Moon Over Soho

Chapter 10 Funland

STEPHANOPOULIS PUT her hand on my shoulder and pulled me back to the base of the stairs.

“Call your boss,” she said.

Larry’s bladders had inflated for a third time but whether it was to plead for death or remind us that delicious snacks were available at the concession stand we never found out — as soon as we were more than a yard away his mouth closed and the bladders deflated with an unpleasant whistling sound.

“Peter,” said Stephanopoulis. “Call your boss.”

I tried my airwave — amazingly it got a signal — and called the Folly. Nightingale picked up and I described the situation.

“I’m on my way,” he said. “Don’t go any farther in — don’t let anything out.”

I told him I understood and he hung up.

“You all right down there, guv?” called a voice from upstairs. The constable with the headscarf — Somali ninja girl.

“I’m going to sort things out upstairs,” said Stephanopoulis. “Will you be okay down here?”

“Yes,” I said. “I’ll be as happy as Larry.”

“Good man,” she said, patted me on the shoulder, and up she went.

“Try and get some lights down here,” I called after her.

“As soon as I can,” she called back.

I kept my torch on and angled slightly downward to give me a reassuring wash of light as far as Larry’s cabinet. Larry’s face, thank God, was reduced to shadow. There was a glint of light from the darkness beyond. I shone my torch and caught a line of bottles along the back of the bar. I thought I heard breathing but when I turned the torch back on Larry both he and his bladders were still.

Nightingale had said not to let anything out. I really wished he hadn’t said that, or at least had said what it was he thought might be in there.

I wondered how long magic could preserve dead flesh. Or had Larry’s head been pickled and stuffed like a hunting trophy? Was there a brain inside? And if there was, how was it being supplied with nutrients? Dr. Walid had once taken cell swabs and blood samples from Nightingale, but they had grown in culture exactly as you’d expect cells from a forty-year-old man to grow. When I asked whether he’d gotten cultures from any of the river gods he laughed and told me that I was welcome to try to obtain some whenever I wanted. Neither of us even considered getting Molly to donate. Dr. Walid’s theory was that, however it worked, it worked at the level of the whole body. So once cells became physically detached from the body they no longer retained whatever quality it was that was keeping them young.

“Or reducing replication errors,” Dr. Walid had said. “Or reversing entropy for all I know. It’s frustrating.”

Ash had been nearly dead when he’d gone into the Thames and now I was reliably informed he was strolling around Chelsea and cutting a swath through the green wellies brigade. Something had repaired the gross tissue damage in his chest and if that was possible for him, then why not Leslie’s face? Maybe she had been right — what magic had done, magic could undo.

I heard a noise from the darkness behind Larry’s cabinet — a scrabbling sound that seemed too regular to be rats. I shone my torch in that direction, but all I caught was a tangle of shadows among the table legs. Larry’s eyes glistened at me — they didn’t look like glass.

I heard the scrabbling again.

I tried my airwave and asked Stephanopoulis whether she had an ETA on Nightingale or even the portable lights. Because it’s a digital system you don’t get the weird atmospherics of an analogue walkie-talkie. Instead, the person you’re talking to drops out at random intervals. I think Stephanopoulis told me that “something” was going to be ten minutes and I was to stay where I was.

Scrabbling.

I took the batteries out of the airwave, turned off my phone, and conjured a nice bright werelight, which I floated off into the foyer beyond Larry’s cabinet. Once you’ve mastered the impello form, you learn to guide whatever it is you’re moving about, but it’s tricky. A bit like operating a remote-controlled plane with your toes. As the werelight curved around the cabinet, I noticed that Larry’s eyes actually moved to follow it. I tried to bring it around in a circle to check, but all I managed was to slow it down and make it wobble. I actually had to close my eyes and concentrate to get the thing to stay. But when I opened them I had my first good look at the foyer.

More of the ubiquitous gold and red flocked wallpaper, and heavy red velvet drapes framing archways farther into the club. Dully gleaming stained pine doors with brass plates marked GENTLEMEN and LADIES on the right. The bar had a mirrored back wall, which meant I could see in the reflection that there was nothing lurking beneath the bar.

My dad had played in clubs that looked like this. I’d gone clubbing in clubs like this, which made me realize how suspiciously unrotten the curtains were — despite the smell of mildew. Then I saw, hanging from a light fitting, the familiar folded-up neon shape of a compact fluorescent low-energy lightbulb — definitely not commercially available in the 1970s. Somebody had been down here recently and often enough to think it worth shelling out for some new bulbs.

