The Severed Streets

by Paul Cornell

  ‘Okay. Great.’

  Still taking care to look unsure about this guy, Sefton got to his feet again. He moved to the door like a wary beast on the edge of being tamed by Tarzan. He turned back and gave the man a long, significant look. Then he inclined his head to him. You’re cool, my white brother. I will think hard about what you’ve said here today.

  As soon as Sefton turned the corner beside the cafe he broke into his everyday stride, dropping the undercover from his shoulders with great relief. He hit the button on his mobile to call Quill. ‘Jimmy,’ he said, ‘have I got juice for you!’

  * * *

  Quill listened to the description of the juice. He found it good. He took pleasure in the way his team all looked so engrossed as they stood around the main table in the Portakabin, gazing down at the Google map of London on Ross’ phone. ‘There’s only one pub name with “goat” in it within five miles of that shop,’ she said. ‘The Goat and Compasses, on Manette Street.’

  Quill looked it up on his own phone. ‘Can’t book it for the first Thursday,’ he said, ‘or any other Thursday. Private function. And it is indeed now owned by Keel Promotions PLC.’

  ‘The Keel brothers,’ said Ross, ‘being Barry and Terry, both with form for burglary and attempted robbery, both single, both with addresses in Shoreditch. The company office for the Quicksilver Dawn chain of stores is the shop that Kev visited.’

  ‘Interesting name, goat,’ said Sefton, ‘a bit Denis Wheatley, and compasses, a bit Masonic.’

  ‘But,’ added Costain, hitting buttons on his phone, ‘it says here that the name’s a corruption of “God encompasseth us”. Wow. This is so the right place that it’s even got a cover story.’

  ‘We should get it checked out,’ said Quill. ‘With the aim of learning anything about the murders, and, incidentally, anything about the Sight.’

  ‘I’ll take a tube of the silver goo along,’ said Sefton. ‘In case there’s someone I can show it to. Maybe indicate that I want to trade it.’

  ‘We should also listen out for any mention of a thing or a person that can walk through walls and skip off like Peter Pan,’ added Ross.

  ‘If the Ripper turns out to be Peter Pan,’ said Quill, ‘I will have had the last of my illusions shattered.’ He looked round the group for more input, and found none. ‘Thus endeth the list of what we’ll be listening out for.’

  ‘We?’ said Sefton.

  Quill had thought hard about this. He had approached Lofthouse for authorization under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act and she’d got it for him, but she’d raised an eyebrow at what he’d told her he was planning to do. ‘We all go,’ he said. ‘We may only get one chance to hear something important before this community is on to us. It seems to be all about who’s in the know and who’s not, and like some of the communities Kev and Tony have gone undercover in, it has its own forms of speech. Some of us may bounce down the steps and some may get invited into the back room for a hand of supernatural whist. Our two undercover officers might find themselves being bounced, given the racially challenged aspects of what we’ve heard. I’m also thinking that this could be the Losley house all over again. What we discovered there, and in Berkeley Square, was that we handle the really terrifying shit better as a team.’

  ‘But you and I aren’t undercovers,’ said Ross. She had developed a serious frown.

  ‘And you’re not a police officer, which I wouldn’t normally mention, except to say that I am absolutely not asking you to go undercover. It’s a public space, the two of us will stay entirely within it. We just show up, off duty. We don’t have an angle; we just watch and chat, and ask no questions. We do not use assumed names, but we don’t volunteer our real names either. We thus stay outside the definition of a covert human intelligence source.’

  She considered for a moment. ‘Okay,’ she said, finally.

  Costain was looking worried too. ‘From what we heard at the New Age fair, police officers are loathed and feared by this community—’

  ‘If things get anywhere near serious, I’ll walk out of there to the car I’ll leave round the corner, and that’ll be the signal for Ross to follow. Same the other way round. You two specialists, on the other hand, will be using constructed identities, and will be free to explore beyond the public areas, should you deem it safe to do so.’

  ‘What if someone from the New Age fair is there?’ asked Sefton. ‘Me and Costain showed our warrant cards there.’

