The clothes was all men’s clothes, all different sizes. I pulled out a shirt and a pair of trousers and gave them a sniff. They didn’t smell too mildewed or nothing so I put them on. Perhaps he was a doctor of clobber and all! A professor of menswear.
Hoo pointed a long, skeletal finger, encased in a glove of black leather, at a straw pallet in a corner, indicating that I might spend the night there if I wanted. The hour was late and I didn’t fancy the hike back to my Whitechapel stamping ground so I took him up on the offer.
“Talk about your lap of luxury.” I tested the mattress. Three species of beetle and an earwig darted for cover. Charming. Doctor Hoo stalked off to some other part of the warehouse, where his own billet was situated, I shouldn’t wonder, leaving me in darkness like the light had gone out of my life.
I couldn’t sleep. Well, I’d had some shut-eye earlier on, you’ll recall, when I was banged up in that coffin and besides, that wooden crate, fashioned though it was for a pauper’s burial, was a damn sight more comfortable than that colony of wayward invertebrates, my straw pallet. I could hear them moving about under my head. I could imagine them creeping and crawling all over me and eating me alive with their little cake holes. Every inch of my skin tingled. Every hair on my body stood on its end. One thing was clear: there would be no rest for Damien Deacus that night.
There was something else and all. A faint tap-tapping in the distance, like a self-conscious woodpecker. Once I’d heard it, I couldn’t not hear it, and what with me six-legged bedfellows, it was enough to drive me both up the wall and round the bleedin’ twist, so I got up, shook and patted myself, jumped up and down to dislodge any stowaways, and went in search of the source of that blasted tap-tap-tapping.
It’s a good job that warehouse was mostly empty but you can bet your old granny if there’s something in the dark, my trusty shinbone will find it. I’m telling you, the coppers should employ me to find missing persons or stolen goods or something. As long as they’re in the dark, I’ll find them.
Sure enough, bang, crash, wallop! I collided with something solid and was forced to let out a bit of a swear. I hopped around, rubbing my offended bone and trying to keep the noise to a minimum. The last thing I wanted was old Hoo to come back and chuck me out for kicking up such a palaver. I fished in me trouser pockets for a handkerchief or something with which to stem the flow of curses by stuffing it in my gob - only to remember that they wasn’t my trousers. I’d had them out of that trunk where there was so many pairs to choose from... Well, the pockets was empty but I was given cause to wonder all over again where Hoo had got them all from and what for. None of them was the kind of thing he’d be seen dead in and he didn’t seem the type to organise a jumble sale out of the goodness of his heart.
A familiar whiff teased my old hooter. The smell of dirt and damp and musty cellars. It ain’t me, I thought with confidence, because I’d just had me a bath. Something in the back of my head clicked: them clothes must have been where I’d been. Them clothes must have been dug up like what I was.
I felt disgusted. Having dead men’s clothes on me. I think that was getting my goat more than the fact that they’d been robbed from somebody’s coffin.
Think, Damien, think! Nobody goes to the trouble of breaking the law against digging people up just because they want new togs. It’s the bodies they’re after. Now, you hear all sorts of tales of doctors paying felons to fetch them freshly buried bodies so they can dismantle them and learn all sorts about human anatomy and bits and pieces what you can’t get from a book.
Putting aside my cringes and woes about wearing some bloke’s funeral suit, I stole across the warehouse floor to a metal staircase that spiralled up to an upper storey kind of thing. Mezzanine - that’s the word. Or am I thinking about Italian grub?
Clang!
My trusty shinbone found the lowermost step with ease. Bugger me! Limping, I climbed the stairs to investigate. The tap-tap-tapping was a little bit louder now and was coming from behind a door, through the opaque glass of which was shining the dim light of an oil lamp.
Something was afoot...
I twisted the knob ever so slightly and, giving the door a gentle push, I went inside.
