“Can you describe this bloke?” Nkata asked. “Anything about him that you remember?”

Masoud’s expression looked dazed, but he answered slowly and thoughtfully. “It was so long ago. An older gentleman? Younger than myself, perhaps, but older than you. He was a white man. English. Bald. Yes. Yes. He was bald because the day was hot and his head perspired and he wiped it with a handkerchief. An odd sort of handkerchief, as well, for a man. Lace on the edge. I remember that because I noticed and he said it had sentimental value. His wife’s handkerchief. She made lace on things.”

“Tatting,” Nkata murmured, and to Lynley, “like that piece got left on Kimmo, guv.”

“He was a widower like myself,” Masoud said. “That was what he meant by sentimental value. And yes, I remember this: He was not very well. We walked from the house to this garage here and that short distance took his breath. I did not wish to comment on this, but I thought that a man of his age should not be so breathless as he was.”

“Anything else you c’n remember about his looks?” Nkata asked. “He’s bald and what else? Beard? Moustache? Fat? Thin? Marks on him anywhere?”

Masoud looked at the ground as if he’d be able to see a mental picture of the man there. He said, “There was no moustache or beard.” He meditated on this, his forehead wrinkled with the strain of remembering. Finally he said, “I cannot say more.”

Bald and breathless. There was nothing to go on. Lynley said, “We’d like to arrange an e-fit of this man. We’ll send someone out to work with you.”

“To draw his face, do you mean?” Masoud said doubtfully. “I will do what I can, but I fear…” He hesitated as he appeared to look for a polite way to say what he wanted to say. “So many English look similar to me. And he was very English, very…ordinary.”

Which, Lynley thought, most serial killers were. It was their special gift: They faded into a crowd with no one the wiser about their presence. Only in fantasy chillers had they been born werewolves.

Masoud returned his van to the garage. They waited for him and walked back to his house. It was only when they were about to part that Lynley realised another question needed to be asked. He said, “How did he get here, Mr. Masoud?”

“What do you mean?”

“If he planned to drive your van home, he would have needed transport here in the first place. There’s no railway station nearby. Did you see what his method of transport was?”

“Oh yes. That would have been the minicab. It remained in the street-parked just outside this house, in fact-during our transactions.”

“Did you get a look at the driver of that cab?” Lynley exchanged a glance with Nkata.

“I’m sorry, no. He merely sat in the car outside my house and waited. He certainly did not appear interested in our transaction.”

“Was he young or old?” Nkata asked.

“Younger than any of us, I should say.”

FU DIDN’T take the van to Leadenhall Market. It wasn’t necessary. He didn’t like removing it from the carpark during daylight hours and, besides, He had other means of transport that would seem-at least to the casual observer-more logical for the area.

He tried to tell Himself that the last days had finally proved to Him His power. But even as others began to see Him as He’d long intended Himself to be seen, it appeared to Him that control of the situation was beginning to slip from His grasp. This concern bore no sense, but still He found Himself wanting to shout from a public place, “I am here, the One you seek.”

He knew the ways of the world. As the knowledge spread, so did the risk. He had embraced that possibility from the first. He had even sought it. What He had not expected was how the need within Him would be fueled once He’d been finally acknowledged. He’d begun to feel consumed by it now.

He entered the old Victorian market from Leadenhall Place, where the freakishly modern Lloyds of London provided Him the cover of the commonplace: His presence here would not be remarked upon, and if one of the countless CCTV cameras along the way caught His image, no one would think anything of it in this place at this time of day.

Inside the market and beneath its vaulted ceiling of iron and glass, the great dragons loomed over him from every corner: long clawed and red tongued, with their silver wings unfurled for flight. Beneath them, the old cobbled central street was closed to traffic and the shops that lined it offered their wares to the daytime workers of the City as well as to tourists who-at other, more clement times of year-made this place part of their trips to visit the Tower or Petticoat Lane. It was designed for exactly that sort of custom, with narrow passageways offering everything from pizza to one-hour photo developing, cheek by jowl with butchers and fishmongers selling fresh items for that night’s dinner.

In midwinter, the site was very nearly perfect for what Fu had in mind. It was virtually deserted in the daytime aside from during the City workers’ lunch hours, and at late nighttime with the traffic bollards removed from either end of the main route through, what few vehicles rolled through it did so intermittently.

Fu strolled through the market towards its main entrance on Gracechurch Street. The shops were open, but they were sparsely peopled, while the most business being transacted appeared to be happening inside the Lamb Tavern, behind whose translucent windows the shapes of drinkers moved periodically. In front of this establishment, a shoe-shine boy did desultory business, buffing the black shoes of a banker type who was reading a broadsheet as his footwear was seen to. Fu glanced at this newspaper when he passed the man. One would expect a type like him to be perusing the Financial Times, but this was the Independent instead, and it carried on its front page the sort of headline that broadsheets generally reserved for royal superdramas, political nightmares, and acts of God. The words “Number Six” comprised it. Below that, a grainy photograph appeared.

Fu felt a different sort of need at the sight of this. It was one directed not towards fulfilling His growing desire but one that-had He lacked control-would have otherwise propelled Him towards that banker and that broadsheet like a starving hummingbird to the embrace of a flower. To proclaim Himself, to be understood.

He diverted His eyes instead. It was too early, yet He recognised in Himself the same sensation He’d experienced while watching the television programme about Him on the previous night. And how odd to name the sensation for what it was, because it was not at all what He’d expected it to be.

Anger. The heat of it, searing the muscles of His throat until He would cry out. For the one who truly sought Him had made no appearance before the television cameras, sending minions instead, as if Fu were a spider easily crushed beneath his heel.

He’d watched and there the maggot had found Him, slithering up the chair in which He sat, crawling in through His nose, curling behind His eyes till His vision went blurry, and then residing within His skull, where he remained. There to taunt. There to prove…pathetic, pathetic, pathetic, pathetic. Stupid little wanker, nasty little swine.

Think you’re someone? Think you’ll ever be someone? Useless piece…Don’t you ever turn your face from me when I’m talking to you.

Fu tossed from it, turned from it. There it stayed.

You want fire? I’ll show you fire. Give me your hands. I said give me your sodding hands. Here. You like how it feels?

He’d leaned His head against the back of the chair and He’d closed His eyes. The maggot ate greedily at His brain, and He tried not to feel or acknowledge it. He tried to remain where He was, doing what He alone had been able to do.

You hear me? You know me? How many people do you intend to send to the grave before you’re satisfied?