Killing Time - Chapter Eight

Please clink~this~link to Nicola's Newsletter Raw Meat..

KILLING TIME

A novel by

NICOLA BATTY

Chapter Eight.

8^th September, 1888 - 29, Hanbury Street, Whitechapel.

            As the early morning light grows steadily stronger, gathering its’ strength in preparation for the new day, the battered body of Annie Chapman becomes visible to the crowd of curious onlookers who gather in the narrow street outside.  Fibres of necks twist and stretch to get a glimpse of the woman who is lying on her back, her stomach gaping open, and eyes staring vacantly at the creeping new morning.  Those people who live upstairs and whose windows overlook the back yard are following the advice of an enterprising laundry-woman across the road and they are doing a brisk business charging a ha’penny for ‘a good view of the gruesome murder’.  The policemen however, try to assume their usual manner of detached professionalism; treating it as routine, they try to ignore the smell of blood in the air, the violence of Annie Chapman’s’ death.  They try, but they mostly stand around the yard, shocked and silent.  The Police Surgeon, having examined the body, turns his back on it and wanders over to the other side of the yard.  He fixes his eyes on some vague area of the sky, watching the ragged pieces of cloud blown slowly across the pale background, tearing themselves away from each other, leaving messy wisps greyly straggling.  Annie Chapman has been disembowelled.  The murderer has been even more thorough this time, more meticulous in his operations.  Perhaps he had more time at his disposal, or his hand had simply become more confident, more controlled, the second time around.  He has removed her uterus and the upper portion of her vagina and most of her bladder – and these are still missing.  The policemen are looking reluctantly in dustbins and gutters; but it is generally accepted that the murderer will have taken these organs away with him, either to destroy away from the scene of the crime or else to keep as macabre souvenirs.   The rest of the intestines, the murderer has left for the policemen to see, draped over Annie’s left shoulder like a Roman toga.  Blood surrounds the body, though most of it has been soaked up by her clothing.  Like Polly Nichols before her, Annie has two deep red gashes running across her throat, side by side, neatly severing her windpipe.  Indeed, the murderer has cut so deep as to almost slice her head from her body.

            Already the policemen are beginning to piece together the last few hours of Annie Chapman’s life.  Some women friends who were also prostitutes had last seen her alive in a pub in Spitalfields market place.  That night, ‘Dark’ Annie had been wearing black, as she had been ever since the day her husband had died, about four years ago.  From the sight of her habitual wearing of black, a special attachment to her husband may have been guessed at.  In fact, this was not so; Annie Chapman now lived alone, having been separated from her husband fifteen years before.  She only realised he was dead when the money he paid her every week to live on, had suddenly stopped.  Since then, ‘Dark’ Annie had been earning a living by taking in odd bits of crochet work, sewing, selling flowers and prostitution.  She lived in various lodging houses around Whitechapel and Spitalfields, confronting each day of life with a determination that was derived only partly from the bottle.  Small and thick-set, she concealed within her compact frame an energy which far surpassed her forty-five years.  With features that echoed the colour of her clothes, a broken nose from a fight and two missing front teeth, nobody would call her a pleasant woman to look at, particularly since she had acquired a black eye following a disagreement with another prostitute over a borrowed piece of soap.  Ever since this incident, her friends will tell the police, Annie had been complaining of feeling unwell.  She suspected that something might have been damaged inside, though Annie was neither too weak nor too drunk to struggle against her attacker, as the bruises on her face and neck show.  The last person to have seen her alive since she left the pub, was a night watchman, who will describe the man she was apparently haggling with in the backyard of twenty-nine Hanbury Street, as ‘dark, foreign looking and wearing a deerstalker hat’.  This house is a well-known ‘picking-up’ spot, although not an established brothel.  Annie had taken her client into the back yard and she had been standing at the top of the steps leading up to the back door, when the night watchman had seen them.  An hour later, a man who lodged in the house, when he left to go to work had found Annie’s body at the bottom of the steps.

            The bright red handkerchief that is tied loosely around her neck looks like another bloodstain against the black of her clothes.  The Police Surgeon still stands with his back turned towards the body, staring into the sky.  He leans against the broken fence, which separates this yard from the next; he has not said a word to anyone since he first arrived and set eyes on Annie Chapman’s corpse, nearly an hour ago.  The murderer has taken great care to rob Annie of any dignity she may have clung to in life; the few last remaining shreds ripped from her.

            A strange touch, the murderer has left all of Annie’s worldly possessions laid out in a neat row by her feet; two brass rings and a few pennies and farthings.  She lays flat on her back, exposed like a pig on a slaughterhouse table, her legs drawn up, her knees turned outwards, her skirts pushed up over her hips.  She has been posed specially for death.  There is no mistaking the contempt, which the murderer must have felt for his victim as he moved her limbs into the position that he has chosen for them.  He carefully manipulated and he smiled to himself as he did so.  He was doing the right thing, he was quite sure of it.  There was not a trace of doubt in his mind.

            And as the early morning greyness strengthens, the murderer is walking along the Victoria Embankment, back to his lodgings on King’s Bench Walk.  He lives in what is known as the lawyer’s area, that strange, classless part of the Temple, hovering somewhere between shabbiness and respectability.  It exists in the space between, neither one nor the other.  The murderer feels perfectly at home here, as one would imagine that he would; his feet sink easily into this vacated space, for he’s an adaptable sort of person, a man for all seasons.  He can’t afford to live on his barrister’s wages and so he teaches part-time at a boy’s school in Blackheath village, on the other side of the Thames.  He finds the scholarly hush of both the Law Courts and the classrooms stifling and so he unwinds by playing cricket for the school team.  Those wide-open grassy fields remind him of the countryside where he grew up, in Dorset.  The murderer pauses on the Embankment for a moment, turning his great, sad eyes back in the direction he has just come from.  He’s remembering how he used to sit on his mother’s knee and make daisy chains with her when he was young in the field, which they always used to go to. (He and his mother both used to call it ‘our daisy-field’ and then smile secretively at each other, as though sharing something quite special and particular between them).  Both he and his mother had long, nimble fingers and they threaded the flowers together to form one single chain, which seemed to go on forever.  Sometimes his brother William would come and join them in the field; but he would soon grow restless and impatient, wanting his brother to come down and swim in the river with him.  He would refuse to sit down and join in the ritual threading of the flowers; for he was clumsy and would probably only have broken the chain.  The murderer leans on the railings, looking down into the filthy Thames below.  He can remember those days as though they were only a moment ago, or even as though they still exist for him, trapped beneath the false glass surface of his mind.  The past becomes the present; it all churns up into one vast tangled stew of memories and experiences, experiences and memories, he doesn’t know which anymore.  But he doesn’t allow this long grey area to worry him.  He accepts all things with a protective layer of dignity wrapped all around him, an air of melancholy resignation, which shields the inner core.  The inner core, which no one can reach; his own alienation from himself terrifies him.  He is not in control anymore.  Slowly the murderer descends the steps of the Embankment to the water’s edge.  His dark eyes scan the surface of the water sadly, as though searching for some lost part of himself.  He strokes the wavering line of his thin moustache, looking around quickly.  His movements are changed; he drifts without reality no longer.  Stooping right down and simultaneously drawing his hands from his pockets, he washes both them and the knife in the river.  He thinks for a moment of dropping the knife into the Thames but decides not to; it has become almost a part of him now, moulding itself to him like a sticky extra organ.  With a knife in his hand he can dictate the circumstances, he can carve out the niche he wants them to fill.  He replaces the knife in his pocket and climbs the steps back up to the roadside.

