London Falling (28 page)

‘Jolly,’ commented Ross, appearing beside him, and looking around.

Sefton and Costain soon joined them. They, too, were eyeing the white middle-aged crowd trooping past. ‘Plain clothes, is it?’ said Sefton.

‘You’re sounding a lot more sarky these days,’ observed Quill, and then regretted it as Sefton clammed up and looked away. This outing was designed, at Ross’ suggestion,
to keep Sefton’s agenda of background research going, but in what they hoped would be a less dangerous way. But Quill wasn’t sure the DC had quite understood that, in that he still
looked as if he’d thrown his rattle out of the pram. Getting him and Costain together on the same page was going to take some doing.

‘We’re here on your say-so, you know,’ he said.

Sefton looked back, blankly. ‘Yeah. Sorry.’

The interior of the hall was also stained red, but thankfully there was no trace of shambling monarchs. Instead, clouds of them floated loftily overhead, mixing with each other
like coloured oil in water. You might call that art rather than a haunting, since they were hardly to be counted as people. Far below their empty gaze, long rows of tables were covered in occult
paraphernalia and lifestyle accoutrements, ranging from crystals to racks of colourful dresses. It was like something from after the apocalypse, this bring-and-buy sale held in the palace that
nobody quite knew the meaning of any more. Quill passed a woman with a bowl and a chalice on her table, who was offering, her sign said, ‘Whole Spirit Therapy’, and who was, his new
senses told him, completely harmless.

She smiled at him, and he felt he should say something. ‘What do you do?’

‘I’m a witch.’

Quill couldn’t help it. ‘No you’re not,’ he said, and moved on.

The stage at one end of the hall was occupied by large paintings of dolphins and eclipses, the man trading them presumably having paid a bit more for his pitch. Over the odour of royalty, half
jeweller’s shop, half butcher’s shop, there was that splendid metropolitan smell that Quill had always associated with the civic spaces of London: some sort of polish, obviously, but
now it also contained the same force that had made the marble and brass shine with use. It was the smell of people. In a good way. Sensing anything about the masses in a good way was a bit new for
a copper. But Quill supposed that, right now, he was willing to take comfort from anything that didn’t equate a mass of people with the horrors of the football stadium, and afterwards.

He’d ordered the others to enter, observe and report back to him in an hour with any points of interest. Given their experience in the bookshop, he’d added that they were to leg it
immediately away from anything seeming remotely dodgy. They were looking for raw evidence, but especially anything that could be used as a weapon against Losley. At first, it seemed to Quill that
this was going to be a repeat of the clerics’ visit. But then he spotted a little shadow of meaning on one table, a little flash of something being put into a box on another. There
wasn’t much of it . . . but it was here. He clicked the button on his phone to send a text that said,
We’re on
.

Ross let a false smile appear occasionally on her face as she walked through the rows of tables, listening to the chatter of the people tending the stalls and their customers.
Her team were grasping at straws, also running out of time. At least the chief’s text indicated there was more here than there had been with the visit of the clerics. As she passed, nobody
was talking about anything weird: tea, the weather, aches and pains, the way the world was going these days . . . this lot certainly weren’t the youngest demographic. Business was bad. Table
prices had gone up. Someone was wondering whether or not to start accepting credit cards, only then they’d just go and bloody replace them with something else. Ross found herself distantly
enjoying listening to them. They seemed to be an everyday sort of people. There was a restful nostalgia about them, for something she’d never really experienced.

And she was feeling so tired. It was tempting to think of herself sitting one day behind a table like one of these, taking refuge in being part of a community like this, where nobody would look
twice at her eyes, her bent nose. It was like she often wished she had a favourite record or movie, in the way other people did, rather than just favouring something that was on the radio or the
television when she happened to be paying attention. Other people seemed to have things to belong to or things to be. Other people said they were enthusiasts, fans of, supporters of. But no, she
chided herself,
That can’t come true until you’ve finished this. And then, whatever happens, you have to find a way to deal with not getting revenge for Dad.
She couldn’t
imagine herself going back to being a normal analyst, even if they somehow got rid of the Sight. What she was hoping for, she now understood, was a happy ending. Which right now felt so impossible
that it was almost like inviting death.

