The present. Friday, 19 December
NIGHT-TIME IN THE city.
Seven-thirty. Friday evening. Inner London. The western edges. North of the river. The air had crystals dancing in it. The pavements sparkled with them, as if a dusting of magic had been sprinkled over them. The night sky had clouds half-covering the low moon. A moon that broke free, now and again, from the long, floating fingers of dark cloud that tried to snaggle it in their grasp, reel it back to them. But the moon shrugged them off, sailed free like a galleon under full sail. Further east, however, even darker clouds were massing and banking together, rolling ever westwards towards London, like a slow tidal wave.
On the streets of Oxford Street and Regent Street, of Piccadilly and Haymarket, the crowds still thronged. Couples and singles laden down with packages, gift-wrapped from Fortnum & Mason, from Selfridges and Hamleys. The golden light spilling from the ornate window displays in the shop fronts onto the faces of the happy shoppers. Office workers en masse, arms linked and singing. The air rich with a heady melange of sound, traffic, laughter, taxis hooting, the swirl and cacophonous dance of carol music competing with one another as doors were opened and closed.
Christmas.
A time for sharing and love. For wassailing and mistletoe, for mulled wine and mince pies. A time for peace and goodwill to all men — whatever their religion.
At least that was the theory. Some people, however, hadn’t got the memo. Some people had other agendas — and goodwill to their fellow man was nowhere on their list. For in the hearts of some, even at Christmas (especially sometimes at Christmas), there is a black wickedness that defines humanity every bit as accurately as the charity in the hearts of good men and women.
Light and dark. Yin and yang.
Life and death.
Holland Park. Eight o’clock Friday evening
Jack Delaney sat on the edge of his daughter Siobhan’s bed.
Her head was propped back on the pillow and her eyes were tired, threatening to close at any minute, but she blinked them determinedly, keeping herself awake.
Jack grinned at her. ‘Why don’t you just shut your eyes, my darling, and go to sleep. It’s late.’
‘Because you promised me a story. And I read in the papers that Detective Inspector Jack Delaney of London England’s finest Metropolitan Police force always keeps his word!’ Siobhan said, gushing the words out with a defiant pout to her lips. A pout that reminded Jack so much of her dead mother.
Jack laughed out loud. And it was testament to the fact that the memories of his dead wife which his daughter conjured forth didn’t put spikes of guilt and misery in his heart any longer. Siobhan had given a thick, Irish brogue to her words, sounding just like a wild, heathen child of Cork from his own youth. He’d schooled her in it, much to his late wife’s annoyance and mock-scolding.
‘I thought you preferred Kate’s stories nowadays,’ Delaney replied, teasing her.
‘No, I always like yours best. It’s just …’ She trailed off and shrugged.
‘It’s what, darlin’?’
‘It’s Kate’s house we’re living in now. So it’s only fair that if she wants to tell me a story, I should let her.’ She frowned, as if puzzling over a matter of great philosophical debate, and Delaney laughed again. It was a rich laugh, full of life.
‘To be sure,’ he said, echoing her and putting on the oirish. ‘Is it not yourself that has been off to scale the battlements and kissed the Cloch na Blarnan? Should it not be you the one as is telling the tales, I’m thinking!’
‘What is the Cloch na Barnan?’ asked Siobhan, all wide-eyed innocence.
‘Ah now …’ explained Delaney, although he was quite aware that Siobhan knew full well what it was. ‘It’s an ancient story,’ he continued. ‘The Cloch na Blarnan is what the unwashed, heathen devils on this side of the blessed channel call the Blarney Stone.’
‘The Blarney Stone!’ said Siobhan in feigned wonder. ‘Is it magic?’
‘Is it magic?’ said Jack, his own eyebrows raising as if in mutual astonishment and his voice slipping into a softer, lyrical brogue. ‘I like that! Why, is the pot of gold at the end of a rainbow magic? Is the music that the fairies’ fluttering wings make magic? Are the wishes that come true on a falling star magic?’
‘Yes.’
‘Then you’d better believe it is magic, Siobhan. Very powerful magic indeed. One of the most important of all the magics.’
‘What is it?’
‘’Tis said that whoever lays his lips on the cool surface of the stone will have bestowed upon them the gift of story, the gift of persuasion …’ He paused dramatically. ‘The gift, as they say, of the gab!’
‘The gift of the gob?’
Delaney laughed again. ‘Don’t let Kate hear you using that expression, sweetheart.’
‘Why not?’
Delaney grimaced. ‘Let’s just say that it’s not one she’s overly fond of.’
‘Tell me more about the gift of the gab then.’
‘Ah now, the magic of the Blarney Stone, you see.’ Delaney pretended to consider the matter. ‘Some say it’s best described as giving you the ability to deceive someone without offending them!’
Siobhan made an O of her mouth. ‘To lie, you mean?’
‘Well now, lie — that might be too strong a word. Bending the facts to one’s advantage maybe.’
‘Tell me more about the Stone. Have you seen it?’
‘No, I haven’t. I don’t need to. We Delaneys don’t need to see or kiss it to have its magic work upon us.’
‘Why not?’
‘Maybe that should be a story for another night.’
‘Tonight, tonight!’ Siobhan wriggled impatiently.
Delaney seemed to consider for a moment, before sighing and relenting. ‘Sure, and you’ll promise to go straight to sleep when the telling of it is done.’
‘Cross my heart and hope to die, if I should ever tell a lie. May my soul lay down to sleep, if a promise I do not keep!’
Siobhan made a cross with her finger over her blanket and smiled as Jack sidled closer to her.
‘It all happened long, long ago. When a man called Cormac Laidir MacCarthy—’
‘The same MacCarthy as MacCarthy’s bar near where you were born, Da?’ interrupted Siobhan. ‘In Castletownbere.’
‘The very same name, the very same family.’
‘Will we go there one day?’
‘Did I not promise it?’
Siobhan clapped her hands. ‘And will we see the magic Stone there?’
‘No,’ Delaney shook his head. ‘The Stone now resides in Blarney Castle in Blarney. Still in Cork, mind, but not where it came from originally.’
‘Where did it come from then?’
Delaney looked at her for a moment before speaking. ‘From Ballydehob!’
Siobhan gasped again, theatrically. ‘The town where you were born!’
‘It certainly is, but there’s more to the legend than that.’
Siobhan settled back down on her pillow. ‘Go on then.’
‘Well, your great-great-great- to the power of something or other grandfather was a man called Liam Colm Delaney. And Liam was famous throughout the whole of Cork. As a fighter, as a poet and as a man who could charm the very birds down from the trees. But one day the worst thing that could ever happen to a man like him did indeed happen.’
‘What was it?’
‘He fell in love.’
Siobhan blinked, confused. ‘Why was that so bad?’
‘Because the woman he fell in love with, the very first time he ever clapped eyes on her, was called Aoibheann.’
