The Butcher of Whitechapel

by Blake Banner

  At the hotel, Manuel collected the printed file for me and we went up to our suite. There we showered and Dehan fell onto the bed and went immediately to sleep. I sat by the open window and worked my way steadily through the old file. Much of it I remembered—at least the broad strokes, the overall shape, the main characters and players. But there were also many details I had forgotten. I had blurred in my mind how central Brad Johnson had been to the case. I remembered as I read how blinded Harry and his colleagues had become by Johnson. They were certain he was their man, and I knew for a fact that he wasn’t.

  Then everything had happened at once. Hattie had been killed. I had gone to pieces. Inexplicably, the Crown Prosecution Service had dropped Johnson overnight as their prime suspect in the Butcher investigation. I had been shipped back to the States and the whole thing had gone cold.

  I had never understood why the CPS dropped Johnson, but Harry and I had lost touch and I guess, as I had never believed he was guilty of those particular murders, I never saw the point in looking into it.

  But now I wondered. Now it began to nag at the back of my mind, along with the pinstriped suit: the kind of suits that the CPS wear. In fact, Ede & Ravenscroft were exactly that, tailors to the Bar. That was their specialization. They made suits for barristers.

  So where did that get me? I heaved a sigh, stood and paced about for a bit. Nowhere. It got me exactly nowhere. I went and stood looking out of the window at Green Park. A suit. A pinstriped suit.

  Then I had a thought. Fifteen years earlier, cooperation between British and American law enforcement was in its infancy. That was one reason why I had been there in the first place, and I had often thought since that there was something I should have done—we should have done—which we never did. Partly because to begin with, the team was so sure it was Johnson, and then because I had left and the case had gone cold.

  I pulled out my cell and called Bernie at the Bureau. We had been friends for over ten years and he had often helped out when I needed to cut through red tape.

  “Stone, you back already? How was it? You divorced yet?”

  I laughed. “Almost. Actually, I’m still here. Listen, I’ve been meaning to ask you this for about fifteen years.”

  “I didn’t think we knew each other that long. Either way, Stone, I’m straight and even if I wasn’t, I am scared of your wife.”

  “Shut up, Bernie, and listen. Going back from 2003, a serial killer, uncaught, anywhere in the States, trademarks are as follows: victims of choice are young women, blonde, roughly five-five to five eight, probably nurses. He rapes them, stabs them in the heart with a kitchen knife, cuts out their wombs post mortem, and then—and this is crucial—he blinds them, pins a note to their left eye with a meat skewer. The note is inscribed with a line from Don McLean’s song American Pie, ‘And them good ole boys were drinking whisky and rye…’ ending on a dot dot dot.”

  He was silent for a moment and you could almost hear him thinking. “You know, I want to say that nothing springs to mind, and nothing does in terms of a name or anything, but it does sound kind of familiar.”

  “You may be thinking of the British Butcher of Whitechapel case.”

  “No, if I’m not making it up, this is one of those Midwest cases, or Deep South. You know, those places where everybody suffers from narrow head syndrome and Seth’s daddy is also his brother and his son.”

  “That’s impossible.”

  “But you get the idea.”

  “I do. Will you have a look? There is a U.S. angle to this case which we never properly explored back in the day. And it’s resurfaced now.”

  “Sure. If there is anything, it shouldn’t be hard to find with these details.”

  “Appreciate it, Bernie.”

  I hung up. I paced a bit more. I sat down again, talking to myself in my head. So, assume, for argument’s sake, that there was a guy, an American, in what Bernie would call Narrow Heads Ville. He is deeply disturbed and starts killing women in this ritualistic fashion. For some reason which is hard to fathom, he moves to the U.K., to London, and continues his killing spree. We investigate. Harry and his team fixate on Johnson. Johnson kills my wife to scare me off, I go home. And at some point during that period, Narrow Head Man suddenly and permanently stops killing. Maybe he died. Maybe he was miraculously cured.

