The Lazarus Prophecy (32 page)

The cellar was filling up when I exited the closet and I climbed between the ropes into the ring and took a look at the crowd we'd drawn. Fairer to say that Boilerhouse had put them there; he was the draw, I was the poor sap expected to take a drubbing. They were there to see claret spilled and wager cash and most of them looked like it in their checks and gingham, in their toppers and spats and their gold watch chains and bullion capped teeth, red-faced and whiskery, puffing furiously on their cigars.

You might wonder if I felt nervous. The truth was I didn't. I'd got myself into some serious scrapes in my working life in America and emerged from a few of them quite surprised to be still vertical and breathing. Prize-fighters are philosophical about pain and though I was out of practice, I was no raw novice. This was my 20th fight and I'd won all of the previous 19.

That said, when I saw him emerge through a set of curtains and walk with the crowd roaring encouragement to the ring, I thought this fellow the most formidable man I'd met in the roped arena. If he could hit half as hard as his mighty appearance suggested he would, I was in for a testing evening.

I took the clove of raw garlic secured in my right fist and bit into it and chewed. I'd never been one for cheating on a serious scale but thought a bit of gamesmanship permissible given the odds in his favour. I would make sure whenever I breathed on him that Boilerhouse would do what he could to shorten the clinches. It's the wrestling for the room and leverage to punch tires that weakens the smaller man in the fight.

It was bare fists, another plus for me. A man can punch only as hard as an unprotected hand can take without damage. Gloves enable clubbing. They suit the stronger man who can risk hitting an elbow seeking to land to the kidneys without dislocating a knuckle.

A second I'd never met before held the stool I'd sit on between rounds and the bucket into which I'd spit my rinse. I'd bought my own filled bottle for that purpose. He was bright-eyed and built along a jockey's sprightly lines. I took a last look at the packed crowd, at the glowing faces behind the wreaths of tobacco smoke, thinking that any one of these men could be the dark figure butchering woman and inflicting a siege of terror on the city. Then the bell sounded and we were at the centre of the ring and at each other.

I'm hard to hit. I'll take blows when I can't avoid them but I'm generally sliding off the punch, pretty difficult to catch flush and daze. The Boilerhouse was a dazer. Everything he threw with either hand was aimed at knocking me senseless and putting me down for the count. By the end of the third he was breathing pretty heavily. Every punch that doesn't land has to be brought back by its owner. Inaccuracy is fatiguing.

He should have gone to the body with those great, swinging assaults of his. It's much harder to get the body out of the way of a blow. But he was a head-hunter and he wasn't in the business of learning from what wasn't working in the fight. It had worked for him before and like a dumb beast he was stubborn.

I looked to land a short left up into the floating rib. It was a coal-shovel of a shot, the hardest I was capable of delivering and if I landed it once in every round, I was content. It pushed the rib up into the lung, forcing out air and inflicting a withering hurt on its recipient. One good one of those in every round and by the ninth my man was generally ready to go.

It was the tenth for the Boilerhouse. By then his strength was counting against him. He could barely lift his huge arms to shape a guard. I feinted past his feeble jab, set my feet flat and clipped his chin to right and left with two heavy hooks. You do that and the brain swivels in the jelly around it and, with most men, the lights go out. I don't
think my opponent was endowed with the biggest of brains, but he followed the form and hit the deck, going down in stages, like a felled tree.

There was a hush, suddenly. I looked around, panting with the effort of that final combination, my knuckles raw and throbbing, alert to the anger an upset can unleash; the hurled bottles and coins, the mob rush of disgruntled gamblers armed with dusters and the cosh.

Applause broke out. ‘Bravo,' someone said. One of the Boilerhouse's handlers climbed into the ring and raised my arm. ‘Let's hear your appreciation for the Irish champion,' he bawled at the spectators, ‘brought over from Dublin especially for your delectation.'

I was the champion of nothing. I'd been in London seven months. I'd walked the five miles there from a rented hovel. But it was quick thinking I rewarded with a wink, knowing he was good for the five guineas I'd earned and that he'd flattered the crowd into thinking they'd been treated to a pedigree encounter, rather than a brawl between a bully and an opponent rusty, past his best and on the slide.

