a last disingenuousness. He apologised to her, silently. She was in it, and more power to her. “Christ, what’s been happening? What did she say?”
“She told you to meet her,” the man Bax said. “She’s in a carpark, in Hoxton. She’s with Tattoo.”
“What?” Billy said. Dane stuttered to a stop.
“Actually that is not quite what she said,” Saira said. “What she said was that she was with Paul. She said he had a proposition.” Billy and Dane looked at each other.
“What the hell’s she been doing?” Billy said. “How’s she mixed up with him?”
“You sure she wasn’t witch to start with?” Dane said.
“I’m not sure of anything,” Billy said. “But I don’t … I don’t see how, I don’t think she …”
“Then she’s going to get killed,” Dane said.
“She’s … Shit,” said Billy.
“If it’s really her,” Dane said.
“She said to tell you ‘Gideon’,” Saira said.
“It’s her,” he said. He shook his head and shut his eyes. “But why would she be with him? Where’s Wati?”
“Here, Billy.” Wati sounded exhausted. He was in a little fisherman figure made by one of the children of the churchgoers, lying on a windowsill. A man made of toilet rolls and cotton wool. He looked at Billy out of penny eyes.
“Wati, did you hear that? Can you get there?” Billy said. He tried to speak gently, but he was urgent. “We need to see if this is real. If it’s her. She might not have any idea what she’s getting into, and that name means it either is her or it’s someone who got it from her.”
“What’s he doing?” Dane said. “Why’s Paul—or the Tattoo—drawing attention to himself? He must know everyone from Griz to Goss and Subby are after him.”
“He wants something. She even said so. We get there he might have a knife to her throat,” Billy said. “He’s not going to negotiate toothless. Maybe he’s holding her hostage. Maybe he’s holding her hostage and she doesn’t even know.” Billy and Dane looked at each other.
“Paul didn’t look in shape to do much when he left,” Saira said.
“Wati, can you get to her?” Billy said.
“There may not even be any bodies there for me,” Wati said.
“There’s a doll in her car. And she wears a crucifix,” Billy said. There was a silence.
“Wati,” Dane said. “Listen to yourself. You sound rough.”
“I’ll see,” Wati said. He was gone. Limping from figure to figure across London.
FITCH SAID THEY SHOULD HIDE. ONE LONDONMANCER, GIDDY AT his own heresy, suggested they leave the city.
“Let’s just drive!” he said. “Up! To Scotland or whatever!” But there was no certainty that Fitch, for example, so much a function of the city, could even live for very long beyond its limits. Billy imagined himself on the motorways, becoming expert at the ungainly swing of the trailer, pulling the preserved squid through the damp English countryside and on into Scottish hills.
“Griz’d find us in ten seconds.” He would. There was something about the surrounds of slate, the angles of the turns that kept them hidden, even if it was a trap too. The city bent just enough that the Londonmancers stayed out of sight. An organic reflex.
If they left they would be nude. A giant squid in a lorry, heading north between hedgerows. Fuck’s sake, everything sensitive within ten miles would start to bleed.
“We’re going to do it this way,” Billy said. “Dane’s way.” He did not look at him. “Because he isn’t going to change his mind, and this way we can stop guessing whether it’s the last night, because we’ll know it is. And Dane’s going to do it, whatever the rest of us do.”
Saira was of his party—the warmakers. He could tell she was afraid, but still, that was her vote. Crisis forced the Londonmancers into democracy. Billy smiled at Saira, and she swallowed and smiled back.
Chapter Seventy-One
WRAPPERS SURROUNDING THEM, MARGE AND PAUL SHIFTED IN their seats. They had been sat for very many hours in the car. Marge recharged the iPod and tried to remain stoic about the increasingly grating warble of her protector.
“What are you listening to?” Paul asked her, finally. It had taken him long enough. She ignored his question. They ate trash calories, ducking below window-level on the few occasions they thought they heard someone approaching. Paul ground his back against the seat as if an insect bit him.
“What’s your story?” Marge said. Maybe calmed down he might be more comprehensible.
“I got tangled up with all this stuff years ago.” That was all he would