London Falling

by Paul Cornell

  He stood up slowly and turned to look. ‘Look at you,’ he said, ‘my very own ghost.’

  The deceased informer Sammy Cliff stood there, the original Tiger Feet, his arms wrapped round himself, shivering. Not so triumphant as when Costain had seen him waiting for him on the edge of Hell. But a good deal more whole than when he’d last seen the same man in the flesh: a corpse hanging from the ceiling with his feet burned off. Actually, though, Costain realized that now he could see straight through the man. The figure was wavering like a mirage, but the expression on his face said there was still something of the real Sammy in there. Costain watched calmly while that pathetic fear turned to fury, as Sammy realized he hadn’t got the rise out of him that he’d wanted.

  With a shaking hand, the ghost pointed at him. ‘You’ll be joining me soon,’ he said. It sounded like a user playing at amateur dramatics. Doing his best and failing. Like they always did.

  Costain supposed that he should feel either fear or pity, those being the options that would keep him out of Hell. But now that he saw what he’d expected to see, he didn’t feel either. ‘You reckon?’

  ‘“Reckon?” Of course I do! Look at you, you’re a fucking liar. You just set people up and let them take the fall for you. And now you’re doing it to your friends, too!’ He was getting more and more solid as he yelled at Costain in that screeching, lost voice that demanded some sort of justice that just wasn’t present in the world. He was a lot like Harry’s dad, and Costain wondered distantly what the difference was between a ghost that was made by being ‘remembered’ and some genuinely dead individual. Because, right now, Sammy seemed bloody artificial, as if he was a story rather than a person. All the time Costain had known him, Sammy had spoken and acted for something else, either for Costain or for the smack. He was continuing in that pattern now, doing this because that smiling bastard wanted him to.

  Costain knew now that he could never be someone like that, someone who just played a role, said the expected lines, felt the expected emotions, in response to someone or something that was itself acting. Costain knew himself to be a shit, but inside that – because of that – he was honest.

  ‘Sammy,’ he said, ‘Tiger Feet, old mate, let me explain something to you. No, tell you what, let me show you.’ He grabbed the box containing the bags of coke, and hauled it through the door to the toilet cubicle in the little hallway. He could feel Sammy watching him as he ripped open each bag and dropped it into the toilet bowl, flushing between every one, until he was down to the last bag. Then he looked up, into those eyes that always sought to appear so demanding and always failed so completely. ‘You’re only a ghost for me, you sad fuck, if I let you be.’ He flushed away the contents of the last bag, too, leaving just a pinch in the bag’s bottom corner. Then he marched back into the room he’d come from. He dropped the remnant of the splendidly fine product onto the table, extracted the blade from his multi-knife, and started to line it up and chop it. ‘It all depends on what I think of myself, on what I can live with – that’s my standard. I’m not going to let you or anyone fucking else judge me when I came out here to help save the life of a child.’

  He took a drinking straw from the storage cupboard, looked the astonished ghost in the eye, and snorted up the last of his emergency exit. He felt it surge into his head, then he straightened up and laughed. ‘You know who I am, Sammy. You remember me. I’m not someone who lets himself get fucking haunted.’ He marched forward until he was looking right into the ghost’s empty eyes. ‘And I’m not someone who plays at being a nice young man just to get a free pass out of Hell. If I’m doing the right thing, I’m doing it for real. And if I go to Hell, I’ll end up fucking ruling it.’ And he stared at Sammy as the ghost faded further, and further, simultaneous with the rush of exultation in Costain’s veins.

  ‘Just remember,’ Costain said finally, when the ghost was nowhere in his consciousness, ‘who’s the star of this picture.’

  He gathered up the guns, turned on his heel, and headed back to Gipsy Hill.

  Sefton watched as the Goodfellow coppers entered Toshack’s lockup through the conventional doors and started yelling to each other about what they saw there. He felt distantly glad for them. He looked over to where Ross kept checking the monitor to see if the cat had yet moved. Quill was pacing about, shaking hands without joy. Twenty-five hours to go, and he had to find a way to turn his experience into something that could help.

