After being reassured that Dr Petrescu wasn't in any immediate danger, Danvers had scuttled out of the mortuary with relief. Last night, Jack had enjoyed the looks of terror that appeared on people's faces whenever they saw him, but tonight it struck him as faintly ridiculous, especially as he crept down the staircase which led to the morgue, sinking steadily into the cold air at the bottom of the building.

They wouldn't have been so scared if they could see what it cost him to go into that room. How he gripped the door-frame and inched his toes over the threshold bit by bit, as if the very air was resisting him.

And he didn't even know what he was so afraid of. It was not as though he wasn't painfully, excruciatingly aware that she was dead. Would seeing her body in a morgue make it somehow final? But it was final already, surely. It couldn't have hurt like this if he had left any room for hope.

She came back to you in your dreams, he thought. It was her.

But he was less sure of that with every passing day. And, even if it had been real, she would never come back again. He had driven her away in a way she could never forgive.

Oh god. Okay. This isn't helping.

He spotted the door at the far end of the room. Lined up in front of it – like the cards in a game of Find the Lady – were three trestle-tables, each of which supported a dead body covered in a white sheet. There was another, longer table to the side, stocked with knives and implements, and these, too, were covered with a white sheet, as though to preserve their dignity. He could see the well-worn handle of a knife poking out from under its covering. It made him think of Robin, which at least lit a candle of anger in his achingly-cold chest.

He turned back to the three tables. He wondered if he'd get a prize for picking out Ellini first time. But he realized, as he got closer, that it would be a simple process of elimination. One of the shapes under its sheet was too big to possibly be human. That would be the gargoyle. They must have folded its wings under its chest, because no leathery, charcoal-grey skin was poking out from under its covering. And the body on the table to the far left was too short, its contours ending abruptly in what could only have been a severed neck.

He felt like Goldilocks trying out each of the beds in the Three Bears' cottage. One was too big and one too small, but the one in the middle was just right. It was human-sized and human-shaped. He could even make out the contours of breasts under the sheet.

He felt a shiver of something, from his throat right down to his stomach. He understood the fear now. It was the fear of seeing something that had meant so much to him suddenly meaning nothing. He and Ellini's body had been very close. He knew every inch of it–he had ached for it–but he had also seen, in all its motions and expressions, the woman he loved.

It had been her, and now, suddenly, it wouldn't be.

The door was right behind. He could thread his way between the tables without looking. He certainly didn't have to pull back the sheet. He had suffered enough tonight, hadn't he?

But no – that was a stupid question. It would never be enough. Besides, he wanted to suffer. Maybe he even wanted to see her one last time.

He drew level with the middle table and extended a hand over it. Would her eyes be open? Would she be staring up at him reproachfully? Would there be autopsy scars?

He reached out shakily and pulled back the sheet, trying to forestall the moment by keeping his eyes shut. And then he tried to forestall the moment again by staring straight ahead of him and not looking down.

But when he eventually lowered his eyes to the table, he realized it wasn't Ellini at all. It was Violet.

God, he'd forgotten about Violet! A shudder of relief passed through him, but it was not alone. There were grains of horror mixed in; wild, paranoid surmises – that Ellini might be in the next room, strung up, naked and dead-eyed, barring his way as soon as he opened the door.

He looked down at Violet, wondering if he felt sorry. Or perhaps still angry with her. But he could only feel envious. That pinched, spiteful face had never looked so peaceful.

Oh god, I wish I were you. To have only betrayed her – not actually stabbed her – and, best of all, to not feel anything.

He covered her up again and turned his attention to the door behind which he would find Alice and god-knew what else.

But he didn't get to open it, because Sam Hastings grabbed him by the neck and lifted him off his feet, spluttering and incoherent with rage.

For a moment, Jack thought it wasn't Sam Hastings. He was almost sure that that thing – whatever Burgess had planted inside him that night – had finally got the upper hand, and he would have to wrestle a demon from the murkiest pit of hell to get to Alice Darwin.

But then he caught the words "You bastard, you bastard" hissing out from between his assailant's teeth, and he knew it was his old friend. Sam 'the battle of' Hastings. Mess with him and you'll lose more than an eye.

It was not nothing to be lifted off the ground neck-first by a man who was almost twice your size, but Jack kicked back with his legs and drove an elbow into Sam's chest, until he was released with a grunt. He tumbled to the floor while Sam staggered backwards, knocking into one of the trestle-tables on which the dead bodies had been laid. Jack saw a limp arm flop out from under the sheet.

