The Severed Streets

FIVE

Sefton finished his coffee. He was inside the usual pub, in his usual place, sitting looking towards the window but far enough back from it that he wouldn’t be seen by anyone looking back from his target. He’d started to come here a few weeks ago and had previously treated this part of his duties reasonably casually. Now, though, he’d been asked to begin to make use of the progress he’d made in getting a look at people involved in London’s occult community. So today was going to be a bit different and he was now in the mental space he associated with being undercover, lightly wearing a role which could basically be described as ‘definitely not a policeman’. He’d always come here on Thursdays because that was the day when more of the particular sort of people he was interested in — the people who could make a little use of what his team called ‘the London shit’ to do impossible things, the people Losley had called Privileged — tended to go into the particular shop on Greek Street, across the road from the pub. In fact, there was one of them now, a bloke whom Sefton now knew well enough by sight to be able to follow him in a crowd: white male; early twenties; around six foot one; slim build; neatly trimmed beard; always wore a waistcoat and tie; a bit tweedy. Student, most likely. Straight. Whether or not everyone who made use of the power of London also had the Sight was an open question, one which Sefton had made a lot of notes about in his special notebooks. More certain was the fact that neither those who had the Sight nor those who knew how to use the power necessarily stood out as being important to someone Sighted. The team hadn’t been able to follow Losley just by feeling her presence. From his own studies, and this was something he was planning to share with the team soon, he suspected that he knew of at least one way in which those who understood how to use this stuff went into stealth mode.

The man was wandering over to the biggest branch of Quicksilver Dawn, the chain of occult shops that had sponsored one of the stalls at the New Age fair the team had attended when investigating the Losley case. All the meaningful customers that Sefton had identified seemed to dress slightly differently to the norm, but there had been very few in anything like the full-on Victorian dress seen at that fair. This, Sefton understood as he made his way to the door, was something J.K. Rowling had got right about the non-Muggle population: the askew dress sense. Maybe she knew more than she let on. He left the pub and sauntered across the street, enjoying the sunshine on his arms. Last night he’d had troubled dreams again. He had felt as if something was trying to get into his head, that the summer had got past his antihistamines and shoved its way right up into his sinuses and was rushing about in his brain, kicking down all the doors. He’d gone into the bathroom at 3 a.m. and splashed water on his face, and only slowly got back to sleep.

Now, in the distance, he could hear the drums of yet another protest march, heading for Parliament. The murders hadn’t deflated that movement; if anything, they had actually increased the number of protestors. The public, he thought, had sensed blood, and now it was as if their ancient hatred of those in power had started to be set free. If there was going to be a Police Federation strike, Sefton had already decided that he wouldn’t join in.

He went to look in the window of the shop. Just displays of completely ordinary Tarot cards and crystals on fake velvet in the window. There was an artificial spring that bubbled from a length of silvered tubing and twinkled as it fell delightfully into the limpid depths below. That might give his team an excuse to stroll in here one day this summer. ‘Hosepipe ban, sir. We’re searching the premises for free-flowing water.’ Even Quill, open to leaving the rule book behind now that they were working in the wild extremes, might blanch at that. There was nothing of Sighted interest in the window, nothing weighty.

Sefton paused for a moment and found that he was quite calm. He was undercover, he was at home with this sort of tension. He went inside.

* * *

The shop smelt clean and airy. The shelves were white, and enormous posters and paintings decorated the walls. Gentle, tuneless music wafted past. No incense; it would be too hard for the staff to put up with all day. There were those staff, twenty-somethings in black T-shirts with the logo of the shop; two of them were laughing at the till, everyday-looking kids, divorced from the clientele he was after.

He wandered towards the back of the store and realized straight away that this was like walking uphill. There was a precise gradient. Every step he took, according to the Sight, got him into more serious territory. Checking the price tags on the items, he saw that they followed that index too: more expensive with every step. He stopped. That felt … wrong. Why? This shop, logically, attached a higher price tag to items that were genuinely powerful, that had the strength of London about them, that had the age so prized by the small portion of the clientele who knew what they were doing. Presumably, he was heading towards more valuable items that could accomplish things — like the Tarot of London or Book of Changes that Ross had encountered — unlike the jewellery in these halfway cases, which just shone through association, without the feeling that it might leap up and help him or hurt him. So what was the problem with any of that? He realized he was feeling that there was something wrong with linking occult power and money. Something almost … gauche about it. He could feel that embarrassment as a physical effect. It was like … being on a fairground ride, with each foot on a plank that rocked in a different direction … the power and the money were sort of … angry at being chained together. They were resisting each other. What the fuck was that about? He recalled the same feeling from the green thing that he’d run into in Soho when he first got the Sight — that same anger at money.

He shook off the feeling and glanced back to the staff. They hadn’t even looked up. They must be used to people doing weird shit in here.

He kept moving.

There was an area right at the back with glass-fronted cases and narrow walkways between the shelves. It smelt mustier. The design of the shop identified it as the dull bit, for serious collectors only, but there were two security cameras up there, neatly covering everything. It seemed that the owners didn’t find it profitable to bring much in the way of this genuine stuff to the New Age fairs. Sefton’s target was looking into one of the display cases. Ignoring him, Sefton walked up to stand beside him, deciding to fix his eyes on something in there that shone brightly to the Sight: a brass bracelet that looked as if it had spent some time underwater, decorated with rough knotwork. There would be some serious London history to it. There was no label on it; if you were back here, you were supposed to know what this stuff was. There was a price tag, though: £1999.99. He could feel the object kind of itching at its attachment to such a value. He could feel its age. He could also feel that there was nothing scary about it; here was an item you could lean on in a crisis, an old friend that would always see you through. He’d seldom felt emotional detail like that with the Sight. Maybe that was because of the shop environment. If someone Sighted had stocked this place — and that was a conclusion he felt he could safely come to — they wouldn’t put out anything that made their customers feel like shit. That’d be in the back, the higher slopes that he felt continued past this end wall, the special stuff for special people.

Sefton had picked the bloke he’d followed in here because he looked young and was in modern dress, unlike the serious practitioners they’d encountered at the New Age fair. Today was just about making sure that the guy saw him here, so that by the third or fourth encounter he’d think of him as a regular, and then maybe start talking to him. Sefton wasn’t planning to begin a conversation himself. You didn’t initiate contact. Doing this in a subcultural context couldn’t help but remind Sefton of something he’d never done himself: cottaging. What would be just a small indicator that he and the man shared common predilections? There might well be a secret language here, but if there was an occult underworld in London, the sort of community that knew itself as a community, it stayed off the internet. With what Ross had reported about her fortune-teller’s embrace of all that was old, maybe that wasn’t surprising. What would be the obvious thing to do here?

