The Black Mile (6 page)

PART
TWO

“HE’S
COMING”

––
September 1940 ––

CALENDAR

––
1940 ––

Sunday
Pictorial
, 16
^th
July:

DISGRACED
POLICE OFFICERS ARRESTED

The six officers dismissed from the Metropolitan Police in the aftermath
of the disturbances during the internment of Italian immigrants in Soho in June
now face criminal proceedings after they were arrested by detectives from New
Scotland Yard. The Director of Public Prosecutions, Mr Gerard Smith, indicated
that the men had been charged with assault and battery arising out of the
fracas at Savile Row police station and would be brought to trial by the end of
the month. “The public can be sure that this office treats the abuse of power
by men in authority extremely seriously,” Mr Smith said. “The full weight of
the law will now be brought to bear against them.”

The
Mirror
, 17
^th
July:

NEWSPAPERMAN ACCUSED

ALLEGATIONS OF FABRICATED STORIES

A newspaper columnist was yesterday accused of fabricating stories in the
Daily Star. A source at the Star said that routine fact-checking revealed
‘inconsistencies’ in Mr Drake’s stories. That paper has promised no further
comment until its internal investigation has been concluded. Mr. Drake was also
unwilling to make comment.

The
Mirror
, 30
^th
August:

“ANTI-ITALIAN” POLICEMEN IMPRISONED

Two policemen have been convicted of assault following their behaviour
during the internment of Italian immigrants in Soho earlier this year. Mr
Stanley Huff and Mr Harry Sparks, both 40, were dismissed from the Metropolitan
Police in July following an internal enquiry. The jury found the two men guilty
on all counts and sentenced them to three years imprisonment. Mr Justice Wilson
said that the defendants had abused their position as police officers and were
guilty of “quite heinous acts of violence.” Four other officers were convicted
of lesser offences and received fines. The Commissioner of the Police, Sir
Phillip Game, said that sentences would bring an end to an appalling situation.
Apologising once again to the men who were assaulted by the officers, the
Commissioner promised that internal changes had been made following an
extensive internal enquiry and it was now “impossible” that such an event could
be repeated.

PROBATIONARY
REPORT

Detective
Constable Charles Murphy

C
Department

Det. Sgt. Murphy has been something of a curate’s egg since his transfer
to Central. In the two months that he has worked under me, he has consistently
proven himself to be a first-rate detective. A good detective must be
intelligent; tenacious; thorough; determined. Murphy excels in every area.
Speaking purely as his D.C.I., his relentless dedication to duty has been a
significant asset to this Department––he averages six arrests per month and has
already made several significant cases despite no investigatory experience. He
has been commended by the court on two occasions on the strength of his work––quite
unprecedented for this Department.

         Unfortunately, he is
unpopular with the other detectives. His vigour in pursuing fellow men has
marked him out as unusual––most men resent this work. He is possessed of a
particularly awkward nature, and shows no interests in anything other than his
policework. His demeanour does not sit comfortably with the usual practice of a
drink after going off turn, and has denied him the chance to mix socially with his
fellows (not that I think this is something that he would relish). I’m quite
sure that the antipathy he arouses is caused in at least small proportion by
jealousy––it is obvious that he is the best D.S. here by some distance––but one
must also ascribe much of the blame for this state of affairs to the officer
himself. He has done nothing to ingratiate himself with his fellows and,
indeed, sometimes seems to actively shun their company. I have delicately
mentioned this to him on more than one occasion but it has had no discernible
effect.

         I hereby
recommend
he be approved following the expiry of his probationary period, but I will
continue to press him to make more of an effort with his peers.

Det. Ch. Insp. Stanley Sinclair

SUNDAY, 1ST SEPTEMBER 1940

 
13

AT LEAST HE WAS WRITING. Better than nothing.
That’s what he told himself, although it never felt like it. Henry Drake
dragged down on the cigarette, screwed it into the ashtray, knocked a fresh
Players out of the box, lit it, rolled a new piece of paper into the
typewriter. Horoscopes. He tapped out his heading––ARIES––his fingers
hesitating as he searched for an opening sentence. Chattaway liked the
horoscopes to be “upbeat” and “optimistic,” given the times. Difficult, since
optimism was something Henry couldn’t remember feeling. After a moment
struggling he started typing: Arian readers could expect their ambitions to be
fulfilled; it was a favourable week for signing documents; leave from the
services would come as a pleasant surprise. Bloody rubbish. He drummed his
fingers against the typewriter keys, unspooled the sheet of paper, rolled his
shoulders, cracked his knuckles, and fought the urge to screw the paper up and
toss it in the bin.

