The Severed Streets

EPILOGUE

Sarah Quill was startled to see the name appear on her phone. She felt dizzy, felt the blood come to her face, felt anger rising. She was standing in the hallway, having just stood up from buttoning Jessica into her coat. She answered the call. ‘Who is this?’

‘It’s me, love. No, please, don’t hang up!’

She stopped herself swearing. ‘Who is this…?!’

‘If someone else had called you, I knew you wouldn’t believe it-’

‘Who is this?’

‘It’s me! It’s me! It’s because of … the stuff about me only a few of us know. Okay? Nobody else would believe this. But you can. You can, love, you can!’

She found a terrible hurt inside her. She was dreaming, wasn’t she? She’d had dreams like this in the last few days. This was hurting her with hope. ‘But-’

‘I didn’t want you just to open the front door and see-’

‘Where are you? Are you outside my house?’

‘It’s me, love. I’ve been waiting outside, wondering how to do this. I didn’t want you to open the front door and see me and be shocked by-’ But she’d dropped the phone and was grabbing at the chain and bolt on the door and she flung it open-

There he stood. In someone else’s clothes, but it was him. She reached out, threw a hand at him, expecting somehow to find nothing there. He grabbed it. He pulled her to him. He let her look into his face. He made her look into his face.

All the ability dropped from her lower body and she fell into him. She was … so furious at him. So enormously angry. This was too big … this was too big an impossibility.

‘Daddy!’ said Jessica, coming out to see them, pleased that he was home and nothing more.

Sarah looked to her, and then back at Quill’s face. He was still there.

Quill held out a hand from holding Sarah up. Jessica took it.

‘I went on a long journey,’ he said to her. ‘I came back.’

* * *

Sefton had one and a half days of solid sleep. Joe took time off work to look after him. He woke with the smell of a natural, early autumn coming through the window. ‘The centre held,’ he said, his voice a croak.

‘What?’ Joe had entered the bedroom with two cups of tea.

‘You said that was what crime fiction was about.’

‘Did I? It’s W.B. Yeats.’

‘Okay.’

‘They’ve found the Ripper’s body,’ said Joe.

Sefton hadn’t managed to tell his boyfriend anything about the ending of the case before collapsing with exhaustion. Now he frowned, unable to process that. ‘What?’

‘Bloke dressed in the costume, left a suicide note, a full confession. All the murders were on Vincent’s orders, he hid among the ranks of the Toffs but he hated them, and when the guilt became too much he killed Vincent then himself. Nice handwriting, apparently. He includes details of the murders, which the police — not your lot — are saying indicates it must all be true.’

Sefton sipped his tea and could only shake his head again. He had no idea what that meant.

* * *

Three days later, Quill’s team sat in the Portakabin at Gipsy Hill, watching Quill put an X of black tape across the photo of Vincent on the Ops Board. They were silent, washed out, exhausted. Sefton hadn’t expected Ross to come, but she’d entered right on time at the start of her shift, here to do her duty or face the consequences of her actions. She hadn’t made eye contact with Costain, who hadn’t tried to speak to her. Sefton was even more surprised that he was here.

He’d last seen Ross when the two of them had found Quill in a Whitechapel pub that had a lock-in of shift workers going on. They were scared shitless of the chaos on the streets and glad to include coppers. Costain had already gone home; that had been a condition of Ross coming to see Quill. She’d stared at him then, unable to believe it, unable, Sefton now understood, having heard everything from Quill, to feel happy at his return. Sefton, on the other hand, feeling as if he was about to die and needing to fall asleep, had just taken Quill in his arms and hugged him. Quill had hugged him back. Ross had managed only a few halting words to Quill. She’d managed to say it was good he was alive, but it had sounded almost like a guess. Then she asked if she and Costain were going to prison. The two of them had, after all, kept information from the investigation, committed offences. Ross had also lied to them about what she’d found in the Docklands documents.

Quill had just shaken his head. He looked as perplexed at what had changed in her as much as she was at him. ‘Condemned man — me, that is — gets a last request, and I choose to let you off. We can’t afford to lose you. What you’ve done to each other, to yourselves…’ He looked at her interrogatively again, as if hoping she’d suddenly smile. ‘I think that’s punishment enough.’

Ross had looked angry at him for that mercy. Then, with Quill calling after her, she’d turned and left the pub.

Sefton had thought about it and decided he might, given the same circumstances, have done the same things. His colleagues had been only human. How terrible that was.

‘We survived,’ said Quill now. ‘Well, you lot did, and I caught up.’ He indicated the list of operational aims on the Ops Board:

1: Ensure the safety of the public.

2: Gather evidence of offences.

3: Identify and trace subject or subjects involved (if any).

4: Identify means to arrest subject or subjects.

5: Arrest subject or subjects.

6: Bring to trial/destroy.

7: Clear those not involved of all charges.

