Legacy of the Ripper (7 page)

Jacob rose from the bench, pulling himself up to his full height. Michael looked surprised when Jacob appeared to be at least three inches taller than himself. From his position curled up on the bench, the young man had looked smaller somehow. No matter, Michael wasn't intending anything violent. He thought that Jacob might just be the man he needed to help him in a coming venture. For now however, it was necessary to get Jacob back to his home, and try to engender a sense of gratitude in his new friend.

Jacob stretched, looked up and around at the multi-coloured seafront lights suspended between the resort's lamp-posts, and at the dark starlit autumn sky. A breeze was being driven in towards the promenade from the English Channel, and the salt air held the tang of a cool night as it whipped around his face. Wherever Michael lived, it would probably be a more pleasant option than spending another night in the open, and risking arrest for vagrancy by some bored copper with nothing better to do than pick on homeless young people. His mind made up, he agreed to go with Michael and the two young men walked together towards the less salubrious end of town, where Michael's home lay. It was, he explained to Jacob, only temporary. He'd be finding something better soon.

Twenty minutes later, arriving at Michaels flat, Jacob had cause to pause and think that perhaps he might have been better taking his chances on the seafront bench. Michael's flat was squalid to say the least, though Jacob could have added a whole host of less than complimentary terms to that one simple word to describe the place he found himself in. The whole flat smelled of something unclean, though Jacob couldn't put a name to the scent that assaulted his olfactory nerves. Perhaps it was just the fact that he'd spent days living in the fresh air of the seafront, but he almost retched as he was swept into the living area by Michael, who proceeded to flop on the sofa in the middle of the room, gesturing to Jacob to take seat in one of the two tattered armchairs that made up the other components of the three-piece suite that had seen many better days, that was for sure.

"Bet you could do with a hot drink, eh, Jacob?" asked Michael, after allowing his guest the luxury of five minutes relaxation on the sofa.

"Wouldn't mind," Jacob replied, and Michael gestured to follow him into the kitchen.

The kitchen reminded Jacob of something out of a war zone. Pots and pans lay strewn on top of the grease encrusted cooker, the centrepiece of which was a heavily burned and well-used frying pan, that, like everything in Michael's flat appeared to have seen better days. The sink was piled high with used plates and bowls giving the whole area the appearance of a piece of grotesque modern sculpture. The worktops were equally laden with plates that bore the remains of a few take-out meals, well past their sell-by dates by the look of them, and Jacob estimated that anything he ate or drank in this place would probably be guaranteed to give him a dose of salmonella at the very least. He was surprised therefore when Michael opened a cupboard and extracted a couple of clean mugs and a clean spoon produced from a cutlery drawer positioned strategically next to the sink.

"I hate washing up," said Michael, by way of explanation for the culinary and hygienic mayhem that lay before them. "I get around to it about once a week," he went on, though Jacob estimated that once a month might be nearer the mark.

"Is Bovril all right? I ran out of tea and coffee days ago and haven't had chance to do any shopping since then."

Jacob nodded, and Michael quickly had his kettle on the boil.

"You go and clear the coffee table, eh?" he said to Jacob, who dutifully returned to the living room and swept the assorted magazines and old newspapers from the surface of the dirty glass-topped coffee table in the centre of the room. As he did so, Michael took the opportunity to drop two tranquilisers into the hot steaming mug of Bovril that he was about to present to his guest. The hot beef extract drink would easily mask any taste of the tiny tablets, once dissolved, that would give Michael the opportunity to carry out the first part of his plan.

When, twenty minutes later, Jacob at last fell into a deep sleep on the sofa, where Michael had insisted he sit and put his feet up, (after all he needed the rest), Michael at last had his chance. He rummaged through the contents of the rucksack, where he soon found out as much as he needed to know. As he'd thought, 'Jacob' was not really Jacob at all, and it didn't take long for Michael to decide that with a bit of tutoring, his new houseguest could be just the man he was looking for. Before he finally placed the rucksack down and crept off to his own bed for the night, he did, however, find one more item of interest tucked away at the very bottom of the bag, under a small pile of underwear of socks. What he found there quite appalled and intrigued him, and he wondered just how he could put what he'd learned to good use.

