The Name of the Star - Maureen Johnson [25]
“Jerome is going to be a journalist,” Jazza said again. She was tipsy, rocking a little to the music.
“I’m not the only one who’s noticed this!”
I looked up at the camera. It was a fairly large one, long and thin, its electronic eye pointed right at us. There was another one next to it pointing in the other direction, so that both halves of the pub garden were covered.
“I’m not a prefect,” Jazza said suddenly.
“Come on, Jazzy,” he said, tucking up under her arm.
“She is.”
Jazza was talking about Charlotte, obviously.
“And what else is she?” Jerome asked.
Jazza didn’t offer any reply, so I chimed in with, “A bitchweasel?”
“A bitchweasel!” Jazza’s face lit up. “She’s a bitchweasel! I love my new roommate.”
“She’s a bit of a lightweight,” Jerome explained. “And never let her have gin.”
“Gin bad,” Jazza said. “Gin make Jazza barf.”
Jazza sobered quickly on the way home, which was exactly when I felt the fizziness in my own head. I started to tell Jerome some of the stories I’d been telling Jazza the other night—Uncle Bick and Miss Gina, Billy Mack, Uncle Will. When he dropped us off on the steps under the large WOMEN sign over our door, he had a strange and unreadable look in his eye. Charlotte was sitting at the desk in our front lobby, a checklist and a Latin book in front of her.
“Nice night?” she asked as we came in.
“Wonderful,” Jazza said, a little too loudly. “And you?”
For the first time, as I walked up the winding stairs, I felt like I was coming home for the night. I looked down the long stretch of our hallway, with its gray carpets and odd bends and multiple fire doors breaking the path, and it all seemed very familiar and right.
The rest of the night was cozy. Jazza settled down with her German. I replied to some e-mails from my friends back home and noodled around on the Internet for a while and thought about doing French. Nothing disturbed my peace of mind until I was pulling the curtains for the night. As I did, something caught my eye. I had already yanked the curtain shut before my brain registered that it had seen something it didn’t like, but when I opened it again, there was nothing out there but some wet trees and cobblestones. It had started to rain. I stared for a moment, trying to figure out what I’d seen. Something had been right below—a person. Someone had been standing in front of the building. But that was no surprise. People stood in front of the building all the time.
“What’s the matter?” Jazza asked.
“Nothing,” I said, pulling the curtain shut again. “Thought I saw something.”
“This is the problem with all of this media coverage of the Ripper. It makes people afraid.”
She was right, of course. But I noticed she pulled the curtains on her side more tightly closed as well.
GOULSTON STREET, EAST LONDON SEPTEMBER 8 9:20 P.M.
VERONICA ATKINS SAT AT HER DESK IN HER TOP-FLOOR flat, overlooking the Flowers and Archers. She tucked one foot up on her chair and rotated slowly back and forth, then blindly reached around into the mess of bottles and cans and dirty mugs to put her hand on her current cup of tea. Veronica was a freelance IT consultant and graphic designer. Her flat was her studio. The front room, the one that looked out over the Flowers and Archers, contained her worktable.
Of course now was the deadline to get this website done, one of her biggest and most lucrative jobs of the year. The contract had no provision for lateness due to the fact that the Ripper chose to strike directly across the street, at her pub. In fact, she had installed the CCTV cameras at the pub after they had been robbed last year. Because she was friendly with the owner, she’d done it for a fraction of the normal cost. In return, he provided her with free drinks. Earlier in the day, she’d watched the police remove the recorder. They would be watching the results of her work . . .
Didn’t matter. Nor did the sirens, the noise of the everincreasing numbers of police going in and out of the mobile lab parked outside of her building, the helicopter