This time, when the scrabbling came, I saw movement at the far end of the foyer, where the drapes half hid the archway to the rest of the club. A strange kicking motion in the fabric. I managed to bob my werelight in the right general direction and saw two human legs, probably female, protruding below. They were dressed in stockings — the same rich red color as the wallpaper. And one of the feet was still shod in a matching scarlet pointy-toed stiletto. As my light wobbled closer the legs began to kick, a spastic mechanical movement that reminded me horribly of early biological experiments with frogs. There were no human sounds apart from the heels drumming against the carpet, and the drapes hid anything above the thighs — assuming there was anything above the thighs.

It was possible a human being was in distress, and I had a duty to check it out — if only I could make my feet take a step forward. The legs began to kick more violently and I noticed that my werelight was beginning to dim and take on a redder hue. I was well practiced at werelights by this point, and they never normally changed color without me changing the forma. I’d seen this before when I’d “fed” the ghost of Captain de Vries and my best guess was that as the magic was drained off, the short-wavelength, higher-energy light dropped away first. Although saying that really doesn’t convey how sodding sinister the effect was in real life.

The legs kicked faster, the remaining shoe coming loose and spinning off into the shadows. The light grew dimmer and still I couldn’t make myself go forward.

“Shut it down, Peter,” said Nightingale from behind me. I popped the werelight and immediately the legs stopped kicking. He’d arrived with a bunch of serious-looking forensics people in noddy suits carrying their evidence-collection kits in camera cases. At the back a couple of Murder Team guys, including Somali ninja girl, were wrestling some portable floodlights down the last flight of stairs. Nightingale himself was in a noddy suit, which despite being the most modern item of clothing I’d ever seen him wear still made him look like the lead from a 1950s black-and-white sci-fi classic. He had one of his silver-topped canes in his right hand and a coil of nylon rope slung over his shoulder.

“Do not feed the animals,” he said.

“You think there might be something alive in there?” I asked.

“That’s something we’re going to have to discover for ourselves,” he said.

As the forensics people helped set up the lights, Nightingale stepped into a climber’s harness, attached one end of the rope, and handed the coil to me. He beckoned me closer and spoke quietly so the others wouldn’t hear.

“There’s a possibility there may be booby traps,” he said. “If the rope goes slack, then you use it to haul me out. But under no circumstances are you to follow me in. Anything that is too much for me to handle will utterly destroy you — is that clear?”

“Crystal,” I said.

“There’s also a small chance that something other than me might try to escape out through here,” he said. “It may look somewhat like me, it may even be wearing my body, but I’m counting on you to know the difference. Understand?”

“And if that happens?”

“I’m counting on you to hold it back long enough for the others” — he nodded at the forensics team and other officers — “to escape. Hit it with everything you’ve got, but your best hope will probably be to try to bring the ceiling down on top of it.”

“Down on you, you mean.”

“It won’t be me,” said Nightingale. “So you needn’t worry about hurting my feelings.”

“That’s reassuring,” I said. “Assuming I survive my heroic rearguard action, what then?”

Nightingale gave me a delighted grin. “Remember the vampire nest in Purley?”

We’d bunged a couple of white phosphorous grenades into the basement where the vampires had been living, or undeading, or whatever it was they did. “How could I forget?”

“A similar procedure to that,” said Nightingale. “Only on a larger scale.”

“And after that?”

“That really won’t be my problem,” he said cheerfully. “Though you should go and see Postmartin as soon as you can.”

“Are you sure you’re up to this?” I asked. “If you have a relapse Dr. Walid will kill me.”

Just then the portable floods kicked in and filled the foyer with harsh light. Larry the Lark’s face was bleached as white as bone and the red stockings on the woman’s legs became the color of blood. Nightingale took a deep breath.

I turned to the people waiting by the floods. “Ladies and gentlemen, I strongly advise that you shut down any laptops, iPads, iPhones, airwave handsets — in fact anything that has a microprocessor. Shut it down and take the battery out.”

The forensics techs looked at me blankly. One of them asked why. It was a good question and I really didn’t have time to answer it. “We think there may be an experimental EMP device rigged farther in,” I said. “So just to be on the safe side …”

They weren’t really convinced, but there were probably enough weird rumors about Nightingale to make them all comply.

“What’s an EMP?” asked Nightingale.

“It’s complicated, sir,” I said.

“Tell me later then,” he said. “Everybody ready?”

Everybody was. Or at least said they were.

“Remember,” said Nightingale, “you’ll hardly be in a position to haul me to safety if you allow yourself to be caught by whatever caught me.” He turned, hefted his cane in his right hand, and stepped forward. I paid out the rope as he gave the Cabinet of Larry a wide berth and headed for the curtained archway.

Somali ninja girl sidled over. “What’s going on?” she asked.

“Want to help?” I asked.

“Yeah,” she said.

“You can take notes,” I said.

She pulled a face.

“I’m serious,” I said.

“Oh,” she said and pulled out her notebook and pen.

