by Paul Cornell
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 f
or 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.