London Falling (28 page)

Every now and then she saw a flash of something interesting, but she didn’t react, didn’t let them see she’d noticed it. She stopped when she realized she was now feeling a couple of larger presences in the distance, one on each side of the hall. Following orders, she’d didn’t head towards them, or even look, just kept on down the middle.

But then she felt something else right in front of her. At this end of the hall, along on the wall furthest from the stage, there sat a young woman: one in a row of three traders, the others uninteresting. A hand of tarot cards were spread out, face down, on a black cloth in front of her. The cards looked heavy and meaningful in her delicate hand. She looked up at Ross and it was obvious she was seeing her as just another potential punter. ‘Shall I read your fortune, my darling?’

Ross considered her orders for a moment, then she went to sit down.

Costain felt as if he hadn’t really slept, only he supposed his head must have dropped for a couple of hours. He was in a world of rules now, when he really just wanted to cut loose and swagger again, and be the star of this picture and, God, maybe get a toot from somewhere. Only, yeah . . . that would be bad. He felt awkward around Sefton.

‘What is it between you two?’ Ross had asked the previous night, after the DC had left. Costain had shaken his head. ‘I read his Goodfellow reports,’ she continued. ‘He always said good things about you. It was reading between the lines there, and your own stuff, that made me think you were a shit.’

Costain had been genuinely surprised. Then had found himself laughing. ‘What do you think now?’

She’d shrugged. ‘You’re
our
shit.’

Sefton hadn’t been undermining him. That unfairness had been in his dreams that night. He had bigger things on his conscience list: things he couldn’t deal with right now, because it’d be unsafe to do so. But every time he started to think of what words to use to Sefton, he found himself getting angry again. He still wanted to hate him. That entire house of pain was still there in his head, even though now it had no foundations. And that felt, somehow, even more annoying. And now he was standing beside him at the tea stall in the middle of the hall. When Sefton nodded to him, he let himself behave as if they were mates.

‘Might as well look as if we’re together,’ said Sefton, under his breath, as he pressed the tea bag against the side of his cup to try and force out a bit of flavour. ‘Seeing we’re the only black guys in here.’

‘The New Age,’ agreed Costain, ‘does not recruit in line with best practice. What have you got?’

Sefton moved alongside him, so they were both facing the same way. ‘Three and nine, the two big noises in town, behind the rows of stalls on either side.’

One of the aims of this expedition had been to find out if anyone who was in any way like Losley would come along to a New Age fair. ‘Yeah. Bloody hell, I can feel their presence, nowhere near on our witchy friend’s level, but . . . yeah, there they are.
People
, though, you reckon, not your . . . spooky
things
?’

‘At a guess, more like our old witchy friend.’

‘Keeping their distance from each other, like bosses would. You reckon they realize we’re here?’

‘Seven, two here and eight at the back have all checked me out, but I think that’s because I is black. As for the level bosses . . . I don’t know. All that’s different about the four of us is . . . our advantage.’

‘If you want to call it that.’

‘I don’t know why it’d show up. We don’t look . . . particular, to each other.’

Costain lowered his voice. ‘You want to try a walk-up with one? Just stroll in like we own the place? Like in that shebeen in Romford?’

Sefton looked startled. ‘That was fucking terrifying.’

‘This will be more so.’

‘Oh, right, this is ’cos marching straight in would be brave – would be “the right thing to do”?’

Costain sighed. ‘Are you going to keep giving me shit about that?’

‘If you want me to stop, Tone, you can always order me to do so.’

‘What’s your question, ducks?’

Ross wondered if that was the fortune-teller’s real accent. It was like something out of a soap opera – the chirpy cockney sparrow, a bit irritating, a bit false. She looked to be late thirties, ears pierced, with evidence of two earlier piercings, tattoo of some sort top left arm obscured by dress, natural brunette, green eyes, no visible fillings, about five foot two, hundred and ten pounds. That tightness of the skin about her. Thin not because of the gym, but with those biceps. This was the kind of woman Ross often saw in interview rooms.

She tried to affect a gentle, spiritual voice without being too hello-trees-hello-flowers about it. ‘Hi, I’m Lisa.’