It hadn't taken him long to formulate a revised plan. His original idea to use Jacob as a runner and a messenger for some of his less than legal activities were rapidly revised into one where Jacob would provide him with something far more important. He knew someone who just might find Jacob a useful pawn in a little game he was playing.

Now, as he watched the sleeping figure snoring peacefully in the bed opposite his own, Michael smiled to himself. Yes indeed, his chance meeting with Jacob had been a sign from the gods, a message to Michael that things were about to start going his way. All his past cares and troubles were about to evaporate, thanks to Jacob. So what if it wasn't his real name? If the poor sod wanted to be known as Jacob, that would do for Michael. After all, Michael wasn't his real name either.

Any minute now, Jacob would be awake. Michael had plans to make, but for now, he'd play the genial host as ever, and have a good breakfast ready for Jacob when he woke.

Escalation

Allow me to now trek back in time once more, back to the dark and murky, crime-infested streets of the East End of London, in the year 1888. Such a time slip is necessary in order for me to illustrate the odd connections that began to come together in the beautiful seaside town of Brighton in our own time. Of course, as events began to unfold no-one made any connection between the events in London so long ago and what was taking place in Brighton. At least, not in the beginning.

In the early hours of the morning of 31st August 1888, the body of forty three year old prostitute Mary Ann Nichols, known locally as 'Polly', was discovered by two men, Charles Cross and Robert Paul in a doorway on Buck's Row, Whitechapel. Three police constables were on the scene within five minutes, and one of them, Police Constable Neil, was able to ascertain immediately, with the aid of the light from his lantern, that the woman's throat had been cut. Her skirt had been pulled up, though it wasn't evident at that time that the victim had been subjected to a series of mutilations. The police surgeon, a Doctor Llewellyn, was summoned. He pronounced the victim dead and ordered the body to be taken to the mortuary shed at Old Montague Street Workhouse Infirmary. It was during the stripping of the body at the mortuary that the mutilations to Polly Nichols's body were discovered and Doctor Llewellyn was subsequently summoned to carry out a further examination of the remains.

Though not identified immediately her identity was later confirmed by Mary Ann Monk form the Lambeth Workhouse, where Polly had spent time in the recent past. Mary Ann Nicholls had been married to William Nichols, a printer, and had borne him five children. Following frequent and often violent quarrels, mostly caused by Mary's propensity for drink the couple separated and, as was so often the case amongst the poor of Victorian London, she took to prostitution in an attempt to keep body and soul together. It was an old story and one repeated all too often amongst the decay and squalor that the poorest inhabitants were forced to endure on a daily basis. There were no welfare benefits, no handouts and no pity to be spared for those who made up the sad underclass without whom the vast engine of the British Empire would in all probability have ground to a halt. These were the souls whose sweat and hard labour fuelled the vast factories that had spring up during the industrial revolution, who worked long and hard hours on the docks, in the markets and on the streets of London in order to eke out the barest of livings. The hours were long and the work mostly soul destroying and back-breaking in its physical intensity.

Their homes were for the most part dark and dirty hovels, with often more then one family sharing not a whole house, but a pitiful room, perhaps without furniture, beds, or decent food. Windows were often bare of glass and were stuffed with old newspapers or sacking, anything to keep out the cold of night. Degradation and squalor were the order of the day and nowhere was perhaps as severely affected as the Whitechapel district, where crime, disease and apathy of soul became bywords for those who eventually sought to attempt to improve the lot of those who were forced to endure the privations of life on the fringes of so-called civilised society.