He let himself smile at the warm feeling coming from the artefact, then glanced sidelong and saw that the young man was surely feeling the same way. But then he actually made eye contact with Sefton, and instead of any shared sentiment, as if they were both in an art gallery, the look on his face was grim. To Sefton’s surprise, the man spoke. He kept his voice low and urgent. He had a slight stammer and an upper-class accent. ‘Does you being here mean what I think it does?’

Sefton turned slowly to look at him, sizing him up.

‘Does someone like you being here mean that the Keel brothers are about to make their move?’

Someone like him? In what sense? Sefton chose his West Indian gang accent. ‘I don’t feel you.’ Suggesting that he really did know what was going on.

The man looked suddenly shocked. He lowered his voice even further. ‘You’re prepared to go that far? In the presence of all this?’

Sefton was now completely lost. But he didn’t let his expression show it. It was vital that he continue to feed this man’s assumption that he knew as much about what was going on as the man did. That was his way in. He smiled a very deliberate smile, and straightened his back from his gang slump, squared his shoulders, emanating basic dominance. Whatever this was, yeah, he was prepared to go that far. Feigning confidence had saved him in the past. Sometimes he thought that was all there was to life. He wished he found it as easy to do in the real world as when he was undercover.

The man seemed not to know what to do. He looked exasperated for a moment, then turned and walked quickly away. He looked back to Sefton from the end of the aisle, then he was off.

Well, that had been a come-hither look. So, here we go; the way in was opening up. Sefton gave it a moment of further window shopping, then went past the oblivious staff again, down something that was trying to slope both ways and out into the sunshine and onto the normal pavement. The man was loitering on the corner beside an ancient-looking cafe; when he saw that Sefton was following, he went inside. So Sefton did too.

* * *

The cafe was one of those you got on the corners of central London, unchanged in design and function since the fifties, apart from a microwave and a smoking ban. There were, now Sefton thought about it, quite a few businesses like this near the occult shop. The pub he’d been in hadn’t even had a telly. Were the proprietors aware that some of their clientele were what might be called neophobic, culturally attached to the past? Or was this just an evolutionary process caused by the flow of cash: in the squeeze, anything that had smacked of modernity had just unknowingly suffered from those customers not showing up? Maybe not. It wasn’t as if the individuals they’d met at the New Age fair were rolling in it. Exactly the opposite.

He went to join the man at a corner table, and now the bloke felt able to look up and acknowledge his presence. ‘I’m on your side. I really am.’

Sefton kept looking stern. Let him talk. His aim here was to find out as much as possible about the culture this man belonged to, and perhaps get an invitation to move further in, to meet more of them. The now-urgent need the man had to express some sort of fellow feeling might be an excellent engine to power that along.

‘But you can’t just march across all the lines. You have to tread carefully.’

What lines? Costain always liked to say that Sefton asked too many questions when undercover. But, sod him, Sefton was in his own world now. ‘Are you disrespecting me?’

From the wince on the man’s face, that had been the wrong thing to say. ‘Why do you keep doing that? Whatever the Keel brothers might want, speaking like that is going too far.’

As his training had taught him, Sefton did the opposite of what he wanted to, looking aside as if being accepted, being invited to become part of this community in some way, was nothing to him. ‘I know it’s hard, in your position-’ the man started to say. ‘You don’t know anything, mate.’

‘I’m only on the fringes myself. But when I’m in their places I do my best to talk their language. You know, to speak all old-fashioned London. All that Mary Poppins music-hall nonsense. It’s just what they’ve always done.’

He meant how Ross’ fortune-teller at the New Age fair had talked. So that was what this guy was worried about — his speech patterns. Just as well he hadn’t gone total Peckham on him.

‘I know the Keel brothers and others are trying to force changes now, that a generational thing of some kind is going on, and that suits me too…’

Sefton filed that one away for future reference.

‘… but you can’t get everything you want at once. Might as well work out which way the wind is going to end up blowing. I know I’m only in the very first stages. And I know it must be a lot worse for … for you…’

‘For black people, you mean?’

He hesitated again, big time. ‘I’m not one of the people who feel you’re automatically too modern. There have been … people of African descent in London for centuries.’

So this was definitely about being seen as too modern. Something not from whatever ‘golden age’ people like that fortune-teller harked back to.

So, hey, entering that shop and heading into the serious stuff at the back must be something you didn’t often see people of colour doing. To this bloke, encountering Sefton had been like getting onto the bus and having Rosa Parks sit down next to him. ‘Right,’ he said. ‘It’s time for a change.’

‘Are you going to the Goat?’ He had lowered his voice, so it seemed that mentioning it in public was dangerous. But he’d also said it as if it was obvious that Sefton would know what he was on about.

Sefton narrowed his eyes and made as if to get up, again doing the opposite of what the man wanted rather than reveal his own lack of knowledge. Again, it worked. The man leaped to his feet, obviously feeling that he’d offended Sefton in some way. ‘Listen, I know about what they say is going to happen there this month. I’m a regular, just on the first level, not every Thursday, but at least on the first Thursday. People are saying that now that the Keel brothers have bought the place, it might get easier for me to, you know, get downstairs. That they’re going to change the rules. You must know something about that.’

The man was obviously assuming that Sefton’s skin colour automatically made him a radical in this subculture, and radicals knew about radical developments. The Goat? It might be a pub. On the first Thursday of the month. That explained why Thursdays brought this sort of person into town. He’d just found one of the meeting places of the London occult community. Job done. He didn’t let that satisfaction show. He slowly sat back down, nodding as if appreciating this bloke’s knowledge of the situation. ‘I might.’

‘Well, if you’re there next Thursday … tread carefully, eh? They might announce new rules, but real change takes time. This might not be the moment. But, hey, if you do get anywhere, I’ll be there to cheer you on. I’d benefit too. I’ve worked hard to get this far. Be nice to get down to the lower floors.’

Sefton considered. He really wanted to know this man’s name and to be given a map of how to get to a location that might be supernaturally hard to find, but he couldn’t risk asking for either. Names were a big deal in both undercover work and everything he’d read about the weird stuff. He waited for a long moment before answering. ‘Let’s see how it goes.’

‘Okay. Great.’

