Again Costain considered his options. As terrible as it was, as horrifying as the line of dominoes that would now fall would be … he now had no alternative. He’d made his decision.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said to Ross.
‘What for?’
‘I have to go.’
She had a look of perplexed horror on her face. He didn’t let it get to him. He would see much worse soon. ‘What? No! We can’t split the team up now…!’
He kissed her again, against her words, held her tightly to him, despite her moving away, her needing to know what he was going to do. He drew comfort from her and desperately wished he could offer some in return.
‘I’ll come back, I promise.’
He wanted to say this wasn’t the scene where the hero marches off to make a heroic sacrifice. Except in a way it was. He was also about to do the most selfish thing he had ever done. He looked again at the wonderful shape of her face. He remembered her passion. He saw how her character informed that. She was the first woman who’d ever truly allowed him inside. Even as she was now, without happiness, when even saving her father would bring her no happiness, still her whole being was something vast and meaningful to him.
He turned and headed back to the van. He looked back to see Ross staring after him, to see Sefton going back to her, wondering what was going on. He kept walking.
* * *
Ross’ mind was racing, trying to work out what could take Costain off alone. She could only make puzzled eye contact with Sefton. Hadn’t she and Costain shared every secret? Was he … was he just fleeing? She watched him drive off, making herself give him the benefit of the doubt. He had told her he’d be back. This was something their team did. She had to trust him.
An alarm came from her phone. She looked at it to find a note from Forensics. ‘Your fingerprint search was one of the few tasks I was able to complete successfully in the current circumstances,’ it began, ‘so it went to the top of the queue, but I find the implications extraordinary…’ Ross scrolled quickly through the message and got to what those implications were.
‘Oh my God,’ she said.
‘What?’
‘One of those photographs of fingerprints inside a prehistoric long barrow, fingerprints put there four thousand years ago, matched the prints found at the Ripper murders.’
Sefton stared at her in shock. Then he grabbed the phone. ‘Where,’ he said, ‘is this long barrow?’
* * *
After a few minutes’ driving, Costain pulled the van to a halt, breathing hard. He’d been going far too fast. Only the emptiness of the streets had saved him. He’d switched off his phone as soon as he’d turned the corner. He was sure Ross would leave him messages. He didn’t want to hear them. He reached into his jacket. He found the secret inner pocket, closed his hand on the object. He wanted to see it, to make sure no secret power had taken it from him.
The Bridge of Spikes was a plain gold sphere, small enough to fit into his hand.
He’d stolen it from Anna Lassiter’s house two days ago, before he and Ross had gone there together, when Quill had sent him back to the Soviet bar to talk about prostitutes. He had used several of Sefton’s protective items, taken from the man’s holdall, to get into Lassiter’s flat. He doubted he’d have been able to do it without what he was now sure had been Vincent’s men making their own attempt hours before.
He had done it because he couldn’t handle the idea of someone looking into his dreams. Because of how vulnerable that made him feel. He hadn’t previously decided what to do with it, although keeping it on him was some sort of decision. He’d had fantasies about staging a fake raid and triumphantly giving it to Ross.
Now he had made his mind up. He had sacrificed so much for this. He hoped it was worth it.
Costain replaced it in his pocket, took a deep breath, and drove off once more.
TWENTY-FIVE
Ross and Sefton looked up at the building above them, dark in the summer night, framed in the ruddy light of the fires from the riots in White City. Only a few windows were illuminated. The former BBC TV Centre looked like the corpse of the building from Ross’ childhood memories. What once had been a broadcasting headquarters was now home to independent production companies, other businesses, apartments. The circular building with the courtyard and the fountain and the statue familiar from so many magazine programmes was now a listed building, a sort of monument to the idea that broadcasting should belong to the nation, to the people. The Sight revealed so much more, it made the building actually hard to look at. Its sheer gravity made Ross feel she had to stand straight, with her feet balanced, or she’d be drawn forward into it. They stepped forward slowly, both of them trying not to stagger, the weight of exhaustion and drugs making what was in front of them feel like a swaying dream. The round building was like an enormous recording device, a swirling whirlpool of visual and audible information, caught here to be replayed forever, like ancient video, fluttering and distorted, the light of childhood, the memories of the great national occasions, the hope for unity, the hope of meaning. The density of the information moving in front of her made it hard for Ross to pick out individual moments, but every voice she heard, every image that swept past her pupils meant something to her, tugged at emotions right down to the core of her, from scenes she’d seen on screen before she was aware of having memory. This place had imprinted itself into the consciousnesses of Londoners for decades. Even now, with this temple turned over to profit, the memory remained; the memory fought the building’s new purpose. This was a place of a billion ghosts.
Across the country now, the Ripper killings were continuing, and here they were, pursuing a tiny hope.
‘They’re sure it’s here?’ asked Sefton.
Ross stopped herself from looking again at the email. ‘The long barrow in the grounds was partially excavated in the fifties, before TV Centre was built. That’s when the fingerprints on the inner wall were photographed. Then it was reburied.’
They stumbled inside. Sefton showed his warrant card to the security guards on duty, who were surprised, and, in the end, relieved to have coppers around tonight. No, they didn’t want an escort. No, they insisted on not being accompanied. They talked fast and harshly and scared the receptionists simply by how they looked on this terrible night. They were allowed through the inner revolving doors, into curving corridors. Ross tried to understand what the Sight was telling her about this place. She put a hand to the wall and felt and saw the gold thread, layered and deep, fine like the grooves on a vinyl record. You could play TV Centre, she thought, if you had the right enormous and precise needle. The information that rushed down these circular corridors, around and around, all sang the same sad song, about a future that had not come to pass, a dream of modernity, of a world evolving into unity through communication. What this building had stood for was an attempt within London to solve everything, to tell the truth about everything. No wonder so many things had conspired to stamp it out, to break this recording and broadcasting device.
Sefton was looking at Google Maps on his phone. ‘I think I can feel where the barrow is,’ he said. He set off at a run which became a stagger which righted itself into a run again, and, making sure that where he was going corresponded to the map, Ross followed.
* * *
They made their way, falling sometimes into the walls or into each other, through the high, empty space of an unused studio, ancient flats standing under covers, lights still hanging from dusty rafters, enormous doors and props which were now without context, waiting to be moved to other facilities. They saw the sad faded ghosts of every meaning, beloved and lost like old school plays. They nearly fell down circular stairwells. They passed a bar on several levels, where a couple of people stood apart, looking out of the long curving windows at the fires which were now consuming the skyline, washing the ancient carpets with crimson. Sefton could taste dark beer and old drama and the tales of actors, worn into the surface of those tables and that bar. He was following, as well as his map, a feeling underneath all this, buried deep underneath the earth, something he was now experienced enough to isolate and pursue, but Ross wasn’t.