Through a gap in the curtains I saw Nightingale stop and kneel down by the woman’s legs. “I’ve got a female cadaver here,” he called back and Somali ninja girl started writing. “Naked, midtwenties, Caucasian, no visible injuries or rigor. What looks like a silver pin has been pushed into her right temple; the skin seems to have healed around the wound so I’m guessing this is either a decorative piercing or possibly a thaumatological device.”

Somali ninja girl paused in her writing and looked at me.

“Put magical,” I whispered. “Magical device.”

Nightingale stood up and moved forward. Judging from the rope passing through my hands he went another ten feet before stopping.

“This area has been extensively modified quite recently,” said Nightingale, his voice surprisingly clear. “Metal cages have been fitted into what I can only assume were seating alcoves. Four on the left-hand side and four on my right. First cage on the left is empty, second contains the cadaver of … a monkey of some description, or ape, or possibly an adult male. The third cage contains what looks like the remains of a big cat, black fur, a panther or leopard at a guess. The last cage on the left is empty. I’m going to look at the right-hand cages now.”

I shifted position to the left so as to keep the rope in a straight line while Nightingale moved to the right.

“First cage on the right contains the cadaver of a Caucasian female with some degree of hybridization or surgical modification. The body is clothed in a tiger-striped leotard that has been altered to allow room for a tail — I can’t tell whether it’s a prosthetic or natural.”

Cat-girls, I thought queasily. Real cat-girls.

“Cages two and three are empty,” said Nightingale. “Thank God.”

He moved again and another couple of yards of rope played out through my hands.

“I’ve found a booby trap.” This time Nightingale had to raise his voice for it to reach us. “It looks like an improvised demon trap.”

I glanced at Somali ninja girl, who paused before writing the words demon trap.

“It’s of a German type,” shouted Nightingale. “But judging from the components it was manufactured quite recently. I’m going to attempt to disarm it, so Peter, I’d like you to stand by just in case.”

I shouted that I was ready.

The vestigium that came before the blast was exactly like the sensation you get when cresting the highest rise on a roller coaster, the moment of terror and excitement before the plunge. And then a confused jumble of sensations, the feel of velvet on my cheek, the stink of formaldehyde, and a sudden panting surge of sexual desire.

Then the physical blast wave hit us, a rolling wall of overpressure that was like having someone slap me in the ears from behind and made me and everyone stagger backward. I heard the Somali ninja girl say something short and Coptic and someone else behind me wanted to know what the fuck that was.

“Demon trap,” I said trying to sound knowledgeable and just in time for all the floodlights to blow out simultaneously. Suddenly in the dark Larry the Lark’s cabinet lit up with a gay sparkle of small colored bulbs, the bladders filled with air, and he opened his mouth and shouted — “At last!” And with a choking rattle the bladders of air emptied themselves for the last time. Then silence and then a clonk as Larry’s jaw fell off his face and hit the base of the cabinet.

I fumbled in the dark for my torch, turned it on, and quickly got it trained on the foyer. Other beams of light stabbed out of the darkness. Everyone else was as keen as I was to make sure that whatever came back through the foyer was somebody we knew.

The rope was slack in my hands.

“Inspector,” I called. “Are you okay?”

The rope went taut suddenly and I had to brace not to be pulled over.

“I’m quite all right,” said Nightingale. “Thank you for asking.”

I coiled up the rope as he returned. His face was pale in the torchlight. I asked him if he was all right again, but he just gave me a strange grimace as if remembering some serious pain. Then he unclipped the rope and went over to talk to the head forensics guy. Whatever he said, the forensics guy wasn’t happy. When Nightingale had finished, the man called over two of the younger-looking techs and told them something in a low voice.

One of the techs, a young man with Trotsky specs and an emo fringe, protested. But his boss shut him down and sent him and his mate packing up the stairs.

Nightingale came over and asked the Somali ninja girl to run upstairs and tell Stephanopoulis that the building was secure, but that we hadn’t found any suspects.

“A demon trap?” I asked.

“That’s just a nickname,” said Nightingale. “It’s a booby trap. I suppose you could call it a magical land mine. I haven’t seen one of those since 1946.”

“Shouldn’t I know about these things?” I said.

“The list of things you need to know about, Peter, is extraordinarily long,” said Nightingale. “And I have no doubt that even you will eventually cover them all. But there’s no point learning about demon traps until you’ve studied basic enchantment.” He held up his cane to show that the silver top was blackened and melted in places. Enchantment, I knew from my reading, was the process by which inanimate objects are imbued with magical qualities.

Nightingale examined the cane ruefully. “Although I may be demonstrating how it’s done in the next couple of months,” he said. “That being the case, we may as well provide you with a training staff while we’re at it.”

“The demon trap,” I said. “Did you recognize the signature?”

“The signare?” he asked. “Not the individual, but I think I know who trained the vicious little so-and-so.”

