London Falling (38 page)

‘Maybe,’ said Quill, ‘that would be the point at which to start negotiating about a few things. Like Objective six: us getting rid of the Sight. But we have to nick her first.
And that cat isn’t going to help.’

Sefton watched as the others drifted back to their regular tasks. He’d observed some lessons of his own from the cat’s story, but wasn’t sure they were the kind of things that
would mean anything much to the others. He wasn’t even sure about them within himself. But now there was somebody else he could tell.

The march held that Saturday headed down one side of Hyde Park, a long column with banners and drums and air horns. In the middle of it walked Kev Sefton, feeling deeply
awkward, as Joe strode beside him.

‘I wanted,’ said Sefton, ‘to talk somewhere private, you know?’

‘It’s noisy enough for privacy, and I’d promised them I’d come along.’

‘Who are “they”?’

‘It’s against the cuts. This is mostly Occupy, but our section is walking under the pink flag.’ Uniforms lined the route. Cars sounded their horns as they passed, either
supportively or aggressively, it was impossible to know. Sefton tried to find support around him, wondered if this sort of thing contributed to being
remembered
. Maybe. But you needed to
mean a lot more, individually, to a lot more people, before you could draw on power like that, even if you knew the right gestures and could make your voice sound the right way. It was like a big
but weak force, while sacrifice was for smaller things, but stronger ones. He wondered if Losley, now she’d mastered both, had turned into some sort of higher being, and was no longer
concerned with killing. But then he noticed that one of the copies of her was stalking along beside the parade, as everyone else talked about the match on Monday, and just a look at that essence of
her told him she still was what she was. She couldn’t forget her past, that history of hers they’d heard. She was addicted to that past. It was all he could do to keep himself walking
along, as he felt the weight of the crowd around him, the nausea of all these individual desires seething among the single purpose. Thank God he had more control of the Sight now, or he’d
have been in real trouble. He’d hoped to be able to talk to Joe about this stuff, but, just looking around now . . .

‘I’m already—’ The music around them suddenly got even louder, and Sefton had to shout to be heard above it. ‘I’m already having to try very hard not to see a
few things even among this lot.’

Joe looked around, interested. ‘You mean with the Sight?’

‘No, I mean like that bloke in a mask, and the couple of canisters being passed back, and I’m not keen on how sharp some of these sign poles look.’

‘Look, we don’t all—’

‘You know what I bloody am.’
I’m like
her
, against one thing and also its opposite, like a lot of people now, maybe like a lot of people always are. And that pink
flag above me is sort of my West Ham, but so’s the warrant card in my pocket. And I don’t want either to become my club, like hers is.
‘Listen, I’ve been thinking about
what I need to do.’

‘What?’

‘I heard her history, and she went through some extreme shit. She was dedicated. She was passionate. You meet a fighter like that, you’ve got to step up, you’ve got to be on
their level, yeah? I’ve just been fumbling around with this shit, I’ve been experimenting, I’ve been making mistakes. I can’t seem to find my right moment, find my voice.
She
didn’t do any of that: she just dived into something she feared, in order to help someone she loved. At least one of us needs to get as deeply into this stuff as she did. And
there’s only me who’s doing it. I’ve got to learn it the hard way, without a teacher, like she did. Maybe get hurt like she did, dig as deeply into myself as she did.’

‘If you feel that, then—’ But now there were shouts from ahead of them, and the sound of horses charging, and the crowd burst apart in all directions around them, yelling and
screaming.

There’d been some violence up ahead, and it exploded back down the column of marchers, splitting it as whole groups tried to turn away from the route, either to get out
of the way or because they’d arranged it beforehand. Sefton and Joe stumbled and swayed with the crowd surging around them, as shouts grew louder from every direction. Sefton felt the Sight
pushing the violence of the situation into his head, making him want to hide. Then the group were shoved aside as another group came barrelling into them, and they found themselves slammed back
against the railings. People started climbing up over them, some of them masked, all of them yelling. Some of them tumbled over the railings into the park, and some of them merely fell back.