  After the three of them got back to the Portakabin, while Quill and Ross started to add the details from the manuscript pages to the Ops Board, Sefton got out his special notebooks and checked through everything he’d written down about his encounter with . . . whatever Brutus had been. ‘I was proceeding in a mystical direction when I encountered a six-foot-two Roman male, with whom I shared a certain sexual tension.’ That’s what it should have read. His actual account still squared with Sefton’s memory, but it felt like a dream now. Brutus had said that he had to remember the bookshop. What he’d felt there. Again that word, a weird one to see in any copper’s record of events. He found the page that covered the night referred to. He read the notes in every way he could: poetically, as if they were metaphors rather than description; like a word puzzle that hid a code. He read every third word; he even ran the pronunciations over backwards. They merely became nonsense. Brutus had been very clear that he had to work for this, that he had . . . continually to offer a sacrifice of work, of himself, and of the sort of work he did. That was going to mean a sort of continual background pain, the inability ever to relax. Pain is what this is about, said a small voice in the back of his mind. What was the most painful aspect of the bookshop? That one was straightforward: being in the dark, having to save the others, when he’d had to make such an effort to make the darkness itself forget the horrors and be something else. It had taken great effort to make it forget.

  And there suddenly was the thought, now so perfectly framed in his head. As it always was in a cop show, the phrase that completed the resolution of the mystery. Except this had taken work. This had taken him on another step towards . . . whatever he was trying to be. Brutus had called him an initiate, and he supposed that now he was. Because he now had something to contribute.

  ‘Jimmy,’ he said, ‘could you give Lofthouse a call? I think there’s something she could do that might help.’

  It was properly night when Costain returned. Ross saw Quill’s eyes widen as the DC put the guns on the table in front of him. He considered them for a moment, then just nodded. ‘I’ll get the ammo sent over from the lock-up,’ he said.

  They took shifts in watching to see if the cat’s locator bug had moved. Quill got some sleeping bags brought over. The person checking the monitor sat by its light while the others lay in the darkness, getting what little sleep they could. Ross wasn’t sure if she got any proper sleep at all. Every now and then she heard a small noise or movement nearby, and realized that a nightmare had woken one of her comrades.

  But then she must have found some way of drifting into sleep, because it was suddenly bright and cold and she ached all over, and Quill, his head in his hands, was looking up from the monitor. He’d just put his phone down. She’d heard him, she realized, at the edge of sleep, talking quietly to his wife.

  ‘Match day,’ he said. ‘Shall we forgo the bloody tea and get straight to the coffee?’

  They took showers in Gipsy Hill, finding whatever change of clothes they could. Ross actually got to the end of the bills list, using it to eat up the hours, saw the last page of it depart her screen, like the last train. Nothing found. If Losley didn’t take her cat home, then, when that football match started, when bloody Manchester City, with all their firepower, with the bloody smiling bastard on their side, couldn’t resist a goal . . . then Quill’s child would be put in a pot by those unyielding, ancient hands and slowly boiled to death. And, beyond that, into the Hell she gave these infants to. As something cold seized her stomach, Ross realized how debilitating it would
be if she kept thinking about that, and made herself get up and start to walk around. Exactly as Quill did.

  ‘You realize she might not even look at the ground, so might not see the cat,’ said Costain, standing beside her, ‘until the match starts?’

  Ross bit her lip, and drew blood.

  It got to an hour before the game. Leaving the Portakabin, they went and sat ready in a car. Everything they needed, from Sefton’s holdall to Costain’s guns, was already in the back. They had the radio on, listening to the match. Otherwise they were silent. Quill had been on the phone to his wife many times that morning. He kept saying that he wished somehow she could be here, that she ought to be part of the effort to save her daughter. From what Ross overheard, she kept saying ‘Then, let me.’ It was the strangeness of there just being the four of them who knew about this stuff that meant Sarah Quill was suddenly closer to this operation than any of the rest of the Met were. But Sarah still couldn’t see what they could see.

