The Severed Streets (32 page)

‘Sarah,’ said Quill, ‘is going to love this.’

Costain looked up at the sound of a car horn outside the Portakabin and bounded out.
Quill went to the window and saw him talking to someone through the window of an ancient TR7 that looked more mud than car.
The car had stopped on the road rather than come in through the gate to their makeshift car park.
Costain turned, clutching something, and the car accelerated away.

‘This is a bit more practical,’ he said, coming back in with a carrier bag.
He opened it up to reveal several packages of a grey powder.

‘Methamphetamine?’
said Ross.

‘Bless you,’ said Costain.

Quill looked to Sefton, who was staring incredulously at what was on the table.
Had it really come to this, that they were going to break the law themselves?
‘Fuck, no,’ said Quill.
‘We keep that for when we just can’t stay awake any longer.
And we don’t keep it in here.’

Costain nodded.
‘Sure.
There’s a hidden compartment in my car.’

‘Oh, that makes me feel so much better,’ said Quill.

Sefton went over to the mirror and uncovered it.
‘This thing feels so completely dead,’ he said.
‘It’s as if, when the Ripper left it, it took all the power with it.’

‘Maybe that’s what happened,’ said Ross.

‘Do you reckon it could appear out of there again?’
said Costain.

‘Perhaps,’ said Quill, ‘it’s like that movie, and you just have to say his name three times, like Ripper, Ripper—’

The others all yelled at him to stop.

Quill sighed.
‘Like I would.
I now work on the basis that things like that might actually be true.’

‘Maybe,’ said Sefton, ‘the scrying glass needs some other form of activation.
I’m wondering if the Ripper appearing out of it was some form of what Gaiman called ostentation, if the first stirrings of protest, two years ago, somehow summoned it.’

‘That wasn’t quite how he used that word,’ said Ross.
‘There has to be an existing story about something happening, which then becomes real.
Just as we’ve seen.
None of those protestors was expecting Jack the Ripper to come back and lead them.
It would have been, I don’t know, King Arthur or…’

‘… or bloody Robin Hood,’ finished Sefton.
‘You’re right.’

‘Put the cloth back over it, anyway, eh?’
Quill said.

Sefton did so.

‘All right,’ said Quill, ‘if someone’s eavesdropping on our dreams, we’ve got a few hours left with us still having one up on them.
So we’re going to follow up our major lead right now.
We’re going into that brothel tonight.’
He went back to the board and pointed to the business card.
‘Tunstall, or persons unknown, turned over Spatley’s office looking for something.
That card, an indication of Spatley having links with persons of ill repute, was in there to be found.
We need to go into the brothel, find out if anyone in there knows anything about Spatley or any of our other victims, especially anything that could be a motive for murder.’

Ross went over to the wheezing PC and brought up her database about the brothel, showing photos that she and Costain had taken of prostitutes and their clients arriving and departing.
‘Nothing unusual on the surface,’ she said.
‘We know all the exits.
There’ll be some muscle in there.
There’ll be something to prevent johns shagging and running.’

‘So we do the simplest possible thing,’ said Costain.
‘I go in as a punter.’

‘I should go,’ said Sefton.
‘I’m better with the Sight.
I’m more likely to find any anomalies.’

‘I’d recommend you both go,’ said Ross.
‘Having a look around isn’t something they’ll encourage punters to do.
You’ll have to find some way between you to break out of the routine of being introduced to women downstairs and then being led straight up to the bedrooms.’

‘We’re not allowed to shag on duty?’
said Costain to her, with a raised eyebrow.

She looked calmly back at him, too professional to rise to that.

‘I’ll have to ask Joe,’ said Sefton.
‘I think he’ll be okay with it.’

Quill went back to the board and drew a vague shape in the air with his finger.
‘We have to move quickly, but we might suddenly run into something significant,’ he said.
‘It’s like when we didn’t know what Losley was, when the disparate things she did made no sense on their own.
We keep hitting the outer features of a dirty great unknown.
They’re all connected, but we can’t work out what the shape in the middle is.
The elephant in the room, as encountered by a team of blind people, who each feel what they think is a different animal.’

