Lost and Gone Forever

by Alex Grecian

  The doctor moved around and sat behind his desk. He indicated for Hammersmith to take the only other chair, but there was nowhere else to put the books that were stacked there, so Kingsley stood back up and they both leaned against the desk.

  “Is it a new case?”

  “Rather an old one, I’m afraid,” Hammersmith said. “It’s Walter Day.” Kingsley listened as Hammersmith filled him in on the fresh developments: the phone call, Sir Edward’s renewed determination, and the fact that Hammersmith was working with the police again. When Hammersmith had finished talking, Kingsley sat back down and stared at a corner of the ceiling, pursing his lips and moving them in and out, chewing over the information.

  Finally he focused his gaze on Hammersmith, who had waited patiently. Kingsley was impressed. Patience was not one of the younger man’s best qualities. “I’ve quite a lot to do here,” Kingsley said. “Five people on my tables right now. They deserve my attention.”

  “Of course,” Hammersmith said. He backed toward the open door. “I knew you were busy, but thought it would be foolish to pass up the opportunity to work with you again, however slim the chance.”

  Kingsley held up a hand to stop Hammersmith. “As I say, I’ve a lot to do, but none of it is as important as finding Walter. I’m ashamed to say I’d given him up for dead. If he’s alive, of course I must do anything I possibly can to help.”

  “Oh, that’s wonderful news. I haven’t made much progress over the last few months. Hell, I haven’t made any progress at all. I could use another pair of eyes, especially yours.”

  “What can I do?”

  “Well, on that point I’m not entirely sure. Inspector Tiffany is available to us in an advisory capacity, and so is the entire Murder Squad, I suppose. And Sergeant Kett, you know him?”

  “We’ve met.”

  “He’s waiting for us. Well, for me, but I hoped I’d be bringing you along. He’s at the house. The house where Walter disappeared.”

  “His old address.”

  “Yes,” Hammersmith said. “Just so. Kett’s going over the place again. Not as if it hasn’t been gone over.”

  “One never knows. Even a hair found along the skirting might be the one clue needed to break through.”

  “A hair.” Hammersmith sighed. “What about finger marks? Fingerprints? Whatever you want to call them, do you think they might be useful?”

  “I did think so,” Kingsley said. He closed his eyes. “When Walter disappeared, I went to that house and I looked for fingerprints. I looked for hair against the skirting, for blood, for footprints. I found nothing.”

  “I had no idea you’d even been there.”

  “Of course I was there. Walter was my . . . is my friend.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me you’d investigated?”

  “Why would I have? I didn’t find anything that might have helped you.”

  “Well, I suppose . . .”

  “Yes?”

  “I suppose it would have been good to know I wasn’t alone in the search.”

  31

  Walter Day had been awake for hours, staring at a dusty orange wedge of sunlight that reminded him of an earlier time. He was in the bottom of a large cart that had a steel frame and canvas sides, and his only view was of high roof beams and dust motes and that wedge of sun. He had no energy, and his vision refused to clear, so that when he held his hand up in front of his face he saw three versions of it. The light, however feeble, pierced his brain, the smell overpowered him, and the thought of what must have happened to bring him to this place was unbearably painful.

  He had delivered himself once again to Jack, and Jack had easily stripped him of his independence. Nothing Day did made any difference. Jack always won.

  The room was quiet and dim, despite that single orange wedge, and eventually Day gripped the metal frame of his ineffectual cage and pulled himself up. It was awkward, and he fell two or three times to the bottom of the loose canvas sling before he was able to throw his weight the right way to tip the cart over. He landed badly, crushing the fingers of his right hand between the frame and the hardwood floor. He flopped out and stuck his fingers in his mouth and looked all round him to see if anyone had heard and come running. But no one had. He was alone.

  Or at least he seemed to be alone. Jack might be hidden somewhere, watching him. But Jack might be anywhere at any time, and there was no longer any sense in fearing that. If the man wanted to show himself, he would, and there was nothing Day could do about it.

