The Severed Streets

TWENTY-FOUR

Costain grabbed Keel by the beard and hauled him out of his seat. ‘If you’re lying…!’

Keel cried out. ‘It’s the truth! I don’t want you coming back here, do I?’

‘Names are worth something,’ said Sefton. ‘If you found out who Vincent was down the phone, you found out who the proxy was too. Who was it?’

‘I wrote the name down.’

Ross watched numbly as Costain released Keel, and he went to look in his filing cabinet. They had been played by Russell Vincent. He had given them an ordinary mirror, while he still had a real scrying glass. More than that, he’d employed the man who’d been there when the Ripper had attempted to kill Mary Arthur, who’d bid against them for the Bridge of Spikes. The obvious reason for Vincent to lie was that he was the one who’d been looking into their dreams. The information gained from their dreams had been used to coordinate the Ripper murders and to send Vincent’s proxy after the Bridge.

The overwhelming weight of circumstantial evidence was that Russell Vincent, one of the richest and most powerful men in the world, was, somehow, the new Jack the Ripper. How could they ever prove it?

Keel had found the scrap of paper. ‘His name was Ben Challoner.’

* * *

They got out of there. They left Keel waving to them from the shop doorway, asking if the nice ladies and gentlemen could please return his staff as soon as possible, grinning at how he had obviously rocked them back on their heels. Costain felt like punching him.

The Armed Response Unit made their apologies, did the necessary in terms of paperwork and left, presumably for awkward afternoons at home or down the pub. The strike was on. London felt silent, waiting. Costain, inside it, felt wired to the point of exploding.

The three of them marched into the unmarked van and locked the door. Only then did they feel able to talk. It was as if Vincent was already listening. ‘Everything about this operation,’ said Ross, ‘makes sense if the perpetrator is Russell Vincent. I say we now regard him as our number one suspect.’

‘Agreed,’ said Costain.

‘So how does everything fit together if it is him?’ Sefton was looking as strung out as Costain felt. They felt like ants who’d just glimpsed a human being standing above their nest. Mora Losley had had no worldly power, only what her occult abilities gave her. Russell Vincent seemed to have immense power in both spheres.

‘If Vincent has a genuine scrying glass,’ said Ross, ‘he could hack people’s dreams like a phone tap. That could be why the Herald’s so famously clean: they get their stories without breaking the law, from the minds of celebrities and politicians.’

‘It’s no wonder they got the Ripper message story first,’ said Sefton.

‘If it’s him, he deliberately used that message at the crime scene to send us on the wild goose chase of Ripper lore. He would have known from our memories that we didn’t know what a scrying glass looked like, and that even when we found out, we’d assume he was the one who’d been played. It all fits. He tailored the fiction precisely to what he knew about his audience.’

‘Just like he does with his newspapers,’ said Costain.

Sefton made a noise as if he’d suddenly realized something. ‘That PA,’ he said, ‘Vincent had her be there when we visited him, so she could confirm his story about the Ripper coming out of the mirror. She never said she saw the Ripper himself or anything happening with the mirror. It was all over by the time she got into the room.’

‘Still,’ said Ross, ‘I don’t believe he was that far-sighted that he staged something to set up his story way back then. Something violent happened to him in that room.’

‘And there were genuine traces of the silver goo,’ said Sefton, ‘which Vincent apparently couldn’t see first-hand, only, I suppose, when he saw our memories of it.’

‘He was cocky enough to try to play us face to face,’ said Ross, ‘when everything else about him says he’s cautious. Why?’ She suddenly pointed at the other two. ‘Because he wanted something from us. What did he say to us? What did he ask?’

Sefton found his notebook. ‘He asked whether or not we could … find a missing person using gestures, and if we had any defence against scrying glasses. He must have known we didn’t have the answers right then, but … oh fuck, I know what this was: he wanted us to go away and find out, and then he could look into our frigging brains like we were his own private Wikipedia!’

‘At least,’ said Costain, ‘we didn’t take him up on those suggestions.’

‘I would have got there with the defences bit,’ said Sefton. ‘And then he’d have known how to get round them, for anyone else’s brain he wanted to look into, if they tried to block him. Shit.’

‘So who would he be looking for?’ asked Ross.

