‘You tricked me,’ Iverson hissed. ‘You kept me talking, so Baycroft would get me.’
He saw the police racing towards them and, abandoning his prey, turned to flee. Lonsdale tore after him, and managed to snag a corner of the rough serge uniform jacket, but Iverson whipped around, lashing out with a punch that sent Lonsdale sprawling, while the killer disappeared towards the Temple Gardens.
‘Are you all right?’ Peters yelled, as he ran up.
‘Where were you?’ demanded Lonsdale, climbing to his feet and hurrying to retrieve his gun from the bushes.
‘He killed my men!’ Peters’s customary poise was gone, and he looked almost as insane as Iverson, hair in disarray and blood on his hands. ‘He crashed his hansom into ours, killing Evans, then came here and stabbed poor Kemp to death.’
‘But why—’
‘To distract us so he could get to you!’ snarled Peters. ‘He played us like fools! Where in God’s name is the bastard?’
‘This way!’ Lonsdale set off in the direction Iverson had taken, Peters and half a dozen constables at his heels.
Peters put on an immense burst of speed when he saw their quarry in the distance, and Lonsdale was hard-pressed to keep up. Iverson was little more than a dark blur, running with a speed that belied his heavy physique. A helmet was flung away, followed by a cloak; unencumbered, Iverson began to pull away from them.
‘Cut him off!’ screamed Peters frantically. ‘He’s heading for the river! Cut him off.’
Obediently, the men peeled away to either side. There was only so far Iverson could run before the river stopped him, at which point he would either have to turn left or right. Policemen were already fanning out to both sides, while Lonsdale and Peters were directly behind.
Iverson scaled the wall at the end of Temple Gardens and disappeared from sight on the Victoria Embankment. Two policemen were already scrambling over it, Peters screaming at them to hurry.
Lonsdale reached the wall and vaulted to the top, kneeling there for a moment to use its height as a vantage point. Policemen were everywhere, heads turning this way and that as they hunted for Iverson among the shadows of the trees. Carriages clattered past, obscuring Lonsdale’s view.
‘We’ve lost him,’ he gasped as Peters struggled up beside him.
‘No!’ yelled Peters, pointing. ‘Look! He’s heading for the river, like a rat returning home!’
A flicker of movement behind one of the trees betrayed the burly form scrambling over the wall that separated the Victoria Embankment from the river. Lonsdale tore after him, causing a hansom driver to swerve. Oblivious to the driver’s curses, he reached the wall and leaned over it. The river was at low tide, revealing a thin ribbon of silty beach. Iverson was stumbling along it, slowed by slippery debris and sucking mud.
‘Hah!’ muttered Lonsdale grimly. ‘He makes a mistake at last.’
He raced along the road until he was ahead of Iverson, making better time than the killer on the flat, paved surface, then climbed the wall. As Iverson pounded past below, Lonsdale dropped on top of him, allowing his full weight to land on his quarry.
But Iverson seemed invincible. With a roar of rage, he flung Lonsdale off as though he was made of feathers. Then he swung round with his broken truncheon, catching Lonsdale a blow that knocked him clean from his feet and into the stinking waters of the Thames. By the time Lonsdale had struggled back to the beach, Iverson was some distance away.
‘He can’t escape,’ he gasped as Peters staggered past. ‘Where can he go?’
‘The sewers,’ Peters cried in desperation. ‘There’s an entrance ahead. Once he gets in there, we’ll never catch him.’
Lonsdale stumbled on after him, wet clothes dragging him down and the foulness of the Thames in his mouth. He tugged the gun from his pocket.
‘Stop, or I’ll shoot,’ he yelled, aiming to loose a couple of rounds to let Iverson know he meant it. He thought the threat made Iverson falter, then realized the killer was actually wresting with a heavy metal grille. Lonsdale aimed skyward and pulled the trigger, but there was only a sharp click. He tried it again with the same response, cursing himself for not having checked it before he went out. He had not used it in years, so why would it work now? He shoved it back in his pocket and began running again, each breath rasping painfully in his chest. The mud made him feel as though he were running in treacle.
Ahead, Peters was straining every fibre in his body to reach Iverson before he got the grille open. Lonsdale heard a distant screech of protesting metal, and Iverson looked back at his pursuers before disappearing from sight. It was dark, but Lonsdale could have sworn he saw him smirk.
