by Adam Croft
‘I did notice that, yes. How very observant of you, Jack,’ Dr Grey retorted. ‘That’s not something we’ve seen before, but I can’t say it was unexpected. That’s what happened to Catherine Eddowes back in 1888, too.’
‘How the fuck did he do it, though? I mean, getting a woman here kicking and screaming in the middle of the biggest manhunt in the county’s history. How did he manage that?’
‘She might not have been kicking and screaming,’ the pathologist replied. ‘I won’t know until we’ve got the toxicology results back. If you ask me, the sensible option would’ve been to have drugged her unconscious and had her somewhere nearby, ready to finish the job.’
‘The sensible option would’ve been not to have bothered at all,’ Culverhouse replied.
‘Can’t argue with that. There is one saving grace, though, Jack,’ Dr Grey said, standing and removing her blue latex gloves.
‘If this is some sick pathology joke, you can fuck off,’ Culverhouse replied.
‘Not at all. I was just thinking, if I remember correctly, the fifth Ripper victim was killed on the ninth of November. That gives you, what, six weeks to stop him this time, if that helps.’
‘Oh yeah. That’s great,’ he said. ‘Just fucking great.’
37
29th September
The incident room was eerily quiet that morning, a mixture of tiredness at most of the officers having been up all night and the anguish at having been bettered — twice — by what they had already begun referring to as the Mildenheath Ripper.
Culverhouse’s main worry was that there was no way he was going to be able to head the press off after this. The heavy police presence in the town hadn’t gone unnoticed, but it didn’t seem to have sparked panic. Suzanne Corrigan had been persuaded not to run any stories involving mentions of the Ripper up until now, and the team had been very careful not to make details of the last two killings known to anyone outside the force. But he knew it would be nigh-on impossible for it to remain that way.
All in all, that meant that Mildenheath would be on the verge of public hysteria. A serial killer never went down particularly well anywhere, but in a town like Mildenheath, it would go down about as well as a skid mark on a hired wedding suit.
He would have to speak with Suzanne Corrigan. The details of the killings simply could not be leaked, else some canny member of the public would piece things together inside twenty seconds and the announcement that another murder was due on the ninth of November would be all over the town within minutes. Come that date, there’d be people out on the street with burning lanterns and pitchforks, which wasn’t what anyone wanted.
‘Needless to say, the link between the original Ripper killings and what’s been happening in Mildenheath over the past few weeks is now pretty indisputable,’ Culverhouse said to the assembled officers. ‘It seems that the Ripper is now following the canonical five, which means that we’re looking at one final victim, due to die on the ninth of November.’ As he said this, he realised how bizarre it sounded. It was six weeks away, and already he was predicting the death. ‘Debbie?’
DC Debbie Weston stood and made her way to the front of the room as Culverhouse sat down. ‘The fifth Ripper victim was Mary Jane Kelly,’ she said, holding up a contemporary sketch of the woman. ‘There are a number of notable aspects about her which might lead us to identifying the modern day equivalent in our Ripper’s mind. We’ve got a much longer timeframe this time. Mary Jane Kelly was born in Ireland but moved to Wales as a child and spoke fluent Welsh. She got married at sixteen and her husband was killed in a coal mine explosion a couple of years later. Some sources say they had a child, but others say they didn’t. Apparently, she worked as a prostitute in Cardiff,’ Debbie said, before Culverhouse interrupted her.
‘Well there’s a fucking surprise. What is it with serial killers and prostitutes around here? I’m surprised there’s any of the fuckers left after the nut jobs have finished their killing sprees.’
Wendy shot him a look.
‘Your brother excepted, of course,’ Culverhouse added.
‘My brother is a monster. I know that much, guv.’
‘Yes. Well. At least now we know he’s not alone in his particular penchant, don’t we?’
Debbie Weston duly noted the awkward silence and continued. ‘Mary Jane Kelly moved to London in 1884, which was four years before she was killed. That might be pertinent to our Ripper’s fifth intended victim, too. There are records of people saying she was violent and abusive when drunk, but fine when sober.’
‘Well that narrows it down, doesn’t it?’ Culverhouse interjected. ‘Might as well warn every old trollop propping up the bars in every pub in town. That’ll take most of our six weeks.’
‘We’ve got a fair bit to be running with,’ Debbie replied. ‘The Irish and Welsh connection, possibly fairly new to the area, potentially working as a prostitute or escort, married young and widowed early. We should be able to draw a fairly narrow shortlist.’
‘Starting with what?’ Frank Vine butted in. ‘The PNC? Only any use if she’s known to us. If she’s moved here within the last four years or so she won’t be on the census. We can’t just put a big sign in the town centre saying “Irish and Welsh hookers with dead husbands, call us now.”’
‘I think we can afford to be a little more tactful than that,’ Culverhouse said, the irony of his comment completely lost on him. ‘We’ve got six weeks, potentially. If we have to knock on every door in the town, we will. It can be done. Our killer seems to be fairly well connected to the social scene. He knows people’s backgrounds. We’re potentially looking at someone in a position of trust, but still with an anatomical or medical background. I’m thinking doctors, surgeons, potentially dentists.’
