The Comeback of the King Read online

  “Super needs to talk to the guy in number eight.” It wasn’t an everyday request, but it was a perfectly reasonable one, and the desk officer didn’t see anything to arouse his suspicions.

  “I’ll open it up, ma’am.”

  The cell corridor was lined with blank doors. They walked as a small little group to the end, and Amanda and Wallace waited while the officer checked the occupant through the spyhole, then fumbled with his keys. He pushed the door open and stood aside so the others could go in.

  The occupant of the cell was getting to his feet in anticipation of the unexpected visit and Amanda paid him no attention. He looked like, and probably was, some dosser brought in for being unruly. Wallace had stepped forward into the cell, and before he could register that this obviously wasn’t any kind of special category prisoner and come to a halt, Amanda gave him a shove that sent him staggering forward with a shout of surprise into the arms of the occupant. She used the reaction of pushing him to spin herself round and jab the other officer in the stomach, and as he gasped and bent over with the breath whooshing out of him, she knocked the keys out of his hand and grabbed his shoulders, sending him into the cell after his superintendent in a smooth Judo throw. Wallace and the prisoner were just extricating themselves when the officer flew into them and knocked them into a three-way tangle. Amanda pulled the door to, swiped the keys up from the floor and turned the lock, as outraged fists smashed against it from the other side.

  “Inspector Stewart!” Wallace’s furious eyes appeared at the spyhole. “Open this door at once!”

  “I think we’re both aware that’s not going to happen, sir,” she said, with as much respect as she could, because even though he wasn’t the King he was, or had been, her superior.

  The Hunter, too, was respectful: as though she had brought down some mighty stag, it was a moment for reverence and respect of a defeated enemy, not vulgar triumph.

  She knew she had only bought herself minutes – the station wasn’t that empty; someone would come soon – but it was long enough to get away and she didn’t expect to be returning. The hunt for Ted Gorse had been compromised the moment Wallace walked into the room and if she hadn’t acted as she had then it would be over for good. This way it could at least continue by other means, even if that meant the end of her career at the same time. The King commanded.

  Amanda flipped the spyhole shut and set off quickly down the corridor, out of the station, to her belated rendezvous with her master.

  *

  Traffic was backing up down Wilton Road as the blockage in the town centre a mile away sent shockwaves back down the flow of vehicles. The urgency of the car’s siren and lights was at odds with its sedate 20 or 30mph crawl, though it still lurched from side to side as Amanda slalomed between vehicles all helpfully trying to get out of the way in different directions. One hand was on the wheel and the other held her phone.

  “Come on, come on–”

  The King wasn’t answering. Either he had put his phone down somewhere or he wasn’t hearing it or he just hadn’t registered what the strange noise was coming out of his pocket.

  For once, the Hunter was a calming influence. To him this was like picking his way through dense forest, where every possible trail was blocked with creeper or intertwined bushes. You picked your way as best you could, you pressed on, and you arrived much more quickly than if you had tried to blunder through in a hurry.

  Amanda dropped the phone onto the passenger seat so that she could concentrate on driving with two hands.

  The car picked up speed as it burst out of the end of Wilton Road and swung round the St Paul’s roundabout. It dived under the railway bridge and into Fisherton Street, a route that should take it straight to the market place at the centre of town. The lane of traffic into town was solid and blocked: some drivers were still optimistically waiting in their cars and some late-coming royal subjects were simply abandoning their vehicles and heading into town on foot. She swerved over into the slightly emptier out-of-town lane, facing down the oncoming traffic, though this wasn’t much better as traffic ahead of her gave up waiting and used the emptier lane to turn around in. When they saw or heard the police car they would try to get out of the way: they moved further forward so she could squeeze between them and the traffic on the left, or they tried to reverse back into the gap they had just left, which was already being filled up by the car behind them, or in some cases as far as she could tell they just panicked. At the same time those cars that had successfully turned round up ahead were trying to squeeze by. It was not, as her mum would have put it, conducive to happiness.

