‘There’s more important things than –’ she struggled not to curse – ‘making us comfy!’
He looked hurt. ‘I just wanted it to be nice for you two.’
Maddy’s stern gaze turned to Rashim.
‘And, uh … I’ve been making money, and of course wiring this place up.’
Maddy looked down at the paper and picked bits to read out loud. ‘… rioting in the East End: Whitechapel, Spitalfields. Riots also beginning to occur in Liverpool, Manchester.’ She skimmed the columns of small newsprint. ‘Groups of anarchists, libertarians, troublemakers and ne’er-do-wells gathering in every city, every town, every village to protest about …’ She fell silent, skimming the words ahead, her lips moving.
‘What? Protesting about what?’
She raised a finger. ‘Just a sec … lemme finish.’
‘I have to say, I always thought Victorian Britain was supposed to be an ordered place,’ said Rashim. ‘Disciplined, you know? The famous British stiff upper lip? That’s the right expression, isn’t it?’ He shook his head. ‘Those men outside? All that anger? That naked aggression? It reminded me very much of my time. Always the riots. Every day news-streams showing a war or a food riot somewhere. Militia with guns stripping possessions from refugees.’ He shook his head. ‘That is what the end days of a failing civilization look like. It’s an ugly, sad thing.’
‘It was beginning to go that way in my time too,’ added Sal. She snorted humourlessly at something that occurred to her. ‘I should say our time.’ She looked at Liam. ‘After all, the three of us come from the same time, right? Same time, same place, same test tube?’
Liam sighed. ‘Best forget about that, Sal.’
She ignored him. ‘When exactly is our time, huh? I mean … when exactly was our particular batch of meatbots cooked up? Hmm? 2030? 2040? 2050? 20–’
‘Just let it go, Sal!’ snapped Liam irritably. ‘Why don’t you just forget about –’
‘Because I can’t! I’m a product. So’s Maddy. So are you! I can’t forget that!’
‘No!’ He shook his head. ‘Jayzus-n-Holy-Mary, no, I’m not acting the maggot! No! I’m still who I thought I was. I’m still Liam and I’m still from Cork, Sal! And I’ll tell you something else for nothing; I’m bleedin’ well remaining that same person! Do you understand? And so you should!’ He looked self-consciously back at the others. They were staring at him, taken aback by his angry outburst.
‘Well …’ he huffed dismissively. ‘That’s all I’ve got to say about this foolish nonsense!’ He slapped the arm of the chair. ‘There! Look, I’m all angry now!’
They sat in a long and awkward silence, an old clock ticking far too noisily in the corner of the dungeon; the deep rumble of Holborn Viaduct’s generator could be heard through several brick walls, doing its clanking, rumbling best to keep the immediate surrounding street lights glowing.
‘You think what you want, Liam,’ Sal sighed. ‘It’s all lies in the end. It’s all –’
‘Will the pair of you knock it off?’ snapped Maddy. ‘This is far more important!’ She shook the paper in her hand for emphasis. ‘This is a contamination. Right here! In this paper – a contamination!’
Sal shrugged. ‘So? It’s not like we have to fix them any more.’
‘Don’t you see, Sal? It means we’re not alone!’
Liam suddenly looked up. ‘Ah Jay-zus! Becks?’
Maddy shrugged. ‘Or someone else.’ She carried on reading parts aloud. ‘… continuing riots in response to the recent shocking revelation of the Ripper’s true identity.’
‘Whitechapel! The Ripper. Jack the Ripper! You mentioned him earlier,’ said Rashim.
Liam nodded. ‘Aye, and the big mystery was they never found out who the fella was.’
‘But now it seems they have,’ replied Maddy.
‘Who is it?’ Sal said, suddenly a lot more interested in what was in the paper than she was brooding by herself.
‘A man called Lord Cathcart-Hyde. A knight of the realm,’ Maddy added, skim-reading the paper, ‘a Freemason, a member of the House of Lords, and until recently a senior member of the government.’
‘Jahulla!’ Sal sat up. ‘Seriously?’
‘Uh-huh.’ Maddy raised a finger to shush her and continued reading in silence for another couple of minutes as the others waited impatiently. Then finally she looked up at them.
