The balding dog sensed it had lost its prey and wandered over to an opening that led out into the warmth of a pleasant summer’s afternoon. It emerged into the sunlight, blinking back the brightness of the sun, sat on its haunches and panted. It decided to rest and recover for a while before returning inside to sniff out another rodent. The pickings were too rich in this building to give up yet.
Its pink tongue darted out and slapped its muzzle. Skinny flanks heaved with the rapid in-out in-out in-out of hot breath being expelled and oxygen pulled in.
And dark beady eyes looked out impassively on a crowded vista that meant nothing to it. A place once upon a time known as Piccadilly Circus.
Tall grass and nettles grew waist-high here, a sea of gently swaying ochre-green giving way here and there to hummocky islands of rust-red vehicle roofs. Lost to sight, but certainly down there where the wild grass and the tall weeds spread their roots, was a rich compost of decaying clothing fibres and bleached bones still able to leak some goodness into the forming soil.
In the middle of this shifting grassland was a circular plinth topped by a still-recognizable human form with wings. Eros. Its bronze base was now a peppermint green, the statue itself — aluminium — was a marble-like pattern of rust spots and algal growth.
Everywhere a pleasing prairie sound. The gentle murmur of breeze haunting the skeletons of dead buildings. The grass whispering a soothing white noise. Crickets chirruping in chorus. Far away another dog barks to find its pack. And slowly the late-afternoon sun eased across a cloudless sky towards a craggy horizon of falling buildings. Eventually that same horizon would be shallow humps beneath a blanket of vegetation. Eventually that horizon would be flat grassland or a wood or something in between.
Peaceful.
But life goes on. Big bugs eat small bugs. Rats eat bugs. Dogs eat rats. A dozen crows circle overhead prepared to eat anything. Life continues despite a gradually decreasing background level of radiation that might still give concern to a radiologist.
Just over four decades ago, it wasn’t peaceful here. Just over four decades ago, there was a period of horror and panic. The sound of wailing sirens filled the air.
Screams.
Prayers.
This same blue sky was criss-crossed with several hair-thin lines of vapour: the approaching and departing vectors of missiles. A day in which the skies all over Earth looked largely the same. Vapour trails and mushroom clouds.
But that’s all long ago. Forgotten now. Silly, vain, stupid, violent humans are history and in a couple of hundred years the last visible remnants of their buildings will be too.
Peaceful, except for a tiny disturbance now. Minute — the size of a mere pinhead. If one knew precisely where to look, you would see nothing more than a spot of darkness floating six feet above the ground. Like an errant pixel on a computer display, grain on an old photograph, the tiniest freckle on porcelain-fair skin.
There for a second, gone the next.
15 December 1888, Holborn Viaduct, london
They stared at the low-resolution image on the computer screen for a long, silent minute before Liam finally spoke.
‘That’s Piccadilly Circus, is it?’
No answer. In his own Liam way he was being rhetorical. ‘Well now, that’s not looking very good, is it?’
‘You’re quite right,’ said Maddy. ‘Not good. Not good at all. I think it’s safe to say we don’t want this future.’
‘That means we have to make it right,’ said Sal. ‘Jack the Ripper has to kill this Kelly lady?’
‘And get away… never to be identified.’ Maddy nodded. ‘Kinda sucks, but yeah. That’s how it has to be.’
Chapter 67
8 p.m., 8 November 1888, Whitechapel, London
Mary Kelly wiped muffin crumbs from her lips and smiled across the table at Faith. ‘I ain’t felt so ’appy in a long time.’
Faith had been gazing out at the street. The late-night market was closing up for business. By the amber glow of lamplight, costermongers, butchers, grocers packed their wares away as weary-looking stevedores returned home from the docks and warehouses along the Thames. A narrow street heaving with activity; a seething mass of grubby humanity seen through the sooty window of this small tea shop. Faith had logged, analysed and dismissed seventy-six faces in the last minute alone.
She levelled her impassive gaze on Mary. ‘Why are you happy, Mary?’
‘I have you.’
Faith had compiled a short list of non-specific, noncommittal yet reassuring responses that she could trot out in response to Mary’s endless chatter. She picked one at random.
‘Then I am happy too.’
‘I feel like there’s a hope. A way out of Whitechapel. A way out of this stinkin’ awful unfair city.’
‘Yes.’ Faith played a smile. ‘We have your plan.’
Mary checked the coins in her purse. The last few nights their petty crimes had paid off well. Mary had decided they could try their luck along the Strand. There were a number of members’ clubs along that busy road that disgorged drunken gentlemen into the streets in the early hours. Faith had played her part well, catching the eye and attention of a number of them with some suggestive and teasing come-ons while Mary had made quick work of dipping her hand into their coat pockets.
‘We’ve already got almost a whole pound! A few weeks like this, Faith love, and we might have enough for tickets to take us anywhere we want!’
‘The place that you called “Wales” sounds like a very nice place.’ Faith was vaguely aware that her AI was adopting some very sophisticated human behavioural traits. She was ‘playing along’. Acting a part. Lying. Faith had no intention of travelling off to a place called ‘Wales’, but maintaining the illusion that she was sold on that idea suited her well. Mary was a useful accomplice with useful local knowledge. More than that, between them they seemed to have developed an efficient way to accumulate money; something that was needed, of course, to purchase food.
Faith finished her lamb broth. Generously full of chunks of mutton and other useful proteins.
‘I think you an’ me’s earned a night off. What do you say?’
Faith was looking out of the soot-smudged window. ‘As you wish.’
‘We could go down me local, the Queen’s Head. How’s that sound?’
Faith turned to look at her reproachfully. ‘You intend to consume alcohol again?’
Mary shrugged. ‘It’s just a little celebration. We done so well, you an’ me. Just one drink ain’t gonna hurt, is it?’
‘Information: intoxication impairs performance and compromises judgement.’
Mary laughed. ‘Bleedin’ ’eck, Faith. Come on, just one little drink. Ain’t gonna kill me now, is it?’
12.27 A.m., 9 November 1888, whitechapel, London
The pub — The Queen’s Head — turned out to be another useful location for Faith to log faces. Her database of stored images was rapidly increasing in size. She’d spotted, logged, analysed and filed 17,217 faces in London so far. None of them, of course, were the people she was after. But it meant over seventeen thousand humans ruled out.
As she calmly surveyed the florid faces around her, through clouds of acrid pipe smoke, Mary was enjoying herself. One drink had turned into several drinks and she was now in the middle of a noisy muddle of men and women, leading them in singing along to an accordion player, all of them equally inebriated. The innkeeper winced at the racket as he collected the empty tankards. Keen to begin kicking out his patrons for the night.