It’ll get better, he told himself.
It didn’t.
He took to walking the streets at night in an effort to get tired enough to sleep. London by night fascinated him. He walked along the pavements, looking at place-names: Marble Arch, Piccadilly, Charing Cross, Tottenham Court Road. All these places had trenches named after them. And, gradually, as he walked through the streets of the night city, that other city, the unimaginable labyrinth, grew around him, its sandbag walls bleached pale in the light of a flare, until some chance happening, a piece of paper blown across the pavement, a girl’s laugh, brought him back to a knowledge of where he was.
He got a letter from Sarah and put it on the mantelpiece, under a small china figure of a windblown girl walking a dog, where he would see it as soon as he came through the door.
Often, on his night-time walks, he thought about Spragge, and the more he thought the more puzzled he became. The man’s whole sweaty, rumpled, drink-sodden appearance suggested a down-and-out, a man blundering through life, and yet the effort required to watch the flat and follow him all the way to Kew revealed a considerable degree of persistence. It didn’t make sense.
One obvious explanation was that he was working for Lode, but Prior distrusted the idea. The atmosphere in the Intelligence Unit was such that baseless suspicions were mistaken for reality at every turn. It was like a trick picture he’d seen once, in which staircases appeared to lead between the various floors of a building. Only very gradually did he realize that the perspective made no sense, that the elaborate staircases connected nothing with nothing.
His landlady, Mrs Rollaston, turned up on the doorstep, cradling her bosom in her arms as women do when they feel threatened. ‘I thought you’d like to know there’s somebody coming to do the bins. I know I said Monday, but I just couldn’t get anybody.’
She was obviously continuing a conversation.
Prior nodded, and smiled.
He could recall no occasion on which he’d spoken to Mrs Rollaston about the bins.
He needed to see Spragge, but the address on the file, as he discovered standing on a gritty, windswept pavement in Whitechapel, was out of date. The bloodless girl who peered up at him from the basement, a grizzling baby in her arms, said she’d lived there a year and no, she didn’t know where the previous tenant had gone. The landlady might, though.
The landlady, traced to the snug bar of the local pub, confirmed the name had been Spragge. She didn’t know where he was now. Did he know this was the very pub Mary Kelly had been drinking in the night the Ripper killed her? She’d known Mary Kelly as well as she knew her own sister, heart in one place, liver in another, intestines draped all over the floor, in that very chair –
He bought her a port and lemon and left her to her memories. Odd, he thought, that the fascination with the Ripper and his miserable five victims should persist, when half of Europe was at it.
He was losing more time. Not in huge chunks, but frequently, perhaps four or five times a day. In the evenings, unless he was seeing Rivers, he stayed at home. He knew the flat was bad for him, both physically and mentally, but he was afraid to venture out because it seemed to give him more scope. Nonsense, of course. He could and did go out, though sometimes the only sign was the smell of fresh air on Prior’s skin.
One morning Lode sent for him.
‘I just thought I’d share the good news,’ Lode said. ‘Since there isn’t much of it these days. They’ve caught MacDowell.’
Prior was knocked sick by the shock, but he managed to keep his face expressionless. ‘Oh? When?’
‘A few days ago. In Liverpool. Charles Greaves’s house. They got Greaves too.’
‘Hmm. Well, that is progress.’
‘Good news, isn’t it?’
Prior nodded.
‘You know,’ Lode said, watching him narrowly, ‘I used to think I understood you. I used to think I had you taped.’ He waited. ‘Ah, well. Back to work.’
Prior wondered why Lode’s endless patting and petting of his moustache should ever have struck him as a sign of vulnerability. It didn’t seem so now.
The nights were bad. He was still taking sleeping draughts, sometimes repeating the dose when the first one failed to work. Rivers strenuously advised him against it, but he ignored the advice. He had to sleep.
That evening, fast asleep after the second draught, he was awakened by a knocking on the door. The bromide clung to him like glue. Even when he managed to get out of bed, he felt physically sick. For a moment, as he pulled on his breeches and shirt, he thought he might actually be sick. The knocking went on, then stopped.
Presumably whoever it was had got tired and gone away. Prior was about to fall back into bed when he remembered he’d left the door open. Of all the bloody stupid things to do. But it was the only way of getting some air into the place.
It was no use, he’d have to go and close it.
The passage was full of the smell of rotting cabbage. The area round the bins had not been cleaned, in spite of Mrs Rollaston’s promise. Prior stumbled along, hitching up his braces as he went.
The door was open. He looked out. The sky was not the normal blue of a summer evening, but brownish, like caught butter. He went back inside and closed the door.
He was walking past the door of the living-room when he heard a movement.
Slowly, he pushed the half-open door wide. Spragge was sitting, stolidly, in the armchair, thick fingers relaxed on his splayed thighs. He looked up with a sheepish, rather silly expression on his face. Sheepish, but obstinate. ‘Well?’ he said. ‘What do you want to see me about?’
‘Do you always walk into people’s houses uninvited?’
‘I thought I heard you say come in.’ He didn’t bother to make the lie convincing. ‘I knew you must be in because the door was open. You want to watch that. You could get burgled.’ A glance round the room pointed out that there was nothing worth taking.
Prior was angry. Not because Spragge had walked in uninvited; it was deeper, less rational than that. He was angry because of the way Spragge’s fingers curled on his thighs, innocent-looking fingers, the waxy pink of very cheap sausages.
‘I’ll get up and knock again if you like,’ Spragge said, pulling a comical face.
‘It doesn’t matter,’ Prior said, sitting down. ‘What do you want?’
‘What do you want?’
Prior looked blank.
‘You’re the one who’s been chasing me.’
Spragge was drunk. Oh, he hid it well. There was just the merest hint of over-precision in his speech, a kind of truculence bubbling beneath the surface.
‘What about a drink?’ Prior suggested.
‘Yeh, all right.’
Prior needed time to think, to work out how he was going to approach Spragge. He went into the kitchen where he kept the whisky. The trouble was he detested Spragge to the point where the necessary manipulation became distasteful. You didn’t manipulate people like Spragge. You squashed them.
He poured a jug of water and, in the sudden silence after he’d turned off the tap, heard a movement, furtive, it seemed to him, in the next room. Rapidly, he crossed to the door.
Spragge was removing Sarah’s letter from underneath the ornament on the mantelpiece. No, not removing it. Putting it back.
‘Have you read that?’ Prior burst into the room. He was remembering how explicit Sarah’s references to their love-making had been. ‘Have you read it?’