Tulloch pursed her lips and blew out a long, slow breath. ‘Victorian locations,’ she said. ‘Victoria Park, Victoria House, the Victorian swimming pool.’
‘Gov, it still makes a bollocks of the whole Ripper business.’ Anderson raised his voice and spoke directly to Joesbury over several heads. ‘Unless you’re telling us that was just a giant smokescreen right from the start.’
Joesbury was watching me again. ‘Oh, it was a bit more than that,’ he said. ‘What do you think, Flint?’
‘What are you talking about?’ asked Tulloch as, around the room, eyes went from Joesbury to me and back again.
‘Let’s go back to the original murders,’ he said, and it could almost have been just the two of us in the room. ‘In a place as densely populated as Whitechapel, how come nobody spotted a man covered in blood? Not once?’
‘It was dark,’ someone offered.
Joesbury didn’t even turn his head. ‘More to the point,’ he said, ‘how come five streetwise prostitutes, more than accustomed to dealing with aggressive punters, allowed a bloke with a knife to get close enough to slice them open?’
‘They had to take risks,’ said Mizon. ‘If they didn’t, they didn’t eat.’
‘Not long before Polly Nichols was killed, there were two violent murders in Whitechapel,’ said Joesbury. ‘Nothing to do with Jack, but I’ll bet every working girl in the city was on her guard. After Polly, definitely after Annie, they’d all have been jumpy as crickets. Yet he managed to kill three more times. Silently and invisibly. You’re our undisputed Ripper expert, Flint. How did he do that?’
‘What has this got to do with Lacey?’ asked Tulloch, stepping a bit closer to me and frowning at Joesbury.
‘Good question,’ he replied.
Tulloch turned to me again, saw the look on my face and took a small step back.
Joesbury, quite deliberately, had dropped me completely in it. Everyone was waiting for me to speak and now I had no choice but to tell them what I’d kept back so far. My own pet theory about who Jack the Ripper had been, exactly as I’d told my classmates all those years ago. My favourite character from history? Jack the Ripper, of course, because Jack kept his secret, right to the very end.
‘What DI Joesbury is driving at,’ I began, surprised at how calm my voice sounded, ‘is that Jack the Ripper was a woman.’
62
4 September, ten years earlier
TYE HAMMOND IS COMING DOWN FROM A HIGH AND, WHEN that happens, he likes to sit on deck and watch the lights bounce across the river. Somehow, they always manage to soothe him, to make the transition from bliss to the pressing crush of real life a bit more bearable.
As he climbs the steps of the houseboat, he thinks perhaps he hears someone calling out his name. When he reaches the cockpit the boat rocks against its mooring. He isn’t alone on deck.
‘What’s up?’ he asks the fair-haired girl at the port stern. Her back is to him, she’s clutching the guardrail. Her head twitches round, then back again, too fast to make eye contact.
‘The bow rope’s been cut, ’ she calls. ‘This one’s loose too. I can’t catch hold of it. ’
It takes a second for the words to sink in. Then Tye sees that the bow of the boat has swung away from its mooring. The current has caught hold of it and is pointing it directly downstream. Only the rope at the stern is keeping them against the bank now. Unsteady on his feet, he stumbles over to where Cathy is still reaching out for the cleat the boat had been tied up to.
Tye is taller than Cathy. He throws himself against the rail and leans over. His fingers brush the cold steel for a split second before the boat drifts too far away. The rope is still wrapped around the cleat but not tied. It’s slipping, only the friction of wet rope against steel is preventing the boat from spinning away at speed. He has to leap to the bank. Cathy can throw him the rope and he can catch the boat before the momentum gets too strong. He straddles the rail just as Cathy grasps hold of his leg.
‘It’s too far,’ she says. ‘You’ll go in.’
She’s right. Already they’re two metres away, three. But they have to go in. There’s no engine on the boat, no way of steering or stopping it. They cannot be loose in the river, at night, without any means of controlling the boat.
‘We have to jump,’ he says, taking hold of her arm. ‘We’re still close enough to swim.’
Cathy’s eyes are wide and pale with fear. ‘The others,’ she says, looking down towards the cabin. ‘Jen and Al are asleep. There’s four people down below.’
