Paul Cornell - London Falling

‘But you’re the one who does all the hard work and, you’re the one they don’t notice. It’s always him they talk about, while you stand in his shadow. What’s he doing in charge of you? How is that fair? And this new operation — you should be in on that!’

It dawned on Quill that he himself had come to expect that Harry would never say thanks after he’d paid him a compliment or reassured him like that. Maybe now he knew the reason, and he felt like he should hold it against him. But this wasn’t Harry , was it? It was. . whatever this thing was. ‘Like I said, I asked for you,’ he began, taking care to talk to Harry rather than to the older man. ‘But we’re being kept apart from you lot, like we’re contagious, and. . well, you know who I think the bad apple is. I think maybe that’s the reason. Or maybe. . now I’m thinking that maybe there’s something more to it, and that Lofthouse had a plan.’

No reaction from the stranger. He was listening, his face set exactly like Harry’s. He was kind of one-track, wasn’t he?

‘But that’s no comment on you, either. We’re both the sons of coppers, Harry. We know the form. Here, remind me — when did your old dad pass on?’

The man turned to look at him, a snarl on his face. And Quill felt the slight relief of having made him do that.

Got you.

In the car heading back from the Losley house to the Hill, Ross had realized there was something wrong. It was as if something was moving inside her head, and she couldn’t push it down. She’d understood the stress of her chosen path, but the trouble was that she’d always expected catharsis at the end. She’d been running for the line, while now she was just working — and then working at home too — until she fell asleep. This couldn’t last. This had to end badly. Maybe this was the start of that ending.

She had first felt it when the car turned into Kilburn High Road. It had felt somehow that gravity had changed, that there was something pressing her down into her seat. She had looked to the others, and then out of the window, and became aware that she was starting to see. . fleeting things moving along and among the shopfronts. . odd things that the car was going too quickly for her to see, and she felt suddenly glad about that. And the shopfronts themselves, most of them with just overnight lights on now, there were. . like all sorts of them all laid on top of each other, at different levels, even, as if suddenly her eyes were offering her options. She had wanted to close her eyes, but she also didn’t want to because, if this was a form of mental illness, it was as frightening as she expected, but also really interesting. Her hand had gone instinctively to the knife she always kept in her pocket, but then she had let it go again. Best not play with that right now.

She had felt cars and buses pass that somehow felt more weighted than others. The underneath of the Marylebone flyover had been, in the looming darkness, exploding fireworks of tracks, of traces. . of cars crashing, she realized; as if every accident, over decades, had left some sort of record. That must be the delusion she was experiencing, that everything mattered, that everything was recorded, so guilt could never escape, so it was cared about still. Unlike in the real world. She hadn’t wanted to say anything to the others because, if her mind was disintegrating, she wanted to have it happen in private. It came as a relief, almost.

She had felt huge things passing high over the roof of the car. She had felt joys among the fears, even, but it had mostly been just fear. There had been motion between the trees of Hyde Park, and strange lights manifesting, in colours she wasn’t able to put a name to. Things moved between the trees faster than was possible. There had been unexpected structures in silhouette. Shadows lurking under shadows.

And then there had been a feeling of some huge, doom-laden presence somewhere distantly on their left, just as the car took them down Grosvenor Place. The car had felt to be teetering on the edge of it, affected by its gravity, sling-shotting around in that whirlpool-

‘What’s that over there?’ she’d managed to say, hoping that some part of the distant light she could see was real.

‘Buckingham Palace,’ said Costain.

She had kept herself a little apart from all she was experiencing, as if recording and reporting on her own fascinating breakdown. This familiar stance had calmed her a little. Never mind that all this reminded her of. . well, it would, wouldn’t it? She had imagined that , and she was now imagining this . It had probably been set off by those bodies in the cauldron. That had been the knife that had severed something she had herself stretched very tight.

The car had proceeded through Victoria, full of tourists, full of unknown shapes moving among the sightseers. And then up onto Vauxhall Bridge Road. Maybe if she went to sleep and woke up again, her brain would reset and it would all then be gone. .

No, it wouldn’t. She knew it wouldn’t. She glanced at Costain and Sefton. Sefton looked calm enough, playing with his phone. Costain had fallen asleep.

She had known, rather than saw, that up ahead stood a building: a house with stark angular walls and five chimneys. A bad place. The weight and impending sight of it had told her so. Then the car had gone through what felt like a gate, but there was no gate here in. . in the real world.

And then there had been hands. Hands of air, snatching at them!

She had reacted, of course, she hadn’t been able to stop herself, but she’d contained it enough so the other two hadn’t noticed, because they really couldn’t see.

The hands had let go, too weak to hold on against the speed of the car. But Ross had seen the five coffins that contained the five perfect corpses, their breath rising in dust, the same dust that killed-

And then the car had taken her out of that vision too, and they were now passing over Vauxhall Bridge. The Thames stretched underneath: such a huge new weight, she’d felt it writhing in her stomach. It hadn’t given her time to stop breathing hard, to stop reacting to those clutching hands taking her back to when she was a child, to a point where she was almost expecting the blows to fall across her face. It was as if she could hear — the vague sound, but not the details of — distant songs, as if all the associations and memories in London ran down to here, collected here. There were churning shapes down there, yet more shadows in the water. Everything she was seeing, she had understood with that detached part of her, was all part of the same thing. These were the symptoms of one big thing. Maybe that big thing was her mind falling apart. Or maybe this was her looking at something to do with what lay at the centre of the enigma she’d described at the crime scene. This was what they’d been missing. Or maybe what she was seeing here was all just a metaphor for the problem she was working on, as if she was a genius in a detective series. Only — she had found she was smiling, her awkward-shaped tooth biting at her lip, her image reflected in the horrible lights from outside — only she was no genius.

Then a ship, an old sailing ship with three masts, was speeding down the river, faster than any ship should be able to move. Its masts were too tall to pass under the bridge. It was going to reach the bridge at the same time they passed over. She had looked in the other direction. Another ship was speeding towards them. This was a steamship with a funnel, smoke coming from it, and a single mast. It looked like a warship but old, primitive. It was moving as if it was in an old film, speeded up, chuffing, impossible-

She’d looked back. From the other direction, the sailing ship was flashing forwards now. She’d made herself not yell, not grab her head and hide like a frightened animal, but just look, keep looking, be ready to tell someone else what she was witnessing-