The Severed Streets

by Paul Cornell

  Costain didn’t like the silence; it made him aware of the terrible fear that was rising up in him. ‘How the fuck do we nick him?’ he said. ‘We’re going to have to fall asleep sooner or later. When we do he’ll know we’re onto him, and send the Ripper after us. We can’t go after him without some insane level of proof, and with his lawyers, it’d still take years.’ Also, he thought but didn’t say it – and this was the most frightening thing of all – Vincent knew about the Bridge of Spikes. What would such a powerful man be willing to do to avoid death?

  ‘Oh shit,’ said Ross suddenly.

  Costain was scared again by the expression on her face. ‘What?’

  ‘Keel said, to use a scrying glass, you need to know the exact location of your target.’ She looked between them. ‘That bastard knows where we live.’

  ‘How?’ said Sefton.

  ‘Fuck,’ said Ross, ‘fuck.’ She leaned on the wall of the van, and her face contorted into an expression of anger, but also, Costain was pleased to see, comprehension. ‘Staunce,’ she said, ‘dates … fuck, this meth is getting in the way, it’s all getting jumbled up, I keep forgetting bits—’

  ‘What?’ asked Sefton.

  ‘I need a table,’ she said.

  * * *

  They took the van through the quiet streets, parked on another double yellow and, near Bloomsbury Square, spotted a pub that was open. They found a corner of the empty cellar bar, and drank their double Red Bulls as Ross constructed a mobile version of the Ops Board. She finally placed it on the table as four sheets of A4 and put down coloured marker pens beside it. Costain felt something once again give inside him at her continuing professionalism, found himself looking up into her serious expression, hoping as always now for a smile that would never come. He knew that something terrible might soon come between them. The fear of it was rising up in him, making his hands play a clatter on the table surface.

  ‘Staunce,’ said Ross, ‘Commissioner of the Met, could find out our home addresses, easy as breathing. We know he was being paid by someone. Those original payments stop…’ she slid her finger down a list in one of her enormous rough books ‘… one day after Vincent bought the scrying glass at the winter solstice auction three years ago.’

  ‘Because, if you can look into people’s dreams,’ said Sefton, ‘you don’t need sources for secret gossip any more, including police ones, so Vincent could dispense with Staunce’s services.’

  Ross added an association line connecting Staunce to Vincent. ‘But then suddenly Vincent does need Staunce’s information again, because he needs our addresses. He can’t just look into Staunce’s head and find them, because Staunce doesn’t actually know them offhand; he needs to be told what to go and find out. So Vincent pays Staunce one more time –’ she looked again at her list of dates – ‘at 2 p.m. on the day he died.’

  ‘Why does Vincent get interested in us then?’ asked Costain. ‘What did we do that day?’

  ‘We interviewed Tunstall that morning,’ said Sefton.

  ‘So somehow Vincent knew about that,’ said Costain. ‘No, never mind somehow, there’s only one way this guy learns secret stuff: he must have used the scrying glass on Tunstall when he went to sleep after we saw him, and he’d have seen Tunstall’s memories of Jimmy telling Tunstall we believed him, and that we had abilities other units didn’t. Bloody hell.’

  ‘Staunce always took an afternoon nap,’ said Sefton. ‘First Vincent pays him, then he checks up on his motives, discovers something amiss, has him killed that same night.’

  ‘When do we start feeling shit going on in our dreams?’ said Ross.

  ‘From that night,’ said Sefton. ‘I think.’ They compared notes. None of them could pin it down exactly, but the date seemed right. They swore and got up and had to talk each other down from the fear, until Ross started shouting at them to let her finish. Quickly, they sat down.

  ‘Why was Vincent listening in on Tunstall’s thoughts?’ she asked.

  ‘Tunstall, like Staunce, was receiving under-the-counter payments,’ said Sefton. ‘If those were also from Vincent, maybe he wanted to make sure Tunstall wasn’t going to tell anyone about them.’

  ‘And he wasn’t,’ said Costain, triumphantly. ‘At least, not at first.’

  He was pleased at the puzzled look that got from Ross. ‘How do you know that?’

