He’d gone down into the hole and he’d faced his fear and he’d come out changed. He’d taken a first step. Already a lot of what he’d experienced felt like a story, something that had happened to someone else. He took his special notebook from his pocket, and started to write down all he could remember. But he didn’t know if he’d ever be able to show it to anybody.
TWENTY-SEVEN
With the cage holding the cat, Costain stood at the empty Boleyn Ground, in the gap where Losley’s and Toshack’s season-ticket seats had once been. Match day was tomorrow, and there were already preparations being made. He unbolted the cage. ‘All right,’ he said, ‘out you get.’
The cat looked at him in surprise for a moment, then did so, dropping lightly on to the concrete. ‘Are you releasing me?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Why?’
‘You’ve got nothing further to contribute to the inquiry. And maybe I’m looking for some good karma. You’ll know from your radio plays that Brits always treat animals decently, even when they’re being shits to each other.’
‘Oh, thank you. Another unexpected kindness.’
‘Will you go back to her?’
‘I’d like to, because I agree with her that she should have me around. But that all depends on whether or not she spots me here. It was a reasonable choice of site on your part. As any true Irons fan would, she does look in on the ground from time to time, remotely as it were. I shall remain here and see what transpires.’
Costain squatted to smooth the creature’s head. ‘Good luck, Tiger Feet.’
‘Thank you. You have been very kind. You are not as bad as you have been painted.’
Costain smiled and headed out of the ground. When he’d driven a significant distance away — further, he hoped, than Losley would ever notice if looking in on her beloved turf — he stopped the car, and took the receiving station for the locator bug from out of the glove compartment. The GPS showed the tiny flash of light at the Boleyn Ground repeating. He didn’t know how long it took for food to make its way through a cat’s digestive system, but he hoped Losley would take the bait before then. She would surely want to retrieve something that she’d invested so much in creating. And there the cat would be highly visible, in a place she paid great attention to, and seemingly free to take back. She might even think she could learn a few things about the coppers from it, but Costain hoped that the friendship he’d so carefully developed with it would protect them from any devastating revelations. And, to be honest, they were utterly vulnerable where she was concerned, anyway. Losley would take the cat back to wherever she was hiding, and the locator bug would then tell them where that was, so they could all swoop in and save Jessica. That was his plan. But, standing here now, it seemed a pretty distant hope.
His phone rang. ‘If you’ve finished your own secret project,’ said Quill, ‘then get your arse back here. Ross has called in, and she’s got us a solid lead.’
‘Me, too,’ he said, and managed to describe what he’d just done without committing the sin of pride. Not much. As he drove off, though, he wondered about sins committed against cats, and whether or not whatever went around really did come around. He hoped he’d get a chance to prove otherwise.
Ross marched into the evidence room to find Quill, Costain and Sefton standing surrounded by all eighty-three stationery boxes. ‘Still can’t find anything,’ said Quill, looking at her almost angrily. ‘Who’s this source of yours?’
For a moment, she wanted to lie or say nothing at all. But then she realized that it was just a ridiculous reflex, that she had no reason to. So she told them everything. She saw that Sefton was looking as if he understood, as if he’d been through something enormous himself. Costain looked sombre as she described her dad’s circumstances. When she got to the bit about the boxes, she went and picked one up, and turned it over in her hands. She put her hand inside it, feeling all the way around. Frustrated, she put it aside and picked up another.
‘So what are we looking for?’ asked Costain.
‘It must be something. . normal. Last time we looked, we were so into having the Sight, but Toshack didn’t possess that. .’ She stopped and realized that, as she’d been talking, she was actually looking straight at what she’d been talking about. ‘Look.’
In biro, on one side of the box, there was a tiny X.
‘X marks the spot,’ said Costain, uncertainly.
‘See if you can find any more,’ said Quill.
They found twenty-nine boxes with Xs marked on them. They made a pile of them. They worked fast, aware of the ticking clock, the football match approaching, and what any single goal would mean. Ross discovered that most of them had two Xs, on opposite sides. Four of them, like the one Ross had picked up first, had only one X. The Xs came in two colours, blue and red. Always the same colour on both sides, except-
Ross held up the special box and spun it to show them all four sides: two blue Xs opposite two red ones. ‘Do you see?’ she said. The others watched as she put it all together. The special box, with four Xs, went in the middle of the space they’d cleared on the evidence room floor. She placed a row of boxes, red X adjacent to red X, running right through it, so the special box remained in the middle. Then she did the same with the blue-X boxes.
They now formed a single large X.
As soon as she shoved the last box into place, something happened. There was a little noise. . as the boxes all shunted closer together. She gently tried to move one of them. But it was stuck against the box beside it, and also to the floor. She stood up and looked at the others.
‘Kick arse,’ said Costain.
Sefton sniffed. ‘What’s that smell?’
‘Fresh air,’ said Quill. ‘Didn’t recognize it for a second.’
It was coming from the boxes, Ross realized. She leaned over to sniff. . and leaped back as the construction. . started to move. It was spinning on the floor, like something badly animated in a children’s show. The lines of boxes were sweeping around, faster and faster, without making any sound to suggest their bases scraping against the concrete. She blinked. . Okay, so the concrete underneath the boxes seemed to be moving too. The X spun faster and faster until it was a silent blur, just a circle of movement on the floor. At the same time a pleasant wet winter breeze was wafting into the stuffiness of the nick.
They kept watching it. They waited. It kept going. Nothing else happened.
‘What’s this for, then?’ said Costain.
‘I think it’s some sort of. . travel thing,’ said Ross. ‘Dad tried to say it was Toshack’s way of getting himself to a lock-up that we haven’t yet found.’
Costain picked up one of the other boxes. ‘I think I heard him working this,’ he said, ‘through the door to his den. This must be why he spent so much time up there.’ He took an awkward run-up at the spinning shape, and threw the box into the air above it.
The box vanished.
They walked around the spinning boxes for a while.
‘We’ve got to see if it sort of. . does it all in one go. .’ said Quill ‘. . or if someone’s going to get their arm chopped off if they make an extravagant gesture.’ He got a mop and, holding it gently, moved it towards the air above the spinning boxes. The end of the mop vanished into thin air. He pulled it back, and there was the end of the mop again. Ross felt relieved. There was a line around the circumference of the boxes: outside it, things were visible; inside, they weren’t — and those things could be safely retracted again.
‘So that leads to-?’
‘Still somewhere in Greater London, judging by his travel time when he used the car instead,’ said Costain.
‘Wait a sec,’ said Sefton. He ran out, and returned a few minutes later with his holdall, from which he produced the vanes that Quill had taken off the bloke who’d attacked him in Westminster Hall. ‘I’ve been wondering if these were meant to be a weapon, or if. .’ He held them towards the spinning boxes as if they were dowsing rods, and took a step forward. The vanes turned in his hands, crossing each other. ‘X marks the spot again,’ he said.