Trapping Fog

by William Stafford

  “No; I can’t allow it.”

  “Tough biscuits; it’s happening.”

  With that, Sprite knocked on the warehouse door and sped around the corner, leaving a nonplussed and befuddled inspector dithering at the doorway.

  I could murder that little -

  Kipper’s homicidal thoughts were cut short as the wide warehouse door slid aside to reveal a tall, gaunt figure cast into silhouette by the lamplight behind him.

  “Um - er...” Kipper fumbled his warrant card from his pocket. “Doctor Hoo.”

  “It says ‘Kipper’,” intoned the slender figure. “I am Hoo.”

  He stepped back and made a sparse gesture, an invitation to enter. Kipper swallowed; it was peculiar but with Sprite no longer at close quarters, the inspector was experiencing the choking grip of fear. He entered the warehouse, like a storage place for shadows, and heard the door slide shut behind him.

  “This way,” his host’s voice rumbled. Hoo picked up the lamp and his face sprang into view; Kipper let out an involuntary gasp.

  It’s only a mask, only a mask, only a mask - he told himself but then the way the cheek curled as the slightest of smiles teased the edge of Hoo’s thin lips told the inspector this was no mask.

  He bleedin’ looks like that! Stone me! What have you got yourself into, Johnny?

  As they crossed the warehouse floor, Kipper saw the doctor’s shadow stretch up the wall, eldritch and otherworldly, like something from a Germanic fairy story. They came to a pair of wooden chairs. Hoo stooped and set the lantern on the floor between them before inviting the inspector to sit. When his guest was settled, Hoo folded himself onto the chair opposite. Lit from below, the mask-like features looked more than ever like they had been carved from wood.

  A silent moment elapsed.

  “Tea?” said Doctor Hoo.

  “Oh, gawd, no!” cried Inspector Kipper, a little louder and quicker than he would have liked. “I mean, no, thank you, but no.”

  He blushed. The lamplight danced in the doctor’s narrow eyes. Hoo was amused by the policeman’s discomfort.

  “Questions?” the lips parted and the thin moustaches drooped like untied bootlaces.

  “Oh? Oh, yes. Yes. I’ve got questions all right.” Kipper took a look at his notebook; it was a prop, merely - he knew exactly what he wanted to ask. “Fellow by the name of...” Quick glance at a random entry. “Deacus. Damien Deacus. Did you know him, Doctor?”

  Hoo’s eyes locked on the inspector’s, his expression inscrutable.

  “Well?” Kipper prompted.

  “Yes,” Hoo’s head inclined but slightly yet the shadows swam under his sharp features.

  “In what capacity?”

  “He worked for me.”

  The intonation was peculiar; Kipper couldn’t fathom what it might signify. He pretended to make a mark in his book.

  “Go to his funeral, did you?”

  Hoo did not respond. Kipper made another note with an extravagant flourish of his pencil.

  “Or did you show up afterwards? Did you turn up when it was all over with two blokes and a couple of shovels and dig up his body? By any chance?”

  Hoo made a sound at the back of his throat to indicate he found the inspector’s questions mildly amusing.

  “Where’s the body, Doctor? Where’s Damien Deacus?”

  Hoo rose, towering over the inspector. Kipper shrank back. Hoo smiled and gestured broadly to a spiral staircase in a corner.

  “He is here,” he said.

  Fifteen

  The bastard! The bloody bastard! He’s only bleedin’ turnin’ me in! After everything I’ve done for him and all!

  The bloody bleedin’ bloody bastard!

  Panic gripped me and I jumped up and down a bit on the spot. I had to get out of there and run for my bleedin’ life.

  There was a window, a small square high up, grey with grime. That would have to do. I shoved the table over to it and climbed up, bringing a chair with me for additional height. My new, longer arms could just about reach the latch but my new, thicker fingers wouldn’t quite bend as I needed them to.