“Geoffrey Wheatcroft?” I asked.

“The very same.”

“Could he have been the original magician?”

“That’s something we’re going to have to look into,” said Nightingale.

“He’d have to have schlepped back and forth between here and Oxford,” I said. “If he was doing that, then he must have had an assistant.”

“One of his pupils?”

“Who might have gone on to be our new magician,” I said.

“This is all terribly speculative,” he said. “We need to find the assistant.”

“We should start interviewing all the people who had contact with Geoffrey Wheatcroft or Jason Dunlop.”

There was an ironic cheer as one of the portable floodlights was restarted.

“That’s an ambitious list of suspects,” said Nightingale.

“Then we start with the ones who knew both of them,” I said. “We can do it under the pretext of investigating Jason Dunlop’s murder.”

“First,” said Nightingale, “I want you to go and secure Smith’s office.”

“You don’t need me here then?” I asked.

“I’d rather you didn’t see what’s in there,” said Nightingale.

For a moment I thought I’d misheard him. “What is in there?” I asked.

“Some very beastly things,” said Nightingale. “Dr. Walid has people coming in who’ve handled this sort of situation before.”

“What sort of situation?” I said. “What sort of people?”

“Forensic pathologists,” he said. “People who’ve worked in Bosnia, Rwanda — that sort of situation.”

“Are we talking mass graves here?”

“Among other things,” he said.

“Shouldn’t I — ”

“No,” said Nightingale. “There’s nothing in there that it would profit you to see. Trust me in this, Peter, as master to apprentice, as a man who’s sworn to protect and nurture you. I don’t want you going in there.”

And I thought — do I really want to go in there?

“I can see whether No-Neck Tony knows anything while I’m at it,” I said.

Nightingale looked relieved. “That is an excellent idea.”

Stephanopoulis lent me the Somali ninja girl whose name was Sahra Guleed and who turned out to be from Gospel Oak, which is just up the road from where I grew up — different school, though. When two ethnic officers meet for the first time the first question you ask can be about anything but the second question you ask is always, “Why did you join?”

“Are you kidding?” said Guleed. “You get to legally rough people up.”

The answer is nearly always a lie — I knew an idealist when I saw one. Despite the drizzle, the Saturday-night crowds were thick on Old Compton Street and we had to dodge our fair share of drunks. I spotted my old mate PC Purdy loading a dazed-looking middle-aged man into the back of an IRV. The man was dressed in a pink tutu and I was sure that I knew him from somewhere. Purdy spotted me and gave me a cheery wave as he climbed into the front of the car — that was him out of the rain for the next couple of hours.

Since, with a bit of persuasion earlier, Alexander Smith had given permission for us to search his office, I had his keys. But when we got to the door on Greek Street it was ajar. I looked at Guleed, who flicked out her extendable baton and gestured for me to take the lead.

“Ladies first,” I said.

“Age before beauty,” she said.

“I thought you liked roughing people up.”

“This is your case,” she said.

I extended my own baton and went up the stairs first. Guleed waited and then came padding up a few feet behind me. When there’s just two of you it’s always wise to maintain a decent interval. That way should anything happen to the copper in front, the copper behind has time to react in a calm and rational manner. Or, more likely, run for help. When I got to the first landing, I found that the interior door to Smith’s office was open and the cheap plywood around the lock was splintered. I waited until Guleed had caught up and then gently pushed the door open with my left hand.

The office had been ransacked. Every drawer had been pulled out, every box folder emptied. The framed posters had been yanked off the walls and the backs slashed open. It looked messy, but very thorough and systematic. This being Soho it’s possible to make a lot of noise before somebody dials 999 but I did wonder where No-Neck had been while the office was getting trashed. I found out when I stepped on his leg. Stepping on some poor bastard has got to be about the worst way to discover a body — I backed off.

No-Neck had been half buried under a pile of papers and glossy magazines. All I could see was the leg I’d stepped on and enough of his face to make the identification.

“Oh dear,” said Guleed when she saw the body. “Is he dead?”

Carefully, so as not disturb the crime scene, I squatted down and felt for a pulse where on somebody normal-shaped there’d be a neck — there was nothing. While Guleed called Stephanopoulis, I pulled on my gloves and checked to see if there was an obvious cause of death. There was. Two entry wounds on his chest, hard to spot because of the black T-shirt; they’d gone in just after the Z and the second P in ZEPPELIN. The wounds showed what might have been powder burns from a close-range discharge. But since this was my first possible gunshot victim, what did I know?

According to Guleed, the first thing we needed to do was get out of the office and stop contaminating the crime scene. Since she was a fully paid-up member of a Murder Team I did what she said.

“We have to check upstairs,” she said. “In case any suspects are still in the building.”

“Just the two of us?” I asked.

