‘I want to pay a visit to Rancer’s mother in Judas Island,’ Pilbury announced. ‘See if she can’t shed some light on a possible motive. I need someone with some knowledge of the area to accompany me.’
The men looked at one another. Titus knew that some of them had been involved in Rancer’s arrest and, by the looks of things, had no desire to revisit the killer’s lair any time soon. The police rarely ventured far into Devil’s Acre. If they hadn’t caught their quarry in the first few streets they generally gave him up as a lost cause.
‘I’ll come,’ Titus said.
All eyes turned to him, mouths stopped chewing.
‘Shame on you, boys!’ Samson roared at the other men. ‘Cowards, the lot of you!’
Some of the men protested and made to get up but Pilbury stopped them.
‘Titus will do nicely. He knows the Acre better than any of us. Come on, lad.’
He led Pilbury through the streets of his home patch with a straight spine and a scowl of defiance. Some of the locals scowled back, one or two spat on the ground or muttered a curse, but most melted away at the sight of the policeman’s dark coat. After nightfall they would have been braver, and more dangerous. Titus and Hannah would have to be careful when they finally came back. Of all the risky professions practised by the Acre’s inhabitants, copper’s nark was the most deadly.
They had to pass close to Old Pye Street and, turning into one of the alleys that ran behind it, Titus came face to face with Stitcher. For a moment the two boys simply stared at one another, then Stitcher looked past Titus to Pilbury. His face hardened and he took a step into the centre of the path. Titus felt Pilbury stiffen behind him and he turned back to the policeman:
‘Wait, I know him.’
He walked forward, but stopped a few feet from Stitcher, held back by the look on the other boy’s face.
‘Selling your old friends already, eh?’ Stitcher said quietly.
‘No. It’s not like that.’
‘Bollocks.’
Stitcher’s hand flickered and then there was a knife in it. Titus moved quickly to block it from the view of the policeman.
‘Don’t. It’s not you he’s after. He’s here about the murders of those kids.’
For a moment Stitcher did not move, and then, almost imperceptibly, the knife vanished back up his sleeve. His expression remained steely but finally he nodded.
‘I’ll make sure it’s known.’
And then he was gone.
‘He looked like a bad lot,’ Pilbury said, coming up to join him.
‘He’s a friend,’ Titus said quietly.
The streets grew narrower until the roofs of the buildings cut out all daylight. Brown water seeped from crevices and the patched windows were draped in cobwebs. Occasionally some wretched bundle of sticks and rags would press itself into a doorway to let them pass. There was little fight left in the denizens of this particular part of the Acre. Those who ended up here only left again in a box.
Just when it seemed as if the buildings would crush them, the alley opened out onto a large square. Though Titus had known the way to Judas Island for as long as he could remember, he had rarely visited the spot. It had a bad reputation amidst his superstitious neighbours.
In the middle of the square was a church, a charred and ruinous hulk surrounded by what might once have been a graveyard but was now a rubbish tip enclosed by a rusting railing.
‘That’s where they lived,’ Pilbury said, ‘Rancer and his mother.’
They walked up to the railing. The walls of the church were partially intact on the eastern side, but the west side had crumbled to rubble. The porch still stood and the badly weathered inscription above it read:
Titus spoke quickly before Pilbury could begin translating:
‘Chapel of St Mary Rouncivall.’
‘I’ve heard of this place,’ Pilbury said, ‘though I thought it was long gone. It was the chapel of an old convent hospital. When Henry the Eighth’s men came to burn the place down the nuns barricaded themselves in, so the soldiers simply burned it with them in it. Afterwards they claimed the nuns had been practising witchcraft. It’s a mystery why the ruins weren’t demolished long since.’
‘This is the Devil’s Acre, sir,’ Titus said. ‘The whole place is a ruin.’
‘I suppose she must be living somewhere over that side.’ Pilbury gestured towards the eastern portion of the building. ‘I’ll go and see what I can get out of her. You wait here.’
