‘You haven’t seen anyone familiar in your investigations so far. If we do, we bug out immediately.’
‘What if they can tell who we are?’ said Costain. ‘At the fair, Madame Osiris had some sort of supernatural tripwire set up, to detect coppers.’
Sefton suddenly grinned. ‘I’ve been thinking about that,’ he said. ‘You remember when Losley scanned our bar codes and suddenly knew about my batting for the other team?’
‘I’m so glad we all speak metaphor,’ said Quill.
‘She used gestures to do almost everything — apart from that destructive shout of hers — and it’d be hard to have everyone shouting in a social situation, so I think we have to watch out for hand movements.’
‘It was when I said “Mora Losley” that Madame Osiris knew I was associated with the police,’ said Ross. ‘I felt that happen, like … a sort of pressure wave in the air. She kept her hands under the table much of the time, so she might have done something while I was there, or she could have made a gesture beforehand that set that up in advance.’
‘So, we need a way to stop people checking out who we are and discovering that we’re coppers,’ said Sefton, as if all the above had been an interruption to his grand announcement. ‘Just as well I’ve been working on something for that very situation. This would, in fact, be only my second venture, after the vanes, into doing anything useful with this London shit.’ He went to his holdall and brought out a file, out of which he took one of the browned and ancient documents from the Docklands ruins. These were manuscripts he’d found that night, and Quill recalled that Sefton had had to negotiate with Ross, once she’d begun her indexing process, to keep them for his own study after she’d given them a once-over. ‘Since this was left there after years of the site being looted, I’d guess what’s written here is kid’s stuff, second nature to anyone starting out on the road of being Privileged, but of course it’s new to us. I can’t find anything about how actually to read a person-’
‘Because that would be of enormous use in our job,’ said Quill. ‘And because we have the luck of coppers.’
‘-but I have here what the document calls a “blanket”. A way to hide one’s identity from prying gestures.’
‘Blanket, as in hide under one?’ asked Quill.
‘From some of the other language used, I think it’s a corruption of “blank eek”, “eek” being Palare, fairground language, for “face”.’
‘But if we use this “blanket”, won’t everyone get suspicious that we’re the ones hiding our true selves?’
‘If I’ve understood this … Jacobean English, I think it is … right, then keeping shtum about yourself when scanned is only proper, what the Privileged automatically do, a sign of belonging in itself. Assuming nothing’s changed since the seventeenth century.’
‘Given what we’ve seen of this lot,’ said Ross, ‘I think that’s a safe assumption.’
‘And labelled as such,’ said Costain.
Quill noticed the glare she flung him about that.
‘Of course,’ said Sefton, ‘someone could always bring a bigger gun to the party, use something to break through the blanket.’
‘In which case,’ said Quill, ‘we revert to Plan B and run like fuck.’
Sefton read over the parchment once again, then turned to Quill. ‘Okay,’ he said. ‘I think the only way to simulate being read is if I yell in your face. When I do, attempt the following…’
That was how they spent the afternoon.
* * *
At home that night, Ross found herself stopping in her researches, considering sleep, but also fearing the dreams that would come. Maybe they were guilty dreams, her searching her conscience. She went to make herself a cup of tea, then returned to her desk, staring out into the familiar orange light of the suburban night. She was eagerly anticipating the next day. Sefton had, without knowing it, moved her closer to her own, private, goal. Getting into the occult underworld of London could make all the difference. She’d had to appear to be against Quill’s proposal at first, though, because if she’d grabbed at it, he might have known something was up.
Would he? No. That was her being paranoid about someone whose defences, as far as she was concerned, were completely absent. Damn it. Quill was definitely not trying to pry into her secrets in the way she was worried Costain might be. He was innocent of the idea that she might keep any such secrets from him.
She was going to go with her colleagues into a situation that was potentially as dangerous as Berkeley Square had been, and she was not going to be entirely on their side.
