The Empty Grave (Lockwood & Co. #5)(108)
Fortunately the explosions themselves claimed no extra casualties. Since they happened at five in the morning, the surrounding streets were mostly deserted. As the smoke cleared, the surviving DEPRAC forces and evacuated Fittes staff gathered in the Strand. Smoke hung thickly over central London, and a number of onlookers began to congregate in Trafalgar Square.
Inspector Barnes, whose raincoat had sustained significant ectoplasm damage in the battle, cast the tattered remnants aside and commandeered a leather biker’s jacket from a bystander in the street. For the next few hours he was everywhere, summoning ambulances and medi-vans, bringing reinforcements from Scotland Yard and rousing the wandering Fittes agents, who were mostly in a state of shock, to assist with crowd control. On the advice of George Cubbins and Holly Munro, who were temporarily assisting him, he also requisitioned two cafés across the street to provide a constant stream of food and drinks to all.
The smoke cleared; the heat in the building died down. Search-and-rescue teams went in. On the ground floor they discovered a number of white-coated scientists, wide-eyed and tremulous, who had appeared from the basement levels. The group was at once handed into DEPRAC custody. Four of Sir Rupert Gale’s men, two suffering from ghost-touch, were also located alive; they were taken off to the hospital under armed guard.
At George and Holly’s urgent behest, teams also immediately made for the seventh floor, from which black smoke could be seen pouring. The building’s lifts were out of action, so they took the stairs. Before they had reached the top of the first flight, however, they heard footsteps descending. It was Lockwood and me, coming slowly, arm in arm. Our clothes and faces were blackened with smoke. I had something small and round, wrapped in a piece of burnt cloth, tucked beneath my arm.
By mid morning DEPRAC crews had cordoned off the end of the Strand and the situation was under full control. A census of survivors was taken, and a tentative list of the dead or missing drawn up. Bodies began to be brought out of Fittes House. These included those of Penelope Fittes and Sir Rupert Gale. Another set of remains, located inside a cabinet amid the rubble of the seventh-floor penthouse, was carried out under a white sheet, placed in a DEPRAC van and driven away at top speed.
The members of Lockwood & Co. watched this activity from a window table in the Silver Unicorn Café, directly opposite the disaster zone. The emergency services had already taken us under their wing; our cuts had been cleaned, dressed and bandaged, and pep-shots of insulin administered to counteract our close exposure to ectoplasm. A hospital visit had been offered – and declined by all. I had been forced to protest particularly strongly to avoid this fate. The stab wound in my side was the most serious of our varied injuries, and an overnight stay was recommended. But I would not leave the others. In the end I was patched up, given a painkiller and a very reluctant temporary discharge, with strict instructions to report to a doctor the next day. Then I was allowed to go to the café with the rest of them.
There’s no point in describing how we looked. We were just as bad as before, only now with added bandages and minor burns. The soles of Lockwood’s shoes had partially melted in the explosion. Holly had the side of her face taped up – one of the blasts had burst an ear drum. George was still wrapped in one of the silver thermal blankets we’d been given by the emergency crews; it looked remarkably like a certain silver cape he’d worn recently, though none of us felt the need to mention it. As for me, my waist was so tightly wound with dressings I could barely move. We nursed our cups of tea, our toast – whatever the harried café proprietors had been able to bring us, for the place was packed. We stared out through the window condensation at the Strand.
‘I don’t like to say it,’ a voice said behind us, ‘but you all really need to spruce yourselves up a bit.’
Flo Bones had materialized by our table. She looked precisely the same as she always did, down to the familiar stains on her puffa jacket and her mud-encrusted boots. Her straw hat was perched on her head at a jaunty angle, and she was spooning something hot and flavoursome from a Styrofoam dish into her mouth.
‘Look at the state of you!’ she said, shaking her head. ‘Soon I won’t like to be seen in your company. Some of us have standards, you know.’
‘Flo!’ Lockwood half rose from his chair and gave her a fleeting hug. ‘You look in excellent shape. I’m glad.’
‘Yeah, I’m just dandy. Enjoying a bit of pie and mash here too.’
George gave a start. ‘Pie and mash? Where’d you get that from?’
‘Next door. You’re in the wrong café. They do sticky toffee pudding there, and all.’
George groaned into his mug of tea. ‘The best they’ve got here is fish-paste sandwiches! And it’s too late to switch. All my muscles have seized up.’
Lockwood grinned. ‘You were amazing last night, Flo,’ he said. ‘Barnes told me you were instrumental in getting him here. How did you persuade him to bring a team along to Fittes House?’
Flo’s blue eyes stared off across the Strand. ‘It weren’t easy – he’s a stubborn old goat. Well, first off, yesterday, I took him down your place in Portland Row. I showed him the state of it – you vanished, all hell broken loose, a spirit-gate upstairs, and a couple of Winkman’s men still systematically rifling through your stuff. That shook him. What the Winkman boys confessed to when he got them back to Scotland Yard … well, that shook him even more. So he put a team together to have a quiet word with Rupert Gale. But he didn’t exactly hurry, and by the time we got here you was already in the middle of your little private war. After that, Barnes couldn’t tiptoe about no more. He had to get involved.’ She made a scraping noise with her spoon. ‘Yep. That’s the story. Nothing more to say.’