‘I’m coming with you.’
Pilbury stared at him.
‘I won’t say nothing and I’ll stay out of sight but Samson would have my guts if he thought I’d let you go in alone.’
Pilbury protested, but Titus was already pushing open the gate, wincing as the rusted iron screamed out their presence, and picking his way across the detritus of the graveyard.
He waited for Pilbury at the entrance to the gloomy porch, but walking through it brought them straight back out into the light again. The whole church was a shell, an empty skull.
‘How could anyone live here, sir?’ Titus whispered. ‘No warmth, no shelter from the elements, no privacy to concoct potions.’
Pilbury looked around him, bewildered.
‘The men arrested him in the graveyard and it was such a struggle they weren’t able to search the place. There must be a roofed section somewhere. Keep looking.’
They spread out, Pilbury moving further into what must have been the nave of the chapel while Titus skirted around the eastern wall, stepping over flagstones pushed vertical by tree roots until they resembled huge teeth.
‘She must have gone already,’ Pilbury called after a few minutes. ‘We’re wasting our time.’
Titus began picking his way back to the porch. Forced to take a detour past an explosion of brambles his ankle suddenly sheared and he was pitched onto his backside. He looked around for a rat hole or tree root, but found, to his surprise, that he had stumbled on the first step of a staircase leading down into darkness.
No, not quite darkness.
Deep down in the abyss a greyish light wavered and the damp air rising up from below stank of tallow.
‘Mr Pilbury,’ he called softly, ‘I think she lives in the crypt.’
Pilbury came over to join him and they both peered down into the depths. Darkness flowed up to meet them like smoke.
‘Come on, then, but keep your wits about you.’
Their feet on the steps were like the cracks of a rifle. Titus wasn’t superstitious but all the way down he had the very strong sensation of being watched. When they got to the bottom of the staircase a long brick corridor stretched ahead of them.
All was silent. There was not even the ticking of a beetle or the scurry of mice as they passed down the corridor towards the wavering grey light at the end. As his eyes became accustomed to the gloom Titus noticed that the walls were not bare. Beside him was a plaster death mask of some crone, the eyes sewn shut, the toothless mouth grinning. Further on was a large bone, black with age and carved with some intricate language he could not read. What looked like a human foetus grown almost to full term turned out to be the desiccated corpse of a monkey, nailed up by its little brown hands. Its eyes, which must have dried out and fallen into its skull, had been replaced by pieces of mirror.
He pressed himself against the opposite wall to pass it, only to brush against a clutch of chicken feathers, their tips caked with dried blood. He couldn’t stop a gasp of horror escaping his lips as he jerked away.
‘Don’t be afraid,’ Pilbury murmured. ‘This mumbo-jumbo has no power to hurt you.’
‘I know,’ Titus said, trying to keep his voice steady.
The smell of pig fat grew stronger and now he could make out the back wall of the tunnel some way ahead. Frail yellow light fell from an opening just to the right of it. He began to hear, over the pounding of his heart, a rhythmic clicking, like that of a beetle or cockroach. He tried to swallow the panic that rose up at the t
hought of them scuttling around his feet.
The Inspector’s pace slowed as they approached the end of the tunnel, his black silhouette a reassuring barrier between Titus and whatever lay beyond. Only the tips of his boots gleamed, unblemished amidst the filth.
He stopped just short of the rectangle of light that fell on the floor and murmured, ‘Stay here. Use your eyes and your ears.’
Then he stepped into the light.
Titus pressed himself against the wall and eased along it until he had a view of the room beyond.
The old woman sat on a wooden chair in the middle of the room, knitting with invisible thread. A fire burning low on the floor in front of her cast the only light. Lining the walls were shelves that stretched off into the darkness. The shelves were filled with lumpen shapes: a jawbone, a pelvis, a skull.
The ceiling was low enough that Pilbury had to hunch his shoulders. Rancer must have scuttled around the place on all fours.
‘What are you knitting, madam?’ Pilbury said.
