Бен Ааронович - Lies Sleeping

‘I’ve always said you were wasted on the police,’ said Seawoll.

‘I’m having a look through the front window,’ said Stephanopoulos in a low voice. ‘I can see something in the back and she’s sitting low on her suspension.’ And then much louder, ‘How many times do I have to tell you: the goat is not allowed in the house.’

Nightingale told me to saunter up the entrance to the ramp while he went to the top of the pedestrian access stairs on the other side of the park, so he could cover Stephanopoulos’ exit.

I was halfway across the road when a spotter reported that a mint coloured Fiesta was heading up Long Lane and was indicating for a left turn – meaning it might be heading for the car park. I said I’d keep an eye out.

I was almost across when Stephanopoulos said, ‘Oh shit. Chorley just came out of the underground bit.’

There was a bit of loud breathing and then Stephanopoulos said she was hidden behind a different van but she could probably get a shot with her taser as Chorley went past.

‘I wouldn’t advise it,’ said Nightingale.

‘Wait for him to pass and get the fuck out of the way,’ said Seawoll.

‘Peter,’ said Nightingale, ‘turn the car away.’

I looked over and saw the Fiesta, mint coloured as advertised, turning out of Long Lane and making an obvious beeline for the entrance at the top of the ramp. I stepped quickly out in front of it and held up my hand in that gesture all police hope is authoritative enough to halt over a tonne of moving metal.

The trick is to always be ready to dive out of the way.

The driver was a white woman in her mid-twenties; white blouse, lightweight navy suit jacket, brown hair.

I made a friendly fending-off gesture, but the woman’s expression gave her away.

I’d know that look of exasperation anywhere – even when it’s not on the right face.

‘Lesley’s in the Fiesta,’ I said over the Airwave.

She’d been slowing to negotiate the ramp, but as soon as she saw me Lesley floored it. I threw a car killer into the bonnet and the engine died. But she had too much momentum and I had to vault the safety rail to avoid getting run down.

‘Pillock!’ I heard her shouting as she went past.

I made what they call a tactical assessment.

I could see the van a third of the way around and down the ramp. Because the ramp formed almost a complete circle I had sight of Nightingale to my right as he went for the pedestrian staircase less than forty metres away. I watched as he jumped over the railing and dropped down onto one of the landings below. I decided that my job, as usual, was Lesley, and took after the Fiesta as it rolled down the ramp.

The ramp was built for carriages and drays drawn by huge Clydesdale draught horses, and so was cobbled for traction and maximum tripping and leg-breaking potential. Still, I went flat out on the basis that I really didn’t want to be tag-teamed by Lesley and Chorley together.

I was good enough by then to throw car killers about without sanding my Airwave, so I was still online to hear one of the spotters yell something unintelligible and Seawoll order the containment teams to set up a safety perimeter. This was the appropriate Falcon response plan in action – the TSG keeps the public out of harm’s way while we lucky few go toe to toe with the Faceless Man.

And not forgetting his sidekick – the mutable Lesley.

The Fiesta pulled up by the van and Lesley tumbled out, still wearing her fake face.

She pulled her hand back into a fist when she saw me, but I was already casting a nice reliable impello palma even as I closed the distance between us. The spell knocked her on her back, but she rolled, did something that I didn’t recognise, and a viciously bright flash in front of my face blinded me. I went crashing down to the cobbles. All I could see was a bruise-coloured blotch in front of my eyes. But, figuring that lying on the cobbles was not conducive to my health, I scrambled off to my right where I knew there were parked cars. After banging my face on somebody’s hatchback, I found the gap between cars and slotted myself in.

I crouched down with my back to a wheel arch and blinked, trying to clear my vision.

It’s the ultraviolet content of a bright light that damages your retinas – I just had to hope Lesley had her flashbulb lux variant tuned to the lower wavelengths. Meanwhile I found I could follow the magic part of the fight through the echoes of the combatants’ formae .

There was the tick-tock precision of Nightingale doing something complicated, followed by a whispering crash like cymbals when his spell hit home. Chorley was a series of painful razor strops speeding up until it was like a buzz saw meeting metal. Somewhere out in the real world I heard real metal tearing and sirens in the distance.

And then there was Lesley with a little bit of tick-tock, some razor strop, and a strange cry like a seagull that I was beginning to recognise as uniquely her own.

Now, it would be really useful if I could use all these lovely sense impressions to get a sense of distance. But some hours spent wearing a blindfold while Abigail and Nightingale set spells off around me had proved you couldn’t. At least I couldn’t. At least not yet.

Still, the beauty of being stuck on a down ramp with nice solid Victorian brick walls on either side was that there was a limited number of directions Lesley could be coming from. When I sensed her gearing up to cast her next spell – some difficult impello -based procedure – I lobbed a glitter bomb in her general direction.

This was one of Varvara’s wartime spells as translated by Abigail – Ledyanaya Bomba in Russian, but we call it a glitter bomb because of the way light sparkles off the ice crystals that form around the epicentre.

I distinctly heard Lesley say ‘fuck’ not five metres away, and then I felt the wave of cold air roll over me. The sight in my left eye was mostly purple but my right was almost clear – obviously I’d been squinting. I risked a look.

Everything around the van was bright and sparkly, like a bright winter’s day after a frost. I saw a blurry figure who was probably Lesley turn away from me and start to run down the ramp, only to slip over and fall down hard with a yelp.

I wasn’t going to get a better invitation than that, so I rolled out of my hiding place and charged down the slope with my shield up for good measure. Which is just as well, as I ran straight into Chorley coming the other way. I was half blind and he was looking over his shoulder – it was one of them meeting engagements that military theorists suggest you should never ever do if you can help it. He didn’t spot me until we were less than three metres apart. He tried to turn away, but slipped and went down on one knee with an audible crack. It looked really painful, but not as painful as I was planning to make it.

Lesley was to his right, trying to get to her feet. She was trying to wrench something out of her jacket pocket, and making a mess of both actions. I couldn’t pass up a shot at Chorley, so I tried to body-slam him with my shield.

I’m not sure, but I think he sort of picked up my shield and used it and my momentum to throw me over his head. Certainly for me there was a confused moment where everything was upside down, a painful impact on my back, and then I slid down the icy cobbles for a couple of metres.

I rolled over in time to see Chorley turn his full attention on me, with a look in his eyes that said I’d just reached the end of the rope he’d been giving me.

Then he fell twitching to the floor – I knew that twitch. I’ve suffered it myself. There were wires trailing from his back to the yellow X26 taser in Stephanopoulos’ hand, and she kept pumping the juice just as instructed by the big bumper manual of how to deal with criminal practitioners.