The Black Mile (36 page)

EPILOGUE

 –– May 1941
––

FRIDAY, 16
^th
MAY 1941

 
69

FRANK MURPHY PAID THE RENT. He said it was blood
money that needed to be put to good use. The building was just off Seven
Dials––Henry could hear the cries of the stallholders on Covent Garden market
from the window. He hadn’t left the office for three days straight––he worked
until he fell asleep at the desk, woke with the scrape of the barrows each
morning, started working again. A single room with a desk, a chair and a narrow
sofa. No-one knew where he was. Murphy had warned him to be careful. What he
was doing was dangerous. He hadn’t needed telling twice.

 
Boxes full
of Ripper case notes were stacked on the floor, five high, filling the space.
Murphy had taken them out of the archive for him.

 
Documents
blurred into one another.

 
It was a
goldmine.

 
The Ripper
files, alone, would have been enough. Weeks worth of stories. A four-page
exposé with follow-ups until Christmas.

 
Hanged for
Crime He Didn’t Commit.

 
Black-Out
Ripper Uncaught.

 
Maniac Still
on London’s Streets.

 
Angles he
never would have dreamed of.

 
But Murphy
gave him more.  

 
He had
searched the houses of Regan and Timms.

 
Buried in
Timms’ back garden: £4,943, a shotgun, two revolvers, ammunition.

 
In Regan’s
cellar: eight pounds of marijuana, fifteen boxes of smut, £5,434.

 
Blackmail
photographs:

 
The
Commissioner.

 
An Assistant
Commissioner.

 
Two Chief
Constables.

 
A government
minister.

 
The great
and the good, frozen in shameful black and white glossies.

 
The pictures
alone were a story a week for the rest of his career.

 
The
investigation went deeper.

 
Regan’s
wife, Martha, was found dead in her bath. The Coroner ruled suicide by way of
morphine overdose.

 
Pearl Timms
was arrested at Liverpool docks, £2,173 and a cross-Atlantic ticket to Canada
in her purse. She turned King’s Evidence in exchange for leniency––a
thirty-page affidavit saying her husband had been on the take for years bought
her six months inside.

 
Another East
End warehouse burned to the ground ––charred pornographic magazines were
discovered in the embers. The Luftwaffe was overhead the night of the fire––a
harried fire service chalked it up to a German bomb and closed the file. Henry
dug. Land Registry records showed the warehouse was owned by George Regan.

 
Gregory
Butters was arrested and interrogated. Murphy scared him silly but he didn’t
know anything else, and was released. Two weeks later he was found face down in
the Thames, his throat slit ear-to-ear.

 
Loose ends
were being tied.

o         
o          o

HENRY STARED THROUGH THE GARRET WINDOW. The world
carried on outside. Yugoslavia and Greece had surrendered to the Germans.
Rommel was pushing Montgomery back to the Egyptian border.

 
Things
looked bleak.

 
He lit up a
cigarette and blew smoke.

 
He rolled a
sheet of paper into the typewriter and grasped for the right words.

 
Things
looked bleak and he didn’t care.

 
There was a
lot to do.

 
Stories he
needed to write.

 
He would
begin with William Murphy.