by Paul Cornell
Sefton understood that that was a hell of a thing. In a company of people who kept their names like hoarded treasure, here he was being offered one for free. From someone who apparently knew who and what he was. He felt himself trusting this man with his own real identity because of that single surprising gesture. He shook the hand. ‘The fuckers of this culture,’ said the Rat King, ‘are going to be troubled by what you might bring to their community.’ He enunciated every syllable, underlining their meaning and put an entire landscape of irony between himself and that last word. ‘So I am delighted to see you.’ He leaned closer to whisper in Sefton’s ear. ‘But I am afraid I don’t know the thing you most want to find out.’
His meaningful glance made Sefton certain that the Rat King was talking about the Ripper.
* * *
Costain, meanwhile, aware of the looks he was getting and not wanting to be seen as coming on too strong, had been looking for differences between this bar and the ones above. He was now inspecting one of several large cracks in the plaster of the walls. Were these walls under pressure from being underground? Pretty rubbish construction, if so. There was something … he leaned closer to the wall and saw something sparkling inside one of the cracks, something … silver. He could feel it on his face: the material in the crack was freezing cold. Yeah, here was that silver goo again. Only this time it seemed to be being used to hold this place together.
* * *
Quill managed to overhear a few conversations that expressed horror or wonder at the activities of the Ripper. Some of this lot had definitely, having seen the news on TV, noted the glowing figure leaving the crime scene, but apart from that, not a thing suggested that this community was better informed on the subject than the wider public. Also, nobody had said anything about a smiling man. He’d heard a couple of conversations where people had talked about making ‘sacrifices to London’, as if the metropolis was the thing this lot worshipped. Whatever plan the Smiling Man had used Rob Toshack to hint obliquely about to Quill’s team, this group didn’t seem to be in on it. Quill was backing up, trying to move round to join the fringes of another conversation, when he hit something with the back of his thighs.
He turned round and saw that he’d encountered the long legs of a man in black jeans, black T-shirt and black leather jacket who was sitting in a discreet corner of the bar, his mobile phone in his hand. He had a long face, caring, slightly sad, with a worried look around his mouth, and a shock of dark hair. He was looking as if Quill had disturbed him in the middle of a thought.
Quill realized, to his surprise, that he recognized this man. He didn’t quite know from where, but he had a feeling that it wasn’t in a police context.
‘Can I help you?’ said the man.
Quill became aware that he had been staring, and at the same moment knew where he’d seen this guy before. It had been on the inside flap of a book he’d read to Jessica, and on another that Sarah had been reading in bed, and he’d been surprised that the same bloke had written both. ‘Here,’ he said, ‘aren’t you that writer?’
‘I’m a writer.’
‘Children’s books?’
‘All sorts of books.’
‘What are you doing here?’
‘It’s usually pretty quiet, and I can write, sometimes.’
‘I mean, so you’ve got, I mean you must have … to get down those stairs…’ Quill pointed to his own eyes.
‘The Sight? Of course.’
‘Of course. Of course. Myself, I got it when I touched a pile of soil. But of course it’s not … always that. Is it?’ Arrgh. Why couldn’t he just talk normally to this bloke?
The man paused as if wondering whether or not he should answer, then went ahead, possibly thinking it was the quickest way out of the conversation. ‘Someone handed me an object at a signing. They said they hoped it would give me “inspiration”. It gave me a headache and a bunch of terrible visions on the way to the airport. And, as it turned out, every time I visited London. So the inspiration it gave me was mostly to live abroad.’
‘And you got to the Goat…?’
‘When I got used to the idea of London being horrifying, I did a bit of exploring and found a few places. This bar has been relatively friendly, but I worry about the new management.’
‘Have you been further downstairs?’
‘No. But…’ He considered for a moment and was absolutely silent, looking aside as if weighing up a few different possibilities. Quill found himself wanting to interrupt, but was too interested in what the man was about to say. ‘No,’ the man finally said again, as if it was a decision. Then he smiled broadly at Quill. ‘Good to meet you.’
Quill understood he was being politely dismissed. ‘And you. I’ll let you get back to…’ He gestured in the abstract direction of whatever the man had been looking at on his phone. ‘Cheers.’
He headed off, kicking himself for asking a lot of bloody copper interview questions, completely ignoring his own rules, all because he’d run into someone who was, presumably, famous.
He realized there was something else he really should have said. He stopped. He headed back.
The man looked up again at his arrival, the look on his face now a little tired.
‘My wife’s a big fan of yours,’ said Quill.
‘Oh. Thank you.’
‘Okay, bye.’ He headed off again, knowing that for just a moment there he had sounded like Columbo and that his next move should really be to reveal the man’s guilt in some extraordinary crime.
Then he realized again, stopped again. Damn it. He headed back.
This time the man looked up with only a slight raise of his eyebrows. Oh, come on now.
‘Sorry, just checking, your name would in actual fact be…?’
‘Neil Gaiman.’
‘Great. Thanks.’
‘Okay.’
