by Paul Cornell
From the crossroads ahead they came, just a handful of them, provoked from their nearby houses by the tides under London: skinheads and Toffs and a bunch of hopeful local kids, ready to go whichever way the wind blew.
They were all staring at him as he ran desperately towards them.
No, he realized, they were staring at what was behind him.
He turned to look at her. She was in the sky, walking down towards him. She was surrounded by a cloud of evaporating silver. He imagined the razor slashing him, penetrating him, making him helpless.
He turned back and looked around. He wasn’t helpless. He’d made his empire, damn it! He still had a few tricks! He feinted left and then suddenly sprinted right, down an alley between houses. She couldn’t keep going forever, not losing that much silver. It occurred to him that she must be showing that to him deliberately, that seeing her like this was the first time he’d seen the silver. But still, it didn’t change the fact that was just her putting on a front. She was fast, but he knew that she needed to see him to find him. Assuming he could find a place where bystanders weren’t reporting on his every move, he could actually hide!
He kept running, turning left and right at random, using the narrowness of the streets, always shying away from a light in the sky behind him. He was in Whitechapel proper now, and wasn’t that ironic! A great story was building here. He wondered how he’d tell it. He’d be the potential victim, obviously. ‘I Faced the Ripper … and Lived!’ The story would help him if anyone started wondering about his connection to the deaths tonight.
He ran out into a municipal open space, a playground with nobody in it, with narrow walkways between houses in all directions. Perfect! He chose one at random and ran for it.
A second before he reached the corner, the illumination washed over him like a searchlight and he felt his breath and adrenalin pump again. He flattened himself around the corner. Had she seen him? The light had stopped. He dared a glance around the wet brickwork.
She was just standing there, in the playground, silver now streaming from the eyes of the mask. It was billowing off her, up into the sky, lit up by the street lights. She looked like a crashed aircraft. The suit looked as if it was hanging on a stick figure. The hat fell from her head. She dropped to her knees. She made gestures to try to rise. He heard faint sounds from her mouth.
He stepped out from his hiding place. She looked up at him and he flinched, ready to run again. But she made no move towards him. A great pool of freezing silver was slowly spreading out around her like blood. The melting snow woman. She was still following his programming for her, to allow the victim to see everything of his pursuer, even now, when the victim was meant to be him. She was jerking, trying to make anything work, and with every movement she lost more fuel.
He took a step closer to her, relishing his victory. He was panting with exertion and relief, alive with the blood pounding in his veins, every muscle feeling it. He was even erect. He felt the sweat between him and his shirt, felt his muscles fresh from a workout at the edge of vitality, felt the arousal of the chase, of having survived it. He silenced a laugh of relief.
She was subsiding, the material of her body dissolving. She was trying to say something to him, it seemed – some last curse. But the volume was so low it sounded almost gentle.
Now all that was left was a mask and a bagful of bones in some discarded clothes, swimming in a pool of silver. As Vincent watched, the mask and clothes began to dissolve too.
Vincent stepped quickly through the silver liquid, aware of how cold it made his feet through his shoes. He’d have to be quick. He took a handkerchief out of his pocket. If the mask would stay together, he wanted it, wanted to get himself photographed with it, the image that would sell the story that he too had been hunted by the Ripper tonight.
He squatted, reached down towards the puddle of silver, his handkerchief wrapped around his hand. He was just about to touch the mask when he saw something moving in the liquid silver in front of him.
A hand burst up out of it and grabbed his tie. It was an old woman’s hand, covered in some sort of dye.
He was about to wrench himself back in panic when her other hand rose up out of the silver. This one held the razor he had made for her.
‘No!’ he shouted. ‘No!’
The rest of his words became a long scream.
