‘It’s going!’ yelled Ross.
Sefton broke into a run. He felt the material falling away at his heels. It was crumbling to the left. He ran right, veering away from Quill and Ross. He leaped and in the same moment he heard Costain yell too. He daren’t look to see what had happened to him.
Sefton hit the far wall at a corner by the crumbling edge where Ross and Quill stood. His hands scrabbled desperately. He just got one hand around the frame of one of the paintings, then swung to grab it with the other. He managed to hang on.
The picture held, impossibly. He swung in the void, his forearms in agony, his legs scrambling for a purchase they couldn’t find.
Ross had Costain, he saw. She’d thrown herself to the edge of the crumbling floor, had grabbed Costain’s hands. Quill had taken a step back, realizing that in a moment he might have to try and haul both of them back at once. Wondering if he could, if he was going to have to leave Costain to fall.
Sefton knew he had to do this or die. With one huge effort, all he had, he hauled himself up the painting. There was something extraordinary holding this thing on to the wall. The mad-looking fat man depicted in the portrait glared balefully at him. He started to swing from side to side, wondering about making the leap. ‘Jimmy!’ he shouted. ‘It has to be now!’
‘Okay!’ bellowed Quill. He got to the edge of the remaining carpet, squatting, his hands out awkwardly.
Sefton flung himself sideways. He hit something. Quill had missed him! His hands grasped air. He was going to fall! He got about half his body onto the crumbling edge. He felt it giving beneath him. He’d got so far-
Quill grabbed him under the armpits and heaved and rolled. He was up, and out. They were on solid ground and both stumbling quickly to their feet as they felt it start to give way too.
* * *
‘Don’t bloody let go!’ Costain bellowed at Ross.
‘Like I’d do that!’ She only had a few seconds before her arms gave out, a few seconds until the crumbling edge in front of her broke away and his weight dragged her with him. She should let him go. But she wouldn’t.
She heaved upwards, thinking only that she was giving her life for no good reason when she couldn’t actually save a colleague.
Then she felt Quill and Sefton join in. They grabbed Costain around the wrists and pulled too. The three of them managed to haul him up. They staggered upright. They dashed for the doors as the floor continued to vanish from under their feet. They burst through them together and the carpeted hallway disintegrated as they ran. They raced up the stairs, which fell away behind them too, until they were standing once more, safe, in an empty, evacuated, normal bar. They all looked back to the entrance to the staircase. It all suddenly fell away in one moment, leaving a gap in the floor which, with a slam, replaced itself with the same wooden flooring as the bar had.
They stood there, panting.
‘This level must be the last one that’s, you know, real,’ said Costain.
‘I think everyone else got out,’ said Quill, ‘including Neil Gaiman.’
‘Neil Gaiman was down there?’ said Ross. ‘The writer?’
‘Yeah,’ said Quill. He looked around. He found a sign that said ‘private function’. He put it where the stairwell had been. ‘Nice guy.’
* * *
There was nobody in the bar upstairs either. Ross felt tremendous relief. ‘I think Terry Keel must have got everyone out,’ she said. ‘I don’t think he knew where the damage would stop.’
‘Hell of a lawsuit,’ said Quill, ‘collapse of reality.’
‘Shall we put out the call for him?’ asked Ross. She found she had to sit down, and dropped onto a bar stool. She looked at the floor and concentrated on the conversation. She sensed them all doing that, all willing each other to come up with the next useful sentence.
‘Complicated. Do you fancy lying to a court about the exact circumstances of him assaulting a police officer?’
‘Or his brother being assaulted by a police officer,’ said Costain.
‘You what?!’ said Sefton. Ross glanced up at him. He had a pent-up, angry look on his face.
‘I meant me,’ said Costain quickly, ‘I meant me thumping him, all right? I wasn’t thinking of-’
‘In the circumstances,’ said Quill quickly, stepping between them, ‘I think you were acting to protect yourself and your colleagues, Tony. And you, Kev … well, I don’t know what happened down there. Did you know that was going to happen?’
Sefton shook his head.
‘As your superior officer, I’m not going to be calling any of that to anyone’s attention, not even Lofthouse’s, so the fault’s now mine, all right?’
Sefton remained silent.
‘So, no, I don’t think we should send the hue and cry after him. The other reason is that he still doesn’t know who me and Ross are, and he might well assume that you two died down there, and — unless his brother somehow got the word to him before he copped it — he still doesn’t know anyone there was a police officer. He could just go back to his normal routine. We know where to find him. We know he’s a good source of juice and we might need him later. Let’s not give him a reason to run.’ He moved a touch unsteadily towards the door. ‘Now, given all that’s happened, may I suggest a pint or two on the way home? Only not here, eh?’
* * *
Outside, breathing deeply of an evening that was still light, with curious passers-by looking at their charred clothes and obvious injuries, Ross felt a hand on her shoulder. She looked up to see Costain looking seriously at her, holding her back a little distance from the other two.
‘Hey,’ he said, ‘listen-’
‘It’s okay.’
‘What?’
‘I know what you’re going to say. I saved your life-’
‘Well, yeah, and thank you, but so did those two, that’s not what I was … Listen, do you want to go out for a drink?’
‘Yeah, bloody right now-’
‘No, I mean … I … think … okay this is what I texted you about.’ His gaze was darting all over her face. He looked so shaken. He was determined to get the words out. ‘Would you like to go out for a … drink. For dinner, maybe. With me. Tomorrow. That being Friday.’
Oh.
Oh no. Oh no. Absolutely not.
He was looking so seriously at her. There was something lost about it, something honest, as if he’d been shaken to the core and needed to tell her this. She knew she couldn’t trust how he looked.
But she found that she was smiling. On the verge of a laugh. Against her will. Sort of. She was shaken too. She was still, actually, shaking. This was the worst possible thing that she could do. She was laughing at herself.
But … she could still hold on to her secrets, couldn’t she? What, did she think she’d just tell him all he might want to know, just because they were on a date? She didn’t even know if he did want anything from her, besides the obvious. To think that was to think the worst of him.
Damn it. She wanted to hear what he had to say. She wanted to hear him in private. She wanted to hear him try to get close to her. She wanted to have some closeness in her life, wanted to be able to choose whether or not to hold it off.
She was flattered. He was beautiful. She would stay in control. She would not tell him those things it would be disastrous for him to hear.
She would find out if he was indeed hoping to discover those things.
‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘Okay.’
SEVEN
Quill stood at the Ops Board, a marker pen in his hand. He’d slept badly the night before, with terrible dreams about being pierced, penetrated. Not so surprising, considering his closeness to a major explosion. Perhaps he was still in shock. He wondered whether people who did what his lot did could ever get a good kip, whether being in shock was his life now. ‘So,’ he said, ‘what have we discovered?’