Rivers of London

Chapter 11 A Better Class of Riot

The first task was to find Lesley. This I did by the simple expedient of calling her mobile and asking her where she was. ‘We’re in Covent Garden,’ she said. We being her and Seawoll and about half the rest of the Murder Team, the Chief Inspector having gone for the time-honoured police tradition of ‘when in doubt throw manpower at it’ approach. They were going to sweep the Piazza and then do a swift check of the Opera House.

‘What does he hope to do?’ I asked.

‘In the first instance, contain any problems,’ said Lesley. ‘Beyond that we’re waiting on you, remember?’

‘I may have sorted something out,’ I said. ‘But it’s important that you don’t do anything stupid.’

‘Hey,’ she said. ‘This is me.’

If only that were true.

The next thing I needed was wheels, so I called up Beverley on her waterproof mobile and hoped she wasn’t swimming lengths under Tower Bridge, or whatever it was river nymphs do on their day off. She picked up on the second ring and demanded to know what I’d done to her sister. ‘She’s not happy,’ she said.

‘Never mind your sister,’ I said. ‘I need to borrow a motor.’

‘Only if I get to come along,’ she said. I’d expected that; in fact, I was counting on it. ‘Or you can walk.’

‘Fine,’ I said, feigning reluctance.

She said she’d be over in half an hour.

Third on the list was getting hold of some hard drugs, which proved surprisingly difficult given that I was in a major hospital. The problem was, my tame doctor was having ethical qualms.

‘You’ve been watching too much TV,’ said Dr Walid. ‘There’s no such thing as a tranquilliser dart.’

‘Yes there is,’ I said. ‘They use them in Africa all the time.’

‘Let me rephrase that and talk slowly,’ said Dr Walid. ‘There’s no such thing as a safe tranquilliser dart.’

‘It doesn’t have to be a dart,’ I said. ‘Every minute we leave Lesley sequestrated there’s a chance that Henry Pyke’s going to make her face fall off. To do magic your mind has to be working. Shut down the conscious bit of the brain, and I’m willing to bet Henry can’t do his spell and Lesley’s face stays the way God intended.’

I could see from Dr Walid’s expression that he thought I was right. ‘But what then?’ he asked. ‘We can’t keep her in a medical coma indefinitely.’

‘We buy time,’ I said. ‘For Nightingale to wake up, for me to get back to the Folly library, for Henry Pyke to die of old age … or whatever it is undead people do when they go.’

Dr Walid went grumbling off and came back a bit later with two disposable syrettes in sterile packaging with a biohazard label and a sticker that said ‘Keep out of the hands of children’.

‘Etorphine hydrochloride in solution,’ he said. ‘Enough to sedate a human female in the sixty-five kilogram weight range.’

‘Is it fast?’ I asked.

‘It’s what they use to trank rhinos,’ he said, and handed me a second package with another two syrettes. ‘This is the reversing agent, narcan. If you stick yourself with the etorphine, then you use this straight away before you call an ambulance, and try to make sure the paramedics get this card.’

He handed me a card that was still warm from the lamination machine. In Dr Walid’s neat, capitalised handwriting it said: ‘Warning. I have been stupid enough to stick myself with etorphine hydrochloride’, and listed the procedures the paramedics were to follow. Most of them concerned resuscitation and heroic measures to maintain heartbeat and respiration.

I patted my jacket nervously as I rode the lift down to the reception area, and repeated under my breath that the tranquillisers were in the left-hand pocket and the reversing agent on the right.

Beverley was waiting for me in the No Waiting zone dressed in khaki cargo pants and a cropped black t-shirt with WINE BACK HERE stencilled across her breasts.

‘Ta-da!’ she said, and showed me her car. It was a canary-yellow BMW Mini convertible, the Cooper S model with the supercharger at the back and the run-flat tires. It was about as a conspicuous a car as you can drive in central London and still fit into a standard parking space. I was happy to let her drive — I’ve still got some standards.

It was hot for late May, an excellent day for driving a convertible even with the rush-hour traffic fumes. Beverley was as averagely terrible a driver as you’d expect in someone who’d passed their test in the last two years. The good thing about London traffic is that your general motorist doesn’t get a chance to pick up enough speed to make fatal mistakes. Predictably we ground to a halt at the bottom end of Gower Street, and I faced the age-old dilemma of the London traveller — get out and walk or wait and hope.

I called Lesley again, but her phone went straight to voice mail. I called Belgravia nick and got them to patch me through to Stephanopoulos’s Airwave. In case anyone was monitoring the channel, she duly warned me to go home and await instructions before letting me know that she’d last seen Seawoll and Lesley heading for the Opera House. I told her that I was dutifully heading home, in a way that wouldn’t convince Stephanopoulos or our hypothetical listeners, but which would at least look good on any transcript produced in court.

