London Falling

by Paul Cornell

  Sixteen minutes later, they spotted the cluster of unmarked vans ahead, two streets away from the Losley house, as arranged. In zero time, Brockley nick had done them proud.

  Quill stepped from the car and shook hands with Inspector Ben Cartwright, who looked as if he’d just won the lottery.

  ‘Losley,’ he said, ‘on our patch. Result.’

  ‘You know what they call Method of Entry teams?’ said Sefton to Ross, as they watched Quill briefing some uniforms in the back of one of the vans, their enforcer ram held ready between them. ‘“Ghostbusters” – if only they knew.’ He was trying to keep talking, because she looked all closed in on herself, in a terrible way, now that she had stopped working and was just waiting. He could feel it in himself, too. We smell death near you soon. It had been written by someone who probably knew. They were going in now and they had almost nothing to protect them that they hadn’t had last time. They had no choice. He found himself again revolted by the thought of what Losley was intending to kill these kids for. Not out of madness or anger, but for what must seem to her to be a good, practical reason. To her, the sacrifices were fuel: a source of energy for any subsequent attack on the footballer. She lived in a London where that sort of equation must be commonplace. He thought back to holding Joe in his arms, in his hands, and took some comfort from that.

  Quill and Costain came over to them, from where they’d been consulting with Cartwright, their breath visible in the street lights. The vans had pulled up beside trees that had cracked the pavement, in front of houses doubtless filled with busybodies already going frantic on Twitter. The radio in the car was still on: the match had reached half time, the restart due in two minutes. No further goals yet, thank God.

  Quill turned to address the expectant uniforms, all clad in Metvests, whatever good that would do them. ‘We’re doing this old-school. One van at the back door, two at the front, the Ghostbusters do the door; my squad go in first, taking advantage of the suspect’s psych profile’ – the same excuse as at the football club – ‘to attempt an arrest. A unit from Specialized Firearms Command is on the way, but they won’t get here for another twenty minutes, and Inspector Cartwright shares my desire for urgency, given the presence of potential victims. Objectives of the operation as follows. One, any of you lot gets hold of one of the kids, you run straight out of that house with them, and keep going all the way to your nick. Do you understand me?’

  The uniforms rumbled in assent. They enjoyed being bullied for something this big. Something where they might get home to their families and say, ‘I saved a kid today.’

  He continued: ‘Two, regarding suspect herself. Leave her to us. Do not attempt to engage her. She comes in your direction, get out of the way. We’re talking poison needles in her clothes, hidden weapons, the lot. Objective three: suspect’s cat.’ He didn’t pause for them to react. ‘Information potentially hidden on it. And it’s dangerous. Again, don’t try and grab it. Leave it to us.’

  Cartwright raised an eyebrow. ‘The cat is booby-trapped?’

  ‘Welcome to our world,’ said Quill.

  Costain started up the BMW, and looked over his shoulder at the three others sitting in it with him. What that note had said – We smell death near you soon – they’d all be thinking about that. In the past he had never thought about death, even when he’d been in really deep and one wrong word could have meant a bullet in the head. He’d been so stupid then, every moment. What would a good person do right now?

  ‘Proud to know you,’ he said. ‘You’re good coppers.’ He reached over his shoulder, and just Ross and then even Sefton shook hands with him, because that was the thing to do, yet no passion in it. Quill quickly did the same.

  And that was it. It didn’t make a difference because there was still Hell.

  ‘Fuck it,’ Costain whispered. And he gunned the BMW forwards.

  Ross felt almost nothing as they turned the corner, and accelerated towards their target. She was saving any feeling for when she had Losley right in front of her. She hoped that, like a hero in a story, how she felt would make some difference to what then happened to her. She held on to that thought.

  ‘Go go go!’ yelled Quill.

