‘Are you sure you’ve got nothing?’ he asked. ‘I was told you usually find extra spaces.’
‘Was it the one I saw you talking to outside the other night?’
‘Yeah. I don’t know his name.’
‘Well, he’s a bit weird. I’ve seen him hanging around here, looking for someone to talk to. You shouldn’t trust him. There’s a lot of troubled lads like him about. We used to keep two or three beds spare for busy nights, but Health and Safety stopped us. I’m really sorry.’
‘Is there anywhere else around here?’
She sat back from the screen and checked her printed lists. ‘Normally I’d say the Barbican or St George’s up by Aldgate, but I know they’re full tonight because I had to call them earlier.’ She was new to the job, he could tell. For a moment he actually thought she was about to get upset. He knew he didn’t fit the usual profile. ‘Sorry, what are you going to do?’ she asked.
‘Don’t worry, I’ll find somewhere to shelter tonight and come back tomorrow.’
‘Please do.’ She pulled out a drawer and slipped a card under the Plexiglas. ‘Ask for me, Karin Scott. I’m part-time but I’ll be on tomorrow night. OK?’
‘Thanks, Karin.’ He didn’t volunteer his name.
‘Tell you what, if you write down your details I’ll try to make sure you get a place tomorrow.’ She pushed another card and a Biro under the window.
‘I don’t like to give out my details.’
‘Then how can I save you a bed, love?’
Reluctantly, he scrawled on the back of the card and returned it.
‘Is that all?’ she said. ‘“F. Weeks”?’
‘Well, I’m not exactly in a position to pick up my emails,’ he replied with a touch of bitterness.
‘Sorry,’ she said again. Judging by the rate at which she kept apologizing, he felt sure she wouldn’t last long at the front desk. The first crazy street-lifer who hammered on the counter shield would probably finish her off. ‘Is that F for Frank?’
‘No,’ he said. ‘Freddie. Freddie Weeks.’ He limped away before she could detain him any longer. Karin was still in that early stage of her job when she thought she could befriend the homeless people she liked and maybe find some way around the rules to help them, but he knew that she would have to raise a barrier against him sooner or later. Getting involved would mean breaking council rules and losing her job.
The streets were wet and deserted. Tomorrow was Halloween, but it would be happening somewhere else, out in the suburbs, where mothers and fathers were preparing to shepherd their children around the neighbourhood in fancy dress, in imitation of the American custom of trick or treat. It seemed unlikely to take place anywhere around here; there were no children. Clerkenwell was the habitat of the single executive, and no lights showed in the minimalist apartments that had been newly carved from warehouses and factories. There was no one to whom he could turn, and nowhere he could go.
He was tired of walking around the city, tired of being forced to take a few pence wherever he could in order to survive another night. Passing another restaurant window where slender girls sat sipping white wine beneath coppery lampshades, he could no longer remember his old way of life. What was it like to go out for a drink and not check your change all the time? Friends vanished like dogs before thunderstorms the moment things went wrong and you stopped being flush.
Below and to the east lay the city’s financial district. The dense cloud base was the colour of bad milk, but something flickered gold closer to the rooftops. Drawn to the brightness, he limped in its direction.
It took him half an hour to reach the source of the light, and what he saw made him forget the pain.
Open fires were glowing and crackling in the middle of the road. A melted yellow ‘KEEP LEFT’ bollard drooped like a collapsed cake over a traffic island. The front of a Pret A Manger was boarded up, its walls blackened with soot. In the distance he glimpsed protestors in white plastic masks running and yelling between the buildings, then vanishing within the turbulent movement of the shadows. It was as if the threat of a truly anarchic Halloween had finally been realized. Everyone was on the move. Only the lemon-coloured Hi-Vis jackets of the police remained immobile, evenly spaced across the road, a human ring of steel.
Like an avatar in a video game he was forced from one route to another by the warning signs, the metal barriers, the plastic cordons. He knew that after two weeks on the street, rough sleepers developed a frayed grey look that repelled the public and attracted police attention, but there was one more thing he still had to do.