‘It’s weird,’ said Ross, ‘how that expression’s come to mean something everyone
should
see and doesn’t want to mention, rather than something nobody could see.
It’s as if fooling yourself is standard practice now.’

‘Except,’ said Sefton, ‘with the Sight, we’re the ones who should be able to see it.’

‘And ours,’ said Costain, ‘is going to be one sodding terrifying elephant.’

FIFTEEN

‘Mr Stephens, Mr Dawson, please sit down.
This won’t take a moment.
Thank you for choosing the Underworld.
The first thing I’m going to need from you is a three-hundred-pound deposit, cash or credit card, against your tab at the bar.
You leave that with me, and the girls who’ll be attending to you this evening will let me know how much of that you’ve used in services; if you go over, you can top up with them.
Anything left – and we all hope there won’t be, I’m sure, because we’re looking to provide you with a good time – will be refunded to you on your departure.
Now, you’re not on a clock; please don’t feel rushed, and just to let you know the way we operate: after you’ve chosen the girl or girls who’ll be attending to you, the first thing she or they will do is take a long relaxing shower with you.
During that, she or they will just make sure that you’re as healthy as you gentlemen appear to be.’

‘She’s saying they’ll check us down for creepy crawlies, yeah?’
Costain looked over to Sefton, sprawled beside him on the very Eighties sofa, their legs way apart, their clothing once again that of the small-time gang soldiers they’d spent a lot of their careers pretending to be.

‘Let’s get this done.’
Sefton took out two rolls of cash and gave them to this businesslike middle-aged woman in an evening gown.
‘You available?’

‘Not this evening, though if you become regular customers, perhaps I might make an exception.’
Her voice, thought Costain, was exactly what he was used to from hookers, just enough acting to let everyone stop worrying about what was real and what wasn’t, but not the full commitment that might lead to doubt.
He felt aroused at that familiar timbre and immediately guilty for it.

*   *   *

Ross and Quill sat in the car around the corner, parked in front of a newsagent, watching the young media folk and the tourists looking for nostalgic thrills pass by in the late evening sunlight.
They were listening to what was going on round the corner, via the wires each of the undercovers wore.
The two speakers were, at the moment, providing a weird sort of stereo.
Now there was just the sound of the two men going through to some other room.
Ross had rebuffed Quill’s attempts at conversation.
She could feel time running out, could feel tiredness rising inside her.
She would take that meth as soon as it was offered.
She was desperately wondering whether whoever had accessed her dreams now knew about the Bridge of Spikes, whether the address they had for the owner had already been raided by something with a lot more power than they had.
Costain had promised to wait to check the place out until she could come with him.
She believed him.
Just about.

The sound coming over the speakers changed.
‘Is that someone moaning?’
she asked Quill.

*   *   *

‘That’s from one of our less private rooms,’ said the middle-aged woman, having led Costain and Sefton into what Costain thought looked like the front room of a couple in their eighties, or maybe the stage set of one, because it felt hardly used.
It smelt of cigarettes.
From an inner door four women entered, all dressed in lingerie that looked as if it had been through the wash too often, all affecting a pose which was meant to be that of a fashion model, but was similarly dulled by repetition.
They were professionally present, and that was all.
Costain tried not to find that absence exciting.
He should really be too worried about the current situation his team, and himself in particular, were in to be aroused, but the body did what it did.
There were two white women, an Asian one and a black one.
‘Gentlemen,’ said the hostess, ‘please pick one or more.
Our rates obviously increase steeply for more than one.’

There had been a door leading off each room they’d been in.
Through it, Costain was sure, would be one or more hard cases, ready to protect the investment here.
The prostitutes would be on a percentage, but it would still be more than they’d get on the street.
‘The one on the end,’ he said, picking one of the white girls.

‘You know what I like, Tone,’ said Sefton, and nodded towards the Asian woman.

