The MO didn’t exactly match how Varney had described his attack—multiple assailants, a strange-shaped knife—but it was way the hell too close for Greta’s taste. “Unless whoever got Varney was a copycat,” she said. “Or maybe there isn’t just one Ripper. Maybe it’s a group of people running around stabbing unsuspecting citizens.”
“There was nothing on the news about the murders that mentioned weird-shaped wounds,” Ruthven said. “Although I suppose the police might be keeping that to themselves.”
The police had not apparently been able to do much of anything about the murders, and as one victim followed another with no end in sight the general confidence in Scotland Yard—never tremendously high—was plummeting. The entire city was both angry and frightened. Conspiracy theories abounded on the Internet, some less believable than others. This, however, was the first time Greta had heard anything about the Ripper branching out into supernatural victims. The garlic on the walls of Varney’s flat bothered her a great deal.
Varney shifted a little, with a faint moan, and Greta returned her attention to her patient. There was visible improvement; his vitals were stabilizing, much more satisfactory than they had been before the extraction.
“He’s beginning to come around,” she said. “We should get him into a proper bed, but I think he’s over the worst of this.”
Ruthven didn’t reply at once, and she looked over to see him tapping his fingers on the arm of his chair with a thoughtful expression. “What?” she asked.
“Nothing. Well, maybe nothing. I think I’ll call Cranswell at the Museum, see if he can look a few things up for me. I will, however, wait until the morning is a little further advanced, because I am a kind man.”
“What time is it?” Greta asked, stripping off her gloves.
“Getting on for six, I’m afraid.”
“Jesus. I need to call in—there’s no way I’m going to be able to do clinic hours today. Hopefully Anna or Nadezhda can take an extra shift if I do a bit of groveling.”
“I have faith in your ability to grovel convincingly,” Ruthven said. “Shall I go and make some more coffee?”
“Yes,” she said. Both of them knew this wasn’t over. “Yes, do precisely that thing, and you will earn my everlasting fealty.”
“I earned your everlasting fealty last time I drove you to the airport,” Ruthven said. “Or was it when I made you tiramisu a few weeks ago? I can’t keep track.”
He smiled, despite the line of worry still between his eyebrows, and Greta found herself smiling wearily in return.
CHAPTER 2
Neither Ruthven nor Greta noticed when something that had been watching them through the drawing room window for some time retreated, slipping away before the full light of dawn could discover it; nor were there any passersby there to watch as it crossed the road to the river and disappeared down the water stairs by the Submariners’ Memorial.
In the early hours of that same Monday morning, the owner of a little corner grocery shop in Whitechapel came down to unlock the steel security grates over his display window and start preparing for the day. He had just rolled the grates up when he saw something in the street that at first he thought to be a stolen department store mannequin; on closer examination it turned out to be the body of a naked woman, her eyes nothing but raw red holes, with something pale spilling from her gaping mouth. He didn’t look closely enough to make out that this was a cheap plastic rosary: as soon as he’d finished being sick, he stumbled back inside and rang the police. By the time most people were awake, it was plastered all over the newsfeeds: RIPPER STRIKES AGAIN! DEATH TOLL RISES TO NINE.
A few streets away from the grocer’s shop and his unpleasant early morning discovery was the tiny office sign of Loders & Lethbridge (Chartered Accountants), one floor up from Akbar Kebab and an establishment offering money transfer and check-cashing services. The Whitechapel Road accounting firm predated its neighbors by approximately forty years, but times were tight all over, and it had been deemed wise to move the offices upstairs and let the ground-floor space to other businesses. This meant that the entire atmosphere of the firm was permanently permeated with the smell of kebabs.
Fastitocalon, who had worked as a clerk for the firm for almost as long as it had been around, didn’t really mind the grease and spice in the air, but he did object to taking it home with him in his clothes. He’d made the best of it by demanding of old Lethbridge that he be allowed to smoke in his office. This Lethbridge had grudgingly permitted, mostly because he enjoyed the occasional cigar himself—and perhaps on an unconscious level because he’d found that keeping “Mr. Frederick Vasse” more or less content seemed to be correlated with fewer boils on the back of his, Lethbridge’s, neck.
Lethbridge was actually one of the more accommodating employers Fastitocalon had known in his time. It wasn’t all that easy to find someone willing to hire a middle-aged and unprepossessing person with an oddly greyish complexion and a chronic cough, even if reassured that he wasn’t actually contagious. Lethbridge had overlooked the physical shortcomings and hired him because of his uncanny gift for numbers, which had worked out in everyone’s favor.
As a general rule Fastitocalon did his best not to read people’s minds, partly out of basic good manners and partly for his own sake—most people’s thoughts were not only banal but loud—but he knew perfectly well what Lethbridge thought of him. When he thought of Frederick Vasse at all.
Right now, for example, Lethbridge was thinking very clearly if he can’t stop that goddamn racket I’m sending him home for the day. Fastitocalon’s cough never really went away, but there were times when it was better and times when it was worse. He had run out of his prescription antitussives and kept meaning to call his doctor to get more of them, but hadn’t gotten around to it; the cough had been bad for several days now, a miserable hack that hurt deep in his chest no matter how many awful blue menthol lozenges he went through.
The thought of going home was really rather appealing, even if his flat was currently on the chilly side, and when Lethbridge came into his office a few minutes later scowling intently he argued against it—but didn’t argue very long.
Ruthven moved through the empty drawing room, picking up the debris of first aid supplies scattered on the floor around the sofa, the discarded gauze-pad and alcohol-wipe packaging looking oddly tawdry in the light of day. He was very much aware of the fact that he had not actually been bored for coming up on ten or eleven straight hours now, and that this was a profound relief.