The Severed Streets

by Paul Cornell

  The people who were doing the talking here, all in all, seemed to need to gossip about everything surrounding the Ripper murders but appeared not to have any idea how or why they were being committed. They were as scared and puzzled as any other slice of the general public. Like the general public, they were in general much more concerned about their own patch. But there were also those here who weren’t talking. Sefton saw a couple of sighing expressions, a couple of looks that suggested that what might be the Sighted members of this community had seen what Quill’s team had seen when they’d watched the news on television. Those were the ones who didn’t gossip so easily.

  He found himself making surprised eye contact with Costain when both the non-undercover members of his team suddenly took it upon themselves to do what they themselves had decided was beyond their operational parameters and move on down to the next level, without even consulting them. He lost the expression swiftly as he looked back to beardy waistcoat, who was beside him, now looking nervous.

  ‘I can’t see anything there,’ he said, nodding towards the stairwell. ‘Can you?’

  Sefton didn’t know how to answer him. Here was a surprise: beardy waistcoat was someone Privileged, who knew how to at least make a start at using the occult power of London, or so he’d indicated, but who wasn’t himself one of the Sighted. Seeing that look on Sefton’s face, he looked suddenly crestfallen. ‘I know you’re able to – I can tell when someone can; I mean, I pick up on the body language—’

  ‘Mate, I’m just learning about this stuff too—’

  ‘But there’s nothing to stop me trying to go down there, is there? To support you, if nothing else. Whether or not change is coming to the Goat tonight, we ought to be allowed access to … whatever that man is guarding. Come on, we succeed or fail together.’ Suddenly he was off, taking his place in the actual queue which was now forming out of the vague one, and Sefton could only feel he should go with him. The abusive woman had just gone down the stairs, and in front of them now was one of the angrier-looking young men of the hipster crowd. The man with the book invited him to step forward, making that checking gesture again with one hand. The youth did so, and walked straight over the top of the stairwell, his feet walking on what looked to Sefton like empty air, keeping going until he’d covered the space to the far wall. Then, furious, he whirled, looking back at the gatekeeper.

  Who stared calmly back at him.

  The bouncer took a concerned step from his corner.

  After a moment of considering his options, the young man turned on his heel and marched for the door. The gatekeeper looked back to Sefton and beardy waistcoat, and visibly sighed when he saw Sefton. Here came more trouble.

  Sefton’s instinct as an undercover was to avoid confrontation. He really should just walk forward, deal with the man’s gesture, get down the stairs, if being able to block the gesture and see the stairs was enough, if there wasn’t actually full-on apartheid in place. But in character – maybe in reality too – he didn’t feel like being allowed to go anywhere.

  ‘What are you reading?’ he asked the man. His first question of the night. Actually it was more of a challenge.

  The gatekeeper looked surprised. He held up his book, which had a blank cover. Blue, tatty, like an ancient library book. Sefton had wondered if there was a list of people inside it, to go with the gesture and the ability to see what you were walking down. To get a look at that list might be valuable. He plucked the book out of the man’s hands and opened it. He could feel beardy waistcoat behind him, going with it, craning to look at what was revealed inside these pages. Sefton realized, in that second, that he’d already handled books that could have done him considerable harm, that he’d just been unprofessionally reckless. That was where playing this character had led him. No, there was nothing inside this book to harm him. Indeed, there was nothing. The fine dusty pages were blank. Genuinely blank. It was just a prop, something to shore up this man’s authority. If there were rules, they weren’t written down. Sefton flicked all the way through to make sure, then he gave it back to the man, who was now smiling patronizingly at him. ‘Thanks,’ said Sefton, ‘didn’t like the ending.’ The look on the man’s face said that Sefton had really pushed it, that now it would be touch and go whether to let him in. Finally, the man made the gesture and Sefton bounced his silent question away and he was allowed to proceed.

  He was about to go down the stairs, but from behind him came an odd, awkward laugh. ‘A book of rules?’ It was beardy waistcoat, looking baffled at Sefton. ‘I could see they’re written in a very tight hand, but I didn’t get a good look at a single one of them. What was that you said about the ending? Come on, did you see how to do this?’

