"Talk to me," she said. "Talk to me and tell me what the f.u.c.k you are doing building a resonant gravitational wave antenna in nineteen fifty-nine, and what it has to do with Silver Rain."

The black tongue oozed and wriggled like a captive maggot. The child made a liquid gurgling noise.

"Maybe if you took your shoe off its neck," Floyd suggested.

Auger reached down and picked up the war baby's weapon. She reminded herself that it had a full clip

and that the baby had been ready to use it just before it had fallen from the pipe.

"I want answers, you shrivelled-up piece of s.h.i.t. I want to know why Susan and the others had to die. I want to know what you f.u.c.kers intend to do with Silver Rain."

"It's too late," the child said, forcing the words out between gurgles of blood and bile. "Much too late."

"Yeah? Then why are you in such a hurry to stop anyone getting too close to this s.h.i.t?"

"It's the right thing to do, Verity. You know it in your heart." The child coughed, spitting blood in her

face. "These people shouldn't exist. They're just three billion dots in a photograph. Dots, Verity. That's

all they are. Pull away and they blur into one amorphous ma.s.s."

She thought of her dream, of the Silver Rain falling on to the Champs-Elysees. Of the beautiful people picking themselves up and thinking that life was about to go on, and being so terribly wrong. She remembered trying to warn them. She remembered the little drummer boy stepping through the bones.

Dizziness washed over her. She suddenly felt very cold and very weak. Auger squeezed the trigger and did something abominable to the war baby. Then she slumped to her knees and was sick.

Floyd gently drew her to her feet and steered her away from the b.l.o.o.d.y mess she had made.

"It wasn't a child," she said. "It was a thing, a weapon."

"You don't have to convince me. Now let's get out of here before those shots attract the wrong kind of attention. We need to get you to a hospital."

"No," she said. "You need to get me to Paris. That's all that matters."

TWENTY-FIVE.

Floyd stood in a public telephone kiosk just outside Gare du Nord. It was Tuesday morning and his head didn't feel any better. With both of them injured, but not wanting to have to deal with helpful or inquisitive strangers, the train journey back from Berlin had been a long and wearying one. There had been tense moments while their doc.u.ments were inspected, neither of them daring to say a word until the officials had moved on. Floyd doubted that his own injuries were any cause for concern, but he was extremely worried about Auger. He'd left her in the waiting room, bandaged and drowsy, but still adamant that she didn't want to be taken to hospital.

"Maillol," a man said on the other end of the line.

"Inspector? It's Wendell Floyd. Can we talk?"

"Of course we can," Maillol said. "As a matter of fact, you're just the man I wanted to speak to. Where have you been, Floyd? No one seemed to know where you'd gone."

"Germany, monsieur. I'm back in Paris now. But I don't have much money and I'm calling from a public telephone."

"Why not use the telephone in your office?"

"I figured it might not be safe."

"Sensible boy," Maillol said approvingly. "Well, shall I start? I'll be quick about it. You're aware of my anti-bootlegging operation in Montrouge, aren't you? As it happens, we've turned up something interesting: a floater."

"A floater, monsieur?"

"A body, Floyd, floating face-down in a flooded bas.e.m.e.nt in the same warehouse complex where we found the illegal pressing plant. Identification revealed the individual to be a Monsieur Rivaud.

Forensics say he can't have been in the water for more than three or four days."

"It's early, monsieur, and I haven't had much sleep, but I don't think I know that name."

"That's odd, Floyd, because you seem to have met the gentleman. He had one of your business cards on

him."

"Still doesn't mean I know him."

"He also had a key that we traced back to Monsieur Blanchard's building on rue des Peupliers. Rivaud

was one of his tenants."

"Wait," Floyd said. "He wouldn't be one of the tenants on the second floor, would he?"

"So you do remember him."

"I never met him. Custine interviewed him: that's how he came by the business card. When I went round

to make follow-up enquiries, no one was home."

"Probably because the young man was dead."

Floyd closed his eyes. Just what the case needed: another death, no matter how peripheral it might be.

"Cause of death?"

"Drowning. It could be accidental: he might have stumbled and fallen into the flooded bas.e.m.e.nt. On the

other hand, Forensics turned up some curious abrasions on the man's neck. They look like finger marks, as if someone had held his head underwater."

"Open and shut, in that case-homicide by drowning."

"Except," Maillol said, "the finger marks were very small."

"Let me guess: they were the right size for a child."

"A child with long fingernails, yes. Which of course doesn't make any sense-"

"Except I already told you there are some bad children a.s.sociated with this case."

"And we have that stabbing in Gare du Nord, of course. We still haven't turned up the boy the witnesses

saw."

"You probably won't," Floyd said.

"Do you know something about that incident?"

Floyd pulled a fresh toothpick from his shirt pocket and slipped it into his mouth. "Of course not,

monsieur," he said. "I just meant to say...the child's probably well away by now."

Maillol said nothing for ten or twenty seconds. Floyd heard his breathing above the muted background chatter of typewriters and barked orders. "I'm sure you're right," Maillol said. "But you see the problem from my point of view. I had no interest in the rue des Peupliers case beyond my desire to do what I could for Custine. But there was no connection between those two deaths and the goings-on in Montrouge."

"And now?"

"Now I have a connection, and it doesn't make any sense. What was your man Rivaud doing nosing around in Montrouge?"

"I have no idea," Floyd said.

"This is a loose end," Maillol said. "I don't like loose ends."

"I don't like them either, monsieur, but I still have no idea what Rivaud was doing there. As I said, I

never even spoke to the man."

"Then perhaps if I had a word with Custine?"

"Actually," Floyd said, "Custine's the reason I'm calling."

"Has he been in touch again?"

"Of course we've been in touch. What else would you expect? He's my friend and I know he's

innocent."

"Very good, Floyd. I'd be disappointed if you said anything different."

"I can't tell you where to reach Custine. You understand that, don't you?"

"Of course."

"But I think I'm close to finding your suspect. You're just not going to like it very much when I hand one of them over."

"One of them?"

Floyd pushed coinage into the iron belly of the payphone. "Custine didn't kill Blanchard. One of those children did. You spoke to the witnesses in Gare du Nord. You know how they described that boy."

"Including one witness who spoke French with a p.r.o.nounced American accent."

"The child was real, monsieur. There are several of them, boys and girls, but up close they don't look

like children at all. If I can deliver one of these monsters to you, I'll have kept my end of the deal, won't I?".

"We didn't have a deal, Floyd."