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  She was pushed into the background as medics mobbed Parker, checking his vitals and hurriedly trying to assess the best course of action. Ash heard people mention “carotid artery” a lot followed by “ligation.” A young ER doctor said it wouldn’t be enough, and recommended a graft. His words were followed by a flurry of activity, and Parker was rushed from the ER into surgery, steered by a team of medics that included a nurse whose only job was to ensure that the shard of plastic didn’t come out.

  As she watched Parker roll out of sight, a nagging vibration alerted Ash to an incoming call. When she pulled the phone from her pocket, she saw that it was Reeves.

  “Romero was hit by a brace, but her vest caught it,” Reeves said. “Couple of ripe bruises, but she’s gonna be OK. How’s Parker?”

  “They’re taking him into surgery.”

  “We had local PD canvas the area and got an ID,” Reeves revealed. “Charles Haig, age thirty-eight. He’s an engineer for a tech company on Ditmas. Hidyne Systems. They build drones.”

  “Put out an APB,” Ash instructed.

  “Already did,” Reeves replied. “Miller and Price are on their way to Haig’s apartment on Blake. How are the hostages?”

  Ash looked across the ER and caught sight of the young mother, whose wounded neck was being checked by a doctor, while a nurse amused her toddler. The grateful young woman looked back at Ash and nodded her thanks. Further along the ER, Jeff was trying to resist treatment, claiming he had a pathological fear of needles, while the old guy sat quietly as a nurse tended the cuts on his neck. Local uniforms milled around nearby, waiting for the opportunity to talk to the victims. “They’re going to be fine,” Ash told Reeves.

  “What about you?”

  “Ask me that when Parker comes out of surgery. Let me know when you get anything on Haig.”

  “Will do,” Reeves agreed before hanging up.

  The first hour passed quickly. Ash got her arm seen to and then liaised with Reeves and local PD, coordinating the search for Babylon, now identified as Charles Haig. Miller and Price hadn’t found anything unusual at Haig’s apartment. The place hardly looked lived in, which suggested it was a decoy, a clean residence to give Haig a veneer of respectability while his real life was lived elsewhere. The guillotines that almost killed four people were not off-the-shelf. Haig, or someone he knew, had manufactured them, a specialist task that would require a well-equipped workshop. Reeves said that Hidyne Systems was full of industrial machining tools, but Ash doubted that Haig would have risked discovery at work. He’d have somewhere private, somewhere secret.

  She called SAIC Harrell and briefed him on the situation. He was already aware of the broad strokes, but Ash gave him the details and let him know what was happening with Parker. Harrell sent Parker his best, congratulated Ash on her initiative, and asked her to keep him informed, before turning his attention to whatever was next on the list of myriad problems that kept the special agent in charge of the New York Field Office awake at night.

  Shortly after Ash had spoken to Harrell, the young mother came over, accompanied by a well-built man with a shaved head. He wore jeans and a grease-stained shirt, had rough, dry hands, and looked a little like Eli Manning’s grizzled cousin. The round-faced toddler squirmed in the man’s muscular arms.

  “They’re letting me go,” the grateful woman told Ash, her tearful eyes brimming with relief. “I just wanted to say thanks.”

  “You did good, officer,” the man chimed in. “Is there someone we can write to? I want people to know what you did.”

  “You don’t have to write to anyone,” Ash assured them. “Just give the officers your contact details,” she added, nodding toward the uniformed police gathered by the entrance.

  “You saved my life,” the woman protested. “We’d like to do this.”

  “Special Agent in Charge David Harrell, New York Field Office, Federal Bureau of Investigation,” Ash relented.

  “Thank you,” the woman reiterated, as the family backed away.

  Ash watched the man put his arm around the mother of his child and pull her close, and they both looked back gratefully as they walked toward the exit. The dark-haired child clasped his father’s neck and stared at Ash, and she was surprised to feel a sudden pang of jealousy. She envied the love the little boy’s parents had for each other and wondered what it would be like to be raised in such a loving family.

