Excerpt: Carabas

Abraham Miller died on the same night the police station at Picadilly Circus burned to the ground.

It was a pleasantly thrilling spectacle. People drifted out of the shops and pubs to watch from the pavements as flames consumed all three stories of the shabby brick building. The thick, dark fumes pouring out of the windows and holes in the collapsed roof smelled strongly of gas and burning linoleum. Several bicycles disappeared as the front façade gave way, pulling the rest of the station down with it.

The fat bobby who was supposed to be on duty had been down at the bar. He stumbled back to investigate the cause of the commotion and found himself fuzzily alarmed at the proceedings—alarmed enough even to squish himself into the red phone booth in front of the Prêt à Manger and try to remember how to call the fire brigade. Any hope of salvaging anything was gone by the time the volunteer department from Leicester Square showed up.

The smoke lingered a long time after everyone had gone back inside to finish their drinks.

Against the coal black of the industrial smoke streams and the violet haze of evening, the orange-grey hue of the foggy column was unmistakable. Jamie Miller, seeing it from his bedroom window in the Miller home a mile and a half away, announced, “Something is accidentally on fire.”