‘That’s a pretty name.’
‘It is, and Aoibheann means “beautiful”. As in the heathen English word “heavenly”. Aoibheann Aghna Finbar McCool was her name, and she was the only woman in the whole of Ireland who was impervious to Liam Delaney’s charms.’
‘What did he do?’
‘He tried everything he could. He wrote epic poems, he sent fields of flowers, he pleaded and begged, but his honeyed words had no effect. She was as cool towards him as a Nordic snow-queen.’
‘What happened?’
‘Well, in desperation, Liam prayed to the goddess Cliodna for her assistance. Now Cleena, as they say in the English tongue, was Queen of the banshees of the Tuatha De Danann. She was the goddess of love and beauty, and ruled over the Sheoques or fairy women of the hills of south Munster. And she answered his prayer.’
‘She made Aoibheann fall in love with him?’
‘It wasn’t as simple as that. At the same time as Liam was petitioning for her intervention, so too was your man Cormac Laidir MacCarthy.’
‘He was in love with Aoibheann too?’
‘No, no. Not so as I know, leastwise. But Cormac MacCarthy was the very builder of Blarney Castle! The day after he prayed to the goddess Cliodna he was due to appear in court in a lawsuit that was like to ruin him entirely.’
‘And was he innocent?’
‘Ah no, that he was not. But the MacCarthys — stretching back, as they did, for many years as Kings of Munster and Desmond — were looked on favourably by the goddess. And they in turn always showed the Queen and her court of banshees the greatest respect. So Cliodna decided to answer both Liam’s and Cormac’s prayers at the same time. Kill two birds with one stone, as it were. She sent a vision to Liam Delaney to stand on the high hill overlooking the estuary at Ballydehob, where there now stands a fine bridge that used to bring the trains across.’
‘I’ve seen the pictures,’ said Siobhan, nodding enthusiastically.
‘So your great-great-great-etc-granda, Liam Delaney, stood there at dawnbreak, as commanded. And as the spears of light broke over the horizon, sending golden flashes darting and rippling along the length of estuary, he saw a wondrous thing.’
‘What was it?’
‘A large raven burst from below the waters. Exploding upwards in a flurry of feathers and sinew, his powerful wings beating and shaking from them the droplets of the Ballydehob estuary so that they hung in the air, sparkling like a mist of the finest diamonds. And then he swooped higher and higher, and Delaney could see that in his beak the raven held a big pebble. As he passed overhead, the raven opened his beak and let the pebble fall to Liam Delaney’s feet. As instructed, Liam picked up the pebble, kissed it and then threw it hard out over the river. It hung in the air for a moment and then plummeted downwards. But before it could hit the water a loud caw was heard that echoed all through Ballydehob, and the raven swooped and caught the pebble in his beak once more and then, beating his powerful wings, headed north and east to Cork city and Blarney beyond.’
‘What happened to it? What did it all mean?’
‘It transpired that the stone had absorbed Liam Delaney’s legendary gift of the gab. Taken it from him, in one fell swoop. That morning, on his way to court, Cormac Laidir MacCarthy was told to kiss the very first stone he saw. And as he set off across the wide green expanse of lawn, a pebble landed at his feet. He looked upwards but the bright sun dazzled his eyes so much that he could see nothing, but as he shielded his eyes he could hear the sound of giant wings flapping. He picked up the pebble and kissed it, put it into his bag, went to court and spoke like the greatest bard the world has ever known.’
‘Did he win his case?’
‘He did indeed! Guilty though he was, he lied like an English politician and spoke with such eloquence, and with such honey in his words, that he was cheered and heralded when he won the case.’
‘He had the gift of the gab!’
‘Indeed. And when he stepped outside, his bag felt heavy on his back, so he took it off and opened it, and inside it he saw that the small pebble had been transformed into a large stone! And that stone he took and built into the parapet on one of the towers of Blarney Castle. And the legend goes that a little of the original magic lingers. So that all who now journey to kiss the Stone are gifted with an echo of the ancient spell of the goddess Cliodna.’
‘And what happened to Liam Delaney?’
‘Well now, it seemed his blessing was also his curse, because by kissing his stone he lost the power to deceive with eloquence.’
‘So what could he do?’ asked Siobhan.
‘He could only tell the truth.’
‘And was that so bad?’
Delaney smiled and ruffled his daughter’s hair. ‘Not at all. Because it turned out that Aoibheann Aghna Finbar McCool was in truth one of the Sheoques herself and so was totally immune to the blandishments of a mortal man like Liam Delaney. It was the truth that won her heart, and Liam Delaney never regretted losing the gift of the gab because he had a far better gift in return for it.’
‘And what was that?’
‘The gift of love.’
‘Ahhh.’ Siobhan smiled and clapped her hands. ‘I like that story,’ she said and snuggled into her pillow, her eyes blinking as she fought to keep them open.
‘Go to sleep then, my little angel,’ said Delaney, smoothing her hair neat again.
‘But I thought you said we Delaneys didn’t need to kiss the Blarney Stone to have the gift of the gab.’
‘We don’t.’
‘But if Liam Delaney put the gift into the Stone, why is that, then?’
‘Because we are direct descendants of Liam Delaney and Aoibheann Aghna Finbar McCool. Herself a fairy of the magical hills of the ancient Kingdom of Desmond, and favourite cousin to the goddess Cliodna. And when the goddess saw how happy Liam had made her cousin, she gifted the magic back to his children, and so it has passed on through all the generations to his descendants.’
‘Does that mean you still have the gift to deceive without offending then, Daddy?’ Siobhan asked, stifling a yawn.
Delaney smiled again. ‘Ah no, in that respect I take after our great forefather Liam Colm. I am only capable of telling the truth.’
Siobhan smiled peacefully, and as her eyes closed she was asleep almost before they did so. The smile stayed on her lips.
However, Jack Delaney wasn’t smiling.
He was thinking about the last question his daughter had asked him, and what he had to do the next morning.
Thinking he had more in common with Cormac Laidir MacCarthy than he ever did with his smooth-talking, invented ancestor.
Perivale. Half-past nine, Friday evening
GEOFFREY HUNT WAS feeling every one of his sixty-eight years.
He was a tall, thin man with a full head of once-dark hair that had gone iron-grey early in his fifties. His hair was silver now, shining, as he stood bathed in moonlight in front of the butler sink in his kitchen. He was looking out through the leaded-light window into his garden beyond. Staring into the middle distance, his grey eyes sad. Unblinking.
A round platter of a moon was shining as brightly as it had done for a long while. Geoffrey was wearing red tartan pyjamas, but no slippers, and he shivered as he looked upwards. His long, narrow feet should have been frozen on the bare stone of the kitchen floor, but when he shivered again it was not from the cold.
