The Severed Streets (19 page)

‘Sure.
Depending.’
He clinked glasses with her.
‘I can ask him how he got the inside track on the Ripper murders.’

‘Yeah, don’t do that.’

‘Like he’d tell me.’

*   *   *

Costain parked outside Ross’ housing block in Catford half an hour early.
This he never did.
It felt as if he was conducting surveillance.
He was only early because he was nervous.
He knew he looked good and smelt good.
He’d prepared.
But still he was nervous.

He waited, enjoying the late evening sunshine.
He put the radio on, but all he could find were news stories about it all kicking off in Wandsworth now, about how people were throwing bricks and setting light to shops across London, Toff masks everywhere, taken up by rioters as being an easily available way to hide their faces.
He switched off the radio and tried to put it all out of his head.

He had one clear aim in mind for this evening, and he had to focus on it.

*   *   *

Ross had interrogated her wardrobe until it failed completely.
Neither of her dresses was useful.
But it was either those or something she’d wear to work.

Why shouldn’t it be something she’d wear to work?
She wanted to find out what he was after, not to make herself more attractive to him.

It was a pity about her and Costain.
Everyone else had someone to talk to.
Someone they got to go home to at the end of the day.
The two of them had nobody, and it was likely to stay that way.

She finally decided on new jeans.
A polo shirt like the one she’d worn to work.
At least it wasn’t the same shirt.
She tried things with her hair.
She undid a couple of buttons.

She did them up again just as the intercom buzzed.
He was three minutes early.

*   *   *

They took the tube to Chancery Lane and walked up the Gray’s Inn Road to an Italian restaurant, where Costain had booked a table outside.
He couldn’t stop feeling nervous.
More than nervous.
Why?
There were high stakes, sure, but he was used to that.
It wasn’t as if tonight was definitely going to be the big pay-off, that she’d immediately trust him and tell him what he wanted to hear.
No, this was an undercover job; this would take weeks of slowly earning her trust.
Only then to betray that trust, if she did have access to what he thought she did.

He looked sidelong at her face as they walked.
That betrayal would be a terrible thing, but he had to do it.
He had no choice.
He was trying not to notice how tight those jeans were.
Being attracted to her made what he was planning to do feel a lot worse.

He was aware they’d been silent for a long time.
No small talk, which seemed fine by her.
They reached the restaurant and were welcomed and seated by staff who seemed very pleased to have paying customers.
He looked at her poker face again across the table.
It wasn’t as if he’d actually been on many dates; of course, this wasn’t a real date.
He had an objective here.
So.
Small talk.
‘I used to come here a lot,’ he said.
‘The food’s good, it’s an Italian family place.’

‘Sure,’ said Ross.
It was almost a shrug.

The waiter arrived and they ordered wine.
When it arrived it was very welcome.

Costain pointed to his glass, worried that she might have thought he was going to drink drive.
The reflex to be good, every moment, was deeply programmed into him now.
‘I can always take a taxi when we get back to yours.’

She frowned, and he realized that she thought he meant he was already thinking about what might happen at the end of the evening.
He suppressed an urge to explain and decided to move on to other topics.
‘So—’

‘Do you mean you brought girls here?’

He closed his mouth.
Then opened it again.
‘No.
Well, yeah.
Maybe sometimes.
Actually, it was usually just me.
When I was undercover.’

‘But sometimes?’

‘Yeah.’
He found he’d said it almost as a question, almost as if he was asking her if that was okay.

‘Where are you from?
What did your parents do?’

Oh. Okay then.
‘I grew up in Willesden.
Then moved out of London.
I came back to the Smoke after I became a police officer.
More opportunities down here.
When I became an undercover, I went back up north again between jobs.
Safer.’

‘You didn’t say anything about your parents.’

That level tone of hers.
The way her eyes were fixed on his face.
He felt as if he was being interviewed about his part in some unspecified crime.
He took a sip of wine and carefully smiled.
‘Are you analysing me?’