  The little boy waved at Ash, and, as she watched the family disappear from view, she was suddenly struck by the thought that she might never know such love. Her childhood had been rotten and devoid of any happiness, and now her life was dominated by work that isolated her from any normal human contact. Would she ever find comfort in a man’s arms, or cradle a child of her own? Fearful of the answer, Ash pushed the question from her mind.

  Over the next half-hour, the other two hostages were discharged. No one came for Jeff or the old guy, and so they shuffled over to Ash alone and expressed their thanks before leaving. The ranking uniform asked Ash whether she wanted an officer to wait with her, but she instructed him to devote everyone to the search for Charles Haig while the trail was still fresh.

  The young ER doctor emerged from wherever they’d taken Parker and confirmed that the shard of plastic had sliced a carotid artery. He told Ash that they were trying to repair the damage using a vein graft, but the surgeon was only midway through the delicate procedure. The young doctor withdrew, promising to keep Ash posted as soon as he heard anything.

  As Ash watched the ER staff deal with the steady stream of patients that walked, staggered, or were rolled into the Emergency Room, she began to replay the afternoon’s events, wondering whether she could have handled things differently. She could have acted on her hunch and jumped Haig before he even got inside the café, but that would have risked blowing the case. Except they would have found the guillotine devices in his backpack, which would have been enough to tie him to the murders.

  Her self-doubt was cut short by a phone call.

  “NYPD got a tip.” Reeves’s voice was serious and urgent. “Willard Brest, says he manages a bunch of properties in the neighborhood. He recognized Haig’s photo from the news, says the guy leased an old warehouse on Bristol—”

  Ash was on her feet before Reeves finished. “That’s right around the corner,” she said, interrupting him.

  “NYPD are gonna check it out,” Reeves advised.

  “No. Call them off,” Ash commanded, jogging toward the exit. “I don’t want them spooking the guy. What’s the address?”

  “Chris,” Reeves began.

  “The address,” Ash repeated.

  “Two-one-six Bristol,” Reeves said at last. “Miller and Price are on their way. We’ll meet you there.”

  “OK,” Ash replied, hanging up. She ran into the bright April sunshine and picked up pace as she crossed a small parking lot. The sudden sound of a siren startled her, and she narrowly avoided being hit by an ambulance as it roared out of the lot. She reached the wide, four-lane Linden Boulevard and danced her way across the road, dodging oncoming traffic. Drivers pounded their horns and some swore at the crazy woman, but Ash ignored them and kept running, glad that she’d opted to wear trainers and jeans for the stake-out.

  She raced across 98th Street, pounding the hood of a van to force it to a shuddering, tire-screaming halt. The shocked driver didn’t have time to react to the fleet figure, who vanished up Linden, sprinting past the redbrick row houses that lined the busy road. Ash dodged a gleaming yellow school bus as she cut across Thomas Boyland Street, and ran past the Brooklands Family Care Center, a squat brown building with a sloped roof, which sat on the corner of Linden and Bristol. Her legs cried out for her to slow down and her lungs screamed for mercy, but Ash ran on, desperate to reach the warehouse before Reeves and the others. She’d almost watched Parker die, and was not going to be responsible for losing another member of her team.

  She tore down Bristol Street, her feet hammering the sidewalk as
they carried her past rows of neatly kept two-story red bricks. As she neared the intersection with Ditmas, Ash realized that she had not been quick enough. She slowed to a walk when she saw Reeves, Miller, and Price exit their vehicles, which were parked opposite a low, windowless brick warehouse that was ringed by barbed wire.

  “We were closer than I thought,” Reeves said, and Ash knew that he hadn’t called her until they were already on their way. What happened to good old-fashioned trust? she mused as she caught her breath. Reeves handed her an earpiece and microphone, which she fitted as they walked toward the solid metal gates obscuring the building’s parking lot.

  “What do we know about the place?” she asked.

  “According to Brest, it’s pretty much derelict,” Reeves told her. “The owner is holding out for an offer from a housing developer, so he lets people have the place on a short-term lease. Brest leaves tenants to themselves. Last guy was a pornographer and discouraged visitors.” Reeves indicated the metal gates and barbed wire.

