Yes, I know it’s only dollymops. Who gives a toss about dollymops? Well, it ain’t them - it’s their clientele. The toffs don’t feel safe to walk the streets looking for streetwalkers. And we can’t have that now, can we? Poor little toffs.
Nah, screw ’em. Kipper thumped his desk. The killer must be stopped no matter who his victims are.
And it would be better if I could be the one to stop him before any of those smug bastards down at Scotland Yard.
Sergeant Adams bustled in, his face ashen above his bright beard.
“There you are,” said Kipper. “Did you bring that file?”
“Sir,” Adams placed a bulging folder on the desk. “There’s been another one.”
“Another file?”
“Another murder, sir. Another dollymop. Down in Smithfield.”
“Good gawd!” Kipper sprang to his feet. “And how do you know this?”
“One of the bobbies, sir.”
“He found her, did he?”
“No, sir. He was nearly knocked over in the rush, sir.”
“Rush? Damn it, Adams; stop speaking in riddles. What bleedin’ rush?”
“Your colleagues, sir. From Scotland Yard. Falling over themselves, they was. Constable Harding just happened to be in the way.”
“Damn it,” Kipper thumped the desk again. “Where?”
“Smithfield, sir.”
Kipper grabbed his hat.
“There’s a cab waiting, sir.”
***
The bleedin’ bastards from Scotland Yard were all over the crime scene by the time Kipper arrived. The area - a corner of the market, an alley between halls - was secured with rope and bobbies standing guard. Kipper sought to get through the cordon but was intercepted by Bigby.
“Ah, there you are, old man!” He clapped an arm around Kipper’s shoulder, champing enthusiastically on his pipe. “I knew you’d show up sooner or later.”
Kipper stiffened. “Who is she?”
Bigby pulled a face. “Difficult to say at this juncture, old boy.”
“Why?”
“Well...” Bigby grimaced. “The nature of her injuries - the extent of them - we’re just about certain she was female.”
Kipper frowned. “What do you mean?” He took a step toward the rope but Bigby pulled him back.
“I’d advise against it, Johnny. Going to be having nightmares for weeks myself.”
Kipper extricated himself from Bigby’s clutches and lifted the rope. A bobby bristled but a nod from Bigby stood him down.
“All right, Johnny,” Bigby called after him. “Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
Kipper strode into the alley as keen to get away from that prick Bigby as he was to see the body. His foot splashed in a puddle and the thought flashed across his mind that there had been no rain that day. He looked at the toe of his boot. It shone, wet and red.
He trod more carefully.
At first he thought it was a pile of meat. Waste from the butchers’ stalls, stacked up for disposal later. Perhaps the body was behind it. But as he drew nearer, he realised with a sick, sinking sensation in the pit of his stomach that this pink and glistening pyramid was the body, the mortal remains of some poor girl who had fallen foul of Foggy Jack.
He’s made mincemeat of her!
Kipper’s stomach rolled but he forced himself to look, despite gagging at the heady stench of blood and offal. A fly ambled nonchalantly down the slope of shredded flesh. Kipper retched and considered himself fortunate to have missed lunch that day. Breakfast too, come to think of it.
At the apex of the crude pyramid was a wig of blonde hair - No, Kipper realised! It was no wig. It was her scalp! At the base, a pair of boots and, at the sides, the woman’s hands - the only parts of her to remain intact. Everything else was finely chopped and ground up as though it had been through a machine.
Pale and shining with a sheen of sweat, Kipper turned away from the hideous sight and returned to the rope.
“Told you so,” Bigby greeted him but his tone was sombre. “Enough to put you off corned beef for life, what!”
Kipper gasped in lungfuls of the comparatively fresher air. “He - he butchered her.”
“Good and proper,” Bigby agreed. “At least we can take her fingerprints, poor cow. If she’s been in bother before, we might be able to put a name to her.”
Kipper’s mind was racing. “Machinery,” he said.