The filigreed canopies of Leadenhall Market were sectioned off by yellow police tape as if marked for demolition, so he cut down to Fenchurch Street, making his way east until he reached the slender avenue called Crutched Friars. Just ahead, beyond the low-slung railway bridge, was the entrance to the bank. Its wide grey marble doorway, stepped and recessed, was carpeted with flattened cardboard cartons. Pulling a black nylon pod from his backpack, he unfolded a thin sleeping bag and prepared to bed down for the night under London’s warrior skies.
2
COCKTAIL
Before the day dawned, the air around the Royal Exchange and the Bank of England still held the acid tang of burned varnish, rubber and charcoal, just as it had after the Blitz and the City of London IRA bomb of 1993.
The protestors had been dispersed for now, but the steel police barriers remained in place. The various groups eyed each other from a wary distance. One subset known as Make Capitalism History had attempted to pitch camp in Cannon Street, while members of the official Occupy movement were still amicably negotiating with City of London officers, standing around with cardboard cups of coffee like technicians on a film set. A newer, brasher protest outfit calling itself Break the Banks was attracting a younger membership, thanks to its tactic of planning flash-mob demos via social-networking sites. A smaller, more violent splinter group, Disobey, hung back in the shadows of the buildings. They had been denied official recognition and were now arguing among themselves about the best way to be effective. Unfortunately, they couldn’t agree on who was allowed to speak.
The police had adopted a bait-and-switch approach in their determination to keep all of the demonstrators from returning at the same time, but just after first light the main groups started to drift back into the same areas they had filled the night before. To make matters worse it was now officially Halloween, a time when it was understood – at least by civilians – that wild spirits would be tolerated and even encouraged. But there was a danger that mere mafficking would turn to something nastier and less treatable.
Before the rush hour had even started a crowd of several hundred people had formed, and would not be dispersed. Some carried placards bearing photographs of Dexter Cornell, the banker upon whom their hatred had found a focus. The chanting began, and as special-interest groups from around Europe (plus a branch from Canada and another from Venezuela) were disgorged from Bank and Monument tube stations to descend upon the Square Mile, the City of London police wearily realized that they were likely to have another grinding day of disobedience on their hands. Every move they made would be recorded, analysed and denigrated by a hostile press, most of whom could see which way the wind was blowing and were taking the side of the aggrieved public. The police hoped the protests had reached their peripeteia, but the demonstrators expected the same thing from an opposite viewpoint, and had the city’s turbulent history on their side. Tonight, they felt sure, the time was right for the forces of anarchy to overwhelm those of law and order.
It was, everyone agreed, a right bloody mess.
Crutched Friars is a short, narrow road capped by a dark railway bridge at one end. It houses a couple of pubs, a coffee shop and a handful of financial institutions, one of which is the Findersbury Private Bank. The bank had been closed over the weekend, so the protestors had not assembled outside it, but as it prepared to open its doors for its final week the mob instinctively made its wa
y over there, on the hunt for Dexter Cornell and his cowardly co-conspirators.
One of the protestors was a fake. He had adopted the name of Flannery, and as he prepared to make his move, he knew that he would have to time it just right.
There were no suspended black eyes that he could see, although there had to be some CCTV globes tucked around somewhere, so he stayed in the shadows beneath the railway bridge on Crutched Friars, smoking nervously until it was time to act. The sky was so grey with cloud that it seemed unlikely to ever get light. Thick black smoke unfurled like funeral ribbons above the roof of the nearest building, and he could hear angry shouting in the distance. Moving anxiously from one foot to the other, he waited for the right moment.
Here came the protestors, pouring into the far end of the street. The police were nowhere to be seen. He darted forward, unzipping his tool bag as he ran. He stayed in the gloom that bordered the edge of the buildings until he reached the entrance of the bank, then lit the bottle and threw it.
