Gordon pushed through the bracken and into the maze of tombstones, turning his head from side to side in the damp gloom of the arched canopy of yews. His heart was still fluttering beneath his sternum, but this erratic palpitation gradually gave way to a more sedate thump as he realised that he was alone.
He'd been so sure of what he'd seen, although he admitted that his overworked imagination had probably supplied a detail or two. That flash and glint might have come from one of the houses on the far side of the ironwork fence. The flicker of black might have been a carrion crow diving into the undergrowth. He dropped his head into his hands and stumbled, leaning back against a nearby headstone, whispering to himself.
Anne moved into this cold, misty grotto, squelching through a puddle to join him. She was shaking her head in bafflement, and she reached out, gently tugging Gordon's hands away from his face.
"What in God's name was all that about?" she whispered, hoarsely. Gordon sniffed and raised his head.
"I wouldn't worry about it," he said, savagely. "I'm just seeing things. Excuse me while I go completely mad, won't you?" Anne folded her arms and nodded sagely.
"I'm not hugely surprised," she told him. "You're under a lot of pressure, plus this is what happens when you go cold turkey." Gordon started, and he knitted his brows before he understood exactly what she was referring to.
"Oh...yes," he said, shrugging mournfully. "To tell you the truth, I'd forgotten all about drinking, but it looks like it hadn't forgotten about me. You really think that's all it is?
They both flinched at that point as a bell rang, some way away to the west. For a second, Gordon thought tremulously of police sirens, but Anne sighed heavily and turned away from the sound.
"We'd better go," she said, carefully, taking his arm as if he were made of spun glass. "They're closing the cemetery."
They walked back to the entrance in silence, although Gordon couldn't help but cast a glance or two over his shoulder as they left. The shadows between the trees were spilling out across the path as if they were a pack of hunting dogs driving their quarry into an ambush. Gordon shivered involuntarily as this metaphor trickled through his brain, and then wondered exactly where it had come from. He wasn't normally given to such excesses of poetry, although perhaps he was learning, even if only by osmosis.
"What now?" he heard Anne say, as they reached the gates that led into the park. Gordon flickered, dragged his gaze away from the murky cemetery, and refocused his attention.
"I honestly have no idea," he sighed. "I think I've extracted myself from the situation, but I'm not sure that it's over yet."
"Remind me again. Why can't you go to the cops?" asked Anne, linking her arm through his and leading him along the winding path through the shrubbery.
Okay, Gordon said to himself. Which reason are you going to give her? That you owe V your life? That you're fascinated by him? That you're afraid of him? That you're in far too deep to risk telling the police? All of the above?
He knew that none of these was the right answer or, at least, not right now. Nothing he could say would provoke anything but further anxiety in Anne's mind. Instead, he turned, and took her by the arm. Several passers-by spared them a curious glance in mid-stride, but he reasoned that to the uneducated eye, the two of them must make rather an odd couple.
"No more questions," he said, huskily. "What's happening has its own pace, and I don't think I can change that no matter what I do or say. I can't act on anyone's advice because this is now out of my hands, but I do need a friendly ear. Yes?" he finished, and squeezed Anne's shoulder momentarily. She turned away from him for a second, and at that moment the very last rays of the sun filtered through her soft blonde hair and lent her an archangel's halo. Gordon studied her profile, traced in amber light, and thought her quite beautiful.
"All right," she said, turning back, though her voice skipped as she did so. "I'll let it be. I'm not going to blackmail you into talking. Now, why don't we go to mine for a cup of tea? I'm only just on the other side of the park..." With that, Anne smiled gently and led the way up the hill. Gordon was several steps behind, and after one last backward glance – at what, he wasn't sure – he followed.
On the far side of the black railings, behind the cavorting bindweed and encroaching rust, a shadow shifted minutely. Something caught the twilight and, for a second, reflected it in two starlike flashes. Then, the cemetery reclaimed its peace, and the undergrowth lay dormant once more.
At that time, meanwhile, Finch was sitting alone on a very sophisticated but very uncomfortable velvet sofa in Holborn, feeling as conspicuous as he'd ever done in his life.
The sofa in question was in the reception of the London office of the De Beers trading company, and Finch was waiting to keep an appointment that he'd struggled to secure. He kept his gaze focused upon the clock on the far side of the reception desk, chiefly because every time he happened to glance at the young woman behind the desk, she would offer him an embarrassingly sympathetic smile.