            Back in Hanbury Street, the Police Surgeon throws a piece of sacking over the body of Annie Chapman.  There is an almost tangible feeling of relief amongst the other policemen in the yard, though still, nobody says anything.  The Surgeon watches them standing around in silent groups, cracking their knuckles nervously.  One of them begins to whistle softly; but the sound soon trails off, crushed by the brutality of the situation.  The Police Surgeon picks up his bag and begins to walk out of the yard, going out through the back gate so as to avoid passing the body again.  He must now return to his office and write a report on the state of the butchered remains of Annie Chapman.  He closes his eyes briefly as he pauses, one hand on the wooden board which serves as a gate.  The photographs he has taken cling to the retina of his mind’s eye.  He wonders how the murderer is feeling now.

Now go to Chapter Nine.

Killing Time - Chapter Seven.

KILLING TIME

A novel by

NICOLA BATTY

Chapter Seven          

6^th September 1991 - Shoreditch High Street

            Early on the following Monday, Louise left the house heading for Shoreditch.  She carried the black card Guy Saint had given her clutched inside her jacket to protect it from the driving rain.  She kept glancing at the address as she hurried along Hanbury Street and onto Commercial Road, as though she feared that the elegant silver letters would fade away into nothingness while she wasn’t looking.  Despite both the early hour and the rain, there were several people lingering in front of shop windows, or striding purposefully to work, briefcase in hand, or to take their children to school.   Louise tried to avoid meeting their eyes, feeling that this would compromise her in some way; she felt guilty, as though she had broken some unwritten law which everybody else held sacred, though she didn’t know why.  She passed a number of old Victorian warehouses which now contained offices or studios, before she found the right one.  It was a grimy building with a large window in the front, where a grey blind was pulled down.  The words Homeopathy - Acupuncture - Spiritual Healing - Clairvoyance were written in violet across the bottom of the window and Louise recognised Guy Saint’s black card displayed with a few others just inside the doorway.  She hesitated before pushing the door, unsure if it would be open yet.  It led into a narrow corridor, with a flight of stairs at the end.  To her left was an office from which a young woman appeared.

            “Can I help you?  We’re not actually open yet.”  The woman shuffled the pile of papers she was carrying officiously, although her smile was open and friendly.  “Do you have an appointment to see someone?”

            Louise shook her head.  She felt panic-stricken, as though every move she made was being watched and hindered, obstacles placed in her path.

            “No, but I want to see … Mr. Saint.”

            “I’ll see if he’s in.  Who shall I say…?”

            “Tell him Louise.  He’ll know me.”

            The young woman nodded and smiled, picking up a phone on her desk.  Louise waited in the doorway, folding Guy Saint’s card over and over until it was just a tiny square.

            “Mr. Saint’ll see you.  Upstairs, second door on the left.”

            Louise needed no further prompting.  She almost ran up the stairs as if they were her own heavenly escape route leading to her private sanctuary high above the clouds.  There were two doors on either side of the landing; both of them grey with a pane of frosted glass - both unmarked.  She felt disorientated, as though this was a deliberate move to try and confuse her.  But then one of the doors opened and the tall figure of Guy Saint emerged to greet her with the slight, vague smile that was so typical of him.

            “Louise, come in!” He led her into his office and closed the door; he seated himself in front of his desk, which was pushed into an alcove immediately behind the door, right in the corner, so that it could hardly be seen.  “Can I offer you some coffee?” 

            Louise shook her head, looking round the room for a chair. A dark blue armchair near the window seemed the only one; either that or a matching two-seater sofa along the wall.

            “Drag a chair over.” Instructed Saint. “What can I do for you?”

            “I need to speak to you.” Louise hesitated, realising that this much was already obvious. “It’s about Harriet, I thought you might be able to help.”

            Saint took out a cigarette and lit it slowly. Louise watched his movements, which seemed to flow along with the grace and inevitability of a dream. His white shirt was fastened at the wrists with slender black chains she noticed; it was almost impossible to tell where the smooth fabric of his shirt ended and his flesh began.  He was dressed entirely in black and white, like a character from a ‘film noir’ classic, cut moodily from the celluloid background, shadows falling across his face… black and white, areas of alternating light and dark.  The dimensionless black of his eyes - which she now realised were turned directly upon her.

            “Ah, Harriet…  your Victorian self.”  He nodded thoughtfully, “I thought you might run into problems with… her, eventually.”

            “Why?”  Louise felt suddenly suspicious.

            “Well, it’s common sense, isn’t it?  Anyone can see it’s not going to be easy juggling two times around, two lives.  It can't be easy.”

            “But that’s just it, you see.”  Louise sat forward on her chair.  “It is easy for me – in fact, it’s becoming so damned easy, that it’s… doing my head in, completely.  I’m so scared…  I don’t want this to happen anymore.  I don’t want anything more to do with Harriet.  I hardly know who I am anymore, I’ve got no control.”

            The vividness of her dream returned to her with a sharp chill like the edge of a blade as she spoke about it, giving some sort of temporary substance to the Victorian London. The terror of turning, the terrible ease of it.

            “But you know… you don’t really have to be frightened of it.  This is an incredible… gift you have.  And you can learn to control it, to click in and out of Harriet, at will.”

            Louise stared at him, lost for words.

            “I can’t believe you’re saying this.  You’re seriously telling me I don’t have to be frightened?”

            Saint chuckled wryly beneath his breath.

            “I know, I know.  Look, I appreciate how incredible it must sound now but you have to stand back, get things in proportion.”

            Louise stood up, turning away from Saint and gazing out of the window instead. 

            “Proportion!  Oh, what are you talking about? Don’t try and tell me I’m making a big thing out of this, I should treat it like a big adventure…"

            “Louise, I’m not saying that.  Of course I’m not saying that.”

            “Well, that’s what it sounds like. This was a mistake coming here. I thought you might be able to do something to help.”

            “Which I can, I’ve said.  I’ll teach you to control this… Harriet.”

            “Oh, I don’t know.”  Turning from the window, Louise found herself staring at a huge print, which hung on the wall above the dark blue sofa.  At first she thought that it depicted nothing but vague grey shapes against a very faintly pink background.  The picture disturbed her, seeming to imply bulky, formless things without actually naming them - which made them none the less real.  Then she recognised the painting as Turners’ Sunrise with Sea-monsters, but instead of the familiarity soothing her, it increased her unease.  “I’d rather just get rid of her, I want to stay me.”

     “But you can, that’s what I’m saying.  It may feel like Harriet’s taking you over and using you according to her own whims, but you can control her.”  As Saint spoke, Louise noticed that there were spots of colour high on his sculptured cheekbones and his eyes glowed with an almost religious fervour.  “And then, don’t you see, you can use your… experiences as you will…  it doesn’t have to be frightening at all?”

            “Maybe not for you.” Louise caught his eye briefly and looked away at the rain masking the dome of St. Paul’s.  She felt safer with her back turned to him, when she didn’t have to risk the draining confrontation with his eyes.  “But, I’m the one who’s actually going through this and I’ve had enough, I want to finish it here. Why can’t you understand? Why won’t you do something?”

            “Louise, I do understand, I really do.  But I think you’re looking at it the wrong way.  In time, you’ll feel more in control.  All right, you feel scared now but that’ll pass.  Think … think what you could learn about life a hundred years ago! Your fear will pass you know, as you learn to manipulate your experiences.  Become distanced from them…  and that’s where I can help you.”

            “I don’t think I want that kind of help. All this talk of manipulation and being able to control becoming Harriet seems irrelevant.  Can’t you see I don’t want any part of it?” Louise gazed at the print on the wall, seeing the sea-monsters rising up like long-forgotten ghosts through the gloom, the thick grey fog of Whitechapel.  “If you’d been there…  if you’d seen that murdered woman… stood so close you could smell the blood… then you'd understand.”

