The Severed Streets

by Paul Cornell

  ‘I thought this might be one of ours,’ he said, sitting down.

  ‘Do you mean that you did some sort of…?’ Quill still didn’t have the language to form that kind of question, so he contented himself with spreading his hands like a stage illusionist, indicating the sort of occult London thing that he supposed Sefton now did.

  ‘I wish I had some sort of…’ Sefton returned the gesture with a smile.

  Quill was pleased to see that. He knew that Sefton liked to try and keep a positive surface going, but that being the one to deal with the London shit, especially when they’d made relatively little progress, weighed heavily on him. He had had adventures on his own that, while he’d described them to the team in every possible detail, he’d added had been like ‘something out of a dream’. Which wasn’t your normal copper description of encountering a potential informant.

  ‘Right then!’ That was Tony Costain, marching in as if he owned the place as always, dressed to the nines as always, in a retro leather coat that emphasized his tall, slim loomingness. The detective sergeant was the other black former undercover police officer on the team. If Costain smiled at you, and you knew who he really was, you wondered what he was hiding, because here was a copper who’d been willing to sell on drugs and guns he’d nicked from the gang he’d been undercover in. Still, Quill felt he’d treated Costain too roughly on occasion. He had felt for Costain when he’d developed a desperate desire not to go to Hell and had decided that from now on he was going to clean up his act, having caught a glimpse of the Hell he was certain was waiting for him. It felt like something that didn’t sit well with the man, though: an abstinence that chafed on him every day. Costain, basically, didn’t want to be a good boy. Quill had never said it out loud, but he’d started to think of this consummate actor’s ability to step in and out of the dark side, to bring on the dodgy stuff, as a positive asset to the team. He had found himself hoping that, should push come to shove, Costain could find it in himself to do, perhaps, extreme violence and leave redemption until later. ‘You look like you got some sleep,’ he said.

  ‘The sleep of the just,’ Costain nodded.

  ‘The just what?’

  Costain gave Quill exactly the sort of smile he’d been anticipating.

  ‘There you are, James, with the bacon sarnies.’ Detective Superintendent Lofthouse had entered. The smart, angular middle-aged woman looked exhausted, as always, while never actually seeming tired. ‘Someone’s fetching one for me, and a gallon of coffee to go with it.’ She sat down with them and lowered her voice. ‘I’ve had a word with the senior investigating officer on the Spatley case, Jason Forrest, and he, despite his puzzlement, you will be pleased to hear, has expressed his trust in his old mate, me, by asking to talk to you at the earliest opportunity. You and I are to take the lift to the third floor.’

  ‘Thank you, ma’am.’ Quill found himself sitting straighter in his chair and glanced around at his team to see them all reacting similarly. None of them quite knew how to deal with their boss these days.

  Three months ago, Quill’s team had used a pair of ‘vanes’ that had been employed to attack Quill with some sort of weaponized poltergeist but could also be utilized as dowsing equipment. With these they had found a ruined building in London’s Docklands. It was something like a temple, the remains standing absurdly on an open space between office blocks by the river. There had been ornate chairs and a big marble table that had been cracked in two. A pentagram had been inscribed on both that table and the ground underneath. Quill had swiftly realized that only they could see this building, that passers-by were looking at his team searching the ruins as if they were performing some sort of avant-garde mime. They’d discovered a few details of a group that called itself the Continuing Projects Team, people who, they’d been startled to find, showed up not at all on internet searches. Quill’s team had already seen what a huge amount of energy it took to make one person be forgotten by a handful of people. The idea that a group of prominent people could be made to vanish so completely from public memory was staggering. They had found an empty personnel file that these people had kept, and on the cover of it had been the name ‘Detective Superintendent Lofthouse’, and then she had stepped from the shadows, holding an ancient key that Quill had recognized as having been on her charm bracelet. ‘This,’ she had said, ‘explains a lot.’

  Quill and the others had been bursting with questions. She’d shaken her head in answer to all of them.

