The Severed Streets

by Paul Cornell

  ‘And you can only read people’s sleeping minds when you know where they are. Given that you make use of the same device, I assume that you also need to know where they are to send the Ripper after them?’

  ‘Exactly!’ Vincent pointed excitedly at Quill. ‘Spatley, in the wake of the honey trap, was going to move against me immediately. So he simply had to die.’

  ‘Well, obviously!’

  ‘Through Challoner, my freelancer, I paid Tunstall, the driver, to search Spatley’s office for the business card Spatley had lost on which he’d written down information that could lead to the prostitute or, if Challoner started talking, to me. The card wasn’t very important to Spatley, considering he’d copied the details elsewhere, but very important to me at that stage, when I wasn’t utterly confident of my power and was contemplating my first murder. When the car was halted by the protest, I made the power I’d contacted once more appear in front of me. I took the shape it had made for itself, and then imposed my own meaning on it, changed it, added certain details. Then I sent it off to do its job.’

  With, thought Quill, its, or rather, her, own fingerprints intact.

  ‘My idea then was only to make it look like a Toff protestor. I knew there were people out there who might get glimpses of it, after all, even if the only person I was intending to fully see it was Spatley. The Jack the Ripper bit was because of you lot.’

  Quill felt a dull pain on hearing that. ‘Because of us?’

  ‘When you told Tunstall you believed what he was saying, I wondered how that was possible. When I realized you understood more about the secret side of London than I did, I must admit I got scared. If I was going to get away with what I’d done I would need a cover story. I had to sell you an alternative narrative, a meaning. Hence Jack the Ripper.’

  ‘Why not just kill us all?’

  ‘And shut off such a wonderful source of occult information?’ Vincent shook his head. ‘I decided to send your team on a wild goose chase instead, into the morass of Jack the Ripper legends, hoping I’d get you to try to solve all that nonsense. And I saw that the Ripper guise would act as a good cover if I located Mary Arthur, because then I would actually have to murder a prostitute. Reading up on the original Ripper murders, I came across that wonderful message on the wall, about the Jews being to blame, or not to blame, or whatever it’s trying to say. It being so vague creates such a mass of conflicting meanings. An excellent motivator, for example, for my lovely skinhead boys.’ He moved around the room, gesturing in mid-air. ‘When I direct my supernatural servant to go and kill someone, it’s me in the driving seat, willing it to move, controlling the individual movements. But when it’s travelling or doing something mundane I just point it in a particular direction and let it do the work. Exactly like riding a horse. Fiddly stuff, like writing that message, or opening the doors on train carriages –’ he gave Quill a wink – ‘making those fingers do precise work – wow, that takes concentration.’

  Quill realized something which gave him some small satisfaction. ‘And being a former copy boy and subeditor, your version of the message just had to have proper spelling and grammar.’

  Vincent looked astonished for a moment. Then he started to laugh. ‘Oh! Oh, I hadn’t realized. But you’re right. That’s tremendous. You have to give me credit for the intelligence of the wider scheme, though. As well as being of practical use, the Ripper icon became just what I needed to lead the Summer of Blood. I’d found the greatest outrage marketing brand of all time. The greatest aspirational cheerleader figure also, free and happy in his work, encouraging people to copy him. The Ripper gets people furious and interested and aroused all at the same time, and it can mean anything.’

  Quill understood that Ross had been right when she’d said that the most important indicator was the Ripper’s new MO: killing rich powerful men, and that Costain had been right about the scrawled message being just a load of front. ‘And you being Jewish yourself, as you went out of your way to tell me when we first met—’

  ‘Led you off into a whole different briar patch of conspiracy theories.’

  ‘But so many of your people must have been hurt in the riots—’

  ‘My “people”?’ Vincent actually laughed. ‘I don’t have a people, Quill, I have shareholders. My mother just happened to be Jewish, it’s not like I regard myself as one. Oh, hey, and you also bought that bit about the anonymous death threats, about me being worried by “dark forces”! I do believe most people actually think those are out there, that there’s some sort of … controlling evil under everything. Or, hey, perhaps because of ostentation, now there actually is.’

