London Falling Read online

  He stared out into the dark, let himself get a flavour of it.

  The roar of the engine underneath . . . a school bus. His school bus. Children, pressed all around, holding him down, his face against the floor, singing taunts round and round, batty boy posh boy homo, all in that accent he hated that was also him that time they’d made him eat fag ends, the walls of the bus locked around him, and the doors will never open—!

  He stumbled, nearly fell off balance from where he was standing on the line, so had to take a mental leap back. He found his feet again, breathing hard. Okay, so when he looked into it, it was about himself. That was probably what the others were experiencing too. Costain would be getting another taste of what he’d decided was Hell. One way to muller a copper: take them off the grid. This was just fear pushed to the maximum. It was like being trapped under the surface of a frozen lake. It was what he’d felt inside Jack, but far worse. This was the perfection of the weight and terror of the crowd. Just as well I’ve got freedom of thought, it’d really be hell if I couldn’t step out of it. The kind of stress that’d give you a heart attack. The others haven’t got long. I can’t walk into that, so what can I do? At least it could only kill him. He didn’t think there was anything beyond death to be threatened with, and he felt that conviction was a strength here.

  So this was remembering. The force of it was huge, like continents. It was older than everything. It flowed through everything. He wanted to utter something brave at it, to make a joke at it. He couldn’t, not just now. What would it take to make it forget instead of remember? He felt the answer emerge: to make something forgotten would take an enormous effort, a continuous effort during every moment. To do that was way beyond him. But instead of forgetting . . . what about trying to create a different version of what was remembered here, to remember not this horror but some of the other things this place had been or was meant to have been? Those memories wouldn’t be as powerful as the fear, for fear was always so strong, but . . . his research had also said this house was a den of criminals, counterfeiters, who used that fear as a cover. Okay, so they wouldn’t still be here as ‘ghosts’, because there was no legend, no memory of that; besides, he had to get rid of even the idea that there were ghosts here. He imagined instead the remains of coins discovered in the gaps in the floorboards, an exhibit commemorating it, maybe, a plaque on the wall outside, this place as a historical building, the infamous counterfeiter gang, with modern actors playing the roles, that manager downstairs laughing about how they get the crime tours coming through here . . . He made himself see the details—

  And, for the first time, he felt the Sight pushing back against this world he’d found himself in. He could see these fragile things in his eyes now. Light had expanded from where he was, making a vulnerable space on the stage set. Knowledge was power, literally, in this city. He stopped himself from celebrating, because he knew this would last only seconds. He dared to step off the marker line. He grabbed Quill and Ross by one hand each. He started to drag them towards the door, pushing against the nightmares that confined them. Their faces were looking at things beyond him, their feet dragging along like reluctant toddlers. He pushed them into Costain, sent him, also, stumbling towards the door.

  Four of them? They could have made their own circle, he realized, with a part of his mind he associated with deduction – with UC thoughts about what OCN shape was like. Only five would be better than four, the shape of the organization of five would be strong. Thoughts like these were being formed inside him by the sheer pressure around him, he suddenly understood: natural defences in operation, his persona finding a way.

  But the fear was strong. The fear had more force. The fear had been thrown back and now was . . . going to come crashing in on them again!

  He gathered them all with him, and shoved them at the door. They rushed through it together. They got over onto the other side. They fell in a heap. The door swung shut with a bang.

  And suddenly the light in the corridor was again provided by a bulb. The four of them were just lying there, staring up at the bulb in its dusty lampshade. Sefton thought they must look like something from an old painting, with their clothes and their hands flung out in glorious abandon. He started to laugh, but then he bit down on it. He didn’t like the feel of where that reaction might take him. He was panting too hard, so he put a hand over his mouth and took smaller breaths. He felt aware of his own failure that had led him to this knowledge.

  The others started to sit up, to look at him and each other. They were shaken to the core. Costain had his hands covering his face. Footsteps approached. Footsteps on the stairs. But no, no . . . not now.

  The startled manager was peering at them. Slowly they got to their feet. Quill just nodded to her, no funny line appearing on his lips. Sefton just about managed to get himself down the stairs. The others stumbled down around him.

  Costain found he could hardly put one foot in front of the other. He reached out to Ross for support, and appreciated that strong shoulder. He felt as if he was going to burst into tears or else throw up. Doing either would feel like death. He had seen it again. It had nearly had him again.

  They went back to the pub. Costain put his hands on his pint but didn’t trust himself to lift it. He didn’t feel able to look at Sefton, even though the man had saved him. That was wrong. He looked at the other two, who were shaking as much as he was. ‘Headless fucking ghosts. As if!’ he said. ‘We had no idea. We’re not even rookies. We’re just . . . kids!’

  ‘We . . . we learned something.’ That was Sefton, looking angry and defensive. ‘It doesn’t matter if it’s true or not; it’s what people believe, and—’

  ‘Shut the fuck up.’ And then the crushing limitations descended again. ‘Sorry, sorry!’

  ‘It’s okay—’ Quill began.

