Murder (13 page)

‘Yes, he
is
a good man,’ he agreed. ‘He’s decent and I like him. And sure you love him – like you love a good friend – but that cannot be enough to tie yourself to him for the rest of your life.’

The idea of Juliana in bed with Bond was making his stomach turn. She was young and beautiful, and yes, it was quite clear the good doctor loved her – but that would not be enough.

‘You think you’ll still love him after a few years of marriage? You think you won’t begin to dread his touch? Or will you make arrangements so your marriage bed remains as dead as your heart? I am sure he would put up with it, for you. But what kind of life is that? What are you so afraid of?’

His voice was rising and he could see he was upsetting her, but he could not help himself. This was
madness
. She was just afraid, and she had been afraid for too long.

‘You can’t marry him,’ he said firmly.

‘Yes, I can. Why shouldn’t I? He is safe and he’ll look after us.’

‘I can do all that,’ Edward growled. He stepped closer to her and gripped her arms, pulling her to him. ‘And I can do this too.’

Before she had time to protest he pressed his mouth on to hers and one hand slid up to gently stroke her face, and then his fingers entwined in her hair. After a second, her lips softened and she wrapped her arms around his neck.

The first kiss was everything he had hoped it would be, and more. Life was going to be good.

The good weather continued along with the celebrations and it was through a London in fine fettle that I weaved my way for dinner with Walter Andrews and Henry Moore. The city’s spirits buoyed my own already good mood and I wondered if I had ever been so happy or free of worry in all my adult life.

I had dined with Moore on several occasions, but never before at his house, and I wondered if this was perhaps a conscious decision to separate his work from his private life, a sensible move. I was still curious about what kind of wife and home the down-to-earth policeman must have; what side of himself he kept just for them – or was he the same gruff, clever practical thinker when away from the grime of the city’s criminal life as he was when immersed in it?

The restaurant he had chosen was perhaps less formal than somewhere Andrews or I might have picked, but the food was hearty and more than agreeable and the tables were full of life and laughter amid the clatter of cutlery and the clink of glasses. I presumed he had called us together to discuss a case, maybe wanting Andrews to investigate something for him and needing my forensic insight, but as we chatted about the jubilee he said nothing of the sort. But his eyes sparkled as he ordered us more fine wine and declared that he would be paying the bill.

After we had exchanged several quizzical looks, Andrews finally broached the subject, demanding to know the cause of
Moore’s excessive good cheer, delighted as we were to be there to share it with him.

‘Not until the cigars and brandy,’ Moore said. ‘Let’s do this like gentlemen.’ He winked then, a gesture of light-hearted humour I had never previously associated with him, and both Andrews and I, despite our curiosity, became infected with his cheery excitement. The wine flowed and whatever dregs of bad feeling there were left between Andrews and me evaporated as we tried and failed to guess what Moore’s news might be.

Eventually, Andrews frowned slightly and said, ‘Have you heard that I am retiring from private investigations? I have told very few people as yet, so if you have, I would like to know the source of your information.’

Moore and I both stared at him and it was clear from the Chief Inspector’s expression that he, like me, had not heard such a thing.

‘Why?’ I asked at length.

‘We are none of us as young as we were, Thomas,’ he said, ‘and I am done with the seediness of the city. I do not thrive on it as you do, Henry. I think I would like some quieter time while I am still healthy enough to enjoy it.’

‘Then I think,’ Moore said, ‘that what I have to share with you will be a fitting retirement gift.’ The brandy and cigars had finally arrived and as he leaned towards the waiter lighting his, he winked again before becoming momentarily lost in a haze of smoke.

‘You may finally be able to put some of the past behind you,’ he announced, and with his mention of the word ‘past’ I felt the first trickle of something cold running through the warmth of my good mood.
The past
. What more of the past could come for me?

‘Well go on then, man,’ I said, praying it would be nothing of import to me. Of course it wouldn’t; I was sure of it. Still my palms had started to sweat.

