Legacy of the Ripper (16 page)

Her breasts had been cut off, the right arm slightly abducted from the body and rested on the mattress. The whole of the surface of the abdomen had been removed and thighs had been removed and the abdominal cavity emptied of the viscera. The tissues of the neck had been severed all the way round, down to the bone. The viscera were discovered in various places around the body. The uterus, kidneys and one breast were found under the head, the other breast was by the right foot. The liver was between the feet, the intestines by the right side and the spleen by the right side of the body. The flaps of skin that had been removed from the abdomen and thighs had been laid on a table. The woman's face was gashed 'in all directions'. The nose, cheeks, eyebrows and ears were all partly removed. The lips had been cut by several incisions down to the chin. The neck was cut through together with the other tissues down to the vertebrae.

In short, Mary Jane Kelly had been murdered, and then systematically butchered by the most heinous killer yet known to the British Police, or to the public at large.

Mike Holland laid his notes and the books belonging to Carl Wright aside. He'd read enough. Jack the Ripper had never been identified, never been apprehended. The largest police investigation ever undertaken up to that time in history had failed to produce a single shred of tangible evidence against one credible suspect. Either the man had been cleverer than the combined brains of the entire police force at Scotland Yard, or perhaps, as Wright had told him some suspected, there had been a cover-up of the facts at the time in order to protect an individual or perhaps a number of individuals with connections to the higher echelons of British society. Either way, Mike Holland had been sickened by much of what he'd just read. The post-mortem reports had been concise and exceedingly thorough for their day and the injuries inflicted upon the bodies of the Ripper's victims certainly corresponded with those inflicted on the recent Brighton victims.

Holland yawned. Tiredness had been slowly creeping up on him and it was now all he could do to keep his eyes open. Sleep beckoned. He'd managed to take in a mountain of facts about the Whitechapel murders of 1888. Now all he had to do was try and figure out how they could help him solve his own case, that of a twenty-first century ripper who appeared determined to copy the style and the acts of the original serial killer. There had to be something in the copious notes and in the vast number of books written on the case that would help him find a way to stop the latter day ripper in his tracks, but that would be a task for him to address in the morning. Laying his papers and books on the coffee table, and shivering with tiredness Mike Holland yawned once more, put his feet up on the sofa and laid his head upon the pile of cushions at one end. Not for the first time, his bed remained cold and untouched upstairs as he felt his eyelids growing heavier. He was asleep in seconds.

The Morning After the Night Before

It had proved to be a long, difficult, sleepless night for Michael. Though he'd felt exhausted after the trauma of Jacob's ferocious attack the previous day he'd been too fired up to allow himself the luxury of a good night's sleep, afraid that Jacob just might decide to repeat his assault. Trying to rest with one eye continually on the door had left Michael feeling cold and low in spirit, precisely the way he didn't want to feel that morning. After Jacob's attack upon him the previous day, Michael had done as the other man had instructed and used his phone to call the man in the house on Abbotsford Road. Unable to speak openly with Jacob listening, he'd told the man that Jacob knew he'd been drugged, wanted to know why and for what purpose and wouldn't be deflected from his desire to find the truth. The man, sensing perhaps that Jacob was listening in on the conversation had told Michael to bring Jacob to the house at precisely eleven a.m the following day, this very morning to be precise. Although Jacob had protested and insisted that he wanted to resolve the situation there and then, the man had instructed Michael to tell Jacob that all would be revealed if he displayed a little patience. The man explained that he had people to see that day and wouldn't be free until the allotted time. Surely, he'd said, Jacob could wait a little longer in order to discover what he needed to know. Despite Jacob's protestations the man would not be swayed and Michael had told Jacob that this was not someone who would take orders or be threatened by anyone, least of all someone like Jacob. He could be dangerous, so he explained and Michael professed to be surprised that the man had agreed to meet with Jacob at all. After all, he was hardly a great friend of Michael's and probably cared little for the fact that Jacob had given him a thoroughly good beating.

