female voice barked out.
‘You leave that poor girl be, Terry Matchins!’
He stopped and turned. ‘Ah, not you!’ He spat a curse at her.
Faith saw a woman who could have been any age between twenty and thirty-five — so very difficult to tell. The woman’s skin was ruddy with rose-coloured splotches, several teeth missing and the rest an unpleasant vanilla colour. She was short and slight with auburn hair tied up in an untidy frizzy bun.
‘You better let her go! Or I’ll box yer ears!’
‘She’s comin’ round mine for a bit o’ supper. Ain’t ya, love?’
The short woman addressed Faith. ‘Love, that dirty ol’ goat’s not goin’ to feed yer anything that you’d want to eat. Terry ain’t got nuthin’ indoors but dirty intentions. He’s bloomin’ bad news is what ’e is!’
Faith turned to look at him. ‘Is this woman correct? You have no food?’ A cold glare and her face so close to his presented a challenge that unsettled the man and his firm grasp on her waist loosened. ‘I… I just thought you was lookin’ a bit peaky, love. I thought — ’
‘I know exactly what you was thinkin’!’ snapped the woman. ‘Go on, sling yer hook!’
The man bared brown teeth at her. ‘I’ll slice yer up one day, Mary! Next time yer so drunk ya don’t know it’s night or day, I’ll give yer a ruddy scar to remember!’
‘Yeah, yeah! So you’re the Ripper, are you?’ She stepped forward and pushed him. ‘Go on with ya! Go pester someone else, you rancid old fart!’
The man laughed and shrugged, and returned to his friend beside the fire.
The woman offered Faith a hand. ‘He’s right, though, you do look awful pale, love. I got some leftovers from yesterday.’ She frowned firmly; a face that wasn’t going to take ‘no’ for an answer. ‘Come on, let’s fix you some food. You look awful poorly.’
Faith extended a hand to the woman. A handshake: she’d learned that gesture of formal courtesy from Agent Cooper. ‘Thank you. I am Faith.’
‘Faith, is it? Well, since we’re doin’ introductions, I’m Mary. Mary Kelly. You’ll be safe with me, love.’ Her ruddy face split with a smile that even Faith was able to judge with a fair degree of certainty was entirely genuine. ‘Perfectly safe.’
Chapter 59
14 December 1888, Holborn, London
‘Oh my God!’ gushed Maddy, ‘I so-o-o-o love this!’ Her face was one big toothy smile framed by the wisps of her strawberry hair and the lace of her bonnet. ‘All of this! These posh clothes, this place! Don’t you think it’s so cool!’
Sal was fussing with her lace cuffs. ‘I feel like an idiot in this dress.’
Liam was in the same frame of mind as Maddy. ‘It feels like this could be our new home all right.’
Maddy sighed contentedly. Her first night in Victorian London. ‘Yeah, it’s almost like back home.’ Home. New York. A strange choice of word for that place, that — home — since she’d never actually had one. ‘Just as busy and bustling and vibrant as Brooklyn.’
‘Uh-huh,’ said Liam. His cheeks puffed up like a hamster’s as he worked his way through a pork pie.
She looked around the open-top wagon with its four small round tables and tall wobbly stools. There was even a serving counter on the end, behind which a barista busied himself roasting coffee beans on an open skillet over glowing coals. A whole coffee shop complete with its own canvas awning and colourful bunting right there on the flatbed of an open horse-drawn cart.
She grinned. ‘Starbucks 1880s style.’ She sipped steaming hot coffee from the mug cupped in her hands and smacked her lips. ‘Actually, even better than Starbucks. I mean, this is what I call fresh coffee.’
‘Aye.’
The meagre light of the overcast afternoon was fading, the featureless December-grey sky becoming a deep ocean blue. Maddy watched as one by one glimmers of flame winked on like fireflies in the gathering twilight; oil lamps on the street, candles behind net-curtain windows. As evening began to settle on Farringdon Street, it became a Dickensian painting; splashes of midnight blue for the advancing evening shadows, and ambers and golds for the glowing pools of gas and candlelight. And, with the evening almost fully upon them, it seemed to be getting busier still.
‘They seem to like their nightlife,’ said Sal.
Liam and Rashim had already spent a week of nights here in London as they’d been setting up the new field office. Partly because some of their banging around had been noisy enough that it kept attracting their curious landlord. He’d turn up at their door like a bad penny with various excuses as to why he was knocking. They soon realized that Mr Hook enjoyed his ale and was in the habit of spending his evenings in one public house or another, so their lifting, bumping and banging, bringing in bits and pieces of furniture to make it more like home, was better done then rather than during the day.
Liam looked round the street. ‘It is actually busier than normally, so.’
As well as a number of well-dressed gentlemen in top hats with elegant ladies on their arms — presumably quite usual for a Friday evening — there were several loose clusters of working men blocking the pavements further along the street. Liam presumed they were the overflow from various overcrowded public houses: men enjoying their ale at the end of the working week.
Maddy’s mood had suddenly changed as her thoughts returned to matters at hand. ‘We have to figure out what happened to Becks,’ she said.
‘It must have been a translation error,’ said Liam.
Rashim fussed with his glasses. ‘No, I don’t think so. I checked and rechecked everyone’s mass index. Something must have happened back in that school.’
‘Like what?’
‘Maybe a rat ran into her square or something?’ said Sal.
Rashim jumped on that. ‘Yes, it could easily be something like that… a rat, or a stray cat, or something.’
‘So, does that mean she’s somewhere here? Somewhere else in London?’
‘I don’t know, Maddy. It’s possible.’
‘She could be wandering around looking for us,’ said Sal.
‘Then we should have Bob and SpongeBubba switch on their Wi-Fi signals. If she gets within — what is it, half a mile range? — it’ll give her something to home in on.’
Rashim sipped his coffee. ‘But, Maddy, it is also equally possible she experienced mass convergence somewhere. This London is a dense place.’
‘She’d be dead, then.’ Rashim nodded.
‘Maybe something happened to her back in the school?’ Liam looked at the others. ‘Maybe those meatbots finally caught up with us.’
‘No.’ Maddy shook her head. ‘I’d say we probably lost them.’
The conclusion, then, wasn’t so great. Her body was lost: a pulp of flesh somewhere in London perhaps fused into the foundations of some building.
‘If that did happen, I just hope it was quick for her,’ said Maddy. ‘That she didn’t suffer too much.’
Losing their half-grown Becks, though, was more than just losing a colleague. Friend even. Maddy felt that there might have been a chance to ‘reason’ with her AI to finally agree to open that locked portion of her mind. Somehow, having reinstalled her complete personality from the rigid binary confines of a hard drive — an object that was never going to be reasoned with — she’d begun to hope that enough things had happened recently for Becks to consider opening up to her, revealing whatever message had been waiting two thousand years to be heard. A message, by the way, specifically intended for her! She ground her teeth in frustration. A message, Becks had claimed, that had been sent by her.
I sent myself a message from the future. Maddy shook her head, very much annoyed with her stupid future self. Why did I freakin’ well decide I have to wait until ‘certain conditions are met’ before I can learn what it is?