‘You know all about me.
You were
briefed
about my family.
If you don’t want to talk about—’

‘No.
It’s just strange that someone would want to know.’

‘Why are you being so weird?’
she said suddenly.

‘What?’

‘This is a date, right?
We’re on a date.
I was making small talk, asking about stuff that’s not relevant to our jobs.
Like your home, your mum, your
dad.
But you’re getting all nervous.
Haven’t you been on many dates?’

He was now actually glaring at her.
‘No, honestly.
You?’

‘Almost zero.’

‘Because we both…’ He made a gesture that attempted to include a ton of sadness and horror and all the world.

‘We both…’ She made the gesture back at him.
‘Yeah.
Thought so.’

He found he was smiling now and, amazingly, she was smiling back.
With her tooth biting her bottom lip, just a notch.
There was still something reserved about her, though; maybe there always would be.
The way she’d underlined the word
dad
back there, as if seeing if that would get a reaction – had that been an indication that she suspected what he was really up to here, that she knew Costain would have found talking about her dad and his current situation difficult right now, because those were pointers towards what he was secretly planning?

It was entirely possible that she did suspect he was up to something.
She was vastly intelligent, used to picking signal out of noise.
Okay then.
He was used to the possibility of those around him being suspicious of him when he was undercover.

It dawned on him that he’d been looking at her for a long time, and she’d accepted that calmly, looking straight back at him as if they were both sizing up the enemy.

He realized he was hard.
Now would not be the time to get up from this table.
What had they been talking about?
He cleared his throat and looked away.
‘You, erm, asked about my parents.
Dad was a taxi driver, Mum did some cleaning.
They split up; I went to live with Dad in Nottingham.
They both passed away a while back.’
There, he’d said ‘dad’ a few times without suddenly blurting out all his plans.
Okay, he decided, two can play at this game.
He reached into his jacket pocket and found the card.
‘Listen, I just remembered, sorry to bring up job things tonight, but I found this in here earlier and, well, I didn’t mention it to the team today.’

‘What?’
She was looking openly suspicious at him now.

He slapped the card down on the table.
It was a business card with just a map that had a bit of the Sight about it and a date.
‘I found a few of these behind the bar at the Goat, in a drawer marked “auction”.
What do you reckon that’s about?’

*   *   *

Ross tried to keep her expression steady, but she was so angry – with herself and with him – that she wanted to leap up and throw this table over him.
She had to wait while the waiter brought their meals over, and Costain made ridiculous small comments about the preparation of the dishes, as if he was still trying to impress her.

She’d thought she could safely see how much he knew, but he’d had that card.
He knew it was an auction.
He could either tell the others about it – and there must be a reason he hadn’t done so already – or, worse, he could come along himself.
If the object she was so desperately seeking was on sale there, as the barmaid had hinted it might be, then he would understand, if he didn’t already, that he needed it as much as she did.
He would bid against her.
He might still have dodgy sources of cash that could go much further than an intelligence analyst’s savings would.
Or, if the auction was based on barter, on sacrifice, he was better placed with his life in the underworld to find terrible things to offer, when all she would have was herself.

That whole chain of thought fell like a row of dominoes as the plates were put on the table.
If she was honest with herself, she’d been having fun watching his fumbling attempts to unlock her, enjoying watching him, until now.

What was she going to do?
She couldn’t risk him bidding against her, so she had to try to get him onside.
It meant not showing him this anger and instead telling him what he wanted to hear.
So he had won, damn it.
For now.

She reached into her bag, found her own card and put it down on the table beside his.
‘It’s an invitation,’ she said, ‘to an auction, as you’ve realized.
An auction, I think, of occult London objects.’

He smiled right across his face, as if appreciating her all over again.
She’d revealed hidden depths.
‘Why haven’t you told the others?’

‘Why haven’t you?’

The smile continued.
‘Because I’d like to see if there’s anything on sale there that might help me avoid going to Hell.’