The arrangements having been grudgingly agreed there followed the longest day of Michael's life. Jacob refused to let Michael out of his sight and if it hadn't been for the fact that Michael had a supply of his own narcotics in the flat he'd have been going crazy by the time evening arrived. As it was it suited Jacob to allow Michael to get 'high' on the stuff as Michael's drugged state rendered him easy to control and watch over.

Jacob had confiscated his phone, leaving Michael totally cut off from the outside world and only at bedtime did Jacob allow Michael the privacy of the use of his own room to sleep in, though Michael sensed rather than saw the presence of his young nemesis just outside the door through the night, seated in the tattered armchair that the young man had dragged across the floor to a position by the door. Michael felt like a prisoner under close surveillance in his own home, a feeling he hated more and more the longer the night wore on.

Now, with the coming of the dawn, all thoughts of sleep finally evaporated from his mind. A leering Jacob entered the room and Michael could almost smell the aura of latent potential violence that emanated from the other man.

"Sleep well, Michael? Don't bother to get up. Just stay where you are. I can talk to you just as well while you have a lie-in."

"What do you think? With you standing guard outside my door and me not knowing if you were going to murder me in my sleep, just how was I supposed to sleep?"

"Now, why on earth would I want to murder you in your sleep? You're the one who's going to take me to meet whoever's orchestrating whatever's been happening to me, aren't you? You can't do that if you're dead can you, Michael?"

"Look, I told you. Nothing sinister's going on."

"Bullshit! You don't drug someone until they're incapable of remembering what they've been doing without some sort of nefarious motive. You certainly didn't do it for the good of my health. I should have carried on beating the hell out of you yesterday until you'd told me the whole truth and nothing but the truth, as they say, instead of giving you the chance to pass the buck on to this mysterious friend of yours."

"I've told you, he's not exactly a 'friend'. He's someone I met who helps me out from time to time and I do the same for him."

"In other words, he's your supplier and a dealer and you sell the stuff for him as well."

"He's not a drug dealer, Jacob, honestly. Yes, he makes sure I'm well supplied but I don't sell the stuff for him. That's a totally different thing. You know I sell the stuff, yes, but only small time and I don't get my stuff from him. You should know that because you've picked up enough packages of the stuff from Andy in the tavern."

Jacob had to admit that much was true. As part of his 'bed and board' deal with Michael he'd undertaken various excursions to the old Crown Tavern in one of the seedier areas of town where he'd met with the mysterious 'Andy' who was always ready and waiting for his arrival and who'd hand over a brown-paper wrapped parcel in exchange for the envelope of cash that Michael sent in return. Unless Andy was the man to whom Michael had spoken on the phone the previous day, which was unlikely given his deferential tone to the speaker at the other end of the line then it was evident to Jacob that in this matter at least, Michael was being totally honest with him. As though to confirm the point Jacob said,

"So it's not Andy we're going to see today, am I right?"

Michael laughed nervously.

"Andy? You must be joking. You don't think I'd be this nervous if it were just Andy who was involved, do you?"

"Just why are you so afraid of this man? What sort of hold does he have over you?"

"I can't explain it all to you, man. Just take my word for it that this is one dude you don't want to cross. He's never actually been violent towards me, but you can tell just by being with him that there's something weird about him. Something that bubbles just under the surface. You can't put your finger on it, but you just know that he could probably kill you as easily as you or me would swat a fly. It's like he's evil through and through. He sort of smells evil if you know what I mean."

"Now I know you're talking rubbish. How the hell can anyone
smell
evil?"

"I told you I can't explain it. It's sort of like he lives in another world, another time altogether. His house just seems like it's trapped in time, old and gloomy and just, well, different."

"Sounds to me like he's got you well and truly spooked, Michael. If you ask me you've shot one too many veins full of crap before you've been to see this character. He won't bloody well scare me, I'm telling you."