Guleed bit her lip. “Good point,” she said. “Let’s stay where we are. That way we stop anyone trying to leave or get into the crime scene.”

“What if there’s a fire escape at the back?”

“You just had to say that, didn’t you?” She tapped her baton against her thigh and gave me a disgusted look. “Okay,” she said. “You go secure the fire escape and I’ll stay here and guard the scene.”

“On my own?” I asked. “What if there isn’t a fire escape?”

“You’re taking the piss, aren’t you?”

“Yes,” I said. “Yes, I am.”

Her airwave squelched. It was Stephanopoulis. “Yes, boss,” said Guleed.

“I’m coming up Greek Street,” said Stephanopoulis. “Just the one body then?”

“So far,” I said.

“So far,” said Guleed into the airwave.

“Tell Grant that I’m going to ban him from Westminster,” said Stephanopoulis. “I really don’t need the overtime this badly. Whereabouts in the building are you?”

“We’re on the second-floor landing.”

“Why isn’t one of you covering the fire escape?” asked Stephanopoulis. “If there is a fire escape.”

Me and Guleed engaged in one of those silent, pointing arguments that you have when you’re trying to sort something out without alerting someone on the other end of the phone. I’d just emphatically mouthed I’ll go at Guleed when we heard the front door being pushed open.

“Don’t bother,” said Stephanopoulis. “I’m already here.”

She stamped up the steps, pushed past us, and had a look around from the doorway.

“What his name?” asked Stephanopoulis.

I had to admit that all I knew was that his first name was Tony and that he worked for Alexander Smith as muscle and that he had no neck. Subtle clues in her manner told me that Stephanopoulis was less than impressed with my police work.

“You idiot, Peter,” she said. “How could you not get his name. Everything, Peter, you have to nail down everything.”

I could hear Guleed not sniggering behind me — so could Stephanopoulis.

“I want you” — Stephanopoulis jabbed a finger at me — “to go back to West End Central and reinterview Smith about who this guy is and what he knows about him.”

“Shall I tell him he’s dead?”

“Do me a favor,” said Stephanopoulis wearily. “Once he finds out about this he’s going to shut the fuck right up and I don’t blame him.”

“Yes, guv,” I said.

Guleed asked if Stephanopoulis wanted her to go with me.

“Christ no,” she said. “I don’t want you picking up any more bad habits from him.” She looked at me again. “Are you still here?”

IT’S A truism that in a secure building like a police station, once you’re past the perimeter security you walk around unchallenged by adopting a purposeful stride and holding a clipboard. I don’t recommend testing this for two reasons: For one thing there’s nothing worth nicking from a police station that you can’t get easier from somewhere else, usually by bribing a police officer. And for another, it’s full of police officers who are often suspicious to the point of clinical paranoia. Even an acclaimed uniform hanger and all-around waste of space like PC Phillip Purdy. This evening he made a spectacular bid to get his name inscribed in the police book of remembrance. As events were reconstructed later Purdy, having successfully navigated his tutu-wearing prisoner into the custody suite, was on his way to the canteen to do his “paperwork” when he spotted an IC1 female walking up a side staircase in the direction of the CID interview rooms. On the CCTV footage from the stairwell he’s clearly seen calling after her and, when she fails to respond, following her up the stairs.

At just that moment, at least according to the time code from the CCTV camera in the foyer, yours truly was flashing his warrant card and getting buzzed into the building. I then head, with my Costa Coffee double macchiato in one hand and a cinnamon swirl in the other, for the central staircase and make my way up toward the same interview room — at this stage I’m one floor down.

Interview rooms used to be just ordinary offices fitted out with a table, a couple of chairs, good soundproofing, and a place to leave the telephone books when you were finished. These days, a modern interview room has two camera positions, a tape recorder, a one-way mirror, and a separate recording suite from which an enterprising senior investigating officer can monitor several interviews at once or have a bit of a nap. Since at West End Central all of this had to be shoehorned into the space designed in the 1930s as a modest open-plan office, it meant the access corridor outside the interview rooms was a bit narrow. The single CCTV camera that covered the corridor began to malfunction about the time I started up the steps and none of the recording equipment in the interview rooms was turned on. This is all to the good for me, because it means that when I came around the corner and found myself face-to-face with the Pale Lady my thirty seconds of stunned indecision were not recorded for posterity.

Apart from her hair, which had been shorn off into a ragged pageboy, she looked exactly like the witness descriptions: white face, big eyes, disturbing mouth. She was dressed in gray joggers, a salmon-pink hoodie, and she didn’t see me at first because she was attempting to shake PC Phillip Purdy off her leg. He was stretched out on the floor with his left arm, broken in two places I learned later, dragging beside him and his right hand locked around the Pale Lady’s surprisingly slender ankle. One of his eyes was beginning to swell shut and there was blood pouring from his nose.

