‘It’s me, love. No, please, don’t hang up!’
She stopped herself swearing. ‘Who is this…?!’
‘If someone else had called you, I knew you wouldn’t believe it-’
‘Who is this?’
‘It’s me! It’s me! It’s because of … the stuff about me only a few of us know. Okay? Nobody else would believe this. But you can. You can, love, you can!’
She found a terrible hurt inside her. She was dreaming, wasn’t she? She’d had dreams like this in the last few days. This was hurting her with hope. ‘But-’
‘I didn’t want you just to open the front door and see-’
‘Where are you? Are you outside my house?’
‘It’s me, love. I’ve been waiting outside, wondering how to do this. I didn’t want you to open the front door and see me and be shocked by-’ But she’d dropped the phone and was grabbing at the chain and bolt on the door and she flung it open-
There he stood. In someone else’s clothes, but it was him. She reached out, threw a hand at him, expecting somehow to find nothing there. He grabbed it. He pulled her to him. He let her look into his face. He made her look into his face.
All the ability dropped from her lower body and she fell into him. She was … so furious at him. So enormously angry. This was too big … this was too big an impossibility.
‘Daddy!’ said Jessica, coming out to see them, pleased that he was home and nothing more.
Sarah looked to her, and then back at Quill’s face. He was still there.
Quill held out a hand from holding Sarah up. Jessica took it.
‘I went on a long journey,’ he said to her. ‘I came back.’
* * *
Sefton had one and a half days of solid sleep. Joe took time off work to look after him. He woke with the smell of a natural, early autumn coming through the window. ‘The centre held,’ he said, his voice a croak.
‘What?’ Joe had entered the bedroom with two cups of tea.
‘You said that was what crime fiction was about.’
‘Did I? It’s W.B. Yeats.’
‘Okay.’
‘They’ve found the Ripper’s body,’ said Joe.
Sefton hadn’t managed to tell his boyfriend anything about the ending of the case before collapsing with exhaustion. Now he frowned, unable to process that. ‘What?’
‘Bloke dressed in the costume, left a suicide note, a full confession. All the murders were on Vincent’s orders, he hid among the ranks of the Toffs but he hated them, and when the guilt became too much he killed Vincent then himself. Nice handwriting, apparently. He includes details of the murders, which the police — not your lot — are saying indicates it must all be true.’
Sefton sipped his tea and could only shake his head again. He had no idea what that meant.
* * *
Three days later, Quill’s team sat in the Portakabin at Gipsy Hill, watching Quill put an X of black tape across the photo of Vincent on the Ops Board. They were silent, washed out, exhausted. Sefton hadn’t expected Ross to come, but she’d entered right on time at the start of her shift, here to do her duty or face the consequences of her actions. She hadn’t made eye contact with Costain, who hadn’t tried to speak to her. Sefton was even more surprised that he was here.
He’d last seen Ross when the two of them had found Quill in a Whitechapel pub that had a lock-in of shift workers going on. They were scared shitless of the chaos on the streets and glad to include coppers. Costain had already gone home; that had been a condition of Ross coming to see Quill. She’d stared at him then, unable to believe it, unable, Sefton now understood, having heard everything from Quill, to feel happy at his return. Sefton, on the other hand, feeling as if he was about to die and needing to fall asleep, had just taken Quill in his arms and hugged him. Quill had hugged him back. Ross had managed only a few halting words to Quill. She’d managed to say it was good he was alive, but it had sounded almost like a guess. Then she asked if she and Costain were going to prison. The two of them had, after all, kept information from the investigation, committed offences. Ross had also lied to them about what she’d found in the Docklands documents.
Quill had just shaken his head. He looked as perplexed at what had changed in her as much as she was at him. ‘Condemned man — me, that is — gets a last request, and I choose to let you off. We can’t afford to lose you. What you’ve done to each other, to yourselves…’ He looked at her interrogatively again, as if hoping she’d suddenly smile. ‘I think that’s punishment enough.’
Ross had looked angry at him for that mercy. Then, with Quill calling after her, she’d turned and left the pub.
Sefton had thought about it and decided he might, given the same circumstances, have done the same things. His colleagues had been only human. How terrible that was.
‘We survived,’ said Quill now. ‘Well, you lot did, and I caught up.’ He indicated the list of operational aims on the Ops Board:
1: Ensure the safety of the public.
2: Gather evidence of offences.
3: Identify and trace subject or subjects involved (if any).
4: Identify means to arrest subject or subjects.
5: Arrest subject or subjects.
6: Bring to trial/destroy.
7: Clear those not involved of all charges.
‘Aims one to three … achieved, just about. The “Summer of Blood” is over. Everyone’s lapping up Mary Arthur’s story and this new revelation about the Ripper, fictional though it is. Vincent’s rival media barons have seized on it.’ The riots were dying down, and every party in this exhausted general election campaign was falling over itself to say it would negotiate with the police. Gaiman’s guess that the mood of London had been linked to solving the Ripper murders seemed to have been correct.
‘Where did that fake Ripper corpse come from?’ asked Sefton.
‘Lofthouse says she’s asked for a meeting with those she feels are responsible and will report back. It’s done some good for London, anyway. I don’t know if that wheel you and I saw on our adventures is turning the right way again now-’
‘It’s not.’ Sefton anticipated Quill’s question and shook his head. ‘I just know.’
Quill looked back to the list. ‘Aim five … I’d like us to go after Gaiman, but he seems to have vanished. Besides, since the man he successfully conspired to murder — that is, me — is now alive again, and because of the difficulties we’d have in walking a jury through that, I’m tempted to say let’s wait until he pops up again, then lean on him as a source rather than arrest him. And aim six … was achieved. But…’
‘But look at us,’ said Costain.
There was silence. Sefton looked again at the faces of his friends who’d betrayed and been betrayed and exhausted themselves and grieved and been to Hell, and remembered his own taking of a life and his own sacrifice. They had been pummelled by their experiences. They were so changed, once again almost strangers to each other. He didn’t see how they could continue to function as a team. Even Quill, who’d been trying to jolly them along with procedure, couldn’t seem to find the words to continue.
‘There is hope,’ said Ross. They all turned to look at her. She wasn’t looking back at them. She didn’t want to look at Costain at all, Sefton got the feeling. Her voice had sounded very small, very calm. ‘The Tarot of London,’ she said, ‘when that fortuneteller consulted it for me at the New Age fair during the Losley case, she said that the Hanged Man, who was my dad…’ She had to stop for a moment. ‘He was supposed to bring hope for us in summer-’
‘He did,’ said Quill, ‘during that case, and it was where he normally was in Hell that made me think of getting to a higher vantage point.’