Bryant & May - The Burning Man (40 page)

‘We have to be there by seven. See if there’s a fast train. There’s something I have to do first.’

‘Can I come along?’ asked May, thinking it would be better if Bryant remained partnered during the hours beforehand, just in case he had another bout of disorientation.

When Bryant looked back, May felt as if he could see into his soul. ‘No,’ he said firmly. ‘I’ll be perfectly fine. There’s no risk attached, and it’s better if I’m unaccompanied.’

‘Can you at least give me an inkling of what you’re up to?’

‘Don’t worry, it’s to do with the case.’ Bryant smiled enigmatically. ‘It’s about the canonical five of 1888.’

‘Where’s he going?’ asked Raymond Land as he watched Bryant grab his battered scarecrow-hat and old overcoat from the stand.

‘He’s going to look for Jack the Ripper,’ said May, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world.

‘You,’ Bryant said, looking around the room, ‘get your coat on. A fine day like this, you should be outside.’

Augustine tore himself away from the plasma screen and lifted off a pair of £300 Sennheiser headphones. ‘It’s pissing down. Where’s my father?’

‘He’s been called away on business. I won’t have language.’

‘What the hell are you wearing?’

‘I don’t know. It was in a drawer.’

‘How did you get in, anyway?’

‘Are you sure you’re nine? You have the suspiciousness of a middle-aged man. Yolanda let me in. Go on, put that ridiculous game down. I’m sure your video-robot-thingies will still be here when you get back.’ He looked about and sniffed. ‘It would be nice to see a bookcase in here.’

‘Books suck, and I can’t go out,’ said the boy, still getting over the shock of having to abandon his biowarfare attack on an alien planet in order to attend to an ancient trespasser in his playspace.

‘You said you wanted to know something about crime in London, so I’m going to show you.’

‘No,
you
said. You can’t make me do anything; you’re not my father.’

‘I taught you that line; you can’t use it on me.’

‘Where
is
my father?’

‘He’ll be back later. And I can do anything I like because I’m a policeman. I’ve got a special pass that allows me to break the law.’ He flashed his bus pass before the child’s eyes and swiftly put it back in his pocket. ‘I’m going to be in charge of you for the next couple of hours, so watch your lip. We’re going to see something that will give you nightmares for weeks. Put a raincoat on, we’re walking to the tube.’

Augustine looked horrified. ‘I’m not allowed to go on the
tube
. Bratling says they’re full of germs.’

‘I’m sorry, I didn’t realize you’d been born without an immune system. Bratling’s off duty. Germs are good for you; they keep you from getting sick.’

‘We’re not even supposed to be in London. Have you seen what’s going on? People are, like, getting killed and stuff.’

‘During the Blitz nearly fifty thousand bombs and millions of incendiaries fell on London. Over sixty thousand people were killed, and for every one who died, another thirty-five were left homeless. People didn’t leave then, so why should they leave now?’

‘I’m nine,’ the boy reminded him. ‘I want to see ten.’

‘Look, do you want me to show you where some really disgusting things happened or not?’

‘Wait, I haven’t taken my pill.’ Augustine struggled into his Puffa jacket as Bryant headed down the stairs. Yolanda saw him coming and hastily backed into the kitchen.

‘What’s the pill?’ asked Bryant.

‘Ritalin. It keeps me calm.’

Bryant was disgusted. ‘A boy of your age shouldn’t be calm; he should be bouncing off the walls with excitement. Come along.’

‘Where are we going?’

‘Have you ever heard of Jack the Ripper?’

‘Of course. He murdered some people a long time ago. I saw a programme about him.’

‘This isn’t on television, it’s real,’ the detective called back behind him as they left. ‘I’m going to show you the truth about Jack the Ripper. Don’t dawdle. Keep up.’

Bryant and the boy strode off through the rain, dodging the stalled and steaming traffic, fighting through the umbrellas that blossomed at the entrance to Angel station, heading down into the sooty bowels of the tube network.

