TimeRiders: City of Shadows (Book 6) (38 page)

‘Murderer?’

He looked at them with momentary bemusement.
‘You know, the mad-in-the-’ead one? Been killin’ women? In the East
End? You ladies an’ gents musta ’eard about that?’

Liam, Maddy and the others shook their heads
in unison.

The barista took in the look of confusion on
all their faces. ‘You … you do know about that, right? That
gentleman … a knight or lord or something. Some say he might even be a friend
of the queen!’

Liam shook his head. ‘Can’t say
that we do, sir.’

The barista laughed incredulously.
‘Blimey! It’s in all the penny papers. It ’as been for the last
fortnight! Been on them telegraph wires all round the world I wouldn’t be
surprised.
Everyone’s
been talkin’ about it! You
lot must be the last people in the country to have ’eard about it,
then!’

‘We’ve sort of only just arrived
in the country, you see,’ said Maddy.

The barista nodded. ‘Ahhh, foreigners!
I thought I could ’ear somethin’ funny in the way you’s lot were
talkin’. Where you ladies and gents come from?’

Maddy met Liam and Sal’s eyes. They
all shared a conspiratorial smile and she shrugged at the barista as if to say,
Where do I even begin?
‘Well now, that’s kind of difficult to
–’

‘Canada,’ said Bob. ‘We
are from Canada.’

The barista looked suitably impressed.
‘Canadians, eh? I suppose you don’t get newspapers and telegraph wires over
there, then. Well –’ he shook his head – ‘to be honest, the whole
thing’s a nasty carry-on. This won’t turn out well for none of us. Best
advice I can tell you is – with all due respect – I’d suggest you might want to
’op on a boat ’eading back ’ome to Canada before it all kicks off over
’ere. It ain’t gonna be nice.’

‘Kicks off?’

‘Nasty business. Very nasty.’
His eyes narrowed as he gazed down the street. ‘The way things are
goin’… there’ll be soldiers on the streets soon. Maybe even blood on
the streets before long.’ He looked back down at them. ‘Best ’ead back
to your ’otel or guesthouse and stay indoors this evening, that’s for sure.
I ’eard a whisper them riots what we’ve ’ad across Whitechapel and the
rest of the East End of London will be spreading to the rest of the city.’ He
nodded at the growing crowd of men far off down the street. ‘And them
troublemakers down there look like they’re making ready to ’ave a scrap with
the police.’

14 December 1888, Holborn Viaduct,
London

‘Jesus, Liam! How did you not notice
all this … 
unrest
 … was going on?’ A copy of the
London Packet
rustled in Maddy’s hands. She’d picked up a
discarded copy lying on the doorstep of a haberdasher’s on the way back to their
cosy little subterranean dungeon.

She unlaced her bonnet and hung it carefully
on the arm of a coat stand. ‘There’ve been riots and stuff going off all
over the country!’

Liam unbuttoned his waistcoat.
‘I’ve been busy in here in case you hadn’t noticed.’ He slumped
down on a creaking, spoon-backed armchair that was spilling stuffing from a popped seam
on one arm. ‘Making this place a little more like a home, so I have.’

‘There’s more important things
than –’ she struggled not to curse – ‘making us comfy!’

He looked hurt. ‘I just wanted it to
be nice for you two.’

Maddy’s stern gaze turned to
Rashim.

‘And, uh … I’ve been
making money, and of course wiring this place up.’

Maddy looked down at the paper and picked
bits to read out loud. ‘… 
rioting in the East End: Whitechapel,
Spitalfields. Riots also beginning to occur in Liverpool, Manchester
.’
She skimmed the
columns of small newsprint. ‘
Groups of
anarchists, libertarians, troublemakers and ne’er-do-wells gathering in every
city, every town, every village to protest about
 …’ She fell silent,
skimming the words ahead, her lips moving.

‘What? Protesting about
what?’

She raised a finger. ‘Just a
sec … lemme finish.’

‘I have to say, I always thought
Victorian Britain was supposed to be an ordered place,’ said Rashim.
‘
Disciplined
, you know? The famous British stiff upper lip?
That’s the right expression, isn’t it?’ He shook his head.
‘Those men outside? All that anger? That naked aggression? It reminded me very
much of my time. Always the riots. Every day news-streams showing a war or a food riot
somewhere. Militia with guns stripping possessions from refugees.’ He shook his
head. ‘That is what the end days of a failing civilization look like. It’s
an ugly, sad thing.’

