“So, with all this money and time and effort, and too many maybes, why the hell don’t they just spend the same money and get some real assassins in? Let’s face it, we’re hardly expert hitmen, are we?”

That silenced them all for a while. It seemed an impossible confusion. Geraint, though, decided to do something while the others pursued their own thoughts.

“I think there’s one thing I can work on right now. We’ve had murders on November the eighth, fifteenth, and twenty-second. Okay, so the first half of the double event was on the twenty-first, but it still looks to me as if the twenty-ninth is a fair bet for number five-if there’s going to be a number five. And I really do think that there will. So excuse me while I begin to track down Mary Kelly. I’m afraid that we’re going to come up with a fair few Mary Kelly's. So I’ll make a start.” He walked to the cyberdeck.

Geraint sat absorbed in his frame programming as the others checked for any relevant reports on the trid news. Newstext had an item on mage warfare in the East End, two killed, but nothing on Catherine Eddowes. Serrin and Francesca were puzzled by that.

“They wouldn’t get baggies involved if there was any chance of keeping it quiet,” Rani explained. The pimps there handle any trouble themselves. They’d have barricaded the front doors and turned all the lights out as soon as they heard sirens. Customers wouldn’t like getting ID’d by the baggies either. They’d have cleared it all up themselves. Probably even sold her corpse to the meatmen.”

Serrin didn’t want to know any details about the meatmen. He remembered the trolls and their trays from the night before. “We can hardly go back and interrogate the orks about what they’ve seen,” He said. “Not after what I did to them. On the other hand, maybe Rani could…”

They sat staring at the screen as Geraint hunched over his desk. The first fall of snow was dropping on those parts of London not covered by the ragged remnants of the disastrous city dome, destroyed by a corrosive years ago. On the street it turned swiftly into gray- and brown-slicked filth, but against the penthouse windows the soft flakes hung for a second, almost white, before they melted. Serrin went to turn the central heating up a notch or two. He was shivering again.

Sunday, November 22, 2054. Noon. London. They’re going to try very hard to find Mary Kelly. They’ll find a whole bunch of them, but there’s only one who matters.

The monster’s head is beginning to fill with that Mary Kelly. He sees her picture, watches the hologram, begins to understand that she is a shield for the woman he hates and fears. Why, these are her clothes! He lifts the linen and cotton in his hands and wads them up in his balled fists. They have her scent on them, cheap floral perfume, and her woman’s smell. He watches the holograms dance; she is a skilled whore herself. The mania begins to burn in his brain, and his hands shred the clothing as the moans and groans fill his head. He is swiftly restrained, but the anger and hatred rage within him, his fear and terror.

The smiling man in the suit watches the vidscan. Four down, one to go.

23

Plans were beginning to form as dusk felt. They had decided from the outset not to contact the Metropolitan Police; their own role in the events surrounding Catherine Eddowes’ staying made that impossible. Geraint needed time to analyze data on the fifty-four Mary Kellys he’d discovered in the capital. The programs wouldn’t take longer than seconds to run. It was the programming that was going to take time. Before then, he would have to deal with his troublesome leg, and that meant a trip out of town.

There was another reason for that, too. Francesca had come up with the link to the British-based corporation. Transys Neuronet. It was into TN’s London system that she had pursued the bizarre, murderous persona that had nearly killed her, and though she didn’t want to meet the thing again she certainty wanted to find out more about it. Furthermore, Transys was the only corp with a facility of any size and importance in Cambridge that Serrin had not been paid to check out. They hadn't much more than suspicion, but it was enough to try some determined system invasion. Geraint and Francesca planned to deck into TN’s London system for a start.

“They may have a file on any of us, and if they do, it would be damn good to read it. Maybe they hired you, Serrin, and you, Rani, for the Fuchi attack. Why they didn’t get decent assassins in, I don’t know. Neither do I know what it was Francesca followed into their system. But I know enough to feel that it’s got to be worth a look. It’s going to be very dangerous, so one decker may not be enough.” Geraint paused for a moment’s thought.

“Francesca and I need to get out of town to penetrate their system,” he continued. But first we have to get in and analyze the structure, just have a look round, find where the personnel files are, the surveillance files, what they may have. You can bet your boots they’ll have trace and report IC to check where we come front Rani, that means that if we enter their Matrix system, they have ways of finding out who we are.”

He did his best to explain matters to the ork, who wasn’t following any of this too easily. In all her life the most complicated deal she'd ever seen was a decker using puny Italian demitech to rip off a Radio Shack. And when she’d asked that decker questions, he’d told her to mind her own business. In words of very few syllables.

“So, we have to disguise our decks. That means a little reconfiguring. The Lord Protector’s Office makes sure licensed decks have very identifiable internal ID codes. We have to change that by fooling around a little with the licenses, like putting fake plates on a car.” Rani grinned, getting the gist immediately. And we have to operate somewhere else. Oxford should do it. I can get my leg fixed there, too, no questions asked. Old college friend of mine”

“Which college?” Francesca asked perkily.

“Didn’t I ever tell you?” he asked. She shook her head. Peterhouse, My father’s doing. I’m afraid.”

I seem to remember someone telling me the only way to get in there was if you were Catholic, or gay, or both.”

He frowned at her. “Not these days. Hell, they’ve even started admitting women.”

Francesca let the jibe pass. Oxford and Cambridge were said to be great centers of learning, but the twenty-first century hadn’t changed them much. She knew that from dating their chinless upper-class graduates.

“That may get us somewhere. At the same time, I can put the Kellys through the mincer.” Geraint winced the moment the words were out, regretting the unfortunate expression. “If we get someone who looks plausible, we can give the police an anonymous tip.”

“Something else. Serrin, your visa runs out at the end of the month, doesn’t it?”

“Yep. ‘fraid so.”

“Wouldn’t you like to go abroad for a couple of days? Look, I know it sounds weird, but here’s the form. You want an extension to the visa, it takes six months for the Aliens section to get around to even considering it. No chance.”

“However, due to one of those weird technicalities that makes British justice the envy of the world, the powers that be will automatically add the days to your visa if you come up with an amazingly good excuse for disappearing abroad, like an illness or death in your family. Maximum of seven extra days. If you make it three, it’ll give us the extra time we need. After all, we’re expecting another killing on the thirtieth. If you have to fly off on that date it’s going to make anything we plan very difficult. Could you get a friend over the Pond to fax notification of a serious family illness to you?”