The Black Mile

by Mark Dawson

  The Italians started screaming blue murder and the coppers went for them, men reaching for saps and truncheons, others settling for their fists and knees. An officer worked a bloke with his sap, backhand and forehand, the man on his knees, teeth spraying out of his mouth. Another swung his truncheon; an Italian caught it in the face, blood and spit splattering.

  A punch landed on Charlie’s forehead; everything blurred. He fell against a couple of blokes, took a punch to the jaw and punched back, his knuckles stinging. He tripped. Three coppers gathered around one man, half-crouched as they swung their saps down again and again. He stopped moving, save for spastic twitchings, each blow smacking like it was hitting into rotten watermelon.

  Charlie scrambled away on hands and knees.

  6

  FRANK STUMBLED AGAINST THE KERB as he got out of the taxi. His head spun. The church clock was striking half-eleven and he was drunk. It had taken an hour to sort out the Italians at the station: two of them had been beaten badly enough to need the divisional surgeon and most of the others were missing teeth. Frank knew he was going to have to write a report but it could wait. His blood was up: the dead girl, the violence. He’d needed a drink to calm down. Harry Sparks had purloined two bottles of scotch and the two of them retreated to his office, shut the door and polished off one each.

  Now he was feeling the worse for it. It hadn’t worked, either, not all the way. He had been stewing on what the Wop had said to him about Eve. Couldn’t get it out of his head. Joseph Costello, that little toe-rag. He was taking the piss, wasn’t he? Taking bloody liberties.

  The more he thought about it, the angrier he got.

  He fumbled the key into the lock and opened the front door.

  Julia was waiting for him in the sitting room.

  “Where’s Eve?”

  “In bed.”

  “She been out tonight?”

  “Yes––she was with Maud. She got back an hour ago.”

  “You sure about that?”

  Frank threw his coat down and went for the stairs.

  “Frank, darling, what is it?”

  Frank took the stairs two at a time.

  “Frank, darling, it’s late.”

  He reached the landing, went for his daughter’s room.

  “What’s wrong?”

  He yanked open the door.

  Eve was sitting on the edge of her bed, still dressed; she was facing the door, disturbed by the commotion. Her diary was on her lap.

  “What are you doing?” she said.

  “Where have you been tonight?”

  “With Maud.”

  “Really? Where did you go?”

  “We were at her house.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “Ask her!”

  “She’ll say what you told her to say.”

  “Where was I, then?”

  “Don’t take that tone with me.”

  “Where was I?”

  “With him. I know.”

  “Who?”

  “Don’t play the innocent. I wasn’t born yesterday.”

  “Who, Frank?” Julia said.

  “That damned Wop.”

  “She said she wasn’t seeing him any more. Isn’t that right, dear? You’re not, are you?”

  “No.”

  Her eyes flickered. Frank recognised guilt.

  “I’m not.”

  “Show me the diary.”

  “It’s private.”

  “Do you want me to come over there and take it off you?”

  “Alright. Fine. I was with Joseph.”

  “What did I tell you? You’re not to see him again.”

  “I want to.”

  “I know you do.”

  “I hate it.”

  “How many times do I have to say it? He’s too old for you.”

  “He’s sixteen.”

  “Nineteen.”

  “He’s not.”

  “Nineteen. Want to know what else I know? He lives in Saffron Hill. His father is a thief and his mother is a hoister. The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, either. He has a criminal record for theft. Do you want me to go on?”

  “How do you know all that?”

  “It’s my job to know things.”

  She pouted. “I don’t care. I love him.”

  “You don’t.”

  “I love him and he loves me.”

  “Do you really think I’d let my daughter step out with a thief?”

  “Then I’ll run away. Joseph said we could.”

  Frank grabbed her firmly by the shoulders. “No. You won’t.”

  “I hate you!” she spat. “If I want to see him, then I shall see him. There’s nothing you can do about it.”

  Frank struck her, once, across the cheek.

  She gasped.

  “Not while you’re living under my roof.”