* * *
Costain and Quill looked down at the butchered body of Russell Vincent. He had been slashed many times across the chest and neck, and the space between his legs was torn open. His dead eyes looked up in horror and lack of understanding. He was surrounded by a pool of his own blood and by a pool of gently billowing silver. They’d followed the Twitter trail here and, in the absence of any other officers, would surely fail to create any sort of barrier between the crime scene and the news teams that were bound to start arriving shortly.
‘Was that what you wanted?’ Costain asked Quill.
Quill couldn’t find an answer. What he wanted was for there to be a law that applied equally to Vincent and to himself, to those who saw themselves above it, and to those who enforced it. He’d had no other ideas of how to bring this to an end. His only consolation was how empty it left him feeling. He hoped he hadn’t done this as the result of a cycle of abuse. ‘If only this had been a Ripper we could have caught, that we could have shown to London in handcuffs. There’s no reason now for Londoners to think the killings will stop. And when the media hear the Ripper’s killed Russell Vincent, it’ll increase the sense of chaos exponentially. How do we prove that the law still works and turn this shit around?’
There was a noise from behind them. Lofthouse arrived. She was staring in amazement at Quill.
‘Yeah,’ he said. He wondered if she’d hug him or something.
She looked him up and down and finally nodded. ‘Right,’ she said.
‘Indeed.’
‘Good,’ she said, then seemed to decide she had to put a stop to this unseemly outpouring of emotion. ‘There’s been a vote of no confidence. There’s going to be a general election.’
‘What about Vincent’s allies in the military?’ said Costain.
‘The military are actually containing a lot of the far right protests,’ said Lofthouse. ‘The death of Vincent, which has now hit the media as the biggest headline of the lot, means that a lot of people who were thinking of acting rashly have now thought better of it.’
Costain’s phone rang, and he answered it. He suddenly looked urgent when he heard who was on the other end, held his hand up for silence. He seemed to be deciding what to say. ‘No,’ he said, speaking carefully. ‘I’m another police officer, but DI Quill is right here beside me. I’ll hand you over.’ He mouthed the name of the caller as he handed Quill the phone.
Quill took it. ‘Hello Mary,’ he said.
* * *
They waited at the corner of the street, underneath dripping arches, watching dawn make its way into the narrow streets. Costain, because Quill didn’t feel he could call up any police yet and announce he was still alive, had found some National Crime Agency staff who’d stayed at their post at the Hill, and so a car with a driver stood ready round the corner to take their guest into what they now were sure would be safe protective custody. Costain was trying only to think of the moment, though his thoughts kept leaping back to Ross, just as, with the chemicals draining from his system, his brain kept reaching out for dreams. He wished he could see her. He desperately wanted to hear news of her, though he couldn’t bring himself to text Sefton and ask. He wanted to touch her. He’d never get to do that again. The Lisa Ross of his dreams and the real one were, for several moments as the sun rose, mixed up. He felt he’d been told something reassuring by her. Then, a moment later, he knew that wasn’t true.
A taxi pulled up. Out of it stepped someone he had never seen in the flesh before, only on CCTV images – Mary Arthur. She looked very young and very scared. Costain showed her his warrant card and told her his name and rank
. Quill and Lofthouse did the same.
‘Is Russell Vincent really dead?’ she asked.
‘Yeah,’ said Quill. ‘Which makes it a lot easier for us to protect you. If, that is, you’re willing to give evidence in the matter of your dealings with Michael Spatley MP, and what happened on the night of the death of Rupert Rudlin.’
That, thought Costain, might begin to sell a new narrative to the public, one which might indeed send London stumbling off on a different course.
Mary seemed to consider for a moment.
‘There won’t be any reward involved,’ said Lofthouse, gently. ‘There can’t be.’
She looked suddenly angry. ‘I’ll tell you all about it,’ she said. ‘Money isn’t everything.’
EPILOGUE
Sarah Quill was startled to see the name appear on her phone. She felt dizzy, felt the blood come to her face, felt anger rising. She was standing in the hallway, having just stood up from buttoning Jessica into her coat. She answered the call. ‘Who is this?’
