The Murder Mile

by Lesley McEvoy

  His fingers traced the line of my jaw where he’d hit me with the butt of the shotgun.

  ‘Sorry about that. But I heard your seminar in Newcastle, so I knew you’d never allow yourself to be moved from crime scene A without a little encouragement.’

  I tried to order my thoughts, which were tumbling in panicked chaos. I squeezed my eyelids shut, then opened them again as if that might erase this nightmare and replace it with something that actually made sense – it didn’t.

  ‘The ninth of November,’ he said, softly, running his hand across my naked body. ‘Mary Kelly. Little Irish girl. My final and most beautiful piece of work.’

  The horrific image of the mutilated remains of Mary Kelly flashed through my mind. I twisted uselessly against the tight cords that were biting into my wrists and ankles.

  I finally oriented myself – we were in my cottage in the woods, with the old door George had hung a few months before, the number thirteen cradled in its rusty horseshoe.

  Number thirteen Miller’s Court. The scene of Jack the Ripper’s final killing.

  ‘Where’s George?’ I dreaded the answer.

  ‘Dead,’ he said, simply. ‘I dropped his body in the sceptic tank. No disturbed earth for the searchers to see – no grave to find. I’ve been living at his farm since September – the day you nearly caught me cleaning this place. I added the number thirteen to the door George had put in – nice touch, don’t you think? I’ve been wearing his clothes, driving his Land Rover. Hiding in plain sight. People see what they expect to see. I’ve waved to you and Jen a dozen times across the fields these past few weeks.’

  Shivers prickled across my skin. Of course, Harvey had always known what James was. That’s why he behaved as he did at the cottage that day. He’d known James had been in there.

  He dipped his head, trailing his lips across my neck, down my shoulders.

  ‘Did you know your boyfriend had a CROP set up at your place the day they searched the farm, as well as putting a lump on your car?’

  A covert rural observation post – surveillance officers literally hiding in my bushes! A ‘lump’ – a tracking device. Could Callum have suspected my involvement seriously enough to have gone that far?

  ‘The morning of the double event, I came to deliver the eggs on my way back to George’s. I wanted to keep up his usual routines. To keep him alive in your mind, so to speak. Coming to your door in the early morning. Seeing you and Jen around the place – knowing you never suspected a thing as you waved to me in the distance. I almost stumbled across the surveillance officer. Then I watched while the CROP was ordered to stand down. He removed the tracker on your car before he left.’ His lips trailed across my collar bone as he spoke. ‘If he’d stayed another ten minutes, he would have seen me come to your door – luck of the Devil, eh?’

  A million thoughts fragmenting into hot metal shards seared through my mind. My words were my tools. My only weapons.

  ‘WHY?’ was the best I could manage. ‘What motive…?’

  He smiled, like an indulgent parent with a stupid child.

  ‘My grandmother was Jane Lubnowski.’ He watched. Waiting for me to catch up.

  My brain crawled sluggishly through the database of Ripper facts.

  ‘Aaron Kosminski,’ I said, slowly. ‘The prime suspect for Jack the Ripper in 1888. Had a sister, Matilda, who married Morris Lubnowski.’

  ‘My grandmother was Kosminski’s niece.’ He lowered his head and brushed his lips across my neck, whispering against my skin. ‘I am Jack the Ripper. I always felt his presence inside me. When my grandmother told me about my heritage, it explained everything. All the feelings.’

  His hand followed the trail of his lips, skimming my collar bone. Finally resting across my throat. ‘All those thoughts. All the things I’d dreamed of doing.’ His grip tightened slightly.

  ‘You’re insane.’ I arched my neck to slacken his grip.

  He closed his fingers more tightly.

  ‘Perhaps. Or maybe I’m fulfilling a genetic destiny?’ His face was filled with a cruelty I now realised I had caught a glimpse of that day in my office – when he’d lost his temper. ‘But you didn’t want to help me when I asked the first time. So here we are.’

  ‘You asked?’

  He nodded, but his eyes were on my stomach. His hand followed his gaze as he spoke.

