Silence.

The sponsor, breathing fast, ragged breath, head down, hands tight across his chest.

“Nathan,” I murmured “step away from him.”

Slowly he stepped back.

I advanced. Pam was moving now, watching me, her back to the wall, gun levelled at my chest, keeping her distance from everyone else in the room. I knelt down in front of him, seeing ancient liver-spotted hands that had been so young the last time they’d been his. I reached up slowly, palms open, fingers flexed, whispered, “I need to touch you, Mr Morgan. I need to know that you are who you say you are.”

His head shaking, tears in his eyes, he couldn’t speak, didn’t stop me, could barely breathe. Coyle whispered, “Kepler…” A question, a warning, but he wasn’t going to stop me, not now, and before anyone could change their mind I grabbed Morgan’s hands, held them tight, squeezed his fingers between my own and felt

nothing.

Only skin.

Just skin.

I let go, Morgan shaking now, the tears running through canyons on his face. He was young; he was so very young.

“Kepler?” Nathan’s voice, high and urgent.

“He’s not Galileo.” I eased myself up, backing away from Morgan, giving myself a little space, room to breathe. My gaze swept the room: the ancient man not yet grown up, the injured killer, the woman in grey. “Nathan, when we came in here, you said ‘Elijah’. What was Pamela’s part of the recognition code?”

He opened his mouth to answer, then closed it again, turning to look into her eyes.

She giggled, pressing three fingers to her lower lip behind the veil. “Whoops,” she said and fired.

Who she intended to fire at, clearly she couldn’t decide, for there was a second in which her gun swung between Coyle and myself, before finally, almost with a shrug, she settled on me and pulled the trigger. By then I was already moving, which was why the bullet shattered my left arm, splitting bone in two with a crack I could feel in the hollows of my ears, but Coyle caught her by both wrists, and as she pulled the gun round he pushed her down, slamming his knee into her face, blood blooming across her scarf. I landed on the floor in a screaming haze of bewildered pain and blood, even as Pam

not-Pam

she-who-was-not-herself

she-who-was-Galileo

twisted round and drove her elbow into Coyle’s throat. I heard two shots, the glass shattering in the ceiling overhead, a rainfall of shards, then three more shots that sang over my head and slammed into the wall, then the click-click-click of the pin on nothing at all, and Galileo, the scarf pulled back from her head to reveal golden hair and a soft blood-smeared face twisted with effort, slammed her open palm against Coyle’s throat,

and it occurred to me

rather late in the day

that she wasn’t wearing gloves.

Then the security guard, she with the face of stern rebuttal from the door, was inside the courtyard, radio in hand, shouting, stop, everyone, stop, and it was not Pamela who ran, but Coyle, blood pouring from his nose, bare hands outstretched for the woman’s face.

From the floor I grabbed the guard’s ankle, my fingers closing an instant before Galileo’s, and I

jumped,

slamming my radio up into the flesh below Coyle’s chin.

He staggered back, one arm sweeping a great smear of blood and nasal liquid across his face, over the side of his cheek and lips. I looked into my face

into Coyle’s face

into the face that was Galileo

shook my head, thought about begging, thought about kneeling at his feet

but he drew his fist back to strike, and I dug my radio into the wound on his shoulder, twisting the butt as hard as I dared, and Coyle

not-Coyle

screamed, the animal scream of a beast caught in barbed wire, and slammed his fist into the side of my face hard enough to knock my teeth together inside my jaw. I tasted salt and blood and loose fillings as I fell. Coyle ran by me, heading for the door, staggered through the red rope that guarded the entrance and out into the crowds of the museum.

I crawled up on to my hands and knees and looked back.

Pamela, struggling to her feet, the gun useless in her hand.

My unnamed, abandoned host in beautiful new clothes, slowly going to ruin as blood seeped from her flesh. Morgan, still sitting on his chair, his eyes turned upwards at nothing at all, his hands loose by his side. Five shots Galileo had fired as she struggled for the gun; one of them had found their home in the sponsor’s chest.

Pam’s eyes turned slowly and settled on her master, the beginning of a choke that might become a sob rising from her throat, and there was no time, no time at all as I staggered on to my feet, picked up my radio and ran into the museum.

Chapter 87

At its busiest the Metropolitan Museum of Art can handle fifty thousand visitors a day.

This was not its busiest; there were probably only two or three thousand souls wandering through its halls.

I found Coyle gasping for breath at the top of the stairs, a small crowd of people tactfully trying not to stare. I slammed my knee into his chest, my elbow into his throat, pushing him back against the cold floor, and roared, “Who are you?!”

“Coyle!” he squeaked. “You know me as Coyle!”

“Who was I the night Marigare fired?” He didn’t answer so I dug my elbow a little deeper, his eyes rolling, tongue flopping against his lips. “Who was I?!”

“Nurse! You were… Samir! Samir Chayet!”

“Who drove you to Lyon?”

“Irena. You. Irena!” The sound barely escaped past the weight of security guard pressing down on to him, the tips of his ears bright crimson.

I rolled off him as more onlookers gathered round our little scene. “Who did you touch?” I whispered. “Who did you touch?”

“A woman. She had red hair. My shoulder…”

“I hit it. Sorry.”

Inspecting the crowd–woman with red hair, woman with red hair–I saw no such woman, but then that could mean nothing at all. “Get out,” I hissed. “Get out of here.”

“What?”

Pulled him to his feet. “Get out. Your injuries will protect you; she won’t wear damaged skin. Shots have been fired; the police will be on their way. Get out!”

“I can’t just—”

“Go!” My voice echoed down the staircase, bounced off hard, clean walls. I pushed him away from me, turned again to the crowd, snapped, “All of you, get out!”

His hand caught my sleeve as I turned. “Be me,” he whispered. “No one else dies.”

I jerked my arm away, shaking my head.

“Kepler!” He held on tighter, pulling me back. “I killed Josephine. It was me. I did it; I killed the woman you love. Be me! The woman you are now, she doesn’t have to die; no one else has to die. Galileo knows me, knows my face. Be me!”

He was crying.

I hadn’t ever seen Nathan Coyle cry.

I pulled my arm free of his grasp, pushed him away. “No,” I said. “I love you.”

And ran on through the crowd.

Galileo.

Who are you, Galileo?

I am security guard.

I am Japanese tourist admiring samurai swords.

I am schoolteacher taking notes on American sculpture.

I am student, sketching a statue of the goddess Kali as she dances on the skulls of her foes, slain in righteous retribution.

I am man who wants to sit down on a gallery bench.

Woman with flapjack stuck between my teeth.

I am catering staff pushing a tray of cakes.

Wanderer with audio guide pressed to my ear.

Usher with belt done up too tight around my underfed belly.

Every step there is someone new to be, every step a new shade of skin.

My flesh is silken soft, moisturised fresh this morning.