Lies Sleeping (Peter Grant, #7)(23)

The following Tuesday was taken up with the American first lady’s visit to a school in Whitechapel. The American Secret Service were already unhappy about having their second biggest target at a largely Muslim school in London’s most Muslim area. Even more so since the Home Office wouldn’t let them park a couple of Abrams main battle tanks on Commercial Road. We all had to work extra hard to convince them security was tight.

The Commissioner requested on the spot Falcon coverage – just in case.

‘I didn’t want to ask him what contingencies he had in mind,’ said Nightingale. ‘I felt he might be a tad preoccupied.’

And it might have been a fun day out for all, if it hadn’t been necessary to guard the bell at the foundry. Striking while everyone is distracted is Martin Chorley’s signature move, so I didn’t argue when Nightingale selected me for the job.

‘After myself you are the most powerful practitioner we have,’ he said. ‘If I am to cover the first lady then it follows that you should guard the bell.’

As we did the preliminary operational planning I had a clever idea about how we might turn the event to our advantage. Nightingale didn’t like it, but he couldn’t argue with my logic. Which is why Guleed has a selfie with Michelle Obama and I don’t.

Martin Chorley being the dangerous criminal he was, Nightingale insisted on some additional contingency planning. Which was just as well, because just as Michelle was going peak-first lady down the road, the bell began to sing.

I’d camped out beside the bell where a work table and several tons of heavy brass wrangling tools formed an improvised barricade between me and the main gates. There I’d made myself comfortable with a coffee and a takeaway from the Café Casablanca and waited for something to happen.

I tried to concentrate on my PIP3 reading list, Professionalism in Policing Level Three being what you do after you’ve qualified for PIP2 – the fun never stops in the Metropolitan Police. Unfortunately ‘Assessing scenes of crime for their potential to provide useful evidence’ kept on slipping out of my brain. Still, I was just grappling with the best practice for determining my restricted access area when I noticed that the bell had started to softly hum.

The hum of a bell is two octaves below its nominal pitch, and is one of the partial tones that give traditionally built bells that sense of depth when they ring. It’s why they ring out danger and celebration and the call to prayer and don’t go ting the way triangles do – however big they are.

I put down the book on Major Incident Room Standardised Administrative Procedures (MIRSAP) that I’d borrowed from Guleed and made sure I switched off my expensive main phone. By the time I was ready, the bell had started to sing quietly in the prime, tierce and quint partials, going in and out like a toddler playing with a wah-wah pedal.

And then Lesley was standing in the gateway.

‘Please, sir,’ she said, ‘can we have our bell back?’

‘What do you want it for anyway?’ I asked.

Lesley hesitated before entering the yard. She was pausing to seem less of a threat, and also to let her eyes adjust to the lower light levels inside the foundry.

She was dressed in a nondescript blue tank top, black leggings and blue trainers. She carried no bag, or anything else that I could see, and she let her hands hang, relaxed, by her sides. The foundry yard was littered with recently cast bells and crates and Lesley was forced to take her eyes off me to pick her way between the obstacles.

It was enough of a disadvantage that I could have probably knocked her down with a sudden strike, but we’d agreed I wouldn’t try. For one thing, probably isn’t definitely. For another, we had other options. And, finally, we thought we might have an opportunity. Well, I thought we might have an opportunity – everybody else thought I was bonkers.

I stood up to mask the movement my hand made as it came to rest on the old-fashioned walkie-talkie I’d Sellotaped to the table, low down enough so it would be out of Lesley’s eye line.

She stopped safely out of baton swing range and gave me a crooked smile. She was pausing for effect, but I wasn’t having that.

‘Does it hurt?’ I asked.

There was a fractional hesitation before she asked, ‘Does what hurt?’

When she spoke, I noticed that the bell hummed in sympathy. You’d have to be listening carefully to be sure, but it was definitely there.

‘When you change your face,’ I said. ‘Does it hurt?’

‘No,’ she said, but there was a twinge around the eyes that made her a liar.

‘Show me?’

‘No,’ she said.

‘I showed you mine, remember?’ I said.

Back in that seaside shelter in Brightlingsea a million million years ago, when we were both on the same side. At least I hoped we were still on the same side back then. Otherwise? ‘Otherwise’ didn’t bear thinking about.

‘Peter, we don’t have much time here,’ said Lesley. ‘Let me have the bloody bell.’

This time the bell sang loud enough to make it clear it was echoing her words.

‘It’s fricking eight tonnes,’ I said. ‘How are you even going to get it out of here?’

‘Let me worry about that.’

‘Why do you stay with him?’ I said. ‘You got your face back.’

‘You think I did it for that?’ asked Lesley.