‘It began with the strange death of a crippled foreign priest several years ago,’ Moore started. ‘The man, an Argentinean, we thought, was found dead in a Soho hotel back in the winter of ‘94. He’d been strangled with a silk scarf – most likely murdered by a recent companion of his.’

I gripped my glass more tightly and heat rushed to my face, leaving the pit of my stomach cold. He surely could not be talking of the priest I had come to know at the end of the last decade, could he?

‘The case led us on a real wild goose chase – all the way to Le Havre, in fact – but all we found there was some missing money and a series of false identities. Whatever name the dead man had been given at birth, it was long lost.’

‘And what does this strange case have to do with us?’ Andrews asked.

‘On first sight, nothing – in fact, I had forgotten all about it,’ Moore admitted. Then he smiled and added, ‘Well, I had, until this new development.’

‘What new development?’ I asked. My throat was dry and the laughter in the restaurant around us was suddenly ringing too loudly in my ears.

‘I received a message from the hotel yesterday. They have been renovating some of their rooms and one of the workmen found a letter tucked behind a loose skirting board in the room in which the priest died. The original intention perhaps had been for it to stick out far enough to be seen by the police, but even if it had been, we did not notice it at the time; I like to think that it had dropped into the gap before I attended the
crime scene. The hotel manager waited until yesterday to pass it on to me – no doubt worried about a scandal affecting their Jubilee holiday bookings – but at least he passed it on rather than just throwing it out with the bloody rubbish.’

‘So? Don’t keep us in suspense! What was this letter?’ Andrews asked.

Moore smiled. ‘It was addressed to Thomas.’ He pulled the envelope out of his pocket. ‘Look.’ He slid the small envelope into the middle of the table.

I stared at it.
Dr Thomas Bond
was scratched carefully in black ink.

‘A crippled priest?’ Andrews asked suddenly. ‘How was he crippled? A strange arm?’ He turned to me. ‘Did you not see a man like that? During our investigations? I could swear you mentioned such a man watching at Whitehall.’

‘Perhaps I did,’ I said, trying to keep my voice light and cursing Andrews’ eye for detail. ‘It was a long time ago and I don’t recall too clearly.’ I picked up the envelope, hoping my clammy fingers weren’t trembling too much.
So the priest is dead
, I tried to reason with myself;
surely that is better than him being alive and returning perhaps to blackmail me?
If he was dead then perhaps the past truly was finally being laid to rest.

I unfolded the paper and despite wishing to clasp it to my chest and read it privately, I placed it in the space between Andrews and me. I could not afford to let him get any more suspicious.

The words were written in a surprisingly elegant hand.

‘The river?’ Andrews gasped after a long moment of silence. His eyes were wide. ‘The Torso killings?
Elizabeth Jackson—?
You think this man was—? But his crippled arm—?’

‘Madness can give men strength,’ Moore said. ‘And we don’t know
how
he killed them, just that he cut them up and disposed of their body parts. But yes, I think this might have been our man.’ He looked at me, grinning like a wolf. ‘What say you, Thomas? You’ve a mind for these things?’

‘I think you may well be right,’ I said, nodding too vigorously as my mind raced, trying to both decipher the meaning of the letter and also to react appropriately in front of my companions. ‘His arm was damaged, yes – but he might still have had strength in it. And if he
was
the man who was watching me – and given that the note has my name on it, I think we can safely presume he was – and with the mention of the river … well, I can only conclude that you are right: this dead priest was indeed our Torso killer.’

‘It was hard to judge how crippled he was,’ Moore said. ‘One hand had been crudely amputated. The doctor who carried out the post-mortem examination thought it had happened within a year of his death.’

‘To stop himself killing?’ Andrews asked. ‘A madman, no doubt.’ His face was alive with excitement and I realised his back was straight for the first time in years. This news was giving him palpable relief – it might not have been the identity of Jack, but it was the next best thing. And I had no doubt that Andrews would be able to convince himself that
the same man was responsible for both sets of murders if he really put his mind to it.

