The Severed Streets

ELEVEN

Brian Tunstall had been shocked by his experience of being on remand in Brixton jail. He’d been on G wing, with a bunch of others awaiting trial, in a cell with, thank God, a very quiet man who had just shaken his head when Brian had attempted to introduce himself, as if he could deny the whole experience of being here.

Brian hadn’t been able to deny it. While he was inside, and when he’d got past the shock of that terrifying, impossible thing that had happened to Michael Spatley, he’d started to mull over the idea that he deserved to be there. To his brief, because he didn’t see how DI Quill’s weird belief in what had really happened could help him in court, he’d maintained his other story: that a protestor had somehow got into the car. So to two different people he’d maintained two different fictions.

He’d started to feel he’d deserved to be there, and then they’d let him out. He’d gone back home, to Angela and little Alee. He’d spent a lot of time at night, woken by terrible dreams, troubled by his conscience, doing what he was doing now — sitting watching Alee asleep in her cot.

Tomorrow, DI Quill was going to visit to talk to him again. He must know something new, something that pointed to Tunstall’s real part in Michael Spatley’s death. Tunstall had been thinking all day about how good it would be to tell Quill everything. He didn’t see how he could possibly face a charge of conspiracy to murder. Though there would, of course, be lesser charges, he might be able to do a deal. Quill had indicated that he’d believed the impossible bits. He would have to tell them about the money.

Yes, he thought now as he looked at his baby girl’s face. Yes, I’ll be a good example to her. I just want to be able to keep seeing her face, to be here for her.

He remembered the taste of the blood-soaked piece of paper as he’d put it into his mouth and chewed and swallowed. That was what they had made him do for money.

He would normally have watched TV if he couldn’t sleep. But all you saw these days were news broadcasts about the protestors. He didn’t want to see them. Even here in Hackney he could now hear the sounds of them. There were shouts from right outside the window. He hoped they wouldn’t wake Alee up.

When the wall in front of him started warping, he wondered if he was dreaming, or if perhaps the stress he’d been under had deformed the shape of his eyes. It took him a moment to realize that something was really pushing its way through the wall.

He managed to grab Alee from out of the cradle before the first blow landed. He staggered to the bedroom door, shoved his way through it, one hand trying to fend off something he couldn’t seem to connect with, his only thought to get the baby away.

He was suddenly aware of many terrible impacts happening rapidly across his body. He looked into the face of his screaming child. He heard what must be Angela yelling too.

He was so incapable of helping them.

Then he was gone.

* * *

Quill and his team stood looking at the remains of Brian Tunstall. No scrawled message this time, and, as far as Forensics could find, again no fingerprints. The adult witness, Tunstall’s wife, Angela, had been too traumatized to answer any but the most basic questions, but it was clear that the MO had been the same. The Ripper had spared the woman and child.

So much for rich white men. Only two out of three for Tunstall.

The now-familiar silver goo showed the entry and exit points of the killer. Jason Forrest, unaware of them, stood glowering near one. As Quill watched, he just shook his head and walked away.

There came an alert from Quill’s phone. He looked at it and found confirmation that the prints they’d found in Spatley’s office had indeed belonged to Tunstall.

* * *

Back in the Portakabin, Quill said out loud what they all knew in their copper hearts. ‘Tunstall must have known something about Spatley’s murder and we didn’t get it out of him when we had the chance. Gaiman suggested that if we catch the Ripper, we might turn everything around and save London. We might have fucked that up before we even knew it!’

They had gone over all the interviews again and had found nothing that spoke of Tunstall’s complicity. The efforts to get Vincent to reply to their request for him to be interviewed were continuing. Billionaires, unlike authors, treated afternoons with the police as optional excursions. The reverse phone book the Met held online had revealed the mobile phone number written on the card found in Spatley’s office to be that of a disposable model, known in the trade as a ‘burner’ — the sort of thing that organized criminal networks used to reduce the risk of being traced. At least it was still in use.

‘The assailant,’ said Ross, who sounded as tense as Quill felt, almost to the point of anger, ‘also waited until the night before we were due to interview Tunstall again. I don’t believe that’s a coincidence.’

‘Who, apart from Lofthouse and the four of us, knew we were going to talk to him again?’

‘Tunstall himself might have talked,’ said Costain. Quill thought he was looking well frazzled, as if sleep was eluding him more than the others, even.