  ‘You haven’t seen anyone familiar in your investigations so far. If we do, we bug out immediately.’

  ‘What if they can tell who we are?’ said Costain. ‘At the fair, Madame Osiris had some sort of supernatural tripwire set up, to detect coppers.’

  Sefton suddenly grinned. ‘I’ve been thinking about that,’ he said. ‘You remember when Losley scanned our bar codes and suddenly knew about my batting for the other team?’

  ‘I’m so glad we all speak metaphor,’ said Quill.

  ‘She used gestures to do almost everything – apart from that destructive shout of hers – and it’d be hard to have everyone shouting in a social situation, so I think we have to watch out for hand movements.’

  ‘It was when I said “Mora Losley” that Madame Osiris knew I was associated with the police,’ said Ross. ‘I felt that happen, like … a sort of pressure wave in the air. She kept her hands under the table much of the time, so she might have done something while I was there, or she could have made a gesture beforehand that set that up in advance.’

  ‘So, we need a way to stop people checking out who we are and discovering that we’re coppers,’ said Sefton, as if all the above had been an interruption to his grand announcement. ‘Just as well I’ve been working on something for that very situation. This would, in fact, be only my second venture, after the vanes, into doing anything useful with this London shit.’ He went to his holdall and brought out a file, out of which he took one of the browned and ancient documents from the Docklands ruins. These were manuscripts he’d found that night, and Quill recalled that Sefton had had to negotiate with Ross, once she’d begun her indexing process, to keep them for his own study after she’d given them a once-over. ‘Since this was left there after years of the site being looted, I’d guess what’s written here is kid’s stuff, second nature to anyone starting out on the road of being Privileged, but of course it’s new to us. I can’t find anything about how actually to read a person—’

  ‘Because that would be of enormous use in our job,’ said Quill. ‘And because we have the luck of coppers.’

  ‘—but I have here what the document calls a “blanket”. A way to hide one’s identity from prying gestures.’

  ‘Blanket, as in hide under one?’ asked Quill.

  ‘From some of the other language used, I think it’s a corruption of “blank eek”, “eek” being Palare, fairground language, for “face”.’

  ‘But if we use this “blanket”, won’t everyone get suspicious that we’re the ones hiding our true selves?’

  ‘If I’ve understood this … Jacobean English, I think it is … right, then keeping shtum about yourself when scanned is only proper, what the Privileged automatically do, a sign of belonging in itself. Assuming nothing’s changed since the seventeenth century.’

  ‘Given what we’ve seen of this lot,’ said Ross, ‘I think that’s a safe assumption.’

  ‘And labelled as such,’ said Costain.

  Quill noticed the glare she flung him about that.

  ‘Of course,’ said Sefton, ‘someone could always bring a bigger gun to the party, use something to break through the blanket.’

  ‘In which case,’ said Quill, ‘we revert to Plan B and run like fuck.’

  Sefton read over the parchment once again, then turned to Quill. ‘Okay,’ he said. ‘I think the only way to simulate being read is if I yell in your face. When I do, attempt the following…’

  That was how they spent the afternoon.

  * * *


  At home that night, Ross found herself stopping in her researches, considering sleep, but also fearing the dreams that would come. Maybe they were guilty dreams, her searching her conscience. She went to make herself a cup of tea, then returned to her desk, staring out into the familiar orange light of the suburban night. She was eagerly anticipating the next day. Sefton had, without knowing it, moved her closer to her own, private, goal. Getting into the occult underworld of London could make all the difference. She’d had to appear to be against Quill’s proposal at first, though, because if she’d grabbed at it, he might have known something was up.

  Would he? No. That was her being paranoid about someone whose defences, as far as she was concerned, were completely absent. Damn it. Quill was definitely not trying to pry into her secrets in the way she was worried Costain might be. He was innocent of the idea that she might keep any such secrets from him.

  She was going to go with her colleagues into a situation that was potentially as dangerous as Berkeley Square had been, and she was not going to be entirely on their side.

  * * *

  Costain volunteered to be the first of them to enter the pub, as was only right for his rank and experience. On Wednesday he walked past the Goat and Compasses, which looked to be a perfectly ordinary city-centre pub: on the classy side, hanging baskets outside, not averse to the odd tourist, colourful chalkboard outside advertising lunch.

