The Head in the Ice

by Richard James

  Beyond the curtain, Hardacre was sovereign. He sat, god-like, upon a grubby, moth-eaten chair before a grate festooned with candles. All around him, seemingly in every available space, lay the spoils of his profession glinting and glistening in the flickering flames. Silk scarves and handkerchiefs hung from the mantle, bags and sacks spilled their booty of coins and jewellery from low tables onto the floor. Stools and chairs were piled high with plates and silver salvers. Cutlery and kitchenware of the highest standard was strewn across the floor. Isambard Fogg knew this was Hardacre’s domain and, as he shuffled through the curtain, his eyes fell instinctively to the floor in solemn reverence.

  “Look at me, Fogg.” Hardacre leaned forward on his chair, daring the wily vagrant to meet his gaze. Fogg looked up slowly, his eyes searching Hardacre’s face for any sign of his mood. He had learned to look for tell-tale clues; a tightness in the mouth or a narrowing of the eyes to indicate displeasure, an incline of the head or an outstretched hand to denote compassion. This morning, thought Fogg as their eyes met, Hardacre was impossible to read. And this worried him greatly. Hardacre’s barrel chest was thrust forward in defiance of the waistcoat buttons struggling to contain it. His hooded eyes looked down a bulbous nose at the sight before him and greying whiskers sprung from leathery, brown cheeks, reaching out like tendrils to spread back across his ears. “Where you been, Fogg?”

  “Workin’.” A hideous, toothless leer spread across Fogg’s face as he recalled his encounter in the alley.

  “What you got for me, then?”

  Isambard Fogg swung the sack back down from his shoulder and let its contents spill to the floor; Joseph Morley’s coat and handkerchief, waistcoat and trousers.

  “Fine clothes,” murmured Hardacre approvingly. “What else?”

  Reaching inside his tattered coat, Fogg pulled Morley’s wallet from a pocket. Daringly, he held the purse out to Hardacre, who snatched at it like a hungry dog might snatch at food.

  “Good, Fogg, good. Currency.” He flicked through its contents as Fogg stood at his feet, nodding and grinning in the half-light. This was going well. “What else?”

  Fogg swallowed hard. Reaching into his trousers, he pulled Morley’s watch from a hidden seam.

  “Gonna keep that for yourself were you, Fogg?” Hardacre’s voice was barely audible now, the threat implicit in its quietening tones.

  Fogg struggled to find his words. “Forgot,” he stammered, the smile disappearing from his face as he let the watch fall to the floor.

  Hardacre leaned ominously to one side, reaching down beside his chair. Sitting back, king-like on his throne, he pulled a club from the folds of an old blanket and sat, resting it across his lap like a sceptre.

  With a sudden hope of appeasement, Fogg reached up and snatched the top hat from his head. “Silk,” he offered hopefully, as he threw the hat to the ground beside Morley’s coat. “And these shoes, they’re new.” He hopped on one foot then the other as he removed each shoe and held them up in the gloom for Hardacre’s inspection. He would have cut a comical figure, if his situation weren’t becoming increasingly desperate. The atmosphere in the room had changed, and Fogg could feel it.

  Fogg owed a lot to the despot in the chair. An orphan, he had been rescued from certain death on the streets by Hardacre who saw him as easy pickings. Fogg was already well versed in the ways of petty crime and Hardacre considered him a wise investment. So he had proved. In exchange for shelter and the protection of a criminal overlord, Fogg had risen to the challenge of becoming one of the best in his business. His unique quality was his ruthlessness. Fogg prided himself on never having shied away from inflicting harm in the pursuit of his booty. He took chances, and Hardacre rewarded men who took chances. Kane and Hobbs were mere hangers on by comparison, content to do just enough and no more for Hardacre’s favours. The new man, Treacher, was still an unknown quantity. He had joined the gang in recent weeks and Fogg suspected he was soft. He returned each day with goods for Hardacre with never so much as a scratch upon him. Fogg guessed he was nothing more than an opportunist, snatching what he could through open doors and windows, never risking injury or discovery. However, as Fogg watched Hardacre swinging his club nonchalantly from one swarthy hand to the other, he got the distinct impression that he had done wrong, that perhaps this time the risk had not paid off.

  “You’ve done well, Fogg,” began Hardacre. “But not well enough.” Fogg’s eyes darted around the room like a trapped animal. He could run back the way he had come but the three men next door would surely catch him.

