The Best Thing You Can Steal Page 6

  The Lost Children are ghosts that have gone feral. Ghosts of men who died building the Underground system, killed in accidents and cave-ins, left to rot in the dark because it was cheaper than carrying them back to the surface. Ghosts of suicides who threw themselves off platforms in front of trains and found it wasn’t the end of their problems after all. Ghosts of homeless people who preferred to die down in the dark rather than suffer the cold indifference of the streets above.

  Dead for so long they’d lost all memory of who they used to be, nothing left of them but maddened emotions and brutal needs, the Lost Children roam the world below because they’ve forgotten there’s anywhere else to be. Wearing bodies they made for themselves out of the dirt and grime and dust of the tunnels.

  All the Lost Children of London’s underground.

  Dark shapes started edging forward into the flickering light. Lex laughed suddenly, and it was a flat, ugly sound.

  ‘They really should have known better than to come here.’

  He jumped down from the platform and strode along the tracks, and a terrible army boiled out of the tunnel mouth to meet him. No longer human, their bodies had slumped and run like melting candles, because the Lost Children could no longer remember what people were supposed to look like. Grimy and distorted, like smoke grown solid, their overlong arms ended in vicious claws. They had no faces, no eyes or ears, but they all knew where Lex was.

  A cold hand closed around my heart as the Damned took on his angelic armour. It didn’t so much cover him as replace him – a greater thing overwriting a lesser. The darkness that replaced his left side wasn’t just the absence of light but had a horrid presence all its own, while his right side blazed brightly, like the sun come down to earth. Armoured by Heaven and Hell, the Damned threw himself at the Lost Children. And they swarmed forward to meet him.

  I didn’t move. There was nothing I could do against odds like that, and I was afraid to get anywhere near the Damned while his killing fury was upon him.

  He raged among the Lost Children, striking them down and tearing their misshapen bodies apart. He ripped off arms and punched faces so hard the heads exploded, sent dark shapes flying through the air with great sweeps of his arms, and trampled the fallen underfoot. The Lost Children responded with angry cries that sounded more animal than human. And nothing the Damned did stopped them pressing forward.

  The Damned laughed happily as claws shattered and dark hands broke against his armour. He tore his way into the heart of the pack, doing terrible things to them with his angelic strength. But there were so many of them … and every moment more came pouring out of the tunnel mouth.

  One of the Lost Children slipped past the Damned and headed straight for me. It started to pull itself up on to the platform, a smoke ghost made solid by the strength of its hatred. Vicious claws gouged furrows out of the platform, its blank grey face fixed on me with horrid intent. I took one carefully considered step forward and kicked it in the face. My foot burst through its head, sending grit and grime flying in all directions, but the clawed hands just dug deeper into the platform to hold the body where it was. I stamped hard on each hand in turn, and they exploded in puffs of dust. The dark shape fell back from the platform and on to the rails. The Damned turned his armoured head to look at me.

  ‘You can’t fight them! Get out of here! Run!’

  ‘I won’t leave you here to face them alone!’

  I didn’t know I was going to say that until I did, and I was surprised to find I meant it. Lex had sworn himself to my cause, to be a part of my crew. I couldn’t just run away and abandon him. But if I tried to fight at his side, the Lost Children would tear me apart in a moment. It wasn’t as if I had any weapons.

  I started to reach for the pen in my pocket and then stopped. Even if I did bring Time crashing to a halt, what good would that do? The Lost Children would still be there when I ran out of breath and had to start Time up again. Just by being what they were, what they’d made of themselves, they were unkillable. And then I smiled suddenly, as I remembered the pen wasn’t the only useful tool I’d inherited from the original Gideon Sable.

  I reached into a different pocket and brought out a heavy iron key. According to the notes that came with it, this was the ultimate skeleton key, able to unlock anything. I dropped down from the platform, ignoring the dusty shape on the rails that was still trying to get its head back together, and strode confidently toward the mass of heaving bodies before the tunnel mouth.

