by Thomas Emson
Jack smiled. Yellow teeth showed. He said, “You help me put my art on display, and you can keep anything you find forever more.”
“On display? What’re you talking about?”
Chapter 28
NEED TO KNOW
Hallam Buck, dragging thirty-seven bitter, lonely years behind him and looking at decades behind bars if they ever caught him, always poked his nose where it didn’t belong.
It was about wanting to know. It was a fear of being left out.
That had been Hallam’s life—isolation.
Skirting the playground while other kids clustered and gossiped about him. Trudging through Barrowmore, trying to attach himself to various groups, all of them telling him to fuck off, if he was lucky, or kicking his head in.
So knowing what was going on kept him in the loop. He could loiter near tittle-tattle and toss in his two-penneth. He could be part of the conversation; he could be part of life.
As usual, Hallam had woken up at 5:00 am. He dressed and made breakfast. He put on his yellow bib with “Tower Hamlets London Borough Council” written on the back. On the breast it sported the council’s logo, and the motto, From Great Things To Greater.
When he was ready, he’d gone out and traipsed the walkways of Monsell House, picking up glass and wiping up piss, cleaning up vomit and scooping up needles, sweeping up litter and sprucing up stairwells.
It wasn’t hard work. He did it at his own pace. After all, he wasn’t getting paid. The bib he’d nicked off a street cleaner a couple of years ago. The equipment was his own—bin bags, brushes, disinfectant. He mostly focused on the eighth floor, where he lived, and the seventh—where she lived.
Tash. Lovely Tash. Delicious Tash. His Tash.
Should’ve been. Would’ve been had it not been for—
Approaching her door that morning, he went through it all again—hot flushes, racing heartbeat, stiff cock, dry throat, and buckling knees.
He knocked. He wore his smile. He pushed his hips out, his erection pressing against the nylon of his boiler suit with nothing underneath it. Just thin material between todger and Tash.
She opened the door and said, “Hi, Hallam,” and looked him in the face.
Look at my cock, he was thinking. Look at my cock.
But she didn’t flinch. A straight-ahead stare.
She had beautiful eyes. So blue. Like two sapphires.
“I . . . I’ve been busy this morning,” he said.
“Oh, good for you,” she said. “Actually, Hallam, I’m busy . . . ”
Rage flared in his chest. He trembled with shame. He mumbled something and turned, plodding off down the walkway.
Back in his flat, he’d fumed.
He stripped naked and masturbated. And when he came, he screamed her name in anger and imagined himself ramming into her while she could do nothing but beg and cry.
One day, he thought. One day . . .
Sweating, exhausted, he slumped on the floor. The dust and the debris stuck to his sticky body.
He thought about Tash. Had she got a boyfriend, or was it a one-night stand that made her “busy”? His guts churned.
Slag. Tart. Whore.
He got on all fours. He stared at the floor. She was right beneath him in the flat below.
If he put his ear down, he could sometimes hear her when she sang along to the radio and when she called Jasmine.
Get out of the bath, Jasmine.
Jesus. Too much. The thought of them made fire in Hallam’s belly.
He had considered drilling a hole through the floor so he could watch her—watch them both.
But it was risky. His life was risky. It had always been risky.
So easy to get caught. Especially these days with DNA and forensic evidence being so good.
After catching his breath, he got to his feet. His blubber itched. Sweat and dust coated his body. His sperm stained the dusty wooden floor.
He showered and then dressed in his dad’s old shirt, trousers, and shoes before going out.
Scudding clouds spat rain. The gloom weighed heavily. His heart was a lump of lead. His life, worthless.
At the shop, he bought The Sun, two cans of beans, and a Twix.
He munched the chocolate as he trudged back towards the high rises.
Behind him, shouts erupted. Hate in the air. Threats on the breeze.
He’d wheeled and faced them—two charging towards him, fear on their faces.
He knew one by name. Spencer Drake. He knew the other youth’s face.
They barged past him. Hallam reeled. The Twix fell out of his hands. He yelled out and squatted to pick it up.
“You’re going to bleed, Drake. You’re going to fucking bleed.”
Hallam looked up. He froze. The Sharpleys, Paul and Michael, raced past him, and after them—You’re going to bleed, Drake. You’re going to fucking bleed—came Lethal Ellis.
As he raced by, Lethal’s twisted, angry face turned to Hallam and said in a shriek, “What are you fucking looking at, flid?”
Hallam watched as the chase hurtled down the road that swerved around the tower blocks.
Goosepimples raced up his back.
He followed the hunt. He couldn’t help himself. He had to know. He had to be part of life.
Chapter 29
THE RED ON THE DOOR
Hallam’s dad would’ve told him, “Don’t get involved.”
But then, Hallam’s dad kept himself to himself. He needed to—being gay on Barrowmore wasn’t something you advertised. Apart from in the beaten-up telephone kiosks where you pinned a scrap of paper with your number on it. Apart from the piss-smelling elevators where you graffitied an image of your cock with your contact details on the shaft. Apart from the shit-coated public toilet where you lurked in the cubicles, staring through the round hole at groin level in the wall . . . waiting.