He didn't want to kill Sam. He didn't like to think about what would happen if Sam wasn't around, propping up all the world's anger like Atlas with the sky. He had devised a plan to avoid killing him, but it wasn't much better, and he still wasn't sure it would work.

"The prison," Sam wheezed, taking a run-up and kicking Jack in the stomach as he struggled to get up. "Do you have any idea-?"

"Yes," said Jack, catching his leg when it returned for another kick, and yanking it out from under him. "Yes, I have every idea. You told me I was insane and I told you you were right. I assumed we'd both be proceeding on that assumption."

He tried to get on top of him, but Sam kicked out, and Jack received a boot to the jaw that made bright colours explode behind his eyelids.

The man wasn't skilled, but he was huge and heaving with anger, and had little thought for self-preservation. It was like wrestling a berserker.

"Where is she?" said Jack, staggering to his feet, out of range of Sam's boots. "Where is she?"

"Who are you talking about?" Sam demanded.

"Who do you think I'm talking about? Where's her body? What have you done with it?"

He saw Sam hesitate, and then give a mutinous shrug. "We've buried it already."

"You're a liar," said Jack, his heart hammering in his throat. "You know I've been watching every entrance and exit to this place. What did you do, bury her under the floorboards?"

"What does it matter now? You want to keep her head as a trophy, like you did with the old man?"

Jack lunged at him, whipping the machete out of his belt and slashing through the jacket of Sam's uniform. He was very careful about it, in spite of the anger. He just sliced through the cloth, stopping short of his skin.

Still, Sam hadn't lost the look of a berserker. He raised his eyebrows and leaned against the blade, forcing Jack to step back for fear of running him through.

"You'll have to kill me," said Sam. "That's in your notes, isn't it? 'Won't back down, can't even be knocked unconscious'. You'll have to kill me if you want to get to Mrs Darwin."

"Any other man would," said Jack, hooking the machete back into his belt.

He reached into the pocket of his coat and drew out an envelope. He didn't hold it up, or show Sam the writing on the front. He was just as light and careful as he had been when presenting Sergei with his son. These were clever, desperate men who had spent their entire lives joining the dots. The merest suggestion would be enough.

He saw Sam's face crease into a frown. He was always frowning, of course, but this was a different frown. Or rather, a succession of different frowns. First, there was incredulity, then fatalistic certainty, and then – following the other two as night follows day – hunger.

Still, he did his best, as a proper policeman should, to interrogate what he knew.

"It's not possible," he said, in a throaty voice. "No-one ever found it."

"You can have it if you walk away right now," said Jack. His internal organs had vanished again – which was just as well, considering how cruel he now had to be to a man he had liked from the very beginning.

Sam half-smiled and shook his head. "Not possible," he repeated. "I went over every inch of her room. Manda's too."

"It was very cunningly hidden. She liked puzzles, your shop-girl. I suppose that was why she was so attracted to you." 

Jack jumped up onto the table of implements and opened one of the high, ivy-covered windows. "It was rolled up in the spine of one of her books. I had to completely destroy the binding to get at it. And who, in Oxford, was likely to do a thing like that? Only a complete scoundrel, which I suppose she thought you weren't. Still, it's addressed to you, so she obviously hadn't given up hope of you finding it."

Sam took a jerky step forward, as though someone was pulling at the buttons of his jacket. "It's – addressed to me?"

Jack held the envelope between thumb and forefinger, and then stuck his hand out of the window, letting the paper flutter in the breeze.

"Raining out there," he said lightly. "And there are any number of ex-convicts who could snatch it up or trample it into the ground."

Sam shook his head again–wildly this time, as if he was trying to shake something off. "This is my job," he insisted. "You're asking me not to do my job."

"It's not your job to die for Alice Darwin. That's not anybody's job. Anyway, it's this or death." With his free hand, he drew the revolver out of its holster. "Don't make me kill you, Sammie."

"But this is...this is worse than killing me..."

"It's worse for you. It's not worse for me." 

But he couldn't make Sam understand him. He wasn't even sure if Sam knew he was there. His eyes were riveted on the letter. Jack took a deep, steadying breath, and forced himself to let it go.

And even he winced when it was snatched up by the wind and pelted with raindrops. He couldn't imagine what it must have been like for Sam. The letter fluttered about like a storm-tossed butterfly, and then it was lost from sight.

