The Art of Murder (34 page)

They crept forward lightly. ‘What the … ?’ Tom exclaimed then.

‘What is it?’

‘It’s a bloke!’

What?’ Eddie sidled up and dropped his sack at his feet, ignoring the way it undulated with the
movement of the angry rats inside it. ‘Well, fuck me!’

Tom bent down beside the crumpled figure. ‘He’s been tied up, the poor sod.’

‘Is he alive?’

‘Dunno.’

Eddie crouched down and noticed the knife and a soggy box containing smears of something that looked like chocolate beside an opened bottle of wine. ‘Somefink strange ’appened ’ere,’ he noted. ‘What’re the knife and the bottle about?’ Before Tom could reply, Eddie turned away and lifted the man’s drooping head. Archibald Thomson’s face was pale and a thick rope of dried vomit ran from his mouth, down his neck and across his shirt.

‘He’s breathin’,’ Tom said, and turned to Eddie with a glint in his eye. ‘You finkin’ what I’m finkin’?’

Eddie leaned forward and shook the man then tried to force open his eyes. Archibald shuddered.

‘He’s a gent,’ Tom observed, studying the wretched figure’s clothes. ‘Check ’is pockets, Ed.’

Eddie thrust his hand inside Archibald’s jacket and fished out a wallet. ‘Weren’t robbed then.’

‘Nah. Anyfink in it?’

Eddie pulled out a handful of crumpled notes. ‘Must be at least five pounds ’ere.’

Tom whistled. ‘Nice one,’ he said, pulling out a fob watch. ‘Gold bleedin’ chain and all.’ He winked at Eddie. ‘Come on. Let’s grab the stuff and go. And don’t forget the knife,’ he added, nodding towards it where it lay a few feet away. ‘Could be worth a bit.’

‘’Ang on.’

Tom looked at him, screwing up his eyes and tilting his head.

‘Fink, Tommy, fink! Don’t ya reckon there might be a reward out for this bloke? He’s obviously a gent, and must be worth a bob or two. Someone should be very grateful we found ’im alive.’

Tom gave the older man a doubtful look.

Eddie could almost see the kid’s mind ticking over. ‘Well?’

‘All right,’ he said after a long pause. ‘But we’ll take the money on ’im. No one need be any the wiser, eh?’

Brick Lane, Stepney, Thursday 29 January, 2.05p.m.

‘Jack, this is the first breakthrough we’ve had.’

Pendragon listened to Superintendent Hughes’s enthusiastic tone dispassionately. He was on his mobile hands-free in the car, heading back to the station.

‘You don’t seem very upbeat about it,’ she commented.

‘Well, I’m not. If Hickle is as clever as everyone thinks he is, he’ll be a long way from here by now. He has almost three hours lead on us. He and his accomplice must have everything well planned.’

‘Okay, we can’t get into a time machine. But I’ve already got top-level support on this. I’ll put road blocks in place. Close the ports. Get ID to the airport authorities. I’ll even shut down the airports if I have to!’

Five minutes later, Jack was pulling the car into one of the bays outside the station, and forty-five seconds after that he was in Hughes’s office.

‘A team are due to arrive at Hickle’s flat any moment now,’ the superintendent said. ‘I’m sure he won’t be there but we have a warrant to search the place, see what nasty secrets the man’s hiding.’

‘They won’t find anything.’

‘Probably not.’

‘What about Chrissy Chapman’s place?’

‘Grant and Vickers are on their way.’

‘What do we do?’

‘We wait.’

Pendragon forced himself to deal with the pile of paperwork that had been steadily building up all week, but he was finding it almost impossible to focus. Then the first of a succession of calls came in. It was from the team at Hickle’s flat. The doctor was not there, and as predicted the flat had revealed nothing incriminating at all.

The second call was from Inspector Grant. They were driving away from Chrissy Chapman’s place. Hickle was not there and the apartment was exactly how the police and cleaners had left it after Forensics, Pathology and the photography department had finished there the day before.

Pendragon had just looked at the clock displaying the time as 18.03 when the third call was patched through from the front desk.

‘Inspector,’ said Colette Newman.

‘Interesting news, I hope, Doctor.’

