Solomon Creed: The only thriller you need to read this year. Simon Toyne

for criminals fleeing south across the border. Anyone who made it there with enough money to pay for protection could stay as long as they liked, knowing no law would ever touch them. El Rey is also Tío’s hometown. Or it was. It’s not there any more.’

      ‘What happened?’

      ‘Tío happened. I don’t know the exact details, but when Tío was a kid there was some kind of family tragedy involving his father and brother. Could be they fell foul of the bosses or something but whatever happened, Tío never forgot it. When he rose to power years later, he got his revenge. El Rey was the headquarters of the old bosses, so it made sense for him to take it over. But he didn’t. What he did was massacre every living soul in the town and burn the place to the ground. It was symbolic, I guess: out with the old and in with the new. But it was also revenge, pure and simple; an old-fashioned blood vendetta. Tío did the killing himself, the way I heard it. Showed the world what would happen if anyone dared to hurt him or his family.’ He pointed out of the window at the smoke rising beyond the church. ‘And his son just died, flying into our airfield. So you think about that when you talk to this guy. I’ll be at the control line if you need me.’ Then he opened the door and was gone.

       15

      Solomon stood inside the door of the church letting his eyes adjust to the gloom after the fierce sunlight outside. Huge stained-glass windows poured light into the dark interior, splashing colour on what appeared at first glance to be a collection of old junk.

      To the left of the door a full-sized covered wagon stood behind a model of a horse and a mannequin dressed in nineteenth-century clothes. A fully functioning Long Tom sluice box stood opposite with water trickling through it, making a sound like the roof was leaking. A collection of gold pans was arranged around it, beneath a sign saying ‘Tools of the treasure hunter’s trade’. There were pickaxes too and fake sticks of dynamite and ore crushers and softly lit cabinets containing examples of copper ore and gold flake and silver seams in quartz. Another cabinet contained personal effects – reading glasses, pens, gloves – all carefully labelled and arranged, and there was a scale model of the town on a table showing what Redemption had looked like a hundred years ago. And right in the centre of the strange diorama a lectern stood, angled towards the door so that anyone entering the building was forced to gaze upon the battered Bible resting upon it.

      Solomon walked forward, feeling the cold flagstones beneath his feet. He could see the remnant of a lost page sticking out from the binding, its edge rough as if it had been violently torn from the book. The missing page was from Exodus, chapters twenty through twenty-one, where Moses brought God’s ten holy laws down from the mountain on tablets of stone.

      ‘The Church of Lost Commandments,’ Solomon muttered, then continued onward into the heart of the church, breathing in the smells of the place: dust, polish, candle wax, copper, mould.

      The commandments were everywhere: carved into the stonework and the wooden backs of the pews, inscribed into the floor in copper letters, even depicted in the stained glass of the windows. It was as if whoever had lost the page from the Bible had built the church in some grand attempt to make up for it. The altar lay directly ahead of him, the large copper cross standing on a stone plinth. As he drew closer he studied it, his eager eyes tracing the twisted lines and spars identical to the cross he wore around his neck, hoping for some jolt of recognition. But if he had ever been here before or stood and gazed upon this cross and this altar he couldn’t remember it and he felt frustration flood into the place where his hope had been.

      The church seemed gloomier here, as if the walls around the altar were made of darker material, and as he drew closer he saw the reason for it. The stonework, bright white in the rest of the building, was covered in dark frescoes. They depicted a desert landscape at night, populated with nightmarish creatures: hunched men and skeletal women; children with black and hollow eyes, their clothes ragged and tattered. Some rode starved horses with ribs sticking out from sunken hides, their eyes as hollow as their riders.

      Beneath the ground, emerging from a vast, burning underworld, were demons with sharp, eager teeth and leathery wings that stirred the dust, and taloned hands that reached up through cracks in the dry land to grab at the wretched people above them. A few of the demons had snagged an arm or a leg and were gleefully dragging some poor soul down into the fire while their terrified eyes gazed up at the distant glow of a painted heaven. And there was something else, something moving in the shadows – a figure, pale and ghostly – walking out of the painted landscape towards him. It was his reflection, captured in a large mirror that had been positioned so that anyone looking at the fresco became part of what they observed. Either side of the mirror were two painted figures – an angel and a demon – gazing out of the picture, their eyes focused on whoever might stand and gaze into it.

      Solomon moved closer until his reflection filled the frame. He studied his face. It was the first time he had seen himself properly and it was like looking at a picture of someone else. Nothing about his features was familiar, not his pale grey eyes nor his long, fine nose nor the scoops of his cheeks beneath razored cheekbones. He did not recognize the person staring back at him.

      ‘Who are you?’ he asked, and a loud bang echoed through the church as if in answer. Footsteps approached from behind a curtained area in the vestry and he turned just as the curtain swept open and he found himself facing a modern version of Jack Cassidy. They held each other’s gaze for a moment, Cassidy’s face a mixture of curiosity and suspicion as he looked him up and down, his eyes lingering on his shoeless feet. ‘You must be Mr Creed,’ he said, walking forward, hand extended. Solomon shook it and his mind lit up as he caught the hint of a chemical coming off him.

       Napthalene – used in pyrotechnics, also a household fumigant against pests.

      He saw a small frayed hole in the pocket of his jacket – Mayor Cassidy smelled of mothballs. It was a dark suit, a funeral suit. ‘You just buried James Coronado,’ Solomon said, and pain flared in his arm again at the mention of his name.

      Cassidy nodded. ‘A tragedy. How did you know him?’

      Solomon turned back to the painted landscape. ‘I’m trying to remember.’

      There was something here, he felt sure of it, some reason the cross around his neck had brought him to this place where its larger twin sat.

      ‘Impressive, isn’t it?’ Cassidy said, stepping over to the wall and flicking a switch. Light faded up, illuminating the fresco in all its dark and terrible detail.

      There were many more figures populating the landscape than Solomon had first thought, their black arms and shrunken bodies almost indistinguishable from the land, as if they were made from the earth and still bound to it. The ones with faces had been painted in such realistic detail that Solomon wondered if each had been based on a real person, and what those people had thought when they had seen themselves immortalized as the damned in this macabre landscape. They seethed over the desert, their faces ghostly, their eyes staring up at the too distant heaven. Solomon looked up too and saw something he had missed when the fresco had been sunk in shadow, something written in the sky, black letters on an almost black background.

       Each of us runs from the flames of damnation

       Only those who face the fire yet still uphold God’s holy laws

       Only those who would save others above themselves

       Only these can hope to escape the inferno and be lifted unto heaven

      The brand on his arm flared in pain again as he read the words, bringing back the feeling he’d first felt back on the road, that he was here for a reason, that there was something particular he had to do.

       Only those who would save others … can hope to escape the inferno …

      ‘I’m here to save him,’ he muttered, his hand rubbing at the burning spot on his arm.

      ‘Who?’

      ‘James