The Severed Streets

FOURTEEN

Quill’s team had gathered in front of the Ops Board once more. Ross had told the others about the auction, but had made it sound as if it was something she’d found out about from the Docklands papers only on that same night. She’d managed not to mention that Costain had come along too. She’d thus established an honest context for having connected the man who’d left the Soviet bar to the big circle they’d drawn to indicate the wider world of the London occult underground. She’d mentioned getting a look at the auction ledger, and thus finding the record of Vincent’s transaction, as though anyone could easily do that. She had made no mention of her ordeal.

Sefton had looked suspiciously at her as she’d told them all that, but had in the end accepted that he’d made solo jaunts himself; it was something their team did. ‘Just bring me along to the next one, okay?’

‘Absolutely.’

‘Are you okay?’

Ross had needed her best poker face for that one. She’d managed to avoid looking to Costain. ‘Yeah.’

Sefton had finally just nodded.

Now, Ross attached an association thread between Tunstall and Staunce. ‘According to Lofthouse, Tunstall received six cash payments of ten thousand pounds each during the six-week period before his death. He was smart enough not to put them into his Barclays current account, but instead started up a deposit account with Mansion House, a bank based in the Cayman Islands.’

‘The main investigation would have looked into his financials,’ said Quill. ‘But they didn’t find that; it took the funny people to do so. So it was set up by someone with considerable knowledge of financial kung fu.’

‘The payments made to Staunce,’ continued Ross, ‘which he put into a more traditional Swiss bank, Heinkemann’s, are of the same amount and frequency, but happen in bursts, every few months, the first of which was paid ten years ago.’

‘That’d be when he became commissioner,’ said Quill.

‘They cease two years ago, but then there’s another payment, the day after the Spatley murder, and then Staunce is killed that same night. This gives us a clear association line between these two but we don’t know what that association is.’

‘We were given that on a plate,’ said Quill, pointing at the line that connected Staunce to Tunstall. ‘We didn’t have to work for it. I don’t like that. Kev, what have you got for us this fine morning?’

Sefton stepped forward and used a marker to add to the concepts part of the board. ‘Scrying,’ he said, ‘means looking deeply into. A “scrying glass”, the item Vincent is recorded as having bought at that auction, is something used in stories to answer questions or get info.’

‘As in “mirror, mirror on the wall”?’

‘That’s the one. I say “in stories” because I couldn’t find anything in my research that came from a real-world source.’

‘There’s nothing in the Docklands documents either,’ said Ross.

‘But this is one of those points where the shallowness of our research materials is obvious. I get the feeling, because it is so well documented in folk tales, that almost anyone at the Goat and Compasses would know what a scrying glass really is.’

‘Assumption,’ said Ross.

‘Professional instinct,’ said Sefton. ‘But, yeah.’

‘So did Vincent buy one,’ said Costain, ‘to see if he was still the fairest of them all?’

‘Someone,’ said Quill, ‘is about to equate us with Grumpy, Sneezy, Bashful and Happy. No, don’t sort out which is which — they were picked at random.’

‘No they weren’t,’ said Sefton.

‘At least,’ said Quill, ‘the mention of said object made Vincent suddenly very cooperative. I think we might shake some juice out of him today.’

Ross finally risked a look at Costain. He smiled back. She felt only relief that they’d sold their colleagues on her story. It was going to be difficult doing her duty today. After work, the two of them were going to set out on their own quest.

It was at least vaguely possible that, by tonight, her dad would once again be alive.

* * *

That afternoon, the four of them took an unmarked car over to Marble Arch, parked with Quill’s logbook propped in the window, and looked around for the address they’d been given by Vincent’s PA. It turned out to be a very plain door to a mews flat, with what had been a stable made into a garage beside it.

‘It’s the same address as he gave to the auction,’ noted Ross.

Quill rang the doorbell. ‘Hi ho,’ he said. ‘It’s off to work we go.’

* * *

They were led up from an entrance hall by an assistant, and it became clear that this wasn’t one mews flat, but a whole row of them knocked together. Some of the rooms were just bare repositories of empty bookshelves and unlooked-at art, but some seemed thoroughly lived in. They were taken along a corridor with carpeting that made their copper feet tired and were finally shown into the presence.

