His plan was simple, perhaps naively so; he would break into Sir Robert’s office to find any remaining evidence against Tumblety, most likely only the arts bag. Dressing as planned he left he lodgings without any of the local people batting any eyelid, all of them familiar with him and his profession. The only thing that seemed at odds with the norm was seeing him hail and board a hansom cab further south in Bakers Row.
“Whitehall please, driver.” He confidently instructed the cold looking driver perched on his exposed padded leather saddle sporting a thick blanket over his knees. The gaunt and pale old man driving the cab nodded in acceptance and wiped away mucus dripping from his nose with the back of the sleeve of his crop bearing hand. He cracked the crop and the cab rumbled off along the cobbles in the now dark gas lit East End streets.
The journey took a little over twenty minutes; the cab pulling up in Whitehall just a little way beyond Whitehall Place and Great Scotland Yard. Ford jumped down and paid the driver his fare and watched blowing warm air in into his hands as the cab drove off. It had become bitterly cold following sunset and he wished he had brought his police beat duty cape or an overcoat to deal with the drop in temperature, especially pronounced with the proximity of the location to the river. Still, he would be outside for a minimal period of time as he began to walk briskly along Whitehall to turn into Whitehall Place leading up to Scotland Yard and to the entrance to the hallowed Metropolitan Police headquarters located there. As he walked towards the red brick and white edged building he considered the international reputation that it commanded for its crime fighting prowess and right now how undeserved it seemed in the face of such illicit corruption. If he pursued his police career beyond this night he vowed that he would never let such practices and associations influence his resolve or investigations in which he embarked.
He reached the steps in the deathly quiet early Sunday evening street to see the reception desk inside the double wooden doors illuminated by a desk lamp but the rest of the open hall in darkness. Few officers came and went; he decided that he would show out entering in uniform so he walked past to try to find somewhere to stow his helmet and tunic safely until he had finished. Near the junction with Victoria Embankment he found an open doorway in darkness in building that seemed largely disused. He rolled his helmet inside the heavy blue serge tunic and placed them just inside the door jam pulling the tatty pine door closed behind him. He turned to walk back still with no one in the street and began to climb the steps to the entrance to ‘The Yard’. His movement as he approached the door must have been picked up by the desk sergeant’s peripheral vision as he looked up from the desk just as Ford was about to push the door open. He entered gauging the type of officer he was about to have bluff his way past examining him without giving the fact he was away.
The desk sergeant was a seasoned veteran by his age and his bearing. A balding well built man with big thick hands, a greying moustache and, as Robert Ford was about to discover, of a direct nature; truly he thought the sergeant a wily old campaigner. Immediately the sergeant could see that he was going to be dealing with a young officer, possibly by the mode of dress a young hot shot detective. He sat back and upright in his chair and spoke with ferocious probing eye contact.
“Yes, son. Can I help you?” Ford could tell getting past him would be challenging and considered his words carefully before speaking.
“PC Ford, attached to the Whitechapel murders, sarge…” before he could continue he was interrupted by the seemingly anti C.I.D. sergeant.
“Oh, yeah? And what do you want at this time on a Sunday then, son?” He used the word ‘son’ in a very condescending fashion. There seemed little point fabricating a complicated story with this man so Ford decided to remain as truthful as possible to try to keep some kind of control of the conversation. “Inspector Abberline has tasked me to collect some case papers from the office here for examination by him personally tomorrow morning. Early.”
“Really?” The sergeant folded his arms and looked him up and down. He was annoyed the story seemed so plausible. To satisfy his boredom and verbose nature he would just make the lad feel a bit more uncomfortable. “And these papers relate to whom then?”
Robert Ford knew he didn’t have to answer that question, but decided to be equal to the obtuseness he was meeting. “Jack the Ripper, sarge.” The sly smile that the sergeant had been giving him fell to a completely stony look of annoyance. The lad had given a smart answer and one he couldn’t contend. His sport with him was over.
“Cheeky, bleeder. You know where the office is then, lad. Bugger off and get what you need.” He settled down to read the newspaper in front of him again as Ford walked past him hurriedly into the building and breathed a sigh of relief.
The corridors were only marginally lit as it was a Sunday, a day when activity in the building was fairly dormant. He made his way up the main staircase having ignored the building guide on the wall by the stairs on the ground floor deliberately so as not to arouse anymore suspicion in the desk sergeant. He knew where the Whitechapel Murders office was but had no clue as to where Sir Robert Anderson’s office was. On reaching the first floor landing he studied the floor guide there; he was in luck, Anderson’s office was only one more floor up. He moved briskly up the stair case in the seemingly deserted building. He passed through the double doors to enter the second floor corridor, breathing just a little heavily now from having run up the two flights nervously; he was presented with a wall plate in front him with a guide to the offices. Anderson’s was room 2.09, a right turn from the doors along the dimly lit corridor. The walls were panelled in a dark oak; this was the floor where many important senior officers had their offices. He reached 2.09 and the door to the office was equally ornate to match the walls.
