There had been other crimes, other suicides, but it was not yet known if these were connected with the more bizarre incidents. And what exactly could the connection be other than the fact that each horrendous act had seemingly been carried out at night? Could the dark really have something to do with this madness as Jacob Kulek had suggested?

Peck had included the blind man's theory in the report, but had left it as a separate section, adding no personal comment himself. He had been tempted to leave it out completely and if he could have offered any reasonable theories himself, then perhaps he would have done so. What the Commissioner would make of it all he dreaded to think but he, Peck, was only a small cog in the operation now; the big boys had taken over. All he could do was provide them with every scrap of information he had. A couple of weeks ago Peck had considered Kulek to be a little crazy; now too much had happened for him to dismiss the man as such. If only they could find out more about Boris Pryszlak. His home had been a flat in a huge apartment block near Marylebone although, according to his neighbours, he was hardly ever there. The flat itself offered no information whatsoever; it was a spacious accommodation which held little comfort in the way of furniture. There were no pictures on the walls, no bookshelves, few ornaments of any kind. What items of furniture there were were expensive but functional and bore little sign of wear. It was obvious the man used the apartment only as a base, his activities whatever they may have been keeping him away most of the time. Even the information gathered at the time of the mass suicides in Beechwood had revealed little. If Pryszlak was head of some kind of crazy religious sect, then his organization kept an extremely low profile. They seemed to have had no specific meeting place, and there was no indication of how they gained recruits. Also there was no record of the work scientific or otherwise Pryszlak had become involved in. Several of the people in the house had been wealthy, Dominic Kirkhope being a prime example, and Peck felt it reasonable to assume they were sponsoring Pryszlak with his project in some way. Did they have genuine aspirations or were they just a bunch of deviates who enjoyed getting together on odd occasions for orgies? The information gathered so far on Kirkhope and some of the others indicated that their sexual preferences were somewhat bizarre. Dominic Kirkhope had once owned a farm in Hampshire which, acting on complaints from neighbouring properties, the police had investigated. It seemed the animals kept there were not being used for natural purposes. The scandal had been hushed up, for the indignant landowners in the surrounding properties did not want their tranquil existence shattered by such adverse publicity. No charges had been brought against Kirkhope and his guests, but the farm itself had changed hands soon after the police raid. Kirkhope had been watched for a while after that, but if he indulged further in such sexual malpractices, then he did so very discreetly.

The backgrounds of Braverman, his wife and Ferrier, the man who had fallen from the window at Kulek's Institute, were being checked: so far, nothing unusual had been unearthed about any of them. Braverman had been a creative director of an advertising agency, a leading figure in his field. Ferrier had been a librarian. There seemed to be no obvious social connection between either party. Could they have been followers of Pryszlak?

There was only one lead on the murders of Agnes Kirkhope and her housekeeper. Two women had been spotted strolling past the Kirkhope property by neighbours on the day of the murders. Had it not been a quiet residential area, then they probably would not have been noticed; as it was, they had been observed walking by Miss Kirkhope's house two or three times by different people. It could be that they were waiting for the right moment to strike. One woman had been tall, the other short.

Chris Bishop had said that two women, one tall, the other short, had let him into the Fairfield Rest Home. Were they the same two? It was possible. Probable in fact. Peck had almost lost all suspicions regarding the psychic investigator now. He was involved all right, but only as a potential victim, of that the detective was sure. Whoever whatever was behind all this was trying to get at Bishop. Why? Who the hell knew? None of it made any sense.

It had been fortunate for Bishop that Peck had ordered an obo on him. The two officers on observation duty that night had followed him to the mental home, then gone in to bring him to Kulek's house as instructed over the car radio. They had found the patients trying to drown Bishop in a bathtub. It was a good thing that the two detectives had been armed Peck had suspected Bishop of murder at that time and was taking no chances with the lives of his own men. Without firearms, they would never have fought off the berserk residents. His men had also seen the two women at the mental home who had set light to the staircase. The home had been razed to the ground, burning almost half the patients to death and Bishop poor bastard had lost his wife in the fire.