Russell Vincent immediately stood up from his desk and shook their hands. ‘I’m sorry my office took so long to get through to me about this,’ he said. Sefton saw Quill leave that one unremarked on. ‘DI Quill, good to see you again. I’m glad it’s you handling this, but, ah, gosh, exactly what this is…’

Sefton hadn’t felt anything of the Sight on entering the building and he didn’t now.

‘What this is,’ said Quill, ‘is something many might find unbelievable, but I now strongly suspect you won’t.’

Vincent looked awkward. He was clearly wary of them, trying to find a way to run this meeting on his own terms. Here, Sefton thought, was a man who didn’t know whether or not he could trust these people who’d come asking questions. ‘The sort of thing you were asking about at the do the other night, but which I was a bit shy of. Before your approach became … official.’

‘Are you, Mr Russell Vincent,’ said Ross, using the official-sounding language they’d agreed on earlier, ‘the owner of a scrying glass?’

‘Yes,’ he said quickly, perhaps a little guiltily. ‘Actually, that’s why I wanted to meet you at this address.’

* * *

Vincent pulled a dusty cloth away from an object which stood in the corner of one of his many disused rooms. ‘This is it,’ he said, ‘my “scrying glass”. The romance of a name, eh?’ It was a full-length mirror on a stand which allowed it to be turned on a vertical axis, the sort of thing you might find, Sefton thought, in a Victorian lady’s boudoir. It certainly looked ominous: an absolutely smooth surface in which he could see the contents of the room reflected.

Sefton looked over his shoulder and saw that the PA who’d answered the door had followed them in. Maybe Vincent wanted a witness at all times? She was standing on the threshold here, as if nervous of what had just been unveiled. Sefton stepped forward and put his hand up to the mirror. Then onto it. The glass was cold to the touch but no more than you might expect. There was nothing that said ‘London’ about its appearance or manufacture. There was no feeling of the Sight about it.

‘What does it do?’ said Quill.

Vincent looked awkwardly at him and his team. ‘I rather need to know how much you fellows know about … well…’

‘The power of London,’ said Sefton, adopting a confidence he didn’t feel. ‘Enough. Whatever you’re going to say, we’ll believe you.’

‘So, you’re police officers who know there are impossible things here?’ Vincent seemed fascinated. ‘My goodness. That must be so much help in your work. If you need to find a missing person or a suspect, you must be able to just make a gesture and…’ He made his own fumbling turn of fingers in the air.

‘You’d think,’ sighed Quill.

‘So you can’t do that?’

‘That’d be an operational matter,’ said Ross.

‘But at least you can defend yourselves against … against what we both know is out there. Please tell me you can do that.’

Ross raised her eyebrow at him. ‘And again.’

‘You were going to tell us, sir,’ said Quill, ‘what the scrying glass does.’

‘You mean you don’t know? Well, that makes this more awkward, in that I don’t see why I should…’ He trailed off, but seemed to make up his mind as Quill’s expression became darker. ‘I suppose you could find out from just about anyone in the community. Look, let me start at the beginning. I suppose it all began on the day I walked out of the Bussard Inquiry into phone hacking, having told them I’d run roughshod through my media business, found a few editors responsible for looking illicitly into the mobile phones of politicians and celebrities and sacked them all. I gave my word to those bastards — and, more importantly, to the public who buy my papers — that from now on mine was going to be the clean press corporation which didn’t do that sort of thing.’

‘How very ethical,’ said Costain, a completely non-ironic look on his face.

‘Not so much, actually,’ said Vincent. ‘I could see the way the wind was blowing — towards bloody government regulation if we weren’t careful — and I wanted to be the one who could use being spotless as a unique selling point. Trouble was … how do I put this?’

‘It’s not easy being clean?’ said Quill.

‘Well, precisely. Politicians and celebrities these days aren’t exactly soft touches. If you’re pursuing stories in the public interest, which, yes, does indeed sometimes mean “what interests the public”, you’ve simply got to cut a few corners. So I, erm, started to look for new ways to do so. I’d always had an interest in occult matters, always been aware of the whispers, knew there was something to it. So now I sent some of my people on fact-finding missions. They went incognito to a few pub nights-’

‘Such as…?’ asked Ross.

