The Severed Streets (10 page)

‘How are you feeling?’

‘Angry.’

He lowered his voice, indicating that he understood.
‘Yeah.’

‘Because that tour guide made so many baseless assumptions about connections between the killings.
The Illuminati conspiracy, my arse.
I actually don’t think we
can
rule out a Jewish or anti-Semite angle, because the differences between the old message and the new are indicative of
something.
I don’t know of what.
But that twat had no idea.
I don’t think the message can have been left by the killer at the time.
I mean, what, he’s trying to blame the murder on the Jews while actually maintaining that he’s the murderer?
Maybe that’s why the grammar got so awkward and there are crossings out.
He’s standing there going, “Wait a sec, haven’t thought this through…” But in our case, like you said at the crime scene, it probably
is
the murderer who wrote it, so what does that mean?’

Costain laughed.
‘When
I
said it, it was assumption.’

‘It was.
But we’ve labelled it as such now.
So that’s okay.’

‘But what I meant was … you know,
I
started to feel pretty shitty about what that tour guide was saying—’

She was shaking her head, angry with him still.
‘You want me to be all touchy feely?
Sorry, I thought we were in law enforcement.’

‘I’m just saying—’

‘Right.
Four points here, I think.’
Now she was talking at high speed.
‘Firstly, the Jack the Ripper case is a trap for analysts.
It feels like there’s a signal there that’s right on the edge of being heard through all the noise.
Suspect doesn’t rape them when he has the chance.
His interest doesn’t seem sexual.
He’s clearly a misogynist, or wants us to think he’s one, but he kills quickly; he doesn’t want to torture them.
He likes the thing with the intestines over the shoulder, and what does that mean?
It’s completely non-archetypal.
Like he’s just following his own ideas, not anything he’s read.
He takes organs sometimes, and which ones he takes varies, but, given all the time in the world, he leaves loads of them behind.
There are genuine suggestions of medical ability, but also random violence.
And all that
bollocks
is what’s sucked in so many people over so many years.
To
no
end.
And it threatens to draw
us
in even more because, having the Sight, we think we have an advantage.
But we haven’t seen a single piece of new evidence today.
If we are called upon to solve the Whitechapel murders in order to get traction in these new killings, we will be doing that
forever.
And I’m thus going to recommend that we concentrate on our new victims and the fresh trail and keep this squarely in the background, while of course being alert to the possibility of connections.
Secondly –’ she raised a finger before Costain could interrupt – ‘my decision there is because I’m not sure there
is
a signal to be found.
I researched the Whitechapel murders before we came here, but I didn’t keep my parameters to anything “canonical” or “written in the book of history” and, you know what?
This sort of shit was just business as usual for this neighbourhood.
A tourist trail of “Whitechapel violence against women” would tend towards infinity.
You get killings and assaults showing many of the “Ripper” aspects, both unsolved and stone-cold solved, culprits put away or hung, for decades before, even during and for quite a few years after.
So maybe “Jack the Ripper” is just … a whole culture: blokes and a desperation for money.
Maybe that means what we’re dealing with in the modern version really is like those ghost ships I saw, something London thinks
should
be out there, not specifically created by the will of the protestors or by anyone else.
Maybe our Ripper kills all the time, and people only notice when it has – and this is thirdly – changed its MO from killing poor helpless women to killing rich and powerful men.
Having seen this end of the background, I’m sure
that
change is the single biggest data point.
If we figure out what
that’s
about, we can nick him.
And the reason I’m sure that
is
a change, and that we haven’t lost a few lords and dukes over the years without making the connection, is because, fourthly –’ Ross took a breath and slowed down, and Costain now finally thought he saw, somewhere in the depths of her expression, the emotion – ‘this whole process whereby the horrible deaths of five women get turned into a narrative, where they get pinned to a map of London and displayed … it’s what I do, when I turn violence into evidence and stop feeling anything about it.
And I have to do it – we all do.
That tour made me start
thinking
about that process, and, yeah, okay, so I had a bit of a wobble and lost my objectivity for about a
minute
—’

‘What?
I wasn’t saying you were … weak or anything.
I felt that too.’