  “I’ve just come from the Thames, Fogg,” Hardacre continued, beating time on the palm of one hand with his cudgel. “Do you understand?”

  “The Thames?” Fogg was sweating now, his heart beating fiercely against his chest.

  “Do you remember the little job you did for me last week?”

  Fogg remembered it well enough, and winced at the memory. “Yes,” he whispered.

  “Well, now. A couple of skaters found something in the ice last night.”

  “S-somethin’ in the ice?” stammered Fogg, his mouth drying rapidly. He knew now what was to come, although he was not yet clear why. He had been on the receiving end of Hardacre’s temper before, and did not relish the prospect of feeling it again. He braced himself for the inevitable onslaught.

  “They found her head in the Thames, Fogg!” With a nimbleness that belied his size, Hardacre had sprung from his chair with a roar, raising the cudgel high above his head with his powerful hands. “They found her in the Thames!”

  In the room next door, Treacher, Kane and Hobbs looked up as they heard the sound of wood crunching on bone from beyond the tattered greasy curtain to Hardacre’s cell. Despite the unfolding horror, not one of them flinched a muscle in response.

  Hardacre had fallen into a grisly rhythm now, punctuating each of his words with another blow to Fogg’s unprotected head. “They – found – her – in – the – Thames!” The first blow had rendered Fogg unconscious and so he had fallen like a doll into an ungainly heap on the floor. Now each successive blow served only to compound his injuries, splitting his skull and eye sockets and matting his hair with blood and tissue. Hardacre’s face was spattered crimson from the frenzy and, once or twice, he paused to wipe the blood from his cheek with a threadbare sleeve. Satisfied he had made his point, Hardacre stepped back, his whole body rising and falling in time with his frenzied breathing. Dropping back to rest after his titanic effort, he stumbled into his chair and sat sprawled, blinking sweat from his eyes and licking blood from his lips. “That’ll learn you, Fogg,” he whispered in triumph. “That’ll learn you.”

  IV

  The Thaw

  “Ready when you are, Inspector Bowman.” Doctor John Crane MRCS was a tall, elderly bird of a man who spoke with a refined Scottish burr. A pair of half moon spectacles perched precariously upon his nose and his hair was parted just above the ear then swept up over his head in an effort to disguise his balding pate. He wore an apron stained in reds and browns, the origins of which Inspector Bowman did not wish to consider.

  Bowman had been waiting for an hour now, hat in hand, in the corridor at Charing Cross Hospital. The tiled walls echoed to the slightest noise and the gas lamps lit at regular intervals along the wall lent a sickly, yellow pallor to the very air. Strange, chemical smells escaped from every door, mixed with the odour of decay. The high windows of frosted glass were heavily barred against intrusion and allowed in little light. The corridor itself was below ground level, and the windows gave out onto the icy pavements around the hospital. Occasionally, Bowman had watched as disembodied feet walked carefully by, their owners completely unseen from the lower leg up. The whole impression was one of being a few feet closer to the flames of Hell itself. Inspector Bowman felt his palms moisten as he involuntarily lifted a hand to rub the back of his neck. He found himself searching for scars, any tell tale sign of his treatment. The doctor in Colney Hatch had mentioned blisters and
the application of leeches. Did he bear a mark that all could see but him? He did not feel at all well. As Doctor Crane turned back into a room off the corridor, Bowman swallowed hard and followed him in.

  Inside Crane’s laboratory, the air was heavy with pungent steam. Condensation dripped from every surface. The countless bottles and vials that lined the walls were pricked with globules of water. There wasn’t a shelf that was free of scientific vessels and instruments. Gas burners were arranged around the room on low wooden tables and, between them, culture dishes and large glass pitchers stood full of coloured liquids, powders and specimens. The tiled walls were hung with charts and diagrams, some of which made Bowman’s stomach turn the more. Against the furthest wall, where Doctor Crane was busy donning elbow-high Indian rubber gloves, stood a stove. On its surface, a metal urn was balanced solidly on a frame above two gas jets that hissed and spat as they burned. The urn had a handle at each side and an ill-fitting lid.

  “Thank you, Sergeant Graves, you may turn off the gas.” Doctor Crane gestured with a bony finger to the dials arranged along the front of the stove, and the sergeant bent to turn them off. Bowman noticed that Graves seemed to be enjoying himself.

  “You all right, inspector?” asked Graves, his youthful face beaming with a childlike excitement. “Feeling a bit queer?”