  Even the Hunter began to stir again into impatience. In his day, at least the forest hadn’t actively closed up in front of him.

  Meanwhile the radio crackled with tense, taut voices. There was no shouting, no screaming, nothing Hollywood would call a proper conflict, but in their sheer calm professionalism they told of a mighty battle raging at the heart of the city.

  “Regroup in Castle Street; repeat, regroup in Castle Street–”

  “Ambulances unable to get through–”

  “Backup required in Endless Street–”

  Damn it, she needed to be there! Maybe the King had just given up on the Ted hunt. That didn’t matter anymore. Now she just wanted to obey his call, to be in the market place regardless, for whatever it was he had planned there.

  And what was that? She drummed her fingers on the wheel, lost for just a moment in thought. The King had to know he was outnumbered. He couldn’t hold out against the entire country. It was simple mathematics. For the moment it sounded like he was winning but it couldn’t last. By now he was surely on borrowed time, as the rest of the country finally woke up to what was happening in Salisbury. Police reinforcements from all around Wiltshire, and beyond – the army, even, eventually – would be pouring in until he was crushed by their sheer weight. So, whatever it was he had in mind, he had to do it quick before he was …

  “Shit!”

  She didn’t see it coming. There was a van in the way, parked, on the on-coming side of the road. Just before that a large people carrier was turning round in the street, though it had stopped to let her pass. Amanda steered into the diagonal gap between the two vehicles from one direction and a Jaguar hurtled into it from the other. She swerved, it swerved, she swerved back. For a vital half second, until she screamed at him to go away, her mind clouded with confused Hunter thoughts – he wasn’t used to having to react at this speed. For a moment the Jaguar was heading towards the in-bound column of traffic. In desperation the driver put the wheel over and the nose of the Jaguar ploughed into the side of the parked van. Amanda jammed on the brakes and turned hard left. The two cars slammed into each other, driver’s side to driver’s side, and came to a halt.

  “Moron!”

  The Jag’s head-on collision had fired off its airbags and the collapsed white fabric was draped over the dazed driver. He weakly waved a hand to dispel the cloud of lubricant powder that filled the car cabin. It looked like there was a passenger in the back, too, maybe a child.

  Amanda’s door was jammed against the other car so she swivelled round and kicked her way out of her own car’s passenger door.

  To the King! To the King!

  I’m going, I’m going …

  She would make the rest of her way on foot, but she was still a police officer and first she would do what she could for the people in the other car, even though they obviously weren’t royal subjects because they had been heading away from the town centre. There was no point calling for an ambulance, they would all be tied up.

  The damage to her car didn’t look bad – just a dented side. The Jag with its crumpled nose and frosted windscreen was another matter. She hurried round to its passenger side and pulled the door open. Her eyes were on the figure in the back seat: yes, definitely a child, a small girl with a blank, glassy look on her face. Shock, maybe? She turned her attention to the older man in the driver’s seat.

/>   “Sir, are you–” Their eyes met with a shock of recognition. “Mr Jackson?”

  His eyes narrowed with the attempt to drag a name for the familiar face out of his jarred memory, but she didn’t give him time. Inside her the Hunter gave a howl of vented fury: all the carefully constrained frustration bursting out in a second.

  The entire wasted hunt for Ted Gorse came down to this man. If he had just hung onto Ted last night then everything that had happened since would have been so much easier.

  “Where is he?” In one swift movement she released his seatbelt and hauled him from the car. His slumped weight carried them both down to the ground, and she crouched beside him with his lapels in her hands. “Where is he?”

  He stared up at her, two aghast eyes in a pale white face.

  “What–”

  She shook him.

  “Don’t give me that! Ted Gorse! The boy you so conveniently lost just before I came to see you last night! You know where he is! You must!”

  He struggled feebly to get up but she pinned him down hard. This was her last chance to obey both the King’s commands: come to him in the market place, and also to bring him the boy. She would not let it pass.