‘Right.
Great.
Okay, then.’

Costain found himself looking intently at her face, wishing desperately that he knew what was going on underneath all that anger.
But he wasn’t going to find out now because he’d set off all her defences.
He raised his hands in surrender.
‘I’m really sorry.’

She just shook her head again.
As if she was shaking him off her.

*   *   *

In the car heading back to the nick, Lisa Ross looked out of her side window and tried to keep her expression steady.
Costain was an expert at hiding his intentions, at getting people talking.
Had he tried today to get her to open up about herself?
Right at the moment when she had something she wanted to hide, particularly from him?
He’d seemed really awkward about that text message –
really
awkward, as if it had been an embarrassing mistake, the sort of mistake someone trying to put up a front shouldn’t make.

Or maybe the sort of mistake someone trying to put up a front
wouldn’t
make.

She sneaked a look across at him driving.
Was it just that he fancied her?
She was constantly taken by surprise when that happened.
She never realized until it was too late.
It was always difficult and complicated.
She remembered him having stayed with her in the hospital.
He’d shown a whole caring side to him that … or, even back then, was that what he’d wanted her to think?

Maybe she was being too hard on him.
What had he done, today, really?
Just tried to find in her some utterly understandable feelings of being shaken up.
Maybe he really had felt the same way.
He’d looked as if he had at the time.
He’d hit one of her buttons: she could never live with any suggestion that she was being less than professional.

Maybe he’d hit that button deliberately to set her off, to see what it revealed.
Had he any inkling what she was up to?
Would she ever know, one way or the other?
If he did, it was impossible that he wouldn’t act on it, impossible that he wouldn’t start trying to play her.
He would have to know for himself what she was finding out.
The object she was after was unique, too valuable for him just to ask her about it and risk warning her of any intentions he might have.

Was
it just that he fancied her?
She wondered if he’d ever do anything else about it, now that she’d behaved the way she had.

Those eyes of his were very useful for an undercover, she decided.

He looked very trustworthy.
Even when she knew he wasn’t.

FIVE

Sefton finished his coffee.
He was inside the usual pub, in his usual place, sitting looking towards the window but far enough back from it that he wouldn’t be seen by anyone looking back from his target.
He’d started to come here a few weeks ago and had previously treated this part of his duties reasonably casually.
Now, though, he’d been asked to begin to make use of the progress he’d made in getting a look at people involved in London’s occult community.
So today was going to be a bit different and he was now in the mental space he associated with being undercover, lightly wearing a role which could basically be described as ‘definitely not a policeman’.
He’d always come here on Thursdays because that was the day when more of the particular sort of people he was interested in – the people who could make a little use of what his team called ‘the London shit’ to do impossible things, the people Losley had called Privileged – tended to go into the particular shop on Greek Street, across the road from the pub.
In fact, there was one of them now, a bloke whom Sefton now knew well enough by sight to be able to follow him in a crowd: white male; early twenties; around six foot one; slim build; neatly trimmed beard; always wore a waistcoat and tie; a bit tweedy.
Student, most likely.
Straight.
Whether or not everyone who made use of the power of London also had the Sight was an open question, one which Sefton had made a lot of notes about in his special notebooks.
More certain was the fact that neither those who had the Sight nor those who knew how to use the power necessarily stood out as being important to someone Sighted.
The team hadn’t been able to follow Losley just by feeling her presence.
From his own studies, and this was something he was planning to share with the team soon, he suspected that he knew of at least one way in which those who understood how to use this stuff went into stealth mode.

The man was wandering over to the biggest branch of Quicksilver Dawn, the chain of occult shops that had sponsored one of the stalls at the New Age fair the team had attended when investigating the Losley case.
All the meaningful customers that Sefton had identified seemed to dress slightly differently to the norm, but there had been very few in anything like the full-on Victorian dress seen at that fair.
This, Sefton understood as he made his way to the door, was something J.K.
Rowling had got right about the non-Muggle population: the askew dress sense.
Maybe she knew more than she let on.
He left the pub and sauntered across the street, enjoying the sunshine on his arms.
Last night he’d had troubled dreams again.
He had felt as if something was trying to get into his head, that the summer had got past his antihistamines and shoved its way right up into his sinuses and was rushing about in his brain, kicking down all the doors.
He’d gone into the bathroom at 3 a.m.
and splashed water on his face, and only slowly got back to sleep.