  ‘I was twenty-two. At university. I watched your documentary about serial killers. The UK’s leading expert, they said. You talked about Jack in the film. I knew then that you were the one. I wrote to you, but you never replied.’ His hand lingered, gently stroking. ‘I wrote that I was a descendant of Jack. That I felt his hungers… his drives… his needs. I wanted you to help me.’ His hand slid again around my throat and his grip cut off my breath. ‘But you didn’t even bother to reply.’

  ‘I never re…ceived…’ I gasped, twisting my head frantically, trying to draw more air into my lungs.

  Suddenly he let go. I drew in a ragged breath, straining to claw as much air in as I could, before he could grip my throat again. Instead, he got up and turned his back to me as he busied himself at the small bedside table.

  Light in the room was coming from a coal fire in the grate, causing James’s shadow to flicker in grotesquely gigantic proportions across the whitewashed walls. The heat in the small space was suffocating.

  Unwanted details from the Victorian police report into Mary Kelly’s death flashed through my mind. I squeezed my eyes shut to try to stop them.

  ‘Inspector Abberline explored the ashes in the grate of Mary’s room. The fire had been so fierce, it melted the spout off the kettle…’

  I could feel the heat from the grate. All consuming…

  ‘Both breasts were removed by circular incisions. The pericardium was open below and the heart absent… Mary’s heart had been cut out and burned in the fire…’

  I felt the bed dip as James sat back on the edge.

  ‘Open your eyes.’ He grabbed a handful of my hair, jerking my head around so that I had to look at him. In his other hand, he was holding the knife. ‘You’ve been looking for this.’

  ‘Don’t.’ I hated the pleading tone I couldn’t keep out of my voice.

  He wasn’t listening. His eyes travelled to my breasts. Lingering for a moment before he lowered the knife. I felt the cold tip of the blade as he held it against my ribs.

  ‘No–’ I felt the searing cold pain as he lightly drew the surgically thin edge across my skin, just deep enough to draw a delicate line of blood.

  ‘Razor sharp,’ he whispered. ‘Only the slightest pressure needed.’

  ‘Wait…’ My breath was coming in short, shallow gasps.

  I had to make him stop. Make him listen. Try something – anything.

  ‘You said you wanted to stop, when you were twenty-two?’ I was speaking too fast. I took a breath, trying to slow my words. ‘When was the first time you killed?’

  He stared at me. ‘Why?’

  ‘I need to know.’

  I felt the knife lift as he released the pressure. Then he lowered his hand. Resting the bloodied blade against his thigh.

  ‘My mother,’ he said, quietly. ‘I was fourteen.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I hated her,’ he said, simply. ‘There was a fifteen-year gap between me and the golden boy. I always knew I was her menopause mistake. She blamed me for being trapped in a loveless marriage with my father. She used to entertain her male “friends” at the house when my father was away in London. I threatened to tell him if the whore didn’t stop. She beat me. She said he’d never believe me and he would hate me for telling lies about her. I was sent to boarding school at five-years-old. Barely tolerated during the holidays, so I stayed with my grandmother whenever I could.’

  He turned the blade slowly in his hand. ‘My grandmother gave me the knives as part of the family inheritance. Told me who they’d belonged to. My mother thought they were obscene. She hated them. She was ashamed of their his
tory and made my father keep our ownership of them a secret. He wanted to loan them to a museum – especially given their provenance. As a lawyer, he found their story fascinating. But she was horrified people would find out about her family’s connection to Jack, so she wouldn’t let him.’

  9 November

  1am

  I followed his gaze as he looked at the green leather case open on the bedside table.

  His focus came back to me. ‘That night, they’d rowed again. She got drunk after my father left the house. I told her how much I hated the way she treated him – treated me. She slipped onto the rug, so drunk she couldn’t get up. I strangled her with the fabric belt from her dress.’ He took a deep breath and his eyes refocused.

  ‘But you got away with it?’

  ‘She was petite – weighed nothing. It was easy to drag her onto her knees. I tied the belt to the door handle, then stood and watched her for a while. I didn’t know enough back then to be certain she was dead. So I slit her wrists, just to be sure. That was the first time I used Jack’s blade. Appropriate she should die by it, considering how she felt – don’t you think?’ He smiled. The memory of it pleased him. ‘It was recorded as a suicide. No one was surprised. She’d threatened to do it often enough when she was drinking.’

