Vincent looked awkwardly at him and his team. ‘I rather need to know how much you fellows know about … well…’
‘The power of London,’ said Sefton, adopting a confidence he didn’t feel. ‘Enough. Whatever you’re going to say, we’ll believe you.’
‘So, you’re police officers who know there are impossible things here?’ Vincent seemed fascinated. ‘My goodness. That must be so much help in your work. If you need to find a missing person or a suspect, you must be able to just make a gesture and…’ He made his own fumbling turn of fingers in the air.
‘You’d think,’ sighed Quill.
‘So you can’t do that?’
‘That’d be an operational matter,’ said Ross.
‘But at least you can defend yourselves against … against what we both know is out there. Please tell me you can do that.’
Ross raised her eyebrow at him. ‘And again.’
‘You were going to tell us, sir,’ said Quill, ‘what the scrying glass does.’
‘You mean you don’t know? Well, that makes this more awkward, in that I don’t see why I should…’ He trailed off, but seemed to make up his mind as Quill’s expression became darker. ‘I suppose you could find out from just about anyone in the community. Look, let me start at the beginning. I suppose it all began on the day I walked out of the Bussard Inquiry into phone hacking, having told them I’d run roughshod through my media business, found a few editors responsible for looking illicitly into the mobile phones of politicians and celebrities and sacked them all. I gave my word to those bastards — and, more importantly, to the public who buy my papers — that from now on mine was going to be the clean press corporation which didn’t do that sort of thing.’
‘How very ethical,’ said Costain, a completely non-ironic look on his face.
‘Not so much, actually,’ said Vincent. ‘I could see the way the wind was blowing — towards bloody government regulation if we weren’t careful — and I wanted to be the one who could use being spotless as a unique selling point. Trouble was … how do I put this?’
‘It’s not easy being clean?’ said Quill.
‘Well, precisely. Politicians and celebrities these days aren’t exactly soft touches. If you’re pursuing stories in the public interest, which, yes, does indeed sometimes mean “what interests the public”, you’ve simply got to cut a few corners. So I, erm, started to look for new ways to do so. I’d always had an interest in occult matters, always been aware of the whispers, knew there was something to it. So now I sent some of my people on fact-finding missions. They went incognito to a few pub nights-’
‘Such as…?’ asked Ross.
‘I think one was called the Goat and Compasses, I deliberately didn’t keep records of this stuff. Never mind being a bit dodgy, my shareholders care if I’ve, erm, you know, gone bonkers.’ He looked awkward again for a moment, as if wondering once more if they too would think he was mad.
‘Understood,’ said Quill. ‘Go on.’
‘Well, I finally went to one of those pub nights myself, incognito. I wasn’t very impressed with the people involved. They seemed all over the place; they didn’t know much, and, well, I can respect people who don’t have time for money, but this lot seemed desperately conflicted about it, obsessed with what they claimed to despise. I got my people to dig further, to ask about … well, about devices that could be used to find out people’s secrets. They came back with a suggestion: the scrying glass.’
Sefton looked at the others, and found they shared his shock. So a scrying glass might be what was being used to listen in on them, might have been what led to the leak that had got Tunstall killed.
‘How?’ growled Quill. ‘How does it do that?’
Vincent looked reluctant. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘I’m assuming this is never going to reach the authorities because, goodness knows, any new inquiry wouldn’t believe you, but you’ve got me over a barrel here, just knowing I’ve got one of these.’
‘We’re after bigger fish than you, sunshine,’ said Quill. ‘Tell us.’
‘The scrying glass is meant to be a device for entering people’s dreams.’
Sefton wanted to punch something. How many times had he had that feeling in his sleep, of something rifling through his mind? He looked again to his colleagues and could see from their own expressions of horror and anger that this was a shared experience.
‘And once you’re in,’ Vincent said, ‘you can check out whatever’s in their memory.’
‘How did that go for you?’ said Quill, advancing dangerously on Vincent.
The billionaire raised his hands in surrender. ‘It didn’t go at all,’ he said. ‘I’ve never successfully used the blasted thing. Wish I’d never set eyes on it. I bought it at this auction which took place under the skeleton of a whale in the Natural History Museum. Not wanting to be there myself in case I was recognized, I stayed on the other end of a phone line and had my proxy purchase this “scrying glass”, which I’d been told was as rare as hen’s teeth. I paid around forty thou for it and had it delivered to me here. I expected some sort of instruction manual, but there was nothing. So I decided that perhaps using it was just going to be a matter of instinct.’ Sefton recognized his own blundering attitude to dealing with the power of London. ‘The first time I tried … well, the only time … Maggie, would you please continue the story? Tell the truth.’
Sefton was intrigued by the idea that otherwise the PA might not tell the truth. They all looked to the middle-aged woman, who now had an awkward expression on her face. She’d been surprised to hear all this from her boss, Sefton felt. She was wondering if he was mad. But she was also very worried that he might not be. ‘It must have been about two and a half years ago,’ she began, haltingly. ‘There was snow on the ground. I was downstairs making tea, and Mr Vincent had said that that night I could leave early, because he was going to be busy all evening. And then I heard him cry out from up here. There was the most enormous crashing around. It was like someone had got in here and was attacking him. I should have hit the panic button, but I didn’t; I just ran upstairs and opened the door and found him staggering about. The room was smashed up. It must have been over in seconds, whatever it was. His shirt was ripped. Mr Vincent saw me standing there and yelled for me to get out. He ran out himself and closed the door behind us. He made sure I was all right, but he wouldn’t tell me what had happened — just that I wasn’t to tell anyone, and … well, he’s never asked me to work in this room since, and I’ve been glad not to.’ She looked as if she was now making some terrible mental calculations about how her perceptions of what was possible had changed since the start of this meeting.
‘What happened?’ Sefton asked Vincent.
Vincent went to a sofa and sat down. ‘Something I now think you might be familiar with. Something I’ve been wondering about coming forward about since the murders started. How could I? When you asked me about the impossible at the party, Inspector Quill, I should have told you then, but I knew nothing about you.’ He let out a long breath. ‘I was attacked by Jack the Ripper.’
Sefton found his mind racing. So there was a connection between the Ripper and the scrying glass. That made sense. Whoever was spying on their dreams also seemed to be the one who chose the Ripper’s victims. He stuck his tongue out and tasted the air. He found a metallic taste, a reminder of when he’d smelt the silver goo. It was very faint, but after two and a half years, perhaps it would be.
‘That evening that Maggie describes,’ continued Vincent, ‘I’d been trying to activate the mirror, looking into it, willing it to do something. When something started to appear out of it — this figure, pushing slowly through the glass — I was intrigued, not even very frightened at first, because it moved so slowly. I thought I’d got what I was after, that this was going to be some sort of, I don’t know, supernatural being who’d go and listen in on things for me. As it became more clear what was emerging, I got scared. It was what we’d now call a “Toff” protestor, though nobody had heard of them then, with the mask and the top hat and the cape and … this one had a razor. When that started to appear, that’s when I started to yell. The moment I did, he leaped out of the mirror and attacked me … or he tried to. I thought I was dead the moment he started slashing at me. But for some reason the blows just seemed to cut through my shirt. After just a moment, he seemed to realize that, and fled.’