by Mark Dawson
“Is it her?”
Frank closed the suitcase. “Miss Rosser, would you be able to come to the mortuary and identify the body tomorrow?”
CHAPTER 26
HENRY DRAKE LISTENED TO THE HOME SERVICE for news of the raid, but there was nothing, just never-ending patriotic music. Keep the spirits up, he supposed, now that the shooting had started for real. He listened, but none of it registered—his mind was buzzing. He had been working all day: preparation for the interview tonight. He had a list of questions he needed Molly Jenkins to answer. The more he thought about what she had said the more questions he had.
Who was behind the pornography?
Who else, save Asquith, was involved?
Questions.
The newsroom was busy. Peter Byatt was at his desk, the telephone receiver pressed to his ear, scribbling furiously in his notebook. He replaced the receiver in its cradle, got up and grabbed his coat.
“What is it?”
“There’s been a murder.”
“The Ripper?”
“That’s what they reckon.”
“Where?”
“Conduit Street. Got to dash, old chap.”
Henry watched him go. He swallowed bile.
It was his story.
No, he reminded himself.
He could do better.
He checked his watch: half-six. Time to be off. He collected his jacket and stepped outside. Dusk was falling.
A buzzing was in the air; it grew until it was everywhere, an ear-splitting cacophony of engines. A V-shaped formation of planes passed right overhead, flying north-east. Looked like Heinkels. The Jerry machines glinted in the half-light. Another formation followed, then another. Henry counted sixty planes, bombers hemmed in by fighters. The sky was full, each machine leaving a white gossamer trail behind it. They looked like black fish in a dark blue pond.
A heavy pall of smoke and dust was rising from the East End. Cloud dominated the horizon, the barrage balloons pink in the glow from flames below. Henry doubted there could ever have been a larger fire. Fire appliances sped through the streets, heading East. Steely-eyed firemen in oilskins clung to the running boards of the engines, the terrible spectacle on the horizon a grim prediction of the hellishness they were being sent into.
Soho. It was eerie—a Saturday night like this, after a day of pleasant weather, the boozers would usually have been jammed with thirsty crowds spilling onto the street. But tonight it was like a ghost-town. Most of the drinkers were shut and the streets were empty. He walked to Ham Yard. Quiet. The door to the Top Hat was open. He went inside. Music played quietly. Jackie Field was sat in one of the booths.
“Evening,” Henry said.
“You’re late.”
“It’s mayhem out there.”
Field shrugged truculently.
Henry said, “On your own?”
“You’re a bright penny.”
“I was worried you might not be here, you know, the raid—”
“No bloody Kraut’s shutting me down. We’re open tonight, tomorrow night, every bloody night until they march in here and tell me to close. Once people realise this is a fuss about nothing they’ll want somewhere for a drink. Somewhere to relax.”
“Where’s Molly?”
“How’m I supposed to know? I’m not her bloody keeper.”
“I need her to be here. I need her to go on the record. I’ve got plenty of questions.”
“She’ll be here.”
“Fine.” Field was definitely on edge. He changed tack. “Maybe you could give me some background.” He shrugged.
“What do you mean?”
“How do you know her?”
“She was one of my girls.”
“You were her pimp?”
“I provide my customers with a service. The gentlemen who come here, time to time they gets to be a bit lonely. Molly used to help me in this regard.”
They sat in an awkward silence.
“Have you got my money?”
“I’ve got it.”
Half-six: still nothing. Henry went outside. There were no planes overhead now but the bells of fire appliances clanged noisily, everything being sent East. He visited the tobacconist on Great Windmill Street. The fellow was shutting up early, but he sold him a packet of Pall Malls. Henry returned to the club and opened the cigarettes. Jackie Field smoked two, one after the other.
“Are you alright? You look nervous.”
“Course I’m alright.”
“You’re smoking like a chimney”
“Don’t be so bloody soft.”
“Your hands are shaking.”
“I’m not nervous.”
Henry checked his watch. “Look, it’s seven. I can’t stay here all night. She isn’t coming, is she?”
Field ground a cigarette in the ashtray. He said nothing.
