The Name of the Star - Maureen Johnson [96]
“King William Street station,” Boo said. “I looked it up. It’s a disused Tube station just north of London Bridge.”
Stephen looked over her shoulder at the entry on the station.
“What’s this down here?” he said, pointing. “Also the scene of a failed drugs bust in 1993 that resulted in the death of six undercover police officers.”
“Bit of a strange coincidence that he wants to meet Rory at an abandoned station where six police officers died, isn’t it?” Boo asked.
“Very,” Stephen said. “There’s a link to an article. Click on that.”
They were still scanning this when Stephen’s phone started to ring. He answered it and listened, mumbling a few yeses, then hung up.
“They traced the texts,” he said. “All different phones, all triangulated to a pub two streets over. There’s a party in there tonight. We can trace all the owners, but that’s irrelevant. He’s just picking up phones. What matters is that he’s close by.”
“Which is fine,” Boo said. “We’re ready for him. This thing about the station . . . he can’t mean it.”
I pulled Boo’s laptop over. They were reading from a “this day in history” news site. Down the left side of the page, there was a column of photographs, the faces of the victims.
At first I thought I was imagining things. I definitely wasn’t feeling right in the head.
“I don’t like it,” Stephen said, taking off his helmet and setting it on the table. He rubbed his hands through his hair until it stuck up. “We know he’s close to this building right now. Why tell her to go across town to some old station?”
“Maybe he wants her to come out, and he kills her when she does?”
“Possibly,” Stephen said.
I ignored the casual way they were talking about my impending murder. My attention was still drilled on the screen. No. It wasn’t my imagination at all.
“He wants me to go to where he died,” I said.
Boo and Stephen both looked at me. I pointed to the fifth picture down the side of the screen.
“That’s him,” I said, pointing to the bald man smiling back at us. “That’s the Ripper.”
31
A LONG SILENCE GREETED THIS ANNOUNCEMENT.
I was still staring at the photo on the screen. The Ripper had a name—Alexander Newman. In life, he smiled.
“Rory,” Stephen asked, “are you sure that’s him?”
I was sure.
“She’s right,” Boo said, leaning in and staring at the photo. “I didn’t even recognize him. I mostly remember him throwing me into the bloody road. But she’s right.”
“This changes things,” Stephen said. “He’s playing a game with us. It’s just after two, so we have two hours.”
He paced the study room for a moment. There was a knock on the door. He threw it open to find Claudia in the doorway.
“Yes?” he snapped.
“All right in here?” she asked.
“Just doing some follow-up questioning,” he said.
Claudia didn’t look convinced. Now that I thought about it—Stephen really did look young, and he’d been around a lot. I don’t think she questioned that he was a policeman, but I’m not sure she was completely convinced that he was around the building purely for police reasons.
“I see,” she replied. “Well, make sure to pop by on your way out, please.”
“Yes, I will,” Stephen said quickly. “Thank you.”
He didn’t exactly slam the door in her face, but he came fairly close.
“We do two things,” he said. “We make him think that Rory will meet him. We’ll draw him away from here. The second thing is, we get Rory out of this building without anyone noticing.”
“Why?” Boo asked.
“Because,” he said impatiently, “before, we thought he was just going to come here and we’d be waiting. But now I have no idea where he plans on going or what he plans on doing. So our move is, we confuse him. He’s been in control of this situation for so long, I can’t imagine he’ll be pleased if he thinks he doesn’t know what’s going on for a moment. Is there any other way out of this building besides the front door?”
“The only other way I know is through the bathroom window,” I said. “And they fixed the bars.”
“You can’t go out a window. This building is surrounded.