London Falling Page 23

  ‘Oh,’ the man said. ‘Oh, now, is this about Mora Losley? What that woman does has nothing to do with these peaceful practices going back to the time of—’

  ‘Yes, sir, I’m sure. This is just a routine check, nothing to worry about. I’d like to be able to say that the . . . what would you call it, the occult community?’

  ‘The New Age community!’

  ‘That you’ve been offering us brilliant support and a nice cup of tea. So, if I could just take a quick look at your list of who’s at what table . . .’

  The list showed two big tables, on either side of the hall, each rented to a major dealer. Quill wondered therefore if maybe what he was feeling there was quantity rather than quality, as it were. He gave the list back to the organizer, thanked him for his helpfulness, told him his silence would be appreciated, and headed off to have a quick butcher’s at one of the tables identified.

  This was indeed where the professionals were based: real swords, glassware, fabrics, paintings in frames, unicorns and dragons. It made Quill sigh a bit: they were among this terrifying weight of people and history, and yet here were vague guesses at it being regurgitated as tourist tat. Oh, so no change there, then. There was nothing specific about most of it, nothing particularly . . . London. The table was staffed by young men and women in T-shirts bearing the dealer’s logo, with an older man, a bit of a pot belly on him, in charge. Nothing odd anywhere, and certainly not among the merchandise. So where was the huge sense of unease about this table coming from? It seemed to be located further behind . . . Quill saw that, at the rear of the displays, there was a stack of the boxes this stuff had been transported in. Unnoticed by the staff, someone was rooting through them, not looking as if he had any particular purpose, but more like a tramp searching for food. He was a big lad with broad shoulders on him, wearing a tattered military coat, a garment that looked as if it was from the Boer War. Woollen gloves, so no fingerprints. He had that special sense of meaning about him. The Sight knew him, and he made Quill afraid. But Quill had been up close with Losley, and had also been in the presence of whatever that smiling man was, and he didn’t rate this bloke as being in that league. He took a step closer, leaving only a couple of punters between himself and the man who was obviously keeping himself unseen by the traders seated in front of him.

  Suddenly the man looked up and sniffed the air. He turned, and Quill felt his gaze sweep the crowd. Any second, he was going to spot him.

  Quill felt afraid, but he was more afraid of looking afraid. He didn’t want to experience how whatever this man was going to threaten him with might chime in with the emptiness inside him and with the previous impotence he’d suffered at the hands of this lot, further diminishing who he tried to be.

  ‘Hoi!’ Quill bellowed. ‘I want a word with you, sonny Jim!’

  That terrible gaze engulfed him, and the fear accompanied it. But, a moment later, with a crash of boxes—

  The man was running for the door!

  Quill felt an old energy come flooding into him. He sprinted off after him.

  Costain had been surprised to find that the dangerous gang boss he’d had in his head when he’d considered this move had turned out to be a gawky young man in a T-shirt advertising an occult shop. He seemed to be in charge of this large stall that had so many punters flocking to it. Sefton had then popped over to check out the other side of the hall, and reported back about the other shop, that what they were actually looking at here was a room seemingly shaped not by occult power but by money.

  So where had the power gone? Costain couldn’t feel it now they’d got here. It almost seemed as if it was . . .

  ‘Hiding,’ muttered Sefton under his breath. ‘It knows we’re here.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘You get used to this stuff. Just tune into it.’

  ‘Do you?’

  ‘It’s now under something . . . or someone on that stall’s gone dark on us.’

  Costain summoned all his confidence. And, yeah, that felt like a blanket that had a lot of holes in it now. He straightened up and began walking as if he had a gun on him. He headed straight for the young man, and noted Sefton peeling off behind him to check out the merchandise further along the stall. ‘Hey,’ he began, ‘. . . no, never mind about the queue, I’m talking to you, son. Who’s in charge here?’

  ‘The Book of Changes.’ The woman sat opposite Ross, staring coldly at her, and held up the small volume. ‘Pick a number between one and three hundred and sixty-eight.’

