In the Footsteps of The Whitechapel Slasher (Edwin Scott Crime Trilogy Book 1)

by Felix Bruckner

  Unlike you, I can see clearly what she is wants. So, what am I to do? I will bide my time: first I must consider long and carefully; then I must make my plans; ultimately, I will do whatever is necessary to retrieve my special friend, oh yes. In the meantime, I must not change my manner. No one can know. No one must suspect.

  Friday, 10th February: Jenny James was an attractive girl, statuesque with an erect bearing and a faultless complexion; towards me she often behaved rather coolly, but in company she was composed, self-assured and extrovert. She was not accepted by the nurses, had few friends among her fellow physiotherapists, but was popular in medical school circles.

  We had been to see Breakfast at Tiffany’s at the local cinema. The evening had turned out a great success: Jenny had been unexpectedly passionate in the back row of the stalls, pressing herself ferociously against me, and almost drowning me with her kisses. As we made our way from the building afterwards, I glimpsed several students from my year a little way ahead. Hopefully they hadn’t observed us.

  The performance had finished early; we might just have time for a night-cap, before my Cinderella act to catch the last train back to Clapham Common. A cold north wind was blowing as we emerged from the cinema exit, but I was snug and warm in my new camel duffel coat. I was absorbed in my thoughts: I still retained the film’s closing image of Audrey Hepburn and George Peppard kissing tenderly in the rain, to the swelling music of Moon River.

  We were comfortably intertwined, as we approached Jenny’s flat in Old Montague Street. With a shock I found our way barred by a bulky figure; however, after a brief moment I relaxed and the pounding in my ears subsided: even in the dim light of the alleyway I could make out the spiky hair and battered visage of Mick O’Malley, one of our medical students.

  “Leave her alone! I saw you pawing her in the sodding flea pit.”

  O’Malley was short, but built like a tank; he played hooker for the first London Hospital rugby team, had been at school with Michael Ffrench, had an Etonian drawl liberally laced with profanities, and mixed with the smart set in my year; now he slipped into a broad Irish accent, though I knew he had never ventured nearer the Emerald Isle than Hertfordshire.

  “Leave my girl alone, or I’ll break your arm!”

  The turn of events took me by surprise.

  “Are you his girl?” I whispered to Jenny. No answer …

  Suddenly and even more unexpectedly, O’Malley lowered his head and charged me like an angry bull. I blacked out ... It must have been for a few seconds only, but, when I awoke I found myself flat on the ground. There was a thumping pain at the back of my head, and my arm was being gripped in a vice, my elbow forced remorselessly backwards; I was powerless to help myself as the pressure increased. With resignation I awaited the inevitable snap of bones ...

  Abruptly the grip went slack. A giant figure loomed over us, and I heard the usually placid voice of Chris Platt, distorted with fury, hardly recognisable:

  “Leave him alone, you great coward. Why don’t you pick on someone your own size?”

  O’Malley rose slowly to his feet, casually dusted himself down, and, avoiding eye contact, slunk off.

  “And are you his girl, Jenny?” I asked again.

  “Of course not ... But you’re hurt, Edwin. You’re bleeding.”

  For a time, I drifted in and out of consciousness. Finally, I was able to sit upright, though my head was still spinning alarmingly, and I felt sick. Chris examined the back of my skull, and staunched the bleeding with a large handkerchief. He and Jenny helped me - still groggy - to my feet.

  “Can you walk, Edwin?” enquired the big man. “You have a lump the size of a cricket-ball on your occiput. You must have banged your head when you fell. We’ll need to take you to the receiving room … ”

  At the London, I required several stitches for my head wound, and was admitted overnight to Mellish Ward with concussion.

  I’m ready to try again. My dissecting has improved. I shall be better on this occasion, oh yes. Again, I have done my homework: this time it will be a night nurse. The student nurses usually go on their meal break in groups; staff-nurses tend to stagger their breaks, and go alone. So a staff-nurse it shall be!

