The Harvest Man

by Alex Grecian

  “Why would they think you give me bad information?”

  “Because I do.”

  “You do?”

  “Not all the time. If it was all the time, you’d never come back and then I couldn’t give you wrong information anymore, could I? Got to plant a little good in with the bad, a bloom here and there to distract you from the weeds.”

  “I guess I need to be careful with you.”

  “That makes us even,” Blackleg said. “What’re you here for today? I know you don’t care much about the opium business. Or whores. You care about the kids bein’ sold on the docks, but I don’t got nothin’ to do with anything like that, and you know it.”

  “Murders.”

  “Don’t got nothin’ to do with murders, either. And anyway you’ve got your friend, Inspector Dew, to help with all that.”

  “His name’s Day. And he’s busy with something else. Somebody’s cutting people’s faces off.”

  “The spider man. Yes, I know about that.”

  “They’re calling him Harvest Man.”

  “For the spider, like I said.”

  “You know where he is?”

  “Now why would I know where he is?”

  “Do you?”

  “No.”

  “There are two children missing. I’ve been looking for them all evening. If anybody can tell me where this madman is, I need to know it.” Hammersmith stared at Blackleg until the other man shifted in his seat.

  “I’m not lying to you,” Blackleg said. “No reason to. I’ve got no interest in that spider man ’less he tries to cut me own face off. If he does that, you won’t be havin’ no problem with ’im again ’cause he’ll disappear off the face of the earth.”

  “I believe you.” Hammersmith took another sip of beer. “Anyway, that’s not why I’m here.”

  “Didn’t figure so. You know I don’t got nothin’ to do with anything like that.”

  “It’s another murderer I’m after.”

  “Like I say, I don’t do murders that ain’t called for. And none that’s your business anyway.”

  “It’s the Ripper.”

  Blackleg pushed his chair back. It hit the wall and he sat there, the sudden reaction followed by a silence that seemed just as sudden. Hammersmith nodded at him, but didn’t speak. He worked on his beer and let Blackleg think. Finally the criminal pulled his chair back up to the table.

  “The bloke you’re talkin’ of,” he said, “it’s the same one I’m thinkin’ of? The same one . . . you know.”

  “The very same,” Hammersmith said. “Went by the name Jack.”

  “He’s gone. Dead and gone. Must be. Supposed to be more than a year now since the last time he cut anyone up.”

  “No. He’s alive.” Hammersmith looked around the room. The card players had found another deck of Happy Families and were busy at a table by the other end of the counter, well out of earshot. The girl had left, gone to join her coworkers at the curb outside. The old man was still at his post by the door, but he was snoring so loudly that the barman had gone to try to rouse him. Otherwise, Hammersmith and Blackleg were alone. “He was being held prisoner. Jack the Ripper was. Somewhere underground. But now he’s free and he’s back at it.”

  Blackleg held up a hand to stop him and motioned at the barman, who trotted over. “Two whiskeys,” Blackleg said. “And one for my friend.” He turned back to Hammersmith. “Tell me about him. What’s happened?”

  “There’s a club,” Hammersmith said. “A society of men. I don’t know who they all are. Their membership is secret and closely guarded, as is their mission. They don’t believe criminals can be rehabilitated.”

  “Nor do I. A man is who he is and that don’t change unless he gets religion, which is nothin’ but its own kind of prison.”

  “These men carry their conviction to its logical but frightening end. They call themselves the Karstphanomen and they specialize in beating the police to their quarry. They capture murderers and rapists and the like, and they do unto them.”

  “Kill ’em?”

  “No. They torture them. An eye for an eye. They make the man feel whatever it is he’s done to his victims, physically feel it. But they keep him alive, keep hurting him in the same ways, endlessly punishing him.”

  “When you say they do everything the man done, you really mean all of it?”

  “I mean everything and anything, short of death. My friend Day captured one of them and he told us more than I wanted to know.”

