The coroner hadn't turned up for work in two days, so Sam had to call in the Bone Inspector to examine the bodies. 

In fact, more and more people were choosing not to venture out of their doors. He saw solemn faces staring out of the windows on every street. They knew that something was going to happen, and they wanted to be locked up safe inside when it did.

Sam wanted to punch through the glass, seize them by the collars and shout, "Now you're afraid? After you watched those gargoyles chasing a young woman over the rooftops as though it was a magic lantern show? After you took the most dangerous man in the city and turned him into an invulnerable monster? It's too late to be afraid – now get out here and take the consequences!"

There had been another murder in the night: a maid-servant from the Chemistry Faculty. Sam knew her vaguely as a girl with a pinched face and long, red nails, but he had no idea how she was connected to Ellini Syal, or the gargoyle, or the old man.

Although he was already starting to think of Jack as the murderer of all four.

Except he couldn't be the murderer of the gargoyle, could he? According to the Book of Woe, only Alice could kill the gargoyles. And yet he had interviewed Alice – after all, she was now staying in the police station – and she had been quite adamant that she hadn't killed the creature.

"What a perfectly barbaric thing to do. Why would you suspect me of it?"

Sam hadn't felt like explaining that a medieval manuscript had decreed that she was the only one who could.

She had been in the University Church, though. According to her account, Jack had been pinned to the wall, Miss Syal had been bleeding copiously from a stab-wound in her chest, and the gargoyle had been trying to molest her.

"Why would it – what?" Sam stammered, feeling too bewildered to even fall back on his limitless reserves of anger.

"I don't know why," said Alice, with a contemptuous shrug. "Insanity would seem to be the only reason that makes sense. There was an old man, however. I didn't think he was dangerous when I came in. My attention was understandably riveted on the gargoyle. But he must have been the one who chloroformed me."

This tied in with what Sam had seen at the River Club. The old man in the mortuary was still missing a head, but, from the clothes and the general shape, he appeared to be the same old man who had stood in the doorway of the River Club, hissing instructions at the gargoyles.

"Could it have been the old man who stabbed Miss Syal?" he asked.

Another contemptuous shrug. "Dr Petrescu thinks Jack did it."

"And what do you think?"

Alice held his gaze for a moment and then looked away. "It was Jack," she said, a trace of weariness breaking through the contempt now. "She was stabbed in a very particular place – far enough from the heart to ensure she remained alive long enough to appreciate the pain. It's easy to forget when you've been watching him drink himself into oblivion for five years, but he is a trained killer."

"But you said he – he remembered his feelings for her."

"I can only assume that that happened afterwards. It would account for his behaviour since that night, wouldn't it? If he regained his feelings not only to discover that the woman he loved was dead, but that he'd killed her?"

There was an edge of bitter resignation to her voice which prompted Sam to say, "I won't let him get you, you know."

Mrs Darwin didn't seem very impressed by this. "You don't know what he is. Or what she meant to him. I knew both, and I still pushed him. I'm not sorry precisely, but it does mean that I've forfeited the right to complain. When he comes for me, I won't be able to say it's unfair. I'll be able to say that it's ridiculous and irrational, and that I've never been more disappointed in him, but 'unfair' is one of the few pejorative words that will not be passing my lips."

Dr Petrescu seemed to be just as resigned. As soon as he'd heard about Violet Pike's death that morning, he had sent for a lawyer to help him make his will. And, to compound the insanity, he had left all his money to John Danvers, 'and any dependants he might have or acquire in the course of his lifetime.'

Sam stood beside the doctor in the interview room while the will was being drawn up, and felt the ground shifting underneath him. Once again, he was too plaintively confused to be angry – although he wanted to be angry. All this grim resignation was insulting. Did they think it was a foregone conclusion that Jack would get past him? Did they think he was completely useless? And was he completely useless? Because people kept dying, after all, and he had yet to find the culprit. 

After a few moments of watching the ink dry on Dr Petrescu's will, he decided to take his feelings of frustration out on the absent John Danvers.

"Why would you leave all your money to him?" he asked, waving a hand irritably. "Didn't you sack him?"

"Alice sacked him," said the doctor, replacing the top on his fountain-pen. "Perhaps I feel he's owed some restitution from us."