‘This story’s been rumbling on for just over a month! This posh guy, Cathcart, was attempting to murder another woman.’ She consulted the article. ‘Mary Kelly.’
‘Aye! That’s it, she was the last woman to be killed by Jack the Ripper!’ said Liam.
‘In correct history, yes! But apparently she managed to fight back. Fought back and killed the man!’
‘Blimey,’ said Liam. ‘What a woman.’
‘Good for her,’ said Sal. ‘It’s not very often the good guy wins. Not in real life anyway.’
Maddy looked over the top of her glasses at them. ‘Point is, folks, she’s become a national hero over the last four weeks.That’s a big goddamn contamination! That shouldn’t have happened. And these riots that are springing up all over England are part of that contamination.’
‘Maddy is correct,’ said Bob. His deep voice rumbled with admonishment. ‘This is a major contamination and must be corrected.’
‘Thank you, Bob.’ She looked down at the paper: headlines screaming out anger and rage on behalf of the common man. Friend of Queen Hunted East End Women For Sport! Cathcart-Hyde – Evil Resides Among the Rich.
‘Those people out there are enraged. They’re out in the streets because this is, like, the final straw. One thing too many. I guess they’re seeing this as an example of the rich considering themselves above the law. That this lord guy was carving up common street women just for fun! Treating it like a … like some sort of a fox hunt!’
‘Yes.’ Rashim nodded. ‘It has escalated into a class issue.’
‘Exactly! And you heard that coffee-store guy – this is going to get worse.’ Maddy looked down at the paper. ‘It’s been a slowly escalating news story and –’ she shook her head – ‘we’ve only just noticed it.’
Through the thick brick walls they could hear the faint roar of voices in the street outside. The barista was right, tonight trouble had spilled west towards central London. They heard a chorus of hooves on cobblestones passing by outside – mounted police called in to disperse the gathered protesters.
‘Liam? Rashim?’ Maddy sounded exasperated. ‘Jesus, didn’t either of you guys notice anything at all brewing up in the background while you were fixing things up in here? I mean, this story has been running in all the papers for the last month!’
Liam shook his head. ‘No … uh, not really, no. I didn’t read any of them papers.’
‘This last week we’ve been inside, in here,’ added Rashim, ‘mostly.’
She sighed. Faintly they heard the shrill tone of a police whistle, the neighing and stamping of uneasy horses, a chorus of male voices united in chanting some slogan. The first tinkle of breaking glass.
‘Bob, we need some more background data. Do a search on your on-board database. Use the search term “Whitechapel Murders”.’
‘Affirmative.’
Back in Harcourt Maddy had loaded him up with a dump of data pulled off the Internet about Victorian times, London in particular. It wasn’t targeted particularly cleverly: basically a ‘copy and paste’ of everything she could find online that she casually dumped into his head. Once they got round to networking the computers and had the system up and running again, she intended to have him Bluetooth the whole lot across. But right now his hard drive made him the historical expert.
‘Whitechapel,’ said Bob. His eyelids flickered as he consulted his database. ‘Information: 1888, Whitechapel murders. Also commonly referred to as the Jack the Ripper murders, and the Leather Apron murders.’
Liam nodded. ‘Aye, I remember Delbert said something about that. Said
the killer’s other nickname was the Leather –’
‘Shhhh!’ Maddy flapped a hand at Liam. She nodded at Bob to go on.
‘I will extrapolate and summarize facts from what I have.’ He closed his eyes. ‘Through the late summer and winter of 1888, a series of gruesome murders of women. Mostly prostitutes. In the terminology of this time – tarts, street ladies. There were five murders attributed to the same murderer because their methodology was strikingly similar.’
‘Methodology?’ asked Sal. ‘You mean how they were killed?’
‘Affirmative. The method of their murder. How they died,’ he replied. ‘In all five cases their throats were severed to the vertebrae; they were almost completely beheaded. Their abdomens were –’
‘Save that for later, Bob,’ said Maddy. ‘We don’t need that detail right now.’