            “But that’s just it, you see.  I understand all this much more than you think I do, and that’s why you learning to control your experiences isn’t irrelevant, it’s a necessary part of coming to terms with Harriet.”  Saint paused, looking at the books, which were lined above his desk on three shelves, reaching almost to the ceiling.  “You were right to come back to me, you know.  You think I don’t understand your fear but you have to see beyond all that.  While the rest of us can only read about Victorian times, you can actually be there.  It’s real to you.”  He shook his head slowly, “Really Louise, you can’t even think about missing this opportunity, take it!”

            Louise tutted irritably. “You talk about it as if it was a free prize-draw or something.”

            Smiling vaguely, Saint stood up and walked over to Louise.  She could feel him standing behind her; a presence cut from the shadows themselves, an imagined shape and substance, torn out with a ragged edge half-say between this world and the next.  A misfit, like Caliban; devoid of any sense of really belonging anywhere.

            “Perhaps there’s an element of truth in that.  Life’s a series of choices, isn’t it?  It’s all a big game, really - you just have to try and stay in control.”

            “Easier said than done though, isn’t it?”

            “Of course, it always is but that doesn’t mean it can’t be done.”  He took Louise’s arm, leading her back to the armchair.  “Sit down Louise, this is where I can help you.”

            She took a step back as though she were being physically cornered.  “I don’t think so.  What are you going to do?”

            Saint smiled faintly.  “Just hypnotise you, relax you a bit.  Don’t worry, it doesn’t hurt.”

            “I don’t like the sound of that.  Wait… wait a minute, I don’t think this is a good idea.”  Louise felt the hard edge of Saint’s desk behind her back.  She wanted to turn and flee as far away from this office as possible.  “I’ve told you what I want and it’s not that… to go into a trance and not even know what I’m doing.  You say it’ll make me feel more in control but it won’t - it’ll do just the opposite.  You'll be in control; you'll be the one who’ll be manipulating me. I won’t really have any say in it.”

            Saint looked at her, he appeared genuinely confused.  Then he shook his head and shrugged helplessly, laughing.

            “Oh, come on, you can’t really mean that.”  He paused, perching on the arm of the chair Louise had vacated and took out another cigarette.  “Think about it.  Do I really look like a villain to you?”

            “Well, that’s what it feels like, anyway.”

            “You’ve got a wild imagination, you know that, don't you?  I only want to help you."

            “Oh, I know… I don’t really know what I mean.”  Sighing, she turned away; as she did so, she knocked against the pile of books which were balanced on the edge of Saint’s desk, which in turn knocked a couple of others off the other end.  She stopped them just before they fell to the floor.  “Sorry,” she mumbled, pushing them to the back of the desk.  As she did so, she noticed that the book underneath was lying open and she thought she recognised the layout of the pages.  The photograph on the right-hand page was of Annie Chapman, the second Ripper victim, lying flat on her back in the yard on Hanbury Street.  The book was The Real Jack the Ripper; a bigger edition than Louise’s certainly and hard backed, but nevertheless, unmistakable.  She sneaked a quick glance over her shoulder at Saint, who was not looking at her but gazing instead at the print of Sunrise of Sea-monsters, smoking thoughtfully.  Putting the other book back on top of The Real Jack the Ripper, she glanced at the spine.  A Study of the Mind of the Ripper she read and put the book down quickly.  She felt as if she had uncovered something vaguely nasty and perhaps even dangerous.  A few sheets of paper covered with Saint’s elegant writing were now exposed where she had pushed the books on top of them back.  She read the words, ‘Whitechapel  – August 31^st 1888 – murder of Polly Nichols on Bucks Row.  How much does Harriet know of this murder?  Did she see the Ripper?  Would she be able to identify him again?’

            “What do you think you’re doing?”  Saint was beside her suddenly, his voice strained and hard, a cutting edge.  “These are private papers, you know.  Confidential.”

            “Yes, I can see that,” said Louise icily.  She allowed herself to be pushed aside, feeling drained and powerless.  “Now I see why you’re so interested in Harriet.  Why you want to make me go back again.”

            Saint piled the papers up and shoved them in a drawer.  Every muscle in his face seemed tightened, as if they were all attached to the same pulley system which had been wound round several times, pulling in the catgut threads.  He sighed, staring at her coldly. 

             "I'm afraid I really don't know what you’re talking about.”

             "Oh, I think you do, Mr. Saint.”

            “The Ripper book, is that what you’re so upset about?”

            “I don’t like being used for your fucking research, that’s all and I’m sure Harriet feels the same.”

            There was a pause.  Saint gazed at her impassively, taking a long draw from his cigarette.  The scar across his face seemed to be livid and pulsating, a thing alive amidst the blank space.

            “You amaze me, Louise. I’ve never encountered anyone quite so paranoid.”  He shrugged, smiling slightly.  “There’s absolutely no reason for you to react like this.”

            “Really?”  Louise gestured towards the drawer containing Saint’s papers.  “Then what’s all that… about Harriet?”

            Saint didn’t flinch.  “Just notes, about you, about Harriet.  It’s an exceptional case, you must appreciate that.”

            “And all this stuff about the Ripper?”

            “Background, that’s all.  I like to know what I’m dealing with.  I’ve got a particular fascination with the Ripper, I thought you knew that.”

            Louise hesitated. She stared at the smouldering cigarette between Saint’s fingers.  “I did.”

            “Well, then I don’t really see why you should be so suspicious.  What do you think I’m going to do to you?”

            “I don’t…  I just think there’s more to it than that.”  She paused, beginning to turn away.  “I just don’t think I trust you, that’s all.”

            “Well, at least I know where I stand.” Saint said brightly, leaning over his desk and stubbing out his cigarette in the ashtray there.  He leant back against the desk, folding his arms thoughtfully.  “But seriously Louise, think about what I’ve said, I’m sure I can help you.  I’m really not interested in… using you or anything, despite what you think.”

            Louise said nothing.  She paused in the doorway, reluctant now, to leave and close the door on this, perhaps her only chance of escape from the turmoil.  She glanced back at Saint, who was still standing by the desk, watching her.  As their eyes met, he smiled vaguely and gave a little shrug, almost of apology.

            “Of course, I’m not going to force you to do anything you don’t want to.  And I understand your reluctance… I think I’d feel the same way in your position, anyone would.  But I really don’t think you’ve got much choice in the matter.  Which sounds melodramatic, but… well, I think you appreciate that the situation is a pretty desperate one, don’t you?”  Raising his eyebrows, he walked towards her resting his hand above her head on the edge of the door.  He seemed to be on the point of physically preventing her from leaving, but then again, he could simply be leaning, or even keeping the door open for her.  It was all so ambiguous; everything about him had two edges, the blade and the healing wand.  Health restored, sanity regained.  The control rope caught and pulled tight.  “Because I don’t think that this thing with Harriet is going to become any easier to keep under control unless you… allow me to intervene, to help you master the time-slip.  You really can’t just let things go on the way they are now.  What’ll happen is that you will lose your grip, sooner or later.”  He paused.  Louise stared at the scar trickling over the line of his jaw; it struck her for the first time that the deep gash was surely the result of a knife attack.  “But I think you know that already, don’t you?”

            Louise nodded mutely.  She swallowed and shook her head.

            “But still… I can’t do it.”  She looked at him quickly, just feeling the impact of his words.  “What do you mean, ‘lose your grip’?  On what?  Sanity… or myself, me?”  Again, the vague smile, the scar creased for a moment like a paper bag.  Louise could feel the answer suddenly creeping towards her on silent claws, its’ inevitable stealth contained within the tough skin, the long drawn-out line of Fate.  “Or both, maybe?”  Turning quickly Louise broke the thread that ran between them, the eye contact that held her like a wizard’s spell, a healing promise tainted black around the edges.  She left quickly, heading downwards, following the sucking spiral without looking back, taking the stairs two at a time.

           

Now go to Chapter Eight.

Floating...

FLOATING

All my life I have never been able to deal with

this idea of gravity pulling me down to earth,

so I still bear scars to remind me of it!

