Culham and Colombo, Sri Lanka

Although Will has been forced to go offline, Judy's and Mary's phones have stayed connected.  Judy has heard Mary's side of their conversation and indistinctly, Will's too.  She has kept her own microphone muted.  She does not want Will to know that she has disobeyed him.

There must be something I can do!

She turns her phone's microphone back on.

'Mary?'

'Judy!  You're back!  Where are you?' 

'I'm in the hallway just outside the lab.  I can hear them talking inside.'

'How did you get there?'

'I climbed  the fence and got in through the door where they grabbed Guilietta.  There's a stairwell just behind it. I could hear her shouting from somewhere above me, so I went up the stairs.  There's some kind of control room at the top; it's full of screens and switches and stuff like that.  There were a man and a woman inside – I could hear them talking.  I think the man was hitting Guili.'

'Bastard!'

'I wanted to kill him.  I stayed outside the door, listening.  I heard them talking to Will and Carlo over the Tannoy.  Then they left the room, pulling Guili after them.  She was howling and making so much noise and kicking them so hard―'

'Good.'

'That they didn't hear me following them.  I was shaking, I can tell you.'

'Judy, you've got guts.'

'Thanks.  I can feel them churning around inside me right now.'

'You're all right.  Can you see anything inside the lab?'

'The door's slightly open.  I'll go and take a look.'

'Give us video, can you?'

Judy tiptoes to the door and carefully looks through the gap.  Don't touch it, it might move and squeak and give me away!

Judy presses the key sequence that activates her phone's camera.  She points it through the narrow gap in the door, relaying a view of the laboratory to Mary, sitting in front of her TV screen in Colombo.  Then she slips back to the foot of the stairs.

'Right, Judy.  It looks as if nobody's moved.  Greaves and Morley are to the left of the door, as we look at it.'

'I saw them.'

'Good.  Now, Will and Carlo are on the far side of the lab, facing us.  Carlo still has the Knife, although I'm afraid that Miss Morley is going to try to make them hand it over to her in exchange for not harming Guili.'

'What use would that be?  They can't use it.  Don't they need Carlo to work it for them?'

'I think they'll keep it themselves and make Carlo open windows for them.  Their business was based on trading between worlds, using the windows that the Knife had opened before.'

'Trading?  What's wrong with that?'

'It's what they traded, Judy.  They didn't hesitate to trade in drugs, or stolen goods, or even children like Guili.  Anyway, what I think they want to do is keep the Knife, and Guili, hostage, and force Carlo to cut windows for them.

'Knife-cut windows are very harmful to the fabric of the universe.  The angels will try to close the windows straight away, so Morley and Greaves will be using Carlo all the time to re-open them again.  It'll be a race between them and the angels and I think a lot of people will be hurt.  Not just Guili and Carlo, but other people too.  You see, there's the Spectres to consider as well.'

'I remember.  Every time a window is cut, a Spectre is released.  It was a Spectre that killed Guili's mother.'

'Guili…  As long as they have Guili, they've got us over a barrel.'

'So we've got to get her back.  What shall I do, open the door and grab her?'

'That might not work.  Greaves isn't all that bright, but he's cunning and strong.'

'I could make a rush at him.  Catch him off-guard.'

'Don't forget there's two of them.'

'I know.  It's not going to be easy.'

Judy walks slowly, carefully, back to the steel door.  It is heavy and it will take a determined push to open it wide enough to allow her to pass through.  How can I open it quickly enough to take them by surprise?

She looks through the gap.  There is Mr Greaves, about ten feet away from her.  He is holding firmly onto Guilietta's wrist with his right hand.  To his left, and partially obscured by him, is Miss Morley.  She can hear her and Will still talking.  She looks at Mr Greaves' profile again.

Wait a minute!

Judy whispers into her phone.  'Mary, I've got an idea.'

She puts her shoulder to the door and, a fraction of an inch at a time, eases it open.  She prays that Will and Carlo, who are directly facing her, do not see the door move, or if they do, do not unwittingly betray her with an involuntary gesture or look.

There.  The gap is now nearly nine inches wide.  Wide enough for what she plans to do.

Judy pulls back her right arm and throws her phone as hard as she can at Mr Greaves' head.  On her screen Mary sees a blurred impression of the lab spinning past and hears a thump as Judy's phone strikes the man's right ear.

His head is jerked over to the left by the stinging blow.  He instinctively raises his right hand to his ear.  'What the fuck?'

'Guili!  Run!'  Will's and Judy's voices ring out simultaneously.  Guilietta dodges under Mr Greaves' flailing arm and dashes straight across the laboratory, passing under the cross-bar of the of the test rig H and ducking her head to avoid knocking against it.

'Come back here, you stupid little slag!'  Mr Greaves is enraged beyond belief by the sudden and totally unexpected, pain in his right ear, and Guilietta's escape.  He runs after the fleeing girl and crashes into the test rig, knocking the cross-bar from its supports.