  The gatekeeper looked despairingly at the young man. He didn’t even bother to make the gesture. He just slowly shook his head.

  ‘Oh, come on, this isn’t fair. Tonight we were told we were going to be allowed…’ Beardy waistcoat looked pleadingly to Sefton, who could only look steadily back in return. Anger made the young man’s face suddenly flush. The oppressed minority he’d thought he was doing a favour to had progressed further than he had. ‘I’ve worked so hard…’

  The gatekeeper looked towards the diffuse, impatient queue that was standing all around, and by implication to the bouncer, who was even now sauntering over.

  Beardy gave Sefton a look that could kill. A look like a mask falling that Sefton felt he would remember for a long time. Then he was pushing his way back through the crowd, heading for the door.

  Sefton turned and calmly walked down the stairs.

  * * *

  Costain had noted the reaction to the bouncer from the guy who hadn’t been allowed down the stairwell. So the bouncer could be seen by everyone, not just the Sighted. He wandered over and found himself casually standing next to the man. If this was a man, a real person. He looked real enough.

  ‘Excuse me, kind sir,’ he said, ‘I was thinking I might head downstairs. May I?’ Asking questions in this circumstance was something his character, the newbie, would certainly do.

  The bouncer barely reacted. ‘Depends,’ he said. He sounded like a clichéd comedy bouncer too, brutal vowels and hardly opening his mouth. ‘Are you on the list?’

  ‘I’m not sure.’

  ‘Then you’re not on the list.’

  ‘Where is this list?’

  ‘You can’t see the list.’

  ‘Who else is on the list?’

  ‘Are you on the list?’

  ‘Possibly.’

  ‘Then you can find out.’

  ‘But not from you?’

  ‘Depends.’

  ‘On what?’

  ‘Are you on the list?’

  It was as if he was a character in a video game. Costain was pretty sure now that the bouncer wasn’t a human being, but something made by someone. A sort of deliberately placed ‘ghost’. But one that the non-Sighted were very much aware of. ‘Is the list real? Or is it just some sort of metaphor? Does whether or not you’re on the list change from moment to moment? Is it down to how confident you are or how you dress or who your parents were? Please, dear sir, enlighten me.’

  The bouncer paused for a second. Processing. But no, there was nothing robotic about those quivering jowls. Whatever he was had been made of emotion and flesh. ‘Depends,’ he finally decided.

  Costain sighed. His way out of this place, should he need it, was what it was. No advantage to be found here. It was time to share the risk his unit was taking. That was the right thing to do, and these days he always did the right thing.

  Besides, Ross was down there. Among the powerful shit.

  He headed for the stairs and patiently waited until it was his turn with the gatekeeper, who looked at him as if it was incredible that two black men had come his way this evening. He made the gesture and sighed at the result, letting him through as if the sky had fallen. Rules were rules, he seemed to be thinking, but he didn’t have to like what the rules allowed.


  Costain was about to walk past him with confidence, the star of this picture. Then he remembered the character he was playing. He stopped and made his body language submissive and dropped his gaze to the floor. ‘Excuse me, sir,’ he said.

  The gatekeeper inclined his head, and Costain went down the stairs.

  SIX

  Quill noted Costain’s arrival. Now all his unit were two floors below street level. Exactly what they had gone down into was another question. At first sight, this bar looked like the one immediately above it, but many of the details were different, and, with the Sight suddenly putting a queasy feeling of gravity in his gut, those details seemed drastically important. He felt as if he was already deep under the earth, as if rescue was a long way off, far above. When he first got down here he’d had to stop himself from going over to Ross and indicating they should both pull out immediately. But there was no operational reason for him to feel like that. Ross had walked straight over to a barwoman who looked a degree more specialized again than the one in the bar above, with a distinctly old-fashioned touch to her uniform, curls to her hair that looked to be from some era he couldn’t pin down, and, startlingly, white pancake make-up that made her look like a mime artist. The dress code for those who’d got down here was clearly older, poorer, often specifically London in nature. There were remnants of uniform: London transport; real cavalry jackets; what Quill realized was a zookeeper, even. The look was distinctive, but hardly impressive in the way of a fashion show. They also showed signs of harm: the odd missing finger; bruises and cuts displayed proudly. There was something else about them now: their voices were hushed, they kept glancing towards the door. This lot were in their familiar place, obviously used to being here … but tonight they were afraid of what remained above. To get out of what had started to feel like a footie boozer with a bunch of away fans in it hadn’t eased the pressure very much.

