Whitechapel (65 page)

Two of the burly butchers had seen what happened and downed their pints quickly and put the glasses on a table then going over to help the now struggling Godley attempting to lift the uncoordinated drunken Abberline. Almost pushing Godley aside quite by accident and not design, each of them got hold of an arm and hoisted him effortlessly up onto his feet; a strength born out of years of carting livestock carcasses around the market. Godley stood to one side himself unsteady on his feet too as the butchers headed for the door of the pub leading out into the crisp cold morning air. Contact with the air outside sent Godley’s head spinning accentuating the intoxicating effect of the ale and he looked at Abberline to see what unfortunate results befell him too. He seemed impassive to it just groaning with the ill effects of the excess alcohol. A familiar voice called to the butchers from a parked carriage on the opposite side of the road.

“Over here, lads, stick him on board.” It was Robert Ford climbing down from a waiting carriage with a look of some concern on his face. “Is he all right, sarge?” He asked enquiringly of Godley who was following slowly behind the butchers and Abberline.

“Yes,” fighting for the right words to come out “we’ve both just had too much, son. Get us home for Christ’s sake.” He supported himself against the carriage as the butchers unceremoniously lifted the now completely limp Abberline into the passenger compartment. He groaned as he was placed onto the floor and then pushed in by his legs to clear the door, his head hitting the opposite side provoking no reaction from the dull impact of skin and bone against light wooden door.

“Thanks, lads,” said Ford handing the butchers a few shillings each for their trouble. “Keep it to yourselves, eh?” They looked at each other and nodded in recognition of his request.

Ford helped the increasingly unsteady Godley onto the carriage and then jumped in himself with the driver who snapped his riding crop as he did so with the horse moving the whole thing off with a lurch. Godley sat with his head in hands as Abberline remained silent on the floor with the noise of the carriage over the cobbles seeming to pound in his head. Rubbing his eyes he looked up at Ford quizzically and spoke.

“You know it’s over, don’t you?”

“For now. Chapman or whatever his name is will pop his head up again. We’ll get him. Least we are allowed to do that,” replied Ford.

“There is no ‘for now’ about it, son. It’s OVER!” Godley said agitated.

“Officially and for now. What I choose to do is my choice, sarge.” Ford was calm and calculated in his reply and not phased by his superior.

“Listen, if you value your career and your life, you’ll leave it.”

“Yeah, whatever. I’ve a lot more time left in this firm than you.” He also had financial means which was unusual for a young policeman; that was his business and his alone. They were both silent for some minutes as the carriage travelled on through familiar streets. Godley then quizzically spoke.

“How did you know where we were then?” Ford looked at him and smiled. “Well, you don’t think I’ve spent all this time on the team and not learnt the art of detection do you, sarge?”

“Well done, son. Glad some positives are coming out of it.”

In just a few hundred yards more both Godley and Abberline were snoring heavily as Ford directed the driver to their home addresses to drop them discreetly off.

***

Everyone finally enjoyed a long weekend with the trails having gone cold, at least for now. That was everyone other than Robert Ford who had decided to begin to take matters into his own hands. It was Sunday, late afternoon and he had spent most of the weekend hatching a plan to start to gain justice for Mary and the others. He was being eaten up inside by the conspiracy of fellow police officers working divisively against their brothers to defend a cruel and tortuous killer from justice. He felt personally aggrieved from the attack he had received led by Sir Robert Anderson who he now felt certain was the mastermind of all the operations to break the investigation into Tumblety. As a uniformed officer he should be able to gain access to Scotland Yard with relative ease but once inside it was the domain of the detectives and wandering the corridors of the upper floors he would need to be in a suit. Neither fact presented a problem; he wore a dark suit under a police tunic so once inside he would only need to remove the tunic and helmet to blend in. By the time he would arrive at The Yard from his lodgings in Bethnal Green it would be at its most quiet, an early Sunday evening, with no one restarting in the offices until around 8.a.m the next morning.

