Judas was waiting anxiously in the room of the keys.
The tables in front of him were covered in thousands of objects and artefacts. Each of them had a uniform circle of space around them, as though they did not like each other and wanted to keep their distance. How many times had he picked one up and spoken to the spirit or entity attached to it? How many times had the musings of a 17th-century murderer helped him to solve a 21st-century crime? Each one of the current inmates had paid their dues many times over. The clock on the wall was moving as if it had cramp. The hour hand was dead.
He was pacing up and down, rubbing at his silver coin as if he meant to rub it out of existence, when he thought he heard a scream, followed by a crash, somewhere nearby. He stopped moving and rubbing an