Thus it was that he'd been waiting for over twenty minutes when a discreet beep sounded from the desk, and the receptionist led him into an office that was more palatial than any he'd ever seen. A woman was stalking around the desk to greet him even as the receptionist bowed out and closed the door.
She was dressed in a blinding crimson suit and, Finch noticed as she reached out a hand, had lacquered her nails in a shade that matched her attire perfectly. She offered him a very professional, very thin and very momentary smile, shook his hand as if she were accepting a dead fish, and then retreated behind her desk, waving a languorous arm at the chair to indicate that he should sit down.
"My name is Marilyn Vogel, Detective Sergeant," she said, smoothly, her voice flavoured with a suggestion of a South African accent which, he assumed, she was assiduously trying to shed. "I'm Director of sales and shipping for De Beers London. How may I be of assistance?"
"Thank you for seeing me, Ms. Vogel," said Finch, just as professionally, dimly aware that some game was being played. "I'll try not to keep you very long. The fact is that I'm investigating a theft which has since been linked to a murder case. We, er..." he added, rooting out the lists and handing them over, "...we understand that the shipment was one of yours. Could you confirm that for me?"
She pinched the papers between finger and thumb and laid them in front of her, wrinkling her nose as she studied the figures. After a few seconds, she drew one polished carmine fingernail down the list, producing a very faint scratching noise, and then tutted flamboyantly as she looked back up at him.
"I'm sorry," she said, rather sharply. "These aren't our diamonds."
"Are you sure?"
"As sure as I'm ever going to be, Detective," said Ms. Vogel, managing to work a splash of irony into her tone. "When we're required to mark a shipment for a customer, we use eleven-digit serial numbers. These numbers have only nine digits."
Finch sat forward in his chair, brow furrowed. He reached out and removed the papers from the desk, scrutinising the woman carefully before playing his next card.
"I wonder if you could make a formal statement to that effect?"
"I'm afraid not," she said, and as he watched, Finch could see her withdrawing defensively. She folded both arms across her chest, creasing the line of her immaculate suit, and her lips flattened out into a thin, bloodless line. Finch started to speak, but she cut across him.
"I apologise, Detective," she continued, "and I'd like you to know that this isn't my position. Granting you an appointment was as far as my employers were prepared to go. They won't countenance any further involvement in..." she hesitated, seeking a word "...in this sordid matter. De Beers have an untarnished reputation in the world diamond market, and they wish to keep it."
For a split second, Finch considered persisting, but he caught the glaze in the woman's eye, and thought better of it. She was merely relaying orders from someone much higher up the scaffold and, while he could in theory do worse things to his career than to annoy the captains of a multi-billion pound international industry, he couldn't think of any right at that point.
He forced his straining hackles back down with a tremendous effort of will, and merely stood up, stowing the papers away in his inside pocket.
"Thank you for your time, anyway," he said, wearily, pulling his overcoat around him, determined to play just as defensive. "You've been very helpful. If you change your mind, you can reach me at this number." So saying, he pulled a card from his pocket and laid it precisely and carefully on the polished walnut desk.
It seemed that Ms. Vogel was out of words for the time being. She offered Finch no more than a small but abrupt nod in response, and he turned on his heel and stalked out of the office.
Finch drove back to New Scotland Yard in an inexplicably tempestuous mood, and even ignored the repeated blurting of his mobile phone. During a stop at a red light, he picked it up and saw that he'd missed three calls from McLennan.
"Bugger," said Finch, under his breath, and then started violently as the driver behind him sounded their horn. Jerking his head back up, he saw that the light had changed, and he stamped down on the accelerator from naked reflex, leaving a wail of overstressed tyres behind him and wondering, with a small, sour smile pasted across his face, what the driver would say if he knew he'd just needled a plainclothes police officer.
He pulled up outside the Yard and got out, all but ending up in the arms of a parking attendant. The man stepped back and frowned very pointedly at Finch's car, but Finch pulled out his warrant card and waved it vaguely in the air between them. Nodding soberly at the parking attendant, he excused himself with a faintly impatient shrug and trotted through the main doors.
The reception was unusually busy, but Finch spotted McLennan by the door to the lift lobby, and dodged his way through the crowd.
"Inspector?" he called, still side-stepping passers-by. He studied McLennan's face, and even in his impatience he could see a skewed and unsettled expression nailed to his superior's face, almost as if Finch were the last thing he needed to see right now. Disregarding this, though, he edged up against McLennan and pulled out the list he'd taken to De Beers.
