The Severed Streets

TWENTY-EIGHT

Quill called Costain from the morgue, having had a vague memory of seeing him on what already felt like a dream of one side of that bridge he’d crossed. Thankfully, the DS had been expecting the call and arrived an hour later in an unmarked van. His left hand was bandaged, but only to the extent of a minor wound. By then, Quill had been given some clothes by still-astonished morgue staff who had started to assume they must have made some enormous clerical error and were probably about to be sued. Quill immediately told Costain not to call Sarah, having already talked to the morgue authorities on that subject. He had no idea how he was going to tell her he was back, was desperately restraining his own urge to call her, to go immediately to see her, because he wanted somehow to moderate how big a shock that was going to be.

He looked at his hands. He kept wanting to touch his body. He expected to feel traumatized, but it was as if his time in Hell had been filed away by his brain as being something like a dream. He felt abused on some distant, deeply internal level and was aware that this might come out and haunt him at some point. But at least for now it was absent.

He asked about how he’d come back, what Costain had had to do with it. Costain told him: about the relationship between himself and Ross, about the details of the auction that Ross hadn’t revealed, about him committing burglary to get the Bridge. He unburdened himself of all the terrible shit that he hadn’t shared with his colleagues. Quill had to sit down. He couldn’t imagine how this was going to make Ross feel. He felt angry on her behalf, and his own — actually infuriated at this man who’d just saved him from Hell. Dear God, that was Costain all over. ‘Why did you choose me to bring back?’

‘Ross’ father coming back still wouldn’t make her happy. She even told me that.’

‘Why not keep it for yourself?’

Costain looked annoyed at being questioned. He looked as if he’d expected something more from Quill. ‘Because I want all of us to stay alive, and you’re our only chance to do that. If the truth behind what you wrote in your notebook is as important as Sefton thinks it is-’

‘Well, I know who’s responsible for the Ripper murders.’

‘Russell Vincent?’

Quill laughed in pride at his team. But the laugh turned into a painful cough and he had to drink some water. He waved aside Costain’s questions about his physical state. ‘And I know where to find him. And I’ve got a lead on Mary Arthur.’ Quill had looked at the back of his hand when he’d first understood that he had come back to life, and found nothing written there. So he’d grabbed a piece of paper and swiftly written down Mary Arthur’s number, hoping that, having repeated it so many times to himself, he’d remembered it accurately. Now he showed it to Costain. ‘Can you get me to Wapping? I’m going to make a house call on Russell Vincent. We can catch up on the way.’

* * *

As Costain drove at terrifying speed through the night that smelt of smoke, and after he and the sergeant had compared notes, Quill dialled the number he’d gone so far to get and spoke quickly and urgently to a voicemail service. ‘Mary,’ he said, ‘this is Detective Inspector James Quill of the Metropolitan Police. I know you’re going to think this is a trap. Mainly because you’ll have heard I was killed, like so many people who have angered Russell Vincent are being killed tonight. But I … avoided that, and so can you. He isn’t as powerful as he thinks he is. We know you might have seen something impossible, and we know what you were involved in.’ He repeated everything that Spatley had told him. ‘We have specialist knowledge of this field. We really can keep you safe. Be a witness for us. You can bring him down. I’m hoping you will.’

‘Tell her you’ll pay her expenses,’ said Costain. He asked for his phone back once Quill had finished the call, and listened to his messages. ‘The others have found something,’ he said, and he told Quill about where Ross and Sefton were. There was a look of tremendous hurt on his face as he did so, as if he’d been the victim of an enormous practical joke, the truth of which was only slowly dawning on him. ‘The long barrow in your notes, they found it anyway. Did I … did I bring you back, did I do that to Ross for nothing?!’

Quill shook his head. Having heard about Sefton and Ross finding the barrow, and having put two and two together with everything Costain had told him, he felt dangerously certain about a few things now. ‘Thanks,’ he said, ‘for my continued existence being valued at “nothing”, but no. I think we’re now going to be able to finish this tonight.’ He started to give Costain specific instructions.

