“Hello, you all right, then? Need another tea? Biscuit?”
This was the constable who’d arrested her, popping his head around the door. A large, black-haired young man in his middle twenties, with a surprisingly lighter-colored moustache, his relaxed face looked quite different from the stressed, super-hyped visage she’d seen over his Smith & Wesson as he’d ordered her to show him her hands, edge on her knees away from Merlin, and then put her hands behind her—upon which she’d been cuffed by his partner and everyone had relaxed slightly.
“I’m fine,” said Susan. “But what’s going on? Am I still arrested or what?”
The constable blushed.
“No, sorry, that was my mistake. We’re waiting for Inspector Greene now, to sign you out.”
“Inspector Greene?”
“Special Branch. You’re Box 500, right? Do you normally work with someone else?”
“I don’t . . .” Susan started to say, but then stopped, as her weary and rather disturbed mind caught up. Being signed out sounded a lot better than being arrested for murder. “Um, can I get my backpack from the Frank Thringley house?”
“Oh, I’ll check with the local jumbos. I’m not from here. I’m D11.”
He said that proudly, as if it meant something significant. Belatedly, Susan realized he was trying to impress her; this was some weird kind of flirting.
“Speaking of firearms, that Smython .357!” He whistled. “I didn’t know what it was; Sergeant Bowen recognized it. Very tasty. Not that I want to say anything against that little Beretta of yours, miss. Easily concealable, I’ll give you that.”
“Yeah, right,” agreed Susan. She was suddenly feeling very, very tired. She looked at her watch, one of the very new newfangled plastic ones called a Swatch that her mother had bought her as a going-away present. It was a few minutes to six, so probably only just light outside.
“Well, if you need anything, knock on the door,” said the constable. “Sorry we have to keep you in here, but out of sight, out of mind, hey?”
“Hey,” replied Susan. She let her head fall forward, cradling it on her arms, and went to sleep.
Inspector Greene was a woman. Which was a little surprising to Susan, though it shouldn’t have been, since it was 1983. But the Metropolitan Police, more than the regional forces, had always been one of the great holdouts against gender equality, right back to the postwar reforms of Prime Minister Clementina Attlee’s radical government. Paradoxically, Britain’s second woman PM was now in power, but Margaret Thatcher was an old-school Tory and was working hard to roll back many of the changes brought in by Attlee and later Labour governments, equal opportunity legislation being on her hit list.
Susan, like almost everyone under thirty who wasn’t a banker or hereditary lord, disliked Thatcher and her government. The previous year’s war over the Falklands had turned that dislike into near hatred, while boosting Thatcher’s popularity with far too many older people, and like all her friends, Susan had a permanent sick feeling in her stomach at the likely outcome of the forthcoming election in a few week’s time, the first in which she was old enough to vote. She’d already put in her postal ballot, for the Social Democrat candidate, but the Conservative, Chris Patten, would almost certainly win in the Bath electorate.
According to Susan’s Swatch, she’d slept for an hour when Inspector Greene tapped her on the shoulder, not very gently. The police officer was thirtyish, tough-looking, and dressed like Sergeant Carter in The Sweeney—the television show, not the real Flying Squad—leather jacket over shirt and jeans. She even looked a bit like Denise Waterman—a subcontinental version of her, anyway.
“Miss Arkshaw. Time to go.”
“Go where?” asked Susan muzzily. “Who are you?”
“Mira Greene, inspector with Special Branch. I handle liaison with your bookselling friends.”
“Uh, they’re not . . . um . . . is Merlin okay?”
“I believe so,” said Greene. “They came and retrieved him from Whittington Hospital half an hour ago. I wouldn’t worry. The left-handed types are very, very tough. But I guess you already know that.”
“Uh, no,” said Susan. “I only met Merlin last night. It was all an accident. I don’t know anything.”
“You know more than’s probably good for you,” said Greene. “Luckily for you, with anything involving those booksellers, the official unofficial policy is that the less everyone knows—or heaven forbid, writes down—the better. We act as if they’re from the security services and sweep it under the carpet.”
She swung her car keys around her finger and said, “Where do you want to go?”
“Go? Uh, I need to get my backpack from—”
“Already in the car. How about Paddington, train back to Bath? We’ll buy you a ticket. Go home to mum, lie low.”
Susan was tempted for a moment. She had three months until the Michaelmas term started. Her student accommodation wasn’t available until a few days before the start of term, so she had nowhere particular to go and a limited supply of money to find a place to live.
But she had come to London early for a reason, and though it had started badly, and become very strange indeed, she wasn’t going to give up.
“No, thanks,” she said. “I’ll find somewhere to stay. I can go to a youth hostel to start, I guess. Or some cheap . . . very cheap . . . hotel. Till I get a job. In a pub or whatever. I am eighteen.”
Greene stared at her. Her eyes were fierce, penetrating. She looked like she might favor the Sweeney school of physical interrogation as well, and was definitely someone Susan wouldn’t like to cross.
“Seriously, you’d almost certainly be better out of London. Not that you’d be entirely safe back home. But somewhat safer.”
“What do you mean?”
Greene shut the door behind her and sat on the desk.
“You’ve been in the Old World. You’ve been seen and marked by things from the Old World,” she said slowly, and with emphasis. “You’ll find yourself there more easily now, or it will come to you. But geographically speaking, word travels slowly in the Old World; there are many borders to cross between Highgate Wood and the entity that lives in the spa waters of Bath, or any of the other . . . things. Or so the booksellers tell me, because to be honest I know sweet FA myself. If you go home it could be years before anything else weird happens, if ever. Stay here, everything you’ve already met is much closer.”
“I want to stay,” said Susan. “I’ve got something I need to do.”
Greene stared at her for a moment longer, then got off the desk and paced around, pausing to loom over Susan. “Okay. Remember this. Nothing you think happened last night happened. If you talk about it to anyone, anywhere, but particularly the newspapers, the best that can happen is you’ll be locked up in a mental asylum and we’ll throw away the key.”
“I understand you’re threatening me,” said Susan slowly. She’d been arrested—though not ultimately charged—with her mother twice at CND antinuclear demos. She knew what was going on. “But I know my rights—”