He needed, urgently, to talk to Kim, and until then he needed to stay out of the Met’s way. The idea of turning himself in and trying to explain didn’t appeal in the slightest. He’d rather let them work out he hadn’t done it from a position of freedom, he really didn’t want to answer questions about Kim, and he’d had his shop raided before by a policeman who was on Zodiac’s payroll. He didn’t want to chance falling into the hands of another crooked copper, especially not if he was locked in a cell.

Last time, the pretext for harassment had been indecent behaviour. He wondered if the Met would have a record of that, and if they’d raid the shop again, which caused him to make an urgent inventory of what Kim might have left lying around. There had been nothing for them to find on that first occasion, by luck rather than discretion, whereas now—

He stopped dead on the pavement.

White Stains. That bloody book was enough on its own to get him in hot water if it was found in his shop, let alone Kim’s handwritten dedication to him, and it had been in the same drawer as the Messer. He’d even given it a plain paper cover, which in retrospect screamed Something Will Darling wants to keep secret! If whoever had stolen the knife had taken the trouble to look at the book...or if they hadn’t, and the police raided his shop and found it...

Today was just getting better and better.

Right. He needed to go and get the damn book, if at all possible; he needed clothes and money; he needed somewhere to hide. Not with Kim, that was far too obvious, and nowhere near Maisie and Phoebe, because dragging them into this would be doing Zodiac’s work for them. He’d have to go somewhere else, and quickly, because there was going to be a manhunt. A brutal murder linked to the Symposium case would be all over the papers. Lodging-house owners and ticket clerks would be keeping a sharp eye out for a shifty character leaving London, or trying to find a bolthole.

Will considered himself a generally law-abiding man, in the teeth of the evidence, or at least his law-breaking had always been within some fairly specific bounds. He had no idea how to go about being a fugitive from justice.