They gave me my winnings. I dressed and went to take the watch from my pocket and remembered I'd had to pawn it three days earlier. I didn't want to hang about and though there were plenty of them in the streets as I walked back the way I'd come, I didn't want to ask a bobby the time lest the accent raise suspicion. Only copper-bottomed cockneys are above it in the current fraught climate.

I had the feeling of being followed. It wasn't dangerous in Whitechapel because there were too many police around for someone to risk a street robbery. Annie Chapman and Elizabeth Stride had seen to that with their slaughter two days earlier. There were two pursuers, both about my height judging from their stride-length and they sounded like they were wearing quality boots.

They were neither skilled at tracking a man, nor poor, I didn't think, wondering what sinister purpose could be making them duplicate my route. My choices were giving them the slip or confronting them. My hands were sore from the beating they'd tattooed in the ring on my ox of an opponent and I didn't want another, unpaid fight.
On the other hand by now my dander was up and so I turned under a lamp post and folded my arms to wait for their approach.

When they got near enough, I recognized one of them. He was Dr. Robert Anderson, the CID chief in charge of the Ripper investigation. The man with him wore a clerical collar. They walked sedately into the yellow spread of gas light and Anderson said, ‘A superb exhibition of pugilism, Mr. Barry. Now we're well away from the eyes and ears of Whitechapel, might my colleague and I tempt you with the offer of a celebratory drink?'

‘I was set for a drink anyway,' I said, ‘just as soon as I reached a quarter friendlier than the one we've all recently left.'

‘You've certainly earned one,' the clergyman said. ‘That fellow was a formidable size.'

‘The bigger they come, Father,' I said, in convivial mood since I'd won the bout and wasn't about to have my throat cut for my winnings.

‘Quite so,' he said.

‘There's a pub not far from here does a very decent glass of porter,' Anderson said. ‘Perhaps we could tempt you into having a pint of oysters too.'

‘Unless you're a stout drinker, being a Dublin man,' the clergyman said.

‘This is Father Jeffries,' Anderson said.

I shook both their hands. I said, ‘Stout or porter would suit perfectly. I've a fierce thirst on me and a modest sense of entitlement.' But under the blarney I was wondering what a senior detective really thought of a man who'd just profited from an illegal fist-fight, and why on earth he would want of all things to buy that man a drink.

It was close to midnight by now and the pubs in this more affluent section of the city were less crowded than they tended to be in the East End. We had reached Clerkenwell, where people find their homes tolerable places in which to sit and read and converse rather than dank slums fit only for escaping in search of the anesthetic of strong drink. We found Anderson's establishment of choice and sat in the snug at a table close to a coke fire and without eavesdropping neighbours.

‘Am I right in thinking you recently returned to Europe from America?' Anderson asked.

‘I think you know you are,' I answered, after a measured sip of porter. He'd told only the truth about that. My thirst would have flattered any brew but this was excellent.

‘Where you were first trained and then employed for three years by the Pinkerton Detective Agency?'

‘For my sins, I was,' I said.

Father Jeffries said, ‘Did you ever kill a man?'

‘I never had cause to fire a bullet, Father. I pointed my pistol when required and they came quietly. So I never had cause to kill a man directly, though I consigned maybe half a dozen to the end of a rope.'

The distinction seemed a fine one to me, but Father Jeffries seemed encouraged by this answer.

Anderson asked, ‘What were your particular skills?'

‘I was good at detection. But it's not a skill has a lot of application in frontier towns. Most cattle rustlers and train robbers leave plenty of clues as to who it is has done the stealing. The same is true of shootings. Tracking was my particular skill. I had a natural aptitude for that.'

‘And you were very successful,' Anderson said. ‘So why did you stop?'

I thought about deflecting him with some platitude, but he had an honest face and a clear-eyed sincerity about him that compelled me to tell him the truth. I said, ‘I had a feeling that my luck was running out. I'd faced down men lightning-quick on the draw with a Colt. I'd come out of ambushes completely unscathed. I'd eluded hostile natives, survived stampeding cattle, never caught the clap and avoided the consumption. Nothing unfortunate ever came my way. Not so much as a nick from a razor being shaved in a barber's chair. I just woke up one morning in a Kansas City hotel eight months ago knowing I'd tempted fate far enough.'