‘It was beginning to go that way in my
time too,’ added Sal. She snorted humourlessly at something that occurred to her.
‘I should say
our
time.’ She looked at Liam. ‘After all, the
three of us come from the same time, right? Same time, same place, same test
tube?’

Liam sighed. ‘Best forget about that,
Sal.’

She ignored him. ‘When exactly is our
time, huh? I mean … when exactly was our particular batch of meatbots cooked
up? Hmm? 2030? 2040? 2050? 20–’

‘Just let it go, Sal!’ snapped
Liam irritably. ‘Why don’t you just forget about –’

‘Because I can’t! I’m a
product
. So’s Maddy. So are you! I can’t forget
that!’

‘No!’ He shook his head.
‘Jayzus-n-Holy-Mary, no, I’m not acting the maggot! No! I’m still who
I thought I was. I’m still Liam and I’m still from Cork, Sal! And I’ll
tell you something else for nothing; I’m bleedin’ well remaining that same
person!
Do you understand? And so you should!’ He looked
self-consciously back at the others. They were staring at him, taken aback by his angry
outburst.

‘Well …’ he huffed
dismissively. ‘That’s all I’ve got to say about this foolish
nonsense!’ He slapped the arm of the chair. ‘There! Look, I’m all
angry now!’

They sat in a long and awkward silence, an
old clock ticking far too noisily in the corner of the dungeon; the deep rumble of
Holborn Viaduct’s generator could be heard through several brick walls, doing its
clanking, rumbling best to keep the immediate surrounding street lights glowing.

‘You think what you want, Liam,’
Sal sighed. ‘It’s all lies in the end. It’s all –’

‘Will the pair of you knock it
off?’ snapped Maddy. ‘This is far more important!’ She shook the paper
in her hand for emphasis. ‘This is a contamination. Right here! In this paper – a
contamination!’

Sal shrugged. ‘So? It’s not like
we
have
to fix them any more.’

‘Don’t you see, Sal? It means
we’re not alone!’

Liam suddenly looked up. ‘Ah Jay-zus!
Becks?’

Maddy shrugged. ‘Or someone
else.’ She carried on reading parts aloud. ‘… 
continuing riots in
response to the recent shocking revelation of the Ripper’s true
identity
.’

‘Whitechapel! The Ripper. Jack the
Ripper! You mentioned him earlier,’ said Rashim.

Liam nodded. ‘Aye, and the big mystery
was they never found out who the fella was.’

‘But now it seems they have,’
replied Maddy.

‘Who is it?’ Sal said, suddenly
a lot more interested in what was in the paper than she was brooding by herself.

‘A man called Lord
Cathcart
-
Hyde. A knight of the realm,’ Maddy added, skim-reading the
paper, ‘a Freemason, a member
of the House of Lords, and until
recently a senior member of the government.’

‘Jahulla!’ Sal sat up.
‘Seriously?’

‘Uh-huh.’ Maddy raised a finger
to shush her and continued reading in silence for another couple of minutes as the
others waited impatiently. Then finally she looked up at them.

‘This story’s been rumbling on
for just over a month! This posh guy, Cathcart, was attempting to murder another
woman.’ She consulted the article. ‘Mary Kelly.’

‘Aye! That’s it, she was the
last woman to be killed by Jack the Ripper!’ said Liam.

‘In correct history, yes! But
apparently she managed to fight back. Fought back and killed the man!’

‘Blimey,’ said Liam. ‘What
a woman.’

‘Good for her,’ said Sal.
‘It’s not very often the good guy wins. Not in real life anyway.’

Maddy looked over the top of her glasses at
them. ‘Point is, folks, she’s become a national hero over the last four
weeks.That’s a big goddamn contamination! That shouldn’t have happened. And
these riots that are springing up all over England are part of that
contamination.’

‘Maddy is correct,’ said Bob.
His deep voice rumbled with admonishment. ‘This is a major contamination and must
be corrected.’

‘Thank you, Bob.’ She looked
down at the paper: headlines screaming out anger and rage on behalf of the common man.
Friend of Queen Hunted East End Women For Sport! Cathcart-Hyde – Evil Resides
Among the Rich.

‘Those people out there are
enraged
. They’re out in the streets because this is, like, the final
straw. One thing too many. I guess they’re seeing this as an example of the rich
considering themselves above the law. That this lord guy was carving up
common street women just for fun! Treating it like a … like some sort of a
fox hunt!’

