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whom?"
"Who knows? There's nothing on the books connected with her name, here, in
Canada, or in the U.K. She just doesn't want to talk to us, and so far we
haven't been able to find someone in the community who will. We'll keep
trying, of course."
"Good luck. I, on the other hand, have had an interesting time." She took the
photocopies out of her coat pocket and handed them over the back of the pew.
"Why don't you two take a look at what I've written first? Save me going over
it twice."
Glen turned his back to her and unfolded the sheets. Ana leaned back and
closed her eyes. She should have had something to eat back in Sedona, she
thought; it might have helped boost her blood sugar. She would stop off and
get a large coffee before driving back, and buy something to eat then. Maybe
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that café next to the bookstore. Which reminded her, she had to pick up the
Lewis Carroll book for Dulcie.
Pages rustled in front of her as Glen passed each one over to his assistant.
The chapel was cold and a far cry from the old wooden building where she
sometimes went with Antony Makepeace and his wife, Maria, for the Quaker
services that passed for worship. Ana's own rather more complicated
relationship with God was personal, both spiritual and intellectual, with
little room for the formal and liturgical. However, this place was too
cerebral even for her.
Glen finished reading. She heard him shift on the seat, imagined his elbow
coming over the back of the pew, felt him looking at her, but she did not
move. She had gone as lethargic as a snake in winter, and wondered idly if she
looked as decrepit as she felt.
"Alchemy," Glen mused.
" 'S a funny old world, ain't it?" she replied, and opened her eyes to find
him looking at her worriedly.
"Are you really feeling okay?"
"Ah, Glen, it's a young woman's game. Time to give it over to young Rainbow,
here."
Curious, she thought, how it was only during these odd moments in the course
of an investigation that she actually liked Glen McCarthy. They smiled into
each other's eyes in brief but perfect understanding, and then she pulled
herself upright and leaned forward, speaking quietly.
"I'd swear that Steven truly believes he created gold, but I know he also
uses trickery to make his initiates think they're doing the same thing, only
with silver."
"Why do you say that?"
"I saw the strings and mirrors. Or in this case, the wax."
"Would you say he thinks he's encouraging lesser minds?" Glen wondered. "Or
just stringing along the marks?"
"Maybe a little of each. But he himself believes it is possible, that he and
others have actually made silver and gold. That's how I read him, anyway."
He looked down at his knee and nodded. Rayne tapped the photocopied pages
straight and folded them, but did not look around. Ana felt the tug of dread
pulling at the edges of her mind, and sighed. "Okay, Glen, what's going on?
Why have you brought your assistant all the way out here instead of using the
man I met in Prescott, and why are you bugging the phones? Is it this thing
with the two children in England?"
"I don't know what the hell's going on in England. As you know, communication
with foreign police departments isn't always what one might wish, and in
England something like this falls into the spaces between departments even
more than it does here. So far it's just the local Somerset police involved,
and I don't have any personal contacts on that force." He shook his head: "No,
the problem's in Japan. A kid in the Yokohama Change center died about three
weeks ago. You probably don't want to know his name?"
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"Not unless I have to."
"I don't think so. Anyway, we just found out about it on Monday and had the
autopsy report faxed over and translated. They're treating it as a mugging he
was a mass of bruises, found dumped by the roadside."
Ana heard the emphasis on "they". "You don't agree that he was mugged."
"All the boy's bruises had diffuse edges no sharp-edged marks such as you'd
expect to find after someone was struck with, say, a bat or a board or kicked
by a shoe. Most of the bruises were along the sides and back of his upper
torso and head, with a concentration on his shoulders. He may have been naked
when the injuries occurred, because there were no marks on the skin from
fabric or seams or buttons. His legs were not bruised other than his hips and
knees, but his feet were badly damaged he had three broken bones in his left
foot. No defense marks on his arms, but all the fingernails on both hands were
broken and bloody. Actual cause of death was a cerebral hemorrhage caused by
the blows to the head."
Ana did not hear the final sentence. The image of those destroyed
fingernails, the clear picture she had of the Japanese boy clawing at
something, kicking and throwing himself violently and repeatedly at some
smooth, hard surface, rose up inside her and blotted all else out. All the [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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