‘You said you thought the man that was killed in the Soviet bar, Rudlin, wasn’t the target, that it was actually Mary Arthur,’ said Costain. ‘If Vincent is the one controlling the Ripper or being the Ripper or however it works, she got away from him that night.’

Ross acknowledged that with a frantic nodding. She fell silent for a moment, no longer able to control the movements of her hands as they flexed in the air, the product of her ferocious thinking.

Sefton hauled himself up and paced the confines of the van, looking more horrified every moment as the implications sank in.

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 London, 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.

He glanced at his watch, which seemed to be working so slowly, and was relieved that the time had arrived when they might do something about all this, even if it too turned out to be a futile gesture. ‘Okay,’ he said.

* * *

London was tense, waiting, as they walked up those steps once more. The summer air was still and warm. It took Ross a moment to figure out what had changed. The lights in all directions were now dulled by a fine veil of smoke.

They took up positions around the exit that someone in Challoner’s seat would most likely use, and they waited as they heard final applause roaring from inside the building, and then that sound turn quickly into the noise of people moving, of doors banging open. ‘They’ve made their gesture,’ said Costain, ‘now it’s a race to try and find a taxi.’

Sure enough, very soon the first people started marching out of the exit past them. They checked out every male face, mentally comparing them to Challoner. Then-

Positive ID. There he was, walking quickly along, his arms stiff by his sides, looking all around. He looked scared and puzzled but, based on previous experience, Ross got the feeling that was how he always looked. She made eye contact with the other two, and they converged. Sefton got in front of Challoner, while Costain slapped a hand onto his shoulder. Challoner halted, and the crowd flowed around them, more and more of them every moment. It was going to be difficult for him to do a runner.

‘Who are you?’ He looked between them as if he was instantly guilty. Then his gaze locked on Ross and Costain as he recognized them.

Costain flashed his warrant card. ‘Police officers. Come with us, please, sir.’

He did, but only a few paces, out of the way of the crowd. He kept looking back over his shoulder. ‘Please, in there-’

‘What are you afraid of?’ asked Costain.

Challoner looked round again. ‘They put the masks on right at the end. I think it’s a protest.’

Ross heard murmurs and exclamations from further up the steps. She spun to look. There they were. Out of every door of the Albert Hall was bursting a horde of Toffs in masks, with placards and banners. The rest of the crowd were drawing back from them, afraid. There came more and more of them. An army of them. They filled the space at the top of the steps and then started marching down them, towards the group around Challoner.

‘That was organized using something other than Twitter,’ said Sefton. Either Vincent had decided not to alert them in the same way, or the demonstrators had known that the substitute security forces in London tonight would be keeping an eye on social media.

Ross turned quickly to Challoner, knowing they had no time for subtlety now. ‘We know about Russell Vincent-’

‘What?’ Challoner was now looking seriously afraid. He didn’t know whether to be more scared of them or of the Toffs.

‘We know everything, sunshine!’ Costain grabbed him by the lapels and roared into his face. ‘We know why you’re worried about that lot! He uses them as cover, doesn’t he? Do you know how many of his employees he’s killed?’

‘I–I don’t know what you’re-’

‘You just happened to be in that bar, just happened to be chatting to Mary Arthur — yeah, we know about her too! We know she was meant to be the Ripper’s target.’

‘We know you go to the auctions,’ said Ross, ‘as a proxy for Vincent. You’ve seen us there too. We’re the coppers who know about the terrifying shit of London. We’re your only chance.’

‘You tell us fucking everything and you might get to walk away from this. You might get to live. Because is Vincent worth it?’ Costain had dropped his voice and was looking the man in the eye. ‘You have risked everything for him, offered your own body for him, and what do you get back in return? Just every day a sense of dread. You come and work with us, you know you’re on the right side, you will make a difference. It’ll be you that brings him down.’

He was talking so fast, improvising at high speed as the wave of Toffs approached them. Challoner was shaking his head. ‘We need to get away from here.’

‘How does he do it?’ shouted Costain. ‘How does Vincent send the Ripper?’

Challoner looked startled to hear the name. He looked over his shoulder again, and now they could all see it. The approaching crowd of Toffs were throwing long shadows down in front of them. They were being illuminated from behind, by an unearthly light.

The Ripper was among them.

Challoner made to struggle out of Costain’s grasp, but Costain held on. He must be on the Sighted spectrum. Perhaps that was why Vincent had chosen him. ‘Too late. Chicken run. You reckon he’s coming for us or for you? Tell us something we can use!’

