‘Oh, I’d let myself forget that for just a second. You’re such a people person.’
Costain’s front remained intact. ‘One of us has to be. But, being serious, thank you for noting that.’
Ross didn’t make eye contact with him as she set up the PC to view the footage. That holier-than-thou carefulness that Costain often adopted these days in his fear of going to Hell seemed to annoy her more than it did Quill and Sefton.
When it appeared onscreen, Quill’s team moved in close to see the images that might give them new purpose. Only Lofthouse held back. They were looking down on a car caught in a traffic jam, protestors swarming around it, some of them looking up at the camera and covering their faces further. A couple of bricks were thrown towards it, but nothing hit it, thank God. Many of the protestors were done up in that Toff mask and cape.
Then something different came walking through the crowd, approaching the car from the left. Quill’s team all leaned forward at the same moment.
The figure flowed past the protestors, its presence pushing them aside, its passing going unfelt.
‘That’s also someone in a Toff outfit,’ said Sefton.
It was. But it was blazing white, obviously a thing of the Sight. It was like watching an infrared image of a warm body in a cold room.
‘The trouble is,’ said Ross, ‘you can’t see much detail.’
Quill looked over his shoulder to check with Lofthouse.
‘I can’t see anything,’ she said. ‘Which I suppose is good news.’
He looked back to the image. The figure was pushing itself up against the side of the car, still getting no reaction from those around it. It started easing its way into the vehicle, until it had completely vanished inside. They watched for a few moments as nothing much happened, horribly aware of what had been reported, but seeing nothing through the tinted windows.
Suddenly, the figure burst out from the right-hand side of the car. It left a spatter of silver as it went. Quill recognized that stuff, whatever it was, as what he’d seen shining out of the car crime scene photos, a liquid that had been deposited all over the seats. With the grace of a dancer, the figure leaped onto the heads of the crowd, and then it was jumping into the air-
It was literally gone in a flash.
Quill’s team all looked at each other, excitement in their expressions.
‘Well?’ asked Lofthouse.
‘We have set eyes on our target nominal, ma’am.’
‘Excellent. I want to be kept in touch with all developments. As soon as possible, I want your proposed terms of reference for a new operation.’
Quill was sure his team would have applauded, if that was the sort of thing coppers did. For the first time in weeks, there was an eager look about them.
‘Game on,’ he said.
TWO
The torso of Michael Spatley MP was a horrifying mass of wounds, including an awful washed stump of pale, open blood vessels where his genitals had been hacked at.
‘He seems to have been slashed across the throat,’ said the pathologist, ‘and then multiple incisions across the abdomen, by a very sharp blade, probably that of a razor. The weapon was not found at the scene. His testicles were cut at their base and the subsequent shock and swift large loss of blood was the cause of death. Time of death tallies with the clock on the CCTV camera, which indicates between eighteen-thirty-two and eighteen-thirty-nine. Direction of blood splatter — ’ she held up a photo of the interior of the car from the files they’d all been given by DCI Forrest’s office — ‘is consistent with the assailant kneeling across the rear seats. No arterial blood was tracked back to the front seats. The driver appears, and I stress appears, to have stayed put in the front during the attack.’
‘From other CCTV cameras,’ Ross noted, ‘it’s clear that the brake lights come on at several points during the time the car was stuck there, meaning that someone’s foot was still on the brake pedal, until a point which may coincide with the driver going to help the victim after the attack, as per his story.’
Quill knew from what only his team could see that that was actually precisely true.
‘How interesting,’ said the pathologist. ‘Not my department.’
What she wasn’t talking about, because she couldn’t see it, was what Quill could see the others glancing at too. All over the corpse, from the grimace on his face to the ripped-up abdomen, there lay traces of the same shining silver substance they’d seen earlier. It looked like spiders’ webs on a dewy morning, or, and Quill stifled an awkward smile at the thought, cum. As the pathologist went into a more vigorous description of how the wounds had been inflicted — frantic slashing and then precise surgical cuts — he gave Costain the nod.
Costain suddenly spasmed in the direction of the pathologist, knocking her clipboard from her hands, as if he was on the verge of vomiting.
Sefton quickly took a phial from his bag and, while the pathologist was fussing over Costain, managed to get enough of the silver stuff into it. He screwed the top closed and dropped it back into the bag.
The pathologist was helping Costain straighten up. ‘If you’re going to do that, we need to get you out of here,’ she was saying.
‘No, no,’ Costain waved her away and abruptly straightened up, smiling at her as he handed her back the clipboard. ‘Thanks, but I think I can hold it.’
* * *
They went to the custody suite and arranged an interview with Spatley’s driver. Brian Tunstall looked stunned, Quill thought, stressed out beyond the ability to show it, as if at any moment this would all be revealed as an enormous practical joke at his expense. He must be somewhere on the lower end of the Sighted spectrum — there were degrees to this stuff — because he hadn’t mentally translated what he’d seen into something explicable. But Quill supposed that, in the circumstances, doing that would have been quite an ask. There were still traces of the shiny substance on his shirt. It was odd to see an adult standing with such mess on him, not seeing it, and therefore not having attempted to clean himself up.
‘Listen,’ Tunstall said immediately. ‘I want to change my statement.’
‘Now, wait-’ began Quill.
‘What I said happened was impossible. It couldn’t have gone like that, could it? One of the protestors must have got into the car-’
‘Mate,’ said Costain, ‘we believe you.’
Tunstall stopped short. ‘You what?’ Then he slumped, a tremendous weight on him again. ‘Oh, right, I get it: you’re the good cop.’
Costain pointed to himself, looking surprised. ‘Bad cop.’
‘Surreal cop,’ said Sefton, also pointing to himself.
‘Good cop,’ admitted Quill. ‘Relatively. Which is weird.’
Ross just raised an eyebrow.
Tunstall looked between them, unsure if they were taking the piss.
Being interviewed by this unit, thought Quill, must sometimes seem like being interrogated by Monty Python’s Flying Circus. At least they had his attention. ‘Why don’t you tell us all of it,’ he said gently, ‘just the truth, as you saw it, and don’t edit yourself for something that’s too mad, because mad is what we do.’
Tunstall sat down at the interview table. ‘What does that mean?’
‘We have access to … certain abilities that other units don’t. Which means that, as Detective Sergeant Costain says, we are indeed willing to believe you. We know there are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio. So telling the whole truth now might really do you a favour.’
The man looked more scared than ever.
* * *
It took until lunchtime to complete the interview and sort out the paperwork. Tunstall’s story was indeed impossible, and confirmed all the physical evidence. The man finally said he couldn’t remember anything else and needed to get some sleep. Quill ended the interview. He found his own attention starting to wander and baulked at the prospect of going back to the team’s nick for maybe only an hour or two of bleary discussion, so he sent his team home for the day and went back to his bed. Only to find that Jessica was home and wanted to play with trains. So that was what they did, until Quill lay his head down on top of the toy station and started snoring.