  “No,” swallowed Bowman. “I’m fine.” His hand reached instinctively to his belly to calm his churning stomach. He noticed that Graves too was wearing a pair of protective gloves and had thrown a laboratory apron over his workaday clothes. The steam in the room had caused his blond locks to plaster themselves across his forehead. The heat had brought a flush to his cheeks. “You seem rather to be entering into the spirit of things,” Bowman observed. By way of a reply, Graves offered him a conspiratorial wink. Bowman turned back to the doctor. “Is she – ” he broke off. “Is it - ”

  “Thawed?” offered the doctor, looking over his glasses.

  “Yes. Is it thawed?”

  “It is not a procedure I would wish to rush, Inspector Bowman. It is imperative that the flesh remains intact. But yes, it is thawed. Sergeant Graves,” snapped the doctor, “Might I have your assistance?”

  The two men positioned themselves on either side of the urn and, with a look to each other to time their actions, plunged their hands into the water. After groping for a while to find purchase and with a look of careful concentration upon their faces, they lifted the head from the urn. Quite by chance, her face was turned towards Bowman as she rose. He could not but gasp as her eyes searched his. The jaw was slack and hung from its moorings so her mouth hung open in a silent, imploring scream. After holding the head over the urn to let the excess water drain, Graves and the doctor moved as one to deposit their load upon a wooden block with an unceremonious slop.

  “Feeling a little uncomfortable, Inspector Bowman?” teased the doctor, removing his half-round spectacles to wipe them free of condensation on his apron.

  Inspector Bowman’s features looked more drawn than usual. His frown cut deep between his brows and his wide moustache twitched nervously at his lip. “No, Doctor Crane, not at all.” Suddenly feeling the oppressive heat in the room, he removed his coat and bowler hat. Hanging them on a nail by the door, he turned back into the room and attempted to adopt a business-like air. Rolling up his sleeves as if he were preparing for nothing more extraordinary than writing a report to the commissioner, he bent down on his haunches and forced himself to look square on at the head on the block. He was sure she would have been a beauty in life. Her features seemed well proportioned, her little nose just slightly pointed up at the end.

  “Well now,” came the doctor’s soft voice, “This should make your job a little easier.” Both he and Sergeant Graves crouched down next to Bowman, the better to examine the object in front of them. Graves was the first to notice what the doctor was referring to.

  “Her eyes are different colours.”

  Looking closely, Bowman could see he was right. The eyes were, indeed, of markedly different hues. The left was a clear, bright blue whilst the right was a deep exotic brown.

  “It’ll help in her identification, that’s for sure.” Bowman pulled a notebook and well-chewed pencil from his waistcoat pocket. “What might have caused it?”

  “It’s a natural occurrence, not brought about by any trauma. The blue eye lacks a pigment that accounts for the colour in the other. It could run in families, it could be entirely random. But perhaps only ten to fifteen ladies of her age would exhibit such a condition in the whole of London.”

  Bowman scratched in his notebook with the worn stub of his pencil, then turned his attention back to the physician in the apron. “Doctor Crane,” he began, “Could you give me a description of the woman from what you have before you?”

  Doctor Crane inched forward onto his knees and set his face closer to the specimen on the table. Bowman marvelled at the professional detachment the doctor employed in the course of his duties. To him, the head on the block was nothing more than a puzzle, an enigma to be unravelled. He glanced across to Sergeant Graves. His eyes were wide with wonder. Bowman envied his enthusiasm for, try as he might, he could summon nothing but revulsion for the spectacle before him.

  “The head is of an average size and shape, so it would be no great leap of the imagination to assume she was of average stature. She was perhaps twenty five or thereabouts, certainly no younger than twenty.” Crane felt around the head with his gloved hands. “There are no signs of trauma about the skull, which may or may not prove pertinent to your enquiries.”

  “Cause of death?”

  “I should have thought that was obvious,” said Graves to Bowman with a quizzical smile. “She had her head cut off.”

  “Ah, but that may have happened post mortem.” The doctor looked at the blank faces before him, and offered a clarification. “After death.”

  “So we can’t assume decapitation was the cause?” Bowman was looking thoughtful.

  “It’s impossible to verify. There is some bruising about the neck, maybe the result of earlier trauma.”

  “Strangulation?” offered Bowman.

  “Possibly.”

  Sergeant Graves looked puzzled. “Why strangle someone, then cut off their head?”

