The Severed Streets (48 page)

He stopped on the threshold as he walked out.
There was something here that did not seem to be compromised by Hell.
It was surely a trap, a device to give him hope, but … ‘What the Hell,’ he said out loud.

He was still being paid to be a policeman.
Those in charge of him were arbitrary and miserly.
So no change there.

A number of persons of interest in the matter of the Ripper murders would almost certainly be in this most outer of outer boroughs.

He would do his duty and continue his investigation.
It would, at least, be something to do until they came for him.

*   *   *

He found Spatley first.
He was working as the director of a home for wayward girls.
It looked like a factory, with enormous chimneys.
He watched as parties of female children were herded out of police vans and through the doors.

He saw posters and heard that Spatley was going to give a speech.
Quill went along and found he couldn’t get through the crowd.
He stayed at the back and watched.
Spatley stood onstage with banners and complacent matrons and stern sponsoring men who looked proud to be there.
Spatley himself was in a high collar so starched that Quill was sure it made him stand straighter.
But Spatley was sweating, and his eyes looked desperate.
‘If I was not here to hold the powers that control this world back, to moderate their policies,’ he said, ‘then things would be so much worse.
I’m doing a good job here.
What I do here is important.’
The rest of it was drowned out by audience laughter.

Afterwards, Quill went into the dark factory, barged past a pair of stout yeomen at the door and marched into Spatley’s office.
The man looked up from his work with an admirable amount of poise.
‘What is the meaning of this affront?’

‘Listen to you, already going native.’
Quill sat down opposite him, in what turned out to be a squirmingly uncomfortable chair made of … he stood up and didn’t look at it again.
‘It’s not often I get a chance to ask this: why do
you
think you were killed?’

‘I’m … not certain.
I don’t deserve to be here—’

‘That’s what they all say.
What do you know about a prostitute by the name of Mary Arthur?’

Spatley looked suddenly, desperately, guilty.

‘Mr Spatley,’ said Quill, ‘you’re in Hell.
Even if, for some unimaginable reason, you think you can mitigate this place, what further trouble do you think an admission of guilt could get you into?’

Spatley looked at him for a moment as if his world was crumbling.
‘I … was lured to a hotel room,’ he said.
‘With an offer, an offer that very specifically catered to my … It was like someone had looked inside my head.
But it seemed too perfect … I mean, I went because I wanted to spring the trap.
Seriously.’

‘I believe you, sir.’
He actually did.

‘I pretended to be outraged that she was dressed as a schoolgirl.
Well, actually, I was outraged.
Or I would have been, had I not been there, you know, deliberately.’

‘Could we please get to the meat of this, sir?’

‘I sent her into the bathroom to change and took a look in her bag.
I found her phone, discovered that that was her real name, Mary Arthur.
There was a text message on the phone that described what was supposed to happen as a “honey trap”.
She was meant to take photos of me, to compromise me.
I wrote down the number of whoever had sent her that text on the back of a card I found in her bag.
When she came out of the bathroom, I sat her down and told her I knew everything.
I tried to get her to come with me to the police, to tell them all about the man who’d hired her, although I was sure he must be an employee, a deniable freelancer.
She listened; I’ll give her that, she was interested.
I ended up telling her all about my suspicions concerning who was behind this trap, put the story together for the first time – the first time I’d told it all to anyone.’

‘Who
did
you think was behind the trap?’

‘Russell Vincent, of course.’

Quill frowned.
‘Go on.’

‘I was about to start assembling my forces for a major inquiry into how he was attempting to influence government.
A certain number of ministers to the right of the Tories adored him, but some of the moderates seemed actually afraid of him.
It was as if he had a hold over individual MPs.
The attempted honey trap convinced me I was right, that he was blackmailing his way towards some enormous … coup.’

Quill didn’t know enough to make a guess about how credible that was.
‘I take it Mary Arthur didn’t agree to give evidence?’