‘Aims one to three … achieved, just about. The “Summer of Blood” is over. Everyone’s lapping up Mary Arthur’s story and this new revelation about the Ripper, fictional though it is. Vincent’s rival media barons have seized on it.’ The riots were dying down, and every party in this exhausted general election campaign was falling over itself to say it would negotiate with the police. Gaiman’s guess that the mood of London had been linked to solving the Ripper murders seemed to have been correct.

‘Where did that fake Ripper corpse come from?’ asked Sefton.

‘Lofthouse says she’s asked for a meeting with those she feels are responsible and will report back. It’s done some good for London, anyway. I don’t know if that wheel you and I saw on our adventures is turning the right way again now-’

‘It’s not.’ Sefton anticipated Quill’s question and shook his head. ‘I just know.’

Quill looked back to the list. ‘Aim five … I’d like us to go after Gaiman, but he seems to have vanished. Besides, since the man he successfully conspired to murder — that is, me — is now alive again, and because of the difficulties we’d have in walking a jury through that, I’m tempted to say let’s wait until he pops up again, then lean on him as a source rather than arrest him. And aim six … was achieved. But…’

‘But look at us,’ said Costain.

There was silence. Sefton looked again at the faces of his friends who’d betrayed and been betrayed and exhausted themselves and grieved and been to Hell, and remembered his own taking of a life and his own sacrifice. They had been pummelled by their experiences. They were so changed, once again almost strangers to each other. He didn’t see how they could continue to function as a team. Even Quill, who’d been trying to jolly them along with procedure, couldn’t seem to find the words to continue.

‘There is hope,’ said Ross. They all turned to look at her. She wasn’t looking back at them. She didn’t want to look at Costain at all, Sefton got the feeling. Her voice had sounded very small, very calm. ‘The Tarot of London,’ she said, ‘when that fortuneteller consulted it for me at the New Age fair during the Losley case, she said that the Hanged Man, who was my dad…’ She had to stop for a moment. ‘He was supposed to bring hope for us in summer-’

‘He did,’ said Quill, ‘during that case, and it was where he normally was in Hell that made me think of getting to a higher vantage point.’

‘-but,’ she said, ‘he’s meant to bring hope in autumn too.’ She shrugged, slowly. ‘So there’s that.’

Sefton wanted to go over there and hold her. But the shape of her shoulders said she really didn’t want to be held.

* * *

As soon as Quill told them they could go home and get some more sleep, to report back next week, Ross bolted for the door. Costain went after her. He couldn’t help it. He could feel the other two willing him not to, but he couldn’t stop himself.

He caught up with her before she got to her car. A muscle memory of how she’d felt made him put a hand on her shoulder.

She rounded on him, disgust on her face. He took his hand away. ‘I just want you to know-’

‘I sacrificed my happiness so I could free my father. Or maybe Jimmy. Maybe I’d have made that choice. You took it from me.’

‘I could have used it to protect myself!’

‘You brought him back because you got scared. You did everything to save yourself and keep fucking me for as long as possible.’

‘No! Listen to me. If you got your dad back, nothing would change for you, that wouldn’t make you happy!’

‘That was my choice to make.’ She took a moment to hold herself back. ‘You think you’re going to Hell. I’m in Hell. I won’t forgive you.’

She went to her car and drove away.

Costain watched her go. He understood what he’d done. He had been surprised by a chance at happiness. He had stamped that chance into the ground until it was dead, and all the time he’d said to himself he was doing the right thing, the only thing.

‘I know,’ he said.

* * *

Rebecca Lofthouse wasn’t entirely surprised when one morning a different but equally beautiful young woman rang her doorbell, refused to identify herself and announced she was here to drive Lofthouse to a picnic. She’d spent the last few days explaining to Forrest, and to many other incredulous parties in the Met, how Quill could still be alive. She’d told them his team had faked his death in order for him to go undercover, the details of which she would not share. It was only the fact that Quill obviously was alive that allowed her to get away with such a thin deception.

The picnic turned out to be by the Thames, down Henley way, in a meadow so perfect that Lofthouse wondered if it had been constructed for this purpose. Rita and Sue sat with a hamper and an ice bucket containing a bottle of champagne. Lofthouse felt they hardly needed the ice. There was a slight chill in the air, and the shadows were getting longer, but summer had not yet ended. There were still a couple of rounds of the County Championship left to play. Another group of picnickers sat at a distance, obediently picking at caviar. The beautiful driver went to join them.

‘My team are a bit perplexed,’ said Lofthouse, sitting down.

‘What about?’ asked Rita, a look of mock innocence on her face.

‘They wonder why Jack the Ripper so conveniently committed suicide, having written such a specific note, incredibly, if accurately, incriminating the late Russell Vincent.’

‘Oh, I saw that in the papers,’ said Sue. ‘Very neat, I thought.’

‘It does give Londoners the feeling that things are back under control,’ said Rita.

‘Let’s say that the still-unidentified corpse wasn’t really Jack the Ripper. Hypothetically,’ said Lofthouse. ‘Where would someone get such a corpse?’

‘I would imagine, said Sue, ‘assuming whoever did this had the interests of the great British public in mind, it would have been ethically sourced.’

