It was the kind of hot early summer day that made sweat run down the back of Gideon’s neck. They’d been walking through the no man’s land west of the river for almost an hour, but Tom showed no sign of slowing down. They forged on through the crumbling streets, every collapsed roof or narrow passageway casting deep pools of shadow where the geists lurked–grinding their broken teeth, waiting for night to fall so that they could devour the both of them. Gideon wasn’t sure if Tom noticed the geists, or if he even cared.

“It’s here,” Tom called from somewhere up ahead. “Hurry up!”

Gideon turned the corner, cutting across an open space that was turning slowly to scrub and sapling trees. From where Tom was standing, you could see all the way down to the hulking mass of rain-broken concrete and rusting metal at the bottom of the hill. A building of some sort, whatever it once was smudged out by age and decay.

“Are you going to tell me what I’m looking at?” he asked.

Tom glanced across behind his tinted spectacles and held out a photograph. It was the postcard they’d found on Cassian Marquez’s body–a single word written on the back in large and ominous letters: “FRIDAY”.

The front bore an old photograph of a tennis club on match day–hordes of people in antiquated clothing swarming around an arena. Gideon hadn’t paid the picture much mind, but it could very well have been taken from where they were standing–the crowd in their summer whites streaming down the pristine hillside, towards what was now little more than a heap of rubble and weeds.

Gid looked between the postcard and the ruins. The long, graceful curve of the outer wall was still there, obscured by thick brambles and the slump of the collapsed roof. He offered the postcard back to Tom.

“Is this really the same place?”

Tom had that hunting dog look about him, vital and alert.

“It was,” he said. “Once.”

Without waiting for an answer, he set off down the hill, moving swift and smooth through the long grass. Gid had no choice but to follow. He must have caught his trousers on every bush west of the river before he reached the arena, winded and sweating in his heavy Warden’s coat.

Tom had already found a way inside, and Gid followed the trail he’d left in the grass, through the cracked wall and into the building beyond. Sunlight filtered through the broken roof, but it was cooler in here–like plunging into a pool of dark water. Gid took off his coat and followed the sound of Tom’s voice. He had no idea if it was dark enough for geists to shelter in here, and he didn’t wait to find out. He had no desire to end up like Cassian Marquez–dead and sprawled out for all the world to see. No, not sprawled, arranged. There was nothing random about the way Cassian’s body had been left at the tennis club on Worple Road. And Gid had no desire to end up the same way. At least Cassian had made for a beautiful corpse. What a waste.

“Over here!” Tom called.

His voice was taut and urgent, bouncing off the broken concrete until it was difficult to tell where he was. Cautiously, Gid made his way down into the depths of the building. Or at least, what was left of it. The darkness was thick and stifling. Still, hot, and full of whispers that sucked all the air from his lungs. Panic thumped a steady rhythm in his throat, but the space soon opened out–large and subterranean. At the far end, there was a line of ornate iron columns, and a flat wall of light beyond where the sunlight poured back in.

Tom’s silhouette hung motionless against the light, like a mirage. Gid approached him carefully, each step careful and shaky, and peered out into the space beyond. Somehow, they had reached the centre of the arena. Outside, the summer sun drove down like pneumatic press–the stands opening up above in dizzying tiers of rotting seats, all facing in, towards the wilds of the court.

Improbably, the net was still up–a tangled mat of bindweed cutting the space in half. Its trumpeted flowers delicate white, blazing and glorious. The air was thick with unfamiliar sweetness, the grass almost hip height and dotted with wonders–campion and cornflowers, poppies and cow parsley. It was impossible. It took a moment for Gid to notice the fat bumblebees stumbling between the flowers. There must be a hive somewhere up in the rafters. The last one for a hundred miles.

Back when this was a living place with people here to tend it, someone had trained wisteria about the terraces. Now, uncared for, it had grown wild–showers of purple blossom spilling down over everything like smoke. Clumps of dog rose and silver birch blurred the line between the court and the stands, swallowing the hoardings and rusted mess of the umpire’s chair. The air was so still and fragrant, and remains of the western Harrows so silent that he felt as though he were floating. A bubble drifting slowly upwards through a golden, liquid light. His whole world narrowed to the sound of the wind tugging through the scrub out on the hill, and the syrupy voice of a blackbird pouring down through the wisteria.

It was paradise. It should have been paradise. But all Gid could see was the blurred faces of the people in that photograph–shining in their summer whites and staring down from those rotten stands. As spectral as geists, and just as surely dead by now. Something throbbed behind his ribs like a wound. He turned away from the ruined court and forced himself to smile at Tom.

“Shall I serve?”

“Very funny,” Tom said drily.

But Gideon could see the smile tug at the corner of his mouth.

“Why are you so certain that Marquez was here?” Gid asked. “That postcard could have meant anything.”

“Only it didn’t mean anything,” said Tom. “It meant something very specific. And whatever it was, it got Cassian Marquez killed.”

“Because they found his body on a Saturday? Come on, Tom. There isn’t even a time written on the back of that postcard. An old photograph and a day of the week don’t make for some clandestine meeting.”

“There doesn’t have to be a time, Shaw,” Tom said, taking off his coloured spectacles and cleaning them on his shirt. “Remember what Marquez’s manager said? Cassian followed the same routine every Friday: he went for a run in the morning, then trained at Worple Road until just before dark. There’s only one time he could have done anything.”