The traffic unclogged once we were past New Oxford Street, and I told Beverley to head down Endell Street.

‘When we get there you’ve got to stay away from Lesley,’ I said.

‘You don’t think I can take Lesley?’

‘I think she might suck out all your magic,’ I said.

‘Really?’ asked Beverley.

I was guessing, but a genii locorum like Beverley had to be drawing on magic from somewhere, and to a revenant like Henry Pyke that must make them attractive victims. Or maybe they had some natural immunity to that sort of thing and I was worrying for nothing, but I didn’t think that was the way to bet.

‘Really,’ I said.

‘Shit,’ she said. ‘I thought we were friends.’

I was going to say something comforting, but that was strangled off when Beverley shot out of the one-way system by the Oasis Sports Centre and turned into Endell Street without, as far as I could see, any reference to or indeed awareness of other road users.

‘Lesley is your friend,’ I said. ‘Henry Pyke is not.’

The thank-God-it’s-Friday crowds had spilled out of the pubs and cafés onto the pavements, and for a few hours London had the proper street culture that the people who own villas in Tuscany keep calling for. The narrowing road and the prospect of hitting a pedestrian caused even Beverley to take her foot momentarily off the accelerator.

‘Watch the people,’ I said.

‘Ha,’ said Beverley. ‘People shouldn’t drink and walk at the same time.’

We swerved round the mini-roundabout on Long-acre, slowed in deference to another crowd of drinkers outside the Kemble’s Head on the corner and accelerated down Bow Street. I couldn’t see any police cars, fire engines or other signs of an emergency outside the Opera House, so I figured we might have got there in time. Beverley pulled into a disabled parking space opposite the Opera House.

‘Keep the motor running,’ I said as I got out. I wasn’t really anticipating a fast getaway but I figured it would keep her in the car and out of trouble. ‘If the police try to move you on, give them my name and say I’m inside on official business.’

‘Because of course that’ll work,’ said Beverley, but she stayed in the Mini which was the main thing. I trotted across the road to the main entrance and pushed through one of the glass and mahogany doors. The interior atrium was cool and dark after the sunlight; manikins were mounted in glass cases by the doors, decked out in costumes from previous performances. As I went through the second, interior set of doors into the lobby I was met by a sudden rush of people coming the other way. I looked quickly about to see what could be driving them but, although they were moving briskly and with a sense of urgency, there wasn’t any panic. Then I twigged: it was the interval, and these were the smokers heading outside for a cigarette.

Sure enough, there were crowds of people streaming out of the doors marked stalls and heading left, presumably towards the loos and the bar — probably in that order. I stayed where I was and let the people go past — Seawoll at least, because of the sheer size of the man, should be easy to spot. Sartorially I was disappointed; everyone was dressed expensively but it was all smart casual with the occasional evening dress to relieve the boredom — I’d expected better of my betters. The crowd thinned and I merged with the flow and let it carry me left, past the cloakroom and up a flight of stairs into the main bar. According to the sign this was the Balconies Restaurant, and as far as I could see had been created by throwing several metric tons of stripped pine into a Victorian cast-iron greenhouse. Designed to serve the interval crowd, when a thousand lightly stunned punters would rush in and attempt to drown out the singing with gin and tonics, it featured large open spaces and plain padded furniture with clean brass fittings. Under the vaulted arch of its white iron and glass roof it was as if IKEA had been hired to refit St Pancras Station. If Thomas the Tank Engine had been Swedish, then his living room would have looked just like this.

Although he probably would have been a lot less cheerful.

There was a balcony six metres up that ran all the way around the room, wide enough for chairs and tables laid with white linen and silver. The crowds were thinner up there, presumably because most people had headed straight for the bar and as many gins as they could chuck down their necks before the music started again. I headed for the nearest flight of stairs, hoping to get a better look from above. I was halfway up when I realised that the mood of the room was changing. It wasn’t much of a sensation, but it was like a dog barking late at night and far away.

‘That bitch can fuck off,’ came a woman’s voice, shrill, from somewhere below me.

It was the same feeling of tension as I’d felt on Neal Street — just before Dr Framline went psycho on the cycle courier. Somebody dropped a tray, metal clattered on the expensive wooden floor, a couple of glasses smashed. There was an ironic cheer nearby.

I reached the balcony level, stepped between two unoccupied tables and looked out over the crowd.

‘Wanker,’ said a man somewhere below, ‘you fucking wanker.’

