Legacy of the Ripper (11 page)

"I'm ok," said Michael in reply to his host's question. He doubted that the man cared either way about his health, it was simply an introduction to whatever he'd been called here for.

"You appear a little grumpy this morning."

"I'm not grumpy, just tired and bloody hot. It's a long walk to get up here and it's a scorching day out there."

"Ha! The young of today. Scorching day? It's barely sixty five degrees out there young man, and look at you, all sweat and panting as though you'd run a marathon. Next time I send for you, get a taxi!"

"Taxis cost money, old man. You gonna pay for it are you?"

"Don't I pay you enough already? And don't you ever call me 'old man' again, or I'll see to it that something very nasty happens to you. You can count on it."

The man's voice rose to a crescendo that forced Michael to sit back in his chair. The temper had appeared from nowhere, and the younger man knew better than to answer back. He'd seen the man like this before. His volatile nature frightened Michael. Though the man was much older than he, Michael had no doubt that he could handle himself well if forced to. His looked strong and lithe, his arms muscular and well proportioned despite his age. Michael could be violent as well of course, but his drug abused body probably meant that the two men would be much more equally matched than would normally be the case if it came to a fight, and Michael didn't dare take the risk. He depended too much on his host.

"I'm sorry," said Michael. "No offence intended."

"Hmm, it might help if you stuck to selling those drugs to the poor misbegotten souls out there instead of using them yourself. You might have a bit more wind with which to make your way up the hill if you were fitter. And isn't it time you had a shave and a damn good wash? When did you last have a bath, or a shower?

What my neighbours must think if they see you coming up my driveway, God only knows."

Michael didn't reply. Instead he waited. He knew the man hadn't called him to the house to discuss his bathing and sanitary arrangements.

"What? Nothing to say to me? You're a bloody coward and a liar, that's what you are. Why I bother with you I just don't know. If you weren't useful to me I'd&"

The man let his last words hang in the air. The inference wasn't lost on Michael. He knew that his host could be violent if he wished to be, and Michael had no wish to be on the receiving end of that violent streak.

"You asked me to come here today." Michael said quietly.

"Yes, I did, didn't I?"

The man leaned forward, took a Davidoff cigarette from a packet that stood on the small side table beside his chair, inserted it into a silver cigarette holder that he extracted from the pocket of his smoking jacket and proceeded to light it using a well used Zippo lighter.

"Well, I presume you have something to say to me about last night?"

"Oh you do? You presume do you? That's rather eloquent of you isn't it? "You presume? Well, well. As a matter of fact, young man, you're quite correct. I do wish to discuss last night with you, and in some detail. This morning too, if you don't mind."

The man leaned back in his chair, took a long drag on his cigarette and with an ease that had always baffled the younger man on previous visits, began to produce a steady stream of smoke rings that billowed forth and rose towards the ceiling before dissipating and forming a cloud that would hang just below the level of the ceiling through out their conversation. Michael hated these 'little talks' as the man referred to them. They always made his flesh creep, and his nerves would be on edge from now until he eventually left the house and returned to the fresh air of the outside world once again.

"Well?" asked the man. "Are you going to tell me about your house guest or not?"

Michael shivered. The air in the room seemed to have grown colder. As he began to relate the information required of him the man closed his eyes and listened intently, hanging on every word of Michael's, absorbing every fact and every detail of the narrative that the younger man laid out before him. It took some time for Michael to convey everything he needed to and the man never once interrupted him or asked a question. He never did. He was content to listen and absorb Michael's words, always sitting as he did now, eyes closed, smoking his cigarettes using that long silver holder that added to the air of Victoriana that Michael felt clung to the man like a thick fog.

When he'd reached the end of his report, Michael himself sat back and allowed himself to relax a little. He waited. At length, the man spoke once again.

"You've done well, young man, very well indeed."

Reaching into the inside pocket of his smoking jacket, the man removed a wad of notes from within and quickly counted out what appeared to Michael to be an inordinately large amount of money. Passing the notes to Michael the man smiled, a smile that Michael felt could chill the soul of any man. There was death in that look, he knew it for sure.

