The Severed Streets

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The Severed Streets Page 21

by Paul Cornell


  Again, there were both catcalls and cheers.

  Bernie, having donned white gloves, held up what looked to be a small piece of tarred wood with splinters sticking in all directions. Ross felt the Sight swing to it, as if he was waving around a lantern in a darkened room. ‘Lot number one,’ said Haversham, ‘a piece of the sign that was fixed to Tyburn Tree when it was first blooded by William Longbeard, declaring him to be a heretic. Is the provenance felt as well as signed for?’

  ‘The provenance is felt,’ called out a man in the front row who was wearing what looked like an ancient agricultural smock; a few others joined in.

  ‘We start the bidding with small beer, small favours or…’ again that hesitation, ‘… two hundred pounds.’

  Ross watched, fascinated, as the crowd started to yell out the names of everything from material goods to body parts to immaterial concepts. ‘A pinch of plague dust!’ ‘My last good tooth!’ ‘An hour of suicidal depression!’ One of them, as if representing his faction as well as making a bid, insisted on that ‘two hundred pounds!’

  With what was clearly an extraordinary skill, or the power of some whispered word or subtle gesture, Haversham decided the money was outbid by the depression. ‘With the man in the tricorne hat.’ The demographic in the suits, she saw, had their phones out now and were listening to them, occasionally bidding themselves. So they were proxies, agents for buyers not actually present, people hired in who … well, who knew what they believed about what they were participating in? Ross wished she could make use of that version of the ‘checking-out’ gesture that could investigate a mobile phone. The identities of those bidders might well be good background info.

  The bidding continued for three more rounds, with the lot finally going to the man with the money. Groans came from the crowd as he pushed his way forward to shove the notes into Bernie’s hand. Bernie kept his gloves on for that.

  ‘The movement of money around London must be like another force on the city,’ said Ross. ‘You’d think they’d be more up for using it.’

  ‘Except money stays modern,’ said Costain, ‘because they change the designs every few years, and new notes are printed all the time.’

  The next few lots showed the same pattern: items from the distant past of London being bid for by both this strange form of barter and by money. Haversham seemed to try to treat both systems equally. The successful bidders who had bought lots for intangibles were taken into the back room by Bernie, each for an illusionist’s moment: the door opened again to let them back in at the very moment it had shut. Each item was handed to the successful bidder as soon as their business was concluded, and several people left early, having presumably won or failed to get what they’d come here for. Ross recognized a few of the items: there was a Tarot of London pack of a different design to the one she’d seen previously and an old hardback Book of Changes. Finally, the last item in the catalogue was accounted for.

  ‘Why do you think they keep records of the bidders?’ whispered Costain.

  ‘Maybe they keep track of the provenance of each item, from owner to owner, just in case someone manufactures something that only looks old.’

  ‘Or contains a trap.’

  ‘So that ledger of sales records is indeed the purest imaginable juice, the most valuable object here.’

  ‘So, what? Are we going to try to nick it?’

  ‘There’s probably some fucking terrifying security in place.’

  ‘Yeah, and we’ve no time to scope it out. Maybe we should find out when the next auction is, and—’

  ‘No.’ The path that led to a different sort of life for her was too tempting. She was shaking her head even as the thought struck her. She knew what she was going to do. It scared her. ‘Haversham said anything could be bought.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘Does anyone have any further business?’ called Haversham, returning to the ceremonial tone, clearly expecting that to be the end of the auction.

  Ross stepped forward before she had time to think, shrugging off Costain’s slight attempt to restrain her. This was her only chance. This was clearly what the barmaid had meant in sending her here. Or if it wasn’t, this was her trying to tell her own story. ‘I do,’ she said.

  ‘What do you offer or wish for?’ Haversham sounded as if she sort of knew, as if she was willing her on. Was that real, or was it just for the sake of spectacle?

