Ross both felt and heard the noise rise from the field and crash through the crowd around them. She and Sefton turned at the same moment. . and on the big screen saw Linus McGuire again trotting back to the centre spot, his team mates rushing around him. He looked actually burdened now, the laugh he was sharing with them was awkward.
The crowd felt complicated. It hated feeling complicated.
‘Take him off,’ muttered Sefton. ‘You’re two-nil up at fucking West Ham, so sub him!’
‘That’d be visibly giving in to threats,’ said Ross. ‘It’s okay. He won’t try to score again.’ But she knew she was just telling herself that.
They became aware of the chants rising around them. West Ham songs, but also tunes that referred to the current situation — creating waves of horrified, relieved, cathartic laughter. ‘We’ll see you on Crimewatch, we will. .’ To the tune of ‘Que Sera Sera’. Ross saw Sefton start to laugh at that, and then he put a hand to his mouth, altogether too tense to let it out.
‘Anything from the uniforms?’ That was Quill arriving, with Costain beside him.
‘No sightings so far,’ said Sefton, looking up from his Airwave radio.
‘If she is here,’ said Ross, ‘she’s either invisible, or looking different from how the fans normally see her.’
‘At least we’ve forced her to change her habits even that much,’ said Costain.
Ross was struck by a sudden thought. ‘I wonder if she can actually still hide from us now? You know, can she shift up another level, past what the Sight can see?’
‘I’ve, erm, been thinking about that,’ said Sefton.
They all looked to him, and he seemed again to regret having spoken up. To him, it was as if there was something shameful about the nature of the speciality he was developing. After all, he’d been the one to say it was the language of the dispossessed, and Ross wondered now how much he included himself in that group. ‘These are all just assumptions, but we said we were doing assumptions, so. . I don’t think she’ll have done that. Not yet. This is rough stuff, big-button stuff, either one thing or the other. We’ve got the Sight, so we can. . see. It feels as if, to take it up a level, she’d need to counteract that with something else, something bigger, and that would be going out of her way, which she doesn’t want to, you know. .’ He looked between them, suddenly seeming to realize that they didn’t know, really. ‘Like I said, just assumptions.’
‘I don’t know if she is in here somewhere,’ said Quill. ‘But someone else has made their presence felt.’ Costain then described his encounter.
Ross got out her laptop, awkwardly held it up with one hand, and ran the PRO-FIT facial description software. ‘Go on,’ she said, ‘let’s be having him for the Ops Board.’ And she quickly selected facial composite items as Costain described the man to her. They’d just about finished when a vast, terrible, scared sound burst from the crowd.
They slowly turned. On the pitch, Stoke players were again milling around Linus McGuire, celebrating — but celebrating at the crowd, defiant almost, as if violence was going to come and strike down their mate any moment now. McGuire himself stopped moving. He held the others back.
‘Don’t,’ Quill whispered. ‘Don’t provoke her.’
The footballer kissed the badge on his shirt, then raised three fingers. The subdued West Ham supporters’ reaction turned instantly to jeers.
On the big screen above them the replay was running. McGuire was in a scramble on the goal line, a lot of feet and heads sticking out among a lot of defenders, as the ball curved down towards them. Anyone could score. And indeed it was hard to see how McGuire could have, while staying out of it at the back of that mass of bodies. But then the picture flickered, and Ross realized that it was changing just for their benefit, as McGuire was shunted forwards a few feet from where he’d been, his body being flung at the ball like a projectile. His head caught it precisely, and sent it into the top corner. He looked astonished as he landed again, the force that had propelled him sending him skidding along the ground.
Ross felt something looking at them and knew the others were feeling it too. Something enormous was saying hello. Her hand reflexively went to the knife in her pocket.
Among all the swaying, yelling, chanting thousands, there he stood, the man Costain had described, just below the screen as it reverted to being a normal scoreboard. He was smiling broadly.
‘She isn’t here. She was never going to be here,’ declared Costain. ‘This isn’t our trap. It’s his.’
The look on Quill’s face was terrible to see.
Sefton’s Airwave radio hissed with urgent communication from the uniforms. Ross let go of her knife and looked away quickly from that horrifying face, back to her laptop, determined to fix all its details in her memory so they could have him.
She saw that the composite face on the screen was now smiling too.
When she looked up again, the man was gone.
And then all hell broke loose.
FOURTEEN
The crowd rose from their seats amid a vast, jeering roar, Irons fans surging towards the lines of the Stoke fans, as if it was their fault that McGuire had scored. He was immediately substituted, and ran for the tunnel to the away changing rooms as abuse and objects were hurled at him. The uniforms and stewards rushed forward, to get between them, and just about managed to keep them apart. The fans fell back like an ebb tide, bellowing at each other across the lines.
‘Come on,’ Quill shouted, and led his team running for the steps.
Quill burst in through the door of the away changing room, a bunch of uniforms with him and his team, having shoved their way past all the idiots that tried to get in the way. The enormous noise of the jeering echoed all around them. It didn’t seem to be just one opinion of what had happened, but many, all interfering with each other like waves crashing around the stadium. Physios and assistants and players came towards them, all yelling in different languages. ‘Change of bloody plan!’ Quill yelled. ‘Get your trousers on, Linus. You’re going on a long journey.’
And there he was, the player himself, with a grim look on his face, already buttoning his shiny suit. ‘I don’t know. . Nobody’s said. .’
‘That’s what we’re here for. Let’s be having you.’ Quill grabbed hold of the man and hauled him to the door, just as Finch, the Stoke City chairman, arrived to get in the way.
‘Now, hold on. We offered you our complete cooperation but-’
‘Brilliant. Try to keep up.’ And they were off and out of there.
Quill spoke quickly into his Airwave radio, as Finch tried to argue in his ear, Costain having to actually grab the star player away from the trailing mass of people who followed them. He could hear Ross behind him, keeping Lofthouse in the loop on her mobile. With the uniforms kept so busy on crowd control, the original plan was shot, and there was no chance of keeping McGuire safe on the team coach. Their only chance now was speed and surprise.
They came out into the fading light at the players’ entrance to the stadium, just as two cars pulled up. They were CID unmarked cars, driven by DCs from the local main office who’d been handy when Quill had started yelling. They’d have to do. Outside the gates, Quill could see the media forming up on the pavements. He found a CID officer, threw a towel over his head, and got the uniforms to form a cordon as the man was bundled over to the first car and shoved in the back. ‘Fast as you can, go visit lovely Swindon,’ he told the driver, then thumped the roof and stepped back. The car headed off out through the enormous gates, the media moving in but then giving way in the face of a blaring of the horn. Costain meanwhile held McGuire back in the tunnel, out of sight.