The Black Mile (3 page)

 
6

FRANK STUMBLED AGAINST THE KERB as he got out of
the taxi. His head spun. The church clock was striking half-eleven and he was
drunk. It had taken an hour to sort out the Italians at the station: two of
them had been beaten badly enough to need the divisional surgeon and most of
the others were missing teeth. Frank knew he was going to have to write a
report but it could wait. His blood was up: the dead girl, the violence. He’d
needed a drink to calm down. Harry Sparks had purloined two bottles of scotch
and the two of them retreated to his office, shut the door and polished off one
each.

Now he was feeling the worse for
it. It hadn’t worked, either, not all the way. He had been stewing on what the
Wop had said to him about Eve. Couldn’t get it out of his head. Joseph
Costello, that little toe-rag. He was taking the piss, wasn’t he? Taking bloody
liberties.

The more he thought about it,
the angrier he got.

He fumbled the key into the lock
and opened the front door.

Julia was waiting for him in the
sitting room.

“Where’s Eve?”

“In bed.”

“She been out tonight?”

“Yes––she was with Maud. She got
back an hour ago.”

“You sure about that?”

Frank threw his coat down and
went for the stairs.

“Frank, darling, what is it?”

Frank took the stairs two at a
time.

“Frank, darling, it’s late.”

He reached the landing, went for
his daughter’s room.

“What’s wrong?”

He yanked open the door.

Eve was sitting on the edge of
her bed, still dressed; she was facing the door, disturbed by the commotion.
Her diary was on her lap.

“What are you doing?” she said.

“Where have you been tonight?”

“With Maud.”

“Really? Where did you go?”

“We were at her house.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“Ask her!”

“She’ll say what you told her to
say.”

“Where was I, then?”

“Don’t take that tone with me.”

“Where was I?”

“With him. I know.”

“Who?”

“Don’t play the innocent. I
wasn’t born yesterday.”

“Who, Frank?” Julia said.

“That damned Wop.”

“She said she wasn’t seeing him
any more. Isn’t that right, dear? You’re not, are you?”

“No.”

Her eyes flickered. Frank
recognised guilt.

“I’m not.”

“Show me the diary.”

“It’s private.”

“Do you want me to come over
there and take it off you?”

“Alright. Fine. I was with
Joseph.”

“What did I tell you? You’re not
to see him again.”

“I want to.”

“I know you do.”

“I hate it.”

“How many times do I have to say
it? He’s too old for you.”

“He’s sixteen.”

“Nineteen.”

“He’s not.”

“Nineteen. Want to know what
else I know? He lives in Saffron Hill. His father is a thief and his mother is
a hoister. The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, either. He has a criminal
record for theft. Do you want me to go on?”

“How do you know all that?”

“It’s my job to know things.”

She pouted. “I don’t care. I
love him.”

“You don’t.”

“I love him and he loves me.”

“Do you really think I’d let my
daughter step out with a thief?”

“Then I’ll run away. Joseph said
we could.”

Frank grabbed her firmly by the
shoulders. “No. You won’t.”

“I hate you!” she spat. “If I
want to see him, then I shall see him. There’s nothing you can do about it.”

Frank struck her, once, across
the cheek.

She gasped.

“Not while you’re living under
my roof.”

Frank’s fingertips tingled. He
caught himself for a moment, breathless, and watched a single tear rolling down
a reddening cheek. Eve didn’t cry; she turned away from him. Julia put a hand
on his shoulder; he shrugged it off and left the room, thinking he needed a
stiff drink and that there was whiskey in the drinks cabinet. Telling himself
he was doing the right thing.

 
7

HENRY DRAKE DRAGGED ON HIS CIGARETTE, held the
smoke in his lungs and blew it out. “Newspapers Are Made At Night,” the banner
on the wall said. Literally: workmen had taken out the glass in the windows
last week and filled in the space with brickwork. Management said they might
get bombed, paranoid that Adolf would hammer Fleet Street once things got
started for real. Part of the newsroom floor had been turned into a dormitory
in case bombing made travel impossible, camp beds lined up against the wall
next to folded piles of linen. Henry had already decided he would sleep here
tonight.

He stared at the blank sheet of
paper in the typewriter. Frustration. He started to type, just the bare facts,
pecking the words out.

Girl found dead.

Possible fifth victim.

Police offer no information.
 

He had nothing.

Fluff for page three, if he was
lucky. Filler for the space between adverts for Colgate Ribbon Dental Cream and
Carters Brand Little Liver Pills. He yanked the paper from the typewriter, tore
it up, threw it on the floor.

No, sir.

No, sir, indeed––not good
enough.

He pushed away from his desk and
looked at the row of offices at the edge of the floor: Bert White, Gregory
Clayton, Roger Spruce. The Star’s top men. Dozens of awards between them. Often
more famous than the people they wrote about.