‘Or,’ said Sefton, ‘the Ripper might have supernatural means of learning about this stuff.’

‘Has anyone got anything new about anything?’ Quill asked.

‘This morning,’ said Ross, ‘I heard back from Photographic Intelligence. As I expected, the images from the bar weren’t good enough for their software to do facial recognition.’

‘Fuck me,’ said Quill. He went to the Ops Board and pointed at it. ‘There is, as I have said before, only what’s up there on that board. It is where the only salvation lies for such as us. Let us think. What could we add to it?’ Already, the brothel business card had been attached to the corkboard with the number written beside it and an association line attaching it to Spatley. The card itself had revealed no clear fingerprints except Spatley’s, but now they were at least sure that he’d handled it.

‘But then he lost it,’ said Ross, ‘and that didn’t worry him too much. Which means it’s probably not a clue to him being involved in some sort of scandal.’

Quill frowned. ‘Why do you say it didn’t worry him?’

‘As owner of that office, he could have locked the door, moved furniture about, found it again. It seems as if it meant more to the person doing the searching than it did to Spatley.’

‘It’s time we found out what the connection is, why someone might have wanted to search Spatley’s offices for that card. You two — ’ Quill indicated Costain and Ross — ‘take a trip to Soho and put eyeballs on the target.’

* * *

Costain had always found Soho’s insistence that it was still naughty, almost because it had to be for the tourists, charming. It was actually calming to be back here. The sex-shop end of the business moving into the daylight across the way on Oxford Street had really taken the oomph out of the place, which now said gay and proud more than it said furtive. There was only one remaining peep show, and its signs sighed with the idea that this was the art of a lost age, like a freak show or a circus. Presumably because the area was still a popular brand, there were still over a dozen prostitutes working in walk-ups, stairwells with small advertising of their purpose that often seemed to lead to flats above independent television production companies (and there was an example of how rent levels created strange bedfellows). He assumed that meetings about new drama series were regularly interrupted by faked cries of encouragement. The TV people probably liked that. There was still a handful of men who made a living hawking to likely customers on the street and walking them to the stairwells. The prostitutes discouraged this parasitic trade. They preferred to have tips given to their ‘maids’, matronly figures who were, in effect, their PAs and lived in. There was a whole other industry of people who pretended to be prostitutes but were in fact thieves, and brothels that were actually high-priced drinking establishments which one was encouraged not to leave. There were also three or four genuine, surprisingly large, brothels in the area, including this one on Berwick Street, across from which Costain and Ross now sat, drinking coffee on a street-side table in the sunshine. The coffee was probably a bad idea. She looked as on edge as he felt. They had watched as a number of men had approached a completely nondescript door, had talked into an intercom and been welcomed up. Having established that the place was still working, in a while they’d take a wander around the map and work out back exits and boltholes.

‘You’re right at home here, aren’t you?’ Ross said to him.

He turned to look at her. They’d hardly talked on the way over. She was probably wondering if he’d meant what he’d said about helping her get her dad out of Hell rather than taking the Bridge of Spikes to save himself. He’d stared into the night worrying about that question himself, but the more he thought about it, the more he looked at her, the more he felt that, once again, he’d done the right thing; this time at least, the right thing felt good. ‘I guess.’

‘It reminds me of Whitechapel.’

‘Does it?’

‘I mean, all those dead women. Except here it’s all kept behind closed doors. How many container-loads of Belarusian teenagers do you reckon get decanted here every week?’

On impulse, he reached out and took her hand in his. She stiffened, but let him. ‘I meant what I said about your dad.’ He wanted her to ask about that third date. Perhaps it would, by default, be tomorrow, the night of the auction. Or perhaps that was putting too many stressful concepts together for Ross. He wasn’t sure she’d even recognize what ‘third date’ tended to mean in modern dating culture. She watched TV, didn’t she? He found it odd, distantly, that he was so attracted to someone who’d reminded him so fiercely of his glimpse of Hell. Or maybe he liked the idea of being with someone who cared enough to keep him on the straight and narrow.

‘I know you did.’ He wasn’t sure if that was a lie or not.

‘We should talk about what we’re going to do about the auction.’

‘Yeah.’

He decided he was going to risk it. Just to see her reaction. ‘You could call it our third date.’

She stopped what she was going to say, actually a little flustered, which was deeply pleasing. ‘Technically,’ she said.