His dad had come out fifteen years ago. His mum walked out.
Hallam was twenty-two, Mummy’s boy and Daddy’s punchbag.
And it didn’t change. His father started drinking heavily. He beat Hallam. He sneaked men back to the flat. Tough guys who’d say, “I’m not fucking queer, right, but . . . ”
Hallam listened to their sex and pined for his mother. He’d weep while his father fucked truckers and doormen. And after he was done, Dad would come into Hallam’s room and say, “Stop your fucking crying, you little queer—she’s gone. Women are no fucking good. You hear me? You hear me? You hear me, you little—”
Mummy’s boy and Daddy’s punchbag.
His dad died three years ago. He left Hallam with nothing.
The council let him stay in the flat. They’d never chuck him out. He was on benefits and couldn’t work because of his mental state. He’d be homeless and more doomed than he already was.
He still cried for his mum. Photos of her plastered the corkboard in the kitchen, covered the door of the fridge, and crammed the mantelpiece.
But she wasn’t coming back.
What would she have said?
Don’t get involved.
Too late. He followed the road around the tower blocks. It led him along streets of low rise housing. It took him to an area dominated by lock-ups.
The silence was heavy.
In the distance, you could hear Barrowmore’s voice—the traffic, the music, and the shouting.
But the sound was muffled, as if an invisible wall separated life on the estate from this other dimension.
He sneaked down the road, staying close to the red brick wall on his right. On the left lay the garages, lined up like coffins.
They were black with age, rotted and battered. They creaked in the wind.
Where had the lads gone?
He looked to his right. They might have scaled the wall. But it was twelve
feet high. It would take some climbing. And security wire curled along the top of it. That would slice up your hands.
He dismissed that option and moved on.
Noises came from a lock-up. He flinched. It sounded like scuttling.
Rats, probably. He shuddered. They were everywhere. The flats were plagued by them. He’d had a Jack-Russell-sized one in his kitchen a few months ago.
He hurried past the garage, hearing a squealing behind him as he went.
He groaned.
What the hell was that? Maybe a cat caught a rat?
He stopped dead. Up ahead, a garage door sagged off its hinges. Red paint covered the corrugated steel. Hallam narrowed his eyes, trying to make out what the paint said.
He swallowed and moved nearer.
The door swayed. The hinges creaked. Hallam held his breath.
THIS IS HELL was daubed there.
The words glistened. The letters ran. It was freshly written. He smelled the paint. It wasn’t paint. It smelled different. He approached. The red was dark. The red smelled coppery.
The red was blood.
THIS IS HELL.
The hinges creaked. Hallam screamed. His balls went up into his belly. The door swung open. Paul Sharpley hung crucified on the back of it.
Part Four
MY KNIFE’S SO NICE AND SHARP
Chapter 30
AN HEIR TO ATROCITIES
6:04 AM, FEBRUARY 27, 2011
At the time, the papers named him the New Ripper because, like the old one, he ripped women.
He cut their throats, mutilated their flesh, and opened their bellies.
He removed organs, scooping them out as if he were searching for something inside the body.
He was searching.
And he always found what he was searching for.
The papers knew nothing about the missing portion. Neither did the police, nor the pathologists who post-mortemed the victims.
Why should they?
What he took was not a normal part of the human anatomy. Not a kidney. Not a liver. Not a heart.
In fact, it was highly unusual.
But when he extracted it from the blood and the gore, he would take it home. He’d wrap it in newspaper and stow it in a mini-freezer hidden away in his attic.
From April to July 1996, he collected four of these treasures.
They had come from his four victims. Rachel Hanbury, Patricia Faultless, Susan Murray, and Nancy Sherwood.
The women lived in the Whitechapel and Spitalfields districts of East London. Two of them—Hanbury and Faultless—were from the Barrowmore Estate.
Nothing had changed. In 1996 it was blood and fear, and in 2011 it was blood and fear again.
Nothing had changed. In 1996 four women were butchered by an unknown killer, and in 2011 four youths are butchered by—
He narrowed his eyes and surveyed the area.
It had been fifteen years. Nothing had changed. Graffiti and burned-out cars. Overgrown grass on a piece of open ground. Rusted swings and a climbing frame. Youths loitering, transmitting menace. The smell of booze and fags on the air. The stench of charred metal from the cindered vehicles, and petrol and oil fumes from their gutted engines. The reek of dog shit from the hybrid beasts used as weapons by drug dealers . . .
Four youths are butchered by—
Not me, he thought. Not this time.
He shuddered. He remembered the voice.
I am the lord who gapes . . . I am the lantern of the tomb . . . I am the moth eating at the law . . .
“Jesus Christ,” he said.
Four youths are butchered by—
It had been carnage. One had his brains bashed in. One had been decapitated. One had been opened up like a book. One had his entrails removed. Two of them had been crucified. Someone had written THIS IS HELL on the building where they’d been found.
