The Devil’s Architect: Book Two of the Dark Horizon Trilogy

by Duncan Simpson

  ‘The other curious detail about the murder relates to Chapman’s rings. On the night of her murder, Chapman was seen to be wearing her two brass rings. It would appear that the Ripper removed them from her fingers sometime during the murder. They were never recovered. All the pawn shops in the area were searched for the rings but without success.’

  Blake raked his fingers through his hair. Days ago he was with Milton in the morgue looking down at the body of the woman murdered at St George’s church. In his head, he could almost hear the voice of the forensic pathologist describing the abrasion marks on the victim’s fingers. The marks being consistent with the forceful removal of the woman’s silver rings, which were eventually found in the grass next to her body. The thought of a copycat serial killer lurking in the East End of London sent a chill running through his body.

  ‘Why would a killer remove jewellery?’ Blake asked. ‘Is it always to sell them or as trophies?’

  ‘Mostly, but not always. In certain cases, it’s more complicated.’

  ‘How so?’

  The curator searched Blake’s face, appraising him with his eyes. ‘A few cases, the Ripper amongst them, have strong occult overtones.’

  Blake raised an eyebrow.

  ‘The museum record has interview transcripts of criminals who are involved in these types of practices. They describe certain rituals in which all metal is removed from the skin.’

  Blake shook his head slightly.

  ‘Metal is conductive, and these transcripts suggest that the perpetrators remove all metal to ensure that the dark energies called upon during the occult rituals are not disturbed by the metal’s conductive qualities. Interestingly, a similar practice of metal removal is part of the Masonic initiation oath. In the ritual, the initiate is symbolically stripped of all metal objects, such as rings, watches and earrings.’

  Blake looked back to the museum’s coarse-grained black and white photograph of Chapman’s body.

  ‘At least there are no cuts on Annie Chapman’s face,’ he said in a voice intended just for himself.

  ‘Not on Annie Chapman,’ replied the curator. The man’s answer hung in the air for a breath. ‘There were some strange geometrical designs cut into the cheeks of the Ripper’s last victim, Catherine Eddowes.’

  ‘Designs, what designs?’ Blake shot back.

  ‘Her eyelids were cut and two upside-down capital V’s were carved into both cheeks.’

  ‘Like a pair of pyramids?’ said Blake with tension in his voice.

  ‘Mmmm, I guess so.’

  ‘Why isn’t any of this talked about?’

  ‘There are lots of things about the Ripper case, and the infamous Ratcliffe Highway murder case before it, that have strong occult connections, but no one seems to want to go there,’ said the curator.

  ‘The Ratcliffe murders?’

  ‘They are known as the Ratcliffe Highway murders, and in many ways they are even more bizarre and shocking than even the Ripper cases.’

  ‘Never heard of them,’ said Blake.

  ‘They’re never talked about,’ said the curator. ‘They happened in an area very close to the Ripper’s killing ground. The Ratcliffe Highway was a road that led east from the Tower of London to Shadwell. During the ending months of 1811, two separate East End households were brutally murdered. The killings took place twelve days apart. The nature of these frenzied attacks was unprecedented and shook London to its core. The victims included a young mother and her baby who were clubbed to death with a heavy maul and slashed with a ripping chisel. You can still visit the gravestones of some of the victims. They are in the grounds of a church called St George-in-the-East. I don’t know if you’ve heard of it? It’s just off Cannon Street Road.’

  ‘Yes, I know it,’ said Blake. ‘Did they get whoever was responsible?’

  ‘Well, here’s where the story takes a rather bizarre twist. Eventually, a seaman named John Williams was arrested for the murders. The night before his trial, he was found hanging in his cell. A mob gathered outside demanding Williams’s body be handed over to them, convinced he had been possessed by some evil power. The body was handed over and paraded in the streets. In a ritual never seen in London before or since, Williams’s corpse was bundled into a makeshift grave, and hundreds watched as his body was decapitated and a wooden stake was hammered into his heart.’

