by Thomas Emson
It’s what it feels like, she thought.
She felt it when Jasmine was born. It sliced through the hate and anger that filled Tash’s veins at the time—hate and anger towards her newborn’s feckless father.
Pete Rayner.
She shuddered at the thought of him.
How had that happened? Through her teens, she had been barely aware of the lanky clown.
The girls, thinking they were cool, would roll their eyes or tut at him as he clambered on top of a car or a wall and shouted, “Look at this,” and he’d dive off, hit the ground, and hurt himself. And Tash and her mates would strut past, ignoring him.
Pete always fancied her, but there were better options around, and Tash blanked him.
By her late teens, with her mates pregnant or already mums and all the better options either in jail or warned off by her dad, Pete wangled his way into her life.
She’d been dumped by Neil Uxford, one of Charlie Faultless’s former lieutenants. Charlie had left a couple of years before, soon after Rachel had died. Soon after his own mum had died. Neil tried to take over Charlie’s business, but he didn’t have the brains, he didn’t have the brawn, and he didn’t have the brutality. He dumped her for a forty-year-old ex-prostitute living in Monro House.
“Her ex, he runs some business up north,” Neil had said, “and she says, if I . . . you know . . . if I shack up with her, shell get me in with him. It’s business, darlin’.”
“Was I business?” she’d asked.
He’d shrugged.
Her tears brought Pete Rayner to her door. He could sniff out Tash’s sadness like a bloodhound could hit a trail.
She was fragile. She was young. She was lost. Her heart had been broken. Her hopes shattered. Her future obliterated.
It happened on the couch at her dad’s house. Lucky for Pete, Roy Hanbury was on remand, awaiting trial.
Tash could barely remember the event. She was blind with grief. But nine months later, the result of the episode came along.
And so did that ache in her heart.
She stroked Jasmines hair. The child continued to sleep. She flinched, still dreaming her awful dreams. Tash wanted to keep her safe from those terrible things going through her head. But that was impossible. It was impossible, even, to keep her safe from the outside world, let alone what was inside her mind. Tash was furious with herself for ever doubting Jasmine, for accusing her of lying about her headaches and her nightmares.
She looked through the window. A gray sky loomed. Rain spattered the pane. There was a chill in the air. Tash shivered. Her anxiety grew. Something was here on the Barrowmore estate. Something that was poison. Something that was dark. Something that was evil.
And it was speaking to her and Jasmine through their dreams.
Pillow . . . Was that what she’d heard? Pillow . . .
There was a knock on the door. It made Tash start. She eased herself away from Jasmine and went to answer it.
It was Hallam Buck. He was carrying something. A brown leather briefcase. Her flesh crawled with dread. She’d seen it before.
Jack froze. He stayed very still. The wind ruffled his long hair, but nothing else moved. It was as if he’d turned into a statue. He didn’t blink, and his chest didn’t rise and fall as he breathed.
“You okay?” said Spencer.
They were still on the roof. Spencer was freezing. He was covered in goosepimples and had been shivering for ages.
“What’s the matter?” he said.
“There is a woman and a child,” said Jack.
“You what?”
“There are others, but they’re weak . . . but the woman and the child . . . ”
“What about them?”
“My bones are trembling.”
“Your bones?”
“My blood runs cold.”
“That’s ‘cause it’s freezing up here.”
“They are dreaming me.”
“They’re . . . ”
“I need a ripper.”
“You need a . . . ”
“I must find him.”
“Who—”
“I need a ripper . . .”
“I don’t understand,” said Spencer.
“The woman and child.”
“What about them?”
“They must be ripped.”
“Jesus . . . ”
“But there’s something else.”
Spencer quaked. It was so cold he was burning. His skin was turning red. He couldn’t feel his hands. He couldn’t feel his legs.
“W . . . what else?” he said.
Jack gazed out across the estate. Police cars trawled the streets. Blue flashing lights lit up the gray sky. Sirens wailed over hip-hop beats.
Jack said, “There’s a darkness.”
“A . . . a . . . a what?”
“A darkness in the corner of my eye.”
Chapter 40
MONTAGUE JOHN DRUITT
Faultless asked her, “Are you all right?”
Tash nodded and said it was okay.
He narrowed his eyes, fixing on her.
“You don’t look it.”
“It’s fine. I’ll tell you later.”
“You look pale.”
“I’m all right.”
The briefcase sat on her kitchen table. Time had blemished the brown leather. Time and blood. It was still wet in places. Faultless had wiped it with his hand, and his skin went red. Slime was also draped over the briefcase. The clasps were rusty. There was a brass name tag. It was covered in mud.
“I’m sorry about this,” Faultless had told Tash ten minutes earlier when she’d let him and Hallam into her flat. “He said he had something to show me, something he found where those boys were killed. He wanted to bring it here. I thought it would be . . . ”
“Yeah, fine,” she’d said, her voice filled with panic. She gaped at the briefcase. To Faultless, it looked as if she were staring at an animal that could kill her. She was carefully watching it as it sneaked by. She was hoping it wouldn’t see her and attack.
