Martin Chorley being the dangerous criminal he was, Nightingale insisted on some additional contingency planning. Which was just as well, because just as Michelle was going peak-first lady down the road, the bell began to sing.
I’d camped out beside the bell where a work table and several tons of heavy brass wrangling tools formed an improvised barricade between me and the main gates. There I’d made myself comfortable with a coffee and a takeaway from the Café Casablanca and waited for something to happen.
I tried to concentrate on my PIP3 reading list, Professionalism in Policing Level Three being what you do after you’ve qualified for PIP2 – the fun never stops in the Metropolitan Police. Unfortunately ‘Assessing scenes of crime for their potential to provide useful evidence’ kept on slipping out of my brain. Still, I was just grappling with the best practice for determining my restricted access area when I noticed that the bell had started to softly hum.
The hum of a bell is two octaves below its nominal pitch, and is one of the partial tones that give traditionally built bells that sense of depth when they ring. It’s why they ring out danger and celebration and the call to prayer and don’t go ting the way triangles do – however big they are.
I put down the book on Major Incident Room Standardised Administrative Procedures (MIRSAP) that I’d borrowed from Guleed and made sure I switched off my expensive main phone. By the time I was ready, the bell had started to sing quietly in the prime, tierce and quint partials, going in and out like a toddler playing with a wah-wah pedal.
And then Lesley was standing in the gateway.
‘Please, sir,’ she said, ‘can we have our bell back?’
‘What do you want it for anyway?’ I asked.
Lesley hesitated before entering the yard. She was pausing to seem less of a threat, and also to let her eyes adjust to the lower light levels inside the foundry.
She was dressed in a nondescript blue tank top, black leggings and blue trainers. She carried no bag, or anything else that I could see, and she let her hands hang, relaxed, by her sides. The foundry yard was littered with recently cast bells and crates and Lesley was forced to take her eyes off me to pick her way between the obstacles.
It was enough of a disadvantage that I could have probably knocked her down with a sudden strike, but we’d agreed I wouldn’t try. For one thing, probably isn’t definitely. For another, we had other options. And, finally, we thought we might have an opportunity. Well, I thought we might have an opportunity – everybody else thought I was bonkers.
I stood up to mask the movement my hand made as it came to rest on the old-fashioned walkie-talkie I’d Sellotaped to the table, low down enough so it would be out of Lesley’s eye line.
She stopped safely out of baton swing range and gave me a crooked smile. She was pausing for effect, but I wasn’t having that.
‘Does it hurt?’ I asked.
There was a fractional hesitation before she asked, ‘Does what hurt?’
When she spoke, I noticed that the bell hummed in sympathy. You’d have to be listening carefully to be sure, but it was definitely there.
‘When you change your face,’ I said. ‘Does it hurt?’
‘No,’ she said, but there was a twinge around the eyes that made her a liar.
‘Show me?’
‘No,’ she said.
‘I showed you mine, remember?’ I said.
Back in that seaside shelter in Brightlingsea a million million years ago, when we were both on the same side. At least I hoped we were still on the same side back then. Otherwise? ‘Otherwise’ didn’t bear thinking about.
‘Peter, we don’t have much time here,’ said Lesley. ‘Let me have the bloody bell.’
This time the bell sang loud enough to make it clear it was echoing her words.
‘It’s fricking eight tonnes,’ I said. ‘How are you even going to get it out of here?’
‘Let me worry about that.’
‘Why do you stay with him?’ I said. ‘You got your face back.’
‘You think I did it for that?’ asked Lesley.
‘Fuck yeah, I thought you did it for that,’ I said. ‘I’d have done it for that.’
‘Liar,’ said Lesley – this time with real heat, and the bell sang loud enough for her to notice. ‘Fucking liar.’
‘Then why?’
I made sure I kept my left hand nice and still where it rested on the walkie-talkie. We didn’t want to get premature – not now. Not now.
Lesley’s lips twisted.
‘You think this is a game, Peter,’ she said. ‘You find out there’s a whole world full of weird shit, and you want to make a form for it. A form? Like you can control gods by ticking off boxes. Like you can make a procedure for dealing with monsters. You’re so blind.’
‘I’m just trying to do the job—’
‘You don’t even fucking know what the job is!’ shouted Lesley, and the bell rang in sympathy. ‘You used to make me sad listening to you talk about fucking engagement and fucking whatnot while the whole city turned to shit around us. Do you remember the baby, Peter? Do you even remember his fucking name?’
His name had been Harry Coopertown, and not saying it out loud hurt more than I expected – but I was so close.
‘So what are you saying?’ I said. ‘If you can’t beat them, join them?’
‘Yeah. Or maybe I’ve got something better. You ever think of that? Did that ever even occur to you, that I might have found something not just for me – you pillock – but for everybody. Including you and, you know, your mum, and maybe even Beverley.’
‘I doubt that,’ I said but, actually, I didn’t. Or at least I didn’t doubt that she believed it. I couldn’t trust the face, but her eyes were bright and confident.
‘Why are you stalling me?’ said Lesley. ‘Everyone is busy with Mrs Obama. SCO19 and Diplomatic Protection are fully deployed elsewhere. It’s just you and me, isn’t it?’
Her eyes flicked left and right, and then up and to the left to the gantry which would serve as the best vantage point for a sniper on overwatch.
She didn’t know – but she suspected.
‘We could slope off for a pint,’ I said. ‘You and me. Have a chat. Sort things out.’
‘It’s really simple, Peter. If you hand over the bell now he won’t have to make another one. Nobody else has to get hurt.’
‘How many people got hurt making the first one?’
‘None,’ said Lesley. ‘But that’s because nobody got in the way.’
‘I tell you what. You tell me what it’s for and I’ll think about it.’
I could actually feel my finger trembling as it hovered over the call tone button on the walkie-talkie.
‘Okay, I’m backing off now,’ said Lesley. ‘Don’t do anything stupid.’
‘You can always call me,’ I said as she backed away. ‘You know that, right?’
She gave me a strange half smile and stepped out the gate.
I ripped the walkie-talkie off the table and thumbed the push to talk button.
‘Anybody got eyes on?’ I asked.
One of the spotters had her, and reported that she’d been picked up by a moped, had crossed the main road and disappeared up Greatorex Street. I told everyone to maintain position just in case Martin Chorley tried to catch us off guard with an immediate follow-up.
Frank Caffrey climbed down from his position in the overhead gantry and joined me. His SA80 assault rifle was cradled in the ‘ready’ position. I didn’t like using Caffrey’s merry band of reserve Paras for operations, but Lesley had been right about the overstretch on SCO19.
And Nightingale had insisted.
‘I’m not sure I approve of making a lure of yourself and casting yourself out into the water,’ he’d said, when I sketched out the plan. ‘I’m not sure the catch will be worth the cost.’