All the nursing staff had been killed, whether in the fire or before it, no one would ever know Bishop and the two detectives had seen several staff members already dead before the fire had struck. Some of the patients had leapt from the same window Bishop and Peck's men had escaped through, and had run off into the night to be picked up later by patrol cars; others had managed to use the fire escape on the other side of the building and these, too, had been found wandering the streets later that night. But a few had disappeared completely, the body count of those living and dead carried out the following day failing to tally with the known number of residents and staff.

Peck scratched the bottom of his nose with his thumb. He briefly wondered if he should recommend that a general alert be put out, to warn the public of the menace that was roaming the streets, then discarded the thought. Why be accused of over-reacting when it was up to the boys upstairs to make such drastic decisions? Besides, the trouble was still confined to an area south of the river. No point in causing panic in the rest of the city. No, he would just hand in his report and let his superiors get on with it. The only thing was, he thought, studying green pins on the large map of London he had stuck to his office wall board, the trouble was growing outwards, the pins spreading from the centre like a green starburst. Each pin indicated a fresh incident, the common denominator being that they had happened at night and that there was some kind of evil lunacy involved. What was it Kulek had said about rainspots on a window? It did seem to be gathering momentum.

The police cells and hospital wards were full of people who had had to be taken into custody for their own protection. Not all had committed acts of violence, but every one of them had that same brainless appearance. There had to be several hundred people being held at that moment, most of them part of the football crowd. The football match incident had been put down to crowd hysteria. Crowd hysteria! Jesus, the understatement of all time. Fortunately, it had been regarded as a single major phenomenon by the public and the authorities had played down the other comparatively 'minor' incidents, never once suggesting and always refuting any connection between them. The condition of those held seemed to be deteriorating rapidly, the first ones taken into custody having become nothing more than empty shells. Dozens, particularly those from Willow Road, had somehow managed to take their own lives, for there was no way such vast numbers could be watched all the time. Many were being fed intravenously, all will to live seemingly gone. Zombies, that was the word Bishop had used when he had spoken with him earlier that week. It was a good word. Apt. That's just what they were. Many shuffled around all day, some murmuring, others silent and immobile, lost within themselves. The medics were baffled. They said it was as if part of their brains had decided to close down, the part that controlled motivation. They had a fancy name for it, but however it was termed it amounted to the same thing: they were zombies. Only one thing seemed to stir them, one thing that had them all staring at the windows of their wards, rooms or cells: the coming of night. They all welcomed the darkness. And that worried Peck more than anything, because it gave substance to Kulek's theory.

The other matter that concerned Peck almost as much was the fact that over seven hundred people had been reported missing, most of them part of the crowd that had run amok at the football match. His chair scraped noisily against the floor as he pushed it back. He straightened his tie and began to roll down his sleeves as he walked to the window once more. He dragged on the cigarette, deep, sharp breaths, wanting to finish it before he went to see the Deputy Commissioner. Seven hundred! He gazed down at the slow-moving traffic once more. Where the hell could seven hundred people disappear to?

'Gorn, out of it!' Duff aimed part of a crumbled brick at the creature caught in the beam from the lamp fastened to his safety helmet. The rat scuttled from the narrow ledge running alongside the sewer channel and plopped into the foul-smelling water. It vanished into the darkness ahead.

Duff turned to his companions and said, 'Watch yourselves along here. It's part of the old network bit dodgy.'

The man immediately behind him wrinkled his nose against the heavy nitrous smell in the sewer, cursing the bright spark at the GLC who had thought up this unpleasant little assignment for him. There was a growing concern over the decaying state of the major cities' sewer networks and inspections were being hurriedly carried out to see if what was happening in Manchester could happen elsewhere. Huge holes had appeared in the busy roads in the northern town, holes big enough for a bus to drop through, caused by the collapse of the underground walls. The danger had been coming for years, but it was something out of the public eye and therefore something that could be put off to a later date. Now the worry was that it would soon be very much in the eyes of the public as cracks and holes appeared in the streets; in their noses too, as the stench wafted upwards. Berkeley, the lucky man in his department chosen to study this section of London's sewer network, shivered in the damp air and had visions of the whole city collapsing inwards into the slimy catacombs beneath. So long as he wasn't down here when it happened he didn't give a damn.