  On the Thursday night, the first of the month, at around seven, he entered the pub in character, in a suit that wasn’t too flashy, as if he’d just come from work, but with the little flourishes of a tie pin and a pair of excellent shoes. It felt good to be back undercover. The character he’d decided to play was well behaved, so as not to risk his soul, and because that fitted the operational requirements, but it was an evening out of his own skin, a breathing space. There had been some debate about whether or not he should wear something symbolic, but he had ruled that out. ‘This is a newbie,’ he had said, ‘who’s trying very hard to not make a fuss, to play by the rules. Maybe he’s come for the first time because he’s heard this change is happening, whatever that’s about, and feels for the first time that a dusky gentleman might be welcome. We don’t know enough yet about what all these occult symbols mean for him – for me – to wear one. This bloke I’m playing knows enough not to rock the boat. He’ll wear a symbol when he’s seen what’s what.’

  The pub looked just as normal inside. Young blokes, a few suits, an old bloke alone with the newspaper, everyday-looking staff, some Eastern Europeans and some Aussies. None of the Hogwarts crowd, and none of that rough white vibe that said he wasn’t welcome, either. He ordered a Diet Coke and carefully looked around, lost, wondering where the do was. A chalk sign by a stairwell at the back said ‘private party’ with a big, coloured-in arrow pointing downstairs. Did this place prefer to keep its monthly clientele out of sight of the regular punters? He considered asking whether he could go downstairs, but, no, newbie is worried about being told he’s not allowed. He headed down the stairs. Nobody stopped him.

  As he took his first step downwards, he noticed that, for the first time since he’d entered the pub, he could feel the gravity of the Sight. There was lots of important stuff down here, but it was a bit … muffled from the pub above. As if where he was going had the equivalent of a lead lining. At the bottom of the stairs, opposite the toilets, a pair of double doors led into a downstairs bar area. Careful not to walk in as if he owned the place, he pushed through them.

  He was early. Only a couple of people around, and they were both looking at him. Newbie mistake to arrive so early. Exactly. There was a bouncer in the corner, which was weird – inside, and in a pub like this, and this early in the evening. But the bouncer was weird too: classically shaped as such, with a jutting chin and a bow tie even, but a bit of a caricature, like a comedian playing a bouncer. None of the door staff subculture vibe that you saw with the real thing, which usually shouted either extreme sports enthusiast or former gang member. Costain drained his drink as he looked at the punters. One of them was a middle-aged man in a tweed suit and waistcoat, bearded, a pint of dark ale in front of him. He was sitting in the far corner beside a stairwell that led down, in exactly the same place as the one in the room above. He looked as if he was guarding it. He was reading a volume bound in leather. He made eye contact with Costain, which seemed significant for a moment, a slight pause – oh my goodness a person of colour – then back to his book. The other punter was in his twenties and looked like something out of an advert: stripy suit; bright yellow brogues; waistcoat with a fob watch dangling from it, and huge, neatly tended handlebar moustache, like Dali crossed with Bertie Wooster. He plucked his monocle from his eye and gave Costain a bow of greeting. He was a rich kid, a modern dandy. But still – so far, so friendly. The bar itself looked to be the kind you might find downstairs in any modern pub. Where was that sensation of weight coming from? Still under his feet. Spread out evenly, as he walked to the bar. Perhaps the Keel brothers, having bought the place, had put some of their more meaningful shop merchandise somewhere. Behind the bar a young woman in the same uniform as the one upstairs, but with a certain attitude about her, had appeared. She had wide open holes in her earlobes, goth decoration that might not be allowed in a mainstream bar.

  ‘You can get your drinks here,’ she said, ‘you don’t have to keep going back upstairs.’

  ‘Okay,’ he said, ‘thanks.’ If she’d been all old-fashioned with her speech, he’d have matched it.