  Costain launched the car, at high speed, straight at the garden fence, its headlights illuminating the woodwork—

  And then they were through it, and slamming to a halt in that empty square of garden, wet soil and grass flying up and spattering the side windows. ‘Out!’ he yelled, though he didn’t need to, because they were all leaping out already. Sefton hauled his holdall along with him. The house above them shone brown and chitinous, polluting the air around it in waves, seeming fleshy cold in the night. The exterior looked exactly the same as the Willesden house, down to the type of front door.

  He wasn’t up to this, was he? He was missing something inside him. He wasn’t what he pretended to be.

  Fuck that, he’d have to do.

  The uniforms were running in around them, the Ghostbusters forming up on the door in their usual reassuring, exhilarating way. The silent gestures, the sudden movement – and together! They swung their ‘master key’. The door burst in. They swung it back again and stepped aside.

  Quill ran inside, yelling. His team went in along with him.

  He had faith in his team. More than in himself, in fact. And faith in the uniforms behind them, who’d die to get those kids out. The four of them ran into the hallway, and stood looking around at what the exterior of the house should have already told them: it was exactly the same inside too.

  ‘Strangers!’ yelled the head perched on the newel post.

  The uniforms rushed in behind them, astonished at the filth even they could detect.

  Then the smell hit Quill. Could that just be hot water? ‘Cooking smell!’ he bellowed. ‘Up!’

  They sprinted up the stairs that confused their senses, not caring about what they saw or where gravity was, falling and scrambling, while the uniforms made it look easy, in their ignorance, and came thundering up behind them. They rushed to the point where the attic access was directly overhead. There was noise from up there: a radio . . . a radio football commentary.

  Quill looked round for the ladder, and realized that, of course, here there wasn’t one. He jumped up on to Sefton’s shoulders and heaved himself upright. He burst up through the hatch and shoved it aside.

  There she was, Losley. Offending the world, and him, with how she looked.

  There were three naked children huddled in a cage beside her: Charlie aged five, Hayley, six, and Joel, seven, and they were screaming and sobbing but all alive, still alive. The room was full of information, pent up with it, as if it was all nearly ready, as if it could only be seconds more. And there was the soil, and there was the cauldron, the water in it boiling, on top of an impossible blue fire that crackled and sparked like bright animated paper. The noise of the radio filled the room, sounding perversely normal, and Losley was already turning to start screaming something over its racket—

  Quill got one foot onto the floor and he ran at her. He was vaguely aware of the others, his three and the uniforms, clambering up, following. He grabbed the crucifix that Franklin had sent over, the one with the Bishop of London’s seal on it, from his throat and bunched it into his fist. He hadn’t felt any power in it, but he’d convinced himself that he believed in the power of horror movies and how it would be enough.

  She was yelling at him, hurling threats. There was that outraged screech in her voice, as if she was amazed they’d kept trying, that she was so much more powerful than them, that—!

  ‘Kiss this!’ he bellowed, and smashed her in the teeth. She went back and down. She spun up again. She’d rolled up like a table footballer. The crucifix had done nothing more than his fist and surprise impact would.

  But the cage had already been cracked open with bolt cutters, the kids were in coppers’ hands now, and they were running for the trapdoor.

  Losley spun round to stop them—
/>   ‘Hoi!’ shouted Costain.

  He kicked over the cauldron, sending water that smelled like decay roaring across a floor that exploded with dust on contact with it.

  She turned to deal with that—

  ‘Losley!’

  That was Ross, yelling what she was doing so the witch could hear it, as Ross unloaded the first super-soaker professional-standard water-pistol carbine full of piss and London holy water into her new container of soil.

  But it wasn’t working! It kept flying off it. Something was protecting it—

  The witch had thought of that. She’d changed it.

  Losley spun back again to Quill, triumphantly.

  But the uniforms were out of there now, the kids were gone.

  And now Sefton had thundered up behind Quill, on his run up, throwing something with great weight right past his shoulder. The bagful of Millwall FC soil caught Losley full in the face. She screeched – like nails on a million blackboards. The uniforms must just be seeing an old woman screaming at all the ridiculous things they were doing to her but, for all that, Quill’s team were being proved right.