  The Lost Children couldn’t hurt the Damned inside his armour, so they’d swarmed all over him, pulling him down through sheer weight of numbers. He struggled and fought them every step of the way, but still they dragged him along the tracks to the tunnel mouth and the darkness that lay beyond. Where, eventually, they would find some way to separate him from the halos they hungered after.

  And perhaps after that they would make him one of them.

  I walked right up to the seething mass of dark and grimy figures, and held up the key. None of the Lost Children turned to look at me, caught up in their dim swirling thoughts of rage and revenge. They didn’t see me as a threat.

  Their mistake.

  I turned the key sharply in the air as I pronounced the activating word, and just like that the key unlocked the forces holding the ugly shapes together. They exploded one after another, like a series of firecrackers. Dust and dirt scattered in all directions, falling slowly in a grey rain as the Lost Children collapsed back into the grime and dust they came from. Until nothing was left on the rails but the Damned, standing alone before the dark tunnel mouth.

  He looked slowly around him, taking in what had happened. His armour disappeared, and a subtle tension was gone from the air, as though an unbearable weight had been lifted off the world. Lex turned to look at me and nodded slowly.

  ‘You stole their shapes from them. Maybe you are a master thief after all.’

  ‘Believe it,’ I said cheerfully. ‘Well, I must be going now. See you at Annie Anybody’s place. Try to clean yourself up a bit first.’

  I walked off down the tracks, heading for the other tunnel mouth. I didn’t want Lex to see how badly my hands were shaking. Because I really hadn’t been sure my marvellous idea would work. Once I was out of the Damned’s sight, I started running, and I didn’t stop till I’d left the Underground behind me and was back in the sane and reassuring streets of London above.

  FIVE

  When a Man Is Tired of London, He Is Tired of Life

  Or Death

  London is a city full of ghosts. Most people can’t see them, and the ghosts prefer it that way. They have their own business to be about, and the living would only get in the way.

  Once I’d left the Underground, I went looking for shelter in the nearest greasy spoon. The cafe’s windows were steamed over, hiding its shipwrecked souls from the hard world outside. At that time of the morning, the place was packed with young mothers, coping with small children and exchanging gossip; out-of-work actors leafing through magazines, quietly hoping to be recognized; and old people making one cup of tea last all morning, just for the illusion of company.

  I found a table at the back, where I could keep a watchful eye on the door, and forced down three cups of foul coffee. My hands were so unsteady that I needed both of them to hold the cup. I wasn’t sure what had unnerved me most: seeing the Lost Children at last in what passed for their flesh or the way the Damned had torn into them. No man should have that much anger in him, or so much delight in letting it loose. The last thing my plan needed was a loose cannon … But I was going to need someone that dangerous, to deal with the kind of things Hammer had put in place to protect himself.

  That was what I kept telling myself until my hands stopped shaking and I finally found the strength to get up and go out into the city again, to look for the Ghost.

  You can find all kinds of ghosts in London. Everything from wispy shades only just there to complete historical re-enactments. Horrid apparitions tha
t peer out of bathroom mirrors in cheap hotels, encouraging the lost and the lonely to pick up the bottle of pills or reach for the razor blade. Or the last fading remnants of once-famous people, having a hard time believing the world could go on without them. And there are always the killers and their victims, endlessly repeating the most important moments of their lives. If all the ghosts of London could be seen at once, they’d make a fog thicker than any of the old pea-soupers.

  I followed my compass to Berwick Street, one of the Ghost’s usual haunts. Day and night, the Ghost walks the streets of Soho, going nowhere, looking sadly at the world he can’t be a part of any more. He never goes inside any of the buildings. They’re full of people living their lives, and he knows he doesn’t belong there.

  The Ghost is different because he still knows who he is, as opposed to who he used to be. He’s still a person, rather than the memory of a man. Though he is starting to lose track of some of the details. I wanted him for my crew because even the most expensive security surveillance couldn’t see him – but, really, what crew wouldn’t want a man who could walk through locked doors?