I don’t know if it was shock or the fact that I had a mouthful of cinnamon swirl, or just because I’d already had a day of weird shit and was getting a bit punch-drunk, but I just couldn’t make myself move.

Purdy saw me, though. “Help,” he croaked.

The Pale Lady looked at me and cocked her head to one side.

“Help,” said Purdy again.

I tried to tell him to let go and move away, but it came out muffled in a shower of cinnamon crumbs.

Without taking her eyes off me, the Pale Lady elegantly lifted one hand and then slammed it down on Purdy’s wrist. I heard bones break and Purdy whimpered and let go. She smiled, revealing far too many teeth — I’d faced a smile like that before. I knew what was coming next. She tensed, so did I, then she surged toward me with a terrifying burst of speed, head thrust forward, mouth open, teeth bared. As she sprang at me I threw my coffee in her face. I’d just bought it. It was very hot.

She screamed and I flung myself out of her way. But because the corridor was narrow her shoulder slammed into mine, and the impact spun me around and dumped me on the floor. It was like being hit by a fast-moving cyclist. I rolled to avoid any follow-up and staggered to my feet, only to find that the Pale Lady was long gone. Each interview room has an alarm button by the door and I slapped my palm on one as I stepped over Purdy and slammed into the room where we’d stashed Alexander Smith.

He was slumped back in his chair, head thrown back, mouth open, and what looked like a bullet hole in his chest with the same charring around the cloth of his shirt that I’d seen on No-Neck earlier.

A uniformed PC cautiously stuck her head around the door and pointed a taser at me. “Who are you?” she asked.

“Peter Grant,” I said. “Suspect is an IC1 female, gray tracksuit bottoms, pink hoodie.” If I left it there some idiot was going to get himself gutted trying to tackle her. “Psychiatric patient, very dangerous, possibly armed. Probably still in the building.”

The PC looked at me in astonishment. “Yeah, right,” she said.

“Have you done the first-aid course?” I asked.

“Last month,” she said.

“Okay, give me the taser and you see to Purdy,” I said.

She handed me the taser; it was heavy, plastic, and looked like something from Doctor Who. Even in her state of shock she could tell that Smith was dead so she went off to get the first-aid kit for Purdy.

I stepped back over Purdy and took a moment to check he was still alive. “Help’s on its way,” I told him. “What the hell were you doing here?”

His face was white and sweaty with pain but he actually laughed — sort of. “It’s got a better canteen,” he said.

I told him to take it easy and headed for the stairs.

The thing about policing is that it’s something you do out on the streets rather than inside the police station. During a normal working day, the civilian staff will outnumber your actual constables by a ratio of three to one. Which means that when there’s a crisis at the local nick everybody has to rush back to deal with it. Which takes time. Feral the Pale Lady might have been, but I didn’t think she was stupid. Which meant she was going to go out by the fastest possible route, before all the police officers came rushing back in.

Since the IRA bombing campaigns started in the 1970s, police stations in London have developed a very clear idea of what constitutes inside and outside and placed a great deal of reinforced laminated Perspex between the two. West End Central was no exception. But the entrance also featured a marble-faced external staircase that had definitely been built with no concern to the needs of wheelchair users and so a second door, at pavement level and just to left of the main entrance, had been knocked into the façade — conveniently located at the base of the stairwell so you could wheel yourself straight into the lift. The designers weren’t stupid, though. It was a very thick door, and alarmed in such a way that the desk sergeant in reception could check you over on CCTV before he buzzed you out. It would have been totally secure if a young detective constable hadn’t been returning to the station with an armful of Chinese takeout and decided that it would serve as a useful shortcut to the CID offices.

The Pale Lady hit him when he was halfway through the door. I came down the stairs just in time to see him go down in a spray of what turned out to sweet-and-sour sauce.

“Call it in,” I yelled as I jumped over him and into the pouring rain.

I’d seen her veer right down Savile Row and charge down the middle of the road. A silver Mercedes SL500 swerved to avoid her and piled into the side of a parked Porsche Carrera and set off car alarms along the whole street. I stayed in the road behind and concentrated on trying to close the distance — as far as I knew, I was the only officer with a visual on the suspect. It was Saturday night in the West End, and despite the weather the crowds were out. If I lost contact she’d vanish without a trace.

I stuffed the taser into my jacket pocket and fumbled for my airwave. I tried it a few times until I remembered that I’d neglected to put the batteries back in. The Pale Lady was running out of road as Savile Row made a T-junction with Vigo Street. She went left, toward Regent Street and Soho. I lost hold of the airwave as I followed her around the corner and it went spinning under a parked car.

