by F. G. Cottam
‘See if you feel the same way when you’ve read it,’ Chadwick said. ‘I guarantee you won’t.’
‘Have you read it?’
‘No. It’s never before been allowed to leave the place it’s always been kept. But I know who Barry was and what he accomplished.’
‘Because you’re party to the brotherhoods secrets,’ Jacob said.
‘Some of their secrets, yes,’ Chadwick said.
‘You’re one of them, aren’t you?’
Chadwick smiled at him. Jacob thought that if a smile could deliver a punch, this one would have put him on the floor. ‘Read the account,’ he said.
‘And then what?’
‘Then we have a proposition for you,’ the cardinal said.
‘I have a commitment to DCI Sullivan and the investigation,’ Jacob said.
The cardinal said, ‘You also have a commitment to your faith.’
Jacob left them thinking that the coffee had been very good. He also figured that they were pretty desperate. He’d put two and two together during a restless night concerning his encounter of the previous day with the man Kath Cooper had shown him on the screen of her neat little laptop in the pub. The likeness was accurate right down to the lapel-width and the size of the fellow’s tie knot.
He’d got five, putting two and two together, because the name he kept putting to the face on the screen couldn’t possibly be his.
He stopped in the street, so abruptly that the woman walking only a couple of feet behind him almost collided with him and swore richly, obviously less than thrilled by the prospect of a pavement pile-up. He put the cardinal’s envelope under his arm and took out his mobile and thumbed Jane Sullivan’s number. Then he cancelled the call and hoped it hadn’t registered on her phone.
He suspected Charlotte Reynard had provided the physical description he’d seen the previous evening. She’d had a premonition that had prevented her from becoming the Scholar’s fifth victim, slightly less than 24 hours after he’d dispatched Julie Longmuir. She possessed a psychic gift. Had a witness come forward, it would be public knowledge. The provenance of the computer likeness was obscure because the source was one that couldn’t be publically disclosed.
But he couldn’t put that to Jane because if she knew he’d seen the likeness, she would know from where it had come and after that it was a small step to determine from whom and Kath Cooper would be compromised in a way that would ruin her career. How could he let Jane know he had seen the man they were looking for, had spoken to him, brushed against him, heard his voice?
His phone rang. It was Jane. She said, ‘You called?’
‘Just wondered if there’ve been any developments I should be aware of. You said you’d keep me in the loop.’
There was a silence at her end. Then she said, ‘It’s 12.45. I’ll meet you for lunch in St. James’s Park, the same bench we used the last time. I’m buying. You’re still ham and gouda?’
‘Yes.’
‘Good. I like a man who stays put.’
‘What does that mean?’
‘It’s a line from Blade Runner, Jake. If you had proper bloke credentials, you’d know that.’
‘You sound buoyant.’
‘Maybe I’m just glad Peter Chadwick’s left you in one piece.’
‘Ah, you want a de-brief.’
‘Don’t you?’
He was silent.
‘I think you know what our development is. I think you know my source and I think I know yours. But our little secrets are safe. I’m concentrating on the bigger picture. You should be too.’
‘I saw him, Jane, yesterday at the rally in the square. There’s no question it was him. He’s way ahead of us.’
‘He’s cocky, Jake. He’ll make mistakes. They always do.’
He walked from the Dorchester to St. James’s Park. He did so aware of the large number of police on foot and in vehicles on the streets. Sirens sounded more frequently than he had heard them do before in the daytime on a London week day. Squad cars flashed by with their light bars blinking pallidly in the summer sunshine. The trees were expansive above in full leaf on the West End’s broad and handsome avenues and the atmosphere in their dappled shade was heavy with foreboding.
He lost count of the number of people he passed wearing Knights of Excalibur T-shirts and armbands. The regular T was white with a black broadsword at its centre and above and below it in heraldic script the legend: England Expects. If it was meant to be inspirational, it wasn’t working for Jacob. To him it read far more like a threat than a rallying cry. England expects what, he wondered. Religious conflict, tribal warfare, blood in the gutters, seemed increasingly to be the likeliest answer to that question.
