London Falling (40 page)

‘We are not,’ declared the chairman, sounding flustered and angry, ‘giving in to threats.’ And his glance slid sideways towards an empty seat at the table. Lofthouse glanced at the others, saw they were all looking over there. As if someone else had given the orders, which they didn’t necessarily agree with, and then had . . . gone?

She shook her head to clear it. ‘Mora Losley is now threatening the life of every player that scores even one goal against West Ham.’

‘We’re aware of that fact, but—’

‘The Professional Footballers’ Association has threatened to strike, the government has already requested you not to continue, and you were agreeing to the point where everyone was sure—’

‘We live in a free country, and—’

‘All the managers are saying they’ll tell their players not to score against West Ham. These games will be a farce. That’s giving in to threats, making every match about
her
!’

‘We will not—’

‘And it’s one of my coppers, one of mine now. DI Quill has had his own child taken.’ She remembered that terrible strain on Quill’s face, that utter lack of his usual brave energy. He’d looked so complicated, so knotted, but he’d asked to be allowed to stay on the case and . . . well, she had felt she had to let him. He’d justified every bet she’d made, on such a flimsy basis. Who knew what horrors he’d already faced, beyond those she knew about? She found her hand going to her charm bracelet. ‘There is a child in Losley’s hands whom she will undoubtedly
kill
if a goal is scored!’

‘We’ve considered that, at great length. We feel it’s
your
job to prevent that. But we can’t give in to every psychopath.’

She kept her voice level. She didn’t want this lot accusing her of being hysterical. ‘I’ll have your arses for this. I’ll fill the pitch with coppers if I have to, and arrest the teams before the match begins.’

‘Now
that
,’ said the chairman, ‘would be illegal.’ And he was right. She couldn’t make it happen. Lofthouse thought she heard a laugh from somewhere nearby. She turned to look, but there was only that empty chair. When she turned back, she saw that the committee members were all looking over there too. Only they were all bloody smiling.

Ross had listened in disbelief as Quill relayed the news that the matches were going to continue. ‘It’s as if football can somehow soak up death,’ she had said, after he’d finished. ‘As if it’s immortal; that a club or a league or a match will always carry on. They’ll just have a minute’s silence and wear a black armband.’

She’d gone back to her work, aware once more of that clock still ticking, only thirty-three hours to go; aware that the only thing she had to go on – that endless flow of data crossing her screen – probably now had no more secrets to divulge. She looked up from it an hour later, needing to rest her eyes. The air of tension hadn’t ebbed. Sefton was making quick, decisive notes. Quill was pacing before the Ops Board as if something would suddenly leap out at him. Costain had gone to get the cat some more food. Ross watched distantly as he gazed at the animal for a long time, as if pondering something, as if needing something to be fond of and wondering if it could be the cat.

‘I thought you’d stop feeding me,’ said the cat, ‘once it became clear to you how little help I can be.’

‘Yeah, well,’ he said, ‘I thought it was about time someone showed a bit of fucking decency about something.’

‘I do appreciate that.’

‘You don’t have much of an ego on you, do you?’

‘I am, at heart, a dead cat. My mistress has told me, many times, that I am worthless. I am forced to agree.’

‘But it’s not about what you are, is it?’ Costain leaned closer to the cat. ‘It’s about what you could be. Imagine being one of the good guys, one of
us
, fighting the good fight against Losley.’ Ross thought she heard a certain artificiality in his tone, like something he’d voiced or thought of often.

‘I really don’t see how. I can only ever agree with her, and thus I believe she should remain at liberty. Though I would . . .’ It hesitated. ‘Well, let’s just say you’re much kinder than she is.’

Costain reached out and stroked it under the chin. ‘I think it’s time I gave you a name, mate. Do you want to choose?’

The cat mewed in delight. Ross was sure it preferred to wait to hear what he’d decided to call it. There was something pathetic about its eagerness.

‘I think,’ said Costain, ‘I’m going to call you Tiger Feet.’