“What’s that, old boy?”
“To do such a thorough job, he must have used a machine.”
“My thoughts exactly,” Bigby nodded. “My lads are asking around now. Which butchers use mincing apparatus and all that.”
Damn it, thought Kipper. One step behind again.
***
Kipper absented himself from the removal of the remains, certain that he could add nothing to the proceedings other than vomit. Instead, he sought out the butcher he had spoken to previously. He found him tending his stall; his part of the market was all but deserted - everyone was swarming to get as close to the crime scene as possible. The butcher brightened a little when he recognised the copper and his eagerness to know more about what was going on sparkled in his eyes.
“Good day, Inspector!”
“Not for some,” grumbled Kipper. He flashed his warrant card to indicate he was there in his official capacity.
“Bad business,” the butcher shook his head.
“Bad for business too, I shouldn’t wonder,” Kipper shot back. “It’s enough to make one turn vegetarian.”
The butcher looked scandalised. “Wash your mouth out, Inspector!” He placed his hands over the ears of a pig’s head on his display. He nodded back the way the copper had come. “Messy, was it?”
Kipper thought about it. That was the thing about these murders: they weren’t messy. They were all arranged - staged, you might say, as though the killer was trying to get your attention and hold onto it. He shook his head.
“I’m not at liberty to disclose details of an ongoing investigation.”
“Bloody hell,” moaned the butcher.
“That is one way to describe it.”
“But it was him, wasn’t it?”
“Who?”
“Foggy Jack.”
Kipper cringed and his eyes darted from side to side as though he feared the butcher might summon the devil. “Don’t call him that! Like I said, I’m not at liberty to-”
“Yeah, yeah, and I said bloody hell.”
Kipper took out his notepad but found he had nothing to write with. He patted his pockets. The butcher offered a stub of a pencil. It was sticky and slimy and a glob of gristle fell off it and blotted Kipper’s page.
“Thanks,” said Kipper, trying not to gag. “Now, what can you tell me about mincing?”
The butcher smirked. “Well, I reckon it’s all about walking only on the balls of your feet. And the hips - they’re very important - you moves ’em like this. And the hands go like this.” He demonstrated by sashaying to and fro behind his stall. It took Kipper a while to realise the man was making a joke. The butcher’s pursed lips could no longer contain his laughter.
“Your face, Inspector! Just pulling your pizzle. Trying to inject a bit of whatsit - levity into your day.”
“I’d be obliged if you didn’t waste my time.”
The butcher’s face fell. “You mean the mincing of meat; of course you do. You have to be careful with mincemeat, let me tell you.” He lowered his voice. “There’s plenty of unscrupulous traders round here who - well, let me just say it’s not all exactly meat what goes through their mincers, if you catch my meaning.”
Kipper had to confess he didn’t.
“Well, it ain’t just meat. It’s bones and all. Fat. Gristle. H
ooves. Eyeballs, liver, lights. The lot. Hair. All of it gets minced up together - makes the meat go further. Good business practice. In a sense. Not me, though, of course. You won’t catch me stuffin’ nothin’ but the choicest cuts through my mincer; no, sir.”
“Might I have a look at it?”
“Look at what?”
“Your equipment?”
“Ooh, Inspector. You’re a fast one, ain’t you? Ain’t even bought me a drink yet.”
Kipper glowered until the butcher’s amusement ebbed.
“Sorry, Inspector. The wife thinks I’m a proper cut-up.”
“I’m sure she does.”
“D’you get it? A butcher who’s a cut-up!”
“No,” said Kipper. “Show me your mincer.”
The butcher adopted a more serious attitude and pulled out a device from under the table. It was about ten inches tall and coated in white enamel. There was a handle on one side and a circular plate riddled with holes on the other. The top was an open maw revealing spiked rollers within.
“Here we go. You see, it’s got a clamp on it here, what holds it to the table, so you’ve got both hands free, see? One hand to crank the handle and the other to feed meat into the top.”
