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Mr Punch is a jolly good fellow, His dress is all scarlet and yellow. The bass and baritone joined in in quick succession, followed by the company, singing as if they had the song sheet before them.

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

With the girls he’s a rogue and rover; He lives, while he can, upon clover; The clapping and stamping spread back, row by row, from the front of the stalls. In the good acoustics of the Opera House the stamping was louder than a Highbury crowd, and just as contagious. I had to lock my knees to stop my feet from moving.

When he dies it’s only all over: And there Punch’s comedy ends. Lesley stepped onto the stage and, bold as brass, walked up the steps that took her to the exaggerated poop deck and turned to face the audience. I saw then that in her left hand she carried a silver-topped cane. I recognised it — the bastard had stolen it from Nightingale. A spotlight stabbed out of the darkness and bathed her in harsh white light. The music and the singing stopped and the stamping trailed away. ‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ called Lesley, ‘boys and girls. I present to you today the most tragical comedy and comical tragedy of Mr Punch, as related to that great talent and impresario Mr Henry Pyke.’ She waited for applause, and when it didn’t come she muttered under her breath and made a curt gesture with the cane. I felt the compulsion roll over me, while behind me the audience broke into applause. Lesley bowed graciously. ‘Lovely to be here,’ she said. ‘My, but this theatre is much enlarged since my day. Is anyone else here from the 1790s?’ A solitary whoop floated down from the gods, just to prove that there’s always one in every crowd. ‘Not that I don’t believe you, sir, but you’re a bloody liar,’ said Lesley. ‘The old ham will be here by and by.’ She looked out past the lights into the stalls, searching for something. ‘I know you’re out there, you black Irish dog.’ She shook her head. ‘I’d just like to say, it’s good to be here in the twenty-first century,’ she said suddenly. ‘Lots of things to be grateful for: indoor plumbing, horseless carriages — a decent life expectancy.’ There was no obvious way to get from the stalls to the stage. The orchestra pit was two metres deep, and the lip of the stage opposite was higher than a man could reach. ‘Tonight, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, for your entertainment, I give you my rendition of that lamentable scene from the story of Mr Punch,’ said Lesley. ‘I refer of course to his incarceration and, alas, impending execution.’ ‘No,’ I yelled. I’d read the script. I knew what was coming next. Lesley looked straight at me and smiled. ‘But of course,’ she said. ‘The play’s the thing.’ There was a crack of breaking bone, and her face changed. As her nose became a hooked blade, her voice rose to a piercing, warbling shriek. ‘That’s the way to do it!’ she screeched. I was too late, but I threw myself into the orchestra pit just the same. The Royal Opera House doesn’t mess about with a quartet with a drum machine — you get a full-on orchestra seventy musicians strong, and the pit is built to match. I landed amid the horn section, who were not so dazed by the compulsion Henry Pyke had them under that they didn’t protest. I pushed my way through the violinists, but it was no good, even with a standing jump I couldn’t get my hands on the stage. One of the violinists asked me what the fuck I thought I was doing and, backed up by a bassist, threatened to kick my head in. They both had that same Friday-night, mean drunk look in their eyes that I was beginning to associate with Henry Pyke. I’d just grabbed a music stand to hold them at bay when the orchestra started up again. As soon as it did the two homicidal musicians ignored me, took up their instruments, took their places and, with a great deal of decorum, considering they were having a psychotic episode, started playing. I could hear the thing wearing Lesley’s body singing in its awful high-pitched voice:

Punch when parted from his dear, Still must sing in doleful tune. I couldn’t see what Lesley was doing, but judging from the song she was acting out the scene where punch watches a gallows being assembled outside his prison window. There were doors at either end of the orchestra pit — they had to reach backstage one way or the other. I elbowed my way through the musicians towards the nearest door leaving a trail of squawks, twangs, squeals and crashes behind me. The door led into another narrow breezeblock passageway with other, identical-looking passageways branching off left and right. Since I’d exited stage left, I guessed another left turn would get me backstage. I was right, only the Royal Opera House didn’t have a backstage, it had an aircraft hangar, a huge, high-ceilinged room at least three times the size of the main stage that you could have parked a Zeppelin in. All the stage managers, prompts and whoever else lurks out of sight during a performance had crowded into the wings, transfixed by whatever influence Henry Pyke was using on the audience. Getting away from that influence had given me a chance to cool down and think. The damage to Lesley had been done; if I stuck her with the tranquilliser now, her face would fall off. Rushing onto the stage wasn’t going to help — for all I knew, me blundering in was part of Henry Pyke’s script. I sidled among the stagehands and tried to get as close to the stage as I could without showing myself. They hadn’t built a gallows. Instead, a noose had been lowered from above, as if from a yardarm. Either Henry Pyke was even more organised than I thought he was, or the original opera had involved someone getting hanged. Presumably after a lot of singing. Lesley, still playing the role of Punch, mimed languishing behind a barred window. She didn’t seem to be following the Piccini script any longer, but instead was regaling the audience with the life story of one Henry Pyke, aspiring actor, from his humble beginnings in a small Warwickshire village to his burgeoning career on the London stage. ‘And there I was,’ declaimed Lesley, ‘no longer a young man but a seasoned actor, my God-given gifts augmented by years of experience dearly won on the hard and unforgiving stages of London.’ That nobody among the stage managers was even sniggering showed the strength of the compulsion they were under. Since Nightingale hadn’t yet started me on ‘compulsion for beginners’, I didn’t know how much magic it took to hold over two thousand people in thrall, but I bet it was a lot, and that’s when I decided it was probably better for Lesley to have her face fall off than her brain shrivel up. I looked around. There had to be a first-aid kit close by. Dr Walid had said I was going to need saline solution and bandages to wrap around her head if I was going to keep her alive long enough for the ambulance to get there. I spotted the kit mounted on the wall above a selection of fire extinguishers, contained in an impressively large suitcase of red ballistic plastic that would also come in handy as an offensive weapon. I got my last syrette ready, and with the first-aid kit in my other hand I sidled into the wings. By the time I had sight of the stage again, Lesley — I couldn’t bear to think of her as Punch or Henry Pyke — was giving a full and detailed description of Henry’s disappointments. Most of which he blamed on Charles Macklin who, Henry claimed, had turned his hand against him out of spite and when challenged, outside this very theatre, had cruelly struck Henry down. ‘He should have swung for that,’ said Lesley. ‘Just as he should have swung for poor Thomas Hallum that he did for in the Theatre Royal. But he has the luck of the Irish and the gift of the gab.’ That’s when I realised what Henry Pyke was waiting for. Charles Macklin had been a regular at the Royal Opera House until his death. According to legend, Macklin’s ghost was supposed to have been seen on numerous occasions in his favourite seat in the stalls. Henry Pyke was trying to draw him out, but I didn’t think he was going to turn up. Lesley paced the width of the poop deck, peering out into the stalls. ‘Show yourself, Macklin,’ she called. I thought there was uncertainty in her voice now. The poop deck was a raised section of the stage, too high at the sides for me to climb. The only access would be up the stairs at the front — but there was no way to sneak up on Lesley. I was going to have to do something stupid. I stepped boldly onto the stage, and then made the mistake of looking out at the audience. I couldn’t see much beyond the footlights, but I could see enough to register the great mass of people staring back at me from the towering darkness. I stumbled over my own feet and caught myself on a prop cannon. ‘What’s this?’ screeched Lesley. ‘I am Jack Ketch,’ I said, rather too quietly. ‘God spare me from fools and amateurs,’ said Lesley under her breath, then louder. ‘What’s this?’ ‘I am Jack Ketch,’ I said, and this time I felt it carry out to the audience. I got a ripple of vestigia back, not from the people but from the fabric of the auditorium. The theatre remembered Jack Ketch, executioner for Charles II, a man famed for being so unrepentantly crap at his job that he once published a pamphlet in which he blamed his victim, Lord Russell, for failing to stay still when he swung the axe. For a century afterwards, Ketch was a synonym for the hangman, the murderer and the Devil himself: if ever there was a name to conjure him with, then it would be Jack Ketch. Which explained his role in the Punch and Judy show, and why this was my best chance to get close enough to Lesley to use the syrette. ‘Thank you very much, Mr Ketch, but I am quite comfortable here,’ said Lesley. I hadn’t bothered to learn the script by heart, but I knew enough to improvise. ‘But you must come out,’ I said. ‘Come out and be hanged.’ ‘You would not be so cruel,’ said Lesley. I know for a fact that there was supposed to be a load more banter here, but since I couldn’t remember the words I cut to the action. ‘Then I must fetch you,’ I said, and advanced up the stairs to the poop deck. It was hard to make myself look at the ruin of Lesley’s face, but I couldn’t risk any surprise moves. Her Punch face twisted with irritation, presumably because I was skipping lines, but she went on with the show — just as I’d been hoping she would. This was the part where Jack Ketch seizes Punch and drags him to the noose, at which point the wily wife-murderer tricks Jack Ketch into sticking his own head through the loop and thus hanging himself. No sir, they don’t make role models for children like that any more. I readied the syrette. Lesley cowered as I approached. ‘Mercy, mercy,’ she squeaked. ‘I’ll never do so again.’ ‘That much is certain,’ I said, but before I could inject her she whirled and thrust Nightingale’s cane in my face. The muscles in my back and shoulders locked and it was all I could do to keep my balance. ‘Do you know what this is?’ asked Lesley, waving the cane from side to side. I tried to say ‘it’s a stick’, but my jaw muscles were locked along with everything else. ‘As Prospero had his book and staff,’ said Lesley, ‘so does your Master have both those things, but of those I need only the staff. Being of the spirit world gives one a certain je ne sais quoi when dealing with magic, but what one lacks sans corporality is the spark of vitality necessary to facilitate one’s desires.’ Which at least confirmed that Henry Pyke had no intrinsic magic of his own, an observation I’d have found more interesting if I hadn’t been sodding paralysed and at his mercy. ‘This is the source of your Master’s power,’ said Lesley. ‘And with his power I can do, well, just about anything I please.’ She grinned, showing her smashed teeth. ‘Your line is: “Now, Mr Punch, no more delay”.’ ‘Now, Mr Punch, no more delay,’ I said, and gestured at the noose. ‘Put your head through this loop.’ The weird thing was, this time I could sense the compulsion almost as if it was a forma, a shape in my mind but not of my mind. ‘Through there,’ said Lesley, winking at the audience. ‘Whatever for?’ ‘Aye, through there,’ I said. I sensed it again, and this time I was sure: the idea of the shape was external but the actual shape itself was being formed by my own mind. It was like hypnotism, a suggestion rather than a command. ‘What for? I don’t know how,’ said Lesley, and struck a pose of deep despair. ‘It’s very easy,’ I said, grasping the noose, the rope scratchy against my palms. ‘Only put your head through here.’ Lesley leaned forward and, missing the noose entirely, asked, ‘What, so?’ ‘No, no,’ I said, and pointed at the noose. ‘Here.’ If it was a suggestion, I thought, then I should be able just to think it away. Lesley theatrically missed, sticking her head through the noose once more. ‘So, then?’ she asked. I tried to push the shape out of my mind but found myself saying, ‘Not so, you fool,’ and pantomiming exasperation. Brute force wasn’t the way, and I was going to have to come up with something because in less than two lines the character of Jack Ketch was due to stick his own stupid neck through the loop and get himself hanged, and me with him. ‘Mind who you call fool; try and see if you can do it yourself,’ squeaked Lesley, and paused to give the audience a chance to titter in anticipation. ‘Only show me how and I will do it directly.’ I felt my body shift in anticipation of the move that would shove my head into the noose. Which is when I thought that if I couldn’t get rid of the compulsion, maybe I could change it enough to break it. I did it like anti-noise, where you cancel out a sound wave by broadcasting another sound wave with an inverted phase — it’s clever stuff and very counter-intuitive, but it works. I was hoping the weird, inside-my-head version would work because I’d only just started making the shape in my mind when my mouth said, ‘Very well, I will.’ My forma met the compulsion like the wrong two gearwheels brushing up against each other in a transmission. I thought I could actually feel bits of the forma spinning around in my brain and painfully ricocheting off the inside of my skull, but that could have been my imagination. It didn’t matter. I felt my body unlock and I yanked my head away from the noose and looked at Lesley in triumph. ‘Or maybe I won’t,’ I said. A huge arm clamped itself across my chest from behind and a large hand gripped the back of my head and pushed it through the noose. I smelled camelhair and Chanel aftershave — Seawoll must have walked up behind me while I was feeling clever. ‘Or maybe you will,’ said Lesley. I twisted, but while there are some big men who are surprisingly weak, Seawoll wasn’t one of them, so I jammed the syrette into the exposed bit of his hand and gave him the whole dose. Unfortunately the whole dose had been calibrated for Lesley, who was half Seawoll’s size. The pressure never wavered until Lesley yelled, ‘Hoist away, boys,’ and I was dragged into the air by my neck. The only thing that saved my life was the fact that I was being hanged in a theatrical noose which had been designed, as a matter of health and safety, not to hang the attractive Croatian baritone whose neck was supposed to be in it. The slipknot was a fake and there was a wire reinforcement inside the rope to keep the loop in shape. Undoubtedly there was a eyelet for clipping a tether to the no doubt artfully concealed safety harness to be worn by the handsome baritone, once he’d made his farewell aria. Unfortunately I didn’t have a harness, so the damn thing half-killed me before I managed to get my head out of the loop, scraping the skin off my chin in the process. I got my elbow into the loop for more support, but even with that, there was a sudden line of agony down my back. I had a quick look down and saw that I was a good five metres above the stage. I wasn’t going to be letting go any time soon. Below me, Lesley had turned back to the audience. ‘So much for the constabulary,’ she said. Behind her Seawoll sat down heavily on the stairs and slumped forward like a tired runner, the etorphine hydrochloride kicking in at last. ‘See,’ said Lesley. ‘One officer of the law kicks his last, while another lies sleeping, no doubt stupefied with drink. Thus do we good men of England put our trust in swine barely separate from the villains they purport to chase. How long, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, are you prepared to put up with this? Why is it that men of good quality pay their taxes while foreigners pay naught, and yet expect the liberties that are an Englishman’s hard-won prerogative?’ It was getting harder to maintain a hold, but I didn’t fancy my chances letting go. There were huge curtains either side of the stage, and I wondered if I could swing over far enough to grab one. I changed to a two-handed grip on the loop and started to shift my weight and to flex, to get momentum going. ‘Because who is more oppressed?’ exclaimed Lesley. ‘Those that seek nothing but entitlements for themselves, or those that claim for everything: social security, housing benefit, disability, and pay for nothing?’ One thing I did do in history was the reform of the Poor Laws, so I knew then that Henry Pyke must either be using stuff from Lesley’s memory or else had been reading the Daily Mail for the last two hundred years. ‘And are they grateful?’ she asked. The audience muttered in response. ‘Of course they are not,’ said Lesley. ‘For they have come to look upon such things as their right.’ It wasn’t easy keeping the rope from swinging out over the orchestra pit. I tried to correct, and ended up describing a figure of eight. I was still several metres short of the scaffolding platform, so I put my back into it, jack-knifing my legs to cross the gap. Suddenly the crowd gave a roar and I felt a wave of frustration and anger well up around me like floodwater backing out of a storm drain. I lost concentration at a crucial moment and slammed into the curtain. I made the jump, desperately grabbing handfuls of the heavy cloth and trying to get enough between my legs to stop me sliding smack onto the stage. Then all the lights went out. They didn’t spark, flicker, flash or do anything theatrical — they just turned themselves off. Somewhere amid the Royal Opera House’s sophisticated lighting rig, I reckoned, a couple of microprocessors were crumbling into sand. When you are hanging by your fingernails, down is nearly always the right direction, so I did my best to ignore the pain in my forearms and started working my way down the curtain. Out in the darkness I heard the audience not panicking which, given the circumstances, was much creepier than the alternative. A cone of white light appeared around Lesley like a spotlight from an invisible lamp. ‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ she called, ‘boys and girls. I think it’s time to go out and play.’ One of my mum’s uncles once had tickets to Arsenal v Spurs at Highbury, and took me when his own son couldn’t make it. We were down among season-ticket holders, the hardest of the hard core football fans who went there for the game, not the violence. Being in a crowd like that is like being caught in the tide — you might try going in the other direction but it drags you along all the same. It was a dull game, style wise, and looked to be heading for a nil — nil draw when suddenly, in injury time, Arsenal made a late surge. As they got into the penalty area I swear the whole stadium, sixty thousand people, held their breath. When the Arsenal forward put it in the back of the net I found myself screaming with joy along with the rest of the people around me. It was entirely involuntary. That’s what it felt like when Henry Pyke let the audience loose at the Royal Opera House. I must have let go of the curtain and fallen the last couple of metres, but I only know that I was suddenly lying on the stage with a shooting pain in my ankle and a sudden desire to smash someone’s face in. I pulled myself to my feet and found myself face to disfigured face with Lesley. I flinched. Up close, the ruin of Lesley’s face was even harder to deal with. My eyes kept sliding away from the grotesque caricature. On either side of her stood the principal cast, all male, all tense and, except for the boyish baritone, much tougher-looking than you’d expect among practitioners of high culture. ‘Are you all right?’ she squeaked. ‘You had me worried there.’ ‘You tried to hang me,’ I said. ‘Peter,’ said Henry Pyke. ‘I never wanted you dead. Over the last few months I’ve come to think of you as less of an arch-enemy and more as the comic relief, the slightly dim character that comes on with the dog and does a funny turn while the real thespians are getting changed.’ ‘I notice Charles Macklin didn’t make an appearance,’ I said. The Punch nose twitched. ‘No matter,’ said Lesley. ‘The gout-ridden bastard can’t hide for ever.’ ‘And in the meantime, we …’ it was a good question. ‘What are we doing?’ I asked. ‘We are playing our role,’ said Lesley. ‘We are Mr Punch, the irrepressible spirit of riot and rebellion. It is our nature to cause trouble, just as it is your nature to try and stop us.’ ‘You’re killing people,’ I said. ‘Alas,’ said Lesley. ‘All art requires sacrifice. And take it from one who knows — death is more of a bore than a tragedy.’ Suddenly I was struck by the fact that I wasn’t talking to a complete personality. The way the accent bopped around from era to era, the bizarre switches in motive and behaviour. This wasn’t Henry Pyke, or even Mr Punch, this was like a patchwork, a personality cobbled together from half-remembered fragments. Maybe all ghosts were like this, a pattern of memory trapped in the fabric of the city like files on a hard-drive — slowly getting worn away as each generation of Londoners laid down the pattern of their lives. ‘You’re not listening,’ said Lesley. ‘Here I am, taking time out of my busy schedule to gloat and you’re in a world of your own.’ ‘Tell me, Henry,’ I said. ‘What were the names of your parents? ‘Why, they were Mr and Mrs Pyke, of course.’ ‘And their first names?’ Lesley laughed. ‘You’re trying to trick me,’ she said. ‘Their names were Father and Mother.’ I was right — Henry Pyke, at least the portion of him inside Lesley’s head — was literally not all there. ‘And tell me all the good things that come into your mind,’ I said, ‘about your mother.’ Lesley cocked her head to one side. ‘Now you’re just taking me for a fool,’ she said. She gestured at the principal cast, who’d been impassively watching our exchange. ‘Do you know what The Times said about this production?’ ‘It was gloomy and pointless,’ I said as I got to my feet. If Lesley was going to monologue, I was going to use the opportunity to get up. ‘Close,’ she said. ‘What the opera critic of The Times actually wrote was that “the performance had all the gravitas of a Christmas episode of Coronation Street ”.’ ‘That’s harsh,’ I said. I didn’t have any more tranquilliser, but the first-aid kit was still lying in the wings. One blow to the back of the head with the heavy case might be enough to put Lesley down. And then what? Lesley cocked her head over to the other side — eyes still on me. ‘Oh look, boys,’ she said to the principal cast. ‘It’s the opera critic for The Times. ’

