CHAPTER TWELVE
The Killing Bull

The Walker emerged with a pop from the small glass mirrors in his hands and looked up at the classical front portico of Tate Britain and then turned around. There was no one around except for people waiting for a bus on the other side of the road.

He approached the gray steps and hurried up the left-hand side of the wide stairway. He kept his hood pulled over the right side of his face in a gesture that seemed to have an unaccustomed air of furtiveness for a being who was, by the very nature of his curse, so good at not being seen.

The truth is that he had come to visit one new statue, but was very keen to not see or be seen by another one.

The statue he sought was around the left-hand side of the entrance, on a little adjunct balcony space beside the double-columned edge of the portico. The one he particularly didn’t want to see was on the other side.

As soon as he was around the corner, he relaxed and resumed his normal arrogant strut.

He looked at the group of statues he had come to see. It was a hybrid, because not all statues are either spits or taints. This was both, or rather, the human statues were spits, two muscular men like Greek wrestlers struggling with a taint, a huge and murderous bull on whose back had been tied a naked woman.

It was not a happy group. It was a monument to the fact that the ancient Greeks had had much too much fun thinking up ways to execute people.

The Walker cleared his throat. “I want to talk to the Bull.”

No one moved. The frozen moment of struggle remained paralyzed in midair.

The Walker sighed. “It’s the Minotaur.”

The Bull’s eye swiveled and looked at him.

“He has been killed,” the Walker flatly informed the Bull.

The Bull convulsed and threw the two men into the corner of the balcony. The woman tied to its back screamed.

“Yes,” said the Walker, unmoved. “Yes. It’s distressing.”

The Bull stood there, snorting angrily through its nostrils as the woman struggled to free herself.

“I wondered if you’d like to help me punish the ones responsible.”

The woman screamed louder as the bull tossed its head and horns back and then drowned her noise in the primal bellowing it blasted up into the night sky.

The Walker looked up and smiled, as a darker shape dropped out of the night and landed gently on his shoulder.

“Ah. There you are.”

The Raven clacked its beak in his ear.

The Walker nodded.

“Good. If they are to be found, the Tallyman will do it quicker than anyone else. Now come. We must go east.