by kindels
As he drove home to report the failure of his mission to Jennifer, Tom reflected on the incident of the mystery woman who'd visited Giles Morris in search of information about Mark. As he'd said to the solicitor, it would be highly unlikely that she'd had any connection to Jack and his disappearance, for after all, what could Jack have wanted from his Uncle Mark?
Then again, as much as he tried to shake the thought, Tom couldn't escape the niggling feeling that he'd missed something significant. As he drove onto the gravel driveway of his home, he saw Jennifer waving to him from the bay window that overlooked the front garden of their home and the thought of having to tell her of the negative aspects of his visit to Giles Morris drove all other thoughts from his mind.
Chapter 18
Jacob's Awakening
Jacob felt as though his eyes had been glued together. He'd slept for longer than usual and was finding it increasingly difficult, almost every day, to wake up with any degree of clarity. He was no fool, in fact he was far from it, and the realisation that he was perhaps being drugged had already entered his mind. The question was, why? He'd done all he'd been asked to do by Michael, and in return had received the benefit of a place to stay where he could develop and put into effect his own plans, and in so doing he'd never once disturbed the routine of his host. Now, as he finally managed to open his eyes and the sunlight that penetrated through the window temporarily caused him to feel as though he'd been blinded, he decided that he had little choice but to confront his host. He'd had the feeling for over week that something was happening to him, something not right, and that Michael was the one responsible for whatever it might be, and Jacob thought he knew just what that something was. The strange, 'out of body' feelings he'd been experiencing, the headaches, the inability to wake up with a clear head, they all pointed to only one thing in Jacob's mind.
He could hear Michael clattering around in the kitchen, probably making some of the terrible tea that Jacob had become used to, made with the cheapest and probably the most tasteless tea bags in the world.
Jacob swung his legs out from under the duvet and slipped his feet into the pair of battered leather slippers that waited by the side of the bed. Wearing just his boxer shorts and t-shirt, he padded across the floor and quietly peered around the door to see Michael at work, as he suspected, creating a pot of the hideous brew he so often inflicted on them both. At least, Jacob thought, he enjoys it because he makes it the way he likes it. How the hell can he imagine anyone else relishing the stuff? Maybe his taste buds died a long time ago and he can't really taste the abject apology for a cup of tea he produces. He saw that Michael was in the process of preparing two cups, obviously intending to wake him and share a brew and a cuppa together. How domestic!
"Morning Michael," he said as cheerfully as he could as he strode through the door and sat down at one of the rickety chairs that lay around the Formica-topped table that really belonged in another era, long before the twenty-first century.
"Bloody hell! Look at you. You look bloody awful," Michael grinned at him. "Couldn't you have got dressed? You could scare someone walking into a room looking like that."
"I'm not feeling too good this morning," Jacob replied truthfully.
"Why? What's wrong? Can I do anything to help?"
For a second Jacob could have believed that his host was actually sincere in his concern for him, but only for a second, and the thought quickly died a natural death.
"No, I'll be okay, but it feels like I've got a hangover, and I didn't even have a bloody drink last night. My head is thumping and my eyes didn't want to open just now in the bedroom."
"My, my, you are in a bad way aren't you? Here, get this down you. It'll make you feel better."
Michael placed a chipped white mug with a picture of a bulldog across the table. The steaming hot liquid smelled almost as bad as Jacob knew it was going to taste, but he forced himself to smile, say thanks, and he gingerly sipped at the foul witches brew.
As soon as Michael sat down opposite Jacob, the younger man decided to seize the moment and make his move. Better not to waste any time, just get on with it.
"Michael?"
"Hmm?"
"What have you been giving me?"
"Eh? It's tea, same as always, you dummy."
"I don't mean the tea. I mean, what drugs have you putting in the tea, or in my food or whatever?"
"Drugs? What fucking drugs, man? I haven't been giving you any drugs. How the hell could you even think that?"
"Listen to me Michael. I'm no dummy, and I'm no fool. I know a hell of a lot more than you could even begin to imagine, especially about drugs. I've known from the moment I met you that you're a user as well as being a small-time pusher, but that didn't matter to me. You gave me a roof to sleep under and I thought you were an okay sort of guy, despite the drug thing, and I didn't even mind running your illegal little errands in return for the pittance you've been paying me, but all the time you were fucking drugging me with something. Don't deny it, you creepy little shit. I know it. It's the only explanation for the way I've been feeling. At first I thought it was just the shitty way I've been forced to live since I moved in with you, the lousy food and that awful stuff you have the gall to call tea, but it wasn't that at all, was it?"
"Look, Jacob, "Michael protested. "I don't know where you've got these crazy ideas from, but I promise you&"
"Don't fucking well lie to me, you bastard," Jacob shouted as he leapt up from the chair and ran around to Michael's side of the table. In a flash his hands were around Michael's throat and as if it was the easiest thing in the world to do, he began to exert pressure on the seated man's windpipe.