  I could see him because I have a gift for that sort of thing. I stole it from a medium, years ago. She never passed on what the spirits were saying, because she said it was too depressing. I always had a feeling the gift would come in handy one day. It takes a certain amount of self-control to focus on what I need and keep all the other ghosts out … All the strange shapes running wildly in the streets, or crawling up the sides of buildings like insects, or screaming endlessly in the face of what they did on the worst day of their lives.

  Ghosts make their own hereafters. But try telling them that.

  The Ghost was sitting among a group of homeless people. Most of them can see ghosts, because the homeless are almost as out of touch with the world as the dead. And they’re not bothered by ghosts – they have far more important things to worry about. The homeless are very accepting of the different. They have to be, because all they have is each other.

  This particular group was sitting patiently on the steps outside a church, waiting for the doors to open, in the hope of being offered coffee or soup or warm clothing. Putting up with the occasional sermon or well-meant advice was a small price to pay for a little unforced charity.

  Some of them passed a bottle of something cheap and nasty back and forth, while others assembled cigarettes from dog-ends they’d found in the streets. Men and women huddled together against the autumn chill, discussing the few things that still mattered to them. Such as what the weather was going to be like, the best begging spots, or which authority figures were useful and which were best avoided. As I approached, one man was telling a story about a woman who kindly presented him with a doggy bag from a very expensive restaurant. But when he looked inside, all he could see was assorted grassy things. The diner was an extreme vegan. The man sniffed loudly.

  ‘I said to her, “What, no chips?”’

  They all laughed. The Ghost smiled happily in their midst. He rarely joined in the conversations, but he enjoyed listening. They reminded him of what it used to feel like to be alive. A thin washed-out presence, the Ghost wore the memories of old clothes, little more than vague shapes and smears of colour. His face had shrunk back to the bone, and his wispy white hair drifted restlessly, as though disturbed by unfelt breezes. More an impression of a man than the thing itself.

  He was the first to notice me, but once he turned to look in my direction, all the homeless did, too. The Ghost was just curious, but they kept a watchful eye on me because experience had taught them that attention from the everyday world was rarely in their best interests. One man held up a handwritten cardboard sign: Will Swear For Food. I stopped a respectful distance away.

  ‘Hello, Ghost. I need to talk to you.’

  Some of the homeless stirred protectively, but the Ghost smiled at them reassuringly.

  ‘It’s all right. I know him.’

  He rose to his feet in a single smooth movement that would have been impossible for anyone living and drifted down the church steps. Several of the homeless shuddered despite themselves as the Ghost walked through them, because he was colder than they would ever be. The moment he joined me at the foot of the steps, they all turned away and resumed their conversations. Because whatever the Ghost and I had to talk about was none of their business.

  ‘Well, well … How nice to see you again,’ said the Ghost. ‘I hear you’re Gideon Sable these days. But then, you’ve had so many names in your time. While I have trouble remembering what’s carved on my gravestone. Not that it matters. No one ever visits it, except me. So, what do you want this time, Gideon? You know, you only ever come looking for me when you want something.’

  ‘I could use your help,’ I said.

  ‘Of course, of course. Only too happy to be of assistance. I may have forgotten a few things, but I still remember that I owe you.’

  I once saved the Ghost from a pair of television evangelists who wanted to exorcize him, live on their show. I was still with Annie back then, and we worked together to sabotage the broadcast. While the holy rollers prayed loudly over the Ghost’s grave, unaware he was standing right there with them, politely asking them to keep the noise down, I hacked into the evangelists’ computers. I found what I needed in their private files and gave it to Annie, who used her gift to charm the television equipment. It happily interrupted the show to broadcast the evangelists’ personal sex recordings to a fascinated audience. As so many people said afterwards, Who knew they’d be into that? The broadcast shut down abruptly, even though it was reaching record viewing figures, and the evangelists never bothered the Ghost again.

  ‘I’m planning a heist,’ I said. ‘And I could use someone in my crew who won’t show up on even the most sophisticated security systems.’

