Lies Sleeping

31 The Winkle Garden

There once were railway sidings that ran right under Smithfield Market, allowing tons of animal carcasses to be shipped into the cold stores prior to dismemberment, distribution and, ultimately, dinner. In the 1960s they were closed by the same people who gave us streets in the sky, the urban motorway and myriad buildings that architects have spent the last forty years trying to blame on somebody else.

The sidings became an underground car park, but in an ironic twist their entrance is an elegant spiral ramp that winds its way around a small circular park. The park itself was built by the Victorians on a site made famous as an execution ground for such celebrities as William Wallace, Wat Tyler and a couple of hundred Protestants who got on the wrong side of Queen Mary. According to the Folly’s records, the area had been pacificatus as part of the process of building the original railway, the ramp and the park. The dispersal of all that negative energy was capped off with a bronze statue of ‘Peace’ by John Birnie Philip, which the Sons of Weyland had, apparently, had a hand in.

‘Does it say in what way?’ I asked.

‘Nope,’ said Abigail, who was back in the library at the Folly digging up references in real time.

I was sitting on a bench in the courtyard in the Church of St Bartholomew-the-Less, peering through the railings out at West Smithfield in the hope of catching sight of Martin Chorley and/or associates. I was there because parked halfway down the spiral ramp was one of the vans last seen leaving Martin Chorley’s factory. Spotted by one of the car park attendants, who called it in because the number plate ‘looked iffy’, which set off a flag at CCC, which filtered quickly over to Operation Jennifer, which didn’t so much spring into action as lurch sideways like a startled crab.

This is totally normal police behaviour, by the way, and nothing to be alarmed about.

Ranks and chain of command are all very well for administration, but when the wheels come off and the world is going fruit-metaphor-of-your choice, then the plod on the spot needs to know who’s in charge of what. That’s why we have the Gold, Silver and Bronze Incident Management Procedure (page 560, Blackstone’s Police Operational Handbook, Second Edition). Seawoll was Gold, which meant he was stuck in the Portakabin back at the Folly. Because this was a Falcon incident Nightingale was Silver and, theoretically, should have also been in a control room somewhere – like that was going to happen – while Stephanopoulos was Bronze (public safety) and I was Bronze (Falcon containment).

‘The Victorians did a lot of this pacificatus stuff,’ said Abigail. ‘And not just in London either.’

And was it just the unquiet dead? I wondered, thinking of the god of the Yellowstone River. Or had the wizards of the Folly gone forth like the loyal sons of the British Empire they were and done a bit of pacificatus in the dominions?

I thought you gentlemen should know how things go in the former colonies, the letter from America had said.

‘Peter?’ said Stephanopoulos over the Airwave. ‘See anything?’

I couldn’t see the van from my position, but I did have a good view of the roads around the park. Sandwiched between Smithfield Market to the north and Barts Hospital to the south, both providing ample cover to bring up van-loads of backup, the car park was tactically a terrible choice for Chorley to get caught in. Stephanopoulos already had spotters on the roofs and the upper floors of the buildings all around and two whole serials of TSG lounging around in the courtyard behind the hospital museum. This particular lot had worked with us before and had taken to wearing a sprig of mistletoe on their Metvests, presumably because a bulb of garlic would look stupid. TSG officers spend a lot of time waiting around in the backs of Sprinter vans and so are prone to violent practical jokes and moments of whimsy. Seawoll had suggested celery, but nobody but me got the joke.

I replied to Stephanopoulos. ‘Nothing from here.’

I listened while Nightingale and the rest of the spotters reported in from their various positions around the perimeter. Nightingale, I knew, was in Smithfield Market with Guleed comfortably ensconced in the Butcher’s Hook pub on the east side.

‘What’s the target, do you think?’ asked Seawoll.

‘St Paul’s at a guess,’ said Nightingale. ‘Possibly the site of the Mithraeum.’

The cathedral was half a kilometre to the south and the Bloomberg building site was further to the east and twice as far.

‘He certainly likes the Square Mile,’ said Guleed.

She was right. The Rising Sun, where Camilla Turner met the late John Chapman, was just around the corner, and beyond that was the Barbican, where Faceless Man senior had been stashed for all those years. Behind me on the other side of the hospital was Little Britain, where Martin Chorley had his think tank.

‘Everyone’s in position,’ said Stephanopoulos. ‘What now?’