"Sir, I just got back from De Beers, they're denying they had anything to do with the shipment..."
"Finch, this isn't the time," said McLennan, sotto voce, hooking a finger into his collar and tugging it distractedly. Finch, however, continued, relentlessly.
"Got to get onto this right away," he said, tugging at the thread. "If we can prove those diamonds were already stolen, we'll have a better idea who we're after, and..."
"We'll discuss this later," McLennan repeated, this time raising the volume a shade and giving his words a keener edge.
"...De Beers don't want to talk about it and I'm bloody sure they're hiding something..."
"Detective Sergeant Finch!" snapped McLennan, his voice little less than an authoritarian bellow. Out of the corner of his eye, Finch saw half a dozen heads turn in their direction, and the conversation in their immediate circle faltered in its tracks. Finch felt McLennan's hand close around his elbow, and then he was ushered out of the main thoroughfare and into a nearby alcove.
Only now did he take in the details of the scene, his guts forming themselves into a series of sinuous knots as he did so. He caught sight of the two men that McLennan had been involved in conversation with, and realised with a rapidly unfolding flower of dismay that he knew them both. One was the Viscount Scarsdale, the other the Commissioner. Both were directing narrow-eyed glances at Finch, and he was horribly aware that they could scarcely have failed to hear every word he'd said.
He turned his attention to McLennan, who'd half-turned so that his face was less than six inches away from Finch's.
"Go on up to my office and wait for me," hissed McLennan, an ugly bloom rising on his cheek. He squeezed Finch's arm to reinforce his point, and at last, Finch pulled free, turned and plodded towards the lifts. Even with his back turned, he heard McLennan offering a profuse apology to his visitors as he escorted them out.
The inspector's office came as a surprise to Finch, who had thus far never set foot in it. Instead of the painfully neat working space he had pictured given what he'd discerned of his superior officer's character, he walked in upon a tumbling array of lever arch files, ziggurats of paperwork and a desk whose surface was all but lost thanks to the combined efforts of blotter, paper coffee cups, binders, memoranda, notebooks and several framed photographs of the McLennan clan.
Noting that most of the chairs aside from McLennan's were similarly occupied with impromptu filing duty, he elected to remain standing, and instead wandered over to the window. The view from the twelfth floor – which dragged his eye out over the subtle shimmer of the Thames and to the moody rain clouds that were congregating away to the south – was fairly breathtaking, although Finch couldn't seem to recoup any of the breath that he'd already lost downstairs.
He stood, eyes unfocused, hands clenched in his pockets, until the door slammed back and McLennan strode in, apparently borne upon the back of an angry sigh. Finch swung around, feeling a hunted expression metamorphosing his face, but was unable to prevent it from doing so. He waited in silence, both respectful and apprehensive, as McLennan cleared a second chair, dumping the paperwork in his already overburdened In tray, and then slumped down in his own seat.
McLennan folded his hands together, looking as if he might at any moment wrench his own knuckles out of their sockets, and then nodded at the empty chair on the far side of his desk.
"Sit down, Sergeant," he said, flatly, as if his gesture might have suffered misunderstanding. Finch obeyed, and made a conscious decision, as he did so, to keep eye contact no matter what.
"I'm sure," McLennan began, "that I don't need to tell you the purpose of the Commissioner's visit, especially given the additional presence of his Lordship." He shifted his gaze out of the window for a second, and then regrouped. "You're an intelligent man, Finch. Did you think internal politics was any different down here than it is up north?" Assuming a rhetorical question, Finch held his tongue for the time being.
"I won't go over the details," McLennan went on, "and I certainly won't go over the subtext, because once in a lifetime is more than enough. The summary is that I've been ordered to suspend this case and refer it to Interpol."
This time, Finch let an errant thought slip out over his vocal cords.
"So we're going to let someone off the hook for theft, assault and murder because they're an old friend of the Commissioner?"
This time, McLennan looked as if he'd been force-fed a pound of fresh limes, but he struggled valiantly with his facial features as he spoke.
"Yes," he said. "Is that what you wanted to hear? Yes. Okay, I'll admit it. What surprises you about this?" He stopped, visibly pulled up short and then wound down, somewhat more gently than before. "I'm sorry, I shouldn't be like this. Do you think it doesn't make me angry as well?"
