London Falling (30 page)

Quill focused all his anger on the man in front of him, put his head down, gave a roar and charged.

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about!’ The young stall manager was looking at Costain fearfully.

‘Don’t give me that. Where is he? Where’s the boss?’

‘Barry’s back at the shop—’

‘Fuck me, do you want me to tell him how you were like this? You know what I’m talking about, ’cos if you didn’t, you wouldn’t be scared: instead you’d be
angry. I’m talking about—’

‘London stuff,’ said Sefton, arriving beside them as if his boss had called him over, looking bigger somehow than Costain was used to seeing him. ‘London rules, you feel
me?’

Costain was sure there was a crowd gathering around them now. But not one of them questioned the basis on which he was verbally abusing this poor kid. This was like a market where the
stallholders paid protection money. A lot of people here knew vaguely that there was another class of people who came round here sometimes, and so did this kid. And all Costain had to do now was
keep carrying on like one of those.

‘We . . . we don’t have . . . We’re just . . . paraphernalia.’

‘I’ve got all the crystal unicorns I want, boy. You know what I’m talking about.’

‘Are . . . are you the ones who were going to collect the package?’

Costain looked skywards in apparent relief, and bumped fists with Sefton. ‘Finally!’

The man went to look under the table. He came back a moment later, carrying what looked like a bit of flat red stone wrapped in a sheet of paper. ‘It’s nothing to do with us,’
he said. ‘He just left it here and said someone would come asking for it.’

Costain nodded as if this was all entirely expected, and took the package. ‘You can now go about your business, my friend,’ he said. ‘Good day to you.’ He led Sefton away
from the stand, and the crowd parted meekly for them.

‘Wish we could have asked for a description,’ remarked Sefton.

Costain just about managed not to snap at him. He was holding the paper-wrapped package between two fingers, hoping that he hadn’t messed up any fingerprints left on it. By means of the
Sight, he could feel the burden of something notable, the strange weight of it in his hand. ‘You feel anything?’

‘Yeah. It’s a tiny bit different to what we felt from across the room, so I reckon we must have felt whoever left that here, and then that feeling changed a bit, without me noticing,
’cos then I was just feeling the presence of this.’

‘So he got away under cover of it?’

‘I think so.’

The piece of paper was secured by a small piece of sticky tape. He laid the package on a shelf beside a window, got out his multi-knife, and sliced through it. The stone was revealed to be a
fragment of red tile, with faded decoration down one edge. Costain took a step back as the paper flapped open. He saw that Sefton had felt it too. The weight of it had suddenly increased. That was
the feeling of something hiding that they’d experienced. On the paper was written a message in a large, scrawled hand:

‘Death near us soon,’ said Sefton. ‘Well, there’s a shock.’ He put his hand over the tile, as if trying to gauge the forces involved. ‘I wonder,’ he
said, ‘if this would hurt someone who didn’t have the Sight?’ He lowered his hand closer and closer to the tile. ‘It’s not getting any stronger.’

‘Just leave it.’

‘If it can hurt us, maybe it could hurt Losley.’ He touched his palm to the tile quickly and then raised it again.

‘Don’t fucking do that! Did I tell you that you could do that?’

‘Like you’d know one way or the other.’ And there was that furious look again, the real Sefton now that they were out of character. ‘I’m the one who’s been
looking into this.’

‘You’re not planning on recognizing my rank at all, then?’

Sefton seemed to pause at that. He didn’t want to say it out loud – which was just like him. His eyes locked on Costain’s, his finger reaching towards the tile again. And
suddenly with a yell he withdrew it. Blood went flying from his finger.

A drop of it landed on the tile.

And motion blurred everything as something battered Costain’s entire body.

