Tales of Jack the Ripper (10 page)

Victim named in Hanbury Car Park stabbing

Press Association

11 September 2013

A woman found stabbed to death and mutilated in Whitechapel has been named by police.

Nancy Brace, aged 51, was found on the morning of September 8 by a security officer in the Hanbury Car Park. At the time of her death, police were unable to identify Brace.

She is survived by her husband and two sons.

The security officer who found Brace said: “Her throat had been cut and she was…. I’m sorry. Give me a moment. She was disemboweled. Her intestines had been arranged over each of her shoulders. Whoever did it, they scratched ‘Dark Annie’ in the hood of the car I found her by. There was all this junk around her, too. All laid out just so. Some pills. A comb. Half an envelope. There’s a serial killer on the loose. That’s what I think. This wasn’t about gangs, or drugs. This was like some kind of sacrifice.”

Yes. Dark Annie. They do understand. Their eyes are open.

Listen, Boss. Two words: Double Event.

THE TELEGRAPH

Two women stabbed to death in Whitechapel:

Metro Police fear serial killer

By Hattie Anne-James

3 October 2013

The double murder of “Long Liz” and the victim Metropolitan Police have dubbed “Catherine” has sparked speculation of a serial killer stalking the streets of Whitechapel.

Scarlett Thomas with Scotland Yard was quoted as saying: “There appears to be evidence—what I believe to be undeniable evidence—many of the recent murders in East London are related to the quasquicentennial anniversary of the Jack the Ripper slayings. Items recovered from the scene at Hanbury Car Park where Nancy Brace was found stabbed to death on 8 September have been identified as symbolic with the 8 September 1888 slaying of Annie Chapman.”

On 30 September, an unidentified victim was recovered from Henriques Street in Whitechapel at approximately 1:00 AM. The victim was pronounced dead at the scene by Metro police. Less than an hour later a second body was discovered by City police at the corner of Mitre Square. A distance of less than a quarter mile from the crime scene on Henriques Street.

Both victims were found with ritualistically displayed items with possible symbolic links to the Ripper killings of Elizabeth Stride and Catherine Eddowes, killed exactly 125 years ago.

Scarlett Thomas, a Chief Investigator for Scotland Yard, has taken over investigation of the five, possibly six, interrelated killings that began in Whitechapel as early as August this year.

You have transcended accepted “morality”; transcended the social human animal; transcended humanity itself. Woven a chrysalis of action, of determination, of retribution. You have chosen THE WILL TO POWER. Emerged from your cocoon Saved. Saved from the Bosses of the world.

There is but one more act of consecration.

You are not so foolish as to believe you will find immortality in Jack’s footsteps, not in this modern world, but you have allowed yourself the hope of bolstering Sickert’s. This is just the way of things, you know. The closest you might come to immortality is a TV miniseries.

But for that you must complete Sickert’s (Jack’s) most sacrosanct act. And you must get away with it.

It is time to make Black Mary.

She is special, your Mary. Oh so special! You bought her in Myanmar. In the Hill Country on the border to Thailand. She was not expensive.

You go down the stairs to the first-floor hall—Flat 6—reach through the broken window and unbolt the door.

The room is tiny. It was always tiny. Twelve-by-twelve whole. Now, with the false wall, the room you enter is a pie-slice four feet wide at its largest dimension. The false wall greets you. Plywood. Painted dark gray. Solid oak door at its center. Padlocked. Chained. In over a year, no one’s noticed. No one has reached through the broken window, peeled away the curtain and seen this strange configuration. And if they have… not a one has reported it. Why would they? This is Whitechapel. The intersection of a hellish far right and the scum of the earth. No one cares, here. But they will remember this. For a little while.

Just inside the door is a halogen lantern. You pick it up, turn it on; its clear, blue-white light is like starlight in the darkness.

You key and unbolt the padlock. The chains crinkle, steel on steel on steel, to the floor. The door creaks. Shouldn’t it? The hinges haven’t moved in months.

She’s there. Of course she’s there. Bound to herself. Bound in starlight and shadow.

She sees you but doesn’t respond. Doesn’t shy, or shrink. Doesn’t blink. You watch the pupils in her eyes diminish in the lamplight.

“Mary,” you say.

Her head lifts on its slight, perfect frame. Like a dog’s head will lift when you call its name.

“Hello, Mary.”

Cow-round eyes, blank as tinted windows stare up at you.

You hold the lamp up and smile at her. Your most rakish smile. Women have always loved that smile; it is both sensual and disarming. You know. You have spent years studying it, practicing it, in mirrors.

You turn away from Mary. Turn a circle on your heel. An almost perfect pirouette. You have reconstructed the original crime scene as closely, as accurately, as necessary. The floor is the same oak it was a hundred or so years ago. Cut-in with shoddy patches, some of them pressboard. The walls are covered in soundproofing. But there are tables. Three of them. Small, wooden tables. A chair that’s never been sat in. The bed in the far back corner. And the fireplace.

“Are you cold, Mary?” you ask cheerily.

“Ye… ye… yesss.”

“Let’s have a fire then, shall we?”

The fire is for light. Mary will be a cold, bloodless assortment of meat in a few hours. You wouldn’t waste warmth on her even if that wasn’t so.

In the fireplace there are two cured logs and an old copper kettle. You take a yellow bottle of Ronsonol lighter fluid out of your coat pocket. A box of matches. Shrug out of your coat. Throw it on top of the logs and the kettle. Soak it with the bottle of Ronsonol. Throw the empty bottle in. Strike the match on the brick hearth.

Flick.

The room ignites.

Mary screams.

For one brief moment, you and Mary are standing on the sun. Consumed. The smell of the coat, the lighter fluid, the burning plastic… it’s sharp, nauseating.

