Bolton, J. - Now You See Me

‘Lost the bastard,’ he said. Then he bent over and spat in the gutter.

39

Monday 10 September

‘KETCHUP, ANYONE?’ ASKED KRISTOS.

Across the table DI Tulloch looked startled. At her side, Joesbury’s jaw was tight. Next to me, Stenning was staring at the blood-red bottle being offered to us. Then Joesbury and I made eye contact. As I bit back a giggle, he reached out for the bottle.

‘You eating that bacon, Tully?’ he asked.

Tulloch peeled back the white bread from her sandwich, lifted out three rashers of bacon and dropped them on Joesbury’s plate. She licked her fingers, before replacing the bread and cutting the now empty sandwich into quarters.

‘I’m a veggie,’ she said, seeing Stenning and I staring at her. ‘I just can’t resist the flavour of bacon fat.’

It was after two in the morning and the four of us were in an all-night café not far from the station on Lewisham High Street. It was the first time I’d been here, but the proprietor, a young Greek Cypriot called Kristos, obviously knew the others well. He’d made us large mugs of coffee and put bacon on the grill without being asked.

‘Wife-swapping,’ announced Stenning, taking the ketchup bottle from Joesbury.

‘Excuse me?’ said Tulloch.

‘It’s a wife-swapping ring gone wrong,’ Stenning went on as Joesbury leaned back in his chair and raised one eyebrow. ‘Middle-class women in their forties. They’re all at it. Read the Mail on Sunday . So, one of the husbands has had second thoughts. Decided all the women are whores and that he’s going to butcher them.’

Almost to the second, Joesbury and I bit into our sandwiches. Tulloch nibbled the corner of hers.

Stenning was leaning across the table, as though physical proximity to the two senior detectives might help persuade them. ‘We’ve seen weirder things,’ he said.

‘If that bloke I chased had been middle-class and in his forties, I’d have caught him,’ replied Joesbury.

I looked up and caught Tulloch’s eye. Difficult to say which of us smiled first.

‘Both victims were the same type.’ Stenning wasn’t one to give up easily. ‘Ladies who lunch.’

There had been no clue, either on the body or in the shed, that would tell us who our latest victim was. All we knew was that she was probably early to mid forties, slim and healthy looking, with manicured fingernails and professionally cut and coloured hair.

Arriving back in the incident room, I’d been asked to check the missing-persons list. There had been several possibilities, although none of the photographs I looked at bore much resemblance to the woman I’d seen. Nevertheless, first thing in the morning, we’d start the grim task of contacting relatives.

The name and details I’d been given by the man who’d phoned in the original call about the boat shed had turned out to be bogus.

All the time we’d been back at the station, we’d had regular reports from our colleagues out on the streets. The man we’d chased from the park – we were calling him Samuel Cooper until we knew otherwise – had disappeared. Joesbury’s guess was that he’d leaped into a garden and doubled back to the main road. A helicopter had been called out, but by the time it arrived we knew it was hopeless; he’d had plenty of time to get away. Cooper’s details had been wired around London, though, and every patrol car on the streets would be looking for him.

CCTV footage from late Saturday afternoon showed someone dressed exactly as our suspect had been earlier, walking into the park in the company of a dark-haired woman. The woman had been wearing a brown coat with polka dots on it and could easily be the victim. The two had been walking close together and the woman appeared to be going willingly enough.

After we’d watched it, Tulloch had sent for the footage from the Brendon Estate on the night of Geraldine Jones’s murder. After thirty minutes, we’d been rewarded. A figure, again dressed exactly like our suspect, had walked into Kennington Tube station just over five minutes after Geraldine had collapsed in my arms. I’d sat watching the two clips of footage for some time, flicking from one to the other.

‘Same clothes on three separate occasions,’ I’d said, almost to myself.

‘Different trousers on the night Geraldine Jones was killed,’ Tulloch had replied from directly behind me. I flicked back to the right piece of footage. ‘Those look like cargo pants to me,’ she went on. ‘And maybe he only has the one jacket.’

‘Maybe,’ I agreed. There was something bothering me, I just couldn’t put my finger on it. Eventually, Tulloch called me away.

Although we couldn’t be sure he was the killer, Samuel Cooper’s photograph had been released to the papers. More than one national was reprinting its front page to carry the image of the man suspected of being the new Ripper.

‘So you think he’s choosing Victorian locations?’ Tulloch said now, glancing sideways at Joesbury.

He nodded. He’d just put the last of the sandwich into his mouth and couldn’t talk.

‘Or with a Victorian connection,’ I said. ‘The pool building and the park were built during Victoria’s reign, but obviously not the Brendon Estate. It was the block name that was important there.’

‘Makes sense,’ said Stenning. ‘He can’t replicate the original locations, most of them don’t exist any more. They’ve been knocked down and built on and look nothing like what they did a hundred years ago.’

‘And look how many rubberneckers were out in Whitechapel two nights ago,’ agreed Joesbury. ‘He’d have been playing to a packed house.’

‘So we identify Victorian buildings and stake them out on 30 September,’ said Stenning.

‘How many of those do you think there are around London?’ asked Joesbury. ‘The Victorians practically built this city. There are over forty streets in the A–Z with Victoria in their name. I checked before we came out.’

‘So we do the prominent ones, the well-known ones.’ Stenning wasn’t giving up easily.

Tulloch was chewing her bottom lip. ‘That piece of wood,’ she said, and her eyes fell to the tabletop. ‘That didn’t happen to Annie Chapman.’

I gave the two men a moment to chip in. Neither of them did.

‘It did to Emma Smith,’ I said.

‘That’s a new one on me,’ said Stenning, looking my way.

‘Emma Smith was the first Whitechapel murder victim,’ I said. ‘She was killed some time in April that year. A thick piece of wood was pushed up inside her, causing extensive internal injuries. She survived the attack but died the day after in hospital.’

Stenning was looking confused. ‘So, hang on …’

‘No one really believes she was a victim of the Ripper,’ I said. ‘She herself said she was attacked by three men. It was probably some sort of revenge thing or punishment.’

‘So what is Cooper playing at?’ said Joesbury. ‘He’s not an out-and-out copycat, that’s for sure. It’s like he’s sorting through and picking the bits he likes best.’

Tulloch glanced at her watch and I wondered if she were looking at the date. It was 10 September. Just twenty days before a Ripper copycat would strike again.

‘We’ll catch him,’ I said, wondering who I was trying to convince. ‘I saw him. He’s real. We know who he is. We’ll catch him.’

I could see her trying to smile.

‘We need a plan,’ said Joesbury.

‘Tell me about it,’ she muttered.

Joesbury was looking at me. ‘I mean a plan for young Ripper-bait here,’ he said.

I sat a little more upright in my seat. ‘If that becomes my nickname around the station, I will personally—’ I began.