London Falling

by Paul Cornell

  ‘Or,’ said Ross, ‘you could just . . . do the water supply of this building, so we can get it out of the tap when required.’ She looked hopefully between them.

  The clerics stared at each other. They then stood up. ‘All right,’ said Irfan, ‘I’ve had it. Your analyst got us to come all the way over here because it sounded urgent—’

  ‘No,’ Quill said, ‘listen, this isn’t a joke—’

  ‘You know,’ said Franklin, ‘even a couple of years ago, nobody would have dared to do this. Now I get kids knocking on my door, I get prank phone calls—’

  ‘You think we’re making this up?’ snarled Costain.

  The clerics fell still.

  Sefton watched the three men of faith doing what they did. He saw their body-language skills, their active listening, their voices pulling more and more explanation out of the others, to the point where he had to speak up and remind them of what couldn’t be said. They were preying on the group’s tiredness, on the stress, seeing their job as merely ameliorating that. They were also obviously aware that this was the team dealing with ‘the witch of West Ham’, and were excited and alarmed by what their being here meant. Whereas in fact they were here, to give Ross some credit, to demonstrate whether what they represented meant anything in this new world the team had found. Proof of meaninglessness would help Costain with his issues.

  ‘Holy water,’ declared Franklin finally, when it became clear the team weren’t going to share beyond a certain point, ‘is the water that’s blessed during the Easter vigil, after sunset on the day after Good Friday. Or at least that’s the only time it’s done.’

  ‘And it lasts all that time?’ asked Ross. ‘I mean, if you needed to do a baptism right now?’

  ‘Any water that’s added to the blessed water becomes blessed. I think that’s the rule.’

  ‘Sorry,’ queried Sefton, ‘you think?’

  Franklin shrugged. ‘It’s been a long time since I’ve run a church. We just performed the one ceremony, and the rest of the year we filled the font up from a bucket. Listen, what can you tell me about the purpose this is going to be put to?’

  ‘Saving the lives of children,’ Costain had said it before Sefton could stop him.

  ‘And this would be saving them from . . . a suspect that’s into the occult?’ said Shulman. ‘This “witch” of yours? And so, because they believe in the power of Toby’s “holy water” . . ?’

  Costain looked to Quill, and didn’t continue.

  Franklin looked frustrated. ‘It’s very hard for me to provide something like this when I don’t believe in the system it represents.’

  ‘You don’t believe in holy water?’ said Sefton.

  ‘I believe the power of God can do anything, but He doesn’t need any particular thing to do it.’

  ‘That’s idolatry,’ agreed Irfan. ‘I’m not comfortable with any of this.’

  ‘Holy water, as you call it,’ said Shulman, ‘this means nothing to me and my colleague here. And I think even for Toby this is . . . a metaphor.’

  Sefton turned away so they wouldn’t see him rolling his eyes. ‘No good to us, then.’

  ‘You don’t believe in the devil?’ That was Costain again.

  ‘I think the “adversary” in the Bible is a metaphor, too,’ began Franklin, ‘for Christ’s hunger and fear—’

  ‘Like the Yetzer Hara,’ said Shulman, ‘the evil inclination of human beings. It’s sometimes personified in art—’

  ‘And in the words of my faith also, but “shaitan” is also an adjective, absolutely, that can be applied to people too,’ joined in Irfan.

  It sounded as if they were going to go on like this for some time. Sefton sighed, glancing at Ross. ‘You should have got a Catholic.’

  ‘I tried to find a Hindu and a Buddhist too.’

  ‘Thank God you didn’t.’

  Franklin spoke up then, and when Sefton turned to look, he saw that all the clerics were giving him a rather offended look. ‘All we’re saying,’ he said, ‘is that we believe in evil done by people.’

  ‘That is, and I’m sorry this displeases you so much,’ added Shulman, ‘because I’m a Reform rabbi. But even an Orthodox rabbi will tell you the time of ghosts and shades and shedim is in the distant past.’

  ‘And I,’ Irfan joined in, ‘spend my whole life trying to make people see how my tradition is a modern, relevant—!’

