London Falling

by Paul Cornell

  ‘She might have had a bit of trouble with Mick and the boys,’ said Sefton. ‘Bloody hell, it’s like a backwoods-cabin horror movie. There must have been a whole family of them for him to say that: loads of them across all these houses, if he thought they’d be able to ambush us. And he didn’t even bother telling us not to bring guns!’

  That thought made the others pause, even as it settled down in Quill’s head and made itself at home. What the fuck were they dealing with here? ‘Hi ho,’ he said, ‘it’s off to work we go.’

  Costain took himself aside for a few minutes, and thought about what he’d heard read aloud, and found that a little bit of bile had now entered his lovely day. But, what the fuck, that was history now. Rob had been willing to sell him out to who knows what: well, that was how the world worked, and he’d got in his retaliation without knowing it. And now he didn’t have to feel bad about anything. He shook his head and carried on.

  Quill called a conference of all those still inside the house, and told them to concentrate on finding a hidden door. But none was found. The next time he looked up, it was dark outside. The noises from out there suggested a major press presence and a crowd of onlookers on the other side of the police cordon, big television lights now heating the air. He phoned Sarah, left a message just saying, yes, he was in the middle of what she was seeing on telly, and so, obviously, he’d be home late. She called back to say there was nothing bloody obvious about it – then clicked off before he could reply.

  Lofthouse arrived, relief showing on her face. She went around, touching walls and windows, as if she was considering buying the place. ‘Brilliant stuff, James. You reckon we’ll nick her?’

  ‘I’m amazed someone out there hasn’t found her already.’

  ‘Quite a few say they’ve sighted her, but so far it’s just the nutters. We’ve put a watch on the West Ham pubs, and so on. The club are being . . . fulsomely cooperative.’

  ‘I’ll bet.’

  ‘I should think they’ll burn her regular seat and salt the ground beneath it.’

  Quill stopped her just before she went outside to conduct her press conference. ‘Ma’am, is this what . . .? I mean, you put such a . . . strange unit together. This has the ring of insane genius.’

  ‘Flattery is always welcome.’

  ‘But I’m waiting for the other shoe to drop. Is this really about . . .’ he chose his words carefully. ‘. . . corruption in Gipsy Hill?’

  She looked for a moment to be choosing her words carefully. ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘Let’s find out. At least you’re thoroughly off the hook.’ And her expression now urged him to leave it at that.

  Lofthouse delivered her press conference out on the doorstep, the light drizzle reflecting the television lights. She didn’t speculate, but asked for the public’s help, particularly from those who were West Ham supporters. She was asked about the matter of the child victims’ identity, and said that she couldn’t add anything on that subject, as yet. Nor could she, for operational reasons (that was, protecting the UCs), offer a narrative that led from the Toshack investigation to this doorstep.

  Quill watched it all from an upstairs window. He wondered how iconic that bare doorway was going to become. This was going to be a famous London murder house, like 10 Rillington Place or 39 Hilldrop Crescent. The neighbours, who’d been moved out and were currently being interviewed, hadn’t, thankfully, done the usual by saying that Losley was a pleasant neighbour who’d kept herself to herself. (Always delivered in a tone of voice that suggested that, since keeping oneself to oneself was the single greatest thing one English person could do for another, the suspect ought to be excused whatever psychopathic shit they’d visited on other people.) They just hadn’t seen her at all. A few of them had even thought that the house was empty, which meant Losley had probably been absent for some considerable time. According to the internet, on the other hand, the holders of season tickets in seats near Losley, plus the supporters’ club, were now queuing up to say she was a bloody paedo and to distance themselves from anything she’d done, from goal celebrations to using harsh language. Quill called up West Ham and arranged to be sent a list of names and contact details for those season-ticket holders seated near to Losley, so he could call them in for interview.

  ‘We’ve heard from West Ham supporters,’ said a reporter with the BBC logo on her microphone, ‘that Mora Losley expressed particular hatred for those who scored hat-tricks against the club. And there’s an urban legend about such players being murdered. Is there anything to suggest—?’

  And the crowd goes wild, thought Quill, who’d been hoping nobody would make that connection. Lofthouse let the noise die down and started to do her best to quench that particular fire. Sefton tapped Quill on the shoulder, and handed him the late-edition Evening Standard. That Losley season-ticket photo featured in it. The Witch of West Ham, said the headline.

  Bang, that was what she was now.

  ‘Anything in there?’ Quill asked the SOCO with the magnetic resonance device, who was running it over the tub of soil. For the third time, because he’d requested her to.

  ‘Soil,’ she said.

  ‘Yeah,’ said Quill. ‘Have a biscuit. Anything else?’

  ‘No,’ sighed the woman, ‘as I said: a shaped pile of the West Ham soil, wet as you’d expect that club’s soil to be, and matching that found at Gipsy Hill, with a layer of what looks to be local soil underneath. We’ve also sifted it and looked under the tub. Which is bloody heavy.’

  ‘Small bones? Needles? You’ve completely forensicated it?’

  The SOCO just glowered at him and walked away.

  At the end of their shift, the forensics team left the loft, heading off for a cuppa, and, in the gap before the next shift came on, Quill looked around and saw that it was just the four of them in here now. Which felt kind of weird. For a while, there, they’d been back in the mainstream of police work. And with luck it was going to be like that from now on. It would surely be the only sane thing for Lofthouse to draw some more personnel into her now highly successful spin-off. Yeah, the sane thing – so how likely was that really?

  He called down to the outgoing SOCOs. ‘Here,’ he yelled, ‘can I touch that soil now? I mean touch touch, with no evidence gloves?’ Having examined every inch of the cauldron in sight before Quill’s team had entered, they’d just taken it – and the skeletons contained therein – off to the lab.

  ‘You’re not the first,’ a female voice came back. ‘I’ve already had a feel. But, if for some reason you want to, you may.’

  Quill took off his gloves, which felt a blessed relief. He reached out to the soil. His fingertips touched it—

  Just as he suddenly realized that all the others should be shouting at him not to, warning that a giant and ridiculous potential had risen out of nothing in the very second he’d moved his fingers towards the soil—

  And he registered that he did actually hear them shouting, in a sudden concerted yell of fear.

  Something gave a snap, between Quill’s flesh and the soil. Something shorted out. And everything changed.

  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 th
at 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—