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in the fashionable colossal style. Black towers ringed the field. Although it had been renovated completely with the Yggdrasil hook-up, the place still carried its ancient associations. Susan thought of
The Hound of the Baskervilles
and fugitives alone on the wetland, cringing in holes while tracker dogs pulled at their leashes, terrified now more of the freedom of the bottomless mires than the captivity of stone blocks and iron bars.
    ‘End of the skip,’ said Juliet. ‘Princetown Jail.’

5
    M rs Quick’s little boy Richard had problems.
    I knew how the picture would look to Poverty Row’s finest. I could see the catalogue description: slightly damaged but beautifully framed. In their gumshoes, I’d think the same. When you find a dead racketeer in an apartment with a private detective who’s been hired to kill him, you don’t waste time looking for superfluous suspects. Or a murder weapon, or truth and justice. Said detective gets a nice little fall, two lungfuls of cyanide smoke, or a short walk with a chair at the end of it.
    My head still hurt, and the sirens – getting louder by the second – weren’t helping. The atmosphere in the penthouse had never been particularly healthy, but I had the impression it would be getting positively cancerous within a minute or two. The sirens cut out. I heard car doors being opened and the unmistakable sound of policemen falling over themselves in their haste to get to a crime scene before the
Inquirer.
    I took one last look at the Night Mayor, spat on his face, and left the penthouse. The landing was empty except for the statue of some dog-headed Ancient Egyptian, but the creeping arrow indicator above the elevator doors told me someone was due directly. I hit the stairs, and got down a flight or two when I heard someone coming up. Someone overweight and in uniform. I plunged through a set of double doors, and crouched down low behind them in the near-total darkness, holding the handles to prevent give-away swinging. My tracks in the dirt would mark my path eventually, but I was hoping the cop on the stair detail would be too concerned with heaving his bulk up to the top of the shop to cast his flashlight about in an orderly, police-procedural manner.
    I heard the cop waddle past, muttering under his breath. Whoever was in charge obviously had it in for him. Me, I’d have sent the youngest, fittest guy on the squad up the stairs, but the law-enforcement mastermind I was up against obviously favoured spite over good police work. That might be worth knowing.
    Then my heart stopped. I couldn’t hear the cop moving any more but I could hear his very loud and asthmatic breathing, and I could dimly see myself. He had stopped on the landing after all, and his flashlight was shining through the grime-and-chickenwire windows. Officer Tubs put his face near the window, lit from below like the boogeyman.
    I was caught.
    And I had to keep myself from laughing out loud. I recognised the man in uniform, and knew how terrible I would feel when the
Inquirer
ran a headline lionising the dedicated policeman who had finally brought the killer in. Another Fine Mess.
    Then the light moved. Officer Hardy had just been taking a rest. He stumbled up the next flight, and I was in comfortable darkness again. A darkness relieved only by a few shafts of moonlight through inadequately shuttered windows. That’s another anomaly of the City; heavy cloud cover outside, but moonlight indoors. You get used to it. I brushed dust off my knees, and looked around for a way out or somewhere to hide. I assumed the police had enough smarts to post a man outside to watch the fire escapes.
    The corridor revealed that the Monogram was a haven for just-going-out-of-business businesses. The glass-fronted doors told me this floor had at one time supported such deadbeats as Chas. Halton, Bail Bondsman, Marcel Dalio, Tattooist, and Henry Hull DDS – Painless Dentist and Plastic Surgeon (No Questions Asked). There was