  Yelling something incoherent, Ross ran into close quarters and let fly with the second carbine, pumping pure London holy water all over Losley. They had no idea if it would work, but the more the merrier.

  Quill took the silver handcuffs from his pocket. ‘Off her feet!’ he yelled.

  The four of them grabbed her at once, and they overcame their fear and they lifted her as if she was nothing – a bone frame with special effects attached – and they made for that table with her, keeping her feet from the floor. They had the advantage of surprise this time. They had learned this time. They had conquered their fear.

  But the soil was intact, they knew. All the power was still there. They were terrified of her, and only their velocity was saving them, and that might give out any second.

  The uniforms were all out of there; they’d got the children safely away.

  Costain grabbed her hands and wrenched them over her head, behind her back. She screamed again, the very sound clawing at the air. The silver handcuffs snapped on, and they slammed her flat onto the table again.

  Quill felt a huge frightening triumph rise up inside him. ‘Mora Losley!’ he yelled, making himself somehow keep his voice level, because now she was going to have a trial and a brief – she was going to be dragged through one now, like normal people, like scared little people on their level, for wanting to fucking boil children, and she was going to cut a deal with them along the way and turn it all back to the way it had been, and this was his tribal cry: the victory that would mean he was the thing he thought he was, ‘you are under arrest in connection with multiple charges of murder, you do not have to say anything, but it may harm your defence—!’

  ‘You can’t stop me,’ she cried. ‘History is on my side.’

  And then they all fell through the floor.

  TWENTY

  The sensation of falling turned out to be what it was like to be holding tightly on to someone when they vanished with their house all around them.

  Ross fell as the wave went through her and over her head. She was aware of the others falling beside her. Again! She’d done it to them again! The house was folding up past them this time, separating itself from them, not trying to take them with it. It was rolling back towards that red door into which it had all rushed the last time.

  But right in front of her—

  Ross dived for the shape she’d glimpsed, seen across a space which she didn’t understand. She got her fingers around it and pulled it to her, and held on against a force that was trying desperately to haul it away from her.

  Beside her, Quill slid across the floor. He was heading for the door, which was now swinging shut, having stayed open, Ross realized, only because of what she held in her hands. He recklessly jammed his hand into the gap between the door and the frame, then pulled his fingers out at the last second—

  —leaving a wedge in place. The door thudded against it and held.

  A terrible creaking noise filled the air. The others covered their ears, but Ross wouldn’t let go of what she was holding, and the others looked to be in as much pain as she was. It was as if reality itself was cracking. Quill began to stagger towards the doorway. The air in Ross’ lungs had got too large, somehow, too hot; it felt as if she was going to burst. Ross sensed the gravity on what she held increase to a point where she was sure it was going to haul her towards the door unless she let go. But she would not.

  Something gave way. Something cracked.

  The door slammed with a concussion that made them fall over.

  They slowly got to their feet. The room had vanished. Ross looked over to where the soil had been. This time, she’d taken it with her. No more supply dumps, now that they were on her case.

  Quill hauled himself over to where the door had been and looked down at something steaming on the floor. It was the perfectly flattened remains of a rubber door wedge. ‘Glad I didn’t get my fingers in there,’ he said.

  Ross suddenly remembered what she was holding, something that was struggling and spitting and very real. She suddenly felt perversely furious at it.

  ‘So last time was deliberate,’ Costain was saying, not having noticed yet what she’d got. ‘She was trying to take us with her, disorient us, then take us out.’

  ‘Or she didn’t have the energy this time,’ said Sefton.

  ‘We saved the kids,’ said Quill. ‘We stopped her.’

  ‘Hoi,’ said Ross, ‘look what I’ve got.’ They all turned to see that she was clutching in her arms the mangy black cat.