  ‘You were a child,’ I said, with a calmness I didn’t feel. ‘Emotional abuse leaves scars deeper than physical.’ I shifted, trying to ease the burning tension in my arms and shoulders. ‘It’s not too late,’ I said, quietly. ‘I let you down before. I never received your letter – but I can help you now.’

  He looked at me quietly for just a second, giving me a glimmer of hope. Then laughed.

  ‘I think you’ll find you’re the one on my couch now, doctor.’ He held the side of the blade flat against my cheek, the tip of it touching the corner of my eye. ‘You’re the one no one is going to help this time.’ His fingers dug into my chin, tilting my face towards his. ‘Your knight in shining armour thought it was all over. The cavalry have packed up and gone home. Nobody is coming to help you. It’s just us for the grand finale.’

  His knuckles blanched white as he tightened his grip on the knife, moving it from my face. Lowering it to my belly.

  ‘Wait!’ My stomach tightened as I felt it touch my abdomen. ‘If this is how it’s going to end, then at least give me some answers first. Please?’

  The muscles bunched in his cheek as he considered for a second. Then he nodded.

  I took advantage of his silence. At least while we talked, it bought me some time. Maybe I could find a chink in his psyche? Find enough space between his delusions and reality to salvage something – anything.

  ‘Martha?’

  He smiled. ‘Susie. Ah yes. Pretty little thing, wasn’t she? Trusting – like a child…’

  ‘She loved you.’ I could feel tears pricking my eyes and marvelled at the human ability to feel such compassion even at this moment – facing the monster with no such empathy, who had ended her life.

  ‘Almost a shame,’ he said, but I could see no emotion behind his eyes. ‘I chose her for her role – right from the start.’

  ‘Where did you keep her? They could never find out where she lived with “John”. I take it you were John?’

  He nodded. ‘She only ever knew me as “John” – her boyfriend.’ He laughed again. The thought of her childlike naïveté amused him. ‘I kept her in my apartment at Salford Quays. I told her the police were looking for her – for the murders she’d committed in Manchester.’

  ‘For the period she couldn’t remember because of her drug use?’

  ‘Yes. She trusted me – didn’t ever question what I told her. I was keeping her safe. Hiding her secret. But it meant she knew to stay out of sight when I left her alone. To keep the blinds closed – not go out or answer the door. No one ever knew she was there. My flat was full of traces of her. Evidence I later planted at Harrison’s apartment.’

  ‘Tell me about Paul Harrison?’

  He rested the blade on his knee. I had to force myself to concentrate on his face.

  ‘I knew you used Fosters – I’d seen the publicity for the Gail Dobson case at the time of the court case. I applied to the firm when I qualified. I used the position to find out everything about you. It was easy enough to meet Harrison. His name came up in Dobson’s case files.’ His hand absently stroked my stomach as he talked. ‘Everyone has a weakness, you know that,’ he said, quietly. ‘For some it’s money or power. For others it’s attention, affection – love.’

  His eyes met mine and held my gaze. And for a second I glimpsed that mesmeric charisma I’d seen when we’d first met. ‘People starved of love recognise each other – don’t we, Jo?’

  He would have sounded seductive if it hadn’t been for the circumstances.

  ‘Harrison wanted independence. His talent was stifled with Marissa, but he didn’t have the resources to go it alone.’

  ‘So you helped him?’

  He nodded. ‘I got close to him. Then I waited. My chance came when I was made partner and Fosters asked me to recruit for the new Manchester office.’

  I almost flinched when his fingers reached up to my face, but he simply brushed a damp tendril of hair from my forehead. His fingers gently traced the curve of my jaw, like a tender lover.

  ‘We needed an IT consultant, so I offered Harrison a contract that would give him enough to finally set up on his own, that put him in my debt. I used my contacts to get him some university contracts. Manchester, Newcastle, Fordley. He moved here. I told him the firm were paying for his flat, but I took care of it. He didn’t know that, but it meant there was no record of it.’ He smiled as his fingers caressed the rope around my wrists. ‘Financial handcuffs you might say.’