  ‘Please, Imam . . .’ Quill raised a hand, ‘Rabbi, Reverend, we’re working against the clock here.’

  ‘I’ll provide you with whatever . . . symbols you want,’ said Franklin.

  ‘As long as you realize—’ Shulman raised his hands warningly.

  ‘—that they are just objects,’ finished Irfan.

  ‘Thanks,’ said Sefton, ‘but we’ll be the judge of that.’

  Ross produced some large bottles of mineral water. Meanwhile, Sefton watched as Franklin got a book out of his pocket, and found what he needed to say.

  ‘Father,’ he began, ‘you give us grace through sacramental signs, which tell us of the wonders of your unseen power. In baptism we use your gift of water, which you have made a rich symbol of the grace you give us in this sacrament . . .’ When he’d finished, he took the tops off all the bottles. ‘And we need salt,’ he said.

  ‘What for?’ said Sefton.

  ‘What’s anything for? It’s what we do in my church.’

  Quill found some sachets. Franklin blessed that also, and added it to the bottles. ‘Salt has always been regarded as a protection against evil,’ he said. ‘Maybe that’s because it preserved meat.’

  ‘Oh, that’d be science,’ said Sefton, failing to keep the triumph out of his voice. He could see what the others were seeing, and what had made Costain look awkward. Like the bastard had half wanted this to be true, because then there’d be rules and something they could fight for, even if it meant he himself was going to Hell. The blessing hadn’t made any difference to the water. Adding the salt hadn’t changed that.

  ‘Surely, science always applies?’

  ‘Are you Richard Dawkins in disguise?’

  ‘Sorry, Reverend,’ said Quill quickly, ‘we really appreciate what you’re doing here.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ suggested Ross, ‘you could say some different words, maybe something a bit older, a bit more . . .’

  ‘Irrational and superstitious?’ suggested Shulman.

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Not from me,’ Irfan shook his head. ‘Islam is a blessing upon mankind. Nothing further therefore is needed. Allah will either help you or He won’t. His will isn’t contained in a bottle of water.’ He looked to Franklin. ‘No offence.’

  ‘None taken.’

  Sefton finally gave in to the temptation. He had, for both Costain’s sake and his own, to take this as far as it could go. ‘After our experience the other day,’ he said, ‘I’ve been putting some stuff together.’ He went and found the holdall. He’d been planning to tell the others about it, at some point. ‘Okay,’ he said, ‘what about these?’ He produced four silver crosses attached to chains. Franklin took them in his hands, and blessed them. Doing so made no visible difference to them. He also blessed, rather more reluctantly, the horseshoes intended to be hung upside-down, the crowbars and bits of rusty scrap that the online folklore journal he’d found had called ‘cold iron’, and, with raised eyebrows, the pair of silver-plated handcuffs that had set Sefton back a week’s wages and that he’d distantly worried about claiming on expenses. None of these items glowed with a divine light afterwards.

  Shulman reached into his pocket. ‘Would you like this?’ he asked, showing them his key ring, upon which hung what looked like a tiny, flat hand made of metal. ‘It’s a Chamsa, a Hand of Miriam, a present from my niece in Israel. It’s a symbol of protection.’ He took it off the chain and laid it on the table. ‘If you ask me how far I go before I think the symbolic turns into the practical, it’s the Torah scrolls, and anything where God’s name is written, like a
Mezuzah, which comprises particular verses from the Torah put in a case and fixed on a doorpost. Not apt for a non-Jewish household, of course, or I’d send one over. But as to the supernatural . . .’ He shook his head. ‘The rabbis of the past are meant to have been able to do things like having calves appear or making birds burst into flame with their voices, though why you’d want to do that I have no idea. But that was because of their deep understanding of the natural world. Whatever you’re facing here, in the end it will turn out to be something that is founded in nature.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Quill, adding the Chamsa to the other objects.

  Sefton noted that there was no reassuring glow there either. He hesitated a moment before placing the final object on the table, in front of the clerics. It was a wooden stake.

  ‘Oh, come on,’ said Irfan. ‘You think you’re looking for a vampire?’

  ‘No,’ said Quill.