‘Of course.’ He resumed. ‘The post-mortem mutilations were immediately distinct, bearing a striking resemblance to Freemason rituals. After the third murder the national press was making veiled accusations that the killer might not be some commoner with basic knife-craft skills – a butcher or a fishmonger for instance – but instead some high-born figure with Masonic associations, possibly medical knowledge. The last murder attributed to the killer was a woman called Mary Kelly. Her body was discovered in Miller’s Court in the early hours of the ninth of November. The killer was never caught or identified, and no further murders were deemed similar enough in method to be attributed to the same man.
‘At the end of the twentieth century several historians considered there might be a royal connection to the murders.’ Bob paged his mind for further details. ‘Context: London in the 1880s was as close as it was ever going to come to a workers’ revolution similar in nature to the one that occurred in Russia.’
‘Well, that certainly seems true enough,’ said Rashim. He cocked an ear at the faint noises of rioting coming from Farringdon Street.
Maddy nodded. ‘Jack the Ripper should never have been identified. The ninth of November should have been the last Ripper victim and then it all stops, and becomes a mystery forevermore. Only … a month ago, ninth of November, something very different happened. The last victim killed him instead … and has now become the figurehead for a revolution.’
‘Oh boy,’ squealed SpongeBubba, ‘someone’s been naught-eee!’
Maddy could see that Bob was eager to say something. ‘You think we should intervene?’
‘This is a significant contamination. The point of contamination origin in terms of time and space is very close to us.’
‘You think we should intervene, Bob?’
‘I am not programmed to define agency policy, Maddy.’
‘Oh, cut the crud, Bob. Just speak your mind!’
‘Give him a rest, Maddy,’ said Liam. ‘He can’t do opinions. He’s not really made that way.’ He got up, wandered across the dungeon and patted Bob affectionately. ‘But we are made that way.’
She nodded at that. ‘OK … then this seems to be the first test case for our new mission parameters. That’s a pretty big change going on outside. So … I guess the way we deal with this is we check the outcome. We take a look forward in time to see where this is going to take us. And depending on what we see, we’ll have to decide whether this Mary Kelly gets to live or … you know, die.’
‘That’s kind of brutal,’ said Sal. ‘That’s a lot of judgement in our hands.’
‘Yeah … I sort of didn’t think about that bit.’ Maddy chewed her lip. ‘That kinda makes us judge, jury and executioner in this kind of situation. That’s a lot of … of power. Sheesh, I’m not sure how I feel about that. It was sort of easier when we were just following orders.’
‘There’s a quote I can think of,’ said Liam. ‘I don’t know if it helps us or not.’
‘Go on, let’s have it.’
‘With great power comes great responsibility.’
‘What is that … Shakespeare or something?’
‘Uh … no. Spider-Man.’
Chapter 61
15 December 1888, Holborn Viaduct, London
At about 11 p.m. the night before, they’d heard the first wagonloads of Metropolitan Police arriving to try and restore some order. The rioting increased in intensity and they heard a volley of shots being fired in the early hours of the morning. As the first touch of dawn began to lighten the night sky, the angry mob had finally melted away.
Now, in the cool steel-grey light of the morning after, with a light drizzle spitting fat drops of rain on to the cobbles, it looked like a war had been fought across Farringdon Street.
‘Hoy! Mr O’Connor, Dr Anwar!’ It was Delbert Hook and his assistant, Bertie. They emerged from the warren of archways and passageways to join them, standing just outside their side door, beneath the looming iron arches of Holborn Viaduct.
‘Spent the blimmin’ night, me an’ Bertie, guarding our front entrance and praying we wasn’t about to be cleared out and robbed blind.’ He shook his head and tutted. ‘Blasted anarchists, some of them even ’ad a go at our doors with ’ammers an’ the like.’
He finally noticed Maddy and Sal; his scowl washed away and was replaced with a greasy charm. ‘And who are these delightful young ladies?’
‘Friends of ours. This is Maddy Carter.’
Delbert reached for her offered hand. She’d expected it to be shaken; instead, he stooped and kissed her knuckles. ‘Enchanté!’ he said with cavalier flamboyance. ‘That’s French, that is, love.’
‘Right,’ she said, doing her best to smile. ‘Yeah, I sort of figured that. Hello.’