 
Good lord.

 
It had come
to this.

 
The newsroom
was frantic, final touches being put to pages before they went down to the
blockmaker. A photograph of Churchill gazing at France through a pair of
binoculars was being captioned; “I’ve Got My Eye on Hitler” was the current
favourite. David Lloyd George’s article on “How Hitler Will Try to Invade Us”
was being proofed, ‘The Man Who Won The War’ saying the invasion would
materialise within the next few days and that, if the Führer grasped the
nettle, it’d be the most dangerous endeavour he’d ever undertaken. London,
Lloyd George opined, might be for Hitler what Moscow was for Napoleon.

 
He took out
the bottle of pills and tipped two into his palm. He washed them down with
whiskey.

 
Chattaway’s
investigation would be over soon. His stories wouldn’t stand scrutiny. He
hadn’t thought about it at the time, but part of him always expected to be
caught. He’d made up too much: people, visits, conversations. It wasn’t wrong.
He took stories he heard, drunken gossip and tittle-tattle, and wove them
together to make something compelling. It was alchemy. He’d wondered about the
propriety of it, at the start. But Chattaway had loved it. He rationalised: he
was providing entertainment. There was a skill in making the stories credible
and not everyone could do that. Justification came easily. Blending fact with
fiction and creating something completely original. It was alchemy. No-one else
was doing anything remotely like it.

 
Chattaway
wouldn’t see it that way.

 
The paper
wouldn’t.

 
He was going
to get slung.

 
He knew what
that meant: no-one would ever employ him again.

 
The pills
started to buzz.

 
He had to
make it impossible to fire him.

 
He had to
find a story so special that it made him indispensable.

 
He rolled up
the sheet of paper, pushed it into the metal tube. “Copy!” One of the boys
scurried over, collected the tube, dropped it down the ten-inch hole in the
centre of his desk. A steel pipe slid down through the floor of the building,
ending in the composing room and the in-basket of the head printer. The
horoscopes would be composed and set and added to the metal frame for the page,
ready for printing. The process had enthralled him once: his words multiplied a
million times. That thrill was dead; shit was still shit, no matter how many
times you printed it.

 
School.

 
His
apprenticeship.

 
The long
slog to Fleet Street.

 
All for
this.

He needed dynamite.

 
14

FRANK MURPHY reached an arm across to the bedside
table, knocking over an empty bottle and a candle. He found the alarm and
switched it off. Eight o’clock. He stared up at the ceiling, at the spot where
the leak from the room above had rotted the plaster and left the laths exposed.

 
He struggled
out of bed and pulled the black-out aside. A seventh-floor view from the police
Section House at 42, Beak Street: London basking under a bright, hot sky.

 
He’d done
the rounds again last night. None of the girls could be persuaded to get off
the street. The Ripper had been quiet for nearly three months and they reckoned
he was finished. He was dead, they said, or called up, or sated. That mad
frenzy of violence and then, what?––nothing? Frank listened to them over cups
of tea and coffee in twenty-four hour cafés and wished he shared their
optimism. He didn’t know where the Ripper was either, but he didn’t think he
was done. He was waiting for the call to tell him that another body had been
found. It wouldn’t be a surprise at all. Impossible that he would just stop. It
didn’t happen like that.

 
He bought
them their drinks and, when they had finished talking about the Ripper, he
asked them about Eve. None of them had seen her and so, eventually, he called
it a night. He had come back to the Section House, brewed a pot of strong black
coffee, and spread the Ripper files out across the room. Hoping, maybe, that
staring at the pages would reveal a connection he had missed. It hadn’t. He’d
fallen asleep, the pot of coffee on the floor and papers scattered over the
bed. The files brought him nightmares instead.