  ‘Because it took Vincent so long to kill him. If you’re a gang boss, sometimes you suspect someone in your organization has grassed you up, and so you kill them, torture them, whatever. But if you had the power to know absolutely who was loyal and who wasn’t, to know who was even thinking about betraying you—’

  ‘You’d drop a lot fewer bodies,’ said Ross.

  ‘We were about to interview Tunstall again,’ said Sefton, ‘about the brothel business card. Vincent must have seen that Tunstall was wavering, that he might crack during that interview, and finally decided he wasn’t worth the risk.’

  ‘It’s kind of humane,’ said Costain, ‘compared to what we’re used to.’

  ‘And he waited to kill Jimmy,’ continued Sefton, ‘until Jimmy encountered him in his dreams and made some potentially incriminating notes about long barrows. Whatever they mean, those are the most important things. If Vincent knew now that we’d seen them, maybe he’d kill us too.’

  Costain suspected now that what had kept him and Ross alive had actually been their quest for the location of the Bridge of Spikes, the success of which Vincent would have had a serious interest in, but he couldn’t share that with Sefton. Maybe Vincent had been interested in what Sefton’s occult researches might reveal. To Vincent, Quill would have been the one whose dreams were least likely to reveal anything useful. ‘So let’s assume – assumption noted – that Tunstall was being paid by Vincent to, maybe among other things, search Spatley’s office…’

  ‘To find, we think, a card that had been lost,’ said Sefton. ‘So its location wasn’t in anyone’s memory that Vincent could search.’

  Ross made a fist in the air at that one. She was drawing new association lines at high speed across her pieces of paper, pushing the pen down too forcefully, occasionally tearing the paper. She’d drawn Vincent as a big blue whirlpool in the middle. ‘Vincent kills Tunstall because he’s about to reveal their connection. He kills Staunce, well, we don’t know, but we might imagine Staunce was thinking about coming clean too. Rudlin is killed by accident when Vincent is really trying to kill Mary Arthur. We still don’t know his motivation there, and we don’t know why he failed. We think Vincent killed Jimmy because Jimmy had seen something key to his power and written what turned out to be bloody cryptic notes about it. And we still have no idea why he killed Spatley in the first place.’ She held up her piece of paper. ‘This is getting beautiful. But it’s so fucking useless. Oh God, we’re going to die.’

  Costain slammed his fist into the table, as much for his own benefit as for hers. ‘We still have three leads,’ he said. ‘We need to find those two people from the Soviet bar: Ben Challoner and Mary Arthur. And we need to work out what the fuck Jimmy was on about in those notes. Okay.’ He looked up Challoner’s name on his phone and found there was only one adult of that name in Greater London. ‘He lives at 56 Flaxton Road, Clapham. We need to get him. Right now.’

  * * *

  Flaxton Road in Clapham was a row of terraced houses which had once been smart little family dwellings, in the era when ‘the man on the Clapham omnibus’ was the standard phrase for the everyday Londoner. Now they had rows of doorbells on every porch – upper flat, bottom flat, basement flat – and the boards for estate agents were all the best kind of firm. This was the sort of place, Costain thought, where you found Pret A Manger wrappers blowing down the street. The street was silent in the summer heat, with only distant sounds of televisions from behind closed doors. The security bolts would have been slammed shut already. Costain thought of the team as little creatures running at high speed through the maze that Vincent, looming over Londo
n, had made of the place. He wondered if little creatures could do Vincent any damage. Even actually finding him, among all his properties, would be hard. Was there really anything they could offer or do to Challoner to change this situation? Of course, there was something that could be done. But Costain would wait until there was no other hope before he would consider that.

  ‘This isn’t the sort of place anyone with seniority in one of Vincent’s companies would live,’ said Ross.

  ‘It’s student land,’ said Costain, ‘young Toffland, more ways than one.’

  They rang Challoner’s doorbell. No reply. Costain then rang the other two doorbells and when the intercom went live said, ‘Police.’ A high window opened, and he showed a warrant card to whoever was above on this simmering afternoon, waiting for the evening to start boiling.

  * * *

  ‘He’s quiet … keeps himself to himself,’ said the stressed-looking young woman in the flowery dress. The team looked at each other knowingly, recalling, thought Ross, the number of times they’d heard that about various guilty bastards. ‘Is he in trouble?’

