London Falling

SEVEN

Quill immediately knew that something was wrong, but he wasn’t sure what. He looked to the others. They appeared to be wondering what they’d just been so worried about. ‘Did you say something?’ he asked.

‘No,’ said Ross, ‘I just, kind of. .’

‘. . got worried about you doing that,’ said Costain hesitantly, as if he was suspicious of his own statement.

Quill looked around. Everything looked the same, except-

He’d suddenly thought how the walls looked different. Just for a moment, out of the corner of his eye. But, no, they were just the same. No, over there — was that a door? It was, with a handle and. .

No, it was just a shadow cast across the wall. Bloody hell, this was like the migraine or whatever that had mucked about with his vision in the interview room. He took a step back towards the trapdoor. And he realized that all the others had retreated a step that way too. He wanted to ask them if they could see anything funny, but there was plainly nothing the matter. ‘We’re way past our shift now,’ he announced. ‘We’re knackered and our eyes are playing up. Let’s get back to this in the morning.’ The others looked relieved, and there was a slight alacrity about how they went for the ladder. Quill was last to move. That shadow where he’d thought a door had been. . did he see something moving over there? Something small, like a cat?

No, there was nothing there.

He went over to the ladder and headed down into the main body of the house, where lights and other people waited. He kept his eye on the shadow as he went.

The other three found a car able to take them back to the Hill. Quill briefed DI Farrar, from the local nick, who was going to be supervising the crime scene overnight, then walked quickly out onto the street, past the huddled TV crews. He really was knackered, and his head was feeling weird. His head and his eyes. But he was too wound up to go home. Also he had some unfinished business. He hit a button on his phone and waited until the familiar voice answered.

‘Harry,’ he said, ‘you fancy a pint?’

He had a couple in the rough Irish pub at the end of the street, while Harry drove over from the Hill. It was a relief that his colleague was willing to come at all. There was a hurling match or something on the telly, torn-up seats and drinkers to match. Some of them looked as if they went home to the sort of rooms that were only one step up from sleeping rough, but still they obviously liked a real pub rather than some shebeen. Quill occupied a snug on his own. This lot would have heard about what was going on down the way, and he no doubt smelt of copper. Meanwhile, the shiny things in here were starting to hurt his eyes: washed glasses; whatever brass was displayed out of reach of grubby hands; the stone floor under the carpet polished smooth by generations of leather. Did he maybe need glasses? Would that not explain a lot?

But there, to his relief, was Harry. Quill stood up, and was surprised to see another man, an older man, enter behind Harry, close enough that they looked to be together. He looked very like Harry, actually: that same dourness round the eyes. Quill went to join him, and was pleased to see that familiar wry expression.

‘You’ve done all right tonight, haven’t you, Jimmy? Sodding serial killer, honey for tea.’

‘Can’t complain,’ said Quill. He looked to the older man. ‘And this is. .?’

‘Because you left the rest of us to do the donkey work on Goodfellow, don’t rub it in.’

Quill wondered if the older man wasn’t with Harry after all. ‘What are you having?’ He addressed the question so that both could answer.

‘Mine’s a pint,’ said Harry. There was silence from the other, who didn’t go to get one of his own, but just stood there beside Harry, now looking as quizzically at Quill, even as Quill was looking at him. Was this some homeless bloke who’d followed Harry in, and who Harry was now tactically ignoring?

Quill got the drinks in and headed back over to the snug with Harry. The older man came too, and sat down beside Harry. He was well dressed, elderly and looked as if he was retired. Didn’t have the face of a loony. In fact a bit out of place in here. The landlady, who looked to be the kind who might, hadn’t objected to him not buying anything to drink.

Quill waited for a moment for some cue from Harry, found none forthcoming, and looked between them. ‘So. .?’

‘He’s bloody enjoying this,’ said the older man to Harry, leaning over for a stage whisper into his ear, glancing at Quill as he did so. ‘Look at him. He’s called you all the way over here just to gloat.’

‘Who the fuck are you?’ said Quill.

‘What?’ Harry looked startled.

‘Who’s your mate?’

Harry glanced over his shoulder, then back at Quill. And now he had a smile on his face. ‘Oh, have you finally got through to Lofthouse, and got me seconded to your lovely spin-off operation?’