I spotted a fit-looking man in his late forties, salt and pepper hair, conservative suit, distinctively bushy eyebrows. It was Deputy Assistant Commissioner Folsom — because my life was not complicated enough. I drew back from the balcony railing and as I did, I saw Lesley leaning on the railing of the balcony opposite, staring right at me. She looked normal, active, happy, wearing her on-duty leather jacket and slacks. When she was sure that I was watching she gave me a happy little wave and nodded down at the main bar, where Seawoll was getting himself a drink.

A voice announced that the performance would be restarting in three minutes.

Down in the main bar a guy in leather-patched tweed slapped one of the men he was talking to. Somebody shouted, Lesley glanced down and I sprinted down the length of the balcony shoving members of the public out of the way. I glanced over at Lesley, who was staring at me in shock as I rounded the first corner and charged across the balcony that bridged the width of the room. Whoever was doing the thinking in Lesley’s head at that moment, her or Henry Pyke, hadn’t expected me to push my way through a crowd of well-dressed worthies. Which was what I was counting on. It’s not easy to fumble a syrette full of tranquilliser out of your pocket while forcing your way past protesting opera lovers, but somehow I managed to get everything ready by the time I rounded the last corner and headed straight for Lesley.

She was watching me with quiet amusement, head cocked on one side, and I thought, you can be as cool as you like because you’re going to be sleeping soon enough. By that point, members of the public were getting out of my way of their own accord and I had a clear run for the last five metres. Or would have, if Seawoll hadn’t come up the stairs and hit me in the face. It was like running into a low ceiling beam: I flipped straight over onto my back and found myself contemplating a blurry view of the roof.

Damn, but that man could move fast when he wanted to.

Clearly Henry Pyke could influence other people, even hard-headed sods like Seawoll — that couldn’t be good.

‘I frankly don’t care,’ brayed a woman somewhere to my right. ‘It’s just fucking men singing about fucking men.’

A voice announced that the performance would recommence in less than a minute, and that people should return to their seats. A young man with a Romanian accent and a waiter’s uniform told me that I should stay where I was and that the police had been called.

‘I am the police, you pillock,’ I said, but it came out muffled on account of the fact that my jaw felt as if it was dislocated. I found my warrant card and waved it at him, and to be fair, he did give me a hand up. The bar was empty except for the staff cleaning up. Somebody had stepped on the syrette, crushing it flat. I felt my face. Since I still had all my teeth, Seawoll must have pulled his punches. I asked where the big man had gone and the staff said he’d headed downstairs with the blonde woman.

‘Into the theatre?’ I asked, but they didn’t know.

I ran down the steps and found myself staring at the long marble counter of the cloakroom. The good thing about Seawoll is that he’s hard to miss and difficult to forget — the attendant said he’d headed for the stalls. I went back to the lobby where a polite young lady tried to block my way. I told her I needed to see the manager, and when she tripped off to get him I slipped inside.

The music hit me first in a great gloomy wave, followed by the scale of the theatre. A great horseshoe rose up in tiers of gilt and red velvet. Ahead of me a sea of heads swept down to the orchestra pit and beyond them to the stage. The set depicted the back end of a sailing ship, although the scale was exaggerated to the point where the gunwales towered over the singers. Everything was painted in cool shades of blue, grey and dirty white — a ship adrift in a bitter ocean. The music was equally sombre, and could really have done with a back-beat or, failing that, a girl in a miniskirt. Men in uniforms and tricorn hats were singing at each other while a blond guy in a white shirt looked on with doe eyes. I had a funny feeling that it wasn’t going to end well for the blond guy, or the audience, for that matter. I’d just worked out that the tenor was playing the captain when the bass, playing the villain of the piece, faltered. I thought at first that this was part of the performance, but the murmur that ran through the audience made it clear it was a mistake. The singer tried to recover, but was having trouble remembering his part. The tenor stepped up to ad lib, but faltered himself, and with an expression of pure panic looked off the stage towards the wings. The audience was starting to drown out the orchestra who, having finally twigged that something was up, crashed to a stop.

I started down the aisle towards the orchestra pit, although I had no idea how I was going to get to the stage. A few of the audience had stood up and were craning their necks to see what was going on. I reached the edge of the pit and glanced down to see that the musicians were still poised over their instruments. I was close enough to touch a lead violinist. He was trembling and his eyes were glazed. The conductor tapped his baton on his music stand and the musicians started playing again. I recognised the music as the first tune sung by Mr Punch in the Piccini script, it was Malbrough s’en va-t-en guerre, an old French folk song, but in the English speaking world it was For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow.