I love that sensation of floating so much,

whether in the water or in the air, I don’t care.

Even in my mind I can achieve this

by lying asleep and dreaming.

I may well need oxygen to keep me alive

but just to be floating is the real object of my life.

Thinking about this makes me think of Stan,

who will understand what I’m talking about.

I wonder if this is what the scientists were driving at

when they were so obsessed with flight.

I can understand this, though I have never

before had any time for science,

I don’t really think it’s scientific at all,

merely a way of living,

a sensation like that is such a beautiful one.

Thank you so much for listening to me, Nic

A Dream...

Here is another dream:
I kept a large cage with a few budgies in it. It was such a large cage I could go right inside. I was responsible for feeding the birds one of which was yellow, it was like a budgie I used to have called Gabriel.
As I stood inside the cage more and more budgies appeared out of nowhere and kept on coming so that I was surrounded by those idiots pecking at me. I can still feel those little feathered bodies crowding around me, pressing in and filling my lungs with feathers so that I found it difficult to breathe. It was such a horrible feeling that I never want to set eyes on those budgies again as long as I live.

Killing Time - Chapter Six Cont.

Chapter Six continued.

As she began to move towards the door, she thought that she heard vague music. She stopped and listened. Where was it coming from? But no, it was not really there at all. The silence encased her, the meat between two slices of bread, and the space between filled with an aching of nothingness. She felt unsteady, on the point of collapse… of complete disintegration. Like a vampire, she would fizzle away to nothing as the light fell upon her. A spark of light caught her eye, a red light; it winked from the side of the projector. Louise moved slowly towards it, puzzled. Hadn’t she seen Nigel just…? She moved slowly through the thick air, layer upon layer, folding in upon itself like a molten Swiss roll from a silver spoon.  She felt like a disembodied shadow of herself, the essential soul sliced through with a sharp knife. Her conscious self had become threadbare, shredded; now she didn’t know where she was, she wasn’t in control any longer. Moving slowly, she was moving slowly… as though walking under water. As if wading through the memory of a dream, her limbs moved as if disconnected from her body. The red light, the red light winked and her hand paused on the switch, swimming through time. Her fingers touched the warm body of the projector and lingered over it as though they were sliding over a different surface, an alternative flesh. Falling over the frame of her bones, cascading around her ankles like a soft shell, a vain effort to disguise her body from herself. Standing over the projector, she was drawn down; her head was drawn down and her eye became fixed on the viewer. She heard the music, sensed the atmosphere, and knew the bustle of life like it was her own, even before she actually saw anything. She felt as if she was falling; things shifted around her, the entire projection room was turning inside out. There was nothing to grip on to, essence dripping through her fingers, slipping like vapour through the crevices in the concrete wall. Music filtered through the membrane of her ears with a soft, padded footfall, growing louder and she knew she was there, there, amongst the audience, clapping and singing along with them. She heard singing; discordant voices rose to a shriek in gravelly union, tinged with a ginny hysteria. Colours, many colours argue and fight for supremacy; vivid cotton frocks, cheap materials, jostled one another for the best view of the stage. The blurred figure, the toothless grins, the place vibrating with energy. And she can see herself – that is, she can see Harriet; she can feel Harriet; she can feel the fumes of cheap gin filling her head, the pain in her shoulder where her landlord had pushed her against the edge of the front door and the continual empty ache of her stomach. Her bones seemed to touch each other, she was so thin; they were brittle and weightless, like dried out reeds or quill pens.  She realised how weak she was and felt she must sit down. She could feel rivers of sweat running down her back and the tightness of her skin stretched across her face, every pore filled with grime and city filth. The sense of dirt clung to her. Her eyes watered needlessly and she saw everything through a film of moisture; she had to close her eyes tightly to stop the air rushing past her, the headlong flight through time. She was aware of a woman on the stage, wearing a red velvet gown and black fur stole, elbow-length black gloves and a huge hat with a long black feather which drooped down her back and trailed along the stage behind her as she stepped quickly across the boards. She carried an elegant black cane, which she tapped lightly against her hip in time to the song she was singing. Harriet remembered her meeting with Mr. Ross and the spilled blood on the cobbles dripped behind her eyes; was it all a dream? Or had it actually happened? The woman on the stage shrieked out the words, encouraging the crowd to sing along with her, to raise their glasses, abandon their factory lives and immerse themselves in the gaudy decorations around them. The posters and the playbills that covered the shabby walls, the coloured lights and coloured feathers, the discordant music, the pianist dropping his sheets of music every time he turned over a page… the words stretched out like raw and rising dough, mouths wide in unison. Harriet leaned against the back wall of the theatre, having left her friends somewhere in the crowd. She felt dizzy and flushed; she wondered if she had caught a chill from sleeping in doorways and under railway arches, as she had been forced to do the past few nights.

            “You alright? You don’t look too well.”

            Harriet started, surprised to find a man standing next to her, leaning back against the wall. She hadn’t seen or even sensed his presence there though he stood so close to her, he almost touched her. For a moment she was unsure whether he had really spoken to her or not; for he didn’t look at her. His eyes - which were a startling green - looked oddly out of place in his pale, unshaven face, with his matted dark hair, which obviously hadn’t seen a comb in quite some weeks. His thick, heavy eyebrows formed a straight line across his forehead and they were pulled so far down, that they almost concealed the fragile beauty of his eyes. He wore an old, patched jacket and a large yellow cravat knotted around his neck. The cravat gave him the appearance of a Regency buck; Harriet wondered if he wore it in an effort to distract attention from the shabbiness of the rest of his clothes. If so, it worked admirably.

            “I’m alright,” she said finally, trying to assess him by his appearance and attitude towards her for the amount of money he would be willing to pay.  But she found it very difficult to glean any information from him, other than that he was neither rich nor poverty-stricken and that he was unmarried, which she could always tell at once.  When he finally caught her eye briefly, she dismissed him instantly as a prospective client, seeing something else in that shifty, sidelong glance, though she was not sure what.  He looked away from her again and spoke almost without moving his lips, so that his words were disembodied the moment they appeared, lost alley cats wailing amongst the dustbins.

            “Well, you don’t look it.”  The man’s voice was hoarse, as if he had been standing on a street-corner shouting for hours.  Perhaps that was how he earned his living, hawking stolen goods in those parts of Whitechapel that ‘bobbies’ would not venture into alone and then only in daylight.  Harriet watched him remove his battered black cap and push his unruly hair out of his eyes.  The movement seemed to belong to a young man, though she doubted if he could be much younger than her.  As he caught her eye again she felt his glance take in her whole body, the state of her clothes; she felt stripped naked, exposed and left on a rock for the carnivores to feed upon.  She looked away from him, “'s'pose yer lookin' for a room.”

        It was a statement rather than a question one to which Harriet felt she could say nothing. So she pulled her shawl tighter around her and stared furiously at a group of men standing in front of her, sailors killing a few hours in the East End before returning to St. Katherine’s Dock for their night passage home.

            “I’ve got a room yer can use.”

            Harriet looked at the man sharply, wondering if she had heard him right.  She knew that he would expect something in return.  However, she knew also that she was in no position to refuse a reasonable offer.

            “'Ow much?” she asked quickly.

            In reply the man shook his head, still not looking at her.  He gestured with his head towards the doors, which led out of the music hall round to the back of the stage.