The door was four panelled in the same wood as the walls with a large brass door knob with a Chubb lock key hole underneath. Ford looked at the door; surely it would be locked and a door like this would not be soundless to put in. Before simply trying the door knob he placed his ear to the door to listen on the off chance for any activity inside. It was, as he expected, silent. He wrapped his right hand around the door knob and gently and quietly tried to turn it. It moved, so he turned it fully and pushed and the door opened into a dimly lit but sumptuous office.
It was again decked out in oak panelling, bookcases, a drinks cabinet and a leather topped desk with a high leather backed office chair behind it, and above a small fireplace in the room hung a portrait of Queen Victoria. The wooden floor was highly polished with a rug in the centre on top of which sat the desk and chair and two less comfortable looking wooden almost dining type chairs in front of the desk; obviously for subordinates to sit in uncomfortably and receive the fury of the Assistant Commissioner when necessary. But why was the room lit? He looked around the room more closely and saw behind the door was an iron hat and coat stand with, he noted with dismay, a hat and coat on it. Anderson couldn’t possibly be here this evening? He cast his vision again around the room and spotted on top of the drinks cabinet two whisky tumblers, one empty the other with about three quarters of inch of light brown coloured spirit in it. He was still stood close to the office door when he heard the double doors from the stairway open and the sound of a man and a woman laughing as they sounded as if they had barrelled through them. ‘Christ!’ Ford quickly shut the office door and tried to see where around the room he could hide. There was no where other than behind the office door when it opened. He had come this far; he was now going to have to see through an extreme course of action.
Robert Ford was not prepared for what he saw when the door opened. Anderson walked with a young woman holding her by his right hand. He led the female up towards the desk where the she stopped and turned round to face him. He couldn’t believe it, it was the pretty East End prostitute Julia Styles. She was smiling and leaning back against the desk reaching for Anderson’s trousers. She spoke as she did so.
“Want a suck before your fuck then, s
ir?” Anderson batted away the girl’s hands with his own and spoke.
“Just turn round and lift your skirt, girlie, and bend over the desk. I’ll see to me.” Julia began to do as she was told as the office door slammed shut.
Robert Ford could have never seen that he would be in such a position of strength against, or so he thought, the establishment and all of its corruption. Neither Anderson nor Julia had seen him in the shadow behind the door as they had entered but now both looked at him aghast as the door closed loudly and both seemed momentarily frozen in time. Julia said nothing but began to pull her skirt back down as Anderson stood silently regarding the young man he had previously tried to kill.
“So, Assistant Commissioner, we meet again, sir,” said a confident Robert Ford.
“What do you want?” muttered Anderson, obviously in a compromised position. Julia looked on nervously and tried to begin to walk away, speaking as she did so.
“I better be going, sir.”
“Stay where you are, Julia,” said Ford. “I’ll tell you what I want, you bastard, re-open the case against Tumblety. That’s what I want. Give me back the remaining evidence against him too.” Anderson spoke immediately.
“I can’t do that.”
“Really? Is this because of your damned ‘Brotherhood’?”
“You know all about that do you, Ford?”
“Yes. I don’t give a shit. Re-open the investigation, or I go public with this about you,” he said gesturing to the nervous unfortunate. Anderson casually turned his back on Ford and walked round to his chair behind the desk and sat down. He opened a drawer of the desk and pulled out a large thick cigar and a box of matches. He rolled the cigar by his left ear and then placed it in his mouth. Pulling a match from its box as he opened it he struck the red phosphorous head against the striking plate on the box and lit the cigar and coolly and slowly drew on it until it glowed brightly and evenly. Julia and Ford both looked on incredulously at the casual calmness of his actions in such a compromising scenario.
“Ford, come and sit down. You, girl,” said Anderson to Julia “Go and pour two large malts please. Then you can fuck off.” To Ford the use of such coarse language from one so refined and eloquent seemed very out of place. He was shocked by Anderson’s confident and calm actions and had no immediate reply. Trying to get a grasp of the situation, he did as he was told and came and sat down opposite Anderson in one of the austere wooden chairs. He gathered his thoughts as Anderson spoke.
“This is bigger than you and anything you can imagine. There is no investigation to be re-opened because there is no longer any evidence.”
“But, the papers maybe gone; there are still the jars and the bag. You can’t keep this suppressed, not when I now know you use the services of prostitutes, being exposed as a cheap thrill seeker will destroy you.” Robert was certain that he must still have an upper hand as he spoke.
“No. The bag is gone; I passed it onto the burgeoning forensic department to destroy once they had examined it for their own experience. You can’t magic up the hand writing evidence against Tumblety. So you destroy my reputation? Two things on that, one, do you think that people will believe a lowly street constable in our society, grieving over the loss of his best friend and love and racked by emotion over a respected senior police officer? Hmm? Just look at my reputation, it is glowing. And second, do you think with all I have done to protect The Brotherhood I will be scared to become a scape goat of some kind? I would have to retire from public life but I’d be looked after. Would you?