The tenor playing the captain picked up the refrain first:

Mr Punch is a jolly good fellow,

His dress is all scarlet and yellow.

The bass and baritone joined in in quick succession, followed by the company, singing as if they had the song sheet before them.

And if now and then he gets mellow,

It’s only among good friends.

The singers stamped their feet to the beat of the music. The audience seemed stuck in their seats; I couldn’t tell if they were confused, mesmerised or just too appalled to move. Then the front row of the stalls took up the beat with hands and feet. I could feel the compulsion myself, a wash of beer and skittles and pork pies and dancing and not caring a fig for the opinions of others.

With the girls he’s a rogue and rover;

He lives, while he can, upon clover;

The clapping and stamping spread back, row by row, from the front of the stalls. In the good acoustics of the Opera House the stamping was louder than a Highbury crowd, and just as contagious. I had to lock my knees to stop my feet from moving.

When he dies it’s only all over:

And there Punch’s comedy ends.

Lesley stepped onto the stage and, bold as brass, walked up the steps that took her to the exaggerated poop deck and turned to face the audience. I saw then that in her left hand she carried a silver-topped cane. I recognised it — the bastard had stolen it from Nightingale. A spotlight stabbed out of the darkness and bathed her in harsh white light. The music and the singing stopped and the stamping trailed away.

‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ called Lesley, ‘boys and girls. I present to you today the most tragical comedy and comical tragedy of Mr Punch, as related to that great talent and impresario Mr Henry Pyke.’ She waited for applause, and when it didn’t come she muttered under her breath and made a curt gesture with the cane. I felt the compulsion roll over me, while behind me the audience broke into applause.

Lesley bowed graciously. ‘Lovely to be here,’ she said. ‘My, but this theatre is much enlarged since my day. Is anyone else here from the 1790s?’

A solitary whoop floated down from the gods, just to prove that there’s always one in every crowd.

‘Not that I don’t believe you, sir, but you’re a bloody liar,’ said Lesley. ‘The old ham will be here by and by.’ She looked out past the lights into the stalls, searching for something. ‘I know you’re out there, you black Irish dog.’

She shook her head. ‘I’d just like to say, it’s good to be here in the twenty-first century,’ she said suddenly. ‘Lots of things to be grateful for: indoor plumbing, horseless carriages — a decent life expectancy.’

There was no obvious way to get from the stalls to the stage. The orchestra pit was two metres deep, and the lip of the stage opposite was higher than a man could reach.

‘Tonight, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, for your entertainment, I give you my rendition of that lamentable scene from the story of Mr Punch,’ said Lesley. ‘I refer of course to his incarceration and, alas, impending execution.’

‘No,’ I yelled. I’d read the script. I knew what was coming next.

Lesley looked straight at me and smiled. ‘But of course,’ she said. ‘The play’s the thing.’ There was a crack of breaking bone, and her face changed. As her nose became a hooked blade, her voice rose to a piercing, warbling shriek.

‘That’s the way to do it!’ she screeched.

I was too late, but I threw myself into the orchestra pit just the same. The Royal Opera House doesn’t mess about with a quartet with a drum machine — you get a full-on orchestra seventy musicians strong, and the pit is built to match. I landed amid the horn section, who were not so dazed by the compulsion Henry Pyke had them under that they didn’t protest. I pushed my way through the violinists, but it was no good, even with a standing jump I couldn’t get my hands on the stage. One of the violinists asked me what the fuck I thought I was doing and, backed up by a bassist, threatened to kick my head in. They both had that same Friday-night, mean drunk look in their eyes that I was beginning to associate with Henry Pyke. I’d just grabbed a music stand to hold them at bay when the orchestra started up again. As soon as it did the two homicidal musicians ignored me, took up their instruments, took their places and, with a great deal of decorum, considering they were having a psychotic episode, started playing. I could hear the thing wearing Lesley’s body singing in its awful high-pitched voice:

Punch when parted from his dear,

Still must sing in doleful tune.

I couldn’t see what Lesley was doing, but judging from the song she was acting out the scene where punch watches a gallows being assembled outside his prison window. There were doors at either end of the orchestra pit — they had to reach backstage one way or the other. I elbowed my way through the musicians towards the nearest door leaving a trail of squawks, twangs, squeals and crashes behind me. The door led into another narrow breezeblock passageway with other, identical-looking passageways branching off left and right. Since I’d exited stage left, I guessed another left turn would get me backstage. I was right, only the Royal Opera House didn’t have a backstage, it had an aircraft hangar, a huge, high-ceilinged room at least three times the size of the main stage that you could have parked a Zeppelin in. All the stage managers, prompts and whoever else lurks out of sight during a performance had crowded into the wings, transfixed by whatever influence Henry Pyke was using on the audience. Getting away from that influence had given me a chance to cool down and think. The damage to Lesley had been done; if I stuck her with the tranquilliser now, her face would fall off. Rushing onto the stage wasn’t going to help — for all I knew, me blundering in was part of Henry Pyke’s script. I sidled among the stagehands and tried to get as close to the stage as I could without showing myself.