‘That’s not what he means, son,’ said the man. ‘Don’t ask him about that. Don’t be so bloody weak.’

Quill couldn’t help it. After all, he’d had a long day. Maybe this bloke was old, but he was only going to grab him by the cardy and-

His hand went straight through. He fell forward, and had to catch himself on the table with his other hand. His arm was still, right now, sticking through the old man’s head. He could feel what it was like inside. It was very cold. The man eyed him mockingly. Quill snatched his hand back.

‘Here,’ said Harry, ‘how many have you had?’

Sefton had felt too strung out to sleep, so when he got back to the Hill, he went on into London. He weighed the risks: no, it wasn’t being part of a non-undercover operation now making him careless. The vast majority of those who’d known him in Toshack’s gang were behind bars, and any who weren’t wouldn’t be seen dead in the kind of place he was going. Just a couple of pints, though. His head felt weird: flashes in the corners of his eyes, sudden colours appearing in the darkness outside the tube train and gone before he got a good look at them. But, what he’d seen in that second. . nah, that was his brain making something up out of shapes.

He went into Soho, tried the Admiral Duncan, was put off by how loud and crowded it was. He found a smaller pub, still with blacked-out windows, which always made him roll his eyes. They should only have those on a copper pub catering for UCs. He wished there was someone he could share the sense of triumph with. In the car, Costain being Costain and the fact that Ross was preoccupied as always, had put paid to any thought of shared celebrations, though the driver had been congratulating them. Triumph. . and, yeah, something heavy got into your brain if you didn’t make jokes about it. Something else that made him silent and made him need to talk was that bloody cauldron. .

He had to stop and put a hand out to steady himself as he got a sudden mental image of. . real children inside it. . screaming. Oh, God, don’t let yourself go there, mate. He went up to the bar and got a pint.

‘Haven’t see you before. Where’re you from, then?’ The voice with the nice London accent, a bit south of the river, had come from behind him. He turned to see who it was, and found himself looking at a bloke with a straggly beard as if he was a hipster mountain man, in a suit as if he was something in PR, and with interesting eyes.

‘Kensington.’ Sefton used his original accent even as he said it. Why, Ambassador, you’re spoiling your son. He felt immediately embarrassed. He hadn’t used that voice in years.

‘Really?’

‘Nah,’ and there he was again, lying, ‘just having you on, mate.’

‘But you haven’t been out round here before? Right, so, this place is bollocks. Let me give you the tour.’

His name was Joe. They had a couple of pints at a couple of different places. Sefton was too knackered to really care about which pub he was in, but he liked the company. And he was on for whatever the evening brought because — come on, skeletons in a cauldron — he was off duty now, thank you. And he always loved the sort of offhand friendliness you got when you met a bloke like this. I mean, yeah, they were both thinking about a shag, but that was also kind of a doorway to the sort of hanging out with near strangers that Americans did so well, and the British didn’t. Exactly right for him tonight. To be nobody in particular.

‘So what do you do, then?’

‘Stuff.’

‘What does that mean?’

‘It means I don’t want to get into that.’

Joe got a resigned look on his face that said, fine, keep me at arm’s length, why are we bothering with the social bit if that’s all you’re after? So Sefton put an arm round his shoulder. ‘I mean it’s been a long day and it’s a dull job and I don’t want to talk about it. Sorry.’

‘Okay, taking that onboard. Intense, you are.’

‘Tell me about it.’

It was crowded on the pavements tonight as they wandered along: encountering unlicensed cab offer, Big Issue seller, old man in white gloves, beery students; gay, gay, not sure, gay, straight, straight, straight; hen night, Japanese couple, religious ranter; stall selling something that looked like shite and smelt like toffee. .

And, suddenly, who they all were and what they all wanted hit Sefton like a punch and he wanted to hide hide hide go undercover be someone else quickly before they know you before they get you because you can feel how they might hate you if they saw the real you and if they turned on you with this gaze and this power and his vision went weird and he had to fall back against the window of a Turkish convenience store and the man behind the counter inside started tapping the window saying what are you doing because he was bumping the back of his head regularly against the glass and he was quite conscious thank you absolutely together but he couldn’t stop and Joe was staring at him not yet completely freaked out and the force of it was because there was something nearby. .

He took a breath, closed his eyes.