  ‘Ah, so you’re planning to drive that through the chest of a person?’

  ‘No.’ Franklin stepped back from the table. ‘I draw the line there. And so should you.’

  There was silence from the coppers. Sefton put the stake back in the holdall. It didn’t matter, anyway. Costain had assumed his poker face, as if this was just to be expected.

  Shulman sighed. ‘I wish I knew what it is you’re going through, all of you.’

  ‘I think,’ suggested Franklin, ‘you could do with being blessed, this time as people.’

  Costain, Ross and Quill sat down in turn for Franklin to say some words over them and touch their heads.

  Sefton remained standing. He studied again all the various things Franklin had blessed, but still no glow, no weight, no added feeling to them.

  The blessings finished, now these futile people were looking to him. The proof of their uselessness was sitting before him. And even that, now they could see it, hadn’t convinced Costain to free himself from his fears, hadn’t made the other two politely show the clerics out. Sefton almost wanted to laugh. ‘I . . . just don’t believe in God,’ he declared. And then he wanted to say sorry, damn it.

  ‘Bloody hell,’ said Quill, ‘neither do I! Neither does Ross, I should think! But we need all the help we can get, so—’

  ‘Kevin, please!’ said Ross.

  The use of his first name was more moving than he’d expected it to be. As was her appeal. But . . . Sefton only shook his head.

  ‘Well,’ said Quill, ‘I don’t think I can order you. That’s got to be in contravention of something.’

  ‘It’s important to me,’ said Sefton, ‘not to do this. It’s . . . who I am.’ He realized, as he said it, that this was the first such declaration of anything that he’d ever willingly made out loud. Franklin came over and took his hand. Sefton tensed and warned him. ‘Don’t try and do anything against my will.’

  Franklin sighed. ‘I myself, just me, Toby Franklin, hope that you find the strength you need. To misquote a phrase: though you walk through the valley of the shadow of death, may you fear no evil.’

  ‘I hope so too,’ said Irfan. ‘Whatever you’re going through, it’s clearly real to you.’

  Shulman came over. ‘You’ll like this,’ he said. ‘We prefer the term “benediction”, because, you know, “blessing” . . . in the end it’s about throwing blood on something. It’s what the word actually means. But don’t worry: it’s not something I’m going to do to you.’ He raised his hand. ‘Praised are you, God, ruler of the universe, who made good people like Kevin here. There you are, it’s sort of sidelong.’

  ‘I’ll send you a crucifix,’ suggested Franklin. ‘But all it will mean is that I’ll be praying for you.’

  ‘I will be too,’ confirmed Irfan.

  ‘All of us,’ said Shulman.

  Sefton looked to the others, and he realized this was the first supportive thing anyone who wasn’t a copper had yet said to them about what they were going through. It had too much of an effect. It was too seductive.

  ‘Thanks,’ he said. But he didn’t fully mean it.

  After the clerics had left, Costain sat holding the various objects in his hands, looking for any sense that these were not now what they had been before. There was nothing to detect. He felt as he had when he’d been a kid, and had put his hands out for the communion offering, without knowing he shouldn’t, and had munched down quickly on the wafer that was just a wafer, and had felt quite drunk after a sip of wine that was just wine.

  ‘They won’t work,’ said Sefton, addressing him for the first time in days, but with noticeable anger in his voice.

  Costain had tried to make himself apologize for the fight, but he couldn’t manage that. And he was getting the growing feeling that mere apologies weren’t going to cut it, anyway. ‘If it’s about belief, more people believe in this than—’

  ‘Maybe all this weird shit we’re discovering is for the people who weren’t included by the major religions, who got fed up with it not working, who needed something different.’

  ‘I think I might . . . have to try to believe.’ Costain said it honestly, then looked to Sefton, hoping for some fellow feeling.

  ‘Great. What will you think about me, then?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘The gay thing.’

  Costain wanted to say that wouldn’t make a difference, but realized he didn’t honestly know what any particular church would expect of him.

  ‘You think you’ve seen Hell,’ said Sefton, before he could reply. ‘So you’ve got a gun to your head. If I was them I wouldn’t take you.’

