through the shadows. The first part of his plan was now complete. It was time to start making arrangements for tomorrow, and the day after. By the end of the week, he felt sure, the whole of the City would be engulfed in flames.
3
PYROPHOBIA
The match sizzled, flared and settled to a soft yellow flame.
It was touched to the branches that had been hacked from the surrounding ash trees, and soon the inferno roared and leaped upwards, orange sparks pulsing into the starry black sky. Behind the spitting, crackling forest a man was caged within its wooded heart. He grew increasingly agitated as he failed to find an exit and was seared by the heat. His cries were lost in the growing thunder of consumed branches. As his clothes burned away, his skin blistered in the conflagration until he was nothing but a blackened carapace …
Janice Longbright sat up in bed with a sudden gasp.
It took a moment to remember where she was: at home in her dark apartment, alone. She checked the bedside clock; 4.22 a.m. From behind the insistent sound of rain came the mournful howl of an ambulance. There was no point in trying to get back to sleep now. There was nothing worse than lying awake in the dark. She slipped out of bed and went to the bathroom, mopping her forehead with a tissue.
The nightmares were becoming apocalyptic, unlike anything she had experienced before. She turned and checked her back in the mirror. The old Marilyn Monroe T-shirt she slept in was wet with sweat. Her features looked unnaturally pale.
Dear God
, she thought,
don’t tell me it’s the menopause. I need a holiday. Vitamin D deficiency. I should get some sun on my face. Fat chance of that happening.
She was broke again; nothing unusual there. This time the dream had been so real that she had to stop herself from checking for burns.
She went to the kitchen and made coffee, then added granary toast, eggs, bacon and – because the Heinz tin was already open – baked beans. She wanted to call Jack Renfield and hear his reassuring voice, but he was spending the night with his daughter and it seemed unfair to intrude upon them. Instead she went online, virtually the only time when she could guarantee a decent broadband speed, and looked up the meaning of her nightmare. The various dictionaries of dream symbolism told her that fire was a sign of destruction, risk, passion, desire, purification, enlightenment, anger and inner transformation, as vague and hopeless as any newspaper astrologer’s predictions.
Longbright pushed the keyboard away and headed back to make more coffee, deciding that it had not been a good idea to eat four pieces of cheese on toast while watching footage of the riots just before going to bed.
The detective sergeant was a woman of stoic practicalities, as proportioned and permanent as the grandest public building. She was rarely prone to doubts or misgivings. But on this occasion she phoned someone to get a second opinion.
If Maggie Armitage was surprised to receive a phone call at a little after five on a Monday morning, she didn’t sound so. ‘You’re up with the lark,’ she said cheerfully. ‘I’m watching a programme about ants. What’s going on?’
‘It’s going to sound really stupid,’ said Longbright, already starting to regret having made the call. ‘Nightmares. The third one in a row, always the same.’ She peered in her mirror, pulling out a knotted curl of bleached hair. ‘I know you know something about, well—’
‘You can say it,’ said Maggie. ‘Magic, even if it’s largely apotropaic and not the Harry Potter sort.’ Maggie Armitage billed herself as a white witch from the Coven of St James the Elder, Kentish Town, a Grand Order Grade Four. ‘I
am
qualified, you know. I’ve got a diploma and everything.’
‘Maggie, you know I can’t allow myself to believe in that stuff. You’re a bit mad, but you’re good at reading people.’ The two women had known each other for fifteen years, and Maggie
3
PYROPHOBIA
The match sizzled, flared and settled to a soft yellow flame.
It was touched to the branches that had been hacked from the surrounding ash trees, and soon the inferno roared and leaped upwards, orange sparks pulsing into the starry black sky. Behind the spitting, crackling forest a man was caged within its wooded heart. He grew increasingly agitated as he failed to find an exit and was seared by the heat. His cries were lost in the growing thunder of consumed branches. As his clothes burned away, his skin blistered in the conflagration until he was nothing but a blackened carapace …
Janice Longbright sat up in bed with a sudden gasp.
It took a moment to remember where she was: at home in her dark apartment, alone. She checked the bedside clock; 4.22 a.m. From behind the insistent sound of rain came the mournful howl of an ambulance. There was no point in trying to get back to sleep now. There was nothing worse than lying awake in the dark. She slipped out of bed and went to the bathroom, mopping her forehead with a tissue.
The nightmares were becoming apocalyptic, unlike anything she had experienced before. She turned and checked her back in the mirror. The old Marilyn Monroe T-shirt she slept in was wet with sweat. Her features looked unnaturally pale.
Dear God
, she thought,
don’t tell me it’s the menopause. I need a holiday. Vitamin D deficiency. I should get some sun on my face. Fat chance of that happening.
She was broke again; nothing unusual there. This time the dream had been so real that she had to stop herself from checking for burns.
She went to the kitchen and made coffee, then added granary toast, eggs, bacon and – because the Heinz tin was already open – baked beans. She wanted to call Jack Renfield and hear his reassuring voice, but he was spending the night with his daughter and it seemed unfair to intrude upon them. Instead she went online, virtually the only time when she could guarantee a decent broadband speed, and looked up the meaning of her nightmare. The various dictionaries of dream symbolism told her that fire was a sign of destruction, risk, passion, desire, purification, enlightenment, anger and inner transformation, as vague and hopeless as any newspaper astrologer’s predictions.
Longbright pushed the keyboard away and headed back to make more coffee, deciding that it had not been a good idea to eat four pieces of cheese on toast while watching footage of the riots just before going to bed.
The detective sergeant was a woman of stoic practicalities, as proportioned and permanent as the grandest public building. She was rarely prone to doubts or misgivings. But on this occasion she phoned someone to get a second opinion.
If Maggie Armitage was surprised to receive a phone call at a little after five on a Monday morning, she didn’t sound so. ‘You’re up with the lark,’ she said cheerfully. ‘I’m watching a programme about ants. What’s going on?’
‘It’s going to sound really stupid,’ said Longbright, already starting to regret having made the call. ‘Nightmares. The third one in a row, always the same.’ She peered in her mirror, pulling out a knotted curl of bleached hair. ‘I know you know something about, well—’
‘You can say it,’ said Maggie. ‘Magic, even if it’s largely apotropaic and not the Harry Potter sort.’ Maggie Armitage billed herself as a white witch from the Coven of St James the Elder, Kentish Town, a Grand Order Grade Four. ‘I
am
qualified, you know. I’ve got a diploma and everything.’
‘Maggie, you know I can’t allow myself to believe in that stuff. You’re a bit mad, but you’re good at reading people.’ The two women had known each other for fifteen years, and Maggie
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