Here Dart turned and slowly raised his finger in the direction of the accused. The Times recorded how the eyes of the courtroom followed the direction of the digit.
// is the Crown's case that that man stood there, Eke Fairbairn, did with malice and in cold blood murder Samuel Roebuck and Leonard Childe.
Dart held his pose, allowing the impact of his gesture and words to settle on the audience. Once again, from the public gallery, came the cry 'Let him dangle!' followed by a brief halt in proceedings while the judge called for order. When they reconvened, Dart outlined the prosecution case.
On the evening of March 24th, Mr Roebuck, as he was in the habit of doing was seeking refreshment in the Clarendon public house on Clarendon Road. According to witnesses, Mr Roebuck had taken a considerable amount of porter during the evening hours. He was a working man and this was nearing the end of a working week. It is not for us here to judge his behaviour. No, Mr Roebuck has met our maker and judgement has already been passed by a higher authority. Late in the evening he was described as drunk yet not incapable.
For reasons unknown, you will hear how Roebuck became embroiled in a quarrel with the prisoner at the bar, which culminated in the ejection from the premises of both men, the expectation being that the quarrel would be settled there and not within sight of womenfolk. The two men departed. . .
The Times noted here how Dart walked the length of the jury rail before returning to his original spot without saying another word, unticlass="underline" Roebuck was not to be seen alive again!
Once again he allowed his words time to imprint on the consciousness of those present. Next he outlined the details of the second murder charge, relating to Leonard Childe, a 38-year-old blacksmith. Again, the night before he was found stabbed, Childe had been drinking at a local pub. Fairbairn had been drinking in the same pub and, as with the previous charge, was seen to row with the victim. Both were evicted from the premises. Dart said the prosecution would also produce a knife found at the lodgings of the accused, and an expert witness who would testify it was the same knife that had caused the fatal wounds.
The News of the World reported how, as the prosecution's opening speech came to its close, Dart lowered his voice to a hoarse whisper.
is the prosecution's case that the accused is a man incapable of handling strong drink. A man who, rather than settling his quarrels with his fists or turning the other cheek, did brutally pull a knife and slay both unfortunates. Good Christian men know evil lurks in the bottom of a glass. We contend there is an even bigger evil lurking in the heart of the accused. Together they have forged a combustible and repellent concoction that has been midwife to these obscene and ungodly acts.
13
'If this map is right, then it should be somewhere around here,' Heather said, turning a photocopy of a map one way and then the other in the hope its mysteries would become clearer.
The bray of a car horn from their rear made them both jump.
'The bastard,' Foster said, checking the rear-view mirror and seeing, from the neck down at least, the male driver of a white van, slapping his steering wheel in frustration at their pedestrian pace.
'Sir, don't,' Heather cautioned.
Foster bit his lip. He wanted to stop the car, climb out and, as the white-van Neanderthal bristled, produce his badge, administer a bollocking and tell him to watch out. The roads of London, where men and women developed the patience of toddlers at being held up in the choked streets, agitation growing at their role as insignificant cogs in the great city's grinding daily machine, had long since been a bugbear for Foster. The resentment caused by the morning's meeting with Harris, the ignominy of being sidelined, had not yet dissipated. Venting his spleen on a gormless van driver might prove cathartic.
Instead, aware from the corner of his eye of Heather's concern, he merely continued to dawdle, gaining solace from the knowledge that he was adding a few increments to the rising blood pressure of the bottom-feeder behind him. Sure enough, there came another blare of frustration, just after Heather indicated that he should turn left on to Queensdale Road.
The street was empty. They parked outside a Sikh temple at the end of the road and got out of the car.
'That's where the Salvation Army mission was,'
Heather said, poring over the map once more. They had gone straight to the local studies section of the hbrary at Kensington Town Hall. Within seconds of asking for a map they had obtained one, printed only a few years after the killings of 1879. Saunders Road was on there, at the end of what was then Queen's Road, now Queensdale. They made a photocopy and drove straight to this spot.
Foster stood and looked at the map with Heather.
He saw the angle of Saunders Road on the map, then gazed up at the point where it would have stood in the present day.
'Jesus,' he said.
Heather was as quick to work out where the road had been. It was a road no longer; instead, twin tower blocks, brown, beige and monstrous, two plinths of sixties functionalism, soared above them into the steel-grey sky. To their left was a terrace of handsome Victorian townhouses, costing well over a million each, Volkswagens and Beamers sitting patiently outside.
Across the road was a different world: high-rise living with its neighbours from hell and claustrophobic menace. Despite spending all his life in the capital, it still took his breath away to see how these two quintessential styles of London existed side by side, rubbing away at each other like silk and sandpaper.
They worked out from the map that it was the nearest of the two tower blocks that covered the ground where Saunders Road had been.
'This guy's having a laugh,' Foster said.
The pair reached the entrance of the grubby building.
A young black woman leaving with a crusty nosed child gave them a suspicious look, rumbling them as police immediately. The local force were probably seen and heard on a nightly basis, Foster thought. Inside the lobby, the smell of piss, neglect and bleach was heady rather than overpowering.
'Twenty-four floors,' Heather said, looking at the lift. She did not press the button to summon it, for which Foster was thankful. He dare not contemplate the evils it may contain. However, at that moment it opened. An acned youth in a white tracksuit, and blessed with the furtive face of a rat, stepped out.
'How many flats in this building?' Heather asked.
He stopped, looked at both, a vacant worry spreading across his face. Foster caught the unmistakable sweet whiff of marijuana.
'Dunno,' he said. 'Maybe a hundred or summink.'
'Thanks,' Foster said and let him pass, though not without a long withering stare to worsen the youth's stoned paranoia.
'So, a hundred-plus flats, any of which could be the one our killer uses to dump the next victim. He could be in there now.' He swiftly corrected himself. 'They could be in there now.'
Heather nodded. 'Nothing for it but to go door-to door and keep an eye on every scroat who comes and goes.'
Foster plunged his hands deep into his coat pockets.
'No point checking on who in this place has a record,' he dead-panned. 'Bet only the cleaning lady and the lift engineer don't.' He gave his colleague a grim smile. 'Come on. Let's make a quick phone call before we start.'
They went back to the car, where he switched on the heater and the radio. Together they formed a background murmur.
Andy Drinkwater's phone seemed to ring for an age. Eventually he answered, sounding breathless.