The Severed Streets

TWENTY-NINE

A FEW MINUTES EARLIER

Ross listened to what the familiar, tender voice on the other end of the phone line was telling her. He was saying what he’d done. He was calling, he said finally, from a room where he was being held by security guards, and Quill — Quill, who was back to life, who was back in this world instead of her dad — was about to do something which was informed by where they were, and so now she should listen, because …

She held the phone out towards Sefton while Costain was still talking. ‘You should listen to him,’ she said. ‘It’s important and I can’t.’

Sefton was astonished; his eyes interrogated her. He hesitantly spoke into the phone, and listened to what Costain told him, and put a hand to his face in amazement.

Ross looked back to the hole in the ground. She listened, unable to stop the analytical part of herself from becoming involved as Sefton got all the information Quill had told Costain and his plan for what they should do next, relayed it to her, finished the call.

She looked down at the hole. Now she knew what Quill had encountered in there. What she was looking at was what, in the end, always seemed to be under everything: the thread of abuse that had wound its way through Whitechapel. She’d been right about something she’d said. It seemed a long time ago now: the Ripper really was just blokes and desperation for money. The meaning of this story truly was the killing of women.

She had no meanings left and no hope.

She picked up the pickaxe, stepped forward and dropped into the dark.

* * *

She landed inside the long barrow. She could hear Sefton scrambling after her. She felt the mighty presence at the end of the chamber, shut in, desperate to be awakened. She shouldered the pickaxe and ran at the rock wall.

* * *

Sefton got inside the barrow just in time to see Ross land the pickaxe against the stone, the scene barely illuminated by the lights through the small opening they’d made in the roof. She struck once, then she cried out, and started striking the rock time after time after time, screaming at it. Sefton watched. He wanted to say something. But anything he might say would be too like her scream. This was what Quill had just ordered them to do, but he was pretty sure that Ross would have done it anyway.

Light sprang from a sudden crack in the rock.

The interior of the barrow was revealed in every detail. Sefton had a moment to see those fingerprints.

Something burst from the rock at the end of the chamber. It still looked like the Ripper. Silver was hissing from its eyes and mouth.

Sefton wondered, in the instant he got a good look at her — for it was very clearly a her — if she would be able to make it out of the barrow and across London. But, as well as the coldness of the evaporating silver, there was in the atmosphere all around them a sense of enormous willpower, of something awoken. The barrowwight opened her mouth and made a sound Sefton would never forget: a single note that banished the tattered remnants of what had been put here to keep her imprisoned.

Ross was looking up at her, empty, clearly wanting to be pleased that she’d freed her, but finding no meaning.

With a splatter of silver against the rock ceiling of the chamber, the being sped upwards and in a blur of motion she was gone.

NOW

Quill was relieved and awed and once again scared to see the figure of the Ripper walk purposefully through the wall of Vincent’s office. He found himself flinching at the possibility that she would once more rush to attack him. She looked at him, considered him. Then she turned to look at Vincent.

He was backing away, looking to the scrying glass, but the figure in front of him felt different now, silver hissing from her, her Ripper guise only a garment that she could throw away if she could be bothered. This woman was awake. She made a noise that went beyond sound, and the scrying glass shattered, the pieces of the mirror embedding themselves into walls and furniture, the valuable ancient bloodline from the frame splattering across the desk. Quill lowered an arm and found himself miraculously unharmed.

Vincent managed to stagger forward, bleeding from a gash across his brow. ‘Go back,’ he said, and he still sounded commanding. ‘I didn’t call for you.’

She took a deliberate step towards him.

Vincent considered for a long moment. Then he bolted for the door.

The Ripper waited, and Quill got the feeling she was considering the other presence in the room, the phantom Quill was sure was the Smiling Man. Quill could feel that being’s pleasure, his sense of completion. The Ripper despaired at that feeling.

The Ripper met Quill’s gaze again. He felt himself noted, distantly approved of.

Then there was a blur of silver, and the Ripper was gone through the wall. Quill looked around for that other presence and was thankful to find that he was alone.