  Frank’s fingertips tingled. He caught himself for a moment, breathless, and watched a single tear rolling down a reddening cheek. Eve didn’t cry; she turned away from him. Julia put a hand on his shoulder; he shrugged it off and left the room, thinking he needed a stiff drink and that there was whiskey in the drinks cabinet. Telling himself he was doing the right thing.

  7

  HENRY DRAKE DRAGGED ON HIS CIGARETTE, held the smoke in his lungs and blew it out. “Newspapers Are Made At Night,” the banner on the wall said. Literally: workmen had taken out the glass in the windows last week and filled in the space with brickwork. Management said they might get bombed, paranoid that Adolf would hammer Fleet Street once things got started for real. Part of the newsroom floor had been turned into a dormitory in case bombing made travel impossible, camp beds lined up against the wall next to folded piles of linen. Henry had already decided he would sleep here tonight.

  He stared at the blank sheet of paper in the typewriter. Frustration. He started to type, just the bare facts, pecking the words out.

  Girl found dead.

  Possible fifth victim.

  Police offer no information.

  He had nothing.

  Fluff for page three, if he was lucky. Filler for the space between adverts for Colgate Ribbon Dental Cream and Carters Brand Little Liver Pills. He yanked the paper from the typewriter, tore it up, threw it on the floor.

  No, sir.

  No, sir, indeed––not good enough.

  He pushed away from his desk and looked at the row of offices at the edge of the floor: Bert White, Gregory Clayton, Roger Spruce. The Star’s top men. Dozens of awards between them. Often more famous than the people they wrote about.

  They were where he wanted to be.

  He opened his desk drawer and took out the bottle of whiskey. It was already three-quarters gone; he sloshed out a triple into a paper cup. He reached into his trouser pocket for the bottle of Benzedrine, unscrewed the top, tapped out two pills, dropped them onto his tongue and washed them down with a slug of booze, took a breath, necked the rest.

  He flipped through his notes and began a new summary of the case. The killer was prolific. Four known victims in less than a month, all brasses or half-brasses, nothing save their profession to link them together.

  Victim number one: Louisa Ann Hart, 24, Dean Street, 15th May, 1940;

  Victim number two: Henrietta Clarke, 23, Manette Street, 22nd May 1940;

  Victim number three: Freda Joanne Williams, 29, St Anne’s Court, 29 th May 1940;

  Victim number four: Lorna Elizabeth Yoxford, 32, Berwick Street, 5 th June 1940;

  And then tonight.

  Murphy hadn’t denied it.

  Speculation seemed fair.

  Victim number five: Rose Wilkins, 17, Old Compton Street, 10th June, 1940.

  The first four had all been strangled, then cut up. No sign of sexual interference on any of the bodies. No sign of robbery. A rapist or a robber might have given Murphy something to go on, even if it was only a filter with which they could fillet the index cards at the Central Records Office. But there was no rape. Purse
s were left untouched. No motive, except the purest and most terrifying: the Ripper just hated women.

  Henry had been the first pressman to make the public connection between the first and second girls, a week before Murphy admitted it. The rags needed a sobriquet for the killer and tried out a few for size:

  The Soho Strangler.

  Jack the Stripper.

  The Soho Slasher.

  Soho Jack.

  Henry christened him the Black-Out Ripper on the front page of the Star on a wet Monday in May. The name stuck.

  He thought of D.I. Murphy.

  He thought of Duncan Johnson.

  Murphy’s prime suspect.

  The smug face. The silver-tongue. A psychopath with time served for manslaughter, assault and rape. He had put his life story together: born 1893, Stepney. Convicted in ’35 for raping a secretary he met at the Captain’s Cabin; overpowered her in a Soho doorway, buggered her, laughed as he did it. A police suspect for six other rapes, but insufficient evidence prevented charges. Four years at Dartmoor, out in ’39 despite the concerns of the medical staff. Henry had bribed an orderly for his psychological evaluations: a genius IQ of 132, a personality described as “aggressive narcissism” and a headshrinker’s summary that included words like “glib, “grandiose sense of self-worth,” “pathological lying,” “lack of remorse or guilt,” and “lack of empathy.” The shrink said he was dangerous, and couldn’t guarantee he wouldn’t do it again. It hadn’t been enough to keep him locked up.