Augustine had never been permitted to do anything like this. He sensed that somehow the rules of his life had shifted today, that his father was unwilling or unable to stop this strange policeman, and his nudging curiosity now turned into a hunger. He knew he was right to be afraid of Bryant, who was unpredictable, dangerous and quite possibly mad, but there was also a chance that he would share something that had always been missing: an adventure.

Over half of the tube map was off-limits. All of the central stations were shut until further notice. Bryant and the boy transferred from the Northern line (City Branch) south to the Hammersmith & City line, and managed to reach Aldgate East. Then they rose to the puddled pavements and started walking again. Makeshift tents had been pitched on almost every corner. When Bryant had used the Blitz analogy, he hadn’t realized just how accurate it was. He paced ahead, dragging the boy through the chaotic throng, barely using his malacca stick, growing younger and more energetic by the minute.

Everywhere it seemed people were gathering in the streets, huddled together or handing out leaflets with singsong chants. Others were working in relays, sandbagging shops and building barricades. A siege mentality had taken hold. London had become a battleground.

He bought Augustine a collapsible umbrella from an Indian stall. ‘That thing will last for exactly’ – he checked his watch – ‘three-quarters of an hour before it falls to bits. Stay close and keep your wits about you. Don’t get separated. Let’s talk about Jack the Ripper.’

‘Have you ever been tested for mental illness?’ asked Augustine.

‘Funnily enough, yes, and quite recently. First of all, I have to explain something. There was no Jack the Ripper. He didn’t exist. Try not to look so surprised; it makes you appear simple. There were only the Whitechapel murders and a man they called Leather Apron, and we will never know who he really was because at the time there was no forensic evidence.’

‘What’s forensic?’

‘Do they teach you nothing at school?’ He pulled the boy clear of some running Indian teenagers. ‘Forensics is the scientific collection of criminal evidence, and in 1888 there was no such thing. What’s more, every bit of information that was gathered about the killer by the police has been examined in minute detail, and there are no more clues left to find, so we can only make guesses. Oh, they’ve studied the DNA on a shawl that miraculously survived for nearly a hundred and thirty years without once being washed, and have come up with yet another supposed culprit, but nobody will ever really know the truth. Over four years there were eleven murders, but only between three and six of them were committed by the same person, and it’s generally agreed that there were five victims by the same hand. We call these the canonical five.’ He grabbed the boy’s shoulders and physically turned him. ‘Stop here. Turn around. Look at these buildings.’

They were now on Hanbury Street near a boarded-up Cash & Carry store, outside the only surviving properties from that time.

‘Across the road,’ said Bryant, pointing at rain-sodden brickwork, ‘in the back garden of number twenty-nine, a short, fat, ugly, forty-five-year-old woman with two missing teeth was found lying on her back with her throat slashed from left to right and her stomach slit open to the chill night air. Her name was Annie Chapman, and her guts had been pulled out of her abdomen and thrown over her shoulders like a bloody scarf. Parts of her insides were missing, and were never found. And all this happened just a few feet from where you’re standing. It was the day after the funeral of the first victim, and the public became terrified.’

Augustine’s eyes widened as Bryant talked, dragging him from one spot to the next, gesticulating wildly, painting pictures in the air, now throwing his arms wide, now thrusting his hands at the startled child, bringing alive the awful history of the area.

‘The Ten Bells,’ said Bryant, pushing open the door of the pub on Commercial Street so that Augustine could see inside. ‘It used to be called the Eight Bells, but the nearby church added two more to its chimes, and they could be heard inside the pub. Annie had a drink in here on the night she was brutally slaughtered. How old did you say you were?’

‘Nine.’

Bryant thought for a minute. ‘Hm. Old enough. Hang on here for a minute. Whatever you do, don’t move.’ He returned with two glasses of bitter, a pint for himself and a half for the boy. ‘When I was nine my father took me for my first beer. I think it’s time you had yours.’

