Bolton, J. - Now You See Me

To my considerable relief, I couldn’t do it. Married to a wealthy man, with a family, a nice home, a job, Geraldine Jones was the direct opposite of the women Jack had preyed upon. The original victims had been chosen at random, in the wrong place at the wrong time. Geraldine must have been in that part of London for a reason. And Kennington was a long way from Whitechapel.

Admittedly, Jones’s injuries were very similar to those inflicted on more than one Ripper victim, but 31 August didn’t even mark the anniversary of the first Whitechapel killing. The death of Polly Nichols that day had been the third murder. The first, that of Emma Smith, had been early in April 1888 and the second, Martha Tabram, on 7 August.

Something was still bothering me though. Something I couldn’t quite put my finger on. Determined to leave no stone unturned, I checked whether there’d been other murders in London earlier in the year, specifically the first two weeks of April and August. I couldn’t access the Met’s computers from home but I searched the various news sites that cover events in and around the capital.

Nothing. There’d been a shooting on 5 August but the man in question, a nineteen-year-old of Grenadian origin, was recovering in hospital. Nothing in early April. There was no connection. So why couldn’t I just go to bed?

Even the similar mode of death meant nothing. The original Ripper hadn’t stuck to one modus operandi, his methods had evolved, even changed completely. There was no copycat. The letter sent to Emma Boston was a daft prank, possibly even the work of Emma herself to get an inside track on the investigation. I’d had it.

I printed off a couple of pages of summary information that I could use to brief the team the next day, closed the laptop and double-checked the front door. It occurred to me, for the first time, that I probably needed a stronger lock on it. Not something I’d ever worried about before. I picked up the printed sheets, meaning to put them in my bag ready for the morning. I was halfway across the bedroom when I caught site of the sub-heading halfway down the first page. A single word that stopped me in my tracks. Canonical.

Eleven Whitechapel murders. Few people, if any, believed them all to have been the work of Jack the Ripper. Experts argued endlessly about who had and who hadn’t been a true Ripper victim. Emma Smith, almost certainly not. Martha Tabram, the jury was still out on. Personally, I was inclined to think probably not. Her injuries, multiple stab wounds from some sort of bayonet, were very different to the murders that followed. Polly Nichols, on the other hand, number three, nobody doubted. Killed on the last day of August 1888, she’d been the first victim that just about everyone agreed was a true Ripper killing. She had been the first of the canonical five.

The bedside clock told me it was three o’clock in the morning. I’ve said already that London is never quiet. It was then. I couldn’t hear a thing. Not the traffic outside, not people in the flats upstairs, not even the sound of my own breathing.

The 31 August, the night Geraldine Jones had been killed, marked the anniversary of the first, undisputed Ripper murder. I checked the notes. Her injuries were practically identical to those inflicted on Polly Nichols and whoever killed Geraldine had disappeared without a trace.

I was going to have to wake up Tulloch and Joesbury, probably with the same phone call. Wasn’t that going to make me popular?

18

Sunday 2 September

‘WHY DIDN’T YOU MENTION THIS EARLIER?’ ASKED Joesbury. It was an hour later, just coming up for four in the morning, and he was standing behind Tulloch’s desk, leaning over her shoulder, both of them staring down at the letter that Emma, true to her word, had scanned and emailed to me at work.

‘I wanted to be sure,’ I replied, knowing how feeble an excuse it sounded. ‘I needed time to do some reading.’ Feeble as hell, but still a whole lot better than ‘I didn’t want to make an idiot of myself in front of you.’

Tulloch looked like she was struggling not to yawn. ‘Did you see the original?’ she said.

I nodded.

‘The handwriting is red?’ she asked. ‘Please tell me it’s somewhere safe.’

‘Emma wouldn’t give it to me,’ I answered. ‘But she seems to be looking after it. She has it in clear plastic. Saved the envelope as well. And I’m pretty certain the writing is in red ink.’

‘That smudge on the bottom corner doesn’t look like ink,’ said Joesbury. ‘Why the hell didn’t you tell us about this in the pub?’

‘Mark, back off,’ sighed Tulloch. ‘You know as well as I do the switchboard’s been jammed with crank calls since Friday night.’ She looked at me again. ‘I know nothing about Jack the Ripper,’ she said. ‘What did you say the five murders were called? The ones that are supposed to be the work of the Ripper?’

‘Canonical,’ I said.

‘What does that mean? It sounds religious.’

‘Conforming to the established order,’ replied Joesbury. ‘Reducing things to their simplest form.’

Tulloch looked blank. ‘I still don’t …’

‘Nobody really knows why they’re called that,’ I said. ‘It’s just tradition among people who describe themselves as Ripperologists. Five of the murders, between August and December, are called the canonical five.’

Joesbury raised an eyebrow. His right eye was still bloodshot. ‘How do you know so much about Jack the Ripper?’ he asked.

I didn’t tell him Jack was my favourite character from history. Somehow, I doubted that would go down too well. ‘I told you I’m interested in criminals,’ I said. ‘I always have been. Isn’t that why lots of people join the police?’

‘And the first of the canonical five was called Polly?’ Tulloch asked. ‘Are you sure about that?’

I nodded. ‘Strictly speaking, her name was Mary Ann,’ I said. ‘But everybody knew her as Polly.’

Tulloch shot a glance at Joesbury. He stared back at her for a second and then shrugged.

‘Why is that …?’ I began.

Tulloch waved me to be silent as she picked up the phone and dialled an internal extension. ‘Find the record of all calls coming into the switchboard since Friday,’ she ordered. ‘Have somebody do a count-up of how many mention Jack the Ripper. Yes, you heard me, Jack the Ripper. I need it now.’

She put the phone down and looked at me again. She opened her mouth, but Joesbury got in first.

‘Didn’t the original Ripper send letters?’ he asked. ‘Taunted the police with them, from what I can remember.’

‘Lots of letters were sent at the time,’ I said. ‘Not just to the police, but to newspapers as well. Even private citizens. They’re generally believed to be fakes. Not actually from the killer.’

‘I saw a film once. Didn’t one have a body part in it?’ asked Joesbury. He was leaning back against the window ledge now. ‘Mind you,’ he went on, ‘the Ripper turned out to be Queen Victoria’s grandson.’

‘Someone did send a human kidney to the head of one of the vigilante groups,’ I said. ‘In a letter described as coming “ From Hell ”. And one of the victims was missing a kidney. But at the time, there was no way to establish whether it was really hers or just another prank.’

‘Geraldine Jones wasn’t missing any body parts,’ said Tulloch.

‘Whoever killed Geraldine Jones didn’t have time to take souvenirs,’ replied Joesbury. ‘DC Flint saw to that. I think we need to see these letters. Come on, Flint, you seem to be our resident Ripperologist, find us a website.’

It wasn’t easy with Tulloch and Joesbury breathing down my neck, but after a few false starts, I found the site I was looking for. It dealt specifically with the hundreds of Ripper letters.