They hadn’t built a gallows. Instead, a noose had been lowered from above, as if from a yardarm. Either Henry Pyke was even more organised than I thought he was, or the original opera had involved someone getting hanged. Presumably after a lot of singing.

Lesley, still playing the role of Punch, mimed languishing behind a barred window. She didn’t seem to be following the Piccini script any longer, but instead was regaling the audience with the life story of one Henry Pyke, aspiring actor, from his humble beginnings in a small Warwickshire village to his burgeoning career on the London stage.

‘And there I was,’ declaimed Lesley, ‘no longer a young man but a seasoned actor, my God-given gifts augmented by years of experience dearly won on the hard and unforgiving stages of London.’

That nobody among the stage managers was even sniggering showed the strength of the compulsion they were under. Since Nightingale hadn’t yet started me on ‘compulsion for beginners’, I didn’t know how much magic it took to hold over two thousand people in thrall, but I bet it was a lot, and that’s when I decided it was probably better for Lesley to have her face fall off than her brain shrivel up. I looked around. There had to be a first-aid kit close by. Dr Walid had said I was going to need saline solution and bandages to wrap around her head if I was going to keep her alive long enough for the ambulance to get there. I spotted the kit mounted on the wall above a selection of fire extinguishers, contained in an impressively large suitcase of red ballistic plastic that would also come in handy as an offensive weapon. I got my last syrette ready, and with the first-aid kit in my other hand I sidled into the wings. By the time I had sight of the stage again, Lesley — I couldn’t bear to think of her as Punch or Henry Pyke — was giving a full and detailed description of Henry’s disappointments. Most of which he blamed on Charles Macklin who, Henry claimed, had turned his hand against him out of spite and when challenged, outside this very theatre, had cruelly struck Henry down.

‘He should have swung for that,’ said Lesley. ‘Just as he should have swung for poor Thomas Hallum that he did for in the Theatre Royal. But he has the luck of the Irish and the gift of the gab.’

That’s when I realised what Henry Pyke was waiting for. Charles Macklin had been a regular at the Royal Opera House until his death. According to legend, Macklin’s ghost was supposed to have been seen on numerous occasions in his favourite seat in the stalls. Henry Pyke was trying to draw him out, but I didn’t think he was going to turn up. Lesley paced the width of the poop deck, peering out into the stalls.

‘Show yourself, Macklin,’ she called. I thought there was uncertainty in her voice now. The poop deck was a raised section of the stage, too high at the sides for me to climb. The only access would be up the stairs at the front — but there was no way to sneak up on Lesley. I was going to have to do something stupid.

I stepped boldly onto the stage, and then made the mistake of looking out at the audience. I couldn’t see much beyond the footlights, but I could see enough to register the great mass of people staring back at me from the towering darkness. I stumbled over my own feet and caught myself on a prop cannon.

‘What’s this?’ screeched Lesley.

‘I am Jack Ketch,’ I said, rather too quietly.

‘God spare me from fools and amateurs,’ said Lesley under her breath, then louder. ‘What’s this?’

‘I am Jack Ketch,’ I said, and this time I felt it carry out to the audience. I got a ripple of vestigia back, not from the people but from the fabric of the auditorium. The theatre remembered Jack Ketch, executioner for Charles II, a man famed for being so unrepentantly crap at his job that he once published a pamphlet in which he blamed his victim, Lord Russell, for failing to stay still when he swung the axe. For a century afterwards, Ketch was a synonym for the hangman, the murderer and the Devil himself: if ever there was a name to conjure him with, then it would be Jack Ketch. Which explained his role in the Punch and Judy show, and why this was my best chance to get close enough to Lesley to use the syrette.

‘Thank you very much, Mr Ketch, but I am quite comfortable here,’ said Lesley.

I hadn’t bothered to learn the script by heart, but I knew enough to improvise. ‘But you must come out,’ I said. ‘Come out and be hanged.’

‘You would not be so cruel,’ said Lesley.

