TimeRipper

by D E McCluskey

  ‘What?’ he asked looking around, realising that the officers were still in his office. ‘Oh sorry, I was a million miles away then. Eh, yes, let’s bring him in here and see what he has to say for himself.’

  ‘Sir, the Chapman murder, do you think it’s the work of the same man?’ another officer asked.

  ‘I do,’ he replied. ‘I think these women have been targeted for a reason, and I want to find out what that could be.’

  ‘Righty-o, very good, sir,’ the officer said, turning away from the table, gesturing to the others to do the same. ‘We’ll leave you to your musings then. I’ll start to get a handle on this Kosminski fella.’

  Bellis was looking considerably pleased with himself as he left the office.

  Abberline wanted to get to the morgue as soon as possible. He wanted to see the bodies for himself, to make his own conclusions regarding the causes of death. Once he’d heard about the Tabram murder, an interest had formed. He took a deeper interest in the next one, Mary Nichols, and had called in a favour from an old acquaintance.

  The coroner on these cases was a friend. He’d spent a number of nights with him in the, nicer, taverns of London, supping fine ales and generally having a good time. Unfortunately, or fortunately for Abberline, the coroner was a heavier drinker than he was, and when he was drunk, he liked to use his fists a little. The problem he had was that he wasn’t very good with them. Abberline had gotten him out of more than a few scrapes where he had found himself out of his depth. So, when he found out that he was working these cases, he wasted no time in pulling in his favours and persuading him to do a separate investigation into the deaths, more of an unofficial version.

  These cases were indeed unusual; after all, people don’t just appear out of thin air and then end up dead on a morgue slab within weeks. He reached down into his bottom draw and produced a file. Large red letters emblazoned across the front read: POLICE FILES: FOR INSP. F. ABBERLINE’S EYES ONLY.

  He opened the file and re-read the contents. It was the unofficial report on the method of the murders. It differed somewhat from the official one produced for the police. This mentioned facts regarding the wounds that had been omitted from the official investigation. It mentioned that the cuts had been cauterised, most probably at the source, and the wounds were deeper internally than they looked superficially. It was as if the killer had stabbed the victim and then rummaged around inside with whatever weapon he had used. It stated that the cuts had been made randomly, not by someone with a knowledge of surgical techniques and anatomical acquaintance, like the papers were stating, and also by someone with a shaky hand, and not the steady, practiced hand, the press had ventured.

  He had been doing his own investigations into the backgrounds of the women and had uncovered something very interesting about them. None of them had any accountable witnesses of any of their historic movements. There were fantastic mosaics painted of who they had been, where they lived, who they were married to, where they worked, there was even mention of family, but there was no one to hand who could corroborate these stories. No living spouses could be identified, no children who would return messages, no friends, or even acquaintances. All this was coupled with the curious fact that at one time or other, these three women had all lived together.

  This was also true of the missing woman.

  Abberline flicked to the back of the file and read a few lines regarding the woman who had been reported missing the same night Mary Nichols died.

  Emily Callaghan. She sold flowers on the stalls in Spitalfields Market. There was no husband and no children. She had moved to London from Grimsby in February, apparently to get away from an abusive father.

  He looked up from the file towards the grubby window besides his desk and scratched the stubble underneath his chin. He stood, put his hat and coat on, and made his way out of his office.

  He crossed the street from the police station to the small morgue opposite. Inside, he gave the attendant a shilling to make himself scarce, which was received without any questions regarding why he was here. Once satisfied that he was alone, he unveiled the body of Annie Chapman. She had been sewn up but was still gruesome to behold.

  Abberline leaned into the body and examined the linings of the wounds. They had only been roughly sewn together and still revealed all the intricacies of the attack. He ran his fingers along the ridges and looked at the residue. It had scabbed, but not because it was congealed, it had scabbed due to cauterisation. It confirmed what he had read in his private report: something hot had caused these wounds.