Unaware that he was doing so, he made a sign of the cross on his chest. Then rubbed his hands. His arthritis seemed to have become progressively worse over the last few months. It was always bad when the weather was cold, and it had indeed been very cold of late that winter. Bitingly cold. But this aching seemed more than just that. The pain was eating into his bone marrow and not just his joints. He looked down at his hands, thin but swollen, the knuckles like small deformed walnuts on his twig-like fingers.
He rubbed one hand over the other again as he looked at the moon and winced.
‘Geoffrey, what are you doing out here? Come back to bed.’
He turned round, startled to see his wife standing in the doorway to their kitchen. She was just a few years younger than him, but she looked younger than that, even though her hair was pure white and the concerned expression that she wore on her face had settled into permanent lines from familiar usage. She had pale-blue, innocent, almost child-like eyes. Eyes that were large with concern. She was dressed in a pale-green dressing gown with matching slippers and held her arms wrapped around her body to comfort herself against more than the cold night air.
‘It’s dark, Geoffrey,’ she said again, ‘and it’s freezing down here.’
‘Yes,’ he nodded, but didn’t seem to register what she had said.
‘You could at least put something on your feet — where are your slippers?’
‘I don’t know, dear. Probably upstairs. Why don’t you get back to bed?’
‘I can’t sleep, with you down here.’
‘I won’t be long.’
‘But you haven’t even got your slippers on, you’ll catch your death of cold!’
Geoffrey nodded at the window. ‘Another full moon.’
‘I can see.’
Geoffrey Hunt looked back at his wife and blinked. ‘It would have been his birthday tomorrow, Patricia,’ he said.
His wife crossed over to him and wrapped her arms around his frail body.
‘I know,’ she said, and then again, ‘I know. I didn’t mention it. I thought you didn’t want to talk about it.’
Geoffrey nodded as he stroked her hair and looked up at the full moon. He shivered again and Patricia took his hand.
‘Come to bed now. There’s nothing we can do. There never was.’
‘I wish I could believe that.’
‘It’s true.’
Geoffrey nodded, but his eyes belied the gesture. He stroked his wife’s hair gently, kissed her on the cheek and let her lead him from the kitchen.
Edgware Road. Ten o’clock, Friday night
THE WHISKY WAS doing the trick now.
It always did, when he could get enough of it. And that was bloody rare. Sodding London! Too many fake immigrants with dogs and babies messing up the game. Only for him it wasn’t a game. People took him for a scammer too, though. Bloody Eastern Europeans — he’d spit on them. He’d blood their noses! Them and the bloody Big Issue nonces. Spoiling it for Bible. Spoiling it for all the real people. The civilians didn’t know better now. They couldn’t tell the Pharisees — the separated ones — from the Pharaohs, and who was to blame them! But it was he and the rest of them who suffered. Separated, right enough. They might be beloved of God, but you couldn’t tell it on the streets of London.
‘For I tell you,’ he shouted and waved his grimy fist in front of him, the people on the streets parting around him like waves before a prow, ‘that unless your righteousness exceeds that of scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of Heaven!’
He slumped against the window of McDonald’s and took a ragged breath. There was a buzzing in his head building now, and he half-mumbled, half-sang along to the rhythm of it. He moved his head slightly from side to side as he did so, bloodshot eyes peering through nearly closed eyelids. He liked it when his head buzzed. It blocked out his thoughts and his feelings, such as they were. Truth to tell, Bible Steve, as he was known on the streets, didn’t feel a great deal any more. Except cold. The last couple of winters had been brutal, and this one looked like it was going to be no better, before it was done with him. Maybe would do for him, because the worst of it still lay ahead, if he was any judge. He tilted his head and looked up at the night sky, his singing turning into a gurgle as he took another sip of medicine and grunted as he stumbled further down the road, heading in the direction of Marble Arch. The snow that had been promised all week might come at last. Which at least meant it would be warmer than it had been for a good long while. Last week it had been too cold to snow, people had said — a ridiculous thing, but seemingly true. And cold it had been right enough, cold so that friends of his had died right there on those very streets. Frozen solid and immobile where they lay in doorways and alleys. Curled up like rimed leaves, their eyelashes white and brittle, their lips blue.
Not that Bible Steve had friends, as such. Just people like him. Living rough. Inner-city flotsam and jetsam. Human beings washed up on the tide of indifference, to seek shelter where they could and oftentimes finding none. Their bodies like the frozen statues in Narnia, only no shaggy lion’s breath was going to bring them back, thought Bible Steve. Then he blinked and the notion had gone from his mind. He shook his head again angrily and grunted, looking behind him suspiciously as if some thief of thoughts had stolen his memories.
‘Wassat?’ he said, but there was no reply. Steve looked forward again, but no one was there, and the person who had been speaking to him in his thoughts was from a time long before. A lifetime ago.
He shivered his shoulders a little to generate some warmth and took another hit from his bottle.
The whisky helped. The whisky always helped Bible. Some said it made him violent, but if it did, he could never remember anyway. Maybe it was the wild Celtic ancestry in him as much as the rough liquor? Sometimes he did feel himself getting angry for no reason, rageful. The buzzing in his head turning from a melody into a storm of locusts, their wings chittering and chattering. It would come out of the blue, the anger building in him like steam in an engine, so that he would explode if he didn’t do something. Maybe that was why he drank? Maybe that was why he turned to the stuff in the first place? Did it dull the rage or fuel it? He couldn’t remember. What he did know was that the alcohol made him oblivious, untouchable, eventually blissfully unconscious. He held the cold bottle to his lips once more and felt the harsh liquid burn down his throat like a cleansing fire. He coughed and shivered, the shiver turning into a trembling that he couldn’t stop. He dragged the rough fibre of his coat sleeve across his mouth and sat down on the pavement, his back propped against the cold brick of an empty building.
‘Vengeance is mine, sayeth the Lord,’ he said and took another sip of whisky, but it did nothing to stop the tremors of his battered body, and even less to stem the darkness that was building now in his mind.
‘Vengeance,’ he said again. Then he looked up at the moon and shook his fist at it. ‘Vengeance!’ He shouted it a third time and then stumbled to his feet once more. ‘An eye for an eye, a life for a life!’
White City Police Station, west London. Ten-fifteen, Friday night
DR LAURA CHILVERS was a striking-looking woman.
She was just under five foot nine inches tall in her flat-heeled shoes. She had her hair cut in a platinum bob, with a muscular, fit, but womanly figure; she wore little make-up, but didn’t need to. She had a luminescence to her skin and a natural beauty that shone. Her eyes were Nordic blue and her smile dazzled. When she walked into or out of a room all eyes turned on her. If she was aware of it she made no sign. Few men dared to ask her out and, if they did, they were wholly unsuccessful. Laura Chilvers was gay. One hundred per cent all-the-way sister. The waste of it was often the subject of frustrated speculation by most of the male policemen at the station (never the bastion of political correctness), over their breaktime cups of tea and bacon sandwiches. And by quite a few of the women too, but not all.