“When’s the last time you saw her?”
“Yesterday. She called in.”
“And?”
He exhaled wearily. “And she was having second thoughts, alright? She was scared. I told her to come in today and we’d sort it out. Get the money on the table, enough for her to stop tomming, she’d realise what she’d be missing out on if she got cold feet.”
“Who would’ve got to her?”
“Who’d you think? The bloody Malts.”
“But you said—”
“I’m not scared of them. It’s all bark with them. No bloody bite. Far as I’m concerned they can all piss off. But it ain’t all about me, is it? They can cut rough with the girls. A razor across the face? A bit of acid? No punter wants to get intimate with a girl who’s had her boat done in, do they? Molly’s worried about what they might do to her.”
“Do you still have the pictures?”
He shook his head. “She’s got them.”
“You said—”
“I know what I said, but she never gave them to me. He wouldn’t let them out of his sight.”
“He?”
“The bloke she was with.”
“The big chap?”
“Yes.”
“Who was he?”
“He wouldn’t say.”
“What about the other girls?”
“Annie’s a drunk. God knows where she is. Pissed in the gutter somewhere. Connie—” He got up and took a coat from over the arm of the chair. “Actually, that’s not a bad idea. She lives in Wardour Street. I’ll see if I can find her. She might know where Molly is. Come back here in a couple of hours.”
CHAPTER 27
FRANK TOOK A TAXI TO THE MORTUARY, a two-storey, stuccoed building in the Egyptian style attached to the coroner’s court in St Mary’s Square. He went inside and introduced himself to the clerk. The man was skittish, the muffled crump of each fresh detonation causing him to jump. He checked Frank’s credentials and showed him through into a large room. Sir Bernard Spilsbury was preparing for the post mortem. The old man was as near to police royalty as it got. Everyone knew him. His career had stretched for thirty years, his name made in a series of infamous cases: the Brides in the Bath murders, Dr Crippen, the Brighton Trunk murders. The papers loved him: “The Nemesis of Slayers,” they called him. He had done the Ripper’s other girls.
“Good evening, Inspector.”
“Doctor.”
An explosion rattled the windows in their frames. Spilsbury hobbled across the room with a walking stick and nodded to the canvas-wrapped bundle on the gurney. “We should probably get started before they drop a bomb on us. What do we have.”
“Female. Found in Mayfair this morning.”
The straps of the canvas bag were unbuckled, the body removed and placed upon a large set of scales to be weighed and measured. Once the details were noted, the girl was transferred to a stainless steel gurney in the centre of the room. A table next to the gurney held Spilsbury’s instruments: scalpel, forceps, a pair of blunt-nosed scissors, a brain-knife, a small hacksaw, a power-saw, a ruler, probes. Spilsbury scrubbed up, pull
ing on a pair of gloves while a technician unwrapped the plastic covering and examined it for items that might have fallen from the body in transit. The bags on her hands and around her head were removed and examined for fragments with a magnifying glass. Once the plastic had been disposed of, the clothing was examined layer-by-layer, cut from the body only when Spilsbury was satisfied that he had seen everything he needed to see.
He picked up her right hand and examined her nails. “No unusual residue, nothing out of the ordinary,” he said to his assistant who scribbled shorthand notes into a notebook. “No skin, no hairs, nothing that might have been scratched from the attacker.”
Frank regarded the naked body on the table: ashy-white, mottled by dull red staining from the natural settling of the blood. She looked small, fragile, vulnerable. He knew Detectives who would do anything to find an excuse to avoid attending post-mortems. Tanner, for example. He knew others who had been sick or who had fainted dead away before even the first incision had been made. Frank didn’t feel that way. This was a crucial element to an investigation and in the nineteen unlawful killings Frank had investigated, he always made sure he was present. There was a simple trick in dealing with the gore: the body was not a person, it was just what had been left behind. Hair, skin, bone, muscle, sinew; all they offered now were clues that might bring him closer to the murderer. Simple—but hard to pull off. The pathologist’s butchery had to be put to one side. This was the job.
