‘Seems they were supposed to have been shut, but they weren’t,’ Brown continued.

  ‘So who was supposed to do that?’ Jordan asked.

  Brown sighed. ‘Now there’s the point,’ he said. ‘We don’t know.’

  Jordan frowned.

  ‘Apparently they, the clerics, are going to investigate and get back to me,’ Brown said.

  ‘Don’t they have, like, routines for such things, guv?’

  ‘Seems not,’ Brown said. ‘Although I personally don’t buy that. Anyway, I said I need to hear from them today. Not very happy about it they weren’t, but then …’ He shrugged. ‘Meanwhile, not exactly being on the ball about church stuff, I’d like you to get into contact with Father George, try and find out if he thinks this is normal – although why I’d use the words “Father George” and normal in the same sentence …’

  Brown walked away, leaving Jordan alone with some very strange thoughts. After his dinner with Wilko the previous night, he’d been left wondering about what was real and what wasn’t. Wilko and Father George seemed to be convinced the world as they knew it was being attacked by right-wing occult forces. Certain members of the clergy were also involved. But then weren’t the priest and Wilko peddling conspiracy theories themselves?

  When the so-called ‘culture war’ had started in the wake of the Brexit vote in 2016, the ‘sides’ involved had seemed pretty straightforward. Either you were a hard-working, patriotic, working-class, often older person who wanted to leave the EU, or you were a liberal, educated, rather up-yourself type who wanted to remain. Orchestrated, so some felt, by the same upper classes who had always controlled everything, Brexit, it seemed, was designed to benefit both the very rich and the very poor. But it was more nuanced than that. Above the level of those who had simply voted with their guts, some had vested interests on both sides of the equation and many of those were not always who they seemed.

  Jordan scrolled through the numbers on his phone until Father George’s came up.

  Long, long ago when she’d been a teenager, Mumtaz had broken her ankle. She’d fallen down the stone stairs that led to her parents’ basement. The bones of her tibia and fibula had snapped and she’d had to go to hospital to have her leg set. Afterwards she’d been on morphine for a couple of days. She remembered how that had felt very well. She felt like that now.

  She knew intellectually that she had opened her eyes, but there were no further clues. She couldn’t see. Not a thing. Had she gone blind somehow, or was she somewhere so completely dark …?

  She put a hand down to where she felt her legs were and felt them. They definitely existed. She poked them with her fingers and experienced some pain. This was good, but where was she and why?

  Pushing against a hard, slightly gritty surface, she sat up. She remembered seeing the pub in Carter Court, The Hobgoblin. It had been quiet. She’d looked at it as she had walked towards a blue door and then … nothing.

  But had the blue door been something real or something from the dream she’d just had about a massive cityscape that existed in a vast hole, like a bomb crater? God, she’d been terrified! It had put her in mind of an old film, Blade Runner, where Harrison Ford had whizzed around a dystopian skyline in a flying car.

  And then she remembered. Not how it had happened, she had no idea about that. But what had happened. She’d been pushed and then she’d flown through space.

  There was, George Feldman often thought, a lot to thank God for. Trees were a popular choice; friendship, comfortable shoes, cheesecake and now a telephone call from a young police officer he barely knew.

  He excused himself from Mrs Chalmers’ enormously oppressive lounge, not to mention her low opinion of her new neighbours (‘hippies!’) and walked out into the old woman’s large, dark hallway. As soon as Jordan Whittington spoke, George felt an imaginary cold finger run up his spine.

  ‘The clergy are saying it was an accident,’ Jordan said. ‘They say they’ve got no formal procedures for shutting the cathedral at night.’

  ‘Who says this?’ George asked. ‘Do you have a name?’

  The young man paused for a moment, possibly looking at notes. Then he said, ‘It was a secretary from the office of the Very Reverend Canon Palmer. It’s him, according to my boss DI Brown, who is responsible for the building and therefore its security as well as its upkeep.’

  ‘That’s true,’ George said.