* * *

They arrived at the skyscraper offices of a company that Quill would never have associated with Vincent. Costain used more muscle than the threat of the law to march them past the front desk. Quill got into an elevator as security guards rushed in with urgent questions, and the last thing he saw as the doors closed was Costain holding them at bay with his warrant card, starting to bellow at them. His part of this plan would keep him down there.

Quill wanted to do this alone.

NOW

‘How did you know?’ asked Russell Vincent.

‘Because I’ve just come from Hell. Where, as part of my continuing investigation, I interviewed witnesses.’ Quill didn’t want to say that his team had come to the same conclusion before him. Vincent wouldn’t know anything of what they’d been up to since the night before the raid on the Keel shop that Costain had described to him. Quill wanted to keep what they might be up to now well away from Vincent’s thoughts.

‘So the Bridge of Spikes worked.’ He was staring at Quill as if he was a fascinating lab specimen. ‘I assume that’s how you did this? Damn. Maybe I could have got my hands on it.’

‘Why didn’t you?’ said Quill.

‘I thought it was still at a very well-defended property, and I was hoping to give my people a lot more occult knowledge before I sent them to have another go.’

‘Occult knowledge gained from us?’

‘Absolutely.’

Quill looked over from where he was still holding Vincent against the wall. There, on the desk, was the scrying glass — the real thing, blood red. It was small, quite insignificant looking, but the Sight gave it great weight. It was the centrepiece of a lavish private office decked out like something from the Fifties, all green leather and polished wood, but with enormous picture windows that, given what was outside, gave the place the feel of a palace that was looking down onto the many plumes of smoke of a besieged city.

There was something else in here too. The Sight indicated an enormous, mocking presence, with a feel to it that Quill found familiar. He couldn’t pin down exactly where it was. As soon as he looked in one direction, it flitted out of the corner of his eye. He recognized it, though. The Smiling Man was watching them, letting Quill know he was here, but doubtless keeping his presence a secret from Vincent. ‘Do you see that?’ he asked.

‘What?’

‘Nothing,’ said Quill. He flung Vincent to the carpet, and before the man could do anything, marched over to the desk, grabbed the scrying glass and smashed it against the corner of a table, again and again. The glass didn’t shatter. It didn’t even break.

‘You won’t have much luck with that,’ said Vincent, getting to his feet. He went to the drinks cabinet, recovering his composure, and poured himself a whisky. ‘I’m pretty sure it’s not actually glass.’

Quill looked round for a window to throw the glass out of and realized that none of them opened. He looked back to Vincent. ‘I could just run off with it.’

Vincent produced a small black device from his jacket. ‘This is my panic button,’ he said. ‘If I press it, my security people seal the building and burst in here.’ He put down his whisky and checked his phone. ‘They’ve just asked me if I think your sergeant downstairs is really a police officer.’ He hit two keys and then the send button. ‘I’ve just told them no, I don’t think so — an entirely reasonable response, given this evening’s chaos. They’ll probably hold him until there’s someone at Gipsy Hill to verify his identity.’ He looked puzzled at Quill. ‘Where are the other two? They haven’t slept in several days. Are they on to me?’

‘They’re on their way over,’ lied Quill. He strode purposefully back over to Vincent and stopped when the billionaire held up the panic button, his finger poised. Quill was trying to control the fury he felt about what this man had done to him. He and Gaiman both. ‘Do you know why I came here?’ he asked.

‘To attack me or arrest me.’

‘To hear you tell me the truth.’

Vincent frowned and glanced at something under the level of his desk. ‘You’re not wearing a wire,’ he said. Quill walked over and saw what looked like a radio scanner. ‘I don’t think you’ve got any occult way of hiding that.’

Quill opened his borrowed jacket and displayed its interior to Vincent. ‘Nothing up my sleeve. Besides, even if we got a recorded confession, do you reckon something as surreal as this could ever make it to court?’

Vincent considered for a moment, taking a sip of his whisky. ‘What do you want to know?’

Quill had been sure the great communicator would want someone to share his story. Afterwards, he guessed, Vincent would just hit the panic button, have him locked up somewhere downstairs and then summon the Ripper. No loose ends, but Vincent couldn’t resist the chance to share.

‘How about: how did you first learn about the supernatural powers of London?’

