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- clearly the church group that Dr Khalil had mentioned.  There were smaller words beneath in gaudily elaborate lettering.  Carla had to cross the road to read them.
     
    Thy way is in the sea, and thy path in the great waters, and thy footsteps are not known.
     
    Carla recognised the line instantly, even without wanting to.  Psalm 77.  A favourite of her mother, who would recite it at breakfast time whenever the rent was due.  Even as a child, Carla had found it rather a plaintive and obsequious verse.
     
    She forced her mind back to the matter at hand.  The makeshift church might be a good place to get information if she could find whoever was in charge - though there was no sound or sign of life at that moment.  She considered trying the door but decided against it.  It was early in the morning; there wasn’t likely to be anybody answering anyway.
     
    With a final glance up at the security camera, Carla moved on.  The rain had grown from a light drizzle to a steady shower and was growing in intensity every second.  She quickened her pace and fished a knitted, woollen hat out of her coat pocket.  Wearing it would probably do her hairstyle no more harm than the rain otherwise would.  Even so, within a hundred paces the water had begun to soak through the wool.  She resolved to look for shelter until the downpour passed.
     
    The rough-looking bar on the corner had not been open when she passed it with Dr Khalil, so there seemed little point in heading back to it now.  Nor was there any obvious refuge ahead of her.  There was, however, a collapsed warehouse to her left.  The ground was cluttered with broken bricks and chunks of mortar that had not been cleared, but fifty or sixty feet of graffiti-garnished wall was still intact, and in the far corner a remnant of the ground-floor ceiling still offered the prospect of shelter.
     
    Carla picked her way warily through the wreckage of the wall that had abutted the road, and trotted gingerly through the debris field beyond.  It was only when she reached the far corner that she noticed the child.
     
    He was squatting by a pile of bricks with his arms wrapped around his knees, facing the vandalised wall and rocking slowly on his haunches.  His face was hidden beneath the hood of a parka.  A seam on the back of the coat had torn, as had the knee of his grey trousers. The sole of one of his scuffed and muddy trainers was coming away too.  With a large and grubby bandage dressing his left hand, he looked like a poster child for inner city deprivation.  He didn’t acknowledge Carla at all.
     
    She tried to get his attention.  “Hello?  Are you alright there?” 
     
    The boy stopped rocking, but remained visibly tense, ready to spring up.  “Look, why don’t you come under this bit of roof, out of the rain?  You’ll get soaked.”
     
    The boy gave a violent shudder, then leapt to his feet.  Something fell from his hand, hitting the concrete floor with a metallic clatter, and then he was sprinting away, the loose sole of his trainer slapping like an applauding sealion with each step he took. 
     
    Carla called after him – “Wait, you don’t have to” – but before she could finish the sentence he had reached the road and disappeared around a corner, his footsteps lost in the wind and the rain.
     
    Carla rolled her eyes and gave an exasperated sigh.  Apparently, Innsmouth folk learned their mistrust of strangers at a young age.  What he thought she might do to him that would be worse than sitting, alone, in a ruined building during a cloudburst, she couldn’t imagine.
     
    Her eye was caught by a dull, oblong object on the ground where the boy had been sitting.  What had he dropped?  She squinted, trying to identify it through the curtain of water dripping from the edge of the ceiling above her.  Some piece of debris?  A metal fixture of some kind?  In the end she decided that she was sufficiently intrigued to justify a few seconds