On the sound principle that whatever Lesley had cast I didn’t want to be in front of it, I threw myself diagonally across the table top and while I slid down it I conjured a couple of delayed action fireballs that I call, much to Nightingale’s annoyance, skinny grenades and lobbed them in the Lesley’s general direction. John Woo would have been proud.
I made a half-hearted grab for Reynard but he sort of bounded off the table, through the slot in the wall, and out into the corridor. I let him go – Lesley was my priority now. But before I could roll off the other side, the bloody table lurched and shot straight upwards. I flattened myself as the ceiling came rushing towards me, but there was a bright flash, like a professional standard flash gun, and the table lurched to the left and tipped me off.
I hit something with my shoulder – I think it was Aretha – and smacked face first onto the floor tiles. What with one thing and another, I didn’t think having a rest was a good idea, so I rolled in a random direction and scrambled to my feet. Just in time to see Lesley vault through the slot in the wall and tear after Reynard who was vanishing up a cross corridor marked HARRODS’ TECHNOLOGY. I went after them, but I had my shield up because I really didn’t think this was going to have a happy ending.
It might have been a Wednesday morning, but there were enough punters around to give a working copper conniptions. There are rules about putting the public in danger during a chase – the principle one of which is don’t put members of the public at risk.
‘Police,’ I shouted as a member of the public bounced off my shield. ‘Everybody out.’
Which had the effect of making some people stop, some people reach for their phones, and the rest to carry on shopping regardless.
I shouted again – which at least cleared enough of a hole for me to spot Lesley turning left into the next room. I followed and felt my shield ripple as I veered past a triple-screened games console with built-in racing car controls. There was a smell of burning plastic and I hoped it hadn’t been me.
Just ahead Lesley and Reynard were in a three-way struggle with a solidly built white man in a beige raincoat. He had an army surplus crew cut and narrow little eyes. He didn’t look like store security and I felt a flash of irritation because have-a-go heroes are all very well until they get themselves killed, and then guess who’s left explaining themselves to the subsequent inquiry.
At least this room was narrow, with Spyware counters on the right and Vodafone on the left – small enough that all the potential collateral had had the good sense to clear out.
I was less than two metres from the struggle when something hit me in the back and knocked me forward on my face. There was a sudden smell of candle wax and hyacinth and a rope of crimson smoke shot overhead and smacked Crew Cut in the face. As he reeled backwards, the smoke fluttered like silk in the wind before slapping Lesley in the chest hard enough to knock her backwards over a counter top. I winced as I heard glass break under her back and saw fashionably black spy gear scatter behind her.
Despite the blow Crew Cut hadn’t let go of Reynard and he quickly regained his balance, tightened his grip on the young man and started dragging him away.
I tried to scramble to my feet, but another blow on my back put me down. A second crimson rope rippled overhead like a vintage special effect from the 1980’s.
‘Is Nightingale doing that?’ yelled Lesley from somewhere to my right.
Hyacinth and candle-wax? I thought, not likely.
Nightingale should have arrived by now, though, and I suspected the delay was something to do with whoever was flinging ropes of magic smoke around. Still, I doubted he was going to be long.
‘Stay down,’ I shouted.
‘You first,’ she shouted back.
I rolled left through a gap in the Vodafone counter to see if I could avoid another smackdown and found myself face to face with a very well dressed but terrified Asian guy. I motioned frantically for him to stay down and he nodded.
The counter I was behind had a transparent top which gave me a chance to see out without getting my damn fool head blown off. The rope of crimson smoke had wrapped itself around Reynard’s neck and was dragging him back-up the aisle despite Crew Cut’s best efforts to pull him the other way. Even as I looked back to see if I could spot where the rope was coming from, a pulse of light raced up its length in a blaze of petrol bomb yellow, vaporising the crimson smoke as it went. It roared past me and then, as it reached Crew Cut and the struggling Reynard, the pulse slowed and dissipated the last of the smoke with a gentle pop, leaving the pair temporarily frozen – and staring in amazement.
Now, that was Nightingale.
Reynard recovered first, and with a snarl buried his teeth in Crew Cut’s neck. The man screamed and beat at Reynard’s head with his fists. Lesley hadn’t emerged from hiding yet. And she was still my priority, so stalemate suited me. Every second of status quo meant more members of the public evacuated, a tighter containment perimeter, and more chance that Nightingale was going to arrive to back me up. And if Reynard got a bit of a smacking in the meantime, I could live with that.
Unfortunately, this plan went to shit when Crew Cut fumbled inside his jacket, pulled out a compact semiautomatic pistol and bashed Reynard on the head with it.
From a policing point of view, guns are a pain. Once someone is known to be tooled up, your operational priorities are suddenly fucked up. It all becomes about managing whoever was stupid enough to pull a gun in central London and your number one priority is public safety, followed closely by officer safety and then, not so closely, by the safety of the moron with the gun. Any other operational considerations, such as arresting former colleagues, don’t enter into it.
‘Gun!’ I shouted as loud as I could.
Crew Cut whirled to point his gun in my direction in a professional, albeit one handed, firing stance. I crouched down and threw up my shield – but he didn’t fire. While he was aiming at me, Lesley launched herself out of her hiding place at him.
He was fast. Before Lesley was half-way to him he’d turned and fired – a flat loud popping sound – and then again and again. There was ripple in the air in front of Lesley’s chest and something small and fast whistled over my head.
He didn’t get in a fourth shot because Lesley swung at his wrist with what I recognised as a police issue extendable baton. There was a crack and the pistol fell out of his hand. He gasped at the pain and Lesley followed up with a sharp blow to the head then a third to his face – another crunch and a spray of blood from his mouth.
I used impello to flick the gun as far up the room as I could, and then I jumped up and yelled, ‘Armed police, stop fighting and drop your weapons.’
All three of them stopped and turned to look at me – and for a moment I thought they might actually comply, if only out of sheer incredulity. But then Reynard gave Crew Cut a swift knee in the bollocks, wriggled free and legged it.
Traditionally, the weapon of choice for a classically trained wizard is the fireball – I’m not kidding. And in some respects, from a policing point of view, it’s not a bad weapon. Being by definition a soft and low velocity projectile, you can loose them off in the knowledge that it’s not going to blast through your target, the wall behind them and the bus queue of blameless OAPs behind that. However, this means that – unless you’re Nightingale – the bloody things can be stopped by modern ballistic armour, my metvest and, in some cases, a thick woolly jumper. At the same time, they remain potentially lethal, which means you’ve got to be careful who you lob them at.
So I water bombed Lesley instead.