"I thought you had nieces and nephews..."

Dr Petrescu gave him one of his sprightly, knowing smiles. "I kept their mothers alive at the expense of my soul, Inspector. They can hardly expect any more from me."

"Anyway, don't you think you're being slightly defeatist? Jack hasn't even made any threats against your life."

"And yet you've kept us under constant guard at your police station for two days," said the doctor mildly. "Is that not defeatist?"

"It's defeatist to think that he'll get you in spite of all these measures!"

The doctor blew on his paper to help the ink dry, and then said suddenly, "Have you ever seen his room? His old room, I mean, at the Faculty?"

Sam gave a surly shrug. "I just remember a mess of paper."

"Well, that's certainly not an inaccurate description. But the nature of the paper is worth remarking on. He collects things – mostly just information, but also legal papers, incriminating letters, photographs of people doing things they shouldn't have done, in places they shouldn't have gone. They're like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle to him. He puts them all together to build up a picture of the city and how it works. It strikes me that he's been preparing for this for a long time, without even knowing it. It was fun then, but now he's deadly serious."

He gave Sam the weary, philosophical look of a scientist who has got an alarming result from his experiments, but who isn't going to run away from his findings just because they're portents of doom.

"He will kill us, Inspector. You have no idea what we took from him."

***

The corpses had been laid out on four tables in the cool cellar of the mortuary. Each was covered with a white sheet, but they were quite easy to tell apart. The bulky form of the gargoyle was unmistakable, and the body of the old man was strangely foreshortened under its sheet, because it was missing a head.

And Mrs No-name hadn't appeared this morning, either. Sam had waited at the corner of St. Aldates until his cigarette burned down to his fingers, but she hadn't come. He would have settled for a glimpse of the same perambulator, even if some other nurse-maid was guiding it down the street. Just something to make him think he was in the same world as he had been three days ago.

But it didn't happen. And, when his cigarette was starting to singe his fingertips, he'd been obliged to throw it aside and drag himself to the mortuary, where four sheet-covered ex-people were waiting for him to solve the mystery of their deaths. He didn't hold out much hope for that either.

The Bone Inspector was cheerful enough, for a man who had been called out of his home when the streets were simmering in the expectation of a riot, to do somebody else's job. He hadn't brought his donkey-cart full of skulls and femurs, but there was some kind of nondescript, blackened bone poking out of his bag. Perhaps he had come straight from a charnel house. It didn't seem very hygienic, but Sam supposed the people under the sheets were long past caring about cleanliness.

He had already performed his examination, and was clutching a report rather proudly to his chest. 

Sam had been emphatic that he didn't want to see any dissections, but the Bone Inspector had explained that these were usually only necessary in cases where the cause of death was mysterious.

"In this case, the cause of death is as plain as the nose on yer face. They have nice, big, lurid, fatal wounds, so there's nae much point examining their stomach contents."

"Just tell me about Miss Syal," said Sam, anxious to stem this tide of anatomical detail. "Did you notice anything unusual?"

"Oh, aye – or rather, something usual where I expected to find something unusual."

Sam sighed. He was starting to envy the corpses. "What does that mean, please?"

"Well, she was one o'them Charlotte Grey lassies, yes? The ones you were kind enough to have me dig up in Cambridge? She had the black ribbons round her arms, same as the other girls in that cave."

The Bone Inspector pulled back the sheet to reveal Miss Syal's head and shoulders. Sam tried to look at absolutely anything else, but his eyes kept wandering back to her – to the other brilliantly sensitive woman he had failed to save. Granted, he hadn't driven this one to her death, but he could have done more.

Still, she looked much happier in death. For once, her shoulders weren't hunched, the expressive sinews in her neck weren't taut with anxiety. There was no desperately polite smile. He thought about how much she had been looking forward to this – how determined she had been to martyr herself – but it didn't make him feel much better.

"Yes," he said at last. "She was one of the 'Charlotte Grey lassies'. What of it?"

"Well, shouldn't she be missing her fingernails, then?"

Sam stared at him. "What do you mean? She is."