‘Okay. Bye.’ Quill walked quickly off into the crowd again, mentally rolling his eyes at his own gaucheness. When he told the others about it, it would be a tale of him getting loads of juice through his clever undercover teasing out of a conversation.
Something was happening ahead now: raised voices, people moving swiftly away from the doors. He made his way through the crowd to see as two powerfully built forty-something males, balding, pot bellies, facial hair, six foot one or so, marched into the room. They wore black vest-tops, shiny leather trousers and immaculate long black coats that didn’t look like they’d be comfortable in summer. Lots of pockets, possibility of concealed weapons. The Keel brothers, Quill presumed, Barry and Terry. He recognized one of them from the New Age fair, but they hadn’t spoken; he doubted the man had got a good look at him. He let out a breath of relief. Aggro he could handle. Famous people? Not so much.
Barry Keel was looking around the room as if he’d just walked in on an unexpected orgy. ‘What the fuck,’ he said, ‘is going on here?’
* * *
Ross examined the new arrivals. No lieutenants in their wake, no entourage. Nobody in the crowd had stepped forward to answer them. The weird new bloke who’d been hanging around near Sefton was looking alternately angry and almost gleeful, anticipating trouble, scampering about, trying to get the best view. The barmaid had tensed and taken a step back from the bar.
‘You!’ Barry Keel went over to the bloke sitting by the stairs that led downwards. ‘I’ll say to you what I said to the one up there: You gatekeepers still aren’t letting all our customers come down here. Today was the deadline. When are you lot going to get it?’ He looked around, addressing the group in general. ‘This is our place now. We bought it.’ His accent, Ross noted, was a lot more modern London than the ones she’d heard from this crowd. ‘So you lot are going to let paying customers enter, let the cleansing breath of the outside world clean up this outsider culture of yours a bit, and you –’ he pointed to the barmaid – ‘are going to take the coin of the realm, and stop with all this self-harming sacrifice barter shit. Or I’ll take something else off you, rig
ht?’ He made a gesture with his hand that had something showy and kung fu about it, but it was also obviously a genuine threat.
The barmaid stayed where she was, but Ross could see that she was breathing deeply, terrified. ‘I thought I’d have a bit longer,’ she said. ‘But fuck it.’ She raised her voice. ‘You can keep my face,’ she shouted. ‘I’ve been here since before you were born, and I’m not keeping filthy coin in my hand.’ She looked around the group, hoping desperately for support, and Ross could see a few nodding heads. But there were no voices raised in support. This lot didn’t have it in them to stand up for anything. The woman looked suddenly, horribly, alone. Ross looked over to Costain and found that he was making eye contact with her. A tiny shake of the head.
Ross made herself step back from the bar.
Barry was looking at the barmaid with what seemed to be genuine sadness and frustration. ‘You try and make a deal,’ he said, ‘you try and do this nicely.’ He made his sudden gesture again, and this time Ross felt a slam of weight behind it.
The woman screamed. She slapped her palms to her face. She held them there for a moment as the crowd stared at her. Then, as if realizing she wasn’t actually in any pain, she lowered them.
There were spaces where her eyes had been. Ross could see right through her head.
‘I can’t see,’ she said, gently. She put a finger to where her eye had been … and then straight through it.
The Rat King stepped forwards, glaring, and put an arm around her shoulders. ‘Come with me,’ he said. He glowered as he led her towards the stairwell. ‘You had your chance,’ he said bleakly to the rest of the crowd, who were gaping in horror at what had been done to her. ‘Well done. Love your “community”. Turns out it’s not a good idea to crowd surf when there isn’t a safety net.’
Ross glanced back to Costain and was surprised to find that he had stepped behind the bar. As she watched, he stepped back out again, without looking at her. He’d obviously taken a quick look to see if there was anything important back there. She was the only one who’d thought to look in that direction.
‘Wait,’ said the barmaid, ‘the new girl.’ Ross realized she meant her. She looked back and saw that the barmaid had blindly stretched out a hand and the Rat King had paused to let her do this. Ross went to her, let her take her hand. The barmaid, with surprising strength, pulled her close, almost into an embrace that smelt of lavender and mothballs. Keeping hold of Ross’ hand, she quickly felt for her own pocket, concealed somewhere inside her uniform, and shoved something into Ross’ grasp. It was a business card. ‘You followed the traditions,’ she said. ‘You wanted to barter. You deserve something in return. Listen. I got a strong feeling about you and what you were after. Whatever it is, I think it’s going to be there, at the next auction.’
Ross looked at the card. There was just a bare date, and a map that seemed to swirl before her gaze, like a view down through a hole in the middle of the card. ‘Thank you,’ she said.
‘You stay alive,’ said the barmaid.
Then the Rat King hustled her off and led her carefully down the stairwell. The gatekeeper there stood up, glaring at the Keel brothers, as if daring them to interfere.
* * *
Costain had seen Ross take something from the barmaid. Now he noted which pocket she put it into. Interesting. Then he turned back to observe the Keel brothers. He was in an enclosed space with deadly weapons, and these two were between him and the door; otherwise he’d have already given the signal for everyone to abort.
