that McLennan, staring quite evenly at the setting sun, remembered something that had eluded him in the mire of Finch's extemporising.
"By the way," he said, casually. "What was that call about?" Finch waited until the car had drawn up at a red light, then reached for his notebook and handed it over without looking.
"We've found Wright's last known address," he added, by way of explanation. "Some place off the Whitechapel Road, I'm told. Do you want to take a look down there now?"
"No point," said McLennan, ruefully, sinking down into the passenger seat and casting a gloomy eye over the passing human traffic. "We'll need to get a search warrant and organise a squad before we go anywhere near the place, and besides, it'll be better to wait until it's dark."
Finch nodded, albeit very reluctantly, and pulled away from the red light.
The night closed in around Whitechapel, dragging a portmanteau of rain clouds with it, wrapping the streets in a heavy, suffocating embrace that mirrored the gesture of the figure stalking through the deserted back streets far below.
V pulled his cloak around his shoulders and lowered his head a little, ears alert for the sound of voices, footsteps or approaching vehicles but it seemed that even here, in the grimmest corner of a foetid city, the denizens had long since burrowed into their beds. He nevertheless quickened his pace a fraction, turning an inch or two to one side to study the house numbers, until he reached the one he was in search of.
There was no gate here, only two rusted stumps that indicated the ancient death of a pair of cast iron hinges. The heavy brick gateposts were speckled with healthy clumps of moss and overhung by a rapacious privet hedge that had been decorated with drinks cans and empty chocolate wrappers by passers-by.
Gliding up the patchwork pathway on cat's feet, V insinuated himself into the mine-dark shadows of the cobwebbed porch and drew out a pair of lock picks. He folded one into his left hand for reserve, and slipped the other into the keyhole, adjusting the steel until it settled and then, with a supple turn of his wrist, forced the tumblers back. The door protested quietly, but swung inward at the touch of one gentle finger.
He slid through the narrow gap and swung the door closed once more. The hall he found himself in was, if anything, more dolorous than the garden had been, decorated in nothing but bare wood chip paper and a dust-haunted light fitting that had, it seemed, been innocent of a lightbulb for quite some time.
As he approached the door to the upstairs flat, V twirled the lock pick in his fingers, somewhat thoughtfully. He turned over his shoulder as a car purred down the street outside, but even as it dwindled without showing signs of stopping, he shook himself out of his contemplation and attended to the second lock that lay before him.
The flat upstairs represented what must once have been the bedroom suite of a stately Edwardian townhouse, but had been split from the rooms downstairs under the sheer, irresistible pressure of the country's housing shortage. The depredations of poverty had done the rest, and the flat was not so much furnished as under siege to an invading army of half-collapsed shambles.
The hall was just as narrow as the one downstairs, although the overhead light was, at least, fitted with a bulb. The door at the end of the hall gave onto the living room, but the one beside it was already standing ajar. V negotiated the hallway in the velvet darkness and moved into the bedroom.
Closing the door with nothing but the subtlest of creaks, V stepped into the single beam of cloudstruck moonlight that was all the illumination that the room boasted. He crossed the rug and drew back the curtains, allowing muted light to wash across the scene.
By this gothic glow, he turned to a dresser that stood beside the window, sliding out the top drawer and studying the contents, which amounted to nothing more than a chaotic confusion of socks. The second drawer contained more clothing and, secreted to one side, half-hidden, a small cardboard box of bullets.
The third drawer stuck a little on its runners, and V tugged it gently to one side and to the other to free it. When it slid out, he stood back to appraise what he saw, and snorted softly with satisfaction. The drawer was half-filled with plastic bags, most of which were bundled up with tape.
He leaned in closer, smiling oddly beneath the cover of the mask, and reached in to sort through the bags. Long, graceful fingers plucked out one small parcel and held it up to the window for a moment. The fading moonlight filtered its dying rays through the cloudy plastic, oddly distorted, and then V folded the bag and deftly tucked it beneath his belt.
A piercing wail from outside had him swinging around, tensing in response, hand already halfway to the hilt of a knife, but he shook his head and unwound his knotted muscles as he realised that it was nothing but the sound of a pair of sparring tomcats. The high-pitched snarls died away and, in a brief lapse in the mournful breeze, V heard one of the combatants scale a fence, claws scoring the wood.