  ‘Do you know this Canon Palmer, Father George?’

  ‘No, I don’t.’

  The old priest he had seen when he’d been to the cathedral, with his brother Barry, had not been a canon. He’d been too grey, unkempt and ground down to attain high office. The modern church needed slick, not eccentric faces these days, as George knew only too well. But who had the old man been and why had he talked, without prompting, about evil and sacrifice?

  Jordan said, ‘Because we’re possibly going to have to go back into St Paul’s and question the clergy again.’

  ‘Mmm. Of course.’

  ‘I’ve a list of those the team questioned before. DI Brown’s given them until this evening to get back to us by phone. But if they don’t, then I have to go out and speak to them in person. Thing is, if you could spare the time to come with me …’

  ‘Of course I will,’ George said. ‘Although how you will explain my presence, I don’t know. I am not Father Brown and this isn’t the Cotswolds.’

  The popular G. K. Chesterton novels about a crime-solving Catholic priest called Father Brown had been turned into a TV series years ago. It was now a staple of afternoon television.

  ‘I’m out of my depth,’ Jordan admitted.

  ‘Does your superior know about my presence?’

  ‘Of course,’ Jordan lied. DI Brown had asked Jordan to consult Father George, not potentially take him along. But when Brown had spoken to him about the clerics at St Paul’s, Jordan had got the distinct impression they were not keen to share their processes and procedures with anyone.

  Did George know he was lying? Jordan felt that he probably did, but the priest agreed to accompany him anyway. Which was the main thing.

  George, for his part, felt cold when he ended the call. Everything he had picked up about the cathedral, everything he’d discussed with Wilko seemed to have a concrete base in what the young officer had told him. And that was disquieting.

  Lee liked Mumtaz’s family. He liked her parents, her brothers and her daughter. Furthermore, he cared about them – which affected his job. And that was wrong. He knew he should just phone up her father and ask him whether or not she was with her mother-in-law. But if he did that he would upset the entire Huq family. Hate was not too strong a word to use about the way the Huqs felt about the Hakim family – Shazia aside. Through Ahmet they had brought pain and shame to Mumtaz and her family, and there was no contact between them. Indeed, Baharat Huq had once told Lee that if ‘those snakes’ ever tried to get back in good odour with any of them he would take out an injunction. So if he told Baharat where his daughter was, there could be consequences. And so it came to pass that all of Lee’s misgivings about becoming emotionally involved with his business partner came crashing into his mind.

  And he still didn’t really know where she was.

  Because he’d been a serving police officer himself, Lee knew that because she hadn’t been missing for twenty-four hours, the police wouldn’t look for her yet. They would also argue that in light of the text from her phone, she wasn’t missing. They would suggest Lee contact her mother-in-law. But if he did that and she was there, then that would probably be interpreted by Mumtaz as interference on his part. It wouldn’t matter were she just an employee, but she wasn’t. She was the woman he loved. And she was fiercely independent.

  However, Shazia knew and maybe she would call Mumtaz? But then he knew she wouldn’t if she thought she was with her grandmother. And anyway, why would Mumtaz go to see the old woman? She owed her nothing. As far as Lee could tell there was only mutual hatred between the two. Why had she gone there?

  He took his phone out of his pocket and sent her a text.

  Why are you with your mother-in-law?

  The house was full. Men like his dad and women like his grandma. People his teachers always tried to avoid on parents’ evening. Mr Becker, who taught English, probably thought they were drunk or on drugs. He was teetotal and never stopped going on about it. But these people weren’t drunk or on drugs; they were the way they were without any sort of help from addictive substances – most of them.

  The boy had dreams. In a room with no windows, unable to distinguish night from day, he observed things that could be real and they made him sick. He couldn’t eat, no matter what he was brought. And that was because when all this started what he’d seen had been real and he couldn’t get it out of his head.

  He’d always thought his dad was just an arse’ole, a bit of a loud ‘I am’, a wanker. He’d never imagined what he had proven himself to actually be. His dad was a cunt and what was more, he was probably the most twisted cunt the boy had ever met.

