Bolton, J. - Now You See Me

Text at the top explained what I’d already told Tulloch and Joesbury, that most of the ‘Ripper’ letters were considered fakes, either the work of journalists trying to stir up a story or of fools intent on wasting police time. Just three, according to the site, may have been genuine.

The first of these, the infamous Dear Boss letter, had been sent to the Central News Agency on 27 September 1888 and had been the first to use the term ‘Jack the Ripper’; the second was a postcard, in similar handwriting to the Dear Boss letter and referring to details of the crimes that, supposedly, only the killer would be in a position to know; the third had been the From Hell letter that accompanied the human kidney.

The phone rang just as I was pulling one of them up on the screen. As Tulloch answered it, her face seemed to tighten. She muttered her thanks and put the phone down.

‘Six callers mentioned the date as that of one of the Ripper murders,’ she said.

‘You need to see this, Tully,’ said Joesbury, who’d been staring at the screen. He lifted my hand from the mouse and enlarged the image. Written in rather elegant copperplate hand, it was the letter of the 27 September 1888, the one sent to The Boss of the Central News Agency. We read it together, Joesbury speaking the words in a just audible voice. Before we were halfway through, I was feeling sick.

Dear Boss

I keep on hearing the police have caught me but they won’t fix me just yet. I have laughed when they look so clever and talk about being on the right track. That joke about leather apron give me such fits. I am down on whores and I won’t quit ripping them till I do get buckled. Grand work the last job was. I gave the lady no time to squeal. How can they catch me now. I love my work and want to start again. You will soon hear of me with my funny little games. I saved some of the proper red stuff in a ginger beer bottle over the last job to write with but it went thick like glue and I can’t use it. Red ink is fit enough I hope. Ha ha. The next job I do I shall clip the lady’s ears off and send to the police officers just for jolly wouldn’t you. Keep this letter back till I do a bit more work then give it out straight. My knife’s so nice and sharp. I want to get to work right away if I get a chance. Good luck .

Yours truly

Jack the Ripper

Don’t mind me giving the trade name .

Mark Joesbury picked up a pink highlighter pen from Tulloch’s desk and started highlighting words and phrases on the letter Emma Boston had emailed to me earlier that morning. I keep on hearing … How I have laughed … clever … on the right track … lady … squeal … clip … ears off … funny little games … proper red stuff .

In the short note pushed through Emma’s front door in the early hours of Saturday morning, twenty-two words had been directly lifted from the original letter. When he’d finished going through it, Joesbury drew a big circle round the misspelling of Emma Boston’s name. Dear Miss Bosston .

‘Christ,’ muttered Tulloch.

‘Bastard’s sent us a Dear Boss letter,’ said Joesbury, in case one of us hadn’t got it. From the look on Tulloch’s face, and the ache at the back of my jaw that usually means I’m about to vomit, it seemed fair to say we both had.

Tulloch looked at me. ‘Do you have her address?’ she said.

I nodded, fished around in my bag for the note I’d made and handed it over. Tulloch headed for the door.

‘Dana, you don’t have to go yourself,’ Joesbury began.

Tulloch turned, glanced at me and then spoke to Joesbury. ‘Do not let her out of your sight,’ she told him, before disappearing.

19

FOR A FEW SECONDS NEITHER OF US SPOKE. JOESBURY WAS right behind me, close enough for me to hear his breathing. To get out of the room I’d have to leap over the desk and run for it, or turn and face him. I think I was half bracing myself for the jump when he spoke.

‘If you were on my team, you’d be on suspension by now.’

Maybe if I didn’t move, didn’t speak, he might get bored and leave himself.

‘You had that note at eight o’clock last night,’ he said. ‘You were in the company of half the officers on the case for three hours after that. It’s nearly four a.m. now and we’ve lost eight hours. You know how critical that is.’

He wasn’t being fair. High-profile murder cases always attract crank calls and anonymous notes, weird conspiracy theories and attention-seekers. To follow up on all of them would require resources no investigation team could dream of. We make judgement calls. Sometimes they’re right and sometimes not. I’d half suspected Emma of writing the letter herself to get my attention and trick me into revealing some juicy detail.

Which might still be the case. Emma could have copied the original Dear Boss letter. I found myself really hoping she had. In the meantime, I had to get out of the room with some shred of dignity. I turned.

Joesbury’s tan seemed to be fading. Maybe he was just tired. The scarring around his eye looked more livid, if anything. He was wearing a loose blue cotton shirt and he’d rolled up the cuffs. The hairs on his wrist were a soft golden brown.

‘What’s the Polly connection?’ I asked, without thinking. ‘The name Polly meant something to you and DI Tulloch. What?’

He shook his head. He still hadn’t shaved. Like most British men, his beard stubble was a mixture of brown, blond and red. There were even tiny grey hairs.

‘You can’t have it both ways,’ I said. ‘You can’t insist I have nothing to do with the investigation, then give me a right royal bollocking because I don’t respond to something immediately. If I’d known about the Polly thing, whatever it is, I would have said something earlier. Although, admittedly, I’d have missed the very great pleasure of dragging you and DI Tulloch out of bed.’

A flash of something that could have been anger, but actually looked more like surprise, crossed his face.

‘Shut the door,’ he said.

Suddenly nervous, I did what he said and stayed right up against it.

‘The knife that killed Geraldine Jones was a bog-standard kitchen knife, the sort you can buy in cooking shops and department stores just about everywhere,’ he said. ‘The team are trying to trace it back to where it was bought, but as several hundred seem to be made and sold every week, they’re not too hopeful.’

I nodded, with no clue where this was going.

‘The knife was unusual in one respect,’ he went on. ‘Five letters had been etched into the blade, along the cutting edge, just a centimetre below the handle. Five letters making up a name.’

‘Polly,’ I said.

He inclined his head. ‘And if you repeat it to anyone I will throttle you myself.’

An hour later I’d bitten my tongue so many times I could taste blood. Joesbury had decided, in Tulloch’s absence, that we had to know as much as possible about the original Ripper murders and that I would be in charge of research.

We were in the incident room and he’d cleared one of the walls for Ripper information. I’d been told to have a file ready on each of the victims, paying particular attention to post-mortem reports of their injuries.

To his credit, I suppose, he was helping. He’d found a massive street map of Whitechapel and had fixed eleven small flags to indicate the locations of the original murders. The canonical five were red, the others yellow. He’d printed out internet photographs of the victims, all of them taken after death. These too had been put on the wall and I found myself looking, for the first time in years, at Polly Nichols. She’d been forty-five, small, dumpy, scruffily dressed and in poor health. It was hard to imagine two women more different than she and Geraldine Jones.