‘You're the seventh son of a seventh son,' Father Jeffries said. ‘They're said to be people of exceptional good fortune.'

‘You two fellows seem to know an awful lot about me,' I said. ‘Would it be rude to ask how and, more particularly, why?'

‘We want your help in a scheme,' Anderson said.

I sipped porter. I said, ‘I'm surprised you've the time for schemes. You've got four murdered women on your hands and a killer fast developing a relish for his work.'

‘It's rather more than four,' Anderson said.

‘How many is rather more?'

‘He's slaughtered eight. Two of them were titled women. He killed Lady Annabel Lamb a week ago. A fortnight ago he killed the Duchess of Oxenbury.'

I'd read about those deaths in the newspaper. Lady Lamb had been hit, the story said, at a railway crossing by a locomotive. The duchess had died in an accident when she had slipped from the stern of a boat and been caught in the propeller.

Anderson looked at me, reading my thoughts. He said, ‘It was the only way to rationalize the injuries. We're having to censor him. He leaves messages at the scenes. We obliterate them the second we arrive. Things have got hot enough for the Jews and the freemasons without those boasts and accusations and threats he daubs becoming public knowledge.'

‘Yet you're telling me.'

‘If you're going to help us with our scheme, we have to trust each other,' he said.

I said, ‘Tell me about your scheme.'

Anderson took a notebook from his coat pocket. It had a leather cover and a sleeve sewn into its side from which he took a silver propelling pencil. ‘I'm going to write down the name of a man and his description,' he said. ‘This fellow eats, drinks, defecates and breaths. He wears a scent he has concocted by a Bloomsbury pharmacy. He has suits tailored for him in Soho. He enjoys gambling and music hall.'

‘That's all commendably thorough. What am I supposed to do with the information?'

‘He's disappeared. We want you to find him. If and when you find him, we'd like you to challenge him to a bout of fisticuffs. He won't be able to turn down the challenge or the wager.'

‘He's unbearably vain,' Father Jeffries said. ‘He can't resist a bet.'

‘He's a liar and a cheat,' Anderson said.

‘He's a prince among liars and cheats,' Jeffries said. ‘But he's not just devious. He's strong. He'll be a formidable opponent.'

‘Then why would I wish to fight him?'

‘For the purse,' Anderson said. ‘Beat him and we'll pay you twenty thousand pounds in gold. You'll never unload another cargo hold as long as you live.'

‘You can muster candidates younger and stronger than me,' I said.

‘But none so lucky,' Jefferies said.

He'd gone pale. They both had. The porter wasn't having the effect of providing them with the fortitude to discuss the fellow they wanted me to fight. There was more to it. They were not weak men I was seated with. They did not, either of them, naturally lack gumption.

‘I'll go to the bar and fetch us a whisky apiece,' I said. ‘To celebrate a bargain struck,' and to put some colour back in my companions' cheeks. I stood fishing in my pocket for change and tilted my head to read the name at the top of the description torn by Anderson from his notebook and placed on our table. It read, Edmund Caul.

I left them with much on my walk back to Devil's Acre to think about. I knew how it was they knew so much about me. In June I was arrested following an affray in a Lambeth High Street pub. I had not been in Lambeth, never mind in the pub when this event occurred.

I was taken into custody, questioned and after a few hours of confinement, released. They were magnanimous enough, the fellows in blue gabardine, to make me a mug of tea before my departure. They'd known I was innocent. They'd been compiling a file on me was all and Anderson and his priestly friend had since then studied it.

October 20
^th
1888

Almost three weeks and I haven't yet located Edmund Caul. London lies in the gloomy embrace of fear and suspicion. The carts and wagons trundle through its teeming thoroughfares and the rough cries of the street peddlers and toughs and costermongers and the rag and bone men chorus and compete shrilly. But there is a sombre End of Days atmosphere about the metropolis and when the smog's suffocating mantle descends it seems in the lost faces and listless souls of its denizens that the darkness might never lift.