The inspector made a very close examination of the keys in his hand. His sharp, energetic features worked awkwardly. “Then I’m afraid …”

“The car might be meant as a message for me. Yes, I’m afraid so too,” said Harper. A movement caught her attention. She raised her eyes to see Slade gazing at her from behind the Peugeot’s window. She didn’t know the man. Could she trust him? Could she trust Pullod?

There was a long silence as the DI resettled himself in his overcoat again.

“Inspector,” Harper said slowly. “How many churches of St. James would you say there are in London?” That was the name of the church in Storm’s film. St. James. Santiago.

The policeman’s mouth pulled down, his hands went up on either side of him. “I … I don’t know. Half a dozen at least, I should think.”

“Yes,” she murmured. “At least …” And she stood pondering. The speech from Storm’s film had confirmed her instinct: Iago had found his destiny that day twenty years ago in the Edgware Road cinema. He had found it, and he wanted to cling to it. In some superstitious way, he was trying to inhabit the stories that had led him to the triptych. Perhaps trying to inhabit Spectre most of all. But then, when Storm had made the picture he was inventing an England he had never then seen. It raised certain logistical problems …

“Tell me this, then,” she said finally. “Do you know of any St. James church that has been abandoned? Or even destroyed?”

Again, Pullod made that baffled gesture. But then, mid-gesture, he stopped. “Well, yes, as a matter of fact,” he said. “There was the bomb blast down in the Barbican. About six, eight months ago now, was it? Started a fire in a church down there. Might have been St. James. Yes, I think it was. I think I remember …”

But Harper was no longer there above him. The door to her mansion stood open, the entryway empty.

Pullod glanced back at Slade in the Peugeot. Both men shrugged.

And Harper returned. Slipping into her cape. Clapping her Borsalino down upon her gray bangs until the brim was just above her spectacles. She descended the stairs quickly.

“Uh …” said Pullod. “Miss Albright? What is it?”

“Don’t be alarmed, Inspector,” said Harper, walking right past him, walking towards the Peugeot. “It’s only the Uncanny. But I believe I’ve caught the current of it,” she called back over her shoulder to him. “Yes. I believe it’s on our side now.”

17

“You will live without pain, you will live without aging. You will live without the fear of death and above the laws of man.”