For my own part, I could feel my world crumbling.

‘More brandy!’ Andrews shouted to a passing waiter. ‘My heavens, Henry! This is incredible – we must thank God they found the letter and passed it on to you.’

‘I am glad it has made you happy,’ Moore said, grinning. ‘We may not have caught the bastard, but at least we know he can’t do any more harm.’

‘What about the others he mentions in the letter?’

‘The imaginings of a disturbed mind? Perhaps this man who killed him – another priest perhaps? – realised what he had become? Whatever the meaning, this is a truly remarkable turn of events,’ I said and raised my glass to them. ‘To Walter’s happy retirement, and to the closing of cases.’ Our glasses clinked and we drank.

I drained my glass almost in one, my head a swirling mass of doubt and the ghosts of the past. My happiness with Juliana now felt like an insubstantial light trying in vain to pierce a fog that was determined to lose me forever within it.

I laughed loudly at everything my companions said and wished for this interminable evening to be over. When finally we came out into the warm night, Henry Moore stood between us and seized us both around the shoulders, almost as if we were sailors headed back to our boat after a night of carousing. I said my farewells, promising to stay in touch more frequently with them both, and climbed into a hansom.

I waited until I was several streets away from them before signalling the driver to stop and set me down near a quiet alley. Once he had moved on I leaned against the wall and vomited until my stomach was empty of everything but bile
and my throat was burning. I wanted to weep. I was snared in the past and every time I thought I had wriggled free another hook snagged my skin.

As my skin cooled and my legs grew steadier beneath me I began to walk, aimlessly, trying to process this new information. The priest had died in 1894 – it was about then that my sleep had returned to normal and the vague sense of dread that had haunted me had finally slipped away. Surely that was just coincidence? The words of the priest’s note were etched in my mind: so he had killed women. I thought of the splash of the river on the dark night James Harrington had died, the sound of the priest disposing of the
Upir
. But had he? Or had the monster clung on to him? And if that had been the case, where was it now? Why did I no longer feel that same unease? Had whoever killed the priest dealt with the
Upir
at the same time?

No. There is no
Upir, I told myself again and again. There was only madness. I sucked in deep breaths of the hot, stinking London air, glad that I could not taste the river in it. Perhaps the priest had been unable to shake the madness he had believed in so sincerely. He must have come to think himself to be carrying the beast on his back, just as Harrington had. Was that it? The fantastic and the logical battled in my mind as I remembered the sight of the thing wrapping around Harrington’s neck. I remembered the whip marks on the priest’s back as he prepared for his battle with the demon – the battle he had apparently concluded he had lost. Such things could not exist – surely they could not. What had the priest meant in his note about ‘putting things right’? And who was the weakest man – me? The hairdresser, Kosminski? I had given the odd little man little thought over the past few
years and now I found myself most fervently wishing that he too was dead. But if he was not, was he now killing women? I did not want to think of his visions; I had never been able to find a way to explain them away, not rationally. The way he had led me to the priest’s rooms that night, the things he had
seen
, they were not so easily dealt with by my scientist’s mind.

I walked until my legs ached and I found myself where some part of me must always have known I was heading: the dark heart of London’s underbelly, where I could find some relief in the poppy smoke. I wanted to numb my mind, to shake away the bitter past that was threatening to drag me down. I wanted to escape the terrible sense I had of Fate at work against me.

I did not speak to this Chi-Chi, merely signalled him wearily to bring me a pipe as I found a cot in the corner of the room. The day’s heat had settled thickly in the air and now it was weighed down with smoke and sweat and body-heat. As I sucked in the opium and lay back on the thin cushions I loosened my collars and allowed my skin to breathe.

Ah, the opium
, I thought, as my mind drifted into a sea of colours and shapes, my skin tingling and my muscles relaxing.
I have missed it
.