The fucker must have put something in my beer. Oh God, is this Ketamine or some shit? Is this a sex thing, or was I followed and targeted, and is that the guy whose house I’ve been in? My warrant card’s in my sock. Get to a taxi, show the warrant, go to Paddington Green or somewhere-

But Joe wasn’t looking dangerous; he seemed really worried now. So he didn’t do this. What did this?

Something was approaching. Something was heading towards him, and that was what had sent him slamming back against the window. Because his body was afraid of what was coming. The owner was coming out now. People inside, buying samosas, were looking out at him. Mad guy. But something was coming. That was what had sent him slamming back away from it. He hadn’t realized. Something was coming and this lot were all in danger. Never mind that they were all terrifying, the force of all of them combined that he wanted to hide from. They were all in danger.

The owner of the shop grabbed his shoulder to push him away into the crowd, towards the thing that was coming. Joe started to get in the way, to rail loudly at him: it’s not drugs, look at him, he’s ill-

Sefton pushed himself away from the shop owner, away from the window, with Joe rushing after him. Get away from this thing. If it was only after him, then get it away from them.

And then he realized that it had changed the direction it was coming from.

It was coming straight through the crowd in front of him. It was here!

It walked through the crowd. It walked right through them, their bodies passing through it, mostly, for there was one old man stepping round it. . but enough of that, just look at it — look at this mother, it’s ten feet tall and it’s a plant, it’s like a tree but with a mass of green on top, and are those human arms? That’s a bloke in a costume, no it isn’t, it’s bringing with it-

Smell of park, not just grass, not countryside, park. More than smell. Something got park into my head, beyond the smell. There’s money and servitude and that anger, all that anger, all that anger at doffing your cap and lowering your eyes as the bastards go past and they’re throwing a coin for you and this is you at their houses, Jack in your green Jack after their maids Jack your only day hidden in here Jack get up to all sorts in here, and Sefton thought, Not me mate, I’m like you whatever you are, money thing, servant thing, old lady remembering thing, city remembering thing-

He’d locked up again, his hands shaking in front of him like he was having a fit, and it was rushing at him, aiming to go through him-

A moment of smelling, or seeing, all those things at once, in the many corners of his eyes, as if his eyes were suddenly stars and pricked with corners, and it was all those things at once and terrifying! And so cold, made out of cold-

And it was into the crowd again, part of them again, and it hadn’t been after him at all, and he staggered.

Joe caught him.

‘He still thinks you’re bent,’ said the man whispering in Harry’s ear. ‘All those years you’ve been kissing his arse, and this is how he repays you.’

Quill had stumbled back to his seat, saying, yeah, he had been in the pub a while. He’d been so freaked out he couldn’t deal with it. But he wasn’t about to run out screaming yet. He sat there and listened to what Harry was saying, numbly nodding along, checking out his surroundings all the time. If he was hallucinating, if he’d got something in his bloodstream, perhaps scratched himself on a nail or something inside that house, breathed something in. . but he didn’t feel woozy, apart from the beer, and he knew what beer felt like, so it gave him something to compare this to. Quill gradually became certain that he was in his right mind.

So what was this fucker he couldn’t touch? Who kept on spouting this shit? And Quill was sure now that Harry was hearing it, too, as he could see tiny reactions to it on his face. But it was very subtle. He got the feeling that, even if the man suddenly shouted, Harry wouldn’t have leaped up. This seemed to be something Harry was deeply used to. Quill decided that he’d do what he always did whenever he didn’t understand certain aspects of a situation. He’d plough right on through. Which meant, for a start, not putting up with this any longer.

‘Listen, Harry,’ he said, ‘nobody thinks you’re a bent copper. Nobody. And especially not me, all right?’

Harry looked surprised, they’d been talking about something else. ‘Thought never crossed my mind, Jimmy,’ he said.

‘Oh, look at you, lapping up the scraps from his table,’ said the old man. ‘You’re ten times the copper he’ll ever be. Look at him, playing the role, saying all the right things. He’s just copying his dad. He gets all the attention because he looks right and he sounds right, never mind the fact that you’re more talented. He gets promoted just because of how he acts, not for what he does.’

