‘I call this my twanger,’ said Fennix, and plunked the end of the rubber blade with his finger to make it vibrate. ‘“Polly” didn’t meet with anything so harmless. She had her throat slit with one blow.’ He turned away from Ross and took two steps forwards, going straight past Mary, who looked towards him with a sudden interest, as if he might be the one to give her money. He slashed across the air nowhere near her, and she looked sadly at him. Costain had half expected her to flinch. ‘Then he lifted up her skirts, cut down her abdomen, and disembowelled her.’ The young woman continued to watch him, oblivious to her own fate. ‘Which shows that perhaps he was a medical man, that perhaps his instincts in this matter were not entirely … natural.’
With that hanging in the air, he led them off. Costain and Ross looked over their shoulders to see Mary continuing to stand there, gazing after them.
* * *
Fennix took them to the next murder site. ‘The canonical five, they call them,’ he said, ‘their names writ in blood in the book of history.’ They arrived in an indoor market, stall owners to either side managing clipped smiles or just avoiding eye contact. There had obviously been no financial arrangement to bring the tour through here, thought Costain, even with Fennix’s increased cash flow. The butcher and pie-maker must feel their business suffering several times a day, with a discussion of human meat nearby, but what could they do about it?
He saw her from a distance this time: what he initially took to be an almost Madonna-like figure, some sort of shawl over one shoulder, her hands spread out. The shape of the Ripper was again a shadow cast all around her. ‘Annie Chapman, slashed across the throat, then had her intestines hauled out and laid across her shoulder like the fur she could never afford.’ Now they were close, Costain could see that she was indeed open, showing off her wounds in silent complaint. Again, there was no silver. ‘Excuse the gynaecological detail, gents, but Jack cut out her uterus and part of her bladder, and took those with him, as well as the brass rings off her fingers.’ Costain watched Ross’ expression grow tremendously calm as she made eye contact with the revenant or recording or whatever you wanted to call it. ‘This place was a yard behind a house then — lots of windows overlooking — brave of Jack to do his business here. Next to her was found a leather apron. Typical attire, as you’ll know, sir,’ Fennix said, looking to Costain, ‘for Jewish tradesmen.’
Also for many other sorts of tradesman, surely? Were all blacksmiths or tanners Jewish? But Costain didn’t give voice to his thoughts. He wasn’t sure if this man would have answers that went any deeper than his script.
They left Annie and the butcher and pie-maker in their aprons behind them.
* * *
They walked to a pair of wooden gates in front of what seemed to be a schoolyard. Against the gates stood a tall washed-out woman with blood spilling down her dress. Her eyes were angry, insistent. ‘“Long Liz” Stride, only slashed across the throat, perhaps because Jack was disturbed.’ There he was, a fleeting glimpse, running. ‘One Israel Schwartz — note that name, sir — saw her having a row earlier with someone he described as “a gentleman”. That is how we know that Jack was, or was pretending to be, a member of the ruling classes, perhaps even royalty. Now, days had separated the previous murders, but this time, perhaps frustrated at not having got what he was after, just forty-five minutes later…’ Fennix let that sentence trail off as he led the party down the street to Mitre Square, where modern offices looked down on a group of benches, across which was sprawled the emaciated remains of a woman, her skirts and legs open, endlessly jerking and juddering, her arms windmilling as if she was in the act of falling, her head just a red lump. Costain wasn’t sure he wanted to move closer, but found himself doing just that.
‘Catherine Eddowes, again a drunk and a whore, again cut with a mighty blow across her throat, then systematically butchered, her intestines pulled out and laid over her shoulder, again her uterus and this time her left kidney taken by Jack. But this time he went further, which is odd, considering that these were all houses around here, and he could have been watched — perhaps was watched — from any one of these windows. He went further in what to us now looks almost like a demonstration, like a work of cruel performance art, like a protest at the conditions that had given birth to him. Her right ear lobe was sliced, a V shape was incised into each of her cheeks, and cuts made into her eyelids. Jack also snipped off the tip of her nose.’ Costain looked into what remained of the woman’s face, a mess of blood, and saw that her eyes, faint as they were, were again pleading. He wondered, not for the first time, what the connection was between what seemed to be people, preserved in time like this, and the Hell he’d glimpsed. Were these just images of people, as all the copies of Losley had been? Or were these somehow still the people themselves? Were they suffering? Was the history of London their Hell? Did they know that what had happened to them had started to happen again? Was this how he might end up, unless he played his cards exactly right?
There was the Ripper, standing all around, hands holding vague trophies.
‘And he took her apron. With two groups of coppers after him, the Metropolitan Police and the City of London Police — because that was the case in those days, each police force having its own territory — Jack cannily hopped back and forth over the border between them, hue and cry all around!’ Fennix led them off again, and this time Costain, following on his phone, knew where they were going.
Ross walked calmly beside him.
* * *
‘Here is Goulston Street, ladies and gentlemen, these days, ironically, the location of Petticoat Lane Market, and — ’ he winked at Costain — ‘yes, sir, there’s a synagogue just round the corner.’
‘Storks on roofs,’ Ross whispered.
It took a moment for Costain to remember that that was a metaphor she’d used during the Losley case. There had been an exact correlation, he remembered, between the size of families in Holland and the number of storks that nested on the roofs of their houses. It wasn’t because storks brought babies, but because rich people back then had both bigger roofs and more children.
She’d obviously seen that momentary look of consternation on his face. ‘I mean, Jews were poor, so the slum landscape of the killings of course includes lots of Jewish references.’
‘Are you sure that’s all there is to it? Spatley was Jewish.’
Ross shook her head, as if now annoyed that she’d shared her thoughts. ‘Don’t know.’
‘Here’s where Jack dropped that apron, and then perhaps wrote, on this wall here, his famous message. Depending on whether you believe that any of the letters the police received were really from him, depending on if you believe he even wrote this — perhaps this is all we ever hear in the man’s own voice. The message that calls out to us even now, which was written in blood in the house of a rich man only this week. Here it was written in chalk, and originally the message read…’ Fennix held up a slate, on which was written:
The Juwes are the men that will not be blamed for nothing.
‘One of the versions, anyway,’ said Costain to Ross. They’d all been reading up on the history of this shit. She just nodded absently. She was looking up at the wall. Costain followed her gaze to where the original message still shone, for just the two of them, in all its different versions, frustratingly, with crossings out and some words faded and some reinforced, as if the memory of London was trying to accommodate all the possibilities, everything remembered, imagined or written about these words. This was merely testimony, Costain thought, as Ross took a photo of it. Not as solid as evidence. Not as reliable. The city continued to be their key witness. But what it told them was subjective.