  I could hear them coming up the stairs - well, not the doctor, obviously, because he don’t make a sound in them flat, black slippers he wears, but I could hear the copper’s hobnail boots all right. Time was running out. I didn’t want to go back to prison - who would? And, call me peculiar, I certainly didn’t want to get sentenced to hang all over again. I’d escaped the noose once and I didn’t want to push my luck.

  At last, the latch did what it was told and I pushed the little window open. It creaked in protest. I jumped up and grabbed the sill with my clumsy new hands and got the fright of my life.

  A face was staring in at me. Right at me. A pair of bright eyes in a pink face that was smeared with black - or it might have been a black face blotted with pink - I didn’t get the chance to have a good look at it, on account of when it said ‘Boo!’ in a high-pitched voice like a kid’s, I was so startled I sprang backwards, lost my grip on the windowsill and fell off the chair - and the table and all. I landed on my Aristotle just as the door opened and in came the doctor, ushering his guest to step inside.

  The double-crossing, treacherous...

  “This is him, is it?” said the copper with a sniff. “Only to my untrained eye he don’t look all that dead.”

  He approached but didn’t offer to help me up. He treated me to a swift squint at his warrant card.

  “Damien Deacus?” he asked.

  “No, mate,” I did my best to look sorry for disappointing him. “You just missed him.” I pointed at the window, which was ajar. The copper looked sceptical and turned to that traitor Doctor Hoo.

  “It is he,” said the doctor, calm as anything. I thought about chucking the chair at him.

  Apparently, his word was good enough for the copper, who pulled out a set of handcuffs and announced he was arresting me.

  “What for?” Well, I had a right to know. I glared at the doctor but it was like trying to faze a cucumber. Surely Hoo hadn’t turned me in just because I tried to diddle him out of that toff’s money.

  “Suspicion of murder,” the copper said grimly, and that stopped me in my tracks, I can tell you. Somewhat dazed, I stood there blinking like a cow with concussion as the copper pulled my hands behind my back and clicked the cuffs around my wrists.

  “Murder?” Even saying the word out loud didn’t make it any more believable. I may be a lot of things but I ain’t never killed nobody in all my struggle and strife (not on purpose, any road) - although at that moment I would have had a bloody good go at polishing off Doctor bleedin’ Hoo if I had my brass bands free.

  “Three murders,” said the copper. “But you can tell us all about them down at Bow Street nick.”

  He bundled me toward the door.

  “Here! What is this?” I tried to dig my heels in but the copper kept shoving. “Tell him! Doctor! I ain’t no murderer!”

  Hoo’s face was a graven image. If anything, he looked a little bit bored by this disruption to his evening.

  “Who am I supposed to have murdered then, eh?” I tried to wedge myself in the doorway. “Tell me that.”

  “Ignorance is no defence,” said the copper. “I’ve got you bang to rights, Damien Deacus, or should I say, ‘Foggy Jack’?”

  It was like a punch in the kisser. And then I laughed. “What’s this? You’re having a giraffe! You think that I’m - Oh, tell him, Doctor!”

  But Hoo wasn’t even looking at me. After that, it was easy for the copper to steer me down the stairs. By the time he got me outside into the damp and chilly air, I was ready to chuck myself into the bleedin’ river.

  A police wagon was waiting and a copper in uniform saluted as we approached. He had a bushy red beard
like a squirrel’s Aristotle had exploded on his face.

  “Get him, sir?” said this copper from somewhere behind all that ginger fur.

  “Sergeant Adams?” My copper seemed surprised to see him. “How did you-”

  Sergeant Bushy-beard Adams tapped the side of his nose. “A little bird told me, sir. A little bird about yea high, covered in muck, sir.”

  This got similar reactions from my copper and me. We both seemed to know who he was talking about. That face at the window that had stopped me climbing out...

  My eyes darted around the dock. I wouldn’t have been surprised to see that filthy face leering at me from the shadows.

  So that was two people whose scores I had to settle. The dirty-faced kid and the treacherous doctor. But what could I do? I supposed I’d have to come back and haunt the bastards. See how they like that.

