‘Sorry,’ said the Faceless Man. ‘But I wasn’t talking to you.’
Lesley tasered me in the back of my neck.
I know it was her, because she dropped the taser half a metre from where I was lying. It matched the serial number of the one she’d been issued. However, she didn’t drop it before tasering me again when I tried to get up.
It’s painful and it’s humiliating, because your body just locks up and there’s nothing you can do.
The Faceless Man’s shoes appeared in front of my face. I noticed they’d got quite badly scuffed during the fall.
‘No,’ said a muffled voice that I later decided had been Lesley’s. ‘That wasn’t part of the deal.’
And then they walked away and left me.
20
Sometimes, when you turn up on their doorstep, people are already expecting bad news. Parents of missing kids, partners that have heard about the air crash on the news — you can see it in their faces — they’ve braced themselves. And there’s a strange kind of relief, too. The waiting is over, the worst has happened and they know that they will ride it out. Some don’t, of course. Some go mad or fall into depression or just fall apart. But most soldier through.
But sometimes they haven’t got a clue and you arrive on their doorstep like god’s own sledgehammer and smash their life to pieces. You try not to think about it, but you can’t help wondering what it must be like.
Now I knew.
I got up off the ground and went after them. Because otherwise what good am I?
I was covered in dust and I must have looked pissed off, because random strangers would rush forward with offers of help only to back off quickly when they got close enough to see my face. I grabbed one that had foolishly got within arm’s reach.
‘Did you see a woman in a mask,’ I shouted. ‘She had a man with her — did you see where they went?’
‘I haven’t seen anyone, mate,’ he said and broke away to leg it.
I reached the outer cordon where a uniformed skipper took one look at me and ordered me to the ambulance assembly point. He sent a probationary constable to guide me and, although she looked about twelve years old, she already had the command voice down pat.
I should have told them who I was, not least because all the gold, silver and bronze commanders thought I’d been on the roof when it came down. But certain things have to be kept in the family.
There were at least a dozen ambulances in the casualty marshalling area on Elephant Road, but even as I was being bundled into the back of one I saw a couple peel off and head back into general circulation. The London Ambulance Service is one of the largest and busiest in the world, and can’t afford to hang about waiting for people to get injured. Not even at a major incident.
A paramedic checked me over and I asked him if there were any casualties.
‘There were two people on the roof when it went down,’ said the paramedic. ‘But they haven’t been found yet.’
And that’s when I should have told them I wasn’t dead. But as I explained to the subsequent investigation by the Department of Professional Standards, I’d just survived having a tower block collapse on me so they should cut me some slack. The real reason was that they would have asked too many question that I couldn’t answer until I’d talked to Nightingale.
I told the paramedic I wanted to call my dad and could he lend me his mobile. He handed it over but only after assurances that my dad wasn’t living in Rio or Somalia or somewhere exorbitant like that. I called Nightingale and I could tell he’d been worried by the tone of his voice.
‘What the hell happened?’
‘I had him sir, I had the Faceless Man. Had him bang to rights and Lesley tasered me.’
There was a shocked pause.
‘Lesley tasered you?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘To facilitate the suspect’s escape?’
I believe this is the moment of decision.
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Are you in any doubt about Lesley’s participation?’
That wasn’t part of the deal.
‘No, sir.’
‘Peter,’ said Nightingale, ‘as your first priority you must secure the Folly and inform Molly that Lesley is off the guest list. You must do this now regardless of instructions from any other senior officer. Once you are there contact me again — was that clear?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Good lad,’ he said. ‘Get a move on.’
I can have trouble getting taxis as the best of times, but nobody was going to stop for me when I was white with dust. To avoid disappointment I merely stepped in front of the first black cab I saw and used the combination of my warrant card, a twenty-pound note and hints that I was part of a vital anti-terrorist operation to get my ride. He got me back fast enough — he was in such a hurry to get rid of me he didn’t wait for a tip.
I went in through the double doors at the front on the basis that I almost never used them and if somebody, if Lesley, was laying an ambush she’d do it at the back door. I paused at the guard booth in the lobby to listen and, hearing nothing, I slipped past the statue of Isaac Newton and into the atrium.
Molly was waiting for me. She took the instructions from Nightingale with the same grave expression with which she accepted menu requests. Then she went silently gliding up the stairs — hopefully to check that the upper floors were clear.
The telephone in the Folly atrium has its own desk complete with blotting pad, notepaper and bendy lamp. I picked up the Bakelite handset and dialled, literally dialled, Nightingale’s mobile. He answered almost immediately.
He gave me a series of instructions and told me to call him back once I’d followed them.
I went down the back stairs, turned left, went past the door to the firing range and paused in front of the armoury. Inside, we had some 9mm Browning Hi-Power automatic pistols that Nightingale had planned to teach us to shoot with. I was tempted to fetch one, but Frank Caffrey had once told me that you should never carry a weapon you don’t know how to use. Besides, I wasn’t even sure if push came to shove I could shoot Lesley. And that was Caffrey’s other maxim — don’t point a gun at someone unless you’re prepared to shoot them with it. I checked to see that the door was still firmly locked and moved on. Then right down a rectangular, brick-lined corridor that, being unlit and damp smelling, I’d never bothered to walk down. And, judging by the dust and cobwebs, neither had Molly or anyone else in the last couple of decades. At the far end was a crude wooden door, the sort you might find on a garden shed. I opened it to reveal another short corridor and a much more formidable grey door of what, I learned later, was face-hardened battleship steel. There were no handles or visible locks, instead a series of overlapping circles were incised into the metal. They looked disturbingly like the payload zones of a demon trap and even more disturbingly like modern Gallifreyan.
None of the circles appeared damaged or disturbed in any way and I for one had no intention of touching them.
I went back up to the atrium and called Nightingale.
‘Thank god,’ he said. ‘That was my worst fear.’
‘You never told us about that door,’ I said.
‘And that has proved to be a wise precaution, has it not?’ said Nightingale.
I knew better than to ask what was behind it over the telephone, but the question definitely went to the top of my to-do list.
It took eight hours for Nightingale to arrive back at the Folly. As Lesley’s senior officer and line manager it was down to him to meet with the Department of Professional Standards. Because he didn’t dare leave Varvara Sidorovna unsupervised, she had to be towed around behind him like an unwanted younger sister. While he was spending quality time with the DPS at their offices in the Empress State Building in Brompton, I was stuck guarding the Folly. Not that I had to do that alone, because Frank Caffrey turned up with a number of his mates, all mature but suspiciously fit men with short haircuts and camera cases full of things that weren’t actually cameras.