  Once freed from the strictures of Mrs Chalmers’ gloomy parlour, George Feldman had the rest of the day to himself. He knew he should really use the time to compose his weekly sermon, but he really didn’t feel like sitting on his arse for hours on end, staring into space. He rang his brother Barry, then got on the Tube and got off at Chancery Lane.

  ‘This time I decided to take no chances,’ Barry said as he rose to his feet to greet his brother. They met in a restaurant of Barry’s choice, an Argentinian place, famed for its excellent beef.

  ‘No more little bits of things on sharing plates,’ Barry continued. ‘I’ve a mind towards chateaubriand and a bottle of Merlot to kick things off …’

  George shrugged. ‘Whatever floats your boat.’

  They both sat down and Barry ordered the wine.

  ‘You’re around and about a lot these days,’ Barry said. Intense beefy smells from the kitchen were making his stomach growl with hunger. ‘Still trying to root out evil in St Paul’s?’

  ‘Something like that.’

  George wanted to be on the spot if and when Constable Whittington called. He also wanted to wander. Although heavily bombed in World War II, the streets around the cathedral were ancient in origin and of course what was underneath them was moot.

  He’d heard things about the tunnels from another exorcist, or ‘deliverance minister’ as his ‘low’ church’s more traditionally Protestant colleagues insisted upon calling it. The Rev. Stephen Masters was vicar of a church in Hertfordshire where guitars were a regular feature and people often spoke in ‘tongues’. All very American to George’s way of thinking. But then all sorts attended the occasional meetings of the south-east’s exorcist community.

  ‘Call me Steve’, as the Rev. Masters had insisted everyone do, said he’d seen documents alluding to Wren’s original architectural designs for St Paul’s – which included for sure one underground passage leading to the Choir School, as well as the remains of some older subterranean structures associated with the mediaeval cathedral. This, the precursor to Wren’s church, had burnt down in 1666 during the Great Fire. And it was this cathedral that ‘Call me Steve’ believed was the source of what he described as the ‘resident evil’ present in the building.

  When the UK had been a Catholic country under Queen Mary I, the cathedral had been inhabited by the Holy Inquisition. Within its walls, people had been questioned about their faith, about their interactions with alleged demons and witches. Rooms and passageways underneath the cathedral, it was believed, had been used as interrogation and torture chambers.

  George and Barry shared a large tenderloin cut of beef, after which the priest felt distinctly stuffed. That ‘Steve’ George remembered reminded him of that young priest ‘Call me Harry’ in the cathedral. Sitting back rather wearily in his chair he asked his brother, ‘Are you having anything else?’

  ‘Well, another bottle of Merlot won’t go amiss,’ Barry said. ‘And I may glance at the dessert menu.’

  George knew of old that his brother would do far more than just glance. It was already almost three and Barry was clearly in for the duration of the afternoon. There were worse places to wait for a phone call, although George really wanted to get out and stretch his legs. He said, ‘I think I may have to push on soon.’

  Barry sighed. ‘You’ve never been what one might call a trencherman, have you?’

  ‘Not really. But it’s been nice spending more time together lately.’

  ‘Even if your real motive is the pursuit of evil?’ Barry asked.

  George rose to his feet. ‘I can’t ignore it,’ he said. ‘If I did that, I couldn’t live with myself.’

  Gary Connor had paid his bill. As far as Lee was concerned that was the end of it. But now here he was on the phone.

  Lee had been on an obbo when Gary had first called and so he’d ignored it. A very nice elderly lady from Leytonstone had wanted to know what her toy-boy husband had been up to at a house in Canning Town. She wasn’t going to be pleased.

  Once he’d spoken to the woman, Lee phoned Gary.

  ‘It’s Lee,’ he said. ‘What’s up, mate?’

  This time it was Gary’s turn to be otherwise engaged, but he did at least answer.

