London Falling Read Online Free

she’d said. ‘Wish good things at them
hard
.’ Then she’d make a serious, ridiculous face. He had kept that as a habit of mind, like not walking under ladders. He glanced at Costain now and wished paydays and promotion
for the sod, contorting his face with the effort of wishing it.
    ‘You all right, Kev?’ asked Toshack. Which made Costain look round quickly, and satisfyingly.
There, Mum, wherever you are now, it worked – sort of.
    He instantly dropped the expression. ‘Come on, boss,’ he said, in that West London accent he’d sold to Quill as a black kid trying too hard. The voice he hated, if he was being
completely honest, because it reminded him of all the kids around him when he was growing up, but not of himself. It was a voice he’d learned to adopt. ‘We’ll move heaven and
Earth for you, you know that?’
Yes, sir, master
– Toshack liked that, so Costain gave it to him. ‘But tell us who we’re after. We all want a drink at midnight,
don’t we?’
    There, the look on Costain’s face! Fabulous, darlings. ’Cos second UC Sefton kept daring to show initiative, and that was recorded on that bloody tape of his. Assuming Quill had
actually passed it to him. And assuming he’d switched it on.
    ‘You’ll get to toast the New Year at midnight,’ Toshack reassured him. ‘Back at the house. If we don’t find it this time . . . it’s last orders for me,
’cos I’ll be gone soon after.’
    Sefton looked just a bit worried and puzzled, but inside now he was yelling.
    As the soldiers strode up the path of their last suburban semi, Sefton finally made eye contact with Costain. They hung back until everyone else had gone inside.
    ‘Your call, skip,’ he said to Costain, as the familiar crashing noises began inside.
    Costain looked splendidly uncertain. His lovely criminal lifestyle was coming to an end, and he was going to have to either call it now or add to the pile of disciplinary charges. ‘Go on,
then,’ he said.
    Sefton looked towards the house, then carefully took his mobile, with the tracer in it, from out of his other pocket. He texted one word to a number which, if called, would connect to a bloke
who called himself Ricky, who would ask, ‘What’s up, Kev?’
    The single word:
Midnight.
    Costain had placed himself between Sefton and the window, and now he pointed to himself. ‘
I’m
going to get him,’ he said, ‘before it goes down.’
    Sefton watched the lead UC, as he marched towards the house, and once again he sent all his bloody good wishes after him.

TWO
    Gipsy Hill was indeed a hill, and the nick was situated near the top of it; at the highest point above sea level that any police station in London occupied. Quill had just
stepped out of his vehicle in the Hill’s car park which was, as usual, lit up like a stadium. Well, a stadium where a few of the lights were broken. It was just past 11 p.m., at the very end
of the old year.
    ‘Midnight!’ he was saying into his Airwave radio, while Harry marched beside him, talking equally urgently into his phone. ‘So we’re assembling at a quarter to, round the
corner from the house in Bermondsey, which means we have to be out of here—’ He paused when he heard the sound of engines behind him, and turned to see a line of unmarked cars rolling
in, followed by an Armed Response Vehicle out of Old Street. ‘—right now!’ He then exclaimed, ‘You beauty!’ before correcting himself, ‘Sorry,
ma’am.’
    Harry waited until his superior had switched off the radio. ‘You still reckon Toshack’s going to run for it?’
    ‘Not so much now. I’ve been talking to the uniforms who’re moving in on every place he’s been to, and he’s been making a fuckload of noise at every one of them.
That’s hardly
sneaking
out of the country. That’s more like desperation. He’s looking for someone important to him: an old flame, or a kid he lost track of. If he’s
cashing in, it’ll be with a shotgun to his own