Still taking care to look unsure about this guy, Sefton got to his feet again. He moved to the door like a wary beast on the edge of being tamed by Tarzan. He turned back and gave the man a long, significant look. Then he inclined his head to him. You’re cool, my white brother. I will think hard about what you’ve said here today.

As soon as Sefton turned the corner beside the cafe he broke into his everyday stride, dropping the undercover from his shoulders with great relief. He hit the button on his mobile to call Quill. ‘Jimmy,’ he said, ‘have I got juice for you!’

* * *

Quill listened to the description of the juice. He found it good. He took pleasure in the way his team all looked so engrossed as they stood around the main table in the Portakabin, gazing down at the Google map of London on Ross’ phone. ‘There’s only one pub name with “goat” in it within five miles of that shop,’ she said. ‘The Goat and Compasses, on Manette Street.’

Quill looked it up on his own phone. ‘Can’t book it for the first Thursday,’ he said, ‘or any other Thursday. Private function. And it is indeed now owned by Keel Promotions PLC.’

‘The Keel brothers,’ said Ross, ‘being Barry and Terry, both with form for burglary and attempted robbery, both single, both with addresses in Shoreditch. The company office for the Quicksilver Dawn chain of stores is the shop that Kev visited.’

‘Interesting name, goat,’ said Sefton, ‘a bit Denis Wheatley, and compasses, a bit Masonic.’

‘But,’ added Costain, hitting buttons on his phone, ‘it says here that the name’s a corruption of “God encompasseth us”. Wow. This is so the right place that it’s even got a cover story.’

‘We should get it checked out,’ said Quill. ‘With the aim of learning anything about the murders, and, incidentally, anything about the Sight.’

‘I’ll take a tube of the silver goo along,’ said Sefton. ‘In case there’s someone I can show it to. Maybe indicate that I want to trade it.’

‘We should also listen out for any mention of a thing or a person that can walk through walls and skip off like Peter Pan,’ added Ross.

‘If the Ripper turns out to be Peter Pan,’ said Quill, ‘I will have had the last of my illusions shattered.’ He looked round the group for more input, and found none. ‘Thus endeth the list of what we’ll be listening out for.’

‘We?’ said Sefton.

Quill had thought hard about this. He had approached Lofthouse for authorization under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act and she’d got it for him, but she’d raised an eyebrow at what he’d told her he was planning to do. ‘We all go,’ he said. ‘We may only get one chance to hear something important before this community is on to us. It seems to be all about who’s in the know and who’s not, and like some of the communities Kev and Tony have gone undercover in, it has its own forms of speech. Some of us may bounce down the steps and some may get invited into the back room for a hand of supernatural whist. Our two undercover officers might find themselves being bounced, given the racially challenged aspects of what we’ve heard. I’m also thinking that this could be the Losley house all over again. What we discovered there, and in Berkeley Square, was that we handle the really terrifying shit better as a team.’

‘But you and I aren’t undercovers,’ said Ross. She had developed a serious frown.

‘And you’re not a police officer, which I wouldn’t normally mention, except to say that I am absolutely not asking you to go undercover. It’s a public space, the two of us will stay entirely within it. We just show up, off duty. We don’t have an angle; we just watch and chat, and ask no questions. We do not use assumed names, but we don’t volunteer our real names either. We thus stay outside the definition of a covert human intelligence source.’

She considered for a moment. ‘Okay,’ she said, finally.

Costain was looking worried too. ‘From what we heard at the New Age fair, police officers are loathed and feared by this community-’

‘If things get anywhere near serious, I’ll walk out of there to the car I’ll leave round the corner, and that’ll be the signal for Ross to follow. Same the other way round. You two specialists, on the other hand, will be using constructed identities, and will be free to explore beyond the public areas, should you deem it safe to do so.’

‘What if someone from the New Age fair is there?’ asked Sefton. ‘Me and Costain showed our warrant cards there.’

‘You haven’t seen anyone familiar in your investigations so far. If we do, we bug out immediately.’

‘What if they can tell who we are?’ said Costain. ‘At the fair, Madame Osiris had some sort of supernatural tripwire set up, to detect coppers.’

Sefton suddenly grinned. ‘I’ve been thinking about that,’ he said. ‘You remember when Losley scanned our bar codes and suddenly knew about my batting for the other team?’

‘I’m so glad we all speak metaphor,’ said Quill.

‘She used gestures to do almost everything — apart from that destructive shout of hers — and it’d be hard to have everyone shouting in a social situation, so I think we have to watch out for hand movements.’

‘It was when I said “Mora Losley” that Madame Osiris knew I was associated with the police,’ said Ross. ‘I felt that happen, like … a sort of pressure wave in the air. She kept her hands under the table much of the time, so she might have done something while I was there, or she could have made a gesture beforehand that set that up in advance.’

‘So, we need a way to stop people checking out who we are and discovering that we’re coppers,’ said Sefton, as if all the above had been an interruption to his grand announcement. ‘Just as well I’ve been working on something for that very situation. This would, in fact, be only my second venture, after the vanes, into doing anything useful with this London shit.’ He went to his holdall and brought out a file, out of which he took one of the browned and ancient documents from the Docklands ruins. These were manuscripts he’d found that night, and Quill recalled that Sefton had had to negotiate with Ross, once she’d begun her indexing process, to keep them for his own study after she’d given them a once-over. ‘Since this was left there after years of the site being looted, I’d guess what’s written here is kid’s stuff, second nature to anyone starting out on the road of being Privileged, but of course it’s new to us. I can’t find anything about how actually to read a person-’

‘Because that would be of enormous use in our job,’ said Quill. ‘And because we have the luck of coppers.’

‘-but I have here what the document calls a “blanket”. A way to hide one’s identity from prying gestures.’

‘Blanket, as in hide under one?’ asked Quill.

‘From some of the other language used, I think it’s a corruption of “blank eek”, “eek” being Palare, fairground language, for “face”.’

‘But if we use this “blanket”, won’t everyone get suspicious that we’re the ones hiding our true selves?’

‘If I’ve understood this … Jacobean English, I think it is … right, then keeping shtum about yourself when scanned is only proper, what the Privileged automatically do, a sign of belonging in itself. Assuming nothing’s changed since the seventeenth century.’

‘Given what we’ve seen of this lot,’ said Ross, ‘I think that’s a safe assumption.’

‘And labelled as such,’ said Costain.

Quill noticed the glare she flung him about that.

‘Of course,’ said Sefton, ‘someone could always bring a bigger gun to the party, use something to break through the blanket.’

