Mayhem (16 page)

A madman, Moore concluded. The streets were filled with them. The Pole stumbled off, still muttering to himself. No one went near him, and Moore didn’t blame them.

‘Everything all right, constable?’ he asked.

The man in the doorway nodded. ‘Lunatic. And he stinks.’

‘Who was that man?’ Bond asked. Moore wasn’t sure if it was simply the effect of the light pouring from the open doorway, but the doctor appeared to have paled.

‘No one for you to worry about, sir,’ the constable said.

‘But what was his name? Do you know his name?’

‘Of course: he’s just been interviewed. A waste of time, given that drivel he was spouting. Kosminski, Aaron. A hairdresser – or was, when he last worked, which hasn’t been in a fair while. Lives with his sister, poor woman.’

‘Is everything all right?’ Andrews asked.

‘Yes, yes,’ Bond murmured. ‘He just looked familiar, that’s all.’

‘Have you treated him at some time, perhaps?’

‘Maybe that’s it – where does he live?’

The constable pulled a small notebook from his pocket and scanned the page. ‘Greenfield Street, sir.’

‘You know him?’ Moore said. He was tired, but if this was something that might lead them somewhere he’d be back in the station like a shot.

‘No,’ Bond said, after a moment. ‘No, I must have been mistaken.’

‘There can’t be too many around like that,’ Andrews said.

‘You’d be surprised. From my experience in the Westminster I can guarantee you that destitution, illness and madness are three who are very happy in each other’s company.’ He smiled, a flash of expression beneath his moustaches. ‘Shall we?’

‘Yes, of course,’ Andrews answered.

‘Goodnight, Inspector Moore, and I hope you sleep better than I have been of late.’

‘Oh, I will, Doctor. A brandy or two will see to that.’

He watched the two men climbing back into the cab. The doctor was tired and slightly on edge – it didn’t take a detective to see that. Moore hoped it would pass. They needed Dr Bond – if he was going to have some kind of nervous collapse, then he needed to wait until all this was over.

PART TWO

20

Venice. Christmas Day, 1884

James Harrington’s Diary

It must be said that I have rarely seen so much beauty in one place as I have in Venice. Even in the crisp cold, which I’m told is rare for this part of Italy, there is something magical about the watery city. Although Edward Kane, my new friend and drinking companion, might say that my excitement was more to do with the wine and good food we’ve enjoyed rather than anything the sinking city has to offer. Perhaps he would be partly right; he does, after all, have a very different way of looking at the world.

Tonight, after all the other guests had drifted away to their beds, we lay on the couches in the library and talked until we were almost sober. Once more, I have to say how glad I am to have met Edward. Like the other Americans, he is so full of energy. He also has that enviable confidence that comes from being exceptionally wealthy – new money, of course, like my father’s own, but earned in far greater sums from the railroads of America.

‘You won’t find me in an office, though, Jim, when you come to visit, which you will and I won’t hear
an argument against it,’ he said, his feet up over the antique arm of the chaise. ‘I’ll be in an artist’s studio, painting the finest female forms New York can provide. Naked.’

I laughed along with him, my head still buzzing pleasantly. He fitted so well with the group of artists and poets who had gathered for the festivities in the Palazzo Barbaro. They fascinated me, but I still felt stiff around them – too English. They laughed freely. They were warm. There was no over-politeness to be observed. If I was honest, they reminded me of
her
. I had been so absorbed in my travels so far that as much as I had vowed not to have her out of my mind for a single second, that had proved not to be the case. My parents had been right: the world was vast, and there were many distractions in it. The further I had travelled into Europe the more she faded, even as I had been determined to cling to her, but now I was here, in this strange enclave of wealth and libertarianism, she was back in my thoughts.

‘It was a girl, wasn’t it?’ he said. ‘It was a girl with me – several of them.’

I laughed again at that. My natural reserve eased around Edward; though I still felt middle-aged around him and his set, I was slowly relaxing with them.

‘Come on, it’s always a girl – or some kind of trouble. The “grand tour” is no longer the done thing. It’s too easy.’

‘It was a girl,’ I admitted.

‘In trouble, was she?’ He sat up and poured us more wine.

