The Thirteen Hallows by Michael Scott, Colette Freedman Page A

effect—“a Miss Sarah Miller.”
    “Miller! What was she doing there?”
    Sergeant Heath shrugged. “One of the officers did ask about the relationship and was told by Miss Walker that Sarah Miller was a friend. It seems they went off together in a taxi.”
    “Find me that taxi.”
    Victoria Heath grinned. “I’ll bet you money that it took them to Miller’s home.”
    Tony Fowler nodded glumly. “Where does this Judith Walker live? We’d better talk to her.”
    “We’re forty-five minutes away…tops.” Victoria Heath smiled. “If you use the lights.”
    “Love using the lights.” Fowler put the siren on the car and accelerated through the traffic.

     
    SARAH PRESSED her fingers against the side of the old woman’s neck. There was no pulse. Judith Walker was finally at peace.
    She slowly backed away from the corpse, head pounding, stomach wracked with cramps, acrid bile in her throat. She had to get out of the room. Stopping on the stairs, she turned to look around the tiny cellar again. It was bathed in blood: It speckled the walls, washed across the floor in viscous puddles, even the bare lightbulb dangled a long thread of dark blood. In the last few days, she had seen so much blood. She was twenty-two years old and the only blood she had seen spilled before came from minor cuts and scrapes or the ersatz blood on television and in films. Feeling her stomach rise in revulsion, she turned and fled up the stairs.
    Sarah found the canvas shopping bag in the kitchen on the table, where Judith had left it. She lifted it, the weight of the metal making it heavier than she expected. Peeling back the newspaper, she discovered an unremarkable rusted chunk of metal. Was this what Judith had been killed for? Some papers and a piece of rusted metal? It didn’t make any sense. Why had she allowed herself to be brutally tortured to death if the item her killers had wanted was just above her head? And for what—a worthless piece of metal?
    The crunch of glass made her look up.
    There was a face at the back door, the snarling mask of a skinhead—the same skinhead who had attacked Judith on Tuesday—wraparound sunglasses lending his face an insectile appearance. There were three others behind him.
    Sarah snatched the bag and ran. Behind her, the thugs kicked the kitchen door off its hinges.

     
    SERGEANT VICTORIA Heath tapped her colleague on the arm. “This one here. Number—” She was pointing toward the house when the front door was flung open with enough force to shatter the glass panes and the wild, disheveled figure of a young woman raced out.
    “Miller!” Heath and Fowler said simultaneously.
    The young woman was looking over her shoulder as she wrenched open the gate and darted out onto the street, slamming against the police car, which Fowler had swung onto the pavement.
    For a single instant, Tony Fowler and Victoria Heath stared at the terrified face of Sarah Miller…before she turned and raced off down the road.
    Fowler slammed the car into reverse, clipping the car behind him, and took off after Miller, tires screaming and smoking on the road. Victoria snatched up the radio and then stopped, jerking her head back sharply. There was a perfect bloody handprint on the window in front of her.
    “Leave her, Tony,” she whispered, “we have to go back.”

     
    IT TOOK her a long time before she realized that she wasn’t being followed. She had raced through rows of streets, past women gossiping on doorsteps, through children playing on street corners, down alleys and lanes, across gardens, into side streets, running until her breath was acid in her lungs and her stomach was cramped into a tight ball. Finally, she had pushed through rusted iron gates and slumped on the same warped and scarred wooden bench Judith Walker had used hours earlier. Holding her head in her hands, Sarah attempted to make sense of the last few hours.
    Judith Walker was dead, brutally killed for…for what?
    For the contents of