by Andy Conway
However much it hurt his body, Danny could see he was gaining on Bury. Just as with the coach chase, where Bury’s nag was not as fit as the two pulling the Clarence, Bury himself was simply not as well nourished and fit as Danny, so the gap was narrowing, slowly but surely.
Arthur and Tom were running along the footbridge but they were too far behind, and too slow. They wouldn’t make it in time. Bury would crest the steps and be out the other side before they reached him.
“He’s going through to the other station!” Arthur called.
The footbridge continued through, taking passengers from the London North West Railway, across Queen’s Street and into the Midland Railway station. Two separate stations that together formed the New Street Station interchange.
Danny hared up that final platform. He could feel the pain in his limbs but he was fast now. Impossibly fast. It was as if there was a wind behind him and he was carried on a zephyr’s breath. He flew up the steps and crested the footbridge long before Arthur and Tom, glancing back to see them only half way across.
He hared on along the footbridge, which spanned Queen’s Street, open to the air, glancing over each side to make sure Bury hadn’t jumped off. But he knew with certainty now what Bury’s plan was.
Even in his mad run through the station he’d taken in the details — the clock that told him what time it was, the chalk boards that announced the trains arriving and leaving — they had flashed on his retinas and he now read them as he tore across the bridge and stormed through into the Midland Railway station, less grand, its ceiling not nearly so vast.
Bury was heading for the other train to London. Not the London North West Railway service to Euston, but the Midland Railway train to St. Pancras.
A train that would leave in exactly sixty seconds.
45
DANNY COCKED THE PISTOL as he ran down the stairs to the platform, scanning the crowd for Bury. There, the deerstalker hat cutting the crowd like a shark’s dorsal fin. Halfway down the platform, lost in the crowd of people piling onto the train. If he didn’t do something this moment, Bury would be on the train and lost.
“Bury!” he shouted, raising the pistol and shooting up in the air.
The explosion echoed all around the station and ignited a pandemonium of panic. Women screamed all around, but the crowd parted like the Dead Sea, leaving only Bury, stranded, turning, arms up, as glass fell from the roof above and shattered all around him.
Danny pointed the gun right at him and walked forward, watching through his peripheral vision for any have-a-go hero who might try to disarm him.
“Police!” he shouted, which he knew would be enough to make anyone think twice about tackling him.
Bury stood frozen, hissing with hate, his knife drawn. This was it. He could shoot him dead right now. He could shoot Jack the Ripper and stop his reign of terror before it had begun.
Those passengers that were to his left clambered onto the train, leaving the platform empty but for him and Bury.
This was the moment. He saw it now. The station platform. The gun. The clock, which was just behind Bury. Is this a dream? No. He had seen it so many times and never once seen Bury in it. Was this what he’d been led to all this time? Was this his purpose? Or would this be the moment when he, Danny Pearce, died.
He looked behind him with sudden fear, expecting a policeman to shoot him down before he had time to explain he’d cornered the killer.
The guard, hanging out of the final carriage, watching with his mouth open, put his whistle to his lips and blew sharply. The engine groaned and a great cloud of steam erupted.
Bury went to dash for the train. Danny fired.
The bullet zinged off the stone platform, sending up a cloud of dust at Bury’s foot, and went somewhere into the great black tunnel ahead.
This was the moment. Just shoot him and get it over with.
The pistol wavered. Something in his eyes. Was it blood? No, sweat. He was so very hot.
The train creaked into life, shunting forward. The engine driver had thought it best to get his train away from the commotion on the platform, away from any potential shooting. It was going to leave on time, without Bury on it.
He’d won.
He was so very hot.
“Who are you?” Bury shouted.
Sweat on his finger, squeezing the trigger. The gun felt so absurdly heavy.
“What are you?” Bury spat. “You’re not from this earth. You made it snow. I saw it.”
“You have to stop it,” Danny said, his voice sounding hollow and far away. “You have to...”