Augustine looked uncertainly at the frothy dark glass. Bryant made a sipping motion. ‘Go on, try it.’

Augustine tipped the glass to his lips and recoiled sharply, thrusting out his tongue as if it had just been dipped in vinegar. ‘That’s totally disgusting.’

‘Everyone says that at first. You have to keep going, at least until you’ve drunk half of what’s in your glass. Think of it as an initiation test. But hurry up, there’s a lot more to see and do. We have to get to the notorious “double event” – two murders on the same dark night. You must imagine these streets without electricity, and only flickering gas lamps, damp and mist and very bad smells.’ Bryant’s fingers rippled before the boy’s face, conjuring up the scene. ‘No trees anywhere, just factories and slums, pubs and doss-houses. After that we’ll look at the final victim and how she was found without her heart.’

Augustine belched as he downed his beer and followed Bryant’s indicating hand like a hypnotized hen. Then they were off again, lolloping through the downpour, over the roads and between the market stalls, the boy intoxicated less by his half of cloudy warm ale than by Bryant’s ability to conjure terrible blood-soaked images from the wet grey air. The shouting, mutinous mobs around them only served to return the area to its dark past.

Bryant brought them to a stop beneath a dripping railway arch and seized Augustine’s collar. ‘So you have seen where the Ripper walked and hunted his victims, if indeed it was just one man,’ he said. ‘For the truth is, we know nothing at all about him beyond the fact that he was probably left-handed and literate enough to write a letter. All the crazy people who are convinced they know who committed the murders, all the suspects, all the clues from the writing on the wall to the note the Ripper sent the police, they all amount to nothing. And that is why he is remembered, not for what we know but for what we
don’t
know, and that is why we are detectives, because we always want to finish the picture. Every case is an unfinished picture, and only we can find the missing pieces. And now I must tell you the most terrible part of the Ripper’s secret.’

He pulled the boy closer, Long John Silver to Jim-Lad, Magwitch to Pip. ‘The legend of Jack the Ripper has been kept alive all these years,’ he whispered. ‘There are nearly four thousand books on the subject. The Ripper breathes and walks almost as if he is still flesh and blood, when he should have been allowed to die long, long ago. His victims were desperate, poor women who could not earn enough to find a bed for the night or a hot meal. Their skin was grey and saggy from a diet of potatoes. They tramped the streets for twenty hours a day, in rain and snow and fog. They were beaten up and treated cruelly for doing nothing more than trying to survive in a mean world that didn’t care if they lived or died.’ He poked Augustine in the chest. ‘Once they were like you, lad, young and full of hope for the world, but unlike you they had nothing beyond a few ragged clothes and their failing bodies. And instead of treating them with kindness and respect, men bullied them and stole away their only precious possession, their innocence, and after they were dead the men – and women – still exploited them, displaying photographs of their ruined lives, writing about the Ripper as if he was intelligent, a surgeon, a member of royalty, an artist, as if he was more worthy of attention than his victims. We raise him up in films and books and TV shows, almost as if he was something to admire. But he wasn’t, Augustine. He was just another cruel, evil bully only worthy of our revulsion and disgust, because he exploited the weak. And this is true of all terrible crimes; it’s the victims who must be respected and honoured, not the murderers, and that is why I do my job, and will continue to do it until the day I die. Do you want some crisps?’

Augustine was crying.

‘Oh, come now, it’s just a bad story that has lived too long. There’s more kindness in the world than harm. I honestly believe that to be true, and so must you. Look around here at all these people. They want to see good things done, not bad.’ Bryant scuffed the boy’s tears away and stopped outside an Indian restaurant. ‘I’d take you for a Ruby Murray but that might be pushing it. Let’s just get some poppadoms.’

The rain had stopped. As they trudged back through dirty puddles and litter towards the tube, Augustine crunched his way through a bag of the savoury discs and they talked of other things: his father and mother, his school, his friends and holidays.