I know for a fact that there was supposed to be a load more banter here, but since I couldn’t remember the words I cut to the action. ‘Then I must fetch you,’ I said, and advanced up the stairs to the poop deck. It was hard to make myself look at the ruin of Lesley’s face, but I couldn’t risk any surprise moves. Her Punch face twisted with irritation, presumably because I was skipping lines, but she went on with the show — just as I’d been hoping she would. This was the part where Jack Ketch seizes Punch and drags him to the noose, at which point the wily wife-murderer tricks Jack Ketch into sticking his own head through the loop and thus hanging himself. No sir, they don’t make role models for children like that any more.

I readied the syrette.

Lesley cowered as I approached. ‘Mercy, mercy,’ she squeaked. ‘I’ll never do so again.’

‘That much is certain,’ I said, but before I could inject her she whirled and thrust Nightingale’s cane in my face. The muscles in my back and shoulders locked and it was all I could do to keep my balance.

‘Do you know what this is?’ asked Lesley, waving the cane from side to side.

I tried to say ‘it’s a stick’, but my jaw muscles were locked along with everything else.

‘As Prospero had his book and staff,’ said Lesley, ‘so does your Master have both those things, but of those I need only the staff. Being of the spirit world gives one a certain je ne sais quoi when dealing with magic, but what one lacks sans corporality is the spark of vitality necessary to facilitate one’s desires.’

Which at least confirmed that Henry Pyke had no intrinsic magic of his own, an observation I’d have found more interesting if I hadn’t been sodding paralysed and at his mercy.

‘This is the source of your Master’s power,’ said Lesley. ‘And with his power I can do, well, just about anything I please.’ She grinned, showing her smashed teeth. ‘Your line is: “Now, Mr Punch, no more delay”.’

‘Now, Mr Punch, no more delay,’ I said, and gestured at the noose. ‘Put your head through this loop.’ The weird thing was, this time I could sense the compulsion almost as if it was a forma, a shape in my mind but not of my mind.

‘Through there,’ said Lesley, winking at the audience. ‘Whatever for?’

‘Aye, through there,’ I said. I sensed it again, and this time I was sure: the idea of the shape was external but the actual shape itself was being formed by my own mind. It was like hypnotism, a suggestion rather than a command.

‘What for? I don’t know how,’ said Lesley, and struck a pose of deep despair.

‘It’s very easy,’ I said, grasping the noose, the rope scratchy against my palms. ‘Only put your head through here.’

Lesley leaned forward and, missing the noose entirely, asked, ‘What, so?’

‘No, no,’ I said, and pointed at the noose. ‘Here.’ If it was a suggestion, I thought, then I should be able just to think it away.

Lesley theatrically missed, sticking her head through the noose once more. ‘So, then?’ she asked.

I tried to push the shape out of my mind but found myself saying, ‘Not so, you fool,’ and pantomiming exasperation. Brute force wasn’t the way, and I was going to have to come up with something because in less than two lines the character of Jack Ketch was due to stick his own stupid neck through the loop and get himself hanged, and me with him.

‘Mind who you call fool; try and see if you can do it yourself,’ squeaked Lesley, and paused to give the audience a chance to titter in anticipation. ‘Only show me how and I will do it directly.’

I felt my body shift in anticipation of the move that would shove my head into the noose. Which is when I thought that if I couldn’t get rid of the compulsion, maybe I could change it enough to break it. I did it like anti-noise, where you cancel out a sound wave by broadcasting another sound wave with an inverted phase — it’s clever stuff and very counter-intuitive, but it works. I was hoping the weird, inside-my-head version would work because I’d only just started making the shape in my mind when my mouth said, ‘Very well, I will.’

My forma met the compulsion like the wrong two gearwheels brushing up against each other in a transmission. I thought I could actually feel bits of the forma spinning around in my brain and painfully ricocheting off the inside of my skull, but that could have been my imagination. It didn’t matter. I felt my body unlock and I yanked my head away from the noose and looked at Lesley in triumph.

‘Or maybe I won’t,’ I said.

A huge arm clamped itself across my chest from behind and a large hand gripped the back of my head and pushed it through the noose. I smelled camelhair and Chanel aftershave — Seawoll must have walked up behind me while I was feeling clever.

‘Or maybe you will,’ said Lesley.

I twisted, but while there are some big men who are surprisingly weak, Seawoll wasn’t one of them, so I jammed the syrette into the exposed bit of his hand and gave him the whole dose. Unfortunately the whole dose had been calibrated for Lesley, who was half Seawoll’s size. The pressure never wavered until Lesley yelled, ‘Hoist away, boys,’ and I was dragged into the air by my neck.