Michael began to gag as the pressure of Jacob's hands slowly cut off the supply of air to his lungs. He kicked out and his flailing legs knocked the table over, the two cups of tea flying across the surface and the cups sliding off to smash on the floor. Still the pressure increased, until Michael began to believe that Jacob was going to kill him, right there and then, without giving him an opportunity to tell him the truth. His eyes felt as though they were about to pop from his head, his lungs were bursting from lack of air and his mind began to go blank, and then, just as Michael believed he was about to black out for the last time, Jacob released the pressure on his throat and slowly let his hands fall away from the death grip in which he'd held his victim.
Michael fell forward on to his knees, gulping in precious lungfulls of life giving air, coughing and spluttering, gasping with relief. . A trickle of blood ran from his mouth and dribbled down his chin. He realised he'd bitten his tongue during Jacob's onslaught. He dabbed at the blood with the back of his right hand.
"Jesus Christ, man! You almost killed me."
"I still might, Michael," Jacob spoke menacingly. "You'd better tell me the truth, and tell me now."
"Look man, it was just a prank, a silly game, that's all."
"Do you think I'm daft enough to believe that? You don't drug someone to the point that they don't even remember what they're doing just for a prank, Michael. Do you really think I remember nothing at all? I know you took me out on at least two occasions when I was drugged up, and I remember being in a mess at least once when we got back. You cleaned me up because I was covered in something. It was blood, wasn't it? What the fuck have you been doing to me? I want to know, or so help me, I'll finish what I just started."
Michael's mind was racing. He knew that if he told Jacob the truth, he might just be signing his own death warrant. On the other hand, if he said nothing at all things could work out just as bad for him. He had to think of a compromise that would tell Jacob something, though not everything, about the events of the last few weeks. The trouble was, someone else had to be considered, someone who could be just as vicious and possibly a hundred time more deadly then Jacob if he knew that Michael had blabbed. Then again, Jacob was the immediate problem. Michael had been amazed at the strength the young man had displayed as he'd almost throttled the life out of
him. Oh yes, Jacob was the here and now, those hands of his quite capable of locking around Michael's throat once again, and with that knowledge, Michael's decision was made. He knew just what to tell Jacob.
"Listen man, I'll tell you all I know," he spluttered, "But I need to make a phone call first, okay?"
"No phone calls, Michael. You tell me what I want to know, and you tell me now!" For starters, I want to know why I woke up in such a state on two occasions, and why my clothes smelled funny, as though they'd come straight out of a washing machine and been quickly dried in a tumble-drier. What the hell did you do to me while I was in a state of drugged catharsis, eh?"
Damn! Michael had hoped to call the man, to tell him what had happened and get his advice on how to handle the situation. That option had been denied to him, so he quickly decided on his story and in a hushed, rasping voice, still affected by the terrible pressure that the other man had exerted on his windpipe, Michael began to relate his diluted and highly adulterated version of the truth to Jacob. He hoped it would suffice, and that Jacob would leave him alone when he'd finished.
For the next twenty minutes Michael talked, and Jacob listened. Michael thought it strange that throughout his narration, Jacob never spoke, not a single sound came from his lips, no interruptions, no questions, nothing. He simply sat opposite Michael with a deadly sick grin on his face, and for the first time, Michael realised that there just might be something seriously weird going on in his guest's mind. A shiver of fear ran through his body, but he continued with his story, slowly and as precisely as he could, trying to make every word sound like the gospel truth. He suddenly knew that without a doubt, his life did indeed depend on the other man believing in his tale.
Jacob simply sat and listened, hanging on every word that came from the still bloodied mouth of his so-called friend. Michael looked briefly at his watch, and wondered how long the other man could sit there without saying a word. Meanwhile, he continued talking as though his life depended upon it.
As Michael's highly edited version of the truth spewed forth from his bloodied lips, Jacob sat listening intently to every word. When Michael eventually fell silent, Jacob stared at him for long seconds, which to the other man felt like hours, then Jacob rose, took hold of the frightened Michael by the scruff of his collar, and pushed him into the sitting room, finally throwing his victim onto the sofa, where he landed in a heap.
"What now?" asked a terrified looking Michael.
"Now," Jacob said, threateningly, "you're going to make a phone call, you lying little bastard. Then, we're going to find out just how much of the truth you've been telling me. We're going visiting!"
Chapter 19
The Tale of Jack the Ripper
In contrast to the house on the hill at Abbotsford Road, the suburban home of the man leading the investigation into the Brighton murders was small, neat, and far less ostentatious and opulent in its outward appearance. With clean white net curtains hanging in the windows, and recently painted woodwork adorning the exterior windows and doors, number forty-eight Acacia Road looked every inch the typical English middle class home. He'd rented the place soon after his divorce, his ex-wife having retained the marital home as part of their divorce settlement. Not too far from the centre of town, the house had been built in eighteen ninety, soon after the series of killings in the Whitechapel area of London that now appeared to have had their ghosts resurrected by recent events in the seaside town. Though late at night, any passers-by couldn't fail to notice that of all the homes on the street, this was the only one where all the downstairs lights still burned brightly despite the hour.