  Quill wondered if Vincent might have a point there, but he didn’t let his face give anything away. The invisible presence in the room shifted, as if reacting to the notion, whether in pleasure or apprehension. ‘You were there before us with ostentation – you must have been.’

  ‘Well, I had rather got the idea that something like that must happen. When I tried to use Twitter to get together a few Toffs in Staunce’s neighbourhood, to make it look as if they were connected to the Ripper, who was due to make his full debut that night, I thought it was a long shot. But they arrived much more quickly and in greater numbers than they should have. I started to see that they felt somewhat compelled to. Though, if you asked any individual Toff, I doubt they’d realize that.’

  ‘So you used Staunce to get our home addresses, then killed him when he started to think of turning you in—’

  ‘Then I had a lucky break. Mary Arthur contacted Challoner, who’d originally employed her. She’d figured that after the death of Spatley she couldn’t still be in trouble, or at least that’s what she told him. I suspect she wanted to find out if she’d been let off the hook. Of course she had no idea that I knew what Spatley had told her. I had Challoner pretend to offer her new work, to set up a meeting at a specific place and time. She was careful; she chose somewhere crowded – that Soviet bar. Bless. Once she got there, I had Challoner keep her talking, then “pop out for five minutes to meet someone higher up”. Of course, he went straight home. He knew enough about occult London to guess what was coming.’

  ‘But that time your Ripper wouldn’t play ball, would she?’

  Vincent smiled. ‘I keep forgetting, you know it’s a she.’

  ‘Yeah. My team kept underlining their assumptions, but that was a huge one they ended up making, that the Ripper was a bloke. You led us into that too, when we interviewed you at the mews flat. We kept saying “it”, you kept saying “he”.’

  ‘I’m so pleased you noticed that. Well, now I am, I mean.’

  ‘Maybe we should have realized the truth when the Ripper refused to kill Mary Arthur.’

  ‘I tried so damn hard to make her do that.’ Vincent sounded as if he was sharing an anecdote about a difficult mount. ‘But she just bucked and bucked. In that bar, she swerved aside at the last moment and suddenly I was stabbing just some random bloke! She was fine with letting me do that!’

  ‘I think she’s got a problem with men,’ said Quill. ‘A feminist Jack the Ripper. Anything really can mean anything these days. This is why she’s leaking silver, isn’t it, because you’re forcing her into a shape she doesn’t want to be in?’

  ‘Yes, and I do wonder if she’ll last much longer. Again, I only know about the fuel thing thanks to you lot. At any rate, she’s probably done her bit now, but I’ll keep using her. I’ve got a few more people to kill. I’ll wear her down to the point where there’s nothing left. Safer that way. Of course, if I’d known she wouldn’t kill women, I’d never have started all this in the first place.’

  ‘I presume this was when you decided, since Mary Arthur then went back into hiding, that getting us to find out about supernatural means of locating people was a good idea.’

  ‘I’d already bought your wife’s newspaper, and a few others at the same time so it wouldn’t look odd, with a view to meeting you, looking you in the eye, eventually planting the seeds
that would send you after whatever occult knowledge I might want to know. You surprised me by seeing that silver stuff on my cards. I only knew about that once I saw your memory of our meeting. When you came to interview me, I was prepared; I dropped a few hints about the sort of thing I wanted you to look into. Didn’t work out. Perhaps I was too subtle for the plod mentality.’ He grinned, enjoying Quill’s reaction to that. ‘Mind you, I did fob you off with that fake scrying glass. Just like with the Bussard Inquiry, I admitted to a little guilt, and this time got away with something much bigger. The detail of the ripped shirt, that’s just the sort of visual image that sells a story, that makes people swallow a narrative.’

  ‘Then you killed Tunstall because he was about to talk to us—’

  Vincent sighed. ‘Only because he was definitely going to implicate me. He’d done everything I asked, including finding that piece of paper with all the contact details on Spatley’s corpse. Really, he got so close to having a happy life with his family and a big payoff.’