‘It’s something London-based entrepreneurs talk about after a few beers. It’s kept at the highest levels. You know, those used to risking millions are the only businessmen mad enough to believe things like that. I got interested, found out about the auction, and, like I told you when you visited me at the mews flat, bought the scrying glass as an alternative to using the electronic methods of covert news gathering. It worked a treat. I’d sit up here, connecting my mind to a celebrity here, a politician there, finding out all their secrets while they slept and then tipping off my editors as to how they could credibly find stories they could print. Watch — what you do is this.’ He went over, and, carefully holding onto the panic button, took the scrying glass from Quill’s hands, then set it back on his desk. He sat down in front of it. ‘You concentrate on a particular location, perhaps a building, and the glass sort of tells you if anyone’s asleep in that vicinity. You can’t see anything, so you can’t use it as a spy camera, worse luck; you just get a sense of who each sleeping person is. You pick the one whose brain you want to leaf through and you get your mind connected directly to theirs. It’s like suddenly having loads more memories. You can’t keep them all, but, like you were trying to recall something you yourself knew, you can reach for whatever you’re after. With you lot, I usually just felt around for whatever you’d been up to the previous day.’ He leaned back in his chair. ‘That US presidential visit was so frustrating: I could never pin down exactly where he spent the night.’ He got up again to retrieve his whisky. ‘As you may have guessed, I also used the glass to further my political agenda. I’m mounting a sort of coup, Quill. I’m tired of politicians who court public opinion. What this country needs is a few who’ll make opinion, who’ll tell the masses what to think. That’s what the British really like. I should know. I’ve been telling them what to think for decades.’

Quill, with his generally low opinion of the general public, allowed himself a grunt of recognition.

‘So I used the glass to make good things happen for the MPs I liked, bad things for those I didn’t, and I gradually let the idea seep into Westminster that this would keep happening, that I had everyone’s secrets, that I was starting to be in control. It was especially ironic, considering that I’d become the “clean” newspaperman. They couldn’t understand how I was doing it.’

Quill found he was interested in something. ‘Did you notice that you couldn’t spy on MPs when they were in Parliament?’

‘Yes, and that was terribly frustrating, because I’d see them there on TV, dozing off on the back benches, and I couldn’t do anything about it. That barrier around the building would be something to do with those mysterious predecessors of yours, I should think. I wish you’d learned more about them.’

‘Me too.’

‘Meanwhile, I brought together the money and the resources to set up what you see tonight, what’s going on out there — ’ he gestured towards what was outside the windows, making the ice clink in his whisky glass — ‘and the response to it. I encouraged thuggery on the far right, and made sure the Met and the other police forces were antagonized to the point of going on strike. The Herald’s been prophesying the Summer of Blood for months, and now here it is. You lot gave me the word for that: ostentation. Those I favour to take over will suspend government, step in themselves, order a crackdown, restore order with amazing speed. The army, thanks to what I know about several generals, is partly onside. I should think we’ll eventually return to some form of parliamentary democracy, but on our terms. I will have changed the whole political landscape.’

Quill could hardly believe the scope of this man’s dreams. ‘That’s why you’re doing this, but how? What’s the connection between the scrying glass and Jack the Ripper?’ Quill was pretty sure he already knew the answer.

Vincent nodded eagerly, as if this was the most exciting part. ‘I started to use the glass randomly to sweep important locations where people might be asleep, where I’d pop into a few minds, see what I could find out: the House of Lords; the Police Complaints Commission. In … one of these locations…’ Quill heard him pause, being careful. He was presumably aware of what Quill had seen in his shared dream with the woman in the barrow, but couldn’t know that Quill’s team had later pieced together where he’d been. ‘… I found a sleeping mind whose presence lit up the mirror with its power. I connected my mind to it, and … bam! It was enormous, it rushed into my head, and I went staggering around the mews flat, breaking things, having some sort of fit as I tried to deal with all that power rushing around my brain.’

‘That’s when your PA came in?’