I considered telling them I didn’t even read The Times, but I didn’t think they’d listen. I ran for the nearest fire exit on the basis that, by definition, it would be the shortest route out and, by law, always unlocked. Also the emergency exit signs were on a different circuit, and thus the only source of light. I got three metres ahead of the singers while crossing the aircraft hangar space behind the stage and didn’t slow down as I banged through the first door, which cost a bruised rib but gained me at least a metre. My eyes had already begun to adjust, but even with the next emergency exit sign directly ahead there wasn’t enough light to stop me from tripping over a badly parked trolley. I went down clutching my shin, and an absurd part of my mind noting that an obstruction like that was a violation of health and safety regulations. A silhouetted figure came charging down the corridor towards me. One of the singers had caught up; it was too dark to see which one. I kicked the trolley into his path and he went down on his face next to me. He was a big man, and smelled of sweat and stage make-up. He tried to get back up but I stepped on his back as I climbed to my feet. His friends banged through the door so I yelled to make sure their attention was focused on me, and then ran for it. The yelps as they tripped over their colleague were deeply satisfying. Bang through another door and the lights were on, a separate circuit from the house lights, I guessed, and I was back in a blinding labyrinth of narrow corridors that all looked the same. I ran through a room inhabited by nothing but wigs and turned into a corridor whose floor was covered in drifts of ballet shoes. I slipped on one and went skidding into a breezeblock wall. Behind me I could hear the principal cast howling for my blood; the fact that the threats were beautifully articulated was of no comfort at all. Finally, through another fire exit and I found myself by the ground-floor toilets next to the cloakroom. I could hear glass smashing from the direction of the main foyer, so I headed for the side exit by the ticket office. I ignored the slow, wheelchair-accessible revolving door and headed straight for the emergency exits, but what I saw through the glass brought me to a sudden stop. There was a riot in Bow Street. A well-dressed mob was looting the hotel opposite, and a column of greasy black smoke was rising from a burning car. I recognised the make — it was a canary-yellow Mini convertible.

Chapter 12
The Last Resort

Nobody likes a riot except looters and journalists. The Metropolitan Police, being the go-ahead, dynamic modern police service that it is, has any number of contingency plans for dealing with civil disturbance, from farmers with truckloads of manure, to suburban anarchists on a weekend break and Saturday jihadists. What I suspect they didn’t have plans for was just over two thousand enraged opera lovers pouring out of the Royal Opera House and going on a mad rampage through Covent Garden. I was pretty sure that a smart Londoner like Beverley would have the brains to bail out of her car before the mob torched it, but I knew her mum wouldn’t forgive me if I didn’t check. I ran out, yelling my head off in the hope that everyone else would mistake me for a rioter too. The noise hit me as soon as I was out the door. It was like an angry pub crowd but on an enormous scale, all strange half-chants and animal hooting noises. It wasn’t like a normal riot. In one of those, most of the crowd does nothing except watch and occasionally cheer. Show them a broken shop window and they’ll cheerfully liberate the contents, but like most people they don’t actually want to get their hands dirty. This was a mob of ringleaders: everyone from the suspiciously well-dressed young man to the matron in an evening gown was mad as hell and ready to break something. I got as close to the burning Mini as I could, and was relieved to see no sign of anyone in any of the seats. Beverley had sensibly legged it and I should have followed suit, but I was distracted by the sight of the helicopter hovering directly overhead. The helicopter meant that GT, the Met’s Central Command, had taken direct operational control of the disturbance. This meant that dozens of ACPO rank officers were having their dinner parties, nights in with a DVD and evenings out with the mistress interrupted by urgent phonecalls by non-ACPO rank officers who were desperate to make sure that they were in no way responsible for anything. I’ll bet that GT knew early on that the wheels were coming off the wagon, and that as soon as the riot was over a grand game of musical inquiries would start. Nobody wanted to be the one without a chair when the music stopped. It was that thought which, ironically, distracted me enough for Deputy Assistant Commissioner Folsom to be able to sneak up behind me. I turned when he called my name and found him stalking towards me. His conservative suit jacket — pinstripe, I saw now that he was close up — had lost a sleeve and all its buttons. He was one of those people whose faces twitch when they’re angry; they think they’re all icy calm but something always gives them away. In Folsom’s case it was a nasty tic by his left eye. ‘Do you know what I hate the most,’ he shouted. I could see that he’d rather be adopting a sinisterly conversational tone, but unfortunately for him the riot was too loud. ‘What’s that, sir?’ I asked. I could feel the heat from the burning Mini on my back — Folsom had me trapped. ‘I hate police constables,’ he said. ‘Do you know why?’ ‘Why, sir?’ I edged round to my left, trying to open an escape route. ‘Because you never stop moaning,’ said Folsom. ‘I joined up in 1982, the good old days, before the PACE, before Macpherson and quality-control targets. And you know what? We were shit. We thought we were doing well in an investigation if we arrested anybody at all, let alone the perpetrator. We got the shit kicked out of us from Brixton to Tottenham and, fuck me, were we bent? We weren’t even that expensive! We’d let some scrote go for two pints of lager and a packet of crisps.’ He paused, and for a moment a look of puzzlement crossed his face, then his eyes fixed back on me and the left one twitched. ‘And you,’ he said, and I wasn’t happy with the way he said it. ‘How long do you think you’d have lasted back then? A locker full of excrement would have just been a warm-up. Odds are, a few of your relief would have taken you to one side and explained, in a rough but friendly manner, just how unwanted you were.’ I seriously considered rushing the guy — anything to make him shut up. ‘And don’t think your relief inspector would have helped,’ he said. ‘He wouldn’t have been able to spell “racial discrimination” on his report, if there had been a report …’ I feinted at him to back him up and then darted to my right, away from the burning car and the rest of the riot. It didn’t work. Folsom didn’t back up, and as I went past he gave me a backhander that was like being slapped with floorboard. It knocked me right back on my arse, and I found myself staring up at a seriously enraged senior officer looking to give me a good kicking at the very least. He’d just managed to land one of his size tens on my thigh — I ended up with a purple heel-shaped bruise for a month — when someone clubbed him down from behind. It was Inspector Neblett, still dressed in his impractical uniform tunic but carrying an honest-to-God wooden riot truncheon of the kind phased out in the 1980s for being slightly more lethal than a pickaxe handle. ‘Grant,’ he said. ‘What the hell is going on?’ I scrambled over to where Folsom lay face down on the pavement. ‘There’s been an irretrievable breakdown in public order,’ I said, while tugging Folsom into the recovery position. My head was still ringing from his backhander, so I wasn’t that gentle. ‘But why?’ he asked. ‘There wasn’t anything scheduled.’ Riots are rarely spontaneous. Crowds usually have to be assembled and provoked, and a conscientious inspector keeps a weather eye out for problems. Especially when his patch contains a riot magnet like Trafalgar Square. The only half-convincing lie I could think of was that somebody had attacked the Royal Opera House with a psychotropic aerosol, but I figured that might raise more questions than it answered. Not to mention trigger an inappropriate military response. I was just about to risk the truth, that a kind of vampire ghost had put the influence on the entire audience, when Neblett twigged exactly who it was he’d just smacked in the head. ‘Oh my God,’ he said, squatting down for a closer look. ‘This is Deputy Assistant Commissioner Folsom.’ Our eyes met across the twitching form of our senior officer. ‘He didn’t see you, sir,’ I said. ‘If you call an ambulance we can have him off the scene before he regains consciousness. There was a riot, he was attacked, you rescued him.’ ‘And your role in this?’ ‘Reliable witness, sir,’ I said. ‘As to your timely intervention.’ Inspector Neblett gave me a hard look. ‘I was wrong about you, Grant,’ he said. ‘You do have the makings of a proper copper.’ ‘Thank you, sir,’ I said. I looked around. The riot had moved on — down Floral Street and into the Piazza, I reckoned. ‘Where’s the TSG?’ I asked. The TSG are the Territorial Support Group. These are the guys that tool around in Mercedes Sprinter vans with equipment lockers stuffed with everything from riot helmets to tasers. Every borough command has a couple of these buzzing around their operational area, especially at closing time, and there’s a reserve force held on standby just in case of unexpected events. I suspected that current events counted as unexpected. ‘They’re staging on Longacre and Russell Street,’ said Neblett. ‘It looks like GT’s plan is to contain them around Covent Garden.’ There was a crash from the direction of the Piazza, followed by ragged cheering. ‘What now?’ asked Neblett. ‘I think they’re looting the market.’ ‘Can you get the ambulance?’ he asked. ‘No sir, I’ve got orders to find the ringleader,’ I said. A Molotov cocktail makes a very distinctive sound. A well-designed one goes crash, thud, whoosh — it’s the last, the petrol igniting, that’s going to kill you if you let it. I know this because before you graduate from Hendon you get to spend a fun-filled day having them thrown at you. Which was why Neblett and I both instinctively ducked when we heard them smashing into the tarmac less then fifteen metres down the road. ‘It’s kicking off,’ said Neblett. Looking south, I could see a mob of rioters on the crossroads where Culverhay met Bow Street. Beyond them I saw flames reflected off blue riot helmets and grey shields. I still had to get Lesley, subdue her and take her back to Walid at the UCH. Transport shouldn’t be a problem, since half the ambulances in London were probably converging on Covent Garden right at that moment. That just left finding her. I decided to assume that she was still looking for revenge on Macklin, who’d once had a gin shop on Henrietta Street and was buried at the Actors’ Church. That meant getting back into the Piazza, which unfortunately meant either passing through the exciting civil disturbance to the south or running up Floral Street, which contained God knew what in the way of rioters and really bad things. Fortunately, when they rebuilt