Paul Cornell - London Falling

The ships passed straight through each other, and through the bridge and right through the car and through her and the others. Something contradictory rushed through them. It felt old and despairing, like British rain. She’d heard once, she absurdly remembered, that London rain was the sweat of Londoners. It looked like silver, like sprue from model kits, like ancient glue. Ross now felt invaded by something horrible and familiar.

The complex cloud of two ships that shouldn’t be one had zoomed out of the back of the car. She’d looked in one direction, then the other, noting the details on those ships, as if she could report the incident. HMS London was the sailing ship, HMS Victoria was the other. The car had come to a stop outside the Portakabin. Ross got out and numbly, quickly, headed for her own car, without even a nod to the others.

She’d driven home to her flat in Catford, having to stop several times: sometimes because her hands were shaking so much, sometimes because of something she’d just passed and quickly driven on from. She finally got out of her car to unlock her garage, still shaking, looking slowly around the housing-block car park, expecting to see something horrifying from out of her own head, and this time for it to be up close, just it and her. And she knew what it would be. She knew she was going to see it again sometime. It would so obviously be coming for her. It seemed that all the time in between, the period of her becoming a serious adult and a police intelligence analyst, was just a dream, and now she was waking up again.

She’d looked up at the tower block itself: a patchwork of lights, balconies with flowerpots, satellite dishes, dead rugs on the rails, painted Jamaican flags. Even this late at night, there was the distant noise of televisions, children and overlapping music. There were. . things. . up there, too. Nothing. . huge. . like she’d felt in the distance while in the car. Nothing. . that bad. Nothing near her own flat. She’d felt worse. She’d been present at worse.

She’d had worse done to her. Maybe that had been real. Shit, maybe that had been real! No, no, this wasn’t real. This now wasn’t real. It had to be that way round.

She shoved the fear down inside her, unlocked the door of the garage, relying on sheer routine to stop her peering fearfully inside it, like a little child, and then drove the car in. She didn’t know how she was going to get through the rest of the night. Or the rest of her life.

She’d sat in her flat with her laptop open, every light fully on. She’d made sure there was nothing bad in her home. She had a sanctuary here. But that didn’t make sense: how could any place be a sanctuary from what was inside her head? Especially when, last time. . she killed the thought. She looked up details on voluntary admission to a psychiatric hospital. There were so many in London. There was a phone number listed. It would provide a rest: no constant wondering about how she was. They would tell her how she was. She’d called the number.

Quill found what he needed in the man’s furious expression. That meant he wasn’t going crackers. This seemed impossible, but he was experiencing it, so it couldn’t be. This was something that was happening, and he’d got a reaction out of the. . yeah, the suspect. . in front of him. He was obviously a wanker, so he might as well be a suspect. Harry was talking about his dad, but not quite as if he was here in the room with them. Because Harry didn’t realize that he was, did he? Not entirely. This was like one of those cartoons where a bad angel is whispering in your ear. But Harry didn’t think it was real.

‘You ever think he’s still watching over you?’ asked Quill, with a glance towards the old man.

‘Yeah, my old mum keeps saying that. She goes along to a. . whatchacallit, a Spiritualist meeting. She says she talks to him every week.’

‘So he owns a semi in the afterlife and still does the pools?’

‘The fucker,’ said Harry’s dad, ‘the arrogant arsehole always with the glib line. He never takes the time to understand anything properly — it’s always about the comedy! Are you going to let him talk about me like that?’

Quill kept his expression unresponsive.

‘Yeah,’ smiled Harry, ‘they’ve all got pets and everything, too. She says he’s always around, looking after me and wanting me to get on. Load of bollocks.’ But Harry didn’t entirely believe that, obviously.

Costain woke up suddenly in the car park outside the Portakabin, and realized something was wrong before he could figure out exactly what. The driver had said something to wake him up, and was now holding the back door open for him. He saw that the other two had bloody gone off and left him there. He got quickly out of the car, and thanked the bemused-looking driver. He watched the vehicle head off. He was feeling vulnerable, cover-blown vulnerable, for no reason. Weird. It made him look over at his own car and hesitate before heading towards it, look around first before he got in, then get out again and have a look underneath before he turned the engine on.

What the fuck was this? Everything was going great now. He’d even found that he’d been justified in betraying Rob. Was he just anticipating the world shitting on him again, or was this about something real? Was he being set up, getting followed by Professional Standards or something? Was this to do with his instincts trying to get the attention of his brain? ’Cos, hello, listening now, conscious mind in gear, thank you. . But, no, he couldn’t find anything sensible to be afraid of.

He drove randomly, looking behind him every now and then, even stopping a few times, making sudden turns down streets to make it more obvious if someone was following him. Whenever he stopped he would look upwards, expecting a police helicopter. He didn’t see or hear one, but there was something up there, he started to realize. It felt as if there were loads of things up there, looking down at him, meaning him harm.

What the fuck? Was he on something and didn’t know it?

He finally stopped the car in a lay-by somewhere near Croydon, his hands still on the wheel, and tried to control this feeling. Yeah, there was something of the effect of cocaine to it, but he hadn’t had any of the stuff since that night with Toshack. Trying to get hold of some over the last couple of weeks would have been suicidal, and he was pretty sure that, having worked so hard to keep all his options open, he wasn’t trying to be self-destructive here. That was the exact opposite of the kind of person he was. So what was this about? It seemed to be deliberately driving him away from London. Or, no, it didn’t care about anything: he was driving himself away from London because he had serious opinions on the subject of putting himself in danger, and London now felt. . dangerous.

But how could London feel like anything to him? There wasn’t any intel to base that reaction on. What. . had he developed his own Spidey sense?

But, yeah, that was where it was definitely taking him. Every new turn he had taken in this car had taken him further out into commuter land, heading through all the lost suburban byways and rat-runs. If he kept going, he’d soon hit the M25, and then he could just keep on going, right down to the coast, maybe get a ferry-

No, no, no! Why?

Did someone’s unconsciousness really function like this? He’d seen movies where someone found themselves acting kind of weird, and it turned out to be about some psychological tic they hadn’t recognized in themselves. That sort of stuff had always seemed like bullshit to him; he knew himself too well, but maybe there was something he could point to underneath this urge. It was as if he was now directly feeling something that had always been out there somewhere, but always previously as an abstract entity, a crushing weight of judgement and prejudice and arrogance. Except it was in a specific place now, here in London instead of all around him.