London Falling by Paul Cornell

Author:Paul Cornell
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, pdf
Tags: Mystery, Fantasy
ISBN: 9780230763210
Publisher: Tor
Published: 2012-12-05T13:00:00+00:00

SEVENTEEN

Westminster Hall: an enormous public edifice with a stage at one end; a vaulted ceiling; marble steps; polished doors with metal lock plates that collected fingerprints. The smell of a library, the echoes of a concert hall. It was Saturday morning, and the match would be on Wednesday. Quill stood in the entrance area, forcing himself not to habitually watch the people that passed by, carrying boxes or pushing carts. A poster indicated that there was a New Age fair today but, looking at this lot, he’d have guessed that anyway. He stood out like a sore thumb and he knew it. No UC was he, especially among this lot with their long hair and sandals and tattoos. He was concentrating on his coffee, on not letting his hangover drag him even further down. He was trying to ignore the red hue of the light penetrating every window, the way the building seemed splattered with blood. He wondered what that was about, before he found a bronze plaque describing the building’s history. This once high security venue, actually part of the Houses of Parliament, you could now hire out, thanks to this cost-cutting government, for your collectors’ fair or your union meeting. The metal detectors had been moved to where it joined with the lobby of Parliament itself. This was where Charles I had been tried, among many others, where they’d demanded his head and signed the death warrant. It had then had Cromwell’s severed head sitting on the roof for twenty-five years. It was where coronations had been celebrated, too. The place smelt of royalty, of being afraid of something flighty and a bit random when it wanted to be, and a bit too real when it didn’t.

It had something of Losley’s attractions to it as well, a terrible jollity but with blood infused in its bricks. It was a bit like those ships or the bus, then. This whole building had a bit of ghost about it. That way it suited how he felt right now. Part of him was aware that, maybe even now, and more and more certainly as Monday evening approached, more children would be in Losley’s hands. And also that, for some reason, nobody would miss them. And that seemed to be his own fault, no matter what he told himself. The match would see a hat-trick, because that smiling bastard would make it happen, and the hole inside him, he was sure of it, would widen by a notch as if held open with forceps. He was overlooking something terrible.

‘Jolly,’ commented Ross, appearing beside him, and looking around.

Sefton and Costain soon joined them. They, too, were eyeing the white middle-aged crowd trooping past. ‘Plain clothes, is it?’ said Sefton.

‘You’re sounding a lot more sarky these days,’ observed Quill, and then regretted it as Sefton clammed up and looked away. This outing was designed, at Ross’ suggestion, to keep Sefton’s agenda of background research going, but in what they hoped would be a less dangerous way.

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