‘No!’ yelled Peters, his voice cracking in despair.
Inside the sewer, Iverson felt he was free and safe. He knew the tunnels like the back of his hand, and needed no lamp to guide him. He took a convoluted route that he was sure his pursuers would never follow, then stopped to listen. In the distance, he could hear Peters organizing his troops, but Iverson was not bothered. They wouldn’t catch him now. He reached a cavernous tunnel and groped in an alcove for the lantern he had left there for just such an occasion. He lit it and splashed on through a stinking soup of sewage and rainwater.
Suddenly, there was a sharp sound ahead. Iverson stopped in alarm. Then there was an agonizing pain in his chest. A second bang followed, and a second centre of pain. Slowly, disbelievingly, Iverson set his light on a nearby ledge and looked down at himself. Blood was pouring from his chest. He tried to straighten up, but the wounds were draining his energy as well as his blood.
Suddenly, hands wrapped round his throat. He had no strength to fight, and was pushed against the wall and then down to the bottom of the passage. Water filled his shrieking mouth.
Peters watched as his men carefully pulled the body out of the water and laid it on a ledge, next to the lamp that someone had left there so conveniently. It illuminated the dead man’s face. Now the chase was over, Peters had lost the wild look that had so transformed him, and was once more his impassive self.
‘Do you recognize him, Lonsdale?’ he asked.
‘It’s Iverson,’ replied Lonsdale. ‘You can see the number on his collar – six-nine-six-D.’
‘He’s wearing Iverson’s uniform,’ acknowledged Peters. ‘But, as I told you, we fished Iverson out of the Thames days ago. This is Leonard Baycroft from Bermondsey, whose speciality was robbery with violence. He liked to break into houses, and if the residents put up a defence, he liked it even more. He was a vicious brute, and London will be a safer place without him.’
‘Baycroft,’ echoed Lonsdale. ‘He was one of the people who Mrs Greaves said had disappeared. I mentioned his name when I was trying to keep Iverson – I mean this man – talking until you arrived. He accused me of trying to keep him talking until Baycroft came to get him.’
‘But he was Baycroft,’ said one of the constables in puzzlement. ‘What was he on about?’
‘The ramblings of a deranged mind,’ said Peters. ‘His crimes had been growing more violent for some years, and the most recent time we arrested him – last summer – we asked Dr Bradwell to assess him. Bradwell said Baycroft was no longer sane and recommended he be sent to an asylum before he killed someone. The judge ignored the advice, and, based on the one charge we could prove at the time – although we knew he had perpetrated a lot more crimes – sentenced him to six months in Newgate instead.’
‘He was released in December,’ said a constable. ‘We knew it was only a matter of time before we came across him again.’
‘December was when people started to disappear,’ mused Lonsdale. He recalled the other names that Mrs Greaves had mentioned. ‘The Johnson sisters, Long Lil, Bill Byers and Baycroft.’
‘And we don’t know if Baycroft killed them, or whether there is some other reason for their disappearance,’ said Peters. ‘Did he say anything else?’
‘He mentioned other murders – said we wouldn’t find the bodies,’ replied
Lonsdale. ‘And he said he had “colleagues” who killed Cath and Greaves – Pauly and Morgan, I suppose. He also claimed the stolen cerebra were for “them”, but he didn’t want to know what “they” did with them.’
‘In other words,’ said Peters, ‘he was not responsible for his own actions – any wrong-doing was someone else’s fault. It’s not the first time I’ve heard criminals claim this.’
‘You think he was making “them” up?’ asked Lonsdale. ‘He was actually acting alone?’
‘Yes and no. I don’t believe there’s some grand enterprise in operation, with arch-criminals delivering orders to minions. However, I am sure Baycroft had help. Our search is far from over.’
‘And you are sure this isn’t Iverson?’ Lonsdale felt he had lived with the spectre of the man for so long that it was somehow unsatisfactory that he should transpire to be someone else.
‘Quite sure. Iverson had a scar on his forehead, but it looked nothing like this.’ Peters pointed to the jagged cut on Baycroft’s eyebrow. ‘I suspect this was self-inflicted, probably when he decided to assume Iverson’s identity.’
