The Art of Murder (25 page)

‘’Ang on, mithta,’ came Catherine Eddowes’s lisp from behind me. ‘Let’s thee ya money firtht.’

I turned slowly and she came right up to me, the gin stink oozing out of her. I looked down at her dirty face, a strand of frizzy hair escaping the bonnet to hang down over her eyes. She blew the straying hair away. I gave her a brief smile, pulled a shilling from my pocket and held it out in the palm of my hand. She gave me a furtive look and snatched the coin, before grabbing my collar. Giggling, she leaned back against the slimy brickwork, pulling me towards her.

‘For thith, you get thpechial treatment, like,’ she whispered and started to lower herself towards my groin.

‘No,’ I hissed. ‘Up.’ And swivelled her round to face the wall.

‘Whatever you wanth, dar …’

The blade made a squelching sound as it split open her throat. Blood sprayed out of her, hitting the wall. A few drops caught me in the face and got into my eyes. I cursed and let her fall at my feet. Her bonnet slid to one side. Bending down, I turned her face towards me. Her eyes were glazed over and her mouth was moving silently. That was when I first saw the light, at the very edge of my vision. I spun round and could just make out the figure of a policeman holding his lantern at arm’s length. The light from it illuminated his face – high cheekbones, bushy brows – his helmet with its silver badge, his voluminous cape revealed under the arm holding aloft the lantern. He saw me. I turned and ran.

There was a low brick wall at the end of the lane. The place was so dark I only saw the wall when I was almost upon it. Under normal circumstances, scrambling up the wet bricks would have been difficult, but I was fiercely energised, my heart racing, every muscle tensed. I heard the policeman blow his whistle, its shrill sound ricocheting from the walls around me. His lantern bobbed around, sending patches of light sliding here and there. I could see his silhouette as he crouched down beside Catherine Eddowes. In less than a second I was over the wall. I could hear his footsteps pursuing me now. He had reached the wall. ‘Stop!’ he screamed. ‘Stop! Murderer!’ He blew his whistle again. This time the
sound was twice as loud. I heard voices, the beat of running feet, men answering the summons and looking for me. I sped off into the darkness.

Something crunched underfoot. I tripped, but just managed to maintain my balance. My outstretched hands came into contact with a large wooden object: a barrel of some sort. It fell to one side and clattered away. The whistle sounded again, and I sped through the narrow opening at the end of the alley.

A group of rowdy fellows was passing by. They were all extremely inebriated, swaying this way and that. I ducked past them and they remained completely oblivious to the commotion coming from the alley behind me. Sliding into a shadowy doorway, I gulped for air. It felt like the first full breath I had taken since slitting the throat of Catherine Eddowes. I noticed blood on my shirt. Pulling my jacket together at the front, I succeeded in covering up the crimson patch, and with my handkerchief wiped away the blood from around my eyes and drops of the stuff from about my mouth. I tasted a speck of it on my fingertip, relishing the iron tang. It was a flavour redolent of what the common herd would call ‘sin’. But as you are, of course, by now aware, dear lady, I have little respect for prudish taboos.

I did not have long to linger. I peered out of the doorway and noticed that there were a number of people around. I decided to cross the street, and was about to turn down a narrow lane when I heard that dreaded sound again – the policeman’s infernal
whistle. I turned towards it involuntarily and there he was, at the end of the alley opposite, staring straight at me. I saw his mouth move and knew what he was about to yell.

‘Murderer!’ The bellow cut through the shuffling footsteps of drunks and silly giggles. After a second’s pause I ran as fast as I could down an adjacent lane.

It was dark, as are all those lanes and byways, the alleys and brick passageways and foul-smelling gaps between tenements. I was becoming heartily sick of the place … and the zeal of its local constabulary! A narrow strip of light told me I was heading towards a main thoroughfare, but I had no idea where I was. I ran on and finally burst into the light of Whitechapel Road. I glanced back and, to my horror, saw two police lanterns bobbing along, approaching me fast.

I dashed left, past a shop, and then saw a chained-up door with next to that an opening above which hung a sign METROPOLITAN DISTRICT RAILWAY, WHITECHAPEL AND MILE END. I ducked inside, leaped over the gate to the platform and sped along an echoing tunnel straight on to the platform.

