The Severed Streets

SEVEN

Quill stood at the Ops Board, a marker pen in his hand. He’d slept badly the night before, with terrible dreams about being pierced, penetrated. Not so surprising, considering his closeness to a major explosion. Perhaps he was still in shock. He wondered whether people who did what his lot did could ever get a good kip, whether being in shock was his life now. ‘So,’ he said, ‘what have we discovered?’

‘That silver stuff,’ said Sefton, who looked like Quill felt. He took a pen and added to the concepts list, which had already gained several new entries this morning. ‘That’s the major connection to Operation Fog. It’s not just something that occurs at the Ripper crime scenes, but, I’d speculate, and note that I’m speculating-’

‘Noted,’ said Ross.

‘-that it’s the fuel which powers occult London.’

‘It was in the cracks of the made-up levels of the bar,’ said Costain. ‘Like the surface had fallen off and you could see the real power underneath.’

‘Right,’ said Sefton. ‘I don’t think, when everything’s working as it’s meant to, that you’re supposed to be able to see this goo. Like with blood in a human body.’

‘So, applying that to the Ripper case,’ said Ross, ‘I think it’s possible that it means that our supernatural assailant got wounded in the struggle with either the first or both of the victims.’

Quill nodded. ‘What the hell,’ he asked, looking to Sefton again, ‘was that enormous river of the stuff?’

‘Maybe the source of all this power? I have no idea what it is, or where it is, or even if there … is a where…’

Quill saw the sleeplessness around Sefton’s eyes, the burden on his shoulders. He’d never killed anyone himself. He’d known a couple of coppers in firearms units who had; it had never left them. He wished he could help Sefton with that burden. He hoped that maybe there was something in his philosophy, in the fact that he was the one who looked more deeply into the occult stuff, that could help him, but Quill suspected there couldn’t be. ‘Did you see the gold stuff threaded through it?’

‘Yeah,’ said Ross, and held up a page in her notebook. ‘It looked like what was on the walls of Losley’s house, on her pile of soil-’

‘On what we thought was a sort of hyperlink in that book in her lock-up,’ said Costain.

Sefton went back to the concepts section of the board. ‘If the silver goo is the power source, the fuel…’ He wrote two headings in the concepts column. ‘Then maybe the gold thread is the software, the instructions.’

‘So that could be what we touched when we touched the soil?’

‘Maybe. And perhaps if we’d looked at that soil at a microscopic level once we had the Sight, we’d have seen silver goo in it too. The software and the power source.’

‘Perhaps. But that still doesn’t tell us why it was just us four, does it?’

There was silence for a moment. Quill supposed the others felt like he did about that central question of their existence. They all needed to know, at heart, if they’d been chosen for some grand quest or had been the victims of an accident. He wondered again if Lofthouse knew at least that much.

‘John, the Rat King,’ said Sefton, starting a new topic, ‘seemed to me to be … not actually a real human being — he said so himself — something like that bouncer, but with … consciousness, ideas of his own, a character, not limited like they were in the bouncer — more like Brutus.’

‘He went away downstairs,’ said Ross. ‘The bearded gatekeeper seemed calm enough to evacuate that way, so I think we can assume any lower floors just detached themselves and weren’t destroyed in the explosion.’

‘The Rat King had several features of interest. I’m pretty sure he knew I was a police officer as soon as he saw me. He had that kind of … greater power that Brutus had too. But he said he wouldn’t give me away, and didn’t.’

‘So he knows about someone just by looking?’ said Costain. ‘He’d be the ultimate source, the fount of all info.’

‘He indicated he didn’t know who the Ripper was,’ said Sefton, ‘so his knowledge has limits, but, yeah. I just wish I knew how to find him.’

‘That’s still brilliant work,’ said Quill. ‘I asked you to find us background, and you got us tons of it.’ He turned back to the board, knowing he wouldn’t get an answering smile out of Sefton right now. ‘Now, I asked a favour of some mates at West End Central and had a couple of uniforms take a turn past the Goat and Compasses and the Keels’ biggest shop. The Goat has opened as usual today, and a car belonging to Terry Keel is parked round the back of his store in a parking place with his name over it. In short, it doesn’t look as if he’s scarpered.’

‘There seems to be some sort of generational conflict going on in what I think we can now call the occult underworld of London,’ said Ross. ‘The Keel brothers, or now just Terry-’ She stopped, realizing she might have said the wrong thing.

‘It’s okay,’ said Sefton.

Ross nodded. ‘They’re on one side, the newer side, happy to use money in transactions. A lot of the regulars at the Goat seemed against that, wanted to keep with older laws about the use of barter.’