  “We got a warrant?” Ash inquired as she produced her pistol and checked her clip.

  “Working on it,” Miller replied.

  “Brest is concerned that someone might have recognized Haig on the news and broken into the place,” Reeves revealed with a wry smile. “He wants it checked out.”

  “Good. Get it open,” Ash instructed Price, who pulled some delicate tools from his pocket as he approached the metal gates. Ash, Reeves, and Miller checked their surroundings while Price picked the lock.

  “Done,” he said. The mechanism clicked and the gate swung open.

  As Ash led Miller and Price toward the redbrick warehouse, Reeves swung the gate closed, careful to ensure that the lock did not snap shut.

  Two shuttered windows flanked a narrow porch that led to a solid steel door with a single lock. Ash and Miller stood either side of the porch and waited while Price picked the lock. Reeves scanned the parking lot, which was littered with garbage. The place reeked of abandonment, and like anything in New York that wasn’t used properly, it had become a magnet for the city’s detritus.

  Price pushed the door open and silently signaled for them to follow. He went first, with Ash behind, Miller third, and Reeves taking the rear. Ash hadn’t wanted the responsibility of a team, but realized that she almost certainly wouldn’t have been able to gain entry without Price.

  They stepped into a dank corridor that led into darkness. Price produced a flashlight and Reeves did likewise, throwing pools of illumination around the narrow, decrepit space. Ash caught sight of a DVD slipcase and the rotted cover of a porno lying in a pool of filthy water on the bubbled linoleum floor.

  They pressed on, until the corridor widened into what might have once been a reception space. The broken remains of a counter lay near one wall, and a doorway with no door stood directly ahead. The ceiling tiles had been removed, exposing pipes and electrical circuits. Price walked into the corridor beyond the open doorway, which formed a T-junction that led left and right. Ash signaled Price and Miller to go left, and she and Reeves went right.

  The corridor stank of damp, and she could feel sodden carpet beneath every step. Reeves led, his flashlight illuminating their way.

  “Stop,” Ash whispered, noticing something stuck to the wall. “Give me some light.”

  Reeves threw the beam in Ash’s direction and revealed an old front page of The New York Times that Ash recognized; the lead story was the Pendulum killings. She looked along the corridor and saw that the walls were covered with newspaper clippings, screenshots of internet stories, bulletin board messages, and photographs—all about Pendulum.

  “I think he’s a fan,” Reeves noted darkly, before moving on.

  About twenty-five feet from the open doorway, the corridor dog-legged left, and, as they crept round the corner, pistols at the ready, Ash noticed a row of familiar silhouettes ahead of her. Hanging from exposed girders high above them, a dozen evenly spaced nooses formed a line down the middle of the corridor. Reeves reached out to touch the nearest, which was slightly above his head, and it swung slowly in the silent corridor. Reeves looked at Ash in disbelief, before moving on. Ahead of them stood a door in the left wall, perhaps sixty feet away, a thin line of light bleeding through the narrow gap beneath it.

  “We’ve got light,” Ash whispered into her mic.

  “Nothing on this side,” Miller replied. “Just a load of nooses. There’s an open door ahead, but it’s dark.”

  “We’ll go in first,” Ash advised, nodding at Reeves, who moved on.

  Ash ignored the nooses hanging above her head, and tried not to look at the Pendulum cuttings that lined their way as she and Reeves crept toward the door. She could feel her pulse rising and each breath becoming shorter as nervous tension built. Forty feet. She caught sight of the now infamous photograph of a body swinging beneath Malibu Pier and wondered how anyone could lionize such brutality. Thirty feet. Reeves glanced back and nodded; Ash returned the gesture. She flicked the Glock’s safety, her every sense alert for—

  The scream savaged Ash’s ear and was loud enough to echo around the entire building. Ahead of her, Reeves cradled his head, an instinctive attempt to counteract the effects of the shrill noise coming from his earpiece.

