* * *
The glowing figure burst through the car door.
Gaiman made himself watch. Quill screamed as he tried to move, to fight, but the razor flew back and forth supernaturally fast, slashing into the man’s torso. Quill kept screaming. Gaiman desperately wanted him to die quickly, but that was such a terrible, selfish thought. The slashes reached Quill’s neck and the sounds suddenly stopped.
The Ripper flew from the car. Silver splattered on the window. The remains of Quill’s body fell in a heap across the seats.
Gaiman took a deep breath to calm himself. Then he switched on the engine once more, checked the rear-view mirror and drove off.
TWENTY
Dr Piara Singh Deb, forensic pathologist, let out a long breath as he looked at these two young coppers and their intelligence analyst. He remembered the last time they had come to see him, when they had been driven, burdened, more passionately engaged with the Mora Losley case than was useful for them professionally. He had been pleased to hear the subsequent reports of them having succeeded in saving children from the fate of those whose skeletons he had examined for them on that occasion. Now they looked just as fraught, but in an entirely different way. The young woman had a terrible expression on her face as she looked at the body on the slab in the forensic laboratory. She kept her jaw tight shut as if she was about to explode with rage, and her eyes shone with it. He expected some variation: perhaps this was the prelude to tears, but none came. She didn’t talk at all as they viewed the body. The stockier black copper had a more conventional grief, which was somehow reassuring. He was pale, he hadn’t slept, you could feel the tension in his neck. Their DS did all the talking. He asked a lot of questions. He seemed determined to remain calm and businesslike — something Singh had seen a lot in the way police dealt with horrifying deaths. But he was talking a little too fast, there was a touch of desperation about him. He was playing host today, in these terrible circumstances, to a superintendent as well as the three of them. He suspected the deceased, James Quill, had also been a friend of hers. The last time Singh had seen him, he’d been suffering somehow, lost. Now he was lost completely.
‘The body was found at oh-four-twenty-eight this morning, having caught in the moorings of a tourist vessel near East India Dock. Exposure to the water indicates he can’t have been in there for more than about nine hours.’
‘That’s before when he was last seen alive,’ said the DS.
‘Various other tests concur that death might have occurred soon after he was last seen. You tell me these are the same clothes he left work in. He was dropped into the river from some considerable height. I wouldn’t be surprised if I was told that was off one of the major bridges upstream from where he was found. Needless to say, he was already dead.’ Singh moved to look into the dead man’s face, remembering how it had looked in life. ‘Cause of death: shock and massive blood loss due to repeated lacerations of the torso and gross injuries to the testicles and lower abdomen.’ The body was white, even the wounds pale. ‘These injuries are precisely in keeping with the MO of the suspect you are investigating in connection with the previous murders.’
‘Does he seem colder than he should?’ That was the other black copper, who had kept his eyes fixed on Quill’s face, as if making himself not look away. He’d changed since last time Singh had seen him. More certain. Harder.
‘That’s interesting. My thermometer doesn’t say so, but…’ Singh ran his hand over the chilly surface of the chest. ‘I feel he is. No, please don’t write that down, that’s ridiculous. Why do you ask?’
The DC just shook his head. So Singh had to move on.
‘I do see some indications, such as traces of fibre beneath the fingernails, that the victim was killed inside a car. The hands seem to have clawed at a seat, and we see leather and other indicators of a luxury interior.’ Looking at Quill’s hands, he recalled his own, a couple of hours ago, pulling a sheet back from this same face. That had been when Quill’s wife had come in. It never stopped being hard to do that. ‘Is this your husband?’ he’d asked then.
‘Yes, it is,’ the wife had said, very quickly. In order to be doing all she could. He’d heard that sound so often. He’d stepped back then and let her do all the other things they sometimes did: put a hand to the deceased’s face; kiss his brow, and, in this case, his lips. Sarah Quill looked exactly like the other widows he’d met, yet each of them was unique. Death was the most common thing to human beings, and still enormous for everyone. Dr Singh had a young family and had never known the death of someone he loved. He hoped his job would prepare him. He knew it would not.
She hadn’t started to cry. Some did, some didn’t. She was one of those for whom it was going to take a very long time before it hit her.
Now he turned to these others who had loved James Quill, wishing he had it in him to be a minister of some kind, a counsellor. But he knew nothing of death. He said the same to them as he’d said to Sarah. ‘I’m very sorry.’
* * *
Ross put a hand over her eyes as they left the lab. She didn’t want people looking at her. She didn’t want to look at people. Or at anything. She felt Costain put a hand on her shoulder, felt the years ahead of her without happiness properly now for the first time. How terrible Quill’s last moments must have been. Now she would never see him again.
Unless. Unless. Unless …
She couldn’t look at Costain. The Ripper might come for the rest of them at any moment. Costain would be considering the very real possibility of suddenly being sent to Hell, at any moment. If she was in his shoes, what would she do? Would she immediately do her best to go and take the object, right away, intending to use it to protect herself? Or would she use it to bring back their colleague and friend, not just because he was their colleague and friend but because, in dying, he might have discovered information that could save them all? Or would she give it to her lover, so that a dead father might be returned to life? Not that there would be happiness for that lover in any of these outcomes.
The meth pumped up every negative she felt. She couldn’t look at him because she would always be looking at the calculations on his face now. But she also could not let him out of her sight. She made herself look. She saw him only looking back with concern for her. But she kept on looking.
* * *
Sefton was watching Costain and Ross. He wanted to ask what could possibly be going on between the two of them that they seemed distracted from Quill’s death. But he was full of grief and guilt, and he couldn’t be sure of anything he might glimpse around the edge of that. His ridiculous presumptions of occult defence had failed entirely. Quill had looked to him to be the specialist, and his so-called expertise had provided him with a few stupid trinkets. The Ripper might come for the rest of them at any moment, and there was nothing he could do about it. It almost felt as if he’d killed again.
‘Listen to me,’ said Lofthouse. They all turned to her. The expression on her face was all business. They were not going to see her emotions. She was toying with that bloody key on her charm bracelet. Sefton wanted to shake her and demand to know what she knew that they didn’t. ‘We have every reason to think,’ she said, ‘that you three will be the Ripper’s next targets. Normally I’d say let’s get you into protective custody, but I think if I did that the results might be bloody terrifying, for you and for London. You’re going to need to look out for each other. Is that clear?’