from them, out of their line of sight.
‘You go,’ Reacher said. Tll check the church.’
She raised her wrist.
‘Now keep him there,’ she said. ‘I’m coming by.’
She headed straight back towards the field without another
word. Reacher was left alone at the church gate. He stepped
through and headed onward towards the building itself. Waited
at the door. It was a huge thing, carved oak, maybe four inches
thick. It had iron bands and hinges. Big black nail heads. Above
it the tower rose seventy feet vertically into the sky. There was
a flag and a lightning rod and a weathervane on the top. The
weathervane was not moving. The flag was limp. The air was
completely still. Cold, dense air, no breeze at all. The sort of air
that takes a bullet and wraps around it and holds it lovingly,
straight and true.
A minute later there was the noise of shoes on the gravel
and he looked back at the gate and saw the churchwarden approaching. He was a small man in a black cassock that
reached his feet. He had a cashmere coat over it. A fur hat
with earflaps tied under his chin. Thick eyeglasses in gold
frames. A huge wire hoop in his hand with a huge iron key
hanging off it. It was so big it looked like a prop for a comic
movie about medieval jails. He held it out and Reacher took it
from him.
qhat’s the original ky,’ the warden said. ‘From 1870.’
‘I’ll bring it back to you,’ Reacher said. ‘Go wait for me on the
field.’
‘I can wait right here,’ the guy said.
‘On the field,’ Reacher said again. ‘Better that way.’
The guy’s eyes were wide and magnified behind his glasses.
206
He turned round and walked back the way he had come.
Reacher hefted the big old key in his hand. Stepped to the door
and lined it up with the hole. Put it in the lock. Turned it hard.
Nothing happened. He tried again. Nothing. He paused. Tried
the handle.
The door was not locked.
It swung open six inches with a squeal from the old iron
hinges. He remembered the noise. It had sounded much louder
when he opened the door at five in the morning. Now it was lost
in the low-level hubbub coming from three hundred people on
the field.
He pushed the door all the way open. Paused again and then
stepped quietly through into the gloom inside. The building
was a simple wooden structure with a vaulted roof. The walls
were painted a faded parchment white. The pews were worn
and polished to a shine. There was stained glass in the
windows. At one end there was an altar and a high lectern with
steps leading up to it. Some doors to small rooms beyond.
Vestries, maybe. He wasn’t sure of the terminology.
He closed the door and locked it from the inside. Hid the key
inside a wooden chest full of hymnals. Crept the length of the
centre aisle and stood still and listened. He could hear nothing.
The air smelled of old wood and dusty fabrics and candle wax
and cold. He crept on and checked the small rooms behind the
altar. There were three of them, all small, all with bare wooden
floors. All of them empty except for piles of old books and
church garments.
He crept back. Through the door into the base of the tower.
There was a square area with three bell ropes hanging down in
the centre. The ropes had yard-long faded embroidered sleeves
sewn over the raw ends. The sides of the square area were
defined by a steep narrow staircase that wound upward into
the gloom. He stood at the bottom and listened hard. Heard
nothing. Eased himself up. After three consecutive right-angle
turns the stairs ended on a ledge. Then there was a wooden
ladder bolted to the inside of the tower wall. It ran upward
twenty feet to a trapdoor in the ceiling. The ceiling was boarded
solid except for three precise nine-inch holes for the bell ropes.
If anybody was up there, he could see and hear through the