When they had walked into the living room, Jasmine was sitting up of the sofa, rubbing her eyes.
“Hello, Jasmine,” Hallam had said, and the way he’d said it made Faultless squirm. He thought about something. It reawakened a memory. He tried to dig it up, but it was buried deep.
Tash had suggested Jasmine go to her room, and the girl had tottered off, looking tired.
Now in the kitchen, Charlie kept a close eye on Tash. She looked twitchy. He clocked her problem, or thought he did, and said, “Hallam, you’ve been really helpful, but me and Tash, we need to talk, now.”
Buck stared, his mouth open. The scar under his left eye wiggled.
“I think it’s time you went,” Faultless said.
“But . . . but what about my . . . my case?”
Faultless stared at him. Buck cowered. He reared back.
Faultless said, “You’ve been a great help, Hallam, see you around.”
Buck mumbled.
“You say something?” said Faultless.
“It’s mine.”
“You want me to call the cops, Hallam? You want to say it’s yours to them?”
Buck mumbled again.
“Go on, off you fuck,” said Faultless.
Hallam slipped out of the kitchen. Faultless looked at Tash. She stared at the case, chewing her nails.
“What’s the matter?” he asked.
“I . . . I’ve seen it before, Charlie.”
“This?” he said, pointing at the case.
She nodded and then asked, “What does the name tag say?”
He wiped the dirt away and read. “Montague John Druitt.”
They looked at each other and shrugged�
�but fifteen minutes later, they were staring at Faultless’s MacBook, both speechless.
“He was a Ripper suspect,” said Faultless, reading from the Web page. “Druitt was one of many suspected of the Whitechapel murders in 1888.”
“What . . . what’s his briefcase doing here?”
Faultless shook his head.
“Did he do it?” she asked.
“No one knows. No one knows who the Ripper was.”
“What happened to him?”
Faultless studied the page. After reading he said, “In November 1888, days before the body of Mary Kelly, the Rippers last victim, was found, Druitt apparently lost his job as a teacher. He was said to have drowned in the Thames. Committed suicide, it says here.”
He stared at the briefcase. Bloody history on Tash’s kitchen table. An artifact worth a fortune to Ripper buffs.
He looked at the page again for a while and then he continued. “Three years later, an MP called Richard Farquharson claimed Jack the Ripper had been ‘the son of a surgeon’ who topped himself the same night as Druitt did. Says here Farquharson lived ten miles from Druitt’s family and knew them. A journalist called George R. Sims wrote a few years later that the Rippers body had been found in the Thames.”
“So it was him?”
“According to this stuff, most of those who are in to this Ripper stuff don’t think there’s any evidence against Druitt.”
Faultless sat back, knitting his fingers behind his head. He gazed at the photo of Druitt on the internet page, a young man resting his head on his hand. Then he said to Tash, “You said you’d seen his case before. How come?”
Her eyes were wide with fear. “I . . . I saw it on a fiery raft.”
“A what?”
She told him, and while she did, he completely rejected her explanation in his head and tried to see reason and logic in this slowly evolving pandemonium.
There was none.
Chapter 41
THE CURSE
NEAR HAVILAH, MIDDLE EAST—PRE-HISTORY
Someone grabbed him by the back of the neck, shook him violently, and tossed him against a tree.
He blacked out for a moment, then came to with a pain in his skull.
He blinked, staring into the light. He tried to look at it, but his eyes strained, and finally he had to turn away. It made him feel as if his body were melting.
“What have I done?” he said.
“Spoiler. Tempter,” said a voice coming from the light, a deep voice that squeezed the air out of a person.
“I haven’t done anything.”
“You’ve destroyed everything.”
“It’s not my fault, it’s yours.”
“Look at what you’ve done.”
He scanned the garden. Already things were dying. Leaves browned and fell from the trees. Branches withered. The grass yellowed. A dog’s corpse lay near a rock. Its belly had been sliced open. Flies buzzed around the carcass. Further away, lions feasted on an antelope. Off to the right, the entrance to a cave was coated in blood.
“Can you smell it?” said the voice.
He could.
“It’s death,” said the voice, “and you brought it—you brought death.”
“It’s your fault,” he said, whining. “You didn’t make them strong enough. You made them weak. They broke. They broke too easily. It’s your fault.”
“Spoiler. Curse you. Curse you, tempter, killer, coward. Serpent. I’ll make you suffer so you wish you’d never been born.”
“I wish that already.”
WHITECHAPEL—11:12 AM, FEBRUARY 27, 2011
Jack entered Spencer’s flat and tossed what they’d found on the doorstep into the living room, and it slammed against the wall, slumping in a heap.
“You have a lovely home, Spencer,” Jack said.
Spencer looked around. Holes in the ceiling. Plaster peeling off the walls. Damp blackening the corners. Rotten floorboards. Pizza boxes and empty beer cans littered the flat. Beneath a huge TV on the wall was the PS3 console Spencer had nicked from the Sharpleys flat.