Quill realized that he’d only just restrained himself from yelling at the strange man, letting out his fear and anger. But that wouldn’t get him anywhere, because this. . this ghost, or whatever it was. . it wasn’t trying to bait him. Its attention was entirely concentrated on Harry.

‘But you’re the one who does all the hard work and, you’re the one they don’t notice. It’s always him they talk about, while you stand in his shadow. What’s he doing in charge of you? How is that fair? And this new operation — you should be in on that!’

It dawned on Quill that he himself had come to expect that Harry would never say thanks after he’d paid him a compliment or reassured him like that. Maybe now he knew the reason, and he felt like he should hold it against him. But this wasn’t Harry, was it? It was. . whatever this thing was. ‘Like I said, I asked for you,’ he began, taking care to talk to Harry rather than to the older man. ‘But we’re being kept apart from you lot, like we’re contagious, and. . well, you know who I think the bad apple is. I think maybe that’s the reason. Or maybe. . now I’m thinking that maybe there’s something more to it, and that Lofthouse had a plan.’

No reaction from the stranger. He was listening, his face set exactly like Harry’s. He was kind of one-track, wasn’t he?

‘But that’s no comment on you, either. We’re both the sons of coppers, Harry. We know the form. Here, remind me — when did your old dad pass on?’

The man turned to look at him, a snarl on his face. And Quill felt the slight relief of having made him do that.

Got you.

In the car heading back from the Losley house to the Hill, Ross had realized there was something wrong. It was as if something was moving inside her head, and she couldn’t push it down. She’d understood the stress of her chosen path, but the trouble was that she’d always expected catharsis at the end. She’d been running for the line, while now she was just working — and then working at home too — until she fell asleep. This couldn’t last. This had to end badly. Maybe this was the start of that ending.

She had first felt it when the car turned into Kilburn High Road. It had felt somehow that gravity had changed, that there was something pressing her down into her seat. She had looked to the others, and then out of the window, and became aware that she was starting to see. . fleeting things moving along and among the shopfronts. . odd things that the car was going too quickly for her to see, and she felt suddenly glad about that. And the shopfronts themselves, most of them with just overnight lights on now, there were. . like all sorts of them all laid on top of each other, at different levels, even, as if suddenly her eyes were offering her options. She had wanted to close her eyes, but she also didn’t want to because, if this was a form of mental illness, it was as frightening as she expected, but also really interesting. Her hand had gone instinctively to the knife she always kept in her pocket, but then she had let it go again. Best not play with that right now.

She had felt cars and buses pass that somehow felt more weighted than others. The underneath of the Marylebone flyover had been, in the looming darkness, exploding fireworks of tracks, of traces. . of cars crashing, she realized; as if every accident, over decades, had left some sort of record. That must be the delusion she was experiencing, that everything mattered, that everything was recorded, so guilt could never escape, so it was cared about still. Unlike in the real world. She hadn’t wanted to say anything to the others because, if her mind was disintegrating, she wanted to have it happen in private. It came as a relief, almost.

She had felt huge things passing high over the roof of the car. She had felt joys among the fears, even, but it had mostly been just fear. There had been motion between the trees of Hyde Park, and strange lights manifesting, in colours she wasn’t able to put a name to. Things moved between the trees faster than was possible. There had been unexpected structures in silhouette. Shadows lurking under shadows.

And then there had been a feeling of some huge, doom-laden presence somewhere distantly on their left, just as the car took them down Grosvenor Place. The car had felt to be teetering on the edge of it, affected by its gravity, sling-shotting around in that whirlpool-

‘What’s that over there?’ she’d managed to say, hoping that some part of the distant light she could see was real.

‘Buckingham Palace,’ said Costain.

She had kept herself a little apart from all she was experiencing, as if recording and reporting on her own fascinating breakdown. This familiar stance had calmed her a little. Never mind that all this reminded her of. . well, it would, wouldn’t it? She had imagined that, and she was now imagining this. It had probably been set off by those bodies in the cauldron. That had been the knife that had severed something she had herself stretched very tight.

The car had proceeded through Victoria, full of tourists, full of unknown shapes moving among the sightseers. And then up onto Vauxhall Bridge Road. Maybe if she went to sleep and woke up again, her brain would reset and it would all then be gone. .

No, it wouldn’t. She knew it wouldn’t. She glanced at Costain and Sefton. Sefton looked calm enough, playing with his phone. Costain had fallen asleep.

