by Alex Scarrow
No. She needs to be afraid. Don’t you know why?
Argyll didn’t.
She lifted herself and squatted against the base of the wall, trembling. ‘Please . . . please . . . don’t ’urt me . . .’
Argyll hunkered down beside her. He felt some of the fear himself, wondering what she was seeing as she looked at him. Wondering why she looked like the Devil himself was hovering just in front of her face. He reached out a calming hand towards her. He wanted to tell her that it was all right, that he didn’t mean to hurt her. He wanted to explain that what just happened came as a surprise to him too.
Above all else, he just wanted to make her a cup of tea and say sorry.
She recoiled from his hand, whimpering as tears rolled down her cheeks and mixed with blood on her lips. ‘Please . . . Mr . . .’ she babbled through snot. ‘Please . . . Mr B-Babbitt, d-don’t d-do me up l-like the others. P-please . . . I . . . I . . .’
His hand froze in the space between them. Somewhere he heard the shuffling of pig’s trotters, excited and playful, the snort of the animal and that awful, scraping voice . . .
Babbitt?
Argyll knew the name. Goddammit. He knew that name from somewhere.
Yes, of course we know that name. Do you see yet?
He frowned. His mind seemed to be stirring, doors opening all along the dusty, dark hallways of his memory, spilling daylight across them. A dozen different noises and voices stirring to life, like a ward of comatose patients emerging into wakefulness together, eyes once stuck fast with sleep now cracking open.
Mr Babbitt. That’s who we are.
But I’m John. John Argyll.
You are Mr Babbitt. Remember? Chop, chop. Work, work. Busy, busy.
Argyll suddenly remembered so much more; not just disjointed moments, dreams and images from someone else’s life. The doors in his mind creaked wide open in unison. All of a sudden, he knew his childhood was a privileged one, lived in a household full of maids and cleaners. He remembered a severe-looking bearded man whom he knew was his father, even if the finer details, like his father’s name, were still yet to come to him. No . . . there it was: Gordon. His father – Gordon – a businessman. A businessman who saw opportunities in abundance on the far side of the continent . . . in a place called Oregon.
He remembered a period of worry, upset, disquiet. Their home being sold, packing cases in every room, saying farewell to favourite toys. He remembered an older brother, Lawrence, who was closer to their father than him. And a much older sister; not a girl but a young woman. Olivia. Almost like a mother to him. A mother to replace the one he never knew. He remembered a long journey across a wilderness of wide open skies and infinite landscapes of rolling hills covered in wild grass, living and sleeping in the wooden trap of their long wagon. Mornings of waking up beneath a canopy of linen stretched over bows of willow. Evenings spent around camp fires with Olivia and Lawrence and his father and other families who had joined together to comprise their train of wagons.
So close to Olivia. He felt an aching in his heart; a deep wound poked and prodded to open and weep once more. He had always been closest to her. Olivia: memories of a young woman’s face, which always seemed to be just a few moments away from laughing brightly at something or other. A tanned and freckled face surrounded by a cloud of auburn hair. And lips that parted wide, constantly amused at all the silly things he said to her, bemused at his fanciful notions and endless questions.
But also growing a little closer to his normally distant father during ‘the crossing’. A man whom had always appeared to be far too busy for his young son, now around the campfire in the evenings, able to tell him stories and listen to his questions. A father who finally actually noticed his youngest child and could see he had something special about him. A keen mind. A talent for planning. Far-sightedness, even.
And then the day it all came to a sudden end. The day of screaming.
He shook his head. Too many memories; too much of his life coming at him at once. And his childhood name . . . he knew what it was now. It certainly wasn’t ‘Mr Babbitt’.
Nor is it ‘John Argyll’, the dry pig-voice chuckled. She named you like a child names a pet.
‘NO!!!!!’ he screamed. His shrill voice filled the small hallway. Liz flinched and whimpered on the floor. ‘MY NAME IS JOHN!!’
