The Severed Streets (31 page)

‘Understood,’ said Quill.
‘Go on.’

‘Well, I finally went to one of those pub nights myself, incognito.
I wasn’t very impressed with the people involved.
They seemed all over the place; they didn’t know much, and, well, I can respect people who don’t have time for money, but this lot seemed desperately conflicted about it, obsessed with what they claimed to despise.
I got my people to dig further, to ask about … well, about devices that could be used to find out people’s secrets.
They came back with a suggestion: the scrying glass.’

Sefton looked at the others, and found they shared his shock.
So a scrying glass might be what was being used to listen in on them, might have been what led to the leak that had got Tunstall killed.

‘How?’
growled Quill.
‘How does it do that?’

Vincent looked reluctant.
‘Well,’ he said, ‘I’m assuming this is never going to reach the authorities because, goodness knows, any new inquiry wouldn’t believe you, but you’ve got me over a barrel here, just knowing I’ve got one of these.’

‘We’re after bigger fish than you, sunshine,’ said Quill.
‘Tell us.’

‘The scrying glass is meant to be a device for entering people’s dreams.’

Sefton wanted to punch something.
How many times had he had that feeling in his sleep, of something rifling through his mind?
He looked again to his colleagues and could see from their own expressions of horror and anger that this was a shared experience.

‘And once you’re in,’ Vincent said, ‘you can check out whatever’s in their memory.’

‘How did that go for you?’
said Quill, advancing dangerously on Vincent.

The billionaire raised his hands in surrender.
‘It didn’t go at all,’ he said.
‘I’ve never successfully used the blasted thing.
Wish I’d never set eyes on it.
I bought it at this auction which took place under the skeleton of a whale in the Natural History Museum.
Not wanting to be there myself in case I was recognized, I stayed on the other end of a phone line and had my proxy purchase this “scrying glass”, which I’d been told was as rare as hen’s teeth.
I paid around forty thou for it and had it delivered to me here.
I expected some sort of instruction manual, but there was nothing.
So I decided that perhaps using it was just going to be a matter of instinct.’
Sefton recognized his own blundering attitude to dealing with the power of London.
‘The first time I tried … well, the only time … Maggie, would you please continue the story?
Tell the truth.’

Sefton was intrigued by the idea that otherwise the PA might not tell the truth.
They all looked to the middle-aged woman, who now had an awkward expression on her face.
She’d been surprised to hear all this from her boss, Sefton felt.
She was wondering if he was mad.
But she was also very worried that he might not be.
‘It must have been about two and a half years ago,’ she began, haltingly.
‘There was snow on the ground.
I was downstairs making tea, and Mr Vincent had said that that night I could leave early, because he was going to be busy all evening.
And then I heard him cry out from up here.
There was the most enormous crashing around.
It was like someone had got in here and was attacking him.
I should have hit the panic button, but I didn’t; I just ran upstairs and opened the door and found him staggering about.
The room was smashed up.
It must have been over in seconds, whatever it was.
His shirt was ripped.
Mr Vincent saw me standing there and yelled for me to get out.
He ran out himself and closed the door behind us.
He made sure I was all right, but he wouldn’t tell me what had happened – just that I wasn’t to tell anyone, and … well, he’s never asked me to work in this room since, and I’ve been glad not to.’
She looked as if she was now making some terrible mental calculations about how her perceptions of what was possible had changed since the start of this meeting.

‘What happened?’
Sefton asked Vincent.

Vincent went to a sofa and sat down.
‘Something I now think you might be familiar with.
Something I’ve been wondering about coming forward about since the murders started.
How could I?
When you asked me about the impossible at the party, Inspector Quill, I should have told you then, but I knew nothing about you.’
He let out a long breath.
‘I was attacked by Jack the Ripper.’

Sefton found his mind racing.
So there was a connection between the Ripper and the scrying glass.
That made sense.
Whoever was spying on their dreams also seemed to be the one who chose the Ripper’s victims.
He stuck his tongue out and tasted the air.
He found a metallic taste, a reminder of when he’d smelt the silver goo.
It was very faint, but after two and a half years, perhaps it would be.