‘In which case,’ said Quill, ‘we revert to Plan B and run like fuck.’

Sefton read over the parchment once again, then turned to Quill. ‘Okay,’ he said. ‘I think the only way to simulate being read is if I yell in your face. When I do, attempt the following…’

That was how they spent the afternoon.

* * *

At home that night, Ross found herself stopping in her researches, considering sleep, but also fearing the dreams that would come. Maybe they were guilty dreams, her searching her conscience. She went to make herself a cup of tea, then returned to her desk, staring out into the familiar orange light of the suburban night. She was eagerly anticipating the next day. Sefton had, without knowing it, moved her closer to her own, private, goal. Getting into the occult underworld of London could make all the difference. She’d had to appear to be against Quill’s proposal at first, though, because if she’d grabbed at it, he might have known something was up.

Would he? No. That was her being paranoid about someone whose defences, as far as she was concerned, were completely absent. Damn it. Quill was definitely not trying to pry into her secrets in the way she was worried Costain might be. He was innocent of the idea that she might keep any such secrets from him.

She was going to go with her colleagues into a situation that was potentially as dangerous as Berkeley Square had been, and she was not going to be entirely on their side.

* * *

Costain volunteered to be the first of them to enter the pub, as was only right for his rank and experience. On Wednesday he walked past the Goat and Compasses, which looked to be a perfectly ordinary city-centre pub: on the classy side, hanging baskets outside, not averse to the odd tourist, colourful chalkboard outside advertising lunch.

On the Thursday night, the first of the month, at around seven, he entered the pub in character, in a suit that wasn’t too flashy, as if he’d just come from work, but with the little flourishes of a tie pin and a pair of excellent shoes. It felt good to be back undercover. The character he’d decided to play was well behaved, so as not to risk his soul, and because that fitted the operational requirements, but it was an evening out of his own skin, a breathing space. There had been some debate about whether or not he should wear something symbolic, but he had ruled that out. ‘This is a newbie,’ he had said, ‘who’s trying very hard to not make a fuss, to play by the rules. Maybe he’s come for the first time because he’s heard this change is happening, whatever that’s about, and feels for the first time that a dusky gentleman might be welcome. We don’t know enough yet about what all these occult symbols mean for him — for me — to wear one. This bloke I’m playing knows enough not to rock the boat. He’ll wear a symbol when he’s seen what’s what.’

The pub looked just as normal inside. Young blokes, a few suits, an old bloke alone with the newspaper, everyday-looking staff, some Eastern Europeans and some Aussies. None of the Hogwarts crowd, and none of that rough white vibe that said he wasn’t welcome, either. He ordered a Diet Coke and carefully looked around, lost, wondering where the do was. A chalk sign by a stairwell at the back said ‘private party’ with a big, coloured-in arrow pointing downstairs. Did this place prefer to keep its monthly clientele out of sight of the regular punters? He considered asking whether he could go downstairs, but, no, newbie is worried about being told he’s not allowed. He headed down the stairs. Nobody stopped him.

As he took his first step downwards, he noticed that, for the first time since he’d entered the pub, he could feel the gravity of the Sight. There was lots of important stuff down here, but it was a bit … muffled from the pub above. As if where he was going had the equivalent of a lead lining. At the bottom of the stairs, opposite the toilets, a pair of double doors led into a downstairs bar area. Careful not to walk in as if he owned the place, he pushed through them.

He was early. Only a couple of people around, and they were both looking at him. Newbie mistake to arrive so early. Exactly. There was a bouncer in the corner, which was weird — inside, and in a pub like this, and this early in the evening. But the bouncer was weird too: classically shaped as such, with a jutting chin and a bow tie even, but a bit of a caricature, like a comedian playing a bouncer. None of the door staff subculture vibe that you saw with the real thing, which usually shouted either extreme sports enthusiast or former gang member. Costain drained his drink as he looked at the punters. One of them was a middle-aged man in a tweed suit and waistcoat, bearded, a pint of dark ale in front of him. He was sitting in the far corner beside a stairwell that led down, in exactly the same place as the one in the room above. He looked as if he was guarding it. He was reading a volume bound in leather. He made eye contact with Costain, which seemed significant for a moment, a slight pause — oh my goodness a person of colour — then back to his book. The other punter was in his twenties and looked like something out of an advert: stripy suit; bright yellow brogues; waistcoat with a fob watch dangling from it, and huge, neatly tended handlebar moustache, like Dali crossed with Bertie Wooster. He plucked his monocle from his eye and gave Costain a bow of greeting. He was a rich kid, a modern dandy. But still — so far, so friendly. The bar itself looked to be the kind you might find downstairs in any modern pub. Where was that sensation of weight coming from? Still under his feet. Spread out evenly, as he walked to the bar. Perhaps the Keel brothers, having bought the place, had put some of their more meaningful shop merchandise somewhere. Behind the bar a young woman in the same uniform as the one upstairs, but with a certain attitude about her, had appeared. She had wide open holes in her earlobes, goth decoration that might not be allowed in a mainstream bar.

‘You can get your drinks here,’ she said, ‘you don’t have to keep going back upstairs.’

‘Okay,’ he said, ‘thanks.’ If she’d been all old-fashioned with her speech, he’d have matched it.

He bought a vodka and Coke, and went to sit at a corner table, facing the door. A new-looking menu advertised cocktails. The Cemetery Jitters. The Last Rites. The Night Terror. He checked what the top-end champagne was. Blimey. Bollinger Blanc de Noirs Vieilles Vignes Françaises 1997, £400 a bottle. That was well at odds with what they’d encountered at that New Age fair. The poverty of the fortune-teller Ross had met there had been evident. The team had been working on the theory that the occult underworld, if it existed, was made by and for the disenfranchised. Maybe that wasn’t always the case. He flipped to the back of the menu. You could, it seemed, ‘order’ The Damned to come to your table and perform ‘Grimly Fiendish’ for ‘prices starting at £15,000’. Getting much pricier if they were away on tour or something, presumably.

He took a glance at his phone, to make sure Quill hadn’t sent him a last-minute no-go message, then dropped it back into his pocket. No showing-off of modern devices. Of the four of them, only he and Sefton were even carrying their phones tonight, in case they went deep and needed a way to call for backup. He looked back to the young man at the bar, now chatting to the barmaid. So, okay, there was a lot of retro styling to him, but he was fundamentally a modern young man with some cash to spare, out on the town. Maybe the dude was on his way to a party, just a part-timer here. So how about the older one? Costain looked over to the corner. There was something of the unkempt about the man, the quality that they’d all glimpsed amongst the serious players at the New Age fair.

