Legacy of the Ripper (26 page)

Sergeant Wright introduced Miss Nickels as being a leading member of
The Whitechapel Society 1888
at which point I remembered her name being mentioned in one of the police reports that had found its way into Jack's file. She'd also testified at the trial as an 'expert witness.' She had assisted the police in their investigations in Brighton and had been instrumental in piecing together the timetable of events that led them to their eventual apprehension of Jack so close to the scene of the last murder. She was a 'ripperologist', an expert on the Jack the Ripper murders of 1888. She had apparently worked out that Jack had been following the timetable and locations of the original killings by placing a map of Brighton over a grid plan of the original Whitechapel murders, thereby locating the site of what turned out to be the third murder and so to Jack's subsequent arrest. Now, it appeared she had new information that she, Holland and Carl Wright felt should be presented to me, as Jack's physician.

"You must understand, Doctor Truman," she began, "that when I first offered my help to Inspector Holland and Sergeant Wright, I held no preconceived ideas as to who the killer may have been. I simply presented what I felt were a series of facts that may have helped them to apprehend the man responsible for those murders. At that time I had no personal axe to grind, or evidence to link anyone, Jack Reid included, to the murders of the three girls."

"Yes, I understand that, Miss Nickels, but what has your visit today got to do with Jack Reid? He's already been convicted of the murders, and there seems little doubt that he did it, or is there?"

"Ah, well, you see, Doctor, that's my problem. At the time we were all so busy congratulating ourselves that the chance of someone else being involved didn't really enter into our minds, despite Jack's insistence that others were responsible for the murders."

"And now you're going to tell me that such a possibility may exist, is that right?"

"Indeed I am. I also have to tell you that Sergeant Wright here and his superior officer, Inspector Holland, both believe that my new information may have some credibility. What we need is to present certain facts to you and to Jack Reid and go on from there if we feel we may have a case of a miscarriage of justice on our hands."

"If that's so, shouldn't Inspector Holland be here himself?" I asked.

"Inspector Holland is in Warsaw," Carl Wright interjected, "following up what we believe may be information that has great relevance to the case."

"Warsaw?" I spoke in surprise.

"Not only that, but Sergeant Wright here is a fellow student of the Jack the Ripper murders and is the ideal man to be present if and when we have the opportunity to speak to Reid," said Nickels.

"Look, will one of you please tell me what this is actually about?" I asked. "What has Warsaw got to do with the case? Why do you think there may be something unsound about Jack's conviction? Do you mean to say there might actually be a grain of truth in his story after all?"

The questions tripped off my tongue. I wanted to know why they were here, and I wanted to know sooner rather than later. I had to get them to come to the point, and quickly. A bright shaft of sunlight poured in through the window like liquid gold, flooding the face of Alice Nickels who raised a hand to shield her eyes from the glare. I rose and closed the blinds a little. Nickels thanked me and then glanced at Carl Wright and on receiving his nod of ascent, she began to relate her tale as I retook my seat behind my desk.

"Well, let's just say that I had certain reservations about Jack Reid's guilt even before the trial."

"You did?"

"Yes. It troubled me that he'd been caught so easily, so sloppily if you like. The first two murders were 'Jack the Ripper' to a tee. There were no witnesses, no forensic evidence, absolutely nothing to link the killer to his victims. Those murders were the work of a cold, calculating, superbly intelligent and highly organised individual who'd gone out of his way to recreate the Ripper murders to the enth degree. In the case of Mandy Clark, however, everything seemed wrong to me. Jack Reid's fingerprints were all over the murder weapon, all over the house and he'd obviously been high on drugs at the time of his arrest. Surely, if copying the original Ripper crimes was so important to him he wouldn't have allowed himself to get into such a state and then leave such a welter of evidence at the scene to incriminate himself. Unfortunately, there was nothing in his story that could be corroborated at the time despite Carl and his boss doing all they could to check out his story. Before you ask why I said nothing of this at the trial, let me tell you that it would have done no good whatsoever. I'm a solicitor by trade, Doctor Truman, and I know the law. If I'd aired my thoughts in court, at best it may have been seen as an attempt to throw doubt on the prosecution case through pure speculation, at worst it would have been instantly rejected by the judge as being nothing more than my own personal conjecture, which to be fair, it was.

