Legacy of the Ripper

by kindels

  As he was led from the dock to be taken to the cells below the court to await transfer to a secure unit, Jack waved to his parents who had sat through every minute of his trial, his face a mask of tears that mirrored those of his mother, Jennifer. Tom Reid tried to appear stoical and strong for his son and gave him a cheery wave in return, mouthing, "we love you" as Jack disappeared down the thirteen steps that led to the corridor housing the cells.

  Jack was transferred later that day to Ravenswood, where of course, my story began and where today I spend much of my time in the company of the highly personable and yet, according to the courts, criminally insane young man who so viciously slaughtered three innocent young women during that awful autumn in Brighton.

  Under normal circumstances it is highly likely that my tale would end right here and yet recent events which have occurred far from these walls have led to the strangest and most baffling twist in the tale of Jack Reid. They have also led me to believe in the possibility that all may not be quite as it seems in the case of the young man with the fixation for blood and the odd tale of a mystery man in an empty house on a hill. I can only relate the facts to you as they were reported to me and allow you to share with me in the shattering and astounding conclusion to the story of Jack Reid and the case of The Brighton Ripper.

  Chapter 32

  A Shadow of Doubt

  So, here we are, almost back at the point where my recollections of these events began. I say almost, because the greatest mystery of all in the tangled affair surrounding the life and deeds of Jack Thomas Reid only truly began to unravel a few short weeks ago.

  My own sessions with Jack had fallen into something of a routine. He would always be polite, deferent almost, as though respecting me a little more than he would someone who wasn't a psychiatrist. He often explained that my position put me on a par with his late uncle Doctor Robert Cavendish and his ancestors who had all practised the art of psychiatry. In some ways I'd begun to feel that Jack virtually hero-worshipped me. He wanted to please me, that much soon became evident in our meetings and he would do all he could to try and put me at my ease while I was with him. He assured me on more than one occasion that what he'd done in the past was literally just that, the past.

  "I thought you said at your trial and under interrogation by the police, that you never killed anyone, Jack. Are you now saying that you did?" I asked him one day, following one of his assurances.

  "Doctor Ruth," he replied. "I know I said I didn't do it, and I firmly believed that to be the truth, but the police, the jury, the psychiatrists, the prosecution and everyone else says that I did. Even you and Doctor Roper have told me that I can only begin to get better if I can admit to you and to myself that I committed the murders. I'm coming round to the belief that maybe I did do those terrible things, because it was all there, you see, in the journal, just as my uncle Robert warned me and I fell under it's spell and must have done those things while I was under the control of Jack the Ripper, or at least, under the control of the power of his words."

  I still believed that the journal was a figment of his imagination, so I found his sudden admission to be a little confusing. Was he still mixing up the truth and the fiction of his situation? That's what I thought at the time, that this was part of Jack's psychosis, his inability to distinguish between the reality and the fiction in his past.

  Things began to change quite suddenly one morning, when I received a telephone call from one of the detectives who'd investigated the Brighton murders. Detective Sergeant Carl Wright told me that he'd become aware of some facts that might throw new light on the case, and he and a 'consultant' as he described her, named Alice Nickels, needed to come to Ravenswood to speak to me and if possible, to Jack Reid himself. Wright assured me that he had the full backing and permission of his own superior Detective Inspector Holland, who would be happy to confirm the fact in writing, which I knew would be required in order for Wright to conduct any interrogation of Jack.

  I was as anxious as Carl Wright to find out as much as I could about the case and about Jack in particular and I agreed to his request, making arrangements for him to visit me at Ravenswood three days later, allowing time for Mike Holland to send the appropriate paperwork, which duly arrived by first class mail the following morning.

  I had the feeling that Sergeant Wright felt there were discrepancies in the case against Jack, not from anything he said directly to me, but simply from the tone of his voice. Call me psychic if you like, but I wasn't far wrong. Warm sunshine bathed the surrounding countryside on the morning of Carl Wright and Alice Nickels's arrival at Ravenswood. Barely a cloud decorated the clear blue sky and the singing of birds in the trees that gave Ravenswood an air of quiet tranquillity allowed for little thought of violent murder and blood lust and yet sadly, such thoughts were never far from the minds of many of the inmates at the facility, a fact that I and many of the staff were forced to face every day of our working lives. Ravenswood may look like a quiet country hotel from the outside, particularly on such days, but it is, after all, a secure hospital and in days gone by the word 'Bedlam' could easily have been applied to my place of work.

  Sergeant Wright introduced Miss Nickels as being a leading member of The Whitechapel Society 1888 at which point I remembered her name being mentioned in one of the police reports that had found its way into Jack's file. She'd also testified at the trial as an 'expert witness.' She had assisted the police in their investigations in Brighton and had been instrumental in piecing together the timetable of events that led them to their eventual apprehension of Jack so close to the scene of the last murder. She was a 'ripperologist', an expert on the Jack the Ripper murders of 1888. She had apparently worked out that Jack had been following the timetable and locations of the original killings by placing a map of Brighton over a grid plan of the original Whitechapel murders, thereby locating the site of what turned out to be the third murder and so to Jack's subsequent arrest. Now, it appeared she had new information that she, Holland and Carl Wright felt should be presented to me, as Jack's physician.