‘Pub landlords?’ Steve Wing added.
‘How many pub landlord do you know with advanced anatomical knowledge, Steve?’
‘Well, not many, but there must be some who went through medical school. Or who’ve read up on it. What I mean is they’d be in a position to know people’s lives and backgrounds. And their habits. We know that at least two of our victims regularly drank in local pubs. Hairdressers hear quite a lot about people’s lives, too. They work with scissors and knives and stuff.’
‘Steve, I...’ Culverhouse started to talk but quickly realised there was no point. ‘I think we need to look at all GPs working in the area for a start. He obviously knows people from the town and their life stories and histories, so it’s unlikely to be a doctor living locally who works elsewhere. Far more likely the other way round. Surgeons are probably less likely in terms of hearing people’s life stories. Perhaps we also need to look at counsellors. Especially ones with medical knowledge. I don’t think there’s any record of our victims all visiting a counsellor, though. Get onto that one for me, Luke,’ he said, pointing at Baxter. ‘I want to see records on all four victims to date. I need to know their GPs, any medical history of doctors they’ve seen in the past ten years. It’s likely our man’s been planning this for a while. I also want to know their hairdresser, the pubs they drink in — everything that might connect them to someone who’d know all about their lives. That way we might find a link.’
38
29th September
After making two mugs of strong coffee — one to gulp down immediately and one to sip after — Wendy spent the evening going through the various reports she’d been handed. The first was from the officer who’d listened to the 999 call reporting the third body. It seemed as though the voice had somehow been distorted or made deliberately deep, which made it practically impossible to identify. The accent was a local one, which wasn’t all that surprising, but it still couldn’t be ruled out that it was being put on.
CCTV in the area had been checked, but there wasn’t anything found. The cameras on the front of the shops showed nothing, and the one which covered the stairs to the upstairs flats over the shops didn’t have anything on it either, which told Wendy that the
caller had crossed the road earlier to walk up to the phone box. Had he done this deliberately to avoid the cameras?
Wendy had almost lost her temper when the council had told her that there were no CCTV cameras in the Alexandra Square area other than one covering the doorway of and alleyway to the nightclub on the corner of Alexandra Square and the High Street. Of course, it wasn’t possible to cover every single inch of the town with CCTV but what disturbed Wendy was that it seemed their killer had taken great care in discovering where the cameras were and working out a route which would avoid them all. A fourth time.
DNA results from the first two bodies had shown no trace of any DNA in the database. They’d been unable to trace anything which was clearly from the killer, which showed his victims had not put up much of a fight. There was no skin or fibres under any of their fingernails, which was particularly rare and was only ever really seen when the victim trusted their killer or knew them very well. What had been discovered, though, was dust from latex gloves. This had also been found on the two most recent bodies, but DNA results wouldn’t be ready for a little while yet.
She’d also been provided with more information about the lives of Emma Roche and Marla Collingwood. Their nexts of kin had been traced and interviewed, and subsequently all confirmed as not being suspects. Marla had been born in Cannock — not a million miles from Wolverhampton at all — and had been a fairly heavy drinker. She’d apparently had kidney stones a few months back but nothing more serious than that, and certainly nothing that would be the modern day equivalent of Bright’s Disease.
Emma, on the other hand, had been born in Sweden as Emma Lundstromm. She moved over with her parents at a young age and had been married but separated. Her husband had apparently been very keen to help with the investigation where he could, as he and Emma had parted on good terms, but he now lived back in Ireland, where he had been born, having moved to England for work at the age of twenty.
All of these pieces of information seemed to tie up with their Victorian counterparts in at least some ways, which, in Wendy’s mind, further backed up the theory that they had a Ripper copycat on their hands.
39
30th September
The bloody fools. They’d done exactly as he’d predicted they would. In a way, he’d also hoped they wouldn’t. The chase was really rather boring when the chasers were so inept.
What was he meant to do? Hand it to them on a plate? The thought did appeal to him. He certainly wasn’t willing to be caught by doing something stupid like walking past a CCTV camera undisguised or being recognised by somebody. No, they’d have to use their brains for once; not rely on science and technology to do the work for them. That’s all the Whitechapel police had had to work with, and it had still eluded them.
If there was to be any hope for the future of public safety and human development, he was going to have to see some sign of progress very soon. After all, it was over a hundred and twenty years on from the original investigation and it seemed that nothing much had changed.
The rush of adrenaline between the third and fourth had been immense, but that was only because he’d stepped up the game and practically led them to him. He knew the way they thought, the way they reacted. That wasn’t going to make him stop taking advantage of that, though. That was all part of the game. That was all part of using their brains to get one step ahead of him. This was a battle of wills.
Their next move would be interesting. It would tell him a lot, whatever they chose to do. They’d probably keep fairly quiet for a while. You’d want to, wouldn’t you, if you’d just failed to stop someone killing two women, having known in advance that he was going to do it at that time and in that place. It’s not something you’d shout from the rooftops about.
