A significant number of them said they felt that things had once been different, even after they’d died. They thought the place they were in had changed but they couldn’t remember how. That made sense, considering what Quill’s team had found out on earth about the point when everything seemed to have changed, the moment when the Docklands headquarters of the Continuing Projects Team had fallen. Perhaps this Hell was not eternal after all, but actually quite new, in terms of its rules and how many people were in here. In all his walking, he still had not found any limits to this generic metropolis. It kept telling him that it did have some, that it was growing every second. However, every street was packed with people, much more so than Quill had ever seen in the real London.
‘They always come for us in the end, sir,’ said one of the constables in a police station he entered. The interior of it was like something out of Gilbert and Sullivan: a lot of men, and only men, from different times, judging by their haircuts, all squeezed into Victorian uniforms, performing endless slapstick comedy and making jolly comments. ‘It is how you spend your time before that … I was about to say that it counts. It does not.’ He would be paid, he was told, amid much laughter at the obviousness of the newcomer’s question, with a certain amount of time on his clock, ‘at the end of the week’. Whenever that was. That seemed to be something that could be moved or taken away.
He stopped on the threshold as he walked out. There was something here that did not seem to be compromised by Hell. It was surely a trap, a device to give him hope, but … ‘What the Hell,’ he said out loud.
He was still being paid to be a policeman. Those in charge of him were arbitrary and miserly. So no change there.
A number of persons of interest in the matter of the Ripper murders would almost certainly be in this most outer of outer boroughs.
He would do his duty and continue his investigation. It would, at least, be something to do until they came for him.
* * *
He found Spatley first. He was working as the director of a home for wayward girls. It looked like a factory, with enormous chimneys. He watched as parties of female children were herded out of police vans and through the doors.
He saw posters and heard that Spatley was going to give a speech. Quill went along and found he couldn’t get through the crowd. He stayed at the back and watched. Spatley stood onstage with banners and complacent matrons and stern sponsoring men who looked proud to be there. Spatley himself was in a high collar so starched that Quill was sure it made him stand straighter. But Spatley was sweating, and his eyes looked desperate. ‘If I was not here to hold the powers that control this world back, to moderate their policies,’ he said, ‘then things would be so much worse. I’m doing a good job here. What I do here is important.’ The rest of it was drowned out by audience laughter.
Afterwards, Quill went into the dark factory, barged past a pair of stout yeomen at the door and marched into Spatley’s office. The man looked up from his work with an admirable amount of poise. ‘What is the meaning of this affront?’
‘Listen to you, already going native.’ Quill sat down opposite him, in what turned out to be a squirmingly uncomfortable chair made of … he stood up and didn’t look at it again. ‘It’s not often I get a chance to ask this: why do you think you were killed?’
‘I’m … not certain. I don’t deserve to be here-’
‘That’s what they all say. What do you know about a prostitute by the name of Mary Arthur?’
Spatley looked suddenly, desperately, guilty.
‘Mr Spatley,’ said Quill, ‘you’re in Hell. Even if, for some unimaginable reason, you think you can mitigate this place, what further trouble do you think an admission of guilt could get you into?’
Spatley looked at him for a moment as if his world was crumbling. ‘I … was lured to a hotel room,’ he said. ‘With an offer, an offer that very specifically catered to my … It was like someone had looked inside my head. But it seemed too perfect … I mean, I went because I wanted to spring the trap. Seriously.’
‘I believe you, sir.’ He actually did.
‘I pretended to be outraged that she was dressed as a schoolgirl. Well, actually, I was outraged. Or I would have been, had I not been there, you know, deliberately.’
‘Could we please get to the meat of this, sir?’
‘I sent her into the bathroom to change and took a look in her bag. I found her phone, discovered that that was her real name, Mary Arthur. There was a text message on the phone that described what was supposed to happen as a “honey trap”. She was meant to take photos of me, to compromise me. I wrote down the number of whoever had sent her that text on the back of a card I found in her bag. When she came out of the bathroom, I sat her down and told her I knew everything. I tried to get her to come with me to the police, to tell them all about the man who’d hired her, although I was sure he must be an employee, a deniable freelancer. She listened; I’ll give her that, she was interested. I ended up telling her all about my suspicions concerning who was behind this trap, put the story together for the first time — the first time I’d told it all to anyone.’
‘Who did you think was behind the trap?’
‘Russell Vincent, of course.’
Quill frowned. ‘Go on.’
‘I was about to start assembling my forces for a major inquiry into how he was attempting to influence government. A certain number of ministers to the right of the Tories adored him, but some of the moderates seemed actually afraid of him. It was as if he had a hold over individual MPs. The attempted honey trap convinced me I was right, that he was blackmailing his way towards some enormous … coup.’
Quill didn’t know enough to make a guess about how credible that was. ‘I take it Mary Arthur didn’t agree to give evidence?’
‘No. She said, sorry, she already felt a bit threatened by how scared the man she’d worked for had seemed of a boss he wouldn’t talk about. If she’d fucked up a job for someone as powerful and dangerous as that, she said, she was going to have to vanish for a while. I wished her well and felt worried about how I’d burdened her with so much of the truth. I decided to stop gathering evidence and move to acting against Vincent as soon as possible. I don’t know how he could have known my intentions, because I’d told nobody, but I think, on reflection, that my plan was what got me killed.’
Quill was starting to wonder at how calm the man seemed. ‘Don’t you want … I don’t know, revenge for what Vincent did to you?’
There was something a little cracked in Spatley’s smile in return. ‘Look at where we are. Here I am, making a difference. I don’t think I’d better allow myself thoughts of revenge.’
Quill wondered at the plasticity of mind of this politician. ‘I gather you lost the card with her employer’s phone number on it?’
‘Yeah, somewhere in my office, I think. Though I kept wondering if it had been taken, because I often got the feeling that the place was being searched. It didn’t matter. I’d written down both the number and the address of the establishment.’