The only thing that saved my life was the fact that I was being hanged in a theatrical noose which had been designed, as a matter of health and safety, not to hang the attractive Croatian baritone whose neck was supposed to be in it. The slipknot was a fake and there was a wire reinforcement inside the rope to keep the loop in shape. Undoubtedly there was a eyelet for clipping a tether to the no doubt artfully concealed safety harness to be worn by the handsome baritone, once he’d made his farewell aria. Unfortunately I didn’t have a harness, so the damn thing half-killed me before I managed to get my head out of the loop, scraping the skin off my chin in the process. I got my elbow into the loop for more support, but even with that, there was a sudden line of agony down my back.

I had a quick look down and saw that I was a good five metres above the stage. I wasn’t going to be letting go any time soon.

Below me, Lesley had turned back to the audience. ‘So much for the constabulary,’ she said. Behind her Seawoll sat down heavily on the stairs and slumped forward like a tired runner, the etorphine hydrochloride kicking in at last.

‘See,’ said Lesley. ‘One officer of the law kicks his last, while another lies sleeping, no doubt stupefied with drink. Thus do we good men of England put our trust in swine barely separate from the villains they purport to chase. How long, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, are you prepared to put up with this? Why is it that men of good quality pay their taxes while foreigners pay naught, and yet expect the liberties that are an Englishman’s hard-won prerogative?’

It was getting harder to maintain a hold, but I didn’t fancy my chances letting go. There were huge curtains either side of the stage, and I wondered if I could swing over far enough to grab one. I changed to a two-handed grip on the loop and started to shift my weight and to flex, to get momentum going.

‘Because who is more oppressed?’ exclaimed Lesley. ‘Those that seek nothing but entitlements for themselves, or those that claim for everything: social security, housing benefit, disability, and pay for nothing?’ One thing I did do in history was the reform of the Poor Laws, so I knew then that Henry Pyke must either be using stuff from Lesley’s memory or else had been reading the Daily Mail for the last two hundred years.

‘And are they grateful?’ she asked. The audience muttered in response. ‘Of course they are not,’ said Lesley. ‘For they have come to look upon such things as their right.’

It wasn’t easy keeping the rope from swinging out over the orchestra pit. I tried to correct, and ended up describing a figure of eight. I was still several metres short of the scaffolding platform, so I put my back into it, jack-knifing my legs to cross the gap.

Suddenly the crowd gave a roar and I felt a wave of frustration and anger well up around me like floodwater backing out of a storm drain. I lost concentration at a crucial moment and slammed into the curtain. I made the jump, desperately grabbing handfuls of the heavy cloth and trying to get enough between my legs to stop me sliding smack onto the stage.

Then all the lights went out. They didn’t spark, flicker, flash or do anything theatrical — they just turned themselves off. Somewhere amid the Royal Opera House’s sophisticated lighting rig, I reckoned, a couple of microprocessors were crumbling into sand. When you are hanging by your fingernails, down is nearly always the right direction, so I did my best to ignore the pain in my forearms and started working my way down the curtain. Out in the darkness I heard the audience not panicking which, given the circumstances, was much creepier than the alternative.

A cone of white light appeared around Lesley like a spotlight from an invisible lamp. ‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ she called, ‘boys and girls. I think it’s time to go out and play.’

One of my mum’s uncles once had tickets to Arsenal v Spurs at Highbury, and took me when his own son couldn’t make it. We were down among season-ticket holders, the hardest of the hard core football fans who went there for the game, not the violence. Being in a crowd like that is like being caught in the tide — you might try going in the other direction but it drags you along all the same. It was a dull game, style wise, and looked to be heading for a nil — nil draw when suddenly, in injury time, Arsenal made a late surge. As they got into the penalty area I swear the whole stadium, sixty thousand people, held their breath. When the Arsenal forward put it in the back of the net I found myself screaming with joy along with the rest of the people around me. It was entirely involuntary.

That’s what it felt like when Henry Pyke let the audience loose at the Royal Opera House. I must have let go of the curtain and fallen the last couple of metres, but I only know that I was suddenly lying on the stage with a shooting pain in my ankle and a sudden desire to smash someone’s face in. I pulled myself to my feet and found myself face to disfigured face with Lesley.

I flinched. Up close, the ruin of Lesley’s face was even harder to deal with. My eyes kept sliding away from the grotesque caricature. On either side of her stood the principal cast, all male, all tense and, except for the boyish baritone, much tougher-looking than you’d expect among practitioners of high culture.

‘Are you all right?’ she squeaked. ‘You had me worried there.’

‘You tried to hang me,’ I said.

‘Peter,’ said Henry Pyke. ‘I never wanted you dead. Over the last few months I’ve come to think of you as less of an arch-enemy and more as the comic relief, the slightly dim character that comes on with the dog and does a funny turn while the real thespians are getting changed.’

