There was a well-dressed, powerfully built man walking purposefully along the same row of seats. He was keeping his head down, therefore Costain couldn’t see his face. He was walking in a way that was out of the ordinary, something coppers always noticed, but it took Costain a moment to work out what exactly was odd. He didn’t seem to be having to edge around people’s feet, or get them to lift up their plastic beer glasses out of his way. He was heading for the little square emptied of seats, and nobody seemed to be paying him particular attention. And surely they would be. Maybe they knew him, as a director or something. But, no, then they’d be shaking his hand. But there was nothing of the Sight about him. It was as if he was. . beyond all that. Costain started to get a terrible feeling about the body language of this figure. He didn’t want to see that concealed face. Sod that. He himself started to move along the row, towards the group of missing seats, but in his case that meant doing all that awkward stepping and looking down that the other figure had somehow avoided.
He took a glance up. The figure was now standing in the middle of the empty square where those seats had been, looking away from him, into the main body of the stadium, seeming pleased with himself. The steward clearly wasn’t seeing him. The crowd wasn’t berating or applauding him, so they weren’t seeing him either. Costain increased his own pace, determined to get his hands on him.
And then the man turned and looked straight at him. And he smiled an enormous smile. It was a smile of recognition.
Costain collapsed. He fell among the feet of fans who started bellowing at him. He felt as if the entire stadium was suddenly tilting on its side. He had a vision of it rolling downhill. The sky was spinning overhead. Costain couldn’t allow this. This fucker was goading him now, challenging him. Just because of where I saw him last, he thinks I’m his bitch, to knock over with a bloody smile? Fuck gravity! He launched himself forward, hauling himself from seat to seat, having to push his way past every intervening foot, making the people he was getting past yell at him, the force of the crowd around him turning against him in an outraged roar as they saw where he was heading. And, all the while, that bugger kept smiling at him, and the force of that smile was like a gale in itself.
Costain finally burst out at the end of the row. He was about to yell at the man, and land a hand on his collar.
Only suddenly he wasn’t there.
He collapsed again, this time inside the empty area. He was dragged to his feet by the steward, who was yelling something at him. And the crowd all around were yelling too, booing and starting to throw things, coins and wrappers, now he’d ventured in to the place of taboo. Costain grabbed his warrant card and brandished it at the steward, who backed off, his hands in the air. He felt like turning in a circle, holding it up to all of them. See? See? I’m actually one of the good guys! The catcalls and yells subsided, but only a little.
Quill eventually found him leaning against a concrete wall, somewhere in the depths of the building. The match had started, and Costain could hear and feel it ebbing and flowing above them, the sound and sensation resonating through the stone. Costain reported his encounter in the correct manner, like a good copper, but he couldn’t help mentioning the thought that had slammed into him through that gale of public opinion caused just by an invisible smile. ‘Listen, what if what we’ve discovered. . what if this is the reason everything’s so shit?’
‘What?’
‘This evil shit that nobody knows about, this is real reality, isn’t it? We do our best, we give to charity, we put in our shifts, we fucking recycle. But all the time this is what the world’s about. That bastard was in charge of that stadium, and his. . gang — Losley and people like her — are the ones with the power to run reality, the way drug gangs run countries. Maybe they’re the reason why the banks got fucked up, and politics is corrupt, and there’s war all the time, and frigging global warming, and every year a new epidemic. If the boss then decides really to put the screws on, in a few years’ time everyone is just going to be fighting each other over the last few fucking scraps left!’
Quill held up a hand to stop him. ‘I have thought about this,’ he said. ‘And I think that if it’s all true, which it won’t be, ’cos everything’s got a bit of front to it, then it’s a good thing.’
Costain stared at him.
‘If this is why the world is shit, then. . don’t you get it? We’ve been given the greatest opportunity any coppers have ever had. We’ve seen the cause of all human evil. And we can nick him.’
‘You’re saying, we could nick-?’
‘Best not name him. It might be like in Harry Potter. No, I reckon that’s why he showed up now. We met his enforcer, but we didn’t run away and hide. He’s wondering if he’s got a game on.’
Costain couldn’t help it: he started to laugh. ‘Bloody hell, Jimmy-’
‘It’s a way to go, anyway, right? Thinking that? Trying that? Tell me that’s not a way to go.’
They both jumped at the sudden noise erupting above them. The slam of a thousand boots, and a horrified pulse of group emotion that had stabbed straight downwards towards them. And then they heard and felt the rumble that came afterwards: the yell of anger, the collective fire of being hurt. Costain closed his eyes, now the moment of release was over. ‘One-nil to Stoke,’ he said.
Ross was on the other side of the stadium, with Sefton, watching the crowd and not the match. They’d quartered up the audience, and through binoculars studied every occupant of every seat. But while there’d been a few things noticeable from the world of the Sight, none of them was Losley. They turned as the goal went in. The celebrations among the away fans were muted, and Ross watched as the player, Linus McGuire, ran quickly back to the centre spot, keeping his head down. The display on the big screen showed laughter from his team mates, however. Careful you don’t get two more, mate!
She realized that she hadn’t just intuited that emotion, but she’d felt it from the crowd. She glanced over to Sefton, who nodded. ‘I can feel this kind of. . raw group desire,’ he said. ‘We’ve got senses other people don’t have, now. I think this is how Losley knew. . about my private life. I don’t think she actually read my mind, or any shit like that. One of those gestures she made kind of read my barcode. Excellent gaydar. We’ve just had the first hints for ourselves of what it must be like to see things as she does, like big crowd emotions we’d probably get anyway, or how we could have gone up to that guy and already known he was a grieving dad. God, I’m just talking and talking-’
‘You’re doing analysis, is what you’re doing. We should work out how she does it. Or maybe you have to be. . I don’t know, special like her.’
‘No,’ Sefton shook his head; this was really important to him, ‘it’s the opposite of special. Losley’s not the queen of the entire world, is she? She’s hiding herself in. . well, okay, several. . council houses. When I felt this power up close in the street, when I felt it inside that Jack thing, it was sort of. . angry, dispossessed. It didn’t feel that it was in charge. It felt like what you might be left with if you had nothing else in the world, and if you were desperate enough to turn to it. I think I can just start to see how you could approach the idea of using it, and feel how you might if you weren’t. . overwhelmed by it. But I think I would still be overwhelmed by it every time one of those sodding monsters or some shit-’