Rivers of London (Rivers of London #1)(85)

My forma met the compulsion like the wrong two gearwheels brushing up against each other in a transmission. I thought I could actually feel bits of the forma spinning around in my brain and painfully ricocheting off the inside of my skull, but that could have been my imagination. It didn’t matter. I felt my body unlock and I yanked my head away from the noose and looked at Lesley in triumph.

‘Or maybe I won’t,’ I said.

A huge arm clamped itself across my chest from behind and a large hand gripped the back of my head and pushed it through the noose. I smelled camelhair and Chanel aftershave – Seawoll must have walked up behind me while I was feeling clever.

‘Or maybe you will,’ said Lesley.

I twisted, but while there are some big men who are surprisingly weak, Seawoll wasn’t one of them, so I jammed the syrette into the exposed bit of his hand and gave him the whole dose. Unfortunately the whole dose had been calibrated for Lesley, who was half Seawoll’s size. The pressure never wavered until Lesley yelled, ‘Hoist away, boys,’ and I was dragged into the air by my neck.

The only thing that saved my life was the fact that I was being hanged in a theatrical noose which had been designed, as a matter of health and safety, not to hang the attractive Croatian baritone whose neck was supposed to be in it. The slipknot was a fake and there was a wire reinforcement inside the rope to keep the loop in shape. Undoubtedly there was a eyelet for clipping a tether to the no doubt artfully concealed safety harness to be worn by the handsome baritone, once he’d made his farewell aria. Unfortunately I didn’t have a harness, so the damn thing half-killed me before I managed to get my head out of the loop, scraping the skin off my chin in the process. I got my elbow into the loop for more support, but even with that, there was a sudden line of agony down my back.

I had a quick look down and saw that I was a good five metres above the stage. I wasn’t going to be letting go any time soon.

Below me, Lesley had turned back to the audience. ‘So much for the constabulary,’ she said. Behind her Seawoll sat down heavily on the stairs and slumped forward like a tired runner, the etorphine hydrochloride kicking in at last.

‘See,’ said Lesley. ‘One officer of the law kicks his last, while another lies sleeping, no doubt stupefied with drink. Thus do we good men of England put our trust in swine barely separate from the villains they purport to chase. How long, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, are you prepared to put up with this? Why is it that men of good quality pay their taxes while foreigners pay naught, and yet expect the liberties that are an Englishman’s hard-won prerogative?’

It was getting harder to maintain a hold, but I didn’t fancy my chances letting go. There were huge curtains either side of the stage, and I wondered if I could swing over far enough to grab one. I changed to a two-handed grip on the loop and started to shift my weight and to flex, to get momentum going.

‘Because who is more oppressed?’ exclaimed Lesley. ‘Those that seek nothing but entitlements for themselves, or those that claim for everything: social security, housing benefit, disability, and pay for nothing?’ One thing I did do in history was the reform of the Poor Laws, so I knew then that Henry Pyke must either be using stuff from Lesley’s memory or else had been reading the Daily Mail for the last two hundred years.

‘And are they grateful?’ she asked. The audience muttered in response. ‘Of course they are not,’ said Lesley. ‘For they have come to look upon such things as their right.’

It wasn’t easy keeping the rope from swinging out over the orchestra pit. I tried to correct, and ended up describing a figure of eight. I was still several metres short of the scaffolding platform, so I put my back into it, jack-knifing my legs to cross the gap.

Suddenly the crowd gave a roar and I felt a wave of frustration and anger well up around me like floodwater backing out of a storm drain. I lost concentration at a crucial moment and slammed into the curtain. I made the jump, desperately grabbing handfuls of the heavy cloth and trying to get enough between my legs to stop me sliding smack onto the stage.

Then all the lights went out. They didn’t spark, flicker, flash or do anything theatrical – they just turned themselves off. Somewhere amid the Royal Opera House’s sophisticated lighting rig, I reckoned, a couple of microprocessors were crumbling into sand. When you are hanging by your fingernails, down is nearly always the right direction, so I did my best to ignore the pain in my forearms and started working my way down the curtain. Out in the darkness I heard the audience not panicking which, given the circumstances, was much creepier than the alternative.

A cone of white light appeared around Lesley like a spotlight from an invisible lamp. ‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ she called, ‘boys and girls. I think it’s time to go out and play.’

One of my mum’s uncles once had tickets to Arsenal v Spurs at Highbury, and took me when his own son couldn’t make it. We were down among season-ticket holders, the hardest of the hard core football fans who went there for the game, not the violence. Being in a crowd like that is like being caught in the tide – you might try going in the other direction but it drags you along all the same. It was a dull game, style wise, and looked to be heading for a nil – nil draw when suddenly, in injury time, Arsenal made a late surge. As they got into the penalty area I swear the whole stadium, sixty thousand people, held their breath. When the Arsenal forward put it in the back of the net I found myself screaming with joy along with the rest of the people around me. It was entirely involuntary.