            “Me name’s Tom,” he said, beginning to move off.  Harriet followed, having almost to run to keep up with the man’s strides.  She hadn’t noticed before how tall he was; he stood nearly two heads above her, despite her own fairly generous height.  As Tom turned into a narrow passageway, which ran away from the music hall itself, he stopped abruptly by an unmarked door and took out a bunch of keys on a chain.  He opened the door, glancing quickly left and right as he did so.  Harriet hesitated before following him into the room.  It was tiny and cramped, with almost every inch of space taken up by an old iron bed, covered with a few tattered, greying sheets and a blanket rolled up to use as a pillow.  At the foot of the bed was an obviously unused fireplace and on the floor beside it, a pile of old newspapers, a kettle, cup and a chamber pot.  There was a window along the wall facing the door, but it was so blackened by soot and grime that it was impossible to see out.  Harriet had to squeeze between Tom and the doorframe in order to distinguish anything through the thick layer of gloom that coated the room like a London fog.  She turned as she felt Tom nudge her and press something into her hand.

            “’Ere’s yer key.”  He replaced the other keys in his pocket and began carefully to retie his cravat, bending to see in a tiny, spotted mirror, which hung on the wall beside him.  Harriet watched him, unsure what to do or say.  “What’s yer name?” he asked, straightening up and looking at her directly.

            “’Arriet,” she answered nervously.

            “Well, make yerself at ‘ome, ‘arriet.  I’ll be around.”

            And he was gone, striding away down the passage, closing the door quietly behind him.  Harriet stood where she was, staring blankly at the closed door.  Finally she sat down on the edge of the bed and began to unpin her straw bonnet, the mechanical motion of her fingers reassuring her, lulling her nerves into a smooth concoction, laying down all the ragged edges.  Numbness washed over her, a great physical relief and she lay back on the bed, which seemed to her to be unbelievably soft and welcoming.  She threw both her arms out and closed her eyes, knowing that she was smiling to herself for the first time in several days.

Louise could still hear the distant sounds of the music hall as she opened her eyes. She was lying on her back, with her arms outstretched and at first she couldn’t recognise anything around her. She felt as though she were hanging suspended from the ceiling, or had been stuffed carelessly on one of the shelves along with the reels of film.  She felt heavy, huge and clumsy; she could hardly lift her arm, or raise her head.  Her eyes stung as if she had been looking into the wind. She sat up slowly. There were several squashed cardboard boxes beneath her.  She was sitting on the floor of the projection room, at the foot of the projector; the sounds of the music hall were gradually weakening, until they were nothing more than shelves around the silence, dim shapes like ghosts which touched her still.  As she got to her feet she was sure that she could still smell the gin and the greasepaint, still feel the aching fatigue that belonged to Harriet, not Louise.  As she reached her hand to switch out the red light on the projector, she noticed that she was trembling uncontrollably.  It seemed that she was looking at someone else’s hand.

Now go to Chapter Seven        

Killing Time - Chapter Six

KILLING TIME

A novel by

NICOLA BATTY

Chapter Six.

6^th September 1991

            In dripping letters of blood, The Hands of the Ripper was scored across the poster as though by some lurking madman. Louise turned away, reminded again of the dark pool of blood surrounding the body of Polly Nichols. The image was still burning fiercely in her head after all this time. Of course it had only been a dream, triggered no doubt, by The Real Jack the Ripper, but it was Harriet who had disturbed her, rather than the murder victim. The effortless transformation of her own self into another seemed too easy - almost natural - she had slipped into a completely different way of thinking as though she had known Harriet all her life, had always bordered on the edge of a different existence. She sat at the crossroads and waited, hovering between self and other. Louise stared out of the glass entrance doors to the foyer. She folded her arms quickly to keep herself from shivering. She felt cold inside, cold with a sinister fear. She felt like she was falling and there was nothing to stop her.

            Louise wandered around the empty foyer of the Palentine Cinema where she worked, searching for something to distract her mind. Her eyes roamed relentlessly over the walls; here and there pieces of plaster had fallen away and cracks appeared, tunnelling behind the posters which might well have been put up in an effort to conceal this decay. Louise began to count how many different looks of terror she could spot on the posters around the walls; and then she would award marks of ten for the most convincing. She moved around the room slowly. The wall behind the refreshments counter scored the highest so far, as the cinema had been showing the complete series of small-budget vampire films and this was where all the posters were arranged in a long line.

            “What do you think you’re doing, Louise?” Mr. Hawkins, her boss, stood behind her, leaning against the counter where her half-filled refreshments tray was lying beside her elbow. His voice was rough and gravelly, even more so than usual - it was quite painful to listen to it. “I don’t pay you to stand around looking at the posters, you know. Get this tray filled up. The interval’s in a minute and where’s Clare?”

            Louise shrugged, moving behind the counter slowly. Mr. Hawkins tapped his rings (he wore one on every finger – huge gold ones, some with black circles in the centre), irritably against the side of Louise’s tray, his little piggy eyes almost hidden beneath his enormous eyebrows as he frowned. Louise supposed that he was about forty-five or fifty, but his insistence on dressing like a seventies pop star seemed to accentuate the frown lines across his brow and the roundness of his beer-belly. He moved with a curious twist and swagger, almost as if he were dancing instead of merely walking. This hip movement of his became exaggerated if there were any women present, including Louise or Clare. When Louise had first started work at The Palentine eight months ago, she had regarded him with a mixture of amusement and pity. By now, however, all her compassion had turned sour, everything had become too familiar.

            “Aren’t there any more King Cones in there, Louise?” Mr. Hawkins moved quickly behind Louise as she bent to reach inside the fridge. “Get some more! You don’t want to run out of the most expensive ones now, do you?”

            “My God, no. Whatever would I do?” Closing her fingers thankfully around the last of the ice creams wedged at the back of the fridge, she withdrew her hand, swinging round to face her boss. The heavy gold cross, which he wore round his neck, hit her in the eye.

            “Christ!” She let the fridge door shut violently.

            “Sorry Louise,” chortled Mr. Hawkins.

            “You could get nicked for carrying that around, you know. It’s a bloody offensive weapon!”

            “Yes, well, let’s not exaggerate.” Mr. Hawkins clapped his hands together as if he were an Infant School teacher hurrying the children along. “Come on, get this tray on! Look sharp!” Beginning to prance away across the foyer towards a door marked ‘Staff Only’; he called over his shoulder, “And don’t forget to take those reel-cases up to the projection room.” He winked at her before disappearing through the door. Louise stared after him morosely.

Later that night, Louise climbed the stairs up to the projection room; she was relieved to find the door open, as it would have been difficult - if not impossible - for her to open the door whilst carrying an armful of reel-cases. She stumbled over an empty cardboard box, which was standing just inside the door and dropped all her reel-cases.

            “Shit!” she said, beginning to scrabble around on the floor for the scattered reels of film.

            “Here, allow me.” A voice behind her made her leap out of her skin. She turned round but could only see a dark shadow.

            “Jesus Nigel, don’t do that, you nearly gave me a heart attack. Why on earth haven't you got the light on?”

            “Because I was just leaving when you barged in, sweetheart.” Nigel stood up, pulling the collar of his cream linen sports jacket up so that it covered the straggling edges of his lank brown hair. He didn’t smile. She wondered if he was even capable of it.

            “Well, what a bloody stupid place to leave a cardboard box,” she answered.

            Nigel shrugged, saying nothing. He began to shove the reel-cases into any gaps he could find in the shelves, which lined one entire wall of the room. She watched him, fascinated.

“Don’t you put them in any order?” she asked.

            Nigel swung the last reel-case onto the top shelf, shaking his head. 

“No", he said without turning around, “there’s no order.”

            He scowled at her impatiently, taking a pair of mirror sunglasses from his pocket and putting them on. Louise stared back at him and saw her own face reflected in his glasses, surrounded by Nigel’s greasy brown hair. She thought for a moment that he was someone else; her eyes were glowing with such ferocity that she almost couldn’t recognise herself. She looked away quickly as Nigel turned, glancing around the room to check that he hadn’t forgotten anything.  Seeing that the projector was still on, he went over and switched it off. Then he went out and Louise heard his soft footfalls quickly descending the stairs. She shivered, she only rarely bumped into Nigel and each time she did, he gave her that same disturbing feeling… a slithering unease, a quiet insinuating snake. She suspected that he and Mr. Hawkins were related in some way; they both seemed to have a similar effect on her nerves.