  It is bitingly cold, and a few snow-flakes drift from the sky, landing on my nose, and brushing against my cheek. I am standing in an impenetrably dark doorway in Cavell Street, some short distance from the nurses’ home. Midnight strikes from the church nearby. I wait. A group of night nurses hurry by, giggling and chattering excitedly to each other, their cloaks wrapped tightly around their shoulders. They pass. I wait, shivering.

  At last I hear solitary footsteps, rapid, yet still not running; it is my staff-nurse, oh yes indeed. I peep out of my hiding place: she is bigger than the last one, may be stronger and more self-possessed. I must be quick - take her by surprise. With my hood and gloves on, I slide out of my doorway, just as she draws level. My hands reach her throat, even as she takes a deep breath, preparatory to a scream. But only a strangled croak - oh that’s good, very apt - escapes her lips. However, she is indeed strong, this one. She thrashes around with her fists, she tries to dislodge my hands by gripping my wrists, silly girl! She tears at my wrists with her finger-nails, but my gloves protect me.

  Still I compress her throat - what a surge of power it gives me. I am immortal, a demon, a god! Her face is congested with dark blood; it becomes mottled. She grasps at my hood, trying to pull it off. I can’t have this, my dear. I kick her hard on the shin. She gasps ... Suddenly her struggles cease, and she is limp, held up only by my hands on her neck.

  I let her fall, check her pulse - absent. I look around: fortunately no-one ventures out at this time, in this weather - hopefully not until the night nurses return from their meal. I’ve no time for all her clothes, this time. I just pull up her uniform skirt and petticoat, and remove her white lacey panties - nice!

  I position her neatly on her back, with arms by her side. From my case, I withdraw my instruments. I dispense with the face and chest for tonight. I make a deep incision down the centre of the abdomen, through all the muscle layers - hardly any blood, as the heart stopped beating several minutes ago. I incise the peritoneum: the liver is revealed under the cloak of the omentum and the lighter pink of the intestines. I have no time to search for other viscera - some-one may pass by at any minute.

  With my forceps, I grab the small intestine, cut with scalpel and pull, pull and cut. Greyish semi-liquid muck squirts from the cut lumen of the gut, but remains confined in the abdominal cavity. I remove most of the ileum, jejunum, duodenum, and stomach, chopping at the pancreatic duct, but leaving the pancreas behind.

  The dissection all looks a bit ragged, but I tidy it up as best I can, and place the gut in a neat pile beside the corpse. I straighten her hair, leave the face showing above her inverted petticoat. Back in my doorway, I dispose of my dissecting kit, hood and gloves in my case, lock it, and walk away quickly, though with no appearance of rush.

  The snow-flakes are coming down more thickly, creating haloes around the street lights. I move through the side-streets, distancing myself from the scene, making my way to my lair by a roundabout route, in case my footprints leave a trail in the snow. Finally, I hear a scream, then more screams. I stop under a lamp, and check my watch - not quite one o’clock. The night nurses are punctual returning to their wards.

  Saturday, 11th February: I was back at home. I had been discharged at ten this morning, and taken by ambulance all the way to Clapham. Mother had been notified of my hospital admission last night, and had been worried sick ever since; she had rung my father at work, and he had come home early to await events.

  Now I was feeling reasonably well, though I wouldn’t have wanted to attempt a ten mile run; I was sitting up in bed, eating a light lunch: soup, cold tongue and potato salad. My whole family fussed gratifyingly around me - even Dad had got up to welcome me back.

  “Have a look at this, Edwin,” he passed me the News Chronicle. The
headlines leapt out at me from the front page:

  “WHITECHAPEL SLASHER STRIKES AGAIN”

  Without pause, I read on. “In the early hours of this morning, a Staff Nurse on night duty at the London Hospital, was found murdered outside the Nurses Home in Cavell Street, Whitechapel, where she was heading for her midnight supper-break. She is named as Amanda Royston who worked on Mellish Ward. She was discovered by a group of junior Night Nurses, lying in the snow. She was fully clothed, but her skirt was pulled up, and it was found that she had been eviscerated. There are parallels with the Jack-the-Ripper murders of the nineteenth century, and also the more recent killing in Whitechapel, last November. For final details we await the forensic pathologist’s report, but Detective Inspector Butter of Brick Lane Police Station informed us that the killer used a sharp implement, and the incision appears to have been made by an expert, such as a butcher or even a surgeon …”