  He bought a vodka and Coke, and went to sit at a corner table, facing the door. A new-looking menu advertised cocktails. The Cemetery Jitters. The Last Rites. The Night Terror. He checked what the top-end champagne was. Blimey. Bollinger Blanc de Noirs Vieilles Vignes Françaises 1997, £400 a bottle. That was well at odds with what they’d encountered at that New Age fair. The poverty of the fortune-teller Ross had met there had been evident. The team had been working on the theory that the occult underworld, if it existed, was made by and for the disenfranchised. Maybe that wasn’t always the case. He flipped to the back of the menu. You could, it seemed, ‘order’ The Damned to come to your table and perform ‘Grimly Fiendish’ for ‘prices starting at £15,000’. Getting much pricier if they were away on tour or something, presumably.

  He took a glance at his phone, to make sure Quill hadn’t sent him a last-minute no-go message, then dropped it back into his pocket. No showing-off of modern devices. Of the four of them, only he and Sefton were even carrying their phones tonight, in case they went deep and needed a way to call for backup. He looked back to the young man at the bar, now chatting to the barmaid. So, okay, there was a lot of retro styling to him, but he was fundamentally a modern young man with some cash to spare, out on the town. Maybe the dude was on his way to a party, just a part-timer here. So how about the older one? Costain looked over to the corner. There was something of the unkempt about the man, the quality that they’d all glimpsed amongst the serious players at the New Age fair.

  Neither of them had attempted to ‘read’ him. Or if they had made some sort of gesture, he hadn’t felt or noticed it, and they now knew all about him. He hoped that his undercover experience meant they might read the role instead of the real bloke, but if they had they weren’t acting on it. He had no cause to raise the alarm.

  Costain took from his pocket the book that Sefton had given him, the small paperback edition of The Stratagem and Other Stories by Aleister Crowley, first published in 1929. It was something a newbie with possibilities might pick, both harmless and indicative. He held it so people could see it was old and crumbling. He started to read, glancing up every now and then. Over the next half-hour he noted a number of people entering, a few who seemed interesting. Soon his lot should start … yeah, there was Ross, entering with the look of a scared rabbit about her. Good acting. Or maybe she was just letting her usual poker face drop. Kind of disappointing, if so. She wore a colourful waistcoat, a big puffy shirt and tailored trousers, hal
fway between a waiter and a gunfighter, all a bit Nineties. Kind of lesbian. She’d put on some make-up, which looked so weird on her he couldn’t tell if he liked it or not. But she looked good. A natural, in an eccentric get-up like that. As if she was about to walk into a spotlight and start singing, but obviously also someone who didn’t quite know how to fit in here. So not playing a role, not doing anything she couldn’t handle. It suddenly occurred to him that, ironically, it meant that he was possibly seeing something like the real Ross here. Or a guess on her part at what the real Ross might be. He was careful to keep watching her sidelong, not look straight at her. When she turned away, he realized he wanted to see her from behind. He did, and felt awkward at having done so; he went back to his book. Those trousers suited her. Good bit of tailoring there. Well cut.

  He remembered how it had been when he’d last been undercover. Some undercovers had wives waiting for them at home, who they went back to at weekends, on the other side of the country. Costain, with what he’d started to recognize had actually been an excessive sense of self-preservation, had always thought that sounded risky. It hadn’t ever seemed an option for him. He’d never met anyone he was interested in while being himself. Or he’d never given himself the chance. What was ‘being himself’? There wasn’t anyone he’d ever properly opened up to. That had been how he was long before he’d become a copper. At school, he’d dance with girls, make out with them … Beverley Cooper … yeah … but when they started to want to go on dates, to hang around, he’d back off. They always took that as him being macho. But really … he had no idea what it really meant. He didn’t know why he was the way he was.

  In the Toshack gang, he’d received enough attention, but on nights out with the other gang soldiers he’d always acted boozy and boorish, distancing himself from women while appearing to be up for it. He’d got close to a couple of toms, actually, found that paying them let him carry on playing the part of the gang soldier while getting some … not sexual release, you could do that with a wank, he never understood blokes who went on about that … some emotion, some closeness. They’d laughed a lot in bed, Sam and Jo, whichever of them had been around; he’d always paid them well enough so they’d stay.