  Ross took a while to consider. She was wondering if she should text a message to the others to converge on her position. After their business was concluded, she was going to have to try to apprehend this woman. ‘Two hundred and . . . seven.’

  ‘One to three?’

  ‘Three.’

  ‘One to seventy?’

  ‘Three.’

  ‘Right,’ the other woman said tersely, ‘that’s Fives Court. That’s the first part of your answer.’

  ‘Is that book . . . the London A–Z ?’

  The woman was silent. She clearly wasn’t going to offer any more than she had to. ‘Again.’ This was even more like the sort of divination which might have found them Losley. Ross gave her three more random numbers. ‘Four Seasons Close. You’ll “win” by favouring the first over the second. That’s your answer. Five is better than four.’

  ‘What does that mean: five is better than four?’ Four what? What was five? ‘Do the locations have anything to do with it? Does the rest of the address matter?’

  The woman remained silent.

  ‘Listen,’ said Ross, ‘you know we’re after Mora Losley, and you surely can’t agree with what she does. You could help save those children—’

  ‘I won’t help you. Not your kind. Never.’

  Ross pursed her lips. ‘Okay,’ she said, ‘let’s go for the Tarot of London.’

  Quill burst out of the hall into the corridor outside. The man he was chasing was just ahead. ‘Police!’ he yelled. The ragged red-faced man spun on his heel and, for a moment, Quill thought he was going to stop. But he was fumbling to get something out of his pocket. He found it and snapped it up to head height, pointing it straight at Quill. Who threw himself into cover behind a pillar adjacent to the wall. He hadn’t got a good look at the thing, but it was close enough to a gun to make him move.

  ‘I really do just want a word with you!’

  But, as he said it, something enormous rushed at him from behind. Quill was hauled away from the wall and thrown into the middle of the corridor. He reflexively put his arms around his head and staggered, aware that he was being battered left and right by . . . air. Air carrying leaflets and rubbish and cardboard boxes. But what was worse was the anger of it: the air was hot and furious and needed something, was missing something as much as Quill was. It was nothing to do with this man, he realized. The man was just . . . using it. That understanding let him find his feet. He could hardly see the bloke now, just a shape in front of him. He couldn’t see how he was producing this effect with whatever he’d grabbed. The beating around Quill’s head got worse, and there were stones now, and suddenly one shot through his guard and struck him across the temple.

  Quill focused all his anger on the man in front of him, put his head down, gave a roar and charged.

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about!’ The young stall manager was looking at Costain fearfully.

  ‘Don’t give me that. Where is he? Where’s the boss?’

  ‘Barry’s back at the shop—’

  ‘Fuck me, do you want me to tell him how you were like this? You know what I’m talking about, ’cos if you didn’t, you wouldn’t be scared: instead you’d be angry. I’m talking about—’

  ‘London stuff,’ said Sefton, arriving beside them as if his boss had called him over, looking bigger somehow than Costain was used to seeing him. ‘London rules, you feel me?’

  Costain was sure there was a crowd gathering around them now
. But not one of them questioned the basis on which he was verbally abusing this poor kid. This was like a market where the stallholders paid protection money. A lot of people here knew vaguely that there was another class of people who came round here sometimes, and so did this kid. And all Costain had to do now was keep carrying on like one of those.

  ‘We . . . we don’t have . . . We’re just . . . paraphernalia.’

  ‘I’ve got all the crystal unicorns I want, boy. You know what I’m talking about.’

  ‘Are . . . are you the ones who were going to collect the package?’

  Costain looked skywards in apparent relief, and bumped fists with Sefton. ‘Finally!’

  The man went to look under the table. He came back a moment later, carrying what looked like a bit of flat red stone wrapped in a sheet of paper. ‘It’s nothing to do with us,’ he said. ‘He just left it here and said someone would come asking for it.’

  Costain nodded as if this was all entirely expected, and took the package. ‘You can now go about your business, my friend,’ he said. ‘Good day to you.’ He led Sefton away from the stand, and the crowd parted meekly for them.

