‘From now on,’ Barry was saying to the crowd, ‘no exceptions. Money will be taken. You may have noticed we’ve started to advertise this pub, only in the right places. We have produced actual fliers. The new punters, the people who’ve got interested in this stuff in the last few years, they’re young and have spare cash, they have certain expectations about their social occasions. You will follow the dress code.’ He grabbed a young woman near him and threw her to the ground. ‘Smart! Casual! The weird fashions don’t add anything, you stupid fuckers — they just mean nobody normal’s going to want to hang around in a bar with you and drink our premium lager while you sip on your glasses of warm tap water!’
Terry, in contrast, had his hands raised, trying to be the voice of reason. ‘Ever since whatever changed a few years back to make it easier for us all to openly use the power that comes from a deep knowledge of the shape of London…’ He seemed to react to mutterings from the crowd. ‘Yes, I’m saying all this out loud. Look. No bolt of lightning from above. No punishment for talking clearly, not in gobbledegook. Me and the bro, in modern gear, speaking like real people, paying hard cash for objects with London history’ — and stealing some of them, thought Costain, if their convictions were anything to go by — ‘we have got ourselves a lot of knowledge and a lot of power. We didn’t need to do all the accents and costumes, we didn’t see ourselves as poor noble outsiders, we didn’t need to wait for some gatekeeper to give us the nod and say we were allowed. We proved that money can be used to shape the power of London too, whether London likes it or not.’ Costain remembered what Sefton had said about the price tags feeling weirdly out of place on those objects in the shop. ‘Still, we played nice with the culture we found: you lot, who assumed you owned this town, just because you did all the things that had always been done. We were cajoling, we extended the hand of friendship. You paid no bloody attention. But now we are in the middle of what we modern people call a double-dip recession. We need to monetize this place. So you lot will be dragged, kicking and screaming, into the eighteenth century.’ No voices were raised to contradict him, but Costain saw people looking angry, heard whispers. ‘Listen, a lot of you at least keep a toe in the real world; you know it doesn’t have to be so hard for us now. When the big change — whatever it was — happened, it was like the people who can do what we do … it was like we won. So why are you lot still hiding?’
‘Cut to the chase, Tezzer,’ said Barry.
‘The point is, whatever you think of us, we are like you. Our brand identity for this pub will embrace the essentials of what the Goat and Compasses has always been about. But from now on, on the special nights, for downstairs, we’ll be charging admission.’
There were yells of protest from the crowd. ‘This is the last night of the Goat, then,’ someone said.
‘Pair of fucking faggots,’ said a woman with dark hair whom Costain had seen with Sefton. She meant the Keel brothers.
Terry turned to her, and flicked a sudden gesture that he seemed to think better of before it did her harm. The crowd flinched anyway. ‘I am also fed up with you insulting our customers. You’re barred.’
‘Who’s barred?’
‘… whoever you are!’
‘You don’t even know my name! Your brand doesn’t have much hold over someone without a brand of her own, cocksucker!’
‘I’ll brand you-!’ He raised a hand to do it.
Ross stepped in front of her.
Costain saw Sefton react, minutely. The two of them had a responsibility to their non-undercover colleagues. They had to do something to move this conflict around and let themselves and their colleagues head for the door. But before either of them could do anything, Terry Keel lowered his hand.
‘You tell her, love,’ he said to Ross. ‘She can stay tonight, but she’d better not come back.’ He turned to the others and deliberately didn’t hear the woman’s next comment. ‘Look,’ he said, ‘it’ll just be a fiver or something. It’s not like you lot have actual rules that you need to vote on or something. You just have traditions. An unwritten constitution, not worth the paper it’s printed on. It’s not as if you’re institutionally racist, for instance.’ He underlined the words with irony. ‘But your “we like old-timey stuff” policy has successfully kept away potential customers.’
Barry took up the narration, nodding pleasantly to Costain and Sefton. ‘Like these two modern and affluent-looking young gentlemen. Who are entirely conversant with a bit of the old-’ He made the checking hand gesture, and Costain automatically now threw what Sefton had called a blanket over his thoughts. Even as he did so, he noticed something very worrying: that gesture … hadn’t it been just a tiny bit … different?
Costain heard his phone beep at the same instant Sefton’s did. The two undercovers looked at each other. Well, okay, Costain reasoned, so they were carrying modern tech, they could just say sorry and-
But a look of horror had come over the face of Barry Keel. An expression that Costain recognized from his nightmares of being caught while undercover. ‘You fuckers,’ he said. ‘You’re-’
Costain leaped forward and punched the man in the stomach.
* * *
Terry Keel lunged at Sefton. The man looked as if he knew how to fight. Low centre of gravity. He was probably packing gestures like his brother’s, which could cause harm above and beyond whatever he could do with his fists. Barry had somehow used that gesture to read their phones. Their own phones, which were full of police-related numbers.
Sefton ducked the first two blows, then hit Terry one-two on the body, and winced at the pain in his knuckles as the man fell. He wasn’t used to doing this without gloves. He took a moment to look around, to try to find Quill and Ross, to see if they could get to the door.
He could only find where Barry Keel was lying near Costain, clutching his abdomen. He was craning his neck painfully to bellow at the ceiling. ‘Marlon!’
Something fell from the roof.
It was a figure, Sefton saw in that second. He managed to leap out of the way, and it landed with a crash where he had been. Sefton turned to see that it was the bouncer from upstairs, who was even now looking to Barry Keel for orders. The leather-coated man gestured to both Sefton and Costain. ‘Rip them apart.’
As both Barry and Terry got to their feet, Sefton looked to Costain, found only a shared disinclination to be here, looked back. The bouncer was advancing swiftly.
There were screams and shouts from the crowd, many of whom — with Quill and Ross among them, he hoped — were now finding the space to run for the door.
The bouncer was herding himself and Costain, Sefton realized, back towards a corner, away from the door and the stairwell. Sefton reached into his pocket, and pulled out the vanes. He waved them purposefully towards the bouncer, as if he had any idea how to use them to attack, in the way their last owner had used them on Quill. But the bouncer paid no attention. He made little grasping movements with his hands, waiting for his chance to grab and rend. As soon as they reached the corner, neither of them would be able to get away.
This was the sort of moment, thought Sefton, where, in his former life, there would have been a horde of uniforms outside, ready to race in and bust heads on his behalf.
Now there was nobody. He and Costain were just going to have to run at the same moment and hope desperately that one or both would make it out. Sefton prepared himself to sprint for his life.
‘Hoi! Mush!’ The bouncer turned at the shout.
Quill leaped from the crowd and smashed the bouncer across the head with a champagne bottle he must have nicked from the bar.