  ‘But the police didn’t find a connection between Harrison and Fosters?’

  ‘I never put his invoices through the books. I paid him myself. But he never knew that and Fosters didn’t know he even existed. I gave him a dummy contract.’

  ‘You thought of everything.’

  I winced as his finger lightly traced the shallow incision he’d made around the curve of my breast.

  ‘I’ve had a lot of time to plan.’ He licked my blood from his finger, his eyes never leaving mine. ‘I told him Fosters needed access to your computer and messaging service – that it was company practice. I said the firm routinely monitored email and messages, in case our clients were doing anything that could damage us or come back to bite us in court. He believed he was hiding his electronic footprint to protect the firm. He knew it wasn’t strictly legal but by then he needed the money.’

  ‘What about the burner phones and the voice digitiser? Surely he’d smell a rat when you needed those?’

  He laughed. ‘My client base, like yours, are criminals. Easy enough to learn their tradecraft. I sorted those out myself. Harrison never knew about them. He used the computer in the university basement to access your computers. I’d had copies made of his keys and his passes. So when I needed to send you photographs of Martha and Polly, I’d go there at night after he left and send them myself.’

  ‘He never suspected?’

  He shook his head slowly. ‘I arranged for a lock-up near his flat so he could keep his bike there–’

  ‘But you had keys, so you could take the bike whenever you needed it? You used it to get Martha away from Westwood – and later at Polly’s café?’

  ‘Bravo!’ He raised his eyebrows, mockingly impressed. ‘After Hanbury Street, Harrison had expended his usefulness. By then he’d set up the electronic maze that kept the police from tracing the IP addresses. The only use I had for him then was to harvest his DNA.’

  I took a shaky breath, trying to keep my tone even. ‘So you took strands of his hair and trace evidence from his flat to plant on the bodies.’

  ‘His toothbrush, hair brush. Easy, reaIly. Then I arranged to meet him in the computer room at the university.’ He spoke matter-of-factly – like he was talking about a day a
t the office. ‘I strangled him with the noose, then hung him by it.’ He laughed. ‘He was so passive – hardly put up a fight.’

  I remembered Paul. That polite, gentle boy who had shown me such patience, and my throat tightened.

  ‘Then I made the “anonymous” call to the police, saying he’d asked me – his student friend – to take the DNA test for him. So they’d find him there – with all the evidence they needed.’

  I could feel a tension travelling through him. His hunger was building, like a starving predator tiring of tormenting its prey.

  ‘How did you install false memory in Martha?’ I asked, quickly.

  ‘I used Gail Dobson.’

  ‘She didn’t know who you were?’

  He shook his head. ‘She thought I was a patient of yours with a grudge when I took Martha to see her. It was easy to convince her to help me set you up. To install “Jack’s” script and the false memories. She thought I was going to get you involved in a fake case, and then humiliate you in the press.’

  ‘You killed her too?’

  ‘I would have done eventually – to tie up the loose end. But she saved me the trouble. Stupid bitch actually fell in love – thought we were in some grand romance. She threatened to kill herself when I ended it. I turned the knife – metaphorically speaking. I knew which cracks to leverage, to make sure I’d destroyed her enough. Then I left the flat.’ He laughed. ‘She called me to say she was going to do it if I didn’t go back that night – I told her to get on with it.’

  I swallowed hard, but I had no saliva. The calculated callousness of it was horrific.

  ‘I waited a few hours then went back. I still had a key.’ He caressed my neck as he spoke. ‘She’d taken an overdose of sleeping pills and painkillers – all washed down with nearly a bottle of vodka. She was conscious enough to know I was there.’ He licked his lips. ‘So I helped her along – slit her wrists and watched her die. Not across the wrist, you understand.’ His finger traced a line from my wrist to my elbow. ‘But down the arm. That’s the mistake people make – going across the wrist rather than up the arm… far more effective. I learned that from working with my brother that summer at the hospital.’