‘The hair of children. If a barren woman secretes such a patch inside her girdle she shall become fertile.’
There was something strange about the way she spoke, as if she was trying to swallow something large or unpalatable, and now, as she squinted up at the policeman, Titus could see that the knot of her shawl was forcing her head over to one side.
The smell of honey was strong and he noticed, beside her stool, a large glass jar filled with an amber substance. Floating in this viscous liquid was the body of a cat. Goosebumps rose up on his arms.
‘Is that honey, madam?’ Pilbury said, his voice light.
‘Honey is a natural preserver, of body and spirit. The ancient Egyptians could revive a person who had been so embalmed, even after many years had passed,’ she said. Then added quickly, ‘This wisdom is lost to us now, of course.’
‘But clearly you believe,’ Pilbury said, gesturing to the cat.
‘That is Osiris,’ the woman croaked, following his gaze. ‘The best and most loved of my darlings.’
As she turned her head Titus could see that the knot at her throat was not the fabric of her shawl but an enormous excrescence of flesh, criss-crossed with swollen veins. He recoiled from the sight and her eyes darted, quick as fleas, in his direction.
He drew back and waited a moment or two before peeping round the wall again. She was smiling at him. His scalp crawled.
The Inspector seemed unperturbed.
‘Where did you get the hair?’ he asked. ‘From your son?’
‘His hair is black, Officer Pilbury.’
‘Did he give it to you after he had torn it from the heads of the children he murdered?’
She did not pause in her knitting. The rasp of the needles was like the sharpening of knives.
‘I bought this from a little one who wanted the money for a dolly.’
‘What was her name?’
‘Esther. Esther Herring.’
Pilbury took a notebook from his pocket and wrote in it. As he wrote, almost offhandedly he said, ‘Your son will be hanged, madam. Is there anything you can tell me that might mitigate the severity of his punishment?’
‘The poor lamb did not know what he was doing,’ she crooned.
‘So you think he was coerced? That he was the instrument of another?’
‘Oh no, no. I mean he is as simple as the blossom on the trees and would not know the error of his ways. Surely in these modern times we do not destroy those whose only weakness is their own poor mind?’
She leaned down and picked up a tumbler of water. It might have been the thickness of the cheap glass but the water inside looked an unhealthy shade of green. She sipped it then placed it back down without taking her eyes off Pilbury.
‘Your son is perfectly sane, Mrs Rancer. Whilst in my care he has displayed reason and cunning. Last week he pretended sickness then wounded one of my officers with a spoon he had secreted from his meal and filed to a point on the wall.’
‘It is not of my doing, sir. His father was a brute who knocked the sense out of the poor lad before he was weaned.’
‘If this is so, then the father must be punished. Where is he now?’
‘Dead.’
The needles click-clacked and the woman’s breath laboured on its passage through her misshapen throat. Titus became aware of scratching behind him and he almost cried out in terror. Turning around he saw two bright eyes low on the ground about three feet away from him. He kicked out but the eyes did not blink. He shrank back against the wall as the scratching resumed and the thing came closer. Surely the claws that made that noise were too large for a rat. When it came far enough into the dim sphere of light he almost laughed out loud. A chicken. The stringy bird went past him into the room and strutted fearlessly into the blackness beyond the firelight.
‘Tell me why he did it,’ Pilbury went on. ‘For the sake of those children’s loved ones.’
Mrs Rancer laughed, a guttural wheeze that made the hairs on Titus’s back rise up and press against his sweat-cold shirt.
‘They had no loved ones. They were nothing but flotsam.’
Pilbury stared at her.
‘You are a wicked woman.’
The needles stopped. The air suddenly congealed until it was too thick to breathe. Titus felt a brown claw close around his heart.
‘As you are not of a mind to assist me,’ Pilbury said evenly, ‘I will, for now at least, bid you goodnight.’
A minute later they were out in the almost-fresh air again.