  Hammersmith sat back in his chair as the barkeep set three whiskeys in the middle of the table and backed away. Blackleg reached for two of them and pushed the third toward Hammersmith. Hammersmith picked it up and took a small sip. Blackleg downed one of his immediately, slammed the glass down, and cupped his hands around the second whiskey, regarded it as he spoke.

  “I think I can guess,” he said. “When these men got hold of Saucy Jack, they cut out his lady parts.”

  “As close to it as they could,” Hammersmith said. “They cut him over and over in the same places he cut those women, his victims. They let him heal and then they did it again. And again.”

  “He didn’t bleed to death?”

  “Indeed,” Hammersmith said. “They took measures to keep him alive. His death would have robbed them of their fun.”

  “But then he got free of ’em. Otherwise you wouldn’t be here talkin’ to ol’ Blackleg.”

  “Yes. He got free. He ambushed Inspector Day and chained him up in the same place he’d been chained himself.”

  “Didn’t kill ’im?”

  “Tortured him.”

  “Like your secret club done to him in turn.”

  “Yes.”

  “You sayin’ Day’s one of these club members?”

  “No. He stumbled upon what was happening and got swept up.”

  “You got him free?”

  “He freed himself. But he was badly hurt. Walks with a cane now.”

  Blackleg sat back and pursed his lips, looked up at the ceiling, and let out a long breath. “That’s bad news, bluebottle. That’s bad business.”

  “He’s killed three men now. At least three.”

  Blackleg brought his gaze down from the ceiling and leveled it at Hammersmith. “Men, you say?”

  “Two of them were Karstphanomen, we think.”

  “Who was the other one?”

  “A killer of children named Cinderhouse.”

  “I remember him. No real loss there. I’d’ve killed that one myself.”

  “No loss at all. But Jack still has to be stopped.”

  “What about women? Saucy Jack was always a lady-killer. Sounds wrong to me, him killin’ men.”

  “I don’t know. I don’t know whether he’s killing the Karstphanomen in addition to killing prostitutes again, like before, or if he’s changed his intent.”

  “Could be he’s out for revenge now.”

  “I’m sure he is. But if so he’s got a completely different way of working, of thinking. He’s got different reasons for doing what he does and that’s led to different methods.”

  “Which would make him as big a puzzle as ever, wouldn’t it?”

  “I think so.”

  “But he’s doing the same thing? Cutting ’em up? These men you’re talkin’ about he’s after.”

  “Not always. Not so far. He cut both Cinderhouse and a doctor into little pieces, took parts of them away with him. But this latest one . . . this one he choked to death.”

  “How do you know it’s him what done it?”

  “I don’t know,” Hammersmith said.

  “But you think it’s him. Why?”

  “It’s a bit complicated, but there’s a clue. The Karstphanomen left signs for each other, right out in plain sight, signs that meant nothing
to anybody but them. They used chalk, blue chalk, to draw numbers and arrows. They would hunt their victims using their network of men, pointing each other in the right direction.”

  “Where was the chalk? I mean, they drew on buildings? On people?”

  “How would you draw on a person?”

  “If you killed him first.”

  “No, nothing like that. They’d just make their mark on the street in front of a house or on the outside wall of a public bath, that sort of thing. And it wouldn’t mean anything to anyone, except another one of them. Most people wouldn’t even notice such a thing, but these men knew to keep their eyes trained to see them.”

  “What does that have to do with himself? With Jack?”

  “He’s using it now. The blue chalk. I think maybe it amuses him. It’s some sort of parody of their own game. Two of the murdered men had circles drawn in blue chalk near their bodies. I think the circles are zeroes. The number zero. I think he’s saying that a dead member of the Karstphanomen is zeroed out, gone, nothing. He draws an arrow from the zero to the body. Just to make his point.”

  Blackleg drank his second whiskey. He licked his upper lip and motioned for another drink. He stared down at his hands on the table while they waited. “A circle of blue chalk and an arrow,” he said. “That don’t say Jack the Ripper to me. That’s nothin’ like anything he ever done before. You thought at all you might be on the wrong track with this?”