He saw the young boy he once was as another person. Another person, yet so alike, with so much in common. Another boy uncertain and lost in an alien world, a wilderness. Another boy cared for by, utterly reliant on, the love of a young woman.
‘GO!!’ he screamed again, smacking the wall with his fist. ‘GO AWAY!!!!!’
Liz stared up at him, wide-eyed, the whimpering fear clogging her throat silenced for the moment. The heels of her boots scrabbled for purchase on the wooden floor.
‘Me?’ she whispered. ‘Y-you l-lettin’ me go?’
He stood up, turned away and took several strides up the hall; her snivelling voice was one too many. He could hardly hear himself think. He needed the woman on the floor to shut up.
Time to grow up. Stop being a child.
‘LEAVE ME ALONE!’ he screamed again, tears thickening his voice. ‘Please . . .’ His voice softer, pleading, desperate. His broad shoulders shaking. ‘Please . . .’
Behind him, quietly daring to pull herself to her feet, trying not to make any noise that might distract him from his fugue, Liz reached for the door handle. She grasped it and grimaced at the daylight flooding into the gloomy space, the noise of Holland Park Avenue seeping in through the partially opened door. She opened it wider. She glanced back at him as he slumped against a wall, his back to her, his fists balled and flexing, his head shaking. She quickly slipped over the threshold. She fled down the steps into the street, across the pavement and onto the road, across the paths of tradesmen’s carts, running heavy-heeled until she found herself gasping and grasping the iron railings of a tall, elegant townhouse on the far side.
She turned to look over her shoulder, certain Babbitt must have recovered his wits and was now weaving through traffic to get to her. But all she saw on the far side at number 67 was the front door still open, revealing the darkness inside. In the gloom beyond, she thought she could just make out the slumped form of the man.
CHAPTER 47
1st October 1888, Holland Park, London
She loves you, does she? Hmmm?
He nodded.
She is not your sister, Olivia. Your sister died a long, long time ago. You remember how she died now?
Yes, he did. He didn’t need to replay that memory to know. It was all back in his head now. He wished it wasn’t.
Oh . . . but Mary reminds you of Olivia, does she? A snort of derisive laughter. You are pitiful. You are weak. You are as naïve as a baby. The voice managed to find a timbre of tenderness. You have to be stronger than this. You have to be as you were.
I don’t want to be like I was. I don’t want to do it anymore.
The work needs doing. All the tormented ones, the bad ones, returning and poisoning everything. God gave you this work because only you can set them free.
No. Not anymore.
Think! Think how much evil you have sent away. Corrupt souls, dirty souls, evil souls, greedy souls. How many of them is it now? Do you remember?
He could count them, although he didn’t need to. The number was already tallied; scored marks cut into a wooden post in his mind. Ninety-three.
Indeed. Ninety-three souls that will never return; never again extort, steal, lie, murder, cheat.
He’d killed ninety-three people. Mostly men, but a handful of women. And with every last one, he’d made sure to study them closely, look into their eyes as they died. With most of them, it had been a rotten, putrid coil of smoke that had wafted up from the extinguished candle. But with a few, just a few, there had been the faintest odour of redemption in the thin twist of rising smoke.
Yes . . . so few.
I don’t want to do thi
s anymore.
Don’t want? Don’t want?! The voice mimicked the whining mewl of a petulant child. Who says you get to choose?
I know that . . . I know that I can choose.
No! You were CHOSEN. When they let you go . . . Oh, yes, they understood what you were.
They, those Indians, the shaman. He remembered . . .
The sky above is so blue. The sun hot on my face. I’m trembling uncontrollably, hands lashed behind me around one of the poles they use to stretch and cure buffalo hides. They’re all dead now: Father, Olivia, Lawrence, the other families. A morning and an afternoon of slaughter right there before me. The whole tribe partaking in the ritual. The women of the tribe, it seems, are the best schooled in extracting the maximum pain, as they insert smouldering and sharpened sticks through clenched eyelids. Pushing and pushing them through ruined eyes until the wood snaps and splinters.