  Ross felt the tension building in her neck. They weren’t at all well-armed enough. Yes, they had a few new ideas, but no secret weapon. They were going to have to go after Losley anyway. If they got the chance. She kept her eyes fixed on the monitor on her lap. The locator bug was still resolutely fixed at the Boleyn Ground.

  ‘The opposition today . . .’ Alan Green was saying on the radio, ‘well, they’ve just about said that they’re not going to try to score. Which is against the rules of the league, and could get them fined, points deducted, or kicked out even. But would anyone here disagree with them? There was talk of fans staying away, too, but every seat is filled. Who knows what they’ve come here to see? Certainly not a proper football match. I hope it might be more of a demonstration of the common sense that the authorities seem to be lacking. The mere fact that this match is being played at all is insanity. No matter that meaningful images – reminders of the victims of Mora Losley – will be shown on the big screens around the ground at half time.’ Ross looked over to Sefton, who exhibited slight relief on his face. ‘No matter that a memorial service to the victims will be said in the middle. It’s not an act of defying terrorism on the part of the football authorities, as they’re making out, but participation in it. And, saying that, well, maybe I won’t be around for the next match myself, either. Those empty spaces around where Mora Losley’s season-ticket seat used to be, they represent a blot on this ground now, like a wound. Everyone can see them, everyone keeps staring at them, even now as the players are coming out . . .’

  Quill’s mobile rang. He answered it and then listened for a moment. ‘The uniform we told to watch the cat, he says he’s lost it.’ Quill sounded as if he didn’t dare hope. ‘He says he was looking right at it.’

  Ross stiffened in her seat. She looked down at the monitor screen, and suddenly, as she watched, it started scrolling wildly, trying to find the signal, previously at the ground but now . . . coming from somewhere else in London? Sefton must have seen her expression. He bent over to look.

  ‘Losley’s taken the cat away,’ he said. ‘She bloody took it.’

  ‘Waiting,’ said Ross, and the screen was still scrolling. ‘Waiting for signal acquisition . . .’

  On the radio, the match had started. The roar of the crowd sounded strange, fearful, as tense as they were. Ross imagined a ball being gently passed, defended, while the West Ham players either genuinely attacked, or showed the same courtesy in return. Various interviews had hinted they’d either play a real game or that they wouldn’t, sometimes both versions from the same player at different times. Ross was keeping her mind busy as she watched the map on the screen scroll uselessly, helplessly, around London. Surely that now meant the signal had been lost completely? Surely, after so long . . .

  The map suddenly changed to show a particular borough of London and the signal tag appeared above a building. ‘Peckham!’ she shouted. ‘She’s in Peckham!’

  ‘Go!’ shouted Quill. Costain put his foot down, and the car accelerated off into the darkness.

  They sped north, the lights on the roof and behind the radiator grill flashing. Costain took them over red traffic lights, cars pulling onto the pavements to get out of their way. She wished she could feel that the people they were passing were all on their side, cheering the good guys who were out to slay the wicked witch. But it felt as if those people would never sufficiently understand the world in which the team had now found themselves. She pulled up Peckham on Google Earth but, even looking straight down at the roof of the building where the GPS signal was located, the Sight said nothing to her. ‘She’s gone stealthy,’ she said. Which was why none of their random sweeps through London aerial maps had yielded anything. ‘Remembered or not, she’s afraid of us.’

  ‘She fucking should be,’ said Sefton.

  Quill was on his phone. ‘Ma’am, we are on our way to Losley’s location. We have precise whereabouts, and we’re passing that to you now. No, no back-up. No armed response. Yes, thank you, ma’am.’ He clicked off the connection.

  ‘What did she say?’ asked Ross.

  ‘Just yes, yes to everything, like always.’ Quill was looking out into the night, as if he could make the car go even faster. ‘I don’t know how, or why, but thank Christ.’