When the ninth of November started to creep up on them, though, he knew they’d start to panic. They’d need to step up the effort, bring in more experts and ultimately go public to do all they could to prevent the fifth and final killing. He credited them with having already worked out that he was aiming for the canonical five. If they had half an ounce of sense they’d’ve worked out the rest of the plan, too. They’d have realised that he’d then slip back under his cover of darkness and they’d never stand a chance of catching him.
He hated to do it, but it gave him a perverse sense of pleasure and self importance. He slipped on his latex gloves, removed the writing pad from its protective pouch and started to write.
40
1st October
Patrick Sharp looked as pumped as Wendy had imagined he might. As the force’s psychological profiler, he couldn’t have hoped for a juicier case to work on. The original Jack the Ripper case had eluded detectives — both professional and armchair — and psychological profilers for almost a hundred and thirty years. Copycat killers were always a particularly unique breed of serial killer, and the fact that someone in Mildenheath seemed to be replicating the Jack the Ripper killings with almost uncanny similarity was something that Patrick Sharp found both worrying and extremely exciting.
‘The killer is keeping remarkably close to the original killings,’ he said to a packed incident room. ‘It might not seem it in many ways, but we have to remember that the original murders were almost a hundred and thirty years ago, so much of it can’t be replicated these days. Even in Whitechapel itself, it’d be impossible as most of the streets and buildings don’t exist any more. The question, then, has to be why Mildenheath? My own presumption would be that the killer has a close connection with the local area and its people, and probably lives in the town himself. He seems to know the area very well and managed to elude the police twice on the night of the twenty-eighth and twenty-ninth of September.’
The assembled officers exchanged a few looks, as if they didn’t need reminding.
Patrick Sharp continued in his faded but still noticeable Irish brogue. ‘The most worrying thing, but also the most promising in terms of narrowing the search, is how methodical and specific he is. The murders always occur on the same date as the original Ripper killings, in a place which somehow resembles the original and the victim always resembles the original, too. Not always in an obvious way, but there are always strong links. This means he must have been planning this for quite some time. I’d say probably years, with this being the first year that he’d managed to complete his canon and plan where, how and when he’d do it. He must’ve known the women would all be in a certain place on those dates. That’s what baffles me. The alternative is that he had more than one person in mind to play the part of each victim. I find that more likely, personally.’
‘What should we be looking for?’ Culverhouse asked, somewhat annoyed at having things he already knew or had worked out for himself being reiterated.
‘Someone with community connections. Someone who’s calm and methodical. A careful planner who’s happy to wait quite some time — years — to get all his pieces lined up before he even considers making his first move. That means he’s probably planned absolutely everything, including the police’s reactions and movements. His call from the phone box was quite likely part of that, especially considering the fact that he didn’t call in any of his other murders. As much as I hate to say it, I think he successfully managed to con you with sleight of hand, there.’
Culverhouse shot him a look which said that he didn’t particularly want reminding of that.
‘It’s the choice of location which particularly interests me. He always finds a place which somehow resembles the original location where the bodies were found. Mary or Polly Nichols was found in a gateway-cum-alleyway, as was Keira Quinn. Annie Chapman was found in the back garden of 29 Hanbury Street, Whitechapel; Lindsay Stott was found in the back garden of 29 Meadow Hill Lane, Mildenheath. Elizabeth Stride was found in a yard by a working men’s club; Emma Roche was found in the car park behind a working men’s club. Catherine Eddowes was found in Mitre Square; Marla Collingwood was found in Alexandra Square. Mary Kelly, on the other hand — the fifth victim
— was found in her bedroom in Miller’s Court in Whitechapel. You might want to look into roads or areas called Court, here, to see if there’s something which might match up but it’s worth opening the net on this one. It may be that the location of killing her in her bedroom is enough for him. I wouldn’t discount the possibility that he’s going to bring things right up close to home for himself with the last victim. With victim number four we focused on the two main squares and roads called Square in Mildenheath and neglected the tiny Alexandra Square shopping precinct. We don’t want to make that mistake again.’
‘Do you think perhaps you could stop going on about that?’ Culverhouse barked. ‘We fucked up. We know that. Perhaps if you’d actually given us something useful a bit earlier, we’d—’
‘I think what Detective Chief Inspector Culverhouse is trying to say,’ Wendy interjected, ‘is that most of us on the team are still quite raw about what happened the other night. We don’t want to make that mistake again, so we’re grateful for any help you can give us.’
‘Right,’ Patrick Sharp said, shuffling his feet and swallowing hard. ‘Well we need to look at why he’s doing this. If he’s of the serial killer mindset, why has he taken so much time to plan these particular murders based around the original Ripper killings? To me, it seems that he has some sort of affinity with the original case. It’s possible that he feels he has a connection with one of the original suspects, or perhaps is even a descendant of one of them.’
Culverhouse’s ears pricked up. ‘Frank, note that down. I want you to run through the list of the original Ripper suspects and trace their family trees. See if they’ve got any living descendants in this area.’
