Afraid of the Dark - James Grippando [80]
Habib did a double take. “My sister?”
“Our shaheeda.”
Habib glanced at the bustling marketplace, then at Abukar, then back at the crowd. He spotted several women dressed in traditional black burkas, any one of whom could have been a human bomb. Before Habib could speak—before his anger could even begin to find words—a huge blast ripped through the usual daily commerce. Screaming bystanders scattered as bloodied body parts flew through the air.
“Samira!” he cried out, invoking his youngest sister’s name.
“Allahu Akbar!” his cell leader shouted.
“King’s Cross St. Pancras.”
The crackle over the loudspeaker stirred the Dark out of his memories. The blur of the platform whizzed past in the train’s window, slowing steadily to a stop. He was the first one off when the doors parted, and he walked straight to the escalator.
The largest tube station in central London was so named because it served two rail stations: King’s Cross and St. Pancras. Forty million riders coursed through the complex each year. The Dark was interested in a select few of them. The tube had delivered the goods in the past, but tonight he would try the Suburban Building. Platforms 9 and 10 to be exact.
In the Harry Potter series, King’s Cross is the starting point of the Hogwarts Express. Riders enter secret platform 9¾ by passing through the brick-wall barrier between platforms 9 and 10. The books and movies are set in the main part of the station, but platforms 9 and 10 are actually in a separate building. Nonetheless, authorities did their best to capitalize on the phenomenon, erecting a cast-iron PLATFORM 9¾ sign on a wall in the right building. Part of a luggage trolley has also been installed below the sign, half of it seeming to have disappeared into the wall. Fans of the series were always flocking there for photographs, one after another taking a turn at pretending to push the cart through the wall.
That was where girls of the right age would be. Silly girls who hung out in train stations late at night and who wanted to disappear like Harry.
The Dark passed a row of shops in the concourse, checked his reflection in a storefront window, and smiled to himself.
Disappear, they will.
Chapter Thirty-nine
Jack’s voice cracked for the third time. Lengthy eulogies were inappropriate at a Jewish funeral on a Friday afternoon, but delivery of even a short one was painful.
“Neil Goderich was my mentor and my friend,” Jack said, fighting back tears. “And he was the kindest soul I’ve ever met.”
The entire memorial service was kept short, as it was the wish of the Goderich family to bury Neil before sundown on Friday, rather than hold the body over until after the Sabbath. Jack was the only gentile among the pallbearers, so the family provided him a yarmulke. The casket was a simple wooden box adorned only with the Star of David. The procession stopped seven times, in accordance with Jewish custom, each stop symbolizing the liberation from the vanity of this world and transfer to the world without vanity.
An easy transition for Neil, a man of remarkable humility.
By the time they reached the burial plot, the sun was low in a cloudless blue sky. A slight chill in the air forced Neil’s widow to drape a sweater over her shoulders, another layer of black atop her traditional black dress. About twenty other mourners gathered at graveside. Among them was Theo Knight, who was forever indebted to “Mr. Goodwrench ” for mentoring Jack through a case that could have ended with Theo in the electric chair. A rabbi, the only speaker at the cemetery, led prayers in Hebrew and in English. As the casket was lowered slowly into the grave, one verse from Psalm 91, in particular, caught Jack’s attention:
“Thou shalt not be afraid of the terror by night, nor of the arrow that flieth by day; Of the pestilence that walketh in darkness . . .”
Terror by night . . . darkness . . . The Dark.
Jack shook off thoughts of how Neil might have died—and who could have murdered him.
One by one, the mourners stepped forward for k’vurah. Jack followed Neil