Vigo Street was little more than an alleyway with pretensions, a narrow road lined with coffee shops and sandwich bars that linked Savile Row with Regent Street. It was late enough for them to be closing and the Pale Lady was having to dodge around pedestrians, presumably because running over them might slow her down even more. I managed to get my phone out of my pocket. Like every police officer under the age of forty I have the bypass number for Metcall on speed dial — that’s a number that routes you directly through to a CAD operator without all that “Which service do you require?” stuff.

When you’re sprinting after a suspect through a narrow street in heavy rain it’s almost impossible to hear someone talking to you on your phone, so I waited a suitable interval and started breathlessly identifying myself and the suspect I was chasing. It’s hard to talk and stay with a fleeing suspect, especially one who runs across a major thoroughfare without waiting for the lights to change.

Regent Street was a slow-moving river of wet metal, but I thought she might even make it until White Van Man came to my rescue and she went spinning off the front of a Ford Transit. She ricocheted off the back of a Citroën with a thin scream of rage and went staggering for the entrance to Glass house Street.

Fortunately for me, the river of metal ran itself aground on the rocks of potential insurance claims and so the traffic had stopped moving by the time I followed her across. I was now less than five yards behind the Pale Lady so I pulled out the taser and tried to remember what its effective range was. I also realized where she was going — twenty yards farther on, Glasshouse Street branches left into Brewer Street. She was heading back to the club.

Then she just accelerated away. I’m a young man, I’m fit, and I used to sprint at school. But she just left me standing like a fat kid on sports day. I came to a stop on the corner of Brewer and Glasshouse, put my hands on my knees and tried to catch my breath. The die-hard smokers outside the Glassblower Pub on the corner gave me an ironic cheer.

You bastards, I thought, I’d like to see you run her down.

I heard a siren in the distance and looked up to see her running back toward me. Behind her I saw the flashing lightbars of at least two IRVs. When she saw me waiting for her, she gave me a look not of hatred or fear but a sort of weary disgust. As if I were a particularly persistent unwanted smell. I was somewhat insulted, so I shot her in the chest with my taser.

The Metropolitan Police uses an X26 model taser manufactured by the imaginatively titled Taser International Company. It uses a compressed nitrogen charge to fire two metal prongs into suspects and then zap them with fifty thousand volts. Which causes neuromuscular incapacitation, which causes them to fall over. Which was why I was a tad disappointed when the Pale Lady just grunted, blinked, and then tore the prongs out of her chest. She glared at me, I took an involuntary step backward, and she spun on her heel and shot off down Glasshouse Street, bowling over the smokers as she went.

I dropped the taser and rocked forward for a good start. Even though my shoes slipped on the wet road I like to think I trimmed a bit of time off my start. If I could get close enough to give her a heel tap I could bring her down long enough for me and half a van of TSG to land on top of her.

She tore down Glasshouse Street with what I realized were bare feet slapping on the road surface. I came after her sweating and blowing. But, weirdly, either she was slowing down or I was warming up, because I was gaining. But where was she going? At the far end of Glasshouse Street was Piccadilly Circus, lots of traffic, lots of tourists to get lost in, and a tube station. The tube. There were steps down to Piccadilly Circus station right where Glasshouse met the circus.

I was right. As she reached the ugly pink façade of the doughnut shop she started angling right for the station entrance. I dug for it, but I didn’t have enough left to get me closer than two yards. Then she suddenly veered left again and started curving around past the big Boots and heading for Shaftesbury Avenue. I couldn’t figure it out until I saw a pair of PCSOs idling in front of the steps down to the station — the Pale Lady must have thought they were after her.

She went across the traffic island, bounced off a hatchback, and ran right over the bonnet of a Ford Mondeo before sprinting past the Rainforest Café, bowling tourists aside as she went. I went around the cars to a chorus of hooting and headed after her, but I groaned out loud when she did a sharp turn into the Trocadero Centre. The only way in was a set of escalators going up a floor. Chasing someone up stairs or escalators is always a nightmare because there’s a chance they’ll be waiting in the blind spot at the top to kick you back down again. But I couldn’t risk losing the Pale Lady, so I ran up the down escalators on the assumption that if she was waiting for me it would be on the wrong side. It was a good theory, and had she been waiting for me I’d have been well pleased with myself.

The Trocadero was a five-story bastard child of a building built in the Baroque style in 1896 and sorely used over the centuries as everything from a music hall to a restaurant and a waxworks. In the mid-1980s the interior was completely gutted and replaced with the sets from Logan’s Run — or that might be just the way I remember it. It’s got a cinema and a multilevel amusement arcade that I remember well, because my mum used to clean it. And one of my uncles knew a trick to blag free turns on Street Fighter II.

I caught a flash of salmon pink as I crested the escalator and saw the Pale Lady jump the short flight of steps that led down to the mezzanine level. A bunch of plump white girls in black hoodies scattered as she landed among them. As I chased her I was praying Please God don’t go into the cinema because short of a minefield, a multiplex is the last place you want to chase a suspect. She skidded on the waxed floor and went left.

