Бен Ааронович - Lies Sleeping

Lesley was still trying to get something free of her jacket, and I scrambled up to stop her. But before I could get to my feet she had a compact semi-automatic pistol in her hand, which she pointed at Stephanopoulos.

‘Drop the fucking taser,’ she shouted.

Stephanopoulos signalled me to hold back.

‘Or what?’ she asked Lesley.

‘Don’t test me,’ said Lesley. ‘I’m having a very trying day.’

‘For God’s sake, just shoot her,’ said Chorley, and then wriggled a bit as the current hit him again. ‘Or Peter. Or fucking somebody.’

I thought it might be quite handy if Nightingale were to turn up about then.

‘If you’re going to shoot, then shoot,’ said Stephanopoulos.

So Lesley shot her in the leg – which, looking back, was probably the sensible thing to do. If you were Lesley.

Stephanopoulos fell over sideways as her left leg gave way. She tried to keep hold of the taser, but Chorley had taken advantage of the distraction to pull the barbs out. I was already surging forward when Lesley turned the gun on me.

‘Plan B,’ said Chorley as he got up and headed for the van.

‘Copy that,’ said Lesley, keeping the gun on me.

Stephanopoulos had dragged herself behind a parked car but I could hear her swearing.

There was the sound of shooting behind me and I instinctively crouched down. At first I thought Seawoll had escalated up to an armed response once Stephanopoulos had been shot. But the gunshots didn’t sound right. Chorley was in the van by then and had it started. I jumped to the side as it pulled out and turned, not upslope as I expected, but down towards the underground car park. The curve of the ramp meant I couldn’t see the actual entrance, but there was no mistaking the bark of shotguns firing from that direction. Suddenly a white man dressed in dark military trousers and a navy bomber jacket flew backwards into view and landed on the roof of a parked car. Chorley had obviously been out recruiting in Essex again. Even as he bounced onto the bonnet he held tight to a pump-action shotgun. But before he could recover, the shotgun was wrenched out of his hands and sent flying all the way up and over the safety railing to West Smithfield Road fifteen metres above.

That explained what had delayed Nightingale.

I turned back to find Lesley had gone, so I ran over to find Stephanopoulos lying on her back with her leg elevated and her belt in place as a tourniquet. She gave me a look of annoyed exasperation.

‘Get down there and help Nightingale,’ she said.

I hesitated.

‘Ambulance is on its way,’ she said. ‘Go.’

I went down the ramp with my shield up and rounded the curve to find Nightingale finishing off a couple of wannabe hard men by knocking them down, stripping off their weapons with impello and throwing them up and out of reach in the direction of Smithfield Market.

As the guns went up, somebody unseen above threw down a couple of pairs of speedcuffs. Nightingale grabbed one and threw me the other – together we cuffed the pair and left them for the follow-up team.

I wanted at least to ask them their names, but Nightingale said we had to hurry.

‘He’s gone to ground,’ he said. ‘But he won’t stay there long.’

There were two vehicle and one pedestrian entrances into the underground. We took up position by a blue and white painted wooden office extension where we could cover the vehicle access. Behind us TSG officers in public order gear collected up our suspects while others guided one of their Sprinter vans to reverse so that it blocked the door to the pedestrian footpath.

‘Who were those guys?’

I indicated the two men as they were led away. Both their faces had a waxy sheen and they averted their eyes as they passed Nightingale.

‘Another one of Chorley’s distractions,’ he said. ‘They had a hostage. I had to resolve that before I could give chase.’

‘Yes but where do you think they came from? And what did you do to them?’

‘Irrelevant,’ said Nightingale, ‘And less than they deserved.’

We inspected the situation. Two eight-metre high Victorian brick arches marked the entrance to separate ‘in’ and ‘out’ tunnels, also from the original Victorian build. They both ran straight for twenty metres before veering left and out of sight.

There was another ‘operational pause’ while we checked that Stephanopoulos was being taken care of, that the other pedestrian access points had been locked down, and that Lesley May was nowhere to be found.

‘Chorley is our priority,’ said Seawoll. And there wasn’t any arguing with that.

‘Two tunnels,’ said Nightingale. ‘And, beyond that, two floors of parking.’

‘He could drill his way up into Smithfield,’ I said. ‘He’s good enough.’

‘But not before I could stop him,’ said Nightingale.

‘Two tunnels,’ I said. ‘One each?’

‘No,’ said Nightingale. ‘This time we want the odds to be in our favour.’

We brought down the other TSG van and used that to block the entrance to the out tunnel. As Nightingale said, it didn’t need to be impenetrable. It just had to slow Chorley down enough for us to catch up with him.

I borrowed a taser and holster and stripped off my hoody.

‘Ready?’ asked Nightingale.

‘No,’ I said. ‘Not really.’

‘Good man,’ said Nightingale. ‘Off we go.’

We went single file up the tunnel, clinging to the left-hand wall so Chorley wouldn’t see us coming. We paused when we reached the turn and Nightingale crouched down to peer around the corner.

‘I can see the ramp,’ he said. ‘Do you think he’s on the upper or lower level?’

I said I hadn’t got a clue.

‘I have an idea,’ he said. ‘I want you to conjure one of your experimental werelights – the one that flies erratically like a bumblebee.’

‘That’s why we call it a bumblebee,’ I said. ‘It’s not really very good for anything yet.’

I’d been trying to develop a self-guiding fireball, but so far all I’ve managed is one that ricochets unpredictably.

‘It will do for our purposes. And when you conjure it see if you can imbue it with . . .’ He hesitated. ‘Some of your essence.’

‘My essence?’

‘Your personality,’ he said.

I gave it a go. The basis is your bog-standard lux-impello combination – the complications come in the various modifiers you add to the principal formae . I opened my hand and an orangey-red sphere the size of a golf ball immediately shot back down the tunnel the way we’d come.

‘Ah,’ said Nightingale.

‘It always does that,’ I said. ‘Wait a second.’

The bumblebee came racing back past us and shot into the car park, making the low hum which is the other reason we call it the bumblebee. It also made a distinctive squealing sound when it bounced off walls or cars. I hoped I’d made it low-powered enough not to dust the electronics of every vehicle in the place.

After it zig-zagged down the ramp into the lower level, Nightingale had me conjure another and see if I couldn’t pitch it onto the upper level. I got it first time and soon we could hear the second bumblebee bouncing off walls.

Then we heard the bell – a low shimmering tone that I didn’t think had anything to do with actual sound waves. Then the sound of an engine starting up, which definitely did.

‘Flushed him, by God,’ said Nightingale.

The engine revved, not a particularly big one by the sound – one of the two-and-a-bit-litre diesels that Ford plonked into the older Transits.

‘That’s the van,’ I said.

There was a squeal of tyres and the engine noise got louder.

‘He’s going to try to bolt,’ said Nightingale. ‘Stay behind me – I’ll deal with any magic while you stop the van.’