"Here. Take it. You've earned it. I'll let you know when I need you again. In the meantime you keep that house guest of yours sweet, you understand?"

Michael nodded.

"Now go, and don't come back until I send for you again, got it?"

Michael nodded, rose from his chair and walked slowly across the room until he felt the reassuring brass of the doorknob in his hand. Opening the door he turned to speak to say his goodbyes to the man. It never hurt to be courteous to the old bugger, thought Michael. He needn't have bothered. As far as Michael knew there was only one door to the room and he'd just opened it himself, but when he looked at where the man had been sitting there was no-one there, and the room was empty!

A minute later as he walked through the front door and out into the sunshine of the day once more, and moved to walk back down the hill towards the town, Michael at last allowed himself to breathe normally. He realised that he'd been tense and holding on to his breath unnaturally as he'd left the house. He increased his pace as he passed through the gate and he could almost swear that the temperature out on the street was at least ten degrees warmer than it had been in the grounds of number fourteen Abbotsford Road.

He hoped it would be quite some time before he was called back by the man. He wasn't to know it of course, but the next call he received from his less than genial host would plunge Michael into an escalating world of danger and fear from which he'd find it ever harder to escape. But that was for the future. For now he was glad to be in the warmth of the sunshine, the walk down the hill being far more pleasant than the lung-bursting climb he'd had to endure to reach number fourteen. Relieved to be back in the 'real world' Michael actually whistled to himself nearly all the way home.

Post Mortem

Chas Murdoch stood up straight and stepped back from the autopsy table. Laid out before him were the mortal remains of Marla Hayes. The large 'Y' incision in her torso had been stitched and sealed, Murdoch's work completed. Mike Holland and Carl Wright stood off to one side about six feet from the table. They had seen autopsies before and although not unduly bothered by the sights and sounds that accompanied the procedure, they never actually encroached any closer than their current distance. It was possible to see too much sometimes!

"Well, Chas?" asked Holland. "Can we be reasonably certain that we're looking for the same killer who butchered Laura Kane?"

"In my opinion, the wounds inflicted on Marla Hayes were done so with the self same knife that killed your previous victim. There's little doubt about it. The knife has a particular ridge on one side and it leaves a fairly obvious track in the flesh as it enters the body. The track is present in the remains of both girls. You have a serial killer on your hands, there's no doubt of it."

"And the actual cause of death was the wound to the throat?"

"Oh yes. Just like the first girl, this one had her throat cut with such severity that the spine was almost severed. Whoever did this has strength, possibly accompanied by great rage, I'd hazard a guess."

"What about the other wounds Doc, the ones he inflicted after cutting her throat? They were inflicted post-mortem, I hope?" Carl Wright inquired.

"Yes, sergeant, they were. The girl was dead before the other wounds were inflicted upon her. I think he killed her and then took his time to carry out his mutilations on the poor girl's body."

"Are the wounds indicative of any specialist anatomical or medical knowledge?" Holland asked.

"You mean, could it have been a doctor? Yes, it could have been, but then again it may not have been. The cuts were certainly inflicted with confidence. There are no hesitation marks where he cut into the body and the incisions are all clean and made with confidence I would say."

"Didn't they ask that question at the beginning of the Jack the Ripper inquiry back in 1888?"

The question came from Carl Wright, who made a habit of studying old cases, particularly unsolved ones, and no unsolved case was as well known as that of the infamous Whitechapel murderer.

"Yes, they did, as I recall," Holland replied. "But that was then and this is now. We need to get some degree of focus on the case. If someone is going around targeting the town's prostitutes he or she, though I'd suspect a man in a case like this, must have a motive, a trigger that's set him off on his course of action. We need to get a team of officers into the red light district with specific orders to try and discover if the prossies have noticed any strangers perpetually hanging around lately, or if they know of anyone who may have developed a grudge against them in general."