  Chapter 19

  Enoch Hart tracked the arrival of the blacked-out Mercedes four-by-four as it crept along the alley. Several seconds later, the vehicle emerged into an abandoned car park, where it made a long sweep before reversing up to a crumbling wall. Almost immediately the front doors of the vehicle opened and two figures stepped out onto the blistered tarmac. Enoch Hart observed the men from the darkness. He spent the morning staking out the area and assessing potential escape routes through the labyrinth of disused warehouse buildings. The location was ideal for the transaction. High fences, red-brick walls, only a single security light on a high pole in the centre of the car park. Quiet, not overlooked and importantly only one way in and out for a vehicle. He could easily control the angles.

  Hart shifted in the shadows, moving closer to the two men leaning against the front bumper of the Mercedes. In the pale, muted light, their profiles couldn’t have been more different. A thin, dreadlocked Rastafarian sharing the bonnet with a massive, white-skinned hulk of a man who looked like an Icelandic hammer thrower. He was the muscle, and the Rasta, the brains of the operation. Neither man looked like they had filed a tax return recently.

  The muscle pushed himself off the bonnet and the car’s suspension groaned with relief.

  ‘Don’t ya fret, he’ll be here,’ said the Rasta lighting up a cigarette. He sucked on its end and mouthed a ghostly smoke ring into the air. ‘Everything’s cool.’

  From the side, Hart stepped out of the shadows, his sudden appearance surprised both men. The Rasta immediately dropped his smoke and ground it into the tarmac with his heel.

  As the three men sized each other up, a cool gust of wind blew between them.

  ‘The name is Eight Ball,’ said the Rasta, tangled dreadlocks swaying in his face. ‘And this is my business associate.’ Eight Ball looked up at the man-mountain at his side and smiled a long, slow smile.

  Even at his safe distance, Hart could smell the stench of cooking fat on the man, as if he had spent the day leaning over a roasting spit. The heavy stood tall with thick muscles and thinning, slicked-back hair.

  ‘You come recommended,’ said Hart, keen to get on with business.

  ‘Ah yes, our mutual friend, Sidney,’ recalled Eight Ball. ‘You did time together?’

  Hart nodded. Sidney the Spike was a psychopath with a penchant for armed robbery and torture.

  ‘Wandsworth, right?’ said Eight Ball dismissively.

  ‘You pissing with me?’ Hart’s eyes tightened with suspicion.

  ‘Where then?’ Eight Ball’s demeanour suddenly bristled with threat.

  The hand of the hired muscle quickly tightened around the Glock 42 secreted in his coat pocket.

  ‘Broadmoor, we were both in Broadmoor.’ Hart’s stance showed no sign of fear. ‘The smart move would be not to play any more games,’ he said coldly as he cast a scathing look at both men.

  Eight Ball shrugged. ‘Just wanted to check that you’re the real deal.’ He squeezed a handful of dreadlocks from the back of his head and let them fall around his shoulders.

  ‘I was told by Sidney that you were the guy to talk to.’

  ‘Any friend of Sidney’s is a friend of mine,’ said Eight Ball. ‘We go back a long way,’ he paused. ‘We did a lot of business together, in the day.’

  ‘I want to do some business now,’ said Hart. He shifted closer to the Mercedes.

  ‘Well, you’ve come to the right place my friend, this sweet shop is well and truly open for trade.’

  Eight Ball exchanged glances with his heavy, who nodded and plodded to the rear of the car. He waited until his boss gestured t
o open the boot before pressing the button on his key fob. Rising on German-engineered hinges, the boot glided open to reveal a faded green tarpaulin covering the boot well.

  ‘Okay, what do you have?’ asked Hart.

  ‘What do we have? The only things we don’t have are weapons of mass destruction.’ Dragging the tarpaulin to one side, Eight Ball revealed the armoury beneath.

  Hart’s eyes darted everywhere to size up the cache of weapons. ‘May I?’

  ‘Be my guest my friend. No charge for touching the sweeties, but if you want to take them home, then you’ll need to talk to my accountant.’ Eight Ball looked over to his hired muscle.