‘He … he makes things happen in London!’ yelled Challoner. ‘He goes on social media, he has all these fake accounts! He uses the Toffs and the skinheads as cover! He starts a riot happening, and then he sends the Ripper to kill whoever he’s after, and then he can blame the Toffs for it! He needs to know roughly where his target is going to be-’

‘You assumed you’d be going to the Proms tonight with Vincent,’ said Sefton. ‘When he didn’t show up, you started to wonder why.’

‘Good little boy stayed in his seat,’ said Ross. ‘You brought Mary Arthur to that bar so that she could be attacked, didn’t you? You kept her there. And then you got out of there, because you knew what was coming!’

‘Yes, yes!’

‘How does it work?’ yelled Sefton. ‘What is the Ripper? How does he control it?’

‘I don’t know. I don’t know!’ Challoner was squirming in Costain’s grip now. The light was getting closer.

‘You can see that, can’t you?!’ bellowed Costain. ‘Will you testify to anything we can get a jury to believe?’

‘Yes! Just, please-!’

Ross looked in the direction of the light again. One of the Toffs was emphasized to her by the Sight, was something extraordinary. It was coming slowly down the steps among the others, moving first to one side, then to another, looking right at the four of them, like a predator sizing up its quarry. She could see the mask clearly now, see the silver falling from its eyes like uncontrollable tears. Suddenly, the figure lurched towards them.

‘Run,’ said Costain.

They sprinted sideways, out of the flow of the crowd down the steps, around the curve of the hall, hauling Challoner along between them. They were aiming for the van parked nearby. Costain was planning to take the wheel, and they would see if the Ripper could match their speed along the empty streets.

But the light was already flaring around the corner of the building. Something shot over their heads.

The Ripper was on them.

It sliced the air with a razor that seemed to cause the air itself to scream and part, like lightning. The first blow cut Costain’s jacket, and he let Challoner go. The man made to sprint away, back into the fringes of the crowd, but before Ross could even shout, the Ripper had spun, leaped up, and come down on Challoner like a cloaked bird of prey as his victim looked up and screamed.

They all started forward, but the flashing of the razor pumped faster than the eye could follow and blood burst from Challoner’s torso and throat.

That was the end of their lead, of their hope, of the little man’s life of service.

The crowd parted, yelling and screaming, leaving a clearing into which the body fell. There stood the Ripper. It turned to face Ross and the others.

Was that it? Was that all it was here for? Challoner had been a loose end to tidy up, a thread that could lead back to Vincent. But what about them? Had Vincent tried to access their dreams, never found them asleep, and started to wonder if they’d guessed his secret? Was the Ripper actually him or someone, something, he’d hired or created? The shape of the body didn’t look right for Vincent, if that meant anything. If he was in communication with, or actually was, this assassin, he’d just realized that they’d found Challoner, that they were that close to Vincent himself.

The Ripper took one decisive step towards them. Then another. It seemed to be hesitating. Ross could see the silver pouring down its face now.

‘He’s losing a lot of silver,’ said Sefton. ‘Maybe he’s not doing so well.’

‘You reckon we could take him?’ said Costain.

‘With what?’ asked Ross.

The Ripper launched itself forward. It had its arm raised, the razor ready to strike. It moved in a blur.

Ross found herself stepping into the way in reaction, like returning a tennis serve. She hadn’t thought about it. She flinched, expecting an impact-

But the Ripper had stopped. It had no momentum. It had halted like a cartoon. It was poised above her, arm back, ready to strike. Its mask was a mass of silver. It looked contorted, almost expressing emotion. It slowly raised its left hand, as if balancing itself, willing itself to attack. The skin of the hand, Ross was close enough to see, looked desperately human, wrinkled.

Ross suddenly understood why it might have stopped. Why, like a character in a video game, it was slowly starting to work itself back and forth now, trying to edge around whatever prohibition was stopping it from attacking her, to get to Costain and Sefton. ‘Tony, Kev,’ she said, ‘get behind me.’

They did so. The Ripper stopped trying to jerk forwards.

‘It doesn’t want to attack women,’ said Ross. ‘Not Mary Arthur, and not me.’

The Ripper seemed to vibrate with tension for a moment. Then, with a movement so swift that Ross couldn’t see in which direction it had flown, it was gone.

