‘Who were those guys?’
I indicated the two men as they were led away. Both their faces had a waxy sheen and they averted their eyes as they passed Nightingale.
‘Another one of Chorley’s distractions,’ he said. ‘They had a hostage. I had to resolve that before I could give chase.’
‘Yes but where do you think they came from? And what did you do to them?’
‘Irrelevant,’ said Nightingale, ‘And less than they deserved.’
We inspected the situation. Two eight-metre high Victorian brick arches marked the entrance to separate ‘in’ and ‘out’ tunnels, also from the original Victorian build. They both ran straight for twenty metres before veering left and out of sight.
There was another ‘operational pause’ while we checked that Stephanopoulos was being taken care of, that the other pedestrian access points had been locked down, and that Lesley May was nowhere to be found.
‘Chorley is our priority,’ said Seawoll. And there wasn’t any arguing with that.
‘Two tunnels,’ said Nightingale. ‘And, beyond that, two floors of parking.’
‘He could drill his way up into Smithfield,’ I said. ‘He’s good enough.’
‘But not before I could stop him,’ said Nightingale.
‘Two tunnels,’ I said. ‘One each?’
‘No,’ said Nightingale. ‘This time we want the odds to be in our favour.’
We brought down the other TSG van and used that to block the entrance to the out tunnel. As Nightingale said, it didn’t need to be impenetrable. It just had to slow Chorley down enough for us to catch up with him.
I borrowed a taser and holster and stripped off my hoody.
‘Ready?’ asked Nightingale.
‘No,’ I said. ‘Not really.’
‘Good man,’ said Nightingale. ‘Off we go.’
We went single file up the tunnel, clinging to the left-hand wall so Chorley wouldn’t see us coming. We paused when we reached the turn and Nightingale crouched down to peer around the corner.
‘I can see the ramp,’ he said. ‘Do you think he’s on the upper or lower level?’
I said I hadn’t got a clue.
‘I have an idea,’ he said. ‘I want you to conjure one of your experimental werelights – the one that flies erratically like a bumblebee.’
‘That’s why we call it a bumblebee,’ I said. ‘It’s not really very good for anything yet.’
I’d been trying to develop a self-guiding fireball, but so far all I’ve managed is one that ricochets unpredictably.
‘It will do for our purposes. And when you conjure it see if you can imbue it with . . .’ He hesitated. ‘Some of your essence.’
‘My essence?’
‘Your personality,’ he said.
I gave it a go. The basis is your bog-standard lux-impello combination – the complications come in the various modifiers you add to the principal formae. I opened my hand and an orangey-red sphere the size of a golf ball immediately shot back down the tunnel the way we’d come.
‘Ah,’ said Nightingale.
‘It always does that,’ I said. ‘Wait a second.’
The bumblebee came racing back past us and shot into the car park, making the low hum which is the other reason we call it the bumblebee. It also made a distinctive squealing sound when it bounced off walls or cars. I hoped I’d made it low-powered enough not to dust the electronics of every vehicle in the place.
After it zig-zagged down the ramp into the lower level, Nightingale had me conjure another and see if I couldn’t pitch it onto the upper level. I got it first time and soon we could hear the second bumblebee bouncing off walls.
Then we heard the bell – a low shimmering tone that I didn’t think had anything to do with actual sound waves. Then the sound of an engine starting up, which definitely did.
‘Flushed him, by God,’ said Nightingale.
The engine revved, not a particularly big one by the sound – one of the two-and-a-bit-litre diesels that Ford plonked into the older Transits.
‘That’s the van,’ I said.
There was a squeal of tyres and the engine noise got louder.
‘He’s going to try to bolt,’ said Nightingale. ‘Stay behind me – I’ll deal with any magic while you stop the van.’
We shuffled forward so that Nightingale could get a better look around the corner. The engine noise was randomly reflecting off the flat concrete surfaces of the garage, but it was definitely getting closer.
There was suddenly a sharp taste of copper in my mouth.
‘Here he comes,’ said Nightingale.
Something hit Nightingale’s shield and spun away to gouge chunks off the brickwork around us. I saw the van grab some air as it came over the lip of the ramp and got my spell ready, but a wave of roiling dust swept past it and over us, blotting everything out. Real dust, I realised, when I breathed it in – I fumbled the spell. Not that I had a target.
We heard the van roar down the second tunnel on our right – the one blocked by the TSG van. I hoped nobody had sneaked back in it for a kip.
‘Come on!’ yelled Nightingale.
We ran through the brown billows of settling dust and followed the van down the tunnel. But we’d barely made it past the turn when the dusty air turned orange and yellow and a wave of heat and sound smacked us in the face.
We stopped – the van was completely on fire from front to back, flames and smoke pouring out of the open back door. I could just see the silhouette of the bell inside. We advanced as close as we dared – because modern vans don’t explode like that without help.
I activated a phone and called Seawoll, who’d already heard about the explosion.
‘Did anyone come out of the tunnel?’ I asked.
‘No,’ said Seawoll. ‘Chorley?’
I looked at Nightingale, who shrugged.
‘We think he was in the van,’ I said.
‘I fucking hope so,’ said Seawoll.
32
What Remains
Burnt beyond recognition.
No one was buying that, not even when the dental records confirmed his identity.
‘We’re sending a team to check they haven’t been tampered with,’ said Seawoll at the morning briefing.
DNA tests were ongoing in three separate labs using several different reference samples, including that of his late daughter. Two to three days for confirmation one way or the other.
And Lesley was still out there.
‘Assuming this is a fake-out,’ I said, ‘he must know we’ll confirm it’s not him pretty quickly. He must be planning to do something soon.’
‘But what?’ said Seawoll. ‘We have his second bloody bell.’
Which was already on its way to the Whitechapel foundry to face the hammer.
‘What if there’s a third bell?’ asked Guleed.
Seawoll fixed her with a stern disciplinary look that wasn’t fooling me for a second.
‘Then you’d probably better find out where he made it,’ he said.
I said that I wished she hadn’t said that, and got a proper stern look for my pains.
‘There was no sign of the sword,’ said Seawoll. ‘Now I’m not a scholar of the Arthurian legendarium but I’m pretty fucking certain that Excalibur comes into it bleeding somewhere. So Guleed finds the bell.’ He glared at me again for good measure. ‘You see if you can narrow down the target.’
He looked at Nightingale, who nodded his approval.
‘Good,’ he said. ‘Let’s get on with it, then.’
Strangely enough, they don’t cover metaphysics at Hendon. But fortunately they do at Oxford, and Postmartin had spent a lifetime reading about the point where the meta meets the physical. He was also, conveniently, currently staying at the Folly. He said this was to keep abreast of developments in Operation Jennifer, but I suspected it was so he could scope out our latest house guest. I’d certainly caught Foxglove showing him her portfolio after he bribed her with two hundred quid’s worth of Polychromos artists’ pencils – whatever they were.