* * *
Sefton finally returned with a small collection of objects that, he said, indicated both serious London provenance and the concept of things or people being kept locked out. There were keys from the Tower of London, boundary markers from royal gardens. He saw how unenthused Quill and Ross were and raised his hands. ‘It’s all I could do,’ he said. ‘I really have no idea.’ There was nothing of weight about any of the objects. ‘Before tonight, I’ll write down some instructions about putting chalk lines and salt around our beds.’
‘Sarah,’ said Quill, ‘is going to love this.’
Costain looked up at the sound of a car horn outside the Portakabin and bounded out. Quill went to the window and saw him talking to someone through the window of an ancient TR7 that looked more mud than car. The car had stopped on the road rather than come in through the gate to their makeshift car park. Costain turned, clutching something, and the car accelerated away.
‘This is a bit more practical,’ he said, coming back in with a carrier bag. He opened it up to reveal several packages of a grey powder.
‘Methamphetamine?’ said Ross.
‘Bless you,’ said Costain.
Quill looked to Sefton, who was staring incredulously at what was on the table. Had it really come to this, that they were going to break the law themselves? ‘Fuck, no,’ said Quill. ‘We keep that for when we just can’t stay awake any longer. And we don’t keep it in here.’
Costain nodded. ‘Sure. There’s a hidden compartment in my car.’
‘Oh, that makes me feel so much better,’ said Quill.
Sefton went over to the mirror and uncovered it. ‘This thing feels so completely dead,’ he said. ‘It’s as if, when the Ripper left it, it took all the power with it.’
‘Maybe that’s what happened,’ said Ross.
‘Do you reckon it could appear out of there again?’ said Costain.
‘Perhaps,’ said Quill, ‘it’s like that movie, and you just have to say his name three times, like Ripper, Ripper-’
The others all yelled at him to stop.
Quill sighed. ‘Like I would. I now work on the basis that things like that might actually be true.’
‘Maybe,’ said Sefton, ‘the scrying glass needs some other form of activation. I’m wondering if the Ripper appearing out of it was some form of what Gaiman called ostentation, if the first stirrings of protest, two years ago, somehow summoned it.’
‘That wasn’t quite how he used that word,’ said Ross. ‘There has to be an existing story about something happening, which then becomes real. Just as we’ve seen. None of those protestors was expecting Jack the Ripper to come back and lead them. It would have been, I don’t know, King Arthur or…’
‘… or bloody Robin Hood,’ finished Sefton. ‘You’re right.’
‘Put the cloth back over it, anyway, eh?’ Quill said.
Sefton did so.
‘All right,’ said Quill, ‘if someone’s eavesdropping on our dreams, we’ve got a few hours left with us still having one up on them. So we’re going to follow up our major lead right now. We’re going into that brothel tonight.’ He went back to the board and pointed to the business card. ‘Tunstall, or persons unknown, turned over Spatley’s office looking for something. That card, an indication of Spatley having links with persons of ill repute, was in there to be found. We need to go into the brothel, find out if anyone in there knows anything about Spatley or any of our other victims, especially anything that could be a motive for murder.’
Ross went over to the wheezing PC and brought up her database about the brothel, showing photos that she and Costain had taken of prostitutes and their clients arriving and departing. ‘Nothing unusual on the surface,’ she said. ‘We know all the exits. There’ll be some muscle in there. There’ll be something to prevent johns shagging and running.’
‘So we do the simplest possible thing,’ said Costain. ‘I go in as a punter.’
‘I should go,’ said Sefton. ‘I’m better with the Sight. I’m more likely to find any anomalies.’
‘I’d recommend you both go,’ said Ross. ‘Having a look around isn’t something they’ll encourage punters to do. You’ll have to find some way between you to break out of the routine of being introduced to women downstairs and then being led straight up to the bedrooms.’
‘We’re not allowed to shag on duty?’ said Costain to her, with a raised eyebrow.
She looked calmly back at him, too professional to rise to that.
‘I’ll have to ask Joe,’ said Sefton. ‘I think he’ll be okay with it.’
Quill went back to the board and drew a vague shape in the air with his finger. ‘We have to move quickly, but we might suddenly run into something significant,’ he said. ‘It’s like when we didn’t know what Losley was, when the disparate things she did made no sense on their own. We keep hitting the outer features of a dirty great unknown. They’re all connected, but we can’t work out what the shape in the middle is. The elephant in the room, as encountered by a team of blind people, who each feel what they think is a different animal.’
‘It’s weird,’ said Ross, ‘how that expression’s come to mean something everyone should see and doesn’t want to mention, rather than something nobody could see. It’s as if fooling yourself is standard practice now.’
‘Except,’ said Sefton, ‘with the Sight, we’re the ones who should be able to see it.’
‘And ours,’ said Costain, ‘is going to be one sodding terrifying elephant.’
FIFTEEN
‘Mr Stephens, Mr Dawson, please sit down. This won’t take a moment. Thank you for choosing the Underworld. The first thing I’m going to need from you is a three-hundred-pound deposit, cash or credit card, against your tab at the bar. You leave that with me, and the girls who’ll be attending to you this evening will let me know how much of that you’ve used in services; if you go over, you can top up with them. Anything left — and we all hope there won’t be, I’m sure, because we’re looking to provide you with a good time — will be refunded to you on your departure. Now, you’re not on a clock; please don’t feel rushed, and just to let you know the way we operate: after you’ve chosen the girl or girls who’ll be attending to you, the first thing she or they will do is take a long relaxing shower with you. During that, she or they will just make sure that you’re as healthy as you gentlemen appear to be.’
‘She’s saying they’ll check us down for creepy crawlies, yeah?’ Costain looked over to Sefton, sprawled beside him on the very Eighties sofa, their legs way apart, their clothing once again that of the small-time gang soldiers they’d spent a lot of their careers pretending to be.
‘Let’s get this done.’ Sefton took out two rolls of cash and gave them to this businesslike middle-aged woman in an evening gown. ‘You available?’
‘Not this evening, though if you become regular customers, perhaps I might make an exception.’ Her voice, thought Costain, was exactly what he was used to from hookers, just enough acting to let everyone stop worrying about what was real and what wasn’t, but not the full commitment that might lead to doubt. He felt aroused at that familiar timbre and immediately guilty for it.
* * *
Ross and Quill sat in the car around the corner, parked in front of a newsagent, watching the young media folk and the tourists looking for nostalgic thrills pass by in the late evening sunlight. They were listening to what was going on round the corner, via the wires each of the undercovers wore. The two speakers were, at the moment, providing a weird sort of stereo. Now there was just the sound of the two men going through to some other room. Ross had rebuffed Quill’s attempts at conversation. She could feel time running out, could feel tiredness rising inside her. She would take that meth as soon as it was offered. She was desperately wondering whether whoever had accessed her dreams now knew about the Bridge of Spikes, whether the address they had for the owner had already been raided by something with a lot more power than they had. Costain had promised to wait to check the place out until she could come with him. She believed him. Just about.