Sam made an incoherent noise in the back of his throat. He teetered for a moment, as though on a precipice. And then, with no further words, he turned and ran out of the building, leaving the way clear to Alice Darwin's door.

***

She was standing upright, breathing heavily, waiting for him. She had heard the commotion up in the morgue, no doubt. A camp-bed had been made up for her in the little alcove where the embalming fluid was stored, and she was dressed in her night-gown, but it didn't look as though she had slept. Her loose, honey-coloured hair was impeccably tidy, and her bosom was heaving in a way that made Jack's stomach lurch. Far from the object of desire it had once been, her cleavage now had the sickly-white, dimpled look of uncooked chicken skin.

Her back was straight, but there was no cool defiance in her expression now. For the first time in her life, perhaps, she was scared.

He crept own the stairs towards her with a strange, surreal, underwater feeling. He couldn't believe he was finally here, finally facing her. Was there anyone he blamed more than Alice? Was there anyone he hated more than Alice?

Well, yes, there was, but it wouldn't do any good to turn the gun on himself.

This one, he really wasn't sure about. Oh, he was sure that he hated her – and sure, too, that she couldn't order him to put down the gun and stop behaving like a spoilt child. But he wasn't sure he could control the anger. He wasn't sure he wouldn't black out and wake up a few moments later, having torn her body – with its useful little hands – to pieces.

There was a reason he had saved her till last. If he was going to snap anywhere, it would be here.

He approached her with a finger raised to his lips, even though she didn't look as if she had the breath to cry out.

She was holding a sheet of paper. It was trembling in her fingers, and she held it out to him as he drew closer. Jack – because he didn't trust himself to speak yet, and because he couldn't imagine what it could be – took it.

But there wasn't time to read it, because she started to say something. It wasn't much more than a whimper, but he raised his finger to his lips again, and said, in a voice that was hoarse with the effort of self-control, "I'd really appreciate it if you wouldn't say anything."

Alice, still white-faced, regained some of her old exasperation. "But that's just because-"

He punched her. 

He actually punched her. He hadn't meant to, but the haughty harmonics in that voice drove him insane. 

She was knocked out instantly, but – Alice being Alice – her pretty nose didn't break. Still, there was a satisfying clunk when her head hit the floor. He clung to that as one tiny shred of comfort.

Oh, damnit, damnit, damnit! He had wanted to tell her how much he hated her – what he was going to do to her. How was it that she always managed to escape any kind of inconvenience? How was it that she always managed to make him feel like an idiot?

He shook open the folded sheet of paper, wondering if she had turned the tables on him. Maybe it was one last letter from Ellini, saying all the things that he dreaded she'd been thinking about him in her last moments on earth.

But it was some kind of form. He saw his own signature at the bottom, and then dragged his eyes up, forcing himself to read the thing from the beginning.

I, Jack Cade, being of sound mind and body, and fully apprised of the probable consequences, do hereby give my consent for my memories to be temporarily suppressed until such a time as my doctors see fit to restore them...

It read like a will – or some kind of magical contract – and the sheer banality of the prose made him giggle.

It was fitting that he'd pictured Alice in the last circle of hell – the control room – because he couldn't imagine a better devil, and here she was presenting him with evidence that he'd sold his soul to her.

There was a movement behind him, and he whirled round, still giggling, expecting to see a furious, rampaging Sam bearing down on him.

But it was Manda. She must have been in the room all the time, perhaps crouching in the shadows, awaiting her moment to knock him out. Since she had a bottle in her hand and was frozen in the act of raising it over his head, this seemed like a plausible guess.

He wanted to grin, and slap her on the back, and say, 'Manda, what are you doing in the ninth level of hell? Was there not enough weeping and gnashing of teeth?' But she wouldn't freeze for long. Manda wasn't easily disconcerted.

And he was going to take a step back when some competing instinct got tangled up in his mind and rooted him to the spot.

Someone Ellini trusted, who wasn't a man.

And she had been so alone in Oxford, hemmed in on all sides by policemen and bitches and men who'd been slavering over her as though she was dinner. Who could she have turned to but Manda? Who could she have trusted but Manda?

But he'd been hesitating too long, and she was frightened. She was huffing and puffing so hard that the veil over her face was in danger of being sucked down her throat. There was no more time to get out of the way of the bottle. Maybe he even leaned towards it, as though he was impatient for the lights to go out on this horrible night.

He didn't even hear the glass break.