After spending the past month as a cheerful amnesiac, drinking gin and making jokes while his world disintegrated, Jack Cade finally has his memories back. That means he knows exactly who Ellini Syal is, and how he feels about her. Unfortunately, he...
Everything was quiet until sunset. Sam took up station in a chair outside the coroner's office, which Dr Petrescu had made his own, and watched through the nearest window as the light seeped horizontally over the Oxford buildings, staining them an even brighter shade of yellow.
At ten o'clock, there was an explosion to the west. A column of smoke darkening the still-light horizon. But Sam didn't even budge in his chair. It was so obviously a trick that he felt as though responding to it in any way would be playing Jack's game.
Silence rolled back over the mortuary for a quarter of an hour. The last of the sunlight faded, and the night seeped in around his paraffin lamp.
And then there were other sounds – screams and breaking glass and the pounding of feet in the street outside.
Jack had roused another riot, maybe? Was he going to lead all the new-breeds in Oxford in a mob to the mortuary? Were they going to lay siege to the place, hurling stones at the windows and battering down the doors with telegraph poles?
The screams were hard to listen to, as Jack had known they would be. Sam had to override every instincts in his body to sit still in his chair, and not stride outside to try and put a stop to the idiocy. He wanted to snarl and glower and shake the rioters by the shoulders until they saw sense.
But that would be exactly what Jack wanted him to do. He had to trust his fellow-officers – although, for the life of him, he couldn't see any of them on the street.
After another few minutes of silent fuming, he got out of his chair and stepped closer to the window, half-wondering as he did so whether he was exposing himself to the sights of some sniper that Jack had stationed on the rooftops opposite. But no shots were fired.
There were people running about on the pavement below. They had been tantalisingly out of sight from his seat, but now he could see them clearly. Men running in and out of the patches of light under the streetlamps. They all seemed to be headed in one direction, although some of them were peeling off into alleyways, or pausing to hurl things through the windows of the nearest shops.
Their movement was so fast, and the lamplight so fitful, that it was difficult to make out anything about them. But, after a few seconds of horrified gaping, he realized that they were all wearing the same clothes: white jackets and trousers with the design of the broad arrow, to signify crown property. It was prison uniform.
And he realized, with a kind of surreal, horrified admiration, that the explosion to the west must have been at the castle prison.
First Jack had set fire to the Bodleian, and now he had broken three hundred thieves and murderers out of the castle prison. All to try and tempt Sam away from the mortuary. In the calm before the anger hit him, he almost felt special.
There were ordinary people out there too, innocent bystanders, although not many. The riot the previous night had taught everyone the value of staying indoors.
But the nastiest detail was that Sam couldn't see a single blue-coated officer amongst the crowd. And yet the escaped prisoners would have had to come past the station to get down here. Were all the Constables at the town hall just sitting at their desks with their fingers in their ears? True, he hadn't left them specific instructions detailing what to do in case of a gaol-break, but they had initiative, didn't they? They had procedure. In some cases, they even had policemen's instincts. What the hell was going on?
Sam went down the staircase to the entrance hall, trying not to run. The bastard wanted him to run. He reached the two officers at the front door – who, he was grimly pleased to see, had not deserted their posts, even when they'd heard the screams.
One of the Constables was Henry Sides, a good, solid, unimaginative officer, who was much too literal-minded to be swayed by any of Jack's excuses. The other was a long-faced man with a crooked nose. It had been broken when Jack had been training the new recruits in un-armed combat, and had never been re-set properly. Sam didn't know his name, but he knew him to be highly-strung, vindictive, and very anxious to avenge himself on the original breaker of the nose.
"Constable," he said, turning to the long-faced man, "get up to the station and find out what they're doing. We need a response out on the streets, but no guns, understand? Truncheons and brass knuckles, the same as us. Don't start any fights until you've got me my information."
He fished the key out of his pocket and opened the front door a crack, letting in an ocean of noise, but no people. No-one was waiting out there, ready to push the door wider and force their way in. The steps down to the street were beguilingly clear.
He pushed the Constable out and then slammed the door again, before he could be tempted to go out there himself. That was what Jack wanted, and he was heartily sick of everyone giving Jack exactly what he wanted.
The Constable was gone for ten minutes – ten excruciating minutes, in which Sam paced around and bit his tongue to keep from shouting.
It was a trick, it was a trick. Jack knew how to manage bloodless revolutions. No-one had been killed in the riot last night, and Gleeson had been shot so cleanly that the doctors said there would barely be a scar. The screams sounded bad, but Jack would have taken precautions. This was just meant to scare him, that was all.
When the Constable edged back in, he smelled of smoke and chaos. He was also bleeding from the ear, but Sam refrained from asking any questions about this.
"There's no-one at the station, sir," he panted. "Mrs Hope says the Mayor ordered the men to stand down an hour ago. Everyone's gone home."
"What?" Sam yelled, finally releasing his tongue. "He can't do that! That's obstructing the course of justice – that's endangering British citizens! I won't just have him removed from office, I'll have him arrested! I'll have his name printed in every newspaper alongside the words 'national disgrace'!"
"Yes, sir," said the long-faced Constable, while the blood trickled down his neck and into his collar.
There was another scream from outside. Sam flung open the door, throwing caution to the wind this time, and saw a convict climbing into one of the houses opposite through a broken window. The resultant screams were particularly high-pitched, and he couldn't escape the conclusion that there were children in there.
Oh god.
"All right," he said, taking a deep breath. "Sides, come with me. You, Constable," he added, turning to the long-faced, crooked-nosed man, "keep watch here and don't open the door to anyone, do you understand? Not even if they threaten to shoot a hostage if you don't."
He was hurrying down the steps to the street by this point, shouting the remainder of his instructions over his shoulder. "Don't worry about sending anyone else. Sides and I will deal with this on our own."
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Sides give him an incredulous look, but there were no protests. Or perhaps he just hadn't heard them. They hurried into the night, making for the high-pitched screams, which seemed like the most logical place to start. And, in spite of the fury, Sam was despairingly pleased to be doing something at last – even if it was exactly what Jack wanted him to do.
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