I’ve dirtied myself many times over. I’ve screamed and cried and fainted, over and over.
And now it’s so quiet. They’ve left me to the very last. An old man approaches, holding a smouldering strip of human hide in one shaking hand. The old man settles cross-legged in front of me, eyes studying me intently. The rest of the tribe are sitting down quietly, watching their elder.
I open my mouth to beg but can produce only a croak.
The old man shuffles closer on his rump. His nose, narrow, almost beak-like, inches from my face. I can hear air whistling into his nostrils. He’s smelling me. Surely the only smell here is my own shit, drying on the parched grass between my feet.
The old man’s eyes narrow, as if he’s discovered something that intrigues him. He holds the smouldering strip of hide up between us, chanting softly under his breath. It burns like a candle wick, an ash grey tip in the afternoon sunlight; but if it was dark, it would be a glowing ember.
I want to die. Please, something quick so I can join the others, wherever they are. It’s over for them now and I envy them that.
The old man reaches a thumb and forefinger to his mouth, licks them and then pinches the end of the strip of hide. I hear the slightest sizzle of spit as the ember is extinguished. He watches a twist of smoke drift, spin and vanish. The old man seems to read something in that. He nods slowly then reaches a hand out and pats my head gently, ruffling my hair with what seems like . . . affection.
I don’t die that day. The tribe adopt me. Only for a year. A hunting season passes, a winter passes; not enough time for me to learn much of their language. But I learn that a dog is called a chinpadda, the sun is hatat. That’s about all.
Eventually, one morning, the tribe encounters another train of wagons. I’m frightened I’ll witness another day like that one from nearly a year ago. But instead the old man approaches me, grasps my arm and walks me forward across the swaying grass towards the wagons. There are white men with guns raised warily. For a moment, I’m afraid both me and the old man are going to die in a hail of musket balls. But they see I’m a white boy and they refrain from firing.
The old man kneels beside me. There is no love between us. No bond. I can’t feel anything for this man who killed my family. But over the year, an understanding between us has developed. These people communicate not with writing, but with pictures. And I understand what the old man has shown me.
Father Sky sees only an imbalance in the white faces. Their world has become bad. This is why they flood in such great numbers across land that is not theirs. The old man presses a strip of hide into my hand. I look down and see it, painted, decorated, with what look like simple representations of faces. He says something and gently places his hand between my shoulders and pushes me forward towards the waiting wagons.
In all my years since, I’ve never understood what the old man actually said. But I am almost certain I now understand what he was telling me.
You were tested. Now test others.
A ticking clock echoes in a hallway thirty years later.
You don’t get to choose. You were chosen.
For a long while, the pig-voice fell silent. Argyll was dimly aware of the sounds coming through the open front door, the braying cough of a horse as it clopped by. He stood up, walked up the hallway towards the front door and gently pushed it to. It closed with a heavy thud that left him in a gloom lit only by the secondhand light coming through the open doorway to the morning room. On the breakfast table in there stood his pot of tea, his boiled egg, his toast, all long since gone cold.
That hateful, rasping cackle filled his head once more, and for a fleeting moment the voice, thin and reedy, reminded him of the old Indian shaman. But, of course, the words were now English.
I have an idea.
CHAPTER 48
1st October 1888 (3.00 pm), Whitechapel, London
It took her most of the afternoon to make her way back across London. Every jostled, harried minute of it wondering what she should do for the best. Stop the nearest copper? Walk into a police station and tell all? And who the hell was going to believe a squalid-looking creature as her, smelling as she did of her own drying urine and old tobacco?
A sobering thought silenced the panicked babbling in her head.
Prince Eddy. They need this to remain secret.
They. Gentlemen in secret clubs. The authorities.
And that chilling thought came with another, hot on its heels. They will want me and Cath dead.