‘No.
She said, sorry, she already felt a bit threatened by how scared the man she’d worked for had seemed of a boss he wouldn’t talk about.
If she’d fucked up a job for someone as powerful and dangerous as that, she said, she was going to have to vanish for a while.
I wished her well and felt worried about how I’d burdened her with so much of the truth.
I decided to stop gathering evidence and move to acting against Vincent as soon as possible.
I don’t know how he could have known my intentions, because I’d told nobody, but I think, on reflection, that my plan was what got me killed.’

Quill was starting to wonder at how calm the man seemed.
‘Don’t you want … I don’t know, revenge for what Vincent did to you?’

There was something a little cracked in Spatley’s smile in return.
‘Look at where we are.
Here I am, making a difference.
I don’t think I’d better allow myself thoughts of revenge.’

Quill wondered at the plasticity of mind of this politician.
‘I gather you lost the card with her employer’s phone number on it?’

‘Yeah, somewhere in my office, I think.
Though I kept wondering if it had been taken, because I often got the feeling that the place was being searched.
It didn’t matter.
I’d written down both the number and the address of the establishment.’

‘Ah.
We never found that.’

‘I kept it on me at all times.
In my jacket pocket.’

Quill frowned.

‘Anyway, neither seemed likely to be useful going forward with the inquiry; the number always went to a blank answerphone, and if I wanted to have another go at convincing Mary to talk, I didn’t have to go via what I presume was her brothel – I’d written her number down too.’

Quill failed to stop himself looking surprised.
‘You wrote down
her
number?’

‘Yes.
On the same piece of paper.’

Quill put a hand over his eyes.
He was pained by now having hope again.
Hell told him he could have all the hope he liked, he was never going to get any of this information to his colleagues.
‘I don’t suppose—’

‘Oh yes, I can tell you it.
I looked at it so many times, and I’ve got a good memory for numbers.
But surely, we’re both dead now, so it hardly matters.’

Quill leaned over the table and pointed into his face.
‘It matters to me.’
He made Spatley tell him the phone number, and wrote it on the back of his own hand.
As he went on his way, he started to repeat the number to himself, his own mantra, his own tiny hope.

*   *   *

Staunce was actually quicker to find, now Quill had got into the ways of this place.
He was a retired grandee, working on endless charitable schemes that always came to nothing, all the Hell money spent on them frittered away in graft, as he always complained at many luxurious dinners.
After those dinners he would suffer days of indigestion and acid reflux that would leave him gasping on the floor of his study, unable to reach for water.
He could have paid for water, but it seemed he was unwilling to do so.
Quill found him in that condition, but, even curled up around himself like a wounded animal, he wanted to be interviewed.
He wanted to talk to anyone.
‘He paid me to tell him things which only the police knew,’ he said, ‘back in the day.
Particularly gossip about celebrities.
They deserved what they got.
And it was harmless.
Argggghh!’
He gasped and curled up around himself again.
‘But I stopped!
I stopped because I knew it was wrong!
Is no one listening?’

‘
Who
paid you?’
asked Quill.

He was told the name, and about how Staunce had taken another payment, and what it was for.
‘You sold us out,’ Quill said, ‘to Russell Vincent.’
He looked up to see an enormous roast being brought in by Staunce’s servants.

‘But … but I
thought
about turning the tables.
I
thought
about turning him in, taking the evidence to the cabinet office…’

Quill straightened up and nodded to him.
‘Thanks for that.
I’ll leave you to it; I don’t want to get in the way of your dinner.’

*   *   *

Tunstall was in a workhouse, walking on an enormous wheel that was slowly grinding a millstone.
He wore a long coat made of weights.
Quill wondered aloud if this was something he was doing to himself.

‘No,’ the man sighed, ‘this is very much something being done to me by others.’

‘What got
you
killed?’

So Quill was told about a working life spent making some extra cash on the side, necessary to keep a home for his wife and child.
The man had, as Quill suspected, been the one who searched Spatley’s office.
‘Not very professionally, I should think, but pretty thoroughly.’
Quill was amazed, distantly, by the idea that Tunstall might still take pride in the quality of such a job.
Tunstall had been told to stop the car, when he’d been driving Spatley, in a specific place at a specific time.
‘We’d already worked out where security might send us if a particular road got blocked up.
I didn’t know what was going to happen.
I was so shocked after … well, I didn’t even know if that had been what the bloke I was working for had planned…’

Quill asked for a description, and recognized the man who’d met Mary Arthur at the Soviet bar.

