“Lenny,” Martha said. “What did you mean by one—”

  “That’s it, Blake. This is over, right now. I’m arresting you. You’ve failed, so I’m arresting you. Arresting you on the suspicion of the murder of Grace Wallens in 2007.”

  I held out my wrists. “Arrest me, then. Where’s your handcuffs?”

  Lenny reached to his right. His cheeks flushed some more. “My cuffs may still be inside the station.”

  “Oh. Inside that place over there? That burning ember of a place?”

  “Are you making a mockery of a terrorist—”

  “Guys!” Martha shouted.

  It took me be surprise. Certainly made me look at her. Lenny flinched, too.

  Her jaw was shaking. Her fists were clenched.

  “Lenny, what did you mean when you said that ‘one of the girls exploded’?”

  Lenny smirked. Smirked and frowned at me as if we both collectively agreed Martha was crazy or something. “Take a look around, sunsh… fellow. A body exploded. When explosions happen, stuff gets blown up.”

  “Martha, is there a point to this?” I asked.

  “One girl?” she said. “Just one exploded?”

  Another pause. Another stretched-out silence from Lenny. “Well… yeah. How many girls do you want exploding? Three? Four? Nineteen?”

  I fast realised what Martha was getting at. I took in a deep breath of the smoky air. Shit, I was sick of the smell of smoke. Fire seemed to be following me lately. “Wait. One girl. One girl exploded. So what about the other two?”

  Lenny looked at me like I had something wrong with me. “The other two what?”

  “Girls! The other two girls, Lenny. The girls who this killer killed. Gouged the eyes out of. Snipped the fingers off. What about them?”

  More silence from Lenny.

  And then, eventually, “Well they’re over at the mortuary so they should be fine.”

  I very rarely felt simultaneously delighted, terrified and infuriated. They weren’t emotions that usually matched. But right now, I felt every one of those emotions at full intensity. 110% on the ‘tensity scale.

  “So they’re… they’re still intact?” Martha asked.

  Lenny laughed. “What? You didn’t think they’d exploded too, did you? God, what a bummer that’d be. Three exploding girls, zero evidence left. Ha! That explains the look on your faces. Holy shit, Blake. That was priceless. Absolutely—”

  “These girls,” I said, heart pounding. The aching in my back was irrelevant all of a sudden. “Why are they in the mortuary?”

  Lenny shrugged. “Dr. Parsons prefers to work down there. In fact he should be taking a look at identifying them in… well, about ten minutes or so.”

  I looked at Martha. She looked back at me with a wide-eyed expression of fear that probably reflected my own look.

  And then we both grabbed Lenny and dragged him by his arms towards Martha’s Fiat Punto.

  “What? What are you—Hey! That’s assaulting an officer! That’s—”

  “We’re going to the mortuary, you fucking idiot,” I said, as I opened the back door of Martha’s car.

  “Why are we going there?” Lenny asked.

  I was on the verge of explaining while slamming the car door against his spindly fingers when his face dropped. The colour drained from his cheeks, pale realisation taking its place.

  “Oh,” he said.

  I closed the passenger door. Martha started up the car.

  “‘Oh’ indeed, Lenny. ‘Oh’ indeed.”

  TWENTY-ONE

  “Do we take a frigging left or a frigging right?”

  We sped along in Martha’s Fiat Punto. Lenny was in the back trying to direct us to the mortuary, where Dr. Parsons was on the brink of cutting open the bodies of the second and third murder victims.

  The bodies that would explode, just like the first one.

  “I, erm… Adelphi Street. I’m pretty certain it’s down Adelphi Street.”

  Martha swung the car to the right. “How certain is pretty certain?”

  “Umm… I’d say seventy per cent certain.”

  “Seventy per cent?” I shouted. “So there’s a three in a frigging ten chance that the mortuary could be on any other road in the entire frigging city?”

  Lenny closed his eyes. Mumbled in concentration. “Yes. Yes, I guess it is three in ten. Or six in twenty—”

  “Jesus, fuck,” Martha muttered.