‘Losley,’ said Quill, ‘if you remember, went apeshit when we dared to suggest she might be “employed”.’

‘Terry Keel,’ said Costain, ‘talked about a feeling that everything changed for this lot a few years back, but that the new generation have taken a while to take advantage of it.’

‘Maybe that’s about what destroyed the temple in Docklands,’ said Sefton. ‘If the Continuing Projects Team were the old law, and there’s been nothing to replace them, then this lot found themselves free to do what they liked, only they didn’t know it. I wonder why.’

‘Maybe the Continuing Projects Team worked more like under-covers than beat coppers,’ suggested Costain. ‘Perhaps you only knew they were there when they nicked you.’

‘I do wish,’ said Quill, ‘that we could find some good old-fashioned good and evil in this generational conflict, that we could say the barter people are the good guys and the money lot are bad. Because in my copper heart I have been waiting with baited breath to discover supernatural good and evil and the simple joy that would bring. But the barter people included Losley, and the money lot included your beardy waistcoat mate. So nuts to that.’

‘That would be good,’ agreed Sefton.

‘I expected one side or the other to be all about the Smiling Man,’ said Quill. ‘But from either of them I only heard references to sacrifices being made “to London”.’

They compared notes and found that was true for all of them.

‘I don’t think they know about the Smiling Man,’ said Ross. ‘Maybe he stays behind the scenes in that community too.’ She found the relevant page in one of her notebooks. ‘We still know almost nothing about him.’

‘Things we did learn,’ said Sefton, finding a page in one of his own scrawled notebooks and reading from it. ‘Losley needed a line of sight on her victims, but nobody else seems to. I kind of thought that might be unique to her after that threat against us that was written on a note when we were at the New Age fair. Whoever wrote that could “smell death” near people, which is not a line-of-sight thing.’ He obviously saw the slight smile on Quill’s face. ‘This is the sort of detail I keep track of.’

‘What about Neil Gaiman?’ asked Quill. ‘Him we can find, presumably, and he seemed in the know. We ought to get a statement.’

‘I’ve put a call in to his agent,’ said Ross. ‘Let’s hope he hasn’t flown back to the States.’

‘Yeah,’ said Costain, ‘it’d be awkward to have to bring this up on his blog.’

* * *

Sefton realized that there was something he’d expected Ross to have mentioned by now, yet she hadn’t. ‘The barmaid gave you something,’ he said to her.

‘Yeah.’ Ross raised a finger, wait a sec, as if she’d forgotten. Sefton was pretty sure she hadn’t. She found it in her bag and pinned it to the board. It was a colourful flier for the pub evening. ‘I think that was her way of saying that, no matter what had happened to her, I was welcome in that pub.’

Sefton didn’t know why he felt worried at her poker face. An alert went off on Ross’ phone. She looked at it. ‘DCI Forrest’s office. The fingerprint results have been checked between both crime scenes. And … we have a match.’

‘Excellent,’ said Quill.

‘The smeared one at the Staunce scene, by the message on the wall, is the same as one found inside the Spatley car. So, since Tunstall was in custody for the Spatley murder when Staunce was killed-’

‘That should clear Tunstall of suspicion.’ Quill indicated the objectives list. ‘I’d say we’ve achieved objective seven there.’

‘-but said fingerprint doesn’t appear in any criminal database, so Forrest’s office is asking us to help build a case against Tunstall by looking into the possibility that he may have had an accomplice.’

‘This is what happens,’ sighed Quill, ‘when only one suspect is visible.’

* * *

An hour later, Ross found Costain alone by the tea kettle. She made sure she was calm, and then she walked over to him. ‘I’ve changed my mind,’ she said.

‘About what?’

‘About tonight.’

‘Too late,’ said Costain, slurping his tea as he moved off. ‘I booked the table.’

Ross stood there for a moment after he’d left, annoyed at how easily he’d shrugged that off, and at how it turned out she didn’t mind that.

* * *

That evening, Sefton put the Xbox controller down on the table and closed his eyes. ‘I killed someone,’ he said.

Joe took a deep breath and slowly lowered his own controller. ‘I wondered what you hadn’t been saying,’ he said.

Sefton told him everything.

Joe held on to him. Finally he said, ‘You killed someone by accident, someone who was trying to kill you.’

‘I know that.’

‘You lot would normally get counselling and compassionate leave-’

‘And be investigated and interviewed and all that, and I could do with that and all.’

‘Because that would end up with you being officially told you hadn’t done anything wrong.’

‘Probably.’

‘Well, you haven’t.’