‘Oh fuck,’ said Sefton, ‘we’ve been kettled.’ And, just as he said it, in came the smoke, a wave of it directed elsewhere but blown back against them. People nearby
started throwing things back in the direction of the attack, their muscles and shouting and sweat all getting into his head now. He looked deep into the swirl of the smoke and saw tantalizing
images of proud protest, of ragged peasants and charging soldiers and gunfire and a map unfolding of how that eruption had poured a more lovely and awful England into the world. He felt it like
another awful nostalgia, a road he couldn’t take, an illusion and a truth both at once. He knew that if he stayed here long enough for the smoke to get into his lungs, he’d be taken by
one side and thus lose his place in the other, and end up off his feet, and unable to stand as he needed to now.

He grabbed Joe and kissed him. ‘We’re going now,’ he said. And then he pulled out his warrant card.

‘What do you mean, “we’re going”?’ But Joe let himself be dragged forward as the crowd went bulging that way, towards a perimeter on the pavement where people were
shouting at and arguing with and attempting to negotiate with a row of uniforms with helmets and riot shields. There was a sudden surge behind them, and Sefton found himself thrown up against one
of those shields. His warrant card flew out of his hand. He bent to pick it up—

He was knocked flying, a knee in his head. His hand closed over the card. Beside him, Joe fell, along with a row of others, a baton bouncing back off his head. ‘Hoi!’ shouted Sefton.
‘Hoi!’ He leaped to his feet, hauled Joe up beside him, and saw the waves back away from him, gathering strength: the two sides about to slam down and force him into some screwed-up
space he couldn’t live in. He held up his warrant card in front of him like a talisman.

‘Right you!’ bellowed the copper directly in front of him, his shoulder number hidden. Sefton and Joe were grabbed and hauled through the shield line. Sefton was shoved down again
and heaved himself up, ready to thump the next uniform that waved a baton at him—

But they were out of it now. The wave of uniforms had moved past them, leaving them both sitting there in the road. More uniforms rushed past, and from this angle Sefton could see a running
battle taking place, the uniforms being pelted alongside those railings, and he felt an immediate stupid anger back in the other direction, and the waves inside him and surging across the protest
rolled round London again and never broke. Sefton went over to Joe and helped him stand, put his hand to the man’s wounded head.

‘Thanks for getting me out,’ Joe said.

‘They shouldn’t have fucking—!’

‘It’s okay. I know you’re—’

‘You know I’m both. Which is why I’m not going to be remembered, since nothing complicated gets remembered, not as it really is.’ He looked back at the protest and saw
the batons rising and falling, and felt the blows echoing off the sky above him, echoing all the way from the suburbs. ‘That’s why I’m going to have to make a
sacrifice.’

Quill had heard from Sarah that she was spending Saturday working at the office, and he very much didn’t want to be at home alone with his brain in its current state. So
he’d gone out into the pubs of London. Out of a feeling of duty, he’d texted Harry to come and join him, half hoping he wouldn’t be up for it, but he was.

Quill knew his London pubs, enough to diagnose one from a glance at the exterior. There were pubs that defined neighbourhoods, in that strange way that London had neighbourhoods just because of
imaginary lines on the ground. There were pubs that were about the British going out into the world, changing and being changed, and coming back to find the old inn still standing, the old crowd
around the fire – apart from those that had died of plague while you were away: the Road to Jerusalem; the Balaclava; the Pillars of Hercules. There were pubs about the trade guilds of the
city: the Carpenters’ Arms; the Coopers; the Square and Compass. There were pubs for the heads of all the kings and queens, and for the heads of enemies brought back to Blighty.

He wandered down to the pleasant neighbourhood around the British Museum, and found a battered leather armchair in a pub which was all enormous windows, like being inside a jewel box, and which,
after a quick inspection, had nothing terrifying about it. He opted for a pint of one of their pleasingly filthy real ales, leaned back and tried to relax, tried not to drink quickly enough to
distract himself.

Until Harry and his dad arrived . . .

‘Now you’ve got all of the Met working for you at every football match, brilliant!’ Harry was sounding his usual self, but these days Quill didn’t need his dad beside him
to hear the subtext, to explain the strain in his face.

‘One of these days,’ said his dad, ‘he might even get around to including you.’

‘I miss having you about,’ said Quill, and he meant it.

