Londoners still spoke of the Leicester Square Vampire precisely because he had never been caught. Was that the purpose of the Highwayman, to provide a nemesis for generations to come, to achieve perverse immortality through incompleteness?
Bryant sat back and untangled his pipe from the scarf he kept wrapped around him in the overheated office. The geographical factor bothered him. Two of the murders had occurred in the area surrounding Smithfield, the former execution site of London’s villains for over four hundred years, before it was moved to Tyburn Tree. Once the mob had gathered there to witness death by fire and roasting chair. Was it really coincidence that modern-day scoundrels should suffer similar fates in the vicinity? Bryant kept coming back to Clerkenwell, and its connection with the blood of Christ. All London areas maintained links with the past, no matter how well hidden they were. Even the pubs surrounding Lincoln’s Inn Fields had bars named after the Templars. Everything was there for a reason. The past misled and taunted him but tightened its grip as his age advanced.
And now that he had been given permission to explore the city’s history of murderers, he sensed a recurring pattern at work, something that ran all the way from the London Monster to the Leicester Square Vampire and the Highwayman. Certainly similar murderers seemed to have existed under a variety of names. London’s bogeymen were part of the folklore that crusted around the city like barnacles on a slow-sailing liner.
Bryant raised his collapsed trilby from the chair and bashed it back into shape. It was time to consult an expert on the meanings of London’s secret landscapes. Creaking up from his seat, he decided to start by paying a visit to his old friend, Oliver Golifer, owner of the Newman Street Picture Library.
♦
Oliver Golifer’s broad, broken nose, badly shaved pate, and ironingboard forehead gave him the appearance of an East End thug sired by Magwitch. Strangers picked Saturday-night fights with him just to prove to their girlfriends that they were hard, which was unfortunate because, although he had the heart of a kitten and the intellect of an Oxford don, he was still happy to knock someone into the floor for their arrogance. He had developed this pugilistic tendency at an early age in response to taunting about his admittedly ridiculous name. This amused Bryant greatly, because while Golifer had the reputation of a bruiser, he could also be as camp as a French operetta. He welcomed the detective with meaty hands the size of Sunday roasts before ushering him through the cramped storefront.
“Nice to see you looking so well, Arthur,” he whispered. As a child, he had accidentally drunk some bleach his stepfather had saved in an orange squash bottle, and it had corroded his vocal cords, reducing his voice to a sinister sussurance as menacing as his demeanor. “I see you’re all over the news again. I’m assuming that’s what you’re here about. What’s on your mind?”
“It’s a question of motive. You’ve read about the investigation?”
“How could I have avoided it? The gentleman you’re searching for is a self-publicist. The tabloids have been praying for someone like him to come along for years. I’ve already opened a picture file on him, although I’m sure they’re only variations on the shots you already have.” He led the way through the warren of rooms to racks of yellowing envelopes, filed in a complex system involving dates, locations, and subjects. The proliferation of Internet picture sites meant that Golifer no longer needed to keep the library open, but it appealed to his sense of continuity to do so; Newman Street had housed picture libraries as long as photographs had been taken. Its walls were lined with famous images: Emmeline Pankhurst being carried away by constables, a fascist throwing a Molotov cocktail at a police cordon, Ban the Bomb gatherings in Trafalgar Square, Poll Tax riots, vacant celebrities alighting from limousines into photographers’ light storms.
“I’m interested in his field of operation,” Bryant explained. “I was waylaid by Clerkenwell’s historical connections for a while, but I think that may be a blind. If you connect the murder sites properly, one place seems to exist at the centre. What do you have on Smithfield?”
“Hm. Bull in a china shop,” replied Golifer enigmatically. He rooted about for a few minutes and finally held up a damaged print of one such enraged bovine creature destroying several hundred Wedgwood vases. “In the early part of the seventeenth century, drunken herdsmen used to stampede their cattle on the way to the market at Smithfield, just for a laugh. The beasts used to rampage into shops and houses, hence the expression.” He studied Bryant’s face thoughtfully. “You want to go even earlier, don’t you? Thinking about the old execution site?”
