“You just . . . you look good. You’re all dressed up. And, you know, the coat . . .”
“You only like me for my coat,” he said.
“Yup,” she replied. “It’s a long game I’m playing to get that coat.”
“Starts at five,” he said.
“What does?”
He shook his head.
They went to Embankment Station and took the Circle Line, which was a yellow spaghetti on the map, one that was twinned with the green District Line. They took the eastbound train, getting off in a few stops at a place called Aldgate. He walked her down a wide commercial street, mixed with large, modern office buildings made of glass, countless construction sites, some older, ornate places of gold brick, several betting shops, and a Burger King.
“Seriously,” she said.
“Almost there.”
As soon as she saw the first sign that said WHITECHAPEL, she knew. They turned a corner and found many people milling around—all tourists, like her.
“This way for the original tour,” a man in a top hat said. “Tickets are available. You should have a code if you bought online, so please have your mobile out so I can scan it and we can be on our way.”
“Is this . . . a Jack the Ripper tour?”
“Nothing’s too murdery for my princess,” he said. “I even coordinated with Janelle.”
David held out his phone and allowed the jowly man with the shock of long white hair to check them in.
Like any person who followed true crime, Stevie knew the basics of the Jack the Ripper case. London, 1888. A man haunted the streets and killed sex workers, women who were poor and trying to survive. He was famous for his rapid mutilations, some in places where he could easily have been discovered. But what he really was, was some dirtbag. The press had given him the nickname Jack the Ripper, and the case had been pumped up in the press. There was debate about how many victims he had, but most people had settled on five. Now he was a spooky folk hero.
She had by now been on a lot of tours. Unlike the other places she had been visiting, there were no fine buildings on this walk—no towers or turrets, no marble busts or spires. Henry the Third had never come this way. Instead, this walk led them down some pretty mundane streets in East London, mostly deserted for the night. They walked past fried chicken places, banks, pubs, vape shops, fabric stores . . . most of them were closed. There were streets of old warehouses of brown brick, now converted into luxury flats. The guide gave a low-key summary of the socioeconomic conditions of Victorian-era London, and the fact that the canonical victims of Jack the Ripper had been forced into sex work because they needed to eat. Many were addicted to the cheap gin that was sold absolutely everywhere, and was the only thing that made the rough life on the streets of the East End at all bearable.
Except he didn’t say it quite that way, and he didn’t call the victims sex workers.
People had come for the murders. People always come for the murders. Stevie had to admit that she was one of the people who had come for the murders—but it was not as simple as that.
“For weeks, all was quiet,” the guide said dramatically. “Then, on the thirtieth of September 1888, Jack the Ripper struck twice in one night—twice in just forty-five minutes—in what is now known as the double event. It was a vicious, miserable night, raining and hailing, gale winds . . .”
There was a buzzing noise coming from David’s coat pocket.
“。 . . how does he do it? How does he kill two people, in two different parts of town, in that short a time? How does he do his evil surgery in the dark of Mitre Square? Is he a phantom?”
“No,” Stevie said to herself.
Murder stories were always about the same thing at their heart—some twerp thought it was acceptable to take the life of another person. Murderers were small inside. People had died here, and they died because they were poor and vulnerable.
More buzzing.
“Who is that?” she asked.
“Izzy,” he said, looking down at his texts.
“Murderers are shadows,” the man said. “That’s their defining quality.”
“Murderers are assholes,” Stevie said, just loud enough to be heard. “That’s their defining quality.”
Someone turned. The guide gave a wry smile that suggested that he had met her ilk before, these young people with their ideas about society, and he found it amusing. As he moved the group along, Stevie put her hand on David’s arm and held him back.
“I really appreciate this,” she said, “but . . .”
“No. I’ve been wincing for the last half hour. There were some other Jack the Ripper tours. But I went with this one because the guy had a hat. I think maybe I picked a bad one. This was a hat-based mistake.”
“What does that even mean, murderers are shadows?” Stevie said to David.
“Who the fuck knows? Well. Seems like we have some time, then. How about dinner and some light entertainment? I can think of a few fun things to do. . . .”
And there it was. The spark. The electric moment.
This was the night. She could sense it now. She could feel the energy coming off the golden-brown bricks of the Victorian warehouses that were now apartments, the orange glow of the lights, the people slipping down the dark streets on electric scooters. It would happen.
Except his phone kept buzzing. He pulled it out of his pocket, thumbed a reply, and dropped it back in.
“Sorry,” he said. “Izzy’s freaked out.”
“About what?”
“Her aunt hasn’t replied to her texts. She’s worried that she’s mad about last night.”
“Yeah,” Stevie said. “I think she might be. I think Izzy kind of sprang all of that on her.”
There’s nothing about a lock. It was strong medication, Izzy.
“Come on,” he said. He wrapped his arm around her shoulders and took comically long steps, walking toward the Tube stop they’d passed a few minutes back. “I know where we should go. I’m taking you to the best restaurant in all of London.”
It was called Ali’s of London. It was, again, a plain white storefront with bright fluorescent lights, with a TV mounted on the wall playing a soccer match. In the window, there was a rotating vertical spit of roasted meat, off which one of the men behind the counter was expertly slicing thin pieces. David leaned against the counter with both hands, watching him work.
“Ali is an artist,” he said. “Look.”
Ali smiled and held up a slice of the meat. It was so thin you could almost see through it. As someone who had worked a deli counter for two weeks over the summer, she knew good meat slicing when she saw it.
“This,” David said, “is the food that keeps England running. This is the doner kebab. It is magnificent. Look.”
Another man was slapping flatbreads on the grill. The smell of the warm bread and the meat was intoxicating.
“People say fish and chips,” David went on. “No. People say sausages and mash. No. It’s the doner kebab.”
“He’s right,” Ali said as the man at the grill dropped the flatbread into a Styrofoam clamshell. “You want everything?”
“She wants everything,” David said. “This is my girlfriend. From America. She’s a famous detective.”