As for Judy, she was too old to have another child, so he was going to have to ditch her and start again with a younger model – but even that idea brought with it a few positives. He could have another daughter, and this time he could start moulding her much sooner, and he could make sure that she understood her role better than Grace had ever managed. All things considered, then, he was starting to come around to the idea that the whole mess might actually be a blessing in disguise.

  And then, interrupting his thoughts, he heard the footsteps again, this time definitely coming from the floor above. He looked up, and already his mind was racing as he tried to work out how he could turn this particular intrusion into an advantage. Someone had seen him sobbing over Grace's corpse, but they hadn't necessarily witnessed anything else that had happened. Was this the strange skinny guy he'd encountered earlier, or was someone else on the loose in the warehouse? Either way, he knew he needed to get rid of any loose ends and – as the footsteps stopped again – he understood that he couldn't afford to simply walk away just yet.

  A smile began to spread across his lips as he realized that in fact a witness – a partial witness – might turn out to be very useful indeed.

  Chapter Nineteen

  After stumbling along several dark, confusing streets, Judy somehow spilled out at the edge of Leicester Square. Shocked by the sudden crowd and by the bright lights all around, she immediately shrank back into the relative safety of a hotel's closed doorway, and she paused for a moment as she once again tried to get her bearings.

  Leicester Square.

  Wasn't that...

  Sighing, she realized that this was no help at all. She had no clue where Leicester Square was in relation to any other part of London; in fact, the entire city was, to her, just a series of touristy landmarks floating independently of one another, and she didn't even know how she'd threaded her way to this spot from Trafalgar Square. She supposed there must be an underground station nearby, and while the thought of going down there filled her with dread, she still had her bank card and she wondered whether she could navigate the tubes and tunnels on her way back to Paddington. Or might she be able to flag down a taxi?

  She took a couple of steps forward, but she was starting to realize now that there seemed to be no taxis at all in Leicester Square, which meant that she was going to have to find a part of the city that hadn't been pedestrianized. She stopped and looked all around, but she could feel her mind straining under the onslaught of so many sensory impressions and she worried that she might never find her way back to Paddington again.

  Pulling her phone out, she checked the screen in case it might be miraculously working, but now it wouldn't even turn on at all. The wretched thing was dead and she felt tears starting to fill her eyes as she wondered just how she was ever going to figure out a route back to safety. At the same time, she told herself that she was a perfectly capable middle-aged woman who damn well wasn't going to collapse into a useless funk just because she found the city a little confusing, and she figured that she just needed to pick a direction and keep walking and that eventually she had to come to a road with lots and lots of available taxis.

  She began to walk around the edge of Leicester Square, not quite daring to go across the centre and risk traversing the busier sections. She saw people laughing and joking, and she wondered how they could withstand the tumult of the place, although she supposed that it was probably much easier for people who had been born in the city. For someone like her, who'd been born and raised in the Somerset countryside, the entire world felt very different and she actually much preferred her own way of life. And as she edged past a huge shop with flashing lights, she made a silent promise to herself that she was going to try to never set foot in London ever again.

  Suddenly hearing a scream, she let out a shocked gasp and pulled back behind a large potted plant that had been placed outside a restaurant. She immediately saw some girls laughing and joking nearby, and she realized that one of these girls had been the originator of the scream. Feeling flustered and more than a little foolish, she took a deep breath and tried to calm herself, and then she set off on her way again, picking a different direction and scuttling past a cinema before turning a corner and starting to make her way along a slightly quieter – but rather foul-smelling – road with not so many lights.

  ***

  A few minutes later, having turned around to avoid going anywhere near a part of the city festooned with red lanterns hanging high above, Judy instead found herself walking past shops that had some kind of meat – rabbits or ducks? - hanging from hooks in the windows. She told herself that she just had to keep going, that eventually she was going to find a taxi, but she was already starting to hate the fact that she constantly felt so exposed and afraid.

  And then, as she made her way around yet another corner, she saw Heidi waiting for her.

  “Leave me alone!” she blurted out, turning and rushing in the other direction.

  “Wait up!” Heidi shouted, hurrying after her. “Hey, Judy, don't be afraid!”

  “Just leave me alone,” Judy replied, before stopping as she felt a hand grabbing her arm from behind. “I'm warning you,” she stammered. “If you don't let me go right now, I'm going to scream for a policeman and then I'll have you charged with assault.”

  “You're not gonna do any of those things.”

  Judy turned and glared at her.

  “Let's face it,” Heidi added, staring deep into her eyes as if she could almost read her mind, “if you were the kind of person who reported things like that, none of this would ever have happened. Or at least, it wouldn't have got this far.”

  “I don't know what you're talking about,” Judy replied stiffly.

  “You feel bad,” Heidi continued. “I can sense the guilt radiating off you, Judy. I'm not some master when it comes to reading people, but with you it's just so obvious. But it's also buried deep down, it's something you try really hard to pretend isn't there. But it is there and you can't ignore it, not forever. Don't you think that maybe you should try to think of some way to fix it all?”

