His mood was described as 'serene', yet elsewhere as 'dark and morbid'. The Sunday before his execution the News of the World appeared to have grown weary of his reluctance to confess all, and carried barely a paragraph about him. It did note that an application had been made by the Royal College of Surgeons for Fairbairn's body to be submitted to them for dissection and study, a matter which was under the consideration of the Home Secretary.
Fairbairn was led to the gallows, only once faltering in his step. The executioner, Norwood, and his subject then shook hands. Fairbairn was asked whether he wished to say any final words. He turned to the selected reporters and said: 'I never done the thing.'
Fairbairn died instantaneously, so the reports suggested, though, as was customary, his body was left on the scaffold for one hour before being taken down and transported to the Royal College of Surgeons.
Nigel stumbled out into the approaching twilight, after faxing what he'd found over to the incident room, and made his way to the tube, the details and events of the trial and execution replaying in his mind over and over. For some reason he felt immense sorrow for the dumb, child-like mute who had received the ultimate punishment. He thirsted to know more, to immerse himself in greater detail. A glance at his watch told him no archive would still be open. Instead, that evening, he would have to throw himself on the mercy of the Internet. Surely such a momentous set of murders, the trial and its aftermath would still ripple down the years?
This hunger for more knowledge grew keener during the hour it took him to reach his flat in Shepherd's Bush. He was puzzled by Foster's silence, but figured the detective had been detained by other business. Perhaps they had caught the killer. Nigel did not actually care; his interest had been pricked by the events of 1879. He wanted to discover as much as he could to satisfy his own curiosity. He booted up his computer before he had even removed his jacket or put his bag on the floor. As soon as it came to life, the luminescent screen providing the only source of light in his flat, other than the remains of the day shining weakly through his window, he sat down and opened his Internet connection, typing the name 'Eke Fairbairn' into his search engine.
Two pages. Twenty-seven results. Is that all, he thought? He had expected more. It was as if what he had read and learned that day had vanished, airbrushed out of history.
He checked the results. Nearly all were linked to sites connected to the Hunterian Museum, housed within the Royal College of Surgeons. According to the first hnk he followed, the museum's collection of anatomical exhibits included the skeletons of several criminals who had been dissected following execution. Among them was that of 'murderer Eke Fairbairn'. So Fairbairn's body was on actual display?
Another look confirmed it was. He checked the museum's opening times: nine the following morning. He sat back and rested his hands behind his head. Tomorrow he was going to meet the Kensington Killer.
Foster threw his jacket on the kitchen table and filled a glass of wine to the brim. It had taken him and Heather the entire evening to doorstep the first five floors of the tower block, twenty flats of surly men and women with a reflexive suspicion of the police.
They had not seen anything out of the ordinary in the past few days, nor anyone new moving in. Even if they had, Foster sensed he'd be the last to know.
He had had to co-opt DC Khan for the next day, but it still meant another forty-eight hours going door-to-door. The exact time they had before the killer was due to deliver his fourth victim.
It had taken five killings for the police in 1879 to bring the murderer to justice. This time he wanted it to stop at three.
He went to his jacket pocket and pulled out a folded envelope. Inside were copies faxed by Barnes of newspaper reports of the 1879 trial. Foster sat down at the table and began to read. Soon, tiredness crept in. He grew weary of having the trial filtered through the lens of a Victorian hack. He wanted to learn the details first-hand, assess the evidence himself.
He called Barnes and left a message, asking if the original court transcripts were available and to contact him first thing in the morning. Some clue as to why this was happening would be in there.
He stood up and stretched. He walked through to the lounge and wondered what to do with himself.
This house had long since stopped being a home; it was more a place in which he rested and refuelled. It had always been like that, ever since his father's death.
Eight years in which he had shut down every part of his life apart from work.
He wondered what his dad would make of this case. When he first became a detective, shortly after his father had retired, Foster would go through current cases with him, get his opinion, his hunches, ideas on where to look next. His dad would give examples of tough cases he'd cracked, but would always warn against making assumptions: 'Nearly every mistake that I know of has been made when people start seeing what they want to see, not what's actually there.' Foster always emerged from those conversations with a sense of purpose, a plan of action.
For the first year or so following his father's death, he still heard his voice. He held conversations in his head, outlining the problem, the sticking point, his father's voice responding in its usual economical way.
But it faded, began to wane. He could conjure up images of his father, and occasionally he would hear him speak. But, when he sat and consciously tried to bring him to mind, he was out of reach. The voice merged into others, those of colleagues, friends. The past had slipped away.
But if he ever needed the sage words of his father, it was now. Could he get it back? Rebuild his father's memory? Can you summon a voice back from the void?
He went to the bureau, unlocked it and lifted the lid. There it still all was, exactly as it had been left.
He had done this countless times, picked up the paperweight, stared at the pictures, then closed the bureau again. But this time he decided to go further.
He looked at the picture of himself as a boy, with his mum on Camber Sands. It brought back no memory; he had been only two. These people were strangers. Neither of his parents was interested in photography, and few pictures existed of him and his sister. Yvonne, he thought, a memory stirring.
Not a pleasant one either. She lived on the other side of the world with her family; he hadn't seen or spoken to her since the funeral. She blamed him, not only because of what he did, but for not including her, consulting her. He remembered the last words she had flung at him before she walked away from the church, as the rain slanted down in sheets.
'One day I will forgive you. But right now that day seems a long, long way away.'
He knew it was down to him to re-establish some sort of contact, to bring that day forward, but the longer he left it the more difficult it became. He winced and cast the image and the anger in her voice to one side, returning to the photo of his younger self at the seaside. Still, no memory came.
There was always one memory he could not erase.
His father, frail and pale, lying on his bed, a monumental weariness seeping from every pore. It had overridden the figure of his youth. The tall, rigid man, not an ounce of fat on him - unlike Foster, whose excesses and indiscipline had bestowed a tyre of fat around his middle. His father did everything with economy: drank, ate, slept. His emotions too; all was confined and controlled.