“The area’s psychogeography is hard to ignore.”
Golifer dragged over another box and opened it. “Is your partner still seeing that married woman behind her husband’s back?”
“Monica Greenwood? I’m afraid so.”
“Dirty old sod, good for him.” Golifer’s gurgling laugh sounded like someone unblocking a sink. “What about you? I heard you were knocking about with some old bird as well.”
“Mrs Quinten and I have an understanding, that’s all,” Bryant bridled. “I enjoy her company. We play skittles together.”
“Your landlady won’t be pleased. Alma always had a soft spot for you.”
“Can we get back to the subject in hand? I don’t ask you about your bedroom arrangements.” Bryant reknotted his scarf, tightening it in some agitation. “What else do you have on Smithfield?”
“I know it used to be called ‘Smoothfield,’ a flat ten-acre grass field with a horse market on Fridays. Early twelfth century, that was. Farmers added other livestock, punters went to watch tournaments and jousts, then they came for public hangings. It was all considered entertainment. Witches and heretics were roasted alive in cages. In Mary Tudor’s reign, over two hundred martyrs were burned. Duels and disorder, death and drunken debauchery, that’s Smithfield for you. Now it’s all rowdy nightclubs. Goes to show some things hardly change.”
“Perhaps it was no accident he picked these sites,” said Bryant.
“What about the other two?”
“I thought of that. The Oasis Swimming Pool is very near the site of Seven Dials’ notorious rookeries; they sheltered many a famous murderer. Which leaves Burroughs’s art gallery on the South Bank as the odd one out. That part of the Thames was hardly more than a rural riverbank until the Festival of Britain in 1951. My theory is that he had no choice in that location, because it’s where White’s art piece had already been installed.”
“A bit of a dead end there, then. You must have tons of forensic information to go on, even if you’re low on suspects. Surely the bizarre methods of death have left you with something?”
“Less than you’d think. We’re due some more results later today.”
“So what do you need me for?”
“I thought you might – oh, I don’t know, help me get a synapse jump-started or something.”
“Well, I can certainly help you with highwaymen. Come with me.” Golifer led the way to a circular iron staircase at the rear of the shop and squeezed his bulk down it. They descended into a mildewy basement filled with overloaded shelves. “They’ve always been a popular subject for prints. After all, so many of them became folk heroes. Let me see what we’ve got.” He slid out a long box from beneath one of the counters and began drawing out envelopes. “Take a look at these. We’ve got prints of around thirty highwaymen operating in England, from Captain James Hind to Jack Shrimpton and John Cottington, but of course there were hundreds of infamous highwaymen – and a few women. The trouble is that most of the illustrations are rather similar in styling.” He carefully lifted a sheet of tissue paper covering one of the prints, which bore the caption Mrs Huntingdon is much received of dissatisfaction by robbery and an offer of marriage from Mull-Sack the Murderer.
“These are all hand-tinted from books published between 1880 and 1925, when the subject came back into vogue. The main features are common to your photographs: flintlock pistol, tricorn hat, greatcoat �
�� usually crimson, occasionally blue – gloves and high riding boots.”
“What’s that?” asked Bryant, pulling out his reading glasses to squint at an object depicted on the bottom of the sheet.
“Ah, that’s a rather more private part of the highwayman’s lore,” said Golifer, “a secret known only to London’s criminal fraternity. It’s the fabled highwayman’s key.”
Bryant found himself looking at the key left behind in the Burroughs gallery.
∨ Ten Second Staircase ∧
31
The Assonance of Myths
John May pushed his way between the moping trumpet vines draped from the railway embankment as the drainpipe-thin boy passed by no more than six feet away from him.