You laugh.

Mary screams. And screams and screams.

You have her on the bed, one hand crimped over her face so hard you can feel her teeth through the skin of her lips. The other hand is on your knife.

The blade.

The blade has become all.

The focal point. Not just of your life, her life, but all life.

You draw the edge of the blade across her throat. It’s not a slow movement. Not quick. There’s pressure. Even. Precision. The smile of death must be perfect.

The struggle has become sex. Penetration, penetration. The last shudder of life, orgasm.

The blood comes. Hot. In spurts. In floods that fill all the fleshy hollows. Thick liquid emptying in every possible way. Life. Leaving. Emptying. Emptying. Emptying.

You lean down on her. Put your face to hers. Shadows and firelight cavort, caper, dance to the irregular music of her suffering. You want to see it. The blankness of abuse in her eyes becomes the dullness, the stillness, the nothingness of a passage that is transpiring. It’s hard to see by the light of the fire, but it doesn’t deter you. You must watch. The emptying, emptying, emptying.

Right now, two miles away in Pimlico Heights, a gang of teens are chasing a fourteen-year-old Bangladeshi boy down with wide kitchen knives. Legs pumping. Lungs burning. Hate fueling. Fear swelling: a thunderhead of dying hope. The boy trips. The gang falls on him. Blades go in. One. Two. Six. Stab. Stab. Feet kick. A small voice says, “Stop.” Begs, “Don’t do it!” Steel slips between bone. Into organs. It’s all hot breath and animal sounds. An orgy of destruction for the sake of destruction. And then it’s over and the boy is left to bleed, to die, alone on a dirty pavement that smells of oil and rubber. The gang members tuck bloody knives into socks, then into sleeves. They walk away, breath easing, hearts slowing. What’s it about? What was the boy’s life payment for? Does it even matter? Do we really care?

You cut into the fat of her left breast. Remove it. Place it under Mary’s head—loose on its neck like a broken toy.

Trapped air escapes her lips. You press the blade to them—the silencing finger of her god—drawing cuts as you whisper, “Shhhhhhhhhh! Quiet, now, Mary. Sh-sh-shhh!”

Three miles away, in the Docklands, through a membrane of time only a few hours thin, a fifteen-year-old girl leads her seventeen-year-old boyfriend to a flat he doesn’t recognize. Six young men, aged 16-20, take bats and fists and tennied-feet to him. He’s nothing to them. They’re less than human. Less, even, than beasts. Even in the most fierce competitions for territory and mating rights, animals seldom kill others of their own kind. Knives come out. Laughter peals the silence (you peal skin from muscle, muscle from bone). Ugly noise. Hate without identifiable source. Hate as human condition. Knives go in. No emotion. No reason. Youth destroyed by youth, without remorse. What has changed? What have we done? What have we become? And have we earned it?

You remove her other breast, knife working in a ragged circle, into the muscle, cutting it away. Once removed, you arrange it by her right foot. Ceremony. Pomp and Circumstance.

You open her abdomen in the prescribed three cuts. Remove the flaps of skin, placing them on one of the wooden tables. You remove your sweat-soaked, blood-soaked shirt and throw it onto the fire. It smells like meat saturated in embalming fluid.

The smoke is hellish. Your eyes sting. Burn. Run tears. The light is too little. Time, running down.

This is your life’s labor.

Everything must be perfect.

You pose her. Arrange her organs.

It’s almost done.

You stare into her emptied eyes one more time. Her face. Her face is beautiful, even with the thin, silencing cuts of the knife running through the plump of her cocksucker.

You reverse grip on the knife.

Whores do not deserve faces.

You stab, arm working like a piece of machinery. The arm of a well pump. Up and down. Up and down. Up and down. Stab. Cut. Destroy. Erase.

You strip out of your gloves, the rest of your clothes. Add them to the fire. From the deep, commercial sink in the far corner of the room, you wash.

On the door in the main hall you write in chalk:

BLACK MARY

MURDER INSIDE

Naked, blade hard in your hand, you walk casually back up the stairs. To your flat on the second floor. No one sees you. No one wants to. You are truly one of thousands. Not even one of the worst. Your work, at least, is at an end.

An ambulance rushes down High Street, red lights and sirens and then it’s gone. Not for your Mary.

You wonder how many murders you will have to wade through on Google News to find her when
they
find her? Will she even make headline (you worry)? Perhaps the front page of the
Guardian
… in print?

Does anyone read print anymore?

Ripping

Walter Greatshell

“You were brilliant up there. I’m a big fan of Louise Brooks.”

“I hate to break it to you, but she’s dead.”

“So I’ve heard. Yet her hairstyle lives on. Drink?”

“Vodka tonic.”

“Make it two. Listen… I may have a proposition for you.”

“A proposition? And here I thought you were buying me drinks out of the goodness of your heart.”

“Not that kind of proposition. I’m casting a movie, and I think you might be right for a part in it.”

“Wow—how original. Did you bring your couch?”

“I’m serious.”

“Aren’t we all. The problem is, some of us are also full of shite.”

“At least hear me out.”

“I’m all ears, Mr. DeMille.”

“Have you ever wanted to be in a movie?”

“At the price of a bumming?”

“Not quite.”

“You offering to make me a movie star, then?”

“No. I think stars are obsolete. Expensive, temperamental…who needs them? Not me. The new face of cinema is not flesh and blood, it’s CGI. Motion-capture—do you know what that is?”

“It’s like how they make Gollum… or Jar Jar Binks.”

“
Exactly
. Everybody knows who Gollum is, but not necessarily the guy who played him.”

“Andy Serkis.”

“Whatever. He was just a stand-in for the digital character they superimposed over him. You don’t need stars for that; all you need is people who embody certain attributes of the character you want to create.”