The glass smashed, but at first he thought the cocktail had failed to ignite. Reaching the protection of the railway arch once more, he looked back and saw a harsh saffron light pulsing out from the doorway. It grew brighter by the second, and covered the entire entrance by the time the first protestors arrived.
Riot police were pouring in from the Armed Response Vehicles parked in Seething Lane, so he dropped back beneath the railway arch and made his way down to the river, loping through the shadows. The first part of his plan was now complete. It was time to start making arrangements for tomorrow, and the day after. By the end of the week, he felt sure, the whole of the City would be engulfed in flames.
3
PYROPHOBIA
The match sizzled, flared and settled to a soft yellow flame.
It was touched to the branches that had been hacked from the surrounding ash trees, and soon the inferno roared and leaped upwards, orange sparks pulsing into the starry black sky. Behind the spitting, crackling forest a man was caged within its wooded heart. He grew increasingly agitated as he failed to find an exit and was seared by the heat. His cries were lost in the growing thunder of consumed branches. As his clothes burned away, his skin blistered in the conflagration until he was nothing but a blackened carapace …
Janice Longbright sat up in bed with a sudden gasp.
It took a moment to remember where she was: at home in her dark apartment, alone. She checked the bedside clock; 4.22 a.m. From behind the insistent sound of rain came the mournful howl of an ambulance. There was no point in trying to get back to sleep now. There was nothing worse than lying awake in the dark. She slipped out of bed and went to the bathroom, mopping her forehead with a tissue.
The nightmares were becoming apocalyptic, unlike anything she had experienced before. She turned and checked her back in the mirror. The old Marilyn Monroe T-shirt she slept in was wet with sweat. Her features looked unnaturally pale. Dear God, she thought, don’t tell me it’s the menopause. I need a holiday. Vitamin D deficiency. I should get some sun on my face. Fat chance of that happening. She was broke again; nothing unusual there. This time the dream had been so real that she had to stop herself from checking for burns.
She went to the kitchen and made coffee, then added granary toast, eggs, bacon and – because the Heinz tin was already open – baked beans. She wanted to call Jack Renfield and hear his reassuring voice, but he was spending the night with his daughter and it seemed unfair to intrude upon them. Instead she went online, virtually the only time when she could guarantee a decent broadband speed, and looked up the meaning of her nightmare. The various dictionaries of dream symbolism told her that fire was a sign of destruction, risk, passion, desire, purification, enlightenment, anger and inner transformation, as vague and hopeless as any newspaper astrologer’s predictions.
Longbright pushed the keyboard away and headed back to make more coffee, deciding that it had not been a good idea to eat four pieces of cheese on toast while watching footage of the riots just before going to bed.
The detective sergeant was a woman of stoic practicalities, as proportioned and permanent as the grandest public building. She was rarely prone to doubts or misgivings. But on this occasion she phoned someone to get a second opinion.
If Maggie Armitage was surprised to receive a phone call at a little after five on a Monday morning, she didn’t sound so. ‘You’re up with the lark,’ she said cheerfully. ‘I’m watching a programme about ants. What’s going on?’
‘It’s going to sound really stupid,’ said Longbright, already starting to regret having made the call. ‘Nightmares. The third one in a row, always the same.’ She peered in her mirror, pulling out a knotted curl of bleached hair. ‘I know you know something about, well—’
‘You can say it,’ said Maggie. ‘Magic, even if it’s largely apotropaic and not the Harry Potter sort.’ Maggie Armitage billed herself as a white witch from the Coven of St James the Elder, Kentish Town, a Grand Order Grade Four. ‘I am qualified, you know. I’ve got a diploma and everything.’
‘Maggie, you know I can’t allow myself to believe in that stuff. You’re a bit mad, but you’re good at reading people.’ The two women had known each other for fifteen years, and Maggie had often provided the PCU with advice, even though it was highly unorthodox and inadmissible in court.
‘What’s your dream about?’
