‘Which one?’ Riker pointed to the pictures of the crowd gathered outside Kennedy Harper’s building. ‘Which face?’

The younger cop turned to point at the rear wall and the photograph between the scarecrow’s T-shirt and the baseball cap. It was the picture of a man whose face was turned away from the camera. ‘He’s that one… Sorry.’

A breeze swept papers and cigarette packs down the narrow SoHo street, and a car alarm went off with a high-pitched incessant squeal. An irate tenant on an upper floor leaned far out his window and hurled a dark missile to the pavement, but the bronze baby shoe fell short of the offending vehicle and narrowly missed the two walking men.

Riker glanced up at the civilian and yelled, ‘Lousy shot!’ In a lower voice, he said to Charles Butler, ‘But it could’ve been worse. It’s scary how many of these people have guns.’

Another man emerged from a building just up ahead. He held a baseball bat. When he spotted Riker and Charles, he thought better of leaving the shadows of his doorway. As the two men came abreast of him, the bat disappeared behind the man’s back.

‘Now that guy means business,’ said Riker, when they were well past the car with the screaming alarm. ‘He’ll get the job done.’

They turned the corner at the sound of breaking glass and the bangs of wood on metal – followed by blessed silence.

They were heading toward Charles’s building on the next block. Mallory would be at work in the back office at Butler and Company, and there might not be another opportunity to speak privately with Riker. ‘When you said the little girl was dead – well, obviously, you didn’t mean Kathy had actually died. So presumably – ’

‘I’ve seen her death certificate. It was backed up by sworn statements from two fire marshals. And neither one of those guys owed any favors to me or Lou.’

‘You’re not going to explain that, are you?’ Charles’s tone was fatalistic. ‘Not a hint, not a clue.’

‘Nope.’

‘And that business of murder and arson charges – ’

‘Not a chance.’

CHAPTER 18

Mallory stood in the office kitchen and poured another cup of coffee. Her eyes were closing. When had she slept last?

Old pictures were breaking into her thoughts again, wreaking havoc with her concentration. The rats were coming for the whore. Greedy vermin. Not content with the blood and meat of Frankie Delight, they wanted Sparrow too.

Mallory turned on the faucet, then leaned over the sink and splashed her face with cold water. She sat down at the kitchen table. Her coffee cooled in the cup. Her eyes closed, and down came the curtain between waking and sleeping dreams. Though she had never had the smoker’s habit, one hand went up to her mouth as she lit a cigarette that was not there. She was ten years old again. Sparrow was bleeding, saying, ‘Don’t cry, baby.’

But Kathy could not stop crying. The frantic child shook Sparrow to keep her from drifting into sleep and death. ‘I’ll get help!’

‘Don’t leave me,’ said Sparrow. ‘Not yet.’ The prostitute nodded toward the shadows where the rats were fighting over the corpse of Frankie Delight. ‘Keep ‘em off me – till it’s over.’

‘You can’t die.’

Sparrow gently touched the child’s face. ‘Baby, I’m always telling you stories. Read me a story – that’s all I hear from you. Suppose you tell me one. But mind you, don’t make it a long story.’ Sparrow’s eyes were closing as she smiled at her own little joke.

‘You need a doctor!’ Kathy shook Sparrow until the blue eyes opened. The child put her hands over the open wound, trying to keep the prostitute’s blood from leaking out.

‘Don’t leave me for the rats,’ said Sparrow. ‘Tell me, how did that book end? The Longest Road, yeah, that one. The Wichita Kid decided he was goin’ home. Did he ever say why?’

‘It ends when he’s on the trail.’ Kathy emptied Sparrow’s purse on the floor, straining to see by the daylight streaming in from the street door. ‘Wichita stops his horse in front of the sign for Franktown.’ The room was growing darker; the day was ending; Sparrow was dying. The child found a handkerchief. ‘He just stares at that sign for a while.’ She used the square of white linen to cover the stab wound. The cloth was soaked with blood the moment she pressed it to Sparrow’s side. ‘Then there’s these lines near the end. But I don’t – ’ Though the little girl knew all the books by heart, her panic was overwhelming her. Sparrow could not die.

‘What lines, baby?’

Kathy bit her lip until it bled into her mouth. She needed this pain to concentrate, and now the passage came into her mind, clear as the spoken word, and she recited, ‘ „It was more than the call of home. He was riding toward his redemption.“ ‘

‘You know what that means, baby?’

‘No.’ And she did not care. Kathy undipped a long strap from Sparrow’s purse and used it to hold the red handkerchief in place. ‘I’m going for help. I’ll come right back.’

‘No, baby. Stay with me.’ Sparrow’s next word was hardly more than a whisper, a sigh. ‘Redemption.’ Her voice was stronger when she said, ‘How can I put that so a little thief can understand?’

The rats were coming. The child stamped one foot and screamed at them, ‘You stay away! She’s not dead! She’s not!’

‘That’s right, baby. You tell ‘em.’ Sparrow’s voice was failing. ‘Redemption – that’s when you buy back all your bad karma – so you can steal heaven.’

What was karma?

The prostitute closed her eyes again, and this time Kathy could not wake her. The child’s head snapped toward the shadows and the sound of a rat’s feet. She waved her arms, but the creatures had no fear of her anymore. The lure of blood was strong. And now another rat appeared at the edge of the failing light from the street door.

‘Stay away!’ Kathy pulled out her pellet gun and fired on the rat, missing her mark. She was crying, vision blurring, yelling, ‘She’s not dead! Not yet!'

The child reached down to the debris from the prostitute’s purse and found something hard, a missile to throw. It was a silver lighter she had stolen for Sparrow. She held it tight, then picked up one of the cigarettes that had spilled on the floor alongside a can of hair-spray. Kathy hunkered down beside the purse, smiling – inspired.

Once, Sparrow had nearly set her hair on fire, smoking a cigarette while waving the hairspray can.

Kathy lit the cigarette, puffing and coughing until it burned. She stared at the glowing ember and waited, fighting down the panic until the rat was close to her feet. She pointed the aerosol can at the animal, then pressed down on the nozzle, wetting the rat through and through. It squealed with the pain of hairspray in its eyes. The child dropped the cigarette on its fur and stood back as the animal burst into flames and screamed.

Another rat came out of the shadows, drawn by the smell of live cooking meat. Hunched over, Kathy crept forward to meet the creature. Holding the cigarette lighter low to the ground, she pressed the nozzle of the hairspray, aiming it at the tiny flame, and the chemical spray became a blowtorch. The second rat was burning, running in circles, streaking fire round and round. It was crying in a human way and drawing cannibals from the corpse of Frankie Delight.

Kathy was numb, too stunned to care what the rats were doing to one another. Working by slow inches, the child struggled with her burden, dragging Sparrow out of the dark building and into the waning daylight where more rats awaited them, scrabbling out from between the garbage cans on the sidewalk.

In the kitchen of Butler and Company, Mallory lurched to one side. Chair and woman crashed to the floor. Her face was pressed to the tiles, and she lay there for a few seconds of absolute stillness, quietly seeking her true place in time and space. Then she rose to her feet and gripped the edge of the counter for support. Her hands were shaking when she splashed more water on her face. If she could not stay awake, Stella Small would die.