Barrelling around the back of a well-stacked hide cart, I lost sight of Wainwright for a moment and feared he had slipped the leash, until I rounded the cart and saw the tanner lying on his back. Standing over him was Holmes, a stern look in his eyes. Lowering the cane he had used to trip Jacob Wainwright, his gaze then alighted on me.
“Making heavy weather of it are we, Inspector?” He looked like he had been out for a gentle stroll, whereas I had sunk to my haunches as I tried to catch a breath.
“Had I the verve, Holmes,” I said, brandishing the cosh, “I would use this thing on you.” Barrows and Cooper joined us a few moments later, red-faced. “And don’t get me started on you two,” I snapped.
“I’m afraid, Inspector,” said Holmes as he approached Wainwright and pressed the end of the cane into the man’s chest to keep him from rising, “we have greater cause for concern.”
When I had recovered and came to stand next to Holmes, I saw Wainwright properly for the first time. He was short, his shoulders narrow and his hands smaller than mine. But that wasn’t the most damning thing about his appearance.
“His left hand…” I muttered, and felt frustration rise anew. It was badly deformed, and this combined with his diminutive stature led to only one conclusion. “This isn’t the Peeler.”
It couldn’t be. A man Wainwright’s size could not have overpowered someone like Jeremiah Goose, especially not with one hand. A hammer lay discarded nearby, and I assumed Wainwright had intended to use it on me or one of my men.
Holmes looked on, impassive, but I could tell he was angry.
“The Peeler is still at large,” I said, leaning down to grab Wainwright. “Jacob Wainwright?”
The man nodded, scowling. “Aye, what’s it to you?”
“Why did you run?”
“You’d run if someone chased you.”
“A man who runs has something to hide, Mr Wainwright,” I told him. “You’re coming back to the station.”
Wainwright’s face went from indignation to fear in short order. “Bleedin’ persecution, this is,” he shouted to anyone in earshot. “You coming here to my place of business, chasing me down and then accusing me of God knows what.”
“And what’s this then?” I asked, showing him the hammer. There was a name etched into the handle, Archie.
“It’s for tanning,” he said.
“Not for breaking skulls then?” I pressed. “And who’s Archie?”
“He’s my cousin. He gave me the hammer when he left London.”
“Left for where?” I asked.
“No idea. He came into some money, though he never gave me a penny, and left the city, left his business too. I use the hammer for trade.”
Everything about this man screamed criminal, but not murderer. “And where is your place of trade, might I ask?”
I let him go so he could point in the direction of one of the tanneries. I saw a wooden sign nailed above the entrance.
“Inspector,” said Holmes, “far be it from me to interrupt this expert interrogation, but we are not alone.”
Wainwright’s plaintive wailing had drawn a crowd. Some amongst them, the rougher sort, clutched tools and clubs as they advanced a cautious step towards us, and I was suddenly aware of how thin the blue line was here.
“Perhaps we should observe discretion on this occasion, Lestrade?” He nodded towards George Garret scribbling notes. No doubt he had followed us from the Yard.
“You’ll find nothing in there but skins,” sneered Wainwright as he got to his feet.
I narrowed my eyes at him. “What happened to you, Wainwright? Weren’t you Old Bill, once?”
“I was,” he said, with no small measure of bitterness, and slapped his injured leg and gestured to his left hand, “then I wasn’t. What business is it o’ yours?”
It turned my stomach to see one of our own so disaffected. “Don’t make it my business,” I said, with half an eye on Garret who tipped his hat and sauntered off, “because if you do, all the tanners, dockhands and scribblers of London won’t keep you from the law.”
As Wainwright limped away, I turned to my constables who had yet to stow their truncheons. “And you two, put those bloody things away!”
Mollified, the crowd began to disperse. Holmes was gone. I hoped, wherever he was, he was close to that one elusive scrap of evidence that would end these murders. Until then I would try and lay a trap for the Peeler.
Fog lay thick over London that night. It had done so the last four nights as I waited in the shadows of back alleys and side streets, or peered through shop windows, hoping for some glimpse of my prey. Four nights, and nothing to show for my patience but a deep chill.
“I can barely see the fingers before my face, sir,” said Metcalfe.
“Keep looking,” I said, squinting through the greenish pall. “He’s out here. I can feel it, Metcalfe.” I looked over at him. “And put your bloody hand down!”
I waited and I listened, standing in the shadows of a shop doorway on the east end of Leadenhall Street, in the vicinity of Aldgate.
“How many, Inspector?” came a voice from the shadows that gave me such a fright I almost drew my pistol and fired at the speaker.
“Hell and blood, Holmes!” I hissed at the detective as he emerged from the dark. “I almost put a bullet in you!”
“At this range, I like my odds, Lestrade.”
Metcalfe had the good sense to keep quiet. I scowled, returning to my vigil of the street.
“Absent of your keeper again, Mr Holmes?”
“If you are referring to Watson, he is nearby. With half the constabulary taking to the streets these last four nights, I thought you might appreciate some assistance.”
“Clandestine operation, my hat,” I muttered, recalling the briefing I had given to the sixty-three plainclothes constables on the eve of this endeavour. Few were abroad this night that I had not sent out myself. Fear had wrapped itself around London like a noose, and the hangman attired like an officer of the law.
The shrilling of a whistle tore apart the night. Shouting followed, muffled by the fog but clear enough. Other whistles joined it as my constables gave out the call to arms, and I was filled with a sense of impending retribution as I ran towards the sound.
“We’ve got him,” I said to Metcalfe, but loud enough for Holmes to hear too, “we’ve got him now.”
From street corners and side alleys and back ways, an army of constables spilled out into the night to chase down the fiend. I ran down Leadenhall Street, following the whistle. And then the shrilling changed, a whistle no longer but now a shout, an awful noise that sent my heart into my throat, for I recognised the voice.
“Barrows…”
I got as far as Billiter Street, and hurled my body around the corner only to stop dead as I came upon the devil himself.
Crouched apelike over Constable Barrows, he turned as he heard me and slowly rising to his full height I beheld not a man but a creature the likes of which could only be found in the Gothic imaginings of Mary Shelley. I do not consider myself a learned man, but I was familiar with such works and saw their pages given grim verisimilitude by the monstrous Peeler. His shoulders were thick and broad, with hands like spades, but it was his face that froze me to the core. Though his eyes were hooded by a policeman’s helmet, I saw the skin. Pale, almost to the point of white and somehow… ill-fitting, as if it would slip from his skull at any moment. All the more aberrant was the fact he wore a policeman’s uniform, but one large enough to accommodate his brawn. He loomed as menacing as death and just as inevitable.
As he glared at me, the same feeling returned that had come over me at the workhouse fire, and I considered with some horror that I had met this fiend before.