"Aye?" said the Bone Inspector, gently fishing her arm out from under the sheet and placing it, palm-downwards, on her chest. "Well then they've grown back in death, 'cause here they are."

Sam bent over the body, forgetting his horror in the face of his astonishment. There they were: five clipped, tidy fingernails, exactly where, a few weeks ago, he had seen five pink-white scars. Could it have been a trick? Some kind of make-up? But why?

He clung to the Bone Inspector's last remark as the only thing in the world that might make sense. "Can that happen? Can your fingernails really grow back in death?"

"Wha-? No, o'course it can't happen-" The Bone Inspector broke off, and turned his eyes heavenwards. "My god, I hate talking to Arts students! They never know when you're joking!"

"But Ellini Syal didn't have fingernails!" Sam protested.

"So this isnae her?"

"Of course it's her!"

"Then she did have fingernails," said the Bone Inspector patiently, taking the dead girl's arm and slipping it deftly back inside the sheet. "I'm not surprised you didn't spot it, though. She was wearing the black bandages – and, o'course, I had to scrub the blood off to be absolutely sure. Now, this one here," he said, turning to the next table, and lifting back the blanket to reveal the face of Violet Pike. "This is a classic Charlotte Grey. She's got the white hair and the scars from being whipped – almost gone now, o'course, because it seems she was a new-breed." He scratched his chin thoughtfully. "I didnae know she was a new-breed. What was her demonic symptom? Whining?"

Sam passed a hand across his forehead. He could still smell the tobacco on his fingertips, and it reminded him – far more powerfully than any words – that Mrs No-name was gone. "You're telling me Violet Pike was a Charlotte Grey?"

"Oh, aye."

"But I've seen her fingernails!"

"They were glued on. Nasty, painted wooden things – must've given her splinters."

"What killed her?" Sam demanded.

"Jugular vein severed with some kind of pronged implement," said the Bone Inspector. "By someone who knew what they were doing. It's nae easy to kill somewhere there – especially with a couple of spikes instead of a blade."

Sam's heart sank. He didn't like the sound of the pronged implement. It seemed too much like the fork that Jack had used against the Lieutenant-governor of Lucknow.

"And what about Miss Syal? What did she die of?"

The Bone Inspector stared at him, as though unsure whether or not he was joking. "The stab wound in the chest?" He leaned closer and whispered, "Incidentally, I think the old man died of beheading."

Sam gave a deep sigh, but didn't rise to this. "Would it have been quick?"

"Oh, aye. Both the stab-wound and the beheading. She was stabbed in the heart, y'see. Couldn't have survived it for more'n thirty seconds."

"So she was stabbed at the Music Rooms?"

The Bone Inspector made a face. "Well, there was enough blood on those steps to make me think so, but I don't see how it could have coated her whole dress like it did. And I also saw a trail of blood leading up to the steps. To be honest, there's more blood than I can rightly account for."

Sam sunk his head into his hands and tried to make sense of what he'd just been told. It helped to screen the Bone Inspector's infuriating face from view.

Stab-wound through the heart. Instantaneous. And yet Mrs Darwin had seen Ellini bleeding but alive in the University Church – had described a stab-wound far enough from the heart to ensure that she died a slow, painful death.

And this corpse had fingernails. It couldn't be Miss Syal. Except that it had to be Miss Syal! Apart from anything else, where would you get a spare body that looked exactly like her? Did she have a twin sister that nobody knew about? And, if the body wasn't Miss Syal, why would she want to fake her own death? Did she have a very valuable life insurance policy?

He turned to see Constable Gleeson sidling into the room, all his movements tensed and stiff in anticipation. Of course, they only sent Gleeson to him when it was bad news, but it had been bad news so often that Sam was starting to forget he had any other officers.

For a moment, he wanted to put his hand on the Constable's shoulder and say, 'What is it that makes this job worthwhile for you? What could possibly justify the constant terror in which you spend your working days?'

But he didn't, because he didn't want the same questions to be deflected back at him.

"What is it, Gleeson?" he said, in a slightly softer tone than he would have used if that thought hadn't occurred to him. "I thought I told you not to come back until you'd found Jack Cade."