‘There were literally dozens of prints in the ICU, and a fair bit of DNA. I managed to get several good, clear prints of Hickle’s as well as some skin flakes and hairs matching his DNA.’

‘Well, that’s all useful.’

‘I guess so, but you realise, of course, that it doesn’t mean that much. The doctor was often in the ICU. It
would have been more unusual if there had been no trace of his DNA or prints there.’

‘Yes, I realise that, Dr Newman. But every bit of evidence helps. Thanks for processing things so fast.’

There was a rap on the door. Pendragon could see Turner’s familiar outline and the door opened immediately. ‘Sergeant,’ Pendragon said. ‘You have a DVD in your hand.’

Turner held it up and waved it in the air. ‘Took a lot of persuading, I can tell you.’

Pendragon followed the sergeant into the corridor and through the third door on the left, the Media Room. Turner flicked on a few machines and pulled a chair close to a pair of monitors on the desk. Pendragon sat back a little, watching the computer boot up and the video analyser go through its litany of sounds as it analysed the DVD. Turner found the part of the film he was after. ‘I haven’t seen it myself yet,’ the sergeant began. ‘They have a master control centre for all the cameras – there’re seventeen of them inside the hospital and another fourteen on the outside of the building. The operator gave me all the films from nine until ten, along with the numbers of the cameras that we’d be interested in – three of them inside and one outside. I can programme the analyser to search just those films. Shall we start with the camera nearest the ICU, sir?’ he asked, swivelling in his chair.

Pendragon nodded. ‘Probably best.’

Turner’s fingers skittered over the control panel in front of the two flat-screen monitors and an image appeared on the left hand. It was a shot of the corridor
leading from the main building into the area around the ICU administration desk. People passed in and out of shot. First, a nurse, then a pair of doctors. A patient using a Zimmer frame took several minutes to walk along the stretch of corridor covered by the camera. The clock in the corner of the screen clicked on. At 9.08 an orderly in a green hospital one-piece suit and tight-fitting cap appeared, head down, moving quickly along the corridor. As the orderly reached the edge of the camera’s field, they lifted a clipboard to obscure their face even more. Then they darted through a door.

The clock ticked along. At 9.14 the orderly emerged from the room, clipboard again held in front of their face. They walked back along the corridor, and at that precise moment the improvised bomb went off. There was a dull thud through the speakers, and on the screen Pendragon and Turner could see smoke billowing out of the door the orderly had left ajar. Several members of staff ran quickly towards the source of the explosion. The only person moving in the opposite direction was the orderly. Glancing around furtively, they stepped into the ICU.

The clock moved on. At 9.17, the figure emerged from the ICU, clipboard held in front of them. Turning right, they walked quickly along the corridor towards the camera, head down. It had been obvious from the moment the orderly had appeared that it was not Dr Geoff Hickle. The person on the screen was slightly built and at least six inches shorter than the man they had suspected.

‘Stop there, Turner,’ Pendragon said. ‘So this must be his accomplice.’

‘Reckon so, guv.’

‘I need some time to think. You must have some paperwork to be getting on with.’

The sergeant nodded.

‘And, Turner, can you switch off the lights as you go out?’

Bedlam Hospital for the Insane, St George’s Fields,
Southwark, November 1888

The hansom passed through the imposing gates of the Bethlehem Royal Hospital and Sonia Thomson heard the cabbie whip the horse to make it speed up. He had not really wanted to take her here in the first place. ‘Bedlam?’ he had said. ‘What d’ya wanna go there for?’ She had given him her chilliest look, prompting him to mumble an apology.

The journey had passed in a blur. She was still numb – the result of reading the batch of letters she had received that morning. Arriving together from America on the post steamer, they constituted what was really a single, long missive. At times, it was rambling and muddled, but it had shocked her, terrified her, and, at some points, brought an inner fury bubbling to the surface. She had always loved her husband, always respected him, always considered him to be brilliant, determined, hardworking and dedicated, but she had also always known that, in other ways, he was weak. Weak like most men were. But the graphic way in which the
author of the letters, a certain William Sandler, had described Archibald’s weaknesses, and had at the same time offered so much information about himself and his own evil-doing … Well, it had left her reeling.