Neither of them had attempted to ‘read’ him. Or if they had made some sort of gesture, he hadn’t felt or noticed it, and they now knew all about him. He hoped that his undercover experience meant they might read the role instead of the real bloke, but if they had they weren’t acting on it. He had no cause to raise the alarm.

Costain took from his pocket the book that Sefton had given him, the small paperback edition of The Stratagem and Other Stories by Aleister Crowley, first published in 1929. It was something a newbie with possibilities might pick, both harmless and indicative. He held it so people could see it was old and crumbling. He started to read, glancing up every now and then. Over the next half-hour he noted a number of people entering, a few who seemed interesting. Soon his lot should start … yeah, there was Ross, entering with the look of a scared rabbit about her. Good acting. Or maybe she was just letting her usual poker face drop. Kind of disappointing, if so. She wore a colourful waistcoat, a big puffy shirt and tailored trousers, halfway between a waiter and a gunfighter, all a bit Nineties. Kind of lesbian. She’d put on some make-up, which looked so weird on her he couldn’t tell if he liked it or not. But she looked good. A natural, in an eccentric get-up like that. As if she was about to walk into a spotlight and start singing, but obviously also someone who didn’t quite know how to fit in here. So not playing a role, not doing anything she couldn’t handle. It suddenly occurred to him that, ironically, it meant that he was possibly seeing something like the real Ross here. Or a guess on her part at what the real Ross might be. He was careful to keep watching her sidelong, not look straight at her. When she turned away, he realized he wanted to see her from behind. He did, and felt awkward at having done so; he went back to his book. Those trousers suited her. Good bit of tailoring there. Well cut.

He remembered how it had been when he’d last been undercover. Some undercovers had wives waiting for them at home, who they went back to at weekends, on the other side of the country. Costain, with what he’d started to recognize had actually been an excessive sense of self-preservation, had always thought that sounded risky. It hadn’t ever seemed an option for him. He’d never met anyone he was interested in while being himself. Or he’d never given himself the chance. What was ‘being himself’? There wasn’t anyone he’d ever properly opened up to. That had been how he was long before he’d become a copper. At school, he’d dance with girls, make out with them … Beverley Cooper … yeah … but when they started to want to go on dates, to hang around, he’d back off. They always took that as him being macho. But really … he had no idea what it really meant. He didn’t know why he was the way he was.

In the Toshack gang, he’d received enough attention, but on nights out with the other gang soldiers he’d always acted boozy and boorish, distancing himself from women while appearing to be up for it. He’d got close to a couple of toms, actually, found that paying them let him carry on playing the part of the gang soldier while getting some … not sexual release, you could do that with a wank, he never understood blokes who went on about that … some emotion, some closeness. They’d laughed a lot in bed, Sam and Jo, whichever of them had been around; he’d always paid them well enough so they’d stay.

Why was he thinking about this now?

He had looked at Ross and felt guilt about what he was considering.

He realized he’d been staring at one page of Crowley’s rather too pompous writing without reading it. He looked over to Ross again and saw that the bloke with the moustache was talking to her at the bar, and she was delighted, taking in every detail of his face, nodding along.

Costain closed his eyes for a moment, then made himself open them again, and made sure he kept reading.

* * *

Ross had made notes on Costain’s instructions about how they all had to look, and she had taken them out when she’d sat down in front of the bedroom mirror that evening. This took her back. She’d been told, years ago, during her training, that police social functions were quite expensive and entirely optional, not the sort of thing analysts did, but she’d wanted to go to one. She’d created her new life, she’d thought then. She had colleagues now, she wanted to do the sort of things they did, to show, as part of her determination to get Toshack, that she was on their team. She’d bought two evening dresses, had taken bloody ages deciding which one to wear, and then in the end had spent a really boring evening trying to find anyone who wanted to talk about operations or methodology.

This time she wasn’t playing a role: she was herself, off duty. But — and she’d known in advance this was going to be a problem — she had no idea how that was supposed to look. She was the one who’d pointed out that the persons of interest they’d met at the New Age fair had made statements with their clothing. She normally made none that she was aware of. Quill had agreed that, while still being themselves, he and Ross should both dress with the style of the ‘occult underworld’ in mind. Take care to not obsess about it, he’d added. So those had been mixed messages.

She’d last tried to dress to specific effect when she’d been persuading the Toshacks that she was a normal teenager, a credit to their family. This was going to be entirely different from that. She’d found the waistcoat in a market two days ago. She made herself up in the way she had when Toshack had expected her to ‘go to discos’, not with her adult eye. The results were … oh, God. But this would all help. She was both herself and a newcomer in this culture.

As she entered the downstairs bar she’d remembered that last time she’d moved amongst these people, at that New Age fair, she’d felt some kinship with them. She’d recognized a certain look about them, but not many of those people were here now, she saw as she entered. Instead it was mostly bloody hipsters, that weird ‘oh I’m so awfully British’ look that had come along around the time of the Olympics and the Jubilee and was probably supposed to be ironic. Beards that looked halfway between Edwardian and pirate. Great rolls of hair in mock Mohicans. She’d gone to the bar and let herself be chatted to by some bloke and did all the things that let him think this was worth continuing with, which was also the real her. At least it had been, sometimes. It meant that she didn’t stand out by rebuffing him. She’d waited for that feeling of air pressure, of someone checking her credentials, but had felt none.

‘So what made you interested in, you know, our jolly old sort of thing?’

Really? He’d said ‘jolly old’ and added distance and irony as he’d said it. The fortune-teller Ross had met had been desperate and honest about her use of dead speech patterns. If this man was typical, this place didn’t look too promising for the operation or for her own aims tonight.

Ross laughed in a way that said she was laughing with him rather than at him. ‘Oh, you know, you read a few books…’ She realized she hadn’t attempted, as Quill had advised them all, her own equivalent of ‘jolly old’. But, okay, she was being herself.

‘Did you see one of the fliers?’

‘No.’ Lying, she had been told, was entirely out.

He fished one of them out of the pocket of his waistcoat. ‘Only given out to the right sort of people in the right sort of places.’ He handed her one with a flourish. ‘There you go.’

The flier looked like a music-hall poster. In that Victorian font it promised, in big letters, The Secret Metropolitan Gathering of which you Have All Heard so Much. Lesser attractions in boxes were noted as Invitations to Further Delights, That which Dare Not Speak its Name and Rum.