He demonstrated. Kipper saw the pair of rollers turn inside.
“Bit like a mangle, you see. The rollers pull the meat in and it gets shoved out through the holes there, see?”
“I see,” said Kipper. “It’s a bit small, ain’t it?”
The butcher cupped his hands protectively around the machine.
“Must take a while...”
“It can be time-consuming, yes. That’s why I only does it when people arsks for it. Then they see what they’re getting. Not like other traders with their pre-minced minced meat. Could be anything in there and besides you don’t know how long it’s been sitting there, all congealin’ and coagulatin’ and flyblown... Here you ain’t half gone pale, Inspector; are you all right?”
Kipper tried to nod. He was awash with sweat at the thought of those remains. Just sitting there, congealin’ and coagulatin’. He remembered the fly... His legs buckled but he managed not to swoon. He held onto the edge of the table and found himself eye-to-eye with the pig’s head. He sprang back, revolted.
Concern was etched on the butcher’s features. “You look like you could do with a sit-down, Inspector. And some brandy.”
Kipper struggled to compose himself. “What about...” he cleared his throat, “What if somebody was to order something big. Like a whole pig, say. And wanted it minced up.”
The butcher rubbed his chin. “Unlikely. I’d advise against it. It’d take me too bleedin’ long, for one thing. Have to cut it up, see. Debone and all. No, mate, you’d need a much bigger mincer than what I’ve got. Why’d you arsk? Police having a do, are they? Only you’d be better off keeping that pig whole and ramming a spit up its jacksy and roasting it over a fire. Lovely.”
“No, no... And where might one find a larger mincer? In London, say?”
The butcher frowned. “Wouldn’t have a clue, mate - Hold up! It is a clue, ain’t it? Gawd above, are you saying he minced her? Foggy Jack minced her up?”
“Er - no!” Kipper was quick to interject. “I ain’t saying that at all.” He pocketed his notebook. “Thank you for your time.”
He hurried away from the stall, cringing as the butcher’s questions rang in his ears.
“He did, didn’t he? He bloody did! Foggy Jack minced her up! Didn’t he? Inspector! Didn’t he?”
Kipper couldn’t get away fast enough. He couldn’t help thinking that Bigby and his bunch of bastards would have handled the interview differently.
Seventeen
I don’t know, they say there’s no rest for the wicked or the beautiful - some guff of that nature anyway. The point I’m making is that there I was, stretched out on me bunk, thinking I may as well make myself comfortable, when a copper comes along and disturbs my shuteye by turning a key in the lock and shoving the door open with an almighty clang. Well, I damn near jumped out of my skin and it amused the copper and he tells me to stop messing about on account of there was somebody wanting to see me.
“Hoo?” I asked, sitting up.
“I don’t know who she is,” the copper shrugged. “Your Mrs, she says.”
“My –” I shut my trap. It wasn’t Doctor Hoo, then. It was some bint claiming to be my old lady. Well, it was some sort of mistake on account of I ain’t never been married. I’ve been to prison once so there’s no way I’m signing up for another one.
Well, this copper had piqued my interest, hadn’t he? So I got to my plates and set my clothes straight and ran a hand over my hair.
“How do I look?” I arsked him but he just sneered and said, “With your bleedin’ eyes, mate,” and he led me away, back to that room - or one very much like it, where there was a table and a couple of chairs. On one of them chairs sat the bint in question, all starched blouse and hooks and eyes rather than buttons. She had on her loaf a titfer, a black straw boater what had a red carnation on it. It was the only bit of colour on her. She stared at me when I came in, steely-eyed and grim. I had never seen her before in my life.
“Hello, love,” I winked and pulled out my chair.
“What is this?” she squawked like a parrot stuck under a door. She got to her feet. She addressed her question to the copper who was standing guard in case she tried to pass me a cake with a file in it or something.