Harry actually had to pause a second to reply, as his dad laughed mirthlessly. ‘Well, it must get pretty stuffy in that Portakabin, with the four of you filling the place up.’

Quill managed to laugh along. ‘How’s Goodfellow?’

‘Oh, limping to the finish line, Jimmy. But there must be an Aladdin’s cave of evidence somewhere, and we ain’t got it. We don’t have Toshack’s accounts.
They’re probably somewhere on the Continent now. We don’t have his supply. And we’ve heard whispers of the top brass saying that, since Toto gets along so well with only the four
of you—’

‘Oh, don’t give me that!’

‘No, no, it’s all right. You haven’t caught her yet, have you? God help us if you do!’

How had Quill ever enjoyed this? Harry had been the furthest thing from his thoughts during most of this investigation, but he’d always thought that somehow they’d get close again.
But how was that ever going to work, unless they managed to force Losley to take the Sight away from them?

‘So, how’s . . .?’

Quill missed what his friend said, because he was thinking of something else. And now he couldn’t even remember what that was. ‘Sorry, Harry?’

‘I said . . .’

His own dad would have loved sitting here among the shininess of these horse brasses. They always had shiny stuff in pubs, like in churches. To take your mind off to relaxing places. And, no, he
was missing something, again – he was bloody missing something! He made himself turn back and look Harry in the eye. He now realized he was breathing hard. It was as if his brain was using up
his body’s energy as it tried to do something. Harry’s dad was looking at him as if he was a prize chump. ‘Harry, you’ll have to forgive me . . .’

‘What’s up, old son? Are you falling asleep on me?’

Quill held himself in place, his arms locked on the chair. ‘Could you say that again, slowly?’

‘Oh, the great detective’s had a revelation. It’s one of those moments, like on the telly, where it all falls into place. From the top, then . . .’

This time it was like something huge screeching against something else, two massive surfaces in contact, and it made his head hurt so hard. He knew that if he let his attention slip aside from
what Harry was saying, it would stop hurting. Such a weight was trying to stop him from hearing Harry, from understanding him—

Quill felt himself on the edge of blacking out. He let his attention slide off into something pleasant: a vision of his dad walking a few paces in front of him, tall in the sunshine. He came
back to reality a moment later to see Harry standing over him, looking shocked, Harry’s own dad, smiling all over his face, by his shoulder. ‘Are you all right?’ Harry was shaking
him. ‘Jimmy, can you talk? Can you move your face?’

He feared Quill had had a stroke, and Quill wondered for a moment if that was true. He moved the muscles on both sides, put a hand to his brow. ‘It’s all right, it’s all right.
Harry, there’s . . .’ There was nothing at all going on here. ‘I’m just tired.’ He wondered what all the fuss was about. Harry was overreacting a bit, wasn’t he?
Quill managed a broad smile. ‘Look, you get them in, while I go and have a slash.’

The toilets were as baroque as the bar itself, all imposing imperial Victoriana and boasting the names of every man who ever invented a sanitation device. Quill splashed some
water on his face. He’d . . . what, had he just fallen asleep? What had he missed? What was he missing? It was as if it was just there, just behind his reflection, just inside his idea of who
he was, just beyond what his mind could touch.

Through the door, he heard the sound of Harry gasping.

Quill burst out of the Gents to see Harry floating over his chair, his skin red with heat, shaking and sweating, his eyes desperately fixed on a flickering light that was
bursting impossibly up through the floor. The smell of it rolled over the thick carpet towards Quill. He didn’t look down, though. He was looking to where Harry’s dad stood beside their
chairs. He was holding on to his son by one hand, almost affectionately, like a balloon. He kept glancing up at him.

Losley had been here. In just those few seconds, Losley had been here, but had left Quill, and taken Harry instead. Had what happened to him earlier been some sort of diversion? Hardly, she
wouldn’t know he’d react like that. But it wasn’t too late, and Quill took a step forward.

‘Stop,’ said Harry’s dad, ‘or I let go of him.’

Quill stopped. ‘You’ve changed your tune.’

‘She made me a bit more than I was, didn’t she? Now, my boy Harry here’s got a message for you. Haven’t you, boy? What did the nice lady tell you to say?’