‘That evening that Maggie describes,’ continued Vincent, ‘I’d been trying to activate the mirror, looking into it, willing it to do something.
When something started to appear out of it – this figure, pushing slowly through the glass – I was intrigued, not even very frightened at first, because it moved so slowly.
I thought I’d got what I was after, that this was going to be some sort of, I don’t know, supernatural being who’d go and listen in on things for me.
As it became more clear what was emerging, I got scared.
It was what we’d now call a “Toff” protestor, though nobody had heard of them then, with the mask and the top hat and the cape and … this one had a razor.
When that started to appear, that’s when I started to yell.
The moment I did, he leaped out of the mirror and attacked me … or he tried to.
I thought I was dead the moment he started slashing at me.
But for some reason the blows just seemed to cut through my shirt.
After just a moment, he seemed to realize that, and fled.’

Sefton was now writing down details himself.
What could have stopped the Ripper from killing Vincent?
And why such an early murder attempt, then nothing for months after?
Maybe it had needed to fix whatever the problem with this killing had been.
‘Which way did it go?’

‘I’m not sure.
He just seemed to fly off and vanish, maybe … that way?’
Vincent gestured vaguely towards the window.
Sefton went to look, inspected the wall and window closely for any sign of the silver goo associated with a Ripper exit, but there was nothing.
Again, a long time had passed.
They had no idea if this stuff evaporated.
He went back to the mirror, had another look for goo, found none and, with a glance at the others, put the cloth back over it.

They all relaxed a little.
Maggie had to lean on a wall.

‘Maggie found me here a moment later, in a daze,’ said Vincent.
‘I didn’t let anyone else in here after that.
I kept the cloth over the mirror, always half expecting it to happen again.
I wanted to get rid of it, but I didn’t see how I could do that without endangering someone else.
It’s not as if I could explain the problem.
I thought about breaking it, but if looking into it had resulted in the appearance of that … ghost or whatever it was, then who knows what would have happened?
Since the protests began I’ve always wondered if the man I saw was somehow … I don’t know … leading them.
And then, when the killings started … but who could I tell?’

‘Can I take another look at your business cards?’
asked Quill.
Vincent looked puzzled, then took a metal case from his pocket.
Quill took it, opened it, and showed them to Sefton.
There was preserved a spatter of silver, faded but obvious.
‘Do you keep a supply here?’

Vincent went to a little open box of them on the desk by the mirror, and pulled one out.
The same silver deposits.
Looking more closely, Sefton found signs of it across the top of the desk also, but the card seemed to have absorbed it in a way the wood didn’t.
He got down on his hands and knees and smelt the carpet, found the tiniest droplets still deep in the weave.
Vincent’s story checked out.

Vincent was looking perplexed at him, not able to see the silver himself.

‘Can you think of any reason,’ said Costain, ‘why the Ripper might have attacked you?’

Vincent was silent for a moment.
Then he seemed to decide that he might as well go the whole distance.
‘I didn’t just want to know people’s secrets for personal gain.
I wanted protection.’

‘From what?’

‘I’d started receiving anonymous death threats, left in places where nobody should have been able to go.’

‘Did you report this to the police?’
asked Quill.

‘No, because when one is aware that one is involved in … questionable activities … one doesn’t like to summon the law right into one’s home, does one?’

‘Do you still have any of these messages?’

‘Well, no.
They tended to … curl up and turn to ashes as soon as I’d read them, or vanish off my phone or computer.
They had a sort of official tone to them.
I think, having declared myself to be an honest newspaperman, I’d got on the wrong side of what the late Princess Diana called “the dark forces” in British public life.
I was feeling the same sudden chill that Assange, Galloway and Snowden must have felt.
I never found out why I was being singled out, or who was doing it.
But, given the way the threats were delivered, I became certain they might have genuine supernatural power on their side.’

‘What were the threats about?’
asked Ross.

‘They were quite vague.
They just said they were watching me and that if I went too far out of line they’d punish me for it.’

‘So you wanted the scrying glass to try to find out who was doing it?’

‘Absolutely.’

‘Your newspapers seem to do well enough without the use of this,’ said Quill, tapping the mirror.
‘Do I take it you’ve gone back to the old-fashioned sort of dodginess?’