  ‘I wish for … that book.’ She pointed at it. Bernie raised his eyebrows in shock. There was a combination of amazement and amusement from the audience. Haversham raised a finger and they were silent. ‘We’ve heard that before, haven’t we, ladies and gentlemen and others? Please, young lady, before you begin anything you can’t finish, understand the value of what you seek.’ She went over and held up the ledger. ‘This book is a cornucopia, a concentration, a concordance of what are known in the vernacular as right proper names. My own name, Haversham, is a nom de gesture’ – she again pronounced the words as if they were English – ‘because I don’t want this lot knowing what I was born as, in case there’s a dispute and it’s used against me. My real name is as valuable to me as my life. This volume contains more than a thousand such names. Do you really think you have anything to offer, girl, that could convince us to sell it to you?’

  ‘No. Which is why I don’t want to buy it. I know the object I’m after only arrived in Britain in the last five years. So I only want to see those entries. I want … the chance to read that book for fifteen minutes.’

  Haversham let out a bemused breath. ‘You’ll still need an offer of enormous value. But…’ Ross got the feeling she was making use of some internal power rather than merely deciding. ‘It’s possible you may have something worth it.’

  Ross could see, out of the corner of her eye, Costain looking sidelong at her, wondering what she was going to offer. She glanced at him, asking him the question first, then back to the auctioneer. They were about to find out if he really did have any secret funds. ‘What’s the opening bid,’ she asked, ‘in cash?’

  The crowd groaned. There were shouted insults at her, but also scattered cheers. She got the feeling this would be the furthest anyone had tried to push the imposition of monetary value on this community.

  Haversham thought for a moment, her inner power doing the maths. ‘Twenty million pounds,’ she said.

  Ross felt a hollow open in her stomach. She slowly looked to Costain, who was staring back at her. He shook his head. Come on. As if.

  She had no idea what to do.

  No, no, she did. The audience was laughing at their reaction to the size of the sum. Some of them were yelling about how absurd it was to put a price tag on such things, an obscenity. There was factional sympathy for her. There was outright cynical mockery too.

  She had to find something else to offer. Something huge.

  Haversham was looking at her like a judge. Not unkindly.

  ‘All right,’ she said. ‘I offer…’ She found herself breathing more quickly, wanting to be sure she knew the size of what she was doing, making herself accept it, for the sake of her father. ‘My left hand.’ She felt Costain beside her start to react and pushed her fist into his arm to make him shut up.

  ‘My left hand and a finger from the right!’ shouted a voice from behind her.

  The crowd roared with laughter. They were laughing at both bidders. At them being so wide of the mark. She turned to see who else had bid so guilelessly, and realized, with a shock, that she recognized who she was looking at. He must have come in late and stayed at the back, and the truth was that they’d been concentrating on fitting in rather than examining the crowd. White, late thirties, five nine, large build, no visible identifying marks, balding, dark hair, off-the-peg suit, and, yes, she had previously been looking at him on grainy CCTV footage.

  It was the man who’d been talking to the woman in the Soviet bar, who’d left before the murder of Rupert Rudlin. He was meeting her gaze now, unsurprised by it. They were comp
etitors – that was all. Or perhaps they could both win this, if they reached the reserve price. There was nothing to stop him looking at it for fifteen minutes too. He wasn’t pleased she’d led him into being laughed at. She glanced back to Costain, and saw that he’d recognized the man too.

  So this was going to be difficult. Their duty was clearly to apprehend this person of interest.

  ‘That’s nowhere near what’s required,’ said Haversham, bringing Ross’ attention quickly back to the stage. ‘Are you wasting our time?’

  She thought quickly. ‘A year of depression and paranoia.’ She could face that. Of course she could. There would be an end to it. Unlike Dad’s time in Hell.

  ‘Two years of that!’ The man from the bar again. He was actually trying to keep up with her. He didn’t care what the rest of the room thought. He would wait until she found the right level, if she ever did, and then make sure he matched her. Damn it!