  The driver of the people carrier was hovering nervously in the background.

  “Look, um, officer, should you be, um–?”

  “Police business, sir,” she told him curtly. Then to Jackson: “One last chance. Ted Gorse! Where?”

  “He knows where Ted Gorse is?”

  A middle-aged man and woman, heading into town on foot, hand in hand, had paused to observe the scene. Amanda glanced up: royal subjects, both of them.

  “He should.”

  “No, he doesn’t.” Jackson had recovered as much of his dignity as is possible for someone pinned down on the surface of a road. His eyes met Amanda’s steadily. “Inspector Stewart, isn’t it?”

  “Mr Jackson,” she acknowledged through her teeth. “Isn’t this a happy reunion?”

  The royal subject on the pavement was explaining to others: “he knows where Ted Gorse is–” and now a small crowd was gathering around with Ted the first thing on their minds. The King had never formally cancelled that order and it still held equal weight with his other commands. But Jackson was speaking.

  “I learnt this morning that Ted spent the night in my shop. Where he is now, I’ve no idea. He left me a note but he didn’t say where he was going.”

  She straightened up slowly while Jackson slowly picked himself up.

  “You’ll have no objection to me searching your car?”

  He actually seemed amused, giving a shaky smile and waving a weak hand at the wreck.

  “Go ahead.”

  “He knows where Ted Gorse is!”

  “Get it out of him!”

  A mini-mob was brewing. There weren’t many of them – the crowd was small enough to be held back by the sight of her uniform, large enough to do damage to Jackson if Amanda let them. And why shouldn’t she? She thought suddenly. Why shouldn’t she? He had conspired to keep Ted out of her hands. What did she owe him?

  Jackson glanced quickly at the brewing mob, then at Amanda, obviously expecting her to do something about it. His eyes widened slightly when he saw she didn’t particularly intend to do anything.

  “Inspector, for God’s sake! I don’t know what kind of hold this King has on you but you can’t let a riot break out here too.”

  It still took another second for Amanda to make her decision. She was still a police officer. Partly against her better judgement she stepped forward to face the mob, feet apart, hands tucked into her belt.

  “Go to the market place! By order of the King! Go to the market place!”

  But the Ted command had taken hold of the mob and the critical mass of the crowd had had reached the point where it outweighed the orders of a single officer. They surged forward and around her.

  Three things happened all at once.

  A flash of horror on Jackson’s face as he realised he wasn’t going to make it back to the safety of the car in time …

  An urgent, unexpected pulse of alarm from the Hunter, as it suddenly sensed danger from a completely unexpected direction, making Amanda look sharply at Jackson’s car …

  And light blazed from inside the Jaguar. The car’s roof split open with a noise like a giant tin can being torn open, and a ball of light rose up into the air. Blinding colour seared its way across Amanda’s retinas with a black dot in the middle that was the negative image of the small figure at the heart of the cold fireball.

  A shockwave blew from the glowing figure. Amanda felt it pass through her and strike the Hunter like a flood tearing at a building. At first it just broke against the obstacle, but it kept coming and coming and the Hunter could do nothing against it. He screamed his anger in her mind but the light that battered against him tore him away, reducing him from a solid entity to a shadow, and then suddenly even that was gone and for the first time in ages she was herself again. The King? Who was he? Ted Gorse? Who cared! And …

  Oh, dear God! And, everything else. The manhunt. She had locked the Superintendent up in the cells! She had assaulted a fellow officer! And a member of the public! Oh sweet dear Lord God Christ Almighty, just how much trouble was she in?

  The light cleared; dark spots at the back of her eyes slowly faded into the grey, moist daylight of Salisbury on a December afternoon. Amanda was kneeling on the ground and all around her people were picking themselves up; all except for the little girl from the back of the Jaguar, who now stood in front of her. She had blonde-brown hair and a pink, fluffy coat and was blinking a little, as if absently surprised by something that wasn’t very important.