'All right, Mr Berkeley?'

He shielded his eyes against the glare of Duff's headlamp. 'Yes, let's get on with it. You say there's a section ahead that's particularly bad?'

'Last time I had a look at it. That was about two years ago.'

Wonderful, Berkeley thought. 'Lead on,' he said.

There were three men in the inspection team: Charlie Duff, senior repairs foreman for the water authority, Geoffrey Berkeley from the ministry, Terry Colt, assistant to the foreman. They were forced to stoop as they moved along the old tunnel and Berkeley tried to touch the fungus-covered walls as little as possible. His foot slipped at one stage and his leg disappeared up to the knee into the murky waters flowing beside them.

Terry Colt grinned and reached down to grasp the man's elbow, saying jovially, 'Slippery, innit?'

'Be all right in a minute, Mr Berkeley,' Duff said, also grinning. 'Tunnel widens out up ahead. Just have a look at this brickwork.'

He reached up and prodded the ceiling with a spiked metal bar he always carried when inspecting the sewers. Loose cement and brickwork crumbled away and plopped down into the centre channel.

'I see what you mean,' said Berkeley, shining his torch upwards. 'Doesn't look too good, does it?'

Duff grunted his reply and moved further along, poking the ceiling as he went. Suddenly a small section of brickwork came away completely causing Berkeley to cry out in alarm.

Duff merely stared up at the damage, shaking his head and mumbling to himself at the same time.

'I suggest you are less forceful with your probing, Duff,' Berkeley said, his heart pounding wildly. This job was unpleasant enough without adding danger to it. 'We don't want the whole roof down on top of us, do we?'

Duff was still grumbling to himself, his torch beam weaving from side to side as he shook his head. 'All these old tunnels are the same, you know,' he finally said to Berkeley. 'It's gonna cost millions to put them right. Solid enough when they were built, but all that traffic up there over the years, all those bleedin' juggernauts, all those buildings goin' up . . . People who built these never dreamed they'd have to bear such a load. Never thought they'd have to carry so much shit, either.'

Berkeley wiped his slime-covered hands on his overalls. 'Fortunately, that's not my problem. I only have to submit a report.'

'Oh yeah?' said Terry from behind. 'An' who d'you think pays for it, then? Only comes out of our pockets, dunnit?'

'Shall we move on? It's rather uncomfortable crouching like this.' Berkeley was anxious to get the inspection over with.

Duff turned and made his way further down the tunnel, keeping his experienced eye on the ceiling, looking for breaks and signs of sagging. He saw plenty.

His assistant's voice came from the rear. 'D'you know what? If you got lost down here on your own, Mr Berkeley, you could wander around for years and never find your way out.'

Silly sod, Duff thought, but grinned to himself all the same.

'There's miles and miles of tunnels,' Terry went on. 'You could get from one end of London to the other.'

'Surely you would have to stop at the Thames?' came Berkeley's acid-toned comment.

'Oh yeah, if you could find it,' Terry answered, unabashed. 'You could drown before you did, though. You should see some of these tunnels after heavy rainfall. Some of 'em fill right up. Just think of it, wandering around down here, your lamp battery runnin' down, things scuttlin' around in the dark. I think the rats'd get you in the end. Some big bleeders down here.'

'All right, Terry, leave it out,' said Duff, still grinning. 'It's gettin' wider up here, Mr Berkeley. We'll be able to stand up soon.'

Berkeley wasn't bothered about Terry's remarks he knew the idiot was only trying to intimidate him but he could not help being afraid of the tunnels themselves. He felt a huge pressure bearing down on him, as though the city above were slowly sinking, pressing down on the tunnel roofs, compressing them, squeezing them flat, inch by inch. He would be forced into the slime flowing beneath him, the ceiling pushing him underneath, holding him there until he had to swallow, the filthy waters gushing down his throat, filling him . . .

'There you go!' Terry had spotted the opening ahead where their tunnel joined another.

Berkeley was grateful to step through into it and stand erect. This branch of the sewer network must have measured at least twelve feet across and the domed ceiling was high at its apex. The causeways on each side of the channel were wide enough to walk along comfortably.

