Maureen Johnson - The Name of the Star

“All right,” Richard said, “we can bring the lights back up.”

The lights didn’t come back up.

“All right,” he said, louder. “The lights, please.”

Still no lights. In fact, everything in the room shut down. All the camera lights went out, as did the power on his computer. There were groans and yells as dozens of live-feed cameras went out at once, and people began bumping together in the intense dark.

Richard stayed where he was, by the board, wondering what to do next. Should he just keep talking? Or should he wait until they were on camera again? It was very difficult, this being in the middle of an international news story.

He felt the pen being removed from his hand and the brisk squeaky noise it made on the board. Someone was writing something on the board, but he couldn’t see who. He stepped toward the board, toward the spot where the person had to be and felt around in the dark. There was absolutely no one there.

The pen was gingerly put back into his hand.

“Who are you?” he whispered. “I can’t see you.”

In reply, the unseen person shoved him forcibly up against the board, crushing his face into it. Then the lights came back on.

Richard heard a confused grumble pass around the room as they took in the sight of him splayed against the board, arms spread. As he backed up a few inches and tried to regain his poise, Richard saw something written on the board in large, bold letters:

THE NAME OF THE STAR IS WHAT YOU FEAR

INNER VILENESS

Do we indeed desire the dead

Should still be near us at our side?

Is there no baseness we would hide?

No inner vileness that we dread? —Alfred, Lord Tennyson,

“In Memoriam A.H.H.,”

part 51

25

STEPHEN WAS DRIVING WITH A GRIM, FIXED INTENSITY. We sped past the school, past a huge cluster of news trucks and police cars surrounding Spitalfields Market. I had to sit in the back, because you can’t sit in the front seat of a police car unless you’re actually a police officer—so I must have looked like a criminal to anyone passing by. A young, crying criminal in zombie makeup.

“How did you know where we were?” I said, wiping my eyes with the back of my hand.

“She phoned me and said you had gone missing from the party, then again from the street once she found you.”

“I want to go to the hospital.”

“That’s the last place you’re going,” Stephen said, glancing at me through the rearview mirror. “You’re already in HOLMES.”

“In what?”

“HOLMES. The Home Office Large Major Enquiry System. You’re in the police database, that’s what it means. You’re a witness in the Ripper murders, and you’re under protection by us. And the police establishment doesn’t exactly know we exist. This all just got very, very complicated.”

“Complicated?” I shot back. “Boo’s back there in the road, possibly dead, and all you can say is that this is complicated ?”

“I’m trying to keep you safe, to keep you both safe. There was nothing we could do to help her. The ambulance was right behind us. The best thing was to get you out of there.” He took off his policeman’s hat and wiped his forehead.

“Tell me one thing,” he said. “Did anything happen to the Ripper?”

“What?”

“What happened to him after the accident?”

“He walked away,” I said.

“Were there lights?” he said again, more urgently. “Sounds? Anything? Are you sure he walked away?”

“He walked away,” I said again.

Stephen let out a loud, exasperated sound and switched on the car’s lights and sirens. Then he hit the gas, and I was thrown back against the seat by the surge in speed. I could basically determine that we were going west, into the center of London. Within a few minutes, I realized that we were headed toward Goodwin’s Court. When we got there, Stephen pulled the car over abruptly. I had to wait for him to let me out of the back, then he hustled me down the alley and into his building. The automatic lights clicked on as he hurried me up the stairs.

“I have to ring someone,” he said, switching on the overhead light. “You should sit.”

Stephen went down the short hallway and into the room next to the living room, leaving me alone for a moment. The apartment was cold, and it smelled stale. There was a bag of used takeout cartons by the door filled with the remains of Chinese food and fish-and-chips. Clothes were strewn about the sofas and chairs. There had been some kind of paperwork explosion over by the window—masses of manila folders turned open, pages piled and stacked and spread out. All the notes on the walls looked like they had been replaced with new ones.

I could hear Stephen through the thin wall. He was talking to someone very urgently.

“How’s Boo?” I asked when he emerged.

“I don’t know yet. I have someone at the hospital who’ll send me a report. Your school has been told that you’re with the police giving a statement. You need to sit. We have to talk.”

“I don’t want to sit. I want to see my roommate.”

“She’s not your roommate,” Stephen said. “She’s a police officer. And the one thing you can do to help her is to tell me what you know.”

“She’s still my roommate,” I said.

Which was odd. Because not long before, I would have sold Boo to the lowest bidder. Now her welfare was the only thing that mattered.

“Do you want to help her?” Stephen asked. “Then you’ll tell me everything.”

He indicated the sofa. I sat. He pulled up one of the chairs and sat directly in front of me, leaning forward to look me in the eye, as if he could tell when I was leaving something out by studying my pupils up close. I had been grilled by the police before. At least that experience had prepared me for this.

“The school was having a dance—” I said.

“I know,” he cut in.

“You told me to tell you everything,” I snapped. “So are you going to listen or are you going to tell me what you already know?”

Stephen put up his hands, conceding the point.

“Go on,” he said.

“We were having a dance,” I said again. “And we were . . . dancing. Everything was fine. Then he appeared. He was just there . . .”

“He?”

“The man, the guy. The Ripper.” Saying “the Ripper” made me queasy. I wiped my nose with the back of my hand. “He stood right in front of me. I mean . . . I could feel him. I could feel something. He told me to come outside with him . . . I didn’t want to, but . . .”

Only now did it occur to me what might have happened if I hadn’t gone. It was possible that he would have just walked away, that Boo would be fine right now. It was equally possible that he would have shoved a knife directly into Jazza’s neck. And now that I had a chance to run over the possibilities, I felt myself begin to quake.

“He asked me if I knew where we’d met. I thought it was at school, but he said we met at the Flowers and Archers on the night of the second murder—”

“You were at the Flowers and Archers on the night of the second murder?”

“My . . . friend. Jerome. He wanted to go. We just went to the street, not to the pub. You couldn’t get near the pub.”

“I was there,” Stephen said. “And you’re saying he was too?”

“That’s what he said. He said we met there, but I don’t remember him.”

“But he remembered you,” Stephen said. “So you must have reacted to him in some way. Even just looked at him, moved around him. He knew you could see him.”