Recording Angel, whose tired eyes, accustomed only to black or white, would fail to spot the grey.
Naughty Isabella hoped to slip into paradise, sins and all. Bad luck, though, for the vigilant Angel wasn't tricked and hauled her out. In a temper, he angrily sentenced her to wander for all eternity, grieving and doomed, in St Paul's churchyard and serve her right. Your average Londoner pooh-poohs it. But the grey figure certainly scares the hell out of postmen at the nearby GPO. The way to avoid her, incidentally, is not to look.
Dart anxious glances hither and yon while visiting St Paul's, you'll see her sure as eggs.
She still lusts after men, you see, and takes a stare as an invitation, with dire consequences I won't go into if you don't mind. Women she hates, and takes a female's look as a challenge, with double-dire results.
'Lovejoy,' Dieter Gluck said. I yelped out of my reverie. He looked the business, neat, height of fashion, cool, handsome.
'Mr Gluck,' I said. No ghost, he.
'Don't whine, Lovejoy. Time to speak?'
'I'm meeting a friend,' I said. It's hard to be polite when you're working out how to knock that person off. I've often found that.
'Here?' He looked about, quite amused. A cool swine, give him that. 'Handful of tramps, busloads of visitors, a mob of office clerks? No, Lovejoy. You're planning deceit. I can smell it. And,' he said reasonably, 'I've learned a great deal. You are a thief, a scoundrel who lives off women, and a forger.'
'Here, nark it.' I could have clocked him one, except so far I'd not had much luck. He looked calm, like he had a servile bruiser handy.
'Don't take offense, Lovejoy. I'm one also. I have a proposition.'
'You got me done over, arrested, and clobbered by your tame ape.' I still ached from my beating in Soho.
'Do not speak ill of the dead, please,' said this killer. 'Consecrated ground. It's time we joined forces, Lovejoy.' He lit a cigarette from a silver case. 'What is this famous scam of yours?' He smiled. 'So secret, so uniquely aimed at my destruction?'
From the corner of my eye I saw Billia start towards me, Dang with her. They were coming down the broad expanse of steps. I passed my hand in front of my forehead to signal them away. Dang hesitated, thank God. I turned.
'Who said I've got a scam brewing?'
He said, pleasant, 'All London's street markets. Now, how much will it cost? What's the profit? And what odds on success?'
I keep a special headache for times like these. It screeched into my temple and exploded, ruining my vision and thought processes. Kindly, Dieter Gluck took me by the elbow and walked me down to the London Hospital Tavern on Ludgate Hill. It stands almost midway between Blackfriars Bridge - where the Vatican these days murders its troublesome bankers and hangs their bodies from the girders over the Thames - and the Old Bailey, where the Vatican's hired assassins are never tried.
This particular murderer sat opposite me in the tap room and brought me a drink.
Smiling pleasantly, he toasted me.
'To partnership,' he said. 28
FOR A TIME, I sat on the facade facing the buses chugging towards the Bank, motors, office girls darting between deaths shrieking, folk smiling, a bobby telling them off. To my right, tourists noshed their pizza slices, swigging from cans and littering culture. I had an overdue think.
Sit still a minute, London descends like dew, steeping the soul in feelings you didn't know you had. Things flow in your brain. Like a fool I actually turned to look, but there was no smoke in the sky.
It happened here, the Great Fire that began in Pudding Lane. The street's still there, a spit downstream of London Bridge. I'd just walked past. From the Monument, you can look down into its narrow thoroughfare. History books don't tell you of the stark terror.
It takes a coward like me, scared from an encounter with Dieter Gluck, to feel fright.
And to see there in front of me the people whose spirits still scream and run. I honestly believe that horror more than any other human emotion lurks all about us, in stones, in the air, in the ground that once bubbled and buckled from the heat. In the Great Fire bells melted, Ludgate Hill to my right running with molten metal as buildings heat-cracked into rubble.
'You all right, mate?' a passing window cleaner asked. He had squeegees sticking out of his overalls.
'Aye, ta, mate,' I managed to say. 'Bit dizzy for a sec.'
That terrible Sunday, second of August in 1666, the real outbreak occurred. A daft preacher - is there any other? -afterwards proved what caused it. 'It couldn't have been caused by London's blasphemy,' he boomed, 'or the Great Fire would have begun in Billingsgate.' Nor lewdness and roistering, for then it would have started in Drury Lane.
Nor lying and untruth (nice touch, this) or God would have torched the law courts of Westminster Hall. No, gluttony did it - for didn't the Great Fire start in Pudding Lane, and finally end at Pie Corner? Oddly, hardly anybody died. The old London Gazette's death count was exactly nil. Even the stern Bills of Mortality notched only six. God must have had a weak throwing arm that week. Divine calamities usually rock the averages.
Our behaviour, back then, was like now. We did what we do. Greed, as I keep saying, like murder, will out. Samuel Pepys tells it in all its grue. The only difference is that the avarice of rich politicians was just that bit more obvious. Alderman Starling, of incredible wealth, gave a measly penny to the thirty labourers who saved his priceless possessions from the flames. Sir Richard Brown was just as stingy, when workmen rescued his chest stuffed with enough money to buy several streets.
Pandemonium reigned as the Great Fire engulfed the city. In all human crucibles, rumour rules. Invasions, political plots, the whole kaleidoscope of mayhem, unloosed panic-stricken mobs. Blackened thousands staggered to Moor Fields and Tower Hill. As the conflagration leapt about with sparks on the wind, the black smoke shadowed riders as far away as Oxford. The phrases are all the same.
