The Severed Streets

by Paul Cornell

  Sefton found his mind racing. So there was a connection between the Ripper and the scrying glass. That made sense. Whoever was spying on their dreams also seemed to be the one who chose the Ripper’s victims. He stuck his tongue out and tasted the air. He found a metallic taste, a reminder of when he’d smelt the silver goo. It was very faint, but after two and a half years, perhaps it would be.

  ‘That evening that Maggie describes,’ continued Vincent, ‘I’d been trying to activate the mirror, looking into it, willing it to do something. When something started to appear out of it – this figure, pushing slowly through the glass – I was intrigued, not even very frightened at first, because it moved so slowly. I thought I’d got what I was after, that this was going to be some sort of, I don’t know, supernatural being who’d go and listen in on things for me. As it became more clear what was emerging, I got scared. It was what we’d now call a “Toff” protestor, though nobody had heard of them then, with the mask and the top hat and the cape and … this one had a razor. When that started to appear, that’s when I started to yell. The moment I did, he leaped out of the mirror and attacked me … or he tried to. I thought I was dead the moment he started slashing at me. But for some reason the blows just seemed to cut through my shirt. After just a moment, he seemed to realize that, and fled.’

  Sefton was now writing down details himself. What could have stopped the Ripper from killing Vincent? And why such an early murder attempt, then nothing for months after? Maybe it had needed to fix whatever the problem with this killing had been. ‘Which way did it go?’

  ‘I’m not sure. He just seemed to fly off and vanish, maybe … that way?’ Vincent gestured vaguely towards the window. Sefton went to look, inspected the wall and window closely for any sign of the silver goo associated with a Ripper exit, but there was nothing. Again, a long time had passed. They had no idea if this stuff evaporated. He went back to the mirror, had another look for goo, found none and, with a glance at the others, put the cloth back over it.

  They all relaxed a little. Maggie had to lean on a wall.

  ‘Maggie found me here a moment later, in a daze,’ said Vincent. ‘I didn’t let anyone else in here after that. I kept the cloth over the mirror, always half expecting it to happen again. I wanted to get rid of it, but I didn’t see how I could do that without endangering someone else. It’s not as if I could explain the problem. I thought about breaking it, but if looking into it had resulted in the appearance of that … ghost or whatever it was, then who knows what would have happened? Since the protests began I’ve always wondered if the man I saw was somehow … I don’t know … leading them. And then, when the killings started … but who could I tell?’

  ‘Can I take another look at your business cards?’ asked Quill. Vincent looked puzzled, then took a metal case from his pocket. Quill took it, opened it, and showed them to Sefton. There was preserved a spatter of silver, faded but obvious. ‘Do you keep a supply here?’

  Vincent went to a little open box of them on the desk by the mirror, and pulled one out. The same silver deposits. Looking more closely, Sefton found signs of it across the top of the desk also, but the card seemed to have absorbed it in a way the wood didn’t. He got down on his hands and knees and smelt the carpet, found the tiniest droplets still deep in the weave. Vincent’s story checked out.

  Vincent was looking perplexed at him, not able to see the silver himself.

  ‘Can you think of any reason,’ said Costain, ‘why the Ripper might have attacked you?’

  Vincent was silent for a moment. Then he seemed to decide that he might as well go the whole distance. ‘I didn’t just want to know people’s secrets for personal gain. I wanted protection.’

  ‘From what?’

  ‘I’d started receiving anonymous death threats, left in places where nobody should have been able to go.’

  ‘Did you report this to the police?’ asked Quill.

  ‘No, because when one is aware that one is involved in … questionable activities … one doesn’t like to summon the law right into one’s home, does one?’

  ‘Do you still have any of these messages?’

  ‘Well, no. They tended to … curl up and turn to ashes as soon as I’d read them, or vanish off my phone or computer. They had a sort of official tone to them. I think, having declared myself to be an honest newspaperman, I’d got on the wrong side of what the late Princess Diana called “the dark forces” in British public life. I was feeling the same sudden chill that Assange, Galloway and Snowden must have felt. I never found out why I was being singled out, or who was doing it. But, given the way the threats were delivered, I became certain they might have genuine supernatural power on their side.’