"Some weeks after the trial Carl Wright and I met at a meeting of The Whitechapel Society up in London, where we discussed the Reid case. Carl confided in me that he held similar thoughts to my own and together we approached Inspector Holland with a request that we be allowed to delve a little further into investigating Reid's story.

"Inspector Holland pointed out that the case was officially closed and though he agreed to some extent with the scenario that Carl and I pointed out to him, the police couldn't devote their resources to a full investigation. However, he did agree that Carl could liaise with me in his own time and if anything useful came up he'd look into it."

"And something did&come up, I mean?" I said, giving Nickels the chance to draw breath.

"Well, yes, sort of, though at first it was a tenuous link at best, but a link nonetheless. When I thought the whole case through, I thought it unlikely that Jack Reid would build a fictional scenario around a real person. You see, this young man called Michael really existed, that much was confirmed by the police, though he'd disappeared well before the trial. Why, I thought to myself would Reid interweave his story about 'The Man' with one about this Michael unless there was some basis in fact for his story? Please don't say that it could have been part of his psychosis. I know that, but I read all I could on the subject and it would have been far more logical if he'd created a wholly fictional tale. Also, he knew where Michael lived, though of course the police at the time of the investigation said that was probably because Michael had been his drugs supplier.

"Anyway, I decided to focus on Michael and with Carl's help we set about trying to locate the elusive drug pusher."

"And, did you find him?"

"At first it was as though he'd disappeared into thin air. The lack of a surname didn't help, and then Carl, during one of his off-duty expeditions into the seedy side of town found a very old customer of his who remembered him once being known as Devlin."

Carl Wright took over at this point, giving Alice Nickels the opportunity to take a breather.

"The junkie, who's name is Taylor, was one of Michael's earliest 'regulars' and though he couldn't swear that Devlin was actually Michael's name, it was a starting point for me. Anyway, I dug deeper and found that a
James
Michael Devlin had been arrested in Hastings a couple of years ago for small-time drug peddling and that seemed to confirm it. The more I searched, however, the less I found. No-one by the name of James or Michael Devlin had been arrested anywhere in the country as far as records showed, so it was obvious that he wasn't in police custody somewhere unless he'd changed his name. Then, we got a break. Alice had surmised that if the man Reid had spoken of really existed and if he exercised such power and control over Michael, it may have been possible that the man had used Michael to assist in his disappearance from the country and then disposed of him."

The more Wright went on, the more I could see where he was going with their theory. I was becoming enthralled by what he had to say and waited for him to continue, which he did following a short pause.

"I spoke with my boss again, who by then had come around even more to my idea that Reid may have been set up and he authorised a check on possible murder victims or unusual deaths or apparent suicides of young men, not just in the UK, but anywhere in the European Union. We have access to far more information on such things than we used to have and eventually we hit pay dirt."

"You found him, didn't you? You found Michael?" I said, sure now that that was what Wright was about to tell me. "That's why Inspector Holland is in Warsaw, isn't it?"

"Yes," Alice Nickels rejoined the conversation. "Last week Carl received an e-mail from a Polish police detective who'd responded to Holland's request for information. Warsaw, of course, stands on the Vistula River, and it appears that the body of a young man was discovered on the banks of the river a few weeks ago. It was badly decomposed and appeared to have been in the water for some time, but the approximated weight of the victim, the hair colour, and the general description that Holland had circulated made the detective think that the man may have been the one we were looking for, especially when combined with the other news he had to impart."

"Precisely," said Wright. "Listen, Doctor, our chief wouldn't have let Inspector Holland go jetting off to Poland just because they found a body that
might
be the body of one of the men Jack Reid said were really responsible for the murders he was tried for."

