The Harvest Man

by Alex Grecian

  He jolted awake and was surprised to discover that he was still on the bus and that his hands were empty. No scissors. Fiona was staring at him, a strange look on her face. The older gentleman next to her glanced up, annoyed, from his newspaper, made a great show of refolding it to a different page, then went back to reading. The little family on Fiona’s other side had all fallen asleep, the baby held tight in the crook of its mother’s elbow, the little girl slack-jawed, drooling on her mother’s arm. Hammersmith motioned to Fiona and she got up, made her unsteady way across the aisle, and sat beside him.

  “Are you all right?”

  “I’m fine,” Hammersmith said. “A bad dream, that’s all.”

  “You shouted something just before you woke up,” Fiona said. She appeared to have forgotten that she was cross with him.

  “What did I say?”

  “I’m afraid I couldn’t make it out.”

  “Doesn’t matter. It came to me while I was asleep.”

  “What came to you?”

  “Listen, when we were separated at the bazaar . . .” Hammersmith hesitated.

  “Yes?”

  “You got ahead of me on the steps there and someone bumped into me.”

  “Did he hurt you? Is it your chest?”

  “No,” Hammersmith said. “No, nothing like that. It was a man, but I never saw him. I mean, I didn’t see his features. He was already moving away from me, going up the stairs as I was going down. But he said something to me. Sort of whispered it in my ear.”

  “What did he say?”

  “He just said one word and was gone, and I didn’t understand it when he said it to me, but I dreamed it just now. In the dream I heard what he said. And I think it’s true. I think it’s what he actually said to me there in the bazaar on the stairs.”

  Fiona nodded impatiently. “Right. And what did he say?”

  “What he said wasn’t as important as who he was. His voice was . . . I’d heard his voice before. You’ve heard it, too, back then, back when he stabbed me, but I didn’t realize who he was until he was gone. Actually, I didn’t realize it until just now when I dreamed him up.”

  “Nevil, you’re frightening me. If you don’t explain yourself right now, I’m going to get off this bus and leave you here and never speak to you again.”

  “Fiona, it was him. He must have followed us when we went to see Goodpenny.”

  “Him.” She said it as a statement. He could see in her eyes that she understood exactly who he meant.

  They said it together: “Jack.”

  He nodded.

  “You saw Jack?”

  “No,” Hammersmith said. “I mean, yes, but I didn’t see him properly, you know. Just the back of one side of him and then he was gone amidst all the other people. I never would have found him, even if I’d realized who he was right away and given chase. I don’t know, maybe if I’d grabbed his arm before he could . . .”

  “But he said something to you?”

  “Just one word. He said, ‘Slowly.’”

  Fiona slumped against the back of the seat and silently mouthed the word in the direction of the old man’s newspaper:

  Slowly.

  32

  Day moved DI Wiggins’s work to one side on his desktop and picked up a pile of papers from the archive box. He set the files in front of him and began sorting through them.

  There were two killers in London, possibly three. The Harvest Man was a known quantity, even if little was known about him. The police, most of whom were out scouring the streets for him even now, were aware that the man was small and thin, that he crept into attics and killed sleeping victims. They knew that he was likely to be in someone’s house at that very moment, either preparing to kill come nightfall or living with the aftermath of some recent prey. Day had no doubt that at some point, hopefully soon, they would find the right house and they would catch him. The kind of killer the Harvest Man represented, though clever and methodical, was also a danger to himself and his own freedom. He was unable or unwilling to deviate from his set pattern of crimes and would eventually be caught because of that pattern. He didn’t just mutilate people’s faces, he spent time with them, posed them in family settings. Day wondered if he had been frightened away from Robert and Simon’s house when he had realized the boys were missing. Otherwise he might still be there.

  The other killer was Jack the Ripper, and he presented a far greater danger because there was no pattern, no rhyme or reason, to anything he did. He operated according to a design that only he could see, one that made sense only to him. And Day was not convinced that the three women killed in the East End had anything to do with Jack. At least, not directly. For Jack to return to a pattern he’d long since given up seemed wrong. It flew in the face of everything Day thought he knew about the man.

  All of which might mean that there was a third killer at large. And, if so, Nevil Hammersmith’s cuff link might be a clue to that third killer’s identity. It was a huge leap of logic for Day to take and he knew it, but his hunches often turned out right. Dr Kingsley, that paragon of rational thought, believed in Day’s hunches, and that gave him the confidence to shirk his duties for the afternoon and sift through old files on the off chance he could help stop a killer the rest of the police didn’t even know existed.

  Even sitting, the muscles in his injured leg throbbed, and he concentrated on the files in front of him, trying to ignore the pain. Whoever had killed the three prostitutes was either mimicking Jack’s methods or celebrating them. Or perhaps the murderer thought he was Jack. Day had encountered enough delusional killers during his time with the Murder Squad to know he shouldn’t rule anything out until they’d caught the culprit and heard his story.

