Sinistrari

by Giles Ekins

  Toffer had been a river man all his life, as had his father Muffer and grandfather Daffer before him. And their fathers and grandfathers before them.

  Charles Dickens had known Daffer Hoxton and used him as inspiration for the river man Gaffer Hexham in his novel ‘Our Mutual Friend’, the difference being that although Gaffer Hexham saw no crime in taking property from the bodies he brought ashore, he could not countenance theft from the living. Not so Daffer. Nor Muffer or Toffer. Daffer had spent time in Marshalsea Prison for trying to steal from a drunken purser he was taking back to his ship off Rotherhithe. And Muffer had worked the treadmills in Millbank Prison for the theft of a gold bracelet he had ‘found’ on the wharf side at Millwall. Unfortunately the bracelet had still been attached to its owner’s wrist at the time of finding and Muffer had been seen and identified. Toffer was more careful. Or had more luck – one or the other.

  Westminster Bridge brought no reward so Toffer turned into the tide and drifted slowly downstream, heading for the Hungerford and Vauxhall Bridges.

  Other booty could be gleaned from the river – boxes and chests and cargo that had ‘fallen’ overboard from ships moored lower down the river. Dock men and stevedores would sometimes tip him the wink and arrange for a cask of rum or crate of tea to go overboard ‘accidentally’. Toffer would recover the flotsam and split the profits of the sale with the dockers.

  Upriver of Hungerford Bridge, Toffer expected no bounty of fallen cargo, although goods sometimes did fall off from pleasure vessels. The best fishing grounds for booty were further downriver, down by the great docks which brought the goods of Empire pouring into the Port of London, the busiest docks in the busiest city in the greatest Empire of the world – but bodies– bodies could come ashore anywhere, and bodies from the West End of London were better picking than those from the wretchedly poor East End.

  A train pulled out of Charing Cross Station and slowly steamed across Hungerford Bridge, its destination Toffer neither knew nor cared. Never in his life had he been upon a train, nor ever expected or wanted to. The River Thames was all his life, Thames water flowed in his veins and his battered wherry, the only means of transport he would ever need. Apart from a hearse, that is.

  A Charing Cross bound train crept across the bridge from the south, white faces at the windows a pale blur, then hidden by a gust of smoke from the funnel of the engine. A paddle steamer went upstream on the port side of the river, the wash swilling across the oily swell to rock Toffer’s boat, the waves slapping against the planking of the wherry like a rebuke.

  Just then, he saw it, disturbed by the passing wake, a sliver of white in the water, merely glimpsed in the corner of his eye, just before the ebbing tide pulled it into the shadows of the second pier of the bridge. If the wake from the steamer had not stirred up the river surface, Toffer might have missed it. He quickly dipped his oars and with a strong stroke, he surged across the river, making sure his gaffe was close to hand, pulling it closer to him with his foot.

  The corpse, for that it what he was sure it was, was out of sight now but Toffer rowed straight beneath the bridge and pulled sharply across to his left. There, just where he had known it would be, the pale- fleshed body slid into view, submerged beneath the waters but visible and easily gaffed. He shipped his oars, allowing the momentum of the boat to carry him up to the corpse. He leaned over the gunwales and gently eased the wide hook of his gaffe around the neck of the body, drawing it slowly to him, playing the corpse as easily as he would a fish on the end of a thin line. A loop of rope over the neck, another over an ankle and the body was secure.

  The body was female; he could see that, naked, and badly cut, as bodies fished from the waters often are. Rocks, fish, propellers, tidal action abrading the swollen flesh against the granite of the Embankment wall, all helped to disfigure and mutilate a floater. Toffer quickly checked for rings, necklaces, and other jewellery, but the body was devoid of ornament and Toffer cursed, angry at the body for being daring to be naked and deprive him of his living. A naked body meant only a Coroners finding fee, hardly worth the effort of bringing it to shore.