           

Now go to the continuation of ChapterSix.


Chapter Six Continued:

As she began to move towards the door, she thought that she heard vague music. She stopped and listened. Where was it coming from? But no, it was not really there at all. The silence encased her, the meat between two slices of bread, and the space between filled with an aching of nothingness. She felt unsteady, on the point of collapse… of complete disintegration. Like a vampire, she would fizzle away to nothing as the light fell upon her. A spark of light caught her eye, a red light; it winked from the side of the projector. Louise moved slowly towards it, puzzled. Hadn’t she seen Nigel just…? She moved slowly through the thick air, layer upon layer, folding in upon itself like a molten Swiss roll from a silver spoon.  She felt like a disembodied shadow of herself, the essential soul sliced through with a sharp knife. Her conscious self had become threadbare, shredded; now she didn’t know where she was, she wasn’t in control any longer. Moving slowly, she was moving slowly… as though walking under water. As if wading through the memory of a dream, her limbs moved as if disconnected from her body. The red light, the red light winked and her hand paused on the switch, swimming through time. Her fingers touched the warm body of the projector and lingered over it as though they were sliding over a different surface, an alternative flesh. Falling over the frame of her bones, cascading around her ankles like a soft shell, a vain effort to disguise her body from herself. Standing over the projector, she was drawn down; her head was drawn down and her eye became fixed on the viewer. She heard the music, sensed the atmosphere, and knew the bustle of life like it was her own, even before she actually saw anything. She felt as if she was falling; things shifted around her, the entire projection room was turning inside out. There was nothing to grip on to, essence dripping through her fingers, slipping like vapour through the crevices in the concrete wall. Music filtered through the membrane of her ears with a soft, padded footfall, growing louder and she knew she was there, there, amongst the audience, clapping and singing along with them. She heard singing; discordant voices rose to a shriek in gravelly union, tinged with a ginny hysteria. Colours, many colours argue and fight for supremacy; vivid cotton frocks, cheap materials, jostled one another for the best view of the stage. The blurred figure, the toothless grins, the place vibrating with energy. And she can see herself – that is, she can see Harriet; she can feel Harriet; she can feel the fumes of cheap gin filling her head, the pain in her shoulder where her landlord had pushed her against the edge of the front door and the continual empty ache of her stomach. Her bones seemed to touch each other, she was so thin; they were brittle and weightless, like dried out reeds or quill pens.  She realised how weak she was and felt she must sit down. She could feel rivers of sweat running down her back and the tightness of her skin stretched across her face, every pore filled with grime and city filth. The sense of dirt clung to her. Her eyes watered needlessly and she saw everything through a film of moisture; she had to close her eyes tightly to stop the air rushing past her, the headlong flight through time. She was aware of a woman on the stage, wearing a red velvet gown and black fur stole, elbow-length black gloves and a huge hat with a long black feather which drooped down her back and trailed along the stage behind her as she stepped quickly across the boards. She carried an elegant black cane, which she tapped lightly against her hip in time to the song she was singing. Harriet remembered her meeting with Mr. Ross and the spilled blood on the cobbles dripped behind her eyes; was it all a dream? Or had it actually happened? The woman on the stage shrieked out the words, encouraging the crowd to sing along with her, to raise their glasses, abandon their factory lives and immerse themselves in the gaudy decorations around them. The posters and the playbills that covered the shabby walls, the coloured lights and coloured feathers, the discordant music, the pianist dropping his sheets of music every time he turned over a page… the words stretched out like raw and rising dough, mouths wide in unison. Harriet leaned against the back wall of the theatre, having left her friends somewhere in the crowd. She felt dizzy and flushed; she wondered if she had caught a chill from sleeping in doorways and under railway arches, as she had been forced to do the past few nights.

            “You alright? You don’t look too well.”

            Harriet started, surprised to find a man standing next to her, leaning back against the wall. She hadn’t seen or even sensed his presence there though he stood so close to her, he almost touched her. For a moment she was unsure whether he had really spoken to her or not; for he didn’t look at her. His eyes - which were a startling green - looked oddly out of place in his pale, unshaven face, with his matted dark hair, which obviously hadn’t seen a comb in quite some weeks. His thick, heavy eyebrows formed a straight line across his forehead and they were pulled so far down, that they almost concealed the fragile beauty of his eyes. He wore an old, patched jacket and a large yellow cravat knotted around his neck. The cravat gave him the appearance of a Regency buck; Harriet wondered if he wore it in an effort to distract attention from the shabbiness of the rest of his clothes. If so, it worked admirably.

            “I’m alright,” she said finally, trying to assess him by his appearance and attitude towards her for the amount of money he would be willing to pay.  But she found it very difficult to glean any information from him, other than that he was neither rich nor poverty-stricken and that he was unmarried, which she could always tell at once.  When he finally caught her eye briefly, she dismissed him instantly as a prospective client, seeing something else in that shifty, sidelong glance, though she was not sure what.  He looked away from her again and spoke almost without moving his lips, so that his words were disembodied the moment they appeared, lost alley cats wailing amongst the dustbins.

            “Well, you don’t look it.”  The man’s voice was hoarse, as if he had been standing on a street-corner shouting for hours.  Perhaps that was how he earned his living, hawking stolen goods in those parts of Whitechapel that ‘bobbies’ would not venture into alone and then only in daylight.  Harriet watched him remove his battered black cap and push his unruly hair out of his eyes.  The movement seemed to belong to a young man, though she doubted if he could be much younger than her.  As he caught her eye again she felt his glance take in her whole body, the state of her clothes; she felt stripped naked, exposed and left on a rock for the carnivores to feed upon.  She looked away from him, “'s'pose yer lookin' for a room.”

        It was a statement rather than a question one to which Harriet felt she could say nothing. So she pulled her shawl tighter around her and stared furiously at a group of men standing in front of her, sailors killing a few hours in the East End before returning to St. Katherine’s Dock for their night passage home.

            “I’ve got a room yer can use.”

            Harriet looked at the man sharply, wondering if she had heard him right.  She knew that he would expect something in return.  However, she knew also that she was in no position to refuse a reasonable offer.

            “'Ow much?” she asked quickly.

            In reply the man shook his head, still not looking at her.  He gestured with his head towards the doors, which led out of the music hall round to the back of the stage.

            “Me name’s Tom,” he said, beginning to move off.  Harriet followed, having almost to run to keep up with the man’s strides.  She hadn’t noticed before how tall he was; he stood nearly two heads above her, despite her own fairly generous height.  As Tom turned into a narrow passageway, which ran away from the music hall itself, he stopped abruptly by an unmarked door and took out a bunch of keys on a chain.  He opened the door, glancing quickly left and right as he did so.  Harriet hesitated before following him into the room.  It was tiny and cramped, with almost every inch of space taken up by an old iron bed, covered with a few tattered, greying sheets and a blanket rolled up to use as a pillow.  At the foot of the bed was an obviously unused fireplace and on the floor beside it, a pile of old newspapers, a kettle, cup and a chamber pot.  There was a window along the wall facing the door, but it was so blackened by soot and grime that it was impossible to see out.  Harriet had to squeeze between Tom and the doorframe in order to distinguish anything through the thick layer of gloom that coated the room like a London fog.  She turned as she felt Tom nudge her and press something into her hand.

            “’Ere’s yer key.”  He replaced the other keys in his pocket and began carefully to retie his cravat, bending to see in a tiny, spotted mirror, which hung on the wall beside him.  Harriet watched him, unsure what to do or say.  “What’s yer name?” he asked, straightening up and looking at her directly.

            “’Arriet,” she answered nervously.

            “Well, make yerself at ‘ome, ‘arriet.  I’ll be around.”