  The Yard had adopted the Bertillon system many years before, recording all of a suspect’s pertinent physical data whenever an arrest was made: height, weight, hair color, eye color, moles, scars, and tattoos, et cetera. A man might change his hair color and his weight, but he couldn’t disguise the color of his eyes or remove a tattoo. With enough information in the hands of the police, cross-referenced properly, criminals who had been arrested once were easier to catch again. Day had begun adding alienist information to these files as well, writing in elements of motive and mind-set whenever those details were available to him. Just as a man couldn’t rearrange the moles on his skin, he was unlikely to change his point of view. Most people were set in their ways and this made them prone to repeating themselves.

  As Day worked his way through the files, working from most recent arrests backward through the early part of the year, he paid close attention to the names of perpetrators and took notes regarding the crimes they’d committed in the past. He pulled out the records of anyone with the initials A-R and made a separate stack in his lap. He wasn’t especially thorough, since Hammersmith’s cuff link wasn’t necessarily a clue at all; he just sped through the archive box, pulling arrest files for anyone that seemed reasonably likely. At the end of two hours, he had a stack of five reports in his lap. He put the discarded files back in the box and closed the lid on it, set it on the floor next to his desk, and moved his small stack of paperwork to the blotter, where he could give them a more in-depth read-through.

  The third report down in the stack gave him cause for excitement. But he set it aside and continued reading until he’d given all five the attention he thought they deserved. In the end, he set the other four files on top of the box, to be put away later, and picked up the file he’d set aside. A boxful of suspects, narrowed down to a single man.

  He smiled and grabbed his stick, stood stiffly, and got his balance. He put on his jacket and hat and took the file with him as he left the building, anxious to find Hammersmith and show him what he’d found. He was surprised to discover that flat grey clouds had rolled in while he was at his desk, obscuring the sun and threatening rain. It crossed his mind that he ou
ght to replace his makeshift walking stick with a sturdy umbrella, something that could do double duty and help keep the weather off him.

  He was so preoccupied that he failed to notice the figure waiting across the street from the Yard, a man who followed along after Day, easily matching the inspector’s deliberate gait.

  33

  Henry was hot and out of breath and so he stepped out the front door for a bit of fresh air. The policeman who always waited there smiled at him and held up his umbrella to cover them both.

  “Would you like a cigarette?”

  “No, thank you,” Henry said. “Dr Kingsley says cigarettes aren’t for gentlemen.”

  “He does, does he? Well then, I suppose I must not be a gentleman, because I’m going to go ahead and have a smoke.”

  Henry held the umbrella for him while the policeman lit his cigarette and took a deep drag on it.

  “Ah, that hits the spot on a miserable day like this, doesn’t it?”

  “I’m Henry.”

  “Yes. My name is Augustus. Augustus McKraken. It’s good to meet you, Henry.”

  They shook hands.

  “I’ve seen you round here,” Augustus said. “You’re a big chappie.”

  Henry nodded, unsure what he ought to say. He already knew he was big.

  “Tell me, Henry, do you see anything under that tree across the way? Anybody behind it?”

  Henry squinted into the rain. “No,” he said. “Is somebody hiding?”

  “I think someone has been hiding there, but I don’t see him now. My eyes are not what they once were and this rain makes it hard to see far.”

  “Nobody’s there.”

  “Good. You know, I won’t always be here.”

  “Where will you go?”

  “I don’t know. Back to my home, I suppose.”

  “Do you have a nice home? I like my home. It’s very small, but I fit inside it.”

  “That’s good,” Augustus said. “What I’m getting at . . . Your Inspector Day’s a busy man. He won’t always be here, either.”

  “Where will he go?” The cigarette smoke was getting in Henry’s eyes and making them water.

  “Well, I don’t know. But he might be gone and there are bad people out there. One in particular that worries me.” Augustus McKraken waved his hand to take in the entire street and perhaps the city beyond it. Perhaps the whole world. Henry wasn’t sure how much of everything one sweep of the hand was meant to indicate.

  “Mr Day catches the bad people.”

  “Yes. I used to do his same job. But what I’m saying . . . I’m saying if he isn’t here. If he’s gone. Well, you seem to get on well with the family.”

  “Mrs Day’s nice.”

  “She is indeed. You take care of her. And you take care of those children. You keep anything bad from happening to them, do you hear?”

  Henry was confused. “Mr Day will take care of them.”

  Augustus seemed to be frustrated, but then he smiled and nodded. “All right. You’re quite correct and I’m just very tired. Yes, Mr Day will take care of his own family. But if you get the opportunity to help him . . . A man your size can be a great help. You can protect the women and children.”

  “Yes, sir,” Henry said. “I’m going to go back inside now.”

  Augustus nodded at him. He threw his cigarette down and ground it beneath his heel. Henry left him there and escaped back into the dry, brightly lit house. Augustus seems like a nice man, but he must be confused, Henry thought. Mr Day would never go away and leave his family.

  34

  Hammersmith looked up at the low dark clouds that were moving fast over the tops of the buildings on Piccadilly. A raindrop hit him squarely in the eye and he reacted, then felt another hit the back of his neck.

  “Starting to rain,” he said.