  ***

  How bloody lovely to be back at Bow Street nick! I’m being sarcastic, of course. I was searched - I don’t know what they was expecting to find. A big knife and a signed confession, perhaps. Yes, I am Foggy Jack all right and you’ve got me bang to rights. Huh! They should be so bleedin’ lucky.

  They shoved me into a room and said they was going to take my fingerprints. Have ’em, I said, I ain’t using them. Nobody laughed. Can’t say I blame them.

  This was where I ran into a spot of bother. They told me to roll my fingers across an inkpad and then press them onto a sheet of paper. Well, it sounds simple enough, don’t it? Only my new chalks had other ideas. I could hardly lift them and the effort made me break out in a sweat, adding to my general air of looking guilty, I shouldn’t be surprised. Perhaps it was being shoved and pulled around, or perhaps it was falling off that table what done it but I reckon my brass fittings needed tightening or loosening or something.

  Anyway, I managed to lift my arms enough to flop them on the table. The inspector - Kipper his name was - took to swearing under his breath. In the end, he took my hand and he rolled my fingers one by one over the inkpad.

  “Being stubborn won’t help you,” he said, between the swears.

  “I’m not being,” I said, but he wasn’t having none of it.

  “How long have you been an opium addict?” he asked all of a sudden.

  “You what?”

  “Is that what’s making your arms all floppy? Or is it the chronic self-abuse?”

  “I beg yours!”

  “Is that what’s making you do all them horrible murders? The opium. Proper little fiend, ain’t you?”

  Well, I didn’t know which question to answer first.

  “Self-abuse?” I scoffed. “I can honestly say these hands have never taken advantage of my body.”

  “And the murders? Have these hands murdered three women?”

  Well, I couldn’t know that, could I? They could have been up to all sorts before I got them.

  “Not as long as I’ve had them, no.”

  The piece of paper was full of black smudges. Kipper handed it to that bearded bastard, who hurried out of the room with it like it was an urgent despatch from the bleedin’ Queen.

  “Now,” says Kipper, taking a seat across the table from me, “while we’re waiting for your prints to be checked, let’s have a bit of a natter, shall we?”

  I looked around for something to wipe my inky fingers on.

  “You are Damien Deacus,” he said. What a waste of time and breath that was!

  “I ain’t never said I wasn’t,” I replied.

  “And you’re also the murderer of three women.”

  “Piss off.”

  “Let’s not forget our manners, Mr Deacus.”

  “Please piss off.”

  “All right then. First things first. You was pronounced dead the night before you was due to be hanged by your scrawny neck. Then you was buried but you are now, alive and kicking.”

  I hadn’t kicked nobody yet but I was willing to start with him.

  “Care to explain?”

  “Well... I couldn’t have been dead, could I? Buried alive, I was. Oh, it was horrible.”

  “But you got out.”

  “Yeah. Evidently.”

  “How?”

  “Well...” I stopped to think. There was no way I was going to grass up Doctor Hoo even though he practically served me up on a plate; I know how to be loyal even if he don’t. “Lucky them grave robbers come along, weren’t it?”

  “Ah, yes,” Kipper nodded. “Two grave robbers who ended up dead and buried in your grave.”

  I tried to shrug but my brass fittings seized up. My shoulders went up but didn’t come down again. Inspector Kipper clocked all this and looked at me like I was odd.

  “There was a scuffle,” I said, “a right old kerfuffle. I just got out of there fast as I could. You can understand that; I’d had an ’orrible experience. What happened after me back was turned, well, how am I supposed to know that?”

  Kipper pouted. He wasn’t having none of that neither.

  “So you didn’t shoot those men with poison darts?”

  “Me, Inspector? No. Cross my heart.” I tried to but only succeeded in making my hands flop about a bit.

  “Somebody shot those men with poison darts.”

  “Somebody else. Look, I don’t know much about grave robbing nor nothing like that but I shouldn’t be surprised if it weren’t a rival gang or something what done them in. Stands to reason.”

  He thought about it. He didn’t like it but I could see he found it plausible. One up to me!