  So they let him out.

  Johnson found work as a stevedore on the Royal Docks. For eight months he appeared to be going straight. Then the murders started. His landlady reported him after finding a bloodied shirt in his laundry. She’d read about the Ripper and said she was suspicious, that he’d been acting strange and keeping irregular hours. Murphy nicked Johnson and put the screws to him: interrogation for twenty hours straight revealed nothing––he was a slippery customer and they couldn’t pin anything on him.

  He came straight to the Star and asked for Henry. He was covered in bruises and burns. He told him everything.

  Murphy had beaten him.

  Murphy had pushed his head in the khazi.

  Murphy had ground lit cigarettes on his arm.

  Henry could see why Murphy was fixated by him. He got under the skin. He was condescending. Smart words from a smart mouth. He said he’d declined the offer of a brief in the station. He didn’t need one, he enjoyed the experience, found it “interesting.” He said he’d intimidated Murphy––that was why he’d assaulted him.

  Henry wrote it up.

  ‘BLACK-OUT RIPPER’ SAYS POLICE BEAT HIM

  The story ran, with pictures.

  Murphy was suspended.

  The charges were investigated.

  Johnson was lying. The injuries were self-inflicted.

  The charges were dismissed.

  Murphy was reinstated.

  He rolled another sheet of foolscap into the typewriter and waited for the Benzies.

  He thought of Old Compton Street.

  A dozen other hacks scooping him.

  Just setting out the facts was for the birds.

  He needed colour, bright brushstrokes, a vivid picture.

  Something different.

  The pills buzzed.

  He started to type.

  The words came easily.

  The clock showed midnight when the familiar rumble rolled through the building. Henry planted his feet on the floor of the newsroom and waited for the shift. The sensation was followed by a tingling in the soles, then a steady vibration. Sixty feet below, beneath the pavements of Fleet Street, the newspaper’s great presses were beginning to turn.

  TUESDAY, 11th JUNE 1940

  8

  FRANK GAVE UP TRYING TO GET BACK TO SLEEP. His nightmare had woken him at five and now the burns on his chest were itching and he couldn’t settle. He lay on his back for an hour, watching the dawn light prickle through the black-out, listening to Julia’s low, shallow breathing next to him. His head was fuzzy, a dull throb pulsing through the fugue. He’d finished off half of the bottle of scotch after the argument with Eve.

  It was no good: he was awake. He levered himself upright, shuffled his feet into his slippers and padded quietly onto the landing and into the bathroom. He relieved himself, took off his pyjama jacket and turned to face the mirror. He angled himself so that he could inspect the burns on the right-hand side of his body. They still looked awful, even twenty years later: mottled, blackish-brown skin, like the flesh on a joint that had been left in the oven too long. The pocked blisters reached all the way up his neck to just below the ear, down his arm and across his breast and shoulder. A white ring of skin marked where his wristwatch had been. He raised his arm; the burns were worst beneath his shoulder. Not unusual, the doctors said. The gas dissolved in the natural moisture of the armpit. A single droplet there was plenty enough to burn all the way through the bone. HS, the lads called it: Hun Stuff.

  He hadn’t had the nightmares for years, until, last week, he’d read an article in the newspaper about the Luftwaffe dropping mustard on London. He’d dreamt it every night since: running into the empty trench, seeing what looked like an oily reddish liquid gathered at the bottom of the excavations––looked like sherry––a garlic-like smell. The captain saying the gas rattle had been sounded but he hadn’t heard it, not with the shells and the rifles. The realisation of what it was, already too late: his skin blistering, his eyes gummed together, the uncontrollable vomiting. When his stomach ran out of half-digested bully beef and hard tack, there came blood and, eventually, a sickly yellow fluid straight from his lungs. In the dream, he watched, helplessly, as Harry Sparks and the two other blokes he dragged out melted before him. Their flesh bubbled and liquefied, dripping off their bones and running away into the mud.