  ‘What were the threats about?’ asked Ross.

  ‘They were quite vague. They just said they were watching me and that if I went too far out of line they’d punish me for it.’

  ‘So you wanted the scrying glass to try to find out who was doing it?’

  ‘Absolutely.’

  ‘Your newspapers seem to do well enough without the use of this,’ said Quill, tapping the mirror. ‘Do I take it you’ve gone back to the old-fashioned sort of dodginess?’

  ‘The oldest sorts,’ said Vincent. ‘The power of money and the willingness of people to tell on each other. Now, I’ve told you all I know. Am I off the hook? Have you had your pound of flesh?’

  A thought had occurred to Sefton. It was dangerous, but his team had taken on worse. ‘Mr Vincent,’ he said, ‘you may have gathered we’re specialists in this kind of thing. You’ve been very cooperative, but I’d like to ask one last favour. Would it be possible for you to lend us this mirror, to aid in our current investigation?’

  Vincent raised his hands, relieved. ‘I would be delighted.’

  * * *

  They heaved the mirror back to the car in silence, all of them feeling as if they were handling a bomb, but, as Sefton was all too aware, also dealing with a different sense of terrible oppression. They got it into the boot, climbed into the car and closed the doors before they felt they could talk about it. Ross said it first. ‘Fuck,’ she said. ‘Someone is bugging our sodding dreams.’

  ‘They already know all we know,’ Costain said. He had a terrible look on his face and Sefton could only wonder what secrets of his own he had to lose. ‘And next time we sleep, they’ll know we’re on to them too.’

  ‘We need defences,’ said Quill, looking to Sefton. ‘We need them today.’

  Sefton took out his phone and started searching. ‘I already have a few ideas,’ he said.

  ‘And I,’ said Costain, ‘need to text a man about a thing.’ He had started to do it before he’d finished the sentence.

  * * *

  They listened to the news on the way back to the Hill: a live announcement of the result of the Police Federation postal ballot. ‘The government had every opportunity to negotiate,’ said the voice of Commander Stephen Marcus, the leader of the strike campaign within the federation. ‘They still do. We do not take our duty lightly, and we will always be willing to return to the bargaining table. But the public should know that, even in the current situation, with disorder on the streets of London every night, this government have not seen fit to look to better conditions for police officers, nor for greater numbers of police officers, and put in place a cut in starting salary. They have seen fit to attempt to take operational control of police forces in London and have assigned them on occasion seemingly at random, without the knowledge and experience of professional police officers, leading to increased danger to the public and to the officers themselves. As such, unless the situation changes, our members have voted for, by a three to one majority, and will begin, in three days’ time, this coming Saturday, a series of twenty-four-hour strikes…’

  ‘Fuck a duck,’ said Quill.

  * * *

  They got back to the Hill and, between the four of them, carried the mirror into the Portakabin. ‘Not a lot in here to mess up if
it, you know, activates,’ said Costain.

  Ross tacked a card with Vincent’s name on it onto the Ops Board, in the Ripper victim category, with asterisks beside the line, indicating that he’d survived.

  Sefton was very aware of the other three all looking urgently to him. He made sure he’d searched everywhere he could think of. He had a couple of leads. ‘I have to visit some antique shops,’ he said.

  * * *

  While Sefton was away, Quill got on the phone to Lofthouse and asked about her dream life. She felt she hadn’t been spied on, which was a relief. She was worried as to why he might ask, so Quill filled her in as far as he could. The news came through that all police leave was cancelled until the strike. There was news footage of last night’s, and to some extent this afternoon’s, riots in Fulham, Brixton and East Ham. There were rumours of isolated incidents in leafy suburbs like Chesham and Rickmansworth. Quill wondered how they were going to keep awake. Every time he thought about it he felt a terrible sense of violation and wondered exactly what memories of his the intruder had spied on, thought about Sarah’s privacy as well as his own. He saw the look on Ross’ face and realized they’d all be thinking the same thing. He went to the tea station and pulled out the big jar of coffee. ‘We are not,’ he said, ‘going to be giving this bastard the chance to have another look.’

