Mayhem Read Free Page A

vault.
    ‘You don’t think it’s him , do you?’ The detective spoke quietly. I didn’t need to ask for clarification: there was only one him being spoken of across London, and he even had a name now, after the letter of five days ago. Jack the Ripper . It had a ring to it, I had to admit. Whitechapel’s fear now had an identity.
    ‘No,’ I said. ‘I don’t think so.’ It was barely fortyeight hours since the deaths of the last two women, Elizabeth Stride and Catherine Eddowes, and in homes across London, and in Whitechapel in particular, the bubble of hysterical chatter that was becoming a vocal demand for the killer to be caught would become hard for the men of H Division to control, should those residents decide to take matters into their own hands. ‘And you would do well to perhaps be loud in those assumptions yourself, Detective. There is enough fear on these streets, and Jack is getting enough publicity without our help.’
    ‘Yes,’ Hawkins said, ‘but it won’t be me talking to them. I’ll be passing this case on.’ He sounded relieved. ‘They’ve sent two inspectors over from Scotland Yard – Moore and Andrews – to help catch this Ripper. Experienced detectives, they are. CID. I’ll give this to them, just in case.’
    Behind us two men emerged from the building site,carefully carrying the pitiful remnants of the body and the newspaper in which it had been wrapped, both now swaddled in sacking. One of them was the reserve officer, Constable Barnes, who had been called in to help mind the new building site; he had been the first among them to see the contents of the gruesome package earlier that afternoon. He had certainly got more than he had bargained for on this assignment.
    We watched silently as they climbed into the waiting cab.
    ‘How the hell did it get down there?’ Hawkins asked. ‘And unnoticed?’
    ‘That, my friend,’ I said as I dampened my pipe and stared into the darkening street, ‘is for your inspectors to fathom. My part of the puzzle will meet me at the mortuary.’
    *
    I had fully intended to go home when my initial work with the remains was done, for I would need to be back in the morning to start the post mortem examination, and had already sent a message to Dr Hebbert to meet me no later than half-past seven in order to get the procedure underway. I myself would be there well before that, but Charles didn’t suffer with my sleep affliction, and I felt no call to drag him out too early simply because my own bed was my enemy.
    Alone in the quiet mortuary, I had cleaned the torso and placed it in alcohol, both to preserve it and to kill off the teeming maggots. There was no urgency foran accurate time of death – and no way of giving one, other than death clearly occurred weeks before – so there had been no cause for me to work through the night, not when a fresh mind in the morning would work better.
    A fresh head had been my hope, at any rate, so I had been determined to go home to a light supper, and then take myself straight to bed with a book, in the hope of getting at least six hours’ sleep, though I would happily have settled for four or five. I had felt exhausted as I had prepared to leave, but yet again I found myself waking up, as I had done most evenings during this past three months. The exhaustion had sunk too far into my bones to disappear, but still my grainy eyes widened and my brain refused to quieten.
    Without making any real conscious decision, instead of reaching for my overcoat, I rummaged behind the medicines cabinet for the clothes that I kept hidden there: a less expensive coat and a rough hat, the kind that would disguise my normal gentlemanly appearance and allow me to blend in more anonymously at my chosen destination. I pulled them on, and once outside the mortuary, I dirtied my face a little. It would do. People tended not to pay attention to others in the dens, but I would rather not take the risk of bringing disrepute to my