Lofthouse considered all the ways in which an organization with the Security Service’s resources could find and doctor a fresh corpse and decided that she was willing to believe her. But still she was angry. ‘You worked out early on that Russell Vincent had something to do with the Ripper-’

‘The list of victims was indicative,’ said Rita.

‘-and you let my team get mangled as they tried to figure out what.’

‘We picked right,’ said Sue. ‘They did a great job.’

‘They even, though we’re still not sure how, arranged for Vincent to be hoist by his own petard,’ said Rita, ‘fatally.’

‘They’re not pleased about that,’ said Lofthouse, amazed. ‘But you are, aren’t you? You’re happy he ended up dead.’

‘Russell Vincent,’ said Sue, reaching for her knife to butter a piece of bread, ‘was somehow learning other people’s innermost secrets.’ She grinned hugely at Lofthouse and dropped her voice to a stage whisper. ‘Only we’re allowed to do that.’

* * *

Lofthouse took a taxi home. At least now she had something to tell Quill’s team. She wished she could tell them everything. She looked to the key on her charm bracelet. There were times when she wanted to throw the damn thing out of the window. But the consequences of that were too terrible to think about.

* * *

Gaiman looked down at London at night as the aircraft he was in banked to begin its climb westwards over the Atlantic. He hadn’t known Quill was going to come back, had been surprised to hear, from the same friends that were now also suddenly alive and well, that the policeman was too. He was glad. He had stayed in hiding, got out of Britain when it felt safe to do so. He didn’t want to face any more questions. He believed he had managed to do as much good as anyone could, in circumstances which few people understood.

But, he thought, as London vanished under the clouds below, that’s what they all say.

* * *

Quill lay in bed with Sarah. She’d been looking at his new body parts, pink and tender. He’d told her everything, though he knew she’d be horrified. Everything, that is, apart from one thing — that sign he’d seen on entering Hell. That would make too much of a difference to her life, to everyone.

‘I don’t know where to begin,’ she said. ‘I don’t know how you can deal with it. I don’t know how I can help. But I want to.’

‘It was harder on you. I learned a lot by being absent. I’m fine.’

‘Of course you’re not … fine, Quill!’

‘I’ve just got some odd memories, which seem a bit like a dream now, and a new cock. Thought you’d be pleased.’

The phone on the bedside table rang. Quill looked at the display and recognized the number. He hesitated. No, he had to answer it. He took it out into the hall and closed the door behind him before he did, so she wouldn’t hear. There was, as he’d expected, only the sound on the other end of the line of something big and far away, breathing. Quill knew he was connected to the Smiling Man.

‘So you’re calling me to try and scare me,’ said Quill, ‘to remind me where I’ve been. I think you’re hoping I might tell someone, even just Sarah, what was written on the sign I saw over the gates of Hell.’ Silence. Had the breathing paused? ‘Yeah, I’ve been thinking about everything that’s happened, and I’m pretty sure that’s what you want me to do. That’s why my time never ran out in Hell, because you didn’t want me coming back here a gibbering wreck. Maybe you planted the document that set Ross off on her quest for the Bridge of Spikes. Let me walk you through it.’ He went down the stairs into the kitchen and started to make a cup of tea, the phone clamped to his ear, aware he was doing this to hold off with sheer domesticity the idea of who he was talking to. ‘Gaiman was working for you. He made sure Vincent killed me. But I wonder if he also made sure my notebook ended up in Sefton’s hands. He could have burned it, couldn’t he, or just kept it? But no, he disposed of it somewhere in London, so it fell into the Rat King’s clutches. Of course, he could have just left it at the scene of the crime, but then it wouldn’t have seemed so important, would it? It took Sefton such a lot of work to find it that it was obvious those ridiculous few words of mine must contain some major clue. That was what got Sefton and Ross to the long barrow, and opening that finished off Vincent. So why would you want to let Vincent nearly complete his plans, and then get rid of him?’ Quill watched the kettle boil. ‘I think you like chaos in London. So you liked what Vincent was doing, but not what he was planning for afterwards: all those jackboots, all that order. If anyone gets that done, you want it to be you. Am I right?’

Silence again. The breathing had definitely slowed. Quill wasn’t sure he wanted to hear the Smiling Man speak. But he was going to keep daring him to do so. ‘I suppose some other people must have come back from Hell, or know what’s written above that gate, what the secret is. But you’ve seen that I’ve got a thing about doing my duty. You were sure I’d have to tell everyone who’d believe it. That gradually that message would sink in to them. That it’d grind them down even more than they’ve been ground down now.’ The kettle finished boiling. He poured the tea. ‘So I’m not going to do that. I’m going to find a way to heal my unit. I’m going to wait until I’m sure they’re able to cope with what I know. Then we’re going to find some way to change it.’

There was a click from the phone. He’d hung up.

Quill found that he was actually smiling. He took a slow sip from his tea. He thought about Sarah and Jessica asleep upstairs, and what the words on that sign over the gate of Hell meant for them and for everyone else he knew. The sign had read:

It’s everyone who ever lived in London