As it was, Dave Matthews, a happily married man, just smiled warmly at Laura when she handed some paperwork over to him as he stood behind the custody desk. ‘Busy night again,’ he said.
‘Friday as well,’ agreed the police surgeon. ‘Which means it is only going to get worse. A lot worse.’
‘How late are you on?’
‘Couple of hours, then off.’
‘Home to bed?’
Laura circled her fists and shimmied her hips a little. ‘On a Friday night? You’ve got to be joking, Sergeant!’ she said. ‘Friday night is down-and-dirty night, it’s clubbing night. You better believe I’ll be seeing the dawn in.’
‘Who’s she, then? The new girlfriend?’
‘That’s funny, Dave,’ she said, deadpan. ‘You’re not a clubbing man, I take it?’
‘What, with these bunions? Why do you think they put me behind a desk so often? Too many years pounding the streets. Tough on crime — tough on feet!’
Laura laughed. ‘Rubbish! You play rugby for the Met. I bet you could still work the dance floor.’
‘I wouldn’t be putting your mortgage on it. The last disco I went to was at school when I was sixteen and copped off with the future Mrs Slimline. You couldn’t pay me to dance.’
‘You wouldn’t want to,’ said Kate Walker, laughing, as she came into the custody area holding three mugs of tea. ‘You didn’t see him at the talent contest a few months ago.’
‘This the one when Smiling Jack Delaney did his Johnny Cash impression?’
‘That’s it.’ Kate smiled herself at the memory. ‘Dave here was trying to bust some moves on the dance floor. Ended up busting the table he landed on!’
‘I was not dancing, I was being jostled by a group of overexcited WPCs! Quite a different matter.’
Laura laughed as her mobile rang. She fished it out of her pocket and answered it. ‘Laura Chilvers?’ she said and her smile vanished. ‘No! I can’t do that. Look, I’ll see you later, okay?’ She snapped the phone shut.
‘Problems?’ asked Kate.
‘Nothing I can’t sort.’
She turned and walked over to one of the police surgeons’ offices.
‘What about your tea?’ Kate called after her, but Dr Chilvers waved her hand dismissively and closed the door as she went into her room.
Kate Walker looked at Dave Matthews and raised an eyebrow.
The sergeant shrugged. ‘Wrong time of the month?’
Kate laughed. ‘If I didn’t think you were being ironic, Dave, I would tell Laura you just said that. I reckon she’d do more than jostle you!’
The sergeant held his hand up in mock-surrender. ‘No, thanks, I wouldn’t want to get on the bad side of that one!’
‘Or me,’ said Kate, throwing him a look.
‘There’s something about Dr Laura Chilvers,’ the desk sergeant continued. ‘I reckon, push comes to shove, she could handle herself pretty well.’
‘Best you don’t find out then!’
The sergeant nodded thoughtfully as Kate headed to her office. Then took a sip of his tea and looked over at Dr Chilvers’ closed door. He’d seen the look in her eyes as she took the call. And it wasn’t a kind one. There was trouble coming for someone tonight, he reckoned.
And he was right.
BIBLE STEVE TOOK a look at his bottle of whisky, half-empty now.
He held it to his lips and poured himself another small glug, felt his body shiver uncontrollably once more as the rough alcohol burned his throat. He looked to his side at the young woman who was sitting next to him. She was five foot six inches tall, with long, blonde hair, a stick-thin body. Innocence in blue jeans. Her skin was stretched tight over the bones of her face with fine, translucent veins showing through. She could have been an anorexic or a supermodel.
She was neither.
She had been abused by her father, an unemployed sheet metal worker, since she was twelve years old. Her mother, an undiagnosed manic depressive self-medicating on meth amphetamine, had added physical to the sexual abuse and she did what tens of thousands of children a year did. She ran away from home.
The young woman sitting next to Bible Steve would have rather walked in front of an Intercity express train than return home. She had come to London when she was fifteen, lived rough on the streets for two days before falling into prostitution, shoplifting and petty crime. Recruited into it by a girl a year younger than her and already six months into the life. She had had two abortions from back-street clinicians and had recently been released from Holloway prison, serving a year of a two-year sentence for fencing stolen goods, amongst other charges. She had been out two months. Two weeks out and she had left the supervised accommodation she had been provided with and was back on the streets. She was an alcoholic and drug-dependent. She was in her early twenties. An old hand. She had the mind of a child. Her name was Margaret O’Brien but anyone only ever knew her as Meg.
Bible Steve looked at her for a moment more, squinting his bloodshot eyes again. ‘Whoever was the father of disease, an ill diet was the mother!’ he roared and handed her the bottle. The girl muttered some thanks, her words slurred, her eyes unfocused. She took a sip and would have let the bottle slide from her grasp as she slumped backwards, but Bible Steve took it from her and held it towards a couple sitting on the other side of him. All four of them huddled together and against the wall for the warmth coming from the heated building.
‘Give, and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over, will be poured into your lap. For with the measure you use, it will be measured to you. Luke 6,37–38,’ said Bible Steve, grinning and revealing teeth rotten with neglect.
The older woman took the bottle gratefully, drank some, coughed and handed the bottle over to her husband. They were in their fifties and had been homeless for over a year. Unemployment, debt, gambling, loan-sharks. Theirs was not an unfamiliar story. Rare, however, that they had stayed as a couple and moreover had stayed together on the streets. The winter was going hard on them. You could see it in the cracked skin of their ravaged faces, and the hopelessness that dulled their eyes. The man took a drink of the whisky and handed the bottle back.
‘You’re a good man, Bible,’ he said.
Steve took the bottle, scowled as he looked at its diminishing contents — barely one-third left now — and had another small slug. He dragged the back of his coat sleeve across his mouth. ‘That, sir, I am not,’ he said. ‘The Lord has looked upon my blackened soul and He has seen that it is not good.’
‘I don’t know about the Lord, but there’s not many as would share whisky,’ said the older woman.
The younger girl snuggled into Bible Steve and he put his arm around her and roared again. ‘But if at the church they would give us some ale. And a pleasant fire our souls to regale. We’d sing and we’d pray all the livelong day, nor ever once wish from the church to stray!’
‘Too fucking right!’ said the young girl and Bible Steve pulled her in tighter to him. ‘Cuddle up, my lovely, old Bible’ll keep you warm. Warm as toast,’ he said. ‘Warm as buttered crumpet.’
The woman nodded, her eyes half-closing again.
‘I’ll make Christians of the whole heathen, ruddy lot of you,’ he said. He stood up, the girl’s face falling into his crotch. He held it there for a moment or two. ‘Business first though,’ he said. ‘Nature calls.’