Danny shook his head. He wanted to say You have to be stopped, but he couldn’t get the words out. He tried to pull the trigger but he felt so weak. Behind Bury, further down the platform, was a seagull. It was the strangest thing. He could feel the pull of another time, calling him, pulling at him, like a magnet. He tottered, trying to plant his feet firmly in this place, this time.
Bury gasped in wonder and stepped back. What had he seen?
“You’re an angel!” Bury said.
Danny felt anger flood him and hoped it would give him the strength to pull the trigger. He could crush Bury like a maggot. Does he not know who I am? I am a god, a Wind God. I can command a hurricane from my fingers. I could lay waste this city with a snap of my fingers.
He pulled back. The hate. That was what had turned him bad, sent him mad. No. That was no answer.
The train began to pull out of the platform, the windows crowded with eager faces watching the show.
Just shoot him. Now.
He tried to pull the trigger but his finger wouldn’t move. It was as if his finger had disappeared. It was as if his hand was melting away into nothing. The pistol fell through his fingers and dropped to the floor, and violent pain spasmed through his heart.
Am I dying?
The seagull took wing and flew into the black tunnel above the train.
Bury smiled and turned and ran down the platform chasing the train, jumping and hanging on to the last door, pulling it open and climbing inside.
Danny stood frozen, the light fading, hearing the cries of astonishment all around him. He was dying, he knew. His vision of standing on a station platform, pointing a pistol at a clock, fading from view, had been nothing but a vision of his own death. He knew he couldn’t hold on any longer.
He saw Arthur push through the crowd on the bridge and then his old friend Tom Conway’s face, his eyes seeking him out with pity.
The lights were fading. He was falling into blackness. And as Tom Conway’s eyes faded from view, Danny cried out Don’t let me die. Let me stop him. Let me stop the Ripper, otherwise this has all been in vain.
But no one heard his words as the darkness took him.
46
TOM CONWAY FELT A SHARP pain in his heart as Danny disappeared. He clutched his burning chest and stumbled against the railing of the steps as Arthur ran on down the platform.
It wasn’t a heart attack. He gulped in crisp, fresh air. No, it was his heart breaking. He hadn’t helped his old friend, but there had been a look of peace in his eyes at the end — a look of resignation, almost as if he understood what was happening.
Danny Pearce had faced the truth about himself in the end, and it hadn’t destroyed him.
At least, he hoped not.
He pushed himself forward from the banister and walked to Arthur, who was looking all about him, bewildered.
“It’s too late,” he said.
All around them the cries of disbelief were rising to a crescendo and he feared it might break out into a wave of panic. He feared for their safety. Then a man clapped his hands together and cried, “Bravo!”
He was applauding.
Arthur looked around, astonished. Other passengers joined in, laughing now, cheering, all applauding.
They thought it was a magic show!
They would dismiss it in the only way they knew how. A street magician had staged a daring illusion
— a disappearing act — and gulled them all. They would talk about it for weeks, tell all their friends, and eventually it would be forgotten.
He grabbed Arthur’s arm and led him away, back up the steps, pushing through the crowd. No one suspected them of being involved. Along the bridge and out over Queen’s Street where the snow was still falling.
They were walking through the grand arches and emerging on Stephenson Street before Arthur shrugged him off and shouted, “What the devil was that?”
“Let’s go, Arthur.”
“No! We both saw it happen. He disappeared!”
“He never belonged to this time, Arthur. We always knew it.”
He tried to lead Arthur away, but the younger man shook his arm off and gripped Tom’s jacket in a tight fist.
“He thought the same of you, Mr Conway! Now why don’t you tell me what’s going on?”
“I don’t know, Arthur. Truly I don’t.”
“You liar. You said it’s over. You said he doesn’t belong to this time. What’s over? What do you know?”
“I don’t know anything.”
“You know a lot more than you’re letting on, Thomas Conway, if that’s your real name. Are you Jack, or is it Bury?”
