‘Then I’m just going to have to kill you.’
‘Aye, I guess you are.’ A movement in his peripheral vision made him glance to his right as the tiny figure of Dr Castelli stepped determinedly out from behind the statue and swung the butt-end of her rifle at Blume’s head. It caught him a bruising blow just above the temple and sent him sprawling to the ground. His gun rattled away across the cobblestones.
‘You despicable little shit!’ she said. ‘You killed all these people for money! I can’t believe you did that. You... you sent that child amongst us, to infect us with your abomination, like some poor little angel of death. You... you...’ She had no more words to express her anger, and instead she wrestled the rifle to her shoulder and fought to point it clumsily at Blume. He dragged himself up on to one elbow and raised a hand as if that might protect him from the bullet. ‘No, don’t,’ he shouted.
But MacNeil stepped in and pushed the barrel of the rifle up in the air and took it away from her. ‘Don’t you want to kill him?’ Dr Castelli raged. It was hard to imagine such anger and indignation seething within such a small frame. ‘He killed your boy.’
But MacNeil just shook his head. ‘I don’t want revenge,’ he said. ‘I want justice. I want him to face the consequences of his actions. I want him to face a jury of his peers, the verdict of humanity. I want him to spend the rest of his life rotting in a prison somewhere, with every single hour of every single day to reflect on his lack of it.’
Dr Castelli sucked in a deep breath and pulled a face. ‘I couldn’t get the goddamned thing to fire anyway.’
MacNeil said, ‘It helps if you take off the safety.’
A single shot rang out, and MacNeil heard Dr Castelli gasp. He whipped around to see Blume still on the ground. But he had retrieved his gun and fired it. Now he turned it towards MacNeil and pulled the trigger again. Nothing happened. He tried once more. Still nothing. He threw it away and staggered to his feet and began sprinting towards the wheel.
Dr Castelli fell back against the statue and sat down heavily. Her right hand was flung across the left side of her chest, and there was blood oozing through her fingers. ‘I’m shot,’ she said, shocked that it should have happened so simply.
MacNeil knelt down beside her. ‘What can I do?’
‘Go after him.’
‘I can’t leave you like this.’
‘It missed my heart or I’d be dead,’ she said. ‘And I’m still breathing, so I figure it missed my lung, too. Go!’
MacNeil did not need a further invitation. He turned and ran after Blume. After all, he still had Amy. And presumably she wasn’t up there in that capsule on her own.
But as he approached the wheel he realised he’d lost sight of Blume. He ran up the ramp to the control room. It was empty. And then the clatter of feet on metal drew his eyes up to the twin spiral staircases that flanked the huge motor on the north-east side of the Eye. Blume was running up the left-hand spiral, up towards the outer rim of the wheel, forced to take small, awkward steps. MacNeil went after him. But by the time he was on the spiral itself, Blume had already transferred to the circular ladder which ran around the outside contour of the wheel. MacNeil stared up at him incredulously. The man was insane. Evidently he thought he could climb all the way up to the top of the wheel to get to the pod where Amy was being held. MacNeil was left with no choice but to go after him, whether he liked it or not.
At the top of the spiral he looked back down and saw Dr Castelli on the ramp below. She was supporting herself on the rail and gazing up at him. ‘See if you can start this thing!’ he shouted, and he turned and swung himself on to the inside curve of the ladder. He tipped his head back and looked up. Blume was eighty feet or more above him, scrambling from rung to rung like a man possessed. MacNeil started to climb, and his hands stung from the burns beneath his bandages.
He knew there was no point in trying to take it too fast. He had to go steady, one rung at a time, one step after another. Don’t look down. And as soon as the thought entered his head, he looked down. He seemed to have come an incredibly long way in a very short time. His heart filled his chest so that he thought he was going to choke. He missed his footing and almost fell. His fear was debilitating. Look up, he told himself. And as he did, he saw Blume transfer from the inside of the ladder to the outside, so that he would be above it as it curved around the top of the wheel. MacNeil pressed on.
The wind was tugging fiercely now at his donkey jacket, whistling amongst the spokes all around him. For all the pain that burned them, he felt his hands start to go numb with the cold. The ladder was beginning to tip him backwards. Time to transfer. He swung around and caught an outside rung and fumbled for a foothold with his ungainly Doc Martens. He was so scared there was hardly any strength left in his arms. And for several moments he simply clung to the very outside edge of the wheel, the city canted at an odd angle below him. He could see the four chimneys belching out their human waste at the old Battersea Power Station. I Think, Therefore I Can. Welcome to the Ideas Generation. It seemed so long ago that he had driven past those hoardings in search of a man called Kazinski.
Away to his left, beyond St. Thomas’ Hospital, was the building site where it had all begun. This time yesterday morning he had been dreaming about playing truant from work, asleep in a single bed in Islington, too short for his six-foot-four frame. This time yesterday morning, Sean had still been alive. How easy it would be just to let go. Just to drift away into the night, and put an end to all this. How much easier life would be in death. It was a seductive notion. It caressed him, tempted him. Until he thought of Amy.
He gritted his teeth and started to climb again, up and up, following the outer curve of the wheel as it arced towards its apex. By now, he was crouched on top of it, holding on for dear life as the wind did its best to yank him free. He looked up and saw the topmost pod almost directly above him. He could see two figures moving about inside, and the merest whisper of a shadow somewhere at its centre. It might have been Amy, but he wasn’t sure. What he was sure of was that Blume was safely inside, and that he was out here, horribly exposed to the night, four hundred feet above the icy cold waters of the Thames. Another few rungs, and he was directly beneath the pod, where they couldn’t see him. He clung on to the tubular superstructure and craned to see a way up. The doors of the pod split in two and slid out to either side. He could swing himself up on the left-hand door and get on to the narrow ledge they used for boarding and disembarking.
He crouched there in the shadow of the capsule, buffeted by the wind, eyes closed, summoning the courage. If he failed, then he failed. He thought of the inscription on the statue below. They went because their open eyes could see no other way. He opened his eyes. It was time to go.
At almost the same moment that he swung himself up to grab the pneumatic bar that controlled the door, the whole wheel juddered and began to move. Dr Castelli had figured out the controls. But it was enough to force a misjudgement, and MacNeil missed the bar. His bandaged hand grasped fresh air and he felt himself tipping impossibly backwards. The city tilted below him and he saw the river turn through ninety degrees.
His elbows struck the boarding platform, and he found himself hanging from it, his face at floor level, looking into the pod. All the time slipping, losing his grip, legs kicking the air beneath him, knowing he was going to fall.
He barely heard Amy screaming.
III
Pinkie had been astonished to see Mr Smith clambering across the top of the wheel and reaching out for a hand up into the pod. He had always known that Mr Smith was a man possessed, by who knew what demons, but this seemed like an extraordinary feat, even for him.