*   *   *

They were both led to rooms leading off a corridor; through a couple of other doors could be heard more, rather artificial, sounds of passion.
Again Costain tried not to respond to the art of those simulated groans.
The woman he was with smiled professionally at him and let him into a particular room, a rather bare bedroom with a double bed, a shower in one corner and a single painting on the wall, apparently sourced from the same sort of place that provided anonymous art for hotel chains.
‘One hundred and fifty for a blow job,’ she said, her voice retaining that businesslike composure, ‘two hundred for straight sex, two hundred and fifty for anal, eighty for spanking, and I tell you when to stop, fifty for me using a strap-on on you, and if you want to look in the cupboard, there are toys in there, and I can tell you what each of them will cost to use.’

‘Okay,’ said Costain.
‘I’ll think about it.’

‘But first.’
She went and turned the shower on and, turning back to Costain, started to undress, with a series of practised movements.
‘Please call me Lucy, and let me know what you’d like me to call you.’

Costain wondered how long he could ethically wait to do this, and decided that, especially given who was listening, now would be good.
‘My name is Tony,’ he said, ‘and I’m actually a private investigator.
No, keep the shower running.’
He stepped between her and it, and took a roll of bills from his pocket.
‘On top of your cut from what I gave your boss, I’ll give you four hundred for the answers to a few questions, none of which will jeopardize your employer or put you or your job at risk.’

She thought about it for a moment.
‘Money now, and I decide.’
He handed it to her.
She counted it, then put most of it in her bag.
She put the rest on the duvet.
‘You tell them you had a blow job.’

*   *   *

Sefton was also sitting on a bed, next to the woman he’d come here with, who called herself Mi Ling.
He hadn’t come out with any particular cover story.
He’d just started talking, which hadn’t surprised her.
He supposed a significant minority of her clients did that.

‘You’re going to have to pay for the time,’ she reminded him after a moment.

He handed her some money and gave his background as one of the people he’d been as an undercover once, adding that they must get all sorts through here.

She made a non-committal noise, alert to anything in that direction.
More than her job was worth, to give away information.
Sefton realized that this was going to take a while.
He manoeuvred the one-sided conversation back onto safer ground.

*   *   *

‘I don’t think I want to tell you about that.’
The woman with Costain was looking angry and … yeah, afraid.
‘We never saw any politician, I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

*   *   *

Sefton and Mi Ling had finally found themselves laughing together at a completely safe conversation about recent celebrity misdemeanours.
Sefton was pleased when she went from that to ones she knew about herself, because, as he’d suspected, she was sometimes at the sort of party that had paparazzi waiting outside.
It was safe for her to talk about what her famous acquaintances got up to there.

After a while he took a risk and held up his phone to show her a picture of Spatley.
‘Is that the bloke who got killed?’
she said.

‘What about this one?’
He showed her a picture of Tunstall, then Staunce, but the only result was her frowning at him.
These people meant nothing to her other than faces on the telly.
‘Would you know if they’d been here?’

‘Course I would,’ she said.
‘We all know when someone famous comes through.
Are you a reporter or something?’

‘Look at this,’ he said, showing her a picture of Rupert Rudlin taken from CCTV footage.

‘That’s—’ She stopped.
She was looking at the phone intently.
‘I don’t know the man, but—’

‘But?’

‘The woman he’s with … she’s a mate of mine.’

Sefton realized that he was looking at her in shock.
He made himself point to the image of the woman who, a few moments after this picture had been taken, would be thrown up against the wall.
‘Her, you mean?’

‘Yeah.
She left here.
I mean, suddenly.
I mean she still owes them money.
Nobody knows where she went.’

‘What’s her name?’
The woman looked suddenly awkward, wondering again if she should get involved with this.
‘Listen, look at me, look at me, I’m not after her to harm her, I’m trying to save her.
You believe me, don’t you?’

The woman considered for a moment, then finally nodded.
‘That’s Mary.
Mary Arthur.
She wasn’t full time here.
She did jobs on the side.
When she disappeared … we all said she must have made it big, gone to Saudi.’

‘Do you know where she lived?’

‘Somewhere in Muswell Hill.’

‘This is saving lives…’

‘That’s all I know.’

The door burst open and an enormous man in a Brazilian football strip, carrying a baseball bat, with a bar through his nose and a huge moustache, threw himself at Sefton.