Spilsbury circled the gurney and the naked girl lying atop it. “She appears well-nourished.” He lifted her right arm and tried to flex it—it was stiff. “Rigor mortis present. Hypostatic stains are livid—at least eight hours since death. Decomposition is absent. Time of death therefore somewhere between around midnight and six o’clock this morning. Does that match your investigations, Detective?”
“It could. We don’t have a firm time yet.”
“Well, we might be able to be a little more precise.” He took a syringe and, holding the girl’s eyelid open, slid the needle into the pupil and pressed it until it was inside by half an inch. He pulled back the barrel. “The level of potassium in the aqueous humour rises in a straight line after death. Analysis will provide a better estimate of her expiry. I ought to be able to give you a better idea by tomorrow morning.”
Spilsbury leant over the gurney, pulling back the other eyelid. “Both pupils dilated. The whites congested with signs of haemorrhage. Lips are livid. Finger-nails, too. Petechial haemorrhages present in the skin of the forehead and eyelids. No sign of trauma to the scalp—no, none at all, we don’t need to shave her.” He took the magnifying glass and a small ruler from the table next to the gurney and examined the body inch-by-inch. He listed each cut and abrasion in minute detail. “The throat has been cut across to the extent of seven inches. A superficial cut commences about an inch and a half below the lobe, and about two and a half inches behind the left ear, and extends across the throat to about three inches below the lobe of the right ear. The muscle across the throat is divided through on the left side. The large vessels on the left side of the neck are severed. The larynx is severed below the vocal chord. All the deep structures are severed to the bone, the knife marking intervertebral cartilages. All these injuries were performed by a sharp instrument like a knife, and pointed.”
Spilsbury moved up to the face.
“Wounds to the mouth. Extending three inches towards the ear. Inflicted by a very sharp implement. Smooth cuts.”
He carefully rolled the body onto its front. He began at the top and worked down, noting similar abrasions. He rolled her onto her back and took swabs from her mouth, anus and vagina, sealing them in plastic bags.
He examined the orifices with a magnifying glass.
“No evidence of sexual trauma. No bruises or lacerations. She’s not virgo intacto. Small amount of fluid in the upper part of the vagina. A little blood. No spermatozoa.”
“So no sexual element?”
“No sign of forced penetration. This isn’t rape.”
The technician photographed the woman’s face as Spilsbury walked around the table to a small shelf that held his equipment. He picked up a long-bladed scalpel. “How’s your stomach, detective Inspector?”
“I’m fine,” Frank lied.
“Excellent. Let’s open her up.”
Spilsbury made a Y-shaped incision that began with cuts beneath both ears and descended through forty-five degree angles along the neck. The cuts met at the top of the chest and then descended vertically as one to the pelvis. The folds of skin were tugged back to unveil the organs beneath. Further cuts were made and organs were carefully removed, measured and weighed. “Petechial haemorrhages on the surface of the heart. It’s slightly enlarged and the cavities are slightly dilated. Valves, muscle and arteries all healthy. Pleural cavities healthy. Lungs congested. Froth in the smaller air passages.” The heart and lungs were scooped out, deposited in stainless steel bowls and placed to one side. “Liver, spleen and kidneys congested and healthy. Bladder normal and empty. The stomach is full of fluid and food in a moderate stage of digestion.” Spilsbury paused, poking around with his scalpel. “I’m not sure, Inspector, but it looks as if she had a meal involving beetroot before she died.”
Murphy looked into the girl’s gut, saw a pulpy residue coloured purplish-blue. Other noxious notes were added to the odour filling the air. He swallowed bile.
Spilsbury made an incision from ear to ear across the top of the head, pulled the scalp forwards and backwards, then took a bone saw and sliced off the top of the skull. “The skull is hard. Arteries healthy. The brain and its coverings are congested.” He removed the brain, weighed it and then placed it in a steel dish. He consulted the bloody remains of his handiwork for a moment, nodding to himself in satisfaction. “Post mortem concluded at a quarter to ten.” He took off his gloves and went to the sink to wash his hands.
“What do you think?”