‘From now on,’ Barry was saying to the crowd, ‘no exceptions. Money will be taken. You may have noticed we’ve started to advertise this pub, only in the right places. We have produced actual fliers. The new punters, the people who’ve got interested in this stuff in the last few years, they’re young and have spare cash, they have certain expectations about their social occasions. You will follow the dress code.’ He grabbed a young woman near him and threw her to the ground. ‘Smart! Casual! The weird fashions don’t add anything, you stupid fuckers – they just mean nobody normal’s going to want to hang around in a bar with you and drink our premium lager while you sip on your glasses of warm tap water!’
Terry, in contrast, had his hands raised, trying to be the voice of reason. ‘Ever since whatever changed a few years back to make it easier for us all to openly use the power that comes from a deep knowledge of the shape of London…’ He seemed to react to mutterings from the crowd. ‘Yes, I’m saying all this out loud. Look. No bolt of lightning from above. No punishment for talking clearly, not in gobbledegook. Me and the bro, in modern gear, speaking like real people, paying hard cash for objects with London history’ – and stealing some of them, thought Costain, if their convictions were anything to go by – ‘we have got ourselves a lot of knowledge and a lot of power. We didn’t need to do all the accents and costumes, we didn’t see ourselves as poor noble outsiders, we didn’t need to wait for some gatekeeper to give us the nod and say we were allowed. We proved that money can be used to shape the power of London too, whether London likes it or not.’ Costain remembered what Sefton had said about the price tags feeling weirdly out of place on those objects in the shop. ‘Still, we played nice with the culture we found: you lot, who assumed you owned this town, just because you did all the things that had always been done. We were cajoling, we extended the hand of friendship. You paid no bloody attention. But now we are in the middle of what we modern people call a double-dip recession. We need to monetize this place. So you lot will be dragged, kicking and screaming, into the eighteenth century.’ No voices were raised to contradict him, but Costain saw people looking angry, heard whispers. ‘Listen, a lot of you at least keep a toe in the real world; you know it doesn’t have to be so hard for us now. When the big change – whatever it was – happened, it was like the people who can do what we do … it was like we won. So why are you lot still hiding?’
‘Cut to the chase, Tezzer,’ said Barry.
‘The point is, whatever you think of us, we are like you. Our brand identity for this pub will embrace the essentials of what the Goat and Compasses has always been about. But from now on, on the special nights, for downstairs, we’ll be charging admission.’
There were yells of protest from the crowd. ‘This is the last night of the Goat, then,’ someone said.
‘Pair of fucking faggots,’ said a woman with dark hair whom Costain had seen with Sefton. She meant the Keel brothers.
Terry turned to her, and flicked a sudden gesture that he seemed to think better of before it did her harm. The crowd flinched anyway. ‘I am also fed up with you insulting our customers. You’re barred.’
‘Who’s barred?’
‘… whoever you are!’
‘You don’t even know my name! Your brand doesn’t have much hold over someone without a brand of her own, cocksucker!’
‘I’ll brand you—!’ He raised a hand to do it.
Ross stepped in front of her.
Costain saw Sefton react, minutely. The two of them had a responsibility to their non-undercover colleagues. They had to do something to move this conflict around and let themselves and their colleagues head for the door. But before either of them could do anything, Terry Keel lowered his hand.
‘You tell her, love,’ he said to Ross. ‘She can stay tonight, but she’d better not come back.’ He turned to the others and deliberately didn’t hear the woman’s next comment. ‘Look,’ he said, ‘it’ll just be a fiver or something. It’s not like you lot have actual rules that you need to vote on or something. You just have traditions. An unwritten constitution, not worth the paper it’s printed on. It’s not as if you’re institutionally racist, for instance.’ He underlined the words with irony. ‘But your “we like old-timey stuff” policy has successfully kept away potential customers.’
Barry took up the narration, nodding pleasantly to Costain and Sefton. ‘Like these two modern and affluent-looking young gentlemen. Who are entirely conversant with
a bit of the old—’ He made the checking hand gesture, and Costain automatically now threw what Sefton had called a blanket over his thoughts. Even as he did so, he noticed something very worrying: that gesture … hadn’t it been just a tiny bit … different?
Costain heard his phone beep at the same instant Sefton’s did. The two undercovers looked at each other. Well, okay, Costain reasoned, so they were carrying modern tech, they could just say sorry and—
But a look of horror had come over the face of Barry Keel. An expression that Costain recognized from his nightmares of being caught while undercover. ‘You fuckers,’ he said. ‘You’re—’
Costain leaped forward and punched the man in the stomach.
* * *
Terry Keel lunged at Sefton. The man looked as if he knew how to fight. Low centre of gravity. He was probably packing gestures like his brother’s, which could cause harm above and beyond whatever he could do with his fists. Barry had somehow used that gesture to read their phones. Their own phones, which were full of police-related numbers.