            And he was gone, striding away down the passage, closing the door quietly behind him.  Harriet stood where she was, staring blankly at the closed door.  Finally she sat down on the edge of the bed and began to unpin her straw bonnet, the mechanical motion of her fingers reassuring her, lulling her nerves into a smooth concoction, laying down all the ragged edges.  Numbness washed over her, a great physical relief and she lay back on the bed, which seemed to her to be unbelievably soft and welcoming.  She threw both her arms out and closed her eyes, knowing that she was smiling to herself for the first time in several days.

Louise could still hear the distant sounds of the music hall as she opened her eyes. She was lying on her back, with her arms outstretched and at first she couldn’t recognise anything around her. She felt as though she were hanging suspended from the ceiling, or had been stuffed carelessly on one of the shelves along with the reels of film.  She felt heavy, huge and clumsy; she could hardly lift her arm, or raise her head.  Her eyes stung as if she had been looking into the wind. She sat up slowly. There were several squashed cardboard boxes beneath her.  She was sitting on the floor of the projection room, at the foot of the projector; the sounds of the music hall were gradually weakening, until they were nothing more than shelves around the silence, dim shapes like ghosts which touched her still.  As she got to her feet she was sure that she could still smell the gin and the greasepaint, still feel the aching fatigue that belonged to Harriet, not Louise.  As she reached her hand to switch out the red light on the projector, she noticed that she was trembling uncontrollably.  It seemed that she was looking at someone else’s hand.

Now go to Chapter Seven 

Killing Time - Chapter Five

KILLING TIME

A novel by

NICOLA BATTY

Chapter Five

2^nd September, 1991

            Louise rubbed her eyes again. It was as if she had sand or dust in them, some grainy substance to prevent her from ever seeing things properly again.  Perhaps she was simply tired. Dropping The Real Jack the Ripper on the floor beside her bed, she reached across and switched off the lamp. She was thinking of the Sandman, stalking through Victorian children’s picture books as she fell asleep. Only the figure seemed to be bordering on something else; the bag of sand slung over his shoulder wavered and could have been anything, a heap of clothes left on the cobbles for the laundry woman to collect the next day. But then she moved closer and she saw the blood.

            Harriet was the first perhaps, to discover the mutilated body of the murderer’s victim as it lay upon the cobblestones as if waiting its own resurrection. Harriet had gone over to the bundle to search through it, hoping to find some pretty rags to wear, as she couldn’t afford any new ones at the moment, not even another shawl to wrap around her emaciated shoulders. But she had found the bundle to be flesh and the red strips of cotton blood! She had backed away clutching her hand as though she had touched not a body but a contagious, disease ridden thing. She didn’t scream or even cry out, though she recalled talking with this woman in The Ten Bells only a few days earlier. They had not been great friends, both working in different areas of the East End; but still, Harriet knew that this could easily have been her, ripped open and left to die on the cobbles. But she felt certain that she would not have surrendered her grip on life quite so easily. She knew that Polly Nichols had been at least twenty years older than she herself; would her own comparative youth really have shielded her from death? And Harriet also knew that her own gaunt face was as pale as the dead woman’s beneath the grime of the city, her grey eyes dull with fear. She retreated behind the wall of an old, decaying building nearby. Sitting on the floor, hunched up by the window, she waited for someone else to come and discover the body and call the police. She could not do it herself. She could only watch, as the sky grew lighter.

            Harriet was tired. She had been roaming the streets of Whitechapel, Bethnal Green and Shoreditch since nine that evening, looking for business.  Tomorrow was rent day again and as she was already twelve shillings behind she fully expected to return home to find her few remaining possessions pawned by the landlord and the room let to someone else. She had found only two punters that night; one was a middle-aged worker from the docks, the other a young sailor just arrived home. She was glad that she still had the looks to attract the younger ones. She had not yet lost all her charms completely, not like that poor old bag of bones outside. Harriet was tired and she closed her eyes.

            She was awoken from her doze by the sound of footsteps directly outside the glassless window. As she listened the steps gradually halted. They were accompanied by a tapping noise, which continued. Harriet raised her head from where it had been resting against a wall. The pain of the muscles in her neck almost made her cry out. She heard the man outside strike a match, and watched it whiz past her nose as he threw it in through the open window when he had lit his cigarette. The tapping noise started again and Harriet wished that the man would move away so that she could look out and discover what the sound was. Early morning light had begun to seep in through the window now, and she wondered how many hours she had dozed, one maybe two? She wondered if the police were here yet. Could she hear men’s voices coming from further up the street? She listened, absently picking pieces of plaster from her long, dark hair.

            At last the man’s foot crunched wetly, as if he were turning on his heel. Harriet heard him walk slowly past the window. She stood up carefully, keeping in the shadows and peered after him. Through the half light of dawn she could see the back of a well dressed gentleman in a tailored black coat treading deliberately along the wet cobbles as though he were walking to the hangman’s noose. He wore a silk top hat and dark gloves; in his hand he carried a shiny black cane with a silver handle, which he tapped steadily against all the walls of the buildings as he passed them by. Harriet noticed that a grim huddle of policemen surrounded the body of her former acquaintance, and she cursed herself for having fallen asleep; how much of the drama had she missed? She was appalled to realise how detached she felt now, as if her initial fear had been crushed. The policemen stood around, silent and morose, their capes gleaming like newly exposed skin in the sinister half-light, their truncheons tapping uselessly against their thighs.

            Harriet watched from the broken-down window; she was able to see the scene clearly from her position. She watched as one of the policemen detached himself from the group and walked towards the approaching gentleman, as if to greet him. The rain glistened over the dark-blue of his uniform, highlighting both the colour of it and the shininess of the brass buttons. She could even make out drops of moisture nestling in the thick blackness of his beard and side-whiskers, decorating his otherwise pale and expressionless face with sparkling gems. Harriet thought that he looked as though he was walking under water very slowly, as if in part of some strange ritual dance. The smart man stopped and turned to face the policeman; she could see now that he was a young man, a very young man. He was clean-shaven and stood almost a foot smaller than the policeman. Despite this, the policeman touched his helmet deferentially before he spoke.

            “Morning Sir,” he said and his voice carried well to Harriet’s ears. The surrounding fog seemed to encase the sound, to encapsulate it, pickle it like sugared fruit in a tall glass jar, preserved in spirits for all to see.

            “Morning,” the young man replied, without inflection. He was smoking a cigarette steadily, perhaps to calm his nerves. Though, to Harriet, he didn’t seem to be in the least bit nervous or even concerned by the policeman’s appearance; his bright blue eyes pierced through whatever they touched mercilessly, glinting with a hard, ironic intensity. The humour lying just concealed there told Harriet that he hadn’t yet seen the mutilated body near him, surrounded by policemen as it was.

            “Nasty business.” The policeman gestured with his head towards the cluster of his associates. “Murder, I’m afraid,” he continued, taking out a notebook and pencil from his inside pocket. Harriet closed her eyes briefly; she had known that woman. The policeman then stroked his sparkling handlebar moustache with the tip of his pencil, gazing thoughtfully at the young man. “Do you mind if I ask you a few questions, Sir? Just routine,” he added nervously.

            The young man returned the policeman’s gaze without emotion.

            “Of course not,” he replied quickly. “Please do.”

            The policeman nodded, pleased.

“Your name, Sir?”

            Harriet watched the young gentleman remove his hat. He appeared younger than ever without it, a child trying to act grown up. He scratched the back of his skull, his straight, short hair gleaming like oil in the day’s new light.

            “Robert Ross.”

            “And your address?”

            “Sixty Holloway Road.”

            Ah, thought Harriet to herself, thought he couldn’t be a local. Must be on his way home from some posh West End club. The policeman obviously thought this too, for he looked up, after scribbling down Robert Ross’s address.