“Quite straightforward.” Spilsbury dried himself and returned to the table. He leant over the excavated torso and played his scalpel up to the throat. “Look here,” he said. Frank moved closer, directing his gaze to the area he was indicating. “The cricoid cartilage of the larynx is fractured on each side—here and, over here, here. Haemorrhaging around the fractures. Further haemorrhage in the muscles of the neck at the level of the larynx, small bruises just below the line of the left jaw. Cause of death is asphysixia due to strangulation by the hand. Look at the abrasion here”—he pointed with the bloody scalpel-tip at a point just below the chin—“see it there, slightly curved? Probably caused by a fingernail digging into the skin.”
“The same as before.”
“Yes.” Spilsbury took off his scrubs. “I think I can anticipate your next question, detective. And, yes, it could be him. The technique looks similar. The cuts are deep but they are not frenzied, just like before. The chances it’s the same fellow are quite good. That’s probably not what you wanted to hear.”
“I’d already reached the same conclusion. Thank you.”
“You’ll have my report tomorrow morning. But I won’t change my conclusion. You’re looking for someone who likes to strangle then cut, Inspector. Just like before.”
o o o
THE DAY HAD PASSED IN A BLUR. A list of tasks as long as his arm that just kept getting longer: house-to-house enquiries; telegrams sent to the Brighton constabulary for assistance; background checks; calls to local asylums for details of sex-addicts, lunatics and epileptics released in the past week; liaison with the coroner; liaison with the police pathologist; reports sent up and down the chain. The onset of the bombing added confusion, but Frank was too tired to be scared. He went up to the roof to smoke a fag and stared at the carnage for ten minutes then got back down to it.
There were some quick checks he could make. He took down the Vice Squad’s Prostitute Ledger—it held details of every known brass in London, their phoney aliases and genuine names, ages, photographs, descriptions, habits, weaknesses,
regular cronies and haunts, even the names of their relatives in the event they needed to identify a Jezebel after she got fished out of the Thames. Molly Jenkins was not in the book. He checked the photographs in case she used a dodgy name for tomming: nothing. If she was hawking the mutton it didn’t look like she’d come to the attention of the lads in Vice.
He emptied her briefcase onto his desk. There were letters to and from her sister and mother but they offered nothing useful. He rifled through the other things. An envelope contained loose paper: a bank statement (Lloyds, Brighton: thirty pounds); torn scraps with addresses written on them; a diary. He opened the diary to the weekend. There was an entry for Saturday.
9pm: Henry Drake
Frank put the diary on the table and stared at it.
Drake.
What was his name doing in the diary of a dead brass?
o o o
MIDNIGHT. He went down onto the street and walked West, along Oxford Street. He looked into the sky: a dozen luminous pencils crossing and recrossing one another in stiff, awkward arcs, occasionally flashing against the underside of an aircraft high overhead. Where smoke had been before, now the whole of the eastern sky boiled ochre, as if a dozen tropic suns were simultaneously setting around the horizon. It should’ve been dark, but it wasn’t. He was miles away from the docks yet the fires cast out so much light he could read the street signs across the road. The atmosphere was frantic, panic barely contained beneath the surface. Flares were unnecessary yet a few sunk slowly down. The barrage balloons stood out against the glow, awfully and obviously inadequate. AAA shells sparkled like Christmas baubles. A sudden flash of light drew his attention as a plane plunged towards the ground, engines trailing fire. It fell, silently, until it was swallowed by the skyline. One of ours, Frank thought. A Hurricane. Poor bugger.
He crossed Regent Street and followed Savile Row up past West End Central. Save the A.R.P. post, the road was deserted. He nodded to the white-faced warden, walked towards the top of the road, turned left into Conduit Street. He went half way down and crossed to the right-hand side. Three shelters: he picked the middle one. It was full tonight: a row of women in carpet slippers with puckered faces and patched coats; a couple of brasses he recognised; a couple of drunks. A woman followed him inside with a wide-eyed child, the youngster probably too excited for fright. People had brought their bedclothes with them, sheets and blankets spread out across the concrete. An old woman shone a torch onto a crossword, an alarm clock brought along to time herself.