A fitful rain began to splatter against the window, though holding the threat of a Biblical deluge in reserve. V moved to the window once more, regarding his own reflection in the glass that was fast becoming a complicated delta of twisting rivulets and streams. The sky overhead, stained its usual umber by London's unchecked light pollution, added demonic highlights to the mask's finer structures, and V angled his head to shift these to and fro for a second.
As the rain picked up tempo, he looked away from his stark alter ego in the water-mirrored glass and extracted a paper bag from his tunic, grasping it in one fist until it crackled and staring around the bedroom with an air of deep and abiding concentration.
Pausing, nodding firmly to himself, V opened the wardrobe and dropped the bag onto the floor inside, alongside a pair of shoes that had seen very many better years. He started to close the door once more, but hesitated as his eye lit upon something else, lurking amongst the other detritus, and a snowflake of an idea flickered through his mind. Stooping, he picked it up and secreted it in a pocket, then turned to leave the room.
V halted as his ears pricked at the sound of footsteps on the path outside the house; a sound that would have been inaudible to most. He pulled up short on the threshold of the hallway, heart ticking over, and listened further. After a few seconds, when it was the silence rather than the lack of it that became unnerving, he swung around and headed for the window, reaching and opening it in one economical and fluid movement.
The sudden splash and bounce of rain on the windowsill formed a counter-rhythm to the crack of the door downstairs as it was kicked inward. V did not obey reflex, did not turn back toward the sound; he simply slithered out of the window, kicked up onto the ledge and balanced there for one second, his toes on the peeling wood and his heels on empty air.
The bedroom window overlooked nothing but a twelve foot drop to the naked concrete patio – a leap that he'd have made if he had to, but there was as of yet another option. Grasping the drainpipe that bordered the window, he stepped out onto it and, finding helpful notches in the old, decaying brickwork, climbed up, over the leaking guttering and onto the roof.
The open sky was now launching a steadfast attack on the city below it, and each belting raindrop plinked and struck against V's mask in a pattern that was half symphony and half cacophony. The rain rustled in the folds of his cloak as he stood up, a little unsteady on the water-slicked slates, and moved at a crouch to the top of the roof.
Even as he straddled the apex, he heard sharp voices echoing up out of the window he'd just left, and he huddled into the shadow of the nearest chimney stack to appraise the situation. As he paused for thought in the lee of the bricks, an insidious, icy raindrop located the tiny gap between the wig and the mask, and trickled down the sensitive scar tissue of his right cheek. He drew a small, sharp breath and shied back.
Thus galvanised, he edged around the chimney stack and out across the wide, sloping weir that the tiles had quickly become under the onslaught of the rain. He moved forward with caution at first, not only to keep his balance but also aware that he was now dicing with capture on both sides.
The end of the terrace lay some eight rooftops distant, but as the rainstorm reached its brief peak and began to slacken, V realised that speed now had to take precedence over stealth, as it was all that was masking the sound of his footsteps from anyone who might be listening in the street below. He shoved his soaking wet cloak well back over his shoulders, took one pace forward to test the resistance of the tiles, and then started to run.
The rain raised a fine ghost of mist that curled in V's slipstream as he vaulted the first boundary wall and took a graceful leap onto the next. There was a subtle shift as a tile cracked beneath his foot, but he was already plunging on through the shower, fine strands of hair whipping across the mask, some sticking there. He darted around a TV aerial, but as he did so, one corner of his cloak caught upon it, and even through the downpour, he heard it tear.
His flight brought him at last to the precipitous drop at the last house in the row, and he reached out, grabbing for the chimney to arrest his dangerous momentum, boots sliding through the trickling water and sending up a short tidal wave of spray.
V paused, taking several deep breaths, and looked down over the edge. Though the rain had dwindled, the wind had risen in counterpoint, and the drizzle was being whipped to and fro, covering the street in a shining curtain that lashed and turned like a shoal of fish. Nevertheless, through this fog, V could see that there was no drainpipe to come to his aid this time. He sighed in no more than mild frustration, and then slipped gracefully down the tiles to the rear of the roof, bracing one foot in the gutter before climbing down over it.