‘But why would a robber impersonate a policeman?’ asked Lonsdale.
‘For the authority it gave him, and for access to people and places that would otherwise have been closed to him. It worked – you believed he was one of us.’
‘But why Iverson?’
‘Almost certainly because he was ill and easy prey. Not to mention that Iverson would have needed money – I imagine he sold Baycroft the uniform.’
‘Or Baycroft murdered him for it.’
‘Poor Iverson killed himself. There were no marks of violence, although Bradwell says he was poorly nourished. He was ill, poor, and clothed in little more than rags. We failed him miserably. If Baycroft was alive, we’d be able to confirm all this. But now it’s just speculation.’
‘Which brings us to the question of who shot him, down here in the sewers,’ said Lonsdale.
‘Someone who knows his way around. We heard the shots, but it took us how long to find the body? Twenty minutes? The killer could have gone anywhere.’
‘Can you tell anything from the body?’ asked Lonsdale. ‘I confess the gunshots meant nothing to me – whether large bore or small.’
‘Definitely large,’ said Peters. ‘Whereas the blood smears on the wall suggest there was a bit of a struggle between Baycroft and his assailant.’
He began to organize a makeshift stretcher, using his men’s cloaks, carefully knotted together. Lonsdale watched, alert for another attack, but the sewers were eerily silent, the peace broken only by the soft gurgle of water and solids oozing towards the pumping station by Chelsea Bridge.
‘Tell me about these other men,’ ordered Peters, as four officers each grabbed a corner of the stretcher to carry Baycroft’s body outside.
‘Morgan is short, powerfully built, and has a tattoo of a snake on one arm. Pauly led a group that attacked Friederichs and me. He’s slight, with dark brown hair and a moustache that’s half brown, half grey. He swears almost constantly. Baycroft said he had spent time in a hospital or an asylum.’
Peters started. ‘That’s Thomas Pawley! P-A-W-L-E-Y. He’s a murderous fiend, and he has been in a number of asylums, most recently Bethlem, from which he escaped. You say he’s the man who attacked you?’
‘Twice.’
Peters groaned. ‘What a mess! Just when you think you might be getting near a solution, it all slips away.’
Peters had sent for Bradwell to examine Baycroft’s body. When Lonsdale expressed surprise that the surgeon was still on the payroll, Peters said he was serving two weeks’ notice. They waited for him on the narrow beach, Baycroft’s body lying on the mud at their feet. It was not long before he arrived, and Lonsdale immediately noticed the change in him. Gone was the nervous pallor; he was back to his ebullient self. He greeted Lonsdale and Peters enthusiastically.
‘You got him, then? Thank God! I told you Baycroft was dangerous, Inspector.’
‘Especially to you,’ said Lonsdale. Both Peters and Bradwell regarded him uncertainly.
‘I know why you went on your sudden trip to Brighton. And why you resigned your post so abruptly.’
Peters looked perplexed, but Bradwell sighed and gazed up at the sky. When he looked back down again, his face was sombre.
‘I made a grave error in judgement,’ he said to Peters. ‘And I overstepped my duties as a police surgeon. It cost me dear …’
‘Explain,’ ordered Peters and, when Bradwell hesitated, added, ‘Or do you want Lonsdale to do it, given that he seems to know already?’
Bradwell took a deep breath and began. ‘I started to think about the nature of the murders, and I made a list of suspects – criminals I’d examined in the past with certain mental abnormalities. In the medical trade, we call it dementia praecox. Baycroft was on it.’
Peters frowned. ‘That doesn’t sound like overstepping the mark to me. It sounds like initiative.’
Bradwell winced. ‘Yes, but then I did something stupid. I decided to speak to them before passing the list to you. I thought my medical training would make me better equipped for it. I was right!’ He gave a bitter laugh. ‘I managed to trace Baycroft, and saw immediately that he had lost touch with reality. He had delusions, hallucinations, and his cognitions were accompanied by severe emotional disturbances.’
‘So what did you do about it?’ asked Peters.
‘I made an appointment for him to come and see me at the hospital the following day.’ Bradwell shrugged apologetically.
‘Did he come?’
