Legacy of the Ripper (29 page)

I'd met with Jack just once since the visit of Wright and Nickels and he'd appeared to have taken in most of what they'd told him, despite his apparent confusion at the time of their interview with him. During our short time together on the day after the visit he'd been lucid and communicative. He assured me that he now knew himself to be innocent of the Brighton murders. Once again he reverted to the story that had been his defence during the original police interrogations and the trial itself. He'd been tricked, drugged and set up by Michael and 'The Man' who he now believed, as Wright had suggested, was his supposed deceased uncle, Mark Cavendish. He expressed his further belief that the police would vindicate him in the course of their current re-investigation of the case. I hoped for his sake that Inspector Mike Holland had found information that would be of help to him. If the police were to discover that Jack was the killer and Mark Cavendish was in fact dead or an innocent man, it could bring about the total mental collapse of my patient. At least, following Holland's call I knew I wouldn't have long to wait in order to find out.

The day of Holland's visit came soon enough. It was Friday and the end of the working week heralded a break from the humdrum everyday working grind for the majority of the population. Not so for the police or the staff at Ravenswood. Neither crime nor healthcare takes a day off and we at Ravenswood, along with the police forces of the country provide an all-round seven day a week service. Luckily for me this would be my weekend off, when I could enjoy two days of rest and respite from the daily contact with numerous psychopaths, murderers and various other psychologically challenged patients within the walls of the high security facility. Every other week I would be on duty over the weekend, with time off during the week which never seemed to carry quite the same restful ambience of the traditional weekend break.

In total contrast to the day of Wright and Nickels's visit, the dawning of that Friday brought with it a thunderous storm. Dark, almost black clouds rolled in from the South carrying with them a torrential downpour, made worse by the winds that began as fierce and soon grew to gale force, causing the rain to slant into cutting icy sheets that stung the face and any other exposed flesh. Though not the best of days for driving, Mike Holland and his two companions arrived dead on time at eleven a.m. Holland had picked up Alice Nickels from a hotel en route where she'd stayed the night to make it easier for him and Wright to collect her as they motored to Ravenswood.

There would be no interview with Jack Reid on this occasion, just a report from Holland on the results of his visit to Warsaw. I couldn't wait to hear what he'd discovered and after greeting my visitors at the main entrance and ushering them along the corridors that led to my office, I eagerly awaited Holland's discourse. Firstly, however, I arranged for coffee and biscuits to be served, Tess once again the willing deliverer of the refreshments. I'd told my secretary what had transpired three days previously and she was as interested as I in the outcome of this further visit. Tess, however, would have to wait until Holland and the others left before I could fill her in on what may or may not be the future dispensation of our most celebrated patient.

"A foul day, Doctor," Holland began.

"Indeed it is, Inspector. I'm surprised you weren't late in arriving what with the rain and the gales."

"I pride myself on never being late for an important appointment. When I saw the weather first thing this morning I called Sergeant Wright and Miss Nickels and had them be ready thirty minutes sooner than expected so that we might make an early start in order to be here on time, and it worked, as you can see."

"I'm impressed, Inspector Holland. Now, please, you have something important to tell me?"

"Yes, I have. I'll ask you to allow me to complete my story before you voice your opinion, as it may sound a little rambling as I go along, but I want to tell it to you as it happened and you will then be better informed as to what we may have to do in the future."

"Agreed," I said. "Please go on, Inspector."

Before beginning his story Mike Holland nodded to Carl Wright and the sergeant passed him the black attaché case he'd carried in to the room. Holland opened it and withdrew a brown cardboard file, which appeared to contain a number of loose papers and a small collection of photographs. Though Holland held the file in his hands, he said nothing of its contents at first.

I switched on my recorder, sat back in my chair and together with Carl Wright and Alice Nickels, listened as Inspector Mike Holland began to relate to us the results of his investigation though, of course, I knew that Wright would already be aware of the contents of the report. Even so, he appeared to be as attentive as any of us. I had a feeling this was going to be some tale, and as it transpired, I wasn't disappointed.

