53. Black Water
Sally glided from the office and took the stairs down. Nothing broke through to her. She barely felt her feet on the ground, like she was drifting along on a slack tide.
Back into the cold gray London air.
Long semi-trucks were driving into the parking lot now, disgorging figures in hi-vis jackets, marked with the logo for 'Thames River Removals'.
Sally stood by the gate and watched these blips of color spread out and head into the buildings.
Soon they came out again carrying office desks, chairs, monitors, server racks.
The figures flowed back and forth before her, like a time-lapse on fast forward. She thought of Heraclitus, raving in his dung pile. Soon these buildings would be demolished and new developments would go up. Residential blocks. A mall. No sign she'd ever been here at all.
She left the complex and turned right to the Thames.
The river's black waters stretched to either side, ferrying low concrete barges piled with scrap metal, pleasure yachts stacked with tourists, a fast blue taxi boat.
The far bank thronged with new, skeletal construction work, while off to the right stood the square Gothic bulk of Westminster Abbey, Big Ben itself and the Big Eye Ferris wheel, slowly revolving.
All done now.
This was disgrace.
McMaster had tried to soften the blow, but she knew the black mark next to her name would never clear. No more active cases with the FBI. Desk duty wherever she went. An emptiness yawned open like the bleakness of Dungeness.
She started north at a run.
She wasn't wearing the right clothes or boots, but it didn't matter. Past the Big Eye and the Houses of Parliament, past a busker crooning Peter Gabriel's 'Solsbury Hill', chased by a litany of failures.
The truth was, she'd brought this on herself.
Past the Tate Modern and St. Paul's, the Tower of London and Tower Bridge, running faster now, her legs burning with lactic acid, her chest tight, the miles passing by, until an hour or so later she sank to her knees in a broad, paved courtyard, panting heavily.
A carousel of golden horses turned before her, fairground music twinkling gaily.
Her heart rate began to slow. People milled through a row of food trucks nearby, buying American-style hot dogs and Korean Fried Chicken wraps.
A large wooden sailing ship loomed before her, seemingly embedded in a bubble of glass fixed into the paving slabs.
Children waved from the deck above. Masts and rigging overlapped in a loom-like lattice of ancient power.
McMaster's ultimatum ticked over in her mind.
There was only one possible answer, with so many careers resting on her decision.
Steadily, she felt the trails of the dead boy on Dungeness pulling away from her mind.
She couldn't help him anymore, and she would not survive another nine months of nothing.
She had to resign.
She stood.
From a food booth she bought a Korean chicken wrap and ate it rapidly, juices running down her fingers. It was so good she bought another. She bought a coffee from a truck called '15 grams' and circled the old ship.
The Cutty Sark. She'd run all the way to Greenwich, it seemed, seven or eight miles. Home of the prime meridian, zero degrees longitude, the place from which all the world's navigation flowed. She paid for a ticket and wandered the clipper's interior in a daze.
It was beautiful, held aloft on metal poles within a repurposed dry dock, the hull burnished in brass.
Once the fastest ship on the world's oceans.
She roamed the deck. Everything changed.
Nothing stayed the same. At the end she sat in the café beneath the hull, drinking coffee and eating a sweet slice of carrot cake decorated with bright purple petals.
Then she went home. Her legs had frozen up and she couldn't face the run, so she took a taxi.
It was getting dark as she hobbled up to her apartment overlooking the Thames.
She had a place on the fifth floor, twisted at an angle, so the water was just visible when she stepped out onto her tiny balcony.
When she closed the door behind her, there was only silence.
No lively bustle of a station. No creak and groan of an old building shifting. She dropped her keys on the counter and looked for a moment at her Lincolnshire murder board, filling half of one wall. Maps, photographs, victim IDs, a timeline. Everything she'd gathered, adding up to nothing.
Her jacket hit the back of a chair. Boots by the door. She moved through the space trying not to think, flicking on lights she didn't need. There was a takeaway bag from Sunday night's dinner still sitting in the fridge. She poured a pint of water and took both out onto the balcony.
Cold chicken noodles in black bean sauce. She ate and watched the city's red aviation lights pulse. Her phone buzzed in her pocket but she didn't look at it, just watching the river. Soon party boats plied their trade up and down the water, music thumping and lights twinkling.
She went back into the silent apartment, stripped the paramedic's borrowed gear and took a shower.
Her eyes stung as the last specks of PAVA flushed from her scalp and skin.
Then she dragged the bed from its hutch on the side wall to rest in front of the window, where she could see the river and the lights of the City.
She did this most nights. Every morning she dragged it back to the wall.
Now she laid down and gazed out at the beating heart of London. White office towers still lit at this hour. The city refusing to sleep. Out there, people were still working. Still moving.
These were sights the victims of Dungeness would never see. At last she closed her eyes and the darkness pulled her down.