'This looks fairly sound,' he commented, his voice ringing out hollowly against the damp curved walls.

'Should be all right along this stretch,' said Duff. 'It's the pipes and small conduits that give us the most problems you'd never believe just what they get blocked up with.'

'No, I meant the brickwork here. It seems solid enough.'

Duff took the lamp from his helmet and flashed it down the tunnel, searching walls and ceiling for breaks. 'Looks okay. There's a storm weir further down. Let's just have a look at it.'

By now, Berkeley had lost all sense of direction, not knowing whether they were heading north, south, east or west. The foreman's assistant was right: it would be easy to get lost in the maze of tunnels. He heard Duff poking at the walls with his metal pike and briefly wondered what would make a man take up this kind of work for a career. Career? Wrong word. His kind didn't have careers they had jobs. And the young man behind surely working in a garage or a factory was better than creeping around in the dark among the city's filth. Still, Berkeley reflected, thank God someone was stupid enough to do it. He peered into smaller openings leading into the main channel as he passed, shuddering at the total blackness they presented, his beam seeming to penetrate very little of their length. He imagined one of the huge rats the foreman's assistant had spoken of lurking there, waiting to pounce on any unfortunate who would unknowingly wander into its lair. Or a giant spider, huge and malformed, glutted on the slithering dark life all around, never before seen by human eyes, its web strung completely across a tunnel, waiting for an unsuspecting victim . . . Or a giant slug, blind and slimy, sucking itself to the lichen-covered walls, living in perpetual darkness, greedy for the next human feast . . .

'Oh my God!'

Duff swung around at the sound of Berkeley's shriek. 'What is it?' he asked, his voice a little higher-pitched than he'd intended.

The ministry man was pointing into a tunnel. 'Something moved in there!' His hand was trembling uncontrollably.

Duff lumbered back to him thinking, silly sod, and peered into the opening.

'You probably saw a rat,' he said reassuringly. 'Lots of 'em down here.'

'No, no, it was much bigger.'

'Trick of the light, probably all it was. It's the imagination that does it, every time. Takes a while to get used to things down here.'

Terry was peering over Berkeley's shoulder into the opening, a big smile on his face. 'They say the sewers are haunted by murder victims whose bodies've been dropped into them to get rid of the evidence,' he brightly informed the ministry man.

'Hold your noise, Terry,' Duff told him. 'Youll be givin' me the bleeding creeps next. Look, Mr Berkeley, there's nothing down there.' The combined lights from their lamps forced back the darkness in the tunnel revealing nothing but green-and-yellow-streaked walls. 'It must have just been your light throwin' a shadow as you passed. Nothin' to worry about.'

'I'm sorry. I'm sure . . .'

Duff had already turned away and was marching onwards, whistling tunelessly to himself. With a last look into the tunnel Berkeley followed, feeling foolish, but nonetheless, still nervous. Stinking bloody job to send him on!

As Terry moved away from the opening he thought just thought he heard a sound from its depths. 'Frightened me bloody self now,' he muttered under his breath.

Berkeley was hurrying to catch up with Duff, finding a small comfort in the man's no-nonsense, down-to-earth attitude, when the foreman came to an abrupt stop, causing the ministry man to bump into him. Duff was pointing his lamp down into the channel at their feet.

'There's something in the water,' he said.

Berkeley looked towards the centre of the wide torch beam. Something was floating lazily along, drifting with the slow-moving current, its progress hindered as it bumped against the raised side of the causeway. It looked like a large sack in the inadequate light.

'What on earth is it?' Berkeley asked curiously.

'It's a body,' said Terry, who had now joined them.

This time Duff knew his assistant wasn't joking. He knelt down on the edge of the causeway and caught the drifting shape with his metal bar as it came close. He pulled and the body turned languidly over in the water. All three men gasped when they saw the white bloated face and wide, staring eyes.

Berkeley found himself bent double against the moist wall, his stomach heaving up and down like a berserk lift. Through his dizziness, he heard Terry say, 'Christ Almighty, there's another one!'