There was a new T-shirt. He didn’t know whether this one was officially sanctioned by the Knights or just a shrewd bit of opportunism, but it was almost as popular as the broadsword T. It was a head and shoulders shot of Joan Fairchild in a white smock with her eyes raised to the sky. The image had been photo-shopped to provide her with a rosary of heavy wooden beads, the crucifix depending from it lying demurely between her breasts. A circle of thorns crowned her plaited hair and blood from her pierced brow trickled down her face. The legend on this garment read: Saint Joan.
He saw it displayed on so many bodies on his route it stopped shocking him and he began to see the tacky charm of the iconography. Then he began to be aware of how physically attractive Joan Fairchild was. Unless her cleavage had been photoshopped she had shapely breasts. She had sculpted cheekbones and an alluring pout. Her message, to him, was contorted and poisonous, but she was strikingly beautiful in black and white, pictured as a sort of martyr. The pedestrians wearing her image were mostly white but some were black and she clearly appealed to both sexes.
He ate his sandwich in the park with Jane without appetite. He told her about Chadwick and the cardinal. He told her about the book he had placed in its envelope on the bench beside him where they sat. She said, ‘Did they tell you what the Lazarus Prophecy was?’
His eyes were on the ducks swimming on the pond. He swallowed bread and ham and Dutch cheese and said, ‘Not in so many words. I think they think the killer is demonic. They think we’ve reached the End of Days. They don’t think the Scholar is delusional. He really is the Antichrist. I don’t expect to learn anything from the Barry account. I’ll read it anyway.’
‘One or two influential bloggers are discussing recent developments as of today. I got off the phone to the Home Secretary 20 minutes ago. She’s calling it a worrying escalation.’
‘It’s the internet age,’ Jacob said. ‘There’s nothing can be done to prevent it happening. What are they saying? Where are they saying it?’
‘There’s a heavyweight political pundit based in New York she’s most concerned about. He does a blog that generally scores about 40 million hits worldwide. Today he writes that the trophy sent to Sandra Matlock is a symbolic attack on freedom of speech. It’s a crude warning of the censorship approved of by Islamic nations. It’s a warning of what’s to come if they gain further influence in western democracies.’
‘That would sound more plausible if the Scholar really was Islamic.’
‘It sounds plausible enough. The hands sent to the Tate Modern are an attack on western cultural values. Amputation is still a common punishment in some Arab countries. They’re a direct criticism of and threat to creative expression.’
‘They were healing hands.’
‘A fact not lost on our blogger. Western art needs healing, was the Scholar’s message. It’s corrupt.’
Jacob was still staring at the pond. Jane nodded and said, ‘throw a stone into that and what happens?’
‘You get ripples, Jane.’
‘The stone is responsible. But it doesn’t create the ripples deliberately. It’s just cause and effect. I do wonder how much of all this the Scholar has actually planned, or even foreseen. I’ve been thinking about the message he delivered me: “There’s none as blind as those
who will not see.”’
‘The times we live in suit him,’ Jacob said. ‘They suit his purpose, that’s all. They echo his madness.’ He was thinking of the T-shirt, Saint Joan in her crown of thorns.
‘I don’t think he’s mad at all,’ Jane said.
‘What are the odds of me running into him by accident yesterday?’
‘I’d conservatively put them at two or three million to one.’
‘He must have read the piece about me Sandra Matlock wrote for the paper on Sunday. The picture she sourced was a few years old, but I don’t look any different.’
‘He could have been hanging about outside HQ and just followed you out of curiosity. He couldn’t do it again. I had the image privately circulated last night. If there’s another press leak I’ll have to fabricate a story about how we came by it, but if any of the boys in blue or plainclothes on the investigation see him now he’ll get his collar felt.’
‘They should only approach him in twos and with Tasers, Jane. I got the impression he’s colossally strong. I touched his arm. It felt like steel cable pulled taut.’
