The The Name of the Star

by Maureen Johnson

  Another hour ticked by. Jazza knocked on the door and said she was going to bed. Charlotte came to tell us that biscuits were being passed around in the common room, and brought us a handful. Gaenor came in to talk to Boo. Jo came in every once in a while to tell us the building was clear.

  I jumped when my phone buzzed. There were a few people who might text me at this hour—my friends from home (though they usually e-mailed) and Jerome.

  Hello, the text read. I’m bored.

  I shared the sentiment, but I had no idea who I was sharing it with. The number wasn’t Jerome’s. I had only five English numbers in my phone, and this wasn’t any of them.

  Who is this? I replied.

  The phone buzzed again. Yet another number this time, and another message.

  Everyone loves Saucy Jack.

  “Is that Jerome?” Boo asked.

  Saucy Jack. That was another Ripper nickname from the past, another fake signature. The phone buzzed again. Yet another number.

  Come to the King William Street Tube station at four.

  The room felt very cold all of a sudden. Boo must have known something was wrong, because she took the phone.

  “King William Street?” she said, looking at the message. “That’s not a station.”

  She was still holding the phone when another message came in. She read it without asking my permission, and I saw her expression grow dark.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “I’m getting Stephen,” she said. She was reaching for her own phone and tried to keep her grasp on mine, but I got it away from her.

  I will kill tonight, the new message said. I will kill and kill and kill and kill again until I make my way to you. I will kill all along the path. I will draw a line of blood until I reach you. Come to me first.

  At least that cleared things up. I almost appreciated how unambiguous it was.

  Stephen was in the study room with us about a minute later. He took the phone out of my hand and quickly scanned through the text messages.

  “All different numbers,” he said. “Do you recognize any of them?”

  I shook my head. He already had his own phone out and was making a call.

  “I need a trace on some text messages . . .”

  He rattled off the numbers from the messages and hung up without saying good-bye. Boo was already on her computer.

  “King William Street station,” Boo said. “I looked it up. It’s a disused Tube station just north of London Bridge.”

  Stephen looked over her shoulder at the entry on the station.

  “What’s this down here?” he said, pointing. “Also the scene of a failed drugs bust in 1993 that resulted in the death of six undercover police officers.”

  “Bit of a strange coincidence that he wants to meet Rory at an abandoned station where six police officers died, isn’t it?” Boo asked.

  “Very,” Stephen said. “There’s a link to an article. Click on that.”

  They were still scanning this when Stephen’s phone started to ring. He answered it and listened, mumbling a few yeses, then hung up.

  “They traced the texts,” he said. “All different phones, all triangulated to a pub two streets over. There’s a party in there tonight. We can trace all the owners, but that’s irrelevant. He’s just picking up phones. What matters is that he’s close by.”

  “Which is fine,” Boo said. “We’re ready for him. This thing about the station . . . he can’t mean it.”

  I pulled Boo’s laptop over. They were reading from a “this day in history” news site. Down the left side of the page, there was a column of photographs, the faces of the victims.

  At first I thought I was imagining things. I definitely wasn’t feeling right in the head.

  “I don’t like it,” Stephen said, taking off his helmet and setting it on the table. He rubbed his hands through his hair until it stuck up. “We know he’s close to this building right now. Why tell her to go across town to some old station?”

  “Maybe he wants her to come out, and he kills her when she does?”

  “Possibly,” Stephen said.

  I ignored the casual way they were talking about my impending murder. My attention was still drilled on the screen. No. It wasn’t my imagination at all.

  “He wants me to go to where he died,” I said.

  Boo and Stephen both looked at me. I pointed to the fifth picture down the side of the screen.

  “That’s him,” I said, pointing to the bald man smiling back at us. “That’s the Ripper.”

  31

  A LONG SILENCE GREETED THIS ANNOUNCEMENT.

  I was still staring at the photo on the screen. The Ripper had a name—Alexander Newman. In life, he smiled.

  “Rory,” Stephen asked, “are you sure that’s him?”

  I was sure.

  “She’s right,” Boo said, leaning in and staring at the photo. “I didn’t even recognize him. I mostly remember him throwing me into the bloody road. But she’s right.”

  “This changes things,” Stephen said. “He’s playing a game with us. It’s just after two, so we have two hours.”

  He paced the study room for a moment. There was a knock on the door. He threw it open to find Claudia in the doorway.

  “Yes?” he snapped.

  “All right in here?” she asked.

  “Just doing some follow-up questioning,” he said.

  Claudia didn’t look convinced. Now that I thought about it—Stephen really did look young, and he’d been around a lot. I don’t think she questioned that he was a policeman, but I’m not sure she was completely convinced that he was around the building purely for police reasons.

  “I see,” she replied. “Well, make sure to pop by on your way out, please.”

  “Yes, I will,” Stephen said quickly. “Thank you.”

  He didn’t exactly slam the door in her face, but he came fairly close.

  “We do two things,” he said. “We make him think that Rory will meet him. We’ll draw him away from here. The second thing is, we get Rory out of this building without anyone noticing.”

  “Why?” Boo asked.

