“So what’s the plan?”

Caldera laughed. “We know what happened, we know what crime was committed, and we’ve got a positive ID on the suspect. We basically solved the case already. This is just the wrap-up.”

“But we have no idea how to find the guy.”

“Don’t need to,” Caldera said. “IDing the suspect and proving what they did is the hard part. Once we’re done with this, you can write up a report and we’ll get a warrant issued for Chamois’s arrest. He attacked you and a civilian on camera: it’s pretty open-shut. Then we pass it on and wait for the next case.”

“And wait for some other Keeper to pick him up?”

“What, you wanted to take the guy down yourself? We’re an organisation. Quit with the lone-wolf stuff.”

I shrugged. “Seriously, though,” Caldera said, “you did a good job on this one. As soon as you managed to get away from the guy at Stratford, you won. The rest is just cleanup.”

“Doesn’t feel like we’ve won.”

“You get used to it. Come take a look at this.”

I got up and crossed the room to look over Caldera’s shoulder. On the screen was a nighttime video of a London A-road, two lanes each way. The time stamp read 7:03, two days ago. “What am I looking at?” I said.

“CCTV from Stratford High Street,” Caldera said. “Same time that the 999 call was made.” She pointed at the bottom-right of the picture. “See the corner there? That’s the side street that leads over the canal to the Pudding Mill Lane construction site. Watch.”

Caldera hit the Play button. Vehicles began to travel back and forth on the main road, cars mixed with the occasional lorry or bus. A few pedestrians were scattered along the pavement. As we watched, a figure appeared at the bottom right corner, running from the direction Caldera had pointed out. He darted out across the road, forcing cars to brake to avoid hitting him. The figure didn’t stop but kept going to the far pavement, then headed southwest towards the big overpass. A few pedestrians had turned their heads to watch.

“In a hurry, isn’t he?” I said.

“Yep,” Caldera said. “999 call was at seven-oh-four, and that spot’s about two minutes’ run from the station. Could have come from somewhere else, but that street’s mostly a dead end.”

“You think he was the one who made the call?”

“Nah.” Caldera pointed to the screen; the figure was disappearing down the road, and the time stamp had clicked over to 7:04. “Call would have been made by now. Besides, the one who called in was a woman. That’s a boy.”

“It is?”

“Early teens, maybe younger.”

The figure just looked like a grey outline to me, but then I don’t spend long periods of time studying CCTV footage. Caldera rewound the video and again we watched the figure dash across the road. “He’s running pretty blind,” I said.

“He’s running from something,” Caldera said. “Look. After the car brakes, see how he turns his head and looks back? He’s more worried about what’s behind him.” Caldera looked thoughtful. “Wonder what got him so scared?”