‘Maybe. But I was here the other night, and it weren’t like that. You reckon it’s Henry and them lot?’

‘Could be,’ James answered with a shrug.

Nobody said anything else on the matter. Then the two boys turned to Liam, looking at him expectantly.

‘Go on, mate,’ Ethan said.

‘“Go on, mate” what?’ Liam replied.

‘You first. It’s the rules. Your first time out with us, you get to go first.’

But he didn’t want to go first. He didn’t want to be there.

‘It’s cool. You can go. Show me how it’s done,’ he said, trying to mask the fear in his voice.

‘The fucking door’s already open. All you gotta do is push it.’

‘Don’t be a pussy,’ James added.

‘Yeah. Just fucking open it. It ain’t that deep. Just push it. We’ll be right behind you.’

Liam quickly realised he didn’t have a choice in the matter. He’d come this far. He’d already jumped over four train tracks, bought and paid for the spray cans they were going to use. He’d invested time, money and energy – not to mention the absolute bollocking he was going to get from his parents if they ever found out – and so he couldn’t back out now. What would they think of him?

‘Mate, you coming or what? Think I can feel my hair starting to turn grey.’

Liam ignored James’s jibe and brushed past him.

First time for jumping the tracks, he thought. First time for breaking into an abandoned church.

Slowly, he pushed the door. The hinge creaked loudly, the sound echoing throughout the hall. It felt heavy in his arms, and he had to use his whole weight to push it forward. Eventually, when the gap was big enough, he stepped in. The air inside was chilly, older, as though it had been sitting, waiting there for a long time.

That the spirits had been waiting there for a long time.

The light from outside barely filtered into the building, and so he pulled out his phone and switched on the torch feature. A wide cone of harsh white light illuminated the concrete floor. The door opened onto a small section of the church. He was half expecting to see an arrangement of benches and chairs facing an altar at some point, but there was nothing. The floor was completely empty.

Behind him, Ethan and James subtly entered, their movements cagey, tentative, just like his. It was comforting to know that he wasn’t the only one whose arsehole was clenched.

He didn’t want to be there.

They didn’t want to be there.

Liam dropped his bag to the floor and pretended to stall going any deeper into the church by retrieving his spray cans. But Ethan and James had the same idea, and a moment later, leaving the bags on the floor, they headed towards the front of the church, their path illuminated by the torches on their phones. They only got as far as a few steps before they saw the body on the floor. Pale white beneath the already-white glow of their torches, lying there naked, staring into the ceiling.

The evil spirits.

The boys froze a moment, stunned and shocked.

Ethan was the first to react, proving that he was in fact the most scared of them all, by sprinting out of there, his scream shattering Liam’s eardrums. He was immediately followed by James, who clattered into Liam on the way and brought him to his senses.

Then it was Liam’s turn. He swivelled on the balls of his feet and raced out of there, tripping over the bags on the floor, and colliding with the door on his way out. Picking himself up from the ground, he joined the others a moment later, all panting, panicking, screaming their lungs out in the open before running away back towards the tracks, back towards home.

Tonight had been a night of firsts.

First time for jumping the tracks.

First time breaking into an abandoned church.

And now he could add the first time seeing a dead body to the list.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Tomek struggled to keep his eyes open. His second sleepless night in two days. The call, notifying him that a body had been found, had come in a little after three am, twenty minutes after he’d finally closed his eyes and felt himself doze off next to Abigail, whose earlier behaviour had been keeping him awake.

The responsibility of attending the crime scene typically fell to the deputy SIO, but because he hadn’t appointed one, he’d nominated himself – and then called both Chey and Rachel on the way. He wanted them both there too, bleary-eyed and restless. The emergency call had been made by Vanessa Carmen, a neighbour who lived immediately opposite the Park Road Methodist Church. She had reported hearing screams from inside the church. At first she’d thought it was a ghost of some kind, a spirit returned to disrupt sleeping neighbours in the early hours of the morning. But when she’d seen three young boys, no older than teenagers, sprinting away from the building with their hoods pulled over their faces, effing and blinding, screaming for their mummies, she’d known something was awry. But she hadn’t been brave enough to find out what it was.

‘That place has always given me the creeps,’ she said as she showed Tomek through to her living room. ‘I almost didn’t move in because of it. I dunno what it is. Just… something about it.’

Your imagination… Tomek thought, but kept it to himself. While he was waiting for the crime scene to be cleared, and for the pathologist to arrive, Tomek thought it worthwhile speaking with the key witness to glean as much information as he could from her, but it turned out that she’d already told the dispatch caller everything over the phone: that she’d been awoken by some loud screams, which she’d originally thought was a poltergeist of some kind, then she’d looked out of her bedroom window, only to find that it had been three teenage boys fleeing the church.

‘And you didn’t get a look at any of their faces?’

‘I wish I had. But they were running in the other direction, towards the train line.’

Tomek didn’t think it worth expending resources on trying to find the boys. Not yet. Not until he could confirm what was inside the church. After a brief moment of silence, Tomek thanked her for the witness statement and hospitality, then made his way towards the exit.

‘I’m sorry I didn’t go in to have a look,’ she said on the doorstep.

‘That’s okay. That’s our job.’

‘Do you know what’s in there?’ She pointed to the church and lowered her voice, as though what they were discussing was supposed to be a closely held secret.

Tomek turned to face the church.

‘I don’t,’ he said.

But I have a very good feeling I know who is in there.

‘Guess I’m about to find out.’

Over four hours later, Tomek was dressed in his white forensic suit, mentally preparing himself to enter the church. Entry into the Grade II listed building was now via the main entrance, at the front of the building, beneath its ominous and frightening spires. That way, there would be no risk of contaminating the side entrance that the boys had used. With him were Chey, Rachel, Lorna Dean the Home Office pathologist, and Rory Stevens, the crime scene manager. Through a narrow gap in the door, Tomek saw a small army of scenes of crime officers dressed in white, moving about the place, bathed in a forensic white light from the floodlights that had been set up in there.

Tomek was first in line to enter. Before he did, he took a moment to observe the building’s structure: the architecture, the craftsmanship, the Kentish stone, the patio that had become overgrown with weeds and plants since its closure in the nineties, the soil that had been picked up by the wind and scattered across the edge of the building, the paint that had begun to flake and peel away, the stained-glass windows that had been boarded up and disregarded, a building forgotten about, left behind as the new age continued to progress and develop.

When Tomek finally received the go-ahead to enter, he inhaled deeply and stepped in.

It took a moment for his eyes to adjust to the harsh white light inside the church, but when they did, the tableau of Angelica Whitaker’s pristine body lying naked on the cold concrete floor came into view. She lay posed on her back, legs straight, pressed together, toes pointed to the sky. Her arms were positioned at forty-five-degree angles from her body. Her head was resting perfectly, and her breasts dangled either side of her ribcage. None of that was shocking for Tomek. He’d seen naked bodies – dead, naked bodies – before. But what did disconcert him were the angel wings that had been painted behind her on the ground. Angel wings that had been painted with care, time, and attention. Angel wings that had been painted with blood.