  SEVENTEEN

  Westminster Hall: an enormous public edifice with a stage at one end; a vaulted ceiling; marble steps; polished doors with metal lock plates that collected fingerprints. The smell of a library, the echoes of a concert hall. It was Saturday morning, and the match would be on Wednesday. Quill stood in the entrance area, forcing himself not to habitually watch the people that passed by, carrying boxes or pushing carts. A poster indicated that there was a New Age fair today but, looking at this lot, he’d have guessed that anyway. He stood out like a sore thumb and he knew it. No UC was he, especially among this lot with their long hair and sandals and tattoos. He was concentrating on his coffee, on not letting his hangover drag him even further down. He was trying to ignore the red hue of the light penetrating every window, the way the building seemed splattered with blood. He wondered what that was about, before he found a bronze plaque describing the building’s history. This once high security venue, actually part of the Houses of Parliament, you could now hire out, thanks to this cost-cutting government, for your collectors’ fair or your union meeting. The metal detectors had been moved to where it joined with the lobby of Parliament itself. This was where Charles I had been tried, among many others, where they’d demanded his head and signed the death warrant. It had then had Cromwell’s severed head sitting on the roof for twenty-five years. It was where coronations had been celebrated, too. The place smelt of royalty, of being afraid of something flighty and a bit random when it wanted to be, and a bit too real when it didn’t.

  It had something of Losley’s attractions to it as well, a terrible jollity but with blood infused in its bricks. It was a bit like those ships or the bus, then. This whole building had a bit of ghost about it. That way it suited how he felt right now. Part of him was aware that, maybe even now, and more and more certainly as Monday evening approached, more children would be in Losley’s hands. And also that, for some reason, nobody would miss them. And that seemed to be his own fault, no matter what he told himself. The match would see a hat-trick, because that smiling bastard would make it happen, and the hole inside him, he was sure of it, would widen by a notch as if held open with forceps. He was overlooking something terrible.

  ‘Jolly,’ commented Ross, appearing beside him, and looking around.

  Sefton and Costain soon joined them. They, too, were eyeing the white middle-aged crowd trooping past. ‘Plain clothes, is it?’ said Sefton.

  ‘You’re
sounding a lot more sarky these days,’ observed Quill, and then regretted it as Sefton clammed up and looked away. This outing was designed, at Ross’ suggestion, to keep Sefton’s agenda of background research going, but in what they hoped would be a less dangerous way. But Quill wasn’t sure the DC had quite understood that, in that he still looked as if he’d thrown his rattle out of the pram. Getting him and Costain together on the same page was going to take some doing.

  ‘We’re here on your say-so, you know,’ he said.

  Sefton looked back, blankly. ‘Yeah. Sorry.’

  The interior of the hall was also stained red, but thankfully there was no trace of shambling monarchs. Instead, clouds of them floated loftily overhead, mixing with each other like coloured oil in water. You might call that art rather than a haunting, since they were hardly to be counted as people. Far below their empty gaze, long rows of tables were covered in occult paraphernalia and lifestyle accoutrements, ranging from crystals to racks of colourful dresses. It was like something from after the apocalypse, this bring-and-buy sale held in the palace that nobody quite knew the meaning of any more. Quill passed a woman with a bowl and a chalice on her table, who was offering, her sign said, ‘Whole Spirit Therapy’, and who was, his new senses told him, completely harmless.

  She smiled at him, and he felt he should say something. ‘What do you do?’

  ‘I’m a witch.’

  Quill couldn’t help it. ‘No you’re not,’ he said, and moved on.

  The stage at one end of the hall was occupied by large paintings of dolphins and eclipses, the man trading them presumably having paid a bit more for his pitch. Over the odour of royalty, half jeweller’s shop, half butcher’s shop, there was that splendid metropolitan smell that Quill had always associated with the civic spaces of London: some sort of polish, obviously, but now it also contained the same force that had made the marble and brass shine with use. It was the smell of people. In a good way. Sensing anything about the masses in a good way was a bit new for a copper. But Quill supposed that, right now, he was willing to take comfort from anything that didn’t equate a mass of people with the horrors of the football stadium, and afterwards.