The Thing About Thugs (26 page)

Major Grayper was not fooled by the occasional lull in the murders. By now a pattern had emerged: there would be no murder for weeks, a month or two at times, and then suddenly there would be two gruesome beheadings in the same week. The Major felt that the lack of a proper and independent all-metropolis detective service was the main obstacle in clearing this mystery, for even with his special mandate it was not easy for him to obtain full cooperation from the other superintendents.

He was convinced that Amir Ali had nothing to do with the murders, though he still had his men looking for the absconding thug, if only to keep them busy and create the impression, so necessary for the preservation of public order, that he knew more than he did. The Major also did not like the idea of the former suspect disappearing into thin air: it made him feel that his grip on London was not secure enough.

He had evidence that at least one of the murders had taken place when the thug was in custody and he had the word of his future son-in-law, Captain Meadows, for the innocence of Amir Ali on the night of yet another murder. He also knew that on at least some of the other occasions, Amir had been seen in a very different part of the city than the one in which a beheading had taken place. It was difficult to imagine a recently arrived East Indian knowing the city so well as to strike in different parts of it, at random and always without witness. Still, he wished he knew where the man had disappeared to. Of course, he could have shipped out, or gone into the provinces, but the Major doubted that.

On his table, Major Grayper had spread out a detailed map of London. Painstakingly, he marked the site of each murder with a red spot. Then he marked the sites of other unsolved murders of a similar character — involving the slicing of a limb or an appendage — with blue spots. The blue spots, he noted, were spread much more widely than the red spots. He was convinced that the blue spots had nothing to do with the red spots. The red spots clustered around central London, seldom, if ever, moving farther out, while the blue spots appeared more randomly. This confirmed the Major’s suspicion that the beheading murders were a special case, perhaps the work of some religious cult after all, or at least some fanatic or lunatic, as that man Oates kept suggesting in his articles.

The main problem in understanding the murderer was the eclectic character of his victims. If they had all been women of the street, Major Grayper would have been able to imagine and perhaps trace a certain kind of man. If they had all been foreigners, he would have had another sort of clue. But the victims of this murderer were so mixed: an old woman who ran an opium den, a lascar, a nigger beggar, a gypsy or whoever it was, and so on. There did not seem to be any connection between them.

Major Grayper paused in his thinking. Of course, there was a connection. It was surprising he had not seen it before. All the victims were the very dregs of society. Was their murder then the work of some vigilante, someone who wanted to cleanse London of its sores and pus? The Major had come across such thinking aired over too many drinks in polite circles: the poor should be removed, sent to the colonies, etc. He himself believed that some drastic action was long overdue. London was swarming with the poor and the useless, not just indigenous folk but from all over the empire. Just last week at the club, one of his friends was complaining of the burden of empire, as he put it: we ship them civilization, he had said, and they ship us problems. Perhaps some other citizen, some vigilante, had felt more strongly on the subject.

But Major Grayper was also a pillar of society. He might sympathize with the feelings of this vigilante, but he would uphold law and order. What was wrong with people who wanted drastic solutions was exactly this, he thought: they did not realize that their solutions would unravel the intricate network of law and justice. It would be like opening Pandora’s box.

Major Grayper lit another cigar. This would be a difficult matter. It might even involve someone from the better circles of London, perhaps a medical man or a tradesman. But he would find the culprit. That was his job. Search, and you will find. Though it would have been easier if the poor of London had not been so suspicious of authority, so unlikely to give full answers to the superior classes — for surely someone or the other must have witnessed the gory murders.

The Head Cannibal Strikes Again
Sketch by Daniel Oates

There are officers to inspect and certify the goods that are downloaded at West India and East India docks at the Isle of Dogs and the London Dock Company’s docks at Wapping. But only if the goods are dead and inanimate. Every day hundreds of living goods are downloaded at those very docks, and they slip into the great city of London with hardly any inspection. There is no one to test if these living goods are of sufficiently high quality or not, to certify that they are undamaged and not rotted.

In the old Royal Exchange, there were separate walks even for merchants in the American, Italian, Norwegian, Irish and other trades, but the living goods shipped into London jostle with the rest of us on the same streets and alleys. Every day we meet these goods on the streets of fair London: men and women from every corner of the Empire who are now in our midst and can be often found associating with the worst of our own native crop of scoundrels. From the far points of the globe they come, from places with wondrous riches and sights but also, as our missionaries and colonists remind us, with strange rites and heathen customs, with extreme political views like anarchism, with devilish practices like cannibalism and suttee and thugee. Why then do we throw up our hands in horror and surprise when another person — this time a beggar from the West Indies — is found murdered and decapitated in our streets?

This morning your correspondent was called to witness, in an indescribable corner of Bethnal Green that reeked of misery and manure, the latest handiwork of the Rookery Beheader. During the night, this monster had fallen upon, battered to death and decapitated an old beggar from the West Indies who was often seen in the streets of London, dressed in a tall hat with green tissues shaped to resemble palm fronds and singing a jolly tune in a kind of English.

Once again, there are no witnesses to the crime. But it has been whispered in the streets that the murderer is some heathen, recently imported into our parts, who either practices a devilish and esoteric rite or consumes human flesh. The practice of some island tribes that shrink the skulls of their enemies has also been raised as a clue to the identity of the monster who is often called the ‘head cannibal, for his victims have all been found without that vital appendage.

Whatever may be his identity, perhaps it is time to think about the nature and significance of all the goods that are brought into the docks of England by its mighty fleet of globe-spanning ships.

I enjoyed observing how Qui Hy went about her investigations, for — need it be said — this was not the first time I had seen her embroiled in solving someone else’s problems. She always had a rational argument for it. No, it was never due to the goodness of her heart, the devils of Hindoostan forbid! She always had a reason. Whatever it was, for me her cases were an education every time. But this time the matter was much more in the public eye than any of her earlier cases.