His plan was simple, perhaps naively so; he would break into Sir Robert’s office to find any remaining evidence against Tumblety, most likely only the arts bag. Dressing as planned he left he lodgings without any of the local people batting any eyelid, all of them familiar with him and his profession. The only thing that seemed at odds with the norm was seeing him hail and board a hansom cab further south in Bakers Row.

“Whitehall please, driver.” He confidently instructed the cold looking driver perched on his exposed padded leather saddle sporting a thick blanket over his knees. The gaunt and pale old man driving the cab nodded in acceptance and wiped away mucus dripping from his nose with the back of the sleeve of his crop bearing hand. He cracked the crop and the cab rumbled off along the cobbles in the now dark gas lit East End streets.

The journey took a little over twenty minutes; the cab pulling up in Whitehall just a little way beyond Whitehall Place and Great Scotland Yard. Ford jumped down and paid the driver his fare and watched blowing warm air in into his hands as the cab drove off. It had become bitterly cold following sunset and he wished he had brought his police beat duty cape or an overcoat to deal with the drop in temperature, especially pronounced with the proximity of the location to the river. Still, he would be outside for a minimal period of time as he began to walk briskly along Whitehall to turn into Whitehall Place leading up to Scotland Yard and to the entrance to the hallowed Metropolitan Police headquarters located there. As he walked towards the red brick and white edged building he considered the international reputation that it commanded for its crime fighting prowess and right now how undeserved it seemed in the face of such illicit corruption. If he pursued his police career beyond this night he vowed that he would never let such practices and associations influence his resolve or investigations in which he embarked.

He reached the steps in the deathly quiet early Sunday evening street to see the reception desk inside the double wooden doors illuminated by a desk lamp but the rest of the open hall in darkness. Few officers came and went; he decided that he would show out entering in uniform so he walked past to try to find somewhere to stow his helmet and tunic safely until he had finished. Near the junction with Victoria Embankment he found an open doorway in darkness in building that seemed largely disused. He rolled his helmet inside the heavy blue serge tunic and placed them just inside the door jam pulling the tatty pine door closed behind him. He turned to walk back still with no one in the street and began to climb the steps to the entrance to ‘The Yard’. His movement as he approached the door must have been picked up by the desk sergeant’s peripheral vision as he looked up from the desk just as Ford was about to push the door open. He entered gauging the type of officer he was about to have bluff his way past examining him without giving the fact he was away.

The desk sergeant was a seasoned veteran by his age and his bearing. A balding well built man with big thick hands, a greying moustache and, as Robert Ford was about to discover, of a direct nature; truly he thought the sergeant a wily old campaigner. Immediately the sergeant could see that he was going to be dealing with a young officer, possibly by the mode of dress a young hot shot detective. He sat back and upright in his chair and spoke with ferocious probing eye contact.

“Yes, son. Can I help you?” Ford could tell getting past him would be challenging and considered his words carefully before speaking.

“PC Ford, attached to the Whitechapel murders, sarge…” before he could continue he was interrupted by the seemingly anti C.I.D. sergeant.

“Oh, yeah? And what do you want at this time on a Sunday then, son?” He used the word ‘son’ in a very condescending fashion. There seemed little point fabricating a complicated story with this man so Ford decided to remain as truthful as possible to try to keep some kind of control of the conversation. “Inspector Abberline has tasked me to collect some case papers from the office here for examination by him personally tomorrow morning. Early.”

“Really?” The sergeant folded his arms and looked him up and down. He was annoyed the story seemed so plausible. To satisfy his boredom and verbose nature he would just make the lad feel a bit more uncomfortable. “And these papers relate to whom then?”

Robert Ford knew he didn’t have to answer that question, but decided to be equal to the obtuseness he was meeting. “Jack the Ripper, sarge.” The sly smile that the sergeant had been giving him fell to a completely stony look of annoyance. The lad had given a smart answer and one he couldn’t contend. His sport with him was over.