They sagged together for a moment. They composed themselves. They looked around, making sure it wasn’t going to come back from another direction.

It didn’t. They were safe. For now.

What did they have now? Did they have anything?

‘Thank you for that,’ said Costain. He held Ross. She kissed his cheek, feeling his fear. She felt only professionally satisfied that she might have saved him. She was acutely aware of the missing emotion. She felt the shock entering her and being amped up by the drugs, and she knew there’d be no happiness in the future to balance it, that there was increasingly nowhere left for her, emotionally or, she was starting to feel, physically.

* * *

They went to look at the victim’s body, around which a crowd was now hesitantly gathering. Costain looked through his pockets and found a phone: a brand new cheap one, the sort you could get from a market stall, with no contacts in the memory. ‘Bet he was told to ditch the old one right before tonight,’ he said, ‘so there’d be nothing to associate the corpse with Vincent.’

The concert audience was shying away from those Toffs who had stayed, some of whom had now taken their masks off, to reveal students and a disparate range of mainstream London faces. Some of this lot would be coming forward in a moment to say that a Toff had done this. ‘We need to find out if we can pin the purchase of that ticket on Vincent,’ said Sefton, sounding as if he knew how little a thing that would be.

‘Already put in the request,’ said Ross, looking up from her phone. With shaking hands, she took her rough books and portable Ops Board from her bag. She sat down on the steps and drew some satisfyingly certain lines across the Ops Board, the only control over anything she could have now. ‘It refuses to kill women,’ she said. ‘So Mary Arthur is safe. If only we bloody knew how to find her.’

* * *

They waited until the paramedics had arrived to deal with the remains of Challoner. Ross felt gutted at the idea of putting a body, a crime scene and evidence into the hands of people other than police and associated specialists. The medics looked surprised that coppers were actually here. One looked pleased, the other disgusted.

What could they do? What was left?

They decided to at least go and check out Vincent’s mews flat, just in case he’d been foolish enough to use it again. Costain insisted he could drive and the others just nodded. He drove them through a London where something worrying could be glimpsed down the end of every side street. It was as if their own experience of having the Sight was starting to be translated into the mainstream world. The feeling of impending chaos was worse for them, because they all instinctively wondered what the wider implications might be, how London would react to amplify it, what the Smiling Man would make of it. They tried to keep talking to each other, shouting to each other, even, to stay awake. They took more of the meth. The intensification of the fear of London beat through them now too.

On the radio news, and on the police frequency, they heard reports of police officers putting on uniforms and turning out to help the army. There were rumours that the Police Federation was going to call the strike off early, point proven, themselves horrified at how the riots in the further boroughs had started joining hands, were becoming what the few news commentators actually out there rather than at home reading Twitter were calling a ‘ring of fire’, moving in towards the centre of the cities of London and Westminster. The schools would be closed tomorrow, the news was saying, the post offices and buses and underground too, as the people that ran these things decided that safety now meant staying at home. Ross wondered if she was watching a metropolis swiftly crumbling, a culture flying apart.

The news of Challoner’s murder was fighting the riots for the lead on all the websites, as if the Ripper was leading the charge, the symbol of everything that was happening tonight. The Herald was going big on that version of the story, inevitably. Its editorial was demanding that the army flood the streets with soldiers and impose martial law, because the government was clearly incapable of restoring order.

‘There’s another one,’ said Sefton, who was also looking at his phone. ‘Another Ripper murder.’ Ross went straight to the Herald’s site, because of course that would get it first. The new victim had been identified as a former stringer for various newspapers. Christ, here was another one: a private detective. As soon as Ross had started to read about that killing, Sefton shouted there was another, a financier.

‘It’s because of us,’ said Costain. ‘He’s killing everyone that could lead us to him.’

‘Does that mean we’ve scared him?’ said Sefton. ‘Or has he now got the luxury of tying up all his loose ends?’

Ross got an email and recognized the name. ‘The first of those victims,’ she said, feeling as if they were rats being pursued into a corner, ‘that’s the person the Royal Albert Hall say purchased the ticket for Challoner tonight.’ She slammed the seat with her fist. ‘No wonder the Herald kept pushing the “mob did it” angle about the killings. Vincent used them as cover for every murder. And tonight he’s got that cover just about everywhere.’