  “Of course. But he’s out there. I know that for a fact. Jack the Ripper is out on the streets, wandering around this city. And those men, the men whose bodies we’ve found, were already suspected of being Karstphanomen. One of them, Adrian March, was certainly a member. He was a respected detective inspector of the Yard itself. The other was a prominent doctor.”

  “He’s killed a policeman?”

  “Former policeman. March was retired and in prison. We found his body this morning.”

  The barkeep put down another glass and took the empties away.

  “Retired or not,” Blackleg said, “a policeman’s a policeman for all of his days. If this bloke’s killin’ bluebottles, the rest of you lot will be all over this, swarming about and lockin’ up anybody looks at ’em cross-eyed. Remember what happened last time bluebottles was killed round here.”

  “This is different.”

  “I can’t stick my nose in nothing that comes anywhere near the police. I make an exception for you ’cause we have history, you and me. Don’t mistake my kindness and the trust I give you for weakness. I don’t plan to go back to jail.”

  “Nobody else is willing to believe it’s Jack.”

  “I don’t know I believe it, either.”

  “Meaning nobody else is looking for him.”

  “So that’s why you come to me.”

  “I have no one else.”

  “And you want me to do what?”

  “Surely you hear about these things. You hear about crimes before the police do.”

  “Some crimes. Maybe just enough before the police hear of ’em to get a hop and skip ahead. That’s all. You lot are better equipped to track a man down.”

  “I don’t think that’s true. And I have no resources anymore. I’m on my own.”

  Blackleg looked him over. “You don’t look the same without the uniform.”

  “I don’t feel the same, either. I always wanted to be a policeman and now I don’t know what I am anymore.”

  “It’s better. I think you were wasted on the police.”

  “I wasn’t good enough.”

  “Depends what you mean by that. Anyway, what if I say I’ll keep my ear to the ground?”

  “You’ll let me know anything you find out?”

  “You’re sure he’s not still after women? Cuttin’ up workin’ women?”

  “Honestly, I’m not sure of anything at the moment. I just want help stopping him.”

  Blackleg picked up his glass and watched Hammersmith over the edge of it. Hammersmith sat patiently. Finally, Blackleg swallowed his whiskey and nodded.

  “Finish your drink,” he said. “I might have something to show you.”

  NIGHT

  Day stood at the rail of a little wooden bridge and watched the moon float high over the trickling water of a tributary. Long branches hung across the water, casting it in shadow, and the moonlight scattered pearls on its surface. Day hung his cane over the rail and leaned forward, taking pressure off his bad leg. He listened to the chirp of insects as they woke up, one by one, and called out to one another; he breathed in the night air, thick with the scent of lilac and honeysuckle. Hammersmith had left long ago, but Day lingered. He hated to give up on the missing boys. He was convinced they were still hiding somewhere in the deep wood, or they were already dead, perhaps floating serenely along this very waterway. He pushed the morbid image out of his head and thought instead about his own children, wondered about the dangers he faced every day as a policeman, whether he would be alive when his girls took their first steps and said their first words, grew to adulthood, married, and had their own children. And grandchildren.

  Someone entered the bridge from the other end, a man moving slowly toward Day. Footsteps echoed up and down the wooden planks, deep and resonant, the sound absorbed by overhanging trees and magnified by the hollow space above the water. Day did not turn around. He recognized the gait of the traveler on the bridge, the confident, evenly spaced steps, and he felt the familiar aura of amused contempt emanating from the man.

  Saucy Jack had found him again.

  Walter held his breath. He gripped the railing tight and refused to look up from the water. He heard the man approach and then pass behind him without breaking stride.

  That would have been the moment for Day to turn, plant his weight on his good leg, catch Jack off guard, and put him in a headlock. But he didn’t. Instead, Day kept his gaze locked on the beads of moonlight shimmering on the water below. The man continued across the bridge and onto the path beyond.