  Pain. He winced. He could normally stand it but it was especially bad today. He opened the cabinet, took out a jar of Vaseline, applied it with his fingertips. The coolness helped dampen the itch. He went quietly back into the bedroom to dress.

  He paused at Eve’s room, rested his forehead on the door panel. He couldn’t hear anything: she was still asleep.

  Downstairs. They had a small house in West Wickham. Nothing fancy, just a two-up, two-down at the end of a terrace of identical houses. It had cost £900 freehold when he bought it, three years ago. The mortgage set him back £1/3/7 a week, just about affordable on an Inspector’s wage if Julia was careful with the housekeeping. It was a nice place. Comfortable. He left it all to Julia. She had an eye for décor, soft furnishings and such like. The female touch. Soft green and brown wallpaper with “autumn tints”. Metal light switches with bronze finishes. An “imitation vellum” chionoiserie-inspired standard lamp with tassels in the front room. Yes: she’d done a super job. The only item he’d insisted upon was the Pye gramophone player in the figured walnut case. £17. Damnably expensive, but quality. Sounded mint. His one little luxury.

  He rubbed the sleep out of his eyes as he went into the kitchen and lit the coal for the boiler. He only had a few chores, what with Julia running the house, but this one he secretly enjoyed. Get a good little blaze going before everyone else got up. Get things started for the day. Tuesday was wash day, so he pulled the electric copper out from under the draining board and filled it with water through the hose attached to the tap above the sink. He pushed the plug into the socket. The filament in the bowl would have the water warmed up nicely by the time Julia was ready for it.

  o o o

  THE KITCHEN WAS QUICKLY FULL OF STEAM. Julia took a pair of his longjohns from the bowl in which they had been steeped overnight and dropped them into the copper. There was no agitator in the tub so she took a long dolly peg and stirred the water.

  “Where is she?”

  “Eve!” Julia called. “Your father wants to speak to you before he goes to work.”

  Frank sat at the table, eating his usual fry-up. He felt bad about
the argument. He hadn’t handled it very well, he knew that. He had been drunk, and he was agitated from the scuffle at the station. But he remembered Costello’s CRO file and the embers of his temper kindled again. He hadn’t handled it as well as he might have, but he was right.

  “Eve!”

  Julia took the longjohns from the copper and transferred them to the washboard in the sink, scrubbing at the soiled marks. She was thrifty, and collected scraps of hand soap in a large jar. She scooped out a little of the waxy jelly and rubbed it onto a stubborn stain. “For goodness sake,” she said, her voice tight. She worked harder and harder at the stain, taking a pumice stone and grinding it into the fabric. “What is this? It won’t come out.” She pushed the garment into the sink. “Bloody thing.”

  Frank looked up. His wife never cursed. “What’s the matter?”

  “I can’t get the blasted stain out.”

  “No, something’s on your mind. Come on.”

  He knew what it was. She looked out of the window into the back yard, biting her lip. “I don’t know, Frank. I mean––are you sure? He didn’t seem so bad. He was polite. You met him––very polite, wasn’t he? And Eve’s so unhappy about it.”

  He replied calmly. “We talked about this, love.”

  “But she was up crying half the night, Frank. You heard her.”

  “She’s going to have to get used to the idea.”

  “But she’s so miserable. Couldn’t we sort something out? I wasn’t much older when I met you, was I?”

  “That was different.”

  Julia took the longjohns from the sink and fed them into the mangle. “Was it?” she said, turning the handle. “My father told me to be careful, too. You were no angel.”

  Frank lined up his knife and fork on the plate. “That’s as maybe. Being a tearaway is one thing, but he’s a bad apple. He’s from a bad family and he burgled a house on top of everything else he’s done that he hasn’t been nicked for. I can’t have someone like that in the family. Apart from anything else, how do you think it’d reflect on me?”

  “What if he doesn’t give up?”