‘He’s gone,’ she said, her voice sounding unexpectedly normal. ‘He was here. He’s left the museum. I’d know if he was still around.’

‘That leaves two questions,’ said Blue. ‘One – if he’s gone, where’s he gone? And two – just how the hell d’you know?’

Chapter 90

90

Rain was starting to fall on London. It spattered on to moss-covered roofs. It blew in through broken windows and splashed on the walls. It flattened the grass in overgrown gardens and flowed down the streets past blocked drains, creating rivers of rubbish. North, south, east and west, the huge cloud dropped its load.

To the south it fell on the blackened ruins of south London, destroyed in a huge fire. And it fell on Ed and Kyle, who were crossing Lambeth Bridge, heading back to St Paul’s to look for Sam. To the east it fell on St Paul’s and the City of London, where The Kid was trapped in a dark cellar with the Green Man, trying to stay alive, and where Sam was going crazy in the cathedral – desperate to know what had happened to his friend, desperate to get away from Mad Matt and his followers, desperate to find his sister Ella …

To the north it fell on the houses and streets of Kilburn where Shadowman was watching a group of kids he hardly knew get massacred as they blindly drove their cars into the centre of St George’s army.

Paul was dimly aware of all this. Even though he could make no sense of it. It was as if his head had become a radio set and was receiving transmissions from all around the city. Voices murmuring, shouting, calling to him. Boney-M in there among them, screeching. And Paul realized that the bird thing had never been real. It had been created by his own brain, trying to make sense of the voices in his head.

They were all around him now, a flock of boneys, circling him like vultures … singing to him … some voices much stronger than others … Like the deep, deep song of the whales in the museum, travelling miles under the heavy water. A big voice in the north, roaring in battle. Another one in the east, cleverer, whispering, filled with the sound of the forest, the jungle, the big green. Clever, but still crazy. One calling to another and another, strung out around the city. Paul wanted to shut them out, but he could do nothing.

He was moving very slowly, from hiding place to hiding place, crawling through the rain-washed streets, half blind from pain, his head banging so hard it must surely split wide apart. It felt like there was a writhing mass of worms eating at his brain; he would claw them out if he had the strength.