Lies Sleeping (Peter Grant, #7)(3)

Once I’d put a nice new Nissan Micra between her and me, I conjured up an impello and whacked it at her knees. Guleed had gone over next door’s garden wall and had her baton out. I watched her tense to jump forward as the nanny went down on her face.

And then rolled over, shaking off the blow to spring onto the bonnet of the Micra, and got a second impello in the face for her trouble. Because I don’t hesitate with my follow-ups these days. This one knocked her off the bonnet and she landed on her back, her face contorted into a silent snarl of rage.

We weren’t going to get a better opportunity than that, so me and Guleed threw ourselves on top of her. I went for the legs, Guleed for the arms. She kicked me as I came forward, her bare foot smashing into my shoulder and knocking me sideways. I saw another dirty heel coming at my face and I twisted enough to take it on the shoulder again. The first kick had been numbing, but the second was agonising. Despite the pain I tried to wrap my arms around her legs and use my body mass to pin her down. But it was like wrestling with a forklift truck. I swear she lifted my whole body weight and threw me over and onto my back.

I didn’t wait to get comfy. I rolled clear – straight into the gutter – and scrambled to my feet. The nanny was up, too, and facing off against Guleed, who’d kept a grip on her right arm. Even as I lurched back into the fight the nanny struck at Guleed’s face with her free left hand. But Guleed pulled her head back and in one fluid motion, pivoted around and swung her baton. It made a peculiar noise – like tearing silk – and slammed across the nanny’s back. The woman arched in pain and I watched as Guleed, still holding her arm, ran up the side of the Nissan Micra in a way that didn’t actually look physically possible and used her whole body weight to bear the nanny face down on to the pavement.

I decided that this was my cue and jumped forward to seize the nanny’s ankles. Before she could react I threw my weight backwards so that her legs were fully extended. Deprived of leverage even the strongest person can’t throw someone off their legs by main strength, and with Guleed on her back we almost had her. We only had to hold her until backup arrived, but we didn’t even have our cuffs out when she rippled like a snake. Guleed tried to hang on, but she was knocked flying into me. By the time we were untangled and on our feet the nanny was away.

‘Where the fuck is Nightingale?’ I asked.

Saving Richard Williams from bleeding out, as it transpired.

‘She tried to bite his throat right out,’ Carey told me later.





2

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We probably should have guessed something like that had happened when the ambulance screeched up and a pair of paramedics charged past us into the house. Me and Guleed didn’t follow them because we were too busy circulating a description of the nanny and warning responding officers not to go anywhere near her until Falcon qualified officers arrived. Then we grabbed a response car so we could be properly mobile in case she was spotted.

We needn’t have bothered – she’d evaporated into the summer afternoon.

Because we were the second Falcon response team, Nightingale being the first, me and Guleed ended up in a corridor at UCH guarding Richard Williams’s hospital room, along with a reassuringly solid member of Protection Command in full ballistic armour and armed with an H&K MP5 sub-machine gun. Her name was Lucy and she had three children under the age of five.

‘Compared to them,’ she told us, ‘I don’t find this job stressful at all.’

You use Protection Command people for this kind of job because unlike SCO19 they’re trained to do guard duty. You want a certain kind of personality who can stand around in the rain for eight hours and still be awake enough to shoot someone in the central body mass at a moment’s notice.

Nightingale and Carey were still out west hunting the Pale Nanny, and Richard Williams was seriously sedated and so wasn’t going to tell us anything, either. Which at least gave us a chance to write up our notes and for me to ask Guleed about the sound of ripping silk and her impossible bit of vertical parkour.

‘Ripping silk?’ she asked.

‘Not really a sound,’ I said. ‘A vestigium – the sort of noise magic makes when you do it.’

And leaves behind in its wake as well, but I try not to overburden my colleagues with too much explanation. Not even Guleed, who I suspected knew way more than she was letting on.

‘That,’ she said. And smiled.

‘That,’ I said.

‘I’ve been training,’ she said.

‘With Michael?’

Meaning Michael Cheung, the Folly’s ‘liaison’ in Chinatown and a man whose business card listed his profession as ‘Legendary Swordsman’.

‘It’s just like any other martial arts training. You learn the patterns, you practise – you get better.’ She leant closer and tapped my shoulder. ‘And you don’t know if it’s going to work until you try it for real.’

‘Did it work?’

‘I think so.’

‘Can you teach me?’

She laughed.

‘Michael specifically said I wasn’t allowed to. No matter what you said.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because Nightingale called him up and told him to refuse if you asked.’

‘Did he say why?’