‘If we’re lucky the fucker will show his face and Thomas can twat him,’ said Seawoll.

‘We’re not exactly covert,’ said Stephanopoulos. ‘We’ve got a couple of hours before we’re all over Facebook.’

‘If that,’ said Guleed.

‘The longer we wait the more we pass tactical advantage to Chorley,’ said Nightingale. ‘And I think we’ve all had quite enough of that.’

‘The bell is the key,’ I said. ‘We half-inch the bell and Chorley’s stuffed.’

‘There were two vans,’ said Stephanopoulos. ‘How do we know the bell’s in that one?’

‘Or not already in place somewhere,’ said Nightingale – unhelpfully in my opinion.

‘Somebody’s going to have to have a look, aren’t they?’ said Stephanopoulos.

It was a difficult decision. Chorley knew me, Guleed and Nightingale on sight and there was no way we were going to risk some poor non-Falcon qualified copper. In the end Stephanopoulos nicked a green London Ambulance service jacket from one of the nearby ambulance crews and got ready to do the walk past herself.

‘And what if you meet Lesley?’ I asked.

‘Then that will be one less problem to worry about, won’t it?’ she said.

‘Make sure she fucking wears her Metvest,’ said Gold leader when we outlined the plan.

Stephanopoulos, who claimed to have stashed her Metvest in her wife’s henhouse the day she made inspector, nonetheless promised not to get stabbed. I donned my magic hoody and dashed around through the hospital grounds so I could loiter suspiciously on the corner of Little Britain and keep the entrance ramp in view.

It was a bright day with scattered clouds and the air was still and warm. Stephanopoulos wore the jacket over one shoulder to sell the illusion, and to disguise the fact that it was too small for her. And to hide the X26 taser she was carrying in her left hand.

I still couldn’t see the van but I knew its exact position halfway down the ramp. I reckoned if I vaulted the safety rail further up, where the drop was less than a metre, I could get there in less than twenty seconds.

‘I’m approaching the van,’ said Stephanopoulos.

I’ve been told that in the old days undercover officers had to try and disguise the fact that they were using a radio. But now you just wear headphones and carry a phone in your hand. This explains why the next thing she said was, ‘Just as long as we don’t have asparagus again.’ A pause. ‘Because I hate asparagus.’

‘I’ve always said you were wasted on the police,’ said Seawoll.

‘I’m having a look through the front window,’ said Stephanopoulos in a low voice. ‘I can see something in the back and she’s sitting low on her suspension.’ And then much louder, ‘How many times do I have to tell you: the goat is not allowed in the house.’

Nightingale told me to saunter up the entrance to the ramp while he went to the top of the pedestrian access stairs on the other side of the park, so he could cover Stephanopoulos’ exit.

I was halfway across the road when a spotter reported that a mint coloured Fiesta was heading up Long Lane and was indicating for a left turn – meaning it might be heading for the car park. I said I’d keep an eye out.

I was almost across when Stephanopoulos said, ‘Oh shit. Chorley just came out of the underground bit.’

There was a bit of loud breathing and then Stephanopoulos said she was hidden behind a different van but she could probably get a shot with her taser as Chorley went past.

‘I wouldn’t advise it,’ said Nightingale.

‘Wait for him to pass and get the fuck out of the way,’ said Seawoll.

‘Peter,’ said Nightingale, ‘turn the car away.’

I looked over and saw the Fiesta, mint coloured as advertised, turning out of Long Lane and making an obvious beeline for the entrance at the top of the ramp. I stepped quickly out in front of it and held up my hand in that gesture all police hope is authoritative enough to halt over a tonne of moving metal.

The trick is to always be ready to dive out of the way.

The driver was a white woman in her mid-twenties; white blouse, lightweight navy suit jacket, brown hair.

I made a friendly fending-off gesture, but the woman’s expression gave her away.

I’d know that look of exasperation anywhere – even when it’s not on the right face.

‘Lesley’s in the Fiesta,’ I said over the Airwave.

She’d been slowing to negotiate the ramp, but as soon as she saw me Lesley floored it. I threw a car killer into the bonnet and the engine died. But she had too much momentum and I had to vault the safety rail to avoid getting run down.

‘Pillock!’ I heard her shouting as she went past.

I made what they call a tactical assessment.