She sat staring at the pond, thinking. She wiped a crumb absently from her lower lip with the pad of her thumb. He could smell her perfume in the June heat, the smell it made on reacting with her skin. He’d read somewhere that it was slightly different on everyone. He wondered had the scent been freshly dabbed on for their lunch in the park.
‘It’s hard to believe that on Saturday night I kissed you.’
‘Well you did, and I enjoyed it. I’d rather like you to kiss me again.’
‘What, now?’
‘No, not now, when this is all over, assuming we both survive it.’
‘He won’t come for me, Jane. I’m the wrong gender.’
‘And he won’t come for me, I don’t think. But I worry about Charlotte Reynard.’
‘Because she supplied his likeness, you mean?’
‘Not specifically that. I just get the feeling that he feels his business with her is unfinished, somehow.’
‘And you trust your intuition.’
‘I do.’
She nodded at the package on the bench beside them. ‘When you’ve read that, let me have a précis, would you? When do you plan to read it?’
‘I’ll start it as soon as I get home. No time like the present.’
‘That might not be true. The past described there could turn out to be very like the present. I suspect that’s why Chadwick and the cardinal gave it to you. They think there’s something to be learned from it. So read it carefully.’
‘I read everything I read carefully,’ Jacob said, rising to go.
October 2nd 1888
I don’t generally commit words to paper but after last night’s goings-on have decided it might be wise to keep a record of events. Before I get ahead of myself, though, I’ll describe the fight and the reasons I took the fight and the unexpectedly strange outcome.
London’s been a tolerable place for the seven months I’ve lived here. The noise and the dirt and the clamour generally are a change from what I’d got used to living in America. But I was in the West in America and a man can miss paved streets and ale houses and buildings made of bricks and not nailed together timber shanties like I saw nothing other than in Deadwood and Dodge. I grew weary of the gun-happy frontier style of living with its lynchings and cattle feud shoot-outs. I was attracted to London, comic as the sentiment now seems, to sample a bit of its refinement and sophistication.
My home for the last seven months has been a garret in the district of Westminster known as the Devil’s Acre. If that sounds bad and you’re unfamiliar with the region, I can assure you it’s worse than its name suggests. It’s ramshackle and run down and harbours some desperate characters. It’s within pungent whiff of the river. The smog comes down so dense there it leaves a man after it clears looking as filthy as a sweep.
But Bloomsbury and Kensington were beyond my means and there are worse places in the city. I could be in Bluegate Fields or Houndsditch or Whitechapel. God help me, I could be in Lambeth.
I took the fight because my savings were running low. I hadn’t fought a man for five years, discounting a set-to in a Dakota saloon that was pretty one-sided on account of the fellow being so roaring drunk on whisky he probably thought there were two of me punching him. So I was rusty at ring-craft. But I’d kept my conditioning doing stevedore shifts at Limehouse Docks before the work got scarcer mid-way through August. I was fit. I’ve always been game. And the prize was five golden guineas.
The sum reflected the fact that his handlers were confident no one could beat their man and take it. He went by the name of Bob ‘Boilerhouse’ Davey and he was undefeated. He stood six-foot-two and weighed fourteen stone and the bits of him that weren’t bone were muscle.
The bout was staged in a Spittalfields pub. In my straitened circumstances I couldn’t run to a Hansom and had to walk there. The East End was a hostile and suspicious place before the double slaying of the previous night on account of the murders there in August. With its Vigilance Committees and its self-elected street ‘guardians’ you risk the wrath of the mob just by owning an unfamiliar face. Add a Dublin accent and you’re a ripe candidate for vigilante cudgels.
There were specials out in twos and threes swaggering in rain capes with their truncheons drawn. I saw no unaccompanied women and assumed the street floozies to be plying their trade by day, when most men work and the pickings are thinner. They have to eat and more importantly drink and I considered their absence after dark a state of affairs desperation would shortly put an end to.