"No, sir," said Finch, evenly, and as he watched McLennan react with confusion, he pressed on hastily. "I don't think you're angry about it as such, because you've been shoved in it up to your neck for thirty years. If you'd stayed angry all that time, you'd have had an embolism by now."
McLennan's eyebrow contorted at this, as if he'd observed something profoundly surreal and unexpected, such as a talking cat, and this led Finch to the impression that he'd said something the inspector hadn't anticipated. Nevertheless, McLennan rallied admirably and pasted a small smile onto his face.
"You're right," he said, eventually. "I suppose that 'despondent' is a better word. And for what it's worth, I believe you're right about all this. However," he went on, tightening his shoulders, "I'm sure you're aware that any further involvement in this case will be the death of your career. I wish there was a kinder way of putting that, but there isn't."
Finch had by now lost his internal resolve, and was gazing thoughtfully out of the window. He watched a gull wheel past on an updraught, wings sketching out two soft white curves against the damp, darkening sky, and then nodded, turning back to the conversation.
"Is that all there is to it?" he asked, for something to say. He watched the inspector dip his chin, sadly.
"Yes, I'm afraid so," said McLennan. "And this won't be the last time you'll be required to sit on your conscience, either. You'd best get used to it."
"I already am," said Finch, morosely.
Three hours later, Finch sat alone in the incident room, staring at the files which represented everything they'd garnered on the case so far. He'd watched the shift change, and somewhere at the rear of his mind was the realisation that he ought to have changed with it, heading home for dinner and, with any luck, some of the sleep that had been avoiding him for the last two weeks.
He'd not been able to bring himself to leave. Several people had stuck their heads in through the door in the past few minutes, offered him a puzzled glance, and then left again, presumably dispelled by the tangible miasma of gloom that he'd lent the entire room.
The whiteboard had long since been wiped clean, although it had been documented before being wiped, and this information was now in the file along with the photographs and memos that had accompanied it. Tomorrow, Finch would have to oversee the Herculean task of making three copies of everything in the files, and seeing that these went to Central Records, to Evidence and, by police courier, to Interpol.
Why Interpol, he asked himself, not for the first time since leaving McLennan's office, although he had since formed the shrewd suspicion that this was an attempt, on the Commissioner's part, to make sure that the case was dumped as far from the Met's doorstep as was humanly possible. After all, on the surface, it was a perfectly rational move; with half a million pounds' worth of stolen gemstones and five murders on his slate, someone like Roger Wright would think of nothing more urgent than leaving the country.
He almost laughed as he concocted the idea that, had it been feasible, the Commissioner would probably have referred the case to the FBI instead. Almost, but not quite. Something about the events of the last few hours had formed a heavy coating of rust on his sense of humour, which had never been too limber in any case.
He sat back in his chair for a moment, fingers laced across his chest, and peered out of the window. This room didn't offer the stunning vista that the inspector's office had, since it was only on the second floor, but if Finch's eyes were fixed upon anything at all, it wasn't the view. He cocked an ear as he heard sirens crowing somewhere away to the north, but this was nothing more than a copper's ingrained reflex, and owed nothing to his conscious reactions.
Still, he sat up and listened hard, until he finally identified them as ambulance sirens rather than police ones. At that point, even his hindbrain lost interest, and he rubbed at his eyes with one furious knuckle until a sudden mild sting was alleviated.
Finch drained the last smear of coffee in the bottom of his cup, cringing as he realised that there was nothing left but dregs, and stone-cold dregs at that. He then pulled the nearest folder towards him over the table, peeled back the cover and leafed through the stack of documents inside, his eyes flickering over the text. After a while, they began to glaze over.
He stopped, snorted in mild surprise, and paused on a page about halfway down the file. Opening the clip, careful not to dislodge the leaves on either side, he pulled out the formal statement that Gordon Deitrich had given some time ago. It comprised four A4 pages, and both the handwritten copy and the typed transcript were stapled together at one corner. The third copy, the tape recording of the interview, would have since been filed away in the basement alongside the portable evidence, but...
Finch swallowed heavily as an idea hit him like a stray sniper's bullet, and caused much the same amount of damage upon impact. Hard upon the heels of this was the stark understanding, coupled with McLennan's clear and unequivocal warning, that there was no way he could pursue this course of action without running the risk of dismissal at the very least and, if he were honest, it would probably amount to a much greater likelihood of disciplinary action and even prosecution.
