The floodlit cathedral tower commanded the fair. They had been up there, locked the bell tower, locked the door to the observation platform, and a couple of men were patrolling below. But he felt uneasy. Something niggled at the back of his mind and he was annoyed that he did not know what.

The square was heaving with people, the noise of rival music and machinery and generators most likely to muffle the sound of shots, and besides, shots were going off all the time as people queued at the rifle ranges. Maybe they should have closed those down for tonight?

He looked around him again. And up. And down. To this side. To that.

Tanya and Dan Lomax were on the Jinny horses, trying to hold hands across the gap between them as the merry-go-round picked up speed until it was a dazzling whirl of music and lights streaming through the night. She seemed to have been on the Jinny horses half her life, as a maid, as the Fair Queen, and now as a bride. The Jinny horses meant being happy and Tanya was happy. She tried to see Dan’s expression but they were going too fast. She wanted to shout, with laughter and excitement and pride and happiness.

“I have decided,” Sam Deerbon said, coming back to the spot beside the fortune-telling tent, where Cat had told him to meet them. He had been given the choice of his last ride. Hannah had already chosen the teacups and been sneered at. “The teacups are what babies go on—Felix could go on the teacups, I should think. You’re a scaredy-cat.”

“Right, what’s it to be, Sam, and don’t say the Sky-Dyve, you know you—”

“No. It’s in the square. Come on.”

They moved slowly through the crowd.

“Hold onto my hand, Hanny, don’t let it go.”

Sam shoved someone in the back.

If Chris were here he could have had one of them on his shoulders, Cat thought. Even Sam. Even now.

They shuffled forward, Judith in front, trying to weave in and out.

“There’s Uncle Simon! Uncle Simon!” Hannah yelled but she wouldn’t have been heard, and in any case, Simon was out of sight again, somewhere in the crowd.

“There!” Sam said.

TAKE A TRIP TO GHOUL TOWN ON THE GRAVE TRAIN.

“I’m not going on that, I’m not going anywhere near that.” Hannah pressed herself into Cat’s side.

“You’re too little anyway, you have to be as tall as that gate and you’re not. Can I?” His eyes shone.

“I’ll go with him,” Judith said quickly. “If you’re dead sure, Sam.”

“Dead, dead sure.” Sam laughed. “Good joke, Judith. Come on, quick, the queue’s moving.”

“Judith, if you c”

“It’s fine,” Judith said, as she was pulled away, “honestly. Why don’t you and Hannah go on the wobbly staircase into the hall of mirrors. Go on, I’ll treat you.”

“Thanks! Would you like to, Hanny?”

“Yeah!”

They separated. When Cat glanced back, Sam and Judith were at the ticket booth, ready to go.

*

Clive Rowley, Paul J and Paul C pushed their way through the ten-deep crowd surging towards the Sky-Dyve. No one moved for them.

“Like ambulances,” Paul C said, “people used to move aside for them but they don’t now.”

“Yes they do. Always. Where’ve you been?”

“He could shoot anyone here—have the gun in his pocket, straight into the back, no one would know.”

“Not that easy. Besides, he won’t do that.”

“How do you know?”

“Because,” Clive said as they reached the vans on the other side, “he’s a planner is our marksman, not an opportunist.”

“You’ve been reading too much profiling rubbish.”

“Why’s it rubbish?”

But the generator behind them started up again and Paul J’s reply was drowned out.

Simon Serrailler looked over his shoulder as he began to walk away from the fair. The high-profile police presence was working. CID were everywhere, standing in queues for fish and chips and rides on the dodgems, wandering about among the bobbing ducks and shove-halfpenny stalls, standing in pairs near the fortune-telling booths. Uniform were making a point of chatting to children and teenagers, joshing with the elderly, arresting a couple of pickpockets. AR were on the perimeter and on relief parked up in the vans. He had a good feeling. No gunman would take a chance here tonight.

He had tried to find his sister but the crowd was too thick. He’d catch up with them later but, for now, he was heading out of the melee, towards the back lane that led towards the Cathedral Close. In five minutes he intended to be drinking a whisky and reading the final chapter of the last Michael Dibdin Inspector Zen novel, which had more twists than the Jug Fair helter-skelter.

Sam Deerbon’s eyes gleamed full of life and excitement as their car shot through the plastic curtains and into the silvery half-dark of the ghost walk and at once a couple of skeletons rattled down from the roof, almost touched them and swooped back up again. The tannoy let out terrible screams and shrieks as they hurtled into pitch blackness. Judith felt Sam nudge very slightly nearer so that his leg was just touching hers. The car dropped down and a gravestone opened up just ahead. A plastic bat was slippery and cold like seaweed waving in their faces.

“OK?” she asked, but a ghoul emerged from the walls of the tunnel, its terrible amplified groaning louder than her question, louder than the shrieks and screams of the people in the cars in front and behind.

They slowed down and then went suddenly very fast again and the tunnel swerved sharply to the right. This time, Sam grabbed her hand, and in the car two back, Helen squeezed Phil’s, alarmed in spite of herself. She saw his face in the green phosphorescence, artificially pale, his teeth flashing as he roared with laughter.

There was a crescendo of noise as they plunged hard down into the darkness, and then, suddenly, down again, faster and faster until the car was rocking to and fro violently and the rails seemed to be rearing up in their faces. Helen screamed. The green lights were out and the place was both black and a hell of noise as metal and timber buckled and canvas ripped and the entire ride began to crumple, the top level crashing down through into the next and the bottom of the whole edifice collapsing under the weight and pitching forward onto the crowd below.

Simon Serrailler heard the noise and for a split second thought not one shot but a barrage of gunfire was resounding through the square. Then he turned and saw the ghost train toppling forward and crumpling like a pack of cards. Heard the unbelievable noise of tearing metal and wood and the exploding generator and the screams that rose and rose in terror, mingling with the lights and the smoke and rising, rising up to the great cathedral tower and so on up and up into the darkness.

“Sam!” Cat screamed. “Oh God, no, no. SAAAAM.”

She tried to push forward but a wall of people was pushing her back and she almost fell over Hannah and they were forced to go the way they were going, to get out of the way of the falling debris. “My son’s in there, I have to get to my son. Oh God, please let me get back. Sam c” Someone was grabbing her arm and pulling her side ways and then she was pushed against the merry-go-round and a girl in a bright pink quilted jacket was pressed up to her so that the quilting was in her face, she could smell the shiny oily fabric. The fairground noise was dying down. The music was stopping, as the loudspeakers were switched off one by one, and then the generators began to fade, and after a while the only sounds were of the still-cracking, crushed ghost-train building and of human voices, shouting, calling, barking orders from somewhere behind. And screaming. Screaming.

Serrailler, pushing through the crowd and shouting “POLICE’, reached the fallen ride at the same time as a dozen other officers and St John Ambulance paramedics. Sirens were now sounding in the distance.

The smell of burning and dust and oil was acrid, the whole structure had toppled in on itself so that it was impossible to tell what had come down, what had been beneath. Fairground workers were already hauling at great beams and crippled girders and dragging them away, while uniform took over crowd control and also began to rummage in the broken mountain for trapped bodies.