It was uncommon cold for early autumn and most of those with the money to do so had lit their fires. The air smelled of coal and soot and horse shit and unwashed clothing all mingled together with the sour reek of gas in the vicinity of the street lamps. People are packed eight and ten to a room in the district I was visiting and there was a jammed pub on every corner, raucous and yellow and smoke-filled.
You’d get buttonholed in a normal night by some toothless crone of 30 desperate to earn the tuppence for a gin. But as I’ve hinted at already this was no normal night in the season of terror the Ripper had quietly begun eight or nine weeks earlier.
I reached my destination. I introduced myself to Davey’s handlers. To him I said, ‘Tonight’s the night you blow a gasket, Boilerhouse.’
I’d not had the advantage of having seen him fight, which meant I wasn’t disadvantaged by having seen him pulverize some poor fellow either. He was even bigger than I’d imagined in the flesh and when I made my joke, which made his people laugh, he grinned at me like someone with a vacancy in his head. It didn’t look like the milling had done that to him. His face was quite unmarked. I reckoned he’d been born brainless.
Since the match was illegal and thus staged clandestinely, it was to take place in a spacious cellar. The ring was smaller than I’d have liked, but it was raised and floored with canvas pulled taut over boards, which was vastly better for me than cobbles. The space was dimly lit by paraffin lanterns, which wasn’t ideal. But my eyes would grow accustomed to the gloom by the time the opening bell was struck.
I was shown to a closet to change and stripped down and put on my trunks and kneaded rubbing alcohol into my knuckles and then stretched and warmed up, slightly melancholy that my fortunes had declined at the advanced age of 28 to the point that I was having to do this again to fetch a purse.
The purse wasn’t guaranteed. It was winner take all and only bruises for the loser to nurse. I was outweighed, out-muscled and he was certainly younger than me. But I’d always been fierce useful at the bobbing and weaving, at the scientific aspect of the craft. And I thought that if I wasn’t quite as fast-handed as I’d been at 24, I was certainly a stiffer puncher than I’d been then.
The cellar was filling up when I exited the closet and I climbed between the ropes into the ring and took a look at the crowd we’d drawn. Fairer to say that Boilerhouse had put them there; he
was the draw, I was the poor sap expected to take a drubbing. They were there to see claret spilled and wager cash and most of them looked like it in their checks and gingham, in their toppers and spats and their gold watch chains and bullion capped teeth, red-faced and whiskery, puffing furiously on their cigars.
You might wonder if I felt nervous. The truth was I didn’t. I’d got myself into some serious scrapes in my working life in America and emerged from a few of them quite surprised to be still vertical and breathing. Prize-fighters are philosophical about pain and though I was out of practice, I was no raw novice. This was my 20th fight and I’d won all of the previous 19.
That said, when I saw him emerge through a set of curtains and walk with the crowd roaring encouragement to the ring, I thought this fellow the most formidable man I’d met in the roped arena. If he could hit half as hard as his mighty appearance suggested he would, I was in for a testing evening.
I took the clove of raw garlic secured in my right fist and bit into it and chewed. I’d never been one for cheating on a serious scale but thought a bit of gamesmanship permissible given the odds in his favour. I would make sure whenever I breathed on him that Boilerhouse would do what he could to shorten the clinches. It’s the wrestling for the room and leverage to punch tires that weakens the smaller man in the fight.
It was bare fists, another plus for me. A man can punch only as hard as an unprotected hand can take without damage. Gloves enable clubbing. They suit the stronger man who can risk hitting an elbow seeking to land to the kidneys without dislocating a knuckle.
A second I’d never met before held the stool I’d sit on between rounds and the bucket into which I’d spit my rinse. I’d bought my own filled bottle for that purpose. He was bright-eyed and built along a jockey’s sprightly lines. I took a last look at the packed crowd, at the glowing faces behind the wreaths of tobacco smoke, thinking that any one of these men could be the dark figure butchering woman and inflicting a siege of terror on the city. Then the bell sounded and we were at the centre of the ring and at each other.