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human. And because of that, while a maker works, something of that must flow into us, and fills that hole the taints have eating away inside them. I mean, a statue of Lord Kitchener ain’t Lord Kitchener, but he’s—well, he’s what the artist thought and knew about Lord Kitchener. It’s like he’s got a spark of Kitchener’s spirit in him. He’s the spirit and image of Lord Kitchener. The spit and image if you like. That make sense?”
    George needed to think before he answered. He knew about sculptors. He remembered talk about “putting something of yourself” into things, other talk of things “coming alive beneath your hands.” He felt the plas-ticene in his pocket. He nodded slowly.
    “So who are you?”
    “I’m the Gunner. No one special. Just a soldier. From the Great War. The only other name I got’s the name of the man what made me. Just like you got the name of the man what made you. Whatever your name is …”
    “Chapman. I’m George Chapman.”
    “I’m Jagger. My maker was Charles Sargeant Jagger. So I’m a Jagger. You got a big family?”
    “No.”
    “I got a few. There’s Jaggers all over London. Jagger did well out of the war. People liked what he done, making us look like heroes, but nothing crowing about it. Made us look like men who knew about mud and dying first, then made us look like heroes after. For them that had lost sons and husbands, we looked like the men they wanted to remember them as, the men they hoped they’d become before the bloody generals sent them out to be butchered.”
    “So I call you Jagger?”
    The Gunner had gone still and was looking up.
    “Wh—”
    The Gunner looked at him and held a finger to his lips.
    “Quiet as mouse.”
    He eased his revolver from the holster.
    “Cat’s on the roof.”

C HAPTER E IGHT
    The Cat on the Roof
    T he parking garage had a roof made of concrete reinforced with a grid of metal rods. It was about two feet thick. Above that was eight feet of earth, thick and sticky, like modeling clay. The earth was reinforced by its own web of tree roots, criss-crossing over and under themselves as each tree sent feelers out into the clay in a microscopically slow explosion, searching for water and food. This network was itself laced with tunnels made by earthworms burrowing blindly beneath the park as they went about their business. And on top of all this was the grass—white roots in the clay, green shoots above it, reaching into the air, trying to breathe something clean through the exhaust fumes from the sea of traffic endlessly growling past on Park Lane. In the three inches of grass that topped the clay was a tiny world of insects going about their daily grind as thoughtlessly and relentlessly as the human inhabitants of the city around them. There were ants, there were ladybirds—and for a moment there was a beetle.
    Edie saw it quite clearly, its shiny black back reflecting the orange glow from the streetlights as it moved slowly from a discarded cigarette packet toward a pile of vomit. She knew the little pyramid in the grass was vomit because she could smell it. She could smell it better than she would have liked because her nose was on the ground like the rest of her, splayed beneath a bush, hardly breathing. She knew the beetle was a beetle—but wasn’t anymore—because she saw the gargoyle land three feet in front of her, and she saw its stone claw plash into the clay beneath.
    Edie edged farther back into the shadows under the bush, trying to move as imperceptibly and silently as the tree roots beneath her. In her left hand was a small glass disk, glowing blue between her fingers. It was also hot. She slipped it in her pocket without taking her eye off the stone claw four feet in front of her nose. She didn’t need a warning glass anymore. The thing was here. It was much too here for comfort.
    It was a limestone gargoyle with the face of a snarling cat and the horns of a small devil. It had wings, but no arms, and long