I could see the van a third of the way around and down the ramp. Because the ramp formed almost a complete circle I had sight of Nightingale to my right as he went for the pedestrian staircase less than forty metres away. I watched as he jumped over the railing and dropped down onto one of the landings below. I decided that my job, as usual, was Lesley, and took after the Fiesta as it rolled down the ramp.

The ramp was built for carriages and drays drawn by huge Clydesdale draught horses, and so was cobbled for traction and maximum tripping and leg-breaking potential. Still, I went flat out on the basis that I really didn’t want to be tag-teamed by Lesley and Chorley together.

I was good enough by then to throw car killers about without sanding my Airwave, so I was still online to hear one of the spotters yell something unintelligible and Seawoll order the containment teams to set up a safety perimeter. This was the appropriate Falcon response plan in action – the TSG keeps the public out of harm’s way while we lucky few go toe to toe with the Faceless Man.

And not forgetting his sidekick – the mutable Lesley.

The Fiesta pulled up by the van and Lesley tumbled out, still wearing her fake face.

She pulled her hand back into a fist when she saw me, but I was already casting a nice reliable impello palma even as I closed the distance between us. The spell knocked her on her back, but she rolled, did something that I didn’t recognise, and a viciously bright flash in front of my face blinded me. I went crashing down to the cobbles. All I could see was a bruise-coloured blotch in front of my eyes. But, figuring that lying on the cobbles was not conducive to my health, I scrambled off to my right where I knew there were parked cars. After banging my face on somebody’s hatchback, I found the gap between cars and slotted myself in.

I crouched down with my back to a wheel arch and blinked, trying to clear my vision.

It’s the ultraviolet content of a bright light that damages your retinas – I just had to hope Lesley had her flashbulb lux variant tuned to the lower wavelengths. Meanwhile I found I could follow the magic part of the fight through the echoes of the combatants’ formae.

There was the tick-tock precision of Nightingale doing something complicated, followed by a whispering crash like cymbals when his spell hit home. Chorley was a series of painful razor strops speeding up until it was like a buzz saw meeting metal. Somewhere out in the real world I heard real metal tearing and sirens in the distance.

And then there was Lesley with a little bit of tick-tock, some razor strop, and a strange cry like a seagull that I was beginning to recognise as uniquely her own.

Now, it would be really useful if I could use all these lovely sense impressions to get a sense of distance. But some hours spent wearing a blindfold while Abigail and Nightingale set spells off around me had proved you couldn’t. At least I couldn’t. At least not yet.

Still, the beauty of being stuck on a down ramp with nice solid Victorian brick walls on either side was that there was a limited number of directions Lesley could be coming from. When I sensed her gearing up to cast her next spell – some difficult impello-based procedure – I lobbed a glitter bomb in her general direction.

This was one of Varvara’s wartime spells as translated by Abigail – Ledyanaya Bomba in Russian, but we call it a glitter bomb because of the way light sparkles off the ice crystals that form around the epicentre.

I distinctly heard Lesley say ‘fuck’ not five metres away, and then I felt the wave of cold air roll over me. The sight in my left eye was mostly purple but my right was almost clear – obviously I’d been squinting. I risked a look.

Everything around the van was bright and sparkly, like a bright winter’s day after a frost. I saw a blurry figure who was probably Lesley turn away from me and start to run down the ramp, only to slip over and fall down hard with a yelp.

I wasn’t going to get a better invitation than that, so I rolled out of my hiding place and charged down the slope with my shield up for good measure. Which is just as well, as I ran straight into Chorley coming the other way. I was half blind and he was looking over his shoulder – it was one of them meeting engagements that military theorists suggest you should never ever do if you can help it. He didn’t spot me until we were less than three metres apart. He tried to turn away, but slipped and went down on one knee with an audible crack. It looked really painful, but not as painful as I was planning to make it.

Lesley was to his right, trying to get to her feet. She was trying to wrench something out of her jacket pocket, and making a mess of both actions. I couldn’t pass up a shot at Chorley, so I tried to body-slam him with my shield.

I’m not sure, but I think he sort of picked up my shield and used it and my momentum to throw me over his head. Certainly for me there was a confused moment where everything was upside down, a painful impact on my back, and then I slid down the icy cobbles for a couple of metres.

I rolled over in time to see Chorley turn his full attention on me, with a look in his eyes that said I’d just reached the end of the rope he’d been giving me.

