* * *
They arrived at the skyscraper offices of a company that Quill would never have associated with Vincent. Costain used more muscle than the threat of the law to march them past the front desk. Quill got into an elevator as security guards rushed in with urgent questions, and the last thing he saw as the doors closed was Costain holding them at bay with his warrant card, starting to bellow at them. His part of this plan would keep him down there.
Quill wanted to do this alone.
NOW
‘How did you know?’ asked Russell Vincent.
‘Because I’ve just come from Hell. Where, as part of my continuing investigation, I interviewed witnesses.’ Quill didn’t want to say that his team had come to the same conclusion before him. Vincent wouldn’t know anything of what they’d been up to since the night before the raid on the Keel shop that Costain had described to him. Quill wanted to keep what they might be up to now well away from Vincent’s thoughts.
‘So the Bridge of Spikes worked.’ He was staring at Quill as if he was a fascinating lab specimen. ‘I assume that’s how you did this? Damn. Maybe I could have got my hands on it.’
‘Why didn’t you?’ said Quill.
‘I thought it was still at a very well-defended property, and I was hoping to give my people a lot more occult knowledge before I sent them to have another go.’
‘Occult knowledge gained from us?’
‘Absolutely.’
Quill looked over from where he was still holding Vincent against the wall. There, on the desk, was the scrying glass — the real thing, blood red. It was small, quite insignificant looking, but the Sight gave it great weight. It was the centrepiece of a lavish private office decked out like something from the Fifties, all green leather and polished wood, but with enormous picture windows that, given what was outside, gave the place the feel of a palace that was looking down onto the many plumes of smoke of a besieged city.
There was something else in here too. The Sight indicated an enormous, mocking presence, with a feel to it that Quill found familiar. He couldn’t pin down exactly where it was. As soon as he looked in one direction, it flitted out of the corner of his eye. He recognized it, though. The Smiling Man was watching them, letting Quill know he was here, but doubtless keeping his presence a secret from Vincent. ‘Do you see that?’ he asked.
‘What?’
‘Nothing,’ said Quill. He flung Vincent to the carpet, and before the man could do anything, marched over to the desk, grabbed the scrying glass and smashed it against the corner of a table, again and again. The glass didn’t shatter. It didn’t even break.
‘You won’t have much luck with that,’ said Vincent, getting to his feet. He went to the drinks cabinet, recovering his composure, and poured himself a whisky. ‘I’m pretty sure it’s not actually glass.’
Quill looked round for a window to throw the glass out of and realized that none of them opened. He looked back to Vincent. ‘I could just run off with it.’
Vincent produced a small black device from his jacket. ‘This is my panic button,’ he said. ‘If I press it, my security people seal the building and burst in here.’ He put down his whisky and checked his phone. ‘They’ve just asked me if I think your sergeant downstairs is really a police officer.’ He hit two keys and then the send button. ‘I’ve just told them no, I don’t think so — an entirely reasonable response, given this evening’s chaos. They’ll probably hold him until there’s someone at Gipsy Hill to verify his identity.’ He looked puzzled at Quill. ‘Where are the other two? They haven’t slept in several days. Are they on to me?’
‘They’re on their way over,’ lied Quill. He strode purposefully back over to Vincent and stopped when the billionaire held up the panic button, his finger poised. Quill was trying to control the fury he felt about what this man had done to him. He and Gaiman both. ‘Do you know why I came here?’ he asked.
‘To attack me or arrest me.’
‘To hear you tell me the truth.’
Vincent frowned and glanced at something under the level of his desk. ‘You’re not wearing a wire,’ he said. Quill walked over and saw what looked like a radio scanner. ‘I don’t think you’ve got any occult way of hiding that.’
Quill opened his borrowed jacket and displayed its interior to Vincent. ‘Nothing up my sleeve. Besides, even if we got a recorded confession, do you reckon something as surreal as this could ever make it to court?’
Vincent considered for a moment, taking a sip of his whisky. ‘What do you want to know?’
Quill had been sure the great communicator would want someone to share his story. Afterwards, he guessed, Vincent would just hit the panic button, have him locked up somewhere downstairs and then summon the Ripper. No loose ends, but Vincent couldn’t resist the chance to share.
‘How about: how did you first learn about the supernatural powers of London?’
‘It’s something London-based entrepreneurs talk about after a few beers. It’s kept at the highest levels. You know, those used to risking millions are the only businessmen mad enough to believe things like that. I got interested, found out about the auction, and, like I told you when you visited me at the mews flat, bought the scrying glass as an alternative to using the electronic methods of covert news gathering. It worked a treat. I’d sit up here, connecting my mind to a celebrity here, a politician there, finding out all their secrets while they slept and then tipping off my editors as to how they could credibly find stories they could print. Watch — what you do is this.’ He went over, and, carefully holding onto the panic button, took the scrying glass from Quill’s hands, then set it back on his desk. He sat down in front of it. ‘You concentrate on a particular location, perhaps a building, and the glass sort of tells you if anyone’s asleep in that vicinity. You can’t see anything, so you can’t use it as a spy camera, worse luck; you just get a sense of who each sleeping person is. You pick the one whose brain you want to leaf through and you get your mind connected directly to theirs. It’s like suddenly having loads more memories. You can’t keep them all, but, like you were trying to recall something you yourself knew, you can reach for whatever you’re after. With you lot, I usually just felt around for whatever you’d been up to the previous day.’ He leaned back in his chair. ‘That US presidential visit was so frustrating: I could never pin down exactly where he spent the night.’ He got up again to retrieve his whisky. ‘As you may have guessed, I also used the glass to further my political agenda. I’m mounting a sort of coup, Quill. I’m tired of politicians who court public opinion. What this country needs is a few who’ll make opinion, who’ll tell the masses what to think. That’s what the British really like. I should know. I’ve been telling them what to think for decades.’
Quill, with his generally low opinion of the general public, allowed himself a grunt of recognition.
‘So I used the glass to make good things happen for the MPs I liked, bad things for those I didn’t, and I gradually let the idea seep into Westminster that this would keep happening, that I had everyone’s secrets, that I was starting to be in control. It was especially ironic, considering that I’d become the “clean” newspaperman. They couldn’t understand how I was doing it.’
Quill found he was interested in something. ‘Did you notice that you couldn’t spy on MPs when they were in Parliament?’
‘Yes, and that was terribly frustrating, because I’d see them there on TV, dozing off on the back benches, and I couldn’t do anything about it. That barrier around the building would be something to do with those mysterious predecessors of yours, I should think. I wish you’d learned more about them.’