  “Well how am I supposed to know where a mortuary is?” Lenny asked.

  “I’m through,” I said, turning away and shaking my head. “I’m absolutely through with trying to reason with you. We might as well drive around in circles and wait until we see the smoke, or feel the ground shake.”

  Martha drove slowly down Adelphi Street, peering out the window at every building. “Don’t you have, like, an app for finding places or something?”

  The idea pinged in my head, a lightbulb moment if ever there was such a thing. “Yeah, I… I do. Google Maps. I’ll give it a go.”

  I yanked my iPhone out. My stomach sank when I saw the screen, cracked after my fall from the window of my flat last night. Not like I took Apple Care out either. Shit. Another unnecessary expense from the Fun Funds. Might as well rename it the Absolutely Anything But Fun Funds.

  I typed Preston Mortuary into the search bar. Waited for the results to load.

  “Well?” Lenny asked, as if I was the offending party all of a sudden.

  My signal danced between 3G and GPRS. A dance between life and death, between goodness and utter shitness. Still, the “Searching…” message was displayed. Still no results.

  “This bloody technology is more hassle than it’s worth, Blake. Do you not have, like, a Fodors in here or something?”

  “A Fodors Guide to Preston Mortuaries?” Martha asked. “Sounds like that’d come in handy a lot.”

  “Just wait,” I said. The search bar was reaching the end. I’d had a 3G signal for a good few seconds now, as Martha took a left, crept past more buildings. “I’ve got this. I’ve got this.”

  The search ended.

  Did you mean Preston Nandos?

  I hadn’t got this.

  “Preston fucking Nandos?” I muttered. “How on earth does Preston Mortuary lead to Preston Nandos?”

  “Have you eaten there lately?” Martha asked.

  “Well it is a kind of mortuary,” Lenny said, deadly serious. “A mortuary for deliciously prepared chicken.”

  I tossed my phone onto the floor of the car. Probably made the crack even worse, but a crack was a crack, so boo-hoo. I leaned back. Brought my fingers through my hair. “We’re screwed. Absolutely screwed.”

  “Alright, Mr Melodrama,” Lenny said. “I can always give them a call and ask for directions.”

  He whipped out his phone.

  “You can do that, can you? You have their number?”

  He put his phone away again.

  I stuffed my head back into the headrest. My aching shoulder and back intensified, so I pushed at them until they got worse. A release. That’s what emos did, right? Caused themselves pain to release stress and anger?

  If so, I needed a bloody brick wall to drive into.

  I closed my eyes. Listened to Lenny and Martha bickering and arguing. The car slowed down, then came to a halt. I knew what this meant. We’d failed. Dr. Parsons was going to cut open the bodies at his own private little studios. The bodies of the girls would blow to smithereens, destroying important forensic evidence, causing even more loss of life.

  I’d go to prison for murder.

  And I wouldn’t even have any Fun Funds to turn to when I got out.

  “Hold up, there’s John,” Lenny said.

  “John who?” I asked, my eyes still closed, every word a strained effort.

  “Parsons. Doctor Parsons.”

  I opened my eyes. Looked from side to side.

  “Where? Where is he? Where’s—”

  “Is that him?” Martha asked. She pointed out of her window.

  “Yeah. That’s John alright.”

  I looked across the street and I saw a short, balding man wearing a white lab coat and grey trousers. His belly spilled out from his blue shirt, which had bust a button or two. He puffed his lips, looking more like a bored McDonald’s manager than a pathologist.

  He was entering The Town Hospital, a private hospital that specialised in the rich and the stupid.

  “That’s not a mortuary,” I said.

  Lenny scratched at his stubble. “No, no, you’re right about that. Mortuary, hospital… near enough, I guess.”

  If I wasn’t in an urgent situation, I’d have turned around and smacked Lenny in his face.

  “We need to get to him before he gets to the girls. Quick!”

  We all climbed out of Martha’s car. Jogged across the street towards the wide glass doors of The Town Hospital.

  When we got there, we were met with a pair of metal barriers and two bulky-looking guards.