  In the wan half-light, Day could see that he was in some sort of combination workshop and warehouse. He assumed the canvas cart had been used to remove him from the Plumm’s office. The space was a large rectangle with a high ceiling, and each of the long walls was lined with benches and tables. There were bins beneath the tables, and the handles of saws and mallets were visible from where Day crouched, his throbbing fingers still in his mouth. Chisels and picks and short serrated knives hung from nails in the walls, and the floor was mottled with dark stains that had been bleached and mopped, and bleached and mopped again. A machine Day didn’t recognize was bolted to one end of the nearest bench. At the far wall was a stack of wooden blocks and planks, and a few of the benches held chunks of wood that were still in the process of transformation: into heads and hands and polished boxes complete with glass tops cut from enormous sheets that leaned against the sturdiest table in the corner. There were other canvas carts, perhaps a hundred of them shoved in random clusters round the tables, and a queue of dozens of silent female mannequins stood at attention behind Day, some of them missing hands and arms and heads, items still in progress, still waiting to be revealed within the big blocks of wood.

  He wondered what time it was. Despite the sunlight, nobody was at work; the half-finished carvings had been abandoned.

  The room was utterly quiet except for Day, who panted and sniffed and shuffled in place. Dust motes swam through the air around him like curious fish. Beneath the scents of sawdust and iron there was a subtle burnt odor caused by the friction of tools against heavy materials. And there was another scent, too. Fetid, sweet, and coppery. Day recognized it immediately. There was a dead body in the room with him. He hoped it was an animal, a squirrel or rabbit that had burrowed in and died there, unnoticed beneath a bench. But he knew better. Jack didn’t murder rabbits.

  He lowered himself to his hands and knees and crawled over to the wall. He peered down the queue of benches behind the bins. It was too dark to see all the way to the far wall, but there were no shapes that reminded him of a human body. He pulled himself up and sat on the end of a bench, waiting for his fingers to stop aching, waiting for his head to stop aching. He watched the orange wedge advance toward him from the high windows, dispelling the shadows. Eventually, he stood and walked slowly to the canvas carts jumbled in the corner. He rolled them out one at a time, pushing them away behind him, until he came across one that felt heavier than the others. He took a deep breath and looked down into it. It was filled at the top with a mass of loose bald mannequin heads, and he moved them to another empty cart. Under the first layer of heads was a shock of hair. He moved more heads until a woman’s face came into view. Her eyes were open and staring, her grey lips drawn back from her teeth in a hideous grin. His knees felt weak, and he braced himself against the cart’s frame until he could trust himself to walk, then he rolled the cart over near the benches and left it there. He went back to the corner and began again, moving one cart at a time until he found another heavy one. This one was filled with wooden hands and feet, and he didn’t bother to remove them but instead dug down, pawing them aside until he found a hand that gave under pressure from his fingertips. He pulled on it, and the wooden parts fell aside, revealing a second woman. Her torso was split open, and he could feel her ripping apart as he pulled. He stopped and moved her cart to the benches, parking it beside the first one.

 
He rested then, and took short breaths through his nose, staring down at his knees. When he was sure he wouldn’t vomit, he went back and began searching the canvas carts again. There was only a handful of them left, and he entertained a sad, small hope that they would all be empty. And they were. All but the last one, which was fitted perfectly into the corner, where Day was sure Jack had left it. There for him to find at the very end, a special surprise, a parting gift.

  There were no mannequin parts covering this body. Perhaps there hadn’t been time to cover Ambrose after transporting Day to the workshop. Or perhaps Jack had wanted to make sure Day didn’t overlook the boy’s body.

  Day didn’t realize he was crying until he saw moisture on Ambrose’s face. A single tear splashing on his cheek and rolling down, absorbed by the canvas side of the cart, as if it were the boy crying. Alive again for an instant.

  Day slumped against the wall and sank down. He buried his face in his hands and did not move until long after the orange wedge was swept away under a fresh yellow carpet of daylight.

