by Cross, Amy
I can't take them. However and whyever they ended up in my pocket, I'm no thief and I can't just waltz off with these things. They're not mine and there must have been some kind of mistake. At the same time, I keep imagining a hidden hand slipping the earrings into my pocket, as if they were somehow intended as a gift. I know that I should toss them back through the broken window, but there's definitely a part of me that's already starting to wonder just how valuable they might be, and what I could do with the money.
“It's a tough world,” I hear Alex saying in the back of my mind. “You've got to take your chances wherever and whenever you get them. There's no time for morals, not if you want to survive.”
She'd want me to take the earrings. She'd probably have taken the rest of the jewellery, too. She'd be coming up with plan after plan after plan, and she wouldn't even bother to think about whether what she was doing was right or wrong. She'd just take the jewellery and cash it all in, and she wouldn't even look back.
I can't do that, though.
These earrings aren't mine. If I take them, I don't think I'll ever be able to live with myself.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Doctor Charles Grazier
Sunday September 30th, 1888
Once I have wrapped Catherine's body in a silk sheet, there is nothing left for me to do other than to set a patch of fabric across her face. Still, I hesitate for a moment, staring down at her features until finally I realize that I am simply delaying the inevitable.
I place a corner of the sheet over her face, and then I take a step back.
It is done.
I cleaned away as much of the blood as I could manage. I spent several hours washing her body, and then I dressed her in one of her favorite shawls. I think I expected that the process would bring me a little peace, but in truth the opposite is true: I have felt continued rage and shock and anger, to the extent that I now wonder whether this shall be my perpetual state for the rest of my life. I want to grab Catherine by the shoulders and shake her until her life is restored, and then I want to make her see that I was right.
I want to hear her voice again.
I want her to tell me she's sorry, and that she believes in my work.
Soon I shall have to contact another doctor and have Catherine declared dead. There will be questions, of course, concerning the state of her body, and in particular concerning the unorthodox treatments to which she has been subjected. I imagine I shall be able to avoid any probing questions, thanks to my status and my connections in the medical field. In the unlikely event that the police become involved, perhaps the whole thing shall unravel, and perhaps I shall even be accused of murdering those whores.
Now that Catherine is gone, I scarcely care one way or the other.
Still, perhaps I can wait until morning before bringing the outside world into our home. I should like one final, calm night here, so that I might remember how things once were. Catherine would like that, too. I feel as if I have been fighting for so long, against such an implacable enemy, against the very cancer that consumed her body and grew through her bones...
I must rest now.
I am so tired, I do not think that even death will be quiet enough.
Turning, I head toward the door, although I stop when I see the bell on the floor. My anger has subsided a little now, or at least paused for a while, so I reach down and pick the bell up. It rings one more time as I set it on the nightstand, and then it falls silent. I suppose it shall never ring again, not now that Catherine is gone, and I might very well decide to have it placed in her coffin. Not out of some morbid belief that it might be needed again, but rather because I simply cannot think of anywhere else that might be suitable for it to rest. Over the past few months, after all, that bell has been constantly at Catherine's side. There were times when the cancer rendered her unable to speak, so she could communicate through the bell alone. It was almost a part of her.
I turn again, but this time a stray thought stops me in my tracks.
I pause for a moment, before turning and looking back over at Catherine's body. Although I desperately want to leave her in peace, I cannot help but wonder whether the kidney is taking to its new home. Indeed, although I know that Catherine's death means such processes will be interrupted, there is a part of me that remains curious.
Finally I head back over and move the sheet aside, before shifting the shawl back until I can see the stitches in my dead wife's abdomen. Everything looks satisfactory so far, and if she were alive I would be very confident that I had achieved my goals. Still, I cannot help but reach down and start unpicking the stitches with my bare hands, unthreading them carefully from her body until the wound begins to open. Once I have undone all the stitching, I pull the flaps of skin aside, and I feel a shudder pass through my chest as soon as I see the alien kidney that I put in place earlier.
The kidney looks darker than the rest of Catherine's organs.
More dead.
That is not possible, of course.
I reach down and start turning the kidney around, determined to prove to myself that the operation would have been a success. What I find, however, is that not only has the stitching begun to come loose, but that one side of the kidney appears to be deteriorating much faster than the other. Even as I turn the organ around in my hands, patches of meat are crumbling away into my hands. And when I tilt the kidney so that I might see the other side, I am horrified to watch as an entire section sloughs away from the bottom and falls into Catherine's abdominal cavity.
This kidney is dead, and I fear it would have died regardless of Catherine's health.
No.
No, I must not doubt myself.
I performed the transplant perfectly, and it is clear that the kidney is simply reacting swiftly to the death of its host. Putting aside my doubts, I force myself to remember that there is much about the human body that I do not understand, and I quickly realize that the kidney is most likely more sensitive to the changes that have begun to occur. If Catherine still lived, and if her heart could still pump blood around her body, the kidney would be thriving.
Yes, of course.
That is the explanation.