‘And I am Madame Osiris, at your service.’ The woman added one of those crazy aitches onto ‘Osiris’, as if she was something out of Dickens. She was dressed a bit like that too. That was a genuinely old dress, the wreck of a real Victorian ball gown. Frayed and stitched up, but not by a tailor. She looked like someone who once might have been seen staggering on stage at a music hall. What, was she actually from that time, keeping herself young? In the way that Losley’s record stretched far back enough to accumulate all those bodies? No, this was a modern face. This woman was just trying really hard to seem antiquated. And Ross got the feeling it wasn’t pretence just for this moment, but something she did all the time.

‘Is that your real name?’

The woman raised an eyebrow. ‘Is that your question?’

‘Oh, sorry.’ Ross considered her question. She was feeling the power in those cards, but did this woman know how to use it? What if she asked the obvious:
Where is Mora Losley?
That was assuming the cards actually worked to answer questions rather than just doing something else, such as make money vanish from her pocket. And that name would surely draw attention. This was their first encounter with another user, and who knew what alliances existed among them? This woman had been keeping her left hand under the table since Ross had arrived. She might suddenly attack Ross with something she had no defence against. ‘Okay,’ she said. ‘My question is: how can I win?’

‘Right. What sort of divination would you prefer?’ She made a swirling gesture with her right hand as she indicated the three choices, and Ross imagined for a second that she could feel something moving around her. ‘Tarot of London?
Book of Changes?
Tube Oracle?’ Each gained weight and importance as she indicated it. So it wasn’t the objects that were meaningful to the Sight, it was the woman – or rather what she was doing. Ross didn’t let the excitement show on her face. This was definitely someone a bit like Losley, the first such they’d met. The
Book of Changes
was a small leather-bound volume, the Oracle seemed to be a cork-backed platter of wood that lay face down on the table, the Tarot were obviously the cards already spread.

‘All three.’

‘That’ll cost you.’

‘Okay.’ Actually, not so great an idea. They’d have to sign off on any expenses claims for operational budget. That meant the team would soon have to come up with some convincing lies about stuff like this.

‘Cross my palm with silver. That’ll be a carpet.’

Ross had been brought up in London and had never heard that one. ‘Sorry?’

‘Thirty quid. Blimey, you’re far from the madding crowd, aintcha?’ Good. The woman was used to setting herself above her punters, not afraid to be dismissive of them, and she had taken Ross to be as foolish as any other. She took Ross’ money and it was gone into that left hand under the table. ‘Let’s start with the Oracle,’ she decided, and turned over the piece of wood, which now was revealed to look suspiciously like a decorative place mat. It had a map of the London Underground on it, an old one that didn’t have the DLR on it. The woman produced a metal pendulum, and set it twirling on a string right over it. ‘Ask your question again.’

Rather self-consciously, Ross leaned across and spoke into the place mat. ‘How can I win?’

The woman suddenly let go of the pendulum, jerking it hard towards Ross’ face, making her jump back. It hit the wood, rebounded violently and, against all possibility, dropped back into the middle of the map. Its pointed tip was precisely on—

‘Baker Street, on the City side of the Hammersmith and City Line. That’s the top side, by tradition. And all is tradition . . . tradition is all.’ She’d said that under her breath, like something she often repeated. ‘So, love, that’s one way you can win. What or who do you most associate with Baker Street?’

Ross realized who that could mean. And probably not the bloke who’d had a hit with the song of that name. But not a great deal of help either. Still, something real seemed to be going on here.

‘The line’s interesting too. The City Line, that’s memory . . .’

‘Why is the City Line memory?’

‘Tradition. Every line stands for something. Nobody knows why.’

‘Nobody?’

‘So full of questions, and yet she’s only paid for the one.’

‘I’m sorry, I do seem to keep breaking the rules.’ Ross let a little of her real desperation show on her face, put her hands on the table, as if coming to a big decision. ‘This is . . . very important to me. Please understand, any help . . . any at all. Look . . .’ She put an upper-class note in her voice, suggesting there was the potential for a lot of money here. ‘I’d really appreciate it.’