  ‘If only he hadn’t had a conscience.’

  ‘Well, exactly.’ Quill couldn’t tell if Vincent was being sarcastic or literal.

  ‘What about me, then? What did I do that drove you to…?’ Quill mimed stabbing himself repeatedly.

  Vincent wasn’t put off his stride in the slightest. ‘Two things. You got hold of the name Mary Arthur, and you had that meeting of minds with my power source while I was looking into your dreams. I decided I could still use the other three, but that you had to go.’

  ‘I nearly got away from you, though, didn’t I?’

  ‘Yes, and you would have done, I grant you, except…’ Vincent seemed to consider for a moment, then smiled again, chancing his arm. ‘Well, okay, perhaps there’s something you could tell me. Perhaps something you found out in Hell has given you a lead on this.’

  ‘And I should answer your questions because…?’

  Vincent held up the button. ‘Because then I might let you live.’

  Quill made an expression as if he was weighing up that promise. ‘I’ve seen how you err on the side of caution with that.’

  ‘If you don’t, I’ll definitely send you back to Hell, okay?’

  Quill nodded. ‘I’m convinced by your argument.’

  ‘Who first called me anonymously, to tell me you were at Baker Street, then again to say you were going to be at Finchley Road, and finally texted me to say you were parked near Edgware Road? When I got to the car, I saw through the Ripper’s eyes, and … I think it was someone you’d recently met, but I can hardly believe it…’

  ‘Gaiman,’ said Quill, amazed. ‘I thought he was working for you.’

  ‘Not at all. I want to know how he knew my number. Why he got involved.’

  ‘Presumably you don’t want to send him a thank-you basket of muffins.’

  ‘Indeed not. He’s another loose end.’

  Quill looked again to the presence in the room that Vincent couldn’t perceive. Was it his imagination, or did it seem to be gloating? The Smiling Man was the other power in London who might use a proxy like Gaiman to achieve his ends, but what were they? Had he just wanted to make use of Vincent to get Quill killed? There had to be more to it than that. He could surely have done that in a million different, far less ornate, ways.

  Vincent put his finger back on the panic button. ‘You know,’ he said, ‘if you’re none the wiser about all that, then it’s time I brought this conversation to an end anyway. You’ve heard everything. You can’t stop me using the scrying glass, and – come on – you’ll never successfully bring me to justice. So I assume you’re now going to launch yourself at me in the vain hope of stopping me pressing this button?’

  ‘Oh no,’ said Quill, shaking his head, ‘definitely not.’

  Vincent seemed puzzled by Quill’s matter-of-fact tone of voice, his finger hovering over the button. ‘So you really did come here just to hear the truth?’

  ‘No,’ said Quill, shaking his head again.

  ‘Then, what…?’

  Quill looked to where a strange and familiar light was appearing through the wall. He grinned. ‘I came here, mush,’ he said, ‘to keep you talking.’

  TWENTY-NINE

  A FEW MINUTES EARLIER

  Ross listened to what the familiar, tender voice on the other end of the phone line was telling her. He was saying what he’d done. He was calling, he said finally, from a room where he was being held by security guards, and Quill – Quill, who was back to life, who was back in this world instead of her dad – was about to do something which was informed by where they were, and so now she should listen, because …

  She held the phone out towards Sefton while Costain was still talking. ‘You should listen to him,’ she said. ‘It’s important and I can’t.’

  Sefton was astonished; his eyes interrogated her. He hesitantly spoke into the phone, and listened to what Costain told him, and put a hand to his face in amazement.

  Ross looked back to the hole in the ground. She listened, unable to stop the analytical part of herself from becoming involved as Sefton got all the information Quill had told Costain and his plan for what they should do next, relayed it to her, finished the call.

  She looked down at the hole. Now she knew what Quill had encountered in there. What she was looking at was what, in the end, always seemed to be under everything: the thread of abuse that had wound its way through Whitechapel. She’d been right about something she’d said. It seemed a long time ago now: the Ripper really was just blokes and desperation for money. The meaning of this story truly was the killing of women.