I yelled “Police!” at the plump white girls, who scattered again.

One of them yelled “Wanker” as I jumped the stairs and followed the Pale Lady along the mezzanine. She went past a café with a drift of aluminum chairs and tables half blocking the way. Some poor sod stood up at the wrong moment and got the Pale Lady’s forearm smashed into his head. He went down hard, upending a table and sending a tray spinning over the railings and down into the atrium three stories below.

“Police,” I yelled again, which just got me bewildered looks from the bystanders. I really don’t know why we don’t just save our breath. Which I needed to save at that point, I can tell you.

The Pale Lady ran up another short flight of stairs and into a dark noisy cavern full of flashing lights. An electric-blue neon sign over the entrance said WELCOME TO FUNLAND.

It was packed, mostly teenagers and young men who were killing time before the clubs opened. They were playing slot machines and old-fashioned racing games that I remembered from ten years ago. If the Pale Lady had gone to ground among all those bodies I might have lost her. But either she was on a timetable or she was smart enough to know that the wrath of the Metropolitan Police was about to fall on her from a great height. Nobody kills a suspect in a police station and gets away with it — at least nobody without a warrant card.

Amid the games and slot machines two escalators led upward to the next floor. When I saw a teenage boy pointing and his mate pulling out his phone to film something out of my sight I knew the Pale Lady was going up that way. I’d already spotted that if I jumped onto the Skittles machine I could jump again high enough to grab the escalator rail and vault onto the steps. I landed just short of the Pale Lady, riding up lying flat on her back to stay hidden. She hissed and lashed her foot at my face but I got out of the way in time to hear her heel go past my ear with a sound like ripping silk. I reared back and tried to stamp on her other knee, but she scrambled back and tried to kick me in the bollocks. I twisted and her kick grazed off my thigh, but hard enough to stagger me. She was just about to kick me again when we reached the top of the escalator.

She screamed and I realized that her hair, as short as it was, had caught in the metal teeth at the top of the escalator. She thrashed, did a sort of roll and then a desperate headstand to pull it clear. I grabbed my baton, extended it, and lashed down as hard as I could. I didn’t think I’d get a second chance like this.

They train us to use our batons, you know. They don’t just issue them to us and say “Try not to kill anyone.” There are light taps for warnings, a full arm swing that’s deliberately slow to make your suspect flinch back, the sneaky slap to the thigh that isn’t easy to see on the news footage. But the basic principle is that the amount of force is always controlled and appropriate. This is why I lunged forward while she was upside down and hit the Pale Lady in the hip with everything I had. Something crunched under the baton and she howled loud enough to cut through all the music and sound effects. Then she kicked me in the cheek.

It wasn’t her best effort, but it was hard enough to snap my head back so that I didn’t see the end of the escalator and stumbled off while she flipped herself backward, twisted, and tried to crawl away. I wasn’t having that, so I threw myself on her back. I fell heavy, to try to drive the air out of her. But in an astonishingly fluid motion she arched her back and flung me into the side of a Spinna Winna machine. My elbow smashed into the glass and I felt a sensation that told me I was on the numb-now, pain-later plan. I straightened up just in time to see her fist coming for my face. She must have been slowing down, because this time I got safely out the way and her hand splintered into the glass and through. I whirled and brought my baton down on her wrist just as hard as I could. Again a crack, and a spray of blood as the glass cut her skin. She let out a wet gasp and turned her head to stare at me.

“Give it up,” I said.

There was pain in her face and anger and the sort of self-pity you see on the faces of thwarted bullies. She bared her teeth in a snarl of defiance and wrenched her hand out of the Spinna Winna machine — a curl of blood splattered my face. I lunged forward with my head down and got my shoulder jammed into her chest. She hammered at my shoulders while I drove her back toward the balcony railing. She was unnaturally strong, but I was still bigger and heavier. And if I could stay inside her reach I might be able to pin her down long enough for backup to arrive.

Surely backup should be arriving soon.

Her back hit the barrier and we came to a shuddering halt. I made a grab for her knee to see if I could trip her up, but she caught me a stunning blow on the side of the head and then threw me hard enough that I fetched up on my side ten feet away. I shook my head and looked up to see the Pale Lady charging toward me with blood staining her clothes and murder in her eyes. She could have at least tried to make her escape; I wasn’t going to follow her anymore. But I think she knew she was going down and was planning to make somebody pay before she went. That somebody being yours truly.

I didn’t have time to shout a warning, I just made the correct shape in my head and shouted, louder than I had intended, “Impello.”

The spell picked her up and slammed her back against the railing and then, horrifyingly, she toppled backward and was gone.