“What do you mean?”
“Daniel rambled on and on about being a killer called Jack.”
“Jack?” Tom felt a sudden, terrible nauseous premonition of dread. He knew what Arthur was going to say before the words came from his lips.
“Yes. What was it now? Jack the Ripper. Is that you?”
“Jack the Ripper.”
“Do you know this?”
Tom shook his head.
“You’ve gone quite pale.”
Jack the Ripper. Of course he knew the name. It was a name that struck terror into the heart of everyone. But here, no one knew it. It hadn’t happened yet. But it was about to happen. It had come to that time, obviously.
Arthur still had his jacket in a fierce grip, nipping his arm, but he felt weak and so very, very sick. Jack the Ripper. The most famous serial killer in history. But it was lost in the fog of time and bad memory. He knew almost nothing other than there had been murders, in Whitechapel. Was Jack a toff? He’d always been depicted as such. A man in a top hat and a red-lined cape. A doctor?
He couldn’t even remember the names of any of his victims.
And yet Tom had travelled to this time, and settled in Whitechapel, so somewhere in his unconscious mind the answers were written. He could stop Jack the Ripper. Is this what he’d meant to do all along?
He felt as useless as Danny Pearce must have felt all those years. A vague sense of purpose — that he might make a difference — but he could remember nothing.
Tom had come to the 1800s from a far flung and complicated future. He had come here to escape. He had taken on the identity of a dead soldier, a man who’d fallen down dead right in front of him as he’d materialized. A man with a pension book. And on that same day he’d met and fallen in love with a sweet young girl called Catherine Eddowes.
Had she been the person he was meant to save? Had she been his destiny? Or was it this? Was it this Jack the Ripper?
Was it William Bury? Was he Jack?
Tom knew it wasn’t Danny, who’d gone back to the future, where he belonged. Perhaps that was what he should do too. He could barely remember what he had escaped from in that dark future — what had compelled him to hide in Victoria’s England. He had planned to die here, but now he knew he should leave. The gig was up. Whatever he was supposed to do, he’d messed it up. If there was a purpose to any of it at all?
He felt so very tired. And old. So very old.
He could do it now. Just think himself back to his own time, leaving Arthur Doyle clutching nothing. But before that happened, could he return to Whitechapel and stop William Bury before he even started? Or would he find that even if he killed William Bury, someone else called Jack the Ripper would still go on a killing spree?
Danny had tried and failed. He had a terrible premonition that before William Bury faced any hangman’s rope he was going to sow a bitter seed, and they would all reap the whirlwind. Nothing would stop him. History would run its course.
The future had always called to Tom, from a very great distance, and he had managed to shut out its music. But now it was his immediate future that called to him, and it demanded a response. It would not be so easy to ignore.
He smiled and said, “This would all make a great story, Arthur.”
“That’s not funny.” Arthur pushed him away and stamped his foot in anger.
Conway took a deep breath and watched Arthur turn away in frustration, and he thought where to now?
When to now?
His eyes fell on the sign above the shop on the corner across the street. Gaze & Son, Railway & Steamship Passenger Agency. It seemed to promise adventure.
He closed his eyes for a moment and when he opened them, the sign across the road was still there but aged and partially obscured. The shop was derelict and on the other side of a wire fence. The road between all broken, a tram line being laid. Behind him the Queen’s Hotel had disappeared, replaced by an ugly edifice of concrete and plastic and garish shops. To one side a concrete ramp leading up to a shopping centre.
He felt tears streaming down his face. People flashed by, not noticing him, staring at their cell phones. He’d forgotten this: the casual alienation, the concrete brutality. He couldn’t be certain of the year, he could barely see it through his tears. He only knew he wasn’t in 1888 anymore.
47
NO ONE HAD TROUBLED William Bury on the train from New Street Station, other than a few people enquiring about his role in the illusionist’s grand trick. He had professed innocence and said he knew nothing of it and the man who’d pointed the gun and then disappeared had scared him half to death. And he had no idea where he’d disappeared to either, but he hoped it was far away.
