London Falling

TWENTY-FIVE

Ross stood in front of what had once been her family home, on that corner of a tree-lined street in Bermondsey. It was raining again on this Sunday afternoon. Only a couple of details of the house had altered: whoever owned it now had changed the garden, and put up different curtains. There was, thank God, nothing that looked special to the Sight.

The door was opened by a middle-aged Asian woman, who eyed her suspiciously. Ross presented her documents, and told the woman she could call the station if she wanted to confirm her identity. The woman kept the door on the chain while she did so, but finally let her in. Ross knew she must look suspicious, her professional politeness hardly concealing the personal urgency of what she was doing here. ‘It’s a routine inquiry, ma’am, to do with an ongoing investigation. Nobody here is in any trouble.’

‘I should hope not!’

Ross didn’t react to that. ‘I’d like a look around upstairs, please. Alone.’

The smell was so nearly the same. New people, new fragrances, same polish. She stepped onto the landing and walked straight past the door leading to what had been her bedroom. She moved on, instead to where Dad’s office had been.

The door was, once again, open just a bit. She resisted the awful urge to first peer through the gap, and instead just pushed the door open and went in.

What Quill had said about where he’d see the ghost of his daughter — that had been the first seed of it for her. She recognized that in retrospect. He’d been right: like with the ships and the bus, this was about places too. People didn’t always carry their ghosts around with them. In her case, she’d suddenly realized, she had very much associated her father with this room. She knew he was now in Hell. She knew that more definitely than any other fact in her head, but without having a solid sense of what that meant, even considering her own experience. But Harry’s dad hadn’t been just a bundle of Harry’s own insecurities. According to Quill, he’d acted with his own volition, right at the end. She hoped that hadn’t all been down to Losley. Ross didn’t know how it worked, so this was going to be an experiment. A terrible experiment. But she owed it to Quill to find the courage to do this.

She stepped into the room, closed the door behind her, looked around at the unfamiliar furniture of a spare bedroom. She looked up and saw that the ceiling rose was still there. No huge reaction to seeing the ceiling. It was just plaster. She made herself remember again, and now she could see it clearly again: that moment that was stamped into her, that had made her. She focused on every detail of what, if she could see a ghost specific to her, she might expect to see here.

‘Dad?’ she said.

No answer. But she suddenly noticed something: she could smell something new. Him, his aftershave, the smell of his jacket, the cigars and beer. And something under that, which spoke of vastness and closeness, of Halloween, of things let in on special nights. ‘Dad, if you can hear me, I need to see you. It’s. . it’s not just for me. It’s something important. I know you’d always try to look after me. . no matter where you are. It doesn’t matter what you look like now, or what’s going on, you can. . come back. It’s okay.’

She waited, feeling afraid and vulnerable but waiting. She smelled it before she saw or heard anything, and then a rose of thorns burst from the ceiling above her. And that distant smell burst in along with it. And the room was full of uneasy light. She staggered back but she stayed on her feet, looking up, looking and looking. . A feeling of potential harm had flooded in all around her. Something formed out of those shapes above.

And there — there he was again. Hanging there, making choking noises, the noose once again around his neck. It was as if the memory she’d fixated on for all these years had been preserved here. There was his wonderful face, alive again, an expression living on it again. She stared and stared as the blood hammered through her body and head. It was him. It was him! He spun and rocked in the awful light, looking at her desperately, one hand outstretched. She could see clearly the signs on his body of what the woman with the Tarot cards had called the threefold death.

But this time she had a knife. She grabbed it from her pocket, dragged the stool from the dressing table across the room and leaped up onto it. She started to saw at the rope. But the rope was like diamond. This was a new nightmare. Her fingers kept slipping off it. The blade kept flying away from it.

‘No!’ he said. His voice! He could say things! ‘Lisa, no! Don’t touch it! You can’t cut it, girl. You can’t undo it. Don’t you get too close.’

She stopped, helpless, staring at his face, loving him. And he looked back at her, and it was the best thing. It was the best thing. But she was still helpless.

He looked quickly upwards, over his shoulder. His voice was a gasp, limited by the rope, but not as limited as it should have been, and that was terrible, that implication that this was usual for him now. ‘I can’t stay long or they’ll notice.’

‘You don’t deserve to be in there!’ She hadn’t wanted this to be about her and him, but she couldn’t control a single thing she might do or say now.

‘I had a bad life, love. We kept it from you.’

She wanted to ask him — ridiculously — she realized, if what she was doing now was okay. Or if she had betrayed him as well as the family. But there was no time for that. ‘Dad, I’ve been given. . they call it the Sight?’

He made a strangled cry, took another moment to breathe. ‘No, not my girl. That means you can see all the things I have to look at every day. This is another punishment they’re doing to me!’ It was terrible to hear him so fearful. A dad shouldn’t be afraid.

‘This is about. . There’s kids, Dad, okay? She kills kids. She worked for Rob. Do you know of a Mora Losley?’

He made the sound again. ‘Mora Losley? Bloody Rob! Bloody Rob! He took everything! Took you! He’s up here now!’ Alf was suddenly gleeful, swinging back and forth, though the effort made his voice crack up. ‘In his own Hell!’

‘Dad, how can we. . get her?’ She’d nearly said ‘nick’, but that would have sounded wrong.

He seemed to gaze up into something that Ross couldn’t see. As if he was looking over things, and into things, reading distant signs. ‘What haven’t you seen? What haven’t you seen? Oh, you’ve done stuff. You’ve done such a lot.’ She tried not to feel pride at hearing that. ‘But. . Oh, there. The empty boxes.’

‘What, from his office?’

‘Yeah. I was shown him from up here, when he was alive and I wasn’t. They showed me what he was up to, as he took over my old life. I don’t know how much it’ll help, but it’s something. Sometimes he drove out to his lock-up-’

‘His lock-up?! We haven’t found that. Where-?’

‘And sometimes, when he could get away with it, he. .’ He looked quickly around, as if something was approaching. ‘Can’t stay,’ he said. And he turned, looking scared like a child, and twisted out of the way before something could see him. And the ceiling vomited shut, and he was gone.

Ross’ legs collapsed under her. She fell to the floor and stayed where she lay, looking up. She could see his face still against the white. She felt the horror of it washing over her. She started to sob. She felt she should remain here, that she should always be here to talk to him, to offer him some tiny comfort.

Her Tarot card reading had turned out to be true. She had found an ongoing hope through someone who had been a sacrifice. She had found something that could help. And she had found something for all seasons that she could return to. That she would return to. She could tell him about her revenge and that would make it better for him. And his being here was horrifying, but it would also make her life better. They still had each other. Slightly. Horrifyingly.

She stood up, and she left the room, and she walked faster and faster down the stairs of her childhood, with her phone already in her hand, making the call to Quill, and she got all the way to her car and drove off without once looking back.