‘Yes.’ Rashim nodded. ‘It
has escalated into a
class
issue.’

‘Exactly! And you heard that
coffee-store guy – this is going to get worse.’ Maddy looked down at the paper.
‘It’s been a slowly escalating news story and –’ she shook her head –
‘we’ve only just noticed it.’

Through the thick brick walls they could
hear the faint roar of voices in the street outside. The barista was right, tonight
trouble had spilled west towards central London. They heard a chorus of hooves on
cobblestones passing by outside – mounted police called in to disperse the gathered
protesters.

‘Liam? Rashim?’ Maddy sounded
exasperated. ‘Jesus, didn’t either of you guys notice anything at all
brewing up in the background while you were fixing things up in here? I mean, this story
has been running in all the papers for the last month!’

Liam shook his head.
‘No … uh, not really, no. I didn’t read any of them
papers.’

‘This last week we’ve been
inside, in here,’ added Rashim, ‘mostly.’

She sighed. Faintly they heard the shrill
tone of a police whistle, the neighing and stamping of uneasy horses, a chorus of male
voices united in chanting some slogan. The first tinkle of breaking glass.

‘Bob, we need some more background
data. Do a search on your on-board database. Use the search term “Whitechapel
Murders”.’

‘Affirmative.’

Back in Harcourt Maddy had loaded him up
with a dump of data pulled off the Internet about Victorian times, London in particular.
It wasn’t targeted particularly cleverly: basically a ‘copy and paste’
of everything she could find online that she
casually dumped into his
head. Once they got round to networking the computers and had the system up and running
again, she intended to have him Bluetooth the whole lot across. But right now his hard
drive made him the historical expert.

‘Whitechapel,’ said Bob. His
eyelids flickered as he consulted his database. ‘Information: 1888, Whitechapel
murders. Also commonly referred to as the Jack the Ripper murders, and the Leather Apron
murders.’

Liam nodded. ‘Aye, I remember Delbert
said something about that. Said the killer’s other nickname was the Leather
–’

‘Shhhh!’ Maddy flapped a hand at
Liam. She nodded at Bob to go on.

‘I will extrapolate and summarize
facts from what I have.’ He closed his eyes. ‘Through the late summer and
winter of 1888, a series of gruesome murders of women. Mostly prostitutes. In the
terminology of this time – tarts, street ladies. There were five murders attributed to
the same murderer because their methodology was strikingly similar.’

‘Methodology?’ asked Sal.
‘You mean how they were killed?’

‘Affirmative. The method of their
murder. How they died,’ he replied. ‘In all five cases their throats were
severed to the vertebrae; they were almost completely beheaded. Their abdomens were
–’

‘Save that for later, Bob,’ said
Maddy. ‘We don’t need that detail right now.’

‘Of course.’ He resumed.
‘The post-mortem mutilations were immediately distinct, bearing a striking
resemblance to Freemason rituals. After the third murder the national press was making
veiled accusations that the killer might not be some commoner with basic knife-craft
skills – a butcher or a fishmonger for instance – but instead some high-born figure with
Masonic associations, possibly medical knowledge. The
last murder
attributed to the killer was a woman called Mary Kelly. Her body was discovered in
Miller’s Court in the early hours of the ninth of November. The killer was never
caught or identified, and no further murders were deemed similar enough in method to be
attributed to the same man.

‘At the end of the twentieth century
several historians considered there might be a royal connection to the murders.’
Bob paged his mind for further details. ‘Context: London in the 1880s was as close
as it was ever going to come to a workers’ revolution similar in nature to the one
that occurred in Russia.’

‘Well, that certainly seems true
enough,’ said Rashim. He cocked an ear at the faint noises of rioting coming from
Farringdon Street.

Maddy nodded. ‘Jack the Ripper
should
never have been identified. The ninth of November should have been
the last Ripper victim and then it all stops, and becomes a mystery forevermore.
Only … a month ago, ninth of November, something very different happened. The
last victim killed him instead … and has now become the figurehead for a
revolution.’

‘Oh boy,’ squealed SpongeBubba,
‘someone’s been naught-eee!’

Maddy could see that Bob was eager to say
something. ‘You think we should intervene?’

‘This is a significant contamination.
The point of contamination origin in terms of time and space is very close to
us.’