  Charing Cross Pier and Whitehall Steps were close by, the stark obelisk of Cleopatra’s Needle loomed against bare branched elm trees on the Embankment and Toffer headed for the steps, hard by the Needle. His Dad, Muffer Hoxton had once told him that the Needle had come from Eee-Jipt and was very old, more ancient than anything in England, although how that could be Toffer could not imagine. The Tower of London was hundreds of years old, everyone knew that, so how could something come from Eee–Jipt, or where-ever the ’ell it was be older than that?1

  The funny pictures carved into the face of the Needle were said to be writing, writing called High-Row-Cliff-Icks but the carvings were pictures of odd looking birds and dog headed men and Toffer did not believe for one minute that they that they were writing. He knew what writing looked like – and he knew it wasn’t funny pictures of dog-headed men.

  He smoothly guided the wherry up to the bottom of Whitehall Steps and tied the boat up to a heavy wrought iron ring set into the stonework. Checking that the corpse was still securely tied, he stepped out of the boat onto the slick granite, careful of his footing, the steps could get very slippery, especially after rain or thick fog. He stretched his arms to ease the knotted ache in his shoulders from his efforts and climbed up the steps onto the Embankment. He then sat down on the low riverside wall and lit up his clay pipe -making sure that his wherry was in sight all the time – waiting for a policeman to come by on his beat. Probably PC Jim Whitstaff, Toffer thought – he knew all the coppers who worked the riverside beats and was sure that Whitstaff was on morning roster that week. He smoked his pipe whilst he waited, he was in no hurry – and his passenger had no pressing engagements to go to either – except to the mortuary slab.

  Chapter 8

  ST. BARTHOLOMEW’S HOSPITAL MORTUARY, LONDON

  THURSDAY APRIL 3rd, 1888 3.40PM

  ‘WHAT WE HAVE HERE, CHIEF INSPECTOR, IS THE BODY OF A YOUNG FEMALE, aged possibly fourteen or fifteen years of age, it is not possible to be more precise at the moment’.

  Doctor Hamilton Dewar, the Chief Pathologist, was a large, heavily bearded Scotsman, a fierce looking Highlander whom Collingwood could readily envisage covered in woad, wielding a massive claymore as he ran across the battlefields of Stirling or Bannockburn with the armies of William Wallace or Robert the Bruce. Dewar had the largest hands that Collingwood had ever seen on a man. They were the size of dinner plates, but despite their size, Dewar was surprising gentle as he examined the body of the nameless girl that Toffer Hoxton had brought to shore that morning.

  The day outside was hot and humid, threatening another heavy thunderstorm, but despite that, Collingwood felt distinctly chilly in the close confines of the basement morgue at St Bart’s, the heavy stone walls and grey paint more like dungeon than a hospital. It was as though the cold presence of death itself lowered the temperature, rather than the refrigerated drawers in which the bodies were stored on ice. The smell of dead flesh and formaldehyde assaulted his nostrils, a smell he could never get used to, despite countless hours spent in the presence of death and autopsies. But Dewar bore it no mind; the realms of the dead was his kingdom, as far removed from the fresh clean air of his Scottish Highlands birthplace as it is possible to imagine. Collingwood had never visited the mortuary at St Bart’s, any time of day or night, and not found Dewar up to his elbows in the inner cavities of a cadaver or two.

  ‘The poor we lassie did’nae die easy,’ Dewar said, gently turning over her right wrist to examine some marking in the flesh.

  ‘She was murdered?’

  ‘Oh, aye, nae doot about that.’

  Collingwood knew from long experience that Hamilton Dewar would rarely offer more information than the barest minimum necessary to respond to a question. Dewar preferred to make his observations and conclusions in the cold written light of his autopsy reports. Gimlet stood to one side, watching eve
rything, saying nothing. Even though Gimlet did not take many notes, every relevant fact and detail was absorbed, soaked up like a sponge, so that all Collingwood had to do was gently squeeze for the information to pour out again.

  ‘How did she die?’

  ‘Anaemic Anoxia,’ Dewar stated flatly, as if talking about the weather.

  ‘She bled to death.’

  ‘Aye that she did, but slowly, whoever did this to the poor wee bairn, knew what he was aboot.’

  Collingwood examined the pitifully thin body, noting a myriad of cuts and wounds, bruising and abrasions, fully aware of the damage done to corpses found in the river, but even to his untrained eye, the deeply incised gash across the girl’s throat could not be missed.