"Um," said Gleeson. He had taken off his helmet, but Sam could still see the mark left by its strap under his pink, hairless chin. "We've had new orders from the Mayor's office, sir. He says we're to call off the search for Jack Cade and concentrate on finding the little mother's body."

Sam stared at him. Once again, he had that sense of the ground shifting underneath him. He felt as though his body was reaching a realization that his brain hadn't yet been able to grasp.

The mayor had never overruled him. The mayor had been terrified of him ever since Burgess had bitten him on the neck. This was like seeing fingernails on Miss Syal's hands – or no fingernails on Violet's.

But Constable Gleeson wasn't finished. "He also...he says we can't keep Dr Petrescu and Alice Darwin in the cells. He says it's a – a waste of city resources."

"A what?" said Sam. But he didn't need clarification, and Gleeson was certainly too terrified to give it. His brain had finally caught up with the rest of him.

It might have been prudent to concentrate on the search for the little mother. It was only a matter of time before her loss caused a riot among the city's new-breeds. It might even have been prudent to pardon Jack Cade, since he was the only living hero the new-breeds had, and his arrest would be bound to fan the flames of their resentment. But saying Alice and Dr Petrescu couldn't be housed in the city cells? That was convenient for Jack, and nobody else. Somehow, he had found a way to get to the mayor. It was the only explanation.

"And," said Constable Gleeson, who clearly felt he should get the worst over and done with in one go. "The evidence locker has been ransacked, sir. Everything to do with the Charlotte Grey case is gone – all the reports on the dead women in the caves, that old Latin manuscript that Miss Manda brought in..." He trailed off into silence under the force of Sam's glare.

"That's it, is it?" Sam demanded. "You're just going to stand there, telling me about his crimes, without bringing him to me? As though you're a newspaper-man, rather than an officer of the crown? You know who did this!" He waved a hand at the bodies behind him. "You know who killed them! He's allowed to murder and steal and blackmail the mayor, and we're supposed to give up and hunt instead for stolen taxidermy?"

"But he-" Constable Gleeson swallowed. It made his Adam's apple tremble. "He's always been so nice."

"At least he can't do much with the manuscript if it's in Latin," said the Bone Inspector. "I dinnae think Jack Cade had a classical education."

"Oh yes," said Sam, throwing up his hands in exasperation. "And where's he going to find someone who can speak Latin in this city?"

He rounded on the Bone Inspector and pointed at the report in his hands. "Right, that doesn't go back to the station. It's the only piece of paperwork he doesn't have, so it's going to stay on your person at all times until we can find a safe place for it."

The Bone Inspector placed an indignant hand on his chest. "So he'll be comin' after me now?"

"He's not going to come after you-"

Yes, he is, Sam thought suddenly. That's what he does. He finds talented people, wins their trust, and then recruits them to his cause. It's what he did in India. Whoever would have heard of Joel Parish if Jack Cade and Azimullah Khan hadn't spotted his talent for making speeches? He'll come after the Bone Inspector and the Last Gasp Lass. He'll target your best officers. He's at war with you – or with the city, which comes to the same thing.

Oddly enough, this was a liberating thought. Part of Sam's stifling gloom evaporated, and giving him some room to think. He had been generally paranoid and generally gloomy for days, but now it hit him with pin-point clarity that Jack was coming, and he couldn't count on the fact that they had once been friends. He would be the brilliant General he'd read about in the papers, not the genial drunk he'd known for the past five years.

"All right, yes," said Sam, turning back to the Bone Inspector. "He will come after you, but not for this. I don't think he'll be able to face it yet – reading about her injuries, or seeing sketches of her laid out naked on a slab. That's why you're going to stay here, until I tell you it's safe to come out."

"Here?" said the Bone Inspector. "In the mortuary? With the dead bodies?"

Sam rolled his eyes. "You're used to dead bodies!"

"Aye, but not with skin and flesh on them. Bones stay exactly where you put 'em, but recently deceased bodies shift about and make noises as they cool!"

"Look," said Sam, trying to keep his voice as soft as possible. "He won't come near her body. He'd take a thousand-mile detour to avoid it. This is the safest place in Oxford. Besides, you'll soon have company. I'm bringing Alice Darwin and Dr Petrescu here as soon as I've been to see the mayor."