  * * *

  Sefton finally returned with a small collection of objects that, he said, indicated both serious London provenance and the concept of things or people being kept locked out. There were keys from the Tower of London, boundary markers from royal gardens. He saw how unenthused Quill and Ross were and raised his hands. ‘It’s all I could do,’ he said. ‘I really have no idea.’ There was nothing of weight about any of the objects. ‘Before tonight, I’ll write down some instructions about putting chalk lines and salt around our beds.’

  ‘Sarah,’ said Quill, ‘is going to love this.’

  Costain looked up at the sound of a car horn outside the Portakabin and bounded out. Quill went to the window and saw him talking to someone through the window of an ancient TR7 that looked more mud than car. The car had stopped on the road rather than come in through the gate to their makeshift car park. Costain turned, clutching something, and the car accelerated away.

  ‘This is a bit more practical,’ he said, coming back in with a carrier bag. He opened it up to reveal several packages of a grey powder.

  ‘Methamphetamine?’ said Ross.

  ‘Bless you,’ said Costain.

  Quill looked to Sefton, who was staring incredulously at what was on the table. Had it really come to this, that they were going to break the law themselves? ‘Fuck, no,’ said Quill. ‘We keep that for when we just can’t stay awake any longer. And we don’t keep it in here.’

  Costain nodded. ‘Sure. There’s a hidden compartment in my car.’

  ‘Oh, that makes me feel so much better,’ said Quill.

  Sefton went over to the mirror and uncovered it. ‘This thing feels so completely dead,’ he said. ‘It’s as if, when the Ripper left it, it took all the power with it.’

  ‘Maybe that’s what happened,’ said Ross.

  ‘Do you reckon it could appear out of there again?’ said Costain.

  ‘Perhaps,’ said Quill, ‘it’s like that movie, and you just have to say his name three times, like Ripper, Ripper—’

  The others all yelled at him to stop.

  Quill sighed. ‘Like I would. I now work on the basis that things like that might actually be true.’

  ‘Maybe,’ said Sefton, ‘the scrying glass needs some other form of activation. I’m wondering if the Ripper appearing out of it was some form of what Gaiman called ostentation, if the first stirrings of protest, two years ago, somehow summoned it.’

  ‘That wasn’t quite how he used that word,’ said Ross. ‘There has to be an existing story about something happening, which then becomes real. Just as we’ve seen. None of those protestors was expecting Jack the Ripper to come back and lead them. It would have been, I don’t know, King Arthur or…’

  ‘… or bloody Robin Hood,’ finished Sefton. ‘You’re right.’

  ‘Put the cloth back over it, anyway, eh?’ Quill said.

  Sefton did so.

  ‘All right,’ said Quill, ‘if someone’s eavesdropping on our dreams, we’ve got a few hours left with us still having one up on them. So we’re going to follow up our major lead right now. We’re going into that brothel tonight.’ He went back to the board and pointed to the business card. ‘Tunstall, or persons unknown, turned over Spatley’s office looking for something. That card, an indication of Spatley having links with persons of ill repute, was in there to be found. We need to go into the brothel, find out if anyone in there knows anything about Spatley or any of our other victims, especially anything that could be a motive for murder.’

  Ross went over to the wheezing PC and brought up her database about the brothel, showing photos that she and Costain had taken of prostitutes and their clients arriving and departing. ‘Nothing unusual on the surface,’ she said. ‘We know all the exits. There’ll be some muscle in there. There’ll be something to prevent johns shagging and running.’

  ‘So we do the simplest possible thing,’ said Costain. ‘I go in as a punter.’

  ‘I should go,’ said Sefton. ‘I’m better with the Sight. I’m more likely to find any anomalies.’

  ‘I’d recommend you both go,’ said Ross. ‘Having a look around isn’t something they’ll encourage punters to do. You’ll have to find some way between you to break out of the routine of being introduced to women downstairs and then being led straight up to the bedrooms.’

  ‘We’re not allowed to shag on duty?’ said Costain to her, with a raised eyebrow.