I had never before been in an underground railway station, and if the circumstances had been different I think I would have been quite fascinated. But not at that moment. Without breaking stride, I sped along the platform, barging past the few people waiting for a train. Some way along the platform, I heard the loudest sound I had ever experienced in
my life. I thought for a moment that the earth was caving in and ready to fall around my ears; that by some great misfortune I had decided to dive into this subterranean world just as Whitechapel Station was about to collapse. But it was nothing so dramatic. It was merely a train roaring into the station. Like a bellowing, trumpeting demon from the pages of a horror story, it shot out of the tunnel in a burst of light and steam and smoke and fumes.

I had no idea if the enthusiastic members of H Division of the Metropolitan Police Force were still hot on my tail, and I was not about to wait around and see for myself. The train stopped and I jumped into the nearest compartment which happened to be First Class.

It was empty and I threw myself into a nearby seat, ducking down as best I could. The train started to move off and I felt a wave of relief sweep over me. Forcing my heartbeat to slow, I took deep breaths and looked around my new surroundings. The compartment was quite beautiful: brass fittings, mirrors on the walls, gas lights at the end of each row of seats. Then I heard the door at the end of the compartment start to open.

I thought I was immune to surprise, but when I saw the blue cape of a policeman appear at the edge of the door as it opened inwards, and then a domed helmet, I was confounded. I sprang up from the comfortable green leather seat and propelled myself along the central aisle towards the other end of the compartment. Reaching the door, I yanked on its
handle. It gave and I plunged into the cool and the noise and the fumes and found myself on a narrow metal bridge between two carriages. I slammed the door behind me, jumped across the coupling and opened a door into the next compartment. It was another First Class carriage. The train lurched and I almost fell as I slammed the door shut behind me. There were just two people in the compartment. I ran along the aisle, hearing the door behind me open. Using the seat backs for additional impetus, I hurtled along the centre of the compartment with no thought for where I was going or what I hoped to achieve.

Standing on the footplate between the two carriages, I looked down and saw the walls slithering away. I sensed the vehicle starting to slow. I glanced back to the carriage I had just exited. There were two policemen running towards me, halfway along it and swaying with the movement of the train, grasping at the seats to steady themselves as I had done.

I stretched my hand towards the handle of the door to the next compartment, pulled down on it and pushed. It would not budge. I felt a spasm of excitement rush along my spine and smiled. I was enjoying myself. But what to do? I could run back and attack the policemen, but it was risky. Two against one. I had a knife, but they had truncheons. It would be a matter of percentages, and to be honest, dear lady, I was wondering if my luck was slipping through my fingers. I looked down again at
the floor of the tunnel. The train had slowed considerably now, and as we approached a station light appeared in the tunnel. I turned to face the wall. There was a gap of perhaps a yard to either side of the train. Would it be enough? If I jumped, I could be caught under the wheels of the speeding train. If I did not, I would have to fight and would almost certainly lose. My heart was racing. I had never been in such a dangerous position and it was absolutely intoxicating. I knew then that if I survived, this would be a moment I would relive in my mind over and over again.

I took a deep breath and stared back at the police officers. The one in the lead – I was sure he was the man who had stumbled upon Catherine Eddowes – was almost at the door. I could see his eager face lathered with sweat, his truncheon raised. Turned back to the sight of the ground rushing by under my feet, my mind was filled with the roar of the train. Smoke blurred my vision. I took a step forward and jumped.

Essex, Tuesday 27 January, early evening

Pendragon and Turner barely exchanged a word as they left Braintree and headed back to London. Turner drove and Pendragon reported in to the station as they pulled away from Macintyre’s rundown council house. Hughes was in a meeting, but Rob Grant took down as many of the details as Pendragon was willing to offer over the phone.

It was overcast and snow had started falling again, melting to nothing as it hit the tarmac of the southbound dual carriageway. Each man was lost in his own thoughts, mulling over unanswerable questions, each trying in his own way to untangle the knotted threads of what they had learned today, a day that, by five o’clock, had started to feel interminable.

The ringtone of the car phone startled them. ‘Pendragon,’ the DCI said, after stabbing the green ‘Incoming’ button below the dash.

