Edgar woke in a seat. The bedcovers were a tangled mess and the other side was empty. He slogged through bathing and dressing and went to the kitchen feeling quite desperate for a cup of strong tea. He fleetingly considered spiking the tea with brandy, but nixed that idea as soon as it formed. Coppers who started taking strong drink for breakfast soon ended up like poor Graves: calling in with 'viruses' and showing up with their heads barely attached to their bodies. Fay was fully dressed and had one long leg swinging over the other as she drank coffee and read the morning's paper.

"You look like hell," she said. "You've had nightmares again, haven't you?"

Edgar flushed slightly. It was odd to have someone worry about him. It had been a long time, since anyone had. "Yeah," he muttered. He took some coffee instead of tea since she had already brewed it. It was hot and strong and bitter and cleared the lingering mists from his brain.
"Don't you ever have bad dreams, Fay?" he asked.

She looked thoughtfully at him. Her blue eyes were open and candid and her face was serene. "Not since I was little," she answered. "I used to dream Great-aunt Matilda's ghosts were coming after me. Only they were as silly and batty and harmless as she is. So I stopped being scared of them and stopped having nightmares."

Edgar smiled. "I think your Great-aunt Matilda sounds quite adorable."

"Oh, go on, Edgar," Fay said, "You are so much the rationalist and so tidy and so determinedly conventional. I think you do this job just because the puzzle offends you. And you're so bloody good at it because you just can't rest until you've got every bit of the puzzle answered and entered the answers in your tidy little boxes on your case charts."

"That doesn't mean I don't appreciate people who are eccentric, you know."

"Hmm ... maybe. You have unsuspected depths, Edgar, and secrets from everyone. Even from me. And I'm nearly as fanatic as you are about wanting to know every answer and every secret there is." Fay smiled at him. Her cat's eyes were hypnotic and enchanting. "But I don't mind if you don't tell me everything right away," she added. "It adds to the fun, pulling things out of you. Besides, after you saved my life two times now, I think you deserve a little slack. But only a little."

"You returned the favor, my dear, the first time out. If you hadn't pulled your gun on Warren Leather-vest, he would probably have twisted my neck and then finished off with yours," Edgar replied.

"Do you think that man in the hood was him? The one that did the disappearing act?"

"I don't know," Edgar answered. "He seemed about the right size, but I couldn't tell with his face and head covered like that."Edgar drank the rest of his coffee and grabbed his coat. Fay followed suit and they dusted off the snow from his Miata in companionable silence.

"You know," Fay said, "that today is going to be just as miserable as yesterday. We'll go in and try to question the gang again, and none of them will talk because they're terrified of being offed just like our poor uniform guy was. And Masters is going to breathe down our rears and tell us ad nauseum that there's no such thing as magic and we'd better figure out what this weapon was that was used on him. And then he'll lecture us again for blowing the take down and letting the masked avenger get away because he's probably our ringleader, even though that's the one piece of info every thug there confirms, that he wasn't."

"Charming, isn't it?" Edgar responded. He took advantage of a stop in traffic to eye her narrowly. "I thought you agree quite firmly with Masters on all of this."

"Well, of course, I agree with Masters. About the magic part anyway," she said. "I bet the Uniform had a bad heart or something. But we did not do anything wrong in the takedown and Masters knows it. We had twenty Uniforms with guns there for a reason. Because this is the worst, murdering group of a gang London has seen since the days of my unfortunate namesakes."

"Quite," Edgar said. "And the Krays even pretended to be ordinary business men, even though we knew better, but couldn't prove it."

Edgar knew something was wrong the instant the secretary handed him the note with isntructions from Masters to come to the conference room immediately. The whole department was acting out of kilter. People were whispering across their cubicles and every so often, one would stop to say, "Bones and Kray. Aren't you the lucky ones."

But no one would elaborate and they had both caught the fever of alarm that swept through, as if it were some noxious wind, invisibly contaminating all.

"Good! You're here!" Masters said as they entered the conference room. There were porcelain mugs set out. The ones that Masters used only for the bigwigs, and Edgar were alarmed to see that the bigwigs were, in fact, there. Each place had a notepad and pen set at the ready and Masters had begun talking before Edgar had struggled out of his wool coat.