  “Because,” he said impatiently, “before, we thought he was just going to come here and we’d be waiting. But now I have no idea where he plans on going or what he plans on doing. So our move is, we confuse him. He’s been in control of this situation for so long, I can’t imagine he’ll be pleased if he thinks he doesn’t know what’s going on for a moment. Is there any other way out of this building besides the front door?”

  “The only other way I know is through the bathroom window,” I said. “And they fixed the bars.”

  “You can’t go out a window. This building is surrounded. The police would notice, even if the Ripper missed it. No other way?”

  I shook my head.

  “All right,” he said. “The two of you stay here. I’ll be back.”

  Stephen was gone for about ten minutes. Jo came by on a break from patrolling the building, and Boo told her what was going on, so she stayed with us. When Stephen returned he had a plastic shopping bag with him, which he tossed onto the table. The bag had one busted handle and looked dirty, like it had come from the trash. Inside, there was a lump of black and white cloth and a very bright green plastic object.

  “Put that on,” he said.

  I dumped out the bag and found what had been inside was a bunched-up police uniform, complete with the vest.

  “Where did you get this?” Boo asked.

  “It’s Callum’s,” he said.

  “What’s he wearing?”

  “At the moment, not much of anything. Put it on.”

  I noticed Boo perk up a bit at this piece of information.

  “I’ll go and have a chat with your matron. Change. Put your clothes in the bag. Hurry.”

  Callum and I were of a similar height; the pants were a little long, but not insanely so. The shirt was much too large—Callum had big arm muscles and a chest that was wide i
n different places. The belt was heavy and loaded down with things like handcuffs, a flashlight, a baton, and what appeared to be Mace. The tactical vest was also massive and heavy, with a radio on the shoulder.

  “Take my shoes,” Boo said.

  She was wearing a pair of black flats, something she could easily slip on. They were kind of sweaty inside and too large for me, but they were better than the pink dotted slippers I’d been wearing. Stephen knocked once, then opened the door while I was still making the final adjustments.

  “What about me?” Boo said.

  “You can’t move with that leg. Plus, you’re needed here with a terminus in case I’m wrong. And you have to do this . . .”

  He took out his notebook and wrote something down, then passed it to her. “You figure out a way to get this message all over those cameras at the vigil. Quick as you can.”

  “I can help with that,” Jo said.

  The helmet didn’t fit at all. It was one of those tall, distinctly English bobby helmets. It had a large silver badge on the front, topped with a crown. The helmet was heavy and instantly fell over my eyes.

  “Just hold it in place by the brim,” Stephen said. “It’s the wrong headgear for female officers, so keep your head down.”

  “I don’t look like a cop.”

  “It doesn’t have to fool anyone close up,” Stephen added. “All we have to do is walk out of the building and around the corner. I’ve sent Claudia off to check a window. We need to move.”

  Boo looked pained that we were leaving, but it was all happening very fast.

  “You lot be careful,” she said. “And don’t do anything stupid.”

  “We’ll see you in a few hours,” Stephen said. “Stay alert. Keep Jo with you.”

  Getting out of Wexford was easy—it was only a few steps down the hall, then a few more steps to the front door. We walked past the common room so quickly that all anyone saw was two briskly moving, vaguely police-like figures.

  Once we were outside, it felt like a very different game. There were four police officers out front. Most were talking to each other or staring at the people who were coming and going from the vigil. Still, one of them turned in my direction. I put my head down instantly, holding the stupid helmet in place. There was a radio attached to the shoulder of Callum’s vest, so I pretended to be talking into that. I couldn’t walk that steadily in Boo’s slightly oversized shoes, and once again, the stupid cobblestones were my enemy. I felt the cuff that I had shortened by tucking it up the pant leg coming slowly undone. Stephen couldn’t support me because that would have looked too odd, but he walked very close, so I could bump into him as a way of keeping from falling over. He walked me straight down the cobblestone street, which led past one of the classroom buildings, and then to the main shopping road. As soon as we were clear of the place, Stephen caught me by the arm to help me. He half dragged me down the street, turning abruptly at a small alley next to a building that was being refurbished and converted to fancy new apartments.

  There was nothing there but trash—old office chairs and rolls of discarded carpet and a Dumpster filled with scrap wood and broken pieces of wall.

  “It’s us,” Stephen said.

  “Oh, thank God,” said a voice.

  Callum emerged from behind the Dumpster. Even with all that was going on, it was hard not to take notice of this: he wore only his underpants and his socks and shoes. The underpants were those tight kind—not tighty-whities, but the slightly longer-legged ones that looked kind of sporty. His legs were hairier than I would have expected, and he had a long tattoo of what looked like a vine running from somewhere just above the leg of the underwear to a few inches above his knee.

  I don’t think I hid my staring very well either.

  “Go ahead and change,” Stephen said, handing me the bag. “I’ll go and get the car.”

  “Please be quick,” Callum added. “This is not as fun as it appears.”