He had intended to talk to Luke Tripp as he exited the school, but something had held him back. The detective’s age counted against him; the boy would not confide in someone he saw as ancient and alien. He was making his way alone from St Crispin’s, and had reached the edge of the Roland Plumbe Community Estate. If the private-school pupils were wary of crossing the estate gang’s territory, their caution had not infected Luke, who kept a steady unfaltering pace as he passed into the shadow of the ground-floor columns. Aware that he was the only other figure crossing the bare open space of the estate’s grounds, May dropped back.
Tripp knew exactly where he was going. Not once did he raise his head to check his route, or hesitate before altering direction. His slender form appeared and vanished between the columns as May kept pace. He thought of something Bryant had said: Even if he doesn’t know it, the boy holds the key. What had he meant?
Luke was perhaps a hundred paces from him when he broke into a run. The little devil knows I’m here, thought May, matching his speed. What does he think he’s doing? The boy reached the concrete staircase at the end of the corridor and took the steps two, sometimes three at a time. May felt his pulse rise as he tried to keep up. He smelled the acrid stench of urine. As they passed the first-floor corridor he momentarily lost sight of his quarry but heard his shoes thumping on the steps above. Then, as if he had been lifted into the air, they simply stopped.
May halted, too, listening to the faintly falling rain above the pounding of his heart. He moved cautiously upward, keeping to the dark inner core of the stairs, until he reached the point where the boy should have been. Looking down, he saw where the wet footprints ceased. Although the staircase was open on one side, there was nothing beyond the waist-high concrete barricade but rainy air beneath low cinereous clouds; he was between the first and second floors of the block.
May’s nerve endings tingled with unease. He felt himself in the presence of the Highwayman. Foolishly, he had ventured here alone. To open his radio line now would be to give away his position on the stairs.
A time switch click-clocked above him, and the stairway was suddenly outlined in dim yellow light. Above a burnt-out sofa and a drift of beer cans, he saw the hand-painted stencils that twined and crowded each other across the concrete. Familiar gang signs of fate and luck: crowns, stars, pitchforks, hearts, horns, dice, pyramids. He peered closer at the recurring stencilled motif of black V’s, and realised he was looking at the tricorn hat and collar once again. As a familiar spasm in his back kicked in, he stood upright to ease the pain, and found himself faced with a dozen watchful shadows.
♦
“We collected a key from the floor of the gallery, beside the installation that contained Saralla White’s body,” Bryant explained. “Made of aluminium, looking exactly like the one in this picture.”
“Well, you’ve been left a pun of sorts,” said Oliver Golifer. “‘A thieves’ key, unlocked for the good of the public,’ as I believe the city marshal once called it. The key is meant to consist of three main sections: the ring, the pipe – that is, the stem – and the wards, which are the cut sections that interface with the inside of the lock. There are fourteen wards in all. The key and its parts are both literal and figurative.” He unfolded a second print of a highwayman, down the side of which was printed a list of words and phrases with the S’s and G’s joined. “The ring is made of gold, signifying the virtuous profession of highwaymen. The pipe is made of silver, and hollow, signifying the secret art of handing out bribes. The wards – well, here you are: First, boldness. Second, neatness. Third, flattery. Fourth, treachery. Fifth, diligence. And so on through obedience, lying, and cruelty – these last few words are water-stained and unreadable, but you get the idea. You’ll probably find books that go into great detail about the thieves’ key if you’re that interested, but it seems a bit arcane. I can’t imagine your average murderer would know or care much about them.”
“He cares enough to dress himself in an exact replica of the clothes in these prints,” Bryant pointed out. “Who knows how far his interest extends?” He pulled his moulting scarf tighter around his neck. “Thank you for the information, Oliver. I have absolutely no idea what I shall do with it, but I’m sure I’ll think of something. There is another matter to be dealt with; you don’t have a file on the Leicester Square Vampire, by any chance?”
“I haven’t heard anything about him in years, but I seem to recall some press shots,” said Golifer. “Let me have a look.” He led Bryant to a back room filled with locked metal boxes. “Most of these photographs are in the public domain, but your lot prefer us to keep them away from public gaze because, technically, they involve stillunsolved crimes and could be needed as evidence.”