Now, in the distance, he could hear the drums of yet another protest march, heading for Parliament.
The murders hadn’t deflated that movement; if anything, they had actually increased the number of protestors.
The public, he thought, had sensed blood, and now it was as if their ancient hatred of those in power had started to be set free.
If there was going to be a Police Federation strike, Sefton had already decided that he wouldn’t join in.

He went to look in the window of the shop.
Just displays of completely ordinary Tarot cards and crystals on fake velvet in the window.
There was an artificial spring that bubbled from a length of silvered tubing and twinkled as it fell delightfully into the limpid depths below.
That might give his team an excuse to stroll in here one day this summer.
‘Hosepipe ban, sir.
We’re searching the premises for free-flowing water.’
Even Quill, open to leaving the rule book behind now that they were working in the wild extremes, might blanch at that.
There was nothing of Sighted interest in the window, nothing weighty.

Sefton paused for a moment and found that he was quite calm.
He was undercover, he was at home with this sort of tension.
He went inside.

*   *   *

The shop smelt clean and airy.
The shelves were white, and enormous posters and paintings decorated the walls.
Gentle, tuneless music wafted past.
No incense; it would be too hard for the staff to put up with all day.
There were those staff, twenty-somethings in black T-shirts with the logo of the shop; two of them were laughing at the till, everyday-looking kids, divorced from the clientele he was after.

He wandered towards the back of the store and realized straight away that this was like walking uphill.
There was a precise gradient.
Every step he took, according to the Sight, got him into more serious territory.
Checking the price tags on the items, he saw that they followed that index too: more expensive with every step.
He stopped.
That felt … wrong.
Why?
This shop, logically, attached a higher price tag to items that were genuinely powerful, that had the strength of London about them, that had the age so prized by the small portion of the clientele who knew what they were doing.
Presumably, he was heading towards more valuable items that could accomplish things – like the Tarot of London or
Book of Changes
that Ross had encountered – unlike the jewellery in these halfway cases, which just shone through association, without the feeling that it might leap up and help him or hurt him.
So what was the problem with any of that?
He realized he was feeling that there was something wrong with linking occult power and money.
Something almost …
gauche
about it.
He could feel that embarrassment as a physical effect.
It was like … being on a fairground ride, with each foot on a plank that rocked in a different direction … the power and the money were sort of … angry at being chained together.
They were resisting each other.
What the fuck was that about?
He recalled the same feeling from the green thing that he’d run into in Soho when he first got the Sight – that same anger at money.

He shook off the feeling and glanced back to the staff.
They hadn’t even looked up.
They must be used to people doing weird shit in here.

He kept moving.

There was an area right at the back with glass-fronted cases and narrow walkways between the shelves.
It smelt mustier.
The design of the shop identified it as the dull bit, for serious collectors only, but there were two security cameras up there, neatly covering everything.
It seemed that the owners didn’t find it profitable to bring much in the way of this genuine stuff to the New Age fairs.
Sefton’s target was looking into one of the display cases.
Ignoring him, Sefton walked up to stand beside him, deciding to fix his eyes on something in there that shone brightly to the Sight: a brass bracelet that looked as if it had spent some time underwater, decorated with rough knotwork.
There would be some serious London history to it.
There was no label on it; if you were back here, you were supposed to know what this stuff was.
There was a price tag, though: £1999.99.
He could feel the object kind of itching at its attachment to such a value.
He could feel its age.
He could also feel that there was nothing scary about it; here was an item you could lean on in a crisis, an old friend that would always see you through.
He’d seldom felt emotional detail like that with the Sight.
Maybe that was because of the shop environment.
If someone Sighted had stocked this place – and that was a conclusion he felt he could safely come to – they wouldn’t put out anything that made their customers feel like shit.
That’d be in the back, the higher slopes that he felt continued past this end wall, the special stuff for special people.