by Alex Scarrow
‘Shouldn’t we go on up, sir?’ asked Hain.
Orman was nodding at his colleague’s suggestion. ‘If there’s evidence up there, sir, they could be disturbing it.’
‘No.’ Both men turned to look at Warrington as if he was insane. ‘No,’ he repeated. The locket could be up there. The portrait of the prince. Those things might well be, and he’d make it his first order of business to be the only person to go into the room and search it thoroughly. But right now, a much higher priority was on his mind. Warrington suddenly realised he was trembling at the prospect of once more coming face to face with the Candle Man. The man exuded a terrifyingly believable aura of invincibility. And god, hadn’t he been fast? He’d exited that warehouse and left them looking like foolish amateurs; one of them beheaded, one gutted and the rest of them looking like a cluster of superstitious old women who thought they’d glimpsed Ol’ Nick in the eyes of a black cat.
He’s just a man, remember. Don’t mythologise him.
If he was somewhere outside on the Strand, watching this hotel from afar, then at the first sight of Warrington and his men, he would just melt away. But these tarts, they’d have something he wanted, presumably; something he’d paid them to retrieve.
‘We need to wait for those women to come back down,’ he said quietly. ‘Then we’re going to follow them. Understand?’
Both nodded.
He turned to the concierge. ‘You can point out these women to us?’
‘Yes, sir. Couple of tarts. You won’t miss ’em.’
Warrington looked around the lobby. On the far side of the marble floor were some high-backed leather armchairs gathered near a fireplace and a table stacked with old newspapers. ‘We shall be over there. You’ll give me the nod in any case, when they go out the door; is that clear?’
‘Yes. Uh, sir? There was some mention of a reward . . . ?’
‘Yes.’ Warrington flicked the question away like a fly. ‘Yes, of course. We’ll arrange the details of that later.’ He nodded at Hain and Orman to go and pick an armchair each. ‘Oh, and no one, I mean no one, is to enter that room until I return; is that absolutely clear?’
He nodded.
‘Good man.’
CHAPTER 42
1st October 1888 (11.30 am),
The Grantham Hotel, The Strand, London
‘She’s in bloody rooms with ’im!’ Liz snapped. ‘She’s actually living with ’im, Cath!’
Even sleeping with him? She doing that, too?
Cath was standing out in the hallway, unwilling to spend another second in room 207, along with the human organ perched on the end of the desk. ‘No way! I ain’t goin’ to ’er bloody ’ouse!’
Liz stepped out and joined her. ‘We ’ave to warn ’er!’
‘The police! We should go to the police! That’s what we oughta do!’
They should. They really should. But Liz wondered how long it would take to convince them they weren’t hoaxers; two gin-breathing slappers looking to have a laugh at the police’s expense and perhaps even hoping to make the next day’s newspapers. Liz left the room’s door wide open behind her as she walked swiftly down the hallway towards the stairs, the key still grasped, forgotten for the moment, in one hand.
Cath caught up with her. ‘So? Police, right? We goin’ to see the police?’
Their boots clattered down the main marble stairs. ‘You go find some police, Cath. I’m goin’ to find Mary.’
They were down in the lobby. She noted it was busier now than it had been half an hour ago. They swept past the doorman, out onto the broad alabaster steps that led down to the Strand, busy and noisy with the clatter and hails of mid-morning traffic.
‘Liz! You shouldn’t go! What if ’e’s there! ’E’s dangerous!’
‘He ain’t got a clue who ’e is, right?’ replied Liz. ‘His mind’s completely gone. That’s what Mary told me. Gone! Just like a big baby.’
Cath grasped her arm. The sight of the decomposing organ had spooked her completely. Liz could feel the trembling in the tight grasp of her hand. ‘He’s lying! Maybe he’s lying to ’er?’
‘I got to warn ’er, Cath!’
‘Yer crazy!’
‘Listen, I ain’t bloody well goin’ in; I’m just knockin’, is all. Just gonna get Mary to step outside with me to talk, all right?’
‘Well, I ain’t going with yer! No fuckin’ way!’