  More laughter, but it was dying now; the crowd saw both of them as merely hopeless, no longer even funny. Haversham didn’t answer.

  ‘Me,’ said Ross. ‘I mean, you know, a night with me.’ This was surely much bigger than anything else she’d offered.

  At least it made them laugh louder again. Among the laughter, Ross was actually pained to hear the man making the same offer, his voice breaking as he did so. She looked back to him again, and saw how desperate his expression had become. What was driving him, that he’d prostitute himself like she just had? In his case it looked more as if he was motivated by fear than by need.

  ‘You can’t offer yourself to London,’ said Haversham, now starting to get annoyed at Ross’ naivety and the way the man was parroting her. ‘We’ve seen what happens. It’s not allowed, which normally goes without saying.’

  ‘You know who you might really be giving it up to,’ whispered Costain in her ear, furious. ‘That smiling bastard. Would you just think before you—?’

  ‘No.’ She stepped forward out of his ability to stop her and did what she had to do. ‘I offer my future happiness. All of it. For a lifetime.’

  There were actually gasps. Various members of the audience turned to look at her, some with new respect, some with a sort of vertiginous horror at what might be about to happen to her. They were shaking their heads, appalled by the harm she was doing to herself. This from people missing fingers and teeth. She was scared now to see those looks; she’d thought she’d be past that. It was too late now.

  She and the whole room turned to look at the man from the bar. Ross could see now that he was shaking. That he was on the edge of tears. ‘Sixty million pounds,’ he said.

  The room went silent. The audience had been startled by his sudden shift from one faction to the other. Ross looked back to Haversham, who was considering, using whatever hidden power worked out conversion rates for her. Her decision here might well affect the future of this community. ‘I do not think,’ she said finally, ‘that a lifetime of happiness can be equated with such a small sum of money.’

  The crowd exploded in anger and applause.

  Ross looked to see what the man was going to do. He was looking right at her, imploringly, and now she saw that expression fade into fury and defeat. Abruptly, he shook his head. He walked quickly towards the door. She couldn’t follow him – that would be against the rules at any auction, this lot would surely prevent her from leaving. She looked to Costain, because he had to get after him, but Costain was just staring at her, an agonized, empty expression on his face.

  ‘Don’t you care that he’s leaving?’ she whispered.

  ‘I care about you,’ he said.

  Ross looked round, but the man had gone. She turned back to the stage. Haversham was looking horribly sad for her. She felt terror in her throat and stomach but she stood firm. She had done this. She would not retract it. Even if she could.

  Haversham waited for a very long moment. As if she was hoping for an interruption. ‘Any other bids?’

  There was absolute, careful, silence.

  ‘Going once,’ said Haversham.

  ‘Withdraw the bid!’ hissed Costain.

  ‘Going twice.’

  ‘We withdraw the bid!’ yelled Costain.

  Haversham ignored him. ‘Going three times.’

  The moment stretched. Ross wanted to yell for her to get on with it.

  ‘Gone,’ said Haversham.

  Silence.

  Ross numbly stepped forward. She didn’t want to look at Costain. She headed for where Bernie was looking sympathetically at her, beckoning her towards the back room. He led her through the door.

  * * *

  She was in an absolutely black space that felt roomy, with air blowing in from many directions. She suspected that this was like Losley’s tunnels between houses. Bernie closed the door behind them, but somehow Ross could still see. He reached into his waistcoat and produced a tiny brass item, something like a curled-up trumpet. He held it up to her. ‘I’m sorry it has to be like this,’ he said. ‘It’ll be easier if you don’t struggle, but I appreciate that you won’t be able to avoid it.’

  She watched as he approached and lifted the object towards her face. It wasn’t obvious what she was supposed to do. This felt like a dream, as if what she’d done couldn’t possibly be as bad as it seemed to be. She wanted to protest, to say she hadn’t meant it, but the whole difference between being an adult and a child was that she could do this, she could make this sacrifice—

  The device suddenly sucked at her face.