He forced himself to look when he heard a splash. Terry had dropped into the sewer, his thigh-high boots giving him adequate protection against the foul-smelling stream that reached a point just above his knees. He was wading to another floating form on the other side of the channel.

'This one's a woman, I think!' he called back over his shoulder.

'Okay, Terry. Try and lift it on to the causeway,' Duff told him. 'We'll go back and get a team to come down and collect 'em. Mr Berkeley, give us a hand to pull this one out, will you?'

Berkeley shrank back against the wall. 'I . . . I don't think . . .'

'Would you believe it?' It was Terry's voice again. 'There's another one comin' down.'

Duff and Berkeley followed his gaze and saw the shape floating towards them. As it approached they saw it was the body of another woman, a white shape that could have been a nightdress billowing out around her. She was on her back, glazed eyes staring up at the dripping ceiling. Fortunately for Berkeley's stomach, her features did not have the puffiness of the first person they had found.

'Grab her, Terry,' Duff ordered.

The assistant heaved the body he was holding on to the causeway, then waded towards the new one. They watched him as he caught a leg, Duff with his hand grasped around the lapel of the dead man below him, Berkeley wondering at the assistant's lack of nerves. Perhaps the boy was too thick to be bothered.

Terry leaned over the floating woman, his arms going around her waist and reaching to grip her beneath the armpits. What happened next caused the same reaction in both men watching but with different results.

As Terry's head came close to the woman's, two pale-fleshed arms slid from the water and encircled his neck. He screamed as he was pulled down, the scream broken off by a choking gurgling sound as he plunged beneath the water. The oozing fluid became a white-foamed eruption as he struggled to free himself from the deathly grip, but the creature held on to him, dragging him down in her embrace.

Berkeley's mouth dropped open in a soundless scream and he was only dimly aware of the hot excreta that had been jettisoned down his sagging legs. He staggered back against the wall again, the knuckles of both hands filling his open mouth.

Duff's initial shock was instantly followed by a paralysing pain that began in his chest and swiftly travelled up to his neck and arms. A red, blinding mist closed the vision before him and he toppled forward into the water, his heart already given up before he could be drowned.

Berkeley watched as Terry rose from the water just once and he saw the assistant's eyes were staring into the face before him as if in disbelief. The woman hugged him tight, a lover's embrace, and her cracked and bitten lips were smiling. The boy stumbled backwards and the creature fell with him. Berkeley could see the dim glow of his lamp beneath the churning, green slime, but it grew weaker as he watched, the disturbance becoming no more than ripples, the ripples themselves fading after the last confusion of bubbles shot to the surface. Finally the light shrank to nothing.

The water was still.

Until she slowly emerged.

Green slime running from her body.

Looking at him.

Smiling.

Berkeley's shrieks echoed around the dingy caverns, the sound multiplied into a hundred screaming voices. There was more movement further down the tunnel. Figures were stepping from black openings into the main sewer. Others were in the water, wading towards him from the direction in which he and the two workmen had come. He didn't want to look, but he couldn't help himself, the headlamp swinging in a frantic arc towards the approaching figures. A cold, wet hand closed around his ankle.

The woman was standing close to him and he jerked his foot away from the edge of the causeway. Her long damp hair hung like the tails of rats over her face and the white gown she wore was ripped almost down to her pubic area, revealing sagging breasts and a stomach that was strangely distended as though she had not eaten for a long time. He cowered before her in the darkness and wondered if she was dead.

The woman reached for him again and began to clamber on to the causeway.

'No!' He kicked out at her and scrambled away on all fours. 'Leave me alone!'

He staggered to his feet and pushed himself against the wall, scraping lichen off with his back as he moved away. She began to crawl towards him. The others were moving closer.

He fell into an opening behind him and, as he looked for a means of escape, white, shaking hands reached for him from within. He tumbled back into the main tunnel, gasping, whimpering sounds burbling from his lips. He slipped from the causeway and fell headlong into the slow-moving fluid, emerging spluttering and crying, but still running. The water, thick with soilage, clung to his legs as though mud creatures at the bottom were gripping his feet and holding him back. Lifting his knees high, he splashed down the channel, away from the dark figures that followed, away from the woman who held her arms out to hug him. He was conscious of more and more objects bumping into his legs and was afraid to look down, knowing what they were, knowing arms would reach up to drag him down if he did look. The sewer opened up into a huge chamber, the ceiling some thirty or forty feet above him and supported by sturdy iron pillars. The massive weir controlling the flow of water through the sewers stood opposite. But he did not see it. For this was where they were all waiting.