An anguished expression crossed Bradwell’s face. ‘He visited my wife instead, and said that if I attempted to contact him or mentioned him to the police, he’d kill our children.’
Peters made an exasperated sound at the back of his throat. ‘We could have taken your family somewhere safe. Why didn’t you ask us for help?’
‘I had every intention of doing so. But first, I escorted my wife and children to Brighton. My plan was to see them safely installed in a hotel, then take the next train back. But I had no sooner left the hotel when there he was – Baycroft.’
‘He had followed you to Brighton?’
Bradwell nodded miserably. ‘He was leaning against the seawall, smirking. I’d been so careful to ensure we hadn’t been followed, yet there he was. I realized there was nothing I could do without endangering my family. I had to do what he demanded.’
‘And what was that?’ asked Peters.
‘To have nothing more to do with these murders, and give up my post as police surgeon.’ Bradwell shrugged. ‘So I did.’
‘And what’s happened since you resigned?’ asked Peters, pulling out his pipe.
The surgeon sighed. ‘I put my family in an isolation ward at Bart’s, claiming they had diphtheria. My wife and I agreed I should tell you everything, because neither of us thought we should put our own safety over the lives of others any longer. I was on my way when I heard you’d got him.’
‘What about O’Connor?’ asked Lonsdale. ‘Was he was aware of any of this?’
‘Of course not,’ said Bradwell. ‘I was told he’d absconded with money from the mortuary – although I find that difficult to believe.’
‘What do you find difficult to believe?’ asked Lonsdale. ‘That there was money to abscond with, or that O’Connor would take it?’
‘Both. There’s nothing to steal, and once, when I left ten shillings sitting out on my desk, O’Connor put it safely in a drawer and reminded me to take it the following day. He was odd, but no thief.’
‘Odd in what way?’
‘Well, wanting to be a mortuary assistant for a start,’ said Bradwell. ‘It’s hardly a rewarding occupation – low pay, dismal surroundings, frequently harrowing duties. He just happened to turn up when I needed an assistant, and now he’s moved on.’
Peters gaped at him. ‘Are you telling me that you hired him without checking his credentials? The
mortuary is a police facility, man! We must observe certain security precautions.’
‘He had written references,’ objected Bradwell. ‘And I was having trouble finding someone to do it. He was basically an itinerant who wanted a job for a few months. Come August, I expect he’ll be in Kent, picking hops.’
‘I suppose such people do exist,’ acknowledged Peters. ‘And I can see why men aren’t exactly queuing for that post. By the way, a further review shows that nothing was actually taken from the mortuary. As you say, he appears to have been an honest man.’
By the time Lonsdale finished giving his official statement, it was the early hours of the morning. He trudged home wearily, and lay down on his bed, intending to rest for a moment before undressing and sluicing the muck from his skin, but he fell asleep almost at once. He awoke after eight to the sound of the servants moving about downstairs.
Rubbing sleep from his eyes, he walked down the stairs and knocked at his brother’s room. When there was no reply, he opened the door and saw the bed had not been slept in.
‘Where is Jack?’ he asked Dillon, who had appeared at the top of the stairs.
‘He failed to come home last night, sir. But I knew not to expect him for dinner, as he had an appointment at six o’clock.’
‘An appointment at six on a Sunday?’ asked Lonsdale in surprise. ‘With whom?’
‘I don’t know, sir. Might I suggest you check his diary? Perhaps after your bath?’
Lonsdale glared at him. If his own days were numbered in the house, then so were the butler’s, because Emelia would not appreciate his smug condescension. Nevertheless, the idea was a good one, so Lonsdale found Jack’s diary and flicked through it.
‘Sunday,’ he muttered. ‘Six o’clock, Regent’s Club re Imp Dem Ins with O.’
What was Imp Dem Ins, and who was O? And why would Jack be going to the Regent’s Club? It was one of the newer establishments, located on Regent Street, away from the exclusive atmosphere of the St James’s area known as ‘Clubland’. He was sure Jack had never been there before. Moreover, six o’clock on a Sunday was a peculiar time to meet anyone, and dinner was unlikely to last until morning, although it would not be the first time Jack had drunk too much and accepted an offer of a room for the night.
Mind of a Killer Page 27