He swung out and dropped smartly, smacking down onto the flat roof of an extension, cloak snapping back in the whistling wind in spite of the weight of the water that suffused it. He straightened up, inhaling the fresh, cold scent of the driving rain, and then, in response to some delicate sixth sense, turned around.
His gaze met another, and became locked there. There was a window behind him, open just a few inches, and through this narrow gap a pair of dark, round eyes were studying him furtively. V, disregarding his precarious circumstance for the time being, approached the window, each step crunching softly on the gravel.
A pair of tiny, pale hands grasped the edge of the sash and pushed the window up a little further, and a curious visage was revealed. A small girl peered out, thick brown curls tumbling over her forehead, blinking slightly as the dying rain speckled her face, and her eyes widened even further as he stretched out one hand, folding her questing fingers into his.
"Childhood has no forebodings; but then, it is soothed by no memories of outlived sorrow," he whispered, and somehow these words, as softly as they were spoken, rose above the whip-crack of the wind and passed quite efficiently across the space between V and his companion.
He felt that small hand squeeze his own, briefly and hesitantly, but just then the wind kicked up a squall, and the rain fluttered into the window. The child yelped, losing her grip on V's fingers and tumbling from her perch on the window-seat with an indignant cry.
The moment of innocence lost, V backed away, shaking his head sorrowfully. He might have lingered, but at that point a light was snapped on in the bedroom, and he heard a voice, raised in concern. Taking three short steps, he leapt from the edge of the roof, landed lightly in the hedge below and swept away into the damp, sullen night, which swallowed him with careless ease.
The first thing Gordon noticed was the snuffling and chattering of the rats. The passage was too dark to see them, although the hardwired instincts of terror forced his head around anyway. It made no difference; wherever he turned, the soft squeals seemed to be behind him, although whether this was only a trick of the echo he had no way of knowing. He strained his ears, trying to hear the scuttle of feet that would suggest that they were on the move, but there was none.
Gordon took several hesitant steps of his own, noting the way the floor crackled beneath his heels. There was a chthonic glow in the tunnel, but the only thing it highlighted was his own trepidation and unease. He had gathered a sense of space around him, albeit not much and, wherever this place was, it was cloaked in bone-aching cold.
A rustle at the limits of his hearing told him that the rats were decamping, and he froze, although it seemed that they were streaming out and around his feet without making any attempt at contact. Beneath the susurrus of this busy exodus, he heard measured, heavy footsteps approaching, although the tremulous reverberation made it impossible to determine their direction or intent. Occasionally, there was a splash and drip, as if the unseen walker had met with a puddle, but still the steps continued unabated.
Gordon drew a shivering breath and started to turn, but at that point a hand gripped the back of his neck; not cruelly, but with implacable purpose, all the same. Another hand descended upon his shoulder, and both held him firm in his place.
A warm, enticing scent filled his world, shutting out the mouldering rank of the tunnel and even the foul, wet-fur reek of the silent parliament of rats, and from it Gordon knew without a trace of a doubt who was behind him. He inhaled the perfume of fine leather and claret, but this time, something was new. He sniffed again, transfixed once more by that aroma in spite of the paralysing terror that was working its way down his spine, and noticed the faint but unmistakeable undertone of roses in full bloom.
"Look," came a deep, sibilant whisper, curving over his shoulder and sliding into his ear. Gordon tried once more to turn his head, but the hand tightened upon his neck until its glove creaked, and he submitted, peering ahead of him into the eddying blackness.
The rats, which had fallen silent before, now shrieked and tumbled, skittering back down the tunnel towards him, driven by a rising vibration which even Gordon could now feel shaking its way up through the soles of his feet.
"Be still," came the voice once more, although it was now raised a little, the better to be heard over a growing, whining, thundering screech. The rats piled up against Gordon's feet and began to climb, piercing his clothes and skin with claws like hypodermic needles, tails lashing and twining with one another's, scrambling up his shirt and sleeves and curling around his neck, chattering their teeth into his ears. He tried once more to fight the grip, to raise his hands and brush at the throng, but he seemed to have lost all control over his own systems.
A new sensation joined the tumult now, and Gordon's pupils contracted painfully as a searing, actinic light lanced through the murky air ahead of him, and he found himself staring into the eyes of...a dragon? No, he checked himself. That animal scream resolved itself into the bang and clatter of steel wheels upon steel rails, and he whimpered as he understood that an Underground train was bearing down upon him at full speed.