She had known, rather than saw, that up ahead stood a building: a house with stark angular walls and five chimneys. A bad place. The weight and impending sight of it had told her so. Then the car had gone through what felt like a gate, but there was no gate here in. . in the real world.

And then there had been hands. Hands of air, snatching at them!

She had reacted, of course, she hadn’t been able to stop herself, but she’d contained it enough so the other two hadn’t noticed, because they really couldn’t see.

The hands had let go, too weak to hold on against the speed of the car. But Ross had seen the five coffins that contained the five perfect corpses, their breath rising in dust, the same dust that killed-

And then the car had taken her out of that vision too, and they were now passing over Vauxhall Bridge. The Thames stretched underneath: such a huge new weight, she’d felt it writhing in her stomach. It hadn’t given her time to stop breathing hard, to stop reacting to those clutching hands taking her back to when she was a child, to a point where she was almost expecting the blows to fall across her face. It was as if she could hear — the vague sound, but not the details of — distant songs, as if all the associations and memories in London ran down to here, collected here. There were churning shapes down there, yet more shadows in the water. Everything she was seeing, she had understood with that detached part of her, was all part of the same thing. These were the symptoms of one big thing. Maybe that big thing was her mind falling apart. Or maybe this was her looking at something to do with what lay at the centre of the enigma she’d described at the crime scene. This was what they’d been missing. Or maybe what she was seeing here was all just a metaphor for the problem she was working on, as if she was a genius in a detective series. Only — she had found she was smiling, her awkward-shaped tooth biting at her lip, her image reflected in the horrible lights from outside — only she was no genius.

Then a ship, an old sailing ship with three masts, was speeding down the river, faster than any ship should be able to move. Its masts were too tall to pass under the bridge. It was going to reach the bridge at the same time they passed over. She had looked in the other direction. Another ship was speeding towards them. This was a steamship with a funnel, smoke coming from it, and a single mast. It looked like a warship but old, primitive. It was moving as if it was in an old film, speeded up, chuffing, impossible-

She’d looked back. From the other direction, the sailing ship was flashing forwards now. She’d made herself not yell, not grab her head and hide like a frightened animal, but just look, keep looking, be ready to tell someone else what she was witnessing-

The ships passed straight through each other, and through the bridge and right through the car and through her and the others. Something contradictory rushed through them. It felt old and despairing, like British rain. She’d heard once, she absurdly remembered, that London rain was the sweat of Londoners. It looked like silver, like sprue from model kits, like ancient glue. Ross now felt invaded by something horrible and familiar.

The complex cloud of two ships that shouldn’t be one had zoomed out of the back of the car. She’d looked in one direction, then the other, noting the details on those ships, as if she could report the incident. HMS London was the sailing ship, HMS Victoria was the other. The car had come to a stop outside the Portakabin. Ross got out and numbly, quickly, headed for her own car, without even a nod to the others.

She’d driven home to her flat in Catford, having to stop several times: sometimes because her hands were shaking so much, sometimes because of something she’d just passed and quickly driven on from. She finally got out of her car to unlock her garage, still shaking, looking slowly around the housing-block car park, expecting to see something horrifying from out of her own head, and this time for it to be up close, just it and her. And she knew what it would be. She knew she was going to see it again sometime. It would so obviously be coming for her. It seemed that all the time in between, the period of her becoming a serious adult and a police intelligence analyst, was just a dream, and now she was waking up again.

She’d looked up at the tower block itself: a patchwork of lights, balconies with flowerpots, satellite dishes, dead rugs on the rails, painted Jamaican flags. Even this late at night, there was the distant noise of televisions, children and overlapping music. There were. . things. . up there, too. Nothing. . huge. . like she’d felt in the distance while in the car. Nothing. . that bad. Nothing near her own flat. She’d felt worse. She’d been present at worse.

She’d had worse done to her. Maybe that had been real. Shit, maybe that had been real! No, no, this wasn’t real. This now wasn’t real. It had to be that way round.

She shoved the fear down inside her, unlocked the door of the garage, relying on sheer routine to stop her peering fearfully inside it, like a little child, and then drove the car in. She didn’t know how she was going to get through the rest of the night. Or the rest of her life.