‘A Shaft of Light in Paddington Station.’ The fortune-teller laid down a card that showed a painting of just that, looking like an old advert or something. The
light looked summery, with dust motes hanging in it. ‘Something Glimpsed from the Underground.’ That was the image of what must have been a tube carriage window, with a brickwork arch
outside it, also a green and blue light that spoke of meadows gleaming through it. ‘The Sacrifice of Tyburn Tree.’ She slapped the third card down over the first. She’d made a
pass of her hands over the cards before they’d begun, and they’d regained the same lustre of importance that they’d had when Ross had first glimpsed them. Now they looked . . .
delicious, meaningful like Christmas, a colourful present that had been unwrapped, a terrible pang of nostalgia that was like the prospect of happiness and repose she’d felt from the rest of
the fair. But this third card looked terrible, too, and it connected with her. It was a man hanging by his neck, in silhouette, other terrible wounds having been done to him, judging from how the
crowd, in faux-medieval dress, all around him were pointing at various parts of his body. The fixture from which he hung sprouted many such nooses, like it was a proper tree, and rooks flew all
around it.

‘What does it mean?’ she asked.

The woman looked angry, but some explanation seemed to be required here to fulfil the bargain. ‘The first two are indications of different sorts of hope: summer and autumn. The third is
what the hope is actually about.’

‘The hanged man?’ She remembered that name from TV shows. It had always made her look up.

‘These aren’t like normal Tarot cards, which are for the rest of—’ She stopped herself, and for a moment Ross thought it was because she’d already said too much,
but it seemed that she’d noticed something else about her subject and now she was smiling, revealing gaps where teeth should be – another sacrifice, Ross guessed. ‘Oh,’ she
said, ‘this is important to you personally?’

Ross didn’t want to show it. ‘The man being hanged . . . is a sacrifice?’

‘Does this cause you pain? Are the details going to make you suffer?’

‘Yes.’

‘Then you listen here, copper, and I’ll tell you all about it. The berk on the card, he’s had three things done to him. The threefold death, they call it: he’s been
sacrificed three times. A death wound to the head. A death wound to the side. A hanging to kill him too.’ The woman was gleefully examining her face. ‘Makes his soul like gold, that
does – commends him to the fire.’

‘To the fire?’

‘So I’m told. Sends him to Hell as solid currency. You get a lot in return for a three in one.’

Ross felt the room swaying around her. She felt the knife in her pocket. She suddenly had in her mind a picture of her dad’s face tilted up against the ceiling rose. The bruise on his
head. The wound in his side.

Quill’s head collided with the ragged man’s stomach. With a cry, the other fell back, and whatever was in his hand went flying. The buffeting winds shut off. Quill
leaped to grab him. He got his hands clenched among the dirty ancient coat, and slammed the man down onto the marble floor, hauling one hand behind his back, pulling the handcuffs from his own
pocket. But then he realized that he was sitting on top of just a dirty old coat with nothing in it. And then on top of nothing at all. He was crouching on bare marble, his arse in the air,
handcuffs jingling from one hand. He looked up to see New Age punters walking past him, raising eyebrows.

He got to his feet and looked quickly around the floor. There they were. He grabbed a fold of his own coat to pick them up in. Then, feeling nothing very dangerous from them, though there was
definitely power of some kind, he took them in his bare hand. They were two thin paddles . . . or vanes. They were made of very old metal, with ancient decorations, like something from out of a
long barrow that should now be in a museum. And in his hands they felt useless.

Sefton lay on the hard floor, his head ringing. He felt as if he was back in the playground. He’d just been thrown to the ground by something with that same effortless
power over him. It had felt as he imagined being caught in an explosion would feel. But it had left him . . . he made himself breathe deeply . . . with his ribs intact, and . . . he rolled over . .
. his hands were just bruised where he’d landed on them. He managed to look over at Costain, who was pushing himself to his feet, looking quickly around him as if he might be attacked again.
Sefton himself slowly stood up. The piece of paper was blowing away in shreds, departing too swiftly to catch, too swiftly for normality, and all that had been left of the tile was dust that was
vanishing into a red stain on the floor.

The crowd was staring at them, though trying not to. What had they witnessed? Not as much as the two policemen had. That had been an explosion meant only for those with the Sight, a silent
warning – something that felt as if it had been put together hastily by an anonymous member of a subculture that didn’t want to be policed. ‘That was my fault,’ Sefton
said.

‘Yeah,’ nodded Costain, looking angry, ‘it was. Let’s get some details on this fucker.’ And he led them off to find the stall manager.

‘I don’t know nothing about that,’ the fortune-teller was saying, but Ross wasn’t listening any more. ‘Our bargain is fulfilled.’