It was gone four in the afternoon when her weary heels clacked onto the cobbles of Millers Court. It was quiet as usual. This time in the afternoon, the evening meals were already being prepared, wood burners stoked, paraffin hobs fired up, children called in off the street to help with the peeling, scraping and chopping, and the men, most of them still two or three hours away from the end of their working day.
She passed by a couple of young boys, hunkered over the bodies of several dozen rats which they had laid out like a platoon of soldiers on the pavement, bickering over how many each of them had caught. She knew their dirt-smudged faces, both annoying little brats with shaved heads like bullets and pink jug ears begging to be grabbed and roughly twisted. They were brothers. Lived next door to Marge’s lodging house.
‘Oi, love!’ said the older one. ‘’Ow much?’ He stood up and started air-humping like a dog on heat.
‘Piss off!’ she hissed as she hustled up the three steps and pushed the unlocked front door inwards.
Dirty little bastards.
The hallway was never lit. ‘I ain’t gettin’ rent off the ’allway, am I?’ was what Marge said. ‘Waste of bloody gas.’ Liz had only rented a room here for a few months. Long enough to know she’d rather lodge elsewhere. But Cath still kept her room because it was relatively cheap.
She closed the front door behind her and stepped across the creaking boards to tap lightly on what used to be Mary’s old door.
‘Mary? Love? You in there?’
She tried the handle. The door was locked. She knocked again. A hope had been growing in her as she’d hurried from one tram to another that maybe the girl had come across to their neck of the woods to see if she’d found out anything about that key. Perhaps she was in Cath’s room, talking to her?
She walked past another door on her left. She could faintly hear bumping going on and the bellows’ wheeze of a man grunting like a farmyard animal. A new girl must have moved in. A new girl getting some early trade in.
The next door was Cath’s. She rapped her knuckles lightly. ‘Cath? You in?’
She heard the muted scrape of shoes. Several quick steps and the door clicked and opened ajar. In the faint pall of light coming from the small bedroom window, she saw the outline of her friend’s head and shoulders.
‘Liz?’ Cath hissed.
‘Yeah.’
‘Thank, gawd. I was gettin’ so worried!’
Liz pushed the door inwards. ‘Cath! He is that killer! The crazy bastard nearly—’ Her eyes registered the man sitting on a stool beside the window. She stopped. Eyes wide.
‘Do
n’t fret! He’s some sort of copper,’ said Cath quickly. ‘It’s all right. We’re safe ’ere!’
‘Is this your friend?’ said the man. His eyes narrowed, peering into the dark. ‘Is this Mary Kelly?’ He looked nothing like a copper to Liz. Expensive clothes, polished shoes, neatly-trimmed moustache and sideburns. Not like any plain clothes copper she’d ever seen.
‘No, it’s me mate, Liz.’
He stood up, smiled, beckoned her in. ‘Relax, my dear, you’re quite safe. My name’s George. Catherine, here, has been telling me quite a remarkable story! That you may have, shall I say, stumbled upon the man who’s responsible for the Hanbury Street and Bucks Row killings? The chap the papers are calling “Jack the Ripper”?’
Cath nodded eagerly. ‘I told ’em about the body parts in ’is jam jar!’ Parts. Typical of Cath, in her excitement, exaggerating the story by one degree. ‘An’ that letter ’e wrote! That letter confessin’ to all of it!’
Liz would rather she hadn’t gushed everything out like that. She didn’t know the half of what was in that letter. Better perhaps that she didn’t.
‘So, you were also in this man’s room at The Grantham Hotel?’ asked the well-dressed gentleman. George. If that was his real name.
She nodded. ‘I was . . . yes.’
‘And do you also believe, like Catherine, that the room has been occupied by the murderer? This so called “Ripper” chap?’
Liz realised Cath had already told them too much for her to offer a guarded response. ‘He has and no mistake.’
‘And you know where he is right now?’
She nodded quickly. ‘I . . . I just come from where ’e’s staying. ’E nearly . . .’ She hesitated, but realised she’d given this man too much already to start being coy with the truth. ‘’E nearly killed me!’