Every now and then she saw a flash of something interesting, but she didn’t react, didn’t let them see she’d noticed it. She stopped when she realized she was now feeling a
couple of larger presences in the distance, one on each side of the hall. Following orders, she’d didn’t head towards them, or even look, just kept on down the middle.

But then she felt something else right in front of her. At this end of the hall, along on the wall furthest from the stage, there sat a young woman: one in a row of three traders, the others
uninteresting. A hand of tarot cards were spread out, face down, on a black cloth in front of her. The cards looked heavy and meaningful in her delicate hand. She looked up at Ross and it was
obvious she was seeing her as just another potential punter. ‘Shall I read your fortune, my darling?’

Ross considered her orders for a moment, then she went to sit down.

Costain felt as if he hadn’t really slept, only he supposed his head must have dropped for a couple of hours. He was in a world of rules now, when he really just wanted
to cut loose and swagger again, and be the star of this picture and, God, maybe get a toot from somewhere. Only, yeah . . . that would be bad. He felt awkward around Sefton.

‘What is it between you two?’ Ross had asked the previous night, after the DC had left. Costain had shaken his head. ‘I read his Goodfellow reports,’ she continued.
‘He always said good things about you. It was reading between the lines there, and your own stuff, that made me think you were a shit.’

Costain had been genuinely surprised. Then had found himself laughing. ‘What do you think now?’

She’d shrugged. ‘You’re
our
shit.’

Sefton hadn’t been undermining him. That unfairness had been in his dreams that night. He had bigger things on his conscience list: things he couldn’t deal with right now, because
it’d be unsafe to do so. But every time he started to think of what words to use to Sefton, he found himself getting angry again. He still wanted to hate him. That entire house of pain was
still there in his head, even though now it had no foundations. And that felt, somehow, even more annoying. And now he was standing beside him at the tea stall in the middle of the hall. When
Sefton nodded to him, he let himself behave as if they were mates.

‘Might as well look as if we’re together,’ said Sefton, under his breath, as he pressed the tea bag against the side of his cup to try and force out a bit of flavour.
‘Seeing we’re the only black guys in here.’

‘The New Age,’ agreed Costain, ‘does not recruit in line with best practice. What have you got?’

Sefton moved alongside him, so they were both facing the same way. ‘Three and nine, the two big noises in town, behind the rows of stalls on either side.’

One of the aims of this expedition had been to find out if anyone who was in any way like Losley would come along to a New Age fair. ‘Yeah. Bloody hell, I can feel their presence, nowhere
near on our witchy friend’s level, but . . . yeah, there they are.
People
, though, you reckon, not your . . . spooky
things
?’

‘At a guess, more like our old witchy friend.’

‘Keeping their distance from each other, like bosses would. You reckon they realize we’re here?’

‘Seven, two here and eight at the back have all checked me out, but I think that’s because I is black. As for the level bosses . . . I don’t know. All that’s different
about the four of us is . . . our advantage.’

‘If you want to call it that.’

‘I don’t know why it’d show up. We don’t look . . . particular, to each other.’

Costain lowered his voice. ‘You want to try a walk-up with one? Just stroll in like we own the place? Like in that shebeen in Romford?’

Sefton looked startled. ‘That was fucking terrifying.’

‘This will be more so.’

‘Oh, right, this is ’cos marching straight in would be brave – would be “the right thing to do”?’

Costain sighed. ‘Are you going to keep giving me shit about that?’

‘If you want me to stop, Tone, you can always order me to do so.’

‘What’s your question, ducks?’

Ross wondered if that was the fortune-teller’s real accent. It was like something out of a soap opera – the chirpy cockney sparrow, a bit irritating, a bit false. She looked to be
late thirties, ears pierced, with evidence of two earlier piercings, tattoo of some sort top left arm obscured by dress, natural brunette, green eyes, no visible fillings, about five foot two,
hundred and ten pounds. That tightness of the skin about her. Thin not because of the gym, but with those biceps. This was the kind of woman Ross often saw in interview rooms.