  "You must understand, Doctor Truman," she began, "that when I first offered my help to Inspector Holland and Sergeant Wright, I held no preconceived ideas as to who the killer may have been. I simply presented what I felt were a series of facts that may have helped them to apprehend the man responsible for those murders. At that time I had no personal axe to grind, or evidence to link anyone, Jack Reid included, to the murders of the three girls."

  "Yes, I understand that, Miss Nickels, but what has your visit today got to do with Jack Reid? He's already been convicted of the murders, and there seems little doubt that he did it, or is there?"

  "Ah, well, you see, Doctor, that's my problem. At the time we were all so busy congratulating ourselves that the chance of someone else being involved didn't really enter into our minds, despite Jack's insistence that others were responsible for the murders."

  "And now you're going to tell me that such a possibility may exist, is that right?"

  "Indeed I am. I also have to tell you that Sergeant Wright here and his superior officer, Inspector Holland, both believe that my new information may have some credibility. What we need is to present certain facts to you and to Jack Reid and go on from there if we feel we may have a case of a miscarriage of justice on our hands."

  "If that's so, shouldn't Inspector Holland be here himself?" I asked.

  "Inspector Holland is in Warsaw," Carl Wright interjected, "following up what we believe may be information that has great relevance to the case."

  "Warsaw?" I spoke in surprise.

  "Not only that, but Sergeant Wright here is a fellow student of the Jack the Ripper murders and is the ideal man to be present if and when we have the opportunity to speak to Reid," said Nickels.

  "Look, will one of you please tell me what this is actually about?" I asked. "What has Warsaw got to do with the case? Why do you think there may be something unsound about Jack's conviction? Do you mean to say the
re might actually be a grain of truth in his story after all?"

  The questions tripped off my tongue. I wanted to know why they were here, and I wanted to know sooner rather than later. I had to get them to come to the point, and quickly. A bright shaft of sunlight poured in through the window like liquid gold, flooding the face of Alice Nickels who raised a hand to shield her eyes from the glare. I rose and closed the blinds a little. Nickels thanked me and then glanced at Carl Wright and on receiving his nod of ascent, she began to relate her tale as I retook my seat behind my desk.

  "Well, let's just say that I had certain reservations about Jack Reid's guilt even before the trial."

  "You did?"

  "Yes. It troubled me that he'd been caught so easily, so sloppily if you like. The first two murders were 'Jack the Ripper' to a tee. There were no witnesses, no forensic evidence, absolutely nothing to link the killer to his victims. Those murders were the work of a cold, calculating, superbly intelligent and highly organised individual who'd gone out of his way to recreate the Ripper murders to the enth degree. In the case of Mandy Clark, however, everything seemed wrong to me. Jack Reid's fingerprints were all over the murder weapon, all over the house and he'd obviously been high on drugs at the time of his arrest. Surely, if copying the original Ripper crimes was so important to him he wouldn't have allowed himself to get into such a state and then leave such a welter of evidence at the scene to incriminate himself. Unfortunately, there was nothing in his story that could be corroborated at the time despite Carl and his boss doing all they could to check out his story. Before you ask why I said nothing of this at the trial, let me tell you that it would have done no good whatsoever. I'm a solicitor by trade, Doctor Truman, and I know the law. If I'd aired my thoughts in court, at best it may have been seen as an attempt to throw doubt on the prosecution case through pure speculation, at worst it would have been instantly rejected by the judge as being nothing more than my own personal conjecture, which to be fair, it was.

  "Some weeks after the trial Carl Wright and I met at a meeting of The Whitechapel Society up in London, where we discussed the Reid case. Carl confided in me that he held similar thoughts to my own and together we approached Inspector Holland with a request that we be allowed to delve a little further into investigating Reid's story.

  "Inspector Holland pointed out that the case was officially closed and though he agreed to some extent with the scenario that Carl and I pointed out to him, the police couldn't devote their resources to a full investigation. However, he did agree that Carl could liaise with me in his own time and if anything useful came up he'd look into it."

  "And something did&come up, I mean?" I said, giving Nickels the chance to draw breath.

  "Well, yes, sort of, though at first it was a tenuous link at best, but a link nonetheless. When I thought the whole case through, I thought it unlikely that Jack Reid would build a fictional scenario around a real person. You see, this young man called Michael really existed, that much was confirmed by the police, though he'd disappeared well before the trial. Why, I thought to myself would Reid interweave his story about 'The Man' with one about this Michael unless there was some basis in fact for his story? Please don't say that it could have been part of his psychosis. I know that, but I read all I could on the subject and it would have been far more logical if he'd created a wholly fictional tale. Also, he knew where Michael lived, though of course the police at the time of the investigation said that was probably because Michael had been his drugs supplier.

  "Anyway, I decided to focus on Michael and with Carl's help we set about trying to locate the elusive drug pusher."

  "And, did you find him?"

  "At first it was as though he'd disappeared into thin air. The lack of a surname didn't help, and then Carl, during one of his off-duty expeditions into the seedy side of town found a very old customer of his who remembered him once being known as Devlin."

