From the outside, flat 47-126 didn’t look like much: just another shabby brown door in a long line of shabby brown doors. Nairn motioned Floyd and Rhodes into position on the opposite side of the passageway, their weapons trained on the flat’s door at chest height. The sergeant reached into his mouth and pulled out a wad of chewing gum, rolled it into a sticky ball, then pressed it over the spyhole. He flattened himself against the wall next to the door, nodded at everyone, then reached out and knocked…

No reply.

Nairn pointed. Rhodes?’

The trooper clicked a button on the chunky oblong strapped to the barrel of his Thrummer, peered into the weapon’s sight. Pulled his head back. Frowned. Slapped the oblong twice. Then went back to the sight again, sweeping the Thrummer back and forth. ‘No sign of movement.’

Nairn turned to Will. ‘You want us to force it?’

He was about to say yes when DS Cameron walked over and crouched down in front of the keypad lock set into the wall beside the door. She popped the cover off with a pocket knife, pulled a thin piece of bent wire from her asymmetrical hairdo and stuck it into the circuitry. As she fiddled about, the display panel flashed warning red. Then ten seconds later a small bleep sounded and the lights went as green as her suit.

‘Open Sesame.’ She pushed the door open on silent, plastic hinges, revealing a small, dark hallway.

Will stared at her. ‘I don’t believe you just did that. A hairgrip?’

‘Yeah, well.’ She stood and worked the impromptu lock pick back into place above her left ear. ‘That’s technology for you.’

‘Unbelievable…’ He stepped into the tiny hallway, opened the door on the other side, and walked into a nightmare.

A fug of hot air washed over them, bringing with it the stench of rotting garbage. Like a bin bag left in the sun. The windows were covered with broad straps of black plastic. Slivers of light found their way through the gaps, falling across the cramped space in horizontal bars. One wall was given over to a collage made up of little bits of paper scrawled with dense handwriting, all glued together to form the life-size silhouette of an angel. Only this angel didn’t have a harp, it had a sword. A big red sword that dripped blood. But that was nothing compared to what sat in the middle of the room.

The paper angel stood guard over a pile of severed heads. Severed halfheads to be precise.

‘Oh-my-God.’ Jo Cameron stared at the mound. ‘So that’s where they all went to!’ There were at least fifteen of them, possibly more, all neatly arranged in a heap.

Will dug a reader out of his suit pocket and pressed it into her hand.

‘Get the barcodes.’

Biting her bottom lip, she reached forward and slid the electronic eye over the nearest disembodied head. The reader gave a disapproving clunk. She scowled at the display. ‘Non sample error. Must be all the wrinkles: thing looks almost mummified…’ Jo snapped on a pair of thin, blue plastic gloves and tried smoothing out the skin on the forehead. Then had another go with the reader. Clunk. ‘Come on you little sod…’

Will left her to it, picking his way through the rest of the squalid flat. Rubbish spread out from huge piles in the corners of every room, hiding the floor from view. The kitchen was awash with green, hairy mould. He opened the fridge door, gagged, then slammed it shut again, bathed in the unmistakeable sickly sour smell of rotting meat. Holding his breath, Will tried again, one hand clamped over his nose. In with the bloated plastics of milk and black slimy vegetables were thick cuts of pale meat, with a fatty, goose-pimpled rind. The flesh a nasty greenish-grey colour, speckled with black mould.

The light didn’t come on. Power was probably dead, which explained the smell.

Will closed the fridge door, then hurried through to the bedroom before he had to breathe in again.

It was a dark, cramped little room, stuffed with rubbish. Another six-foot angel collage dominated the wall above the bed, just visible in the gloom. Mr Brown had done a much better job of taping over the bedroom’s tiny window. Will punched the lightsight on his Whomper up to maximum, bathing the room in its eerie green glow. It leached away all the colours, turning the whole scene into a monochrome landscape of half-seen garbage.

He stepped forward and felt something crunch underfoot. He froze. Please don’t let it be what he thought it was…Gingerly, he lowered the Whomper’s barrel, spotlighting the refuse beneath his feet.

Emerald light glittered back at him from dozens of cracked plastic cylinders. It was just discarded HotNoodle tubes, their biodegradable plastic littering the nest like gaily patterned animal bones.

He waded through the filth to peer at the angel and its blood-soaked sword.

Each bit of paper in the collage bore the same handwritten quotation:

‘And the third angel followed them, saying with a loud voice, Ifany man worship the beast and his image, and receive his markin his forehead, or in his hand, The same shall drink of the wine of the wrath of God, which is poured out without mixture into the cup of his indignation;and he shall be tormented with fire and brimstone in the presence of the holy angels, and in the presence of the Lamb: And the smoke of their torment ascendeth up for ever and ever:and they have no rest day nor night, who worship the beast andhis image, and whosoever receiveth the mark of his name.’

That explained a lot.

Back in the lounge, DS Cameron was still cursing her way through the pile of severed heads, scowling at the reader. ‘Come on, you little-’

‘I know why he did it.’ Will said as she banged the handheld device against the floor. ‘No, scratch that. I don’t know why he did it, but I know why he thought he was doing it.’

She hurled the reader at the heads, settled back on her haunches, then looked up at him, her face all pinched and lined. ‘Why does nothing ever sodding work?’

‘The angels: there’s another one in the bedroom. They’re made up of little bits of the Book of Revelation. Chapter fourteen.’

She frowned for a moment, then started to recite in an almost singsong voice, ‘“If any man worship the beast and his image”-’

‘“And whosoever receiveth the mark of his name.”’ Will pointed at the heap on the carpet. ‘It’s the tattoo.’

He turned the lightsight on his Whomper down to a more reasonable operating level. ‘Tell the SOC team to start scanning the place. When they’re done, have them bag and tag anything that looks like a body part. Start with the fridge. But tell them to get a shift on. Sooner we’re out of here the better.’

‘OK.’ She stood, then stooped to pick up the discarded reader. ‘What are you going to do?’

‘The other body George showed us, he lived two doors down. I’m going to take a look.’ He turned and made for the door. ‘Oh, and see if you can dig a VR set out of this midden. If our halfhead-hunting friend really did have VR syndrome, there’ll be one in here somewhere.’

The door to flat 47-122 swung open after a small amount of fiddling with the lock. It wasn’t as quick as DS Cameron’s hairgrip method, but it didn’t leave any physical evidence of tampering. The tiny hallway was as nondescript as its neighbour, but the rooms beyond it were completely different. Allan Brown’s flat had been a lair. This had been a home. Right up to the moment when Mr Kevin McEwen came home and shot his wife Barbara in the face. Then he’d gone into the second bedroom and done the same thing to his two children, before turning the gun on himself.

The council clean-up crew had stripped the place back to the fixtures and fittings, leaving it bereft and lifeless. Will stood in the middle of the empty living room and tried to imagine it before Kevin McEwen wiped out his entire family.