“It smells of dead flesh,” Jack continued.
“Dead flesh?”
“You know, everywhere smells of dead flesh.”
“Does it?”
“Of course, lad. It must do. Every city is built on the dead. Bones lie below. For miles and miles. Rotting corpses. Worm-riddled skeletons. Piles of them. London would sink into the earth, were it not for its foundation of bones. I close my eyes, I can see them—a white tangle of them, a scaffold of them, holding everything upright. And gluing them together, like concrete, the flesh and the blood. Death is everything, Spencer. Without it, you wouldn’t be alive. Without death, you’d be dead. And d’you know who brings you death so you can live?”
Spencer gaped and shook his head.
“I do. I am the bringer of death, and I drape fear over the world. I am the plagues that kill the sick. I am the wars that make refugees of the innocent. I am the famines that make the poor hungry. I am the fires that burn your cities. I am the curse.”
He paused, smiling. His eyes glittered. Saliva dribbled from his grinning mouth.
After a second he said, “You’ve got to find this woman and child for me, Spencer. The child would be easier.”
“Yeah?”
“And the ripper, I must find the ripper.”
Spencer shook. What had he got himself into? “Christ,” he said.
“The work he did while I was captive makes things so much easier this time. Just one left to kill. One left to rip.” Jack was ranting again, his eyes glittering with madness. “It will be the child, and . . . and I shall devour what she has inside her, and will be free. The city will be my playground. This nation will tremble at my name. My real name. Now, help me pin this to the wall.”
He went over to the thing that had been outside Spencer’s door when they arrived. Spencer stared, not wanting to move. This was going too far.
But I’ve gone further than far already, he thought.
“Get some nails, Spencer,” said Jack, lifting the thing up against the wall.
“We shouldn’t do this,” said Spencer.
“Why ever not?”
“Because . . . because he’s Old Bill.”
“Get me nails, Spencer.”
Jack spread the policeman’s arms out.
Chapter 42
REACH FOR THE SKY
Terri Slater felt safe with the cops here. She didn’t want to admit that, but it was the truth.
She hated the cops. They’d put Wayne in jail.
Bastard pigs.
Always picking on him, knocking on her door at all hours asking, “Is Wayne in, Terri?” just because he went out robbing.
Bastard pigs.
Then the social came round and discovered she and Wayne were living as a couple.
Terri had told them she was a single mum, living alone with her kids.
How else was she supposed to get all the benefits she needed?
How else could she buy Italy and Rome the Ted Baker, Nike, and Ralph Lauren gear they had to have?
How else do you get Dominos delivered every night and Sky Movies on tap?
The girls were thirteen and nine and wanted to dress up nice. They wanted the best food and the latest music.
Dole money was the only way.
But when they found Wayne was living there, they cut it.
Terri fumed. She’d had to get a job. Her clients wouldn’t cover the costs. So she ended up doing the early morning shift at Costcutter four days a week, including Sundays.
And then the cops picked Wayne up again. It was three weeks ago. He’d mugged a pensioner near the post office.
He’d barely touched her, but she put up a fight when he tried to snatch her purse. Why h
adn’t she just let go? Stupid bitch. She tugged and wrenched and screamed, but you can’t fight Wayne off when he wants something. He kicked her in the belly, and she fell, hitting her head on the pavement.
A week later, the old cow died.
Wayne faced murder.
I hate the cops.
But thank God they were crawling all over Barrowmore today.
She knew the Sharpleys. She thought she might’ve sucked off the eldest one, Michael, a couple of years ago.
Wasn’t he the one who refused to pay after she swallowed the lot?
She threatened to call Wayne in unless the kid paid.
She hurried along the tenth-floor walkway of Bradford House.
Home to Terri since she’d been born.
Home to her parents before her and home to their parents.
In fact, her mother’s mum and dad were among Barrowmore’s first residents.
They’d lived in the slums that scarred the East End. They’d crammed ten kids into their hovel. They’d lived on bread and potatoes. Four of the kids died.
The authorities razed the tenements. They built swanky new tower blocks. They said, “Look at what we’ve made for you, and be grateful for it.”
Reach for the sky.
Terri’s gran and grandad moved in. Thousands more came with them. They crawled from their fleapits and scaled their high rises.
Reach for the sky.
Work dried up. Crime leached in. The benefits culture became the way of life. It was cool Britannia. The immigrants kept coming—Bangladeshis at first, before the East Europeans swarmed in.
“No white Englishman left,” Wayne would say.
It was nearly midday. With her shift at Costcutter over, she was planning to snooze for the rest of the afternoon. Italy and Rome were probably out somewhere. Terri should’ve stayed home as well. But Mr Khan was a bastard when it came to sickies. You had to come in even if you had a cold.
“Fucking Paki,” Wayne would say. “Thinks he owns the place. They never gave a white person a chance—just gave it to a Paki.”
Terri had thought about it and said, “Yeah, but it was shut for years, Wayne, ‘cause no one local wanted to open it.”