  Judy stared at her, clearly shocked, before finally bursting into a fit of laughter.

  “Do you think this is funny, Judy?” Heidi asked.

  “I think you're hilarious,” Judy replied, pulling free from her grip and taking a step back. “How old are you? Twenty? A year or two either side? You're roughly my daughter's age, anyway, and you think you can talk to me like this?”

  “I -”

  “And you have the audacity to think you know anything about me?” Judy continued, unable to hide a sense of disgust now. “Seriously? Is this all part of your shtick?”

  “My shtick?”

  “Your personality or whatever you call... this.”

  She made a point of looking Heidi up and down now, and after a few seconds she began to shake her head.

  “This thing that you do,” she added. “This over-confident smug sneering bullying act.”

  “Bullying?”

  “I get it,” Judy went on, “you've clearly been homeless for a while so you think that makes you smarter than me. You think you get to talk down to me because I'm so naïve and innocent, and because I don't know the tough city streets the way that you do.”

  “I never -”

  “But that's not a bad thing!” Judy snarled, suddenly stepping toward her and jabbing her in the chest with a bony finger. “I happen to like the fact that I haven't been hardened by a place like London! I happen to prefer quiet country lanes and views of fields and walks in churchyards! I'd much rather do any of those things than... than wander around in the filthy streets of this place. Where I live, I smell flowers and I'm surrounded by nature. Here in London...”

  She looked around and saw yet more bin bags piled up outside a restaurant.

  “It's going to take me a while to scrub this stench off,” she sneered. “To be honest, I'm not sure I'll ever feel clean again. But you can keep London and all that it supposedly has to offer, because I'm not buying! No, Ma'am, I'm not interested in any of this at all.” She turned to Heidi again. “All I want to do is find my daughter and my husband and take them both home. Do you understand? We're not made for this place. All three of us, we're... we're not like you. We're not cynical and we haven't given up on the beautiful things in life. We're not dead on the inside.”

  Heidi opened her mouth to reply, before holding back and instead allowing herself a faint smile.

  “So don't think you can stand there with your smirk and lecture me,” Judy continued, clearly warming to her theme. “Missy, you don't know the first thing about me or about my family. So you can shove your arrogance where the sun doesn't shine, and I would kindly ask you to leave me alone or else I shall prove you wrong by flagging down the first police officer I see. Have I made myself clear?”

  “Crystal,” Heidi replied, “and to be honest, I think you might actually have a point. About me not understanding your life, that is. Or anyone's life, really.”

  “I'm glad you actually listened,” Judy admitted. “Now, if you'll excuse me, I think I've already been extremely kind by buying you something to eat and drink, and also by listening to your silly made-up stories. I'm sorry you're living rough but there's nothing more I can do to help, so I'm afraid this is where we shall have to part ways. I wish you nothing but the best in your future endeavours, but I can't help you fix the many problems in your life.”

  “I think it's a bit late for that,” Heidi said darkly, tilting her head slightly to one side and this time keeping it there, before reaching up and touching her neck. “It's a bit late for a lot of things, actually.”

  “I don't know what you're talking about,” Judy replied, “and... and I don't... I'm not...”

  Falling silent as she spotted a cut on the side of the girl's neck, Judy tried to tell herself that she was imagining things. As she watched, however, Heidi began to slip two fingers into the cut, revealing pale red meat glistening at the heart of a ragged cut.

  “I know you're not the most observant person in the big wide world, Judy,” Heidi continued as her voice became darker and her fingers squelched in the depths of the wound, “but you don't really want to notice some things, do you? You like turning the other way.” She began to force the cut on her neck open, letting blood run freely down to her collar. “Even when the truth is staring you right in the face.”

  Chapter Twenty

  Hearing his footsteps echoing in the open space, Patrick stepped back into the warehouse's stairwell and paused again. Several minutes had now passed since he'd heard any hint of the other person, yet he knew they had to still be around somewhere. He couldn't help thinking back to the scrawny guy he'd encountered earlier, yet he'd managed to convince himself that he might have imagined the whole thing. This latest arrival, however, seemed much more real.

  “I know you can hear me,” he said out loud, convinced that someone was hiding just out of sight. “That probably looked pretty weird back there, but I want to reassure you that I did absolutely nothing wrong. My daughter fell, that's all and I... I found her. It's a tragedy, but nobody's to blame.”

  He paused.

  Waiting.

  Listening.

  “Nobody who's still alive, at least,” he added under his breath as he turned and looked around. “Apart from her mother, maybe.”

  Again he waited, but he was starting to think that he needed to try another tactic. At least with Grace he'd had a plan; he'd known his daughter inside and out, and he'd been able to lure her from the shadows by manipulating her on an emotional level. In fact, there had been times when he'd felt as if he'd been able to wrap Grace around his little finger, although he had to admit that in the end she'd surprised him by jumping to her death. He hadn't expected her to be so spiteful. This other presence, however, was clearly someone he'd never met before, and he wasn't entirely sure how to make himself seem less threatening.

