The Great and Dangerous Read online

  The cyclist looked up in a daze, probably still feeling the tremor of the thump of the vehicle’s front end that killed him. His eyes found us in the crowd and flickered with a kind of recognition.

  ‘Oh,’ his expression seemed to say. ‘Oh, it’s you.’

  And, stepping around the ailing wasp twitching in the gutter by our feet, Mr October moved towards the cyclist’s ghost and went to work.

  The forecasts weren’t too accurate. None of our calls that night were weather-related. Not directly, anyway.

  The 4275 in Edgware was standing in the wrong place at the wrong time when the chimney collapsed. A TV engineer, repairing an aerial on the roof, lost his footing on loose tiles and fell against the stack, which came apart like a sandcastle. This didn’t rule out weather-related wear and tear on the tiles or the brickwork over time.

  ‘Never assume anything,’ Mr October said later. ‘Sometimes the numbers tell us a great deal, but it’s possible to read too much into them. We can never be sure until we’ve seen for ourselves.’

  The 4275 wasn’t happy. He’d only stepped outdoors for a moment to check on the work in progress, but that was the moment the chimney stack came down on him. He argued his case well, I thought, but in the end he went on his way with a shrug and a shake of the head.

  Next up was a natural causes in Leyton, an 8847 in Ministry speak. The house was a typical two-up two-down on the W15 bus route with floral curtains and a tiny square of untended lawn at the front. Many 8847s passed away in care homes and on hospital wards, but others refused to give up the homes they’d lived in all their lives. Mary Butterfield, 91, had lived most of hers here. She’d left this world moments before we walked to her door.

  Mr October wiggled his fingers and touched the door in two separate places. The door, which had been locked when we arrived, clicked open.

  The chintzy interiors, all pink and brown flowers, smelt of cat pee. Alerted by a hum of flies down the hall, Mr October told us to stay back.

  ‘Could be something you’d rather not see,’ he said, heading to a room at the end. Seconds later he called, ‘It’s all right. All clear.’

  The handful of flies were confined to the kitchen, darting between trays of cat litter and half-eaten dishes of Felix. A tap was running. Lu turned it off and made a face as she looked around.

  ‘Why do flies exist?’ she said. ‘What’s the point of them?’

  Not an easy question to answer. I let it go.

  ‘In here,’ Becky called.

  She’d found the old lady in the living room in a reclining armchair, an unfinished cup of tea on her side table, a novel entitled The Murder of Roger Ackroyd in her hands. Her forefinger marked a page close to the end.

  ‘It’s the page where the killer’s name is revealed,’ Mr October explained. ‘You see? No two natural causes cases are ever alike. Her poor worn-out old heart simply gave up when she found out whodunnit. The excitement was all too much.’

  The excitement still gripped Mary’s face. Her mouth gaped open in an O of surprise, and her unseeing eyes were wide with astonishment. As Mr October closed her lids, I thought of the ancientspeak book he’d given me – a book of words with the power to build up or destroy. Words with the power to kill.

  A breeze passed through the room, ruffling Mary’s clothing. The living room windows were shut, the curtains still, but this breeze hadn’t entered the room from outside. It was coming from Mary herself.

  Becky let out a little cry, feeling the old lady’s presence. On the side table, the reading lamp dimmed briefly before glowing three times brighter, and then Mary’s loose-fitting clothes lifted and flapped around her as something inside her began to make its way out.

  This was a new thing to me, the part Mr October called separation. Most souls had already separated when we turned up. Not this one, though. Another Mary was entering the room, the hidden one who’d been with her since she was born, through two long-lasting marriages and on through the days she’d lived alone with her cats in this house.

  The wind lashed our faces, a warming gust. Specks of soft light were being blown together into a shape beside her chair. The shape was mostly made of light, but tiny parts of Mary were visible too – a wrinkly hand, a wisp of white hair, a patch of navy blue pattern on her shin-length dress.

  Soon the rushing wind fell to a breeze, a draught, and there stood Mary Butterfield, eyes glazed, frowning as she tried to adjust to where she was. She looked at herself in the armchair, then at us, aghast.