‘I’ll get them,’ he says. ‘You jump.’
Tye turns his back on Cathy and heads for the hatch. Four people. He’d thought five. Jen and Al, Rob and Kit, and that new girl who pitched up a day or so ago. That made five, seven with him and Cathy. But Cathy thinks four and she’s never wrong. He hears Cathy cry out behind him and spins round for a second to see her striding towards the bow. ‘We’re on fire,’ she calls. ‘The boat’s on fire.’
The explosion throws him high into the air, burning into his skin, sucking all the air from his body. When he hits the river, it feels like a relief.
Part Four
Catharine
‘The most agonizing of the East End mysteries is that of the utter paralysis of energy and intelligence on the part of the police.’
Daily News, 1 October 1888
63
Wednesday, 3 October
‘THIS THEORY MIGHT SEEM A BIT WILD, BUT IT CERTAINLY isn’t new,’ I said. ‘It was the inspector in charge of the original investigation, a chap called Frederick Abbeline, who first suggested that the Ripper might not actually be a man after all.’
‘On what grounds?’ asked Tulloch.
I glanced over at Joesbury and said, ‘You’ve just heard. When the whole of London was looking for a suspicious male, Abbeline couldn’t understand how a man with bloodstained clothing could make his way around the streets without being spotted.’
Faces around me were a mixture of sceptical and interested. I decided I might as well sit down, I wasn’t going anywhere in a hurry.
‘Abbeline talked it over with colleagues,’ I went on, as I perched on a desk. ‘They came up with the mad-midwife theory. In later years it became known as the Jill-the-Ripper theory.’
Some small sounds that might have been titters.
‘Keep going,’ said Tulloch. All eyes were still on me. Sceptical or not, everyone wanted to hear what I had to say.
‘They asked themselves who could get up and go out in the middle of the night without arousing suspicion in their own households, ’ I said. ‘Who wouldn’t attract attention if seen walking the streets in the small hours.’
Heads were starting to nod. Across the room a phone rang.
‘Who could even appear heavily bloodstained without anyone thinking it out of the ordinary,’ I said. ‘The answer they came up with was a midwife. Or an abortionist. Quite a few women were both.’
‘A midwife would have the anatomical knowledge to locate things like the uterus, the kidneys and so on,’ said Mizon. ‘Better than a butcher, at any rate.’
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Joesbury leave the desk he’d been sitting at and approach the TV screen. The phone was still ringing. Tulloch signalled for someone to answer it.
‘That was also part of the argument,’ I said to Mizon. ‘Another thing being that if prostitutes were approached by a woman, especially one they knew to be a midwife, they wouldn’t be alarmed. It would explain why no one heard a scream or a struggle. The women weren’t scared until it was too late.’
‘And it was common practice at the time for midwives to knock their patients unconscious by using pressure points,’ said Joesbury, who’d switched the TV on and was flicking through the list of stored information. ‘A midwife who could do that wouldn’t have much trouble subduing a tired, drunk prostitute,’ he said. ‘Could explain how he, or she, got Elizabeth Stride on the ground.’
I hadn’t realized quite how
much reading Joesbury had done on Ripper lore. He’d stopped fiddling with the TV and was watching me again. ‘Seems to me women invariably get nervous if approached by a man they don’t know,’ he said. ‘Completely different story if it’s a woman. As a rule, women don’t fear other women.’
‘Geraldine Jones didn’t scream or run the night she was killed,’ said Barrett. ‘If she had, Lacey would have heard her.’
‘Flint, you’ve been banging on about a height discrepancy,’ said Joesbury. ‘Remember, you pointed out that the chap we saw on CCTV escorting Amanda Weston into Victoria Park didn’t look as tall as the one we chased out of it?’
I nodded.
‘Here we go,’ said Joesbury. ‘This is what the camera on Grove Road picked up on Saturday 8 September, the day before Amanda Weston was killed.’