  She had no meanings left and no hope.

  She picked up the pickaxe, stepped forward and dropped into the dark.

  * * *

  She landed inside the long barrow. She could hear Sefton scrambling after her. She felt the mighty presence at the end of the chamber, shut in, desperate to be awakened. She shouldered the pickaxe and ran at the rock wall.

  * * *

  Sefton got inside the barrow just in time to see Ross land the pickaxe against the stone, the scene barely illuminated by the lights through the small opening they’d made in the roof. She struck once, then she cried out, and started striking the rock time after time after time, screaming at it. Sefton watched. He wanted to say something. But anything he might say would be too like her scream. This was what Quill had just ordered them to do, but he was pretty sure that Ross would have done it anyway.

  Light sprang from a sudden crack in the rock.

  The interior of the barrow was revealed in every detail. Sefton had a moment to see those fingerprints.

  Something burst from the rock at the end of the chamber. It still looked like the Ripper. Silver was hissing from its eyes and mouth.

  Sefton wondered, in the instant he got a good look at her – for it was very clearly a her – if she would be able to make it out of the barrow and across London. But, as well as the coldness of the evaporating silver, there was in the atmosphere all around them a sense of enormous willpower, of something awoken. The barrowwight opened her mouth and made a sound Sefton would never forget: a single note that banished the tattered remnants of what had been put here to keep her imprisoned.

  Ross was looking up at her, empty, clearly wanting to be pleased that she’d freed her, but finding no meaning.

  With a splatter of silver against the rock ceiling of the chamber, the being sped upwards and in a blur of motion she was gone.

  NOW

  Quill was relieved and awed and once again scared to see the figure of the Ripper walk purposefully through the wall of Vincent’s office. He found himself flinching at the possibility that she would once more rush to attack him. She looked at him, considered him. Then she turned to look at Vincent.

  He was backing away, looking to the scrying glass, but the figure in front of him felt different now, silver hissing from her, her Ripper guise only a garment that she could throw away if she could be bothered. This woman was awake. She
made a noise that went beyond sound, and the scrying glass shattered, the pieces of the mirror embedding themselves into walls and furniture, the valuable ancient bloodline from the frame splattering across the desk. Quill lowered an arm and found himself miraculously unharmed.

  Vincent managed to stagger forward, bleeding from a gash across his brow. ‘Go back,’ he said, and he still sounded commanding. ‘I didn’t call for you.’

  She took a deliberate step towards him.

  Vincent considered for a long moment. Then he bolted for the door.

  The Ripper waited, and Quill got the feeling she was considering the other presence in the room, the phantom Quill was sure was the Smiling Man. Quill could feel that being’s pleasure, his sense of completion. The Ripper despaired at that feeling.

  The Ripper met Quill’s gaze again. He felt himself noted, distantly approved of.

  Then there was a blur of silver, and the Ripper was gone through the wall. Quill looked around for that other presence and was thankful to find that he was alone.

  * * *

  Down the night-time side streets of Wapping ran Russell Vincent. His suit was sweaty from him having spent all night in it. It clung to him like a second skin, outlining the contours of his buttocks and thighs, his ragged breaths pushing his muscular chest tight against the silk of his shirt. As he ran, he saw people who were boarding up their doors or looking down from their windows or just doing what they always did and taking shopping from their cars, stopping to point at him as they recognized him. He could imagine the huge web of commentary, of tweets, people saying that a famous media tycoon was running down their street, that he looked afraid. That he would soon be in Whitechapel. In moments, all London would know where he was, that he was being pursued by something. He hoped someone with secret knowledge might see that, might help him, in the hope of a reward.

  He saw the light behind him change as his shadow lengthened in front of him. At the same moment he heard the sound of drums coming closer, of shouts and now sirens from the crossroads he was running towards, and he saw people dashing away from him into their houses, slamming down windows, closing their doors rather than helping. The message they were sending out was that the chaos was arriving here.