‘The oldest sorts,’ said Vincent.
‘The power of money and the willingness of people to tell on each other.
Now, I’ve told you all I know.
Am I off the hook?
Have you had your pound of flesh?’

A thought had occurred to Sefton.
It was dangerous, but his team had taken on worse.
‘Mr Vincent,’ he said, ‘you may have gathered we’re specialists in this kind of thing.
You’ve been very cooperative, but I’d like to ask one last favour.
Would it be possible for you to lend us this mirror, to aid in our current investigation?’

Vincent raised his hands, relieved.
‘I would be
delighted.
’

*   *   *

They heaved the mirror back to the car in silence, all of them feeling as if they were handling a bomb, but, as Sefton was all too aware, also dealing with a different sense of terrible oppression.
They got it into the boot, climbed into the car and closed the doors before they felt they could talk about it.
Ross said it first.
‘Fuck,’ she said.
‘Someone is bugging our sodding dreams.’

‘They already know all we know,’ Costain said.
He had a terrible look on his face and Sefton could only wonder what secrets of his own he had to lose.
‘And next time we sleep, they’ll know we’re on to them too.’

‘We need defences,’ said Quill, looking to Sefton.
‘We need them today.’

Sefton took out his phone and started searching.
‘I already have a few ideas,’ he said.

‘And I,’ said Costain, ‘need to text a man about a thing.’
He had started to do it before he’d finished the sentence.

*   *   *

They listened to the news on the way back to the Hill: a live announcement of the result of the Police Federation postal ballot.
‘The government had every opportunity to negotiate,’ said the voice of Commander Stephen Marcus, the leader of the strike campaign within the federation.
‘They still do.
We do not take our duty lightly, and we will always be willing to return to the bargaining table.
But the public should know that, even in the current situation, with disorder on the streets of London every night, this government have not seen fit to look to better conditions for police officers, nor for greater numbers of police officers, and put in place a cut in starting salary.
They have seen fit to attempt to take operational control of police forces in London and have assigned them on occasion seemingly at random, without the knowledge and experience of professional police officers, leading to increased danger to the public and to the officers themselves.
As such, unless the situation changes, our members have voted for, by a three to one majority, and will begin, in three days’ time, this coming Saturday, a series of twenty-four-hour strikes…’

‘Fuck a duck,’ said Quill.

*   *   *

They got back to the Hill and, between the four of them, carried the mirror into the Portakabin.
‘Not a lot in here to mess up if it, you know, activates,’ said Costain.

Ross tacked a card with Vincent’s name on it onto the Ops Board, in the Ripper victim category, with asterisks beside the line, indicating that he’d survived.

Sefton was very aware of the other three all looking urgently to him.
He made sure he’d searched everywhere he could think of.
He had a couple of leads.
‘I have to visit some antique shops,’ he said.

*   *   *

While Sefton was away, Quill got on the phone to Lofthouse and asked about her dream life.
She felt she hadn’t been spied on, which was a relief.
She was worried as to why he might ask, so Quill filled her in as far as he could.
The news came through that all police leave was cancelled until the strike.
There was news footage of last night’s, and to some extent this afternoon’s, riots in Fulham, Brixton and East Ham.
There were rumours of isolated incidents in leafy suburbs like Chesham and Rickmansworth.
Quill wondered how they were going to keep awake.
Every time he thought about it he felt a terrible sense of violation and wondered exactly what memories of his the intruder had spied on, thought about Sarah’s privacy as well as his own.
He saw the look on Ross’ face and realized they’d all be thinking the same thing.
He went to the tea station and pulled out the big jar of coffee.
‘We are not,’ he said, ‘going to be giving this bastard the chance to have another look.’

*   *   *

Sefton finally returned with a small collection of objects that, he said, indicated both serious London provenance and the concept of things or people being kept locked out.
There were keys from the Tower of London, boundary markers from royal gardens.
He saw how unenthused Quill and Ross were and raised his hands.
‘It’s all I could do,’ he said.
‘I really have no idea.’
There was nothing of weight about any of the objects.
‘Before tonight, I’ll write down some instructions about putting chalk lines and salt around our beds.’