“That’s good. Right now, I need all the reality I can get.”
Nancy dropped the caftan over her head. It was pure silk, and it felt cool, soft and reassuring, like gently being stroked by an affectionate friend. Ella sat down next to her, cross-legged.
“I was born in the other world. It’s hard to believe, isn’t it, but I had no idea this London existed when I was a child. I was born in British Martinique and my mother was a slave. I would have been a slave, too, if I hadn’t had the same psychic sensitivity as my grandmother. One day I used my sensitivity to find a small child who had been trapped down a well for three days. The slavemaster told the Hoodies what I’d done, and the Hoodies took me away from my family and brought me to London by Zeppelin. They trained me to find subversives and non-believers and Purgatorials.”
“So how did you get here?”
“The Hoodies beat me and they abused me and they treated me so bad. So one day, when a subversive was running away from them, jumping over the candles and right through the door, I followed him. I’ve been here ever since. But I always swore to God that I would get my revenge on the Hoodies one day.”
“What exactly are they, the Hoodies? Why do they wear those horrible hoods all the time?”
“They’re sensitives, too. They’re direct descendants of the Puritan witchfinders. They can actually sense when a man or a woman is an unbeliever. They can almost taste your lack of faith. That’s why they all wear hoods … so that they’re not distracted by what they can see with their eyes. They could find you blindfolded if they really wanted to. Where do you think the game of Blind Man’s Bluff came from? It was children, pretending that they were the Hoodies, hunting for Catholics. Sniffing them out.”
Nancy sipped her tea. Ella was right: she felt very much calmer now, very much more focused. The day seemed clear and sharp, and her panic was beginning to subside.
“Tell me about Frank Mordant.”
“What a piece of work he is. About two years ago we discovered by accident that he was advertising for young girls here in this London; and that he was taking them through the doors to the other London. One of my friends saw him by the Tower of London, taking a girl through the door by Traitor’s Gate. The same thing happened to Julia and it happened to John Farbelow’s girlfriend, too. Frank Mordant always preys on girls who are lonely or distressed or looking for a new life. He gives them a job; but he doesn’t touch them for weeks; or months; or even years. He doesn’t touch them until he thinks that the trail has gone stone cold and hardly anybody in this London is looking for them any more.
“Then – without any warning – he kills them. He hangs them and he takes video pictures while they die. Snuff movies, which he sells for hundreds and thousands of pounds all over the world. He always mutilates them, too, in different ways, although we don’t know why. Some of their bodies he dumps back here, but a whole lot more of them have disappeared for good. We don’t know how many exactly, but we reckon he may have murdered as many as fifty or sixty.”
“My God. Can’t you do anything? Can’t you talk to the cops?”
“We’ve tried more than once. We found a very sympathetic young detective inspector in Chelsea who was prepared to listen to us. But even he had to give up, in the end. He didn’t want to jeopardize his career by sounding as if he was some kind of raving lunatic. And there’s the burden of proof, too. We have to catch Frank Mordant red-handed, actually disposing of one of the bodies, or else we have to find fingerprints and fibers and DNA samples. And even if we do that, we have to catch him and physically drag him back here, without the Hoodies stopping us. And we know from bitter experience that he’s very well in with the Hoodies. They never touch him, no matter how many times he goes backwards and forwards from one London to the next. I don’t know why.
“Then, of course, we have to persuade the police here to arrest him and bring him up in front of a court of law. And do you seriously think that any jury is going to believe anything about nursery-rhyme doors or parallel Londons?”
“Couldn’t you light the candles and show them? They’d have to believe!”
Ella gave her a wry smile. “Let’s cross that bridge when we come to it. Let’s just see if we can get Frank Mordant first. And before that, let’s see if we can get Josh back.”
“Don’t the police in the other London suspect Frank Mordant of anything? I mean, if girls are disappearing … doesn’t anybody wonder what’s happened to them? Even there, they must have laws against abduction and murder.”
“Don’t ask me. Perhaps the Hoodies protect him. Perhaps he bribes them. Perhaps people from this London aren’t entitled to the same kind of human rights. They don’t have valid birth certificates or passports or any proof of identity. Strictly speaking, they don’t exist. In that other London, they have slavery, don’t they? What are they going to care about a few homeless girls?”
“So, what are you going to do?” asked Nancy.
“I’m going to go through this evening, probably through Bread Street. With any luck the Hoodies won’t be looking for anybody to come through there. I’ll find John Farbelow and see what he can do to help me. I’ll do everything I can, Nancy, I promise. I’ll be back tomorrow evening, and let’s hope that Josh will be coming back, too.”
“And what can I do?”
Ella grasped both of her hands, and gave her a smile of sympathy. “I’m sorry. Nothing. You’ll just have to sit and wait.”
When Nancy returned to their hotel room, a red light was flashing on the phone. She picked it up and the receptionist told her that they had been called by DS Paul. Could they call her back on her mobile?
“Detective Sergeant Paul? This is Nancy Andersen.”
“Is Mr Winward with you?”
“He’s – ah. He had to go out for a while. To buy some dental floss.”
“Well, when he comes back, can you tell him that we may have had something of a breakthrough. A young man called us today to say that he was down by Southwark Bridge on the night that Julia’s body was dumped into the Thames. He was depressed because he had just split up with his girlfriend, and he was thinking of throwing himself into the river. That’s why he’s taken so long to come forward.”
“He saw something?”
“Yes, he did. He saw three men carrying a bundle to the parapet and throwing it over. He swears that it was just like a body. One of the men was oriental in appearance, the other two were white, middle-aged. The young man says that he would be confident about identifying all of them. He’s coming into New Scotland Yard in about an hour to help us prepare a photofit picture.”
“This is amazing. I mean, this is real evidence, right?”
“Oh, we’ve got more than that. After the men had gone, our suicidal friend found a gold and brown enamel cufflink on the pavement, close to the place where they had thrown the bundle over. It was a monogrammed cufflink, with the initials FM.”
Nancy felt as if her stomach had suddenly filled up with icy cold water. “FM?”
“That’s right. Whoever it was, he could hardly have helped us more if he’d left a note stuck to the bridge with his name and address.”
“That’s good news. That’s terrific news. So … all you have to do now is find the guy, yes?”
“There’s more to it than that. We still have to prove that the bundle was Julia’s body, and that whoever this man was, he killed her. But it’s a very, very significant step forward. I don’t have to remind you not to talk to the media about it, do I?”