  “Miller? Price? What’s happening?” Ash asked urgently as the screams continued. She ran back the way they had come. Reeves followed, his flashlight bouncing its beam around the decaying building. The screams became a cry.

  “Help me!” a voice called, but it was so horribly distorted and guttural that Ash couldn’t tell whether it belonged to Price or Miller.

  She rounded the corner and sprinted toward the open doorway that led to the exit. The anguished cries were close now, just beyond the corner that turned right about thirty-five feet ahead. Ash was almost level with the open doorway when her heart juddered at the sight of the figure that stepped through it. She tried to level her pistol, but didn’t have time. The figure cracked her in the face with a metal bar and she went down, hard. Ash’s senses struggled for purchase as the world swam, and the last thing she saw before blacking out was Reeves getting off a single shot before he was disarmed and then brutally knocked out by a man in the familiar mask and body armor of Pendulum.

  9

  Chalcot Crescent was an upmarket narrow road in Primrose Hill. It was lined by a mix of single- and double-fronted three-story Georgian terraces which had been painted in pastel colors, making the street look like some pricey offshoot of a beachfront promenade. Bailey pulled to a halt in the residents’ parking lot outside number 146, a large, green, double-fronted house on the crescent’s bend. He walked up the short run of stone steps between the two Doric columns supporting the lintel above the front door and rang the doorbell. A quiet chime sounded somewhere inside. After a few moments, a flurry of hurried footsteps ended when the door opened and a quizzical young face peered up at him.

  “Who are you?” the boy asked.

  “Arthur, I’ve told you not to open the door,” a woman’s voice admonished the boy, who shrugged and quite deliberately closed the door on Bailey.

  When it reopened moments later, a tall, slim woman in her mid-forties stood in the doorway. She wore tight jeans and a turtleneck and had Connor’s pronounced cheekbones. Her wide eyes were red raw.

  “Sorry about that,” she said. “What can I do for you?”

  “DI Bailey. I’m here to talk to Hector and Joseph,” Bailey replied, flashing his warrant card.

  “Oh. Is there any news?” the woman asked.

  “Can I come in?”

  “Of course. Sorry,” she said, standing aside. “I’m Marcella, Connor’s sister.”

  Bailey stepped into a large, open hallway. This is money, he thought as Marcella shut the door. A double-width winding staircase rose through the center of the house, climbing to the upper floors, and tasteful contemporary art hung from the walls, somehow managing not to jar with the traditional Georgian fittings.

  “The other
officer said they wouldn’t be bothered,” Marcella observed.

  “Ordinarily they wouldn’t,” Bailey replied. “But we believe they might have important information that could help the investigation.”

  “Investigation? So you don’t think she . . .” Marcella trailed off.

  “That’s what I’m trying to find out,” Bailey explained, ending with a pause that quickly became an awkward silence.

  “I’m sorry,” Marcella said, sensing his impatience. “They’re through here.”

  Bailey followed her through a doorway beneath the staircase and found himself in a huge kitchen. Marcella crossed the marble floor and opened a door on the other side that led to a cozy family room. An L-shaped couch was pressed into one corner, opposite a large television. Four boys crowded round the machine, each holding a console controller. The TV almost shook with the ultra-realistic mayhem of a combat game. The boys didn’t even look round when Marcella and Bailey entered.

  “Boys!” Marcella exclaimed above the staccato machine-gun fire, but there was still no response, so she picked her way over the prone bodies and switched off the TV, provoking disapproval from two of the group. “That’s enough,” Marcella said firmly. “Arthur, Crispin, go to your rooms.”

  “But, Mum,” Arthur protested. “We can’t leave Hec and Joe.”

  He gestured toward the other two boys, who Bailey recognized from the Greene family photos. Hector, the eldest, had maybe two or three years on his younger brother. They’d both inherited their father’s high cheekbones but had their mother’s almond eyes, which looked blankly at him from deep pits of sorrow.

  “They’ll be fine,” Marcella assured Arthur. “This gentleman wants to talk to them. He’s from the police.”