  But, fifteen years later, somebody kills Katie Ellison. The choice of victim is not part of a serial killer’s victim profile. The choice of victim is deliberate. But the killer imitates Narrow Head Man perfectly, in every detail, except that the victim is not a one hundred percent perfect match for Narrow Head Man’s victim of choice, she is a little shorter, and she is English, not American. The spelling of whiskey is also English, not American…

  Where the Butcher of Whitechapel had been an American case, Katie Ellison was an English case.

  It was as though the darkness in my mind slowly began to crack. Slivers of light began to filter through, things began to connect, link up and make sense. I reached for the file and began to leaf through it furiously, searching for a reference, and finally, there, on the third from last page, I saw it. And the memory flooded back. I sank slowly into my chair. I had it. I had the missing link. And it was a pinstriped suit.

  THIRTEEN

  The problem was how to prove it. I spent half an hour staring unseeing at the sky through the window and finally, I picked up my phone and called Harry.

  “John, we haven’t sorted your ticket yet, but I’ve got the lad on it now.”

  “Harry, why did the team drop the investigation against Brad Johnson?”

  “John! Come on, mate!”

  “Humor me, I am just curious. You were all crazy about him and then overnight, you dropped him as your prime suspect.”

  “Um…” He paused and sighed. “It’s there in the file…”

  “All it says is ‘acting on advice from the CPS’.”

  He thought for a minute. “Yeah, they said they had received information and that they were satisfied Johnson was not guilty of the murders and that on advice from the Home Secretary, they were recommending that the case should not be investigated further.”

  “Did that strike you as odd?”

  “Yes, of course it did. And doubly odd when he showed up again and then Katie Ellison died. But if we were told not to go after Johnson, and we had bugger all else to go on, and the Home Secretary is telling us to drop it, what could we do? And the killing stopped, so there were no fresh leads. Look, can’t you just let it rest, John? Look, I’ll have the tickets couriered to you in the next hour, OK?”

  “Sure. Thanks, Harry.”

  I dialed again.

  “Chiddester!”

  “Good afternoon, Chiddester, it’s Stone here. I may have some information of use to you.”

  “Really? What?”

  “I need access to a file. In 2003, the Crown Prosecution Service advised the Serious Crimes squad that Brad Johnson, their prime suspect, was not guilty of the Butcher of Whitehall murders. No explanation. The Home Secretary then recommended that investigation of the case should cease. After that, there were no more murders. I am satisfied that I know almost everything that happened, and I know who killed Katie, but I can’t prove it. If I can see that file, I might just be able to bring it home.”

  He was quiet for a long moment, then said, “Leave it with me.”

  He hung up and I paced for half an hour, achieving nothing but a slight flattening of my path on the rug. Then the phone rang. I was surprised to see it was Bernie.

  “That wasn’t difficult, Stone. Popped up straight away, but it was never solved.”

  “I know.”

  “Course you do. You know everything. Westminster, Colorado. Three girls killed over a three year period. Susie…”

  “Don’t give me the names, I won’t remember. Can you outline the basic facts and then email me the file?”

  “Whatever. The girls were killed like you described them, with the note pinned to t
he eye like you said…” He paused, like he was trying to multitask. “File’s on it’s way. Yeah, with the line from American Pie. They were all nurses, or involved in caring for people. The sheriff was pretty sure he knew who the killer was, but before he could arrest him, he took off and disappeared.”

  “Who did he suspect?”

  “Simon Clarence.”

  I frowned. “Simon Clarence? Doesn’t sound…”

  “I know. But his mom was local, his dad wasn’t. His dad was from Barbados. Seems mom was couple of cans short of a six-pack, and dad liked to use his belt, on the whole family, not just the kids. Violent man, rap sheet for assault, use of a deadly weapon…”

  “I get the idea. He was cruel to the wife and the kids.”

  “Yup, sheriff tried to intervene a few times but they all told him to take a hike. Mom died in suspicious circumstances when Simon was ten, probably witnessed it, if you ask me. Not much more to tell. They were kind of travelers, neo-hippies, moved around a bit. Simon was born in the U.K…”

  “So he had dual nationality?”