The hairy man put a hand to the side of the rough brickwork to steady himself, he had to blink for a moment or two to remember where he was. All memory of the last two hours had vanished from his mind again as soon as he stood.
This happened to him often. Whole hours of blankness, days sometimes. He remembered early evening. A drunken Japanese tourist had handed him a twenty-pound note some hours ago when he had asked for any change. A mistake by the tourist, presumably, being unfamiliar with the currency, or else to impress the loud and overly made-up women who accompanied him and his business colleague.
Hired women no doubt, Bible Steve thought at the time. But if you were to ask him now what he thought he wouldn’t have been able to remember where the money he had spent had come from. Strong lagers and a bottle of whisky. He had passed a slug or two of the whisky around, but not much and the bottle was severely depleted. He looked at it, confused, and down at the people he had been talking with.
‘Have you been at my whisky?’ he snarled.
But the other three were huddled into each other and didn’t reply.
Bible Steve patted the young woman on the head. ‘I’ll be back in a minute, darling. Don’t worry, Bible’ll see you all right. He’ll see you snug,’ he said with a wink.
He took his hand off the wall and staggered a little further down the alleyway. Bright light spilled from a lone restaurant further ahead.
The Lucky Dragon restaurant. Cantonese. Bible Steve staggered towards it and put his hand on the glass, peering in as he fought to keep steady. The nearly finished bottle of whisky swayed in his left hand as if to counterbalance.
He didn’t recognise the figure staring back at him, reflected palely in the glass of the restaurant window. It had the face of a wild-haired and heavily bearded man. A French rugby player came to his mind. But he couldn’t remember his name. This man’s hair, though, was lank, greasy and matted. The beard covering most of his face was like a tribal shaman’s mask. He had on a battered and soiled army greatcoat with layers of equally filthy clothing beneath. His eyes were like coals. Sore, cracked and flickering with residual heat, but near to winking out as his eyelids closed. He shook his head and growled. He peered in the window, scowling at the diners within, who regarded him with an equal mixture of horror and disgust. An elderly Chinese woman shook her hands, gesturing at him as if to shoo away a large rodent.
Bible Steve blinked again and then snarled and banged on the window.
‘A corruption! A plague!’ he shouted. His native tongue broader now than earlier that day. His voice raspy with the rawness of the whisky and his outrage. ‘And the Lord says that he who eats with the pigs shall be as swine. Consumption and damnation is your bill. And ye shall pay it in punishment and in death!’
He banged on the window again. The Chinese woman leaned out from the doorway and shouted at him.
‘I call police! I call police! You go now.’
Bible Steve looked across at her and belched. ‘Madam, I shall gladly go now, as per your instructions.’ He belched again.
He looked down at the bottle of whisky in his hand, now empty, and tossed it imperiously to one side. Then glared at the woman once more. ‘As per your commandment, so mote it be!’ He fumbled with his trouser zipper and pulled out his member. ‘If you want me to go I shall go. And great shall be the mic … the mic …’ Bible Steve said, struggling to find the word and then grinned showing a full set of yellowed teeth. ‘Great shall be the micturation!’ he said and began to urinate powerfully on to the window, splashing down onto the pavement. The Chinese woman hopped, horrified, back into the restaurant, flapping her arms and shouting like a startled crow.
Bible Steve looked down and grinned again. ‘And the Lord looked down at the waters that came to pass and he was pleased,’ he said before falling backwards to crash unconscious on the floor, a river of piss still flowing toward the kerbside.
A short while later and in the distance was the faint sound of an ambulance siren. But Bible Steve didn’t hear it. He was snoring like an elephant, and the buzzing, for a while at least, had stopped in his brain.
Above him clouds scudded past, revealing a full moon that hung even lower and fatter in the sky now, its pits and craters clearly visible to the naked eye. Yellow, seemingly, like ancient wax, swollen and pregnant with omen.
The Chinese woman looked up at it and made another gesture. Warding with her fingers and muttering under her breath. She looked scared.
She had every good reason to be.
DR KATE WALKER lifted the eyelid of the man lying supine on the cot in the holding cell and shone a small torch in his eye.
The man’s pupils contracted but he continued to snore. Loudly. She looked over at ‘Slimline’ Matthews and shook her head.
‘Sleeping Beauty here won’t be round any time in the near future.’
‘Not surprised.’
‘Get someone to look in on him in the morning.’
‘The amount of booze he had in him, probably take a day or two before he’s fit for questioning. It wouldn’t be the first time.’
‘You know him?’
‘Oh yeah. Keith Hagen’s been a customer of ours since he was fourteen years old,’ said the sergeant as they walked out of the cell. He closed the door behind them none too gently but the snoring could still be heard.
‘And how old is he now?’
‘Twenty-two.’
‘Really? He doesn’t look older than eighteen,’ said Kate, surprised.
Dave Matthews shrugged. ‘I guess some people have all the luck.’
‘It’s the kind of luck that won’t see him making thirty.’
The sergeant shook his head as they headed towards the custody area. ‘I’m not so sure. The thing is, he only does it now and again. Most of the year he’s as good as gold. Works for the post office, volunteers at a local charity shop most Saturdays.’
‘So what sets him off?’
Dave Matthews jerked his thumb to the moonlight shining through the front window of the police station. ‘The full moon. Brings all the loonies out.’ He twiddled his finger round his temple in case Kate had missed his point.
Laura, who was putting a report behind the reception desk, turned round and frowned at him.
‘Not a term we in the medical profession entirely endorse, sergeant.’
Kate walked across and looked out of the window at the night sky. The moon hung clear for a moment or two, as it had all evening, and then clouds began to drift around it, quicker than she would have thought, and soon the moon was wrapped and hidden and the night was dark.
‘They reckon we’re due snow any time now,’ she said.
‘Shouldn’t wonder,’ the sergeant grunted, looking none too happy at the prospect.
‘Not looking forward to a white Christmas, Dave?’ asked Bob Wilkinson cheerily for a change. ‘Not going all “bah humbug!” on us, are you?’
Dave Matthews’ scowl deepened. ‘We’re spending it at the in-laws’.’
‘Ah,’ Bob nodded sympathetically.
‘Ah, indeed.’
The telephone on the front desk rang and PC Wilkinson snatched it up.
‘White City Police Station?’ he said and listened for a moment or two. ‘Okay, Peggy. Show me as attending.’
He hung up and nodded to Dr Laura. ‘You’re with me.’
Laura looked at her watch. ‘I’m off soon. Can’t you go, Kate?’
‘Sorry. I’m off shift, and I’ve got a pile of paperwork to process before I can get home.’ Kate shrugged apologetically.
‘It’s only Edgware Road,’ said Bob Wilkinson to Laura. ‘Come on, Doctor, the sooner we go, the sooner we’ll be back.’
A SHORT, FAST ride later and Laura Chilvers and Bob Wilkinson were walking down Edgware Road.