‘Fine. Yer go do whatcha said – go find a police station. Tell ’em exactly all what we found.’
‘Everythin’ . . . Yeah, I will. I will.’
‘All right, then.’ Liz nodded. She looked down the Strand. She had enough money for a tram at least part of the way. She could bilk a free ride on a busy one if need be. One could often get a crafty couple of stops before the conductor got round to dealing with you.
She clasped her friend by the shoulders. ‘I’ll see yer back at Marge’s later, right?’
Cath nodded quickly. ‘Oh, gawd, be ever so careful, Liz!’ Her voice scratched and rattled, like a cat in a box.
‘I will.’
‘It’s that Jack the Ripper, Liz.’
‘I know that . . . I know.’
Warrington watched them through the glass of the lobby doors. The two women were talking animatedly. A disagreement of some sort? They both looked over-excited. No, not excited; they looked terrified.
Then the taller of the two – a woman Warrington imagined ten years ago must have been quite a beauty, a sight to turn heads – seemed to be giving the shorter one instructions.
Damn.
That meant they were probably going in different directions. The taller one grasped the other woman’s hands and squeezed them: a ‘see-you-later’. Then she turned away and headed up the Strand.
Warrington muttered a curse and then turned to his two men. He pointed at Hain. ‘You follow the taller one. Don’t lose her, do you understand?’
The man nodded, put on his bowler hat and bustled out the lobby doors. Warrington watched him skip swiftly down the steps past the other woman who was still standing at the bottom on the busy pavement. She looked undecided.
‘What about her?’ said Orman.
Warrington ignored him. He was watching her. Come on, come on . . . What are you thinking, woman?
She was looking up and down the busy street, looking for something.
Looking for the Candle Man, perhaps?
Her manic searching suddenly stopped; her eyes had found something on the far side of the street. Warrington tried to follow her gaze, to see what she’d picked out, but a double-decker tram clattered slowly past, blocking his view.
She stepped off the pavement, down onto the busy road, glancing right and left and then towards the far side, waiting for a gap in the traffic.
‘Sir? Mr Warrington?’
‘Yes, come on, we need to follow her!’
They pushed their way out through the double doors and caught sight of the woman as she hefted her heavy skirts above her ankles and darted perilously across the wide road, causing cart and cab drivers to rein in their horses and swerve and hurl streams of colourful invective at her back.
Warrington and Orman followed in her wake, trying desperately not to lose sight of her burgundy frock coat and her grubby cream-coloured bonnet.
On the far side, back up on pavement once more, it was far busier with foot traffic. His glance flipped one way then the other, looking for her bonnet amidst a sea of bobbing heads; every other one, it seemed, was yet another off-white cloth bonnet.
‘Over there!’ gasped Orman. He stuck out a thick butcher’s finger and pointed the way. Warrington followed his finger. He couldn’t see her but Orman was a good five inches taller than him; he could see above the bobbing pedestrians’ heads. And he saw the dark dome of a constable’s helmet.
‘She’s talking to that constable over there, sir.’
PC Docherty sighed. ‘Sorry, love. Why don’t you just calm down an’ try sayin’ that all over again, eh?
’
The woman looked to him like one of the usual Whitechapel dregs: breath like a bleedin’ brewery and teeth like a drawer full of broken china.
‘Me an’ Liz found ’im!’ she gabbled, her hand flapping at the front entrance of The Grantham Hotel across the Strand. ‘Over there! The murderer!’
‘Murderer, love? Which murderer’s that, then?’
She nodded, florid jowls flapping with a life of their own. ‘The killer what’s been doin’ over the women!’
Docherty rolled his eyes irritably. Jesus, not another bloody one. He’d wager a pound to a penny the next thing coming out of her flapping lips would be something about Jack the Ripper. All week, since some idiot had decided to write a letter and post it into the Central News Agency, staking a claim to those two recent murders and then signing off with that provocative name, their front desk sergeant had been plagued with silly fools like this one. Excitable morons claiming their neighbour, their cousin, their father, their son, their boss, their colleague, was the Whitechapel murderer. The Ripper!