  “Yup. Dad was a British citizen, Simon was born in the U.K. and they came back to the States when he was just two, settled in Colorado.”

  “And he disappeared, what, 2002, 2003?”

  “2002. So did he show up in the U.K.?”

  “He showed up in London, killed four women and then vanished off the face of the Earth.”

  “Maybe he’s in Barbados.”

  “Yeah, maybe. But I don’t think so.”

  “You going to let me in?”

  “Not yet, but soon. Thanks, Bernie, I owe you.”

  “I lost count how much you owe me. If I ever call it in, I’ll die of alcohol poisoning.”

  We promised to catch up soon and I hung up. Dehan appeared in the bedroom doorway and looked at me with sleepy eyes behind lots of hair. She shook her head at me and went away to the shower. Then the phone rang again.

  “Stone, Chiddester here. It’s not much help, I’m afraid. Fine work on your part but…”

  “Simon Clarence approached the Crown Prosecution Service through defense counsel…?”

  He was silent. Then, “How could you possibly have known that?”

  “Ah, you know, eliminate the impossible… So what have you got?”

  “Well, I didn’t know his name. The file is sealed and there is only a very brief abstract available. It seems this, um, Clarence had started to see a psychiatrist. The psychiatrist was so disturbed by what he learnt, and by what he was reading in the press, putting two and two together, as it were, that he felt he had no choice but to violate patient confidentiality. However, rather than go to the police, being a somewhat eminent fellow with some pull in the establishment, he arranged a series of meetings with a judge and the Director of Public Prosecutions, and sectioned the chap, to be detained at Her Majesty’s leisure at Goodnestone Park.”

  “What is that, a high security mental institution?”

  “Precisely.”

  I shook my head. “That’s not the full picture, Chiddester. There was somebody else involved. Let me see if I’m right. Either his psychiatrist arranged, or the judge appointed, but at some point during the proceedings Simon Clarence was given counsel.”

  “Oh, yes, naturally.”

  “Does counsel’s name appear on the abstract?”

  “Of course.”

  “Can you send me a scan of that abstract? Once I have read it, I can give you the name of the man who killed your daughter.”

  “Good Lord! You mean it wasn’t Sadiq?”

  “I told you it wasn’t.”

  He grunted. “All right, the scan is on its way. But I’ll need convincing, Stone. My money is still on Sadiq Hassan.”

  “OK, just don’t do anything rash. Listen, I need one more favor from you.”

  “It’s you who are doing me a favor, dear boy. If I can help, I will.”

  “I need to visit Clarence at Goodnestone, either as a friend of the family or as American cops clearing up unsolved American murders. Whatever you think will work. Can you pull strings?”

  “I’ll see what I can do.”

  He hung up. My phone pinged to tell me an email had arrived and I opened it and read it. It told me exactly what I expected it to tell me. So I went to the bathroom, where Dehan was looking at herself in a large mirror, wet and wrapped in many white towels. “I found the Butcher of Whitechapel.”

  She glanced at me in the mirror. “OK, what’s the punch line?”

  I shook my head. “No punch line. His name is Simon Clarence. He’s in a high security mental institution called Goodnestone Park. He’s been there since 2003.”

  She turned to stare at me from among her towels. “Are you kidding me? How come Harry didn’t know?”

  “It was kept quiet because the way it was handled, though probably wise, might have caused a public outcry. The file was sealed and his identity was not revealed. He was sectioned and the Home Secretary instructed the police to stand down on the investigation.”

  “I lie down for a siesta and you solve world hunger. How?”

  “It was the suit.”

  “Oh, yeah, right. I see that now.”

  “I’ll explain properly in the car.”

  “Oh, the car, right… What car?”

  “We are going to visit Simon Clarence in Goodnestone Park.”

  She sighed. “Does Harry know?”

  I mouthed something obscene at her.

  She laughed and turned back to the mirror. “Well, that’s true. So what about Katie? How does she tie in to all this?”

  “We may never know,” I said vaguely as I thumbed a text message on my phone. “On the other hand, we may find out tonight.”