  Fiona didn’t respond. She was craning her neck, looking all round them at the mouth of every alley and the gloomy back of every vestibule in every doorway. Looking for Jack.

  “He’s not there,” Hammersmith said.

  “Who?”

  “We wouldn’t see him if he was there. And if we did see him, we wouldn’t recognize him. We’ve never glimpsed his face.”

  “Just the same, I think I’d know him.”

  Hammersmith understood what she meant. Saucy Jack radiated an aura of evil that seemed physical. But Hammersmith knew it was nonsense, a feeling generated by countless nightmares and waking fears. There was no such thing as an aura of evil.

  Another drop of rain spattered against Hammersmith’s shoulder and he reached out to take Fiona’s hand, then thought better of it and shoved his hands into his pockets. He jerked his head in a southerly direction.

  “It’s up this way,” he said.

  “I know,” Fiona said. She came with him, moving quickly but watching over her shoulder.

  “Shouldn’t be far.”

  “Right around the corner,” she said.

  They trotted along the footpath beside the road and turned east when they hit Jermyn Street. Hammersmith could see St James’s Square between the tailors’ businesses, the milliners’ shops, and the catchall emporiums with their displays of women’s clothing, men’s bespoke suits, and children’s fashions. Beyond the square, he knew, was the larger park, and beyond that . . .

  “We’re right near the Yard now,” he said. He immediately regretted the words. They sounded pathetic, as if he yearned for little more than a glance at his former workplace. Still, he couldn’t seem to stop talking. “The old place, I mean. They’ll be moving soon.” This sounded even worse. The Murder Squad would, of course, be moving without him. He would never have an opportunity to work in the new building on the Victoria Embankment. He winced and silently ordered himself to shut up.

  He glanced at Fiona. She was looking up at him and he hoped it wasn’t pity he saw in her eyes. She looked quickly away.

  “That’s it there,” she said. She pointed ahead, through the now steady shower of slow fat raindrops, and Hammersmith saw a sign for PARKS AND SONS, HATTERS. They ran for it as the sky opened up and they jumped through the big glass door, laughing and shaking their heads, their damp hair sending water flying three feet in every direction. Hammersmith noted that the hatter must be doing well for himself to have afforded so much plate glass at the front of the shop.

  The inside of the place was dim and dignified: Hats hung on pegs that covered every wall, there were shelves full of hat blocks of every size, bolts of felt scattered across a long cluttered counter, spools of ribbons, and bins of some strange earth-colored dust. Hammersmith guessed the powder must be used to season hats in some way. A door opened at the other side of the room and a man came through it, presumably the hatter himself. He was perhaps twenty years younger than his friend Mr Goodpenny and was wearing an American-style wide-awake hat. Hammersmith had only seen the likes of it in books and the wide brim would have seemed absurd on anyone else, but the whole thing looked like it had been crafted specifically for this man’s head. And, of course, it must have been. Parks (if it was Parks) adjusted his spectacles on the bridge of his nose and peered at them, then broke into a huge friendly smile and held out his arms.

  “Well, look at you,” he said. “I’d say it’s started to rain, hasn’t it? You’re a sight. Come, I’ve a fire going in the back and I’ve just put tea on. Warm up, dry off.”

  They followed him back through the inner door into a room that was perhaps half the size of his showroom. He pointed at two low mismatched chairs in front of the hearth, where a crackling fire lent the room an inviting glow. Parks left them and went through yet another door. They heard him murmuring something to another person, but Hammersmith couldn’t make out the words. A few moments later, a girl roughly Fiona’s age brought out a tray heaped with teacups and scones and pots of clotted cream and raspberry jam. The hatter came beh
ind her, carrying crockery.

  “Sit,” he said, “sit. You haven’t sat yet? Here . . .” He put the plates and cups he was holding on a low table and hurried back through the door, emerging seconds later with two big soft towels, which he handed to them. Hammersmith dried his hair. The towel smelled clean and felt warm against his face, as if it had recently been hanging by the fire. When they were sufficiently dry, the girl took the towels from them and they sat. The hatter pulled up a third chair and sat between them, taking the closest spot to the hearth, and the girl left them.

  “My daughter,” he said.

  “You’re Mr Parks, I take it,” Hammersmith said.

  “The very same.”

  “Your sign out front says ‘Parks and Sons,’” Fiona said. “Does your daughter work with you as well?”

  “She does indeed,” Parks said. “And she’s turning into a better hatmaker than I am. My son’s too young. Still in school.”

  “You’ve only one son?”

  Parks looked confused for a moment and then realization dawned and he smiled again. “Ah, yes, that sign is misleading. I have one son and one daughter. But I’ve got to compete with the bigger shops around here. They’re more established, been making hats for a century or more, passing the trade down through families. My business doubled overnight when I hung the new sign and claimed more children than I actually have.”

  He turned to Hammersmith and frowned. “Now, let’s talk about the proper hat for you. Do you always wear your hair so long around the ears?”

  Hammersmith shook his head. “Oh, I don’t need a new hat, thank you,” he said.