Expecting Hughes, he and Turner were surprised to hear Sergeant Roz Mackleby’s voice. ‘Sir,’ she said, ‘how near the station are you?’

Pendragon paused a moment. ‘About twenty minutes, traffic permitting. Why?’

‘I’m with Inspector Towers,’ Mackleby replied. ‘The Super’s in a car behind us. We’re on Johnson Road. We’ve got another murder.’

On any other day, the apartment on Johnson Road, Stepney, would have been considered beautiful, a place straight from the pages of a lifestyle magazine, but today it resembled a chamber from the depths of Hell.

A uniform stood at the front door leading from the marble-tiled hallway into the apartment itself. The door was listing slightly from where it had been knocked in. The lock was shattered. The PC nodded to Pendragon and Turner and continued to stare at the far wall as they followed the sound of voices coming down a wide passage from the living-room. Hughes saw Pendragon and paced over to intercept them. She took the DCI to one side.

‘Jack.’ She seemed relieved to see him. ‘This is really not nice.’

He frowned. ‘It never is. So, what do we have?’

‘Definitely a fourth. Same MO. The vic is Chrissy Chapman. Quite a well-known artist, I believe.’

Pendragon looked stunned. ‘Yes, she is. Very well-known.’

‘But get this … Francis Arcade called it in. When we got here, he was sitting opposite her body, just staring at her. Hardly seemed to notice us when we forced the front door.’

‘Arcade? Where is he now?’

‘In the bedroom, under guard. He’s out of it. In an almost trancelike state.’

Pendragon tilted his head and pulled a face. ‘This just gets more ridiculous,’ he said, starting along the hall.

Hughes took his arm gently. ‘And, Jack,’ she said, searching his face, ‘Arcade’s prints are all over her.’

A photographer was moving around one of two sumptuous sofas trying to get the best angles, and a forensics officer in plastic overalls was dusting for prints around a low walnut coffee table nearby. The victim, Chrissy Chapman, was propped up on the sofa. It was a pristine white. The woman’s skin was just as pale as the sofa. She was dressed in a dark top, a scarf draped casually around her neck. Her dark fringe had been recently trimmed; some curls of hair lay on the scarf and scattered across the sofa. The face beneath had been hideously contorted, the flesh split under the hairline, the fine facial bones shattered, but the skin was still intact, heavily rouged around the cheeks and temples. Her features had been wrenched to one side, both her eyes were on one side of her face, her nose had been left behind, her mouth coated thickly with lipstick.

Pendragon felt a cold chill run down his spine. Turner had just appeared at his side and the DCI could feel a tremor run through the sergeant as the shock of what he was seeing hit him. ‘Holy fucking Christ,’ he said slowly and glanced at his boss, his mouth open.

Pendragon ignored him and took a couple of steps towards the obscene tableau of Picasso’s painting of his wife Olga Khokhlova. It seemed so incredibly bizarre it was hard to believe the scene was real. But the girl sitting there had recently been a living, breathing human being; one who had been mutilated, violated with such malicious
intent it was barely conceivable. It was one thing to take a life, Pendragon found himself thinking. This was act of an entirely different order.

He turned away and saw movement through the doorway into the bedroom. Inspector Ken Towers emerged. ‘Sir,’ he said. He looked tired and unusually jumpy. ‘This fella Arcade … We have him in the bedroom. But he hasn’t said a word.’

‘Thanks.’ Pendragon clicked his fingers in front of Turner’s face and the sergeant snapped back to attention. ‘I want you to go straight to Arcade’s flat.’

‘But it was searched, sir.’

‘I know that, Turner. But I want it searched
again
. Take someone with you. Go over the place with a fine-toothed comb. Anything suspicious, anything at all, I want to know about it. Come straight to me after you get back to the station.’

Turner nodded and walked towards the front door.

The bedroom was large and brightly lit by a rash of powerful ceiling halogens. The blinds had been pulled down over a large window that took up most of one wall parallel to the bed. The decor was stark: white walls, white bedding, white rug over a polished concrete floor. On the wall opposite the bed hung an ornate French antique mirror, the only suggestion of anything other than straight lines and white in the room. Francis Arcade was sitting in a chair in the far corner. Uniformed policemen stood to either side of him. Pendragon flicked his head to indicate the constables should leave. They looked uncertainly at each other.