There were plenty of people out on the streets. London doesn’t stop for the cold; it doesn’t stop for anything, particularly at Christmas. The restaurants were packed with office parties, and the sound of their celebrations spilled out into the street as doors were opened and closed. A lot of sore heads in the morning, if the raucous laughter and the unsteady balance of people leaving and waving drunkenly for taxis were anything to go by, in Laura’s considered, professional opinion. She stepped aside as one drunken man in his twenties staggered out of McDonald’s and lurched by, clutching a hand to his mouth and hurrying to the kerb looking like he was about to be violently sick. She left him to it. Taking the Hippocratic Oath didn’t mean she had to rush to the aid of every binge-drinking idiot in London. She’d be working round the clock from here to Michaelmas if she did.
Bob Wilkinson was chatting to her as they made their way down the road, moaning about something or other as usual, but she wasn’t really listening. She was thinking about partying herself and the night ahead that she had planned. A new, fashionable fetish-club was opening in the West End and she was looking forward to paying it a visit. A young woman she had met last week at a gay bar in Soho had invited her. Laura had coolly told her she might be there, she might not! The woman was clearly the submissive type, but absolutely gorgeous, and Laura liked to play mind-games, as well as the other games. Mind-fuck them first, she thought to herself, and she was happy to take the dominant role if that was what was required. It wasn’t always her thing, but if the mood took her she’d get into it as much as any of the serious players. S&M was more about the mental than it was about the physical — something women understood a lot better than men in her experience. Laura didn’t consider herself a sadist as such, but she liked giving sensual pain if it was consensual. Not the kind of all-out beatings that some women she had met wanted. The kind that draws blood, leaves serious bruising; she couldn’t even watch that, at some of the clubs and private parties she had been to. She was a doctor after all and the Hippocratic Oath definitely did go against that kind of thing! She smiled to herself at the thought.
‘What?’ Bob Wilkinson asked her as he stopped walking and looked at her curiously.
‘Nothing,’ she said, keeping the smile on her face. She couldn’t imagine what the perennially cranky police constable would make of her thoughts, or her plans for that night. She certainly had no intention of telling him. Her private life she kept exactly that. And when she did attend the kind of clubs like the one she was going to later, she always wore a mask and went incognito. A sexy mask, mind. She was not only a doctor but a police surgeon, after all, not the sort of thing she wanted to be public knowledge. Fetish wasn’t quite the new gay yet. Hell, gay wasn’t even the new gay in the Metropolitan Police. She had lost count of the number of women who had hit on her. Some of them married, some with boyfriends, others not. But a lot of them asking her to keep it strictly between themselves. There were some women who were out and proud, of course. Chief Inspector Diane Campbell and her gorgeous girlfriend, who worked in the evidence area back in White City, for one. But a lot of gay women — and men come to that — kept that part of their life separate from work and, in all honesty, she didn’t blame them. It was a lot easier for her to come out as a student going on to be a doctor than it was for a cadet over at Hendon.
‘Down here,’ said PC Wilkinson, snapping her out of her thoughts and heading her off the main drag down a small cul-de-sac of a lane. There were a few shops, closed for the night now; some offices where homeless people were huddled together with their backs against the wall, taking some small comfort, she assumed, from the heat emanating from it. She looked up at the night sky, heavily swollen with snow, and wondered why they didn’t make it to one of the homeless shelters. Maybe they would later. She fished in her pocket and came up with a couple of pound coins. She threw them onto the blanket laid out in front of a young woman seated with a man and another woman, both much older than her. The girl looked up at her. She had the face of an angel, Laura found herself thinking. A malnourished, haunted-eyed angel. Homeless girl by way of Margaret O’Brien. But the girl’s eyes were unfocused as well as enormous and sad, the pupils dilated and huge. God knows what cocktail of booze and pills she was on. Laura wanted to stop and speak with her but the girl mumbled some thanks and closed her eyes, unable to keep them open, and leaned up against the older man next to her.
Bob Wilkinson pointed ahead some twenty yards further on to the Chinese restaurant. An elderly Chinese woman was waving angrily at them. In front of her restaurant window a homeless man lay sprawled on his back, a broken whisky bottle on the pavement near him, his arms outstretched. Cruciform. A hobo Christ nailed to a London side-street.
‘He piss on window,’ the Chinese woman was saying as they approached, still waving her hands around. ‘All the time he come and piss on window, and police do nothing!’
‘Yeah, well, we’re here now, missus,’ said Bob Wilkinson, trying to be placating, but his gruff tone did little to assuage the indignant old woman.
‘Yeah, you here now!’ she continued, spluttering with rage. ‘Then you let him out, and then he come and piss on my window. People eating dinner here! How you like him to come and piss on you when you having your roast beef and gravy?’
Bob looked down at the man lying near his feet for a moment, and then back up at the woman.
‘I don’t think the wife would approve,’ he said.
Dr Laura Chilvers knelt down and put her hand to the unconscious man’s neck. She felt for a pulse, somewhat unnecessarily, for at that moment he made a wet, slapping sound with his lips and grunted. His eyes remained firmly closed, however, and his stretched arms still stayed wide and immobile. Laura looked up at the sky again. Maybe he was welcoming aliens from space. It wouldn’t be the first time a mentally ill person had ended up on the street. Not by a long chalk, and certainly wouldn’t be the last.
She looked down at the man again, wondering what his story was, and then shrugged and nodded up at Bob Wilkinson, who stood with a couple of tall, uniformed police constables that she didn’t recognise.
‘He’s alive at least, I can tell you that much,’ she said. ‘He’s got a steady heart rhythm. Lungs seem to be functioning fine too.’
Bob Wilkinson glanced across at the now-broken and empty bottle of whisky and grimaced sourly. ‘Take more than a cheap bottle of Scotch to kill Bible Steve, I reckon,’ he said.
‘You know him?’ asked Laura.
The sergeant nodded. ‘Don’t know his real name. I’m not sure even he does any more. Everyone calls him Bible Steve. He’s always quoting the scriptures or preaching at people. When he’s not falling down drunk, that is, or pissing on Mrs Lucky Dragon’s window.’
Laura glanced back at the man sprawled on the pavement. He looked like an actor, she thought, but couldn’t remember who he reminded her of. Hard to tell under all the grime and the greasy, matted hair. Maybe an older version of Mickey Rourke in The Wrestler, when out-of-his-face on booze. Maybe Oliver Reed in his hell-raising heyday. This man’s hair was dark at one time, she could see, but it was mostly grey now, tangled, long. Impossible to tell what he would look like when he was shaved, shorn and cleaned up. Either way she knew for certain he wasn’t Oliver Reed and was pretty certain he wasn’t Mickey Rourke nor likely to be getting a call from Hollywood any time soon. Cricklewood maybe.
‘Bible Steve we’d call a bit of a nut-job,’ continued PC Wilkinson. ‘But what you medical types would probably classify as having mental difficulties.’
