Broken Homes

apart.
    Come on Erik, I thought, if you’d wanted it to be a piston, why would you have put the bloody glass pimple at the top?
    Then I heard a crack from behind me as, finally, the Statdkrone exerted enough pressure to open the fissure I’d smashed in the top of the cylinder.
    ‘Surprise,’ I shouted, and the blast knocked me to my feet.
    And the Stadtkrone fell open in segments exactly like a practitioner opening his hand. Or more like a chocolate orange because, like every chocolate orange I’d ever opened, some of the bits stuck together.
    I don’t know what Stromberg had been expecting to see from his roof garden in Highgate. Something Lord of the Rings , I expect – streamers of light pouring upwards into a rapidly opening circle of clouds. Instead it was a barely visible shimmer, like a column of heat haze. But I felt it. A wave of cooking smells and tastes, grease and peppers, green curry and macaroni cheese, spirit gum, the feel of wet papier-mâché and children crying. People ironing, shaving, singing, dancing, grunting and fucking.
    ‘Here’s Bruno!’ I shouted. But the Faceless Man wasn’t listening to me. He was staring at the Statdkrone and, even with his mask on, surprise and anger were written along the length of his body. The roof lurched underfoot, dropped a centimetre, stopped, dropped again – Skygarden was not about to defy gravity for much longer.
    The Faceless Man turned, took three steps and threw himself over the railing.
    I ran after him and followed him over.
    What else could I do – it’s not like I could stay on the roof, was it?
    Besides, the Faceless Man didn’t strike me as the suicidal type. And if he had some plan to survive the fall, then I didn’t think he should be allowed to keep it to himself.
    Otherwise, I was going to have to think of something on the way down.
    I didn’t fall far before landing on his back. Then I threw my arms around his neck and hung on. He was definitely doing some sort of magic, a spell involving aer I thought, that caught hold of the air like a parachute. Or more like a para-wing, because we were gliding rather than falling.
    ‘You just keeping going, my son,’ I whispered in his ear. ‘Because I’ve got nothing to lose.’
    He must have carefully calculated it against his own weight, but with mine added he fell dangerously fast. I made sure that I was the one riding him down – thinking heavy thoughts. We must have been falling at the same speed as the tower, because I could hear rending and crashing of concrete behind us and see billowing, dense grey and brown clouds reaching out around us.
    We were roughly heading for the gap in the blocks where Heygate Street met Rodney Place. There, I presumed, he’d have a getaway vehicle standing by. But he wasn’t going to make it with yours truly on his back. And he couldn’t even squirm without breaking his concentration.
    Serves you right for being an arrogant dickhead – if it had been me, I’d have tripped the explosive from the viewing gallery in the Shard.
    I looked down and saw the big wide world rushing up to meet me fast. I really hoped it was going to be friendly.
    We came down in the garden just short of the far edge. He hit first and tried to roll, but I made a point of breaking his centre of gravity so that he went down hard. Unfortunately, so did I. Then the dust cloud rolled over us and we were fighting blind, only he was in a suit and I was wearing Doctor Martens. Before he could get up I got one good kick to his head, and down he went. I put him face down, and got hands behind his back in the approved fashion and cuffed him.
    ‘You’re nicked, you bastard,’ I said.
    I heard Lesley calling my name.
    ‘I’m over here,’ I shouted, but you couldn’t see more than half a metre because of the thick, rolling clouds of dust.
    I choked on it, so did he. I hauled him up until he was sitting upright. I didn’t want to risk positional asphyxiation.
    Lesley called again and I shouted back – the dust seemed to be settling.
    ‘I am genuinely impressed,’ he said.
    ‘I’m so pleased,’ I said.
    ‘I believe this is the moment of decision,’ said the Faceless Man.
    ‘I already made up my mind,’ I said and reached for his mask.
    ‘Sorry,’ said the Faceless Man. ‘But I wasn’t talking to you.’
    Lesley tasered me in the back of my neck.
    I know it was her, because she dropped the taser half a metre from where I was lying. It matched the serial number of the