“The Met is no longer ‘my lot,’ as you put it,” said Bryant, ruffled. “We report directly to the Home Office now, and I’m not sure which is worse. Why don’t they keep the pictures themselves?”
“No room, apparently. I asked them to pay for some better security down here, but they refused.” He unclipped one of the box lids and drew out a selection of large-bordered monochrome photographs taken in the 1950s. “These are the earliest ones we have. Didn’t you once get a priest involved to exorcise the spot where he appeared? You reckoned he could run through walls like Le Passemuraille. I’m sure I remember a scandal.”
Bryant sighed. When it came to his investigative technique, everyone remembered the scandals. “It was a long time ago, Oliver. I was desperate for a break in the case. Three deaths, sixteen attacks, I was prepared to try anything at that point. He ran to ground and we never found him.”
“So why the interest now?”
Bryant scratched at the grey stubble on his cheek. “Because I’m sure now it was all trickery, jiggery-pokery designed to make us think he was superhuman. He was motivated less by the need to attack than by the desire to make an impression on the world. That’s what we have here. Rampant egotism. The superior being flexing his muscles. And because of that, we never managed to close the case. I don’t want history to repeat itself. Do you have any earlier prints of legendary London murderers? Engravings, stuff like that?”
“The usual plates of Spring-Heeled Jack, Charley Peace, Jack Sheppard, things you’ll have seen plenty of times before.”
“Let me see them. You never know.” They returned to the print files, where Golifer pulled down a vast, mildewy volume of prints. “Who are these characters?” asked Bryant, stabbing at a page. The print showed four black-faced men, covered in dirt and ashes, making off with several screaming children.
“Ah, they’re the Flying Dustmen,” Golifer whispered. “A good example of real-life characters who were absorbed into London’s mythical history. Charles Fox was one of a group of bogus refuse collectors known around St Mary, Islington, as the Flying Dustmen.
He and his cronies stole baskets of ashes from households. Back in 1812, contractors paid seven hundred fifty pounds a year to the parish and employed several men and their carts to empty the dustbins. They hired women and children to sift cinders, which fetched half the price of coal, and siftings for brickmaking. The regular dustmen feared they would lose their Christmas bonuses from households, and issued written warnings to customers about the rogue collectors. T
he ringleader was caught and prosecuted, but for many years, parents used the image of the dust-clad thieves to frighten their children into good behaviour.”
“How one misses the ability to frighten children.” Bryant turned the pages, fascinated.
“Now, if you’re looking for a man with the reputation of vanishing through walls, there’s John Williams, who supposedly slaughtered a draper and his own family with a ripping chisel before striking a second time and killing a publican, his wife, and his maid with a crowbar.”
“You’re talking about the infamous Ratcliffe Highway murders of 1811.”
“That’s right.” Golifer indicated an etching that showed a curlyheaded sailor stretched out on an inclined platform. “This is a good example of how the public colluded in manufacturing a legend.
Hysteria swept Wapping and the surrounding area because the murderer seemed superhuman, vanishing from the upper rooms where the deaths occurred, and there were over forty false arrests. Finally, a seaman named John Williams was taken in with virtually no evidence against him, and after he hanged himself in suspicious circumstances at Coldbath Fields Prison, he was paraded through the streets with the maul and the chisel inserted into a board beside his head. The High Constable of Middlesex and hundreds of parish officers and constables escorted the cart. Suicides were buried at crossroads in those days, and Williams is interred at the crossroads of Cannon Street and St George’s Turnpike. But for years after, the area was infected with a kind of poison. Residents said they heard and saw his vengeful ghost, and even to this day the area has a strange feeling, especially when it’s rainy and the wind is high, and everyone else is indoors. Murderers who operate in mysterious – that is to say, unsolved – circumstances, are survived by a peculiar assonance that can last across generations.”
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