‘He’s bin stayin’ in that ’otel, ’e ’as. That killer, Jack the—’
‘All right, love. Come on, now, that’s enough.’
She snatched at his cuff with grubby hands. ‘Please! Come an’ see!’
‘Better let go, miss . . . I mean it! Right now or I’ll take you down the station.’ He’d spent a good half an hour this morning ironing the creases into his tunic; he wasn’t going to let some old slapper, with fingernails dirty with god-knows-what, make a mess of his uniform.
‘Please! There’s ’uman bits up there! BLOODY ’UMAN BITS!’ She was almost screaming now. Heads of people walking past them were beginning to turn. Several had even stopped to see how this amusing little scene was going to develop. She now had the kernel of an audience. PC Docherty realised he had better bring the matter to a close. The longer he let her yap, the more out of control she was going to get.
‘Right! I think that’s enough nonsense from you, love!’ He twisted her paw off his crumpled cuff and was about to armlock and arrest her for causing a disturbance when a couple of gentlemen pushed their way through.
‘Ah! There you are!’ said one of them. Posh gentleman in a smart morning suit.
‘Err . . . You know this woman, sir?’
The gentleman shrugged. ‘Don’t actually know her . . . she just . . . she . . .’
The other man – taller, broad-shouldered – stepped in. ‘This rascal just attempted to lift this gentleman’s wallet.’ He fished out the late Inspector Smith’s warrant card and flourished it for Docherty to see briefly.
‘Oh, I see . . .’
‘I’ll take her off your hands, lad.’ He winked at him. ‘And she can make as much noise as she bleedin’ well wants back at the station. Right?’
PC Docherty nodded. ‘Right, sir.’ He let her arm go and passed her to the inspector.
‘Come on, you!’ he said. ‘Let’s get you all sobered up in a cell, shall we?’
Docherty watched them turn away with her and shook his head. The silly old bitch was trying her garbled nonsense about Jack the Ripper on the inspector now.
He shrugged. Good luck to him.
He sniffed the cuff of his tunic and wrinkled his nose, realising he was going to need to wash it again tonight.
CHAPTER 43
1st October 1888 (11.35 am), The Strand, London
Damn, the woman can march!
Hain was struggling to keep up with her without breaking into a jog. Thirty feet in front of him, her head and neck visible above the pavement traffic, she was weaving with a sense of urgency.
His eyes on her – he wasn’t going to lose her easily, being as tall as she was – he allowed his mind to ponder. He wondered what she’d found upstairs in that hotel room.
Something grisly, no doubt.
This man they were after – he’d heard Warrington refer to him once as the ‘Candlestick Man’, or something like that – was a real frightener, and no doubt about that. Hain had seen enough blood and savagery in his twenty-two years in the army. Particularly the tribal habits of those Pashtun barbarians in Afghanistan. And even more back here in London working for various members of the Lodge in a variety of capacities. He’d seen what those godless scrotums in the shittiest rookeries of Whitechapel and Spitalfields could do to each other. Beat each other to a pulp over the contents of a purse, the favour of some dirty poxed-up slapper, or simply because they figured they’d been disrespected in some way.
As if any of them scrotes actually deserve a shred of respect.
But this man, this Candlestick Man, was something else altogether. Fuckin’ evil. That’s what it takes to carve a man’s head off, like he did. To do what he did to those tarts. Not the everyday brutish, selfish evil he saw in the East End. This was bible evil. Old Testament evil. This was bloody sulphurous down in the very depths of Hell evil.
Hain remembered a painting he once saw. Last summer, he decided to do a bit of the ol’ ‘High Art’ with his wife and two daughters. Bit of culture and learning for ’em. Took them down for a family day out to the National Gallery off Trafalgar Square. And that’s where he saw that huge horrible painting. He forgot its title but he remembered the artist’s name.
Hieronymus Bosch.