  The building on the corner of what was otherwise a civic shopping street looked dull, formerly something official, but with one of those hardcore sheet-metal doors that Quill associated with crack houses. There were rugs hanging up to curtain the windows on an upper floor, and an attempt at artistic graffiti on the lower wall. The street lights made everything shine. ‘She’s moved herself into a frigging squat!’ It had taken them less than ten minutes to get here. The pedestrian streets all around were almost deserted. The sound of the match came out of every pub, out of every window boasting a satellite dish. The spectacle, the unknown, all of London was centred on them. ‘She in there?’ he asked Ross.

  Ross looked up from the monitor. ‘Yes.’

  Sefton unzipped his holdall. Costain and Quill reached into the pockets of their coats. Quill had offered Sefton the gun he was carrying, but he’d turned it down in favour of his normal bag of tricks. The man had a weird certainty about him now. He saw Ross also check something in her pocket. After all they’d been through, he’d still baulked at giving someone who wasn’t a police officer a gun, but if she’d brought some sort of weapon along, good luck to her. ‘You all open up when you feel like it,’ Quill decreed. ‘Who knows if I’ll be in a position to give the order.’

  ‘Guv,’ said Costain.

  ‘You know who she . . . well, you know everything, don’t you?’ He found he couldn’t look them in the eye. ‘I don’t have any speeches, but I’m glad you lot have . . .’ He looked around at them, and found their expressions satisfied him. And there was no further need for words. ‘All right, then.’

  Costain led them over to the door and knocked on it demandingly, but quickly, civilian-like. ‘Steve, mate!’ he called. ‘Fuck’s sake, you’re missing the match!’

  A hard-looking man opened the door, after a minute or so of pounding. He looked blearily at them. ‘There’s nobody called—’

  Costain grabbed hold of him and threw him out into the street and they were in through that door and locking it behind them, before he had a chance to leap back up and slam his fist against it and yell. And now they were in. There was a stairwell that had also been painted with graffiti, a kitchen full of hippies who were staring at them in shock. Costain pointed at them, then upwards, to indicate where they were going, and that it was nobody else’s business. They happily stayed put. Quill led his team slowly up onto the first landing. A distant radio commentary wafted through an open window. Still revealed the same level of tension. Still no goal. But, coming from above, there was an echo of the same sound.

  Quill put his hand on the banister. ‘Here, you see what these stairs have?’

  ‘Newel posts,’ said Sefton, indicating the flat surface of the upright at the turn of the landing. ‘That
’s what they’re called.’ He produced a piece of blue fabric from his holdall and, poised to act, started slowly upwards on his own, trying to look up ahead around the corner. Quill waited.

  There came a sudden sound, a cut-off shout, and then a muffled yelling. Quill made a gesture, and the others followed him softly upwards. On the next floor, Sefton was standing beside a newel post, on top of which sat a head, presumably, but it was now covered entirely by what had been an anorak hood, pulled tight and secured by wrist ties at the bottom. Granules of salt were spilling out of it.

  Quill nodded in approval, and stepped forward towards what had obviously once been an office. The remains of an old sofa, burned in some accident, took up most of the corridor outside. The graffiti were everywhere. But, over it all, Quill could see the shades of Losley’s typical house, applied here and there. That effect grew more pronounced, until the doorway itself looked exactly like the door they’d been through twice before, like a front door bizarrely located in an office corridor. The head had found its new position, presumably, because this was where the surrogate house’s stairs were meant to be. The sound of the radio commentary came loudly through the door, and Quill guessed that someone had been turfed out of their home to make way for Losley. Which probably meant another skeleton somewhere, and that bunch of people downstairs never being quite certain who was in occupation here now. And this was also a way in which she could be sure that there were no edits to show up in the tax records. Either for this ‘house’, or for who-knew-how-many she had left, all empty and waiting to be filled by the sudden arrival of her rooms?