  ‘Fucking temperamental jacuzzi in Loughton,’ he puffed – probably wrestling with some valve. ‘Wanna put some more work your way.’

  ‘Fine by me,’ Lee said. ‘What’s the coup, mate?’

  ‘I’ll put it all in an email later,’ Gary said. ‘Basically, you’ll be working out Dagenham.’

  ‘Sweet.’

  DI Brown and DS Pinker dived out as soon as the results came through. All info about men smoking pipes was temporarily pushed to one side. It wasn’t that often a DNA test came back a direct hit, but on this occasion that had happened. The dead child’s DNA pointed directly at a man currently banned for multiple drink-driving violations. Brown and Pinker were off to south London to question him. The rest of the team followed up on leads pertaining to men at or near the scene the night the child had died. Jordan, deputising for Brown, waited for the clergy to call him from St Paul’s.

  He wasn’t comfortable around religious ‘types’. All that airy-fairy spiritual stuff left him cold. On the few occasions he’d been to church with Nana Willi, all that speaking in tongues and falling on the floor business had done his head in. He’d no doubt his mum’s family got a lot out of it. They were always so happy in church and what they learnt there really did inform their lives. They were always out and about doing good things in the community and Nana Willi particularly was the soul of generosity, to both those close to her and complete strangers. But still, Jordan couldn’t make himself like the pastors who led the worship in that church. They were far too snappily dressed and had cars only rich people drove. He didn’t buy the argument that as community leaders they could ‘hardly be seen driving around in old rust buckets’, as Nana Willi always argued.

  The clerics at St Paul’s, however, were of another order. Very ‘establishment’, in spite of a sort of slightly casual attitude Jordan did not trust. Father George was really weird but, in a way, Jordan felt more at ease with him than any of the others. Maybe it was because he was friends with Wilko? Not that he’d probably pass a sanity assessment himself. But Wilko, for all his strange facts about London and his odd beliefs about the place, did care. Whatever he was, his motives were good – which was something Granddad Bert had always taught him was ‘a measure of a person’.

  Brown’s phone rang then, making Jordan, who had been almost asleep were he honest, jump.

  George Feldman’s first experience of St Paul’s Cathedral had happened when he was ten. Unlike his brother, he’d not been taken on a school trip to the cathedral, but had visited with his father. At the time, and just as Barry still did, the Feldman family lived in the Middle Temple of the famous London Inns of Court. Close to the cathedral, Feldman senior had one day taken it upon himself to visit the massive church with his youngest son. Back then the place had still been scarred by centuries of London smogs, and so George recalled the building as a vast black hulk. Inside it had only been lit by candles, which had given George’s first exposure an eerie feel.

  However, it was the area around the cathedral that had really made an impression on George that day. In their attempt to bomb the cathedral during World War II, Hitler’s Luftwaffe had destroyed many of the streets around the great church, including what had once been the centre of the city’s publishing trade, Paternoster Row. In the 1960s when George and his father walked those streets, Paternoster Row had been rebuilt as a drab ode to concrete known as Paternoster Square. His father had hated it and had avoided walking through it, preferring instead to take George across Ludgate Hill into the little tangle of streets that still retained some of their original buildings.

  And although many of those buildings were in a poor state of repair, there was at least an authenticity to this area, centred around a street called Carter Lane, that spoke to George of a Dickensian London he had never known. Back then it had been dark, slightly frightening and threaded with mist from the river.

  Today much of that had changed and Carter Lane had gained many new, much brighter buildings in between the old. With few people about, however, it still had a slightly menacing feel. It produced in George almost the exact same sensation of tingling dread that he had experienced as a ten-year-old boy.

  George walked into the tiny space that was Carter Court and looked at the old pub that stood opposite the entrance. The Hobgoblin. In an area so freighted with symbolism it was difficult to look at the name of this pub without getting a shudder down the spine. Hobgoblins were spirits associated with homes and were, since the coming of Christianity, considered disruptive and mischievous, if not downright evil.