With his back to the door, Doctor Hoo was working at a bench; I don’t think he heard me come in but I froze just in case, and tried to see what he was up to.
The tap-tapping stopped and he reached for something from a wooden box to his left, rummaging through it before his fingers - still gloved - closed on what he wanted. I found myself drifting closer - There is something about somebody absorbed in his work that draws you in. From my new vantage point, I could see what was on the bench, illuminated by a pool of light spilling from the oil lamp.
Cogs. Springs. Dials.
All the time I’ve known him, he’s always tinkering with something. To look at him, you wouldn’t peg dear old Doctor Hoo as a clock doctor! A clocktor, you might say. Well, you probably wouldn’t call him ‘dear’ neither.
“That tool,” he said without turning around. Somehow or other he’d clocked me! My bloody shinbone must have given him the head’s up.
“This one?” I picked up a spindly screwdriver. He nodded and took it from me. He used it to tighten something so teeny I couldn’t see it. It was only then that I noticed he was wearing huge spectacles with lenses like the bottoms of jam jars. His eyes loomed large behind them - it was quite startling.
“Here,” I said. “Moonlighting, are you, as a whatdyoucallit, a doctor of clockery?”
“Horologist,” he said without looking from his task.
“Really? I would have thought they was all about dollymops.”
He ignored me and continued to make adjustments to the curved contraption that was gripped in a vice. It was made of brass, for the most part, five overlapping crescents behind which the workings formed an intricate maze of gears and little wheels. I’m no whore expert but I could tell it weren’t no timepiece. It was a thing of beauty though, I have to say, whatever it was.
Hoo turned to me and fixed me with his magnified stare. “You are loyal,” he said slowly and I couldn’t tell if it was a question or a staff appraisal.
“O’ course,” I said. “I ain’t going to turn in the geezer what saved my life now, am I?”
His eye twitched at ‘geezer’ - I wouldn’t have spotted it if it weren’t for them spectacles.
“You are honourable, then,” he nodded.
“You know me: honour among thieves and all that.”
Another twitch, slightly bigger. I think he preferred it when I was calling him a geezer.
“Wait,” he instructed. He moved away from the bench, taking the oil lamp with him. “Do not touch,” he added as an afterthought and I rammed my hands into me pockets before they could pilfer any of them shiny brass doings. And then I rammed them out again - if such a thing is possible - remembering they was dead man’s pockets. So I took to whistling, as you do when you want to come across as all innocent and that.
All of a sudden he was back and I never heard a thing. With the oil lamp on top, he was carrying a crate of the sort you see in Billingsgate what had fish in it. Dead ones, I mean. Well, they wouldn’t last long in there because all the water would leak out. Anyway, he hadn’t brought me a spot of fish supper. He put the oil lamp on the bench and then lifted the lid off the crate and it took him no effort at all even though it was plain to see it was nailed down. It would have taken me a jemmy or a hammer and chisel at least. He’s deceptively strong, is Doctor Hoo.
The crate was packed with ice so I thought perhaps we was in for a bit of fresh fish after all. I could murder fish and chips right about now, I reckoned, and my stomach gurgled and leapt like a puppy begging at the dinner table.
Hoo delved his hands into the ice. His leather gloves protected him from the cold and he pulled out something long
and pink like a joint of meat. So, it weren’t fish on the menu, it was pork. He placed the joint on the bench top and tilted the lamp so we could get a better squint at it. And I saw it was a joint all right but not a joint of pork. It was a human joint, a blimmin’ leg from the knee down to the toes. I told you something was a foot! Doctor Hoo rolled it over, peering at it through those magnifying spectacles. His face never gives much away but I could tell he was pleased with it. I backed away. No, thank you. Not even with chips.
Where would he get his hands on a bloke’s leg?
Well, it might seem obvious to you but it took a while to dawn on me. It was as though I’d forgotten where I’d just been.
Grave-robbing.
Of course!