She had as yet barely had time to absorb the contents of the letters, but a part of her – the logical, well-educated part, for she came from a long line of successful academics – had already started to ask some difficult questions. Foremost among them: What could or should she do with the information in her possession? It was clearly some sort of crazed confession, but was it genuine? Was it really a letter from Jack the Ripper? How could she be sure? True, the Whitechapel murders seemed to have stopped with the demise of Mary Kelly. And what of the description of how Archibald had ended up in the sewer? If the toshers she had paid off had told the truth, then William Sandler’s version would have been entirely accurate. Even so, that did not mean Sandler – or Tumbril, as Archibald had known him – really was The Ripper. Those parts of the account could have been entirely fabricated.

But it was not this that preyed the most on her mind. Her most pressing problem was not the matter of who the author of the letters might be, but rather what she should do with them. She could not make them public without ruining her husband’s name and reputation. Few people knew the truth of what had happened to Archibald. As far as the public were concerned, he was a kidnap victim abandoned
and left for dead in a filthy sewer. The
Clarion
had gone to great lengths to report that their editor was recovering from the physical incapacity caused by his ordeal. She would do nothing to contradict that story. For what good would it do anyone to know that her husband had been so thoroughly duped by Jack the Ripper?

The cab drew to a halt and Sonia climbed down on to the gravel driveway. Walking slowly around the back of the cab, she approached the steps and found Dr Irvin Braithwaite, standing with hand extended in welcome. He was a tall, thin man, not unattractive in a scholarly, distant way. He wore black and his greying mutton-chop whiskers gave him an added air of distinction. He was the Head Physician at the hospital and had been caring for her husband for over two months. In this task he had been nothing but patient and considerate.

‘Mrs Thomson,’ the doctor said, squeezing her hand and bowing very slightly. He was such an old-fashioned fellow, Sonia thought, nodding back. ‘Come, let us see your husband straight away.’

They passed between the portico’s massive Neoclassical columns and moved on through the grand doorway and into an echoing entrance hall. Dr Braithwaite led them to the left, through some double doors and into a wide corridor.

‘How is my husband?’ Sonia asked.

‘We are optimistic,’ Braithwaite replied, guardedly.

She gave him a doubting look, which he studiously ignored. ‘He has recovered well from the lobotomy
and is responding to treatment with cocaine. He is much calmer now. I’m thinking of moving him on to a new drug, a substance called lithium carbonate. Some patients have shown great improvement with this. Ah, here we are.’

They stopped outside a metal door. Braithwaite produced a key and turned it in the lock. ‘If you’ll excuse me, Mrs Thomson, I would like to go first.’ He opened the door slowly and peered in. Then he took two steps into the room and beckoned Sonia to follow him.

The room was small but looked surprisingly comfortable, with its barred window overlooking the manicured gardens to the front of the building. It was furnished with a bed, a side table and a couple of chairs. Archibald was sitting at the end of the bed, stiff-backed and staring straight ahead, his face utterly expressionless. He was wearing a dark brown dressing-gown over a crisp white nightshirt. His hair had been neatly combed. Sonia walked up to him and took his hand. It was icy cold, and he did not look up. She caught a whiff of carbolic.

When he had first been admitted to the London Hospital on Mile End Road, Archibald had been barely conscious. Over the period of a week, he had begun to mend. In some ways he had been remarkably lucky. He had suffered rat bites to his legs, but had thankfully not contracted any deadly disease from them. He was malnourished and dehydrated, but the physical ills had been relatively easy to treat. The problems had started just as he was
growing physically stronger and begining to remember what had happened to him. Seemingly overnight, he appeared to lose his senses. He began to rant and rave, to shout incoherently. It had been possible to grasp a few words here and there, but nothing comprehensible. He had become violent, uncontrollably so, and as his mental state deteriorated, it became impossible to treat him in the hospital. That was when the decision had been made to move him to Bedlam. For his own good.

The doctors at the asylum had tried to calm Archibald. They had thrown him into a freezing cold bath, tied him to a bed and left him for twenty-four hours, and then tried spinning him at high speed in a chair for ten minutes. He had simply grown worse, ranting incoherently. Finally, with Sonia Thomson’s permission, they had conducted a lobotomy. That had shut him up. Indeed, Archibald had now been silent for five weeks. He had not moved a limb by his own volition. Everything had to be done for him.