Such was the way of life endured by Polly Nichols and those like her, the poor 'unfortunates' who plied their pitiful trade selling their bodies for a few pence at a time in a pitiful attempt to raise enough money to find a bed for the night in one of the many 'doss' houses that sprang up around the East end to cater for those with no home to call their own. Of course, the handmaiden of the prostitutes of Whitechapel was so often the gin that flowed in the many ale houses and pubs that lined the district's streets, and the temptation was always there to spend whatever meagre earnings they'd obtained in attaining the oblivion of drunkenness in preference to finding that bed for the night. It was certainly the case for Polly Nichols. A woman by the name of Ellen Holland had been the last person to see her alive, reporting her as having been 'drunk and staggering' when she saw her on the corner of Osborn Street and Whitechapel High Street at around two thirty a.m. Perhaps we may hope that her state of drunkenness protected her from the full horrors of what was about to befall her.

Mary Ann 'Polly' Nichols had received such a wound to her throat that the incision completely severed the tissues down to the vertebrae. The lower part of her abdomen had been subjected to a number of wounds, deep and violent in their execution. In addition, bruising was apparent on her face and jaw, as though caused by a blow or blows, and possibly by pressure from fingers on the side of her face. Though not as grotesque as some of the wounds inflicted on later victims in the killing spree that had begun in Whitechapel, they were sufficient to raise the spectre of horror and fear that was soon to engulf the whole of London, and capture the attention of the nation as a whole. The infamy of the killer's reputation would soon spread abroad, far and wide, though as yet, the killer was unknown, nameless and little more than a shadowy figure in the night, unseen and unheard as he went about his grisly work.

With no progress made in the hunt for killer, Mary Ann Nichols was buried in the cemetery at Little Ilford on 6th September 1888.

Returning to the present, it is worth noting that Marla Hayes was in no way similar in looks or background to Polly Nichols. She was twenty four years old, not forty-three, and she came from a reasonably well-to do family in Hastings. Her father was a doctor, her mother a librarian and money had never been a source of trouble for the Hayes family. The one thing the two women shared, despite the passage of time between their time on Earth, was the fact that both worked as prostitutes. Marla had fallen in with a bad crowd after leaving school and attending her local college where she initially began a course in animal care and welfare, hoping to one day realise her ambition of working in the veterinary industry.

Soon, she had descended, as do so many others in modern society into the world of the drug addict. Her habit grew worse until she was caught stealing from a local shop in order to fuel her growing habit. A period of probation followed and her father did his best to wean his daughter from the drugs he was only too aware might bring about a sad and sorry death for her one day. Sadly, his efforts were in vain and Marla became more and more embroiled in the world of drugs and drug addicts. It soon became plain to the bright and pretty young girl that there was an easy way of funding her habit. She began to sell herself for sex at the age of nineteen, and a series of arrests for soliciting followed. Her parents were at a loss as to how to deal with their wayward daughter and it probably came as no surprise to them when, soon after Christmas following her twentieth birthday, Marla disappeared from their lives.

She simply left home one evening and never returned.

Mara's crumpled body was found by boat-builder Andrew Mitchell as he walked along Catherine Steer on his way to work at five thirty a.m on the morning of 31st August. It lay in a doorway about halfway along the street, and at first he'd thought the body to be a drunk, sleeping off a heavy night on the front step of her own, or someone else's home. The river of blood that had poured from the girl's gaping neck wounds as he drew closer soon dispelled any such thoughts, and Mitchell stepped back in horror as he realised the full horror of his discovery. Her black mini skirt had been pulled up around her waist and the man had no difficulty in seeing that a series of terrible mutilations had been carried out upon the poor girl. Pulling his mobile phone from his pocket Mitchell quickly summoned the emergency services and waited for the arrival of the police and ambulance teams.

The squad car that arrived on the scene within twenty minutes of the call contained two uniformed constables and, upon seeing the extent of the murdered girl's injuries and realising the similarities between this and the murder of Laura Kane, P.C. Donald Stone quickly placed a call in to headquarters. It wasn't long before the telephone in Mike Holland's bedroom woke him from a deep sleep and within half an hour of waking, the Detective Inspector was on the scene, quickly followed by his sergeant, Carl Wright.

As Wright so aptly understated as he and Holland looked down at the pitiful remains of the once beautiful young girl who lay cold and lifeless on the ground before them, "Bloody Hell, sir, this is getting serious."