D.I. Mike Holland stretched his legs across the full length of the sofa, and placed the book he'd been reading on the coffee tale. Next, he stretched his arms behind his head to their full extent and looked across at the mantelpiece where the cock read eleven thirty five. It was getting late and he'd barely moved from the sofa in the last four hours. A mug of coffee, long ago gone cold, sat beside the book on the table and Holland listened for a minute or two to the sound of the wind as it whistled along the street outside the warm cocoon of his home. The sound reminded him of the power of nature, the ability of something unseen and yet so powerful to disrupt power lines, damage property and even to drive ocean going ships aground at will. Man may have thought he'd harnessed the power of nature, wind farms used to generate electricity, the wind itself used to drive the sails of ships and smaller, private vessels used for sport and recreation, and yet he knew only too well that such beliefs were nothing more than an illusion, a feeble attempt to pacify our own insecurities. Nothing in the realm of man could ever hope to compare with the power of nature, the awesome ability of wind, storm, lightning or flood to decimate cities, end countless lives, and bring man to his knees in fear and terror.
Fear and terror! Those were the two words with which much of Holland's evening had been occupied in studying. The reign of terror that had been produced over a hundred years earlier by a murderer so elusive, so damnably clever that not only had he succeeded in killing with apparent impunity, never to be caught and apprehended, but even after the passage of so many years, his identity was as yet unknown, with the police, the public and the world at large still no nearer to being able to identify the force, not of nature, but of the twisted evil that lay within the mind of the man whom history knows only as Jack the Ripper.
The reasons for such thoughts lay on the coffee table before him. The two hard cover books had been provided by Sergeant Carl Wright. Holland's assistant had long been a student of unsolved murder cases and none came with as high a historical profile as that of the Whitechapel Murders of 1888. His study of the Ripper case had long been a source of amusement among some of his colleagues, who thought his time might be better spent trying to ascertain the identity of some of the more recent killers who appeared to have escaped detection. After all, some of them had voiced to him, what use was it after all this time to try and find out who Jack the Ripper really was? What could it mean to the living to reveal the identity of a man long dead, one who admittedly had escaped detection for over a hundred years, but who was after all way beyond the reach of the law. Wright simply explained that thousands of people around the globe still felt a need to try and solve the case, he being only one of them. If someone couldn't understand his motives in attempting to arrive at a solution to the case, that was their hard luck, in his mind. Holland had spent the best part of the evening poring over the books, trying to commit to memory as many facts about the case as he could. In addition to the books, he'd managed to obtain a dossier from the Metropolitan Police, sent by e-mail that afternoon, which also provided him with as many details as he could possible require about the case, this time from the police of the time's point of view. There were case files, interview reporters with various witnesses, before and after the fact, as no-one ever saw the ripper at work.
With too many similarities between the case Holland was currently investigating and that of the Whitechapel Murder of 1888, Mike Holland had decided that it would be folly to ignore the possibility of a link, however tenuous, between the two even if it were no more than the fact that they had a crazed killer on the loose in Brighton who had determined to replicate the murders of the original ripper. The fact that the two killings on Holland's patch had occurred on the same dates as the first two Whitechapel murders and that both victims had been prostitutes was too coincidental to be ignored at this stage of the investigation.
Holland eventually shook himself from the lethargy of tiredness that he felt slowly engulfing him, rose from his sofa and made his way to the kitchen, mug in hand, where he quickly boiled the kettle and replenished his coffee with a freshly made, steaming hot mug of the dark elixir. Returning to the sofa, he began to read through the notes he'd made earlier when correlating the information he'd gleaned from Wright's books and from the old Scotland Yard reports.
Knowing that 'knowledge was power' he'd become determined to learn as much about his curre
nt nemesis as possible. If the Brighton killer was using the Jack the Ripper murders as a template for his own crimes it was obvious to Holland that the man must have studied the intricacies of the original murders in order to carry out his macabre re-creations of the murders, and Holland had therefore set out to arm himself with every scrap of knowledge that might give him an 'edge' no matter how slight, in his search for the murderer. Holland needed to know everything there was to know about the Whitechapel murders of 1888, and so, he continued his studious reading of his notes.
***
The crimes of Jack the Ripper had been played out against the backdrop of filth and degradation that pervaded the Whitechapel and Spitalfields areas of Victorian London. In what become known as 'The Autumn of Terror' the world's first officially acknowledged 'serial killer' stalked his prey and carried out his hideous campaign of murder and mutilation amidst the streets and alleyways of the veritable rabbit-warren of streets that reeked of human effluent, mirroring the poverty and deprivation that stared out at the rank thoroughfares from the windows of the squalid, bleak buildings that housed the employed, the unemployed and the unemployable of the city's vast underclass of the poor. Even to be employed proved no guarantee of a healthy or a long life within those mean streets, with the work available to the denizens of Whitechapel usually being that of the manual labourer, back-breaking work with long hours, poor pay and no assurance of job security. Often such work, perhaps in the markets of London or at the vast docks that helped fuel the engine of Empire with the comings and goings of the great ocean going ships that carried goods to and from the capital was of the casual, transient kind, a day here or there if the worker was lucky. Each day huge queues would build up wherever the prospect of earning a few shillings, or maybe just pennies presented itself.