  He looked around the room, making sure there was no one observing him. When he was satisfied, he reached inside his pocket and produced a small device.

  The sphere glowed green while it was in his hands. He cast the glow over the full length of the cadaver. It uncovered an internal view of her insides. The edges of the wounds shone red beneath the glow. Abberline, satisfied with his findings, turned the device off and concealed it back into the inside pocket of his jacket before leaving the room.

  45.

  Orbital Platform One. 2288

  VINCENT AND JACQUELINE were in bed in Vincent’s room. She was lying on her side with his arms wrapped around her. Both had a sheen of sweat over their skin and were slightly out of breath as they stared up towards the ceiling. ‘Are you nervous?’ she asked, burying her head into his chest.

  He thought for a moment before answering. ‘Yes, and no. Yes, because I’m going back in time, four hundred years into the centre of the unknown. God only knows what that’s going to be like.’

  ‘What about the no, then?’

  ‘Well, I’ve been training for this mission all my life. In the EA, we get the best physical and tactical training, but because the whole of the planet comes under the one umbrella, we get very little action.’

  ‘So, you’d say you’re ready, then? Psychologically, I mean.’

  He smiled as he removed his arm from underneath her and flexed his hands, ridding himself of the pins and needles that had built up. He sat up and turned towards her. ‘Jacq, the only things I actually think too deeply about are dinner, and just lately, you.’

  She blushed a little. Why am I blushing at what he has just said after what we have just been doing? she thought. Come on, he’s a grunt, don’t go falling for him. She already knew that thought was a lost cause.

  ‘Anyway,’ he continued as he got out of the bed. She couldn’t help marvelling at his well-muscled physique, and she was already eager for more of what they had recently taking to doing at any given chance. ‘I’ll know that I’ll have you looking out for me, keeping me safe.’

  ‘Yeah, four hundred years in the future.’

  ‘Still on the end of a communications line.’

  Jacqueline sighed. ‘I don’t want you to read too much into this, but I really don’t want you to go. I think I’ve finally found someone I can connect with, and now you have to go the furthest anyone could ever go away from me.’

  Vincent laughed as he slipped on his exercise trousers. ‘I’ll only be in London, we orbit London every day,’ he teased.

  ‘You know what I mean,’ she laughed, sitting up, giving him something to look at.

  ‘Look,’ he said sitting down on the bed. ‘I’m not going for a while yet. I’ve got to do that week of training, and you guys still need time to sort the Higgs Storm containers out for when I return, and for when I bring the prisoners back. So, let’s make the most of it. I want to be here with you, you want to be here with me. I say c’est la vie.’

  Jacqueline looked at him, a sly smile creeping across her face. ‘I love it when you talk French,’ she joked as she dragged him back underneath the bed covers.

  ‘Moi?’ he asked with an expression of injured innocence.

  46.

  London. 1888

  THE LETTER DROPPED on Abberline’s desk. He took one look at it and knew what it was. Oh, fantastic, he thought with a small shake of his head. A letter, possibly from the mu
rderer, and it will have passed through the hands of every officer in Whitechapel before it’s gotten here.

  ‘I think you’d better have a gander at what has just come through form the newspaper today, Inspector. We think it’s from the murderer.’ Officer Bellis announced proudly.

  ‘It says it is, look…’ added another, pointing at the envelope. ‘Right there, in the words.’

  ‘It’s written in blood, sir,’ a third proud-looking idiot chirped in. ‘The bastard has written it in the victim’s blood.’

  The officers were looking towards the stated letter as if it were a stray dog that just might bite them at any moment. Abberline could see the crowd gathering outside his office. They were all vying for a look at the famous artefact. He shooed everyone out of his office, leaving only Bellis, his second in command. He picked up the envelope, turning it in his hands, examining it from every angle.

  The Boss, it stated on the front.

  ‘If this was written in blood, then the wording would be brown by now. Blood only stays red while it’s warm and free flowing. As it dries, it turns brown.’

