‘But which now sounds like something you’d need to talk to your agent about,’ said Quill.
‘Nobody outside the car saw anything,’ said Ross. ‘Nobody felt the suspect move through or above the crowd. Tunstall’s testimony is what you’d expect of someone who was watching an attack by an invisible assailant. And I should add…’ She used her own pen to write ‘Can walk through walls (slowly)’ under the cartoon of the prime suspect.
‘Like Losley,’ said Costain.
She also added ‘Can vanish’.
‘And again.’
‘Remind me to cover that up at the end of the day,’ said Quill. ‘We don’t want to terrify the cleaners.’ He paused as he stepped back from what was once again a blankness. ‘We need to do proper police work on what’s up there,’ he said. ‘We need to find meaning, a narrative. We work our three suspects: in the real world and in what, horribly, I’m starting to think of as our world.’
Sefton saw that now was the time to announce the plan he’d been putting together. He was a bit proud of this, the sort of cross-discipline package that, in normal police work, would have been a boost to his CV. Now Lofthouse had made it obvious that she was aware of what they did — whatever the implications of that were — it might still be a good career move. ‘I’ve been assembling a list of people who seem to be on the fringes of the subculture we encountered at that New Age fair. I know a few places where they hang out. I could start to attempt undercover contact, get some sources for general background on all this stuff and work towards specifics concerning the Spatley case, if you think it’s time to risk all that.’
‘I do.’ Quill nodded. ‘Go forth and make it so, my son.’ He turned back to the wall and began pinning up a big sheet of paper on the right of the board. ‘And now, ladies and gentlemen, it’s time for … operational objectives!’ He picked up a marker and began to write.
1. Ensure the safety of the public.
2. Gather evidence of offences.
3. Identify and trace subject or subjects involved (if any).
4. Identify means to arrest subject or subjects.
5. Arrest subject or subjects.
6. Bring to trial/destroy.
7. Clear those not involved of all charges.
‘Maybe it’s a bit vague,’ he admitted, standing back to admire his work, ‘but for us it’s always going to be. Even writing the word “destroy”…’ He let himself trail off. ‘But that’s how it is for us. And, of course, this list mirrors the objectives of Forrest’s SCD 1 murder inquiry, which, if we’re not careful, may lead to conflict and ire. Now, instead of drawing the names from the central register, I say we continue to name our own ops because that’s how we roll and I like it. So for this one, where we might well be venturing into Gothic and clichéd portrayals of our fair metropolis, how about…’
He wrote on the card at the top of the Ops Board:
OPERATION FOG
The rest of the day was spent assembling all the evidence they had and building their initial Ops Board to the point where they all felt they were looking at everything they knew. They kept the news on in the background, but no fresh details came to light in the press. Ross had set up a bunch of hashtag searches on Twitter, but, as the day went on, they only revealed that London was panicking and gossiping in many different ways about the murder; no one signal was poking up out of the terrified noise.
All in all, Sefton was glad to have put in such a productive day and, with the Portakabin getting stuffy, he was pleased when Quill sent everyone home. Home was now a tiny flat above a shop in Walthamstow with, on good nights, a parking space outside. Tonight he was lucky. The flat was half the size of the place he’d used as an undercover. It was like suddenly being a student again. Joe, who lived in a bigger place, had started coming over and staying most nights, which neither of them had commented on, so that was probably okay. Tonight he found Joe had just got in, using the key Sefton had had made for him two weeks ago, and was planning on heading straight out to the chippy. ‘Best news all day,’ Sefton said, after kissing him, and they headed off.
The streets of Walthamstow were full of people, loads of office workers coming out of the tube in shirtsleeves, jackets slung over their shoulder, women pulling their straps down to get some sun. They looked as if they were deliberately trying to be relaxed, despite the smell of smoke always on the air, even out here. But even the sunshine had felt sick this summer, never quite burning through the clouds, instead shafting through gaps in them. It felt as if the whole summer was going to be dog days. Or perhaps all that was just the perspective of the Sight. It was impossible for Sefton to separate himself from it now. Every day in the street he saw the same horrors the others did, startling adjuncts to reality. ‘The opposite of miracles,’ he’d called them when Joe had asked for a description. There was a homeless person begging at the tube entrance as the two of them passed, an addict by the look of him, thin hair in patches, his head on his chest, filthy blankets around his legs. He was newly arrived with the ‘austerity measures’.
‘So,’ said Joe, ‘what did you do at work today?’
‘Can’t tell you.’
‘I thought you told me everything.’
‘Everything about the … you know, the weird shit. Nothing about operational stuff.’
‘Ah, so now there is operational stuff.’
‘Yeah. Kind of big, actually.’
‘Oh. Oh! You mean like what everyone’s been talking about all day?’
Sefton sighed. Why had he been so obvious? ‘And now I’m shagging a detective.’
Joe worked in PR for an academic publishing house and was now doing the job of what had been a whole department. His work stories were about dull professors who couldn’t be made interesting.
He lowered his voice. ‘I saw about the murder on telly and thought the same as everyone else is saying, that it had to be the driver-’
‘I can’t-’
‘-which means it must really be something only you lot can see, like, bloody hell, another witch or something, like maybe there’s one for every football club? The witch of Woolwich Arsenal? The witch of Wolves? It can only be the alliterative ones. Liverpool doesn’t have one. Liverpool has a … lich. Whatever one of those is.’
Sefton put a hand on his arm and actually stopped him. ‘Could we just get those chips?’
* * *
They sat on the low wall of the car park outside the chippy and breathed in the smell of frying. The old woman in a hijab they always saw around here trod slowly past, selling the Big Issue. Sefton bought one.
‘How are your team getting on now?’
‘I can’t talk about the case.’
‘Which is why I’m asking about the people.’
‘I think there’s something up with Ross.’
‘Really?’ Joe followed the people Sefton talked about as if they were characters on TV, never having met them, and Sefton almost laughed at the interest in his voice.
‘Ever since she got into the Docklands documents, she’s kind of suddenly gone back to how she was: all curled up against the world. Maybe it’s that she’s found something terrible and doesn’t want the rest of us to have to deal. Maybe she’s waiting until she’s got all the details.’
‘Like what?’
‘I don’t know. I don’t even know if she and Costain are rubbing each other up the wrong way or…’
‘Just rubbing each other?’