 
He got up,
unsteadily, tripping over a pile of papers. Field reports, interview
transcripts, photographs, lists of witnesses, notes on suspects. A map with
scrawled markings denoting the location of each victim. He couldn’t stop. He
had a recurrent nightmare now: Eve, fifteen years old and alone, the Ripper
stalking her in the darkness. Until she came home he wouldn’t stop working the
case.

 
He didn’t
really have the space to be untidy. The cubicles in the Section House were
tiny, eight by seven and separated by a six-foot partition that didn’t reach
the top of his head. There was a bed, a steel locker, a flap which folded down
to make a table, a chair, a shelf and a cardboard hat-box. He’d tried to resist
having to fall back on owed favours, a first-class detective Inspector
cheek-by-jowl with newly-minted P.C.s who didn’t have the money for their own
drums. But there was no other choice: he couldn’t afford the mortgage on the
house plus rent for a place. There hadn’t been anything else for it. Back in
with the lads, as if the last twenty years had never happened. But what was the
alternative? A kip-shop? No chance: he’d nicked blokes in Sally Army dosshouses
and the worst room in the worst Section House would be like a suite at the
bloody Ritz compared to that.

 
 He
thought of Julia. They argued, they blamed each other. She said it was better
he move out. He told himself it was only temporary. Once he found Eve, things
would get back to normal. He’d move out of here and back to the house. They’d
get over it. Sort it out. This was just a short-term thing.

 
He stripped
down to his undershirt and pants and walked across the landing to the communal
bathroom. He sat down and emptied his bowels. There was half a quart of Black
and White on the cistern. One of the other lads must have left it there. He
hefted the bottle, thought about it, dismissed it, put it back. He hadn’t
touched a drop for two months. Clean and sober. He missed it––it was necessity,
not choice. He needed a clear head. Couldn’t afford to be distracted.

 
He went back
into his room, sparked up a match and lit the gas, filled the kettle and boiled
it. He emptied his washbowl out the window, filled it with hot water and
shaved. He found his dickie and held it up: the collar, cuffs and front were
clean enough, you wouldn’t be able to see the soiled underarms with a jacket
on. He did up the collar and fixed his tie. He searched for a pair of clean
slacks. He settled his homburg on his head, locked the flimsy door behind him
and set off.

 
Summer had
been a scorcher, the mercury up in the nineties. A blue sky with no clouds
stretched overhead. No vapour trails, either: no Jerry, although everyone was
saying that was just a matter of time. Croydon aerodrome had taken a bit of a
spanking last week. The newspaper sandwich boards were all about invasion. The
blokes at the nick had been going on about it all week. Something was going to
happen, that was for sure. He was coming, that was what the experts were
saying. Old Adolf was coming.

o         
o          o

THE PHOTOGRAPHER’S PLACE WAS IN St Martin’s Court,
just off Leicester Square. A brass nameplate was fixed next to the door:
GREGORY BUTTERS, ESQ. Frank knocked.

 
Butters
opened it. “Mr. Murphy.”

 
“Are they ready?”

 
“Yes. Hold
on.”

 
He went back
inside. Frank peered through the crack in the door: a desk; a sink; shelves
heaving with magazines, books with plain covers and spines, photographic
equipment and flasks of chemicals. A small printing press.

 
Butters
returned with a box. “Here”––Butters passed him a glossy piece of paper––“I
think they’ve come out rather well.”

 
Frank looked
at it: it was a photograph of Eve with an ice cream. It was taken on Brighton
pier over the May Day bank holiday. A wide-boy with a camera had been touting
for trade. Eve was wearing a sun hat. It was just before her fifteenth
birthday. She was on the fuzzy cusp between girlishness and womanhood; her
expression mixed shyness with pride, timorousness with the stirrings of
confidence. She was beginning to believe that she was pretty: she had her
mother’s eyes and nose, her long dark hair contrasting delicate, porcelain
skin. Frank had never doubted it: she was going to be a heart-breaker.

 
He swallowed
hard.

 
“What do you
reckon?”

 
“Very good.
How much do I owe you.”

 
“An oncer’ll
do it.”