Sefton considered for a moment, and realized that, as always, Joe had helped him frame how he really felt. ‘No,’ he said finally, ‘I have.’

* * *

‘Russell Vincent bought our paper,’ said Sarah, dropping her bag onto the kitchen table.

Quill motioned for her to be quiet. He’d just got Jessica to sleep. He went and closed the door of her room. ‘And that’s a good thing?’

‘It’s a great thing. We get to keep our jobs.’

‘Then that’s a brilliant thing. Russell Vincent is … that media tycoon who’s on telly all the time, the one who-?’

‘He’s the owner of the Herald. Opinion leads, long lenses, that one.’

‘Oh.’

‘Oh indeed. He’s personally famous for taking on the Bussard Inquiry into phone hacking. He told them his firm had once used it to get celebrity gossip, but that when he found out, he’d fired everyone involved. He gave the inquiry access to his entire communications network and told them to go fuck themselves.’

‘I remember.’

‘But, hey, whoever owns my paper, I am still, thank God, employed as a journalist.’

‘Excellent.’ Quill rooted around at the back of a cupboard and found a dusty bottle of cava, which he uncorked and poured into two glasses, after giving them a quick rinse under the tap.

‘He actually bought our whole group. Seven local papers in all. There’s a reception on Sunday night for all the employees. You’re invited too — there’s a plus one.’

‘Sure. Depending.’ He clinked glasses with her. ‘I can ask him how he got the inside track on the Ripper murders.’

‘Yeah, don’t do that.’

‘Like he’d tell me.’

* * *

Costain parked outside Ross’ housing block in Catford half an hour early. This he never did. It felt as if he was conducting surveillance. He was only early because he was nervous. He knew he looked good and smelt good. He’d prepared. But still he was nervous.

He waited, enjoying the late evening sunshine. He put the radio on, but all he could find were news stories about it all kicking off in Wandsworth now, about how people were throwing bricks and setting light to shops across London, Toff masks everywhere, taken up by rioters as being an easily available way to hide their faces. He switched off the radio and tried to put it all out of his head.

He had one clear aim in mind for this evening, and he had to focus on it.

* * *

Ross had interrogated her wardrobe until it failed completely. Neither of her dresses was useful. But it was either those or something she’d wear to work.

Why shouldn’t it be something she’d wear to work? She wanted to find out what he was after, not to make herself more attractive to him.

It was a pity about her and Costain. Everyone else had someone to talk to. Someone they got to go home to at the end of the day. The two of them had nobody, and it was likely to stay that way.

She finally decided on new jeans. A polo shirt like the one she’d worn to work. At least it wasn’t the same shirt. She tried things with her hair. She undid a couple of buttons.

She did them up again just as the intercom buzzed. He was three minutes early.

* * *

They took the tube to Chancery Lane and walked up the Gray’s Inn Road to an Italian restaurant, where Costain had booked a table outside. He couldn’t stop feeling nervous. More than nervous. Why? There were high stakes, sure, but he was used to that. It wasn’t as if tonight was definitely going to be the big pay-off, that she’d immediately trust him and tell him what he wanted to hear. No, this was an undercover job; this would take weeks of slowly earning her trust. Only then to betray that trust, if she did have access to what he thought she did.

He looked sidelong at her face as they walked. That betrayal would be a terrible thing, but he had to do it. He had no choice. He was trying not to notice how tight those jeans were. Being attracted to her made what he was planning to do feel a lot worse.

He was aware they’d been silent for a long time. No small talk, which seemed fine by her. They reached the restaurant and were welcomed and seated by staff who seemed very pleased to have paying customers. He looked at her poker face again across the table. It wasn’t as if he’d actually been on many dates; of course, this wasn’t a real date. He had an objective here. So. Small talk. ‘I used to come here a lot,’ he said. ‘The food’s good, it’s an Italian family place.’

‘Sure,’ said Ross. It was almost a shrug.

The waiter arrived and they ordered wine. When it arrived it was very welcome.

Costain pointed to his glass, worried that she might have thought he was going to drink drive. The reflex to be good, every moment, was deeply programmed into him now. ‘I can always take a taxi when we get back to yours.’

She frowned, and he realized that she thought he meant he was already thinking about what might happen at the end of the evening. He suppressed an urge to explain and decided to move on to other topics. ‘So-’

‘Do you mean you brought girls here?’

He closed his mouth. Then opened it again. ‘No. Well, yeah. Maybe sometimes. Actually, it was usually just me. When I was undercover.’

‘But sometimes?’

‘Yeah.’ He found he’d said it almost as a question, almost as if he was asking her if that was okay.