  ‘Wish we could have asked for a description,’ remarked Sefton.

  Costain just about managed not to snap at him. He was holding the paper-wrapped package between two fingers, hoping that he hadn’t messed up any fingerprints left on it. By means of the Sight, he could feel the burden of something notable, the strange weight of it in his hand. ‘You feel anything?’

  ‘Yeah. It’s a tiny bit different to what we felt from across the room, so I reckon we must have felt whoever left that here, and then that feeling changed a bit, without me noticing, ’cos then I was just feeling the presence of this.’

  ‘So he got away under cover of it?’

  ‘I think so.’

  The piece of paper was secured by a small piece of sticky tape. He laid the package on a shelf beside a window, got out his multi-knife, and sliced through it. The stone was revealed to be a fragment of red tile, with faded decoration down one edge. Costain took a step back as the paper flapped open. He saw that Sefton had felt it too. The weight of it had suddenly increased. That was the feeling of something hiding that they’d experienced. On the paper was written a message in a large, scrawled hand:

  You smell of modern shit. Leave us alone. We smell death near you soon. You brought that on yourselves.

  ‘Death near us soon,’ said Sefton. ‘Well, there’s a shock.’ He put his hand over the tile, as if trying to gauge the forces involved. ‘I wonder,’ he said, ‘if this would hurt someone who didn’t have the Sight?’ He lowered his hand closer and closer to the tile. ‘It’s not getting any stronger.’

  ‘Just leave it.’

  ‘If it can hurt us, maybe it could hurt Losley.’ He touched his palm to the tile quickly and then raised it again.

  ‘Don’t fucking do that! Did I tell you that you could do that?’

  ‘Like you’d know one way or the other.’ And there was that furious look again, the real Sefton now that they were out of character. ‘I’m the one who’s been looking into this.’

  ‘You’re not planning on recognizing my rank at all, then?’

  Sefton seemed to pause at that. He didn’t want to say it out loud – which was just like him. His eyes locked on Costain’s, his finger reaching towards the tile again. And suddenly with a yell he withdrew it. Blood went flying from his finger.

  A drop of it landed on the tile.

  And motion blurred everything as something battered Costain’s entire body.

  ‘A Shaft of Light in Paddington Station.’ The fortune-teller laid down a card that showed a painting of just that, looking like an old advert or something. The light looked summery, with dust motes hanging in it. ‘Something Glimpsed from the Underground.’ That was the image of what must have been a tube carriage window, with a brickwork arch outside it, also a green and blue light that spoke of meadows gleaming through it. ‘The Sacrifice of Tyburn Tree.’ She slapped the third card down over the first. She’d made a pass of her hands over the cards before they’d begun, and they’d regained the same lustre of importance that they’d had when Ross had first glimpsed them. Now they looked . . . delicious, meaningful like Christmas, a colourful present that had been unwrapped, a terrible pang of nostalgia that was like the prospect of happiness and repose she’d felt from the rest of the fair. But this third card looked terrible, too, and it connected with her. It was a man hanging by his neck, in silhouette, other terrible wounds having been done to him, judging from how the crowd, in faux-medieval dress, all around him were pointing at various parts of his body. The fixture from which he hung sprouted many such nooses, like it was a proper tree, and rooks flew all around it.

  ‘What does it mean?’ she asked.

  The woman looked angry, but some explanation seemed to be required here to fulfil the bargain. ‘The first two are indications of different sorts of hope: summer and autumn. The third is what the hope is actually about.’

  ‘The hanged man?’ She remembered that name from TV shows. It had always made her look up.

  ‘These aren’t like normal Tarot cards, which are for the rest of—’ She stopped herself, and for a moment Ross thought it was because she’d already said too much, but it seemed that she’d noticed something else about her subject and now she was smiling, revealing gaps where teeth should be – another sacrifice, Ross guessed. ‘Oh,’ she said, ‘this is important to you personally?’