They were where he wanted to be.

He opened his desk drawer and
took out the bottle of whiskey. It was already three-quarters gone; he sloshed
out a triple into a paper cup. He reached into his trouser pocket for the
bottle of Benzedrine, unscrewed the top, tapped out two pills, dropped them
onto his tongue and washed them down with a slug of booze, took a breath,
necked the rest.

He flipped through his notes and
began a new summary of the case. The killer was prolific. Four known victims in
less than a month, all brasses or half-brasses, nothing save their profession
to link them together.

Victim number one: Louisa Ann
Hart, 24, Dean Street, 15
^th
May, 1940;

Victim number two: Henrietta
Clarke, 23, Manette Street, 22
^nd
May 1940;

Victim number three: Freda
Joanne Williams, 29, St Anne’s Court, 29
^th
May 1940;

Victim number four: Lorna
Elizabeth Yoxford, 32, Berwick Street, 5
^th
June 1940;

And then tonight.

Murphy hadn’t denied it.

Speculation seemed fair.

Victim number five: Rose
Wilkins, 17, Old Compton Street, 10
^th
June, 1940.

The first four had all been
strangled, then cut up. No sign of sexual interference on any of the bodies. No
sign of robbery. A rapist or a robber might have given Murphy something to go
on, even if it was only a filter with which they could fillet the index cards
at the Central Records Office. But there was no rape. Purses were left
untouched. No motive, except the purest and most terrifying: the Ripper just
hated women.

Henry had been the first
pressman to make the public connection between the first and second girls, a
week before Murphy admitted it. The rags needed a sobriquet for the killer and
tried out a few for size:

The Soho Strangler.

Jack the Stripper.

The Soho Slasher.

Soho Jack.

Henry christened him the
Black-Out Ripper on the front page of the Star on a wet Monday in May. The name
stuck.

He thought of D.I. Murphy.

He thought of Duncan Johnson.

Murphy’s prime suspect.

The smug face. The
silver-tongue. A psychopath with time served for manslaughter, assault and
rape. He had put his life story together: born 1893, Stepney. Convicted in ’35
for raping a secretary he met at the Captain’s Cabin; overpowered her in a Soho
doorway, buggered her, laughed as he did it. A police suspect for six other
rapes, but insufficient evidence prevented charges. Four years at Dartmoor, out
in ’39 despite the concerns of the medical staff. Henry had bribed an orderly
for his psychological evaluations: a genius IQ of 132, a personality described
as “aggressive narcissism” and a headshrinker’s summary that included words
like “glib, “grandiose sense of self-worth,” “pathological lying,” “lack of
remorse or guilt,” and “lack of empathy.” The shrink said he was dangerous, and
couldn’t guarantee he wouldn’t do it again. It hadn’t been enough to keep him
locked up.

So they let him out.

Johnson found work as a
stevedore on the Royal Docks. For eight months he appeared to be going
straight. Then the murders started. His landlady reported him after finding a
bloodied shirt in his laundry. She’d read about the Ripper and said she was
suspicious, that he’d been acting strange and keeping irregular hours. Murphy
nicked Johnson and put the screws to him: interrogation for twenty hours
straight revealed nothing––he was a slippery customer and they couldn’t pin
anything on him.

He came straight to the Star and
asked for Henry. He was covered in bruises and burns. He told him everything.

Murphy had beaten him.

Murphy had pushed his head in
the khazi.

Murphy had ground lit cigarettes
on his arm.

Henry could see why Murphy was
fixated by him. He got under the skin. He was condescending. Smart words from a
smart mouth. He said he’d declined the offer of a brief in the station. He
didn’t need one, he enjoyed the experience, found it “interesting.” He said
he’d intimidated Murphy––that was why he’d assaulted him.

Henry wrote it up.

‘BLACK-OUT RIPPER’ SAYS POLICE
BEAT HIM

The story ran, with pictures.

Murphy was suspended.

The charges were investigated.

Johnson was lying. The injuries
were self-inflicted.

The charges were dismissed.

Murphy was reinstated.

He rolled another sheet of
foolscap into the typewriter and waited for the Benzies.

He thought of Old Compton
Street.

A dozen other hacks scooping
him.

Just setting out the facts was
for the birds.

He needed colour, bright
brushstrokes, a vivid picture.

Something different.

The pills buzzed.

He started to type.

The words came easily.

The clock showed midnight when
the familiar rumble rolled through the building. Henry planted his feet on the
floor of the newsroom and waited for the shift. The sensation was followed by a
tingling in the soles, then a steady vibration. Sixty feet below, beneath the
pavements of Fleet Street, the newspaper’s great presses were beginning to
turn.

