The Memory of Blood

∨ The Memory of Blood ∧

48

Strung Up

When Colin Bimsley was seven years old his father bought him a black and white cat which he called Bargepole because it kept knocking things over. One day, Bargepole decided to get closer to the blackbirds that lived in the elm tree at the end of the garden and got stuck in its boughs.

Colin’s father suffered from a rare syndrome that affected his spatial awareness. It created an imbalance in the inner ear and was a hereditary condition but, luckily, young Colin had shown no sign of developing the same problem. Until he decided to climb the elm tree.

For once he reached the cool, breeze-swept branches at the top where Bargepole had become lodged, his sense of distance and equilibrium deserted him. The ground telescoped away into the distance and Colin was left as stranded as the cat.

Every time he reached out to Bargepole, trying to lure him nearer, the cat growled in fear and backed further away. What the boy had failed to notice was that he was now in the more precarious position, extended on a sapling branch that could not hold his weight for long. As he felt it break, he glanced back at the ground and saw it rushing towards him like the bottom of a roller-coaster loop. The fence to the railway broke his fall, and his right leg.

The memory of falling never left him. His old nemesis reappeared whenever his diminished spatial awareness struck, and it did now, with a vengeance.

Colin was halfway up a flight of service stairs leading from the brick arches of Tooley Street to the railway line above when sweat broke out across his back and forehead. Ahead of him was Ray Pryce, running with a section of rusted iron downpipe manacled to his wrist. It shouldn’t have happened – but nothing in the case should have happened the way it did, and now they were dealing with the consequences.

Colin fell back against the wall, watching in horror as the stairs rotated beneath his feet. He could not move. From the corner of his eye he saw Jack Renfield and Fraternity DuCaine ascending towards him. All he could do was point upwards.

Renfield and DuCaine powered up and out into the rainswept corridor that ran beside the train lines. The southern routes of London Bridge station fanned out in a vast grey swathe. The bright windows of carriages flickered past, heading for Kent and the coast. Pryce was running hard, but DuCaine’s powerful long legs quickly closed the gap. Renfield could see an escape route; at the end of the alley there was an open section of the fence that led to a buttress of the railway arch. Ray Pryce would be able to get out, but it was a long way to the street below.

Fraternity had almost caught up with him when Ray slipped through and out onto the brick promontory. “Leave him,” Renfield called, “he can’t go anywhere.”

Fraternity answered by jabbing his finger down: Look.

Renfield peered over the side and saw a decorative pillar ten feet below. If Pryce jumped to it, he could jump once more to the pavement and run back into the tunnels beneath the lines. There was a good chance that he would be able to evade capture. “No,” he shouted, “you can’t let him jump!”

But it was too late, and Fraternity was still too far away. Ray saw the pillar and made his move. He was light and managed the fall easily. Now he just had to jump again, and then he would be home free. Renfield fatally hesitated, knowing he should head back down the stairs, but was too far behind. Fraternity was there one second, gone the next. He had jumped, too. Renfield watched as Ray made the second leap.

And right at that moment, something entirely unexpected happened. He stopped in midair, hovering above the street with his arms over his head. It seemed insane, impossible, but there he was, suspended over the road.

Bryant, you’ve got the luck of the bloody devil, Renfield thought, unable to stop himself from grinning.

Ray Pryce had jumped between a pair of all-but-invisible metal guy ropes that ran between the arches. They had been used to suspend signs for the London Dungeon’s last exhibition. Pryce had passed between them but the length of pipe had not. Trapped by his left wrist, desperately trying to ease his weight by holding onto the other guyline with his right hand, he swung helplessly back and forth, unable to move.

A few moments later, he was surrounded by various surprised members of the PCU.

“You’re too late,” Ray shouted down at them. “It’s over. I did what I set out to do. You know I did. Whatever happens now, remember this. I won.”