Hell. That’s what he figured they were looking at: a depiction of Hell. An army of skeletal imps, chimeras and monsters, carving up the innocent like so many joints of beef. Hacking at them, impaling them, dismembering them. The painting had stayed with him, disturbed him. Had, in fact, given both his little girls nightmares. They really shouldn’t have lingered so long in front of it.
Ever since that night in the old abandoned warehouse, Hain had imagined this Candlestick Man to be a bit like one of those skeletal imps, those gargoyles. A mischievous demon who had somehow managed to find a winding tunnel from the depths below and emerged in the darkest part of London, to play. Since then he, Orman and Robson had discussed that night in the warehouse with hushed voices; met several times to discuss it over a pint in the quiet corner of a pub. The three of them agreed the man was most probably quite dead. But then Robson had half-jokingly wondered whether he was even a man.
His mind was thrown back into the present. The tall woman had stopped walking. She was looking back this way.
Looking at me? He wondered if she’d somehow figured out she was being followed.
Hain quickly dropped the pace of his urgent stride to a casual stroll. A slope-shouldered man behind him cursed as he almost collided with him.
What the hell is she looking at?
Hain resisted the urge to turn and follow the direction of her gaze. That would surely give him away. Instead, he decided to improvise a reason for his sudden halt and, feigning irritation, he dropped down onto one knee and started fumbling with his shoelaces. Through milling pedestrians he could still see her, a couple of dozen yards in front, craning her neck, looking back down the Strand.
Come on, what you looking for, love?
Then he realised, as he heard the jangle of a bell, the clatter of approaching hoofs. The shadow of a double-decker tram spilled over her as it slowed to a halt beside a stop. He lost sight of her for just a second; a plump lady, arm in arm with her spindle-thin husband, blocked his line of sight. Cursing, Hain quickly stood up, just in time to see the tall woman squeezing herself onto the back of the tram. A bell jangled again and the tram began to move off.
‘Bloody hell!’ he growled, pushing his way forward through people who scowled at him and remarked at his rudeness. But he was too slow. The tram was already too far ahead for him to try and attempt to catch it up on foot.
He looked around desperately for a hansom. But this being the Strand, every damned cab he could see in either direction already had passengers aboard.
‘Argh, shit n’ fuckin’ bollocks!’
Liz shouldered her way inside the tram, but not so far inside she’d struggle to do a runner if the conductor clocked her for
a fare. She hung on to a handrail. Like everyone else shoe-horned on, she was oblivious to the people bumping against her, lost in her own world of thoughts.
What am I doing? Cath’s right. This is crazy!
She had told Cath only part of it. It was all there in that letter, that confession. All there and almost too much for her to untangle and make sense of with one quick read. The man who’d been living in room 207 – what name had he signed at the bottom? Babber? No, Babbitt, that was it – he was some sort of hired murderer. And he confessed he was the one who’d done the Hanbury Street and Bucks Row murders: Nichols and Chapman.
The organ in the jar was a part of the Chapman woman. His proof that he was not just another hoaxer having fun with the police. But then the confession got complicated. She wondered whether she’d misread the letter or misinterpreted what had been put down on those pages. The man – Babbitt – was confessing he’d been hired by a group of gentlemen who belonged to the Freemasons.
Liz, like most people, had heard of the Masons but knew very little about them. Posh gents who met in clubs, sometimes donated money to workhouses, some would say. Others? That they danced naked around virgins and conducted all sorts of dark magic in their mysterious halls.
But this group of gentlemen seemed to have a particular responsibility, a particular purpose. When she’d opened the envelope, she had given the scuffed photograph scant attention. Glanced at it and no more. A man, a woman and a baby. But, having read further . . .
Prince Albert? Really?
She tried to recall the grey image. The man with his head held up and a cocky twist to his lips beneath the meagre twirl of a thin moustache. He certainly looked like he could be royalty. There was an inbred swagger in that pose. But in truth, the only royal face she’d know anywhere was Queen Victoria’s. From the few paper illustrations she’d seen of him over the years, she thought young Prince ‘Eddy’ had looked wholly unremarkable. It could’ve been him in that photograph picture. On the other hand, it could’ve been any fashionable young fop.