Not that Doctor Hoo would get his own brass bands dirty, oh no! He paid blokes, like them two bruisers what catched fire and got buried to do all the dirty work.
Hoo picked up the contraption he’d been working on and proceeded to attach it to the top of the leg like a cap for the knee. A kneecap cap, I suppose. He stood the foot on the table and then twiddled something on the device. The foot kicked out sharply, knocking the lamp over and plunging us into darkness.
A chill ran down my backbone as I heard a sound unlike any other, a sound I’d never heard before.
Doctor Hoo was laughing.
Four
Inspector Kipper rubbed his eyes and looked at the clock. It was almost three a.m. I’ll forget where my home is, he thought sourly. He perused the information on his desk one last time, the words swimming on the pages in front of him, making no sense. Too tired. Perhaps he should go home and get a few hours’ kip.
The nick was quiet. Even the drunkards in the cells were asleep, snoring like contented kittens. There was the duty sergeant reading The Strand on the front desk but apart from that, Kipper was alone in the building. Anyone with an ounce of sense had gone to their beds hours ago.
He stood on weary feet and reached for his coat and muffler. Home seemed like a long way away. Well, it’s not really home, he reflected. Just a place to go. He sat down again and riffled through the papers on his desk one more time.
Her name had been Miggles. Amelia Miggles, known as Millie. She was nineteen from somewhere in the West Country - those who had come forth to speak to the police were unable to say where exactly. Like most of the dollymops, Millie had no known next of kin.
Poor girl. What brought you to London, eh? The old streets-are-paved-with-gold bollocks? The promise of fame and fortune? Or what drove you from home? That was another way to look at it. What did you run away from? And could it have been any worse than the way things turned out for you? Kipper could think of nothing worse than what happened to Millie Miggles, winding up as the third victim of a maniac. Not quite the fame you’d perhaps been seeking, eh?
He scanned the preliminary hand-written report from the morgue. Evisceration was given as the cause of death. Dressing it up in big words didn’t make it any more palatable. A sharp knife, perhaps of the kind used by butchers, was proposed as the murder weapon. Or a scalpel, a surgical scalpel. Either way, the killer knew what he was doing. The wounds were not haphazard, born of homicidal frenzy. They were precisely where they needed to be in order to achieve the desired effect.
Kipper scribbled two notes on a pad.
Smithfield
Harley Street
Both seemed good places to start and, with the dawn only a couple of hours away, the meat market would be awash with butchers. The enquiries could begin along with the new day.
Kipper’s eyelids drooped. His head bobbed and jerked on his neck. Before he knew it was happening, he was drifting off-
-along a dark alleyway of cobbles and puddles, where the fog from the street didn’t quite penetrate. A woman on a corner cackled ‘Hello, dearie’ sizing him up with wary eyes. He hurried along, turning corner after corner - the alley seemed inordinately long. At every corner another woman. Or perhaps the same woman, the same corner, making the same offer: ‘Chuck your muck, sir?’ and giving him the same languid appraisal. He stopped; he had an idea of asking one of the women the way out, the way back to the street, the way home. He would pay for the answer. He fished a guinea from his pocket to show willing but the coin came out dripping with blood and the woman’s mouth broadened into a grin, and the grin kept on gaping wider until it split her face and the blood poured out and the fog swirled around and Kipper could no longer see and he-
“Morning, sir!” Sergeant Adams was standing over him with a cup and saucer. “Nice drop of Rosie Lee.”
Kipper composed himself and cleared his throat, grunting his thanks.
Adams was perusing the papers, twisting his neck to try to read them better. “Nasty business and no mistake,” he concluded. Kipper shuffled the papers together and put them in a wallet. “There’s a cab waiting, sir. I’ll tell him five minutes.”
“Thank you.” Kipper nodded at the cup of tea. Adams put it on the desk. Kipper waited until the sergeant had gone before he picked it up. He didn’t want Adams to see how much his hands were shaking.
