Michael White - The Art of Murder

I had no idea if the enthusiastic members of H Division of the Metropolitan Police Force were still hot on my tail, and I was not about to wait around and see for myself. The train stopped and I jumped into the nearest compartment which happened to be First Class.

It was empty and I threw myself into a nearby seat, ducking down as best I could. The train started to move off and I felt a wave of relief sweep over me. Forcing my heartbeat to slow, I took deep breaths and looked around my new surroundings. The compartment was quite beautiful: brass fittings, mirrors on the walls, gas lights at the end of each row of seats. Then I heard the door at the end of the compartment start to open.

I thought I was immune to surprise, but when I saw the blue cape of a policeman appear at the edge of the door as it opened inwards, and then a domed helmet, I was confounded. I sprang up from the comfortable green leather seat and propelled myself along the central aisle towards the other end of the compartment. Reaching the door, I yanked on its handle. It gave and I plunged into the cool and the noise and the fumes and found myself on a narrow metal bridge between two carriages. I slammed the door behind me, jumped across the coupling and opened a door into the next compartment. It was another First Class carriage. The train lurched and I almost fell as I slammed the door shut behind me. There were just two people in the compartment. I ran along the aisle, hearing the door behind me open. Using the seat backs for additional impetus, I hurtled along the centre of the compartment with no thought for where I was going or what I hoped to achieve.

Standing on the footplate between the two carriages, I looked down and saw the walls slithering away. I sensed the vehicle starting to slow. I glanced back to the carriage I had just exited. There were two policemen running towards me, halfway along it and swaying with the movement of the train, grasping at the seats to steady themselves as I had done.

I stretched my hand towards the handle of the door to the next compartment, pulled down on it and pushed. It would not budge. I felt a spasm of excitement rush along my spine and smiled. I was enjoying myself. But what to do? I could run back and attack the policemen, but it was risky. Two against one. I had a knife, but they had truncheons. It would be a matter of percentages, and to be honest, dear lady, I was wondering if my luck was slipping through my fingers. I looked down again at the floor of the tunnel. The train had slowed considerably now, and as we approached a station light appeared in the tunnel. I turned to face the wall. There was a gap of perhaps a yard to either side of the train. Would it be enough? If I jumped, I could be caught under the wheels of the speeding train. If I did not, I would have to fight and would almost certainly lose. My heart was racing. I had never been in such a dangerous position and it was absolutely intoxicating. I knew then that if I survived, this would be a moment I would relive in my mind over and over again.

I took a deep breath and stared back at the police officers. The one in the lead — I was sure he was the man who had stumbled upon Catherine Eddowes — was almost at the door. I could see his eager face lathered with sweat, his truncheon raised. Turned back to the sight of the ground rushing by under my feet, my mind was filled with the roar of the train. Smoke blurred my vision. I took a step forward and jumped.

Essex, Tuesday 27 January, early evening

Pendragon and Turner barely exchanged a word as they left Braintree and headed back to London. Turner drove and Pendragon reported in to the station as they pulled away from Macintyre’s rundown council house. Hughes was in a meeting, but Rob Grant took down as many of the details as Pendragon was willing to offer over the phone.

It was overcast and snow had started falling again, melting to nothing as it hit the tarmac of the southbound dual carriageway. Each man was lost in his own thoughts, mulling over unanswerable questions, each trying in his own way to untangle the knotted threads of what they had learned today, a day that, by five o’clock, had started to feel interminable.

The ringtone of the car phone startled them. ‘Pendragon,’ the DCI said, after stabbing the green ‘Incoming’ button below the dash.

Expecting Hughes, he and Turner were surprised to hear Sergeant Roz Mackleby’s voice. ‘Sir,’ she said, ‘how near the station are you?’

Pendragon paused a moment. ‘About twenty minutes, traffic permitting. Why?’

‘I’m with Inspector Towers,’ Mackleby replied. ‘The Super’s in a car behind us. We’re on Johnson Road. We’ve got another murder.’

On any other day, the apartment on Johnson Road, Stepney, would have been considered beautiful, a place straight from the pages of a lifestyle magazine, but today it resembled a chamber from the depths of Hell.

A uniform stood at the front door leading from the marble-tiled hallway into the apartment itself. The door was listing slightly from where it had been knocked in. The lock was shattered. The PC nodded to Pendragon and Turner and continued to stare at the far wall as they followed the sound of voices coming down a wide passage from the living-room. Hughes saw Pendragon and paced over to intercept them. She took the DCI to one side.

‘Jack.’ She seemed relieved to see him. ‘This is really not nice.’

He frowned. ‘It never is. So, what do we have?’

‘Definitely a fourth. Same MO. The vic is Chrissy Chapman. Quite a well-known artist, I believe.’

Pendragon looked stunned. ‘Yes, she is. Very well-known.’

‘But get this … Francis Arcade called it in. When we got here, he was sitting opposite her body, just staring at her. Hardly seemed to notice us when we forced the front door.’

‘Arcade? Where is he now?’

‘In the bedroom, under guard. He’s out of it. In an almost trancelike state.’

Pendragon tilted his head and pulled a face. ‘This just gets more ridiculous,’ he said, starting along the hall.

Hughes took his arm gently. ‘And, Jack,’ she said, searching his face, ‘Arcade’s prints are all over her.’

A photographer was moving around one of two sumptuous sofas trying to get the best angles, and a forensics officer in plastic overalls was dusting for prints around a low walnut coffee table nearby. The victim, Chrissy Chapman, was propped up on the sofa. It was a pristine white. The woman’s skin was just as pale as the sofa. She was dressed in a dark top, a scarf draped casually around her neck. Her dark fringe had been recently trimmed; some curls of hair lay on the scarf and scattered across the sofa. The face beneath had been hideously contorted, the flesh split under the hairline, the fine facial bones shattered, but the skin was still intact, heavily rouged around the cheeks and temples. Her features had been wrenched to one side, both her eyes were on one side of her face, her nose had been left behind, her mouth coated thickly with lipstick.

Pendragon felt a cold chill run down his spine. Turner had just appeared at his side and the DCI could feel a tremor run through the sergeant as the shock of what he was seeing hit him. ‘Holy fucking Christ,’ he said slowly and glanced at his boss, his mouth open.

Pendragon ignored him and took a couple of steps towards the obscene tableau of Picasso’s painting of his wife Olga Khokhlova. It seemed so incredibly bizarre it was hard to believe the scene was real. But the girl sitting there had recently been a living, breathing human being; one who had been mutilated, violated with such malicious intent it was barely conceivable. It was one thing to take a life, Pendragon found himself thinking. This was act of an entirely different order.