  Officer Bellis dropped his head and his face began to turn crimson.

  ‘It’s a common mistake, Officer, don’t beat yourself up over it. Go out there and tell them that we’ve both realised that it’s red ink instead of blood.’ This cheered the officer up, and Abberline watched as he made his way outside to address the crowd. ‘Close the door would you, Bellis, there’s a good fellow,’ he shouted to the officer, who turned and closed the door with the trace of a smile on his face.

  As soon as he was alone, he drew the curtains he had installed when he took over the office. Satisfied that no one would be able to observe him, he returned to his desk and the envelope. He opened a drawer and retrieved a pair of silver tweezers. He removed the contents of the envelope. Careful not to miss anything inside, he turned it upside down, and tapped it. When nothing else fell out, he was satisfied that all it contained was the paper lying on his desk. It was two pages of unremarkable text, some terrible spelling, and the worst punctuation he had ever read in his life. All of this coupled with a few vague threats. The part that Abberline liked most was the signature. Jack the Ripper. Inspired name, he thought. Much more inventive than Leather Apron. He had never liked that name as it wasn’t either inspirational or creative, but Jack the Ripper? ‘That’s a name I can make use of,’ he mumbled.

  He re-read the letter before removing a device from the locked bottom draw of his desk. He needed to know who wrote it, and the only way he was going to find out was to retrieve DNA from the paper. He set the scanner to filter out any DNA that had been added to the paper in the last two days, thus eliminating any of his policemen, the press, and the postal service.

  He watched as holographic images emerged from the device, images of all the people who had handled the paper. It stopped on one. It was a well built, moustached, foreign looking gentleman. His name appeared underneath a grainy image. ‘Severin Antoniovich Klosowski, you’ll do for me.’ He was smiling as he put the scanner away, back into the drawer, and locked it.

  ‘Officer Bellis,’ he shouted. He might as well have a bit of glory too, he isn’t a bad sort, he thought.

  ‘Yes, sir?’ Bellis replied, popping his head back into the office.

  ‘When can we be ready to move? I’ve got an idea on who this murderer might be.’

  ‘Well, erm, just about any time, sir. You really think you know?’

  ‘Let’s just say that I have another of my hunches,’ he replied.

  Bellis smiled as he entered Abberline’s office. ‘When you get hunches, sir, murders get solved. So, did you get something from the letter then?’

  ‘Yes. There’s just something about what this Kosminski man was supposed to have been shouting in The Ten Bells. I get the feeling that it was him who wrote this. The writing has a foreign tint to it. It’s my opinion that he thinks he’s doing something noble. Something like, killing witches.’

  ‘We can have an arrest squad ready to go in about ten minutes, sir,’ Bellis replied, straightening his woollen police tunic.

  Abberline took in a deep breath and sucked on his teeth. ‘I think I’d rather it was just you and me, if you don’t mind.’

  Bellis beamed from ear to ear. ‘I don’t mind at all, Inspector.’

  ‘Good! We should leave right now. Do we have his home address?’

  ‘It’s the same as his business address, sir. Cable Street. St George’s in the East.’ The policeman looked at his wristwatch. ‘He should be there now.’

  ‘Fantastic. When we get there, I want to talk to him on my own. I’ll take him into the barber shop while you do a thorough search of his residency. Thorough, though, you got that?’ Abberline emphasized.

  ‘You can count on me, sir!’

  47.

  EMILY CALLAGHAN WAS cold, hungry, and desperate to go to the toilet again. She had been held captive for at least a week, although this was only guesswork. She’d been fed and had been let out of the chair occasionally, but not for long. Each time she had been let go, her captor had not entirely released her from the holding beam, and therefore, she had no means of escape. He allowed her to stretch her legs and go to the toilet. Painful sores were developing on her behind and the tops of her legs, and she knew that she was weakening.

  ‘Callaghan, I swear if you don’t give me those codes today, I won’t give you another chance,’ her captor spoke from behind her.