"Let me say first of all," Holland began, "that if it hadn't been for Sergeant Wright's constant nagging at me that he felt there was something wrong with the case against Reid, and for Miss Nickels's intuitive and quite extraordinary research and investigative skills I wouldn't have been sitting here today telling you what I'm about to. You, Alice, could have been a police officer. You are a quite extraordinary woman."

Alice Nickels smiled, nodded, but said nothing, not wanting to interrupt the inspector.

"When Sergeant Wright kept nagging at me about the case and I personally reviewed all the evidence and the trial transcripts and looked back on everything we'd been through in bringing Jack Reid to trial, I had to admit that there did appear to be flaws and discrepancies in the whole affair. Obviously, as the case was effectively closed when Reid was sent here there wasn't a lot I could do to actively re-open the investigation, but my sergeant and Miss Nickels, convinced that there'd been a serious miscarriage of justice, refused to let the matter drop. How on earth Alice came up with the idea of seeking information about murders outside the UK, I'd no idea at the time, though she's since explained her reasons to me and they were, of course, perfectly sound. Why would our killer, if it wasn't Reid, place himself in danger of capture by continuing his crimes here in England when owing to his deranged mindset anywhere would have done? All he had to do was plan his locations to overlay those in Brighton and Whitechapel and his means would be served. The brilliance of the criminally insane is often far greater than that of your average criminal and in this case, perhaps even more so."

I saw Holland was looking intently at me as he mouthed the last sentence and I nodded my assent to his belief. It is indeed true that the criminally insane quite often display a genius, though often a warped version of that trait, in the quite brilliant execution of their crimes, fuelled by the intense and often very frightening psychoses that exist within their minds. The inspector went on.

"When these two redoubtable experts in the history of the crimes of Jack the Ripper laid their final batch of facts and beliefs before me I had little choice but to take them seriously. The more I looked at it, the more it looked as though Jack Reid had been set up to take the blame for the Brighton killings while the real killer, or killers, made their escape. The messy scene at the house of Mandy Clark confirmed what Alice believed, though I'd never have thought of it myself. I was too pleased to have caught the man who I believed had carried out the murders and to his credit, my sergeant here was generous enough to admit that at the time he felt exactly as I did. It was only later, when the doubts began to creep in that he and Alice started to seriously bombard me with their beliefs, and I was eventually forced to take a close look at the case when the Polish connection came along. Of course, I couldn't do much about it on my own authority, but the Chief Superintendent was wholly behind me when I presented Alice and Wright's theory to him. Once the sergeant received that e-mail from Warsaw and we'd made contact with the Warsaw police and got a few facts from them, it appeared more and more as though the 'Warsaw Connection' could hold the answer to what Alice and Wright, and by then, I believed. The Chief Super authorised my visit to Warsaw as there wasn't a lot I could do simply on the basis of telephone calls and emails between here and Poland, so off I went.

"On my arrival in Warsaw I was wonderfully looked after by Inspector Kowalski. He met me at Frederic Chopin Airport, escorted me by car to my hotel, and left me to get settled on my first night in Poland. Funny thing is, I thought Poland would be a really cold country and yet the temperatures were much the same as here. So much for taking my winter thermals.

"Anyway, we began work together the following day and Fabian and I became good friends in a very short space of time. He's a little older than I am, though he looks younger, damn him, and has been a police officer for over twenty-five years. He says that his wife tells him that he loves the police force more than he does her. He laughs about it, but I suspect there may be some truth in those words. He loves his job, is fanatical about catching the bad guys, and yet I saw him change when I showed him some of the stuff I'd taken to Poland with me.

"He was intrigued by the potential connection between the Polish murders and those in England. There isn't a policeman in the world who hasn't heard of Jack the Ripper and the possible connection between the murders and those in Whitechapel over a century ago had him drooling at the mouth, in an investigative sense, of course.