‘I notice Charles Macklin didn’t make an appearance,’ I said.

The Punch nose twitched. ‘No matter,’ said Lesley. ‘The gout-ridden bastard can’t hide for ever.’

‘And in the meantime, we …’ it was a good question. ‘What are we doing?’ I asked.

‘We are playing our role,’ said Lesley. ‘We are Mr Punch, the irrepressible spirit of riot and rebellion. It is our nature to cause trouble, just as it is your nature to try and stop us.’

‘You’re killing people,’ I said.

‘Alas,’ said Lesley. ‘All art requires sacrifice. And take it from one who knows — death is more of a bore than a tragedy.’

Suddenly I was struck by the fact that I wasn’t talking to a complete personality. The way the accent bopped around from era to era, the bizarre switches in motive and behaviour. This wasn’t Henry Pyke, or even Mr Punch, this was like a patchwork, a personality cobbled together from half-remembered fragments. Maybe all ghosts were like this, a pattern of memory trapped in the fabric of the city like files on a hard-drive — slowly getting worn away as each generation of Londoners laid down the pattern of their lives.

‘You’re not listening,’ said Lesley. ‘Here I am, taking time out of my busy schedule to gloat and you’re in a world of your own.’

‘Tell me, Henry,’ I said. ‘What were the names of your parents?

‘Why, they were Mr and Mrs Pyke, of course.’

‘And their first names?’

Lesley laughed. ‘You’re trying to trick me,’ she said. ‘Their names were Father and Mother.’

I was right — Henry Pyke, at least the portion of him inside Lesley’s head — was literally not all there.

‘And tell me all the good things that come into your mind,’ I said, ‘about your mother.’

Lesley cocked her head to one side. ‘Now you’re just taking me for a fool,’ she said. She gestured at the principal cast, who’d been impassively watching our exchange. ‘Do you know what The Times said about this production?’

‘It was gloomy and pointless,’ I said as I got to my feet. If Lesley was going to monologue, I was going to use the opportunity to get up.

‘Close,’ she said. ‘What the opera critic of The Times actually wrote was that “the performance had all the gravitas of a Christmas episode of Coronation Street”.’

‘That’s harsh,’ I said.

I didn’t have any more tranquilliser, but the first-aid kit was still lying in the wings. One blow to the back of the head with the heavy case might be enough to put Lesley down. And then what?

Lesley cocked her head over to the other side — eyes still on me. ‘Oh look, boys,’ she said to the principal cast. ‘It’s the opera critic for The Times.’

I considered telling them I didn’t even read The Times, but I didn’t think they’d listen. I ran for the nearest fire exit on the basis that, by definition, it would be the shortest route out and, by law, always unlocked. Also the emergency exit signs were on a different circuit, and thus the only source of light.

I got three metres ahead of the singers while crossing the aircraft hangar space behind the stage and didn’t slow down as I banged through the first door, which cost a bruised rib but gained me at least a metre. My eyes had already begun to adjust, but even with the next emergency exit sign directly ahead there wasn’t enough light to stop me from tripping over a badly parked trolley. I went down clutching my shin, and an absurd part of my mind noting that an obstruction like that was a violation of health and safety regulations.

A silhouetted figure came charging down the corridor towards me. One of the singers had caught up; it was too dark to see which one. I kicked the trolley into his path and he went down on his face next to me. He was a big man, and smelled of sweat and stage make-up. He tried to get back up but I stepped on his back as I climbed to my feet. His friends banged through the door so I yelled to make sure their attention was focused on me, and then ran for it. The yelps as they tripped over their colleague were deeply satisfying.

Bang through another door and the lights were on, a separate circuit from the house lights, I guessed, and I was back in a blinding labyrinth of narrow corridors that all looked the same. I ran through a room inhabited by nothing but wigs and turned into a corridor whose floor was covered in drifts of ballet shoes. I slipped on one and went skidding into a breezeblock wall. Behind me I could hear the principal cast howling for my blood; the fact that the threats were beautifully articulated was of no comfort at all.

Finally, through another fire exit and I found myself by the ground-floor toilets next to the cloakroom. I could hear glass smashing from the direction of the main foyer, so I headed for the side exit by the ticket office. I ignored the slow, wheelchair-accessible revolving door and headed straight for the emergency exits, but what I saw through the glass brought me to a sudden stop.

There was a riot in Bow Street. A well-dressed mob was looting the hotel opposite, and a column of greasy black smoke was rising from a burning car. I recognised the make — it was a canary-yellow Mini convertible.