Judy's phone has landed undamaged on its side on a bench behind the place where Mr Greaves was standing and its lens is facing forwards into the laboratory so that Mary sees everything that happens on the TV screen in her Colombo hotel room, albeit rotated to the right by ninety degrees.

When she recalls what happens next, in nightmares or when the memories break through, unwanted, while she is trying to concentrate on her work, it is as if each individual video frame that Judy's phone transmitted to her was stored, frozen, in Mary's brain.  She can play it through forwards and backwards.  She can zoom in on each image and examine it in detail.  Whether she wants to or not.

The cross-bar falls to the floor with a loud clang.  Mr Greaves charges through the gap between the two benches.

And is cut in two by the Thread which is suspended between them.  The invisible, deadly fibre slices cleanly through his lower torso, just above the pelvis.  The lower half of his body falls to the floor by the benches.  His legs twitch twice and stretch out rigid, their muscles and nerves separated from the brain and spinal column which control them.

The upper half of Mr Greaves' body describes a slow arc through the air as it falls across the laboratory towards the stunned Will and Giancarlo.  Guilietta runs into her brother's arms and buries her face in his side.  'Carlo! Carlo!'  The boy wraps his arms around her trembling body and holds her tightly to him.  'Guili, sweetheart, don't look!'

Blood is jetting from Mr Greaves' severed arteries, and a mixture of this and the voided contents of his intestines trails behind him as he drags himself across the laboratory floor, his arms furiously windmilling, his ghastly cries of agony echoing in the open space of the room.

The mutilated body thrashes, face pressed against the floor, by their spattered feet.  Its movements become feebler as the slow seconds pass by, one by one.  Will knows that there is no possibility of staunching the flow of blood from Mr Greaves' heart – the main arteries are open to the air and spurting vital fluid with steadily decreasing force as the amount of available for the man's heart to pump runs out.  The stench of excrement from his sliced-open bowels is putrid and totally overwhelming.

Ohgodohgodohgodohgodohgod.  Judy can hear herself repeating the words over and over again.  There is no God, silly.  He died and set us free.  The thought does not comfort her.

Will goes down onto one knee and gently turns Mr Greaves' body over so that he can see his face.  His takes his head in his arms.  The man's eyes are filming over.  He has only a few seconds to live now, as the blood which is needed to supply oxygen to his brain dribbles from his torso and pools on the floor.  Mr Greaves' lips move feebly and a few words escape from them.

'Bastards.  Bastards.'  And: 'Elspeth―' His head falls limply in Will's arms.  With a practised gesture, Will passes his right hand over Mr Greaves' face, pulling the lids down over his dead eyes.

He stands up shakily.  'That was…  that was an awful way to die.'

Miss Elspeth Morley crosses the laboratory floor towards them, carefully avoiding the test stand and the pool of blood that Mr Greaves has left.  She is pale and unsteady, but composed.

'He was… very loyal.'  She looks down at the body.  'Doctor Parry, will you see to this, please?'

'Yes, Miss Morley.'

'Thank you.'

She turns away and walks, straight-backed and rigidly self-controlled, over to the doorway opposite, her heels clicking on the ceramic tiles of the laboratory floor.  Wordlessly, Judy pushes the door fully open to let her go through.  Miss Morley, refusing to acknowledge Judy's presence, passes her and walks down the passageway beyond.  A door closes behind her, and she is gone.

'Let's get out of here.'

Judy collects her phone and joins Will, Kirjava, Giancarlo and Guilietta as they leave the laboratory and sit facing one another on two rows of chairs that have been left in the hallway outside.  Guilietta speaks first.

'He was a nasty man.  He hurt me.  Doctor Will, I didn't want that to happen to him.  Did I make it happen?  Was it my fault?'

'No, Guili.  Never think that.  It wasn't you – it was him.'  Will looks at them all.  'It was his own stupidity and greed that killed him.'

'I didn't know…'

Will takes Judy's hand and squeezes it.  'None of us knew what would happen.

'I've got to call an ambulance and I'll have to stay here until it comes.  I can say that Miss Morley found the body and called me, but she was too distressed to stay.  They'll ask her to corroborate my story, and she'll have to appear in the Coroner's court as a witness, but I'm sure she'll be able to handle all that.  There'll be a verdict of accidental death, or death by misadventure, and that will be that.

'The rest of you had better wait for me in the car.  Judy, you'll be OK to drive it up to the main entrance?  I'll tell the police we'd all gone out for a meal or something like that and I was bleeped.  It'll pass.  None of you will have to turn up in court.'

Mary, on Judy's phone: 'The entrance gates are still locked.'

'Right.  We'll have to go up to the control room and open them.'  Will laughs.  'I've forgotten how hard it is, being a criminal.'  The thumping on the stairs in his mother's house.  The crack of the intruder's head on the floor.  How it all began.

They are quiet for a while.

'OK.  Let's go.'  Will stands up and hold Judy's hand, for which she is grateful.  Giancarlo does not stand up.

'Will, everyone, wait please.  There is something else.  Something we must do.  Something terribly important.'