Anyway, before taking me to view the actual murder sites in Warsaw he gave me a thorough run through of the sequence of events. On the night of 30th September both Anna Adamczyk and Florentyna Jaworski were killed less than a mile from one another, their bodies posed in death much as the bodies of Elizabeth Stride and Cathy Eddowes had been in 1888. In the case of Adamczyk, the wounds mirrored those of Stride's with little mutilation having taken place, but in Jaworski's murder, the killer had removed her uterus and one of her kidneys and had slashed and mutilated her face as Jack the Ripper had done with Cathy Eddowes. He'd also laid out the few possessions she'd carried in her clutch bag beside her body, another Ripper re-creation as I understand it. Fabian showed me the crime scene photographs and believe me, if it weren't for the fact that they were in colour and the girls dressed in modern clothes, I could have been looking at the photos of Stride and Eddowes that the sergeant gave me to take to Poland for comparison. In these two cases the Polish police drew a blank. There were no witnesses, no trace evidence left at the scenes and no-one in the area heard a sound. Oh yes, I should mention that both girls were known to the police as being working prostitutes, though I suspect you'd already worked that out, Doctor."

I nodded, and gasped with revulsion as Holland at last took something from the file on his lap. Two photographs of the murdered girls as the police discovered them. It was as he said, horrific and bloody and all the hallmarks of a series of Ripper-style murders. I said not a word, as I'd promised and he continued.

"Despite channelling a lot of resources and manpower into the investigation, the Warsaw Police drew a blank due to the lack of evidence and witnesses. In fact, they were almost on the verge of declaring the two murders as unsolved and scaling down their investigation when, on the 9th November, the most horrific murder that Fabian had experienced in his time on the force occurred. A young twenty year-old prostitute by the name of Maria Kaminski was literally butchered in her apartment. Whoever killed her had taken their time and made sure that the crime scene resembled that in the case of Mary Kelly in Millers Court in Whitechapel. Fabian admitted to me that he'd been violently sick when he'd seen the body as he entered the apartment. Never had that happened to him before and he confessed that if he ever came across such a horrendous sight once more in his career he would probably resign from the police force that very day."

Once again Mike Holland reached into his case and passed me the crime scene photos without saying a word. He didn't have to. They were as he'd intimated, literally horrendous. Any right thinking human being could only take some comfort from the fact that the poor girl was already dead when her body had been virtually torn limb from limb by the crazed knife of the butcher who'd perpetrated the vile and

unspeakable horror. In all my years in the business of dealing with and treating those unfortunate souls whose minds had become affected by numerous psychological disorders, even I baulked at the thought that one human being, no matter how mentally afflicted, could have inflicted such vile and despicable mutilations on another. Still, I remained silent as Holland continued his tale of the macabre and chilling results of his visit to Poland.

"Of course," he went on, "there was still nothing at that stage to connect the killings to Mark Cavendish, assuming he was still alive, or to any other individual. The Warsaw police had, by the time of my arrival, made a connection between the murders of the two girls and the young man who we now believe to have been James Michael Devlin. Fabian had been astute enough, although the cases at first appeared unconnected, to compare the wounds on the girls with those described by the pathologist who'd carried out the post-mortem on Michael. The wounds on the bodies, and the throats specifically, matched. The same knife had in all probability been used to cut the throats of all the victims. Unfortunately, by the time I arrived on the scene all the bodies had been cremated so there was no chance of my either viewing the remains or obtaining DNA samples for any future comparisons. There were just too many coincidences present for there to be no foundation to Alice's theory. Everything seemed to fit, right down to the overlaying of the maps to produce a near-perfect representation of the geography of the Whitechapel murders. The only thing that Fabian and I had to do, or so it appeared, was to find proof that Mark Cavendish was alive and well and committing murders in Poland when he'd supposedly died by drowning in the warm waters of the Mediterranean. Fabian took me to the murder sites, which gave me the creeps but produced no results, naturally, and he circulated a description of Cavendish together with copies of a photograph that I'd obtained from his brother's widow, with instructions to all forces within Poland's borders to be on the lookout for the man in connection with the Warsaw murders. Detectives and uniformed officers were showing copies of Cavendish's photo to hotel and guest house receptionists and proprietors all over the country, without much success I must say.