  32

  When Hammersmith and Kingsley arrived at 184 Regent’s Park Road, they were astonished to see three police wagons and at least a dozen uniformed bobbies moving in and out of the house through the familiar blue door. A small crowd of neighbors had gathered at the periphery, and Hammersmith pushed through them, motioning for Kingsley to follow him. Sergeant Kett must have been watching for them because he immediately came bounding down the steps, still barking orders at the constables behind him.

  “One of you men get down here and control this lot.” Kett waved the back of his hand at the crowd, as if to push them away. “Move along,” he said. Nobody moved. Kett turned toward Hammersmith. “Good, you brought the doctor. Gonna need him in there.”

  “What’s happened?”

  “Ugly stuff, I’m afraid.” He was almost out of breath, and Hammersmith wondered whether it was from exertion or shock. “Just come on and you’ll see.”

  An angry buzz circulated through the crowd as Hammersmith and Kingsley were led up the steps and into the house.

  “Like as if they got a God-given right to see everything for themselves,” Kett said.

  A constable lifted a length of rope that was strung across the open front door, and the three of them scuttled beneath it into the house.

  “I see you’re using the kits I supplied,” Kingsley said, “to help keep the scene intact.”

  “Always do these days,” Kett said. He patted a pair of rubber gloves that were tucked into his belt. “Ain’t seen you much, though. Always that fellow Pinch who comes round.”

  Kett led the way through the entry and past the staircase. An aggressive cloying odor filled Hammersmith’s nostrils. The scent of decaying meat seemed to coat his tongue. He smacked his lips and nearly gagged. Across from the stairs, on their left, was the parlor, and Hammersmith peeked in as they passed the open door. He caught a glimpse of a man lying naked on the floor, his arms and legs spread. There was something wrong with the body, but he instinctively pulled his head back and kept walking, following Kett down a long passage to the kitchen. Behind him, he heard Kingsley gasp. Whatever had happened to the dead man in the parlor, it was enough to make the seasoned doctor uncomfortable.

  “Yeah,” Kett said. He didn’t turn around. “That’s bad enough in there, but the real show’s in here.”

  With that, they entered the kitchen. The room was dominated by a heavy burnished metal table. The six chairs around it had all been moved aside, and four of them were pushed up against a sideboard. A second dead man lay facedown on the table. His wrists and ankles were tied to the table legs, and the flesh of his back had been laid open, exposing his spine. The table was bowed beneath him, and a dry yellow puddle of plasma flaked in the breeze from the open back door. The bodies of two more men sat in the remaining chairs against the far wall. Their hands were raised above them and nailed to the wall, and their feet were nailed to the floor. All three men were nude, their clothes folded neatly and stacked on the sideboard. Next to the back door, above the two men in the chairs, four circles had been drawn on the wall in blue chalk. Beneath the circles was a message, also in blue chalk:

  EXITUS PROBATUR MR HAMERSMITH

  THEES ONES NEERLY DID ME, BUT FALED

  I LEFT YOU THE KIDNES BUT FOR THE ONE I ATE.

  ALL KARSTS WHO WER THERE HAVE PADE NOW BUT 2

  THE CROW AN THE WHITE KING.

  THE WIL RUE THE DAY THEY DO ME AS THEY DID.

  KIND REGARDS

  YOUR FRIND JACK

  Hammersmith took it all in quickly, then moved past Kett to the door and stepped through into the thin mist of the back garden. An ash tree loomed out of the fog, its branches hanging heavy over the tops of four pale chairs and a tiny round table. A veneer of lilac smothered the dead meat odor that followed Hammersmith out of the house. He sat in one of the chairs without bothering to dry it off and felt the accumulated moisture soak into the seat of his trousers. He didn’t move. After a moment, Kett joined him.

  “Rough,” Kett said.

  Hammersmith nodded.

  “You’ve seen it rough before, son.”

  “I have,” Hammersmith said. “But I still don’t like it. And there’s the message, too. The writing on the wall.”

  “Someone copying the Ripper’s work, you think?”

