The lorry reached a stop sign, or a red light, or a hazard, or just stopped, and Paul did not hesitate. He opened the back so there was a glow of headlights in from behind them lurching side to side, as perhaps some glimpse of kraken was granted a startled motorist. Too fast to be stopped, Paul was down, gone, out of the lorry, ink and papers in his hand, slamming the door closed.

“Shit!” said Dane. He fumbled, but the lorry, its driver unaware, was speeding up. When Dane at last got the door open again, it had moved some way off and Paul was gone.

“We have to find him,” Billy said. “We have to…” To bring him back to the Londonmancers, to Fitch, who had not made a full denial of the ink’s allegation. Billy hesitated. Dane had taken a right old time opening that door.

Chapter Sixty-Nine

“YOU LET HIM GO,” FITCH SAID. “WE HAD THE TATTOO AND YOU LET him go.”

“Do not give me this shit,” Billy said. “You shut your face. Paul is not the Tattoo.”

“We weren’t going to let you kill him, Fitch,” Dane said.

“We weren’t going to kill him.”

“We saw you,” Billy said. “Couldn’t even meet his eye. Don’t come the innocent, we know what you did to Adler.”

“Anyone could get hold of Paul and then we’re all in trouble,” Fitch said. “I have no intention of hurting him, but I make no apology for keeping all options open.”

“All options open?” Billy more or less screamed.

“What?” Saira said to Fitch.

“We had one of the two kings of London right here,” Fitch said. He trembled. “Responsible for God knows how much. We had to be ready to secure the situation. What could we do?”

“I can’t believe I’m hearing this,” Saira said. “We’re not murderers.”

“Such drama.” Fitch tried to look unrepentant.

“You weren’t going to let him go,” said Billy. “Don’t you think he’d had enough of being someone else’s property?”

“There was a debate to be had,” Fitch said.

“I imagine,” Billy said, “Paul would have disagreed strongly with those who proposed the motion that his incarceration or death were the least bad option. I bet he’d have strongly seconded those who leaned toward not that.”

“Now would you all listen?” Fitch said. “Paul knows where we are.”

“What are you talking about?” Billy said. He gestured beyond the trailer. “I don’t know where we are and I’m there.”

“He knows how we travel; he’s seen the vehicle. If the Tattoo gets the better of him again, and it did it before, then it’ll gather its strength and forces and then we are in serious trouble. We have to assume we’re compromised.”

IT COULD HAVE GONE NIGHT TO NIGHT, SKIPPING DAY ALTOGETHER, was how long it seemed to have been dark. Paul did not mind. He liked it that way. He manoeuvred away from sounds, breathed deep and tracked whatever London silence he could find. He was panicked, exhilarated. It was the first time for many years that he had walked without chaperone and threat, that he decided which way he was going.

So which way was he going? He kept running for a long time. There were many people running that night, he learnt. He glimpsed them at junctions, at roundabouts, escaping whatever sort of catastrophes chased them.

Despite years of effort to numb himself from the acts ordered and committed by the ink on his back (memories of murders committed behind him, the screams of those close by he did not see die), Paul had picked up various criminal tips. How could he not? He knew that most escapees were recaptured because they underestimated how far they needed to get away before they slowed, so he just kept running.

He held his hand closing the ink’s container. He felt the liquid bite his thumb when it splashed it. It was too weak for anything else. He knew he would be sought not only by the Londonmancers, but by the Tattoo’s old employees, missing their boss. He knew he would be found.

Goss and Subby would be hunting. Buy them and you bought them. They would be raging to get back into the service of the illustration he wore.

Paul would be crippled, this time. He knew he would be blinded, boxed without limbs, forced to swallow vitamined gruel without the tongue that would not be left him.

He slowed at very last. He did not feel tired. He looked carefully around him.

“Is it driving you crazy?” he whispered, so only his own skin could hear. “Not knowing what’s going on?” Blind and mute. “You must be able to feel I’m running.”

He heard breaking glass. He felt knacked percussions that the news would probably nervously report as Molotov cocktails. Paul vaulted iron railings into a scrub-filled corner between streets, a green oversight too small to be a park. Huddled runaway animal out of sight of the estates, he lay in shrubbery and thought.

The Tattoo stayed quiet. At last Paul stood. It really did: the Tattoo was still. He put the tiny container he had grabbed in front of him. He stared at it as if he might throw in his lot with this adversary of his tormenting skin, as if he might collaborate with Grisamentum. He watched the ink watch him.

He whispered to it. “Thanks for the offer,” he said. “Thanks. For, you know. Warning me. And saying that you’d take care of me. Thanks. Do you think I’m going to let you run me instead?”

He stood. He unzipped his fly and urinated messily into the tiny pot, dissipating and spattering the tiny self of the ash king of London, pissing him away. “Fuck you,” he whispered. “Fuck you too. Fuck you as much as him.”

When he was done there was only his urine in the bottle. He took out the paper on which Billy’s hand had let Grisamentum write himself. Helpful wind moved the last clinging leaves so a streetlamp could shine on it directly. Paul looked through every piece he had. He put together bits of information about Billy from these remnants from Billy’s bag. Patchwork detectiving. He worked things out.

One sheet he kept hold of. He sat, his back to the railings, and read and reread it many times. He folded it and put it to his head and thought and thought.

At last, treading the streets again in his shabby Converse he found a phone box. He went through a thicket of front organisations reversing charges and taking their cuts, even then, that night, before connecting to the number on the paper. It was voice mail.

“I have the leaflet you put out here,” he said. He cleared his throat. “Is that Marge? I have your leaflet. I know where Billy is. Do you want to meet? I know it’s all going weird tonight, but it’s now or it’s not going to happen. I’ll wait here. Here’s the number. Call me when you get this.” He gave it. “I need you to pick me up, and I need you to come now. I’ll tell you everything.”

Finally, but hesitantly, the Tattoo twitched. The movement was, by chance or not, in time with a horrible twitch in history. Everyone felt that. A heating up, a smoulder and disappearance. History was scorching.

“DID YOU FEEL THAT?” FITCH SAID.

If Paul surrendered to what he wore and the Tattoo regrouped and came back for them, they were done. The Londonmancers agreed. Or perhaps Paul might even collaborate with Grisamentum, the little drips he carried, take them back to the rest of the liquid criminal, in which case it was all finished, too.

“What kind of team-up would that be?” Billy said.

No one heard him over the overlapping arguments. Fitch shouting at Dane and Billy for letting Paul go, then lapsing into muttering. Dane growling back in a truly scary way, then giving up suddenly and sticking his head out of the trapdoor or window and whispering to Wati, who if he woke in the doll said nothing anyone else could hear. Londonmancers shouting at Fitch, despite who he was, at the plan they could still hardly believe he might have countenanced. Saira saying nothing.

“There’s just too many dangers,” Fitch said. “He’s not stable. The Tattoo’s back out there, now. First thing it can, it’s going to be making for Goss and Subby. You understand? Then they’ll come for us… and it’s not just us who’ll die.”