“Is there a problem?” said the copper.
“Sit down, darlin’,” I told her. “Take the weight off.”
She pointed at me but kept her eyes on the copper. “Who is this?” she demanded. Well, ‘who’ was a step up from ‘what’, I supposed.
“It’s your husband,” said the copper.
“It bloody well isn’t,” said the woman, glancing at me with a sneer of disdain. “You’ve brung me the wrong one.”
“No, I haven’t,” said the copper. “This is him all right. This is Jedidiah Plank.”
The scandalised look on the woman’s face was enough to make me feel insulted.
“Look at him,” she said. “Do you think I’d wed my soul to a pasty-faced whippersnapper like that?”
“Hoi!” I said on account of there being nobody else to stick up for me. “You’re no oil painting yourself.”
“Now, now,” said the copper. “Don’t go having a domestic.”
At that the woman roared. I reckon she was seconds away from swinging for that copper.
“Young man,” she said, struggling to retain her temper. “You are quite mistaken. This - stripling - is not my husband. This is not Jedidiah Plank.”
“No?” said the copper.
“After twenty years you get to know what someone looks like. And this boy doesn’t even look twenty!”
“Oh. Well, if you’re sure... Only the fingerprints...”
I almost felt sorry for that copper and would have, were it not for the fact that he was a copper. He didn’t know what to make of it all. He stood gawping like a stunned goldfish for a bit, his face getting redder and redder by the second, and then he comes to a decision and he says, “Right. Sit down, both of you. I’ll go and fetch the sergeant.” And before we could say boo, off he goes but he ain’t completely stupid: he locked the bleedin’ door behind him. He shouldn’t have done that, leaving a criminal and a member of the public alone together so I reckoned he was in for a dressing-down from his sergeant, but of the two of us, me and the bint, I reckoned I was in the most danger. I felt like old Brutus in the lions’ cage.
The woman - Mrs Plank, I suppose she was - sat down again, keeping the table between us. She bored into me with her eyes and I felt a twinge of sympathy or something for the original owner of my chalks, having to come home to that.
&
nbsp; “Who are you?” she said. “Why do these idiots seem to think you are my husband?”
I nodded at the empty chair. She nodded too, allowing me to sit on it.
“Listen, Mrs,” I began, although she wasn’t making it no easier for me, “About your husband. I think he’s brown bread.”
“What are you talking about?”
“He’s popped his clogs, Mrs. Folded his umbrella.” I was trying to break it to the poor cow as sensitively as I could. “He’s snuffed it.”
“Clogs? Snuffed? Umbrella? You’re a blithering idiot.” And then it dawned on her. “Are you telling me my husband is dead?”
“It looks that way, yes.”
“And - and - where is he? What happened? Is he here?” The steely look in her eyes had been replaced by panic and pain and I began to feel sorry for her.
“Not exactly,” I said. “Listen, how did you know to come here?”
She frowned as though she didn’t understand the question and her eyes brimmed with tears and I thought, Oh gawd.
“Do you know,” she said, her lips quivering. “It was the queerest thing. I got a message.”
“Who from?”
“That’s just it; I don’t know. A note was pushed under the door. I opened it - the door, I mean but there was nobody there. But I did catch a glimpse of somebody over the road. Somebody tall and rather gaunt. Chinese he might have been. And then an omnibus came by and when it had moved on again, he was gone.”
Doctor Hoo!
“And what did it say, this note?”
“It didn’t say much. Just ‘husband’ and ‘Bow Street’.”
He always was a man of few words.
“So I came along, thinking what’s he got himself into this time. Oh, I try to keep him on the straight and narrow but it’s not easy. Where is he? Oh, that’s right. You said he was dead.”
Poor cow.
She reached across the table and took my hand in both of hers and gave it a right old squeeze. Tears were spilling down her face and her eyes searched for mine through their watery curtain. “Were you with him at the end?”
Trapping Fog Page 11