Ross got to her feet at the same instant the woman did, intent on apprehending her.

The woman glared at her. ‘We haven’t had the law bothering us for a few years now. We stayed out of sight of them. But then they was got rid of, and so will you be. That’s the
way the wheel’s turning.’

Ross gave her a hard stare. ‘Try and get away, I’ll have you.’ She could hear running feet behind her. The others had finally come to find her. She kept eye contact with the
woman, who produced a small knife that was too small to make Ross back off. She felt like reaching into her own pocket and comparing blades. But, no, she had to keep her authority.
‘What’re you planning on doing with the potato peeler?’

The fortune-teller suddenly drew it across her own palm, and cried out at the pain. Ross took a step forward, to try to stop the woman doing herself any more harm. But then it occurred to her
that she hadn’t paid proper attention to the floor. It was really interesting, so she got down on to her hands and knees and, dimly aware of the rest of her team arriving, she settled on the
perfect spot, a brass line at the edge of where the wood and marble flooring met. She raised her head back, smiled at the others, and—

Costain threw himself at her and sent her rolling into the table before she could dash her brains out. The table flew towards the woman. He was desperately holding Ross down.

‘Let go!’ she yelled. ‘I have to—!’ And then normal awareness rushed back into her head. ‘The suspect!’ she shouted. ‘Stop her!’

Costain eased off just enough to see that Quill and Sefton had already pushed the table aside—

To reveal that the woman had gone, like a dove out of a conjuring trick, taking her equipment with her, leaving only a spray of blood across the white cloth. There came cries and shouts from all
around, as people who did and didn’t know the truth of it gasped.

They sat on the steps outside, the Houses of Parliament looming behind them, the office lights coming on in the afternoon twilight. Big Ben began to strike four, and Quill
could swear he heard the echoes reverberating through this new London he was learning about. They sounded to the depths and resonated back off the sky. They rang through people and memory.
‘The woman at that table turns out to have paid them in cash and provided a false address. Bloody sketchy description you got of that bloke who left the . . . bomb or whatever it
was.’

‘I reckon he disguised himself,’ said Costain, ‘like Losley did.’

He looked to Ross. He’d have expected her to have got her laptop out by now, but she was just staring into the distance. ‘All right,’ he said, ‘so that woman told Ross
that we’re going to have to be like Sherlock Holmes to win: hardly a revelation. She also said that five is better than four, whatever that means. We’ve also discovered that there used
to be some form of law enforcement among this community, but that’s gone now. And we’ve found that stuff associated with London, made in London, about London – that stuff seems to
have power in London. I got these things too.’ He took the vanes from his pocket and, meeting Sefton’s gaze, handed them over to him.

‘And there’s going to be a death close to us,’ muttered Sefton, accepting them. He’d retreated into his shell again.

Quill closed his eyes for a moment, as that statement put a weight in his stomach weirdly beyond what he’d expect to feel at a threat. He felt he should know what it was about, and was
feeling vulnerable that he didn’t. ‘Yeah, but . . . later for that. Lisa, what aren’t you telling us?’

She composed herself for a moment. ‘My dad,’ she said, ‘he was Toshack’s “good sacrifice”. He was sent to Hell, and Toshack got Losley’s services in
return.’

They were all silent. Quill looked at Sefton, who was silently disapproving of their terminology again.

‘Which makes me realize something,’ she said, making him look back. ‘Everybody thought my dad committed suicide. Including the coroner. So this stuff can close cases that
should have remained open. We’ve only instructed the databases to look through open cases, so how about we look at closed ones, too?’ Quill made to put a hand on her shoulder, but her
expression deterred him.

That evening, Quill oversaw the rewriting of the Ops Board. ‘Speaking in tongues’ and the three items Ross had consulted through the fortune-teller were added to
the Concepts list, as were ‘London items’, ‘old law’, ‘five over four’, ‘tile bomb’, ‘vanes’ and ‘someone close’.
‘Remembered’ had been expanded to include Sefton’s ideas about the memories of the masses and the dead. Photofits for new suspects Fortune-Teller, Windy and Bomber had been put
up, unconnected to Losley so far.