Laura didn’t smile. ‘Whatever he is, he shouldn’t be left out unconscious on a cold night like this. Is he violent?’
‘Not particularly. Harmless enough most of the time. But when he’s had a drink in him, he has been known to swing his fists. No different from most of them on the streets, when they’re out of it on drugs or booze.’
‘He’s pretty much dead to the world now, but you better get him back to the station. So he can’t harm himself. Or anyone else, come to that.’
She stood up and sprayed some antibacterial, disinfectant into her left palm and rubbed her hands together.
Bob Wilkinson gestured to the two uniforms to pick up the sleeping man, his nose wrinkling. The drunk continued groaning, muttering half-formed obscenities, his hands twitching, but he didn’t waken. PC Bob Wilkinson scowled and looked down at the homeless man as they manhandled him to his feet. ‘And for God’s sake put that thing away, and zip him up.’
DR LAURA CHILVERS had only been back at the station for a short while, but had had to see to a couple of forty-year-old businesswomen who had got into a fight in a male lap-dancing club over one of the dancers, and needed minor treatment before being booked; a nineteen-year-old woman who was cycling the wrong way up a one-way street dressed only in her underwear, a feather boa and a Santa Claus hat on her head; and a seventy-year-old retired army general who had become convinced after several bottles of Dom Perignon that he was living in the nineteenth century and that the head concierge at Claridge’s was a Russian cavalry officer, he’d led his own Charge of the Light Brigade with an empty luggage trolley and had fractured one of his shins.
Laura was coming round to Bob Wilkinson’s way of thinking as he led her to one of the holding cells. Nut-jobs. The guest in number-two cell was awake, according to the sergeant, and she could hear it for herself as the sound of his drunken shouts reverberated from the locked room.
‘Lord, you have assigned me my portion and my cup; you have made my lot secure. The boundary lines have fallen for me in pleasant places; surely I have a delightful inheritance. I will praise the Lord, who counsels me; even at night my heart instructs me. I have set the Lord always before me. Because he is at my right hand, I will not be shaken!’
Bob Wilkinson opened the door and held it wide for Laura Chilvers to enter. ‘All right, calm it down, Bible,’ he said. ‘You’re not in Kansas now.’
Bible Steve stood up from the bench-bed, casting his eyes heavenwards and spreading his arms wide, and shouted, ‘It is God who arms me with strength and makes my way perfect. He makes my feet like the feet of a deer; he enables me to stand on the heights. He trains my hands for battle; my arms can bend a bow of bronze. You give me your shield of victory, and your right hand sustains me; you stoop down to make me great. You broaden the path beneath me, so that my ankles do not turn.’
Lowering his arms, he looked at the doctor, then squinted his eyes. ‘I know this harlot!’ His finger jabbed towards her chest and Laura took a step back.
‘No, you don’t, Bible. She just moved down here.’
‘She is a Jezebel! Satan’s spawn.’ He continued to point, saliva running into his beard.
‘She’s a police surgeon from Reading,’ said PC Bob Wilkinson.
‘I think you must be mistaking me for someone else,’ said Laura Chilvers patiently, and smiled at him, trying to calm him down.
The drunken man clasped his hands over his ears. ‘That voice,’ he said, almost reverentially. ‘Are you my angel?’
‘No, like the constable said,’ she replied, ‘I’m just a police surgeon.’
He opened his raw eyes and looked at her, tears welling up now. ‘Are you my guardian angel?’ he asked.
‘I’m nobody’s angel!’ she said. ‘He’s still drunk, Sergeant. Get him some tea and I’ll check back later.’
‘What about—’ the sergeant started to ask her, but Laura was already moving away, her heels clacking on the stone floor.
PATRICIA HUNT STOOD by her bedside window looking out, just as her husband had done earlier in the evening, at their garden below her.
It was late. Past midnight. A few hours into a new day that she was dreading. Had been dreading for years, even though she didn’t know what the day would bring. But, just as her husband felt the ache of arthritis in his bones, so in her bones she knew that their time was coming. Sometimes you can run for ever, but justice is always there ahead of you. Waiting patiently for you.
Her husband behind her mumbled something and turned over in his sleep. He would be awake soon, she knew that. And if he did manage to get to sleep again, it wouldn’t be for long. It was the same for her. Neither of them had been able to sleep properly for days now. The strain of it was carved into their faces, like bark on a tree.
Outside the snow had finally come. There was no wind to speak of and so the snow seemed to fall in straight lines. Like an illustrated picture from a Victorian children’s book, she found herself thinking. Mysteries in the Secret Garden. There was moonlight shining through the cloud now, and the frost on the ground had hardened so that the snow was settling. There was an oak tree in the corner of the garden with a flowerbed beside it and a high hedge running around all sides. A stone slab was laid into the lawn in the opposite corner to the oak tree, and an ornamental birdbath sat in its middle.
Beyond the hedge, in the distance, Patricia could make out rooftops gradually whitening as the snow settled, and in the midst of them a tall spire rose. The weathervane atop it was unmoving. Patricia gazed at the spire for a while and then looked back down at her garden. The snow had completely covered the green of their lawn now. She looked at the birdbath. And thought about what was buried beneath it.
‘Come back to bed,’ her husband said.
LAURA HAD LOCKED the office door and was changing into her outfit for the evening at the new club — putting on a pair of stockings with black suspenders before slipping into a pair of cami-knickers. A short black leather skirt, with a matching stud-fronted, plunge-style basque and a black leather jacket over it. Dominatrix by Gucci. She’d sort her hair and makeup later. Meanwhile she slipped a pair of killer heels into her large shoulder bag together with a small riding crop and a Catwoman-style mask. Time to party.
She put a full, almost shoulder-to-heel leather overcoat on top of her outfit, buttoned it up and put a Russian military-style fur cap on her head.
She turned the lock in the door and went into the reception area, sticking her head around Kate Walker’s door to say goodbye, but she had already left. As she headed for the exit, the desk sergeant, Dave Matthews, called her back.
‘Hold your horses a moment, Dr Zhivago.’
Laura turned back, not particularly amused as she saw that he was with another PC, leading the drunk they had collected earlier from the Edgware Road. Bible Steve. He was a lot quieter now and quite passive as the young constable walked him forward.
Laura looked pointedly at her watch. ‘I’m out of here, Sergeant.’
‘Just take a minute. The cells are full back there.’
‘Are you going to charge him?’
‘You bet! I want him charged and out of here as soon as.’
Laura’s nostrils quivered. ‘I can see why.’
Bible Steve looked up at her. ‘I am here, you know!’
‘No doubting of that, Mr Bible.’
‘What are you going to charge me with?’
‘Putting people off their sweet-and-sour pork balls,’ said Dave Matthews, and Laura laughed despite herself.
