Christopher Fowler - Disturbia

'Tyburn tree…'

'It's nothing to do with Tyburn! I spoke to Doctor Masters, he was giving you the full story when you jumped to conclusions and cut him short. Hang on.' She pressed a hand against her chest, drawing breath. 'It's recorded that Cromwell and the others were hung up here until sunset, then beheaded. Their remains were supposedly chucked into a pit under the gallows, and their heads were stuck on poles on the roof of Westminster Hall. But Masters reckons it's a trick question. He says that the night before the bodies were taken to Tyburn they were kept at the Red Lion Inn in Holborn, and that a "Tyburn" can mean any place of execution.'

'So they may not have come here?'

'Think about it. Why would they have been dragged east to Holborn when this Tyburn lies to the north-west of Westminster? There were other Tyburns, one where Centre-point now stands, and another in Fetter Lane. The bodies were kept at Red Lion Square and here's the important part – there used to be an obelisk with your Latin inscription on it, standing in a paddock near the square.'

'So the last lines of the riddle refer to what, their ghosts?'

'They've been seen through the centuries, walking diagonally across the square deep in conversation, which is weird because their heads weren't buried there with them.'

… They have no mouths but still must speak…

'Do you have any money on you? I'm nearly out. I'll pay you back if I get out of this alive.'

Pam dug in her shoulder bag. 'I just got paid. Let me come with you, Vince.'

'Absolutely not. I won't be responsible for something bad happening to you. You can't risk being seen with me.'

Pam stopped and stared at him awkwardly. 'You are sure about all of this, aren't you?'

'What do you mean?'

'I mean you're sure you really saw someone – killed?'

'Well for God's sake you don't think I'm making it all up, do you?'

'Well no, it's just that -'

Vince tore the riddle-page from his jacket and waved it in front of Pam's alarmed eyes. 'You think I sat at home writing these damned things out, do you?' He became aware that he was holding a scrap of paper no bigger than a postage stamp. The rest had fallen to pieces in his pocket. Pam had edged out into the street and was now standing within range of the traffic cameras. 'Get back in here!'

'No, let's test out your theory.' She looked about at the passing traffic, then walked towards the nearest intersection. 'Let's see if we can make this secret society show itself.'

She really didn't believe in any of it, not deep down. His best friend didn't believe him. Perhaps it was better this way. Thank God she hadn't brought Louie with her; they would really have stood out in a crowd.

The moment Pam's back was turned, he slipped from the safety of the store entrance and ran off down the street. He hated to do it to her, but by the time she missed him he wanted to have vanished from her sight.

ARTHUR BRYANT halted in the middle of Battersea Bridge and gripped the handle of his umbrella tightly as the wind tried to snatch it away. He looked along the line of the river, but his vision was obscured by squalls of gale-driven rain and sleet. The city was well-protected from the elements, but here above the Thames, away from the sheltering mansion blocks, a man could catch pneumonia. Why Harold Masters had persuaded him to move their monthly meetings a week forward wasn't entirely clear. The doctor had mumbled something about 'being on hand' to help a friend in trouble, and had promised to call the others, so Bryant had set off to visit his friend unmindful of the late hour. Which was fine by him, because after all, they were jokingly known as the Insomnia Squad.

The elderly detective was not enjoying his sabbatical one bit. His partner John May was busy making a fool of himself over a woman in a closed-for-the-season hotel somewhere in the Greek islands, and would not be back until the new year arrived or his passion departed. The damage caused by the fire that had virtually destroyed their offices six weeks earlier was supposed to have been fully repaired by now, but thanks to a remarkable number of malingering carpenters and decorators claiming that they couldn't get the parts, their vans had broken down in Wandsworth, their wives had left them and so on, the work had yet to be finished. May had swanned off leaving his partner in an office without a roof, and so far he had not even sent a postcard detailing his absurd affair with the former Miss Ghana, or somewhere like that, who was young enough to be his niece. It really wasn't good enough. May knew what he was like when he couldn't work, how wound up he became. Not even a phone call.

So when Harold Masters had called twenty minutes ago, Bryant had jumped at the chance to get out of his flat and start solving something. 'I think you'll be intrigued by this,' the doctor had told him, whetting his appetite. What could he have meant? Still, it would help to find a cab right now. What did they all do in the rain, melt away?

Damn and blast, thought Bryant, setting off with renewed vigour, I must be half-mad to come out in weather like this. And of course, there were many in the metropolitan force who believed he was.

There was someone walking behind her, she was sure of it. There had been for the past five minutes or so. Pam quickened her pace, cutting down into Bond Street and checking the reflections from the street in each window she passed. There were three people following her route, a woman laden with Christmas shopping bags, a young Asian man in a track suit, an older man in a long black raincoat. None of them seemed to be paying her special attention. Releasing a cautious breath of relief, Pam doubled back to the tube station. She was furious with Vince for running off and leaving her, but she had decided to go to Red Lion Square and keep a watchful eye on him anyway. Display her initiative. Show some leadership qualities. Besides, she was curious to see if any members of this mythical League would put in an appearance.

Vince studied the buildings as he passed, endless terraces of Victorian homes, carved into tiers of offices. It was close to midnight now, but even at this late hour there were a few lights in the windows, legal and medical secretaries still at their desks, chatting on phones, talking to colleagues. These days a lot of people felt that they could only get their work into some kind of manageable shape by waiting until their switchboards had closed for the night. Pleasant, ordinary people, seated in cream-coloured rooms with great closed fireplaces, toiling quietly, sipping coffee, as unapproachable as if he was viewing them from a telescope a thousand miles away.

He walked through Queen Square, where a few doctors, nurses and students would still pass each other through the night on their way to Great Ormond Street Hospital, and the great dark weight of London surrounded him. Layers of history compressed like geological formations were here beneath his feet, ancient countryside lying in disguise. These roads were older than history, their paths twisting to preserve routes around long-dried marshes, their walls following the borderlines of land once defined by hedgerows. A two-thousand-year-old city that had stood in darkness for all but the last century. So many murderous deeds had occurred here beneath the heavy cloak of night, and yet he felt protected, as though the metropolis would ultimately prove itself to be on his side.

The air was sharper here than in the traffic-choked West End. Red Lion Square stood dark and empty before him, the bare branches of its trees entwined in symbiotic dependency. The new buildings stuck out among the old, square and plain, of lighter brick. They marked the sites of the Blitz's bombs more clearly than if the land had been left razed.