  ‘It’s not okay! We’re playing . . . cops and robbers because it comforts us. That’s all there is to it!’

  Ross took Costain’s hands in hers. ‘What did we all see?’ she said. ‘I saw . . . my dad, over and over.’

  ‘I saw a lot . . . of fuckwittery concerning myself,’ said Quill, ‘about which I feel like suing someone. Pity, then, that it was all true.’

  ‘Complicated.’ Sefton shook his head. ‘I need to think about it.’

  Ross looked back to Costain. ‘So what about you?’

  He didn’t want to answer, but . . . this was still going to come out. It was beyond his control, and he hated that too. ‘I saw it again . . . what I saw in Losley’s attic. The place I’m . . . I’m going to.’

  ‘Hell,’ suggested Sefton, sounding like he wanted to say it out loud, but also sounding like he didn’t bloody believe it.

  ‘Back in the attic, you lot were being sent there, so maybe it appeared differently for you. I was just . . . getting there early, so I saw all the details. And I saw them again just now.’

  ‘No,’ said Quill, ‘we don’t do theology—’

  ‘Jimmy, we have to,’ said Ross.

  ‘That smiling bastard was there, too. And down there he felt like . . . like one of those gang enforcers who have done the really bad shit, the ones where you can see it in their faces that they can’t surprise themselves with how far they’d go, because there is no limit to . . .’ He had to stop. He was shaking so hard, it took him a moment to continue. ‘The sort that put blowtorches to informers’ feet. Every UC . . . we think about those guys, about ending up in the hands of one of them.’

  ‘Yeah,’ whispered Sefton.

  ‘He’s the biggest version going of one of those terrifying sods. He knew all about me, so I had no secrets I could give up to spare myself anything. He’s waiting for me when I die. I know he is, it’s just obvious. Does nobody get that?’

  Sefton again nodded, grudgingly. ‘Yeah.’

  ‘And with him . . . there was this informer. Sammy Cliff, his name was.’ They were silent now, listening carefully. ‘He kept pretending he didn’t want my money. This is years before Goodfel
low. He kept saying he was “on the side of the police”; that’s the catchphrase we joked about with him. Fucking little bike boy, user, dirty fucking hair, burns . . . that smell on his skin.’ He saw from their faces that they’d all known similar. ‘He kept saying how he was nothing, a pile of shit on the pavement; that’s what he once told me he was. When it became clear we weren’t going to get his boss, best we could do for him was not nick him. And it was bloody obvious to the gang, by the end, who the informer was. They can’t run anywhere, not kids like that. Their idea of running is going to a different mattress. He ended up with one of those blokes. They burned his feet off, worked upwards from there. They made a party of it, there were cans and condoms all over the warehouse. We heard all the details. So there he was, Sammy Cliff, waiting for me. He didn’t even look pleased. All he was there for was to wait his chance to see what had been done to him also being done to me. Forever.’

  ‘So,’ said Sefton, oh so gently, as if he was talking to a lunatic, ‘you think that now you have to be good.’

  ‘It’s my only chance, yeah? And it’s so bloody hard to think of every single thing, all the time—’

  Sefton was shaking his head. ‘Can I say something?’

  ‘More of your theories,’ said Costain, ‘’cos that worked so well! Sorry!’

  ‘There’s no God, so there’s no Heaven—’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘—and this “Hell” might well be like that, might well have the ghost or the memory or whatever these things are of this informer of yours in it, but it is just the place where the big boss of whatever we’ve found—’

  ‘How do you know?!’

  ‘If you’d listen! I’ve found out—’

  And suddenly Costain was up out of his seat, and had thrown himself at him.

  Ross leaped up just as Quill did. She managed to grab Sefton so that a punch that would have taken Costain’s head off went wide. They hauled the pair apart. They fell on the floor as one mass.

  Bar staff were running over, shouting. Among all the confusion, as they were being hauled to their feet, Quill’s phone beeped. As he stumbled out onto the street, looking angry as he did so, as he made himself do it – he looked at the screen. ‘The DNA database results are in,’ he said, his voice incredulous. ‘They found nothing.’

  SIXTEEN

  ‘A vicar, a rabbi and an imam walk into a Portakabin,’ said Quill. He was looking up at just that. Sefton and Costain looked over in surprise too.

  Ross raised her head from her endless scrolling through computerized bills records from various London boroughs. They’d all got back to that, letting their eyes cover page after page to see if they noticed one of Losley’s edits in the records of a borough where she wasn’t known to have lived. The same effect, frustratingly, didn’t hold for the DNA records. There were no matches with the DNA from any of the child skeletons, or from the skull on the newel post, in the files for any still-open cases. That is to say, none of these victims was listed as a missing child. Having heard that staggering verdict, they’d expected the files to have been edited, and had got copies sent over, but they showed no sign of tampering. It wasn’t that Losley had altered the records of who these children were; it was that the world seemed to have forgotten them. There came with the results a great mass of descriptions, details of hair colour and teeth and ethnic origin (increasingly diverse as the strata approached modern times) and how, on several occasions, there seemed to be groups of three siblings taken together. The West Ham away game against Liverpool had finished in a nil– nil draw. The next home game would be on Wednesday. Costain and Sefton were doing their best to avoid each other, and Sefton hadn’t raised the matter of looking into the background materials again, though Ross saw him poring through pages on the internet.