‘I did nothing of the sort!’
‘Wagging the weeny at the window, Bible. It’s not the sort of entertainment the diners at the Lucky Dragon were expecting. I don’t know …’ The sergeant wagged his hand himself. ‘Maybe a fortune-cookie.’
‘The call of nature must be answered, Sergeant. No man can ignore it.’
‘You could have gone down the alley, Bible. Spraying the shop window like a territorial Great Dane — it’s hardly being discreet, is it?’
‘I was making a protest. My Christian duty. This city is rife with its worshippers, like an apple rotten with worms. They dine as others starve so that the seventh prince of Hell be worshipped!’
‘I haven’t got time for this, Dave,’ said Laura.
Bible Steve held his hands aloft again. ‘Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon Earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal. But lay up for yourselves treasures in Heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal. For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also. No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other; or else he will be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and Mammon.’
‘Right,’ said Laura with a sigh and looked at her watch.
‘Matthew six, nineteen to twenty-one,’ said Bible Steve.
‘Shut it now, or I’ll put you back in the cell and leave you there till Christmas. Sergeant Matthews, White City nick,’ said Slimline Dave.
Bible Steve lowered his hands and looked at Laura. ‘Lead on MacDuff.’
‘This way.’ Laura gestured for the constable to bring him to her office. As they walked towards it, Bible Steve turned and looked at her.
‘I know you,’ he said.
‘No, you don’t.’
Bible Steve looked across at the constable. ‘She interfered with me, the last time I was here.’
‘She wasn’t even here the last time you were brought in, Steve.’
‘Interfered, I tell you!’
Laura opened the door to her office. ‘In here.’
Bible Steve saluted and followed her in. The constable nodded to her. ‘I’ll be just outside, if you need me.’
‘Thanks, I am sure I’ll be fine.’
Back inside her office, Laura checked his eyes, his pulse. Then looked at his hands, which were bruised, scarred and had dried blood on both sets of knuckles.
‘How did you hurt your hands, Steve?’
Bible Steve spread his fingers wide. ‘But I hae dreamed a dreary dream. Beyond the Isle of Skye. I saw a dead man win a fight, and I think that man was I.’
‘The Bible?’
‘The Battle of Otterburn, mid-sixteenth-century.’
‘Are you a time-traveller?’ asked Laura gently, as she cleaned his knuckles up as best she could with a tissue and surgical spirit.
The bearded man nodded his head. ‘I have been.’
‘And how did you hurt your hands in this millennium?’
Bible Steve looked down at his hands again and made fists of them. ‘Doing the Lord’s work,’ he said.
‘Fighting?’
He nodded. ‘The good fight, yes.’
‘Who were you fighting with?’
‘I fight the Devil, Doctor. Where I find him.’
‘On the streets?’
‘The Devil is in the hearts of men,’ he said angrily and glared at her. ‘In the hearts of men and women and in the corruption of children!’
Laura looked at him, concerned. ‘Have you hurt children, Steve?’
Bible Steve shook his head, then tilted it to one side. ‘I am just a vessel. No more than that.’
Laura put the cap on top of the bottle of surgical spirit and placed it to one side. She would have stood up, but Bible Steve grabbed her hands and pulled her towards him, an intent look in his red, sore eyes. ‘I know you, don’t I?’ he said again.
Laura shook her head and took her hands out of his. ‘No. Like I said. I met you earlier, on the street, and when you were in the cell. You were drunk. You still are.’
‘No. I know you!’ he said for the third time, in a hoarse croak. ‘You are my angel. My guardian Angela!’
He stood up and reached out for her, turning his huge hands into claws, and Laura stepped back, her eyes wide. Horrified.
LAURA STEPPED OUT from her office, nodding to the constable, and hurried across to the desk where Sergeant Matthews was filling in a form and watching two uniforms lead a drunk Santa Claus to the holding cells. He sighed and put the form to one side.
‘What’s the verdict, Doctor?’
‘He’s sober enough now, I guess. If not entirely lucid.’
‘Bible Steve is never entirely lucid.’
‘Probably not, no.’
The sergeant looked across as the constable led the man in question out of the police surgeon’s office. ‘So I can charge him and release him?’
Laura held up her hand to the constable, signalling for him to wait, and leaned in to speak quietly with the desk sergeant. ‘He’s sober enough to be charged and released, but why don’t you keep him in for the night?’
‘Why would I do that? Is he ill?’
‘Not physically, no.’
‘I’m jammed up here, Laura.’
‘I know it’s against procedures, but a night out of the cold isn’t going to hurt him.’
Bible Steve called out to them, ‘I just want my own bed, Officer. Take a page or two of the Good Book. God’s love keeps us warm. Nourishment, not punishment.’
‘He hasn’t got a bed, Dave.’
‘Neither have we — like I say, we’re jammed up here and the night is far from over.’
Laura looked at her watch. ‘Yeah, and it’s time I was out of here.’
‘We’ll drop him off at the shelter. We always do.’
‘You’re a good man, Sergeant Matthews, and I’ll kill any man who says otherwise!’ shouted Bible Steve.
The sergeant nodded to him. ‘Please don’t. And remember, sweet-and-sour pork balls are off the menu tonight!’
Laura adjusted her hat and headed for the door.
‘Bless you, my child!’ the homeless man called after her.
But Laura hurried on, the door closing behind her.
‘Take care, darling,’ Bible Steve said softly.
London, off the Edgware Road. 3 a.m., Saturday
THE STREETS OF London were mostly quiet now.
In the distance, the sound of music playing from a club that was staying open until five in the morning. Lou Reed singing about shiny boots of leather, but faintly. Audible when the club doors opened for people to leave. There was little or no traffic on the roads, which were covered with thick snow. Large flakes of it that continued to fall, filling the air. Any footprints in that snow in the little side-street had long been filled in.
Bible Steve looked upwards, his eyes wide with wonder as the snow fell on his upturned face. He reached a hand out and clutched it, as if the dancing snowflakes were little bits of magic he could catch in his palm. He watched as they melted on the back of his hand and a tear trickled down his cheek. He wiped the sleeve of his coat roughly over his eyes, as he did hundreds of times a day, then thrust his hand into his pocket and pulled out a can of strong lager. He pulled the ring-pull, took a long drink and then belched.
‘Onward then, ye people,’ he sang loudly. ‘Join our happy throng, blend with ours your voices in the triumph song. Glory, laud and honour unto Christ the King, this through countless ages men and angels sing.’
He waved his can of lager to conduct an invisible choir, and his voice grew even louder.
‘Onward, Christian soldiers, marching as to war, with the cross of Jesus going on before …’
And then his voice faltered and his eyes widened. But not with wonder this time. He shrank back against the brick of the wall that he was leaning against and raised a protective arm.
‘You keep away from me,’ he said, his voice trembling with fear. ‘You keep away from me!’