‘That which dare not speak its name?’ Oh. That had been a question, hadn’t it? But surely she would ask some? If she was being herself. Playing a part.

He feigned shock. ‘I dare not say. Obviously.’

‘Only, that was what Oscar Wilde called being gay…’

‘That’s mainstream now. This is … truly blinkin’ underground.’

She laughed again and carefully slipped the flier into her waistcoat pocket. ‘Right.’ The people from the New Age fair wouldn’t have allowed themselves a flier. She looked around the room. Had they even got the right place? Maybe this was just a sort of … copy, a cargo cult, weekend punks. She saw Costain. He had been looking at her. He’d told her not to worry if she happened to look at him. Being herself, she would sometimes look at him. He looked weird, all buttoned up like that, his head bent over his book while all around him people were chatting. She saw one of his fingers resting on the words, and wondered if he was really reading them. He moved his fingers as if he was, and then he delicately turned a page.

She looked back to the bloke at the bar, because he’d started to look in the same direction, and then took her own gaze over to the bearded bloke by the stairs. He was still reading too, paying absolutely no attention to all the bright young things who were gathering around him. He looked up from his book, as if feeling her watching him … and, oh, that might actually be true … and made eye contact with her for a significant length of time. She tensed, expecting him to check her bar code. He didn’t. He looked back to his book again.

* * *

Sefton had been tempted to ask Joe’s opinion as to what might make him look the part tonight, but that would have only made Joe worry, without saying he was worried. In the end he’d chosen a battered leather jacket he’d had at the back of the wardrobe, which he’d got from a second-hand shop, so probably qualified as vintage. The inner pockets were thick enough that the flask containing silver goo didn’t feel continually cold against his chest. He put the vanes the bloke at the New Age fair had attacked Quill with in the other one. He still had no idea how to use them as a weapon, but they might be a useful sensor. He put the jacket on over a bland polo shirt. He was meant to look as if he didn’t give a damn. His character had been established as in your face at the shop, so in your face he would remain. It was quite crowded by the time he arrived. He didn’t look for Costain and Ross, and didn’t find them. He’d waited across the street until he’d seen beardy waistcoat, his mental shorthand for the bloke from the occult shop, enter, and followed. There he was now, at the bar, talking to a very severe-looking young woman. She was the real thing — the most interesting by far of all those who’d arrived. She wore a black dress so old that the seams and creases were white. Her hair was a black mop, tufts in all directions, completely unstyled. She couldn’t have been more than twenty, but she looked sour, with great rings of sleeplessness under her eyes. Beardy waistcoat was looking shocked at her, shaking his head in mute astonishment at whatever she’d just said to him. Sefton went straight to them, but then made sure to stop when beardy saw him, as if registering only in that moment that the man had company. Beardy waved him over.

‘Glad to see you,’ he said. ‘What are you having?’ He wanted to get Sefton away from the woman, whom it seemed he’d just met, but was already having difficulties with.

‘Who’s the cunt with the sun tan?’ she said. Her accent was full-on Eliza Doolittle, and Sefton actually had to restrain a laugh. Wow. That sort of old-fashioned racism? Was this how it was going to be tonight? He let the other half of what he felt hearing that, the sudden bleak anger, show on his face.

The man shook his head. ‘Oh, for God’s sake. She was like that with me, too. Would you please just-?’

‘What?’ The woman looked calm and empty as she said it. She was, weirdly, taking no pleasure in this. She seemed utterly sober. ‘He’s a fucking nigger.’

‘What the fuck?’ said Sefton.

‘I–I think maybe it’s-’

‘You don’t know shit, you look like shit, you’re talking shit.’ Again, precise, resigned to what she was saying. There were signs of old bruises about her throat. Was it likely that she was throttled on a regular basis? Maybe it was some sexual thing? It was as if she had Tourette’s or something. There was a sense of harm about her, of harm that was done to her rather than what she’d do to others. But he couldn’t let this go, could he? Every character he’d played before, especially he himself, the real him, would have shrugged this off, but this one-

He made his decision and stepped into her space. ‘Are you asking for a beating?’

She closed her eyes, her teeth bared, wincing, preparing herself to be hurt. She took no pleasure in that anticipation, like some people Sefton had met, facing the prospect with a sort of grim determination. He saw that one tooth in two was missing, that there was weird bronze stuff screwed into some places there. She broadcast dental pain. When it was clear that he was hesitating, she spoke again. ‘You know what wog stands for? Westernized Oriental Gentleman. That’s what they say. That’s what you are.’

‘Oriental?’

Beardy tried to step between them. ‘Listen, I think I know what you’re doing. We all find our own path to studying the ways of London, but-’

Sefton let his body react. With a straight arm, he pushed beardy back. This was between her and him.

She opened her eyes, and now her gaze was dancing over his face, taking him in as she spoke quickly under her breath. ‘Cockney rhyming slang: Berkshire Hunt, cunt. It should be “bark” for “Berkshire”, but the meaning is only conveyed if you change the pronunciation.’ It was as if she was reciting something to herself, a mantra or a prayer, while expecting to be beaten. If you didn’t count the words, everything in her body language was pleading with him not to hurt her. What sort of character was he playing, who couldn’t rise above it?

‘You’re a fucking berk,’ he said. Which was slight. Not enough.

She let out a long, relieved breath.

‘I think she’s dedicated her speech to breaking off her every social relationship,’ said beardy waistcoat. ‘It’s a sort of sacrifice. I’ve read about-’

‘Fuck you,’ said the woman, mildly, and then nodded to Sefton. ‘And you and all, you fucking flid fucking nigger fucking twat.’

He let himself make understanding eye contact with her. ‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘How nice for you.’ He hoped she knew that was what the Queen was supposed to say when she didn’t like someone.

She gave him a relieved smile and a nod of appreciation. Then she turned on her heel and was gone into the crowd.

* * *

Quill had never paid much attention to what he wore. Now he was feeling awkward, walking down the steps into a boozer in what felt to him like something his old man would have worn on a night out after nicking the Shantry gang in 1983. He’d stuffed those rather too well-upholstered abs of his into a waistcoat that was a bit too tight. He’d found some natty striped trousers of which he was rather proud, and a jacket that swung under its own weight, all poured into a pair of brothel creepers. ‘Fancy dress party?’ Sarah had asked, and so he’d told her. ‘Just because you’re going as Gene Hunt,’ she’d said, ‘don’t act like him.’