  ‘I know you lot are doing something … impossible,’ she’d said finally. ‘I realized that a while back.’

  Quill had pointed at the key. ‘What does that have to do with this? Did you know the people who worked here?’

  She had raised her hands to shut him down. ‘It’s only because you say so that I know there is something here. I can’t tell you anything more, James. I know less than you do.’ She’d asked for a detailed description of the ruins, walking through them with a look on her face that said she was willing herself to sense something there, but couldn’t. There was pain in that expression, Quill had realized. She’d handled the key as she’d looked around at what to her was just an empty area of Docklands pavement, reflexively toying with the object. Then, when she’d been satisfied that she’d been told everything, she’d looked once more to Quill. Her expression drew on their old friendship, hoping he’d understand. ‘I’m sorry,’ she’d said. ‘I know you want more from me. For now, please, just accept. Be certain you can always rely on me. From now on, tell me about your operations. I’ll believe you. But I can’t tell you why.’

  Before they could say anything more, she’d marched off into the night.

  Quill had understood at that moment that Ross had had that expression on her face that he’d come to associate with some immediate deduction or revelation. ‘Oh,’ she’d said. ‘Oh.’

  ‘That, from her,’ Costain said, ‘always ends with us getting told something true but deeply shitty.’

  ‘Even with the Sight,’ said Ross, ‘Jimmy still forgot his daughter. He couldn’t process any of the clues to her presence in the physical world. He just ignored them. So how come we can see that document listing the people who worked here, who otherwise have been completely forgotten?’ She hadn’t given them a moment to think about an answer. ‘For the same reason that these ruins have been left. Deliberately. For people like us, who can see things like this, to notice.’

  ‘As a sign, a warning,’ said Sefton, nodding urgently. ‘That’s why all we’ve found is a list of those people and nothing else. Having found that document, we now know it’s possible for people like these, people like us, to be not just killed, not just wiped out, but actually erased from everyone’s memories.’

  ‘It’s a display of power,’ said Costain.

  ‘She –’ Ross indicated where Lofthouse had gone – ‘knows more about that situation than we do. But if we want to keep this unit going, we can’t ask her about it.’

  ‘“Just accept”,’ repeated Quill, sighing. ‘Does she know any coppers, do you think?’

  In the three months since, they hadn’t found out anything further. DeSouza and Raymonde, the firm of architects that owned the land upon which the temple stood, when interviewed, had no more knowledge of the Continuing Projects Team than anyone else. Ross’ examination of the documents found at the scene revealed them to be mostly about architecture. She had shown the others what looked to be learned debates about how ‘the side of a building does turn the water’ written in a brown and curly hand that looked like something from the seventeenth century, and printed pamphlets from before that arguing lost causes in dense language. Those who’d curated this material seemed not to have understood it much more than Quill’s group did. There were only gestures in the direction of a filing system or index. Nor could they find any useful occult objects in the ruins. On closer examination it had become clear that, as Ross had speculated, scavengers had been through the place and taken anything useful.

 
; Lofthouse had set up regular meetings between herself and Quill, and had listened with great interest to his reports of things which she should think impossible. True to his word, he had not asked her any questions. It meant that he left every such meeting feeling exactly as tense around her as he was feeling now.

  He picked up his bacon sandwich for a last bite before they had to go and meet the man in charge of the Spatley case and glanced to his team, trying to keep the wryness out of his voice. ‘Good to have you onboard, ma’am,’ he said, ‘as always.’

  * * *

  Detective Chief Inspector Jason Forrest had a body like a rugby player’s, wore a bespoke suit and had an old scar down his left cheek. He looked as if he’d been persuaded at gunpoint to let Quill and Lofthouse into his office this morning. He asked a lot of questions about the exact purpose of Quill’s ‘special squad’ and rolled his eyes at the imprecise answers he received. ‘Come on, why should I ask you lot to help with my investigation?’

  ‘Because if there are features you find hard to explain—’ began Lofthouse.

  ‘How do you know that?’ He sounded bemused to the point of anger.

