London Falling (34 page)

But the soil was intact, they knew. All the power was still there. They were terrified of her, and only their velocity was saving them, and that might give out any second.

The uniforms were all out of there; they’d got the children safely away.

Costain grabbed her hands and wrenched them over her head, behind her back. She screamed again, the very sound clawing at the air. The silver handcuffs snapped on, and they slammed her flat onto
the table again.

Quill felt a huge frightening triumph rise up inside him. ‘Mora Losley!’ he yelled, making himself somehow keep his voice level, because now she was going to have a trial and a brief
– she was going to be dragged through one now, like normal people, like scared little people on their level, for wanting to fucking boil
children
, and she was going to cut a deal with
them along the way and turn it all back to the way it had been, and this was his tribal cry: the victory that would mean he was the thing he thought he was, ‘you are under arrest in
connection with multiple charges of murder, you do not have to say anything, but it may harm your defence—!’

‘You can’t stop me,’ she cried. ‘History is on my side.’

And then they all fell through the floor.

The sensation of falling turned out to be what it was like to be holding tightly on to someone when they vanished with their house all around them.

Ross fell as the wave went through her and over her head. She was aware of the others falling beside her.
Again! She’d done it to them again!
The house was folding up past them this
time, separating itself from them, not trying to take them with it. It was rolling back towards that red door into which it had all rushed the last time.

But right in front of her—

Ross dived for the shape she’d glimpsed, seen across a space which she didn’t understand. She got her fingers around it and pulled it to her, and held on against a force that was
trying desperately to haul it away from her.

Beside her, Quill slid across the floor. He was heading for the door, which was now swinging shut, having stayed open, Ross realized, only because of what she held in her hands. He recklessly
jammed his hand into the gap between the door and the frame, then pulled his fingers out at the last second—

—leaving a wedge in place. The door thudded against it and held.

A terrible creaking noise filled the air. The others covered their ears, but Ross wouldn’t let go of what she was holding, and the others looked to be in as much pain as she was. It was as
if reality itself was cracking. Quill began to stagger towards the doorway. The air in Ross’ lungs had got too large, somehow, too hot; it felt as if she was going to burst. Ross sensed the
gravity on what she held increase to a point where she was sure it was going to haul her towards the door unless she let go. But she would not.

Something gave way. Something cracked.

The door slammed with a concussion that made them fall over.

They slowly got to their feet. The room had vanished. Ross looked over to where the soil had been. This time, she’d taken it with her. No more supply dumps, now that they were on her
case.

Quill hauled himself over to where the door had been and looked down at something steaming on the floor. It was the perfectly flattened remains of a rubber door wedge. ‘Glad I didn’t
get my fingers in there,’ he said.

Ross suddenly remembered what she was holding, something that was struggling and spitting and very real. She suddenly felt perversely furious at it.

‘So last time was deliberate,’ Costain was saying, not having noticed yet what she’d got. ‘She was trying to take us with her, disorient us, then take us out.’

‘Or she didn’t have the energy this time,’ said Sefton.

‘We saved the kids,’ said Quill. ‘We stopped her.’

‘Hoi,’ said Ross, ‘look what I’ve got.’ They all turned to see that she was clutching in her arms the mangy black cat.

‘Now,’ the animal began, ‘wait a moment—’

Costain grabbed a sack from the floor and flung the cat inside. Then he tied the opening in a knot. Inside the bag, the cat hissed and spun around. ‘We have an accomplice in
custody,’ he declared.

‘Tell
that
to a judge,’ muttered Quill.

Ross swallowed an urge to laugh. She could feel them all giddy with it, the incredible feeling of having saved the kids, of having survived! Then she started to hear the screams from
outside.

They jumped down from the loft and raced down the stairs, back to normal now.

They got out of the door to where the noise was coming from, aware of the increasing shouts. People were staring out of the windows of their houses, more and more of them. ‘Get back
inside!’ Cartwright was yelling. Two uniforms were lying on the pavement, their blood pooling around them. Others were tending to them, too late.

They stopped. They stared. Dead coppers. What they’d done had produced dead coppers.

‘She’s heading towards the railway!’ a woman shouted from a top window. ‘I can still see her!’ She was pointing along the road.

‘We stopped her bailing out!’ yelled Quill. ‘She only managed a short hop, and she can’t have much power left! Come on!’

Costain shoved the sack into Cartwright’s arms. ‘Get that back to the nick,’ he said. ‘Hold on to it.’

Then the four of them raced off after Mora Losley.

It felt good to Ross to be in hot pursuit, to feel the pounding of blood inside her. She and Costain and Sefton, who all kept themselves very fit, soon pulled ahead of Quill.
Sefton was still running with his holdall, but they were all pushing themselves as hard as they could go. Because there she was! There was a thin shape darting ahead, pausing, hauling herself along
again. They nearly had her! She turned the corner. More and more people were coming out of their houses, into their gardens, pointing and shouting. ‘Get back!’ Quill was yelling to them
as he ran.

Ross knew Cartwright would have called it in. There’d be cars coming in from all directions. One sped past them now, siren blaring, making Quill yell for it to go on, my son!

Dead coppers.

Ross saw the lights of the vehicle turn left ahead—

And there was some sort of explosion, a ball of purple light that rose up high over the houses, though nobody could see it but them. They got to the end of the street and saw the marked car in
pieces, two officers thankfully staggering out of it, because that was all she could manage now, all that was left to her! They were pointing down a road that ran alongside a railway cutting, as a
train roared past behind the houses, sounding its horn as if all of London was joining in on this chase, the city alerted to the thing amidst it which claimed to be part of it. Ross felt good about
the city: it was on their side, surely it was!

And there she was again, off in the distance, impossibly already at the end of the street. And she’d turned again, right this time, some sort of bridge over the railway—

Quill was on his Airwave radio, yelling a description of where the suspect was heading.

They sprinted after her.

She led them through one suburban street after another, past houses, and garages on the corners with metal shutters, and pet shops and schools. She was loping, slowing down, as
were they. The network of cars and coppers on foot must be closing on her now. Ross could almost hear the running footsteps echoing from other streets. She could feel this like some medieval hue
and cry. Up ahead there were ever more shouts as people spotted Losley – her off the telly – and they’d be phoning each other now, Tweeting each other to come to the window and
see, as Losley became a trending topic, as the whole city converged on her.

Straight above them roared a helicopter without a police logo. ‘Frigging TV news team!’ yelled Quill.

They came to a halt at a corner, and got the TV news displayed on Sefton’s phone. There she was: a dark shape, like a target in a foreign war, running past people’s gardens. Heading
straight for a fence . . . and going right through it, as if it wasn’t there, with a flare of white light that Ross was sure only they saw.

‘There are some sports pitches, or a school playing field ahead—’ began Sefton.

Quill heard from Cartwright on his radio. ‘She’s going straight across the pitch. We’ve got people coming out of their houses all over. We are attempting an intercept with
multiple cars along Ivydale Road. Stay at location. Pick up’s on its way.’

A marked car arrived a minute later, and took them at high speed, blues and twos blaring, through the crowds of people that now lined the roads, straight to Ivydale Road, where
the crowds were even larger. Quill saw that some of them had makeshift weapons now: tools and cricket bats. But they were holding back, leaping aside to let through the multiple police cars that
were racing down the road towards an intercept point.

‘How’s she doing this?’ the driver was yelling.

Quill’s team jumped out of the car without anyone answering her. They rushed towards where the other vehicles were converging—

Just as Losley burst through, from a gap between houses that shouldn’t have been there. She spun and looked round with fury on her face, and with a terrible fear that Ross sensed in that
second: the hunted animal who would do anything to escape. The crowd roared at her and heaved forward, except at the front, where the people were pushing back, terrified at the sight of her.
Terrified but excited and caught up in it.

Losley looked around at them, at the masses of people and police closing on her from all directions. She looked across the road, from one row of suburban houses to another. She looked at the mob
and hissed at them.

The people in her way broke and scattered.

She hurled across the road. She went straight through the uniforms. Screams and explosions of blood, and coppers were shouting,
She’s got a gun, she’s got a gun
. Coppers fell
bloodied and injured and crying out but, again, not dead, as if her power was waning at every moment. The crowd began screaming and some of them started running.

Quill’s team followed, slamming their way through and around members of the public. They were right behind her again. She was running towards a house. She rushed into the garden. She
leaped at its front windows, with television light flickering behind them. The glass caved in, and there were shouts from inside, and then screams.

Quill got to the door and hammered on it. ‘Police!’ he bellowed. ‘Police!’

A woman opened it. ‘She’s— she’s—!’

He burst past her. The others followed.

She was already through the house, and out a back door, now just seconds ahead of them. They could almost lay hands on her. Ross felt her hands clutching at the thought of it.

Mora ran straight down the thin back garden. They sprinted after her, ducking past a rotary washing line and crazy paving and gnomes and a rotten wooden fence, and at the bottom of the garden
there was—

A high stone wall. And beyond it an expanse of trees. Thick, even with only the bare bones of winter, a black mass against very distant lights.

With an impossible leap and two upward scuttles like a spider, hand over hand, Mora was over the wall.

They themselves slammed against it. ‘Where?’ Quill yelled, turning as the family whose house this was came stumbling outside. She hadn’t had a chance to hurt them.

‘That’s Nunhead cemetery,’ the woman said.

‘Tonight, somewhere in this 250-year-old, thirty-acre cemetery, reopened less than a decade ago and still partly a ruin, the police think Mora Losley has gone to
ground. Attempts to seal the site have proved futile, as groups of people have formed and ventured into the cemetery, guided by their phones and portable devices, taking along torches and
improvised weapons. They say there’s safety in numbers, but look at them here, as our helicopter shot captures it: all those lights down there are ordinary people taking the law into their
own hands. More and more of them doing so as our coverage has continued, though the latest to arrive are being turned away by what’s now an enormous police presence. Our camera crew is there
with one . . . I nearly called him a protestor.’

‘We’re all of us parents, and we’ve come down here to ensure—’

‘Find her! Find her and make sure she doesn’t get away with it!’

‘You seem to have weapons with you?’

‘The police better hope they get to her before we do. I’ve got kids!’

‘Burn the witch! Burn the witch!’
Half laughter in the young voices, but half meaning it.

‘I wish they’d stop calling her a witch. I’m down here to point out to people that this ancient and peaceful tradition . . .’

‘It’s absolutely unprecedented. Police have sealed off several roads to stop people from other parts of London heading to the cemetery. Tonight the capital is gripped by anger and
fear, and it’s all focused on this one woman. I have here a police statement which says she remains only a suspect, she is not to be approached, but I’m hearing . . . is she even still
in the cemetery? We’re getting reports in . . . Now we can go to a map, as we’re getting reports of sightings of Mora Losley in Kentish Town, in Clapham, in Brixton . . .’

Quill and his team looked out over the expanse of the ancient cemetery. Between the trees flickered torches, everywhere they looked. The landscape of graves and vaults and
distant buildings rippled with a strange heat amid the cold of winter. The first place they’d headed had been somewhere Sefton had found on his phone in the Wikipedia description of this
place: a restored chapel. They weren’t the first to have that thought. Quill had to yell at crowds of angry people with torches, some of them literally old-style flaming torches, all of whom
felt they had a perfect right to be here, who wanted to tell him that if he did his job better, that if he knew what it was like to raise kids in London, with paedophiles on the streets, and now a
frigging witch—!

That was when she’d lunged out at them.