This verdict was overruled, however, by the darker and much less subtle part of his brain; the part that had led to his joining the police in the first place, the part that could no more resist the lure of the chase than could a foxhound. Every clamour of civilised inhibition was gripped in its jaws and ripped head from tail from limb, and it was this animal urge that reached down his arm, took possession of his hand and forced it to turn to the last page of the statement.
There, with eyes narrowing painfully, he skipped over the florid signatures and found exactly what he was looking for.
The last Piccadilly Line train had passed by almost an hour before, and nothing disturbed the tunnel now but the scuffling of a browsing rat.
It hopped over a sleeper and landed in the gravel on the far side. The live rail stretched away beside it, for all intents and purposes all the way into infinity, but the animal knew from long experience that in the small hours of the morning, when the rail wasn't humming, it presented no threat. It gathered its hindquarters, twitched its tail once or twice, and leapt onto the live rail itself, hesitated, then dropped back down into the detritus on the far side.
This brought it alongside a platform and, at one and the same time, to the lip of the suicide pit beneath the rails. The drop gave it pause, but just then a soft scrape from the gloom of the platform had it pricking its ears and rising to its back feet for a better view of the situation.
Its beady black eyes met another pair, but these were a pellucid shade of blue, and carefully focused. V lowered the whetstone from the edge of the dagger and regarded the rat just as intently as it was regarding him. He watched, not moving a muscle, as its nose flickered, and then it dropped back down onto all fours and slipped down the wall of the pit, being lost to sight in its depths.
V sighed like a midnight breeze, returned to the task at hand, and continued to draw the whetstone down the edges of the blade; first one side, then the other, his movements both effective and economical. There was no light in this vaulted chamber save for the firefly glow of the emergency bulbs in the ceiling, and these did little more than add angles to the shadows. Nevertheless, each turn of the stone along the knife brought a brief glimmer to the cutting edges of the blade, and each dull flash raised a pinpoint sparkle in his slanted eyes.
It had been necessary to remove the mask, the better to see what he was doing in the suffocating gloom of the abandoned station. Every few strokes, however, V would pause and drop a hand to his side, fingers brushing the mask where it lay, as if assuring himself that it was still there. The gesture was performed without glance and even without thought; it was more instinct than anything else.
As he worked, he took gentle sips of the air in the station. It was indefatigably stale, and there was nothing about it that wouldn't have led any other observer to the rightful conclusion; namely that this twisted crawlspace of a station had been more or less left to the mercy of the subterranean nightlife for at least the past fifty years.
Most others would have quit the area with a wrinkle of distaste stamped across their face, but V found in the stagnant air, if not enjoyment, then at least equanimity. He'd smelled far worse in his existence, and had in any event come to the decision that solitude was well worth the price of a little foul air from time to time.
After several more minutes, apparently satisfied with the result of his labours, V held the blade up to eye level and turned it to and fro against what little light he could find, checking the cutting edge for nicks, dents or other flaws. Seeing that there were none, he loosed a soft growl of approval, and then tugged at his glove, exposing the fresh, rough scars beneath.
Turning the knife in his right hand, bringing the point of the blade around with deliberate care, he pressed the tip to the pad of his index finger and pushed fractionally, grimacing as he did so, although not without some bizarre new species of humour. His pupils dilated as a rich droplet of blood, almost black in the dim light, welled up around the cold steel.
Disregarding the pain this brought, V increased the pressure until the droplet swelled and, finally, burst, sliding down his finger and across his palm. Withdrawing the blade, he cocked his head curiously and then slipped the needle-sharp point into the pad of his ring finger, applying the same pressure, forming another fat bead of his own blood around the intrusive metal. This, too, sagged and fell, and sketched out a thin crimson line of its own upon his mottled flesh.
V watched, barely drawing breath, as the bloodied streams traced out his lines of Life and Fate, converged and, eventually, intersected in the subtle valley at the heel of his palm. This slow trickle passed on its way, slipping beneath the cuff of his tunic, but he ignored it, still fascinated by the pattern that he'd wrought on his hand.
"By the pricking of my thumbs, something wicked this way comes," he murmured, his eyes now no longer banked and dormant, but rising with a phoenix-like firelight that had nothing to do with the meagre illumination above him.
He smiled now, not the distorted visage that earlier discomfort had created, but a dreamlike study in contentment as he watched the vivid scarlet 'V' drying on his skin.