Julia approached the table and placed a generous tumbler full of single malt whisky in front of each of them.
“And what about her, surely it concerns you that she could blow the whistle on you or black mail you?” asked Ford watching the young woman step away from the table.
“Not really.” In a rapid movement Anderson reached back into the drawer he had used earlier and pulled out a revolver and pointed it at Julia. He pulled back the hammer action which set with a loud click. He pulled the trigger. To Ford the room for a fraction of a second froze as he tried to comprehend what he had just seen in relation to the sounds. There had been a another loud click only and no sound of a shot so he realised that everyone still sitting or standing was the right picture he should be seeing. He could hear running water; looking down at Julia’s feet he could see fluid running onto the floor from under her skirt. He had to confess to himself that Anderson was indeed a ruthless and determined man. Events from the canal back flooded back to him to re-enforce this view.
“Do you honestly think that there would much of an investigation into the murder of a prostitute? They are hardly unusual these days are they? Don’t underestimate me or what I am prepared to do. You have nothing. Go away, enjoy your career, or what you may have left of it, and live a sad unfulfilled working class life.”
Ford felt belittled, exactly as Anderson had intended. But Anderson had said nothing about him entering his office.
“But, what about tonight?” He asked Anderson who was gradually filling the room with more smoke.
“Granted, you have that on me. I shan’t pursue that matter, not having bribed the sergeant to let my friend in. Think of it as a battle won against us. But as you know, a battle and not the war.” Ford couldn’t believe he was hearing those words again. He grabbed the tumbler and emptied it. The bitter powerful liquid burnt his throat and he could feel the sensation all the way to the pit of his stomach, which as it began to line it he felt his head go a little light. He got up to leave, lost for words and intending to say nothing and further give Anderson the upper hand.
“Take her out with you, and shut the door when you go,” said Anderson with more self assurance than ever referring to Julia.
Ford had turned towards the door as Anderson spoke. He stopped in his tracks and faced his adversary and replied.
“Fuck you.”
“Oh, no. That’s my job as you may have noticed when you saw us come in.” Stunned by the sheer gall of the man to rebut him in such a manner at the last, he walked out and said nothing further. He realised that for now he had won the only battle he was ever going to win.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
1903
Tuesday 7th April 6.a.m; Severin Klosowski had not had a restful night in his cell on death row in Wandsworth Prison. On the 19th March he had been convicted at the Central Criminal Court in London, colloquially known as ‘The Old Bailey’, of ‘The Borough Wife Poisonings’. The presiding judge had been Justice Grantham who had donned the black cap to sentence Klosowski to death following the unanimous guilty verdict on the death of Maud Marsh and two other acts of fatal poisoning on Bessie Taylor and Mary Spink. His plea for clemency to the Home Secretary had failed and he was wakened by guards checking on his condition prior to his last meal who all saw real terror in his face. Klosowski, alias George Chapman, now himself faced death following the reign of terror his own existence had wrought. When arrested by Detective Inspector George Godley in October 1902, Godley’s former colleague and mentor the now retired Chief Inspector Frederick Abberline was reported to have commented to him “I see you have caught a Jack the Ripper at last.”
His cell was a meagre ten feet square with a Spartan harsh cot on which he attempted to sleep. This evil man at last had no control over his own life or that of others and therefore the manner of his death. He had at last become a shell of a man with his only method of escape from his incarceration being the hangman’s rope. A catholic priest arrived at the cell and entered to find Klosowski on his knees and praying on his arrival – a massively uncharacteristic display of religious conviction.
The confession that was taken by this priest would be of a remarkable nature and the contents of which would go with both men to their graves.
“My son, do you wish to make a confession and be granted absolution?” Klosowski was sobbing with all colour from his face drained. He felt sick and found it hard to speak. During this silence the priest administ
ered last rites which when finished had given the evil Polish multiple murderer enough time to compose himself and find a voice.
“Father,” he spoke in a low tone in close proximity to the priest to ensure no one else could hear. “May the Lord forgive? I have sinned greatly and fear that I am only destined to burn in hell. Though I don’t consider myself to be Jack the Ripper I am guilty of some of those killings. One was premeditated and the others spontaneous through violent rage. I have also killed in Paris, on the way to London from Europe. I killed outside of London to affect my escape and I killed in America. If the Lord can find it in his heart I wish to confess and be granted entry to his kingdom.” Tears were rolling down his cheeks from his heavily bloodshot eyes.
The priest, although a man of God, had as human a sentiment as any decent man. He found it hard to speak the traditional words of comfort when he heard such a sickening confession to a multitude of evil unpardonable sins. As he considered his own feelings that this man should indeed burn in the fires of hell, he composed himself to speak the accepted reply that this loathsome individual on his knees before him expected to hear.
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