  Then Day finally looked up, half expecting to see Jack standing there watching him. But there was no one. The path was wide and the view along it was shadowed but clear for several yards before it curved away into the trees. Jack was nowhere to be seen. The footsteps, the choking miasma of evil, it had all been a figment.

  Day opened his mouth and took a breath at last, let it out, and heard himself sobbing as if it were someone else in pain, in fear.

  He patted his pockets until he found his flask and he drank until it was empty. He put it away in his waistcoat and took his cane from where it hung on the railing. He walked away from the deep wood, listening to the uneven bump of his own gait on the planks. He left the bridge and walked to the road where he knew he could still find a cab, get to his house where Claire would be waiting.

  But he could not escape the sensation of being watched.

  • • •

  WHENEVER HENRY MAYHEW entered Trafalgar Square, his gaze traveled to Nelson’s Column and the statue of the man at the top. Henry had always wondered who that man was and where he was going. He had one foot out as if he was about to step off the column into midair. It worried him that the man might topple from his perch and hurt himself. It made no sense for anyone to be so high up there against the sky. He could see the moon rising behind the statue, moving in tiny increments that were only visible because the column remained stationary.

  Oliver swooped in from somewhere to the east and made a great show of landing on Henry’s shoulder. His wings brushed against Henry’s cheek. He reached up and rubbed the tickle out of his skin, then stroked the bird’s feathered head, ran his fingertips over Oliver’s black beak. The bird nuzzled his hand, looking for food, then flew away to the top of a lamppost at the southeast corner of the square. Henry smiled and followed him. He fished a key out of his pocket and inserted it into a keyhole in an almost invisible door. The doo
r swung open to reveal a space barely large enough for two people to stand in, perfectly sized for Henry’s giant frame.

  He took a few kernels of dried corn from the ledge that ran along the inside wall of the post and held them up outside. Oliver flew down and perched on his arm, snatched at the corn. His beak was sharp, but it only whispered against the palm of Henry’s hand as he ate. When the corn was gone, Oliver flew back to the top of the lamppost and began the long process of preening his feathers, preparing for sleep. Henry murmured good-night and glanced around the square once more before closing the door and settling in.

  • • •

  CLAIRE DAY HESITATED in the kitchen door, but didn’t enter. She imagined a body lying on the floor, a blue uniform soaked in blood. She blinked and the body was gone, replaced by gleaming wooden planks. She shuddered. The kitchen maid saw her there and smiled at her, raised an inquiring eyebrow. Claire shook her head and turned and went down the hallway, passed the front room without looking in, and crept quietly up the stairs to the nursery.

  She held up a finger to quiet the nanny, then picked up the book she had left there and sat in the rocking chair next to the twins’ cradle. She peered over the high railing at them. They slept curled together, touching each other’s faces with their tiny chubby fingers, their round stomachs rising and falling. A silvery string of spit flowed down one of their chins, soaking the blanket their heads rested on. Claire used the back of her finger to stroke the drooling baby’s cheek. She snagged the runner of drool and wiped it away. She felt calm now. She only needed to be near her girls, to blot out everything in the world but them.

  With her free hand, she opened to a page in A Child’s Garden of Verses and she tried to read, but the words blurred and disappeared. The nanny moved about at the far end of the nursery, folding the endless supply of little towels they used throughout the day, but Claire took no notice of her.

  Her breathing evened out and she drifted off to sleep with her hand still draped over the side of the cradle.

  • • •

  RETIRED INSPECTOR AUGUSTUS MCKRAKEN stood on the porch at 184 Regent’s Park Road and watched the street. His eyes felt gritty in their sockets and his legs were like rubber. He wasn’t a young man anymore. Sometime soon he would need to sleep. But not yet, and hopefully not until he received some news about Jack the Ripper. He could hold out a bit longer. There were many men out looking for that fiend, and as much as McKraken wanted to join the hunt, he knew he was doing good work here protecting the Day family from harm. He leaned against the front wall and closed his eyes for just a moment, just giving them a rest. Within seconds, he was snoring.