‘And this is Saleena Vikram.’
Sal stuck her hand out and chuckled at Delbert’s theatrical gesture. ‘Your moustache tickles!’ She giggled as he kissed the back of her hand.
He stood up, straightened his rumpled waistcoat. ‘Are you ladies ’ere to help with Dr Anwar’s experiments?’
Maddy looked to Liam for the answer. He’d mentioned that he’d spun Delbert Hook a vague cover story to do with science and experiments. She wasn’t so sure she liked the idea of being seen as some sort of mere lab assistant to Rashim, though; just because she was female she had to be the gopher not the brains?
Typically sexist.
She sighed. ‘We’re here to help him out, I guess. And you … you must be our landlord, Mr Hook? Liam’s told me a little bit about you.’
‘Mr Delbert Hook at your service, ma’am. Although you can also call me Del if you so wish. Self-made businessman. Importer and exporter of the finest goods in the world. You name it, and I can probably get ’old of it. And if I can’t, I’ll know someone who can. And this tall drink of milk standing behind me is Bertie.’
The young man offered a limp, pen-pusher’s hand to the girls. ‘Herbert actually. I do his accounts for him.’
Delbert looked out. Shopkeepers were already trying to restore some semblance of order to the street, brushing up piles of debris, the shards of glass, damaged, soiled goods looted from their stores and discarded in the dirt of the road. ‘Shocking business this is. We’ve ’ad this going on in the East End of London for the last four nights in a row now. First time it’s spread here to Holborn, though. Never thought it would come this way.’
‘I was reading about it in yesterday’s paper,’ said Maddy. ‘This has something to do with those murders in Whitechapel, doesn’t it?’
Delbert sucked on his teeth. ‘Any excuse for these yobbos to make a ruckus and take all they want, as far as I can see.’
‘They’re anarchists,’ said Herbert. ‘Workers, the common man. And they have good reason to be angry, Del. It’s an unjust country. The rich get richer and the poor starve. Those murders …’ Herbert paused and stroked his thin, pencil-line moustache. ‘That was just the tinderbox to the fire. There were riots brewing anyway, but that lady, Miss Mary Kelly, she’s an inspiration to the poor, isn’t she? An inspiration to the oppressed proletariat.’
‘Proletariat?’ Delbert turned round sl
owly and looked up at his assistant. ‘Listen to yer and yer poncey posh-boy talk. Since when did you swallow a whole blimmin’ dictionary?’
‘I read a lot, Del. When I’m not keeping your business running for you, or humping boxes around for you, I actually read. You should give it a try.’
‘You think this is going to get worse?’ Maddy directed her question at the young man.
Herbert nodded, his eyes wide, his Adam’s apple bobbing like a fisherman’s float. ‘Oh yes, Miss Carter, I think this’ll get a great deal worse.’
They let Delbert and Herbert get back to patching up the damage to the front doors to their business and decided to take a walk down Farringdon Street. Then along Blackfriars Passage, all the way down to the River Thames. Across the city’s skyline, beyond London Bridge, they could see smudges of smoke rising up to the overcast sky. Hundreds of smouldering fires from the riots last night. It seemed the unrest had spread out of the East End in all directions – south over the river to Newington, into the City of London. And, if the view hadn’t been obscured by the tall quayside warehouses along the river’s edge, Maddy suspected they’d see more hairline columns of smoke to the north of them.
‘It’s a real mess.’ Sal pulled a lace veil aside so Maddy could see her eyes more clearly. ‘Maybe we can go back now?’ Sal chose to wear a broad-brimmed ‘ladies’ touring hat’ with dark lace trim that dangled over the edge and hid most of her face. She felt a little better that way. It was the combination of having darker skin in a city where there appeared to be virtually no black or Asian people – that and wearing clothes that she felt looked like pantomime costumes. Walking the streets by gaslight was one thing, but by broad daylight she felt too many eyes lingering curiously on her.
‘Yeah, let’s go back.’ Maddy nodded. ‘We need to decide what we’re going to do next.’
Half an hour later they were back inside the dungeon, top hats, bowlers and bonnets dangling from their coat rack.