There was silence within the car. Above them was the excited mourning of the siren. “I tell you what, boss,” the other officer, the young man driving, said suddenly. “I like her plan. I’m for that.”

Collingswood laughed. Looked away and up into the sky over London where clouds wriggled. “Yeah,” Collingswood said. “Might be nice to see tomorrow. You never know. But then,” she said, and wagged her finger at Marge and Paul, “we are definitely taking you in. So what’s the plan?”

“WHO THE HELL ARE YOU?” SAID MO OUTSIDE HER HOUSE, HER broom held up like a weapon. Trees shuddered. Marge held the crucifix out at her. “I’m not a vampire,” the woman said.

“No, for God’s sake,” Marge said. “You know Wati? We’re Dane’s friends.”

“Jesus bollocks,” said Collingswood to Mo. “Am I going to have to police brutality you? Let us in and listen.”

“We’re here for Simon,” Marge said in the hallway.

“That’s a bad idea. Simon’s still haunted.”

“Tough,” said Collingswood.

“We’re down to the last one.” One tenacious dead self. Mo hesitated. “He needs rest.”

“Yeah,” said Marge. “I need a holiday in the Maldives. And needs must.”

“She ain’t wrong,” Collingswood said. “I’m with the prisoner here on this.”

Simon looked up at their entry. He was in a dressing gown and pyjamas. He held a ball of squeaking fur.

“We’re friends of Billy and Dane,” Marge said.

Simon nodded. From the air came a faint wrathful ghostly melisma. He shook his head. “Sorry about that,” he said.

“Message,” Marge said. “We need you to move something. For Billy. Don’t look at me like that…”

“But… I can’t. That’s why I’m here. This… it’s like an addiction,” Simon said. “The knack’s like a drug. I can’t go down that road again, I…”

“Bullshit,” said Wati, faint but audible.

“Let me lay it out for you.” Paul spoke, for the first time. He coughed. There was a groaning from his back, and Simon’s ghost responded in moaning kind. Paul scratched himself hard against the doorframe until his back was silent.

“I just done in the most dangerous piece of shit you can imagine by the most horrible method I ever had to use to do anything,” he said. “Wati said you got into this because you was paid to and you might’ve saved the world. If Griz’d got what he wanted earlier… So thank you. For that. But you are going to help. Knacking ain’t a drug. What did for you was dying and not noticing you’d died, again and again.

“Tomorrow you can do whatever you want. But London owns you now. Understand? One more thing needs porting. You don’t even have to beam yourself, no more snuffing it. You are going to do this. I’m not even saying please.”

Chapter Seventy-Six

THE LORRY ROARED ON, IN PLAIN SIGHT, HARASSED BY A HARD core of inked papers that stayed in its slipstream to track its breakneck journey.

“We’re not going to lose them,” Saira said. She was driving now. “Just got to get there fast and do the job. They can’t take us, not this few. It’s when the rest of Grisamentum arrives we’re in trouble.”

Finally they reached the street Billy remembered. It was still all quiet, as if there were no war. People looked from houses at them and hurriedly away. Saira braked by the last, dim house.

“Are we here?” Fitch said. The trailer was stinking and crowded. The last Londonmancers waited by the dead kraken. “Why are we here? What’s the sea going to do?”

The papers rose, a malevolent little covey, circled. Fuck you, Billy mouthed, as they gusted over the roofs and away. “They’re fetching the rest of him,” he said. “Come on, come on.” He froze at approaching blue lights. A police car tore toward them and rubber-burned to a stop. Collingswood emerged, and Billy opened his mouth to yell at Saira to drive, but he heard Marge’s voice.

“Billy!” she almost screamed. She got out and stared at him. “Billy.” He ran for her, and they held on to each other a long time.

“Look,” said Collingswood. “It’s beautiful, innit?”

“I’m so sorry,” Billy said to Marge. “Leon…”

“I know,” she said. “I know. I got your message. And I got your other message. Look, I brought him.” Sitting in the car by Paul was Simon Shaw.

WHEN FITCH SAW PAUL, HE STARTED, AND OPENED HIS MOUTH BUT obviously did not know what to say. The other Londonmancers looked uneasily between the two. Fitch tried again to speak, and Paul just shook his finger no. “We got nothing to talk about,” Paul said. “Not while he’s on his way.” He pointed. Circling like a blown leaf was a single scrap of Grisamentum. “He’s coming, so let’s get this done.”

There would almost be a showdown between Grisamentum and the Tattoo, Billy thought, at last. But it would, rather, be between Grisamentum and Paul. Whatever Fitch’s plans had been or now were, Billy realised, Paul was not afraid of him anymore.

“Billy,” Collingswood said. “Mate. What the shit have you been up to?” She winked at him. “If you didn’t want the job you should’ve just said no, fuck’s sake.”

“Officer Collingswood,” he said. Found himself grinning at her for a second. She pursed her lips.

“What’s the plan then, geezer?”

“Come on,” Billy said. “Let’s move. You ready?” Simon looked terrified but nodded. They opened the lorry so he could stare at the kraken’s tank. Metabolise its position in his head. “Good man,” Billy said. “You know what’s going to happen?”

Billy had prepared his case in writing. It was a long and detailed message, which he had sealed in a glass bottle. “Shall we?” he said to Saira and Simon. “We need its permission.”

“And bearings,” Simon said. “I told you, I can’t do it without pretty precise bearings.”

Billy tapped the bottle. “I said all that. It’s in there. Don’t panic.”

The message in the bottle begged.

YOU SAID THE KRAKEN WAS NO LONGER YOURS. PLEASE, YOU HAVE TO help us. Even if it’s not one of yours, for the sake of the city where you’ve been for however long, please, we are asking you to use your neutrality and your power like when you helped against the Nazis. We need a safe place. We all heard about how the Tattoo wouldn’t face you that time, and we need that sort of clout again.

Everything is at stake, Billy had written. We just need to get past this night. And protect it. We are desperate. He pushed the message into the letter box.

They stood quietly in the dark. A man rode by them on a bike, with squeaking pedal-strokes. Fitch and the Londonmancers waited. The last krakenbit hid their teuthic tumourous amendations in the lorry. The sea inside the house did not answer the bottle for a long time.

“What’s happening?” Simon whispered.

“We can’t stick around forever,” Saira whispered.

Billy raised his hand, to rap the window, with a sense of blasphemy, when he was preempted. Something knocked instead from the inside. A slow beat through the curtain. A lower corner of the cloth moved. It was pulled slowly back.

“It’s showing us,” Billy said. “So you can see for coordinates, Simon. Do what you need to do.”

“Bloody hell,” said Saira. “I guess that’s permission.”

The curtain retreated from a corner of darkness. There was nothing visible behind it, until from deep within that dark came motions-insinuations in the pitch. They came closer, halting inches behind the glass. Staring out from the dim light that streetlamps shone into the room were tiny translucent fish.

Their ventral fins thrummed. They regarded Billy with see-through eyes. A suddenness came, a quick thing, viper-mouth agape, and the little fish were gone. The curtains gently eddied.

Lights came on in the dark room. The lights were moving. They came up on a grotto. A room full of sea. A living room, sofa, chairs, pictures on the walls, a television, lamps and tables, sunk in deep green water, investigated by fish and weeds. Those lights were the pearl tint of bioluminescent animals.