‘It’s me, love. No, please, don’t hang up!’
She stopped herself swearing. ‘Who is this…?!’
‘If someone else had called you, I knew you wouldn’t believe it—’
‘Who is this?’
‘It’s me! It’s me! It’s because of … the stuff about me only a few of us know. Okay? Nobody else would believe this. But you can. You can, love, you can!’
She found a terrible hurt inside her. She was dreaming, wasn’t she? She’d had dreams like this in the last few days. This was hurting her with hope. ‘But—’
‘I didn’t want you just to open the front door and see—’
‘Where are you? Are you outside my house?’
‘It’s me, love. I’ve been waiting outside, wondering how to do this. I didn’t want you to open the front door and see me and be shocked by—’ But she’d dropped the phone and was grabbing at the chain and bolt on the door and she flung it open—
There he stood. In someone else’s clothes, but it was him. She reached out, threw a hand at him, expecting somehow to find nothing there. He grabbed it. He pulled her to him. He let her look into his face. He made her look into his face.
All the ability dropped from her lower body and she fell into him. She was … so furious at him. So enormously angry. This was too big … this was too big an impossibility.
‘Daddy!’ said Jessica, coming out to see them, pleased that he was home and nothing more.
Sarah looked to her, and then back at Quill’s face. He was still there.
Quill held out a hand from holding Sarah up. Jessica took it.
‘I went on a long journey,’ he said to her. ‘I came back.’
* * *
Sefton had one and a half days of solid sleep. Joe took time off work to look after him. He woke with the smell of a natural, early autumn coming through the window. ‘The centre held,’ he said, his voice a croak.
‘What?’ Joe had entered the bedroom with two cups of tea.
‘You said that was what crime fiction was about.’
‘Did I? It’s W.B. Yeats.’
‘Okay.’
‘They’ve found the Ripper’s body,’ said Joe.
Sefton hadn’t managed to tell his boyfriend anything about the ending of the case before collapsing with exhaustion. Now he frowned, unable to process that. ‘What?’
‘Bloke dressed in the costume, left a suicide note, a full confession. All the murders were on Vincent’s orders, he hid among the ranks of the Toffs but he hated them, and when the guilt became too much he killed Vincent then himself. Nice handwriting, apparently. He includes details of the murders, which the police – not your lot – are saying indicates it must all be true.’
Sefton sipped his tea and could only shake his head again. He had no idea what that meant.
* * *
Three days later, Quill’s team sat in the Portakabin at Gipsy Hill, watching Quill put an X of black tape across the photo of Vincent on the Ops Board. They were silent, washed out, exhausted. Sefton hadn’t expected Ross to come, but she’d entered right on time at the start of her shift, here to do her duty or face the consequences of her actions. She hadn’t made eye contact with Costain, who hadn’t tried to speak to her. Sefton was even more surprised that he was here.
He’d last seen Ross when the two of them had found Quill in a Whitechapel pub that had a lock-in of shift workers going on. They were scared shitless of the chaos on the streets and glad to include coppers. Costain had already gone home; that had been a condition of Ross coming to see Quill. She’d stared at him then, unable to believe it, unable, Sefton now understood, having heard everything from Quill, to feel happy at his return. Sefton, on the other hand, feeling as if he was about to die and needing to fall asleep, had just taken Quill in his arms and hugged him. Quill had hugged him back. Ross had managed only a few halting words to Quill. She’d managed to say it was good he was alive, but it had sounded almost like a guess. Then she asked if she and Costain were going to prison. The two of them had, after all, kept information from the investigation, committed offences. Ross had also lied to them about what she’d found in the Docklands documents.
Quill had just shaken his head. He looked as perplexed at what had changed in her as much as she was at him. ‘Condemned man – me, that is – gets a last request, and I choose to let you off. We can’t afford to lose you. What you’ve done to each other, to yourselves…’ He looked at her interrogatively again, as if hoping she’d suddenly smile. ‘I think that’s punishment enough.’