Gideon shook his head. “It’s crazy. Anyone coming out here after dark is out of their mind. The geists would have torn him apart and, unless I’m very much mistaken, whoever killed Cassian was very much alive. Not to mention back on the other side of the Osier.”

“Hmm,” Tom said.

Unconvinced, although about which part, Gid wasn’t sure.

The sun was still beating down on them, bruising in its intensity, but Tom looked cool and sweatless. He was still wearing his coat, even. He must have been suffering, but he looked calmly around the arena, squinting against the light. His gaze was restless and unsettled, snagging every now and then on something in in the stands.

“There,” he said. “What is that?”

Gideon followed his gaze up into the wisteria, but there was nothing there.

“Tom, we should get going. It won’t be long before the sun goes down.”

But Tom wasn’t listening. He set off as nimble as a greyhound, climbing through the tiers of rotting seats. Gid followed as best he could, feeling heavy and ill-formed. He stumbled on rotting concrete. Sweat tickled down his spine.

He didn’t like this. Didn’t like the way the whole structure seemed to shift and sway under his feet, as if one strong storm could topple it. As they climbed, the shadows beneath the upper tiers grew longer–the sun sliding slowly for the horizon.

By the time he caught up, Tom was quietly assessing the nest someone had built for themselves up here. The space was screened off with a collection of blankets and shawls, all knotted carefully onto the supports above. That must be what Tom spotted from the court. The fabrics were all threadbare, faded by the sun and the rain, but they had been beautiful once. The cushions and clothes on the floor had held their shape and colours better. All of them were handmade and expensive, and the empty wine bottles dotted among them had the label of a vineyard two hundred miles south. Whoever had holed up here had money to burn. Or rather, to leave out in the rain to rot.

“This was where Marquez was coming,” Tom said. “His bolthole. And for quite some time, by the look of it. Sleeping here, even.”

Gideon’s coat was like lead, draped over his arm. His shirt stuck uncomfortably to his back.

“It could have been anyone,” Gid protested. “What makes you so sure it wasn’t the killer?”

Tom bent down to pick something up off the floor and threw it at him. Gideon fumbled more than he caught it. It was a shoe–hand-stitched in white, made from supple leather with a gripped rubber sole. A tennis shoe.

“Do you remember the pair we found in Marquez’s locker?” Tom asked.

Gid peeled the tongue back. Infuriatingly, Tom was right. It wasn’t even that they were the same size, although looking at them, they almost certainly were. They even came from the same shoemaker.

“All right, all right,” Gideon said, holding up the shoe in surrender. “No need to take my head off with it.”

“Not my fault that you never learned to catch,” Tom said, pretending not to smile.

He was enjoying this.

Gid turned the shoe over to inspect the sole. There were still blades of grass stuck in the tread–dried out and papery. Not the wild rugged stuff that grew here, but neat short blades, clipped to a fine lawn. Gideon frowned.

“Cassian’s manager said that he hadn’t been himself for the last couple of months. That he’d seemed distracted.” They’d dismissed it after Cassian’s wife told them she hadn’t noticed the change. “But if he was coming out here regularly, I’d say that Mrs Marquez has a few more questions to answer.”

“Yes,” said Tom. “I would say so.”

But he was only half-listening. His attention drawn to the railing between Cassian’s bolthole and the tier of seats below.

“What is it?” Gideon asked.

They picked their way closer, careful to avoid much of the clutter as they could. If Cassian really had been here, then all of this was evidence.

“Is that blood?” Gideon asked, leaning closer.

A stain on the concrete under the metal rail. Dark brown. Almost black.

“There’s more of it,” Tom said, ducking past a blanket.

Dread gathered like a knot in Gideon’s belly, but he followed all the same.

There was another spot on the railing, and a long streak of it across the back of one of the crumbling chairs. Tom followed the trail like a bloodhound–steps so light that he barely made a sound.

“Shaw! Over here!”

He’d stopped in the space at the top of the stairs, just where they plummeted down into the darkness of the building below.

It was a bloodbath. Or at least, it had been. Several days ago, judging by the way the stains had darkened and sunk in. But Gid could still see the splatters on the riser, the shaking handprints, and the large gruesome stain soaked into the concrete.

Gid took an involuntary step back and checked his gloves. He didn’t touch the blood, he made certain that he didn’t touch it, but it didn’t matter. Cassian’s death was in the air here. It saturated everything. The panic. The pain. For a moment, the world whited out. There was only the dull gleam of metal, streaking from the darkness like a meteor. And then the blood. So much of it–spurting out of him as though he was a punctured downpipe in a storm.

He was screaming, no, he couldn’t even do that. He was trapped in his body with the hideous wall of his fear. Watching in mute horror as the life fountained out of his body and darkness clenched around him like a muscle.

The firm grip of Tom’s hand brought Gideon back into himself. His pressing so deep into Gid’s forearm that it ached. He was drenched in sweat, heaving for breath. Nausea lodged like a fist in his throat.

He reached out to steady himself against the rail. Above them, the wind whined through the broken roof like a kicked dog.

“We should head back to the Terminus,” Tom said grimly, still staring at the blood. “Luminous will want to know that we’ve found the place where Cassian Marquez was murdered.”

#END#