* * *

Down the night-time side streets of Wapping ran Russell Vincent. His suit was sweaty from him having spent all night in it. It clung to him like a second skin, outlining the contours of his buttocks and thighs, his ragged breaths pushing his muscular chest tight against the silk of his shirt. As he ran, he saw people who were boarding up their doors or looking down from their windows or just doing what they always did and taking shopping from their cars, stopping to point at him as they recognized him. He could imagine the huge web of commentary, of tweets, people saying that a famous media tycoon was running down their street, that he looked afraid. That he would soon be in Whitechapel. In moments, all London would know where he was, that he was being pursued by something. He hoped someone with secret knowledge might see that, might help him, in the hope of a reward.

He saw the light behind him change as his shadow lengthened in front of him. At the same moment he heard the sound of drums coming closer, of shouts and now sirens from the crossroads he was running towards, and he saw people dashing away from him into their houses, slamming down windows, closing their doors rather than helping. The message they were sending out was that the chaos was arriving here.

From the crossroads ahead they came, just a handful of them, provoked from their nearby houses by the tides under London: skinheads and Toffs and a bunch of hopeful local kids, ready to go whichever way the wind blew.

They were all staring at him as he ran desperately towards them.

No, he realized, they were staring at what was behind him.

He turned to look at her. She was in the sky, walking down towards him. She was surrounded by a cloud of evaporating silver. He imagined the razor slashing him, penetrating him, making him helpless.

He turned back and looked around. He wasn’t helpless. He’d made his empire, damn it! He still had a few tricks! He feinted left and then suddenly sprinted right, down an alley between houses. She couldn’t keep going forever, not losing that much silver. It occurred to him that she must be showing that to him deliberately, that seeing her like this was the first time he’d seen the silver. But still, it didn’t change the fact that was just her putting on a front. She was fast, but he knew that she needed to see him to find him. Assuming he could find a place where bystanders weren’t reporting on his every move, he could actually hide!

He kept running, turning left and right at random, using the narrowness of the streets, always shying away from a light in the sky behind him. He was in Whitechapel proper now, and wasn’t that ironic! A great story was building here. He wondered how he’d tell it. He’d be the potential victim, obviously. ‘I Faced the Ripper … and Lived!’ The story would help him if anyone started wondering about his connection to the deaths tonight.

He ran out into a municipal open space, a playground with nobody in it, with narrow walkways between houses in all directions. Perfect! He chose one at random and ran for it.

A second before he reached the corner, the illumination washed over him like a searchlight and he felt his breath and adrenalin pump again. He flattened himself around the corner. Had she seen him? The light had stopped. He dared a glance around the wet brickwork.

She was just standing there, in the playground, silver now streaming from the eyes of the mask. It was billowing off her, up into the sky, lit up by the street lights. She looked like a crashed aircraft. The suit looked as if it was hanging on a stick figure. The hat fell from her head. She dropped to her knees. She made gestures to try to rise. He heard faint sounds from her mouth.

He stepped out from his hiding place. She looked up at him and he flinched, ready to run again. But she made no move towards him. A great pool of freezing silver was slowly spreading out around her like blood. The melting snow woman. She was still following his programming for her, to allow the victim to see everything of his pursuer, even now, when the victim was meant to be him. She was jerking, trying to make anything work, and with every movement she lost more fuel.

He took a step closer to her, relishing his victory. He was panting with exertion and relief, alive with the blood pounding in his veins, every muscle feeling it. He was even erect. He felt the sweat between him and his shirt, felt his muscles fresh from a workout at the edge of vitality, felt the arousal of the chase, of having survived it. He silenced a laugh of relief.

She was subsiding, the material of her body dissolving. She was trying to say something to him, it seemed — some last curse. But the volume was so low it sounded almost gentle.

Now all that was left was a mask and a bagful of bones in some discarded clothes, swimming in a pool of silver. As Vincent watched, the mask and clothes began to dissolve too.

Vincent stepped quickly through the silver liquid, aware of how cold it made his feet through his shoes. He’d have to be quick. He took a handkerchief out of his pocket. If the mask would stay together, he wanted it, wanted to get himself photographed with it, the image that would sell the story that he too had been hunted by the Ripper tonight.

He squatted, reached down towards the puddle of silver, his handkerchief wrapped around his hand. He was just about to touch the mask when he saw something moving in the liquid silver in front of him.