She’d sat in her flat with her laptop open, every light fully on. She’d made sure there was nothing bad in her home. She had a sanctuary here. But that didn’t make sense: how could any place be a sanctuary from what was inside her head? Especially when, last time. . she killed the thought. She looked up details on voluntary admission to a psychiatric hospital. There were so many in London. There was a phone number listed. It would provide a rest: no constant wondering about how she was. They would tell her how she was. She’d called the number.

Quill found what he needed in the man’s furious expression. That meant he wasn’t going crackers. This seemed impossible, but he was experiencing it, so it couldn’t be. This was something that was happening, and he’d got a reaction out of the. . yeah, the suspect. . in front of him. He was obviously a wanker, so he might as well be a suspect. Harry was talking about his dad, but not quite as if he was here in the room with them. Because Harry didn’t realize that he was, did he? Not entirely. This was like one of those cartoons where a bad angel is whispering in your ear. But Harry didn’t think it was real.

‘You ever think he’s still watching over you?’ asked Quill, with a glance towards the old man.

‘Yeah, my old mum keeps saying that. She goes along to a. . whatchacallit, a Spiritualist meeting. She says she talks to him every week.’

‘So he owns a semi in the afterlife and still does the pools?’

‘The fucker,’ said Harry’s dad, ‘the arrogant arsehole always with the glib line. He never takes the time to understand anything properly — it’s always about the comedy! Are you going to let him talk about me like that?’

Quill kept his expression unresponsive.

‘Yeah,’ smiled Harry, ‘they’ve all got pets and everything, too. She says he’s always around, looking after me and wanting me to get on. Load of bollocks.’ But Harry didn’t entirely believe that, obviously.

Costain woke up suddenly in the car park outside the Portakabin, and realized something was wrong before he could figure out exactly what. The driver had said something to wake him up, and was now holding the back door open for him. He saw that the other two had bloody gone off and left him there. He got quickly out of the car, and thanked the bemused-looking driver. He watched the vehicle head off. He was feeling vulnerable, cover-blown vulnerable, for no reason. Weird. It made him look over at his own car and hesitate before heading towards it, look around first before he got in, then get out again and have a look underneath before he turned the engine on.

What the fuck was this? Everything was going great now. He’d even found that he’d been justified in betraying Rob. Was he just anticipating the world shitting on him again, or was this about something real? Was he being set up, getting followed by Professional Standards or something? Was this to do with his instincts trying to get the attention of his brain? ’Cos, hello, listening now, conscious mind in gear, thank you. . But, no, he couldn’t find anything sensible to be afraid of.

He drove randomly, looking behind him every now and then, even stopping a few times, making sudden turns down streets to make it more obvious if someone was following him. Whenever he stopped he would look upwards, expecting a police helicopter. He didn’t see or hear one, but there was something up there, he started to realize. It felt as if there were loads of things up there, looking down at him, meaning him harm.

What the fuck? Was he on something and didn’t know it?

He finally stopped the car in a lay-by somewhere near Croydon, his hands still on the wheel, and tried to control this feeling. Yeah, there was something of the effect of cocaine to it, but he hadn’t had any of the stuff since that night with Toshack. Trying to get hold of some over the last couple of weeks would have been suicidal, and he was pretty sure that, having worked so hard to keep all his options open, he wasn’t trying to be self-destructive here. That was the exact opposite of the kind of person he was. So what was this about? It seemed to be deliberately driving him away from London. Or, no, it didn’t care about anything: he was driving himself away from London because he had serious opinions on the subject of putting himself in danger, and London now felt. . dangerous.

But how could London feel like anything to him? There wasn’t any intel to base that reaction on. What. . had he developed his own Spidey sense?

But, yeah, that was where it was definitely taking him. Every new turn he had taken in this car had taken him further out into commuter land, heading through all the lost suburban byways and rat-runs. If he kept going, he’d soon hit the M25, and then he could just keep on going, right down to the coast, maybe get a ferry-

No, no, no! Why?

Did someone’s unconsciousness really function like this? He’d seen movies where someone found themselves acting kind of weird, and it turned out to be about some psychological tic they hadn’t recognized in themselves. That sort of stuff had always seemed like bullshit to him; he knew himself too well, but maybe there was something he could point to underneath this urge. It was as if he was now directly feeling something that had always been out there somewhere, but always previously as an abstract entity, a crushing weight of judgement and prejudice and arrogance. Except it was in a specific place now, here in London instead of all around him.