  Quill had been in conference with Lofthouse a great deal, trying to find some resource or clue in the evidence coming out of any of the searched houses, Toshack’s included, but so far there had been nothing. They had so many alerts for missing children in place it wasn’t true, and also a public that was keen to cooperate to the point of being terrorized. Consequently, playgrounds were empty and school runs were packed. The unit had asked to be sent reports of Losley, and now had way too many of them to sort through, from places as far afield as Inverness and Guernsey. An elderly woman in Aldershot had even been forced to leave her house after persistent attacks on her by youths identifying her as Losley. Ross had decided on some filters for sorting these reports, notably instantly chucking away all those from outside London. Still, working through them was another thing each of them could be doing when whatever else they did was proving fruitless and they felt they had to be doing something.

  And behind it all was the spectre of that smiling man, Losley’s lord – the shape in the dark whose existence, every now and then, suggested to Ross, on the edge of sleep, that all they were doing was futile.

  The Ops Board had only a couple of new things added to it: an explanation of ‘remembered’ by Sefton, and the phone number from which the darkness had texted them. It comprised a string of numbers which appeared in no searches, and which Quill had scribbled at the bottom left of the board. Ross had pinned up a sheet to cover the board a few minutes ago, and it was a bad sign that her workmates hadn’t mentioned that.

  ‘Detective Inspector Quill,’ she said now, ‘these are my guests.’

  Yesterday morning she’d realized what might bring together Costain’s needs and Sefton’s needs, and had arranged it without bothering to ask the increasingly distant Quill if it was a good idea. She got to her feet. ‘This is the Met chaplain, the Reverend Toby Franklin,’ who looked as if he’d come straight from being kicked around on the rugger pitch, ‘Rabbi Peter Shulman,’ who looked as if he’d walked into the wrong room, ‘and Dr Firdos Irfan, who’s an imam,’ and who also looked to be regretting this already. ‘These last two gentlemen work in the prison service in London.’

  ‘What’s this about?’ said Sefton, standing up. Costain was looking kind of thankful and awkward at the same time. He’d clearly got it straight away.

  Quill eyed her questioningly, then nodded. ‘Let’s call it showing initiative.’

  ‘I was expecting to meet someone with a spiritual crisis . . .’ began Franklin.

  ‘You might well call it that,’ said Quill. ‘A dirty great spiritual crisis. Tea, Reverend?’

  The three clerics started to look concerned as they realized that this was about an operation. Sefton kept his distance as he watched Costain fussing over them. He felt almost betrayed, though Ross kept looking at him encouragingly. It seemed that his colleagues hadn’t heard a word he’d said. If these three men had any power, then the churches and mosques and synagogues of London would be aglow with it. This counted as a wholesale adoption of what the other two probably saw as Costain’s agenda, and if this had been a regular squad . . . well, he supposed he could have complained to somebody. Not that he ever would have.

  Sefton had spent every waking moment since the bookshop incident researching the world in which they now found themselves. He’d come up with a lot of theories, only he was sure now that this lot wouldn’t want to hear them. Not after he’d led the group into danger. Not after they’d pulled him off Costain – who’d come at him, not the other bloody way round, but who’d nearly got what was coming to him. Only, because of the situation they were in, there couldn’t be any talk of disciplinary action. It was as if they were all waiting, instead, for some regular police-work-shaped clue to come along, rather than bothering to deal with his stuff. When he’d spoken to Ross about this stuff being for the lost and downtrodden . . . well, maybe he’d got it more right than he’d imagined. For he was the specialist here, slight as his expertise was. These three priests simply didn’t know what the world they’d found themselves in was like. Getting them in here was like getting a bloody psychic into a normal investigation. He pushed the anger down inside, folded his arms across his chest.

 
‘Reverend—’ Quill began, turning to Franklin.

  ‘Or Toby,’ said the priest.

  ‘Yeah . . . Reverend, Rabbi, Imam, we brought you here to ask you . . .’ He looked to Ross.

  ‘For points four or seven on the Objectives list,’ she said, nodding to the concealed Ops Board, ‘I think we could do with some holy water.’

  The clerics stared at her.

  ‘No,’ said Ross, ‘seriously.’

  ‘What do you want that for?’ asked Shulman.

  ‘That would be an operational matter,’ said Quill.

  ‘Okay . . .’ said Franklin, ‘what exactly do you mean by—?’

  Sefton couldn’t take it any longer. If they were going to do this, they were going to do it. If he’d known this was what Ross had been after, he’d have been able to provide her with all the details. And, as long as this was all there was going to be to it, he had to admit she had a point. He located on his phone the website he’d bookmarked. “Holy water,” he read out. “A sacramental, as used in baptism, having been blessed by a priest.” We’d need at least several large bottles of it.’ He looked challengingly at Ross. ‘For testing.’