* * *

They reached the mews flat and parked outside. It was silent and dark, and through the windows that didn’t have curtains they could see only empty rooms. An estate agent’s board indicated it was for sale. They could hear the distant sounds of chaos moving closer. Costain felt a helpless fury marching back and forth inside him as he looked up at the building. The billionaire had many properties, in London and round the world. He also had an organization which could keep the Met in general — never mind one small unit with a bizarre story — at bay forever. He’d had a good long look at the way Costain’s team did things and had used tonight to make any possibility that they might get him into court recede into the distance at the speed of light. Even the phone number Vincent had given to the Quills didn’t connect now. Mary Arthur might have gone into hiding, never to be heard from again.

Eventually they would sleep.

‘There’s been a Ripper attack in Manchester,’ said Ross, looking up from her phone. Costain went over to see, while Sefton went across to try the door of the building. The story checked out, the MO just the same. As they’d suspected, Vincent could reach them even if they fled London. Their only chance was to hide, to give his vast media network, used to pursuing disgraced celebrities, no clue as to where they were. They might need to live the rest of their lives in fear.

Again Costain considered his options. As terrible as it was, as horrifying as the line of dominoes that would now fall would be … he now had no alternative. He’d made his decision.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said to Ross.

‘What for?’

‘I have to go.’

She had a look of perplexed horror on her face. He didn’t let it get to him. He would see much worse soon. ‘What? No! We can’t split the team up now…!’

He kissed her again, against her words, held her tightly to him, despite her moving away, her needing to know what he was going to do. He drew comfort from her and desperately wished he could offer some in return.

‘I’ll come back, I promise.’

He wanted to say this wasn’t the scene where the hero marches off to make a heroic sacrifice. Except in a way it was. He was also about to do the most selfish thing he had ever done. He looked again at the wonderful shape of her face. He remembered her passion. He saw how her character informed that. She was the first woman who’d ever truly allowed him inside. Even as she was now, without happiness, when even saving her father would bring her no happiness, still her whole being was something vast and meaningful to him.

He turned and headed back to the van. He looked back to see Ross staring after him, to see Sefton going back to her, wondering what was going on. He kept walking.

* * *

Ross’ mind was racing, trying to work out what could take Costain off alone. She could only make puzzled eye contact with Sefton. Hadn’t she and Costain shared every secret? Was he … was he just fleeing? She watched him drive off, making herself give him the benefit of the doubt. He had told her he’d be back. This was something their team did. She had to trust him.

An alarm came from her phone. She looked at it to find a note from Forensics. ‘Your fingerprint search was one of the few tasks I was able to complete successfully in the current circumstances,’ it began, ‘so it went to the top of the queue, but I find the implications extraordinary…’ Ross scrolled quickly through the message and got to what those implications were.

‘Oh my God,’ she said.

‘What?’

‘One of those photographs of fingerprints inside a prehistoric long barrow, fingerprints put there four thousand years ago, matched the prints found at the Ripper murders.’

Sefton stared at her in shock. Then he grabbed the phone. ‘Where,’ he said, ‘is this long barrow?’

* * *

After a few minutes’ driving, Costain pulled the van to a halt, breathing hard. He’d been going far too fast. Only the emptiness of the streets had saved him. He’d switched off his phone as soon as he’d turned the corner. He was sure Ross would leave him messages. He didn’t want to hear them. He reached into his jacket. He found the secret inner pocket, closed his hand on the object. He wanted to see it, to make sure no secret power had taken it from him.

The Bridge of Spikes was a plain gold sphere, small enough to fit into his hand.

He’d stolen it from Anna Lassiter’s house two days ago, before he and Ross had gone there together, when Quill had sent him back to the Soviet bar to talk about prostitutes. He had used several of Sefton’s protective items, taken from the man’s holdall, to get into Lassiter’s flat. He doubted he’d have been able to do it without what he was now sure had been Vincent’s men making their own attempt hours before.

He had done it because he couldn’t handle the idea of someone looking into his dreams. Because of how vulnerable that made him feel. He hadn’t previously decided what to do with it, although keeping it on him was some sort of decision. He’d had fantasies about staging a fake raid and triumphantly giving it to Ross.

Now he had made his mind up. He had sacrificed so much for this. He hoped it was worth it.

Costain replaced it in his pocket, took a deep breath, and drove off once more.