Joesbury pressed a button and we all watched the recording of a busy London street on a Saturday afternoon. Two people walked into shot and along the pavement before turning into Victoria Park. The woman was wearing a brown coat with polka dots. We hadn’t found the coat, but Daryl Weston had confirmed that his wife had owned one just like it. The woman’s companion was dressed in black and was a little taller than she. Only a little.
‘How tall was Amanda Weston?’ asked Tulloch.
‘Five five,’ replied Mizon, reading from some notes.
‘We need to compare this to the footage from the library,’ said Tulloch. ‘See if the heights are comparable.’
Joesbury was still looking at the picture of Amanda Weston and her killer that he’d frozen on the screen. ‘In the meantime,’ he said, ‘I can’t see anything to suggest that isn’t a woman with her.’
‘It is a woman,’ I said. ‘Our killer is a woman.’
Everyone turned to me. ‘Go on,’ said Tulloch.
‘Charlotte Benn was being pestered by a woman claiming to be Emma Boston in the days leading up to her death,’ I said. ‘If Emma can prove it wasn’t her …’
‘I think we need her to prove it beyond any doubt,’ said Tulloch. ‘Emma Boston has always been a bit close to this investigation for my liking.’
‘She will be able to prove it,’ I said. ‘I’ve just spoken to her. She didn’t make the phone calls and she didn’t go to the Benns’ house that morning. The killer was using her again. I know I’m right. It’s a woman.’
‘That was Stenning,’ called someone from across the room. ‘He’s stuck in traffic.’
‘Hang on,’ said Anderson. ‘We know Amanda Weston was raped. We found semen – Cooper’s – on her body.’
‘Cooper was living with a woman,’ said Tulloch. ‘Or at least he was according to that street bloke Lacey spoke to. A woman we still haven’t managed to track down. If the two of them had sex, it would be a relatively simple matter for her to save a condom. The pathologist found traces of a spermicide, remember?’
Several heads nodded. We heard another phone ringing.
‘We don’t know for certain Amanda Weston was raped,’ said Mizon. ‘At least, not in the usual sense. We just know someone pushed a piece of wood up inside her. A woman could have done that.’
‘But why go for the mothers?’ said Anderson. ‘That makes no sense.’
Something tight inside me broke loose. ‘Oh, you think?’ I said, turning on him. ‘Because it makes perfect sense to me. If you really pissed me off, and I was a bit of a psychopath, I wouldn’t go for you, that would be too kind. I’d go for someone whose death would tear you apart. Your three-year-old daughter, maybe.’
‘Steady on, Flint,’ Anderson managed, as people around us started to look nervous.
‘Or if you didn’t have a daughter, maybe I’d go for that other relationship men always feel really protective about.’
‘Mothers,’ said Tulloch, looking like she’d swallowed a peach stone.
‘Exactly,’ I said. ‘In fact, I can think of few better ways of getting your revenge on a man than by carving up his mother.’
‘OK, OK.’ Anderson was holding up both hands. ‘All I’m saying is, it seems a bit extreme to me.’
‘Rape changes women,’ I said, and waited to see if anyone wanted to hear what I had to say. Nobody turned away. ‘Rape victims talk about themselves before and after the rape as though they were two different people.’
‘We know people are impacted by trauma,’ said Anderson. ‘But it doesn’t—’
‘I’m not talking about a period of depression or getting a bit edgy,’ I said. ‘Rape victims are very specific in the language they use. They talk about the rape killing the person they were and then having to get used to the new person they’ve become.’
‘Yes, but with all—’
Tulloch put her hand on his arm. ‘Go on, Lacey,’ she said.
‘For most of these women, their life after the rape is governed by fear,’ I said. ‘They become afraid of the dark, of being alone, of strange noises in the night, of meeting strangers, of crowds.’
‘Of everything,’ said Mizon.
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Once a woman has been violently raped, the dominant force in her life, sometimes for years afterwards, becomes fear.’ I stopped, suddenly having no real idea where I was going with this. ‘Sorry,’ I went on, ‘I’m probably not making any sense.’
‘You’re making perfect sense,’ said Joesbury. ‘What you’re not making is a connection.’
I looked at him and saw the connection. ‘Well,’ I said. ‘What if, for one of these Llewellyn sisters, the dominant force in her life afterwards wasn’t fear? What if it was rage?’