Ross had looked angry at him for that mercy. Then, with Quill calling after her, she’d turned and left the pub.
Sefton had thought about it and decided he might, given the same circumstances, have done the same things. His colleagues had been only human. How terrible that was.
‘We survived,’ said Quill now. ‘Well, you lot did, and I caught up.’ He indicated the list of operational aims on the Ops Board:
1: Ensure the safety of the public.
2: Gather evidence of offences.
3: Identify and trace subject or subjects involved (if any).
4: Identify means to arrest subject or subjects.
5: Arrest subject or subjects.
6: Bring to trial/destroy.
7: Clear those not involved of all charges.
‘Aims one to three … achieved, just about. The “Summer of Blood” is over. Everyone’s lapping up Mary Arthur’s story and this new revelation about the Ripper, fictional though it is. Vincent’s rival media barons have seized on it.’ The riots were dying down, and every party in this exhausted general election campaign was falling over itself to say it would negotiate with the police. Gaiman’s guess that the mood of London had been linked to solving the Ripper murders seemed to have been correct.
‘Where did that fake Ripper corpse come from?’ asked Sefton.
‘Lofthouse says she’s asked for a meeting with those she feels are responsible and will report back. It’s done some good for London, anyway. I don’t know if that wheel you and I saw on our adventures is turning the right way again now—’
‘It’s not.’ Sefton anticipated Quill’s question and shook his head. ‘I just know.’
Quill looked back to the list. ‘Aim five … I’d like us to go after Gaiman, but he seems to have vanished. Besides, since the man he successfully conspired to murder – that is, me – is now alive again, and because of the difficulties we’d have in walking a jury through that, I’m tempted to say let’s wait until he pops up again, then lean on him as a source rather than arrest him. And aim six … was achieved. But…’
‘But look at us,’ said Costain.
There was silence. Sefton looked again at the faces of his friends who’d betrayed and been betrayed and exhausted themselves and grieved and been to Hell, and remembered his own taking of a life and his own sacrifice. They had been pummelled by their experiences. They were so changed, once again almost strangers to each o
ther. He didn’t see how they could continue to function as a team. Even Quill, who’d been trying to jolly them along with procedure, couldn’t seem to find the words to continue.
‘There is hope,’ said Ross. They all turned to look at her. She wasn’t looking back at them. She didn’t want to look at Costain at all, Sefton got the feeling. Her voice had sounded very small, very calm. ‘The Tarot of London,’ she said, ‘when that fortuneteller consulted it for me at the New Age fair during the Losley case, she said that the Hanged Man, who was my dad…’ She had to stop for a moment. ‘He was supposed to bring hope for us in summer—’
‘He did,’ said Quill, ‘during that case, and it was where he normally was in Hell that made me think of getting to a higher vantage point.’
‘—but,’ she said, ‘he’s meant to bring hope in autumn too.’ She shrugged, slowly. ‘So there’s that.’
Sefton wanted to go over there and hold her. But the shape of her shoulders said she really didn’t want to be held.
* * *
As soon as Quill told them they could go home and get some more sleep, to report back next week, Ross bolted for the door. Costain went after her. He couldn’t help it. He could feel the other two willing him not to, but he couldn’t stop himself.
He caught up with her before she got to her car. A muscle memory of how she’d felt made him put a hand on her shoulder.
She rounded on him, disgust on her face. He took his hand away. ‘I just want you to know—’
‘I sacrificed my happiness so I could free my father. Or maybe Jimmy. Maybe I’d have made that choice. You took it from me.’
‘I could have used it to protect myself!’
‘You brought him back because you got scared. You did everything to save yourself and keep fucking me for as long as possible.’
‘No! Listen to me. If you got your dad back, nothing would change for you, that wouldn’t make you happy!’