"Sir Graham, Chief Superintendent, Colonel Barkely, this is Inspector Edgar Bones and Detective Sergeant Fay Kray. They are the lead officers now assigned to this gang warfare case, and they will be able to answer questions for you if anyone can. Inspector Bones and Sergeant Kray coordinated the arrests of the gang members and they have been diligently interrogating the lot of them all week since." Masters paused, and having gotten that little bit of puffery in for his department, gave them the news that Edgar knew had been simmering behind the alarm. "Yesterday, at some time unknown, our prison security was breached and there was a major attack upon our system," Masters said.

"There's been a breakout?" Sir Graham asked.

"Worse than that," Masters said grimly. "Every one of the suspected gang members we had incarcerated was killed. And the guard on their cell block as well. Every one of them was found dead this morning, and we don't know how or when the attack occurred." Edgar and Fay looked at each other. He saw she was about to speak, and motioned for her to be quiet. Let the bigwigs have their say, he thought coldly, through the shock. It was more shocking to him when he thought about it, that the news wasn't as big of a surprise as it ought to have been.

"How were they killed?" Sir Graham asked.

"We don't know yet. We suspect some kind of poison gas may have been pumped through the ventilation system, or perhaps the food was poisoned. None of the dead men have physical injuries. But every one of them is dead. Their hearts just stopped. We'll have to wait for the tox screening to get our answers as to the exact method."

Sir Graham turned to Edgar and Fay and said, "Do you have any suggestions, Inspector, Sergeant? Any ideas whatsoever? You're the ones working this case. You know this villain as well as anyone."

Edgar said warily, "I know that he's as evil a villain as anyone we've seen. And I know that he thinks nothing of killing or torturing if it suits his purposes. We saw that in that other killing at the Black Jack tavern. One of their lot literally carved the ganglord's sign on his victim's body. I suspect that we're dealing with a psychopath, an organized one at the moment. But one who's been killing for a very long time. And I think that he's gone into the actual business of crime quite recently. Or we'd have heard of him before now."

"That is nasty," Sir Graham said. "But does it warrant calling in SAS or Special Forces to deal with it?"

"Is that what you're thinking of," Fay asked.

"Not if I can help it," Sir Graham answered. "I'd like to think that our officers at the Yard are more than competent to handle anything. And Masters here has good things to say of you. Do you think you can handle this one? It's going to take a delicate hand and a closed mouth to bring this off." Edgar decided that truthfulness was more important at this point than his immediate promotion.

"Sir Graham, I'm not sure that we shouldn't advise the Home Office of this business and at least have them at standby in case things blow up further. From the looks of things, this fellow is creating for himself a private army by combining all of the independent gangs that were previously rivals. And he simply exterminates the ones that won't join."

"Then you'll have to do some fancy dancing to bring him in, Inspector Bones. But I want this fellow caught by us, if possible. I want him dead to rights, with every ounce of evidence locked down, so we can put him away and throw away the key."

"Hear, hear," Masters said.

"What about these rumors of magic?" Colonel Barkley asked. "The guard on that cell-block told me the prisoners were having these odd conversations. They were terrified they'd be got with some black spell."

"Just one more clever means of intimidation," Masters said. "Most of these lot aren't all that bright. He's clever, this psycho, plays on their fears, creates little dramas, wears a costume right out of a Halloween party, and they fall for it. Maybe," Masters added, "he's used some form of hypnosis. Maybe he's got them programed to drop dead all by themselves out of fear, just at the right stimulus. Sort of like a Manchurian Candidate kind of scenario."

"Now that is a bit of creative thinking," Sir Graham said. "I think we can leave it to you, Masters, and your officers here. And I'll take it under advisement that you've suggested we call on Special Forces if things blow open on the street itself." He added with a grim attempt at humor, "The government's been saved the trouble of actually prosecuting this lot. It's a rather generous helping hand this fellow's given us."

Edgar thought, he's just destroyed every witness we had. And, he thought, they'll never believe the truth, if it is what I suspect. In the deepest recesses of his mind, he prayed, please God, don't let it be what I think it is.