If only she had lived to see that I was right. Her survival would have been my greatest triumph, and men such as Thomas Culpepper would have dropped to their knees when they heard what I had done.
Now, however, there is nothing to show them. And I most certainly do not intend to share my new-found knowledge. Perhaps other lives could be saved, but why should I care?
“Why couldn't you have waited?” I whisper, taking a step back as I see that there is once again blood caked all over my hands. After a moment, I look at my wife's dead face. “My darling Catherine, what haste compelled you to rid yourself of this world? I was right, you would have seen that, you just needed to give me more time!”
Kneeling next to the bed, I kiss the side of her face. Her skin is cold already, but I cannot help kissing her again and again, all the way up past her ear and onto her forehead. Tears run from my eyes and drip onto her dead features, but I only wipe away the first couple before realizing that there are in fact too many. I kiss her forehead several more times, while wrapping my arms around her corpse and hugging her tight.
“I was going to save you!” I sob, unable to contain my sorrow for even a moment longer. “We'd have been happy again! You only had to wait while I saved you!”
Yet even as I speak these words, I know they are hollow. For Catherine is gone, and even I – the greatest surgeon in all of London – can have no hope of ever bringing her back. I must simply arrange certain matters in my life, and then join her in whatever place comes next. As I continue to hug and kiss her dead body, I know without a shadow of doubt that I cannot live without her.
One thing is certain, then. This life of mine is done.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Maddie
Today
My heart is pounding as I walk out of the shop, and I f
eel as if I might be about to faint. But somehow, despite my trembling knees and the pain in my waist, I make it to the corner and slip down the alley, and then I finally take a moment to re-count the cash in my trembling hands.
Two hundred and seventy-five pounds.
I count it again, then again, and then suddenly I stuff it all into my pocket and look around to make sure nobody noticed. My mind is racing so hard and so fast, I can barely think straight.
I don't think I've ever held so much money in my hands before. When the guy in the shop told me how much he'd pay me for the earrings, I struggled to keep a straight face. He asked a lot of questions, of course, and I'm not convinced that the deal was quite on the up-and-up. There are probably loads of regulations about buying and selling antiques – and he said these are definitely antique earrings – and I kept expecting him to demand proof of where the jewellery had come from. The fact that he didn't ask for any proof at all makes me think, in fact, that he must be pretty dodgy himself. He obviously thought they were stolen, but apparently at the end of the day he didn't care too much.
Whatever.
He seemed happy, and I got what I needed.
I was expecting maybe a hundred pounds at most. The worst part is, the guy probably saw me coming from a mile off, and I'm pretty sure the earrings must have been worth even more than he gave me. Still, there's no way I'm going to complain. Even now, I can't help putting my hand into my pocket to double-check not only that the money is still there, but that it's real at all. There's definitely a part of me that think I might suddenly wake up, cold and alone on the floor in that house – and find that the past few hours have all been a dream.
Alex would be proud of me.
No, Alex will be proud of me, when I find her and show her what I've got.
Although if I tell her about all the other jewellery in the house, which must be worth thousands at the same rate, she'd probably be furious at me for not cleaning the place out.
Still, I'm no thief.
One day, I'll buy another set of earrings and take them back to that house on Cathmore Road. I might even buy two, just to set things right. I'm not a thief, I swear I'm not, but right now this money might be enough for me to get back on my feet. I can buy a bus ticket and go to find Alex, and I'm sure she'll know how we can use what's left to really lift ourselves up off the streets. I guess maybe I'm being a little optimistic, but I don't suppose that really matters right now. What matters is that I actually have some money.
And I'll pay it back, I swear.
I'm not a thief.
The earrings were literally slipped into my pocket, which means somebody wanted me to have them. I have no idea why that might be, but I guess it's not my job to solve the mystery. Whatever's going on in that house, I'm grateful for the help I received but I really just want to keep away. Maybe there's some reclusive surgeon living there in squalor, casually doling out free jewellery to anyone who happens to climb through his window. I'm sure that's not the truth, but it's clear that something weird is happening there.
I need to stop overthinking this.
Obviously the owner of the house wanted me to have the earrings, and I should just be grateful.
Once I've checked yet again that the money is safely in my pocket, I head out of the alley and start making my way along the street. I don't even know where I'm going right now, but I do know that I have to make sure I don't splurge the money. The best option might be to go to a bus stop or a train station and try to figure out how I'm going to get to Stratford. Alex has always said that if she can get just a couple of hundred pounds together, she can buy things to sell at a market, and then she'll be able to get her life back on-track. If we work together, we might even -
Suddenly I stop in my tracks as I see yellow police tape fluttering in the breeze at the end of the street. A moment later I spot a couple of officers next to a police car, and one of them turns to look this way.
I immediately turn and start walking back the other way. Instantly, I realize that I'm acting suspiciously, but I figure I just need to get away. The police are obviously investigating something that happened in the neighborhood, so I doubt they'd give a damn about me, but there's always a danger that they might decide to make my life difficult. And if they began to scrutinize me at all – especially with all this cash in my pocket – they could make my life very very difficult. As I reach the end of the street I look over my shoulder, and I feel a flash of relief as I see that the police don't seem to be coming after me.