‘A burning man,’ Janice replied. ‘He’s trapped in the centre of a vast, terrible fire and I get to watch him go up in flames. But it’s as if I’m trapped there with him – like I can see through his eyes and experience his pain.’
‘What happens at the end?’
‘I’m not sure, but I think he just dies – and I die with him.’
‘There’s no way out for either of you?’
‘None that I can see. I can actually feel the heat scorching my face and arms. I’m overcome with the feeling that we’re trapped together, him and me, and then I wake up.’
‘Do you have pyrophobia? Fear of being burned alive?’
‘No more than anyone else.’
‘Well, the obvious answer is that you’ve recycled images from the day’s news into your dreams. Have you been watching footage of the riots?’
‘Of course – we all have.’
‘You placed yourself inside the scenes. But the man, well, that suggests something else. How are you getting on with Jack?’
‘All right. I’m still uneasy about dating someone I work with.’
‘So there’s tension,’ said Maggie. ‘You said it yourself: “I feel trapped.” I know fear of commitment is a terrible cliché, but it sounds like the relationship is making you feel claustrophobic. I can get rid of the dreams, mix you a nice calming bedtime drink, something with skullcap and passionflower. I make it for Daphne whenever she’s been boxing. I’m letting her stay with me at the moment. It helps with the rent, although I won’t let her summon her spirit guide when Downton Abbey’s on because he always tells us what’s going to happen next.’
‘The dream,’ prompted Longbright. Maggie had a habit of wandering off the subject.
‘Well, I can get rid of the symptom but not the cause, of course. That would be down to you. But it doesn’t bode well.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘You know what you’re like when men get too close.’
‘No, what am I like?’
‘I think you and Jack are going to break up.’
‘Jeez – Maggie, I called you for advice.’
‘I’m sorry, advice doesn’t come with reassurance. Do you love him?’
‘I … care for him.’
‘Hm.’ The sound was pregnant with thought. ‘Of course, there is another interpretation.’
‘What’s that?’
There was a small silence on the other end of the line. ‘I think you know, my dear.’
Longbright tried to recall what Maggie had told her, and inwardly groaned. ‘What, that I’m psychic?’
‘Your
mother was, and it generally runs in the female line.’
‘Maggie, that’s what you believe. I don’t share your views; you know that. Besides, it would mean I’m foreseeing someone’s death, and what am I supposed to do about it?’
‘You should know that we’re entering a period of terrible turmoil, and it’s better to consider the possibility before …’
‘Before what?’
‘Before it’s too late to save yourself,’ Maggie replied.
So much for the reassurance of phoning a friend. The detective sergeant rang off and buried herself behind the cushions on the couch, waiting for the arrival of dawn and a fresh week’s work.
4
CHARCOAL
Like all angry phone calls seeking to apportion blame, it started at the top and worked its way down; the ACPO Commissioner called his Assistant Commissioner, who called the Chief Superintendent of the Serious Crime Directorate, who called Superintendent Darren ‘Missing’ Link, who summoned the head of the Peculiar Crimes Unit, Raymond Land, to meet with him in front of a burned-out doorway in the Square Mile.
The area surrounding the Findersbury Private Bank had been tented and taped off, sealing it away from prying reporters. Most had moved on, in any case; the action had shifted to St Paul’s, where fresh dissent had started on the steps of the cathedral.
Link was an old-school copper from the East End who liked to warn his team that he had come up the hard way and would take every opportunity to practise what he preached. He’d started out in the Special Demonstrations Squad, an undercover unit whose task was to infiltrate and subvert left-wing, anarchist, anti-fascist and environmental-activist groups. His leaving had less to do with the unit’s unethical code of behaviour, which had notoriously included exploiting the vulnerable and infiltrating peaceful protest organizations by adopting the identities of dead children, and more to do with the obscene amounts of cash pumped into questionable spying ops. He considered himself to be a deeply moral man.
Bryant & May - The Burning Man Page 2