  Lofthouse looked to Quill. Quill told him about Ross’ search strings.

  The DCI’s expression grew even more nonplussed. ‘Why are you interested in words like “impossible”?’

  Quill had his explanation prepared. ‘Following the Losley case, we’ve been specializing in crimes with an occult element to the motive.’ The look on Forrest’s face suggested that Quill was barking up the right tree. ‘We’ve been given access to … advanced sensor … techniques, the details of which we can’t go into. It gives us a bit of an edge.’

  ‘You jammy buggers. We could do with that technology for the riots.’

  ‘We’re trying it out. Maybe other units will get it soon.’ ’Cos you’d really enjoy that.

  Forrest considered for a moment longer, looked again to Lofthouse and finally gave in. ‘All right, I’ll formally request that your team assist in the investigation. You’ll get access to the crime scene after it’s been forensicated, and to witness statements and evidence. I’ll be overjoyed for you to help out my very stretched staff by interviewing persons of interest. I’ve already lined up searches at Spatley’s offices, both in Whitehall and the Commons, but if you can think of anywhere else to search, I’ll okay that too.’

  ‘Thank you, sir,’ said Quill. It was already occurring to him that his lot would not need just to find different places to search, but to go over the same places, given their advantage of having the Sight.

  ‘So, here’s the problem.’ Forrest opened the file on his desk and placed some gruesome crime scene photos in front of Quill and Lofthouse. ‘We have a car surrounded by witnesses for the whole time frame in which a murder could have been committed. We have CCTV footage of that car throughout. We have enormous coverage of the incident on Twitter, loads of social media photos. No one gets in, no one gets out. One of the two men in the car is brutally murdered. The other maintains he didn’t do it. Incredibly, we have some reason to believe his account – because we can’t find the weapon. The driver, Tunstall, has some of Spatley’s DNA on him, but only what you’d expect from him getting in the back to try and help Spatley after the attack, as he told us he did. I suspect,’ he finished, looking up from the photos, ‘this may well be how the word “impossible” popped up.’

  Quill was making a determined effort not to smile; his target nominal had appeared on the horizon. There was something in the photos that was literally shining out at him, which Forrest and Lofthouse could not see. His team had, brilliantly, finally, a case of their own. ‘Is there any chance, sir,’ he said, ‘that my team could take a look at that CCTV footage?’

  * * *

  ‘This lot can’t work out what we’re about,’ said Costain, as a young female detective constable closed the door of an office behind Quill’s team and left them to it. ‘We could be an elite squad, we might be irrelevant. I got halfway to convincing that young officer of the former.’

  ‘You didn’t say a word to her,’ said Ross, switching on a PC.

  ‘It was how I walked.’

  ‘Oh, I’d let myself forget that for just a second. You’re such a people person.’

  Costain’s front remained intact. ‘One of us has to be. But, being serious, thank you for noting that.’

  Ross didn’t make eye contact with him as she set up the PC to view the footage. That holier-than-thou carefulness that Costain often adopted these days in his fear of going to Hell seemed to annoy her more than it did Quill and Sefton.

  When it appeared onscreen, Quill’s team moved in close to see the images that might give them new purpose. Only Lofthouse held back. They were looking down on a car caught in a traffic jam, protestors swarming around it, some of them looking up at the camera and covering their faces further. A couple of bricks were thrown towards it, but nothing hit it, thank God. Many of the protestors were done up in that Toff mask and cape.

  Then something different came walking through the crowd, approaching the car from the left. Quill’s team all leaned forward at the same moment.

  The figure flowed past the protestors, its presence pushing them aside, its passing going unfelt.

  ‘That’s also someone in a Toff outfit,’ said Sefton.

  It was. But it was blazing white, obviously a thing of the Sight. It was like watching an infrared image of a warm body in a cold room.

  ‘The trouble is,’ said Ross, ‘you can’t see much detail.’

  Quill looked over his shoulder to check with Lofthouse.

  ‘I can’t see anything,’ she said. ‘Which I suppose is good news.’