  The boot of the Mercedes was a veritable buffet of lethal hardware. Hart moved through the inventory in his head: an Uzi complete with a mounted bayonet, a box of light anti-tank missiles, an aged AK47, three Calico 9mm submachine guns, a sawn-off Winchester pump action shotgun, a Claymore anti-personnel mine, at least a dozen Glock pistols of differing specifications, and a pristine box containing two Heckler & Koch MP7’s.

  Hart re-stacked some of the weaponry to one side to get a better view of the hoard buried beneath. His sight was immediately drawn to a familiar profile in the shadows. He reached down and liberated the weapon from its neighbour with a slight clattering sound of metal moving on metal.

  ‘Ah, good choice, my friend. The Scorpion Evo 3. Light-weight, designed to be manoeuvred in tight spaces. Comes with a three-mode fire switch: semi-automatic, three-round burst, or hell-raising fully automatic. Very versatile.’

  Hart locked his hands onto the grip and quickly racked the cocking handle. Nuzzling into the stock, he aimed the weapon upwards towards the security light blinking on the high pole in the centre of the car park. He pressed the trigger and a metallic sound clicked within the interior of the machine gun.

  ‘Czech-made,’ said Hart. He ran a finger down the muzzle before replacing the weapon into the boot.

  Unsure whether the comment was a statement of fact or a question, Eight Ball continued with his sales pitch.

  ‘You handle guns like a pro, my friend. Yes, Czech-made, stolen to order, direct from the ČZUB factory, 300 kilometres southeast of Prague. From there, overland to Boulogne and then sailed over the Channel, up into the Thames estuary. We are an international operation, my friend.’

  Hart backed up a step and crossed his arms. ‘One of the Glock 17’s, the L118 sniper rifle, six grenades, the Scorpion and a silencer for the Scorpion.’ Hart’s eyes narrowed. ‘And I’m going to need ammunition, lots of it.’

  ‘Ammunition is no problem. Looks like you are about to start a war,’ said Eight Ball fingering his dreadlocks.

  ‘The war has already begun,’ said Hart.

  Chapter 20

  Whilst the man sitting in the centre of the packed tube carriage had his eyes closed, he was far from asleep. His mind was very much alert and was rehearsing the speech he was about to give. He sensed that his juddering progress along the tracks of the London underground was about to come to an end.

  ‘The next station will be Covent Garden,’ announced the automated public address system in a comforting female voice.

  Captain Sam Lambton slowly opened his eyes and immediately felt the stare of people upon him.

  ‘I guess we’re here,’ he said as his frown softened into a smile.

  A friendly hand from the seat next to his touched his shoulder. He gave a nod of his head and locked his hand onto the grip of his walking stick.

  ‘Let’s get started,’ he said as the tube train decelerated.

  When serving as an officer with the British Army’s Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD) Regiment, the specialist unit responsible for bomb disposal, Lambton had been a striking man who stood well over six feet tall and had riveting cerulean blue eyes and thick, jet black hair.

  Like all combat-serving members of EOD, he was selected for his ability to think clearly under the intense pressures of war. His role as a front-line bomb-disposal expert was reputedly the most dangerous job in the world, and Lambton had carried out his duties in two of the world’s most perilous combat zones: the badlands of Iraq and Afghanistan. He soon earned a reputation as a cool operator, someone who could be trusted to make the right decisions in the most demanding situations.

  In the last week of his final tour in Afghanistan, his luck finally ran out. Lambton was so good at his job that he ended up being targeted by the insurgents. They lured him in like a fish on a line.

  The report of an abandoned car blocking the main road between Kandahar and Sangin in the north was enough to raise suspicions, but the two dubious-looking metal drums spotted on its backseats meant it was a job for EOD. Lambton was the obvious choice for the task. As he made the long and lonely walk to the battered Toyota pickup slewed at an angle across the desert highway, Lambton could see tell-tale wires emerging from the open drums, which had been filled to the brim with crude homemade fertiliser-based explosives, a particular favourite amongst Afghan insurgents. What he didn’t see were the two additional devices made of state-of-the-art American C4 buried an inch below the road surface. Luckily for Lambton, only one of the charges detonated, but the single explosion that ripped through the right side of his body caused catastrophic injuries. He had all but lost the sight in one eye, his right arm and leg were severely damaged, and the side of his once handsome face was criss-crossed by a series of deep scars. Notwithstanding his injuries, Lambton still considered himself fortunate. He had seen many of his friends lose their lives in combat.

