"So you never saw his face?"
"No, sorry."
"And his voice?"
"He didn't speak. He just nodded or shook his head when they asked him questions."
I put my hand on the arm of the little boy with the missing ear and say: "Thank you."
He nods and scampers off.
"I told you he wouldn't be much help," says Caroline. We're sitting on one of the sofas, back in the office building she calls home, watching the sun set behind the Lyric Theatre.
"And he's the only one here who's met Spider?"
Caroline nods. "He doesn't leave Parliament, and he doesn't show his face. Why are you so interested anyway? You'll never get near him."
"Someone said that to me once before, but I got close enough to ensure that he'll remember me for the rest of his life."
Caroline regards me curiously. "So you met this guy before The Cull?"
"I think so. No, I know so. It must be him. It all fits."
"And is he the reason you changed your name and went into hiding?"
I look up, startled. "How…?
"I heard you and Sanders talking after I was shot. You thought I was asleep. He knows you from before, doesn't he?"
"Yes. And it's knew, I'm afraid. He's dead too."
"So…"
"Yes, Spider's the reason I went into witness protection and ended up at St Mark's. But it's a long story and I don't really want to talk about it, if that's okay."
"Whatever. So the school's back up and running?"
"Yeah," I reply, grateful that she isn't pressing the point. "Sixteen staff now, seventy-three kids. It would be more if these bastards weren't spiriting them away."
Caroline stares intently at her hands. I can tell she wants to ask the obvious question but isn't sure how to.
"Yes," I say. "All of you. We've got plenty of room."
She looks up and beams. "There are thirty-four of us. Plus kids we rescued today."
"More the merrier," I say, smiling.
"We'll have to go out and around," she says, excited for the first time today. "Coz south of the river is churchland." She looks up at me and stops short, her smile fading. "There's a 'but' isn't there?"
I nod. "Spider. He and I have unfinished business."
"But… but that's mad. Even if you get in to see him, he's surrounded by a fucking army!"
"Oh, he'll see me, all right. And as for the army. Well, one thing at a time, eh?"
I take out my sidearm and chamber a round.
"You are fucking mental, Miss. If you go and get yourself killed, who's going to get these kids to safety? You owe them… you owe me that."
She's right, of course. I do.
I know the sensible thing is to get these kids back to St Mark's, meet up with Lee, try and recruit help from Nottingham and put together a properly formulated plan of action. I know this. But John and Tariq are lying dead in that school, and Lee is missing. For all I know, I could be the only one left of our team, and I'm closer to the heart of this mystery than anyone's yet got.
I can't turn back now.
I shake my head. "Sorry Caroline. I'll give you directions to the school," I say. "If I'm not back in three days, take these kids and go."
I lean forward and hug her tightly but she doesn't respond, shocked at my abandonment. "I'm so glad you're safe, sweetheart," I say. "I can't tell you how glad."
Then I let her go, stand up, and walk out of the building without looking back. I don't want to see the accusation in her gaze. I take a moment to get my bearings then take off down the high street, heading for the Thames. If I walk all night, I can be there by dawn.
It's a bitter night. Clear sky, full moon. The sun's not down for an hour before there's frost on the ground. I walk down the Thameside path in the half-light, listening to the lap of the waves as the tide drags the river down, slowly exposing the rubble of a thousand demolished warehouses and the rotting timbers of ancient wharfs and jetties.
I went on a walking tour of the Thames once, when I was a medical student at Barts and The London. The guide was an ancient old woman, eighty if she was a day, yet sprightly and funny and with a deep booming voice that always reached me, even when I was at the edge of the crowd.
A hundred and fifty years ago the exposed mudflats of low tide London would be swarming with mudlarks, even at this time of night, she'd told us. Children between the ages of eight and fifteen would swarm down to the edge of the retreating water, sometimes wading hip deep in mud laced with fresh effluent and the occasional bloated corpse, scavenging for lost trinkets and dropped wallets. Mostly, though, they just found lumps of coal which had fallen off the barges that passed up and down the river. They'd collect the coal in sacks and then take it to sell to a local dealer. If they were lucky, they'd earn a penny a day.
150 years of progress, of making sure that children were protected from that kind of existence — in the West, at least — and yet five years after The Cull, I'd just left a hundred and thirty children who were living together in a crumbling building, scavenging for food and clothes, barely better off than mudlarks. Most of them would probably never go to school or university, never learn about history or geography or medicine.
Human nature tells me that there are sweatshops in England now. Somewhere, someone will have rounded up kids to use in makeshift factories. It's inevitable. One day someone will let something slip at a market and we'll follow whispers and rumours and track them down. I know with absolute certainty that if I survive this week, one day I'll kick down the doors of an old warehouse and find a hundred emaciated, pallid children dressed in rags, making matches or shoelaces.
And I'll free them, and feed them and clothe them and teach them.
Right now, we are clinging to the scraps of knowledge and technique left to us by the dead, but when the last person who was over 16 during The Culling Year dies, it will be these children who inherit the ruins. It's vital we protect them. Give them a childhood and an education. If we don't, we'll be responsible for a new dark age.
I tell myself this, examine my motives for staying at St Mark's, rehearse all the arguments I've used to justify what we're doing, all the historical precedents that have spurred me on, all the smiles I've brought to the faces of children who would be dead without my intervention. But all of it, every laugh, every smile, just wilts when I think about the man I am walking towards. My grand mission to save a generation of lost kids was discarded, forgotten and irrelevant the instant I heard that name again.
I keep putting one foot in front of the other, forcing my way through the silent city, finally realising the true power of revenge.
It's still dark when I reach the reconstructed Globe Theatre. I'm amazed to see it's still intact, despite a thatched roof that's practically an invitation to arson. I'm walking past when I catch an echo of a voice. Faint at first but then, as I pass the wrought iron gates, distinct. Someone is reciting Shakespeare from inside the theatre, presumably on the stage. I stand and listen for a moment, surprised by the sudden, unexpected evidence of life. It's the only sound in the cold, calm night.
It's a man, young by the sound of it, and he's not following any play that I know. He skips from this to that — a comic monologue, a Hamlet soliloquy, a sonnet. After a few minutes, I sit on a bench and give myself over to this improbable voice. Was he an actor? If I enter the theatre, will I recognise him? "Oh you played whatshisname, on The Bill!" Or is he a young man who'd just been accepted to RADA and was about to begin a career that would make him a star, standing alone on a dark stage in the middle of dead city, dreaming of a world where the sex lives of actors were the talk of every sitting room in the land?
He's good. Emotive. Strong, clear voice. I feel a sudden ache in my chest, and I stifle a sob that seems to have come from nowhere. I sit and listen to King Lear's death speech with tears pouring down my face. I have no idea why I'm crying, but I can't help it. The tears just flow out of me.