  ‘What’s the meaning of this?’ she cried in a voice strident enough to peel paint. ‘What are you doing in my house? I’ve a mind to call the police, I have. Get out, get out!’

  ‘Ho hum,’ Mr October said. ‘It’s going to be one of those.’

  After Mary, we followed the cards to a 126329, which Mr October described as ‘most unpleasant’ and which I’d rather not go into in detail. This was followed by another natural causes in Bow, then a visit to London Hospital for the cyclist Roger Finney, dead on arrival, and our last call of the shift, a 6575 at the Isle of Dogs.

  At first we were confused by the 6575. On paper it looked straightforward – a thirty-eight year-old male dead as the result of a fall. Open and shut. But not many things in our line of work were open and shut.

  It began with a late afternoon party, a few drinks to usher in the weekend on the top floor of a three-story block near the river. To avoid complaints from neighbours, Peter Van Dornen had invited everyone in the building. They wouldn’t moan about the noise, he reasoned, if they were guests.

  Friends arrived, neighbours invited friends of their own, and by six o’clock the modest one-bedroom flat was hot and heaving. Several party guests spilled out to the balcony to take the air, unaware that the bolts securing the iron safety railing were worn and loose.

  The booze was running out, and the host decided to run down to the corner shop for supplies. Returning, straining from the weight of the four bags he was carrying, Peter Van Dornen stopped below his balcony to catch a breath. Something small but solid pinged in the darkness close by. Bottles clinking in the bags, he supposed, but in fact what he’d heard was the balcony’s first falling bolt striking the pavement at his feet.

  ‘Hurry up, Pete,’ the guests called from three flights above, leaning over the rail, empty glasses in hand. ‘We’re dry. We’re depending on you!’

  Two or three of them pressing against the rail wouldn’t have made such a difference. Twelve was more than it could take. Peter Van Dornen heard a second metallic object bounce off the ground. The next and last thing he heard was screaming.

  Incredibly, only one partygoer took the plunge. The rest, tugging and clinching like a rugby scrum, pulled themselves back as the railing gave way. The falling man, a strapping muscular type with a bulldog face and no neck, lived in the flat below Van Dornen’s and later hobbled back to it without so much as a bruise. He wasn’t on our list, but Peter Van Dornen, who broke his fall, was.

  Just before Lu brought the Mustang screaming round the corner onto Ferry Street, Van Dornen left his broken body to go down to the river. In a kind of trance he watched the city lights dancing across the black water. He didn’t look up when we joined him, or when Mr October laid a hand on his shoulder.

  ‘You know, I’ll miss this,’ he said. ‘I worked so hard to get here.’

  Mr October’s voice was low and soothing. ‘You will and you did. But it’s better this way.’

  ‘Better?’ I said, but Mr October’s look told me not to interrupt.

  ‘You know all about me, don’t you?’ Peter Van Dornen said dreamily.

  ‘We do,’ said Mr October.

  ‘Then you’ll know the doc gave me three months to live, and I’d planned to see the world, all the sights, do it all while I still could. Only my closest friends knew. Tonight was supposed to be the start, the big send-off before I set sail.’

  ‘Not quite the send-off you had in mind,’ Mr October said. ‘I’m so sorry.’r />
  ‘Don’t be sorry,’ Van Dornen said as Mr October prepared to walk him away. ‘Those three months were a sentence. Now I’m free.’

  Soon after, another light flashed across the Thames like a brief burst of flame, and he was gone. That was the end of the shift for Becky and me, but for Lu and Mr October the night was just beginning. More calls to make, more numbers to reel in. Always the same.

  They dropped us at Liverpool Street and we took a bus home.

  It was after nine when I got in. Ross had been over, leaving a note – sorry he’d missed me – and another food parcel in the fridge. I sat up, too tired to settle, and ate the spare ribs he’d brought in front of the TV, skipping channels.

  Later, I lay awake in bed going over the evening’s events, from the multi-cycle pile-up to Peter Van Dornen’s farewell at the Isle of Dogs to the bus ride home with Becky.