I watch the fluttering tape for a moment, before taking a left and heading along a different street. After just a couple of paces, however, I stop as I see that there's a TV crew ahead, with a news reporter talking into the camera. Whatever's happened around here, it seems to be big news. I watch for a few seconds, before hearing shuffling steps nearby and turning to find that an old man has come out of a house and is leaning against a bin as he too watches the news crew.
“What happened?” I stammer.
He turns to me.
“Do you know?” I continue, trying to force a smile. “Did something bad happen?”
“A girl got killed,” he explains. “Someone found her this morning at sunrise, a couple of streets away. Didn't you hear about it on the news?”
Shocked, I shake my head.
“Was it an accident?” I ask.
“An accident?” He rolls his eyes. “I doubt it. Not after what they've been saying on the news.”
“What have they been saying?”
“She was murdered. All cut up, like, with a knife.”
I feel a shudder pass through my chest as I think back to my encounter with that guy last night. The guy who put a knife in my waist and almost killed me.
“How exactly was she killed?” I ask, trying to hide the fact that I'm panicked.
“They're saying it was pretty nasty,” the man replies. “They're not giving out all the details, not yet. I heard she was all sliced in the belly, though. They say it was real horrible, and that -”
“Harold!” a woman's voice calls out from inside. “Are you coming or what?”
“Hang on!” he yells, before stepping over to me. “It's all over the news this morning,” he continues, lowering his voice a little. “Haven't you been watching? It's the top story after the details came out. They haven't identified her yet, but that's probably just 'cause they've gotta inform the family first. If she had a family, this is. A lot of these street kids haven't got anyone at all. Maybe they'll just release the details later on.”
“What details?” I ask.
“How the poor girl died. They say she was only a kid. Fifteen, sixteen, something like that. It shouldn't be happening, not in the modern world. Kids shouldn't be out there with nowhere to go and no-one to look after them, forced to sell themselves to whatever shady characters dangle some cash in front of their noses. It's not right.”
“She was a prostitute?”
“They're not saying that, but everyone knows,” he replies. “You see them all the time, up and down this street. It's as clear as the nose on your face. They're flaunting it, selling it, you name it.”
“So a customer killed her?”
“She wasn't just killed,” he continues, before miming a slicing motion across his belly. “From what I've heard, she was all cut up and she'd had all this horrible stuff done to her. Bits taken out, if you know what I mean. God bless her soul, but it's not right. A mate of mine said he saw some blood on the ground all the way up in Burgess Road. Sounds like the killer was a real butcher. From what I heard...”
He looks around again, as if he's still worried about being overheard, and then he leans even closer.
“From what I heard,” he adds, “she got her guts ripped out right there on the street. Like an animal. All spread out everywhere. She was killed right there in the open, under a street-light, and no-one saw a thing. And you know what the world's like. If they don't catch the bugger soon, he'll kill again.”
/> “Why would someone do such an awful thing?” I ask with a shudder.
“It's a copycat.”
“I'm sorry?”
He leans closer. “My mate at the paper says it's an exact copy of a murder that happened here over a hundred years ago.”
“That's crazy,” I point out.
“You know what's even crazier?” He turns and looks toward the flashing police lights, and I follow his gaze. “It's just like those murders that happened here back then,” he continues. “Of course, the bloody papers are having a field day. The jackals love something like this, don't they? They've got no respect for the dead. I bet you a bunch of those dirty buggers are already trying to hack into her phone and her internet. That's what they're like, isn't it?”
“Harold!” the woman yells from inside. “Come and see this! It's on the telly! There's a helicopter! Our house was just on!”
He mutters something about having to go and watch, and about how it's important for me to stay safe, and then he heads into the house, leaving me shellshocked on the pavement. I watch the flashing lights for a moment, before starting to make my way along the street. No matter how many times I try to tell myself that this was all a coincidence, I can't help wondering whether I might have had a close encounter with the killer last night.
If I hadn't managed to kick him away, maybe I'd be the one who ended up getting killed and mutilated by some maniac.
As I walk along the street I pass camera crews and loiterers, gawpers and concerned locals leaning against their garden gates. People are even watching from the upstairs windows of nearby houses, as if everyone in this part of London wants to see what's happening. Up ahead there are more police vans arriving, along with a couple of trucks that have probably brought forensics teams to the area. This is turning into a major operation, and I'm actually a little stunned by the scene. It takes almost a full minute, in fact, before I realize that I'm wandering too close.
I take a detour across the road, toward a row of shops. Even here, however, there are people standing around and watching the scene, and whispering theories to one another. Trying to ignore them, I slip through the crowd, until suddenly I stop as I see some TV screens in a nearby shop window. Each TV is tuned to a news channel, and each channel is covering the story of the murder. They have their own approaches, of course, but one in particular grabs my attention with its lurid banner:
