Peter Robinson - All the Colors of Darkness

“It had better not be,” said Banks.

Tomasina blushed and took the tickets. “Thanks,” she said. “That’s great. I’ll be there.”

“Look forward to it,” said Brian. “Got to go now. See you later, Tom. See you, Dad.” He shook Banks’s hand and then disappeared in the direction of Piccadilly Circus.

“Thank you,” said Tomasina to Banks. “Thank you so much. That was really nice.”

“Feeling better?”

“A lot.” She shuffled on her feet and tucked her hair behind her ears, the way she had done in the restaurant. “I don’t really know how to say this properly, and promise not to laugh at me, but I don’t really have anyone to, you know, share these tickets with. Do you want to come?”

“With you?”

“Yeah. That’s not such a horrible thought, is it?”

“No, no. Of course not. I was just... yes, sure, I’d be delighted to.”

“It’s easiest if you come by the office,” she said. “Then we can have a drink after work first. All right?”

“All right,” said Banks, thinking of Sophia. He would most likely have gone to the concert with her, and he still would if she was speaking to him again by next week. On the other hand, he didn’t want to let Tomasina down right at the moment. She’d been through a lot because of him. Well, he decided, he’d let it lie as it was for now and see how things turned out. It wasn’t as if it was a date or anything. Tomasina was young enough to be his daughter. Mind you, Sophia was young enough to be his daughter, too, at least technically. Maybe the three of them could go together. Sophia would understand.

“I’d better be going,” said Tomasina.

“Office?”

“No. I’ve had enough of that for the day. Home.”

“Where’s that?”

“Clapham. I’ll get the tube from Piccadilly. See you next week.”

Then she gave Banks a quick peck on the cheek and dashed off along Sparrow Street, a spring in her step. How resilient are the young, Banks thought.

The car, with his suitcase in it, was still parked at the hotel in Fitz-rovia, and he thought that was probably where he should go to begin the long drive back to Eastvale. The other phone call he had made while Tomasina smoked was to Dirty Dick Burgess, but again he had got no answer.

Banks walked up Regent Street toward Oxford Circus, enjoying the sunshine and the slight buzz from two glasses of white wine, but keeping an eye open as best he could for any sign of a tail. He went into the Bose shop for a couple of minutes and tried out some noise-canceling headphones he liked. Around Great Marlborough Street, the crowds of tourists got too thick, so he turned right to avoid Oxford Circus altogether. He wanted to call at Borders and HMV, anyway, before heading back up north. He was somewhere between Liberty and the Palladium when he heard an almighty explosion, and the pavement shook beneath him as if there had been an earthquake. High windows shattered and glass and plaster fell into the street.

For a moment, the world seemed to stop, freeze-frame, then it was all sound and motion again, and Banks became aware of people screaming and running past him, confused and terrified expressions on their faces, back toward Regent Street or deeper into Soho. To his left, up the narrow side street, he could see a pall of black smoke mixed with dark orange flames. Alarms sounded everywhere. Without thinking, he ran up Argyll Street, against the panicking crowds, to Oxford Street, and he found himself in a scene of carnage that might have come straight out of the blitz.

There were fires all over the place. The dark thick smoke stung his eyes. It smelled of burned plastic and rubber. Plaster dust filled the air, and rubble lay scattered everywhere. Broken glass crunched underfoot. At first, everything happened in slow motion. Banks was aware of sirens in the distance, but where he was, in the smoke, felt like a sort of island separated from the rest of the city. It was as if he had arrived at the still center of darkness, the eye of the storm. Nothing could survive here.

Wreckage lay everywhere: bits of cars; twisted bicycles; a burning wooden cart; gaudy souvenir scarves and pashminas and cheap luggage strewn over the road; a man lying halfway though his windscreen, still and bleeding. Then, out of it all, a figure stumbled toward Banks, an elderly Asian woman in a bright-colored sari. Her nose was gone and blood streamed from her eyes. She had her arms stretched out in front of her.

“Help me!” she cried. “Help me. I can’t see. I’m blind.”

Banks took her arm and tried to murmur words of comfort and encouragement as she gripped on to him for dear life. Maybe she was better off not being able to see, he thought fleetingly, leading her over the street. Everywhere people were staggering about in the haze, their arms flailing like zombies in a horror film. Some were shouting, some screaming, fleeing from burning cars, and some were just sitting or lying, moaning in pain.

One man lay on the road on fire, thrashing about, trying to douse the flames that consumed him. There was nothing Banks could do for him. He stumbled on and tripped over a leg. It wasn’t attached to a body. Then he walked through stuff that squished unpleasantly under his feet and saw body parts strewn everywhere. After he had got the Asian woman out of the smoke and sat her down on the pavement until help came, he picked his way back through the wreckage and the rubble. He found a disoriented boy of about ten or eleven and half-dragged him away to the edges of the scene where the smoke thinned, and where he had left the Asian woman, then he went back and guided the next person he saw out of the carnage.

He didn’t know how long he went on doing this, taking people by the arm and leading them away, even scooping them up off the road into his arms, or dragging them to the edge of Oxford Circus, where the air was still full of the stink of burning plastic but was at least breathable.

A burning taxi lay on its side and a pretty young blonde in a bloodstained yellow sundress was trying to climb out of the window. Banks went to help her. She had a lapdog held to her chest like a ball of fluff and a Selfridges bag, which was almost too big to get through the window. She got out, but she wouldn’t let go of the bag handle, no matter how much Banks tried to pull her away. He feared the taxi might explode at any moment. In the end she pulled the bag free and tottered back into Banks’s arms on her high heels. It only took him a quick glance in the front to see that the driver was dead. The woman clung to Banks and her bag with one arm and her dog with the other as they edged their way toward the cleaner air, and for the first time, amid it all, he could smell something other than death: it was her perfume, a subtle musk. He left her sitting by the roadside crying and went back. There was a bendy-bus lying on its side burning, and he wanted to see if he could help people get out. He could hear the woman wail and the dog start to yap behind him as he walked away.

The next thing he knew the area was full of dark shapes in protective gear, wearing gas masks or heavy breathing equipment, with oxygen tanks strapped to their backs, some of them carrying submachine guns, and someone was calling over a loudspeaker for everyone to evacuate the area. Banks carried on searching for survivors until a heavy hand rested on his shoulder and pulled him away.

“Best get out of here, mate, and leave it to us,” said the voice, muffled by breathing apparatus. “You never can tell. There might be another one. Or one of the cars might go up any moment.”

The strong, steady hand guided him gently but firmly past Oxford Circus and around the corner to Regent Street.

“Are you all right?” the man asked him.