  ‘Now,’ the animal began, ‘wait a moment—’

  Costain grabbed a sack from the floor and flung the cat inside. Then he tied the opening in a knot. Inside the bag, the cat hissed and spun around. ‘We have an accomplice in custody,’ he declared.

  ‘Tell that to a judge,’ muttered Quill.

  Ross swallowed an urge to laugh. She could feel them all giddy with it, the incredible feeling of having saved the kids, of having survived! Then she started to hear the screams from outside.

  They jumped down from the loft and raced down the stairs, back to normal now.

  They got out of the door to where the noise was coming from, aware of the increasing shouts. People were staring out of the windows of their houses, more and more of them. ‘Get back inside!’ Cartwright was yelling. Two uniforms were lying on the pavement, their blood pooling around them. Others were tending to them, too late.

  They stopped. They stared. Dead coppers. What they’d done had produced dead coppers.

  ‘She’s heading towards the railway!’ a woman shouted from a top window. ‘I can still see her!’ She was pointing along the road.

  ‘We stopped her bailing out!’ yelled Quill. ‘She only managed a short hop, and she can’t have much power left! Come on!’

  Costain shoved the sack into Cartwright’s arms. ‘Get that back to the nick,’ he said. ‘Hold on to it.’

  Then the four of them raced off after Mora Losley.

  It felt good to Ross to be in hot pursuit, to feel the pounding of blood inside her. She and Costain and Sefton, who all kept themselves very fit, soon pulled ahead of Quill. Sefton was still running with his holdall, but they were all pushing themselves as hard as they could go. Because there she was! There was a thin shape darting ahead, pausing, hauling herself along again. They nearly had her! She turned the corner. More and more people were coming out of their houses, into their gardens, pointing and shouting. ‘Get back!’ Quill was yelling to them as he ran.

  Ross knew Cartwright would have called it in. There’d be cars coming in from all directions. One sped past them now, siren blaring, making Quill yell for it to go on, my son!

  Dead coppers.

  Ross saw the lights of the vehicle turn left ahead—

  And there was some sort of explosion, a ball of purple light that rose up high over the houses, though nobody could se
e it but them. They got to the end of the street and saw the marked car in pieces, two officers thankfully staggering out of it, because that was all she could manage now, all that was left to her! They were pointing down a road that ran alongside a railway cutting, as a train roared past behind the houses, sounding its horn as if all of London was joining in on this chase, the city alerted to the thing amidst it which claimed to be part of it. Ross felt good about the city: it was on their side, surely it was!

  And there she was again, off in the distance, impossibly already at the end of the street. And she’d turned again, right this time, some sort of bridge over the railway—

  Quill was on his Airwave radio, yelling a description of where the suspect was heading.

  They sprinted after her.

  She led them through one suburban street after another, past houses, and garages on the corners with metal shutters, and pet shops and schools. She was loping, slowing down, as were they. The network of cars and coppers on foot must be closing on her now. Ross could almost hear the running footsteps echoing from other streets. She could feel this like some medieval hue and cry. Up ahead there were ever more shouts as people spotted Losley – her off the telly – and they’d be phoning each other now, Tweeting each other to come to the window and see, as Losley became a trending topic, as the whole city converged on her.

  Straight above them roared a helicopter without a police logo. ‘Frigging TV news team!’ yelled Quill.

  They came to a halt at a corner, and got the TV news displayed on Sefton’s phone. There she was: a dark shape, like a target in a foreign war, running past people’s gardens. Heading straight for a fence . . . and going right through it, as if it wasn’t there, with a flare of white light that Ross was sure only they saw.

  ‘There are some sports pitches, or a school playing field ahead—’ began Sefton.

  Quill heard from Cartwright on his radio. ‘She’s going straight across the pitch. We’ve got people coming out of their houses all over. We are attempting an intercept with multiple cars along Ivydale Road. Stay at location. Pick up’s on its way.’