  Her throat was cut?’

  ‘A sharp incised cut, from left to right. Not deep however, not done savagely, although that’s not quite the right word since everything else he did to her was so savage as to make you doubt he could be human. No, what I am sure of is that whoever cut her made sure that she bled slowly. Slowly but surely. And she was almost certainly inverted at the time?’

  ‘Inverted?’

  ‘Aye, inverted, upside down. Despite her immersion in the river, there remains a lot of blood in her nose and mouth, in my opinion, consistent with inversion as she bled. And look here, Chief Inspector, these wounds to the hands and feet. The poor wee creature was crucified.’

  ‘Dear God! Crucified!’

  ‘Crucified inverted. Crucified upside down.’

  And Collingwood could feel the horror and outrage in Dewar’s voice, despite the countless hundreds of corpses to pass through his hands; the obscenity of this particular death obviously affected him, volunteering information without it having to be dragged from him.

  Dewar gently lifted the girl’s right leg at the ankle, as gently as though he were caressing his lover. ‘See here, these puncture wounds to the top of the foot. See, they go entirely through the foot, exiting here, through the sole. She was nailed, Collingwood, nailed to her cross. The manner of her crucifixion wounds also confirms my contention that she was inverted.’

  ‘How so?’

  ‘The weight of her hanging body has distended the wounds. Stretched them if you will, her weight tearing apart her living flesh

  ‘Dear Lord, she was alive?’

  ‘Och aye, without doubt, ah wish tae all the Saintly Martyrs in Heaven I could say otherwise, but so help me, she was alive.’

  Dewar lifted the dead girl’s foot higher, bringing it closer to the light. ‘The wounds have stretched towards the toes, d’ya see?’

  ‘Meaning that the nails were dragged in that direction by her weight? And so enlarged the wounds?’

  ‘Aye, exactly. If she had been crucified in the manner of Our Lord, the extended wounds would have split towards the heels, d’ya ken?’

  ‘I wish, Dewar that I did not.’

  ‘Her hands were nailed the same, but the wounds in either case, inverted or conventional, would enlarge in the directions of the fingers. She was also tied, wrist and ankles, you can see the marks from the rope. She was hung by her heels, like hanging a haunch of venison. See, the marks of the rope, angling down toward her heels.

  ‘Dear God, is there anything as abominable as this.’

  ‘I would that these were all the abominations this poor lassie has had to endure.’

  ‘There is more? This poor girl suffered more?’

  ‘Aye, the devil incarnate carved these symbols, for the want of a better word, into her flesh.’

  Dewar turned the body of the young girl over onto her stomach, as he did so Collingwood could not help but notice how young, how pathetically young she was – and he thought with a sense of anguish of his own daughter Lucy, his only child, fifteen years old, sixteen in June, so dearly loved – and for one horrid unreal moment in which his heart seemed to stop beating, the poor dead child on the mortuary slab was Lucy. He took a pace closer, as if to gather his child into arms before the horrid illusion faded – and felt ashamed of his relief, relief that it was not his daughter – but some other father’s child who lay cold and mutilated on the slab.

  Dewar’s words cut across his thoughts, ‘You see these lacerations here,’ pointing at open wounds on the girls back; a series of cuts and areas of excised skin, wounds that Collingwood assumed had been caused whilst the girl’s body had been in the river. ‘If you look carefully, what initially appears to be a random cuts and lacerations, are in fact symbols. Here, a five pointed star.’

  ‘A pentagram?’

  ‘Aye, a pentagram, and here, within the pentagram, a mark or symbol. Look here, across the back of the body, and on the stomach and sternum area, another series of symbols, I dinna ken, Hebrew or Coptic, possibly Cyrillic.’ One by one, Dewar pointed out the excisions, areas the size of greengages scored with deep-cut symbols.

  ‘Twenty-one signs carved into her flesh. Three groups of seven’

  Collingwood was almost afraid to ask, ‘And she was alive?’ ‘Aye, that she was poor, wee creature.’

  Collingwood was aghast, in all his years as a police officer, and his service with the Army in the Crimea, he had seen nothing which so horrified him, so shook him up inside. He tried to bring his thoughts back to the mundane routine of police investigation.