  “Passes, please.”

  Martha and I turned to Lenny. Lenny turned to us.

  “Well?” I said.

  “Well I don’t have a pass.”

  I bit my lip. “Lenny, you’re a police officer. You have rights.”

  “I have rights,” he said, as if he was only just realising. “Yes. I have rights.” He turned to the guards. “I have rights.”

  The guards looked at Lenny with furrowed brows and crinkled foreheads.

  “Sure you have rights,” the one on the left said. “These rights: show your pass or you don’t come through.”

  “I’m… I’m a police officer,” Lenny said. “And this place is in grave danger. Grave danger of… of something very grave.”

  “Well if you’re a police officer, show us your badge.”

  Lenny patted at his pockets. Glanced at me, then at Martha, then at the guards again.

  “Right… right now I don’t have my badge. But I can give it to you later if you let me through now.”

  The guards stepped closer to Lenny. Towered over him. “Are we gonna have to keep on askin’ you to leave or are we gonna have to start telling you?”

  My heart pounded and my face felt hot as Hell. If I didn’t hate Lenny before—which I did, I really did—then I absolutely hated his guts now. He didn’t have his badge. The inept bastard didn’t have his badge, and therefore we weren’t going to get inside The Town Hospital.

  Dr. Parsons was going to cut the bodies of the girls open, and they were going to go boom.

  I listened to Lenny bicker with the guards. Listened to him tell them about his “rights,” while they shouted back at him, stepped closer to him. I listened, and then I saw him.

  Dr. Parsons walked across the reception area of the private hospital, iced donut in hand.

  My stomach rumbled with fire. Just nerves, really, but fire sounded fancier. I got a weird tunnel vision, where everything else around me blanked out. Everything but Dr. Parsons, everything but the need to stop him.

  I held my breath. Ground my teeth.

  And then I threw myself over the metal barrier.

  I heard commotion and shouting behind me but I was already halfway through the reception area. People looked at me with wide eyes, all of them moving and turning as I passed. Another harsh truth about humanity—we might think we want to stop somebody who looks suspect, but really, we’d rather just wait for the next person to do it.

  Or the next.

  Or the next.

  I sprinted as fast as I could through the double doors that Dr. Parsons had gone through. I could hear the guards running behind me, their footsteps so close that I couldn’t bring myself to look back. I knew I had one shot at this. One shot, or the whole building would explode.

  If I failed, I’d explode with it.

  Bloody shit. What had I gone and got myself into?

  “Dr. Parsons!” I shouted, as I saw him take a left through a door. He didn’t hear me, though. He closed his door and disappeared inside.

  I threw myself at the door. Turned the handle, ran through.

  Another door closed ahead of me. A door to a windowed room.

  “Dr. Parsons!” I called.

  I threw myself at the door. Turned the handle.

  It was locked.

  My arms and legs went weak. In this room with me, I hadn’t even noticed the bewildered-looking woman in a surgical mask working on a sleeping person beside me.

  I didn’t say a thing to her, not as the footsteps got close behind me.

  I threw myself at the glass window of Dr. Parsons’ office. Banged against it.

  “Dr. Parsons!” I shouted. “Don’t open that body!”

  I watched as he finished off his iced donut in one bite. As he pulled back the white sheet, revealed the mutilated body of the second victim. As the door behind me swung open, as he brought the knife towards her skin…

  I knew I should get away. I knew I should duck for cover. I knew my life was fucked.

  But I couldn’t help but bang on the window.

  I felt the guards grab my arms, felt sharp pains all through my back and my shoulder as they dragged me away.

  And I saw Dr. Parsons slice open the girl’s skin.

  TWENTY-TWO

  I closed my eyes and prayed I’d go to some gadget-laden heaven when Dr. Parsons sliced away at the bomb-rigged body.

  The pain in my arms and my back as the guards dragged me away from the surgical area of The Town Hospital was strong. It was still there at least, which meant I wasn’t dead yet. Maybe my life was just going in slow motion. Maybe I was having one of those cinema moments, so aware of my inevitable fate, so in touch with my senses, that the final seconds of my life were dragging on, stretching out.