Of course, Qui Hy never left the house; she seldom does, now that she suffers from gout and swollen knees, but even when she was younger she would wait for people to come to her. She would sit there, her eyes hooded and appearing only vaguely interested, patiently stitching her pockets, and they would sit with her, sipping tea or munching the paan she prepared. If you did not know, if the surroundings were not so different, and especially if her guests were ayahs or women, you would think it was a scene in India. She would ask them about their health or about news from ‘home’ or of ‘family’, if they had family. They would ask after her health. She would complain about her knees: that took at least ten minutes. And so the conversation would continue. Somewhere in the middle of this flaccid banter would be inserted a kernel of information. After the guest or guests had left, she would come into my room and make me a new pipe or fetch me something I needed. Then she would say, write this down, Paddyji, will you. Out would come the name of a place or a pub, some detail to add to what she knew already, nothing more than a word or two usually, and I would add it under the appropriate heading in the notebook that she had bought and now kept, with a stub of pencil, on the floor under my bed.

She is illiterate. Lick lora, per patter, she says, confessing her absolute illiteracy and laughing silently when one of her people asks her to help them read out or write a letter. She speaks five or six languages, most of them Indian dialects, as also passable French along with English, both of which she picked up while working as an ayah for various families. She cannot read or write a word in any language, though. ‘Likh lorha, parh patthar’, she corrects me.

Once a week, she would ask me to read out all that I had written, heading and all, from the first page to the last. I would do so. She would sit there and sometimes she would nod or shake her head. I would ask her if the reading had helped. She would smile slightly and say, ‘It helps, don’t worry, everything helps, Paddyji.’

I would not press her for more. I knew she would tell me first when she felt she had the answer. I know she will have the answer. She always gets what she wants. I have been with her for two decades now: I know that. She is a deep one, this woman, my Indian wife.

It is a strange time for Amir Ali. After his initial angry outburst, he has started to feel a kind of lethargy, as if the idea of vengeance, perhaps even the notion of justice, is tiring. He misses Jenny more than he ever missed Mustapha Chacha and his family, but he feels a reluctance to do anything about it. It is only in the evenings sometimes, when he sleeps in the basement and is entirely alone with his thoughts, that he jolts up, sleepless, filled with anger at the senselessness of it all. He is happiest when, using the forged papers he received from Ustad, he accompanies Gunga to the docks, looking for work on one of the ships, any kind of ship plying the seas or the river, even the new steamships that none of them has any experience of. Gunga wants him to join his gang of lascars. Sometimes Amir feels tempted, but he knows he cannot leave London without finding out what happened to Jenny and why. Qui Hy has told him a little more every week, but he suspects she has told him less than she knows. When he accuses her of keeping back some information, she says, ‘But Amir beta, do you think I am God?’

‘Not God, Qui Hy’, he retorts, ‘but surely someone from His inner circles!’

At that she shakes with soundless laughter and talks of something else.

Look at the man. Look at the blasted man, thinks John May. He turns to Shields and says it aloud. ‘Look at yourself, man. When did you last shave? When did you last change your shirt? You are more jumpy than a bloody bean. Even your hands are shaking...’

Shields mumbles something.

‘Speak up, man’, John May barks at him. ‘Speak up. There’s no one else here.’

One-eyed Jack sniggers.

‘They are here, John May’, Shields replies, looking around furtively. ‘They are always around.’

‘Who?’ John May shouts at the shorter man. ‘Who, you goddamn peasant? Who have you seen now? Another trailing maidservant?’

Jack laughs aloud this time.

‘It’s not right, John May’, Shields mumbles back.

‘What, man? Speak up. Speak up, damn you.’

‘What we are doing. It’s not right.’

Jack laughs again. But for a moment John is silent: he has qualms of conscience too, at times. Despite himself. Despite his iron will. But it is a matter of a few weeks now: M’lord is barely interested any more. John May has to make elaborate promises — strange skulls, stranger skulls — in order to keep him interested. It is only a matter of weeks before M’lord stops paying, stops appearing at the pub. John May senses this. M’lord is paying less and less; he acts distracted, like he has other matters on his mind. Very soon, he will vanish as suddenly as he appeared, mask and all. Why not make as much as one could until then? A beggar here, a lascar there, who would miss them?

The night Bubba Bookman burst into Qui Hy’s parlour was different. He did not come with information. And he did not enter gently. He threw the door open violently, and entered with two of his men. I was so startled that I reached for the dagger I keep under my pillow, an old army habit. I cannot fall asleep unless I feel the sheathed dagger under my head.

‘Who are they’, he shouted at Qui Hy.

Bookman has a booming voice, a sound that reverberates from the deep well of his being. Shouting comes naturally to him and it is not pleasant to have a man of Bookman’s size shouting at you.

But Qui Hy remained in her rocking chair, stitching as usual. She did not even look up.

Bookman said again, ‘By God, Qui Hy, you tell me who those men are. I know you know of them. You give me the names and I will kill them with my bare hands (He made as if he was twisting off heads). No one murders the poor buggers who pay me for safety, and that too, behead them in my own territory. They have gone too far. One I could have ignored. But two. Two! They killed poor old Crazy Abraham last night...’

Qui Hy looked up then. ‘I know’, she said.

‘You tell me, now, now’, Bookman thundered. ‘Names, names, names...’

It was seldom that Bookman lost his sense of being on a complex stage and slipped into a singular emotion like anger. The beheadings had shaken him. Qui Hy set aside her basket.

‘I always speak to people I know and trust, Bookman’, she said calmly, looking him squarely in the eye.

‘Then tell me, Qui Hy, tell me.’

‘I know you, Bookman. But do I know the men with you?’