  He turned to look around, but after a moment his attention was once again drawn to the black door in the corner. He'd already investigated the small office behind that door, but now he found himself – almost on autopilot – wandering over to take another look. The door was shut so he pushed it open, and he once again peered through into a mostly empty and certainly very nondescript place. Stepping past the first window, he saw discoloured patches on the walls, suggestive of posters or boards that had once been there; all that remained now were some old metal signs showing faded adverts for the brewery, and he couldn't help but smile as he stopped and looked at one particular advert.

  He had to hold his phone up so he could see properly, and he tilted his head slightly as he made out a cartoon puffin balancing a pint of beer on its beak as it ran from what appeared to be a wolf.

  “Do you have the new invoices?” a male voice asked suddenly. “Come along, you know I needed them yesterday.”

  Startled, Patrick turned and looked over his shoulder. The voice had already faded and he was sure nobody else was in the room, yet he saw an abandoned desk tucked into the far corner and he felt sure that the voice had come from that exact spot. Convinced that he must have imagined the whole thing, he stared at the desk for a few seconds and imagined some long-dead man working furiously, and then he spotted another door at the very farthest end of the room. Part of him wanted to take a look and see what was beyond that door, but part of him was simply too exhausted – and he couldn't help but worry that he needed to clean up the mess in the large storage room.

  He turned to leave the office, but at the last second he heard a distinct bump, followed by a slight crunch. He turned to look at the distant door again, and now he felt sure that somebody was on the other side.

  “Hello?” he said cautiously.

  He waited.

  Silence.

  “Who's there?” he continued, taking a step forward. “Listen, I just want to talk to you, okay? I'm sure this can all be straightened out. The girl back there... she's my daughter. Well, she was my daughter, until something happened tonight. I know how it looks but I can explain everything.”

  Again he waited.

  Again he heard only silence.

  He looked at the handle, and he felt that he was too tired to play more games.

  “Okay, I'm coming in,” he added, stepping forward and reaching for the handle. “I think -”

  “Dad.”

  In that moment he froze, not daring to move at all as he realized that he recognized the voice he'd just heard. He stared at the handle, but the voice had come from the other direction and after a few more seconds he slowly turned and saw a figure silhouetted in the open doorway leading back out to the stairwell.

  He blinked.

  The figure was still there.

  He blinked again.

  “You shouldn't have come here tonight, Dad,” Grace's voice continued as her silhouette remained in the doorway. “Why couldn't you just leave me the hell alone?”

  ***

  “Grace!”

  Stumbling back through into the stairwell, Patrick stopped and looked all around. Mere seconds had passed since Grace had spoken to him, but she'd somehow vanished in the time it had taken him to rush back across the office. His heart was pounding and he felt as if he was losing his mind, but her voice had been so very clear even though...

  Even though he knew she was dead on the concrete floor in another part of the building.

  “Grace?” he continued, fully aware now that he hadn't so much as heard her footsteps hurrying away. “Grace, what's going on here? Can you talk to me?”

  He waited for an answer, and then – when nothing was forthcoming – he headed to the stairs and began to hurry down. He still couldn't make sense of anything, but at the back of his mind he was once again clinging to the desperate hope that somehow she might have survived a thirty-foot fall and a head-first landing against a concrete floor. Sure, he'd seen lots of blood, but he told himself that something miracles happened and that perhaps she'd enjoyed a one-in-a-million stroke of luck.

  He almost tripped as he rounded the corner, and then he raced down the next set of steps. As he did so, he let go of his phone and watched it tumble down ahead of him. Accidentally kicking it at the bottom, he grabbed it and shoved it into his pocket before running down another set of steps and then another before finally getting to the bottom.

  Now he had to run through several open doorways, hurrying through mostly pitch-black voids as he tried to find the storage room again. He was on the verge of giving up when he finally got to the right doorway, and then he froze as he once again saw Grace's body on the floor ahead. He opened his mouth to call out to her, but somehow he could already tell that she hadn't moved since he'd last seen her, that she was completely still and dead. Her death even seemed to be hanging in the air all around, causing him to hang back for a few seconds.

  He tried to call her name again, but all he managed to get out was a series of brief, stuttering beginnings that never quite managed to form the single syllable they needed. Meanwhile a solitary tear danced in his left eye before proceeding with undue haste down his cheek.

  Again he tried to say her name, and again, and eventually he was able to form some approximation.

  “Grace?”

  Stepping forward, he heard his own feet brushing against the concrete floor. For some reason he felt unsteady, as if he might fall, and that sensation was only becoming stronger with each passing second. He was just about approaching the crumpled, red-coated body on the floor, just about staying up and just about keeping the rest of the tears from rolling down his face – at least for now.

  “Grace?” he said again, with his voice trembling so badly that he barely managed to get anything out at all. “I -”

  Stopping a few feet short of her, he stared down at her body. In that moment he tried to think of some way to still help her, but he could see that she was without a doubt dead, and he found himself wondering how he could possibly have heard and seen her upstairs a few minutes earlier unless...