  “Who the hell are you?” Amanda gasped.

  The little girl looked disdainful.

  “I’m Sarah Elizabeth Gorse and I live at 34 Henderson Way, East Harnham, Salisbury and my Dad says grown-ups shouldn’t swear in front of children.”

  Amanda cocked her head and fought back a harsh laugh. Oh God: Gorse? And 34 Henderson Way sounded familiar too. In fact, now she remembered two large eyes looking down at her over the banisters.

  “Well, Sarah Elizabeth Gorse, I certainly wouldn’t want to get on the wrong side of your Dad.”

  “He’s only my stepdad, really.” Sarah leaned a little closer, confidentially. “Anyway, he swears sometimes and my brother swears a lot more than that.”

  “And your brother is Ted Gorse. Of course.”

  “I know all the rude words.”

  “Do you, now?”

  “And anyway, I do go to school.”

  “And I bet it’s a big, grown-up school too?” Amanda asked recklessly. The little girl withered her with a look of contempt.

  “No, it’s just an ordinary primary school. I’ll be eleven in February.” The girl beamed. “Hello, Malcolm! I’ve got a message for you.”

  Malcolm Jackson was gingerly fingering the two halves of his car roof that gaped open like a giant man trap. His mouth was open, his eyes were unfocused and Amanda thought she might have heard a faint whimper. He tore his stricken gaze from the car.

  “For me?”

  Sarah’s voice didn’t change at all – it was still the voice of a little girl – but suddenly the words she spoke told of age and maturity. She didn’t even stumble in her recitation, like a child would when reading an adult’s speech.

  “This was not the purpose of the guardians. I was able to manifest only when this vessel fell into danger. There is a power abroad in the world different to that which I am equipped to handle. It was woken by a remaining fragment of the Knowledge; you must find that fragment to remove it.”

  For a moment no one spoke. Jackson was gazing at Sarah with his head slightly tilted, absorbing what she had said.

  “Well, that explains everything,” Amanda commented, but Jackson was nodding.

  “Anything else?”

  “Nuh-uh.”

  “Do you remember the guardians, Sarah?”

&n
bsp; She shook her head. “Ted told me about them but I don’t remember. He said you’re one too.”

  “I am. Or was. You’re what you could call a fully functioning model.”

  Amanda looked from one to the other.

  “What and what?”

  Jackson sighed.

  “Put simply, Inspector, this King or whatever he is was woken up by an ancient magic called the Knowledge, and there is a fragment of that Knowledge in the world now, and we have to find it to stop the King.”

  Amanda had no idea how, but it made sense. It had felt the most natural thing in the world to be under the King’s command, until you weren’t and then you realised just what he had done to you. Now, talk of ancient magics and powers and Knowledges made perfect sense.

  “And this remaining fragment,” Amanda asked, “is where, exactly?”

  Chapter 16

  “Just what is wrong with you?”

  The young man at the back of the bus was only a couple of years older than Ted and his angry, guttural voice could be heard all the way down. The girl was subdued, mouse-like, sobbing quietly.

  Ted hadn’t gone to the bus station – too crowded, too much risk of being seen by one of the King’s royal subjects. He had walked south until he felt it was safe enough to linger at a bus stop, and these two had been waiting there. None of them had said anything to each other but even so Ted had felt a silence between them like a brewing thunderstorm. So he had kept his head down and not got too close.

  Ted was familiar with the type of boy and he enjoyed quietly despising them. His mum said their mums had never spanked them enough. Any kind of give and take was beyond their tiny minds so to get their way they had to resort to shouting and bullying.

  The girl barely dared to lift her head. In her faint whisper Ted was sure he heard something about ‘the King …’

  “Will you shut up about this King? I’ve had enough of this King!”

  With that, Ted could sympathise – a little. He hunched his shoulders and looked away, like the rest of the bus’s handful of Sunday passengers. The boyfriend was loud and offensive but their relationship wasn’t Ted’s problem.