They stood around the edges of the chamber, others in the water itself. More were crammed into the many openings in the circular wall. The water at the bottom of the chamber was full of bodies, several drifting away into various outlets as he watched. His headlamp swung round from face to face and he had the eerie sensation of being in a dark underground cathedral, the black-smeared people choristers awaiting the arrival of the choirmaster. The lamp beam seemed to be growing weaker, the surrounding darkness closing in around it, slowly stifling its brightness. Hundreds of eyes watched him from the shadows and the gaseous fumes from the chamber assailed his nostrils with added force. The stench here was somehow more acrid.

He began to back away from the crowded chamber. But a damp, white hand on his shoulder told him there was nowhere to run.

21.

The cat kept to the shadows, its progress along the rain-freshened street silent and unseen. The rain had stopped, otherwise the cat would still be skulking somewhere under cover. It was an animal that had no owner, one that needed no permanent home; it lived on its own cunning, its own stealth, its own speed. Humans would never pet its kind, nor welcome it into their homes, for it was a scavenger and had the looks of a scavenger. The black fur on its back was sparse, almost bare in places where the cat had come off worse in fights with others of its breed. One ear was just a mangled shape, a stub protruding from its head; the dog that had inflicted the wound could now see only from one eye. Its claws were stunted from too much running on concrete, but were still lethal when fully extended. Its pads were hard, like tough leather. The cat sniffed the damp night air and its eyes, caught in the dull glow of an overhead street-light, were glassy yellow.

It turned into an alleyway and padded towards the dustbins hidden there in the dark doorways. The scent of other night creatures was strong in its nose. The cat recognized most of the individual smells, some friendly, others producing a new sharpness to its already acute senses. The furtive, sharp-nosed, long-tailed creatures had been here, a cowardly enemy that would always choose to run rather than fight. They were gone now. Its own kind had been there earlier, but they, too were gone.

The cat sniffed its way through the litter on the ground, then leapt on top of a dustbin, disappointed that its lid was sealed tight. The lid of the next dustbin was at a slight angle and the smell of corrupting food wafted through the narrow, new-moon gap. The cat poked its nose inquisitively into the opening, poking a paw through to tug at the loose paper and rubble at the top. The lid moved a little under the cat's insistent probing, then even more when the creature pushed first its head then its shoulders through the widening gap. The metal lid finally slid gratingly across the rim of the dustbin and landed with a loud clatter on the ground. The cat fled, alarmed by the noise of its own making.

It paused at the entrance to the alley, its one good ear pricked for unfriendly sounds, nose held high and twitching for hostile scents. The animal stiffened when it detected the slight acrid smell in the air and the sparse hairs on its back began to bristle. As its fellow creatures had been only minutes before, the cat became aware of a strange presence that somehow belonged to man, yet wasn't man. It crept over the paralysed cat like a crawling thing, a shadow that mixed with the other shadows. The terrified creature bared its teeth and hissed. Something was moving in the middle of the glistening wet road.

The cat arched its back, every hair on its body stiff and erect, mouth wide in a hissing snarl. It spat its defiance, afraid though it was, and its eyes narrowed, full of venom. The street-lights had dimmed as though a mist had drifted across them and the pavements no longer offered any reflections in their wetness. A heavy, metallic sound came from the road's centre as the manhole cover shuddered, then began to rise. It was pushed higher, one side resting on its base, and something black began to emerge. The cat recognized the shape that came over the edge of the hole. It knew it was a human hand. Yet instinctively, it knew the hand did not belong to a human.

The cat hissed once more, then fled, for some reason heading for the lights rather than the shadows.

The three youths waited in the weather-battered shelter on the common. Two were white, one was black. They puffed on cigarettes and jiggled their knees to keep out the cold.