  She cried out. Bernie slammed a hand onto her shoulder as she tried to twist out of the way. He was strong, he was infinitely strong! That was good, because she couldn’t help trying to pull herself away, and she couldn’t stop what was happening. It was pouring out of her nose. It was forcing its way up out of her throat, and forcing her mouth open, and … here it came! It was like throwing up and drowning at the same time. It started squirming out of the corner of her eyes a moment later. It was being sucked into the metal shape. And now she could almost see it! It was—

  It was happiness.

  She couldn’t quite see what it looked like, but she knew what it was. In this space it was mentally labelled for her, in the same way that something in a dream is instantly recognizable. He was pumping joy out of her. She had been full of happiness and she hadn’t known it. She had been full of joy.

  Losing it now, she suddenly realized, was much worse than the physical feeling of it being wrenched out of her. It took her back to a sudden, pure moment of horror from her childhood, when she’d let go of a balloon that her dad had got her at a fair. She’d grabbed for it and missed and it had floated higher and higher and she’d started to scream, because it was going and she’d never get it back! Never! Never!

  Bernie held her there as the terror of loss became too much to bear.

  Then it passed and was gone, into memory. The last bit of joy was taken from her.

  He put the device back in his pocket, and took out a big crimson handkerchief of absolute cleanliness, and wiped her face with the care of a father as she staggered, leaning against him. Then he put the cloth away in the same pocket, and she realized that it would be taken to the same place as the device. Her scraps were to be taken to the table too. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, ‘but you asked for it.’

  * * *

  She walked back into the room to find the audience waiting for her. She had only been gone, to them, an instant. They wanted to stare at her. They parted for her, their gazes examining her. She could still feel. She’d expected to be utterly numb, had looked forward to it, even, during her sacrifice. Instead she could feel annoyance at them looking at her, fear at what she’d done to herself, even a sort of calculating hope for what this would mean for her plans for her father … and there was Costain, not angry now, just terribly worried for her, and she felt a swell of relief, even, as … there was a reaction in her to his expression.

  Perhaps the device had gone wrong.

  No. She wasn’t that l
ucky. Perhaps this just wasn’t so bad as it was meant to be. Perhaps ‘happiness’, for this lot, was very narrowly defined.

  No, something inside her said, this is grief protecting you. The full meaning of it hasn’t hit you yet. Relief is not happiness. Hope and lust are not happiness. Perhaps you are already losing sight of the thing you lost.

  She went to the book on the lectern. Haversham took a fob watch from a pocket of the spidery gown. Ross found her own notebook, but Haversham raised a finger. ‘You are not to take notes,’ she said. ‘That wasn’t part of the bargain. You have fifteen minutes. From now.’

  Ross opened the book and found the pages to be smooth with dust. The lists were written in a precise, looping hand, the scratches of the quill visible. There were, as with the catalogue, no pictures and no descriptions. She noted the dates on the pages and saw that the auction was four times a year, yes, on the solstices and equinoxes, so she had nineteen to search. She flipped back, started with the first of them, and worked forwards in time, running her finger down the lists. She knew what the thing was called in the translations she read, the Bridge of Spikes, and had seen a few variations. The familiar name of a person leaped out at her. There were sometimes celebrities at these auctions, then. At the winter solstice auctions in particular, there were a number of them. Four years ago, a famous singer had bought … something the name of which meant nothing to her. What he had offered? Oh, that was so terrible for him.

  She stopped at the winter solstice of three years ago when she saw another familiar name. Oh. Oh, but that meant…!

  It meant she had found something useful for the investigation. She had come here for her own ends, but here, in what she was staring at in amazement, she had found something new to go on for her team, some startling new leverage they could apply. What could she do about it?

  She called Costain over.

  ‘You can’t show him—’ began Haversham.

 

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