 
Frank took
out a pound note and gave it to Butters.

 
“She’s a
pretty one.”

 
“My daughter,”
Frank warned.

 
“Right you
are. Mind me asking what you need them for?”

 
“Never mind
that.” He didn’t feel like talking.

 
“Fair
enough. You need any more, you come and see me.”

 
“Thank you.”

 
Frank ambled
towards Leicester Square, staring at the picture. The lengths he’d gone to find
her–– He’d spoken to the female police who patrolled the railway stations,
long-distance bus terminals, all-night cafes and milk bars, public parks and
prostitute-ridden districts of the West End. They looked after the callow girls
who’d been caught up in what they thought would be a glamorous, exciting life
but what usually turned out to be a life of vice to pay for their addiction to
chink marihuana. Night after night, he waited with the big blue police
tender––“The Children’s Wagon,” they called it––as it drove between the Royal
Parks. Every night, he checked the girls that had been swept up; girls who’d
escaped from remand homes, detention institutions, or who answered to
descriptions of missing girls circulated within London by every police force in
the country. He made sure they were safe, that they had somewhere to sleep,
that their loved ones were informed.

 
But there’d
been no sign of Eve.

 
He had
wandered off-course. He turned and made for Savile Row.

o         
o          o

FRANK BREWED A POT OF COFFEE, shut the door and
lifted the lid off the gramophone player. He had brought it to the office when
he moved out of the house. He kept a small collection of records on the
sideboard next to the player and he shuffled through them for something
suitable: Benny Goodman, Jimmy Lunceford, Count Basie. He selected Johnny
Hodges, slid the record from the brown paper sleeve, stroking dust from the
vinyl, and set it on the turntable. He carefully lowered the stylus and, after
a moment’s hiss and crackle, gentle swing music filled the room. Frank listened
for a moment, letting his mood settle, and then sat down to work.

 
Bill Tanner
had called a meeting tomorrow, and he needed to prepare. Tanner was the D.C.I.
from the Murder Squad who had taken over the Ripper enquiry after the third
victim. Frank knew him through his father and it hadn’t taken long to agree
with the old man’s assessment: he was out of his depth in the Squad.
Ex-military, the kind of snooty attitude you’d expect from a bloke with that
background, looking down his nose at the rank and file, not nearly as clever as
he thought he was. Frank had come across plenty of his type in the Army.
Promoted beyond his ability because he had the same school tie as Nicholas
Lezard, the Detective Super in charge of C1. The D.S working as Tanner’s bagman
was a good sort, though. Salt of the earth. Most of the time, when he wanted
things done, Frank dealt straight with him.

 
He had a
stack of Ripper boxes against the wall. Chapter and verse on the inquiry: ten
cardboard boxes full of documents. He’d handled the case from the start and
knew it was trouble when the second girl was found, strangled in a one-bedroom
Manette Street knocking shop. The confirmation that they were dealing with a
multiple killer came with the third body; his old man called for the Murder
Squad and Tanner was the detective in the frame. Frank had been assigned to the
team along with every other able-bodied officer on Division who could be
detached.

 
The first
side of the record finished. Frank got up and flipped the platter.

 
They’d made
no progress. Tanner bumbled around without logic or reason, no real idea what
he was doing. He had them chasing ghosts, leads that never went anywhere.
Wasting time they didn’t have. Frank carved his own furrow, attending the daily
briefings but following his nose. He approached it from different angles. He
spent one week solid going over the hundreds of interviews that had been
conducted: men with form for sexual violence recently released from prison; men
with bedroom kinks grassed up by wives and girlfriends; punters who’d been with
the victims. He knew the Ripper was in the files––he was convinced of it. They
would have had him in a station, answering questions, locked up. And then they
let him out to kill again.

 
Victim
number five.

 
He was
taking the piss.

 
They were
fighting a losing battle.

 
Demands on
the Met were rising. Blokes were would be needed on the street once the bombing
started. Every day seemed to bring it closer. Men would be removed from the
enquiry. The investigation would be gutted. Tanner would go back to the Yard.
The Nazis would make it a duel.

 
Him against
the Ripper.

 
And Eve was
out there.