“Cheeky, bleeder. You know where the office is then, lad. Bugger off and get what you need.” He settled down to read the newspaper in front of him again as Ford walked past him hurriedly into the building and breathed a sigh of relief.

The corridors were only marginally lit as it was a Sunday, a day when activity in the building was fairly dormant. He made his way up the main staircase having ignored the building guide on the wall by the stairs on the ground floor deliberately so as not to arouse anymore suspicion in the desk sergeant. He knew where the Whitechapel Murders office was but had no clue as to where Sir Robert Anderson’s office was. On reaching the first floor landing he studied the floor guide there; he was in luck, Anderson’s office was only one more floor up. He moved briskly up the stair case in the seemingly deserted building. He passed through the double doors to enter the second floor corridor, breathing just a little heavily now from having run up the two flights nervously; he was presented with a wall plate in front him with a guide to the offices. Anderson’s was room 2.09, a right turn from the doors along the dimly lit corridor. The walls were panelled in a dark oak; this was the floor where many important senior officers had their offices. He reached 2.09 and the door to the office was equally ornate to match the walls.

The door was four panelled in the same wood as the walls with a large brass door knob with a Chubb lock key hole underneath. Ford looked at the door; surely it would be locked and a door like this would not be soundless to put in. Before simply trying the door knob he placed his ear to the door to listen on the off chance for any activity inside. It was, as he expected, silent. He wrapped his right hand around the door knob and gently and quietly tried to turn it. It moved, so he turned it fully and pushed and the door opened into a dimly lit but sumptuous office.

It was again decked out in oak panelling, bookcases, a drinks cabinet and a leather topped desk with a high leather backed office chair behind it, and above a small fireplace in the room hung a portrait of Queen Victoria. The wooden floor was highly polished with a rug in the centre on top of which sat the desk and chair and two less comfortable looking wooden almost dining type chairs in front of the desk; obviously for subordinates to sit in uncomfortably and receive the fury of the Assistant Commissioner when necessary. But why was the room lit? He looked around the room more closely and saw behind the door was an iron hat and coat stand with, he noted with dismay, a hat and coat on it. Anderson couldn’t possibly be here this evening? He cast his vision again around the room and spotted on top of the drinks cabinet two whisky tumblers, one empty the other with about three quarters of inch of light brown coloured spirit in it. He was still stood close to the office door when he heard the double doors from the stairway open and the sound of a man and a woman laughing as they sounded as if they had barrelled through them. ‘Christ!’ Ford quickly shut the office door and tried to see where around the room he could hide. There was no where other than behind the office door when it opened. He had come this far; he was now going to have to see through an extreme course of action.

Robert Ford was not prepared for what he saw when the door opened. Anderson walked with a young woman holding her by his right hand. He led the female up towards the desk where the she stopped and turned round to face him. He couldn’t believe it, it was the pretty East End prostitute Julia Styles. She was smiling and leaning back against the desk reaching for Anderson’s trousers. She spoke as she did so.

“Want a suck before your fuck then, sir?” Anderson batted away the girl’s hands with his own and spoke.

“Just turn round and lift your skirt, girlie, and bend over the desk. I’ll see to me.” Julia began to do as she was told as the office door slammed shut.

Robert Ford could have never seen that he would be in such a position of strength against, or so he thought, the establishment and all of its corruption. Neither Anderson nor Julia had seen him in the shadow behind the door as they had entered but now both looked at him aghast as the door closed loudly and both seemed momentarily frozen in time. Julia said nothing but began to pull her skirt back down as Anderson stood silently regarding the young man he had previously tried to kill.

“So, Assistant Commissioner, we meet again, sir,” said a confident Robert Ford.

“What do you want?” muttered Anderson, obviously in a compromised position. Julia looked on nervously and tried to begin to walk away, speaking as she did so.

“I better be going, sir.”

“Stay where you are, Julia,” said Ford. “I’ll tell you what I want, you bastard, re-open the case against Tumblety. That’s what I want. Give me back the remaining evidence against him too.” Anderson spoke immediately.