Paul Cornell - London Falling

After the three of them got back to the Portakabin, while Quill and Ross started to add the details from the manuscript pages to the Ops Board, Sefton got out his special notebooks and checked through everything he’d written down about his encounter with. . whatever Brutus had been. ‘I was proceeding in a mystical direction when I encountered a six-foot-two Roman male, with whom I shared a certain sexual tension.’ That’s what it should have read. His actual account still squared with Sefton’s memory, but it felt like a dream now. Brutus had said that he had to remember the bookshop. What he’d felt there. Again that word, a weird one to see in any copper’s record of events. He found the page that covered the night referred to. He read the notes in every way he could: poetically, as if they were metaphors rather than description; like a word puzzle that hid a code. He read every third word; he even ran the pronunciations over backwards. They merely became nonsense. Brutus had been very clear that he had to work for this, that he had. . continually to offer a sacrifice of work, of himself, and of the sort of work he did. That was going to mean a sort of continual background pain, the inability ever to relax. Pain is what this is about , said a small voice in the back of his mind. What was the most painful aspect of the bookshop? That one was straightforward: being in the dark, having to save the others, when he’d had to make such an effort to make the darkness itself forget the horrors and be something else. It had taken great effort to make it forget.

And there suddenly was the thought, now so perfectly framed in his head. As it always was in a cop show, the phrase that completed the resolution of the mystery. Except this had taken work. This had taken him on another step towards. . whatever he was trying to be. Brutus had called him an initiate, and he supposed that now he was. Because he now had something to contribute.

‘Jimmy,’ he said, ‘could you give Lofthouse a call? I think there’s something she could do that might help.’

It was properly night when Costain returned. Ross saw Quill’s eyes widen as the DC put the guns on the table in front of him. He considered them for a moment, then just nodded. ‘I’ll get the ammo sent over from the lock-up,’ he said.

They took shifts in watching to see if the cat’s locator bug had moved. Quill got some sleeping bags brought over. The person checking the monitor sat by its light while the others lay in the darkness, getting what little sleep they could. Ross wasn’t sure if she got any proper sleep at all. Every now and then she heard a small noise or movement nearby, and realized that a nightmare had woken one of her comrades.

But then she must have found some way of drifting into sleep, because it was suddenly bright and cold and she ached all over, and Quill, his head in his hands, was looking up from the monitor. He’d just put his phone down. She’d heard him, she realized, at the edge of sleep, talking quietly to his wife.

‘Match day,’ he said. ‘Shall we forgo the bloody tea and get straight to the coffee?’

They took showers in Gipsy Hill, finding whatever change of clothes they could. Ross actually got to the end of the bills list, using it to eat up the hours, saw the last page of it depart her screen, like the last train. Nothing found. If Losley didn’t take her cat home, then, when that football match started, when bloody Manchester City, with all their firepower, with the bloody smiling bastard on their side, couldn’t resist a goal. . then Quill’s child would be put in a pot by those unyielding, ancient hands and slowly boiled to death. And, beyond that, into the Hell she gave these infants to. As something cold seized her stomach, Ross realized how debilitating it would be if she kept thinking about that, and made herself get up and start to walk around. Exactly as Quill did.

‘You realize she might not even look at the ground, so might not see the cat,’ said Costain, standing beside her, ‘until the match starts?’

Ross bit her lip, and drew blood.

It got to an hour before the game. Leaving the Portakabin, they went and sat ready in a car. Everything they needed, from Sefton’s holdall to Costain’s guns, was already in the back. They had the radio on, listening to the match. Otherwise they were silent. Quill had been on the phone to his wife many times that morning. He kept saying that he wished somehow she could be here, that she ought to be part of the effort to save her daughter. From what Ross overheard, she kept saying ‘Then, let me.’ It was the strangeness of there just being the four of them who knew about this stuff that meant Sarah Quill was suddenly closer to this operation than any of the rest of the Met were. But Sarah still couldn’t see what they could see.

Ross felt the tension building in her neck. They weren’t at all well-armed enough. Yes, they had a few new ideas, but no secret weapon. They were going to have to go after Losley anyway. If they got the chance. She kept her eyes fixed on the monitor on her lap. The locator bug was still resolutely fixed at the Boleyn Ground.

‘The opposition today. .’ Alan Green was saying on the radio, ‘well, they’ve just about said that they’re not going to try to score. Which is against the rules of the league, and could get them fined, points deducted, or kicked out even. But would anyone here disagree with them? There was talk of fans staying away, too, but every seat is filled. Who knows what they’ve come here to see? Certainly not a proper football match. I hope it might be more of a demonstration of the common sense that the authorities seem to be lacking. The mere fact that this match is being played at all is insanity. No matter that meaningful images — reminders of the victims of Mora Losley — will be shown on the big screens around the ground at half time.’ Ross looked over to Sefton, who exhibited slight relief on his face. ‘No matter that a memorial service to the victims will be said in the middle. It’s not an act of defying terrorism on the part of the football authorities, as they’re making out, but participation in it. And, saying that, well, maybe I won’t be around for the next match myself, either. Those empty spaces around where Mora Losley’s season-ticket seat used to be, they represent a blot on this ground now, like a wound. Everyone can see them, everyone keeps staring at them, even now as the players are coming out. .’

Quill’s mobile rang. He answered it and then listened for a moment. ‘The uniform we told to watch the cat, he says he’s lost it.’ Quill sounded as if he didn’t dare hope. ‘He says he was looking right at it.’

Ross stiffened in her seat. She looked down at the monitor screen, and suddenly, as she watched, it started scrolling wildly, trying to find the signal, previously at the ground but now. . coming from somewhere else in London? Sefton must have seen her expression. He bent over to look.

‘Losley’s taken the cat away,’ he said. ‘She bloody took it.’

‘Waiting,’ said Ross, and the screen was still scrolling. ‘Waiting for signal acquisition. .’

On the radio, the match had started. The roar of the crowd sounded strange, fearful, as tense as they were. Ross imagined a ball being gently passed, defended, while the West Ham players either genuinely attacked, or showed the same courtesy in return. Various interviews had hinted they’d either play a real game or that they wouldn’t, sometimes both versions from the same player at different times. Ross was keeping her mind busy as she watched the map on the screen scroll uselessly, helplessly, around London. Surely that now meant the signal had been lost completely? Surely, after so long. .