Quill supposed that bloody Mora Losley would be somewhere in this lot as well, and Rob Toshack and Harry and Harry’s dad and a bunch of others who might bear him a grudge, but he wasn’t planning on trying to find them.
* * *
Quill walked to where he thought Bermondsey should be, and asked around for Ross’ dad, Alfred Toshack. He was directed to a small park, where he found an enormous tree that grew to a tremendous height above all those around it. Putting a hand to his eyes to shield them from the dull glare of the sky, Quill looked up into its highest branches and found a noose there. But there was nobody hanging from it. Alfred had, according to the passersby Quill stopped and asked, been ‘sent to the Tower’.
Quill went to the Tower of London, but his authority wasn’t enough to get him in. Walking away from it, though, he had an idea. According to Ross, Alfred Toshack had been able to see every detail of what was going on in the everyday world from his vantage point in Hell. It was part of his punishment. If Quill could find somewhere high enough that he could access — in his condition he didn’t fancy trying to climb that tree — perhaps he could duplicate that. Perhaps he could find out, from Hell, things he wanted to know about the real world.
* * *
He was told the centre of London was where, in the modern version, the Centre Point building would be. He went to see what was there, and Hell anticipated that, enjoyed it. He wondered if it would be a tall building.
He felt the shadow a long time before he saw, over the buildings, what was making it. At the centre of Hell’s London stood an enormous statue of the Smiling Man. There was an entrance at its base. Like the Statue of Liberty, it seemed, one could walk up inside it and, yes, he saw movement behind them, look through the eyes.
He discovered, when he got to the entrance, that to do so would cost him. Of course it would. But he needed to do this, so he paid. Hell had known that he would.
He climbed the stairs inside the statue, which took all his energy, emphasizing each of his pains — of course it did.
He reached the top and looked out of one of the eyes. Beside him, helpless, sobbing newcomers were doing the same from the other. They had come here, like him, in a vain search for hope.
Quill looked out over Hell’s London. There it was: not just this outer borough beneath him, but, at an angle to the horizon, the real London. He was looking down on it. London in summer, a blissful aerial view that made Quill feel an agony of wanting and loss. He could see it in several different ways, he realized. There was the physical city, there was a sort of contour map of rushing energies, and there was … as if it had been built there, a great wheel, the structure of which was threaded through everything, that cut across everything. The wheel was made of ideas made by people, or imposed on them. It had gone wrong, he saw: it was moving the wrong way. Right now, there was nothing he could do about that, so eventually he looked elsewhere.
He could see Jason Forrest’s limited point of view, the history of the historical Jack the Ripper, the warring viewpoints of the occult community. He could see whatever concepts he wanted to see. He found himself automatically thinking about Sarah, and then suddenly he was looking at her, and he knew where she was on the map as he pulled his attention away from her.
Oh, oh, that was too painful. If he stayed here he was going to have to do it again. Again and again. What could he look at that was more practical, that could give him a despairing hint of his duty again? He looked again at the back of his hand, at the phone number he’d written there and memorized through repetition.
He looked back to the real London to find all the places Russell Vincent might be.
TWENTY-SEVEN
EARLIER ON THE EVENING THAT QUILL RETURNED TO LIFE
Costain drove the van into the car park of St Gertrude’s Church in the part of Enfield known as World’s End and parked. He composed himself for a moment. Then he got out.
The facade of the church was bathed in spotlights on this still not very cold night. They threw deep shadows across the porch. As he approached the building, Costain saw a figure standing there, then stepping out to meet him. It was a young woman in clerical dress, a worried look on her face.
‘Reverend Pierce?’
‘You must be Sergeant Costain. Okay, let’s not waste any time.’ She sounded like an Oxbridge graduate, calm and professional. She was somehow more modern than Costain had expected her to be.
‘I was surprised when I read you did this.’
‘I don’t like the fact that one can do this. Very few people know. Priests who apply to be the vicar of this parish are warned off it, and only if they persist are they told the nature of the geography here, and only if they then still persist are they trained to make use of it. Turns out I’m rather pig-headed. We’re told it’s for the health of London. There used to be some sort of body overseeing it, but for some reason no one now seems to know how to contact them. I’m quite interested to see whether it still works.’
‘Me too.’
She led him not inside the church, as he’d been expecting, but around it, to a side of the churchyard where there were no spotlights and the shadow of the building cut a straight line between light and absolute darkness. There they stopped. ‘Here we are.’
‘Have you done this before?’
‘Twice. My predecessor only did it once. Demand seems to be on the increase.’
He showed her the Bridge of Spikes. ‘I thought this was unique, or at least just once a century.’
‘It might be. I don’t know what it is.’ He quickly explained to her, and she raised an eyebrow. ‘In every previous case I’ve dealt with, and in all I’ve read, these are only visits. You think that this object offers … a permanent solution?’ She sounded not only dubious, but worried at the implications.
Costain found he was suddenly angry. But not at her. He could only hope he hadn’t sacrificed so much for something brief and terrible. ‘Whatever. Come on. Let’s do it.’
‘All right.’ She closed her eyes, said some prayers under her breath and made the sign of the cross. ‘If you know what to do with that thing, do it now.’
Costain took a deep breath. He only had a feeling for what had to be done. The sphere seemed to be telling him. If he was to use it on himself, this is what he’d have had to do at any point before he died. He supposed you could even do it way in advance. He put the sphere in the palm of his left hand, and then, decisively, crushed it in his grasp. For a moment, nothing happened, and then-
He stared in shock as he saw the spikes burst through his flesh. It was as if his hand had turned into a golden sea urchin, every spike dripping with blood.
Then the obvious agony of that hit him, and he had to fall to his knees. He grabbed his left wrist with his right hand, staring at it. Blood was gushing around the spikes now, surely from some major artery! He was panting. The meth both amplified the shock and deadened it, let him see past it. But … it was … only pain. He somehow knew he hadn’t been horribly wounded, that the Bridge had prevented that.
He managed to open his hand … the Bridge had vanished. He was sure, though, because it was telling him, that it had done its work.
The reverend was crouched beside him, he realized, looking desperately at him, wondering how she could help. ‘Do it!’ he bellowed.
‘It’s done,’ she said. ‘Can I get a dressing for-?’
‘Not until I know!’ Costain forced himself to look up from his own blood splattering onto the gravel of the church path. He looked into the darkness. He could see something moving there.