But he knew that the artist was an angel. It had been there in his pictures, which were messages to him. He was an angel who was protecting him from the men who’d tried to shoot him. An angel who had seen him safely on the train to London, where he might continue his important work.
As soon as he’d alighted at St. Pancras, shortly after midnight, he’d stalked away from there and lost himself in the anonymous London crowd. He had walked for an hour, down the numbing, endless length of Kings Cross Road, along Clerkenwell Road and finally down Commercial Road, till he paused, sick with hunger at Hanbury Street. He pushed on till he passed the Ten Bells pub, resisting the urge to go inside, knowing he had no money to buy a drink.
Instead he gazed up at the white spire of Christ Church, Spitalfields, thinking on all he had seen.
Mother Shipton had said the world would come to an end when summer turned into winter, and it had now happened. He had seen it. Snow falling in July. And he knew this miracle, this sign, had been summoned entirely for his benefit. He knew it now. He had seen it for himself. God had sent snow in July. Summer had turned to winter and God had shown it to him and him alone.
It was the end of days. The world would come to Armageddon, and he, William Bury, was the harbinger of doom. Here he would lay waste the world, in the shadow of Christ’s Church.
There was no Hell in some other place. This was what no one knew. He alone had been given this sacred knowledge. This was Hell. Hell was here. And he was surrounded by the damned.
He walked on, sick with hunger and thirst, his mind burning, febrile, as if he were a man on fire, lit by flames which no one saw. The raucous shouts of the whores and the drunks from every pub he passed — the Ten Bells, the Britannia, the Queen’s Head — was alike to the pandemonium of Sodom and Gomorrah. He was the fire that would cleanse the streets. He was the instrument of retribution for the sinners. He was God’s knife.
The sun would turn to blood and there would be one universal carnage of death. Soon they would know. Soon they would all shrink in terror. Soon would be the har
rowing.
He plunged his hands deep in his pockets, feeling the comforting weight of his knife, and walked on through Hell, before turning into Whitechapel Road.
48
DANNY OPENED HIS EYES to the faint outline of a building before him, with an arch, a black wide-open mouth that wanted to swallow him. He looked up and down the narrow street. No one around. Late at night. Cobbled stones beneath him.
I’m alive, he thought. I’m reborn.
He hadn’t died. He couldn’t have. He could smell and see and hear. What was this? Where was he?
When was he?
He wondered for a moment if he had hurtled back to his own time. To 2014. To whatever life he had there. To whatever life he’d been banished from.
But he sensed this wasn’t it. He wasn’t in 2014. Something about the smell of the place, the feel of it, the intangible taste of it — he knew he was still in 1888. He hadn’t gone back to his own time. He stared at the black mouth of the arch before him and he knew somehow that Bury was in there. Jack the Ripper was in there. His last desperate wish to stop him, before he’d disappeared from the platform of New Street Station, had somehow kept him hanging on.
He tried to step forward, wobbling, dizzy. His hold on this time and this place so precarious that if he breathed a little too deeply he might lose his grip and plummet through a century. No, not yet. Let me get him first. Let me stop him. Even if I die trying.
Bury was in there. Inside that black mouth. Danny could feel his evil emanating from it like bad breath.
He stepped into the blackness and through to a cobbled courtyard. A stairwell to the side. Up there. So close now. He stepped up, straining himself, like climbing a mountain, each step, his feet scraping on the stone.
Boots sudden rushing down towards him. He knew it was Bury and steeled himself ready to tackle him. At the last moment, as his shadow came hurtling round the corner, he realized Bury would have his knife drawn and might plunge it into anyone in his way. The shadow came too quickly, knocked Danny back against the wall, pain shooting through his body. His hand grabbed at the man’s coat and found only air. The shadow’s steps echoed off into the night.