"You're working on the assumption that the girls may have known their killer?"

"Correct sergeant. We know that in the majority of murder cases the killer is known to the victim, and there's no reason why that might not be the case here. We just have to find the common denominator that links the girls with the killer. Let's not get bogged down with theories of mad doctors or anything like that for the moment. Like Chas says, the killer is just as likely to be a plumber or a waiter or a stockbroker, eh, Chas?"

"Hmm, yes, I believe I said something like that," said Murdoch, "though not in those exact words."

"But that's what you meant. Just because the killer knows how to wield a knife and target certain areas of the body doesn't make him a medical man, correct?"

"Correct."

"Right then, is there anything else we need to know as a result of your examination?"

"Only that whoever did this terrible thing does know where he's aiming for when it comes to the mutilations. Every incision was made in exactly the right place in order for him to ensure he gained access to the girl's inner organs without having to hack around once he'd got in to the body. In that respect there is care and deliberation present in his 'work' if you wish to call it that, but then he also virtually hacked at her genitalia until they were almost unrecognisable, hardly the work of a calm or skilled person, I'd say."

"Which inner organs in particular did he target?" asked Holland.

"The womb, uterus, bowel and intestines. It appears he removed about six inches of the large intestine and I'm afraid in all probability he carried it away with him. It certainly wasn't present at the scene of the crime and it's nowhere to be found in the body."

"A trophy, d'you think, sir?"

"Maybe, sergeant, maybe."

"What else could he have taken it for?"

"I don't know, but it seems odd doesn't it? Just six inches of intestine? Why not something more high profile?"

"Who's to say how a killer's mind works?" Murdoch returned to the conversation. "Maybe he took it simply to taunt or to add confusion to the police's case, you know, make you think and start guessing as to his motives?"

"Just like we're doing now, eh Doc?" said Wright.

"You should have been a detective, Chas," Holland smiled.

"I often think of myself as a detective of sorts you know," said the doctor. "After all, every time I have to cut one of these poor people open I begin an investigation of my own, searching for clues as to what killed them, and of course, my reports to you boys in blue often lead to the arrest of the killer in cases of murder don't they? You tell me what that is if it's not the art of detection?"

"Well, well, that's quite prosaic of you Chas my old friend. You're right of course. You are a detective, perhaps even more of one than we are. We have to catch the bad guys, sure we do, but you often have even less to go on than we do when you start to search for the clues that the dead provide."

"Exactly Mike. You at least have live witnesses to speak to, to interview and give you leads that might help in the solution of the crime. My only witness is the deceased, and they have a completely different way of talking to me. Having said that, the dead can't lie, Mike, and when I find something at autopsy, there can be no denying the truth of it. It may not always fit with the known facts, but the truth is the truth, and that's it. You have to go with what I and my colleagues find and build your case around it because to do otherwise would leave any future prosecution open to question, am I right?"

"Spot on, Chas, as usual. So, anything else you can tell us about Marla before we go in search of the elusive 'Brighton Ripper' as I'm sure Carl here would love to dub our killer?"

"Just that your killer is right handed, as evidenced by the direction of the wounds he inflicted on the girl, and he wore rubber gloves, probably of the surgical variety when he carried out his mutilations."

"Alright Sherlock, the right-handed bit I'll admit was probably easy to establish, but just how did you work the rubber glove bit out?" asked Holland with a quizzical smile on his face.

"A ha, my dear inspector," Murdoch grinned. "That was easy as well. There's no mystery involved. Surgical gloves usually come in sealed packets. You've probably seen me take them out on a hundred occasion or more. They also have a fine dusting of powder on the inside that makes it easy to slip them on to the hand. Some of that powder was present on the girl's body, probably where it fell as he was stretching the gloves in order to put them on. It also explains why there are no fingerprints anywhere on her body or clothing. He was gloved, and that would also prevent her blood staining his hands, making it harder for the police to establish any contact with the dead girl if your boys had picked him up."