‘I think one was called the Goat and Compasses, I deliberately didn’t keep records of this stuff. Never mind being a bit dodgy, my shareholders care if I’ve, erm, you know, gone bonkers.’ He looked awkward again for a moment, as if wondering once more if they too would think he was mad.

‘Understood,’ said Quill. ‘Go on.’

‘Well, I finally went to one of those pub nights myself, incognito. I wasn’t very impressed with the people involved. They seemed all over the place; they didn’t know much, and, well, I can respect people who don’t have time for money, but this lot seemed desperately conflicted about it, obsessed with what they claimed to despise. I got my people to dig further, to ask about … well, about devices that could be used to find out people’s secrets. They came back with a suggestion: the scrying glass.’

Sefton looked at the others, and found they shared his shock. So a scrying glass might be what was being used to listen in on them, might have been what led to the leak that had got Tunstall killed.

‘How?’ growled Quill. ‘How does it do that?’

Vincent looked reluctant. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘I’m assuming this is never going to reach the authorities because, goodness knows, any new inquiry wouldn’t believe you, but you’ve got me over a barrel here, just knowing I’ve got one of these.’

‘We’re after bigger fish than you, sunshine,’ said Quill. ‘Tell us.’

‘The scrying glass is meant to be a device for entering people’s dreams.’

Sefton wanted to punch something. How many times had he had that feeling in his sleep, of something rifling through his mind? He looked again to his colleagues and could see from their own expressions of horror and anger that this was a shared experience.

‘And once you’re in,’ Vincent said, ‘you can check out whatever’s in their memory.’

‘How did that go for you?’ said Quill, advancing dangerously on Vincent.

The billionaire raised his hands in surrender. ‘It didn’t go at all,’ he said. ‘I’ve never successfully used the blasted thing. Wish I’d never set eyes on it. I bought it at this auction which took place under the skeleton of a whale in the Natural History Museum. Not wanting to be there myself in case I was recognized, I stayed on the other end of a phone line and had my proxy purchase this “scrying glass”, which I’d been told was as rare as hen’s teeth. I paid around forty thou for it and had it delivered to me here. I expected some sort of instruction manual, but there was nothing. So I decided that perhaps using it was just going to be a matter of instinct.’ Sefton recognized his own blundering attitude to dealing with the power of London. ‘The first time I tried … well, the only time … Maggie, would you please continue the story? Tell the truth.’

Sefton was intrigued by the idea that otherwise the PA might not tell the truth. They all looked to the middle-aged woman, who now had an awkward expression on her face. She’d been surprised to hear all this from her boss, Sefton felt. She was wondering if he was mad. But she was also very worried that he might not be. ‘It must have been about two and a half years ago,’ she began, haltingly. ‘There was snow on the ground. I was downstairs making tea, and Mr Vincent had said that that night I could leave early, because he was going to be busy all evening. And then I heard him cry out from up here. There was the most enormous crashing around. It was like someone had got in here and was attacking him. I should have hit the panic button, but I didn’t; I just ran upstairs and opened the door and found him staggering about. The room was smashed up. It must have been over in seconds, whatever it was. His shirt was ripped. Mr Vincent saw me standing there and yelled for me to get out. He ran out himself and closed the door behind us. He made sure I was all right, but he wouldn’t tell me what had happened — just that I wasn’t to tell anyone, and … well, he’s never asked me to work in this room since, and I’ve been glad not to.’ She looked as if she was now making some terrible mental calculations about how her perceptions of what was possible had changed since the start of this meeting.

‘What happened?’ Sefton asked Vincent.

Vincent went to a sofa and sat down. ‘Something I now think you might be familiar with. Something I’ve been wondering about coming forward about since the murders started. How could I? When you asked me about the impossible at the party, Inspector Quill, I should have told you then, but I knew nothing about you.’ He let out a long breath. ‘I was attacked by Jack the Ripper.’

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.’