"We'll see about that when you meet him, won't we? I'm telling you he's unlike anyone I've ever met before, almost as though he doesn't really belong in this world at all. I don't even know his name after all this time. There's no name listed under the phone number he gave me and as far as I know, the house is supposed to be empty. The owner lives abroad somewhere, that's all I've ever been able to find out about the place."

"What are you trying to say? He's a ghost?"

"No, of course not, but there's just something not quite right about him, man, that's all. I know I've done things to you on his orders but I never meant you no harm, honest. Just be careful when we get there, ok?"

Jacob considered Michael's words carefully. Despite his obvious fear of Jacob, developed as a result of the beating meted out to him the day before, the young druggie appeared to be even more frightened of the man who was pulling the strings behind whatever was going on. It was plain to Jacob that he'd have to be on the alert for any sign of treachery when Michael took him to the man's house later that morning. It looked like being a
very
interesting morning, if Michael's description of his strange employer was to be believed. For now though he had to make sure he was prepared for the day ahead and that meant breakfast. Keeping his conversation with Michael as brief as possible and thus maintaining his air of superiority and threat towards his host he moved toward the door, smiling that slightly leering smile of his once more at the man in the bed.

"You just leave the man to me. I'm fucking amazed you don't even know his name, you prat. How can you work for someone doing the things you do for this weirdo without even knowing his name? You must be more stupid than I thought."

Michael appeared as though about to answer, but Jacob cut him off with a dismissive wave of his hand

"Now, let's have breakfast. We've got a busy morning ahead of us, and this time, Michael, I'm making the fucking tea!"

A Plan of Action?

"You look bloody awful, if you don't mind me saying so, sir."

Detective Sergeant Carl Wright had walked into his inspector's office just after eight a.m. to find Holland looking as dishevelled a sight as he'd ever seen his boss appear. Shafts of sunlight pouring through the plate glass window of the office served only to highlight the appearance of the inspector who sat bathed in the halo produced by the sunlight that diffused around him from behind his back.

The D.I. looked as though he'd slept in his clothes, which he had of course and his chin showed traces of stubble that suggested a not too close encounter with his razor that morning. His hair, never his best feature due to it's propensity for thinning and making him look older than his years, appeared even more unruly than was usual for the time of day.

"Well, I daresay you're correct, sergeant, but I have to say that you're probably the chief reason for me getting hardly any sleep at all last night and the little I did get was spent curled up on my sofa, hardly the best place for a restful night, wouldn't you agree?"

"Now how on earth could I be the cause of your sleepless night, boss?"

"Those damn books, Wright, that's how. I started reading them and the contemporary reports from Scotland Yard on the Jack the Ripper case and couldn't put the bloody things down. By the time I did it was the early hours of the morning and I just didn't have the energy to climb the stairs, get undressed and get into bed. They made riveting reading I must admit. I'd no idea that Jack the Ripper was quite as gruesome and ghastly in the degree of his mutilations as I discovered last night. Like everyone, I'd heard of him, who hasn't? But to read the details in graphic detail was something else. No wonder you and your fellow 'Ripperologists' as you call them find the case so intriguing."

"I know, sir. It's hard to believe that someone could get away with such blatantly grisly and horrific acts on the streets, be obviously stained with the blood of his victims and not be reliably seen by anyone, even once. It's as though the man were a wraith of the night, appearing from the shadows and simply disappearing back into them again after committing the murders, unheard, unseen and unknown, even to the present day. So if you don't mind me asking, what are your thoughts as to how it connects with our current case?"

Holland took a deep breath. He knew he was about to commit himself to a train of thought that others including his superiors might find incredible, but he needed his sergeant to be one hundred percent behind him as he took the inquiry down the road he intended to follow and absolute honesty between them would be of paramount importance.

"Well, Carl, I think it's bloody obvious, as I think you also suspect that our killer is attempting to recreate the Ripper murders. It can't be a coincidence that his killings have taken place on the anniversaries of the murders of Martha Tabram and Mary Nicholls and that both victims have been prostitutes."