They all took notice of him now: the dead man. The people there saw him walking. Soon the whole world would see it too.

Robbins barked at the uniforms on either side of him, telling them to get more men out for crowd control. The plainclothes officers driving the van backed up when they saw what was rapidly turning into a mob. There was total and utter confusion. Cameras flashed, Dictaphones were pushed through.

And there, at the back, Robbins saw her----short dark hair, craning her neck along with the other people to see who had gathered here today: Caroline Hills. He turned to see that the man they had in cuffs had noticed her, too. A look passed between Caroline and the person who so resembled the husband she had lost, and Robbins almost felt sorry for him. But then the DCI was being jostled to one side and more policemen were emerging from the station to deal with the numbers.

"Can we just ask----"

"Where are you taking----"

"What connection he has to----"

"What you found at Westmoor Cemetery----"

The gaggle of voices was terrific, so much so that they wove themselves into one loud hum.

Then it happened.

Beth spotted it first and grabbed Robbins' shoulder. There, in the crowd, was a hand clutching a gun. It was an old-fashioned type of pistol, nothing that might be used on the streets today----more like a relic from a museum. Robbins doubted whether it would even fire.

But it did. Three loud bangs.

He saw the man in cuffs go down, two bullets hitting him hard. Then Robbins felt a pain in his own arm, as he dove across to try and shield Beth. If there was confusion before, then there was mass panic now that the shots had rung out. Robbins tried to shout out to his men: apprehend the shooter; secure the area. But the plainclothes officers from the van had already pulled their own guns, which caused even more hysteria.

Robbins clutched at his arm and his hand came away red. Then Beth was there, examining the wound.

She told him to keep the hand on it and apply pressure. "You silly sod," Beth whispered, and kissed his forehead, before checking on the other injured party. She scrambled along the floor to where he'd fell.

But when she got there she found nothing. No body, no Matthew.

Nothing except a patch of blood where he'd lay, spreading out like wings on the concrete floor.

Chapter Sixteen

The next few days were just as confused as that afternoon.

For a while the news had concentrated fully on what had happened: about Matthew, about who he might be, about where he might have gone after the assassination attempt, about his revenge on the man who had 'killed' him. It was discussed on every message board and talk show, theologians offered their opinions and scientists expounded on what Beth had already suggested. But there was no proof, no concrete evidence of anything. So rationality soon began to reign. If nothing else it was a diversion, a curiosity along the lines of raining fish and the Yeti. Certainly nowhere near as exciting as reading about which politician was having an affair or which celebrity had suddenly been diagnosed with bulimia.

Then, just as Croft had predicted, the world began to change.

The first thing that happened was that Phil Barnes, the motorcyclist Matthew had apparently brought back from the brink of death, got up from his hospital bed and went for a walk himself. The nurses thought he was going to the toilet, a good sign that he was recovering even more. But he wasn't. Phil was going down into the morgue.

He walked past the attendant in charge, who was listening to Nessun Dormaon his ipod at the time, as if he hadn't even seen him. The man asked him exactly what he thought he was doing and Phil simply replied:

"They're asleep, that's all. Just asleep."

Then he pulled open the freezer drawers and woke them up, one by one: men, women and children. In no time at all, the morgue was filled with reanimated corpses and the attendant had collapsed on the floor in a dead faint. He was used to cadavers making noises----groaning and farting as he moved them----but not used to them climbing out of their drawers. The last person to be woken was in quite a bad condition. His limbs were broken and he was still scarred, bruised and cut from the fall.

However, when he looked down on himself, Douglas Knowles found that he was entirely healed, that his body was as good as... no, betterthan new. Life surged through him, the blood pumping in his veins full of vitality. The last thing he could remember was being on that balcony. When the man he'd killed refused to put him out of his own misery, he'd suddenly been overcome with a sense that there was no point in going on. And he owed the person standing there some kind of justice. That was when he decided to throw himself off.

He smiled. It was a miracle.

"Come on," said Phil, showing the others a way out of their resting place, up into the light.

In his hospital bed, recovering from being shot and being treated for the 'full house' of ulcers they'd now found in his gut, DCI Robbins saw the strange procession go past. And saw Knowles tagging on at the end. But he put it down the strong medication he was on, just as he had the return visit from Croft.

"I can't stand these places," he'd told him, eating Robbins' grapes, "they remind me of the time I had my heart attack."

He'd mention it to Beth the next time he saw her.

But Beth would have other things on her mind entirely by then.

~

That night, Dr. Beth Preston was down in the lab----going through blood samples she'd squirreled away while she was still able to----when she was interrupted in her work by a child calling out her name.

She rose from the microscope slowly, then nearly lost her balance, clutching onto the desk for support and knocking over the vials.

"Hiya Bethany," said the little girl in front of her. She was the only one who'd ever called her by her full name.

"S-Sarah?" She shook her head, not trusting the evidence of her own eyes. "Sarah, is it really you?"

The girl with long golden locks ran over and hugged her. "Course it is, silly. Who else?"

Beth's hand wavered, then it found the child's back and she hugged her tight. The girl felt as real as anyone she'd ever met, as solid as... well, as solid as Matthew had been. Tears were tracking down the doctor's cheeks, and she could taste saltwater on her lips.

"It's... it's so good to see you," Beth told her.

"It's good to see you, too. I was getting bored of waiting."

In spite of herself, Beth laughed. She held Sarah by the shoulders and bent down. "I don't understand any of this."

"You're not meant to," Sarah said. "Not yet. But you will." She took Beth's hand and began to tug it.

"Where are we going?"

"You'll see."

Beth hung back. "Hold on, Sarah. I have to say something."

Sarah looked puzzled. "Can't it wait?"

"No," said Beth, shaking her head. "Not really."

Sarah looked up and nodded.

"I'm sorry," said the doctor.

"What for?"

"You know, for what happened."

The penny dropped and Sarah suddenly grinned. "Oh that. It's okay, it wasn't your fault."

"But if I'd picked it up earlier then maybe----"

"It was meantto happen, Bethany," Sarah told her. "There was no way you could have known about the clot." She tittered. "Sounds like cream, doesn't it?" When Becky didn't join in, Sarah said, "Could've happened anytime."