‘So I said what I’d seen happen, straight off.
I suppose part of me thought I might get off because it was all so mad, though I was being well paid to take any fall.
We was sent a lot of money in a way so my wife could get hold of it.
We needed that money.
You don’t know how hard it is; they expect you to live in town … But then you lot turn up, saying you actually believe me, and you get me off.
And I go home and … and it’s all shit.
I couldn’t keep Spatley’s face out of my head, how scared he was when he was killed.
I
did
like him, all right?
But I’m holding on for my family, it’s all I ever did.
Until you lot want to interview me again, and I start thinking I’d feel better if I told you everything.
And then … then the Ripper came for me.’

‘You want to come clean about
everything
now, then?’

Tunstall seemed to understand what Quill was talking about.
‘I did something else on orders.
When he was lying there dead in the back seat … I reached into his jacket pocket, and my hands were shaking, I tell you.
I took out this piece of paper I’d been told was there, and I … I ate it.
I was told that was the only way to get rid of it without tipping anyone off that anything had been there.
Burn it and there’d be, you know, the smell.
They didn’t even want to risk me crumpling it up and taking it with me.
I can still taste it.’
Quill could see the tears welling up in the man’s eyes.
‘I mean, my mouth’s still full of it.
It’s all I
can
taste.’

Quill went on his way and left Tunstall to his walking.

*   *   *

He found Rupert Rudlin in the middle of a crowd that kept grabbing him and hauling him over to waterboard him in a barrel of beer.
Quill spared him that for a few moments and asked him his questions.

‘No,’ sobbed the young man, ‘I don’t know why I was killed!
I don’t!’

The crowd grabbed him from Quill again and kept on with their torture.

*   *   *

Quill discovered, much more easily than he expected, that the real name of the final person he wanted to interview was Eric Wilker.
He was something of a celebrity.
Quill arranged to meet him in a pub.
He was a small man with threadbare clothing – someone so average that it took Quill a while to pick him out in the crowd.
‘People tell me there’s all this kerfuffle about me,’ he said, sipping his half-pint of mild and bitter.
‘I thought it’d all die down when I did.
Back in 1888, I killed them filthy whores as a public service.
One of them they say were mine wasn’t, I can’t remember which.
Two more they say were other people were me.
All the time I was working as a draper’s assistant.
I just did what I felt like with them after, and I laughed when I saw what they all made of it.
Didn’t mean nothing.
I never sent no letters to anyone, I never wrote no message on any wall, I ain’t daft.
I stopped when it got too hard.
Every now and then I was tempted, but then I thought, no, I’ve done my bit.
I died of a fever when I was in my sixties.
Thought about telling my old lady on my death bed.
Decided against.
Ended up here.
And younger, which is nice.
And here I get to keep on doing what I’m most famous for.
Only, every now and then, they get a chance to do it to me.
We take it in turns, you might say.’
He took a slow, sad sip of his beer.
‘All a bit pointless, really.’

That was true of Quill’s investigation as well.
He’d interviewed everyone he could find who was involved in the case.
He was aware of Hell laughing at him for how short a distance that small hope had taken him.
Now that small hope was gone.
He knew who was guilty, but he had no way to tell anyone.

*   *   *

At one point, as Quill was walking down the street, picking his way through the enormous crowds, someone grasped him, flung him to the ground and started kicking him.
‘It’s your fault!’
screamed Barry Keel.
He seemed to be an alderman now, smart in his coat and tails.
But his eyes were lost to madness.

Quill grabbed his leg, rolled it over, and slammed the man into the shit, his hand in the middle of his back.
He was aware of whistles and of suddenly efficient hellish coppers running towards him from all directions as the crowd helpfully shouted all the details to them.
‘I don’t want to find out what they’ll do to you,’ said Quill, ‘for assaulting a police officer.’
He let the man go and kicked him on the backside, off into the crowd.