Harper only nodded. “I didn’t expect him to return, but it seemed worth trying. It was something he said about being chosen. I have a sense, you see, that he is not only following this trail of stories, but attempting somehow to inhabit them. As if he thought they were all about him in some way, as if he thought he were their ongoing protagonist. It makes one think he might seek out locations that bore some relation to them. That he might use them as the base for his operations.”

“Aha,” said Pullod. He put his tongue in his cheek to keep from smiling.

Harper Albright looked up at him sharply. “I don’t expect you to believe me, Inspector. All I ask of you and your people is that you let me know the moment you locate Bernard’s car.”

Pullod, caught out, lost the smile and nodded briskly. “Morris Minor. We’re keeping our eyes peeled.”

She studied him through those goggles of hers for a long, uncomfortable moment. Then she sniffed.

“Please do,” she said. “Because whether you believe me or not, the truth of the matter is: We haven’t got very much time.”

3

Then a church bell tolled some unknown hour and Bernard began to come around. He had no idea where he’d been, where he was, no notion of what had happened to him. For a long time the only thing he knew for certain was that the business of living had turned dimly dreadful.

Then, after a while, his eyes came open. Slowly. Breaking the dried crust that had held them shut. He looked.

Nothing. Blackness. Darkness more complete, more empty than any he had ever known. He became aware now too that he was deeply uncomfortable. Lying on his back, inert, twisted. Knees to one side, one hand flung up by his face. The reek of the air was foul. There was a stench of vomit that made him want to vomit. He could feel the stuff soaking his shoulder through his shirt, viscid, lumpy. There was the smell of urine as well: his crotch and thighs were stinging with the drying damp.

A steady throb in his forehead was fast becoming intolerable. The taste in his mouth defied description.

Well, he’d woken up in a similar condition any number of times. But no, this wasn’t an ordinary hangover. He was remembering now. The church. The crucifix. That moan; that man. His head lifting. His eyes …

Bernard made a weak, shuddering noise, a sound he’d never heard himself make before. The blackness seemed to be growing heavier, thicker. Closing in around him. Smothering him. Entombing him.