‘The Maori of New Zealand believe their dead leave a pohutukawa tree at Cape Reinga at the tip of the North Island for a journey back to Polynesia — actually back to where they came from, historically,’ said the vicar, staring into the void as Costain was, now fascinated. ‘There’s a river in Japan which is also, physically, the border between this world and the next, so they say…’
Costain watched as the vague shape resolved itself into a figure. He wasn’t sure now if the uncertainty about it was in the world or in his head. He’d lost a lot of blood to get him to the point of being able to see this. The figure wasn’t stumbling. It was walking quite purposefully, marching, even. It was familiar.
With a determined look on her face, Pierce went to the edge of the light and held out her hand.
* * *
Quill didn’t know if he could trust this. He had found, standing in the head of that statue, that he was being forced to close his eyes, and when he’d opened them he was elsewhere, looking at a strange figure. The ferryman was, depending on which side you saw him from, either a cloaked figure with skeletal hands or an Asian cabbie with tobacco stains on his fingers. He was pushing the boat forward across the river of silver which warped under and around them, his staff of many wrapped dimensions made out of the pink flatness of the Hammersmith and City line as seen on a tube map. Or he was driving across a bridge that didn’t exist, going north across the Thames, the road lined with a million spikes, the tarmac ahead red with blood that was flowing down to meet them. ‘I don’t normally go south of the river,’ he said.
* * *
Costain watched as the figure reached Pierce and grabbed her hand. He willed its features into being those he wanted to see. He hoped he had given enough.
* * *
James Quill woke up. He was in darkness. He was gasping for air. He sucked in a great breath of it. He didn’t know where he was. He … okay, he knew who he was. But there were gaps. He was naked. Was he…? He panicked for a moment, his limbs shot out and hit the sides of a container all around him. He cried out. He found that his throat hurt desperately. He bellowed again. He made himself concentrate and reached out … the sides he was touching were made of metal. He pulled back his legs as far as they could go, and slammed them forward again-
Suddenly, he was rushed forward, and was being hauled out into a light too blinding for him to see anything, amongst shouting people. He tried to lash out, fell, howling, onto a freezing floor. He was in a room. More and more people were rushing into it and they looked as astonished as he felt. He looked down at his body. His familiar flesh startled him. It was … as if he’d been gone from this house. For so long. There had been changes. Swathes of new pink skin across his chest and abdomen, younger than his own, smooth. Between his legs … new there too. The people were asking him all sorts of questions. They put water to his lips.
A morgue, he was in a morgue.
He took their hands and helped them haul him to his feet. He knew something terrible … but that didn’t matter now. Dear God, that didn’t matter now! He grabbed the glass and threw back the water. He moved his tongue, croaked and licked his lips until he was sure he could use this … unfamiliar … body again. Until he was certain he could form words. He knew exactly the words he wanted to form.
‘I know where Russell Vincent is,’ he said.
TWENTY-EIGHT
Quill called Costain from the morgue, having had a vague memory of seeing him on what already felt like a dream of one side of that bridge he’d crossed. Thankfully, the DS had been expecting the call and arrived an hour later in an unmarked van. His left hand was bandaged, but only to the extent of a minor wound. By then, Quill had been given some clothes by still-astonished morgue staff who had started to assume they must have made some enormous clerical error and were probably about to be sued. Quill immediately told Costain not to call Sarah, having already talked to the morgue authorities on that subject. He had no idea how he was going to tell her he was back, was desperately restraining his own urge to call her, to go immediately to see her, because he wanted somehow to moderate how big a shock that was going to be.
He looked at his hands. He kept wanting to touch his body. He expected to feel traumatized, but it was as if his time in Hell had been filed away by his brain as being something like a dream. He felt abused on some distant, deeply internal level and was aware that this might come out and haunt him at some point. But at least for now it was absent.
He asked about how he’d come back, what Costain had had to do with it. Costain told him: about the relationship between himself and Ross, about the details of the auction that Ross hadn’t revealed, about him committing burglary to get the Bridge. He unburdened himself of all the terrible shit that he hadn’t shared with his colleagues. Quill had to sit down. He couldn’t imagine how this was going to make Ross feel. He felt angry on her behalf, and his own — actually infuriated at this man who’d just saved him from Hell. Dear God, that was Costain all over. ‘Why did you choose me to bring back?’
‘Ross’ father coming back still wouldn’t make her happy. She even told me that.’
‘Why not keep it for yourself?’
Costain looked annoyed at being questioned. He looked as if he’d expected something more from Quill. ‘Because I want all of us to stay alive, and you’re our only chance to do that. If the truth behind what you wrote in your notebook is as important as Sefton thinks it is-’
‘Well, I know who’s responsible for the Ripper murders.’
‘Russell Vincent?’
Quill laughed in pride at his team. But the laugh turned into a painful cough and he had to drink some water. He waved aside Costain’s questions about his physical state. ‘And I know where to find him. And I’ve got a lead on Mary Arthur.’ Quill had looked at the back of his hand when he’d first understood that he had come back to life, and found nothing written there. So he’d grabbed a piece of paper and swiftly written down Mary Arthur’s number, hoping that, having repeated it so many times to himself, he’d remembered it accurately. Now he showed it to Costain. ‘Can you get me to Wapping? I’m going to make a house call on Russell Vincent. We can catch up on the way.’
* * *
As Costain drove at terrifying speed through the night that smelt of smoke, and after he and the sergeant had compared notes, Quill dialled the number he’d gone so far to get and spoke quickly and urgently to a voicemail service. ‘Mary,’ he said, ‘this is Detective Inspector James Quill of the Metropolitan Police. I know you’re going to think this is a trap. Mainly because you’ll have heard I was killed, like so many people who have angered Russell Vincent are being killed tonight. But I … avoided that, and so can you. He isn’t as powerful as he thinks he is. We know you might have seen something impossible, and we know what you were involved in.’ He repeated everything that Spatley had told him. ‘We have specialist knowledge of this field. We really can keep you safe. Be a witness for us. You can bring him down. I’m hoping you will.’
‘Tell her you’ll pay her expenses,’ said Costain. He asked for his phone back once Quill had finished the call, and listened to his messages. ‘The others have found something,’ he said, and he told Quill about where Ross and Sefton were. There was a look of tremendous hurt on his face as he did so, as if he’d been the victim of an enormous practical joke, the truth of which was only slowly dawning on him. ‘The long barrow in your notes, they found it anyway. Did I … did I bring you back, did I do that to Ross for nothing?!’
Quill shook his head. Having heard about Sefton and Ross finding the barrow, and having put two and two together with everything Costain had told him, he felt dangerously certain about a few things now. ‘Thanks,’ he said, ‘for my continued existence being valued at “nothing”, but no. I think we’re now going to be able to finish this tonight.’ He started to give Costain specific instructions.