"So, why did they let him go?"

"Because of the other bodies," said Alice Nickels.

That was it. They had me and I had to know the rest.

"What other bodies?" I asked impatiently.

Sergeant Wright took up the tale once again.

"It wasn't just the bodies; it was the timing and the locations that did it. At first we were sceptical of the chances of the man being Michael. His clothes, or what remained of them, all had English labels, but that could have been a coincidence. Many Poles live and work in England and he could have been a native of Poland who'd done just that and then gone home. But, as well as the manner of his death, the other bodies confirmed a lot of what Alice and I had suspected."

"What other bodies?" I almost screamed at the policeman in my need to hear what he had to tell me.

"Any chance of some coffee, Doctor?" he asked by way of reply. "I could do with something to wet my whistle before I tell you what we really came to relate."

My frustration was liable to boil over any second, but I managed to retain my air of professional calm as I lifted the phone and asked my secretary to bring in three mugs of coffee.

"Now, sergeant, will you please tell me about these
other bodies?
"

Wright looked at Alice Nickels, who smiled a knowing smile at him, and nodded. As he was about to begin, Tess, my secretary, knocked and entered the office with a tray containing coffee for the three of us plus a thoughtfully well-stacked plate of assorted biscuits. Wright held himself in check as Tess placed the tray on my desk and withdrew from the office. As the door closed quietly behind her, Sergeant Carl Wright took a deep breath and as I looked intently into his eyes, ready to hang on his every word, he began his strange telling of the events in Warsaw that had led him and Alice Nickels to my office that day.

Alice
Nickels Investigates

"I already had my own doubts, as I've told you," Wright began, "and I continued to bug Mike Holland as the weeks after the trial went on. Something about the case just didn't fit in my mind and when I met Alice at the most recent meeting of The Whitechapel Society and we put our heads together, those doubts simply grew until I was sure that Reid's story just might have some truth to it. When I told Mike Holland of Alice's thoughts, he was sympathetic as I've intimated but he wanted more. As I hadn't the time to do it, I asked Alice if she'd like to conduct some research into the affair, which she did, with surprising results."

"And?" I asked impatiently. Wright nodded to Alice Nickels who took up the tale.

"Well, I already believed that whoever was behind the killings was not only clever, but probably severely mentally deranged, as well. Sorry if that's the wrong term to use, Doctor, but it's the way I thought of him. I've already told you that Jack Reid's behaviour after the Mandy Clark killing was just so markedly different from what we expected after the first two killings that I had grave doubts as to his guilt. Now, it follows that if he isn't the killer, so the possibility has to exist that his story is true. My problem was in what way would I go about proving or disproving my theory. Then I had an idea. What, I thought to myself, would I have done if I'd been the real killer and knew that my time in Brighton was up, as the police had caught on to my scheme? The answer, stupid as it may seem, was easy. I'd go somewhere else to complete the series of re-creations."

"But surely," I said, "That would spoil the look of things. I mean the geography of the killings and so on, as you pointed out at the trial?"

"Not if he found a way to stick to the original layout. You see, when I laid the map of Brighton over the plan of Victorian Whitechapel the murder sites matched so, why couldn't the killer have picked a new town or city and done the same thing again, this time adding the other murders by committing them in locations that when added to the earlier killings still produced the same geographical layout as the original Whitechapel murders? Remember that whoever did this had to be ingeniously and fiendishly clever. Also, his mental state wouldn't have made him think that perhaps no-one would add two and two together to join the dots and associate his new murders with the Brighton ones. I've had that confirmed by a psychiatrist by the way. He assured me that the killer, if there
is
someone else apart from Jack Reid who is responsible for the crimes, is probably so fixated on his own 'mission' that he wouldn't care if no-one else realised the significance of any new killings in a new location. He was satisfying his own need, a compulsion to complete his re-creation of the Ripper murders and he would do it in any way he saw fit that would also enable him to escape detection.