It was sound advice. That Seventies TV copper was the part of his dad he sort of was but tried not to be. The place was rocking. He immediately clocked where his officers were, got a pint of something filthy and went to look at the paintings that lined the walls. Supernatural subjects: watercolours of graveyards; wood-cut prints of dancing skeletons; occult modernist pieces that were all clashing shades and angles. He checked out the juke box. It was the modern sort, millions of choices, probably downloaded from somewhere. The list of suggested tracks demonstrated an interest in the spooky, from mockery like ‘The Monster Mash’ to Black Sabbath and Led Zeppelin. He hit a button, and found … two pounds a play — bloody hell. It had been a while since he’d used one of these. The introduction to ‘Don’t Fear the Reaper’ rang out under the noise of the crowd.

* * *

Costain had noted the arrival of the rest of his unit. It was getting too crowded in here to be doing what he was doing. Already all the other chairs had been taken from his table, on two occasions without asking, with just an annoyed glance in his direction. He put his book back in his pocket and stood. That bearded bloke across the way who was now obviously watching the stairs hadn’t been disturbed similarly. He was still reading, a discreet space kept around him even now the bar was packed. He had been, for some minutes now, making eye contact with Costain every now and then. Now the undercover watched as a young woman approached the man directly and he looked up. He … oh, there we go, he’d done that checking thing Sefton had mentioned: there had been just a little hand gesture, a curl of the fingers in a sort of well-practised spiral, and then he’d nodded. The woman walked down the stairs and out of Costain’s line of sight.

He turned to look at a noise from the bar. A group of lads, well dressed but very modern, in jackets and jeans, were suddenly laughing and whooping as if a goal had been scored. They were pointing in the direction of where the woman had just gone. ‘Vanished!’ he heard them yelling to each other. ‘Right through the floor!’

Okay. Those were guys without the Sight, and the stairway downwards was something of the Sight, invisible to those without the ability. He looked back. The bearded man, who was obviously some sort of gatekeeper of that stairwell, was looking pained at the celebrations by the bar. Very gauche. They were letting the wrong sort of people in here nowadays. The man visibly sighed, then slowly and purposefully closed his book and looked expectantly at the crowd, making eye contact once more with all those Costain had noticed earlier. They were the ones, Costain was sure now, who could see what he was sitting beside.

Costain stood. At the same moment, many others moved too. The people separating themselves from the throng formed not so much a queue, but an awkward spread, waiting for their turn. The ones who had wandered over … yeah, he could feel the sudden shift in gravity … you couldn’t tell if an individual had the Sight, but when they all moved together … They were, largely, the ones who looked poor or wore older clothing. He looked back to the rest. There was a real anger in the room about what was happening now. A couple of the better-dressed people had marched over to insert themselves into this rough queue, and there was mocking laughter, rolling of eyes, people turning away in annoyance. Costain could feel the social forces in conflict here, a frustration that, if it had been later in the evening, might have led to something kicking off. Hence the bouncer — he’d woken up a bit and was looking around.

Costain wished he knew more about the nature of the defences in this place, in case he had to make a sudden exit.

* * *

‘See you later, then,’ said Ross to the bloke at the bar, and she made to get up. She’d started a conversation about safety on the streets, in light of the riots, and had hoped the man might say something about the Ripper murders. But he hadn’t.

He stopped her now. ‘I didn’t realize you were … one of them.’

She tried to look non-committal.

‘We were told we were going to get to go down there too, sometime soon. You know, under the new proprietors.’

‘Oh.’

‘Obviously that message hasn’t got through. I mean, I don’t even know how we’d do that now, since it turns out to be true that we’re not even able to see the bally stairs, but … could you remind those in charge? When you get down there?’

‘Of course,’ she said, and headed over. So, there was a whole other level to this place, and only people with the Sight were allowed down there. That was where juice for the operation might be found. Maybe juice that would help with her own plans too. She had to find some sources of information about occult objects, about one object in particular. She had to get down there. She wanted just to march over, but down there — given that it didn’t exist as far as a lot of these people knew — surely counted, in the terms Quill had set out for the evening, as a private space. So to go down there would be to go against orders. She noted Quill nearby and walked past him, raising her eyebrows in a question.

Quill seemed to consider for a moment, then, just before he was gone out of her eyeline he nodded, which was a relief.

She headed for the stairs, and the man beside them met her gaze. He made a gesture so quick she couldn’t follow it, a grab of nothing, and she felt the air flatten against her face … as she mentally recited the couple of lines of nonsense syllables that Sefton had taught them from the scroll he’d found in the Docklands ruins. She’d been repeating them to herself ever since so it was second nature.

He nodded her through.

Without looking back, she was aware of Quill doing the same and being allowed to follow.

She walked quickly down the stairs. At the bottom was another set of doors exactly like the ones that led into the bar on the floor above. Ross marched right in as if she belonged.

* * *

In the milling group waiting beside the stairs, Sefton had managed to strike up conversations with a few people, by just rudely butting in. It seemed to be the sort of interaction they were used to. He was being the classic undercover — not asking questions, but instead, annoyingly, moving the conversation away from the subject, making people focus on it again, while listening to what was said in the background. It turned out that what was most on the minds of these people was what was going to change about this venue. They mentioned a number of other pubs they might try, and Sefton made a mental note of them. Then there was the issue of whether or not the Ripper murders were going to be pinned on ‘their lot’. These people were unsure if there was anyone aware enough of ‘their lot’ to be doing any such pinning. There was a little bit of a paranoid streak to them; they seemed pretty certain that soon enough bad things would happen. He caught whispers from people who’d look in his direction, and when he noticed and returned the gaze, look away: too many outsiders, too many changes. He heard someone refer to the Ripper as ‘proper London’, but there were urgent denunciations of that until the person who’d said it had to admit that they didn’t know anything about what was going on now, that they’d been talking about the Ripper as part of London history.

The people who were doing the talking here, all in all, seemed to need to gossip about everything surrounding the Ripper murders but appeared not to have any idea how or why they were being committed. They were as scared and puzzled as any other slice of the general public. Like the general public, they were in general much more concerned about their own patch. But there were also those here who weren’t talking. Sefton saw a couple of sighing expressions, a couple of looks that suggested that what might be the Sighted members of this community had seen what Quill’s team had seen when they’d watched the news on television. Those were the ones who didn’t gossip so easily.