He seemed oddly distant from what he was saying. But perhaps that was just what this man was like, how she didn’t feel warmth from him even when he was being kind – or forcing himself to be. She could feel sleep tugging at her again in the afternoon sunlight. They had to find another avenue of inquiry soon, or they’d all break. Well, not her, because she’d do something else instead of break. Or just her body would. Into her mind came the images that kept her going, and the anger about it that she kept trying and failing to project onto Losley, away from its real cause, which was the now unreachable Toshack. There he was again, her dad, hanging from the ceiling. The person that made her, the person she thought of every waking moment, the ghost that—

She actually fell. She fell off her chair. Her chair skidded across the floor. All the others stared at her. She stood up. ‘I . . . I think I’ve got a lead, only . . .’ She couldn’t say it aloud. ‘Give me a couple of hours.’ She grabbed her coat and put one foot in front of the other, and then she started to run – before Quill could demand good practice from her – out of the Portakabin, out into the meaningless sunlight, sprinting for her car.

Sefton found that he wanted that to be an excuse. There was something to be done here, so he didn’t have to carry out what he’d now come to the conclusion only he could do. No, not good enough. He got to his feet. ‘Me, too,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry.’ He found that he wanted to say something to Costain too. But he couldn’t find the words. He also got to the door before Quill could start to say anything.

Quill didn’t know how to feel. He knew that if anything drastic happened to those two, then any knowledge they found would be gone with them. And many other copper rules applied, besides. But he’d been staring at the Ops Board for hours, dealing with calls and emails from other operations that offered up useless lead after useless lead. What his team were doing now, he felt, was away from the board. And that honoured him.

He looked to Costain. ‘What about you?’

‘Actually,’ Costain glanced back towards the cat, ‘yeah.’

‘Want to tell me about it?’

‘No.’

‘Okay, then.’ Quill flapped his arms uselessly. ‘Don’t get yourself killed.’

Costain picked up the cat’s cage, the cat inside it already looking startled, and came over. ‘Listen,’ he said to Quill, ‘you and me, I know—’

‘Nah, come on. Is this just you doing the right thing again?’

‘Well, yeah. But—’

‘But we don’t ever know why anyone does what they do, do we? You might have stayed even if you hadn’t felt forced into it. You came back that first time, didn’t you?’

‘And now I need you to trust me.’

‘I’m watching you heading for the door with something that’s halfway between evidence and a witness, so I think I’m there. Is that it, or are we going in for any more of the touchy-feelies?’

Costain nodded to him.

Quill nodded back.

Costain headed out to his car, taking the cat with him.

TWENTY-FIVE

Ross stood in front of what had once been her family home, on that corner of a tree-lined street in Bermondsey. It was raining again on this Sunday afternoon. Only a couple of details of the house had altered: whoever owned it now had changed the garden, and put up different curtains. There was, thank God, nothing that looked special to the Sight.

The door was opened by a middle-aged Asian woman, who eyed her suspiciously. Ross presented her documents, and told the woman she could call the station if she wanted to confirm her identity. The woman kept the door on the chain while she did so, but finally let her in. Ross knew she must look suspicious, her professional politeness hardly concealing the personal urgency of what she was doing here. ‘It’s a routine inquiry, ma’am, to do with an ongoing investigation. Nobody here is in any trouble.’

‘I should hope not!’

Ross didn’t react to that. ‘I’d like a look around upstairs, please. Alone.’

The smell was so nearly the same. New people, new fragrances, same polish. She stepped onto the landing and walked straight past the door leading to what had been her bedroom. She moved on, instead to where Dad’s office had been.

The door was, once again, open just a bit. She resisted the awful urge to first peer through the gap, and instead just pushed the door open and went in.

What Quill had said about where he’d see the ghost of his daughter – that had been the first seed of it for her. She recognized that in retrospect. He’d been right: like with the ships and the bus, this was about places too. People didn’t always carry their ghosts around with them. In her case, she’d suddenly realized, she had very much associated her father with this room. She knew he was now in Hell. She knew that more definitely than any other fact in her head, but without having a solid sense of what that meant, even considering her own experience. But Harry’s dad hadn’t been just a bundle of Harry’s own insecurities. According to Quill, he’d acted with his own volition, right at the end. She hoped that hadn’t all been down to Losley. Ross didn’t know how it worked, so this was going to be an experiment. A terrible experiment. But she owed it to Quill to find the courage to do this.