the Royal Opera House one thing they made sure of was that it had a lot of exits. Pausing only to wish Neblett good luck and give Folsom a surreptitious kick in the shins, I ran back inside. Then it was a simple matter to slip past the box office and the company shop and out the other side into the Piazza. At least it would have been, if someone hadn’t been looting the shop. The glass display window was smashed, and fractured glass littered the displays of DVDs, holdalls embossed with the Royal Ballet School logo and souvenir pens. Somebody had torn the silver-and-ivory-coloured manikin out of the window and flung it across the corridor with enough force to break it against the marble wall opposite. I could hear sobbing coming from inside, punctuated by the occasional crash. Curiosity got the better of me as I was creeping past, and I paused at the broken entrance to peer cautiously inside. A middle-aged man sat barefoot on the floor of the shop surrounded by hundreds of clear plastic wrappers. As I watched, he grabbed one of the wrappers and ripped it open to extract a pair of white ballet shoes. Carefully, the tip of his tongue emerging from the side of his mouth, the man tried to slip one of the shoes onto his big hairy foot. Unsurprisingly the shoe was too small to fit, no matter how hard the man pulled on the straps — until finally he ripped the seams open. The man held the ruined shoe in front of his face and burst into tears. When he flung them across the shop and reached for another pair, I left him to it — there are just some things that man is not meant to know. The back exit of the Royal Opera House emerges under the colonnade in the north-east corner of the Piazza. The Paperchase on the left had been gutted, and shreds of coloured paper were blowing across the stone flags and into the square. On the right the Disney Store was being enthusiastically looted, but the Build-a-Bear shop was bizarrely untouched — an oasis of brightly coloured twee and peace. Most of the actual fighting seemed to be down by the church on the west side — that’s where I reckoned Lesley would be. I headed for the covered market, reckoning that I could use it as cover to get close to the church. I was halfway there when somebody wolf-whistled at me. It was a proper two-fingers-in-the mouth whistle and cut right through the noise of the riot. I zeroed in on the second whistle. It was Beverley, staring down at me from the pub balcony on the first floor — she waved when she saw me looking and ran for the stairs. I met her at the bottom. ‘They burned out my car,’ she said. ‘I know,’ I said. ‘My lovely brand new car,’ she said. ‘I know,’ I said, and grabbed her arm. ‘We’ve got to get out of here.’ I tried to drag her back towards the Opera House. ‘We can’t go back that way,’ she said. ‘Why not?’ I asked. ‘Because I think there’s some people following you,’ she said. I turned. The principal cast were back, followed by what I recognised as the orchestra and some people dressed mostly in t-shirts and jeans who I took to be the backstage crew. The Royal Opera Company is a world-class institution dedicated to staging some of the biggest operas on an epic scale — they have a very large backstage crew. ‘Oh my God,’ said Beverley. ‘Is that Lesley?’ Lesley had pushed to the front of the crowd, still wearing her Punch face. She held up her hand and the company paused. ‘Run,’ I said to Beverley. ‘Good idea,’ she said and, grabbing my arm, pulled me backwards so hard I almost fell over. Beverley darted down one of the dim brick corridors that led into the heart of the covered market. With evening drawing in, most of the actual shops were closed but stalls serving drinks and generic ethnic food should have been doing a roaring trade fleecing tourists. But there was nobody in sight, and I was hoping this meant punters and stall holders had already run for safety. Behind us I heard the company give a great howl, in good harmony, and above that, the high-pitched squeaking laugh of the avatar of riot and rebellion. There was a sudden ominous silence, and then the first of the firebombs hit the roof. Lesley had said she didn’t want me dead, but I was beginning to suspect that she may have been lying. Beverley swung us round a corridor and into one of the covered courtyards, which is where we found the German family. There were five of them, a stolid dark-haired father, a sharp-faced blonde mother and three children aged between seven and twelve. They must have taken shelter behind a food stall when the riot broke out, and were just emerging when they looked up to find Beverley and me barrelling towards them. The mother gave a terrified yelp, the eldest daughter screamed and the man squared up. The father didn’t want to fight but by God he was ready to defend his family from dangerous stereotypes, whatever the odds. I showed him my warrant card and he deflated in relieved surprise. ‘ Polizei,’ he told his wife and then, very politely, asked whether we might help them. I told them that we’d love to help them, starting by proceeding to the nearest exit and evacuating the area. I was sweating suddenly, and I realised that it was from the heat of a fire on my back. The whole rear of the covered market was on fire — I put one hand on the father’s back and the other on his eldest son and pushed them in the other direction. ‘ Raus, raus!’ I yelled, hoping it really did mean ‘get out’. Beverley led the way towards the so far untouched south-west corner of the market, but we’d barely cleared the second row of stalls when she skidded to a halt and the German family and I slammed into her back. Ahead, a group of rioters were using the western façade of the market to engage in a running battle with police reinforcements. ‘We’re trapped,’ said Beverley. The rioters had their backs to us, but it was only a matter of time before one of them turned round. One of the nearby shops looked surprisingly unlooted, and while running into a building during a fire is generally considered a retrograde step I didn’t see that we had much choice. It wasn’t until we’d bundled inside and I found myself crouching behind a manikin wearing nothing but two wisps of silk that I realised we were in a branch of Seraglio. I persuaded the family to sit down behind the counter so they wouldn’t be visible from outside. ‘Please,’ asked the mother. ‘What is happening here?’ ‘Beats me, sister,’ said Beverley. ‘I just work here.’ The covered market at Covent Garden has four parallel rows of shops under its iron and glass roof. Originally built to house open-fronted fruit and vegetable stalls, they’d been retrofitted with windows and power but they were still less than three metres across. Into them were shoehorned specialist craft shops, cafés and bijou versions of high-street chain boutiques, which weren’t going to let a little thing like inadequate floor space get in the way of gleaning some of that high-spending tourist action. As a result, our haven was crowded with manikins of the tastefully abstract silver and black kind, wearing distractingly skimpy bits of satin. I hoped the manikins would make us less obvious to anybody who glanced inside. That was tested when a number of rioters slunk past the windows. Judging from the torn suit jackets and dirty white shirts, these were members of the audience, not the cast. I held my breath as they paused outside, calling to each other in their guttural stockbroker accents. Strangely, I found I wasn’t frightened. Instead I was embarrassed — that this nice family of Von Trapp impersonators had come to my city, and instead of being gently relieved of their money they were facing violence, injury and bad manners at the hands of Londoners. It pissed me off no end. The stockbrokers loped off towards the west. ‘Right,’ I said after a minute, ‘I’m just going to check the coast is clear.’ I slipped out of the shop door and looked around. On the plus side, there were no rioters in sight but on the minus side this was probably because everywhere I looked was on fire. I ran a little way towards the closest exit but I got no more than a few paces before the heat started singeing my nostril hair. I quickly ducked back into the shop. ‘Beverley,’ I said. ‘We’re in deep shit.’ I told her about the fire. The mother frowned. She was the linguist in the family. ‘Is there a problem?’ she asked. The flames were clearly reflected in the shop windows and the blank silver faces of the manikins, so it seemed pointless to lie. She looked at her children and then back at me. ‘Is there nothing you can do?’ I looked at Beverley. ‘Can’t you do any magic?’ she asked. It was definitely getting hotter. ‘Can’t you?’ ‘You got to say it’s okay,’ she said. ‘What?’ ‘That’s the agreement,’ said Beverly. ‘You’ve got to say it’s okay.’ One of the window panes cracked. ‘It’s okay,’ I said. ‘Do what you have to do.’ Beverley threw herself down and pressed her cheek to the floor. I saw her lips moving. I felt something pass through me, a sensation like rain, like the sound of boys playing football in the distance, the smell of suburban roses and newly washed cars, evening television flickering through net curtains. ‘What is she doing?’ asked the mother. ‘She is praying for us, yes?’ ‘Sort of,’ I said. ‘Sshh,’ said Beverley, sitting up. ‘I’m listening.’ ‘What for?’ Something flew in through the window, pinged off the wall and fell into my lap — it was the cover off a fire hydrant. Beverley saw me examining it and gave me an apologetic shrug. ‘What exactly have you done?’ I asked. ‘I’m not sure,’ she said. ‘I’ve never actually tried this before.’ The smoke thickened, forcing us face down onto the mercifully cool stone of the shop floor. The middle German child was crying. His mother put her arm around him and pulled him close. The youngest, a girl, seemed remarkably stoical. Her blue eyes were fixed on mine. The father twitched. He was wondering whether he should at least get up and try do something heroic, however futile. I knew exactly how he felt. The last of the window panes shattered, glass pattering down on my back. I breathed in smoke, coughed, breathed in more smoke. It didn’t feel like enough of a breath. I realised that this was it — I was going to die. Beverley started laughing. Suddenly it was a hot Sunday morning under unexpectedly blue skies. There’s a smell of hot plastic and dust as the paddling pool is rescued from the garden shed and the kids, dressed in swimsuits and underwear, are bouncing up and down with excitement. Dad is red-faced from blowing up the pool and Mum is yelling to be careful, and the hose is run in through the kitchen window and jammed onto the cold tap. The hose gives a dusty cough and all the children stare at its mouth … The floor began to vibrate, and I had just enough time to think What the fuck when a wall of water hit the south side of the shop. The door was smashed open and before I could grab hold of something I was lifted by the surge and slammed against the ceiling. The air was blown out of my lungs by the impact, and I had to bite down on the instinct to draw in a breath. For a moment the flood cleared enough for me to catch sight of Beverley floating serenely amid the debris before the water drained out of the shop fast enough to slap me into the floor again. The father, with more presence of mind than I’d shown, had wedged himself and his family against the counter. They assured me they were all okay, except for the youngest who wanted to do it again. Beverly stood in the middle of the shop and did the air punch. ‘Oh yeah,’ she said. ‘Let’s see Tyburn do something like that.’