Page 48 of The Dead Come to Stay

Jo stared down an empty street. They had been following the yellow raincoat for ten minutes. Yellow like Caution, or Slippery

When Wet; it should have been easy to track. It wasn’t. The woman never stopped, rarely slowed and moved with erratic cadence...

almost as if she knew someone followed behind and had every intent of losing them.

Now she had.

Jo leaned against a light post and overlooked Grey’s Monument.

“Gone,” she muttered, lifting her left foot. There had been entirely too much walking all day, and a newborn blister was forming.

Gwilym rolled his shirtsleeves. The evening promised to be cool, but they’d both worked up a sweat in the chase.

“Maybe she went into one of the shops?” he asked. Jo looked at her flagging phone battery and frowned.

“According to GPS, we’ve been heading south and east pretty directly,” she said, showing the blue line of their recent movements.

Gwilym had tucked Aiden’s notebook under his arm and followed along on his own mobile.

“So not as random as it felt,” he said. “She must have a destination in mind. I mean, she might even live around here.”

“But we first saw her in Abington,” Jo protested.

“Honestly, all I saw was a yellow blur. How can we be sure it’s even the same person?”

“It’s her. I saw her face. Also, the coat doesn’t have lapels; you don’t see a priest’s collar on a rain slicker very often,”

Jo said. But there was something more, too, something that assured her even if she couldn’t quite explain it. It felt the same. Both times she’d seen her Jo had the same strange presentiment, the long-shadowed feeling of dread. It wasn’t a

superpower, but pheromones... And according to recent scientific study, it wasn’t even rare. Humans evolved to pick up

emotion chemicals; they simultaneously evolved to forget that’s what they were doing. Chemical signatures shared through sweat

glands: I have a bad feeling about this . The woman was afraid... and on some subconscious level, Jo could smell trouble.

“We need to find her before something bad happens,” Jo said finally. And to his credit, Gwilym started hunting the map for

possibilities.

“Welp, if she keeps on south, she’ll have to cross a bridge.” He looked at his watch, then back to the phone. “We might be

able to catch up.”

They headed south, not quite jogging down Grey Street with Gwilym in the lead.

“Okay, decision time,” Gwilym said as they circled a roundabout in a nest of stately sandstone buildings. “High Level Bridge

or Swing? Those are more likely for pedestrians.”

“Let’s do both. I’ll take Swing and meet you on the other side.”

The High Level Bridge arched above them, meaning Gwilym had to backtrack. Jo stole another look at her own map before heading

toward the river.

Swing Bridge took the middle between High and the stately auto bridge; it was, however, the far more humble construction. The pedestrian way wound outside of the supports; no rails or bumper between pavement and a short drop to the water. Safe enough, she guessed, as fat drops

began falling. Jo pulled her hood in place as pedestrians ducked under awnings on her side of the river. The far side appeared

empty; no shops, no one traveling the bridge, not even a passing car. Certainly not a woman in a rain slicker. Jo headed across

anyway.

The drops became a steady—if light—rain by the time she reached the end. The south side of the river had a wholly different

feel. On the hill she could see a hotel; street level offered mainly spray-paint-tagged garage doors of closed shops. The

wind had begun to blow, sending a chill down her damp spine. Gwilym would be coming from the west, so she chose to go east

and south.

Bottle Bank Street ran next to a stone wall and the separation of the river. There had been crowds all day, everywhere she went; the business

corridor felt strangely blank and lonely by contrast. She stood at the next intersection, a prickle raising hairs on the back

of her neck. Text MacAdams , she thought. She’d meant Gwilym. Until she didn’t.

Jo pulled out her phone and scrolled to M . We’ve found and lost the vanishing hiker , she typed. Send. Send. Send, send, send...

The screen blinked and turned off: dead battery. Jo huffed and tucked it back in her pocket, eyes straying down the cross

street and its identical apartment lofts for rent—and a single flash of distant yellow.

“Wait!” Jo shouted, but she was far ahead of her.

The street headed away at an angle, past the hotel.

Service drive , Jo thought. Garbage bins and maintenance vehicles, and probably no trespassing, but the girl had just vanished around the corner.

Jo followed, ignoring her screaming blister—but the road dead-ended at a parking garage.

Jo stared at two square doors and warnings about low ceilings.

There wasn’t anywhere else to go; she must have run inside.