‘Her doing so knocked me out of my trance, broke the connection. There would have been that silver stuff that only you can see all over the place. I felt angry at her, though I was careful not to show it, because right before she’d arrived I’d realized that I could control the power I’d encountered. It was ancient and confused and, above all, asleep, in some way which went beyond all our definitions of sleep. It was terrifying, but also completely vulnerable.’ Quill remembered his vision of the stone being slammed shut, of the once-powerful wise woman now locked away. ‘Later that night I contacted it again. I dominated it, learned how to shape the power that flooded into me, to the point where I could afford to give it limited freedom, like a horse I’d broken. I let it make a body for itself in front of me, an energy form that was spun together out of this golden thread in mid-air, deliberately a body I could see, that others would only see when I wanted them to. I thought then that it was going to be like Caliban out of The Tempest, that I’d send it flying around doing invisible errands. I tried a bit of that, actually, but it wasn’t very satisfying.’

‘But then someone started getting angry at the influence you were exerting over Members of Parliament. Someone started making plans.’

‘And I knew that my servant could help with that, yes.’ Vincent looked almost irritated, as if he was being misunderstood. ‘But, listen, you have to believe me: Spatley really went out of his way to get himself killed. I’d been observing his dreaming mind for months, hoping his plan to come after me would stay in the realm of Lib Dem daydreams. But he started to put real work into it, to make a mental map of what I was up to. I had to do something.’

‘And you didn’t go straight for the fatal option, I’ll give you that. This is where Mary Arthur comes in, isn’t it?’

Vincent smiled, seeming to appreciate Quill’s insight into his cleverness. ‘I took a look at his sexual fantasies and set up a honey trap catering to them — a prostitute who did the full schoolgirl thing, who was, as you say, Mary Arthur. What I didn’t expect was that he’d end up telling her everything he’d found out about me. And that then she’d be sensible enough to go into hiding immediately.’

‘And you can only read people’s sleeping minds when you know where they are. Given that you make use of the same device, I assume that you also need to know where they are to send the Ripper after them?’

‘Exactly!’ Vincent pointed excitedly at Quill. ‘Spatley, in the wake of the honey trap, was going to move against me immediately. So he simply had to die.’

‘Well, obviously!’

‘Through Challoner, my freelancer, I paid Tunstall, the driver, to search Spatley’s office for the business card Spatley had lost on which he’d written down information that could lead to the prostitute or, if Challoner started talking, to me. The card wasn’t very important to Spatley, considering he’d copied the details elsewhere, but very important to me at that stage, when I wasn’t utterly confident of my power and was contemplating my first murder. When the car was halted by the protest, I made the power I’d contacted once more appear in front of me. I took the shape it had made for itself, and then imposed my own meaning on it, changed it, added certain details. Then I sent it off to do its job.’

With, thought Quill, its, or rather, her, own fingerprints intact.

‘My idea then was only to make it look like a Toff protestor. I knew there were people out there who might get glimpses of it, after all, even if the only person I was intending to fully see it was Spatley. The Jack the Ripper bit was because of you lot.’

Quill felt a dull pain on hearing that. ‘Because of us?’

‘When you told Tunstall you believed what he was saying, I wondered how that was possible. When I realized you understood more about the secret side of London than I did, I must admit I got scared. If I was going to get away with what I’d done I would need a cover story. I had to sell you an alternative narrative, a meaning. Hence Jack the Ripper.’

‘Why not just kill us all?’

‘And shut off such a wonderful source of occult information?’ Vincent shook his head. ‘I decided to send your team on a wild goose chase instead, into the morass of Jack the Ripper legends, hoping I’d get you to try to solve all that nonsense. And I saw that the Ripper guise would act as a good cover if I located Mary Arthur, because then I would actually have to murder a prostitute. Reading up on the original Ripper murders, I came across that wonderful message on the wall, about the Jews being to blame, or not to blame, or whatever it’s trying to say. It being so vague creates such a mass of conflicting meanings. An excellent motivator, for example, for my lovely skinhead boys.’ He moved around the room, gesturing in mid-air. ‘When I direct my supernatural servant to go and kill someone, it’s me in the driving seat, willing it to move, controlling the individual movements. But when it’s travelling or doing something mundane I just point it in a particular direction and let it do the work. Exactly like riding a horse. Fiddly stuff, like writing that message, or opening the doors on train carriages — ’ he gave Quill a wink — ‘making those fingers do precise work — wow, that takes concentration.’

