“Shtum,” Dane said. He pulled out and drove, fast. “If it weren’t for little sodding nutkin I wouldn’t have found you. It got onto Goss’s car.”

They turned into lights, reached a street where there were shoppers and drinkers by late cafés and amusement arcades. Billy felt as if he would cry, to see people. It felt like the breaching of some meniscus, like he had entered a real night at last. Dane passed him a tissue.

“Wipe your mouth.”

“Leon…”

“Wipe the blood. We don’t want to be stopped.”

“We have to stop, we have to go to the police…” Really? Billy thought even as he said that. You’re not there anymore.

“No,” Dane said, as if he were listening to that monologue. “We do not.” You know that, right? “We’re just going to drive. Wipe your mouth. I’m going to get you out of here.”

Billy watched a quadrant of London he recognised no more than if it were Tripoli go by.

Chapter Thirteen

“WELL THIS IS BLOODY FABULOUS, ISN’T IT? THIS IS BLOODY perfect.” Baron stomped around Billy’s flat. He shook his head at the walls, folded and refolded his arms. “This is just how it was supposed to go. This is peachy.”

He stamped past the team powdering for fingerprints. She had her back to them, but from where she stood examining Billy’s doorway, Collingswood got gusts of their resentment.

She could not hear thoughts. So far as she knew, no one could: they spilt from each individual head in too many overlapping and counterflowing streams, and the words that part-constituted some of those streams were contradictory and misleading. But irritation that strong communicated, and knowing it to be mistranslation, she-like most of those with any knack at all for that kind of thing-automatically translated into text.

whos this twat think he is

wankers shd fuck off let real coppers work

y r we leting that litl bitch smoke

She turned and spoke to the thinker of that last fragment. “Because you been told to let us do whatever we want, innit?” she said, and watched the blood leave his face. She stepped over dropped books and followed Baron. She picked up the post on the table.

“Well?” Baron said. “Any ideas?”

Collingswood unlistened, focused on the traces of Billyness. Touched with a fingertip the doorframe, where stains of Billy’s attention read to her like messages squint-seen through a broken screen.

whats this she did that girl

cant get in

shes fit i wouldn’t mind

“What are you bloody smirking at?” Baron said. “Got something?”

“Nothing, boss,” she said. “You know what? No. You got me. This thing was still primed when I got here, you know? That’s why I had to let you in. No entry without invite, and you saw Billy boy-he was way too chickenshit to let anyone he didn’t know in after what we told him.”

“So what’s happened? He’s hardly just gone for a bloody walk, has he?”

“Nah.” She shrugged at the signs of scuffles. “Someone’s took him.”

“Someone who couldn’t get in.”

She nodded. “Someone who didn’t get in,” she said.

Vardy emerged from the bedroom, where he had been examining Billy’s bits and pieces. He joined them in the kitchen.

“That ain’t all,” Collingswood said. She made shapes with her hands, chopped the air up. “Something big happened tonight. Big like when the kraken got took. I don’t know what it is, but something’s wandering around out there.”

Baron nodded slowly. “Prof,” Baron said. “Any thoughts from your good self? Wish to revise your opinion about the unlikelihood of any attacks by your teuthists?”

“No,” said Vardy shortly. He folded his arms. “I do not. Care to revise your tone? Can’t tell you what’s gone on here or who’s done what to whom, but seeing as you ask, no. This does not read teuthism to me.” He closed his eyes. His colleagues watched him channelling whatever it was he channelled when he did what he did. “No,” he said, “this does not feel like them.”

“Well,” Baron said. He sighed. “We’re on the back foot here, ladies and gents. Our star witness and intended colleague is gone AWOL. We know the guard system was up and running. Doing what it was supposed to. But we also know it had both been tripped and not been tripped. Do I have that right?”

“Sort of,” Collingswood said. “It went off in reverse. Woke me up. I couldn’t work out what it was at first.”

“It would cover windows, too?” Vardy said. She stared at him. “Fine,” he said. “I have to ask.”

“No you don’t,” she said. “I told you. No one could get in.”

“No one?”

“What’s your point? I ain’t saying there’s no one stronger’n me out there-you know there is. If anyone got in, it would go off and I’d know. No one broke in…” She stopped. She looked one by one at the post. She looked at the cardboard book box. “No one broke in,” she said. “Someone sent him something. Look. There’s no stamp, this was hand-delivered.” She hefted it. She sniffed it.

Vardy unfolded his arms. Collingswood moved her fingers over the paper, whispered, ran little routines and subroutines.

“What is it?” Baron said.

“Alright,” she said finally. In the other room the grumbles of the other police were audible and ignored. “Everything remembers how it used to be, right? So like, this…” She shook the container. “This remembers when it was heavier. It was a full parcel and now it’s empty, right? It remembers being heavier but that ain’t the thing, the weird thing.”

She moved her fingers again, coaxed the cardboard. Of all the skills necessary for her work, what she was perhaps worst at was being polite to inanimate things. “It’s that it remembers being not heavier enough.

“Guv,” she said to Baron. “What do you know about how to…” She opened and clenched her hands. “How to make big shit go into something little?”

Chapter Fourteen

“WHAT HAPPENED TO LEON?” BILLY SAID.

Dane glanced at him and shook his head.

“I wasn’t there, was I? I don’t know. Was it Goss?”

“That man Goss, and that boy. It looked like he-”

“I wasn’t there. But you got to face facts.” Dane glanced again. “You saw what you saw. I’m sorry.”

What did I see? Billy thought.

“Tell me what he said,” Dane said.

“What?”

“The Tattoo. Tell me what he said.”

“What was that?” Billy said. “No. You can tell me some stuff. Where did you even come from?” They turned through streets he did not know.

“Not now,” Dane said. “We ain’t got time.”

“Get the police…” Beneath Billy’s seat the squirrel made a throat noise.

“Shit,” Dane said. “We don’t have time for this. You’re smart, you know what’s going on.” He clicked his fingers. Where his fingers percussed, there was a faint burst of light. “We do not have time.”

He braked, swore. Red lights disappeared in front of them. “So can we please cut the crap? You can’t go home. You know that. That’s where they got you. You can’t call Baron’s crew. You think that’s going to help? Old Bill sort you out?”

“Wait…”

“That flat ain’t your home anymore.” He spoke in little stabs. “Those ain’t your clothes, they ain’t your books, that ain’t your computer, you get it? You saw what you saw. You know you saw what you saw.” Dane snapped his finger under Billy’s nose and the light glowed again. He steered hard. “We clear?”

Yes, no, yes they were clear. “Why did you come?” Billy said. “Baron and Vardy said… I thought you were hunting me.”

“I’m sorry about your mate. I’ve been there. Do you know what you are?”

“I’m not anything.”

“You know what you did? I felt it. If you hadn’t done that I wouldn’t’ve got there in time, and they would’ve took you to the workshop. Something’s out.” Billy remembered a clenching inside, glass breaking, a moment of drag. “Goss’ll be licking for us now. It’s the man on the back you need to worry about.”