The woman smiled broadly, but Ross didn’t let her satisfaction show on her own face. The bait had been taken. ‘That’s what I’m here for, help and interpretation. You’ve got the right look about you, my darling: I can tell you’ll ask the right questions. And you’re bright enough to understand the answers. Bright enough to come to the likes of me, too, rather than any of these hangers-on.’ She indicated the innocent fortune-tellers to her left and right, busy with their own meaningless consultations.

‘Yeah, I sensed you were different’, Ross went on. ‘It’s like there’s . . . there’s something about your voice.’

The woman nodded sagely. ‘I said you was clever. You always sound out how a seer talks, my darling. Not all in whispers that won’t break the surface, but with the proper London. Proper London isn’t your darkie talk, like the kids do now. It’s not your estuary English . . . Gawd, that grates on my ears. It’s from
before
.’

Not that much before, reckoned Ross. This movie Victoriana wasn’t that old, nowhere near as old as London; it was just a gesture in that direction. Maybe that was something to do with degrees of power. This woman didn’t sound anything like the insane mixture of tongues Losley had used. Oh,
speaking in tongues
, was that a thing, too? ‘You seem to know so much about these things.’

‘I know what my mum used, and her mum before her, and her mum before that, hetceterhah.’

‘Don’t you ever want to change it? Make it more modern?’

The other woman shook her head quickly, her eyes widening. ‘You don’t want change. Change is the enemy of memory, like my mum always said.’

‘Could . . . could I learn it?’

‘Maybe. It’s about the way you talk, the way you move. The past is the thing, and that’s what the people in the know do, we follow the past.’

Ross felt the truth of it in the woman’s eyes. Here was someone who had the past always looming over her, wearing a parent’s clothes. This lack of a present or a future was suddenly startling, and genuinely sad. She made herself focus on the job again. ‘You must have had a really hard life.’ That phrase, said right, at the right moment, always opened a few doors.

The woman paused, searching her face, clearly wondering how much she could trust her. Wanting to talk, though.
Come on, come on.
‘Well, that’s where you find the power, isn’t it? Like my mum said, between the game and the gutter. Most of it works without you knowing what it means, or how it does it. You can sometimes work it out, just a bit, or sometimes it’s just obvious, just being how things should be. You try and work one of those out with your school head on, you’ll be up all night pondering the complexities of life. That’s how the City Line is memory, it’s one of those: you can kind of see how it works, but you can’t
think
about it. All this stuff is just enough to get by. You don’t get no riches out of it, not really. You start thinking you want that, you start asking for more, it quickly gets to be more than you can handle. More than the likes of me can, anyway.’

Ross decided to take a risk. ‘You’ve obviously made . . . sacrifices.’

The woman was silent for a moment, a real, hurt part of her rebelling, her eyes only just keeping faith with Ross, just the promise of money and being listened to keeping her on the hook. ‘What do you mean by that, now?’

‘I’ve . . . read some old books . . .’

The woman thought for a further moment. Then she raised her left hand from below the table and put it down in front of her. All three middle fingers were missing, and there was scarring up and down the wrist, old wound on old wound, not in an angry, self-harming way, but something more like the endless search of the junkie for a suitable vein. ‘Of my own flesh and blood.’

‘I’m sorry,’ whispered Ross. ‘So you can’t get . . . remembered?’

‘What? You’ve read a bit, I see, but not enough. How would I make a big enough splash to get folk to remember me?’

‘Well, Mora Losley seems to be . . .’ Ross stopped as she felt the words bounce off some sort of tripwire in the air. She felt the confidence leave her face.

And now the woman was looking at her as if she was the scum of the earth, the promise broken, another betrayal in a whole life of them. ‘Oh,’ she said. ‘Oh, so you’re a fucking rozzer.’

‘I’m not,’ said Ross quickly, letting the truth that she wasn’t actually a police officer be a kind of lie. ‘If you really can see, you can see I’m not.’

‘Judas words. As good as.’ She was getting to her feet. She was about to march away, or maybe start yelling. And here was someone who might be able to find Losley for them directly! By answering just the one question! Ross had to keep her here. She remembered what the woman had said about doing what
seemed
appropriate. Copper gut assumption again: there was one thing that all the stories seemed to insist on.