***
The dawn only served to cast a dim glow on the fog. The cab picked its way slowly through the streets, the horse as tentative as though it was crossing thin ice. In the carriage, Kipper was waxing impatient. He had a headache from lack of sleep and his neck and back were protesting every jolt and bounce.
Smithfield, formerly ‘Smooth field’ had once been an outdoor market and could trace its heritage back to medieval times. Kipper wondered what wares they would have hawked back then. Dragon meat probably. And hawks.
In more recent times, great halls had been erected so at least indoors and out of the fog, you had a good chance of getting a proper look at what you were buying even if it was no help identifying what your purchase might be. Kipper knew, when times were hard (and when were they anything else?) unscrupulous merchants would pass off cat meat as rabbit or lamb.
There were still some external stalls with red and white awnings, showing in the fog like bloodstains. And, even at first light, the place was bustling with trade. As early as two a.m. buyers would flock in to secure fresh supplies for the city’s shops and hotels. It’s a glimpse into another world, thought Kipper. An underworld that is, for the most part, legit. And, of course, if the killer is a butcher, it would be easy to filter out those who had alibis by checking with market officials who had opened up their stalls when and on which nights...
He entered the first hall he came to, a grey monument of dilapidated grandeur, and pulled his muffler down. As well as the din of commerce, the stench of the place assaulted him like a mugger. The stink evoked the scene of Millie Miggles’s slaughter.
Blood is blood; animal or human, the stink of it is the same. Kipper coughed and lifted his scarf again but then, realising it might appear as though he had come to rob the place, steeled himself and uncovered his mouth again.
“Now then, sir,” a burly, jovial fellow with forearms like ham hocks and a complexion as ruddy as the stains on his apron. “What can I do you for? Got a lovely batch of tripe right here.”
Kipper flashed his warrant card. “I don’t want tripe,” he said. “I want answers.”
The butcher’s smile faltered but he continued to prepare cuts for his display. With a long-bladed filleting knife, Kipper noted. But then a cursory glance at surrounding stalls revealed that no butcher worth his salted pork would be without such an implement.
“If it’s about them suckling pigs, I bought them in good faith, so I did.”
“No-”
“How was I to know they was mutts? They come to me with their skins off. Heads, feet, the lot off.”
“Surely a man with your experience can tell pork from mutton.”
“No, mate, not mutton. Mutts. Bow-wows. Doggies.”
“Oh...” Kipper consid
ered this for a moment and forced himself back to the matter in hand. “It’s not about the bow-wows. Do you come here every night?”
The butcher smirked. “Are you giving me the glad eye, Inspector? Because I ain’t into that but I’ve heard tell of a molly house not far from here.”
Kipper reddened. The butcher chuckled and dealt with a particularly obstinate piece of gristle.
“Every night - except Saturday night, Sunday morning. Market’s shut of a Sunday morning, praise the Lord.”
“You’re a religious man?” To Kipper it seemed unlikely - unless the religion involved grisly sacrifices.
“Nah, mate, but a man needs a lie-in. The body needs rest. You look fit for the knacker’s yard yourself, if you don’t mind me saying.”
That’s true enough, thought Kipper. He sorted through his notes. None of the murders had been committed on a Saturday night or Sunday morning. So this fellow at least was off the butcher’s hook.
“Anything else I can help you with, only I’ve got customers?”
Kipper became aware of men queuing behind him, sporting the livery of London’s swankiest hotels. He thanked the butcher for his time, tipped his hat and moved on, almost getting trampled by a dozen or so cows being led through the hall. Docile creatures, Kipper observed; dewy-eyed and wet-nosed, they trudged by, little suspecting what fate lay in store for them, not knowing that bits and pieces of their kind were hanging from hooks all around.
“Mind out!” laughed the toothless cowherd. “Or you’ll be taken in with them. Get your bonce bashed in before you know it!”
Trapping Fog Page 2