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Down into the main switchboard, the operators staring at him open mouthed. He could see Enrique already going through the door beyond, down again towards the foyer, but the girls just stared at him, recoiling. As he raced past them, putting up his arms to bash the swinging door aside, the Doctor connected another part of the string. The creature had been based in the telephone exchange. The place where so much information was passed. And he’d used it too, had somehow used it to reach observers, to see what was going on. But the observers had been changed by it.

The Doctor took the stairs three at a time, more a controlled fall than a descent. He barged through the main doors, glancing wildly about the quiet street. There was no sign of the strange figure.

* * *

The jangle of keys made only half of them look up. Fitz glanced about the room. The listless, dispirited mood had deepened gradually throughout the day, though they had received no visits, no new prisoners. They just waited, with the dulled boredom of a doctor’s waiting room. The man next to Fitz, José, had told him, in a few hurried whispers, what was known about Burton. He was the NKVD’s best man. He took people and broke them. Some had come back, after being taken to see him, others had vanished forever.

‘Buried or burnt,’ the man had said with horrified interest.

The ones that had been brought back to the cells were quivering, shaken. Yet there were few physical marks on them. Not enough to account for their state.

Fitz’s hand had subsided to a dull ache now, throbbing in time to his pulse. He would periodically straighten the fingers, worried about his tendons tightening shorter. That would cause a deeper ache, gradually subsiding. The sound of people moving along the corridor, the jangle of the keys, was the first external stimulus for hours. The ones who looked up were glancing about, as he was. The ones that didn’t seemed to hunch further down, keeping their eyes closed. Absurdly, Fitz was reminded of the way he and his classmates would sit on their hands whenever a volunteer was called for, hoping desperately not to be noticed.

Several men dressed in Popular Army uniforms appeared in the doorway, with the same two civilians who had been at the bar. Fitz caught a glimpse of others behind them.

‘English,’ one of them barked, looking into the cell, straight at Fitz. Fitz looked to either side, automatically double-checking.

‘Yes, you.’

Fitz wondered what would happen if he didn’t move. He wondered how much of a fight he could put up. Maybe they were releasing him, though. The mistaken identity resolved? Yeah, and maybe he was about to vanish entirely. Even as he started to rise, realising that refusing to move wouldn’t miraculously free him, the soldiers were striding over, grabbing his arms. As he was bundled forward, back through the door, he heard José shout for him to have luck. Then he caught a glimpse of one of the civilians waiting at the outer gate, a notepad ready in hand. Of course, they thought he might start babbling on the way to see the forbidding Burton. They were ready to take any statement he cared to make. The notary frowned at him, took a single step back. Fitz stared into her startled eyes.

‘Pia?’

* * *

Chapter Eleven

Jo Veure La Llei

The room was trashed.

The Doctor stood in the doorway of Anji’s room and took in the mess. The hand-drawn map had been ripped off the wall, shredded. The careful stacks of paper were strewn all over the floor. Anji’s handful of clothes were pulled off their hangers, crumpled on the floor. The chair’s covers had been ripped off, the guts spilling out. He took one step forward, just over the threshold and felt his ankle twist on something. Looking down, lifting his foot, he saw a rock. One of Anji’s paperweights. He picked it up, absently slipped it into his pocket.

The notebooks were gone. Not trashed but actually gone, taken. The record of six months of life here removed, wiped out. He picked up some of the