‘No, nothing like that.’ My face flushed. I imagined that Edward had left many girls in trouble in his wake. ‘But I loved her.’ And I had, truly. However much my travels had gripped my imagination, and made London seem so far away, I knew that what I had felt – what I am sure I probably still felt – was real.

‘Love, eh?’ He frowned, and then smiled in triumph. ‘Ah, the wrong sort of girl!’

‘Something like that.’

‘No wonder your parents sent you away,’ he snorted from behind his wine glass. ‘Love is a dangerous emotion in the young. They want it beaten out of us so we can be as cold and dead as they are.’

For the first time I saw something other than good humour in his eyes and I wondered at his upbringing. Had it been particularly hard for him? Was that why he was so wild now?

‘I do believe that my parents love each other,’ I said, ‘in their own way. They just want … well, I suppose they just want the best for me. My studies were going badly, and then they found out about …’ Now that I had started, I couldn’t stop. ‘They thought this would be a good idea for me. I was ready to start in the family business and they said no, they wanted me to see more of the world before I limited myself to one aspect of it.’ As I listened to my own words, I felt quite ashamed at some of the darker thoughts I had had towards them
in the early days of their discovery of my secret, and as I had set off for Calais. They were good people. They were kind. They probably would fit much better into this artistic Venetian palace than I did.

‘Then I apologise,’ Edward said, and raised his glass. ‘To your family. To kind hearts.’

We sat in silence for a while, both tired, him drunk and me definitely merry, and both lost in our own thoughts, no doubt of people far away. I thought of my bed a few floors up, but could not muster the energy to find it. It was the end of Christmas day, and it had been a fine one. Despite my thoughts of home, my heart was content.

‘Of course,’ Edward said, laying back once more on the chaise, and staring up the painted ceiling far above us, ‘you have seen nothing thus far on your trip, nothing of any real import.’

I sat up, my tiredness forgotten, and immediately began to protest. I had seen Rome for one thing, and the remains of Pompeii – how could he—?

‘Enough, my friend!’ He held one hand up to silence my protest as he smiled. ‘Yes, of course you’ve seen beautiful things – the famous arts, the work of the Renaissance. Culture, buildings, all built by dead men – all just relics. What of life, Jim? What of that?’

‘What do you mean?’ I said, taking a long sip of my own wine. My head spun slightly, but I didn’t mind. I was glad of it. I wanted to be more like Edward. He had adventures. He had confidence. I wanted both of these
things. I wanted his courage. ‘I’m here with you and all these glorious people. Surely that is life?’

‘We are like the arts, though. We are wealthy; our lives are easy. They are what we want them to be. I talk of painting beautiful women, and maybe I shall, but in my heart I know I’ll end up with a stiff collar, a sensible wife and working with my father in the railway business.’ He smiled. ‘Oh, I shall be comforted by my fortune, and I shall holiday in the finest places and live in a beautiful home, but will I
live
? Will I know the struggles of day-to-day existence? I doubt it, and that haunts me. That’s what I came to see. And that’s what you must see too.’

‘I do not understand.’

‘Where were you planning to go next?’ he asked.

‘Vienna.’ I was looking forward to the cultural city of learning.

‘Then that is good. That’s on the way.’

‘On the way to where?’ I frowned. Where would he have me go?

‘Poland – but don’t go to the cities. Go to the heart of it; see the
people
.’ He waved his wine at me as he spoke.

‘But surely not?’ I said. ‘There is so much unrest …’

‘That, my English friend, is the point.’ He shrugged. ‘For what is life, if it is not struggle, pain and death?’ He got to his feet and swayed slightly. ‘And as much as I have no desire to experience these things for myself, not really, we must
see
them, surely?’

He leaned forward and slapped me hard on the shoulder. ‘And now I must find my bed. Or somebody’s bed. Any bed.’ He turned and wandered off towards the stairs, his footsteps echoing on the stone floor.

I sat there for a while longer before finally venturing to my own room. I haven’t stopped thinking about what he said though. Even in the grey light of dawn, with my head throbbing from an excess of wine and good cheer, more than I am accustomed to, my heart is racing with excitement.

For I shall do what Edward suggested: I shall go to Poland. My mind is set. I shall have an adventure!