  The Ghost shook his head. It took his hair a moment to catch up. ‘I don’t know, Gideon. I mean, this would involve me doing things, wouldn’t it? I don’t really do things any more. I sort of feel I’ve left all that behind.’

  ‘No, you haven’t,’ I said. ‘Or you wouldn’t still be here.’

  He smiled ruefully, acknowledging my point, but he still didn’t look convinced.

  ‘What about guard dogs? They’d know I was there. Dogs always bark at me. I don’t know why. I like dogs.’

  ‘There won’t be any dogs. As such.’

  ‘And I’m not sure about being part of a crew … I mean, they wouldn’t be able to see or hear me, would they? I don’t like being ignored. It makes me feel even more not here than usual.’

  ‘All the people in my crew are as weird as you,’ I said reassuringly. ‘They’ll have no trouble interacting with a ghost. My old girlfriend is one of them; you know her.’

  ‘Oh, Annie Anybody, yes … Pity about what happened to her gift.’

  I didn’t ask him how he knew. He probably couldn’t have told me.

  The Ghost gave me a sideways look. ‘You’re not the first person to invite me to join a crew. People always think I’d make the perfect burglar. But I always say no. I’m very busy, after all. These streets won’t haunt themselves.’

  ‘The job I have in mind will only take a few days,’ I said. ‘You’ll be in and out before you know it.’

  ‘I won’t have to do anything physical, will I?’ the Ghost said anxiously. ‘I mean, I’m just spiritual. Heavy lifting is beyond me.’

  ‘I only need you to stick your head through a few locked doors and see what’s on the other side.’

  ‘Oh, yes, I can do that,’ the Ghost said happily. ‘In fact, I do it a lot. You don’t lose your curiosity just because you’re dead.’

  ‘Then you’re in?’

  ‘Depends. Who’s the target?’

  ‘Fredric Hammer.’

  ‘Oh …’ said the Ghost. ‘You know what he did to me?’

  I knew the story; everyone did. But I pretended I didn’t, because he did so love to tell it.

  ‘I used to be an art fo
rger,’ the Ghost said proudly. ‘One of the best. You can still see a lot of my work hanging in museums. Under far more famous names, of course. I was doing very well – lots of money, a quiet kind of fame and all the work I could handle. Until I got the chance to sell Hammer one of my fakes, for his collection. I should have known better, but I never could resist a challenge.

  ‘It was a bloody good Turin Shroud, if I say so myself. I spent ages putting together a credible back story, to explain why the world thought it was still where it should be. Where I went wrong was in taking a short cut with the cloth. Sourcing the real thing would have gouged a huge chunk out of my profit, so I faked it. But the suspicious bastard had it carbon-dated …

  ‘With the money Hammer paid me, I could have retired to Hawaii, but I never was one for lounging around on the beach. I only ever felt at home in Soho, so I was still here when Hammer’s people came looking for me. I’m told the manner of my murder was so grisly it made the national news. I don’t remember it – which is just as well, I suppose.’

  He stood staring at nothing for a while and then turned to look at me seriously.

  ‘Are you sure this is a good idea, Gideon? Fredric Hammer is a powerful, vindictive and very dangerous man. I wouldn’t want what happened to me to happen to you.’

  ‘My plan is sound,’ I said. ‘We can do this.’

  ‘Lots of people have said that,’ the Ghost murmured sadly. ‘But none of them ever come back from Hammer’s private vault to boast about it.’

  ‘Let me sweeten the deal,’ I said. ‘Hammer recently acquired something that could give you a new chance at life. An ancient artefact that would allow you to possess anyone you wanted.’

  ‘Oh, I couldn’t do that!’ the Ghost said immediately. ‘That wouldn’t be right. And I wouldn’t know how to possess anyone anyway.’

  ‘The artefact would do all the heavy lifting,’ I said. ‘We’re talking about something very special here.’

  ‘You always are, Gideon,’ said the Ghost. ‘What is it this time?’