  The army captain had forged a new life and career for himself. He was now a much-liked and respected public figure and a successful entrepreneur. His eighty-pound bomb disposal suit had been replaced by a business suit and his sometimes-present walking stick. Lambton always travelled by public transport, a rare activity for a public figure. It helped to cement his reputation as a ‘man of the people’.

  The ex-soldier shot a glance over his shoulder and saw the familiar blur of Covent Garden Station appear in the window. As the train stuttered to a stop, Lambton gritted his teeth and hauled himself to his feet. His knees seemed to creak in time with the carriage, and a gentle groan escaped from deep within his throat. He vigorously massaged his leg to coax some sensation back into the flesh.

  The other passengers waited until Lambton secured his grip around the vertical hand rail near the doors before they started to move. Soon the sound of excited voices pulsed through the carriage.

  The doors of the tube train clunked open and, after a moment, the captain’s walking stick bridged the gap between the carriage and the platform. It was followed by the shuffling, stiff-legged gait of Lambton leading his stream of loyal supporters.

  The captain could hear the crowds outside the Tube station even before the doors of the elevator had opened. He gave a small, self-effacing shrug and was soon corralled by his supporters through the entrance of the station into James Street.

  Only then did he fully see the extent of the crowds that had gathered to hear him speak. Word of his impending announcement had spread like wildfire on social media. The news had ignited public interest in the man that many people were seeing as the new face of politics.

  Lambton took in the scene for a moment and then presented himself to the crowd. Applause thundered all the way down James Street to the open piazza of Covent Garden and the stage that had been hurriedly erected for the occasion. As he moved along, the volume of the crowd rose behind him.

  The audience tracked his slow progress towards the stage. Finally he emerged from the crowd and tried to take it all in. Moments later he arrived at the lectern facing a crowd of thousands. Lambton stood there and leant heavily on his walking stick before taking his familiar grip on the lectern, setting off another burst of applause.

  ‘I am honoured to stand here today, and I am humbled by your kind welcome. Ladies and gentlemen, today marks a turning point. The beginning of a fight between two visions of our future.’ His face was stiff with conviction
. ‘We can either forge a new path, or we can go on accepting the status quo. We can either build a future where dignity and integrity mean something, or we can refuse to confront the problem.’ Lambton allowed his words to take root in the crowd for a second.

  ‘In my London, all people are equal, from the youngest to the oldest, from the poorest and most disadvantaged, to the richest and most powerful. Everyone is equal. That is my starting position.’ His voice rang out with authority.

  ‘Who owns this city? Is it the people? Is it you or me? No, it’s the faceless silent minority. It’s the bankers, the media moguls, the industrialists, the hedge fund managers.’ Scattered applause and shouts of approval echoed along the piazza.

  ‘These people have perfected greed. They think they are invincible. But I stand before you today and I tell you, they are not. All of them have secret vested interests. They live in a world of protected entitlement. Where is the fairness in them receiving massive financial bonuses, large enough to fund a number of inner-city hospitals, whilst the ordinary worker is struggling to make ends meet? Inequality is rife in our nation.’

  Lambton shifted his hold on the lectern.

  ‘The powerful are living off the backs of the ordinary people and mortgaging the next generation. Let me ask you who’s going to pay for it? It’s the likes of you and me and our children, that’s who.’

  The captain, motioned to the crowd attempting to settle down the roar of applause that had just broken out.

  ‘The present mayor of London is part of this system. He is part of the problem, not part of the solution. That is why today, I am announcing my candidacy for the mayoral elections.’ Applause erupted again from the sea of faces ahead of him and swelled out through the audience.