Then he fell twitching to the floor – I knew that twitch. I’ve suffered it myself. There were wires trailing from his back to the yellow X26 taser in Stephanopoulos’ hand, and she kept pumping the juice just as instructed by the big bumper manual of how to deal with criminal practitioners.

Lesley was still trying to get something free of her jacket, and I scrambled up to stop her. But before I could get to my feet she had a compact semi-automatic pistol in her hand, which she pointed at Stephanopoulos.

‘Drop the fucking taser,’ she shouted.

Stephanopoulos signalled me to hold back.

‘Or what?’ she asked Lesley.

‘Don’t test me,’ said Lesley. ‘I’m having a very trying day.’

‘For God’s sake, just shoot her,’ said Chorley, and then wriggled a bit as the current hit him again. ‘Or Peter. Or fucking somebody.’

I thought it might be quite handy if Nightingale were to turn up about then.

‘If you’re going to shoot, then shoot,’ said Stephanopoulos.

So Lesley shot her in the leg – which, looking back, was probably the sensible thing to do. If you were Lesley.

Stephanopoulos fell over sideways as her left leg gave way. She tried to keep hold of the taser, but Chorley had taken advantage of the distraction to pull the barbs out. I was already surging forward when Lesley turned the gun on me.

‘Plan B,’ said Chorley as he got up and headed for the van.

‘Copy that,’ said Lesley, keeping the gun on me.

Stephanopoulos had dragged herself behind a parked car but I could hear her swearing.

There was the sound of shooting behind me and I instinctively crouched down. At first I thought Seawoll had escalated up to an armed response once Stephanopoulos had been shot. But the gunshots didn’t sound right. Chorley was in the van by then and had it started. I jumped to the side as it pulled out and turned, not upslope as I expected, but down towards the underground car park. The curve of the ramp meant I couldn’t see the actual entrance, but there was no mistaking the bark of shotguns firing from that direction. Suddenly a white man dressed in dark military trousers and a navy bomber jacket flew backwards into view and landed on the roof of a parked car. Chorley had obviously been out recruiting in Essex again. Even as he bounced onto the bonnet he held tight to a pump-action shotgun. But before he could recover, the shotgun was wrenched out of his hands and sent flying all the way up and over the safety railing to West Smithfield Road fifteen metres above.

That explained what had delayed Nightingale.

I turned back to find Lesley had gone, so I ran over to find Stephanopoulos lying on her back with her leg elevated and her belt in place as a tourniquet. She gave me a look of annoyed exasperation.

‘Get down there and help Nightingale,’ she said.

I hesitated.

‘Ambulance is on its way,’ she said. ‘Go.’

I went down the ramp with my shield up and rounded the curve to find Nightingale finishing off a couple of wannabe hard men by knocking them down, stripping off their weapons with impello and throwing them up and out of reach in the direction of Smithfield Market.

As the guns went up, somebody unseen above threw down a couple of pairs of speedcuffs. Nightingale grabbed one and threw me the other – together we cuffed the pair and left them for the follow-up team.

I wanted at least to ask them their names, but Nightingale said we had to hurry.

‘He’s gone to ground,’ he said. ‘But he won’t stay there long.’

There were two vehicle and one pedestrian entrances into the underground. We took up position by a blue and white painted wooden office extension where we could cover the vehicle access. Behind us TSG officers in public order gear collected up our suspects while others guided one of their Sprinter vans to reverse so that it blocked the door to the pedestrian footpath.

‘Who were those guys?’

I indicated the two men as they were led away. Both their faces had a waxy sheen and they averted their eyes as they passed Nightingale.

‘Another one of Chorley’s distractions,’ he said. ‘They had a hostage. I had to resolve that before I could give chase.’

‘Yes but where do you think they came from? And what did you do to them?’

‘Irrelevant,’ said Nightingale, ‘And less than they deserved.’

We inspected the situation. Two eight-metre high Victorian brick arches marked the entrance to separate ‘in’ and ‘out’ tunnels, also from the original Victorian build. They both ran straight for twenty metres before veering left and out of sight.

There was another ‘operational pause’ while we checked that Stephanopoulos was being taken care of, that the other pedestrian access points had been locked down, and that Lesley May was nowhere to be found.

‘Chorley is our priority,’ said Seawoll. And there wasn’t any arguing with that.

