Бен Ааронович - Lies Sleeping

I sighed and climbed down and onto the pavement.

Even from a distance I could see Beverley’s shoulders relaxing and I realised that she’d been genuinely worried I’d jump. I considered explaining what I’d been up to, but I was worried that might make me sound even crazier. Even to Bev, who once rescued me from fairyland.

‘And when you do come home, bring some of your mum’s chicken,’ said Beverley. ‘I know you’ve got some stashed in the fridge.’

‘No probs,’ I said.

She told me that she loved me and to call her when I got off duty – whenever that might be.

There’s always a bit in a TV series where the detective or whatever has a final revelation that solves the case. You get the close-up on House or Poirot as the light of comprehension dawns in their eyes – usually accompanied by a soft but insistent musical cue.

I didn’t get a musical cue or a close-up, so I didn’t know I’d just solved the case until it was much too late. I just remembered that Lesley had been shopping around the Covent Garden area, so I decided to catch a cab there and have a look round before returning to the Folly.

That’s how I found myself standing out of the rain in the fake portico on the west side of the Covent Garden Piazza, wondering if the ghosts were ever going to come back. Which was why I put my hand against one of the pillars and felt for their vestigia and got, very faintly, the ringing tone of the bell.

All right, I’ll admit – that was a musical cue.

I called Seawoll on his personal number and that’s something I’ve never done before.

He must have clocked my ID on his phone because he said ‘Oh fuck,’ without preamble and then, ‘This can’t be fucking good.’

‘It’s the bloody Actors’ Church,’ I said. ‘It’s been the Actors’ Church all along.’

All that shit about the Temple of Mithras and St Paul’s had been a distraction. I told him where I was, and what I’d learnt.

‘Nightingale is at least an hour away,’ he said. ‘And Guleed is unavailable. So what we’ll do is this: I’ll put in a perimeter, nice and quiet like, while you, very carefully, ascertain the full extent of the shit we’ve landed in.’

‘It’s a plan,’ I said.

‘It’s a bloody cock-up, is what it is,’ said Seawoll. ‘And can I make it clear that when I say very carefully I mean very fucking carefully . I’m all for courageous action, in moderation, Peter. But you have an alarming tendency towards heroics. I do not want to be getting the justified hairy eyeball from your mum at any memorial service other than my own. Is that clear?’

‘Crystal, guv,’ I said.

‘However, should you spot a window of opportunity to deploy your undoubted talents at bolloxing things up for Chorley et al, feel free to proceed. But carefully.’

‘Yes, guv.’

‘Off you go.’

When the fourth Earl of Bedford hired Inigo Jones to build him an Italianate piazza on land that Henry VIII had ‘appropriated’ from the local convent, for some reason the 7th Earl decreed that a church be built, on the cheap, on the west side of the square. Since the business end of an Anglican church is supposed to be at the east end of the nave, the portico that sticks out into the square is a fake, as is the door in its centre. The main entrance is at the west end, opening into the old cemetery, now a pleasant urban garden enclosed by the tall former houses that are now all shops and offices. The main entrance is on the far side of the park, on Bedford Lane. But you can climb over the spiky fence on the piazza providing you are both careful and very stupid.

Or slightly desperate. Like me.

I made my way past the sunken steps and pressed myself to the wall so I could peer around the corner. The west end of the church is plainer than the east, being all brick and square doors and lacking those fake classical flourishes that no Renaissance landowner could live without. It still has a pediment, though, this one with a ridiculously wide lower cornice that jutted out like a particularly unsafe balcony.

Parked on the flagstones was a vintage white Ford Transit van, back doors open to show emptiness. I texted Seawoll what I was seeing and, as I pressed Send , I felt a magic detonation from the opposite side of the church. Sand, gravel and a couple of half bricks bounced off the pediment and onto the roof of the van.

‘Try it now,’ said Chorley – I judged he was standing on the left side of the cornice.

‘That did it,’ said Lesley, more muffled – so probably inside.

I texted Seawoll that the crime was ongoing and I was moving to disrupt – TOO LATE, GOING IN.

The main doors were unlocked and I slipped into the narthex, which is the fancy term for that bit of a church with the collection box and the pamphlets and souvenir stand. This being the Actors’ Church, there was a lot of stuff you could buy. There were also two staircases going up – one to the belfry on the left and one to the belfry on the right.

I didn’t have to pause long before I heard a thump and someone swearing up on the left. I went up the stairs as quietly as I could, pushed through the door at the top and nearly got the drop on both of them.

If only the bloody bell hadn’t started humming.

The Punch-summoning bell was larger than the church bell it was replacing, so Chorley had had to knock a big hole in the wall to get it into position. It hung from the original headstock while the original bell perched precariously on the landing.

Lesley was holding the sword occasionally known as Excalibur, while Chorley stood out in the rain on the cornice.

He saw me first.

‘Ah, Peter,’ he said. ‘Why am I not surprised?’

‘So much for Plan B,’ said Lesley.

They were both dressed in boiler suits and blue nylon cagoules, all the better to pass as council workers or contractors.

I was going to say something clever, but Lesley put the point of Excalibur against my chest and pushed gently so that I was forced out onto the cornice with Chorley. The rain had eased off a bit, but the cement was slick. There was no safety rail and the courtyard was a good twelve metres straight down. There was a clock with a blue face in the middle of the pediment and in the distance I heard a roll of thunder – all we were missing was a DeLorean.

‘Do you believe in fate, Peter?’ asked Chorley.

‘No,’ I said.

‘Neither do I,’ he said. ‘And yet despite all our efforts to the contrary – here we are.’

Lesley climbed out to join us. I caught her eye. She’d transferred the sword to her left hand and in her right was the compact semi-automatic she’d used to shoot Stephanopoulos. She held it pointed down by her side with her finger safely outside the trigger guard as Caffrey had taught us both.

‘There’s no—’ I said, but Chorley cut me off with a bark of laughter.

‘No Arthur, no Merlin, no one sword,’ he said. ‘It’s all dull old socio-economic forces acting on an undifferentiated mass of semi-evolved primates.’

‘Sorry,’ I said.

‘Is he right?’ asked Lesley.

‘Why don’t you ring the bell, and we’ll find out?’ said Chorley.

‘Am I right, Marty?’ I said. ‘I think I am.’

‘You’re a bright boy, Peter,’ said Chorley. ‘I’ve always thought so. But you’ve never understood the limitations of your own viewpoint. It doesn’t matter whether there was an actual Round Table, a king, a sword, a mighty magician. Because we can make it so.’

‘And how do we do that?’ I asked, because Chorley liked the sound of his own voice and so did I – especially when I was playing for time.

‘Magic is about man reshaping reality itself,’ he said. ‘That’s what the formae do, that’s what a spell is. A tool to reshape the universe.’