‘Where are you from? What did your parents do?’

Oh. Okay then. ‘I grew up in Willesden. Then moved out of London. I came back to the Smoke after I became a police officer. More opportunities down here. When I became an undercover, I went back up north again between jobs. Safer.’

‘You didn’t say anything about your parents.’

That level tone of hers. The way her eyes were fixed on his face. He felt as if he was being interviewed about his part in some unspecified crime. He took a sip of wine and carefully smiled. ‘Are you analysing me?’

‘You know all about me. You were briefed about my family. If you don’t want to talk about-’

‘No. It’s just strange that someone would want to know.’

‘Why are you being so weird?’ she said suddenly.

‘What?’

‘This is a date, right? We’re on a date. I was making small talk, asking about stuff that’s not relevant to our jobs. Like your home, your mum, your dad. But you’re getting all nervous. Haven’t you been on many dates?’

He was now actually glaring at her. ‘No, honestly. You?’

‘Almost zero.’

‘Because we both…’ He made a gesture that attempted to include a ton of sadness and horror and all the world.

‘We both…’ She made the gesture back at him. ‘Yeah. Thought so.’

He found he was smiling now and, amazingly, she was smiling back. With her tooth biting her bottom lip, just a notch. There was still something reserved about her, though; maybe there always would be. The way she’d underlined the word dad back there, as if seeing if that would get a reaction — had that been an indication that she suspected what he was really up to here, that she knew Costain would have found talking about her dad and his current situation difficult right now, because those were pointers towards what he was secretly planning?

It was entirely possible that she did suspect he was up to something. She was vastly intelligent, used to picking signal out of noise. Okay then. He was used to the possibility of those around him being suspicious of him when he was undercover.

It dawned on him that he’d been looking at her for a long time, and she’d accepted that calmly, looking straight back at him as if they were both sizing up the enemy.

He realized he was hard. Now would not be the time to get up from this table. What had they been talking about? He cleared his throat and looked away. ‘You, erm, asked about my parents. Dad was a taxi driver, Mum did some cleaning. They split up; I went to live with Dad in Nottingham. They both passed away a while back.’ There, he’d said ‘dad’ a few times without suddenly blurting out all his plans. Okay, he decided, two can play at this game. He reached into his jacket pocket and found the card. ‘Listen, I just remembered, sorry to bring up job things tonight, but I found this in here earlier and, well, I didn’t mention it to the team today.’

‘What?’ She was looking openly suspicious at him now.

He slapped the card down on the table. It was a business card with just a map that had a bit of the Sight about it and a date. ‘I found a few of these behind the bar at the Goat, in a drawer marked “auction”. What do you reckon that’s about?’

* * *

Ross tried to keep her expression steady, but she was so angry — with herself and with him — that she wanted to leap up and throw this table over him. She had to wait while the waiter brought their meals over, and Costain made ridiculous small comments about the preparation of the dishes, as if he was still trying to impress her.

She’d thought she could safely see how much he knew, but he’d had that card. He knew it was an auction. He could either tell the others about it — and there must be a reason he hadn’t done so already — or, worse, he could come along himself. If the object she was so desperately seeking was on sale there, as the barmaid had hinted it might be, then he would understand, if he didn’t already, that he needed it as much as she did. He would bid against her. He might still have dodgy sources of cash that could go much further than an intelligence analyst’s savings would. Or, if the auction was based on barter, on sacrifice, he was better placed with his life in the underworld to find terrible things to offer, when all she would have was herself.

That whole chain of thought fell like a row of dominoes as the plates were put on the table. If she was honest with herself, she’d been having fun watching his fumbling attempts to unlock her, enjoying watching him, until now.

What was she going to do? She couldn’t risk him bidding against her, so she had to try to get him onside. It meant not showing him this anger and instead telling him what he wanted to hear. So he had won, damn it. For now.

She reached into her bag, found her own card and put it down on the table beside his. ‘It’s an invitation,’ she said, ‘to an auction, as you’ve realized. An auction, I think, of occult London objects.’

He smiled right across his face, as if appreciating her all over again. She’d revealed hidden depths. ‘Why haven’t you told the others?’

‘Why haven’t you?’

The smile continued. ‘Because I’d like to see if there’s anything on sale there that might help me avoid going to Hell.’

She took a deep breath and let her secret out. ‘And I’d like to see if there’s anything on sale there that would get my father out of Hell.’

‘Interesting.’ He wasn’t pretending at all now, just going through the motions, giving her credit as a fellow player while looking at her as if he wanted to eat her. ‘And do you think there will be an item on sale there that will allow either … or both … of us to achieve our respective goals?’