‘Two tunnels,’ said Nightingale. ‘And, beyond that, two floors of parking.’

‘He could drill his way up into Smithfield,’ I said. ‘He’s good enough.’

‘But not before I could stop him,’ said Nightingale.

‘Two tunnels,’ I said. ‘One each?’

‘No,’ said Nightingale. ‘This time we want the odds to be in our favour.’

We brought down the other TSG van and used that to block the entrance to the out tunnel. As Nightingale said, it didn’t need to be impenetrable. It just had to slow Chorley down enough for us to catch up with him.

I borrowed a taser and holster and stripped off my hoody.

‘Ready?’ asked Nightingale.

‘No,’ I said. ‘Not really.’

‘Good man,’ said Nightingale. ‘Off we go.’

We went single file up the tunnel, clinging to the left-hand wall so Chorley wouldn’t see us coming. We paused when we reached the turn and Nightingale crouched down to peer around the corner.

‘I can see the ramp,’ he said. ‘Do you think he’s on the upper or lower level?’

I said I hadn’t got a clue.

‘I have an idea,’ he said. ‘I want you to conjure one of your experimental werelights – the one that flies erratically like a bumblebee.’

‘That’s why we call it a bumblebee,’ I said. ‘It’s not really very good for anything yet.’

I’d been trying to develop a self-guiding fireball, but so far all I’ve managed is one that ricochets unpredictably.

‘It will do for our purposes. And when you conjure it see if you can imbue it with . . .’ He hesitated. ‘Some of your essence.’

‘My essence?’

‘Your personality,’ he said.

I gave it a go. The basis is your bog-standard lux-impello combination – the complications come in the various modifiers you add to the principal formae. I opened my hand and an orangey-red sphere the size of a golf ball immediately shot back down the tunnel the way we’d come.

‘Ah,’ said Nightingale.

‘It always does that,’ I said. ‘Wait a second.’

The bumblebee came racing back past us and shot into the car park, making the low hum which is the other reason we call it the bumblebee. It also made a distinctive squealing sound when it bounced off walls or cars. I hoped I’d made it low-powered enough not to dust the electronics of every vehicle in the place.

After it zig-zagged down the ramp into the lower level, Nightingale had me conjure another and see if I couldn’t pitch it onto the upper level. I got it first time and soon we could hear the second bumblebee bouncing off walls.

Then we heard the bell – a low shimmering tone that I didn’t think had anything to do with actual sound waves. Then the sound of an engine starting up, which definitely did.

‘Flushed him, by God,’ said Nightingale.

The engine revved, not a particularly big one by the sound – one of the two-and-a-bit-litre diesels that Ford plonked into the older Transits.

‘That’s the van,’ I said.

There was a squeal of tyres and the engine noise got louder.

‘He’s going to try to bolt,’ said Nightingale. ‘Stay behind me – I’ll deal with any magic while you stop the van.’

We shuffled forward so that Nightingale could get a better look around the corner. The engine noise was randomly reflecting off the flat concrete surfaces of the garage, but it was definitely getting closer.

There was suddenly a sharp taste of copper in my mouth.

‘Here he comes,’ said Nightingale.

Something hit Nightingale’s shield and spun away to gouge chunks off the brickwork around us. I saw the van grab some air as it came over the lip of the ramp and got my spell ready, but a wave of roiling dust swept past it and over us, blotting everything out. Real dust, I realised, when I breathed it in – I fumbled the spell. Not that I had a target.

We heard the van roar down the second tunnel on our right – the one blocked by the TSG van. I hoped nobody had sneaked back in it for a kip.

‘Come on!’ yelled Nightingale.

We ran through the brown billows of settling dust and followed the van down the tunnel. But we’d barely made it past the turn when the dusty air turned orange and yellow and a wave of heat and sound smacked us in the face.

We stopped – the van was completely on fire from front to back, flames and smoke pouring out of the open back door. I could just see the silhouette of the bell inside. We advanced as close as we dared – because modern vans don’t explode like that without help.

I activated a phone and called Seawoll, who’d already heard about the explosion.

‘Did anyone come out of the tunnel?’ I asked.

‘No,’ said Seawoll. ‘Chorley?’

I looked at Nightingale, who shrugged.

‘We think he was in the van,’ I said.

‘I fucking hope so,’ said Seawoll.