“This murk, sir. There's been a lot fewer vehicles on the streets what with the rioting, so where's the bally steam coming from?”
“Hmm, that's a very good question!”
“Then, of course, the steam got mixed up with the smoke from the fires, so we got this dirty grey soup. But most of the fires in this area burned themselves out a good while ago. So, again, Commander: where's it coming from?”
Krishnamurthy suddenly became aware that his breath was clouding in front of his face.
“By jingo!” he exclaimed. “I hadn't realised! The weather's on the turn!”
“Crept up on us, didn't it!” Slaughter said. “The end of the heatwave, and about time, too. Except, it looks like the change has brought on a London particular.”
“Fog!” Krishnamurthy spat. “Curse it! That's exactly what we don't need!”
He heard the chopping of an approaching rotorchair.
“One of your squad, Commander?” Slaughter asked. “He's taking a risk, isn't he?”
“He'll be all right as long as he stays this side of the cordon. We're at the edge of the danger zone. If he flies past us and over the Strand-” He made a gesture with his hand, indicating something plunging downward.
“Hallo! He's landing!” Slaughter cried.
The miasma parted and men ran out of the way as the rotorchair descended, dropping like a stone and only slowing at the very last moment before lightly touching the cobbles and coming to rest. A man, wearing the Flying Squad uniform and with goggles covering his eyes, clambered out of the contraption and ran over to Krishnamurthy.
“Hello, sir!” he said, with a salute.
“Hallo, Milligan. What's the news?”
“Not good, I'm afraid. The rioting is most intense to the east of here, especially around the Bank of England, which is up in flames. As if that's not bad enough, the circle of disorder is fast approaching the East End.”
“Blast it!” Krishnamurthy whispered. He removed his peaked cap and massaged his temples. Once the madness touched the overcrowded Cauldron, all hell would break loose. If the East Enders began rioting, London would be lost.
“Milligan, gather together the patrols in the north and west and have them join you in the east. If it becomes necessary, fly low and use your pistols to fire warning shots at the rioters. Shoot a few men in the leg if you have to! Anything that might hold them at bay for a while.”
“Yes, sir!”
Milligan ran back to his machine, strapped himself in, and, with a roar of the engine, rose on a cone of steam and vanished into the fog. Seconds later, the chopping of the rotorchair's wings suddenly stopped, there was an instant of absolute silence, then the machine dropped straight back down out of the cloud and smashed into the road.
Krishnamurthy clutched Sergeant Slaughter's arm and looked at him with an expression of shock.
They ran to the wreckage. Constables joined them. The flying machine had turned upside down before hitting the ground. Milligan lay beneath it, mangled and dead.
Wordlessly, Krishnamurthy squatted and closed the man's eyes.
“What happened?” Slaughter asked.
“It seems our enemy has expanded the no-flying zone.”
“By the Lord Harry,” the sergeant muttered. “They must realise we're here.”
Krishnamurthy glanced back toward the Strand. “Damnation!” he said under his breath. “Come on, Swinburne! Hurry up!”
Charles Doyle was dead and he knew it.
Only the Russian bitch's force of will was keeping his carcass moving, his spirit self-aware.
Her words vibrated and throbbed in his mind: “Break free! Cast off your chains! Rise up and overthrow!”
They cut into him, were magnified through him as if he were a lens, then radiated outward, receding into the far distance, where they touched other astral bodies and were bounced farther on.
If only he could press his hands over his ears, block out that voice!
A tiny man with moth wings fluttered in front of his face and sang: “Prepare thyself!”
He tried to bat the fairy away but his hands were either without substance or too heavy and slow, it wasn't clear to him which.
A part of him coiled and writhed through the atmosphere near the Fleet Street end of the Strand, while the other part dragged itself along the pavement of Kingsway.
He was overwhelmed by a voracious hunger. It was not for food, nor even for alcohol. No. This rapacious craving was for the fulfillment of life!
For how long had he been tormented by this lack? His entire existence, it seemed. The opportunities he'd missed or wasted! He'd been so cautious, so afraid of making a mistake, that he hadn't done anything-instead, he'd escaped into the bottle, and now it was too late!
“I had life but I didn't live it!” he wept. “I want it back! Please, don't let me die like this!”
Something registered in his consciousness. There was a figure ahead, moving in the thickening fog. He could sense its warmth, its vitality. There were others beyond it, but this one was close.
A beating heart! Pulsating blood! Life!
He must have it! He must have it!
His corpse lurched forward, the arms reached out, the fingers curled into claws.
There came a distant shout: “Constable Tamworth! Come back! Don't wander from the group, man!”
Detective Inspector Honesty looked at his pocket watch. It was ten to three in the morning.
He felt weary.
He loved police work, mainly because he was very good at it, but at times like this his mind tended to drift to what he considered his true vocation: gardening. In his youth, he'd dreamed of becoming a landscape gardener, but his father, one of the original Peelers, had insisted that his boy follow him into the force and wouldn't hear otherwise. Honesty didn't begrudge the old man's stubbornness; policing had, after all, gained him respect, a secure job with prospects, and a loving young wife whom he'd met while on a murder case. He'd been able to buy a house with a large garden, too, and it was the envy of the neighbourhood, with its bright displays of flowers and finely trimmed lawn.
What, though, would his life have been like had he defied his father?
He remembered something Sir Richard Francis Burton had told him: that when Edward Oxford, the man they called Spring Heeled Jack, had altered time, original future history had become disconnected. It still existed-in the same way that, if you find yourself at a junction, taking road A won't cause road B to vanish-but it was inaccessible; there was no way back to the junction without a time-travelling device.
Did that mean that somewhere, some when, there was a Thomas Manfred Honesty, Landscape Gardener?
He hoped so. It was a strangely comforting thought.
It was ten to three.
His watch had stopped.
He shook it and tut-tutted.
Only a couple of minutes had passed, he was sure. The signal wouldn't come for at least another hour.
His men were restless and he was feeling the same way.
In front of the police cordon, Kingsway had faded from sight, obscured by the fog, which was obviously returning to London with a vengeance. The shambling figures, visible earlier, were now hidden, which made them seem even more uncanny and threatening.
“Dead Rakes,” he muttered, for the umpteenth time. “Damned peculiar.”
A constable approached and pointed wordlessly back at the men. Honesty looked and saw three wraiths swirling among them. The policemen were swiping at the ghosts with their truncheons, to no effect.
“Stop that!” he ordered. “Waste of time! Save your strength!”
They desisted, but one of the men looked at him, his face suddenly contorting with fury, and screamed: “Don't bloody well tell me what to do!”
“Constable Tamworth! At ease!”