A hand burst up out of it and grabbed his tie. It was an old woman’s hand, covered in some sort of dye.

He was about to wrench himself back in panic when her other hand rose up out of the silver. This one held the razor he had made for her.

‘No!’ he shouted. ‘No!’

The rest of his words became a long scream.

* * *

Costain and Quill looked down at the butchered body of Russell Vincent. He had been slashed many times across the chest and neck, and the space between his legs was torn open. His dead eyes looked up in horror and lack of understanding. He was surrounded by a pool of his own blood and by a pool of gently billowing silver. They’d followed the Twitter trail here and, in the absence of any other officers, would surely fail to create any sort of barrier between the crime scene and the news teams that were bound to start arriving shortly.

‘Was that what you wanted?’ Costain asked Quill.

Quill couldn’t find an answer. What he wanted was for there to be a law that applied equally to Vincent and to himself, to those who saw themselves above it, and to those who enforced it. He’d had no other ideas of how to bring this to an end. His only consolation was how empty it left him feeling. He hoped he hadn’t done this as the result of a cycle of abuse. ‘If only this had been a Ripper we could have caught, that we could have shown to London in handcuffs. There’s no reason now for Londoners to think the killings will stop. And when the media hear the Ripper’s killed Russell Vincent, it’ll increase the sense of chaos exponentially. How do we prove that the law still works and turn this shit around?’

There was a noise from behind them. Lofthouse arrived. She was staring in amazement at Quill.

‘Yeah,’ he said. He wondered if she’d hug him or something.

She looked him up and down and finally nodded. ‘Right,’ she said.

‘Indeed.’

‘Good,’ she said, then seemed to decide she had to put a stop to this unseemly outpouring of emotion. ‘There’s been a vote of no confidence. There’s going to be a general election.’

‘What about Vincent’s allies in the military?’ said Costain.

‘The military are actually containing a lot of the far right protests,’ said Lofthouse. ‘The death of Vincent, which has now hit the media as the biggest headline of the lot, means that a lot of people who were thinking of acting rashly have now thought better of it.’

Costain’s phone rang, and he answered it. He suddenly looked urgent when he heard who was on the other end, held his hand up for silence. He seemed to be deciding what to say. ‘No,’ he said, speaking carefully. ‘I’m another police officer, but DI Quill is right here beside me. I’ll hand you over.’ He mouthed the name of the caller as he handed Quill the phone.

Quill took it. ‘Hello Mary,’ he said.

* * *

They waited at the corner of the street, underneath dripping arches, watching dawn make its way into the narrow streets. Costain, because Quill didn’t feel he could call up any police yet and announce he was still alive, had found some National Crime Agency staff who’d stayed at their post at the Hill, and so a car with a driver stood ready round the corner to take their guest into what they now were sure would be safe protective custody. Costain was trying only to think of the moment, though his thoughts kept leaping back to Ross, just as, with the chemicals draining from his system, his brain kept reaching out for dreams. He wished he could see her. He desperately wanted to hear news of her, though he couldn’t bring himself to text Sefton and ask. He wanted to touch her. He’d never get to do that again. The Lisa Ross of his dreams and the real one were, for several moments as the sun rose, mixed up. He felt he’d been told something reassuring by her. Then, a moment later, he knew that wasn’t true.

A taxi pulled up. Out of it stepped someone he had never seen in the flesh before, only on CCTV images — Mary Arthur. She looked very young and very scared. Costain showed her his warrant card and told her his name and rank. Quill and Lofthouse did the same.

‘Is Russell Vincent really dead?’ she asked.

‘Yeah,’ said Quill. ‘Which makes it a lot easier for us to protect you. If, that is, you’re willing to give evidence in the matter of your dealings with Michael Spatley MP, and what happened on the night of the death of Rupert Rudlin.’

That, thought Costain, might begin to sell a new narrative to the public, one which might indeed send London stumbling off on a different course.

Mary seemed to consider for a moment.

‘There won’t be any reward involved,’ said Lofthouse, gently. ‘There can’t be.’

She looked suddenly angry. ‘I’ll tell you all about it,’ she said. ‘Money isn’t everything.’