Бен Ааронович - The Hanging Tree

I picked up his walkie-talkie and shook it. It sounded like a rainmaker, with loose bits and sand rattling around inside.

Nightingale signalled Guleed, who spoke quietly into her Airwave then nodded to me. I trotted over to the main entrance to make sure it was open. Then I retreated back to Nightingale and maintained watch while a trio of TSG guys in full riot gear clattered in with a pair of London Ambulance paramedics in tow. The paramedics were public order specialists and had their own riot gear, only their helmets were painted green – presumably to confuse rioters for long enough for them to do their jobs. As the paramedics went to work Nightingale signalled to two of the TSG to take position behind the reception desk while the third escorted the paramedics.

The TSG were under strict instructions not to engage anyone but to contain and report.

Satisfied that the foyer was locked down, Nightingale led us up a set of grey marble stairs and onto the first floor. Here there was another curved hallway linking the pavilions and the access towers. The flats on these levels were all one- or two-bedroom and mainly owned by shell companies and investment portfolios. What Seawoll called ‘corporate jolly pads’, and he really didn’t need to emphasise that ‘jolly’ much to illustrate his meaning. Still, they had to be cleared just like the shops. Me and Guleed held the stairwell again while Nightingale did his witch sniffing thing, before signalling Stephanopoulos that her people could go door to door.

Now, I’d wanted to go straight downstairs to the underground car park because, apart from the thought that Reynard might have stashed his car down there, each flat came not only with its own parking space but with an underground storage locker the size of a standard shipping container. But Seawoll and had pointed out that we still had a duty of care to people in the building and that had to be our priority.

‘And strangely, Peter, we fucking thought to check it during the investigation.’

‘It’ being the storage space associated with Martin Chorley’s flat.

But not for the Renault 4. Because we didn’t know about Reynard’s car then.

We’d been inside One Hyde Park for over twenty minutes by now, and I’d expected screams after ten . . . the kick-off was suspiciously late. Martin Chorley had spent the last two years psyching us – from sending a Pale Lady to distract me from the murder in West End Central to Lesley’s bit of bait-and-switch that very afternoon at Hyde Park Corner. I figured the very next thing that happened was going to be a feint too.

And so did Nightingale. Because when Seawoll told us that the spotters had seen the lights go on in the Chorley apartment three floors above, he sent me and Guleed down to check the garage while he went up.

Had we managed to make it all the way down to the cars immediately, things might have gone differently. But we ran straight into the Americans on the first sub-level. Below ground the stairs reverted to standard concrete – they were, after all, the service stairs – with the same sort of solid fire door one would expect in any modern building. We were just minding our own business and creeping down the stairs when one of these doors opened. I saw a figure in a dark blue suit framed in the doorway, Guleed yelled – ‘Gun!’ and I raised my staff and impelloed the door shut in his face.

There was a crack as the door trapped his arm, a loud bang as the gun went off and a clang as his pistol hit the concrete floor. I didn’t hear Guleed yell over the man’s scream – he’d sustained fractures in both bones of his forearm. I let the door loose long enough for him to clear the gap and then slammed it shut again.

‘Peter,’ said Guleed in a strange voice. ‘I think I’ve been shot.’

I barely had the presence of mind to keep my impello up against the door as I turned to stare at Guleed who was plucking at the bottom of her Met Vest.

‘Where?’

‘There,’ said Guleed, pointing at a spot just above her hip. ‘Have a look will you?’

This is a thing that both Caffrey and Nightingale have impressed upon me. Most people only fall down when they’re shot because the media tells them they’re supposed to. Especially with something low calibre like a pistol round. The truth is that unless there’s immediate death or gross mechanical damage, people can function quite normally right up to the point where blood loss or shock kicks in. It’s known in the police as ‘walk, talk and die’ – although mostly we run into it when motor-cyclists get knocked off their bikes. That’s why you’ve got to check your casualties even when they’re standing there with a puzzled look on their face.

There was a definite hole in the heavy material of Guleed’s Public Order boiler suit that widened when I stuck a finger in it to reveal a matching slice in the white t-shirt underneath.

‘Ow,’ said Guleed. ‘Careful.’

It would have taken way too long to dig out my pocket knife, so I chopped the cloth with a spell Nightingale had taught me – he’d made me practice on letters and Amazon packaging. I pulled up the T-shirt to reveal a long scrape along her waist. I prodded it, which made her wince – but the skin seemed unbroken.

‘It’s a scrape,’ I said. ‘You’re going to have a lovely bruise.’

There was a thump on the fire door, followed by gunshots.

I looked at Guleed, and she looked at me, and we both stood there dithering and thinking that about now it would be nice to have a little bit of command and control, when down the stairs thumped DI Stephanopoulos with Bill Conti’s ‘Fanfare for Rocky’ playing in the background, and what looked like half a carrier of TSG piling up behind her.

‘Just a scrape, boss,’ said Guleed before Stephanopoulos could say anything.

Stephanopoulos looked at the door.

‘The Americans?’ she asked.

I filled her in.

‘But we don’t even want to be on this floor,’ I said. ‘We’re supposed to be checking the garage.’

‘In that case we’ll secure the stairs while you go down,’ she said. ‘If the Americans try to come in, we scoop them up – otherwise we wait until we get some more bodies in here.’

She stabbed a finger at Guleed.

‘You,’ she said, ‘be more careful. And you,’ she turned to glare at me, ‘just try to be a little less Peter Grant on this outing.’

I had a witty comeback all ready to go, but at that point the whole staircase shook. There was a shower of fine grey dust all around us as the joists securing the staircase to its frame ground into the concrete.

Stephanopoulos’ Airwave squawked and Seawoll reported that Martin Chorley’s flat had just lit up like a fireworks display. I could feel it, too, amongst the bangs and shrieks that echoed down the stairwell. Forma and counter- forma, a full-on magical duel. Nightingale was going head to head with someone formidable – Martin Chorley, at last?

I opened my mouth, but Stephanopoulos put her hand up for silence.

‘Wait,’ she said.

‘But—’

Three gunshots from beyond the fire door, but not that close. Two more further away. Then running feet right outside, five or six shots, loud, rapid, desperate. I tensed, but Stephanopoulos shut me down with another glare.

‘Wait.’

Two more shots . . . and then it was like being mugged by an old fashioned gentleman’s club – a wave of brandy, cigar smoke and pheasant that had hung too long. Then, mixed in with nutmeg and the shine of silver, the heated excitement of the mob, the creak of wood under strain and the smell of old rope, defiance and fear.

And rising above it like a clear note in a trumpet solo, the smell of wood smoke and fresh caught fish cooked over an open fire.