  I stepped over the boards and got myself behind the Dumpster. It was cold and dusty back there, and it only got colder and more unpleasant when I shed my outfit. I tossed out the clothes as I finished with them, so by the time I emerged, Callum was fully dressed, doing up the buttons and zippers. This was slightly disappointing.

  Stephen pulled up at the end of the alley, and we got into the car. The spot was probably illegal, but being in a police car, he could do what he liked. He had opened a laptop that was attached to a center console in the front of the car, and it appeared he was going into a police database.

  “There’s an Alexander Newman in here,” he said. “Says he died in 1993, which was the year of the King William Street incident, but his file doesn’t mention it. Says he was Special Branch. Medical degree from Oxford. Trained as a psychiatrist at St. Barts Hospital, three years on the force . . . What was this man doing on a drugs squad?”

  “Is this what we should be worrying about right now?” I asked.

  “He wants you to go where he died,” Stephen said, not turning around. “Clearly, this place has significance to what’s going on. The more we know, the better we can determine what to do next—or what he’ll do next. There’s also something very strange about this case file. A case like that, six officers dead, there should be endless documentation. This file seems light.”

  “You just love the paperwork, don’t you?” Callum asked.

  “I’m saying that for a case of this magnitude, there should be hundreds of pages. But all that’s in here are the general report, the coroner’s report, and four officer statements. Basically all this says is that a firearms unit was dispatched to the scene to try to take control of the situation, but by the time they got there, all the officers were dead. According to this, there were four officers in the armed response vehicle.”

  He typed some more. I looked out of the window to the dark street we had parked on. Not a person in sight. There was a CCTV camera pointed right at us. That was almost funny now.

  “It looks like one has died and two are retired. But one’s still working—Sergeant William Maybrick. City of London Police, Wood Street. He’ll be on duty tonight.”

  “How do you know?” Callum asked.

  “Because everyone is on duty tonight,” Stephen replied. “I think it’s worth the time to go and find out what he knows. Sirens on, I can get there in five minutes.”

  32

  ONE THING ABOUT STEPHEN—HE COULD REALLY drive. He power-shifted through the gears as we tore into the City, ripping past banks and skimming inches away from the cabs and very expensive-looking cars that still floated around the streets. I caught a part of some snarky remark Callum made about Stephen celebrating a lot of birthdays by doing racing track days. Stephen told him to shut up.

  We came to an actual screeching halt in front of the station. Because we were in a police car, we got to pull right up front. The Wood Street police station looked like a fortress built entirely of blocks of white stone. There were a few windows, and a big set of brown wood double doors with a crest sculpted into the stone just above—two lions snarling at each other over a shield. Two old-fashioned lamps, ones that looked like converted four-sided gas lamps with the word POLICE on them, provided the only light or identification.

  “How exactly are you going to get him to talk to you?” Callum asked as he unbuckled himself.

  “We have ways,” Stephen said.

  “We? I am part of that we. I don’t know our ways.”

  They got out and continued their conversation outside of the car, but I couldn’t hear it that well. I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to do. I was in the back, and I was dressed in my alligator pajamas. Getting out seemed like the logical idea, but the door didn’t open. Stephen came back and released me. The three of us marched into the station. At the front desk, Stephen asked for Sergeant Maybrick in such a firm and entitled way that the front desk officer raised an eyebrow. He looked at Stephen, then at Callum, and finally at me. I seemed to be the weak link in this overall picture. />
  “And you are?” he asked.

  “Just ring him.”

  “He’s quite busy at the moment.”

  “This has to do with the Ripper case,” Stephen said, leaning over the counter. “Time is somewhat of the essence. Pick up that phone.”

  The word Ripper really had an amazing effect on people. The desk officer picked up the phone instantly. A minute later, a man emerged from the elevator down the hall. He was at least an inch or two taller than Stephen and probably twice his weight. There were sweat marks under the arms of his white uniform shirt, and the epaulettes on his shoulder had a lot more stripes than Stephen’s.

  “I understand you have some information for me?” he said.

  His accent, I now could recognize, was Cockney—serious London.

  “I need you to tell me everything you remember about the deaths of the six officers at King William Street in 1993,” Stephen replied. Even to my ears, this demand sounded ridiculous.

  “And who are you exactly, Constable?” the sergeant said.

  Stephen took a notepad from his belt, opened it, scrawled something, and passed the paper to the sergeant.

  “Ring this number,” he said. “Tell them you have Constable Stephen Dene with you. Tell them I need you to give me some information.”

  Sergeant Maybrick took the paper and stared Stephen straight in the eye.

  “If you’re wasting my time, son—”

  “Ring the number,” Stephen said.

  The sergeant folded the paper in half and sharpened the fold by running his fingers along it several times.

  “Ellis,” he said to the man behind the desk, “you see these three stay here.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  The sergeant stepped down the hall and took out his phone. Stephen folded his arms over his chest, but from the way he clenched and unclenched his fists, I could tell that he wasn’t entirely sure this was going to work. The desk officer studied us. Callum turned toward the wall to hide his alarmed expression.

  “What number is that?” he hissed in Stephen’s direction.

  “One of our overlords,” Stephen whispered. “And he’s not going to be happy I gave out his number.”