  She looked calmly back at him, too professional to rise to that.

  ‘I’ll have to ask Joe,’ said Sefton. ‘I think he’ll be okay with it.’

  Quill went back to the board and drew a vague shape in the air with his finger. ‘We have to move quickly, but we might suddenly run into something significant,’ he said. ‘It’s like when we didn’t know what Losley was, when the disparate things she did made no sense on their own. We keep hitting the outer features of a dirty great unknown. They’re all connected, but we can’t work out what the shape in the middle is. The elephant in the room, as encountered by a team of blind people, who each feel what they think is a different animal.’

  ‘It’s weird,’ said Ross, ‘how that expression’s come to mean something everyone should see and doesn’t want to mention, rather than something nobody could see. It’s as if fooling yourself is standard practice now.’

  ‘Except,’ said Sefton, ‘with the Sight, we’re the ones who should be able to see it.’

  ‘And ours,’ said Costain, ‘is going to be one sodding terrifying elephant.’

  FIFTEEN

  ‘Mr Stephens, Mr Dawson, please sit down. This won’t take a moment. Thank you for choosing the Underworld. The first thing I’m going to need from you is a three-hundred-pound deposit, cash or credit card, against your tab at the bar. You leave that with me, and the girls who’ll be attending to you this evening will let me know how much of that you’ve used in services; if you go over, you can top up with them. Anything left – and we all hope there won’t be, I’m sure, because we’re looking to provide you with a good time – will be refunded to you on your departure. Now, you’re not on a clock; please don’t feel rushed, and just to let you know the way we operate: after you’ve chosen the girl or girls who’ll be attending to you, the first thing she or they will do is take a long relaxing shower with you. During that, she or they will just make sure that you’re as healthy as you gentlemen appear to be.’

  ‘She’s saying they’ll check us down for creepy crawlies, yeah?’ Costain looked over to Sefton, sprawled beside him on the very Eighties sofa, their legs way apart, their clothing once again that of the small-time gang soldiers they’d spent a lot of their careers pretendi
ng to be.

  ‘Let’s get this done.’ Sefton took out two rolls of cash and gave them to this businesslike middle-aged woman in an evening gown. ‘You available?’

  ‘Not this evening, though if you become regular customers, perhaps I might make an exception.’ Her voice, thought Costain, was exactly what he was used to from hookers, just enough acting to let everyone stop worrying about what was real and what wasn’t, but not the full commitment that might lead to doubt. He felt aroused at that familiar timbre and immediately guilty for it.

  * * *

  Ross and Quill sat in the car around the corner, parked in front of a newsagent, watching the young media folk and the tourists looking for nostalgic thrills pass by in the late evening sunlight. They were listening to what was going on round the corner, via the wires each of the undercovers wore. The two speakers were, at the moment, providing a weird sort of stereo. Now there was just the sound of the two men going through to some other room. Ross had rebuffed Quill’s attempts at conversation. She could feel time running out, could feel tiredness rising inside her. She would take that meth as soon as it was offered. She was desperately wondering whether whoever had accessed her dreams now knew about the Bridge of Spikes, whether the address they had for the owner had already been raided by something with a lot more power than they had. Costain had promised to wait to check the place out until she could come with him. She believed him. Just about.

  The sound coming over the speakers changed. ‘Is that someone moaning?’ she asked Quill.

  * * *

  ‘That’s from one of our less private rooms,’ said the middle-aged woman, having led Costain and Sefton into what Costain thought looked like the front room of a couple in their eighties, or maybe the stage set of one, because it felt hardly used. It smelt of cigarettes. From an inner door four women entered, all dressed in lingerie that looked as if it had been through the wash too often, all affecting a pose which was meant to be that of a fashion model, but was similarly dulled by repetition. They were professionally present, and that was all. Costain tried not to find that absence exciting. He should really be too worried about the current situation his team, and himself in particular, were in to be aroused, but the body did what it did. There were two white women, an Asian one and a black one. ‘Gentlemen,’ said the hostess, ‘please pick one or more. Our rates obviously increase steeply for more than one.’