  ‘The enemy were dead quiet tonight, weren’t they?’ she’d said towards the end of the journey. ‘There’s usually some sign they’re about, hiding in a crowd or under a bridge, but I didn’t feel them anywhere and they didn’t contest one soul. What are they waiting for?’

  My thoughts exactly. Where were they now, and why the silence? The question was still ringing in my ears when I fell asleep.

  It was still dark when I woke to the burr of the living room telephone. Groaning, I turned over in bed, wrapping the duvet around me.

  The phone rang and rang. The bedside clock said seven. Who called at this hour? Then the phone stopped. Then it started again. Suppose it was Mum with news of her homecoming? I dragged myself out of bed and hurried to answer.

  ‘Hello?’

  It was Becky, jabbering away so frantically I couldn’t make out a word.

  ‘Slow down,’ I said. ‘Take a breath. Then try again.’

  ‘The tornado they forecast touched down,’ she said. ‘Right here on our house, ten minutes ago. Can you come over, Ben? I really need to see you.’

  7

  EYES OF THE STORM

  ecky lived on Parkholme Road, a good ten minutes walk from my place. I made it there in three.

  Turning past the Prince George on Wilton Way, the first thing that struck me – the strangest, most obvious thing – was how peaceful the shady tree-lined street looked. The freak tornado had checked in only briefly, leaving behind a swirl of gritty brown air. Apart from the haze and the two fire engines parked outside there weren’t many signs it had been here at all. All the houses were untouched except one.

  And that one was half demolished.

  Becky’s was the left half of a semi-detached building around the corner past the pub. Most of the windows had been blown out and the roof looked as though a giant’s fist had punched through it. The front yard was clogged with tiles, bricks and dust, and a tree had flipped forward over the wall, crushing an electric car parked in front. The property next door had suffered barely a scratch, losing a few tiles and gaining a coating of dust.

  The Sanbornes’ front door was open, giving a view of a hallway strewn with rubble, everything smashed to bits. A framed picture of Becky hung askew on one wall, the portrait I’d done of her during my first week at Mercy Road. Through the gaping front window I saw a shattered upside-down TV, a gleam of broken glass and crockery, a mountain of furniture piled up like so much landfill.

  Suppose Becky and her folks were trapped indoors? She hadn’t said so on the phone, only that she needed to see me. But she’d sounded panicky, rushing her words, and I hadn’t heard everything clearly. Perhaps I’d missed the most important thing.

  But now I heard voices and footfalls tramping around the wreckage inside, and a group of shadowy figures turned into the hall from a room further back – Becky’s family and the firefighters escorting them out.

  Seeing me on the path, Becky ran straight outside. Her face was pale with shock and plaster dust, her forehead and hands were criss-crossed with scratches and her knees were gashed and bleeding. She looked up and down the street in disbelief.

  ‘So it was only us,’ she said. ‘They didn’t come for anyone else.’

  ‘They?’

  ‘It, I mean.’ She clearly wanted to say more but her parents were at the doorstep. ‘The tornado.’

  If Becky was shaken, Mr and Mrs Sanborne looked as if they’d stepped off a white-knuckle fairground ride. They looked a little alike, the way couples who’ve stayed together long enough eventually do, with similar rounded faces and colouring. They both had the same wild, haunted eyes.

  ‘Mum, Dad,’ Becky said, trying to sound cheerful. ‘This is Ben, you know, who I told you about, who did my picture.’ To me she said, ‘It’s just about the only thing that wasn’t destroyed.’

  Mr Sanborne nodded in my general direction. ‘Good to meet you, Ben. Wish I could’ve said that in different circumstances.’

  Mrs Sanborne forced a tense smile. ‘Oh . . . hello,’ was all she managed.

  We hadn’t met before and we weren’t exactly meeting now. They didn’t see me clearly, and no wonder. All they could see was the eye of the storm that had rampaged through their home.

  ‘Please, folks,’ the firemen called. ‘Keep moving, out to the street. It’s not safe.’

  ‘Where will you go?’ I asked Becky as we went.

  ‘My aunt in Hoxton will make space for us tonight. After that I don’t know. We haven’t had time to think.’

  The good news was that the Sanbornes’ car wasn’t the one under the tree. Theirs was a midnight blue Astra parked on the opposite side of the gate. They moved towards it leadenly, like sleepwalkers.

