“It will all be over after this,” Day said, as Ben stared at his clasped hands. “You are doing the right thing. You know it. There’s no choice.”
They walked him into the gardens, then the justiciars disappeared. Ben went forward alone, to the bench he’d sat on before, and seated himself. It was still a few minutes to four.
The crocuses pushed through the earth in front of him, many of the flowers now in full bloom. They brought back the memory of the other day—was it just yesterday? It felt longer. He’d sat here, waiting for Jonah…
…who they were going to arrest, and hobble, because Ben had told them where to find him.
Giving Jonah up was the right thing to do. He knew, absolutely, that it was the right thing to do. There was no question of that. He was a criminal.
Ben looked down the path. A trim figure came towards him, lifting a hand in greeting. Ben could see Jonah’s irrepressible pleasure in every quick stride, as he hurried towards his imprisonment, his betrayer.
Then he was on his feet, screaming. “Run, Jonah! They’re here for you! Run!”
His voice was cut off as something seized him by the throat and an invisible blow landed in his stomach. He doubled over, winded, but he’d got the words out and Jonah, after one frozen fraction of a second, turned and sprinted. Behind Ben, Janossi bellowed a curse and pounded by, and Saint erupted from the trees, through the air, moving astonishingly fast. Jonah was already out of sight, and Ben flopped back down onto the bench, breathing hard, shaking.
After a few moments, he became aware of someone standing over him, and looked up, although not very far, to see Stephen Day.
“I suppose that was my fault.” Day spoke in the calm, almost chatty tone he’d used to Janossi earlier, and it made the hairs rise on Ben’s neck. “I quite underestimated your determination to ruin your life for the sake of the most worthless individual of my acquaintance. I told you, more than once, that giving him up was the right thing to do. Was I insufficiently convincing?”
“No.” Ben stood. He towered over Day, but he didn’t delude himself that gave him any chance at all. He thought he could feel a tension in the air around him: perhaps just his imagination, but he was quite sure that the invisible bonds would close round him again if he tried to run.
He had no right to run. He’d aided the escape of a wanted man. Committed a crime. He looked down at Day and went on. “No, you were right. He should be arrested.”
“But you decided he wouldn’t be.”
“Yes.”
Day stuck his hands in the pockets of an expensive topcoat, incongruously worn over a shabby and battered jacket. “Fine. Your decision, Spenser, although this leaves you facing the music on his behalf for the second time, and by God, you will face it now. Lost him, have we?” He didn’t look round as Janossi panted up.
“Saint’s after him,” Janossi offered. “They’re both in the air.”
“Over Regent’s Park.” Day massaged the bridge of his nose. “Good. Marvellous. Do you think she’s likely to catch him?”
“Pastern had a good start.” Janossi cast an unkind look at Ben.
“My responsibility,” Day said. “Right, well. Saint will return in due course, with or without that flying nuisance. I suggest we bring Mr. Spenser back to the cells and decide what to do with him there.”
Ben did not want to go back to the red-brick building, to the strange people who worked there, or to another cell. “What’s your authority?” he demanded. “You police magicians. I’m not a magician. Have you any right to detain me?”
“Good question.” Day considered it, with a thoughtful air. “My authority… Well, for one, you’re a practitioner’s accomplice and I’m holding you as such. For another, by the terms of our agreement with the Met, I can hold unskilled criminals till they can be handed over. And for a third, if you argue with me now, I’ll drag you by the neck till your bones snap. Does that clarify things?”
Chapter Six
Ben spent a long time back in the little cell—and it was a cell, now, the door firmly locked, a chamber pot in the corner. He banged on the door a few times, at first experimentally, then trying to shake a rising fear that these odd, angry people might have forgotten his existence. Nobody came.
Some hours after he was put in there, the door was unlocked by Waterford, the pudgy youth with the broken nose. Ben felt the invisible force clamp around him as his gaoler entered, much harder than when Day had detained him. Waterford carried in a plate of stew and a jug of water, which he put on the table. He looked at Ben, said, “Bloody poof,” and deliberately let a long string of saliva drool into the jug.
It wasn’t the first time—the only question in the cells after Jonah’s first escape had been whether he saw them spit or not. That didn’t make it any easier to bear.
He drank the water anyway, because he was thirsty.