  He looked back to the image. The figure was pushing itself up against the side of the car, still getting no reaction from those around it. It started easing its way into the vehicle, until it had completely vanished inside. They watched for a few moments as nothing much happened, horribly aware of what had been reported, but seeing nothing through the tinted windows.

  Suddenly, the figure burst out from the right-hand side of the car. It left a spatter of silver as it went. Quill recognized that stuff, whatever it was, as what he’d seen shining out of the car crime scene photos, a liquid that had been deposited all over the seats. With the grace of a dancer, the figure leaped onto the heads of the crowd, and then it was jumping into the air—

  It was literally gone in a flash.

  Quill’s team all looked at each other, excitement in their expressions.

  ‘Well?’ asked Lofthouse.

  ‘We have set eyes on our target nominal, ma’am.’

  ‘Excellent. I want to be kept in touch with all developments. As soon as possible, I want your proposed terms of reference for a new operation.’

  Quill was sure his team would have applauded, if that was the sort of thing coppers did. For the first time in weeks, there was an eager look about them.

  ‘Game on,’ he said.

  TWO

  The torso of Michael Spatley MP was a horrifying mass of wounds, including an awful washed stump of pale, open blood vessels where his genitals had been hacked at.

  ‘He seems to have been slashed across the throat,’ said the pathologist, ‘and then multiple incisions across the abdomen, by a very sharp blade, probably that of a razor. The weapon was not found at the scene. His testicles were cut at their base and the subsequent shock and swift large loss of blood was the cause of death. Time of death tallies with the clock on the CCTV camera, which indicates between eighteen-thirty-two and eighteen-thirty-nine. Direction of blood splatter –’ she held up a photo of the interior of the car from the files they’d all been given by DCI Forrest’s office – ‘is consistent with the assailant kneeling across the rear seats. No arterial blood was tracked back to the front seats. The driver appears, and I stress appears, to have stayed put in the front during the attack.’

  ‘From other CCTV cameras,’ Ross noted, ‘it’s clear that the brake lights come
on at several points during the time the car was stuck there, meaning that someone’s foot was still on the brake pedal, until a point which may coincide with the driver going to help the victim after the attack, as per his story.’

  Quill knew from what only his team could see that that was actually precisely true.

  ‘How interesting,’ said the pathologist. ‘Not my department.’

  What she wasn’t talking about, because she couldn’t see it, was what Quill could see the others glancing at too. All over the corpse, from the grimace on his face to the ripped-up abdomen, there lay traces of the same shining silver substance they’d seen earlier. It looked like spiders’ webs on a dewy morning, or, and Quill stifled an awkward smile at the thought, cum. As the pathologist went into a more vigorous description of how the wounds had been inflicted – frantic slashing and then precise surgical cuts – he gave Costain the nod.

  Costain suddenly spasmed in the direction of the pathologist, knocking her clipboard from her hands, as if he was on the verge of vomiting.

  Sefton quickly took a phial from his bag and, while the pathologist was fussing over Costain, managed to get enough of the silver stuff into it. He screwed the top closed and dropped it back into the bag.

  The pathologist was helping Costain straighten up. ‘If you’re going to do that, we need to get you out of here,’ she was saying.

  ‘No, no,’ Costain waved her away and abruptly straightened up, smiling at her as he handed her back the clipboard. ‘Thanks, but I think I can hold it.’

  * * *

  They went to the custody suite and arranged an interview with Spatley’s driver. Brian Tunstall looked stunned, Quill thought, stressed out beyond the ability to show it, as if at any moment this would all be revealed as an enormous practical joke at his expense. He must be somewhere on the lower end of the Sighted spectrum – there were degrees to this stuff – because he hadn’t mentally translated what he’d seen into something explicable. But Quill supposed that, in the circumstances, doing that would have been quite an ask. There were still traces of the shiny substance on his shirt. It was odd to see an adult standing with such mess on him, not seeing it, and therefore not having attempted to clean himself up.