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time.”
    No doubt Mallory did the same thing every Monday morning at precisely the same time.
    Garrett followed him up the stairs to the factory. Morning light gleamed through the dusty windows, casting a grayish pall over the enormous room, and it was frigidly cold up here. Somewhere in the eaves a pigeon fluttered and cooed, frantically searching for a way out. Huge steel cables hung from the ceiling, suspending the walkways that overlooked the main room and led to the offices upstairs.
    A dark figure caught his attention: Perry. Dressed in her tight black leathers, she almost blended into the shadows that swallowed up the walkways above. The only thing that caught his eye was the pale oval of her face, almost as familiar to him as his own. She paused here and there as if examining the area. Scenting the air, he knew. Perry could track a man to the London borough where he lived, purely by the scent trail he left.
    “All the factories shared the mess hall outside,” Mallory explained. “But there were a gas stove and kettle in Mr. Sykes’s office. He’s the overseer.”
    Garrett tore his gaze away from her. Focus . “But he’s not here?”
    “Ah, well. Ain’t his practice to be here till midday or thereabouts. I sent word to his house, but ain’t heard back yet.”
    “Sleeping off a soused head?”
    Mallory looked relieved. “Something like that, I’d expect.”
    Garrett questioned Mallory thoroughly until they finally found themselves maneuvering from the enormous row of machines toward the bodies.
    This was where Garrett differed from Lynch. He liked to take a man’s measure, to hear the story from witnesses before he sought out the bodies. Lynch, however, took his evidence in scientific facts and autopsies. Lynch could guess what type of man had the means of doing something like this, but he lacked the ability to converse with people easily. Garrett knew people inside and out. He could put them at ease with a few well-placed words, and he listened. People liked to talk about themselves, given an attentive audience.
    Both methods worked and Garrett stuck with what he knew. He wasn’t Lynch. He could never be Lynch. And the Nighthawks and the Council would just have to get used to that.
    By the time they came upon the bodies, Mallory had relaxed enough to forget his words were being recorded as he spilled details of the ghost he’d seen. “Way up on them ramparts, where your Nighthawk’s standing . ’Twere a woman, sir. I could see right through her, and she gleamed fair pale…”
    Mallory stopped in his tracks as soon as he saw the pair of bodies, and this time he couldn’t stop himself from making the sign of the cross.
    Two of the Nighthawks, Faber and Scoresby, had secured the area and Scoresby was setting up the mechanical shutter camera with Barrons looking on in curiosity. Dr. Gibson would be arriving soon to make his own analysis and take the bodies away for autopsy.
    No help for it. Garrett looked at the bodies. Pale and naked, their fingers tangling, almost as if reaching for each other. One was a brunette, her dark curls covering her features. The other had long, blond hair with ringlets framing her heart-shaped face.
    “Poor wee lasses,” Mallory muttered, working his cap in his hands. “Can’t think what they were doing here at night.”
    Garrett knelt down and, using a stylus, lifted one of the girl’s stiffening arms. Dark stitches in her skin showed where deep cuts had been made to her chest. Almost as though something had been removed inside, then the skin replaced. But little blood spatter around her. He felt her throat, but the skin was quite cold and cadaveric rigidity had begun to set in. Dr. Gibson would no doubt discover more.
    “Found anything?” Perry asked, appearing on quiet feet. He could never work out how she did that, as her boots had small heels on them.
    “This one was already dead,” Garrett murmured. “Look at the bruising on the bottom of her arm—and body.