She took a deep breath and let her secret out.
‘And I’d like to see if there’s anything on sale there that would get my father out of Hell.’

‘Interesting.’
He wasn’t pretending at all now, just going through the motions, giving her credit as a fellow player while looking at her as if he wanted to eat her.
‘And do you think there will be an item on sale there that will allow either … or both … of us to achieve our respective goals?’

She paused for a moment, getting tiny satisfaction from keeping him in suspense.
‘I’ve been reading up on an object called the Bridge of Spikes.
There was a document about it in the hoard we found in the Docklands ruins.
Very hard to translate, but I managed it.
It talked about a device that resurrects a person to full, breathing, unharmed life, wherever their body is, and simultaneously wipes clean what you might call their ethical record.’

‘A “Get out of Hell Free” card.’

‘Exactly.’

‘Is this a London thing?’

‘No.
It was used once, in medieval times, somewhere in the Middle East.
I think it can be used once per century.
And, yes, that means that this occult shit can happen in other cities.
I haven’t told the others that, either.’

He took a long drink of his wine, his eyes never leaving hers.
‘Once per century also means that only one of us could use it.’

Her lips were dry; Ross took a drink herself.
Her heart was racing.
An efficient solution to Costain’s problem now, she knew, would be for him to kill her and dispose of her card.
She was pretty sure he wasn’t capable of that.
Pretty sure.
But now he had the prospect in front of him of having all his sins erased, would he decide it was worth it?
She examined his face again.
No.
At least not before he was sure he had it in his sights, there at the auction on the night.
She would have to play him along, right up to that moment, then find a way to get the object and run.
‘Right.’

‘I knew you were thinking that.’

‘I was.’

‘You’re also thinking I might bid against you.
Try to nick it from you if you won.
Worse.’

‘Yeah.’

He paused, considering, then looked at her with a quizzical expression that contained an edge of hurt.
‘Is that why you agreed to this?
To see how much I knew?’

She shrugged.
‘Maybe a bit.’

He seemed to accept that.
‘What are we going to do?’

She found she wasn’t angry any more.
As he’d said, they both now knew what the game was going to be.
‘Join forces.
Go to the auction together.
See what happens?’

He considered that.
Then nodded.
‘What about … this?’

‘What?’

‘Is this still a date?’
He was trying to make her think he was actually still concerned about that – that it really did matter to him.
She wasn’t sure how she felt about it.
If she was going to be stringing him along, waiting for a chance to take the object for herself, she didn’t want to have to play the scarlet woman to do it.

That would only be the case if she wasn’t also genuinely … okay, this was complicated.
She looked him in the eye.
‘If you want it to be.’

He looked like the cat that had got the cream.
The size of his reaction, and the moment it took for him to conceal it, warmed her.
Or fooled her, she thought, a moment later.
He held up his glass.
‘Cheers.’

She picked up her glass, satisfied that at least her hand wasn’t shaking, and touched it to his.
‘Cheers.’

*   *   *

It was around eleven when they got back to Catford.
They had each made an obvious effort to talk about other stuff on the way, though when Ross started to weigh up various dead ends in the op, he had gently shut her down.
Yeah, that was just normal.
She should know when to let herself not work.
She liked having someone tell her that, actually.
It was seductive.
It was probably quite deliberate on his part.

They walked to her place; the housing block loomed above them.
They stopped by his car.
She wasn’t going to invite him in.

‘Well,’ he said, ‘thank you for a lovely evening.’

She couldn’t help but laugh at that.
‘No, thank you.’

‘So, neither of us is going to tell the others about…?’

‘No.’

Instead they were going to play out this game of theirs.
He was looking at her very determinedly.
She let herself look challengingly back.

‘Well.’
She put a little tired sigh in her voice.
Time to turn in.
She was going to see how far he was prepared to take this.

He suddenly stepped forwards and put his hands on both sides of her face, and with incredible gentleness and force at the same time, kissed her.