  ‘I won’t give you any codes,’ she croaked. Her voice was dry from lack of any real nourishment. ‘I’d rather die than give them to you.’

  ‘Believe me, you’ll die if I don’t get them. But I’m hoping that you might want to save the lives of your colleagues. I’m giving you fair warning. You have one hour before I start to prepare for retrieving another of your friends’ quantum slugs.’

  Emily remained silent.

  He entered into her field of vision, his face was distorted by the collars of his cape and his moustache. He jangled three small, flat, scraps of metal in her face. ‘You know what these are, don’t you?’ he asked as he threw them onto the floor, one by one. ‘These are Martha Tabram, Mary Nichols, or Polly if you want to call her that, and Annie Chapman; or what’s left of them anyways. There’ll be at least another one of them tomorrow night to keep them company. Is that what you want?’

  Emily’s sore eyes were regarding the quantum slugs on the floor. She knew that she should be feeling more empathy towards them, as each one was an epitaph for one of her friends, but she was too tired, too exhausted, to elicit much emotion towards them. She tried to avert her gaze, but it kept reverting back to the gruesome sight.

  ‘You know I’m not joking here, don’t you? It will happen. I’m committed to this mission, and something you may want to know is that I’m holding a large grudge against you, in particular.’

  ‘Why me?’ Emily asked.

  The man smiled beneath his moustache, but Emily couldn’t see any humour in his dark eyes. ‘You don’t need to know that right now, all you need to know is that if I don’t get those codes this afternoon, you’ll be condemning another of your colleagues to a slow, painful death. I’ve been watching the movements of Stride. Tonight, could very well be her last night alive.’ He leaned into the emaciated woman. Emily could smell mint on his breath, and something else, something that didn’t quite sit right for a man in this time. ‘That’s up to you,’ he concluded.

  ‘And if I give you their codes, then what?’ her voice was attempting to be defiant, but the croak, and the weakness, in it, lost its credibility. ‘You take us back; we stand trial and get put to death for what we’ve done. Liz’s dead either way.’

  ‘The EA don’t put people to death. Unlike The Quest, we don’t kill innocent people on an ideal. We don’t kill guilty people either; if we don’t have to, that is. So, you see, your friends will be able to live long, and if they chose it, productive lives back in twenty-two-eighty-eight, otherwise, it all ends
tonight, in the squalor of the east end of London.’

  Emily stayed silent, even though a multitude of different thoughts were racing through her head. ‘Can I go to the toilet, please?’ she asked eventually.

  ‘Of course, you can.’

  48.

  KOSMINSKI WAS BUSY scheming. Since he had rid himself of his wife and children, and delivered the letters, he had become frustrated, bored even. Everything seemed on a low ebb, he needed a way out of his trough. He had expected there to be a lot more excitement regarding the letters, especially due to the name he had given the murderer.

  ‘Jack the Ripper,’ he mused. He had gotten the idea for the name from the small snippets of conversation he’d overheard after the Nichols woman was killed. The murderer had spoken into his wrist and said something about ‘Jack, ripped her.’

  Also, since the witch in the pub had charmed him, and given him a silly, if not petrifying, vision of the future, he had kept his distance from the women. They scared him now more than he’d ever been scared before. He knew that he had an affinity with the killer, but he thought now that the killer was watching him too. After the altercation in the pub, he had gone straight home, but it was all over the city the next day that they’d found another woman, mutilated, slaughtered, like the other two. It hadn’t taken him long to find out that it had been Annie Chapman they’d found, the bitch who put the hex on me.

  ‘They should have that letter by now,’ he mumbled almost incoherently as he paced his bedroom, his wife’s bloodstains still drying on the cheap carpet. ‘I’ll start flooding them with letters. That’ll keep them busy while my dark friend continues his work. I wish I could do some of the killing for him,’ he mused. ‘His methods look fun.’

  A sharp rap on the door pulled him from his inane ramblings.

  His stomach dropped.