“I should not be doing this.” It had never worked before, but she felt obliged to say it anyway. Then she held her breath

and crossed into the shadow of the building. Jo half expected to be accosted, or at least to set off some sort of alarm; she

saw no one, heard nothing but a distant drip of water somewhere farther within. A row of parked cars ran down the one side,

one of them surprisingly American —an SUV as big as an Escalade. Jo stared at her own reflection in its tinted windows, and then, the engine turned over. Jo

started and spun around, ready to dash for the entrance, but someone stood just behind her. A man. A man who shouldn’t be

there.

“Can I help you, miss?” he asked, coming closer.

Jo’s voice came out in a gasping whisper: “Ronan Foley?”

19:00

Newcastle’s CID grew considerably quieter in the after-hours. Green and MacAdams had borrowed desk space and were currently

going through the charity ball footage frame by agonizing frame. MacAdams had taken a break to refresh their coffees; when

he returned Green was hanging up the landline.

“They’re keeping the kid overnight in a cell,” Green was saying. “Worried he’s a flight risk.”

“He’d have every reason. He doesn’t want to go back to the Ukraine.”

“We still have Sophie, too,” he said, though they couldn’t keep her. He’d repeated the interview and taken her statement,

but lying about someone else’s offense wasn’t the same as committing one.

“Speaking of.” Green paused the footage and reversed it. “There’s Sophie on the night of.”

Dressed in sequins, she’d be hard to miss.

She worked her way through the ballroom.

A banner had been hung above, and tiny white lights twinkled against exposed stone walls.

Smart-clad staff filled champagne flutes, and Sophie gave her wide, breezy smile to black-tie guests. Time-stamp: 21:12, just after 9:00 p.m.

“That’s the city CEO she’s taking to—Ava’s father,” Green explained. “And that’s the Lord Mayor in the back with the whiskey

glass.” The guest list had included plenty more from city governance, but also three MPs and a representative from Home Office,

along with not a few local celebrities and the city’s top-earning businesspersons. “They skimmed the whole top layer for this

gig. And there’s Burnhope.”

MacAdams squinted at the freeze-frame. He’d given a speech at the outset, about eight, and hadn’t been around much since.

Now, four people stood in front of him posing for a photograph and mostly obstructing the view. Stanley said something to

Sophie, then he was out of frame again.

“You know, while you were suspecting Ava, I half thought the two of them were carrying on,” Green said. “Sophie and Burnhope, I mean.”

“They did fly to Syria without Ava,” MacAdams agreed, settling back in his chair.

“Right? But it’s like with Trisha and Foley, maybe. One-sided.”

“You think Sophie was keen and Burnhope wasn’t?”

“Or didn’t want to risk it. A wife like Ava and all those fancy connections would be a lot to jeopardize.”

“Yet, he has jeopardized them,” MacAdams said. “If we can find evidence he was part of this mess, he stands to lose just about everything.

Then again, what if this case isn’t about the artifacts at all?”

“Didn’t we seize a small museum’s worth of the stuff?”

“Yes. Technically,” MacAdams said. “But it hasn’t helped us make sense of Foley’s murder. What’s the motive?”

“Money, in’it? Makes problems go away. And trafficking anything makes money,” Green reminded him. MacAdams drank his coffee. Obviously, following the money was just good policing. Then why did it feel wrongheaded?

“I know the gold is worth something on its own. The pottery, though. The bronze statue in Dmytro’s locker. Our going theory

is that most of the objects that the kids trafficked didn’t ‘look’ expensive. They would be valuable for a select few.”

“It would to the right people, though,” Green said, looking at her screen again. “Standish, for instance.”

“Him and his nose rings. But even he’s not buying a whole warehouse full. That’s the sign of a big operation. Trafficking

anything requires a network. It’s global. Hammersmith is global. And yet, this butty van business, the use of the kids, the

Geordie driver—”

“With his lead pipe,” Green added, and MacAdams grimaced a smile.

“Ye-es, with that. It’s all small. Unprofessional.” Beside him, Green pushed her chair back and swiveled toward him.

“ Ah. That’s why you still suspect Burnhope. And what, this other stuff was Foley cutting corners?”

“Maybe. He made a mess of the York property, too. As Burnhope himself told us, no head for business. But if Foley isn’t the

trafficking mastermind, then we need to open up our motives again.” He set his mug down. “Leave the video for a minute. Let’s

go to the whiteboard. What are our possible scenarios now?”

Green rolled up her sleeves and tapped her chin with one finger.

“Number one: Foley is running it all—dealing with trade and with the front end, in Syria. Gets in over his head. Tries to

do a runner but doesn’t make it.”