  ‘Is there anything else, anything you can tell me to help identify her.’

  ‘As to her identity, I cannae really help. She was, as I say, fourteen or fifteen years of age. Malnourished but not starved. Five feet two inches in height, slight of build. Brown hair shading to dark brown. Her face, hands and arms are bronzed, indicating that she spent much of her days outdoors. Her heels are badly lacerated, from, I suggest, ill-fitting shoes. She was sexually very active, but not diseased. Her vagina is severely lacerated, as though penetrated by a sharp object, I cannae say by what precisely. She had recently been sodomised, but not forcibly.’

  ‘A prostitute, do you think?’

  ‘Aye, that would be my guess? Look here, Collingwood, her upper arms, back and buttocks are contused, as are her cheeks and upper and lower eyelids. And there is a substantial bruising to her right breast, consistent with a heavy punch with someone wearing several rings, rings on every finger.’

  Rings on her fingers and bells on her toes, she shall have music wherever she goes.’ For some irreverent reason the nursery rhyme came into Collingwood’s head, and however hard he tried to ignore it, the childish tune echoed around his head. Another pitiful reminder of his daughter Lucy.

  Collingwood could readily see the contusions on the painfully thin body, yellowy brown marks, like old stains, as Dewar pointed them out in turn. Her buttocks especially were a lurid patchwork of bruising.

  ‘The killer beat her as well?’

  ‘Well, she was surely beaten, but these are old bruises. See the colouration; these contusions are a week old or so. But this bruising was not inflicted at the same time as her other injuries. Which I’ll come to anon.’

  If she was a street prostitute …’

  ‘Aye, I have the same notion, if she were a street hoor; these beatings could have done by her pimp.’

  ‘Her bully.’

  ‘Aye, bully is a better word, wi’out doot.

  ‘As to cause of death, the throat was cut across to the extent of about six or seven inches, a superficial cut commences here, look,’ Dewar pointed out the wounds, ‘about one and one half inches below the lobe of the ear. The main cut commences about two and one half inches behind the left ear and extends across the throat to about two inches below the lobe of the right ear. The muscle across the throat was divided through on the left side and the large vessels to the left side of the neck neatly severed. The cut was made evenly and lowly. The larynx was severed below the vocal cords. The carotid artery to the right side was barely opened, a small incision only so as to allow slow haemorrhage. The jugular vein was cut but not severed. Cause of death anaemic anoxia from haemorrhage from the right common artery.’
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  ‘The weapon.’

  ‘A very sharp long bladed knife.’

  ‘Or razor?’

  ‘Aye, it could have been a razor, right enough, I’m thinking more of a scalpel, but, no, I’d no discount a razor altogether.’

  Collingwood stood quietly for a moment. ‘These signs cut into the body, these symbols as you call them – have you ever seen anything of the like before?’

  Dewar pondered the question slowly, nodding his head up and down as if holding a discussion within himself.

  ‘Aye, the once. Once only; many years ago.’

  The pathologist fell silent, looking off across the mortuary, deep in thought. Collingwood waited, prompting the taciturn Scot might only produce a retreat into yet more silence. ‘Ye have the bearing of a military man, Chief Inspector,’ Dewar said after many long drawn seconds.

  ‘I was once.’

  ‘You’d barely be of an age to be at the Russian war.’

  ‘I fought at Sebastopol; I was a seventeen year old Ensign in my first battle.’

  ‘I did’nae fight mysel. I was with the Medical Corps. Picking up the pieces after the carnage and cutting off the shattered limbs and burying those poor souls who could’nae be saved.’

  ‘I was wounded within five minutes of the battle starting,’ Collingwood said, remembering as though yesterday his absolute terror and the pounding of the guns and the thick acrid taste of the powder and smoke, the screams of the dead and dying and the utter confusion of the battlefield. ‘A piece of shrapnel took me to my shin. My first and only battle and I never even fired a shot in anger. My leg was broken and the wound infected and so I was shipped out to the hospital at Scutari. By the time I recovered, the war was over. When the weather is damp I can still feel the shrapnel in my leg, even though there is none there.’