  Ross didn’t want to show it. ‘The man being hanged . . . is a sacrifice?’

  ‘Does this cause you pain? Are the details going to make you suffer?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Then you listen here, copper, and I’ll tell you all about it. The berk on the card, he’s had three things done to him. The threefold death, they call it: he’s been sacrificed three times. A death wound to the head. A death wound to the side. A hanging to kill him too.’ The woman was gleefully examining her face. ‘Makes his soul like gold, that does – commends him to the fire.’

  ‘To the fire?’

  ‘So I’m told. Sends him to Hell as solid currency. You get a lot in return for a three in one.’

  Ross felt the room swaying around her. She felt the knife in her pocket. She suddenly had in her mind a picture of her dad’s face tilted up against the ceiling rose. The bruise on his head. The wound in his side.

  Quill’s head collided with the ragged man’s stomach. With a cry, the other fell back, and whatever was in his hand went flying. The buffeting winds shut off. Quill leaped to grab him. He got his hands clenched among the dirty ancient coat, and slammed the man down onto the marble floor, hauling one hand behind his back, pulling the handcuffs from his own pocket. But then he realized that he was sitting on top of just a dirty old coat with nothing in it. And then on top of nothing at all. He was crouching on bare marble, his arse in the air, handcuffs jingling from one hand. He looked up to see New Age punters walking past him, raising eyebrows.

  He got to his feet and looked quickly around the floor. There they were. He grabbed a fold of his own coat to pick them up in. Then, feeling nothing very dangerous from them, though there was definitely power of some kind, he took them in his bare hand. They were two thin paddles . . . or vanes. They were made of very old metal, with ancient decorations, like something from out of a long barrow that should now be in a museum. And in his hands they felt useless.

  Sefton lay on the hard floor, his head ringing. He felt as if he was back in the playground. He’d just been thrown to the ground by something with that same effortless power over him. It had felt as he imagined being caught in an explosion would feel. But it had left him . . . he made himself breathe deeply . . . with his ribs intact, and . . . he rolled over . . . his hands were just bruised where he’d landed on them. He managed to look over at Costain, who was pushing himself to his feet, looking quickly around him as if he might be attacked again. Sefton himself slowly stood up. The piece of p
aper was blowing away in shreds, departing too swiftly to catch, too swiftly for normality, and all that had been left of the tile was dust that was vanishing into a red stain on the floor.

  The crowd was staring at them, though trying not to. What had they witnessed? Not as much as the two policemen had. That had been an explosion meant only for those with the Sight, a silent warning – something that felt as if it had been put together hastily by an anonymous member of a subculture that didn’t want to be policed. ‘That was my fault,’ Sefton said.

  ‘Yeah,’ nodded Costain, looking angry, ‘it was. Let’s get some details on this fucker.’ And he led them off to find the stall manager.

  ‘I don’t know nothing about that,’ the fortune-teller was saying, but Ross wasn’t listening any more. ‘Our bargain is fulfilled.’

  Ross got to her feet at the same instant the woman did, intent on apprehending her.

  The woman glared at her. ‘We haven’t had the law bothering us for a few years now. We stayed out of sight of them. But then they was got rid of, and so will you be. That’s the way the wheel’s turning.’

  Ross gave her a hard stare. ‘Try and get away, I’ll have you.’ She could hear running feet behind her. The others had finally come to find her. She kept eye contact with the woman, who produced a small knife that was too small to make Ross back off. She felt like reaching into her own pocket and comparing blades. But, no, she had to keep her authority. ‘What’re you planning on doing with the potato peeler?’

  The fortune-teller suddenly drew it across her own palm, and cried out at the pain. Ross took a step forward, to try to stop the woman doing herself any more harm. But then it occurred to her that she hadn’t paid proper attention to the floor. It was really interesting, so she got down on to her hands and knees and, dimly aware of the rest of her team arriving, she settled on the perfect spot, a brass line at the edge of where the wood and marble flooring met. She raised her head back, smiled at the others, and—