* * *
Costain volunteered to be the first of them to enter the pub, as was only right for his rank and experience. On Wednesday he walked past the Goat and Compasses, which looked to be a perfectly ordinary city-centre pub: on the classy side, hanging baskets outside, not averse to the odd tourist, colourful chalkboard outside advertising lunch.
On the Thursday night, the first of the month, at around seven, he entered the pub in character, in a suit that wasn’t too flashy, as if he’d just come from work, but with the little flourishes of a tie pin and a pair of excellent shoes. It felt good to be back undercover. The character he’d decided to play was well behaved, so as not to risk his soul, and because that fitted the operational requirements, but it was an evening out of his own skin, a breathing space. There had been some debate about whether or not he should wear something symbolic, but he had ruled that out. ‘This is a newbie,’ he had said, ‘who’s trying very hard to not make a fuss, to play by the rules. Maybe he’s come for the first time because he’s heard this change is happening, whatever that’s about, and feels for the first time that a dusky gentleman might be welcome. We don’t know enough yet about what all these occult symbols mean for him — for me — to wear one. This bloke I’m playing knows enough not to rock the boat. He’ll wear a symbol when he’s seen what’s what.’
The pub looked just as normal inside. Young blokes, a few suits, an old bloke alone with the newspaper, everyday-looking staff, some Eastern Europeans and some Aussies. None of the Hogwarts crowd, and none of that rough white vibe that said he wasn’t welcome, either. He ordered a Diet Coke and carefully looked around, lost, wondering where the do was. A chalk sign by a stairwell at the back said ‘private party’ with a big, coloured-in arrow pointing downstairs. Did this place prefer to keep its monthly clientele out of sight of the regular punters? He considered asking whether he could go downstairs, but, no, newbie is worried about being told he’s not allowed. He headed down the stairs. Nobody stopped him.
As he took his first step downwards, he noticed that, for the first time since he’d entered the pub, he could feel the gravity of the Sight. There was lots of important stuff down here, but it was a bit … muffled from the pub above. As if where he was going had the equivalent of a lead lining. At the bottom of the stairs, opposite the toilets, a pair of double doors led into a downstairs bar area. Careful not to walk in as if he owned the place, he pushed through them.
He was early. Only a couple of people around, and they were both looking at him. Newbie mistake to arrive so early. Exactly. There was a bouncer in the corner, which was weird — inside, and in a pub like this, and this early in the evening. But the bouncer was weird too: classically shaped as such, with a jutting chin and a bow tie even, but a bit of a caricature, like a comedian playing a bouncer. None of the door staff subculture vibe that you saw with the real thing, which usually shouted either extreme sports enthusiast or former gang member. Costain drained his drink as he looked at the punters. One of them was a middle-aged man in a tweed suit and waistcoat, bearded, a pint of dark ale in front of him. He was sitting in the far corner beside a stairwell that led down, in exactly the same place as the one in the room above. He looked as if he was guarding it. He was reading a volume bound in leather. He made eye contact with Costain, which seemed significant for a moment, a slight pause — oh my goodness a person of colour — then back to his book. The other punter was in his twenties and looked like something out of an advert: stripy suit; bright yellow brogues; waistcoat with a fob watch dangling from it, and huge, neatly tended handlebar moustache, like Dali crossed with Bertie Wooster. He plucked his monocle from his eye and gave Costain a bow of greeting. He was a rich kid, a modern dandy. But still — so far, so friendly. The bar itself looked to be the kind you might find downstairs in any modern pub. Where was that sensation of weight coming from? Still under his feet. Spread out evenly, as he walked to the bar. Perhaps the Keel brothers, having bought the place, had put some of their more meaningful shop merchandise somewhere. Behind the bar a young woman in the same uniform as the one upstairs, but with a certain attitude about her, had appeared. She had wide open holes in her earlobes, goth decoration that might not be allowed in a mainstream bar.