‘Honey,’ Pilbury said as they picked their way back to the porch, almost to himself. ‘The rags he stuffed down their throats were soaked in honey. A preserver of life . . .’
They passed through the porch and into the graveyard.
‘But no eggs,’ he went on.
Titus stared at him but Pilbury did not seem inclined to elaborate on the strange comment.
‘There was a chicken,’ Titus said.
Pilbury stopped walking.
‘It came past me when you were talking to the old woman. At first I thought it was a monster!’
He laughed at his own foolishness, and with it came a wonderful release of tension.
‘A demon perhaps,’ Pilbury said thoughtfully. ‘Chickens are traditional familiars for witches.’
As they stepped through the gate and out into the silent square Titus prayed that he would never have to go down into that hole again as long as he lived.
9
Though it seemed to take years, Friday afternoon finally arrived. Titus burst out of the gate at five and hurtled along Victoria Street.
At least the porter would not recognise him. His clothes were even cleaner than when his mother had bought them from the ragman, thanks to the pungent green hand soap in the station bathroom, and his hair was unrecognisably sleek and springy. He had put on weight and working in the sun of the courtyard had taken away some of his pallor. He strode past the file of miserable applicants and straight into the porter’s anteroom.
‘Afternoon, sir,’ he said briskly. ‘I should like to see Hannah Adams.’
The porter did not look up from his ledger.
‘Visiting hours is nine till noon.’
‘I’m sorry, I was unaware of this. Perhaps you could make an exception. I’ve come a long way.’
The man looked up at him wearily.
‘Older brother, are you?’
Good. He did not recognise him.
‘Yes.’
‘Then I will make an exception, but not for the sake of your legs, boy. Adams is already on reduced rations. If her behaviour does not improve she will placed in solitary confinement. If you have any influence on her at all I would advise you to exert it now.’ He sighed and went back to the ledger. ‘We do not enjoy inflicting pain on one so young.’
Titus could utter no reply and waited dumbly while the man rang a bell and the young nurse he had seen that first night appeared.
‘He’s here to see Adams,�
� the porter said.
The nurse led Titus through endless dingy corridors. His eyes had just grown accustomed to the gloom when they reached a door and a moment later burst out into the daylight. The yard was divided into two portions, with the men and boys occupying the left side and the women and girls on the right.
‘Wait here. I’ll get her.’
She walked away from him towards a sea of white caps. The girls’ uniforms, of striped aprons with dark skirts and blouses and great black boots, made them indistinguishable from one another, except in height.
Gathered in a small group around an elderly nurse were the infants, all dressed in the regulation uniform, right down to the baby in striped swaddling. Some listened to the story she was reading, others drew with chalk on the ground, two fought over a wretched doll made from a lump of wood.
Off to the left of them were the slightly bigger girls. Too old to escape work they were all sewing, their heads bent, in silence. He watched them for a while, searching for Hannah, but in all that time none of them exchanged a titter or a murmur.
A sharp male voice made him turn his head. In the far corner of the yard was a long table, behind which sat a line of young women unravelling lengths of tarry rope into dirty strands that could be reused. One of the male officers was reprimanding a girl for her idleness. She had folded her arms and was staring at him with a look of such insolence that eventually he struck her face with the crop he was holding. Her head snapped back but a moment later she had composed herself, refolding her arms and fixing him with the same look of contempt, even as blood trickled down into her left eye. He gave up and walked briskly away. A burly, hard-faced nurse was stationed at either end of the table: presumably these were the troublesome ones. Some wore the yellow jackets that marked them out as prostitutes or women who had birthed out of wedlock: a few of these were as young as Hannah. One was entirely obscured by the ball of oakum before her and he could just see her thin white fingers tugging at the strands. His heart jumped into his mouth.
Sure enough the young nurse picked her way behind the table, eventually stopping by the hidden figure, bending and speaking to her. The fingers froze for a moment then resumed their work. The nurse came back over to him and said with some satisfaction, ‘She will not see you.’
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