Paul Cornell - The Severed Streets

Lofthouse stood up and went to the window, as if she needed to see some everyday reality. It wasn’t as if, Quill thought, she was used to thinking like this. Whatever her mysterious knowledge was, it hadn’t prepared her. ‘So our … our … suspect : it looks like Jack the Ripper, it leaves the Ripper’s message-’

‘And it kills like Jack the Ripper. The single slash across the neck, followed by multiple incisions in the abdomen, done with some medical precision — that’s pretty much the original Ripper’s MO. Except that in this case the victims are male.’

‘So is this actually what it looks like? Jack the Ripper is back, only this time he’s killing rich white men?’

‘Well, concerning the message, Spatley was Jewish, but Sir Geoffrey was not. But they were both indeed powerful, relatively but not grandiosely affluent, middle-aged white males. That’s certainly the connection the media are making…’

‘Because for them it’s cake every day. Hey, Mr Typical Herald Reader, you could be next!’

‘That seems to be about it. One was money, the other was law. They had met, but only at the times you might expect them to: cabinet meetings about security issues around the Olympics, official functions — that sort of thing. We’re sifting through the related correspondence between them, but so far it’s pretty anodyne. They share no schools, housing, jobs or friends outside government circles, at least not that we’ve been able to uncover yet.’

Lofthouse toyed with her charm bracelet for a moment, her fingers finding the key. That made Quill frown once again about what he wasn’t being told.

As Costain had driven to Whitechapel, he’d found himself changing channels on the radio a lot. He didn’t like what he was hearing.

‘If one of the biggest coppers in London isn’t safe, then who is?! They should bring in the army! ’Cos the police are shitting themselves!’

‘People are talking as if this is a copycat Jack the Ripper serial killer, but apart from one wrongly transcribed message and the nature of the attacks themselves … Listen, as a Ripper expert…’

‘When you think Jack the Ripper, you think fog and prostitutes, don’t you?’

‘The Jewish community … I can’t speak for a whole community, but “dismayed” would be the word. That someone who committed these unspeakable murders should seek to slander us in the process…’

‘Attacks on two synagogues in the East End, but we’re talking about a few youths daubing paint here; it might be part of the wider disturbances…’

‘True British nationalists say it’s time to stand up to these thugs that are on the streets looting every night, but the police are still obsessing over the content of one scrawled message, because it mentions ethnicity, rather than dealing with the death of their own most senior officer, rather than dealing with what’s in front of their noses, which is that they have lost control and people are demanding a better solution!’

‘Our protest has always been peaceful. We march against spending cuts and corruption, which have killed many more people than Jack the Ripper. We do not condone the murder of anyone. However…’

In the end, he plugged in his iPod to escape the news. He finally switched that off too, frustrated at having run away from what was real. As always now, he was wondering if that running away contributed to his own approaching damnation.

He parked in the first free space he saw in Whitechapel, put his logbook in the window to avoid getting a ticket and closed the car door gently, without slamming it. He would do anything to stay out of Hell. That thought went round his head so often it was like a mantra. He would do anything.

* * *

He found Ross looking at a lurid sign, a woman pictured lying in the gutter, blood dripping from her mouth, and a silhouetted caped figure running away. The sign was propped against a brick wall that looked as if it had been scrubbed clean of centuries of dock slime for the tourists. Or perhaps it was new, built in the old style.

She turned to look at him as if he was something on the Ops Board. ‘Why’d you text me the other night?’

‘And hello to you.’

She frowned at him, but at that point the tour guide arrived and took their money, and others who wanted to go on the tour started to arrive; he was relieved not to have to answer the question.

The tour was called, in dripping red letters, ‘Jack the Ripper Extreme’. Their guide was a Mr Neville Fennix — probably his stage name. He was dressed in a top hat, opera cape and evening suit, and he carried a silver-tipped cane. There were a large party of Italians and their translator, and another group who were talking in what Costain thought might be Korean. There were also quite a few younger people, students, several of whom were wearing what had now become known as the Ripper mask on the back of their heads to shade their necks from the sun. That bloody thing was everywhere now. Previously only a fraction of protestors had worn it; now it was their uniform. He’d seen T-shirts and online banners with the Ripper mask portrayed in those Obama ‘Change’ campaign colours or like Che Guevara, with slogans underneath such as ‘Occupy Hell’. The Ripper had put a face to the summer of blood. He had killed not just an MP, but now one of the most senior police officers in London, right at the point when the Met was creaking under the pressure of lack of resources and government meddling. If they can get to him, they can get to any of us, that’s what a spokesman for the Police Federation had been quoted in the Herald as saying, and the job cuts and the service cuts and every cut make every single one of us more vulnerable. The driver, Tunstall, had been released at the end of his ninety-six hours in custody, the main investigation having convinced a judge that they needed the maximum period of detention. Tunstall hadn’t changed his impossible story, though, and so now the media were also full of the news that he was ‘back on the streets’.

As Fennix took cash from the other tourists, Costain found himself glancing at Ross again. She was still looking interrogatively at him. He wasn’t going to be able to get away from her question.

On the night he’d sent the text message, he’d first been annoyed at her for not getting back to him, then at himself for sending it. It had been exactly the wrong step to take. He’d tried to get to sleep, despite the heat, but he’d kept waking up, not liking how vulnerable he felt in his dreams. So, without thinking about it as much as he should have, he’d reached out. He’d wanted to talk to someone. He told himself now that he’d had his overall objective in mind. He wasn’t sure if that had been true.

Ross hadn’t raised the matter of the text message the next day, and, relieved, he hadn’t either. But Ross wasn’t very good with social interaction and so had saved it up for now because … well, who knew?

‘Well?’ she said.

‘Sorry. I was pissed. You know, you text your mates, ask if they’re up for a pint-’

‘You asked if I had five minutes.’

‘But that was where it was going.’

‘At 1 a.m.?’

‘Like I said, I was pissed.’

‘After last orders?’

‘At home with some cans.’

‘You drink at home alone?’

‘Not often. I’d just got back from the pub.’

‘Open late, was it?’

‘Yeah.’

‘You really thought I’d come over for a drink?’

‘Like I said, pissed.’

‘Okay.’ She suddenly nodded as if it was the end of the interview and looked away.