She stepped into the room, closed the door behind her, looked around at the unfamiliar furniture of a spare bedroom. She looked up and saw that the ceiling rose was still there. No huge reaction to seeing the ceiling. It was just plaster. She made herself remember again, and now she could see it clearly again: that moment that was stamped into her, that had made her. She focused on every detail of what, if she could see a ghost specific to her, she might expect to see here.

‘Dad?’ she said.

No answer. But she suddenly noticed something: she could smell something new. Him, his aftershave, the smell of his jacket, the cigars and beer. And something under that, which spoke of vastness and closeness, of Halloween, of things let in on special nights. ‘Dad, if you can hear me, I need to see you. It’s . . . it’s not just for me. It’s something important. I know you’d always try to look after me . . . no matter where you are. It doesn’t matter what you look like now, or what’s going on, you can . . . come back. It’s okay.’

She waited, feeling afraid and vulnerable but waiting. She smelled it before she saw or heard anything, and then a rose of thorns burst from the ceiling above her. And that distant smell burst in along with it. And the room was full of uneasy light. She staggered back but she stayed on her feet, looking up, looking and looking . . . A feeling of potential harm had flooded in all around her. Something formed out of those shapes above.

And there – there he was again. Hanging there, making choking noises, the noose once again around his neck. It was as if the memory she’d fixated on for all these years had been preserved here. There was his wonderful face, alive again, an expression living on it again. She stared and stared as the blood hammered through her body and head. It was him. It was him! He spun and rocked in the awful light, looking at her desperately, one hand outstretched. She could see clearly the signs on his body of what the woman with the Tarot cards had called the threefold death.

But this time she had a knife. She grabbed it from her pocket, dragged the stool from the dressing table across the room and leaped up onto it. She started to saw at the rope. But the rope was like diamond. This was a new nightmare. Her fingers kept slipping off it. The blade kept flying away from it.

‘No!’ he said. His voice! He could say things! ‘Lisa, no! Don’t touch it! You can’t cut it, girl. You can’t undo it. Don’t you get too close.’

She stopped, helpless, staring at his face, loving him. And he looked back at her, and it was the best thing. It was the best thing. But she was still helpless.

He looked quickly upwards, over his shoulder. His voice was a gasp, limited by the rope, but not as limited as it should have been, and that was terrible, that implication that this was usual for him now. ‘I can’t stay long or they’ll notice.’

‘You don’t deserve to be in there!’ She hadn’t wanted this to be about her and him, but she couldn’t control a single thing she might do or say now.

‘I had a bad life, love. We kept it from you.’

She wanted to ask him – ridiculously – she realized, if what she was doing now was okay. Or if she had betrayed him as well as the family. But there was no time for that. ‘Dad, I’ve been given . . . they call it the Sight?’

He made a strangled cry, took another moment to breathe. ‘No, not my girl. That means you can see all the things I have to look at every day. This is another punishment they’re
doing
to me!’ It was terrible to hear him so fearful. A dad shouldn’t be afraid.

‘This is about . . . There’s kids, Dad, okay? She kills
kids
. She worked for Rob. Do you know of a Mora Losley?’

He made the sound again. ‘Mora Losley? Bloody Rob! Bloody Rob! He took everything! Took you! He’s up
here
now!’ Alf was suddenly gleeful, swinging back and forth, though the effort made his voice crack up. ‘In his own Hell!’

‘Dad, how can we . . . get her?’ She’d nearly said ‘nick’, but that would have sounded wrong.

He seemed to gaze up into something that Ross couldn’t see. As if he was looking over things, and into things, reading distant signs. ‘What haven’t you seen? What haven’t you seen? Oh, you’ve done stuff. You’ve done such a lot.’ She tried not to feel pride at hearing that. ‘But . . . Oh, there. The empty boxes.’

‘What, from his office?’

‘Yeah. I was shown him from up here, when he was alive and I wasn’t. They showed me what he was up to, as he took over my old life. I don’t know how much it’ll help, but it’s something. Sometimes he
drove
out to his lock-up—’