  “Come the fuck away from that door,” one of the guards said, and yanked me out into the corridor.

  I listened for an explosion. Waited for it to engulf me. Shit, how did these IEDs work, anyway? Were they rigged so that exposure to air triggered them? Or was there a wire attached to the flesh? And damn—how had the killer even got the bombs inside the bodies in the first place? Technically precise, that’s what he was. The police could do with someone like him to set them straight. Pity he was a homicidal maniac.

  I opened my eyes as the guards dragged me further away from the surgical area of The Town Hospital. I passed by people who stared at me, shook their heads like I was a naughty kid who’d been caught stealing sweets.

  “You don’t understand,” I said.

  The guards tightened their grip, cut out my speech. “We understand one thing—we’re kickin’ you out of here. You’d better understand it too.”

  A part of me wanted these idiots to explode, but I knew what it meant if I let that happen. “There’s—the bomb that blew up the police station. It was inside the girl—argh!”

  “You can explain that to the cops,” one of the guards said. “Now shut up and keep moving.”

  They dragged me out into the reception area, where more disapproving eyes stared at me. I prayed to God Lenny didn’t see me like this—being dragged away like a rabid animal. I’d never hear the end of it.

  My prayers were shat on right away.

  “Jesus, Blake! Why did you have to go running in there? Think you’re Rambo or something?”

  I turned around, shuffled away from the guards. I saw Lenny standing by the metal barriers, smile twitching at the sides of his mouth. Martha was behind him, looking similarly bemused. And beside Lenny, there was a chubby officer with one of the most miserable faces known to man. The closer I got to him, the more I smelled his nasty alcohol breath. A boozer, no doubt about it.

  “Blake, McDone. McDone, Blake.”

  I nodded at McDone. McDone nodded back at me, eyes glassy and distant.

  The guards prepared to toss me over the barrier.

  “Now before you toss this man, guards, you might want to take a look at our identification here.”

  The guards waited. Looked at one another. And then looked at the black wallet this McDone guy handed over to them.

  “Detective Inspector Kole,” he said. “Like I said, I left my badge at the station. McDone here kindly picked it up for me before the place turned into a fireball. ‘Cause that’s what buddies do for each other, right, McDone?”

  McDone shrugged. Barely even looked at Lenny. I figured he probably hated him as much as anybody. Having to work with him day in day out… I pitied the guy.

  “So you put my man down. On the floor just there would be fine.”

  The guards sighed. Hesitated. “But—”

  “You put him down and you get everyone out of this building immediately.” He looked past the guards. Raised his voice. “We believe there’s several explosives on the premises.”

  The people in the reception area didn’t need any extra encouragement to get the hell out of here. Fire alarms went off. People screamed, flocked together, stormed out of the fire escapes, climbed out of windows. If it weren’t terrifying, it would actually be pretty funny.

  “Put my man down and let us through before you put anyone else at risk.”

  The guards tutted. They lowered me down, rested me on the cold floor of reception. I stood up right away, brushed myself down.

  “Thank you,” Lenny said. “Now let us pass.”

  After some more hesitation, the guards parted and let Lenny and Martha inside.

  “Um, Kole, I’m gonna get off,” McDone mumbled.

  “Oh, yeah, cheers again, McDone. A drink later, maybe? A drink or two?”

  McDone scratched the back of his neck. “Yeah, I… Maybe another time.”

  “Another time. Always another time. Great. Bye!”

  The pain in my shoulder and my back was at an all-time high after the guards dragged me along.

  “Great man, McDone. Great man. Anyway, what’re we waiting for, John McClane? We gonna stop a bomb exploding, or what?”

  “It’s—it’s too late,” I said. “I saw him… I saw him cutting the body open. This place is gonna blow any second. We need to get out.”

  Lenny puffed out his lips. “And lose every last bit of evidence? I don’t think so, Blake. Besides, this place is still here. Maybe it’s a sign. So lead the way, Johnny Bravo.”