Ben Aaronovitch - Broken Homes

‘I’ve got to ask,’ I said. ‘What’s with the mask — who were you expecting to meet up here?’

‘Your master,’ said the Faceless Man. ‘Or do you call him your guv-nor?’

‘Fair enough,’ I said sauntering a couple of steps closer to the cover. ‘Have you considered a cape? You’d look good in a cape. You could throw in an opera hat.’

‘Very funny,’ he said. ‘But I’m not the walking anachronism around here.’

‘He’ll be here soon,’ I said. ‘You know he took out your Russian witch?’

‘I heard,’ he said. ‘Very impressive.’

‘She was all like, “Oh no you don’t” and he was like — splat! And that’s all she wrote.’

‘Do you have a radio?’

‘What?’

‘A radio,’ said the Faceless Man. ‘A means to contact your superiors.’

I showed him my airwave.

‘Are you planning to surrender?’ I asked.

‘Hardly,’ he said. ‘I want to know if the building has been evacuated.’ He patted his jacket pocket. ‘Before I set off the fireworks.’

I keyed the airwave and asked for MS 1, the Walworth duty Inspector.

There was a couple of seconds’ silence and then a response; ‘MS 1 receiving.’ Then another voice; ‘Go ahead.’ An older woman with an old-fashioned estuary accent and lots of attitude — I bloody loved the sound of that voice.

‘I’m on the roof facing and talking to an unidentified Falcon-capable suspect who claims to have a detonator for multiple IEDs in the building. He wants to know if the building has been evacuated.’

‘The building has been investigated, EOD is with the device on the twenty-first floor.’

Meaning, yes of course the bloody building’s been evacuated and can you please get more information for the bomb squad.

I told the Faceless Man that the building was cleared except for the disposal team.

‘Tell them that I will detonate the device in five minutes, so they’d better pull everyone out now. If I so much as hear a helicopter in the distance I’ll detonate there and then,’ he said. ‘Make sure they understand I’m serious.’

‘He says you have five minutes to evacuate any personnel before he detonates the IEDs; if he sees or hears India 99 or a helicopter he will detonate immediately.’

‘Are you free to speak?’ asked MS 1.

I said no.

‘Is there anything you can do?’ she asked.

‘No,’ I said. ‘I’m totally buggered.’

‘Understood,’ she said and then my airwave went dead. They’d cut me off and from that moment on I was a hostage not an asset.

Five minutes.

The Strata building overlooked Skygarden and might be close enough for a sniper, but I rather suspected the Faceless Man had positioned himself carefully so that the central cylinder blocked the line of sight.

‘What’s all this in aid of, anyway?’ I asked.

‘Can’t you guess?’

‘I know that Stromberg built this tower in order to harvest magic, but I don’t know why,’ I said. ‘I know you’re planning to steal it, but I don’t know how.’

‘Peter,’ said the Faceless Man, ‘you’re an exceptionally bright boy and I know you’ve been to the farm, so why don’t you stop pretending and tell me what you really know.’

‘I know that you used demon trap tech to engineer a sort of dog battery for storing magic. And I know you’ve got them connected to the plastic core that runs down the centre of the tower,’ I said. ‘What I don’t know is why. Since you’re obviously plugged in, why haven’t you siphoned off the power already?’

‘Dog batteries,’ said the Faceless Man. ‘Good one. Although they act much more like capacitors than batteries.’

‘Canine capacitors, then?’

‘Oh very sharp, yes, canine capacitors,’ he said. ‘Magic is not like electricity, it’s slippery stuff and much harder to manipulate. This tower is much like a cafetiere, one of those coffee plunger things, the coffee grounds are held in suspension within the hot water and, in order to concentrate them, one must use the plunger.’

‘Have you actually ever made coffee using a cafetiere?’ I asked.

‘I admit that I should have spent a bit more time on that simile, but you get the basic idea,’ he said.

‘You’re going to collapse the building, and that should drive the magic into the dog batteries,’ I said. ‘Then I presume you have a company that specialises in clearing demolition sites all set up and waiting to swoop in with a low bid — then they just load up the dog batteries and off you go.’

He has no idea about the Stadtkrone , I suddenly realised, that’s why he had to blow up the building. But how can he not know?

‘What do you want all that magic for?’ I asked.

‘Oh, I have done some extraordinary things with just the power of my body,’ he said. ‘Imagine what I might do with the forty years’ accumulated potential here.’ He looked at his watch. ‘I think they’ve had enough time to evacuate, don’t you?’

‘What about me?’ I asked.

‘I’m afraid you’ve got to stay here,’ he said. ‘I may wish to avoid mass murder, but let’s be honest. . I’d be extremely stupid to let you live.’

‘Why not just kill me now?’

Well done, Peter, I thought, let’s put that idea into his head.

‘Why should I?’ he asked. ‘Besides-’

I caught him mid-sentence. It was a beauty, impello with no modification, just the biggest impact I knew how to do focused down to a single point. He still managed to a get a shield up before I could strike. There was a crack like concrete breaking and he flinched — which made me feel better.

He straightened and made a show of dusting himself down.

‘Really, Peter,’ he said. ‘I thought you’d progressed a bit further than that.’

I let him think that I’d missed but before I could say something witty in reply, he drew out a wireless detonator and blew up the building.

I heard the charges go off below me, weirdly distant like something in a nightmare. I felt them as a thudding sensation through the soles of my shoes. I staggered towards the Faceless Man, expecting any moment for the roof to literally drop out from beneath my feet.

I felt it then, a great solidity, like the wave of power I’d felt come off the Thames at the Spring Court. Or the air that had so nearly floated me aloft when I was dancing with Sky. The building was holding itself up, trying to retain its shape.

I took the opportunity to close the range to the Faceless Man, until I’d got within three metres of him. But he didn’t seem afraid.

‘I wouldn’t get your hopes up,’ he shouted. ‘It’s not going to stay standing long.’

I heard people screaming far away and hoped that it was startled onlookers on the ground.

The trembling had become shaking — the wavelength of the oscillations lengthening. Once they reached a certain length, the tower would pull itself apart.

Come on Erik, I thought, if you’d wanted it to be a piston, why would you have put the bloody glass pimple at the top?

Then I heard a crack from behind me as, finally, the Statdkrone exerted enough pressure to open the fissure I’d smashed in the top of the cylinder.

‘Surprise,’ I shouted, and the blast knocked me to my feet.

And the Stadtkrone fell open in segments exactly like a practitioner opening his hand. Or more like a chocolate orange because, like every chocolate orange I’d ever opened, some of the bits stuck together.

I don’t know what Stromberg had been expecting to see from his roof garden in Highgate. Something Lord of the Rings , I expect — streamers of light pouring upwards into a rapidly opening circle of clouds. Instead it was a barely visible shimmer, like a column of heat haze. But I felt it. A wave of cooking smells and tastes, grease and peppers, green curry and macaroni cheese, spirit gum, the feel of wet papier-mache and children crying. People ironing, shaving, singing, dancing, grunting and fucking.