Let me go, he said, although the words didn't make any mark upon his larynx. We'll die! But the hands remained in place, and now he felt the presence lean close, felt a warm body up against his back, and a hiss slithered into his consciousness.
"Of all base passions, fear is the most accursed," it said through the howl of imminent death, the voice consummately soothing and soporific even as the light burned its way through his retinas and the train slammed into him...
Gordon awoke, shaking, half-suffocated from this bewildering dream, his lungs straining with the effort of his laboured breathing. He struggled into a sitting position, gradually becoming conscious of several things in short succession. One was that he was shivering like a willow, having thrown and kicked the quilt down around his ankles as he fought against the worst of his fear. The second was that the window was wide open, and that the relentless wind was driving the curtain up against the ceiling and carrying an intermittent spray of rain inside with it. The third was that he had an erection.
He tumbled out of bed, hitting the carpet on all fours in his dreadful, shameful confusion, rising to his knees and holding a hand to the back of his neck, fully expecting to find it bruised from the force of V's grip upon it. His fingers probed, but didn't locate any point of pain, and he grabbed at the edge of the bed to assist him in standing up.
He was still trembling like a palsied horse, but he managed to stumble across to the window and slam it shut, gasping aloud with the strain of this action. The soft voile curtains relaxed, dropping down around his shoulders, and for a fractional moment he flinched at the unfamiliar touch upon his skin. Then, brushing the fabric aside, he staggered back to the bed and collapsed onto it before curling up like a baby, one pillow clasped to his chest, another soaking up the sweat on his cheek and neck.
The clang of the doorbell ripped through his disturbing reverie, and he sat bolt upright once more, still clutching the pillow like a shield. He looked around for his alarm clock, trying to ascertain the time, and then he recalled that he'd left it in the wardrobe, determined not to be roused too early for once.
The remnants of the dream were clinging to Gordon like so many remoras, and though he grabbed his robe and swathed himself in it, this did nothing to ease the chill that settled down inside him like a well-fed parasite as he made his way downstairs to the hall. With each step, he recounted a portion of the dream, each element bouncing back and forth through his skull with the slight reverberation of the treads, and as hard as he tried, he could not dispel the brooding sense of foreshadowing that hung around it all.
As he negotiated the last few stairs, he heard a soft, shifting sound from outside the front door, and then a sharp scratch upon the wood that had him pausing to slow his fluttering pulse a little.
After what felt like aeons, he dragged his feet over the glossy hall floor and arrived at the front door, drawing back the bolts and then halting himself momentarily. Such had been the power and depth of the nightmare that he could still feel those hands upon his skin and those whispered phrases in his ear, and his fingers tightened on the latch until they ached.
Of all base passions, fear is the most accursed, his mind reminded him at that point, and before he found a reason to stop himself from doing so, he had snapped the latch back and opened the door.
When he saw who stood upon his doorstep, though. Gordon sagged, clasped his hand to his mouth in deep and unresolved shock and, for the moment, said nothing at all.
At that moment, in another location far below the wet, shining streets, V lowered the needle of the gramophone, listened patiently to the scratch and crackle of the record, and then attended to his sewing as the siren song of a Mozart violin concerto poured over him.
With some care, he stripped off his gloves and ran pink, overly sensitive fingertips over the corner of his cloak, searching for the damaged area. Locating the tear, he ran the needle and thread through the ragged edge, noting with satisfaction that it was only a seam that had given out.
For some minutes, he worked in a bubble of silence, wreathed in nothing but the soft whisper of his own breath and the dulcet tones of the ancient recording and, through it all, the steady scratch of the silk thread through the coarse black cloth.
After a time, V murmured inaudibly to himself and snapped the trailing thread. Holding the corner up to the table lamp, he studied the repair, applying critical scrutiny, looking for the slightest peep of light through the warp or the weft. Satisfied, at last, with his endeavours, he folded the cloak between his hands and stood up.
As he did so, a small weight in his pocket brought with it the remembrance of what he'd retrieved from the viper's nest in Whitechapel. Reaching down, he extracted the compact black radio receiver and turned it back and forth under his gaze.
Presently, he crossed the gallery and lifted the needle from the record.