  “All right,” he says. “Let’s put your miraculous resurrection to one side for a minute. We’ve got your fingerprints at the scenes of numerous crimes in Harley Street, to wit: the thefts of various medical instruments, the likes of which have been used in the murders of three prostitutes in recent weeks.”

  “Oh, have you, now?”

  “Yes, we have. Come off it, Mr Deacus. You’re our man, ain’t you? You’re our killer.”

  Before I could curl my lip in the sneer of disdain his comments deserved, the door burst open and in came that sergeant, running in after his beard like a child eating candy floss.

  “Sir, sir! It ain’t him, it ain’t him!” he pointed at me.

  “I told you that,” I said.

  “What?” Kipper got up. The sergeant handed him the sheet of fingerprints.

  “According to those we’ve got on file, which match those found at Harley Street, that man sitting there ain’t Damien Deacus!”

  “You what?” said the inspector and he stared at me.

  And then it struck me, what Doctor Hoo had done. Not only had he given me new arms, he’d given me a new set of fingerprints and all. He’d swapped my arms not to punish me but to protect me! The clever old basket.

  “Well,” I says, managing to fold my arms - just about - “it couldn’t have been me what nicked them medical things then, could it?”

  I sat back while the inspector and the sergeant gaped at me all incredulous.

  “So I can go now, can I?”

  Kipper ran a hand down his face. He looked exhausted.

  “No,” said the sergeant, surprising me and the inspector both. “These prints belong to notorious safe-cracker and bank robber, Jedidiah Plank. We’ve been looking for you for ages.”

  “Ha!” said Kipper.

  “Oh, bloody hell,” said I.

  ***

  They bunged me in a cell while they gathered a list of my crimes - not the crimes of Damien Deacus, oh no, (it would be a short bleedin’ list) but the crimes of this Jedidiah Plank, whoever he may be - or rather, whoever he was, because I don’t think Doctor Hoo took the arms off of a living bloke, do you? So, how did he come by them? Did he have this Plank geezer dug up? Or did he do away with him himself
?

  No.

  Hard to imagine Doctor Hoo getting his gloves soiled doing his own dirty work.

  The cell was small, little bigger than the bunk it contained. There was also a bucket - well, you can imagine what that was for; I hoped I wouldn’t be in there long enough to need it.

  I had to convince them I wasn’t this Plank geezer - but how? Fingerprints don’t lie; that Kipper took great pride in telling me. He was keen to see me go down for something. You could see it in his eyes. He knew he couldn’t convict me for my own crimes, on account of I’d already been tried and sentenced for them, and you can’t do a man twice for the same misdemeanour. It’s the rules or something.

  I tried pacing the cell as an aid to thinking but I may as well have spun pirouettes on the spot so I gave that up and stretched out on the bunk and held my hands where I could get a butcher’s at them.

  Oh, Doctor Hoo, I guess you meant well and was trying to save me from arrest. Perhaps you should have got me new chalks off of a vicar or somebody. Mind you, some of them vicars can get up to all sorts, can’t they? You can’t trust nobody these days.

  I practised clenching my fists and turning my wrists. I bent my fingers one by one and everything was in working order. Perhaps I would get the hang of it - poor choice of words! Well, it depends on what this Plank had been up to. Somehow I didn’t think I’d get away with a slap on the back of me legs. At least that Kipper bloke probably didn’t think I was Foggy bleedin’ Jack no more.

  I put Plank’s hands over my eyes and groaned and couldn’t help wondering if I’d been better off back when I was buried alive.

  Sixteen

  Kipper didn’t know what to think. He had been so sure he was on the right track. Damien Deacus had stolen all those medical instruments, which he had then used to commit three grisly murders - Kipper had checked the dates and none of the dollymops had met their gruesome fate while Deacus had been banged up, waiting to be hanged up.

  That was another thing. The whole not-being-where-he-was-buried. And now, here he was, banged up again, only his fingerprints said the man in the cell wasn’t Damien Deacus but some other villain. Kipper had sent Sergeant Adams to dig up Jedidiah Plank’s file. Let’s see what this toe rag has been up to; maybe I can fit the murders onto him.