She tried to affect a gentle, spiritual voice without being too hello-trees-hello-flowers about it. ‘Hi, I’m Lisa.’

‘And I am Madame Osiris, at your service.’ The woman added one of those crazy aitches onto ‘Osiris’, as if she was something out of Dickens. She was dressed a bit like
that too. That was a genuinely old dress, the wreck of a real Victorian ball gown. Frayed and stitched up, but not by a tailor. She looked like someone who once might have been seen staggering on
stage at a music hall. What, was she actually from that time, keeping herself young? In the way that Losley’s record stretched far back enough to accumulate all those bodies? No, this was a
modern face. This woman was just trying really hard to seem antiquated. And Ross got the feeling it wasn’t pretence just for this moment, but something she did all the time.

‘Is that your real name?’

The woman raised an eyebrow. ‘Is that your question?’

‘Oh, sorry.’ Ross considered her question. She was feeling the power in those cards, but did this woman know how to use it? What if she asked the obvious:
Where is Mora
Losley?
That was assuming the cards actually worked to answer questions rather than just doing something else, such as make money vanish from her pocket. And that name would surely draw
attention. This was their first encounter with another user, and who knew what alliances existed among them? This woman had been keeping her left hand under the table since Ross had arrived. She
might suddenly attack Ross with something she had no defence against. ‘Okay,’ she said. ‘My question is: how can I win?’

‘Right. What sort of divination would you prefer?’ She made a swirling gesture with her right hand as she indicated the three choices, and Ross imagined for a second that she could
feel something moving around her. ‘Tarot of London?
Book of Changes?
Tube Oracle?’ Each gained weight and importance as she indicated it. So it wasn’t the objects that were
meaningful to the Sight, it was the woman – or rather what she was doing. Ross didn’t let the excitement show on her face. This was definitely someone a bit like Losley, the first such
they’d met. The
Book of Changes
was a small leather-bound volume, the Oracle seemed to be a cork-backed platter of wood that lay face down on the table, the Tarot were obviously the
cards already spread.

‘All three.’

‘That’ll cost you.’

‘Okay.’ Actually, not so great an idea. They’d have to sign off on any expenses claims for operational budget. That meant the team would soon have to come up with some
convincing lies about stuff like this.

‘Cross my palm with silver. That’ll be a carpet.’

Ross had been brought up in London and had never heard that one. ‘Sorry?’

‘Thirty quid. Blimey, you’re far from the madding crowd, aintcha?’ Good. The woman was used to setting herself above her punters, not afraid to be dismissive of them, and she
had taken Ross to be as foolish as any other. She took Ross’ money and it was gone into that left hand under the table. ‘Let’s start with the Oracle,’ she decided, and
turned over the piece of wood, which now was revealed to look suspiciously like a decorative place mat. It had a map of the London Underground on it, an old one that didn’t have the DLR on
it. The woman produced a metal pendulum, and set it twirling on a string right over it. ‘Ask your question again.’

Rather self-consciously, Ross leaned across and spoke into the place mat. ‘How can I win?’

The woman suddenly let go of the pendulum, jerking it hard towards Ross’ face, making her jump back. It hit the wood, rebounded violently and, against all possibility, dropped back into
the middle of the map. Its pointed tip was precisely on—

‘Baker Street, on the City side of the Hammersmith and City Line. That’s the top side, by tradition. And all is tradition . . . tradition is all.’ She’d said that under
her breath, like something she often repeated. ‘So, love, that’s one way you can win. What or who do you most associate with Baker Street?’

Ross realized who that could mean. And probably not the bloke who’d had a hit with the song of that name. But not a great deal of help either. Still, something real seemed to be going on
here.

‘The line’s interesting too. The City Line, that’s memory . . .’

‘Why is the City Line memory?’

‘Tradition. Every line stands for something. Nobody knows why.’

‘Nobody?’

‘So full of questions, and yet she’s only paid for the one.’