  In the far corner, in the same place as on the floor above, was a different tweedy bloke with a beard, sitting guarding yet another downward stairwell. As above, so below. So there was another level beneath this. Of course.

  Quill went over to the juke box, in exactly the same place as in the bar above. This one was an old-fashioned job with vinyl singles, and the selections were all songs about London: the Kinks; Blur; the Small Faces. To play one cost only twenty pence. But he didn’t feel like being the first to select a track. He went to a table and picked up a menu. These cocktails had names like the Lambeth Walk, the Ally Sloper, the Black Shock. That last name made something echo in his head. Like déjà vu for something that hadn’t yet happened. Quill didn’t know one bottle of champers from another, but the top of the range down here was considerably cheaper than upstairs. He went to check out the paintings on the walls. These were all portraits of individuals, their names underneath, nothing spooky about them. Though, wait a sec, Aleister Crowley – there was a name he recognized: fat bloke, a sort of coked-up mania about him, half performance, half something a bit more worrying. Beside him: Dion Fortune; Austin Osman Spare; Gerald Gardner … There were many more – a complete circuit of them on the walls – and in between the portraits were what seemed to be action scenes, or at least metaphorical versions of such. Here were a group of figures under the searchlights and blimps of wartime London, their arms arranged in stark stick-figure angles, protesting against or attacking what was surely the threatening shape of a falling V2 rocket. Here was a parting of the ways, a splitting, as many figures walked many different paths, some falling off into nothingness, into a sunlit map of London.

  So someone in this community knew at least a bit about the history of it. Looking around, though, Quill decided that even the punters down here seemed about as useless as the general public he was used to.

  * * *

  Ross looked into the white face of the barmaid. ‘What can I get you, my darling?’ said the woman, her mask of make-up not equalling the welcome of her broad East End accent. The mask was extraordinary, now she was up close. Some of it, around the eyes, was obviously cosmetics on the surface of skin, but some of it was absolutely smooth, blank, as if there was only the artificial colour of the cosmetics and nothing underneath. If she wiped it all off, the woman looked as if she might be just eyes and what was around them and a mouth floating in mid-air.

  Ross realized that she was staring and ordered a glass of red she had no intention of drinking. The barmaid gave it to her. Ross could see fine old cuts in almost every inch of the skin of her hands, making it look like a map on vellum. Her fingernails were cut to the quick. ‘And how are you going to pay for that?’

  Ross made a decision based on what she’d seen at the New Age fair. ‘Not with money.’

  ‘Good. Were they upstairs already? Are they going to come down here?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Well, that’s even better, you going the right way about things without knowing what’s going on. All right, what have you got to offer?’

  What had the fortune-teller at the New Age fair lost? Fingers, teeth … ‘Blood?’

  The woman laughed. ‘Bit much, my dear. Never met anyone before who opened with that. Tell you what, I’ll start a slate for you, and eventually you can make a donation. Blimey, I can’t get over it, a first-timer who actually wants to follow the form. You came here wanting something, I take it?’

  Did she know?

  The barmaid obviously read the expression on her face. ‘I haven’t just rifled through your drawers, love. It’s why most people come here.’