  Carl Wright took over at this point, giving Alice Nickels the opportunity to take a breather.

  "The junkie, who's name is Taylor, was one of Michael's earliest 'regulars' and though he couldn't swear that Devlin was actually Michael's name, it was a starting point for me. Anyway, I dug deeper and found that a James Michael Devlin had been arrested in Hastings a couple of years ago for small-time drug peddling and that seemed to confirm it. The more I searched, however, the less I found. No-one by the name of James or Michael Devlin had been arrested anywhere in the country as far as records showed, so it was obvious that he wasn't in police custody somewhere unless he'd changed his name. Then, we got a break. Alice had surmised that if the man Reid had spoken of really existed and if he exercised such power and control over Michael, it may have been possible that the man had used Michael to assist in his disappearance from the country and then disposed of him."

  The more Wright went on, the more I could see where he was going with their theory. I was becoming enthralled by what he had to say and waited for him to continue, which he did following a short pause.

  "I spoke with my boss again, who by then had come around even more to my idea that Reid may have been set up and he authorised a check on possible murder victims or unusual deaths or apparent suicides of young men, not just in the UK, but anywhere in the European Union. We have access to far more information on such things than we used to have and eventually we hit pay dirt."

  "You found him, didn't you? You found Michael?" I said, sure now that that was what Wright was about to tell me. "That's why Inspector Holland is in Warsaw, isn't it?"

  "Yes," Alice Nickels rejoined the conversation. "Last week Carl received an e-mail from a Polish police detective who'd responded to Holland's request for information. Warsaw, of course, stands on the Vistula River, and it appears that the body of a young man was discovered on the banks of the river a few weeks ago. It was badly decomposed and appeared to have been in the water for some time, but the approximated weight of the victim, the hair colour, and the general description that Holland had circulated made the detective think that the man may have been the one we were looking for, especially when combined with the other news he had to impart."

  "Precisely," said Wright. "Listen, Doctor, our chief wouldn't have let Inspector Holland go jetting off to Poland just because they found a body that might be the body of one of the men Jack Reid said were really responsible for the murders he was tried for."

  "So, why did they let him go?"

  "Because of the other bodies," said Alice Nickels.

  That was it. They had me and I had to know the rest.

  "What other bodies?" I asked impatiently.

  Sergeant Wright took up the tale once again.

  "It wasn't just the bodies; it was the timing and the locations that did it. At first we were sceptical of the chances of the man being Michael. His clothes, or what remained of them, all had English labels, but that could have been a coincidence. Many Poles live and work in England and he could have been a native of Poland who'd done just that and then gone home. But, as well as the manner of his death, the other bodies confirmed a lot of what Alice and I had suspected."

  "What other bodies?" I almost screamed at the policeman in my need to hear what he had to tell me.

  "Any chance of some coffee, Doctor?" he asked by way of reply. "I could do with something to wet my whistle before I tell you what we really came to relate."

  My frustration was liable to boil over any second, but I managed to retain my air of professional calm as I lifted the phone and asked my secretary to bring in three mugs of coffee.

  "Now, sergeant, will you please tell me about these other bodies?"

  Wright looked at Alice Nickels, who smiled a knowing smile at him, and nodded. As he was about to begin, Tess, my secretary, knocked and entered the office with a tray containing coffee for the three of us plus a thoughtfully well-stacked plate of assorted biscuits. Wright held himself in check as Tess placed the tray on my desk and withdrew from the office. As the door closed quietly behind her, Sergean
t Carl Wright took a deep breath and as I looked intently into his eyes, ready to hang on his every word, he began his strange telling of the events in Warsaw that had led him and Alice Nickels to my office that day.

  Chapter 33

  Alice Nickels Investigates

  "I already had my own doubts, as I've told you," Wright began, "and I continued to bug Mike Holland as the weeks after the trial went on. Something about the case just didn't fit in my mind and when I met Alice at the most recent meeting of The Whitechapel Society and we put our heads together, those doubts simply grew until I was sure that Reid's story just might have some truth to it. When I told Mike Holland of Alice's thoughts, he was sympathetic as I've intimated but he wanted more. As I hadn't the time to do it, I asked Alice if she'd like to conduct some research into the affair, which she did, with surprising results."

  "And?" I asked impatiently. Wright nodded to Alice Nickels who took up the tale.

  "Well, I already believed that whoever was behind the killings was not only clever, but probably severely mentally deranged, as well. Sorry if that's the wrong term to use, Doctor, but it's the way I thought of him. I've already told you that Jack Reid's behaviour after the Mandy Clark killing was just so markedly different from what we expected after the first two killings that I had grave doubts as to his guilt. Now, it follows that if he isn't the killer, so the possibility has to exist that his story is true. My problem was in what way would I go about proving or disproving my theory. Then I had an idea. What, I thought to myself, would I have done if I'd been the real killer and knew that my time in Brighton was up, as the police had caught on to my scheme? The answer, stupid as it may seem, was easy. I'd go somewhere else to complete the series of re-creations."

  "But surely," I said, "That would spoil the look of things. I mean the geography of the killings and so on, as you pointed out at the trial?"