She paused for a moment, getting tiny satisfaction from keeping him in suspense. ‘I’ve been reading up on an object called the Bridge of Spikes. There was a document about it in the hoard we found in the Docklands ruins. Very hard to translate, but I managed it. It talked about a device that resurrects a person to full, breathing, unharmed life, wherever their body is, and simultaneously wipes clean what you might call their ethical record.’

‘A “Get out of Hell Free” card.’

‘Exactly.’

‘Is this a London thing?’

‘No. It was used once, in medieval times, somewhere in the Middle East. I think it can be used once per century. And, yes, that means that this occult shit can happen in other cities. I haven’t told the others that, either.’

He took a long drink of his wine, his eyes never leaving hers. ‘Once per century also means that only one of us could use it.’

Her lips were dry; Ross took a drink herself. Her heart was racing. An efficient solution to Costain’s problem now, she knew, would be for him to kill her and dispose of her card. She was pretty sure he wasn’t capable of that. Pretty sure. But now he had the prospect in front of him of having all his sins erased, would he decide it was worth it? She examined his face again. No. At least not before he was sure he had it in his sights, there at the auction on the night. She would have to play him along, right up to that moment, then find a way to get the object and run. ‘Right.’

‘I knew you were thinking that.’

‘I was.’

‘You’re also thinking I might bid against you. Try to nick it from you if you won. Worse.’

‘Yeah.’

He paused, considering, then looked at her with a quizzical expression that contained an edge of hurt. ‘Is that why you agreed to this? To see how much I knew?’

She shrugged. ‘Maybe a bit.’

He seemed to accept that. ‘What are we going to do?’

She found she wasn’t angry any more. As he’d said, they both now knew what the game was going to be. ‘Join forces. Go to the auction together. See what happens?’

He considered that. Then nodded. ‘What about … this?’

‘What?’

‘Is this still a date?’ He was trying to make her think he was actually still concerned about that — that it really did matter to him. She wasn’t sure how she felt about it. If she was going to be stringing him along, waiting for a chance to take the object for herself, she didn’t want to have to play the scarlet woman to do it.

That would only be the case if she wasn’t also genuinely … okay, this was complicated. She looked him in the eye. ‘If you want it to be.’

He looked like the cat that had got the cream. The size of his reaction, and the moment it took for him to conceal it, warmed her. Or fooled her, she thought, a moment later. He held up his glass. ‘Cheers.’

She picked up her glass, satisfied that at least her hand wasn’t shaking, and touched it to his. ‘Cheers.’

* * *

It was around eleven when they got back to Catford. They had each made an obvious effort to talk about other stuff on the way, though when Ross started to weigh up various dead ends in the op, he had gently shut her down. Yeah, that was just normal. She should know when to let herself not work. She liked having someone tell her that, actually. It was seductive. It was probably quite deliberate on his part.

They walked to her place; the housing block loomed above them. They stopped by his car. She wasn’t going to invite him in.

‘Well,’ he said, ‘thank you for a lovely evening.’

She couldn’t help but laugh at that. ‘No, thank you.’

‘So, neither of us is going to tell the others about…?’

‘No.’

Instead they were going to play out this game of theirs. He was looking at her very determinedly. She let herself look challengingly back.

‘Well.’ She put a little tired sigh in her voice. Time to turn in. She was going to see how far he was prepared to take this.

He suddenly stepped forwards and put his hands on both sides of her face, and with incredible gentleness and force at the same time, kissed her.

She realized that she’d raised her hands. What she did with them, what she did next, this was so important, she had just a second to decide …

She wrapped her arms around him and kissed him back. She let the kiss become passionate. She closed her eyes. She let his tongue into her mouth. Okay, so she was now the full-on scarlet woman. Damn it.

She had to stop this before it got too intense and in a moment he’d think they’d be going inside to-

He broke away. She opened her eyes. He was looking at her with the most gorgeous, scared, vulnerable expression. His hands dropped from hers.

‘Good night,’ he said. With a smile that again had just that hint of the cat that had got the cream about it, he got into his car.

She stood there while he drove away. After his car turned the corner, she dropped her head to one side, confused. ‘Oh,’ she whispered, ‘well played.’

* * *

Quill woke from dreadful dreams that he couldn’t now remember to find himself sweating in his duvet, and his phone once more ringing.

‘Would you please tell him,’ Sarah groaned, ‘to kill people in the morning?’

Quill answered his phone. It was Lofthouse. ‘A third murder, same MO,’ she said. ‘It’s open season on rich white males.’