He found himself making surprised eye contact with Costain when both the non-undercover members of his team suddenly took it upon themselves to do what they themselves had decided was beyond their operational parameters and move on down to the next level, without even consulting them. He lost the expression swiftly as he looked back to beardy waistcoat, who was beside him, now looking nervous.

‘I can’t see anything there,’ he said, nodding towards the stairwell. ‘Can you?’

Sefton didn’t know how to answer him. Here was a surprise: beardy waistcoat was someone Privileged, who knew how to at least make a start at using the occult power of London, or so he’d indicated, but who wasn’t himself one of the Sighted. Seeing that look on Sefton’s face, he looked suddenly crestfallen. ‘I know you’re able to — I can tell when someone can; I mean, I pick up on the body language-’

‘Mate, I’m just learning about this stuff too-’

‘But there’s nothing to stop me trying to go down there, is there? To support you, if nothing else. Whether or not change is coming to the Goat tonight, we ought to be allowed access to … whatever that man is guarding. Come on, we succeed or fail together.’ Suddenly he was off, taking his place in the actual queue which was now forming out of the vague one, and Sefton could only feel he should go with him. The abusive woman had just gone down the stairs, and in front of them now was one of the angrier-looking young men of the hipster crowd. The man with the book invited him to step forward, making that checking gesture again with one hand. The youth did so, and walked straight over the top of the stairwell, his feet walking on what looked to Sefton like empty air, keeping going until he’d covered the space to the far wall. Then, furious, he whirled, looking back at the gatekeeper.

Who stared calmly back at him.

The bouncer took a concerned step from his corner.

After a moment of considering his options, the young man turned on his heel and marched for the door. The gatekeeper looked back to Sefton and beardy waistcoat, and visibly sighed when he saw Sefton. Here came more trouble.

Sefton’s instinct as an undercover was to avoid confrontation. He really should just walk forward, deal with the man’s gesture, get down the stairs, if being able to block the gesture and see the stairs was enough, if there wasn’t actually full-on apartheid in place. But in character — maybe in reality too — he didn’t feel like being allowed to go anywhere.

‘What are you reading?’ he asked the man. His first question of the night. Actually it was more of a challenge.

The gatekeeper looked surprised. He held up his book, which had a blank cover. Blue, tatty, like an ancient library book. Sefton had wondered if there was a list of people inside it, to go with the gesture and the ability to see what you were walking down. To get a look at that list might be valuable. He plucked the book out of the man’s hands and opened it. He could feel beardy waistcoat behind him, going with it, craning to look at what was revealed inside these pages. Sefton realized, in that second, that he’d already handled books that could have done him considerable harm, that he’d just been unprofessionally reckless. That was where playing this character had led him. No, there was nothing inside this book to harm him. Indeed, there was nothing. The fine dusty pages were blank. Genuinely blank. It was just a prop, something to shore up this man’s authority. If there were rules, they weren’t written down. Sefton flicked all the way through to make sure, then he gave it back to the man, who was now smiling patronizingly at him. ‘Thanks,’ said Sefton, ‘didn’t like the ending.’ The look on the man’s face said that Sefton had really pushed it, that now it would be touch and go whether to let him in. Finally, the man made the gesture and Sefton bounced his silent question away and he was allowed to proceed.

He was about to go down the stairs, but from behind him came an odd, awkward laugh. ‘A book of rules?’ It was beardy waistcoat, looking baffled at Sefton. ‘I could see they’re written in a very tight hand, but I didn’t get a good look at a single one of them. What was that you said about the ending? Come on, did you see how to do this?’

The gatekeeper looked despairingly at the young man. He didn’t even bother to make the gesture. He just slowly shook his head.

‘Oh, come on, this isn’t fair. Tonight we were told we were going to be allowed…’ Beardy waistcoat looked pleadingly to Sefton, who could only look steadily back in return. Anger made the young man’s face suddenly flush. The oppressed minority he’d thought he was doing a favour to had progressed further than he had. ‘I’ve worked so hard…’

The gatekeeper looked towards the diffuse, impatient queue that was standing all around, and by implication to the bouncer, who was even now sauntering over.

Beardy gave Sefton a look that could kill. A look like a mask falling that Sefton felt he would remember for a long time. Then he was pushing his way back through the crowd, heading for the door.

Sefton turned and calmly walked down the stairs.

* * *

Costain had noted the reaction to the bouncer from the guy who hadn’t been allowed down the stairwell. So the bouncer could be seen by everyone, not just the Sighted. He wandered over and found himself casually standing next to the man. If this was a man, a real person. He looked real enough.

‘Excuse me, kind sir,’ he said, ‘I was thinking I might head downstairs. May I?’ Asking questions in this circumstance was something his character, the newbie, would certainly do.

The bouncer barely reacted. ‘Depends,’ he said. He sounded like a clichéd comedy bouncer too, brutal vowels and hardly opening his mouth. ‘Are you on the list?’

‘I’m not sure.’

‘Then you’re not on the list.’

‘Where is this list?’

‘You can’t see the list.’

‘Who else is on the list?’

‘Are you on the list?’

‘Possibly.’

‘Then you can find out.’

‘But not from you?’

‘Depends.’

‘On what?’

‘Are you on the list?’

It was as if he was a character in a video game. Costain was pretty sure now that the bouncer wasn’t a human being, but something made by someone. A sort of deliberately placed ‘ghost’. But one that the non-Sighted were very much aware of. ‘Is the list real? Or is it just some sort of metaphor? Does whether or not you’re on the list change from moment to moment? Is it down to how confident you are or how you dress or who your parents were? Please, dear sir, enlighten me.’

The bouncer paused for a second. Processing. But no, there was nothing robotic about those quivering jowls. Whatever he was had been made of emotion and flesh. ‘Depends,’ he finally decided.

Costain sighed. His way out of this place, should he need it, was what it was. No advantage to be found here. It was time to share the risk his unit was taking. That was the right thing to do, and these days he always did the right thing.

Besides, Ross was down there. Among the powerful shit.

He headed for the stairs and patiently waited until it was his turn with the gatekeeper, who looked at him as if it was incredible that two black men had come his way this evening. He made the gesture and sighed at the result, letting him through as if the sky had fallen. Rules were rules, he seemed to be thinking, but he didn’t have to like what the rules allowed.

Costain was about to walk past him with confidence, the star of this picture. Then he remembered the character he was playing. He stopped and made his body language submissive and dropped his gaze to the floor. ‘Excuse me, sir,’ he said.

The gatekeeper inclined his head, and Costain went down the stairs.