For a moment no one spoke.
‘Boss,’ called Barrett from the other side of the room. Tulloch looked up.
‘Pete and Joe are at Karen Curtis’s house,’ said Barrett. ‘Local uniform were waiting for them. They can’t get any reply and it looks like there’s mail behind the door. What do you want them to do?’
Tulloch glanced over at Joesbury. He nodded.
‘Tell them to go in,’ she said.
64
BARRETT PASSED ON THE INSTRUCTION AND I SENSED THE room holding its breath. We waited the several minutes it would take for strong young coppers to break down a door.
‘They’re inside,’ said Barrett.
‘If anybody here’s religious, this would be a good time to put it to use,’ said Tulloch in a quiet voice.
‘Nothing on the ground floor,’ said Barrett. ‘They’re making their way upstairs.’
I am not remotely religious, but I was still repeating an old prayer from my childhood, over and over in my head.
Seconds ticked by. Barrett was talking quietly on the phone again. He looked up.
‘Nothing,’ he said. ‘Not a trace of anything out of the ordinary.’
There was a sound of exhalation and I wondered if everyone in the room had been holding their breath. Tulloch sank on to a chair. ‘Thank God,’ she said, dropping her head into her hands.
‘Hang on a minute, Boss, they have found something.’
Every head in the room turned in one direction.
‘It’s an envelope behind the door,’ said Barrett. ‘It’s not been opened but it looks a bit like the one Jacqui Groves had. What do you want them to do?’
‘Open it,’ said Tulloch.
We waited.
‘Another warning note, Boss,’ said Barrett after a second. ‘Press coverage of the Jones and Weston murders and a typed note saying “TIME FOR NUMBER FOUR”.’
Tulloch was on her feet. ‘We need to find Karen Curtis as a matter of urgency,’ she said. ‘She hasn’t seen the note, so may not be on her guard. Tom, can you sort that out?’
Barrett nodded.
‘And get a team talking to her neighbours,’ Tulloch went on. ‘Find out where she works, who her friends are, when she was last seen.’
‘Who’s sending these notes?’ asked Joesbury. ‘The Jones, Weston and Benn mothers weren’t warned.’
‘That we know of,’ said Tulloch. ‘They could have had a note of
some sort, just not kept them. Or the killer could have taken them.’
‘Doesn’t make sense to me,’ said Joesbury. ‘If you want to take someone by surprise, you don’t put them on their guard. And why two number fours? Surely the killer knows who he or she’s going for next.’
‘Gayle, get back to the three families,’ said Tulloch. ‘Find out if the mothers received any unusual mail in the days before they were killed. Then find out where these letters were posted. And get them down to Forensics, see what they make of them.’
‘On my way.’
‘OK,’ said Tulloch, as Mizon left the room. ‘After finding Karen Curtis, top of the list is tracking down the Llewellyn sisters. Mark, do you have contacts in Cardiff?’
He nodded. ‘Helped bring down a paedo ring couple of years ago,’ he said.
‘Find out as much as you can about the girls, please,’ said Tulloch.
‘Yes, ma’am.’ Joesbury sat down and picked up the phone.
‘And I want someone to get on to Social Services in Wales,’ said Tulloch. ‘See if they have any record of them. We need to know about family background, school, that sort of thing.’
Across the room, someone volunteered.
‘Neil and Lacey, can you make your way through the other agencies. Start with the DSS.’
DS Anderson and I nodded. It was standard procedure when trying to track someone down. Start with the Department of Social Security. If the two girls had ever claimed benefits, they’d be on the system. Failing that, we’d work our way through the others. If they paid tax, the Inland Revenue would hold records; if they drove a car, the DVLC would have them on file. We’d try the utility companies in Wales and then London. If they’d ever paid a gas, electricity or phone bill, they’d appear on a database somewhere.
‘We’ll meet back in an hour,’ called Tulloch as she left the room.
Fifty minutes later she was back. ‘Jacqui Groves is going to stay with her sister’s family for a few days,’ she said. ‘With a police escort. Anything on the letters, Gayle?’
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