  Good God, I thought. Mandy Royston, I knew her, a lively extrovert girl. She had been in the Christmas Show …

  Sunday, 12th February: Mick O’Malley and Chris Platt were brought to the London Hospital receiving room by ambulance: Platt had a broken fore-arm; O’Malley was semi-conscious, with swelling and bruising around his eye, and a suspected fracture of his cheek bone. Both insisted they had been waylaid by a gang of youths.

  “If you think we look bad you should see them …”

  Yet a pernicious rumour had spread that O’Malley had attacked his companion with a crowbar, but Chris managed to knock his assailant unconscious with his good (right) fist, before he, too, had succumbed. Both students were X-rayed: O’Malley’s fracture was undisplaced and required no specific treatment; Platt’s fore-arm fractures (radius and ulna) were immobilised in plaster of Paris. Afterwards, the pair spent the night, scowling, in adjacent beds in the orthopaedic ward; and Chris was out of the rugby team for the rest of the season.

  Mick O’Malley, however, was playing again after a week.

  Saturday, 25th February: The caves reverberated to the sound of Jazz; grotesque dancing shadows were cast on the walls and ceilings by candles and electric fairy lights. We had taken the train from London Bridge, and arrived at Chislehurst at eleven o’clock at night. I had made a good recovery from my knock on the head. Now, Jenny and I walked hand in hand, marvelling at the strange surroundings: the Chislehurst Caves had been excavated by man for its chalk deposits, and subsequently used as a gigantic air-raid shelter during the Second World War; they stretched for miles, with galleries opening into caverns of all sizes, the largest of which were illuminated. Music from at least a dozen bands echoed off the walls, and mingled eerily in the dark passages. We helped ourselves to free beer and lemonade from the stalls we passed; the snacks and sandwiches we ignored, having brought our own for the night ahead.

  Dancing was in full swing, to a band playing Chris Barber’s Petite Fleur; the bright colours of the dancers were subdued to a faded sepia by the dim lighting, the beards of the men merging with the shoulder-length hair of the women. We wandered around for a time, sipping tepid beer, along shadowy galleries, in and out of caverns. I still wore my overcoat, but Jenny had divested herself of hers to reveal a loose scarlet jumper, a black jade necklace, black calf-length flared skirt, and black boots; in her hair - to match her jumper - was a scarlet ribbon.

  “It takes a worried man to sing a worried song,” sang the band. The atmosphere was becoming increasingly warm: the dancers’ faces shone with sweat, and their outer clothes were gradually discarded, as they performed the figures of the traditional jive.

  “I’m worried now, but I won’t be worried long …”

  We had joined in the dancing, intermittently sipping remnants of the beer from the trestle tables, and had gradually consumed our stock of sandwiches; hot baked potatoes were brought around in an old pram at about two in the morning; when we interrupted our exertions to devour these, our limbs became pleasantly weary; we huddled down in a corner of a dim passage, kissing and cuddling gently; gradually we grew more aroused: my hands strayed under her jumper, and I could feel her responding ... As our eyes adjusted to the dark we became uncomfortably aware of several couples in sleeping bags on the ground around us - one or two watching us with interest!

  We sprang apart, and sat stunned until the pounding in our ears had subsided. The passage had been getting colder as the night outside progressed. We got up, put on our coats, and wandered away - the blessed darkness hiding our blushes.

  It was after three-thirty. There were still a few bands playing slow sleepy music; we came upon quite a crowd in one of the main caverns: some couples in sleeping bags, but many still upright, swaying to the music, arms around each other, eyes closed. The body heat of the multitude had kept the place pleasantly warm.