21

London. November, 1888

Aaron Kosminski

He had come out early, before dawn, and walked aimlessly in the quiet, his feet carrying him through the miserable streets which made up so much of Whitechapel. He had thought perhaps if he immersed himself in wickedness, then the evil that haunted him would get lost there, but it was not to be, of course. At four o’ clock in the morning, even in the overcrowded houses of Flower and Dean Street, most people slept, whether an honest sleep or the stupor of the drunk. But not Aaron: he’d awakened gasping for air once again, only just managing to contain the scream that threatened to burst from his chest.

Matilda and Morris were no longer sympathetic to his night terrors – not that Morris had ever done more than tolerate them. Matilda gave him no practical comfort when they struck; she was barely able to contain her anger and irritation. He woke the children and scared them, and even though they knew he could not control the workings of his sleeping mind, his panicked screaming allowed his relatives to vent their frustrations with everything else, all the things
they felt he could control if he put his mind to it: his fear of water and his subsequent filthiness; his strange nervous tics and irrational behaviour, and of course, most of all, the financial burden he’d become to them all over the years he’d been unable to work.

Could he blame them for any of that? No. It was all true. If he were Matilda – sensible, practical Matilda – he would think himself a madman too.

He had tried to fight the night terrors by staying awake as long as possible, and once he managed a whole twenty-four hours before exhaustion got him, but the constant pacing and slapping his own face in the last hours infuriated and worried his sister and her husband more than the screams in the night. They had started to whisper about him when they thought he could not hear, and he found himself wondering if, in their own darkest moments, they too suspected him of foul deeds. He had noticed the change, ever since the police had come back for him – although Matilda must surely have realised he was too weak to have committed those terrible atrocities. And where would he have hidden the tools required? And he had not washed himself in a long time, so if he were Jack, then he would be covered in dried blood.

Still, fear and worry could make people have the strangest thoughts – he knew that better than most. And the city was infected with the darkness that came in the creature’s wake – the
mayhem
– and filled with suspicion and intolerance.

He was infected in a different way: he had the
visions – the scent. He was the unwilling hunter in this game which had been played out so many times over the ages. The creature had found its way out of the river and now the pieces had been reset; they would hunt each other until one was the victor. He knew these things, though without knowing how. He’d tried to explain the visions to Matilda – it was not so very long ago that his dreams had saved all their lives – but she did not want to listen. She had no time for the old ways now. She had no time for
him
.

So when the dreams had awakened him once again, he’d wrapped his thin coat around his sweat-soaked, stinking carcass and come out into the graveyard of the night, walking with no real sense of purpose, but looking all the while for the man with the devil on his back who plagued his dreams. How could he hope to recognise him? There was never a face visible – in the main, he viewed the visions as if from within the man looking out; sometimes they came in an abstract flurry of images, like pieces of a puzzle. None of it made sense. He wondered if perhaps he had started to fear the dreams as much as the creature itself.

He had walked the streets for perhaps two hours and now his thin legs ached and his feet were numb with cold. Sometimes he circled through the narrower alleys, which were so dark it could still be midnight there, and sometimes he wandered along the main thoroughfares. His body shook from expending so
much energy. He rarely left their home for so long these days; even when the visions forced him out, he would be back within the hour.

Slowly, the city around him came back to life. How many of those were waking with more than a touch of excitement, wondering whether Jack had struck once more while they slept? Perhaps he’d even been wandering the same streets as Aaron, a few moments behind or before him – it was possible; for all the efforts of the police, he had seen not a single constable during the past hours. He felt quite alone, and suddenly, wanting to cry, could not stop a small sob escaping him. It was all madness, of course, he knew that: not the madness his sister thought he suffered, but the madness that came from knowing so many around you were living in an illusion, believing that the solidity of the world was all there was. They would never see or understand the wickedness that had taken up residence in their city. He alone carried the weight of the truth, and he wasn’t up to that burden. He could taste the stagnant river water in his mouth from the visions; it was more real to him than the sooty air he breathed. Where was the creature now? Was it watching him, laughing at him? And what of the man it clung to – was he yet aware of what he had become? Perhaps he was now as tortured as Aaron himself, for they were all victims in different ways.