Lorlo was shitting himself, it was obvious. He had sent a message back on the fax, but there had been no reply.

He might be in big trouble. For some reason, the girl was dynamite. That meant trouble for Frankie too, but Frankie had his own contingency plans. These involved shopping Lorlo as soon as was needful.

Now Lorlo was doctoring his files, or trying to, looking up all the little fiddles and indiscretions.

Honey just wanted to get out. He edged nearer and nearer to the lift.

"Mr. Mulley," said Frankie finally, "the fucking car's gone."

"Jesus. She took my car," said Lorlo.

He darted back across the room and fastened on the internal phone. "Chas? Chas? Sod him, he's not there."

Then they heard the big thump in the lift which trembled the floor. It was often noisy. Nerves might make it seem worse.

"That's him coming up now," said Frankie.

"Stupid bastard, letting her take the car. There's stuff in the car. Maybe she's gone to them—"

Lorlo pictured Ruth driving through the night to Manchester.

While he was doing this, the lift arrived.

"Chas—"

The doors opened, faster it seemed than they had ever done before. Not Chas, but the burning Mercedes came crashing through. It bowled over the screeching Honey, bumped once, and then poured toward them up the plain of white, with fire leaping from its open sides.

Lorlo and Frankie wailed like children in the dark.

Down among the dereliction, Malach stood with Ruth, in the black night above the inky river.

Together they watched the windows of the third floor of the warehouse, behind which came a sudden constipated thunder, and then a blinding whuff of light and rage of sound. All the glass shot out, a rain of stars, and tiny pieces tinkled about them like hail, and small blobs of flame and scraps of burning furnishings and papers.

Then the fiery Mercedes burst from the far end of the warehouse and dived slowly down into the prolapse of the wasteland, into the black rubbish and the weeds. Redness rose from there to the canopy of tainted city sky. Reflected in the vitriol of the river.

As the glass and flaming fragments fell, Malach had lifted part of his long coat to cover Ruth's head, and shielded her face with his hand. The coat was like a black wing, under which he had taken her.

CHAPTER 21

ALTHENE PUSHED BACK THE DOOR. "Come in." The storm had broken abruptly, and her room was lit and flickered by sheet lightning through the colored window. This was like another scene. And not like at all. Then, that time in the past, Rachaela had woken to find Adamus, and the window of the Temptation flaring upon him.

Althene's window was cunningly of a woman before a colored window, and this inner casement was a thing of irises and hyacinths.