  She watched Costain limber up like a method actor, letting a troubled expression cross his features and then killing it, all a bit jumbled by the meth. ‘We don’t know what’s happened to him,’ he said. ‘Are you sure he’s not in his flat? Have you heard any … noises?’

  ‘What sort of noises?’

  ‘How thick are the walls in here? I mean, if he was shouting for help…?’

  ‘Shouting for—?’

  ‘Listen, we don’t have time for – I’m sorry – do you think he might be in immediate danger?’

  ‘Well, he might be…’

  Costain looked to Sefton. ‘The lady here thinks Mr Challoner might be in immediate danger.’

  Sefton nodded frantically. ‘Right,’ he said, ‘so we have to do our duty and take a look.’

  * * *

  They went down the stairs to the basement flat, and Costain tried the door. It gave a little even as he pushed it. He retreated up the stairs, took a run down, and kicked at the lock, which left him lying there on his arse, and the door swinging open.

  Ross led the way into the flat. There was a living room, clean, with a flat-screen TV, Xbox, a small sofa and a table at foot level. A bedroom: lived in, but tidied up. Man smell. Joop. No woman. A narrow kitchen that didn’t look as if you could cook in it, microwave and fridge. Costain found inside it the contents of the Abel and Cole vegetable delivery box that lay in a corner of the lounge. A bunch of the more exotic fruit and veg had started to rot. A small back-room office, with a PC, shelves. No books, not even a magazine.

  Costain picked up a pile of papers from on top of the printer. ‘Challoner keeps it tidy,’ he said, ‘doesn’t have a lot to clutter it up.’ He nodded towards a camera on one of the shelves. ‘Luxury goods, which he probably couldn’t afford. The rent on this place looks to be a step up from the income level of the person who bought the furniture.’

  Ross had taken a file of papers off the shelf. ‘Private detective licence,’ she said. ‘Ran out last year.’ The photo on it confirmed that this was indeed the man they’d seen at the auction and on the CCTV footage from the Soviet bar. He looked scared even in the picture.

  Sefton came in, holding up elbow and knee pads, which looked weird to Ross, not the sort of thing a skater would use. Brand new, without a scratch. ‘Always look under the bed,’ Sefton said. ‘No sex toys, but these, which is weird.’

  Ross went through every drawer, too fast for her liking, then went back and double-checked. She found another folder, this one containing photos. Big prints. They looked as if they’d been taken at a film premiere. But they were from the back of the crowd, the arm and head of a celeb waving as they got out of a car.

  Costain indicated the printer, which was indeed a serious piece of work. ‘Failed paparazzi,’ he said, ‘hence the protective gear. Failed private detective.’ He held up a greetings card still in a ripped-open envelope, blank inside but for a printed note pasted in it, with ‘Congratulations!’ in a jolly font at the top. The receipt stub for the anonymous gift that had been enclosed was still in there. ‘Ticket for the proms tonight at the Royal Albert Hall,’ said Costain. ‘Someone’s looking after him.’

  Ross reached under the sofa and found a Moleskine notebook that hadn’t been written in, but it had contact details written in the front. She held it up to show the others. ‘Where have I seen that mobile number?’ she asked. Costain found a picture on his phone, and compared the number in the image to the one in the front of the notebook. They were the same. The picture was the one he’d taken of the back of the brothel’s business card. ‘He’s the owner of the burner phone,’ he said. ‘Someone wrote Challoner’s number on the back of the brothel card.’

  * * *

  As soon as they left the flat, Costain called Lofthouse. ‘Dear God,’ she said, ‘Russell Vincent?’ Ross asked for the phone, and told Lofthouse she’d photographed her portable Ops Board and was sending it to her in an email. ‘You know the lines we’re following. We’re pursuing the hottest one as we speak. As far as we know, Vincent isn’t listening in to your dreams. So if we don’t make it through tonight…’

  ‘Understood,’ Lofthouse said. ‘I’m still at my desk; I know a few others who are too. The Special Constables have largely volunteered to break with the strike. If you need backup, we’ll find it from somewhere.’

  Ross winced inwardly at the idea of the part-time Specials coming to their aid and dying in droves. ‘I don’t think, ma’am, that if the Ripper comes after us, any backup you could find would help.’

