‘We are in a Ripper-free zone.’
‘A suspect still on our Ops Board — that is, Tunstall — came in here for regular cups of tea. Nobody would have paid attention to him popping in when Spatley wasn’t about.’
Lofthouse stopped what she was doing. ‘And do you know what I would have said if I was Tunstall and I’d just been accused of murdering someone I’d had regular cups of tea with?’
‘I’d say I’d never do that, that we were friends,’ said Quill, feeling as if he wanted to slap her heartily on the back or something equally inappropriate. ‘But Tunstall hasn’t seen fit to mention that, has he? It’s as if he knows that drawing attention to his close relationship with Spatley, and mentioning that he popped in here for tea and sympathy, might implicate rather than exonerate him.’
Lofthouse nodded. ‘You know, when coppers tell me they searched a room, I do tend to ask, considering how many times a second search is required in order to find the evidence we’re after-’
‘You reckon they just opened every drawer and read every piece of paper, and didn’t, for instance, lift up those heavy bookcases and filing cabinets?’
‘Of course, a normal human evildoer who was short of time wouldn’t have moved the furniture in his search either.’
‘So…’ said Quill, taking off his jacket.
‘I wish,’ said Lofthouse, ‘that I had come dressed for manual labour.’
They hauled every piece of furniture in the room out of its designated place. They revealed the remains of food, and a spider that must have felt they were hunting it down as it skittered from one hiding place to another. On the underside of a cabinet they found a cluster of obvious fingerprints in deep dust. Quill felt sudden copper glee. ‘If you were doing this fast, you wouldn’t bother with gloves, either.’
‘If they’re Tunstall’s, he can probably explain them away. Dropped his keys or something.’
‘Yeah, but at least it’ll give him an awkward five minutes under interview. It’ll be even better if we can find what he might have been after.’ He continued to search while Lofthouse put in a call to get some Scene of Crime Officers over to record the prints.
It was under the last bookcase he hauled away from the walclass="underline" something white and dusty revealed between it and the skirting board. A business card. Quill picked it up. It looked as if it must have been dropped down there by accident. He showed it to Lofthouse. One side was blank apart from a mobile number written in biro. ‘Relax in the Underworld’ said the lettering on the other side, with an address in Berwick Street in Soho.
‘A brothel,’ said Lofthouse.
Quill laughed. ‘I would have needed to look that up, ma’am,’ he said. ‘Excellent. We finally have some juice.’
‘Politically, it might be an idea to give this to Jason Forrest.’ Lofthouse said it as if she was sure Quill would say no, but she just wanted to put it out there.
Quill gave her her due, mentally rolled the dice, but finally shook his head. ‘No, ma’am, I’m going to keep that from him for the moment. We’re going to want to check the place out and I don’t want the main investigation crashing through there, perhaps disturbing evidence only we can see.’
‘James-’
‘I know, ma’am, on my head be it.’ He got out his mobile. ‘We can use the old reverse phone book to look up the number and see whose phone it is, but best foot forward.’ He dialled the number on the card. He waited a moment, then, without speaking, switched off his phone again. ‘Straight to voicemail, just the automated greeting.’
‘Are you going to interview Tunstall again?’ asked Lofthouse.
‘I’ll get that sorted for tomorrow,’ said Quill. ‘And this time we’ll all be bad cop.’
* * *
Sefton and Ross found the hotel that Gaiman’s agent had given them the address for. It was a simple three storeys, Victorian from the look of it, in the Seven Dials area, with the intersection of streets of that name visible from the door. Ross asked at the desk, and they were shown up to an ornate library, where armchairs were positioned in the sunshine and a breeze blew through the open windows. Nobody else was about. Sefton felt an ache in his legs as he sat down. He felt only half here, wanting to get on with finding the numinous in the world, but not knowing how. The Ripper, or rather his message, was exposing fault lines across London, and the bolder the rioters and rival groups of protestors became, the less the police seemed to be able to do to prevent them. His dreams made him feel as if he was being rifled through, and he woke with an urgent need to do something about all this. Still, he supposed, they were about to talk with someone who, according to Quill, might know more about occult London than they did. Background was always useful. But if Gaiman knew anything of direct relevance to the case, he’d be surprised.
‘Hullo.’ So this must be Gaiman, entering the room with a guarded expression on his face. He was all in black: a good-looking man, a long face, a lot of emotion around the eyes. Now he’d stopped and was looking startled at them. ‘You two are police officers?’
Sefton showed him his warrant card, and, as they all tended to do now, omitted to add that Ross technically wasn’t an officer.
‘I saw you both in the Goat.’ Gaiman motioned for them to sit down at a table by the window, and he followed. ‘Were you there undercover?’
‘That would be an operational matter,’ said Ross. She seemed burdened today, nervous about something. On the way over, she’d hardly replied to Sefton’s attempts to start a conversation.
Gaiman frowned at them for another moment, then seemed to decide on a more friendly course of action and extended his hand. ‘Neil.’ They introduced themselves in turn. ‘Thank you for blowing up my favourite bar.’
‘Sorry,’ said Sefton, ‘not deliberate.’
‘No, I think actually it was a mercy killing. You and your boss didn’t see the place at its best.’
‘Our boss?’ said Ross, raising an eyebrow.
‘The one who looked a bit lost there, stayed behind to help and looked like something out of The Sweeney.’
‘Our boss,’ Ross conceded.
‘He’s not an undercover,’ sighed Sefton.
‘Do you also have the Sight?’ Gaiman asked. From the look on her face, Ross was about to say that was also an operational matter, so Sefton quickly confirmed they did. ‘You’re the first police officers I’ve ever heard of who had the gift.’
‘Were you aware,’ asked Sefton, ‘of anyone before us who tried to bring law to the Sighted community?’
‘People say there was someone, but I don’t know who. Everyone seems to think that sort of went away a few years ago. I take it you’re investigating a particular case … and now, of course, I realize, having seen the news, that it’s obvious what that might be.’
‘We’re just putting together some background context,’ said Sefton, wishing he could share more information with this man. He was, after all, the only friendly human being they’d met who saw the world the way they did. A waiter arrived, and they all ordered tea. Gaiman asked for honey with his, and, while they waited, all aware that their conversation would get intense again once there was no possibility of being interrupted, talked about the bees he kept at his home in the States. ‘Each hive has its own personality,’ he said. ‘They have moods. You can’t really call a single bee an individual. The hive will sacrifice it for a greater good.’ Once the waiter had returned, he got them both to try a spoonful of the particular honey he’d asked for. It was, Sefton was pleased to discover, delicious.
When the waiter closed the door behind him, Gaiman put his hands on the table. ‘So … the Ripper…’
Sefton had got out his special notebook, which by now was a very randomly organized grimoire of notes and diagrams concerning ‘the matter of London’. Ross had got out her much more functional notebooks. ‘Sorry to keep on about it, but we can’t talk about operational matters. If you wouldn’t mind answering a few questions…?’