‘And what about your phones?’
He smiled. He was always pleased when she worked something out. ‘Them too. And again, a clean bill of health. We had SO15 sweep the Portakabin for bugs while they were at it. That caused a few raised eyebrows. Nothing found there, either.’
‘So let me get this straight. You talked out loud about reinter-viewing a witness while you were in the Treasury, a place which is, security-wise, presumably as safe as the proverbial Bank of England, and the witness you talked about interviewing is killed the next morning.’
‘With us having only talked to each other about it, on phones which have definitively not been hacked.’
‘But, dear God, somehow you’re being listened in on.’
‘It looks that way, yeah.’
‘Maybe whatever evil shit you’re up against this time is all seeing and all powerful?’
‘Let’s hope so. Then we can just retire and leave them to it.’ He looked a little happier now. ‘I always like it when we talk things through like this. We should have an Ops Board at home.’
‘Really,’ she said, ‘no.’
* * *
Ross stood on her balcony, listening to the summer sounds of her suburb: the distant music, the cars racing by with conflicting tunes blaring from them, nearby laughter, the pubs, ambulances over the hill. Distant sirens spoke of continuing violence, which hadn’t yet reached Catford. She’d stopped watching the news. It was all uniforms with shields and helmets and the surging of huge masses of people, and then fires and running kids with looted televisions. She’d thought there was a limit to how long it could go on; seemingly there wasn’t. It was turning out to be a long summer. The Summer of Blood. Whoever had coined that phrase had — if what Gaiman said about ostentation was true — helped in a tiny way to make it happen.
She was dressed for the underworld again, in costume. The only advantage she had tonight was that, unless he’d looked it up — and he might well have done — Costain didn’t know where her dad was buried. If she got the Bridge of Spikes, she’d have to get there fast and activate it, without Costain following her, she hoped. She didn’t have any idea how the device actually worked. Presumably, if it was in the auction, it would come with instructions. She hoped Costain was also uncertain about that.
She would keep her knife on her tonight, in case she got hold of the Bridge and Costain tried to take it, in spite of all his promises. She was prepared to hurt him. She wouldn’t back away from that possibility. She was doing this for Dad, and she wasn’t going to stop now.
Alongside that, it was also going to be their third date. If he was being honest, if he was now genuinely on her side, they might end up together, might get to celebrate together. The possibility of that had turned her on all day, whenever she thought about it. She’d even gone out and bought some underwear.
It almost made her smile. Talk about all or nothing.
When he arrived, she opened the door to him and would have been happy to let him kiss her. But he didn’t. He looked calm and serious and committed to her cause. The librarian look he once again sported helped with that. ‘Let’s get this done,’ he said.
* * *
The map on the card had surprised Ross when she’d compared it to Google Maps. The location given hadn’t looked promising when she’d checked it out in person, either. But she supposed it made a sort of sense.
How thin the Millennium Bridge across the Thames felt as they walked over it that evening. Perhaps it was because with every step Ross felt something enormous growing all around her. The sun was still a way above the horizon behind her, making her shadow sharp on the new stone. The full moon was in the sky ahead, the base of it still hidden behind the buildings. She found that Costain, beside her, had slowed his walk too. She looked over the rail, to the river itself. It was sparkling in the combined light, a reminder of the great river of silver and gold that lay beneath all things in London. Tonight it felt as if it was simmering with the million sparkles on its surface, preparing, flexing like a muscle. It was uniting with the sky above, creating this enormous sensation of a waiting, observing, presence.
She could feel London tonight as if she had her palms against the heart of a wild animal. She could sense it watching them. She supposed it was because she herself was on the edge of a precipice. Maybe all Londoners felt it at times like these. Maybe this was how some of the Privileged felt all the time. It wasn’t the first time she’d thought of them as lucky. This was the truth that was under everything.
If she looked down into the detail at the water’s edge, she’d see terrible things, but that would be the truth too. To be part of a city was to be a cell in a bigger animal, an animal large enough to have a conversation with the sea, which the river moderated, and the sky, which the river reflected. To be part of a city was to have an index of your mortal life right in front of you: as you got older you’d start saying you remembered when it was all different around here.
She understood why those who had the Sight felt the need to hang on to the past. She herself, she realized, was trying to get back to when her dad had been alive. It was as if she was trying to begin her life again, even when everything about a city said the world went on without you.
She slowed to a stop and Costain halted too. They were halfway across the bridge. Where they stood, people had attached padlocks to the horizontal wires, usually with the names of couples on them. It was a gesture that was supposed to be about eternal love, but it had always felt a bit creepy to Ross, suggesting that locks had anything to do with love. Every month, the City of London Corporation sent people along with bolt cutters to remove them.
She understood now that she had no idea about that sort of love except as something people talked about. She’d always hoped if she ever felt like that, it’d be free of the locks she’d made for herself, of the burdens of her own quest. That it would be freeing.
She felt now how small her mission was. Just one person — her dad. She was prepared to harm Costain, to do anything, for that one tiny being. She could give all that up and choose love instead, the river seemed to be saying to her.
No, all she knew about London said the opposite: that the actions of one person could be remembered. Saving her dad was who she was. Sorry, she said now to the glory of London, I am what I am and I will do what I am going to do.
The glory of London seemed to worry in reply, to flex its river muscles anxiously, to fret about what she was going to contribute to its history tonight.
‘What are you thinking?’ asked Costain.
She turned to look at him, and was sad for him because he was with her. ‘It’s beautiful,’ she said.
* * *
They finally made their way to the end of the bridge, and thus to the enormous square and ugly building that had once been Bankside Power Station. ‘The Tate Modern art gallery,’ said Costain. ‘Are you sure this is the right place?’
Ross got out the card again. The vortex on its surface was twisting, reaching forwards, the map distorting more and more as they got closer. ‘Incredibly,’ she said.
The art gallery was open late for a new exhibition: Metaphysicaclass="underline" The Nostalgia of the Infinite. The poster had made Ross wonder if, despite the occult underworld’s problems with the whole concept of modernity, this might in fact be an exhibition that suited it. What she took from the accompanying leaflet: the concept of items or buildings being placed to overshadow and influence people — surely that struck a nerve with them? The Turbine Hall was packed with people queuing to get up to level three, where the exhibition was. Ross recalled seeing something about this having suddenly become one of those summer art ticket rushes London had, with staggered entry and sweaty groups of people craning to look at the paintings, even as the suburbs burned.