  ‘I know,’ said Lofthouse, ‘but I had to say something.’

  * * *

  It was evening by the time they reached the Albert Hall. On their journey they had to tack away from suburbs where the radio news and Sefton’s continual searches of Twitter had started to say things were kicking off. Ross drove. They talked and talked about what might be ahead and had all sorts of plans to avoid it. They were all acutely aware, she thought, of the potential for ostentation to bring trouble suddenly upon them. But of course, since, up to a certain point, Vincent knew the contents of their minds, he’d also know they were keeping a lookout on the social networks.

  Ross, Costain and Sefton strode together up the steps in front of the enormous domed building. They could hear the sounds of the orchestra inside, stark against the absolute silence outside. Or not quite silence. Was it Ross’ imagination, or the workings of the Sight, that she could hear distant drums and shouts? There was definitely smoke in the air. Signs said that the Promenade Concert tonight was still on. ‘I like that,’ said Sefton. ‘Keep calm and carry on.’

  ‘The band playing on the Titanic,’ said Costain. ‘We know Challoner’s seat number; do we walk in there and drag him out?’

  ‘He might be armed,’ said Sefton. ‘Our kind of armed. Innocent bystanders.’

  ‘Then let’s find out which exit he’ll be using, get him on the way out,’ decided Costain. ‘He’s not expecting anyone. If we miss him, we go back to his place.’

  ‘Would you go to a prom concert tonight?’ said Sefton.

  ‘From what we saw of his flat,’ said Costain, ‘I think he’s desperate in loads of ways.’ Ross saw what might almost be sadness on his face and wondered if, like her, he was thinking about a man who had offered parts of his body at that auction, on behalf of his employer. Ross wanted to hold Costain. Wanted him. Now, she thought, it was in moments of sadness, of sudden vulnerability, that she felt closest to him. If it all literally went to Hell tonight, if they couldn’t find anything to pin on Vincent, if the metropolis started to collapse in flames, maybe the two of them could get away. To where? To no happiness for her, ever, and the burden of that for him.

  A sound made them all turn. A convoy of military lorries was roaring along Kensington Road, the trees of Hyde Park dark against their camouflage. ‘Peacekeepers for tonight,’ said Costain. ‘Going back and forth
to every borough where it sounds like something’s going down. Without police liaison, or with a very reduced one. Being run out of the Home Office. Fuck’s sake.’ Behind those lorries came white vans with company logos.

  ‘Private security companies too,’ said Ross. ‘Shit.’

  ‘If anyone gets shot by that lot tonight,’ said Sefton. ‘Ostentation could ramp up the anger about that, amplify it, and we could be on the verge of sheer hell.’

  ‘Bloody London,’ said Costain.

  * * *

  They explored the layout of the Albert Hall area at a fast pace, decided on their options and went looking for an early dinner at the only restaurant that was still open. There was nobody else eating. They all ordered two starters and a main course and a pile of dessert, and they must have given the impression they were making the most of things before the world ended. The noises from the kitchen were the only sounds apart from their frantic speech as they drank every mouthful of strong coffee. Costain felt he might collapse at any moment. He had no idea what that collapse would even involve. If it involved sleep, it might mean death – not just for him but all of them.

  He wondered how the waiters would be getting home. Would London tonight change London tomorrow once and for all? Would the streets in the next few days be like something out of John Wyndham: emptiness and distrust, and everything rolling downhill with increasing ferocity? Was that the plan the Smiling Man had hinted at through Rob Toshack, months ago?

  He kept looking to his phone for the rolling news: riots in Tooting, Lambeth, Peckham, Wandsworth, and now reports of it coming into the centre of town, fascist marches in support of shopkeepers with cudgels, the army firing plastic bullets at youths in hoods running with televisions down Oxford Street, where a sports shop had the contents of its window strewn across the bus lane, and private security staff running left and right, trying to stop the looters who were rushing out in all directions. The Toffs, changing tactics, were pictured standing arm in arm in Trafalgar Square, marching across Westminster Bridge. There were scraps of interviews with them yelling that they were out here because they wouldn’t be intimidated, and there was safety in numbers. It seemed futile to Costain. Parliament was sitting in an all-night session. There were rumours of a vote of no confidence in the government, of all leadership dissolving before the morning.