            “And may I ask what you’re doing here, Sir? At…” The policeman consulted his watch, returning his eyes critically to the young man’s face. “Four thirty in the morning?”

            There was a pause. Harriet watched the elegant figure of Mr. Ross lean heavily on his cane, gazing off into the distance as though he were trying to remember his own identity, to recognise the city around him. For a moment she thought that he looked directly at her; she drew back into the shadows quickly, her nerves suddenly on edge. But Ross turned away, throwing his cigarette stub onto the cobbles and grinding it to death beneath the heel of his polished boot. A strange sense of unease crept over Harriet, a dull recognition of the action, as though it had featured significantly in some almost forgotten dream from her childhood. The young man seemed to her to be playing for time. He watched his cigarette fizzle and die on the damp ground without curiosity.

            “I’ve been… to a party.” Ross spoke with great deliberation, slowly and heavily, as if to an idiot. He gave the impression of possessing both great knowledge and experience. “At Tite Street, Chelsea.”

            The policeman looked up sharply. He tapped his teeth with his pencil.

            “And there are people who can vouch for your whereabouts at this party, Sir? Reliable people?”

            Ross paused again and Harriet understood his dilemma. While wanting to provide himself with an alibi he did not, naturally enough, wish to involve his friends with the police. Though they would be able to look after themselves.  Those with money always could. And Chelsea – the West End in general – was the home of the rich, the decadent, of the notorious. She had been there a couple of times with gentlemen, real gentlemen, who occasionally came to the East End to sample for themselves the fights, the poverty, the gaiety and bustle that went with it. The West End had seemed to Harriet an intimidating and awesome place, full of wealth, colour and texture. She had wanted to linger over sparkling shop windows laden with sugared confectionery, or lengths of chiffon or velvet and hats decorated with ribbons, yards of lace and silk flowers. She had felt that she could only stay there so long, drinking in the spectacle; for not only was the scent too heady for her thin veins, too intoxicating, but she was also aware that she had no right to be there. She felt awkward, an intruder, she had crossed the forbidden threshold; she had transgressed.

            “Oh yes,” replied Ross finally and Harriet could tell that he was trying his hardest to conceal a smile in these grim circumstances. “Many reputable people saw me. Would you like the full address?”

            “Not necessary, Sir.” The policeman closed his notebook with a snap, returning it to his inside pocket. For the first time he smiled fleetingly; it seemed that he was satisfied with the young man’s story. Though she could not say why, Harriet felt absurdly relieved. She yawned and shifted her position carefully; perhaps she would be able to leave this grisly scene now, under cover of the young man’s exit. For now he appeared to be moving away, tapping his cane against the cobbles. But the policeman stopped him, touching his helmet again.

            “I’d get a cab if I were you, Sir. It’s a nasty business.”

            Ross shrugged and glanced over at the huddle of policemen surrounding the body of the murdered woman. Harriet wondered how much he could see. She shrank back as the policeman hurried past her, evidently trying to find a cab for Mr. Ross, who followed him slowly. He seemed reluctant to leave the scene of the crime, as though he could not really believe in its reality and wanted to watch it pop and disappear, explode in the early morning light, transient as a soap bubble, fleeting as the policeman’s own slight smile. Ross’s steps were unhurried; he lit another cigarette as he ambled past the building in which Harriet was concealed, his black cane tucked neatly under his arm. She waited for him to throw the dead match in through the window, but he didn’t. He looked directly at her - she froze. He stood there, holding the dead match between his fingers, staring at her.  She couldn’t move, she heard the clatter of horses’ hooves and the policeman’s voice.

            “Here’s your cab, Sir.”

            Ross blinked and turned slowly to the policeman, dropping the dead match onto the cobbles.

            “Thank you,” he said as he moved out of Harriet’s sight. She heard him climb into the cab and saw the policeman pass the window once again to rejoin his colleagues. She was still unable to move, her fear was huge and vague but with the immediacy of one who has been standing near to a grisly murder victim for any length of time. She heard the horse’s hooves again; the cab was turning round, right outside the window. It stopped and she heard Ross’s voice again, low so that the policeman wouldn’t hear.

            “Hey! Can I offer you a lift?”

            Harriet looked back at the policeman’s ambling figure, his broad back getting smaller as he moved away from her towards the scene of the murder. Most of his colleagues had dispersed by now and were examining the surrounding buildings, loose cobbles and drains along the street. The grey morning poured its watery light over the body of Polly Nichols, whose throat had been slit right open and the blood mixed with rain that gleamed darkly over the cobbles. Harriet suddenly turned and clambered out through the window and into the cab, which had drawn up alongside. She caught her cotton skirt on the edge of the window frame and heard it tear as she tugged it free. Harriet gazed anxiously back at the pathetic red rag hanging on the window frame, waving slightly in the breeze.

            “Where do you live?” asked Ross gently.

            She pulled her head back inside the cab quickly, remembering the policeman behind her and then there was the Jarvie too. Ross was risking a lot, it seemed; he would be severely compromised if anyone he knew saw them together.

            “I live on Fashion Street” she answered.

            Ross nodded and pushed up the trapdoor on the roof of the cab with his cane to shout instructions to the Jarvie. When he had sat down again, he removed his hat and gloves and leant back against the seat with a deep sigh.  Harriet played with the fringe of her patterned shawl, watching him nervously.  He continued to smoke his cigarette, not looking at her.

            “Thank you… fer yer kin’ness t’me Sir,” she muttered finally, uncomfortable with the silence. He looked at her and his face broke easily into a grin. It seemed a relief to him to drop this pretence of maturity.

            “It’s nothing.”

            “Well, that may be, Sir, but… however it is, I’m glad yer come along when y’did.” Harriet stared at her restless hands, twining like a Medusa’s head in her lap. Her thin fingers were white with cold. “I was… I was very much frightened.”

            Ross nodded, saying nothing. The murder was unmentionable.

            “See… I knew ‘er,” Harriet said suddenly.

            Ross frowned.

            “Did you?”

            “I spoke wiv ‘er only a few days ago. Just a few words… the time o’day, yer know.” She picked at the hem of her dress, biting her lip. “An’ now look at ‘er. Murdered… in such an ‘orrible way, too. I’ll admit, it’s frightened me somethin’ terrible, Sir.”

            “Well, you’re safe now,” said Ross, putting his arm around her shoulders. She stiffened at once; but this was quite a different touch from that which she was used to, intended simply for reassurance. “Yours is a dangerous profession,” he added.

            She looked at him sharply but he was gazing out of the window again at the rows of bleak slum houses, crowded together into every conceivable space, every yard, alley and court. He had spoken of prostitution as if she had told him she was a dressmaker or a cook. She liked this attitude of his. She had never come across it before.

            “What’s your name?” he asked suddenly.

            “’Arriet,” she replied, automatically guarded.

            “Well, Harriet here we are at Fashion Street. Which number is it?”

            “Twelve.”      

            “Number twelve, please!” Ross called to the Jarvie. He then turned and grinned at her once again; she thought that he had a lovely face, with its youthful naivety and candour, almost concealing the sharp wit in his clear eyes. “I hope to see you again, Harriet. Here’s my card.” He gave her a small white square of card, which she stared at blankly, not being able to read what was written on it. But she kept it anyway. “I’ll watch you go inside. Goodbye!” he called, as she slithered down from the cab and ran up to the door of the house in which she lodged. Turning in the front doorway, she waved to the cab as it carried on towards Brick Lane and north to Shoreditch. She could just see Ross waving his top hat in her direction as she tried to open the front door. As she had expected, the landlord had bolted it from the inside so that she could not get in. She considered pounding on the door until he opened it, but decided that causing such a fuss would just make him even more bad tempered than he was already. So she crouched down in a corner of the doorway, trying to shelter from the rain, and waited.

Now go to Chapter Six