Was this a moment he’d talk about in the future, saying, ‘And then a little voice said to me. .’? Because this thing was pretty bloody concrete, more of a big foghorn than a little voice.

He had wanted to talk to someone, he realized. He’d wanted, ever since Quill appeared in the service station, to convince someone of. . of what? His innocence? But he wasn’t innocent. He wanted to tell his story. . only, since he’d woken up in that car, it had felt as if the thing was already starting to be left behind him now, was instead. . enormous, implacable, not to be bargained with.

Okay, so, let’s get this straight: leaving London now would be tantamount to running away. It would make him look guilty of something. It would deprive him of the kudos derived from the successful op. And it would also stop him cashing in on his endgame. He’d prepared that for an emergency exit, and then left it hidden, back in London. He would be leaving all that behind if he ran now. And, though his training and his inclination made running very much part of his world, he fucking hated doing it.

He forced himself to breathe more easily. None of this is either/or, Tone. How about a middle way? Call in sick tomorrow, maybe go to see a doctor, figure out if this feeling was. . fuck. . brain damage or something. Or maybe an optician thing? He looked around carefully, and then stared into the dark distance. Nothing out there struck him as weird. . but how could you tell?

So, okay, Tony, how about you get some more data and then make a genuine decision? He started the engine and set off again, making deliberate decisions about which turns he took now, watching himself, undercover, in his own head. At every turn he took, he still felt that urge to head away from London. He went east instead and started feeling it more precisely, now he was looking for it, almost as an actual pressure on his left shoulder. He passed through increasingly rural countryside, forests and parks. He was now in what used to be called Truncheon Valley, where the needs of the Met, house prices and salaries all conspired to produce a belt of police officers’ homes. He saw a sign saying Biggin Hill, and turned right on a whim. . and there it went, London was right behind him now, making him relax more with every mile.

This was a pretty bloody clear message, wasn’t it? The sense of threat would recede completely if he went in this direction for a while. So maybe this was just himself letting go of the tension, simply relaxing with the therapy of a long drive? Because, come on, he’d seen enough shit outside London, too; it wasn’t as if the city had a monopoly on oppression. He pulled the car to a halt, made a three-point turn, and headed back the other way.

He felt it coming, ahead of him, after only a minute.

Fuck.

So he turned again, fled again. He passed a sign beside a bit of parkland that said Westerham Heights: Greater London’s Highest Point. He turned at the junction, parked up, the only car on the gravel, and cautiously made his way on foot along a path between the trees, the only sound nearby being the night wind sighing through the branches. He had to get his eyeballs on to this thing, find out if he could see it as well as feel it, once he was looking at it directly.

He felt it hidden now by the rise ahead of him. Something demanding. Something threatening. Like an enormous. . audience. He went through a gate and crested the hill, and the wind was suddenly buffeting him directly, the sound of it turbulent in his ears. He was on the side of downlands, facing north towards London. To the north-west there lay Biggin Hill airport, the lit-up lines of the runway, and to the north the lights of London itself illuminated the clouds. But that was just what his eyes were telling him. Underneath that there was much more. So much that he dropped onto the grass, although it was wet with dew that would soon become frost.

There was something in the sky above Biggin Hill. Something he could see that transcended mere sight.

He stared at it, shocked. It was right on the edge of vision and. . and of hearing. . a dream of vapour trails and the bursts of ack-ack guns firing — he could hear them clearly — and beautiful parachutes and aircraft shapes spinning and interlacing in airborne fights that meant. . everything.

It meant everything to that great weight out there. But not to him. It — this force he’d been feeling — was trying to tell him how he should feel the importance of whatever was up there. That was a familiar feeling, he suddenly realized, and something he always felt being forced on him. It was something he didn’t quite own naturally, but was meant to. Something he was missing. It was especially beautiful when seen like this, a feeling of longing and purity and of enjoying sadness. It was stamped in the sky, and it wouldn’t fade. Or, at least, not for a long time. A shared thing that he didn’t share. And then he found he hated it, even though he also wanted terribly to have it. Or something instead of it that was his very own. That would be the best thing; it would be so easy to lie back and join in with it. He felt that the great weight beyond it was made up of that particular sensation. There was something real underneath it all that made him ache even more. He stared ahead, amazed at these specific thoughts, which were being put in his head by what he was now seeing. He wasn’t in control of his emotions right now, he realized. This power in London, whatever it was, was doing this to him somehow.