  “No,” Hammersmith said. “I think it is the Ripper. And I’m worried he’s trying to tell us that he’s killed Walter. That he’s been torturing Walter for a year and . . . Is he saying that Walter’s dead?” A sudden thought made Hammersmith jump up from the chair. “I saw the three men there, but the one in the parlor . . . I didn’t see his face. It wasn’t . . .”

  Kett shook his head. “Not one of them in there’s Walter Day. I checked that first thing.”

  “So this was all here . . .”

  “These dead men have been here for a week or two, I’d say. Few days, at least. Up to the doctor to say for sure, though. He’s workin’ on ’em right now. Set right in on ’em while you came out here.”

  “I should go back in.”

  “Do like I do and breathe into the cuff of your sleeve. Filters it out a bit.”

  “I’ll go you one better,” Hammersmith said. He pulled his shirt up over his mouth and nose. His sleeves snugged up under his armpits and he couldn’t lower his arms all the way, but he could breathe well enough. He followed Kett back into the kitchen.

  Kingsley looked up from the table where he was examining the second body. “I thought we’d lost you, lad.”

  “Needed a moment’s all,” Hammersmith said. He was breathing hard now, warm air gusting down across his chest.

  “Ah,” Kett said, “the private sector’s been too easy on you.” He grinned, then made a face and stuck his nose into the end of his sleeve.

  “Let’s get some more windows open in here,” Kingsley said.

  “On it,” Kett said. He hurried away, shouting at his men as he went.

  Hammersmith kept his distance from the table. “What do you think of this?”

  “There’s a lot to deal with,” Kingsley said. “A lot to try to put into some kind of context. I’m trying to piece together how many men were here. You’ve been in this house and examined it, and so have I. How long do you think the killer had to do his work here?”

  “It’s been at least two months since I was in here,” Hammersmith said.

  “Aye, more than that for me. It makes me wonder if whoever did this was watching us, waiting to make sure the place was empty. Unless it’s sheer chance. It’s possible someone came upon the abandoned house and seized on an opportunity for mischief.”

  Hammersmith pointed to the message on the wall. Kingsley looked up at it and nodded.

  “Fair point. That’s clearly directed at you, even if your name’s been spelled incorrectly. The men who did this—I�
��m assuming they were men. Or maybe one man. Women tend to be less messy when they kill—they knew you visited here on occasion and they wanted to get your attention.”

  “I think we both know who did this. There was only one killer here.”

  Kingsley straightened up and stepped back from the table. “You mean . . .”

  “Of course it was him. Of course it was Jack.”

  Kingsley stared at the message for a long moment. He nodded and turned away. “I believe it.”

  “You do?”

  “Of course. The evidence is too great to ignore. The hard part is figuring out how one man was capable of overpowering four others.”

  “But Sir Edward doesn’t believe Jack exists.”

  “Sir Edward knows he existed, but he doesn’t like to think about Jack. He’s a military man. The concept of evil is too huge for him to conceive of. He thinks of murder as an exercise in motivation and reward. In his philosophy, people only kill because they want something.”

  “Jack wants revenge. That’s motive, don’t you think?”

  “It’s more than that. There are things in the air and under the dirt and even dwelling within our own bodies, things that will kill us if we aren’t constantly diligent. But we can’t see them. They’re invisible predators.”

  “Jack the Ripper isn’t invisible.”

  “He may as well be. He operates on society like those germs and bacteria do on our bodies. You can’t go after him the way you do every other criminal.”

  “I can,” Hammersmith said. “I really can. You romanticize him, I think. But I’ll treat him like any ordinary criminal because he doesn’t deserve better than that. I’m going to find him. Because he’s a man, not some demon or figment. I’ll find him just as soon as I find Walter.”

  “You may be able to do both things at once.” Kingsley stepped away from the table and walked to the kitchen’s back wall, where he stared up at the message there. “It’s no accident that he’s left these men here for us to find, rather than dumping them in some Whitechapel alley. He’s taunting us. Well, he’s taunting you, actually.”