Quill realized something which gave him some small satisfaction. ‘And being a former copy boy and subeditor, your version of the message just had to have proper spelling and grammar.’

Vincent looked astonished for a moment. Then he started to laugh. ‘Oh! Oh, I hadn’t realized. But you’re right. That’s tremendous. You have to give me credit for the intelligence of the wider scheme, though. As well as being of practical use, the Ripper icon became just what I needed to lead the Summer of Blood. I’d found the greatest outrage marketing brand of all time. The greatest aspirational cheerleader figure also, free and happy in his work, encouraging people to copy him. The Ripper gets people furious and interested and aroused all at the same time, and it can mean anything.’

Quill understood that Ross had been right when she’d said that the most important indicator was the Ripper’s new MO: killing rich powerful men, and that Costain had been right about the scrawled message being just a load of front. ‘And you being Jewish yourself, as you went out of your way to tell me when we first met-’

‘Led you off into a whole different briar patch of conspiracy theories.’

‘But so many of your people must have been hurt in the riots-’

‘My “people”?’ Vincent actually laughed. ‘I don’t have a people, Quill, I have shareholders. My mother just happened to be Jewish, it’s not like I regard myself as one. Oh, hey, and you also bought that bit about the anonymous death threats, about me being worried by “dark forces”! I do believe most people actually think those are out there, that there’s some sort of … controlling evil under everything. Or, hey, perhaps because of ostentation, now there actually is.’

Quill wondered if Vincent might have a point there, but he didn’t let his face give anything away. The invisible presence in the room shifted, as if reacting to the notion, whether in pleasure or apprehension. ‘You were there before us with ostentation — you must have been.’

‘Well, I had rather got the idea that something like that must happen. When I tried to use Twitter to get together a few Toffs in Staunce’s neighbourhood, to make it look as if they were connected to the Ripper, who was due to make his full debut that night, I thought it was a long shot. But they arrived much more quickly and in greater numbers than they should have. I started to see that they felt somewhat compelled to. Though, if you asked any individual Toff, I doubt they’d realize that.’

‘So you used Staunce to get our home addresses, then killed him when he started to think of turning you in-’

‘Then I had a lucky break. Mary Arthur contacted Challoner, who’d originally employed her. She’d figured that after the death of Spatley she couldn’t still be in trouble, or at least that’s what she told him. I suspect she wanted to find out if she’d been let off the hook. Of course she had no idea that I knew what Spatley had told her. I had Challoner pretend to offer her new work, to set up a meeting at a specific place and time. She was careful; she chose somewhere crowded — that Soviet bar. Bless. Once she got there, I had Challoner keep her talking, then “pop out for five minutes to meet someone higher up”. Of course, he went straight home. He knew enough about occult London to guess what was coming.’

‘But that time your Ripper wouldn’t play ball, would she?’

Vincent smiled. ‘I keep forgetting, you know it’s a she.’

‘Yeah. My team kept underlining their assumptions, but that was a huge one they ended up making, that the Ripper was a bloke. You led us into that too, when we interviewed you at the mews flat. We kept saying “it”, you kept saying “he”.’

‘I’m so pleased you noticed that. Well, now I am, I mean.’

‘Maybe we should have realized the truth when the Ripper refused to kill Mary Arthur.’

‘I tried so damn hard to make her do that.’ Vincent sounded as if he was sharing an anecdote about a difficult mount. ‘But she just bucked and bucked. In that bar, she swerved aside at the last moment and suddenly I was stabbing just some random bloke! She was fine with letting me do that!’

‘I think she’s got a problem with men,’ said Quill. ‘A feminist Jack the Ripper. Anything really can mean anything these days. This is why she’s leaking silver, isn’t it, because you’re forcing her into a shape she doesn’t want to be in?’

‘Yes, and I do wonder if she’ll last much longer. Again, I only know about the fuel thing thanks to you lot. At any rate, she’s probably done her bit now, but I’ll keep using her. I’ve got a few more people to kill. I’ll wear her down to the point where there’s nothing left. Safer that way. Of course, if I’d known she wouldn’t kill women, I’d never have started all this in the first place.’