  * * *

  Sefton followed the abusive young woman to a group of people seemingly familiar to her, hoping they’d take him for an acquaintance of hers and that would give him a way in. But the woman looked sidelong at him as soon as he got there, like a bird of prey needing to alter the angle of its vision to get perspective on its target. Perhaps, Sefton thought nervously, that was exactly what she was doing. He was among power, of varying degrees, and who knew who was hiding theirs? The users of it were all looking at him, and at Costain, now he turned to look, as if the two of them were a terrible development. He should think of this lot, as he did when he was in a gang, as being armed and dangerous. ‘Fucking poser jacket,’ said the abusive woman, actually raising her voice so he’d be sure to hear. ‘How did you get down here, when you look like a complete fuckwit?’

  Sefton was too intrigued now to get in her face again. Besides, a character shouldn’t be one note. Her straightforward aggression was a relief after the chill coming from the rest of this lot. Also, she’d chosen a non-racial approach this time. Presumably she’d exhausted that material. ‘I’m a complete fuckwit.’

  Sudden mocking laughter erupted from behind Sefton. It sounded almost like a voice saying ‘ha ha ha’, in an extraordinarily cynical, almost self-critical way. ‘At least someone here knows themselves.’

  Sefton turned to see that an extraordinary figure had joined the group. He looked middle-aged, with a face that made him look as if he had some sort of wasting disease, a skull that, under a shock of bright red hair, boasted handsome cheekbones and eyes that seemed continuously challenging, rolling and staring. Those eyes knew everything about him, in a moment. Sefton found the undercover part of him reacting, certain he’d been recognized, that somehow this man he’d never seen before knew who he really was. He had to stop himself from marching for the door, telling himself there was no logical reason to do so, that this still might just be a feeling. Besides, the look of the man had stopped him in his tracks. His jacket was made of newspaper, from enormous edifices of Victoriana to brash red-top headlines, flowing and changing. The pattern on the man’s trousers was a grid that resembled tartan, but it flexed like a topographical map. The man’s grin was increasing as he took in what Sefton was now absolutely bloody certain he’d learned about him. Never mind walking out; in a moment, Sefton might have to sprint.

  ‘Don’t mind me,’ the man said, ‘I’m not real.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  The ma
n shook his head, impatient with the wrong tack being taken. ‘Don’t like that question. I’m going to answer a different one. Yes, I know all about you. Fortunately, I don’t care.’ Sefton kept his fear in check, making himself look calm once more. But still, this lot would now know there was something dodgy about him. ‘I might know anything about anyone,’ the man continued, ‘with just one look. All the information of this world flows down to me.’ He poked a finger into Sefton’s jacket, and Sefton felt the vanes in his breast pocket jerk at the contact, trying to point towards the gravity of the man. The group had all turned to look at the new arrival, he realized, as if he was some sort of touchstone for them. ‘You’re all right, you are. He’s all right, everybody!’ That had been a call with no expectation that it would have any result, an irony at the man’s own lack of influence, but Sefton could see that it had actually had some effect. ‘Oh, it’s all going pear-shaped tonight,’ the man continued, looking back to Sefton. ‘Our barmaid over there,’ he indicated, ‘I know her name but I will not share it; she made the mistake of continuing with the old ways, of not allowing coin to stay in her palm. The Keel brothers did not like that. The penalty was the loss of her face. Les yeux sans visage, as some pretender once said. The Keels would like her to continue working here, to please the old clientele even as they begin to fleece them. They have promised to give her face back if she’s a good girl. But tonight we’ll see.’ He looked Sefton up and down, an arrogant and yet somehow self-mocking smirk on his face. ‘We all love our masks, don’t we? It’s the only option when a circle has to fit inside a square. When one song has to be sung to the tune of another. The distortion continues. Ever feel you’re being bent out of shape?’ He whirled a finger in the air as if sampling the oppressive quality of the air, and then licked it, seeming to be entertained by the taste. He pointed downwards. ‘The things I have to crawl up through to attend these soirées now. The things you people put up with. The things you allow.’ Now his gaze was fixed again on Sefton. ‘But still we get new arrivals. Oh, sorry, I said the N word –’ he made a quick, scathing glance at the gathering – ‘sorry.’ He suddenly held out his hand to Sefton. ‘I am John, and I was born in London. They call me the Rat King. When they call me anything at all.’