TUESDAY, 11th JUNE 1940

 
8

FRANK GAVE UP TRYING TO GET BACK TO SLEEP. His
nightmare had woken him at five and now the burns on his chest were itching and
he couldn’t settle. He lay on his back for an hour, watching the dawn light
prickle through the black-out, listening to Julia’s low, shallow breathing next
to him. His head was fuzzy, a dull throb pulsing through the fugue. He’d
finished off half of the bottle of scotch after the argument with Eve.

It was no good: he was awake. He
levered himself upright, shuffled his feet into his slippers and padded quietly
onto the landing and into the bathroom. He relieved himself, took off his
pyjama jacket and turned to face the mirror. He angled himself so that he could
inspect the burns on the right-hand side of his body. They still looked awful,
even twenty years later: mottled, blackish-brown skin, like the flesh on a
joint that had been left in the oven too long. The pocked blisters reached all
the way up his neck to just below the ear, down his arm and across his breast
and shoulder. A white ring of skin marked where his wristwatch had been. He
raised his arm; the burns were worst beneath his shoulder. Not unusual, the
doctors said. The gas dissolved in the natural moisture of the armpit. A single
droplet there was plenty enough to burn all the way through the bone. HS, the
lads called it: Hun Stuff.

He hadn’t had the nightmares for
years, until, last week, he’d read an article in the newspaper about the
Luftwaffe dropping mustard on London. He’d dreamt it every night since: running
into the empty trench, seeing what looked like an oily reddish liquid gathered
at the bottom of the excavations––looked like sherry––a garlic-like smell. The
captain saying the gas rattle had been sounded but he hadn’t heard it, not with
the shells and the rifles. The realisation of what it was, already too late:
his skin blistering, his eyes gummed together, the uncontrollable vomiting.
When his stomach ran out of half-digested bully beef and hard tack, there came
blood and, eventually, a sickly yellow fluid straight from his lungs. In the
dream, he watched, helplessly, as Harry Sparks and the two other blokes he
dragged out melted before him. Their flesh bubbled and liquefied, dripping off
their bones and running away into the mud. 

Pain. He winced. He could
normally stand it but it was especially bad today. He opened the cabinet, took
out a jar of Vaseline, applied it with his fingertips. The coolness helped
dampen the itch. He went quietly back into the bedroom to dress.

He paused at Eve’s room, rested
his forehead on the door panel. He couldn’t hear anything: she was still
asleep.

Downstairs. They had a small
house in West Wickham. Nothing fancy, just a two-up, two-down at the end of a
terrace of identical houses. It had cost £900 freehold when he bought it, three
years ago. The mortgage set him back £1/3/7 a week, just about affordable on an
Inspector’s wage if Julia was careful with the housekeeping. It was a nice
place. Comfortable. He left it all to Julia. She had an eye for décor, soft
furnishings and such like. The female touch. Soft green and brown wallpaper
with “autumn tints”. Metal light switches with bronze finishes. An “imitation
vellum” chionoiserie-inspired standard lamp with tassels in the front room.
Yes: she’d done a super job. The only item he’d insisted upon was the Pye
gramophone player in the figured walnut case. £17. Damnably expensive, but
quality. Sounded mint. His one little luxury.

He rubbed the sleep out of his
eyes as he went into the kitchen and lit the coal for the boiler. He only had a
few chores, what with Julia running the house, but this one he secretly
enjoyed. Get a good little blaze going before everyone else got up. Get things
started for the day. Tuesday was wash day, so he pulled the electric copper out
from under the draining board and filled it with water through the hose
attached to the tap above the sink. He pushed the plug into the socket. The
filament in the bowl would have the water warmed up nicely by the time Julia
was ready for it.

o         
o          o

THE KITCHEN WAS QUICKLY FULL OF STEAM. Julia took a
pair of his longjohns from the bowl in which they had been steeped overnight
and dropped them into the copper. There was no agitator in the tub so she took
a long dolly peg and stirred the water.

“Where is she?”

“Eve!” Julia called. “Your
father wants to speak to you before he goes to work.”

Frank sat at the table, eating
his usual fry-up. He felt bad about the argument. He hadn’t handled it very
well, he knew that. He had been drunk, and he was agitated from the scuffle at
the station. But he remembered Costello’s CRO file and the embers of his temper
kindled again. He hadn’t handled it as well as he might have, but he was right.

“Eve!”

Julia took the longjohns from
the copper and transferred them to the washboard in the sink, scrubbing at the
soiled marks. She was thrifty, and collected scraps of hand soap in a large
jar. She scooped out a little of the waxy jelly and rubbed it onto a stubborn
stain. “For goodness sake,” she said, her voice tight. She worked harder and
harder at the stain, taking a pumice stone and grinding it into the fabric.
“What is this? It won’t come out.” She pushed the garment into the sink.
“Bloody thing.”

