‘In order to justify our existence and minuscule budget,’ he announced, ‘we’ll need to become, in effect, a targeted crime squad. So, that means we need to find some other nasty buggers.’ He pinned a new blank card at the top of the board, with a question mark on it where the name of their next operation would be indicated.
Sefton had come in that morning with the idea of further experimenting with the vanes as dowsing rods. Quill assimilated that suggestion in tandem with Ross’ desire to take a closer look at the Thames, since it had seemed such a source of strange activity during her drive across London. ‘I’ve started a dirty great database,’ she said. ‘We don’t know what half of what we’ve been seeing means. Think of all those. . stories we glimpsed across London on that first night. The coffins, the bridge gatehouse, those ghost ships. That’s our patch now. And then we have to find out what that bastard’s done to it. What Toshack meant by moving the goalposts. Why he wanted rid of Losley, and why he was glad we did it.’
‘And,’ said Sefton, ‘we never found out why it was us who acquired the Sight.’ He put his finger on the word ‘protocol’ on the board. ‘Losley didn’t use that word very much, and when we heard it from her, it sounded awkward. I reckon that’s someone else’s word, an expression she heard once.’
They went down to Wapping nick, and Sergeant Mehta of the Marine Policing Unit took them out on the fast-response boat Gabriel Franks. Now they’d got used to having the Sight, there wasn’t so much to shock them during the daytime, though those heads sticking out of the mud under certain docks were a bit unnerving. They all took their own special notes, but there was just a bit too much of the pleasure cruise about this jaunt for Quill to feel comfortable.
‘This is just a pause,’ said Costain, looking up at the sky, where the sun was struggling to make London anything other than cold and blustery. ‘The world’s still fucked up. They’re still taking the piss. This city’s still going to Hell.’
Quill could only nod. ‘It’s hard for it to escape the past,’ he said. ‘That’s why they call it “being haunted”.’
‘How are you feeling now?’
‘Much like you lot, I suppose. But I’ve had a lot more sleep. I’m enjoying Jessica so much, as if she was just born, that she’s wondering why all the sudden attention. That is positively a good thing. And as for all this. .’ he gestured around him. ‘If I was previously missing having a meaning to life — which feels bloody weird and selfish now, considering I had her — well, here it is. There is a meaning to the world — or at least to London. Granted, it’s a bad meaning, but you can’t have everything, can you?’
Costain got the binoculars out, and every now and then he’d call one of the others over. Sefton noted the way the vanes turned when encountering every new oddity. Seeing that going on, Quill felt content to just observe with a sense of purpose.
Maybe that was why he was the first to see it. It was because he’d got used to his ‘new eyes’, he assumed later; because he’d started to integrate them with his copper’s instinct of when something was wrong. He still didn’t have too much of an imagination to get in the way. But, seconds later, Sefton was at his side, indicating there was something important over there, and then the others joined in too, the Sight pulling on them all, in its different ways.
It stood on the left bank, the Rotherhithe side of the river, and it looked completely out of place. ‘Weird that they’ve left that in such a mess,’ he said, pointing it out to the others. ‘Prime real estate — or is it a historical thing?’
Sefton looked with surprise at the vanes in his hands. Quill could see they were almost jumping towards what he was pointing at.
‘What?’ said Mehta, looking straight past whatever Quill was talking about.
He then looked puzzled at them when they all turned and smiled at him at once.
Quill left the sergeant with the boat, docked beside a floating restaurant, and led his team off to have a look. They walked at a pace Ross could manage on her crutches. The anomaly stood on the edge of a great commercial plaza, where new skyscrapers rose, all tall Byzantine curls and gestures towards the nautical. There was a giant anchor here, a flock of seabird silhouettes on the paving.
Among it all, beside a well-tended little garden, were the remains of a square of walls punctuated with gaps, the hint of a roof surviving at one corner. All of them were bleached white, and it was impossible to tell how old the ruin was. Inside it, now they were up close, Quill could see, to his surprise, a stone table, split in two, and beside it the remains of some chairs.
‘Are we sure it’s not some kind of art?’ said Sefton.
As Quill watched, a young man in a suit, hurrying on his way somewhere, swerved right around the outside wall, without breaking step, contorting his body as if he was water flowing around an island, but with a lack of expression that suggested nothing unusual.
He hadn’t even noticed there was anything in his way.
They checked over the ruins.
Quill was all the time aware that, to any passers-by, they must look like some demented group of mime artistes pretending to look into nooks and crannies in mid-air. By the way the others were looking but not touching, and occasionally straightening up when someone laughed, they felt much the same.
‘If we’re going to carry on in this job,’ he said to them, ‘embarrassment is going to have to be the least of our worries.’ To underline that, he called over some distant private-security personnel who’d started to take an interest, and showed them his warrant card. A quick chat with them revealed no local problems except some disturbances involving youths, in the evenings.
The adjacent garden annex apparently belonged to the nearby firm of De Souza and Raymonde.
Quill swept his hand over the surface of the table. It seemed to be made of granite. There were traces of a floor underneath it, on which could be glimpsed signs of. .
‘The same pattern that’s on the table,’ confirmed Sefton. ‘That’s a pentagram, such as is used as a protective symbol.’
‘Obviously a not very protective symbol,’ said Costain, gesturing at the ruin around them. ‘Have you been taking occult evening classes?’
‘I’ve been reading up on this stuff,’ Sefton admitted, ‘wanting to, you know, survive.’
‘Come on, then,’ said Quill. ‘Give me the who, what, when, why.’
‘Relatively recent,’ said Ross, studying the table. ‘There’s bird shit on this thing-’
‘Do you reckon the birds can see it?’
‘-and, comparing it to this car that’s been sitting outside my flat for the last few months-’
‘That’s really the limit of our useful forensics now?’ remarked Costain. ‘That’s going to be an issue.’
‘-this has been open to the sky for quite a lot longer than that.’ She put her palm on the surface. ‘But it’s hardly weathered, so we’re talking only a few years that it’s been exposed, not centuries.’
‘If I was asked to guess what we’re looking at,’ said Sefton. ‘I’d say it’s some sort of meeting room, with a stone table out of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, out here all on its own-’
‘Not on its own,’ said Costain, standing at the far corner and looking towards the long shadow of the De Souza and Raymonde skyscraper. ‘Look at where that path leads. This little room belongs to that enormous building.’
‘Right, so we’ll be having a word,’ said Quill. ‘That could be the who of who owns this — scary architects.’
‘Masons,’ suggested Sefton. ‘And now we’re in the Da Vinci Code.’
‘And as for the why,’ said Quill, ‘this place doesn’t look like a bomb’s hit it. No scarring anywhere, not even on this lovely table; no sign of concussive debris; no fire damage. .’
‘Even if it was attacked with hammers,’ said Ross, ‘where’s the rubble? That’s what makes it look like a historical ruin-’