  We were drawn to a commotion in an adjoining cave: two young men were involved in a drunken scuffle, struggling together ineffectually - neither able to strike a telling blow; eventually they tumbled to the ground, still locked in each other’s arms like lovers; here, one fell asleep, snoring, head lolling to one side; the other shuffled unsteadily away on hands and knees, before collapsing in a heap a few feet away. The show being over, the onlookers dispersed.

  We returned to the larger cave, sat down in a corner, arms entwined, covered with our overcoats; we watched the few dancers still on their feet, marvelling at the stamina of the band - was this still the group who had started at ten o’clock yesterday evening?

  The landscape was a brilliant white, dazzling to the eye. I was skiing down a steep mountain, but I seemed to observe everything from a great height, beyond my body … A skier was in trouble (was it me?): in slow motion, the figure flew head over heels, skis and ski-sticks shooting off in different directions, before coming to rest, ominously still … Everything went black … A witch trapped me in an Underground carriage, her features contorted in fury. “I know your sort,” she was screeching. “You men are all the same - only want one thing …” Her features dissolved into those of Jill Pritchard, very pale, and streaked with tears: “I loved you, Edwin Scott, but couldn’t wait forever … I am getting married to another …”

  I woke stiff and cold, the cave silent as the tomb; only a few fairy lights still burned; as Jenny and I watched, the last candle guttered and went out; slowly we rose, and stretched our limbs. I shrugged off the memory of my dreams; I checked the time on my watch: five o‘clock! The band had gone; around us lay couples in various stages of undress - some in, and some out of their sleeping bags; we began to retrace our steps; in the distance we heard the sound of a solitary jazz band, which grew louder as we approached; the organisers had kept busy through the night: new candles were being lit, and the caves were brightening in parallel with the outside world; gratefully we tucked into the hot dogs and scalding black coffee, which had magically appeared.

  People were beginning to stir, and we decided it was time to leave; tired but happy, arm in arm, we emerged from the subterranean chambers towards the lightening eastern sky.

  We headed towards Chislehurst Station, and the first train home.

  Chapter Six - March, 1956

  I stand again in my dark doorway in Cavell Street. Spring is in the air, and the nights are warmer. I await my quarry - another solitary staff-nurse. Midnight strikes.

  A group of student-nurses pass, conversing, but looking watchful. This does not augur well for my night’s business. However, all I can do is wait, that’s all. I press myself deeper into the shadows of the doorway, continue my vigil.

  After a further five or ten minutes, come further foot-falls. At last! It must be my staff-nurse. Yet something makes me hesitate, before I spring out on her; something in the cadence of the footsteps. I peep out of my hiding place: there are two staff-nurses, not one! I let them pass.

  My heart is pounding, and I’m suddenly perspiring liberally. This will not do, oh dear me no! I could have spoilt everything, I might even have been caught. I bet that the hospital authorities have advised all the ni
ght staff to be on their guard, to take precautions, to avoid walking alone during their breaks. Damn them all to Hell!

  Well, I’ll have to revise my plans. I must practise patience. I’ll leave the night-nurses be for the time-being. I’ll wait until the hue and cry dies down, until they begin to forget me, until they relapse into their customary complacency.

  Chapter Seven - April, 1956

  Saturday, 8th April: The windscreen wipers were working flat out to cope with the heavy April showers.

  “Take the next turning on the left.” This was, in fact, a “No Entry” into a one-way street; however, as I was familiar with Wimbledon’s roads, I took the following one instead.

  “Good,” purred the examiner. I was retaking my driving test.

  The first test had ended in ignominious failure. This time around, I had coped well with stopping and starting at traffic lights, had received nods of approval when I had waited at a zebra crossing for a pedestrian, and had successfully overtaken a wobbling cyclist; I had managed a three-point turn without stalling or hitting the kerb; I had performed a perfect reverse around a corner. There had been no problems controlling the big powerful Austin Cambridge saloon, though the steering wheel was heavy and the turns were tight: never had I been so expert during my lessons!

  Now (with a feeling of relief), I pulled away from the kerb on my hill start, without slipping back. Next would be the emergency stop. I had practised this on many occasions with Mr Irons, my instructor - inevitably it came when I changed up from second to third gear, on the steep incline.