  ‘I’m going with Ben,’ Becky announced as her dad unlocked the car. ‘I’ll catch up with you later, OK?’

  ‘Fine,’ Mr Sanborne grunted, not hearing.

  Mrs Sanborne stared shell-shocked up the drive, close to tears. ‘Look at our home. Everything’s gone. Everything.’

  ‘Mum, did you hear me?’ Becky said.

  ‘Do anything you like, sweetheart. You know where we’ll be. You have Aunt Meg’s number.’

  Mrs Sanborne fell inside the car and stared blankly ahead while her husband fired the engine. Leaving their shattered world behind, the Sanbornes drove off up the street, passing a TV news crew vehicle as it sped to the scene to record what was left.

  It was still early, first light, and on Broadway Market the Saturday traders were setting up their food and trinket stalls. Seated by the window in the Broadway Café, we ordered traditional breakfasts and watched the street.

  ‘So tell me,’ I said. ‘They. What did you mean by they?’

  ‘It’s like this.’ Becky leaned forward, elbows on the table. ‘Like you said about your mum. Once you’re involved in this thing, the Ministry and everything, you’re in it up to your eyes. And it isn’t only you they want – it’s everyone around you, everyone that matters to you.’

  True, but that didn’t answer the question. ‘A tornado hit your house, though. Didn’t it?’

  ‘Yes and no.’

  ‘That makes no sense. Either it did or it didn’t.’

  She went quiet while the waitress brought coffee and hot chocolate and rounds of hot buttered toast. A whiff of bacon from the kitchen woke my appetite.

  ‘Yes,’ Becky said when the waitress had gone. ‘A tornado touched down. Something like a tornado. But did you see the place, and no other house on the street even touched? How random is that?’

  ‘So what did you see?’

  She stirred her chocolate. ‘It’s hard to be sure. It came and went so fast. I was up early, making tea in the kitchen, when I saw this thing coming in low over the rooftops, darker than the sky and heading our way. Kind of like what we saw at the cemetery, only bigger and with a more definite shape. It was shaped – I know how this sounds – like a face.’

  ‘A face?’ I nearly gagged.

  ‘That’s how it looked. If I could draw things like you, I’d do you a picture. Basically, though, it was cone shaped, wider at the top than the bottom, but made
out of smoke and dirt, or whatever these things carry around with them. If a thing like that can have an expression, I’d say it was angry.

  ‘So I called Mum and Dad to look, and I ran to my room for a better view. The house was trembling, all the trinkets and knick-knacks on my shelves were rattling. The face was like a massive shadow over the street, and I swear there were eyes or something staring out of it, triangles of bright red light. I didn’t dare go to the window. If I had, I wouldn’t be here now telling you this.’

  The waitress delivered our breakfasts, and I looked at my loaded plate, the kind of fare Mum used to serve on Mare Street before she took ill. Suddenly I didn’t feel all that hungry.

  ‘And then. . .’ I prompted.

  Becky went on, ‘Then everything went black. I felt a tingling here and here. . .’ She touched her face and the back of one hand. ‘That was from the shower of glass when the window blew. I’m lucky it wasn’t worse, but most of the glass was sucked outside. There was a change in the air pressure, like on a plane when you’re descending too fast and you’re carrying a cold and blocked sinuses and you’re sure your head’s about to explode? You know?’

  ‘I’ve never flown.’

  ‘But you can imagine.’

  ‘I think so.’

  ‘It’s like having all your teeth drilled at once. My head was splitting. The wind threw me up at the ceiling, and I whacked my shoulder, which still hurts like hell, and all my things – CDs and books and old dolls – were flying around and past me. I was screaming so hard it feels like I swallowed a load of razor blades, and I heard the roof cracking, bits tearing and splintering off. My bed went airborne, the frame hit the wall and the mattress went out the window. And I thought, there goes my soft landing, if I ever come down.’

  ‘But you did come down. You walked away. That’s incredible.’

  ‘Yeah, but I didn’t come down straight away because something was pinning me against the ceiling.’

  ‘The storm. The air pressure.’