  The phone rang as I pressed send.

  “Stone.”

  “Chiddester here. I pulled some strings and they’re expecting your visit at six. I said it was an unofficial fact-finding mission sanctioned by the Home Office to help families in the States find some closure. I believe that’s the popular term. Anyway, I thought that would give you maximum elbow room.”

  “That’s perfect.”

  He hesitated. “Have you got a name yet?”

  “Yes. But let me prove it, Chiddester. It isn’t straight forward. It’s complicated. But I hope to have the whole thing wrapped up by tomorrow morning, at the latest.”

  He gave a reluctant grunt. “Very well.”

  “I’ll keep you posted, I promise.”

  I called down to reception for them to arrange me a car, and twenty minutes later, after I had showered and we had both dressed, we went downstairs. I signed for the vehicle, saw the price, thanked the gods in Valhalla that I wasn’t paying and we headed out toward Kent, and the village of Goodnestone.

  It was a nice drive. Kent is known as the garden of England, and as we drove down the A2, the countryside all around us was green and abundant, with hedgerows like huge billows of green smoke, heavy and dense, clinging to the hillsides. At Barham, we turned north and east, down small winding roads and through woodlands, ever deeper into Tolkien landscapes where tall, red brick chimneypots peered out from among bushy clusters of foliage in every imaginable shade of green. There were villages of just a handful of houses, that had names like Nonington, Easole—which made Dehan giggle like a schoolchild—and Womenswold, which made me think of a department store in Stepford.

  Finally, we came to a small crossroads with wooden signs pointing, amusingly, to Ham one way and Sandwich another, and a third pointed to Goodnestone. We followed this road through dense forest, over blacktop dappled with patches of sunlight and the shadows of twisted branches and dancing leaves, until at last we came out of the woods onto the rim of a shallow valley. We stopped a moment to have a look.

  Ahead of us, the road, like a thin, black ribbon, curved gently to the east, leading to a small hamlet of ancient, red brick houses. From there, the road turned sharply west to what looked like an old Georgian manor house, surrounded by smaller
, more modern buildings, and several acres of parkland contained within a high wall. This was the Goodnestone High Security Psychiatric Facility, otherwise known as Goodnestone Park.

  “It just blows my mind, Stone, that after all these years, it turns out they had him all the time, and never let on. Why would they do that?”

  “Politics,” I said, then looked at her. “Politics with a small ‘p’. Not party politics, conservatives, liberals, all that crap. Just avoiding a public outcry. The fewer people who knew about it, the fewer could get upset.” I started up the engine again. “When you think about it, it’s pretty controversial, with the potential to upset just about everybody. Man gets sentenced to life, without even trial; or, man murders seven women and gets off without even a trial. But from a pragmatic point of view, it saved the country a very expensive trial and took a very dangerous man off the streets without the risk of a clever defense counsel getting him off. The file was sealed to protect his identity, which some would also think controversial.”

  Dehan nodded. “We have a right to know who killed our daughter. I get that.”

  “Yeah. It’s tricky.”

  I pulled up at the gate and a guy in a private security uniform came over to look in the window. I showed him my driver’s license.

  “Detectives Stone and Dehan. Lord Chiddester arranged the visit. I believe you are expecting us.”

  He checked my license and nodded. “Very good, sir. Leave the car in the car park at the right of the main building and report to reception, through the main door.”

  “Thanks.”

  We did as he said and ten minutes later pushed into what would originally have been the entrance hall of the manor, but was now a quiet, still reception, paneled in dark wood with bare, highly polished boards on the floor. To our left, there was a woman sitting behind a functional, white counter, looking at us through glasses that reflected the windows and concealed her eyes. Standing, leaning on the counter, smiling at us, was a man in chinos and a white coat, with reading glasses hanging around his neck. He was a well-preserved sixty and knew it. He approached us with his hand held out to Dehan.

  “Detectives Dehan and Stone, I believe. I am Dr. Fenshaw, the director of this facility. Shall we go to my office? And you can tell me exactly what it is you want.”