Бен Ааронович - Lies Sleeping

We shuffled forward so that Nightingale could get a better look around the corner. The engine noise was randomly reflecting off the flat concrete surfaces of the garage, but it was definitely getting closer.

There was suddenly a sharp taste of copper in my mouth.

‘Here he comes,’ said Nightingale.

Something hit Nightingale’s shield and spun away to gouge chunks off the brickwork around us. I saw the van grab some air as it came over the lip of the ramp and got my spell ready, but a wave of roiling dust swept past it and over us, blotting everything out. Real dust, I realised, when I breathed it in – I fumbled the spell. Not that I had a target.

We heard the van roar down the second tunnel on our right – the one blocked by the TSG van. I hoped nobody had sneaked back in it for a kip.

‘Come on!’ yelled Nightingale.

We ran through the brown billows of settling dust and followed the van down the tunnel. But we’d barely made it past the turn when the dusty air turned orange and yellow and a wave of heat and sound smacked us in the face.

We stopped – the van was completely on fire from front to back, flames and smoke pouring out of the open back door. I could just see the silhouette of the bell inside. We advanced as close as we dared – because modern vans don’t explode like that without help.

I activated a phone and called Seawoll, who’d already heard about the explosion.

‘Did anyone come out of the tunnel?’ I asked.

‘No,’ said Seawoll. ‘Chorley?’

I looked at Nightingale, who shrugged.

‘We think he was in the van,’ I said.

‘I fucking hope so,’ said Seawoll.

Burnt beyond recognition.

No one was buying that, not even when the dental records confirmed his identity.

‘We’re sending a team to check they haven’t been tampered with,’ said Seawoll at the morning briefing.

DNA tests were ongoing in three separate labs using several different reference samples, including that of his late daughter. Two to three days for confirmation one way or the other.

And Lesley was still out there.

‘Assuming this is a fake-out,’ I said, ‘he must know we’ll confirm it’s not him pretty quickly. He must be planning to do something soon.’

‘But what?’ said Seawoll. ‘We have his second bloody bell.’

Which was already on its way to the Whitechapel foundry to face the hammer.

‘What if there’s a third bell?’ asked Guleed.

Seawoll fixed her with a stern disciplinary look that wasn’t fooling me for a second.

‘Then you’d probably better find out where he made it,’ he said.

I said that I wished she hadn’t said that, and got a proper stern look for my pains.

‘There was no sign of the sword,’ said Seawoll. ‘Now I’m not a scholar of the Arthurian legendarium but I’m pretty fucking certain that Excalibur comes into it bleeding somewhere. So Guleed finds the bell.’ He glared at me again for good measure. ‘You see if you can narrow down the target.’

He looked at Nightingale, who nodded his approval.

‘Good,’ he said. ‘Let’s get on with it, then.’

Strangely enough, they don’t cover metaphysics at Hendon. But fortunately they do at Oxford, and Postmartin had spent a lifetime reading about the point where the meta meets the physical. He was also, conveniently, currently staying at the Folly. He said this was to keep abreast of developments in Operation Jennifer, but I suspected it was so he could scope out our latest house guest. I’d certainly caught Foxglove showing him her portfolio after he bribed her with two hundred quid’s worth of Polychromos artists’ pencils – whatever they were.

Luckily I managed to drag him away before Foxglove convinced him to strip off and pose for her. We convened in the upstairs reading room, where a frighteningly cheerful Molly brought us tea and cakes.

‘So, where do we think Martin Chorley plans to make his sacrifice?’ said Nightingale.

‘St Paul’s Cathedral remains the obvious choice,’ said Postmartin. ‘Given what we know of the history of Mr Punch, the next highest probability, I would say, is the true location of the Temple of Mithras. Why else would he have John Chapman encourage his banker friends to conduct their bacchanalia there?’

‘That’s assuming Punch is the determining factor,’ said Nightingale.

‘Our problem,’ I said, ‘is that Martin Chorley isn’t concerned with evidence – it’s the truth of the heart, isn’t it? Now that I’ve had a chance to chat to him, I think he really believes in it.’

‘Believes in what?’ asked Postmartin.

‘All of it,’ I said. ‘Arthur, Camelot, a British golden age, or at least the modern equivalent.’

‘A romantic,’ said Nightingale. ‘The most dangerous people on earth.’

‘For all we know he could be looking for Arthur back up at Alderley Edge,’ I said.

‘In Cheshire?’ asked Nightingale. ‘Whatever for?’

‘There’s a rather fine children’s book set there,’ said Postmartin. ‘ The Weirdstone of Brisingamen , and a sequel too – The Moon of Gomrath .’

‘No,’ said Nightingale. ‘We should not confuse a mistaken belief with a general incredulity. He may be no true scholar but it seems to me he has always followed the forms. The places that interest him will be those that present him with the most respectable “evidence”.’

‘If we’re talking Arthur, then it’s quite a long list,’ said Postmartin. ‘The hill fort at Cadbury. Camlann, which is in the Welsh sources. Badon Hill likewise. Tintagel and Glastonbury, if we stretch the scholarship somewhat.’

‘All out of London, I notice,’ said Nightingale. ‘We can at least ask the local constabulary to keep an eye on the places we can identify.’ He looked at Postmartin. ‘If you had to pick your most likely target, which would it be?’

‘Oh, Glastonbury,’ said Postmartin. ‘Without a doubt. If you’re a romantic then the Isle of Avalon is always going to appeal.’

‘I don’t like splitting our forces,’ said Nightingale. ‘But I can reach Glastonbury in just over two hours, give the area the once-over and be back by nightfall.’ He looked at me. ‘I’d like you to kit up and be on immediate standby. If Chorley makes his move in London, God forbid, I want you to get in and disrupt him. I think we’ve eliminated most of his mundane assets, so just do what you do best and frustrate the hell out of him.’

I understood the logic. We already had St Paul’s covered, ditto the Bloomberg building. Seawoll had booked up a couple more vans’ worth of TSG and I’d noticed a couple of Frank Caffrey’s ‘associates’ in the breakfast room that morning. It would be just like Chorley to wait until we were fixed on London and then make his move out in the country. Postmartin would already be working on a potential target list and no doubt having enormous fun in the process. Meanwhile Nightingale was the only one of us with a chance of going up against Chorley without backup, so it had to be him that went.

I still didn’t like it. But what are you going to do?

To my surprise, I found Seawoll downstairs, sitting in one of the overstuffed chairs in the atrium, the remains of an elaborate morning tea spread out on an occasional table beside him. He beckoned me over and I asked why he wasn’t at Belgravia nick.

‘I’m keeping a bloody eye on you lot,’ he said. ‘Plus this is closer to the City and that’s where the action is. Which reminds me . . .’

He pulled out an envelope and shook it under my nose – coins jingled inside. Not that there were many coins. It seemed to be mostly full of tenners.

‘Whip-round for Miriam,’ he said.