He himself was so nearly nothing, compared to the size of that power. He looked away from the ache in the sky, and towards London beyond. He could see strange things there, too. Or feel rather than see. He felt he had an extra sense hovering between all the others, which he didn’t yet understand enough, which needed fine tuning. He saw, or felt, lots of tiny individual meanings there in London. They added up to that enormous feeling emanating from the city itself. And it was just from the metropolis, and nowhere else. Costain looked to his left and right. There were other towns nearby, including Sevenoaks and Tunbridge Wells somewhere behind him. But from them there came nothing, not even faintly. This was purely a London thing.

Costain considered it for a while, this London thing: this British thing that had been poured into London and solidified there. He found he wanted to apologize to it. But he also wanted it to apologize to him.

He would never before have imagined a London thing. If he was experiencing a psychotic episode, something the drugs had done to his brain over the years. . that’d be about everything he saw and felt, wouldn’t it? Not this one, precise thing. Yeah, he knew a threat when he saw one. And this was real.

He sat there for a while longer, letting himself relax, feeling no threat in the woods around him, only beauty in the downlands beyond, but he looked every now and then at where the bad stuff — if it was bad stuff — was. And it was only there. What was over Biggin Hill was like a question posed in the sky. It was a constellation in a suddenly genuine astrology, perhaps significant to him, perhaps not — not good or bad, just real.

For a while, he’d thought he was in on a successful operation, that finally he had something to celebrate. Instead he’d found this.

It was what it was. And he had to face it.

Okay, then.

After a while, he got to his feet, went back to his car, and headed back into London.

Quill had three more pints with Harry. He gradually started to tune out the running commentary from Harry’s dad. The more he drank, the more he accepted what was in front of him. Maybe he could even use it. ‘Harry,’ he said finally, ‘are you jealous of me?’

‘Don’t give him the satisfaction,’ said Dad.

‘What?’ laughed Harry. ‘You’ve done so well ’cos you’re a better copper, Jimmy. I know that. When it comes to getting on, I’m a lazy sod. But I see you putting the work in.’

‘He made you say that! You do all this to hurt yourself! And he loves it when you do, you pathetic little twat!’

Quill steeled himself. ‘To some extent, that’s true, but it’s also just because of how the dice rolled. You’re a fucking amazing DS, Harry. If you went off to do something else, using those same skills, you’d be way ahead of me.’

‘Patronizing bastard.’ That had been Harry himself, with just the tiniest twitch of a smile — which his dad didn’t share.

‘But the dice did roll that way, and you’re my mate. You’re going to be my DS again at some point. I don’t want to think of you gnashing your teeth.’

Dad burst forth with a tirade of insults, but Quill wasn’t listening. He was watching Harry instead. He wanted to see if his laying down the law could make Harry rebel against this thing, if Harry’s disciplined side could make this other bastard vanish.

‘That’s good to hear, Jimmy,’ Harry said. ‘Don’t worry your pretty little head about it.’ But, though he gave Quill his most sardonic grin. . his dad remained.

Quill finally left the pub at closing time, and fended off Harry’s suggestion of finding a cab with him. This encounter was going to be just a weird drunk ghost story, wasn’t it? Something he’d tell people after he’d retired: ‘There was this one odd night when. .’

He staggered a bit as he headed back round the corner, stepping on and off the suburban pavement, going back towards the blaze of lights outside the Losley house. He should call home: Love, it turns out ghosts are real. Don’t have nightmares. It’ll never happen again. But he was still feeling weird and, now he was out in the open, he could still feel the sort of sensation he’d had with Harry’s dad sitting there. That coldness, it was everywhere. As if there was a dead dad lurking in a lot of these houses. And. . above him, and under him. That was too worrying to think about. And that feeling was especially strong, hugely strong. . right ahead of him.

He had to stop as soon as he saw the Losley house.

He stared at it. He had to look away, and then look back. But he knew what he was seeing was real.