  Pointedly ignoring the inquiry, Doctor Crane continued with his examination. “Otherwise, the tissue is remarkably well preserved. I should say she had not been in the water above six hours.”

  “But that part of the river has been frozen these past three days.” Graves had a look of concentration on his face that was almost endearing.

  “Then she entered the water some six hours before the freeze.”

  “That would be December the Twenty Ninth.” Bowman wrote the date in his notebook.

  “Then you have your date of death, at least,” ventured the doctor in his soft Scottish lilt. “If not the exact time.”

  Bowman felt some progress had been made, but was eager to learn more. “Anything else?”

  Doctor Crane was unnervingly still for a moment before suddenly reaching forward to cup the head in his hands. As a veterinarian might examine a horse, he first pulled down the lower eyelids with a finger then, with his thumb, prised the lower jaw gently open. “Her teeth are all present, but they’re in rather poor order.”

  “Is that significant?”

  “It would, together with a yellowing of the eyes, indicate she had led a healthy life until her later years, when she was not in the best of health.”

  Looking further into the mouth was impossible with the head in its present position, so the doctor tilted it back at an angle. “Could you hold the head in this position please, sergeant?” Sergeant Graves moved around the back of the table to oblige the doctor and put a hand either side of the head to steady it. Reaching into the mouth with his fingers, the doctor made a discovery. “Ah,” he said quietly, “The tongue has been removed.” As Bowman scratched at his notebook, the doctor continued. “Just before the frenul
um.” Looking around him, he noticed he was confronted with blank looks once more. “It’s the ligament which anchors the tongue to the bottom of the mouth. I should imagine the tongue was pulled forward, thus,” he put his fingers perilously close to his own mouth, then mimed pulling his tongue forward over his lower teeth. “Then severed with one cut.” He made a swooping movement with his other hand, as if cutting his own tongue off with a knife. “The cut is a clean one.” He stared hard at the tips of his gloves. “Now, what’s this?” Opening her mouth wider still, he angled the head into the sparse light thrown from the gas lamps on the wall. “There’s something trapped at the back of the throat.” He reached back in between the teeth and pulled out a rich, muddy substance that he rubbed between a forefinger and thumb.

  “Earth?” suggested Sergeant Graves from his lofty position behind the table, but Doctor Crane was peering back into the mouth.

  “It’s packed tightly at the back of the throat.”

  “It’s red in colour. Is it clay?” Inspector Bowman slid his pencil behind an ear and looked closer as the doctor coaxed more of the muddy substance from the depths of the unfortunate woman’s throat. He rubbed it again between his fingers and held it to his nose, looking for all the world as if he were taking a pinch of snuff or smelling a fine cigar. Then he turned his beady eyes on Bowman.

  “You must draw your own conclusions, inspector,” he said, “but those are the facts as I see them presented before me.”

  V

  Precious Cargo

  Treacher was getting restless. Hobbs and Kane had fallen back into their stupor following the commotion behind the curtain. Jabez Kane had reached for his opium pipe and now, leaning back upon a pile of rags, fell into oblivion as he drew upon it intermittently. Albert Hobbs snored against the wall by the brazier. Treacher knew he’d not move much further for the rest of the morning. In fact, in the three weeks he’d been part of Hardacre’s gang, Treacher had seen little of the behaviour that had earned these men their reputation as two of the most reviled villains this side of the Thames. Perhaps, he reasoned, they were marking time, waiting for the circumstances to come right before embarking upon their latest criminal pursuit. Or perhaps they were waiting for Hardacre’s word. In the meantime, they were happy enough to while away their time in this dark, dank cell, smoking opium, sleeping or drinking. Every other day or so, they would rouse themselves from their torpor enough to go out for food but, on the occasions Treacher followed them, he saw neither of them attempt anything untoward. He was, frankly, disappointed. Screwing up the now empty bag of chestnuts, he threw the paper into the brazier. He was getting worried about Fogg. Several minutes had passed now since the noises from behind the curtain and Fogg had yet to reappear. Treacher knew that to have moved to help Fogg would have been hopeless. He would surely have been stopped by Kane and Hobbs and most likely have found himself out on the street with a solid beating for his pains. And so he had waited. He had never seen beyond the curtain into Hardacre’s domain. He had never been called in and had never dared make use of his companions” incapacity to pry when they were asleep. Treacher knew not to rock the boat in a situation such as this.