‘Because someone’s tidied up,’ said Costain. ‘Which kind of implies this place was subject to some sort of. . special attack.’
‘But if they could do this,’ said Quill, ‘they could have just left it flattened, couldn’t they? Or left it as a mountain of candyfloss or something.’
‘Which then implies,’ said Sefton, ‘that it was left here like this deliberately as-’
‘A sign,’ said Ross, ‘a warning.’
They walked the entire floor, each taking a quarter of the small area, treading with care, staring down at it as they went. Costain brushed some leaf mulch aside with his shoe, and then called out to the others.
It was a small loop of rope, connected to a metal ring set into one of the larger floor tiles. Costain bent down to pull it-
Sefton called for him to stop, and went over.
‘Okay,’ said Costain, ‘what sort of extra protection have you got for me?’
Sefton thought about it for a moment. ‘Nothing,’ he said. ‘Sorry.’
Costain let out a long breath and put his fingers into the loop again. ‘I wasn’t feeling as scared, before you did that.’ He heaved on the loop. He grabbed his straining wrist with his other hand and put his full weight into it-
A row of several tiles flew up, leaf mulch falling from them, and slammed onto the ground like the lid of a chest. The team looked down into what was below. A dark space, that smell of a library-
‘There are books down there,’ said Quill, aware of the copper’s relish in his voice. ‘Documents.’
Ross clomped over to a chair standing in her quarter of the area and moved it aside. It had been in front of a small post with a metal rotary lever on it. ‘I was waiting to mention it until after I’d finished examining my section,’ she said. ‘Could someone please-?’
Sefton turned the handle. It, too, took a little effort. He leaned on it with all his weight. ‘Rusty,’ he said. There was a sudden noise from under them, and then something rushed up out of the gap in the tiles and into the ruins-
And came clanking to a halt with a solid click of machinery. Wooden racks that looked to form part of some Victorian library. Containing row after row of cards and documents. Quill let out a long, exultant breath.
They found spindles full of information, too, that had to be hauled out of the ground, and then spun so fast that, when they slammed to a stop, they swayed as if they were going to collapse. Sefton found himself excitedly moving back and forth between all this information, exchanging glances with Ross, both of them interested by virtue of their own speciality.
This was what he was now: a police specialist in. . well, call it the London underworld. ‘There are gaps,’ he announced. ‘Look at it, someone’s been through this.’ He opened up a polished wooden case with brass handles, and found a velvet interior with. . he put the vanes he’d used to find this place into the gaps, and they fitted perfectly. ‘There’s been a bit of looting but, of course, it’s only been by those who’ve got the Sight. We might get a lot of evidence here, but the site’ll have been filleted for anything that’s powerful in itself.’
They were going to need at least a large van to take away this haul. The light was failing them, the big shadows of the skyscrapers obscuring the ruin, more and more people passing through the square as they headed home from work. They all looked at them curiously.
Quill and Costain went to commandeer bags and boxes from anywhere they could, and Ross called Mehta to tell him to take his boat back to his nick. There was no authority onto which they could pass this crime scene, if it was one; no experts to examine all this in situ. Forensics just would not see anything out here, so this had to be their business now, thought Sefton, and theirs alone.
They started to put everything into the bags and boxes systematically. Until suddenly Sefton realized that, in his hand, he was holding something like a personnel file. He called everyone over. Inside the file were just photographs of five people. The looks on their faces were proud, almost smug. ‘The “Continuing Projects Team”,’ he said, reading aloud. He had a quick look through the job descriptions on each photo and raised an eyebrow. ‘A brief, an architect, a priest, a senior civil servant, even someone from the BBC.’
Ross looked up from her phone. ‘None of whom are recorded anywhere.’
‘All of whom,’ said Quill, ‘have been forgotten.’
‘Think of the energy,’ said Sefton, ‘that someone is putting into keeping that going.’ He gestured around him. ‘Into this.’
They ended up reading by torchlight amid the ruins. They were all too interested to wait until they got it back to the Portakabin. ‘It’s all about. . buildings,’ said Sefton, ‘shapes. Nothing much here about people.’
‘And this lot,’ observed Quill, ‘go on about “protocols” all the bloody time.’
‘I think they,’ Ross flapped the folder, ‘must be the “old law” that Losley talked about.’
‘And maybe this,’ Costain gestured at the ruins around them, ‘was when those goalposts got moved.’
They thought about that in silence for a while. Sefton was about to suggest that it was time to pack up and summon that van over, when Ross made a sudden noise. She held up a personnel file with nothing inside it, which she had just found between the remains of two filing boxes.
On the front of it was written: Detective Superintendent Rebecca Lofthouse.
‘Oh, bloody hell,’ said Quill.
There was a noise from nearby, and they all looked up. Standing there was Lofthouse herself. She looked very uncertain, and was holding what looked like an ancient key. It had a gravity about it. It was a thing of the Sight.
‘Oh,’ said Quill, ‘and I’d seen that on her charm bracelet so many times.’ He stood up, and they all did.
Sefton suddenly remembered his sensation, inside the circle in the bookshop, that there should be five of them, rather than four. He looked back to the pentagram on the broken table: there had been five members of this team, too. And there had been that weird moment when Lofthouse had got them to sit at very particular places around that meeting table. ‘Five,’ he said to Ross, under his breath.
‘Five is better than four,’ she replied. ‘Like the fortune-teller said.’
Lofthouse stepped forward, looking between them and the key in her hand.
‘There’s something here I can’t see, isn’t there, Jimmy?’ she said.
Quill could only nod.
‘Well,’ she said, ‘now I know why I’ve been supporting you all this time. This explains a lot.’