‘I presume this was when you decided, since Mary Arthur then went back into hiding, that getting us to find out about supernatural means of locating people was a good idea.’

‘I’d already bought your wife’s newspaper, and a few others at the same time so it wouldn’t look odd, with a view to meeting you, looking you in the eye, eventually planting the seeds that would send you after whatever occult knowledge I might want to know. You surprised me by seeing that silver stuff on my cards. I only knew about that once I saw your memory of our meeting. When you came to interview me, I was prepared; I dropped a few hints about the sort of thing I wanted you to look into. Didn’t work out. Perhaps I was too subtle for the plod mentality.’ He grinned, enjoying Quill’s reaction to that. ‘Mind you, I did fob you off with that fake scrying glass. Just like with the Bussard Inquiry, I admitted to a little guilt, and this time got away with something much bigger. The detail of the ripped shirt, that’s just the sort of visual image that sells a story, that makes people swallow a narrative.’

‘Then you killed Tunstall because he was about to talk to us-’

Vincent sighed. ‘Only because he was definitely going to implicate me. He’d done everything I asked, including finding that piece of paper with all the contact details on Spatley’s corpse. Really, he got so close to having a happy life with his family and a big payoff.’

‘If only he hadn’t had a conscience.’

‘Well, exactly.’ Quill couldn’t tell if Vincent was being sarcastic or literal.

‘What about me, then? What did I do that drove you to…?’ Quill mimed stabbing himself repeatedly.

Vincent wasn’t put off his stride in the slightest. ‘Two things. You got hold of the name Mary Arthur, and you had that meeting of minds with my power source while I was looking into your dreams. I decided I could still use the other three, but that you had to go.’

‘I nearly got away from you, though, didn’t I?’

‘Yes, and you would have done, I grant you, except…’ Vincent seemed to consider for a moment, then smiled again, chancing his arm. ‘Well, okay, perhaps there’s something you could tell me. Perhaps something you found out in Hell has given you a lead on this.’

‘And I should answer your questions because…?’

Vincent held up the button. ‘Because then I might let you live.’

Quill made an expression as if he was weighing up that promise. ‘I’ve seen how you err on the side of caution with that.’

‘If you don’t, I’ll definitely send you back to Hell, okay?’

Quill nodded. ‘I’m convinced by your argument.’

‘Who first called me anonymously, to tell me you were at Baker Street, then again to say you were going to be at Finchley Road, and finally texted me to say you were parked near Edgware Road? When I got to the car, I saw through the Ripper’s eyes, and … I think it was someone you’d recently met, but I can hardly believe it…’

‘Gaiman,’ said Quill, amazed. ‘I thought he was working for you.’

‘Not at all. I want to know how he knew my number. Why he got involved.’

‘Presumably you don’t want to send him a thank-you basket of muffins.’

‘Indeed not. He’s another loose end.’

Quill looked again to the presence in the room that Vincent couldn’t perceive. Was it his imagination, or did it seem to be gloating? The Smiling Man was the other power in London who might use a proxy like Gaiman to achieve his ends, but what were they? Had he just wanted to make use of Vincent to get Quill killed? There had to be more to it than that. He could surely have done that in a million different, far less ornate, ways.

Vincent put his finger back on the panic button. ‘You know,’ he said, ‘if you’re none the wiser about all that, then it’s time I brought this conversation to an end anyway. You’ve heard everything. You can’t stop me using the scrying glass, and — come on — you’ll never successfully bring me to justice. So I assume you’re now going to launch yourself at me in the vain hope of stopping me pressing this button?’

‘Oh no,’ said Quill, shaking his head, ‘definitely not.’

Vincent seemed puzzled by Quill’s matter-of-fact tone of voice, his finger hovering over the button. ‘So you really did come here just to hear the truth?’

‘No,’ said Quill, shaking his head again.

‘Then, what…?’

Quill looked to where a strange and familiar light was appearing through the wall. He grinned. ‘I came here, mush,’ he said, ‘to keep you talking.’