“Jesus Christ,” he said again.
I am the lord who gapes . . . I am the lantern of the tomb . . . I am the moth eating at the law . . .
He was only a kid when the voice came to him—eight or nine years old. He knew who it was in his head straight away.
Him.
He owned books about him. He watched TV show’s about him. He walked the same streets as him.
He regaled guests by raving about the killings, “ . . . and he sent part of a kidney he took from one woman to Mr Lusk of the Whitechapel Vigilance Committee, and he said he’d eaten—”
And his mother would scold him. “Your auntie doesn’t want to hear about those things, darlin’. Little boys shouldn’t be thinking about those things, either.”
But he couldn’t stop thinking. The voice was in his head. The voice was calling him. The voice wanted him to serve.
I am the lord who gapes . . . I am the lantern of the tomb . . . I am the moth eating at the law . . .
As he got older, he studied the brutal murders more forensically.
Like many before him, he tried to identify the killer. But he just could not make the evidence against any of the suspects stack up. Circumstantially, perhaps, but not forensically.
It was as if the killer were truly a ghost.
And maybe he was.
Maybe Jack the Ripper only existed in his head, and that’s why he took on the mantle in 1996.
That’s why he became the New Ripper, an heir to past atrocities.
He strolled along the passageway separating two of the tower blocks. It smelled of piss. Beer cans and pizza boxes littered the path. He stomped on them and kicked them.
The passage led into the quad that was hemmed in by all four high rises. He studied the space. It was a car park. It was somewhere to have a kickabout. A place to hang out, smoke and drink. A battleground to settle differences.
It was anything you wanted it to be, because here, on Barrowmore, there was no one to tell you what it shouldn’t be.
An odor of petrol clung to the air. A large, once-white wall stood by a grass verge. It was a canvas for the local graffiti artists. Or yobs, as he preferred to call them. He bristled. Another useless, politically-correct gesture by the lefty-liberals running the council.
As he could have predicted, the wall hadn’t spawned the new Banksy. It had only bred a new hatred.
Instead of art, the wall was decked in abuse towards Old Bill, parents, teachers, boyfriends, girlfriends, football teams, other estates, foreigners.
It had become a place to vent fury, not creativity.
The hate had no meaning.
Does what I do have meaning? he wondered.
I am the lord who gapes . . . I am the lantern of the tomb . . . I am the moth eating at the law . . .
It had to have meaning. The voice in his head gave it meaning. The voice told him what to do. It urged him, encouraged him. It said, Prepare the way for my homecoming. It said, Spill blood and gather gifts. It said, Kill one, kill two, kill three, kill four . . . prepare for the fifth . . . the fifth we share . . . our reign shall begin with her blood . . . the blood of the fifth . . .
And on it went. The voice was always in his head. It would come to him as he stood over an eviscerated victim, drenched in her blood. Dig, boy, dig, it would say. Find the treasure. Find it for when I return . . .
And he dug, and he gouged, and he scoured—and he found.
He stared at the hate on the graffiti wall.
He thought, The death of these youths means something.
The bloodbath had a point.
The carnage had a reason.
It wasn’t some madman—it was an artist.
An artist like him.
Meaning, he thought, and walked back down the passageway. And the meaning is Jack the Ripper.
And he was here.
Prepare for my homecoming.
; Jack was back.
Chapter 31
FALLING MAN
“You’re up early,” said Tash.
“I went for a walk,” said Faultless.
“Is it him?”
He said nothing, just looked at her standing on the threshold.
“Can I come in, Tash?” It was 7:00 am, it was cold, and he wanted a drink.
In the kitchen, she stood with her arms folded, her back against the fridge. She chewed her nails now and again. She put strands of her hair in her mouth.
Faultless drank cold coffee.
“How’s Jasmine?” he asked. “Is she okay?”
“She’s okay. Sleeping.”
They were quiet, Tash fretting and Faultless watching. “It’ll be all right,” he said.
“Is it him?”
He lifted his shoulders. “I don’t know.”
She reached for a packet of cigarettes, took one out, and lit it.
“It’s definitely him—the . . . the one who killed Rachel . . . ”
“We can’t say that—”
“Funny that you’re back, too.”
He raised his eyebrow. “I don’t know what to say to that.”
“Something’s wrong, Charlie. I feel it. Something . . . something evil is here.”
“Your dreams again?”
“Don’t make fun of me.”
“Christ, Tash, I’m not making fun of you.”
“I wake up screaming. Jasmine too. Christ, how could I have doubted her? I . . . I thought she was making it up. You think people can have the same dream?”
He shook his head.
“They named the dead ones yet?” she said.
“Not yet. The news headlines said four dead. Teenagers.”
“Jasmine probably knew them. They say how they died?”
“Badly.”
“You know who found them?”
“Some guy named Hallam Buck,” said Faultless.
Tash gaped. “Hallam?”
“You know him?”
“He lives next floor up. He’s a bit weird. He comes round every morning to tell me he’s cleaned up, swept away the litter.”
“That his job?”