Frank looked up. His wife never
cursed. “What’s the matter?”

“I can’t get the blasted stain
out.”

“No, something’s on your mind.
Come on.”

He knew what it was. She looked
out of the window into the back yard, biting her lip. “I don’t know, Frank. I
mean––are you sure? He didn’t seem so bad. He was polite. You met him––very
polite, wasn’t he? And Eve’s so unhappy about it.”

He replied calmly. “We talked
about this, love.”

“But she was up crying half the
night, Frank. You heard her.”

“She’s going to have to get used
to the idea.”

“But she’s so miserable.
Couldn’t we sort something out? I wasn’t much older when I met you, was I?”

“That was different.”

Julia took the longjohns from
the sink and fed them into the mangle. “Was it?” she said, turning the handle.
“My father told me to be careful, too. You were no angel.”

Frank lined up his knife and
fork on the plate. “That’s as maybe. Being a tearaway is one thing, but he’s a
bad apple. He’s from a bad family and he burgled a house on top of everything
else he’s done that he hasn’t been nicked for. I can’t have someone like that
in the family. Apart from anything else, how do you think it’d reflect on me?”

“What if he doesn’t give up?”

“Then I’d deal with him.” Frank
had already considered the prospect: he’d have a word, explain why it was in
his best interests to steer clear of his kin. He’d keep it as civil as he could
but with something like this––when family was involved––well, if he needed more
than a word in his ear he could arrange that, too. He wasn’t beyond fitting him
up––something from the evidence room found in his pockets––and with his record
he’d be looking at a stretch before his feet could touch the ground. That would
be that. End of problem.

“Eve! Time to get up!”

There was no sound upstairs.

“Go and get her, love. I’ve got to go.”

Julia went up to her room.

Frank mopped his plate with a hunk of bread. Bit of
grease, that’s what he needed, sort out his bloody hangover.

“Frank!”

He dropped the bread.

“Frank! She’s gone.”

He raced up the stairs.

The room was empty and the bed was still made.

Frank opened the cupboard: Eve’s suitcase was
missing.

“Her dresses are gone. Her underwear, too.”

Frank felt weak.

“You should never have told her she couldn’t see
him.”

“Don’t worry, love.”

“Look what you’ve done!”

“I’ll find her.”

o         
o          o

THE BOY’S ADDRESS WAS A TERRACE in Saffron Hill.
Right in the middle of the Italian enclave. Early risers wandered around
anxiously. Men would have been pulled out of their beds last night, taken away
and locked up. Anti-Italian graffiti had been daubed on the walls of buildings.
Windows had been put through.

Frank parked the Wolsley and got out. He walked up
to the house, kicked the door down and went inside.

 
An old
matron––the boy’s mother, probably––screamed. Frank pushed her aside and took
the stairs two at a time.

 
Joseph
Costello was in bed. Frank threw the covers aside, grabbed him by the throat
and tipped him onto the floor, naked, face down. He put his knee into the small
of his back and pressed his weight down so that bones cracked.

 
“Jesus
Christ, that hurts!”

 
“Where’s
Eve?”

 
“What?”

 
“Where’s
Eve?”

 
“I don’t
know.”

 
Frank
pressed down harder on Costello’s back and yanked his wrist up towards his
shoulder blades. Costello yelped. “Where’s Eve?”

 
Costello
whimpered, the words coming out fast and high-pitched. “I don’t know where she
is.”

 
Frank pulled
a finger right back, close to snapping it. “And I won’t ask again. I don’t
believe you. Where’s Eve?”

 
 “I
swear on my life, I bloody swear it, I don’t know where she is. She came around
here. This morning, bloody early.”

 
“How long
ago?”

 
“A couple of
hours ago.”

 
“What did
she say?”

 
“That you
told her we couldn’t see each other no more. She said you’d had a barney. She
had a suitcase, said she wanted to run away with me. I told her that wasn’t a
good idea. You’re a policeman, for Christ’s sake, it’s not like we could just
disappear.”

 
“Keep
going.”

 
“I said what
you said was probably for the best. I told her we ought to stop seeing each
other.”

 
“And this
was when?”

 
“An hour
ago?”

 
Frank ducked
his head and hissed straight into Costello’s ear. “You better not be lying.”

 
“I swear I’m
not.”

 
Frank went
back down to the car. He drove up and down, then turned off the main road and
traced a path around the criss-crossed thicket of side-streets. It was still
early: a horse-drawn milk-float rattled along the kerb and a handful of
pedestrians went about their business. Frank feathered the accelerator,
crawling the car up and down, staring into the faces of the people passing by.
They looked at him nervously, probably making him as Old Bill.

 
There was no
sign of her.

 
He turned
the car and headed back towards home.