The Harvest Man (8 page)

T
here were four workingwomen loitering outside the Whistle and Flute, and Hammersmith felt them sizing him up as he approached the front door. For a moment he was confused by their attention, until he realized he no longer wore a constable’s uniform. As far as the women were concerned, he was no different from any other customer of the establishment. He felt a stab of anxiety that turned to deep sadness and he stopped short of the curb. In truth, he wasn’t any different. He wasn’t a policeman anymore and quite probably never would be again. His dream, his life, everything he thought he knew about himself, was all ended and he would have to start anew. He took a deep breath, set his shoulders, and tried to put the thought out of his mind. He still had work to do, regardless of what he wore. At least for the moment. He would concentrate on the moment.

One of the women became impatient. She pushed herself off the building’s façade and approached. “Need some help up out of the street, love?”

“I’m fine,” Hammersmith said. “Go about your business.”

“But you are my business. Come, let’s have us a taste of gin and I’ll give you a taste of summat else besides.”

“No.” He pushed his elbows in close to his body and walked past her, trying not to get caught up as she reached for him.

“Just a taste.”

“I said no.” He put his hand up and kept walking, ignored the woman, who was still wheedling. The others moved aside as he passed, seeing that he wasn’t going to be persuaded. He opened the door and stepped through into the pub.

The ownership of the place seemed to change with the phases of the moon and there was always a different man behind the counter whenever Hammersmith visited. But the clientele remained the same: the same women working outside, whether they went by the same names or not, tottering in on the hour to spend their newly earned coins; the same four men in the darkest corner playing Happy Families for money, keeping a wary eye on newcomers; the same old gin-soaked sailor sitting by the door with his hand out. Hammersmith ignored the old man and the single tarted-up woman at the counter. He nodded at the barman and held up a finger. The man nodded back and reached for a glass while Hammersmith walked to the table in the corner and stood quietly watching the men play cards.

None of them looked up at him, but one clucked his tongue and said: “Have ya got Mr Plod, the policeman?” Hammersmith could see the cards the man held and there was no Mr Plod in his hand.

“Yeah,” another man said. “He’s right here, but I don’t want nothin’ to do with him.” He threw down his cards and pushed his chair back and two of the other men stood up at the same time. They walked away in a group, passing the barman, who brought Hammersmith’s beer and set it on the table at one of the now empty chairs. He took the penny Hammersmith offered, scowled at it, and hurried away. Hammersmith sat down across from the remaining card player.

“You ruined my game,” the man said. “And I was winning.”

“Looked to me like you weren’t doing so well,” Hammersmith said.

“I had a strategy.”

“How have you been, Blackleg?”

“Been better’n you, from what I hear. And judging by the state of you, the rumors ain’t far off.”

Hammersmith looked down at his torn and muddy clothes. “I’m still alive.”

“Well,
I
won’t be for much longer if you keep comin’ in here askin’ me questions.”

Hammersmith looked the man over. He seemed at home in the shadows, his back against the wall. He was imposing, with a heavy black beard and dark deep-set eyes. There was something slippery about the eyes, something amused and dangerous, like a big cat waiting for something smaller to move and give away its position. He had got his name, the only name Hammersmith had ever known him by, from his time spent crossing picket lines at the docks. Normally, it would have been an insult, but he wore it with pride and nobody dared to disagree with him.

Hammersmith took a drink of his beer and wiped his lips with the back of his hand. Then he unconsciously wiped his hand on the leg of his trousers. “I can’t meet with you unless I go where you are. And you’re always here. You used to be more careful about where we met. What do your friends think we talk about?”

“They think you’re my brother,” Blackleg said. “Only you was injured in the head when you was little and went wrong somehow, grew up a bluebottle.”

Hammersmith grinned. “You know I’m not a bluebottle anymore.”

“Still act like a bluebottle, askin’ questions about things don’t concern you.”

“That’s got to worry them. Surely they don’t like you talking to me, even if they do think I’m your brother. How, by the way, did they come to that conclusion?”

“Somebody told ’em you was. Might’ve been me told ’em. On account of the family resemblance.” He smiled at the weak joke. “And they think I give you wrong information in order to put you off the scent of their business.”

“Why would they think you give me bad information?”

“Because I do.”

“You do?”

“Not all the time. If it was all the time, you’d never come back and then I couldn’t give you wrong information anymore, could I? Got to plant a little good in with the bad, a bloom here and there to distract you from the weeds.”

“I guess I need to be careful with you.”

“That makes us even,” Blackleg said. “What’re you here for today? I know you don’t care much about the opium business. Or whores. You care about the kids bein’ sold on the docks, but I don’t got nothin’ to do with anything like that, and you know it.”

“Murders.”

“Don’t got nothin’ to do with murders, either. And anyway you’ve got your friend, Inspector Dew, to help with all that.”

“His name’s Day. And he’s busy with something else. Somebody’s cutting people’s faces off.”

“The spider man. Yes, I know about that.”

“They’re calling him Harvest Man.”

“For the spider, like I said.”

“You know where he is?”

“Now why would I know where he is?”

“Do you?”

“No.”

“There are two children missing. I’ve been looking for them all evening. If anybody can tell me where this madman is, I need to know it.” Hammersmith stared at Blackleg until the other man shifted in his seat.

“I’m not lying to you,” Blackleg said. “No reason to. I’ve got no interest in that spider man ’less he tries to cut me own face off. If he does that, you won’t be havin’ no problem with ’im again ’cause he’ll disappear off the face of the earth.”

“I believe you.” Hammersmith took another sip of beer. “Anyway, that’s not why I’m here.”

“Didn’t figure so. You know I don’t got nothin’ to do with anything like that.”

“It’s another murderer I’m after.”

“Like I say, I don’t do murders that ain’t called for. And none that’s your business anyway.”

“It’s the Ripper.”

Blackleg pushed his chair back. It hit the wall and he sat there, the sudden reaction followed by a silence that seemed just as sudden. Hammersmith nodded at him, but didn’t speak. He worked on his beer and let Blackleg think. Finally the criminal pulled his chair back up to the table.

“The bloke you’re talkin’ of,” he said, “it’s the same one I’m thinkin’ of? The same one . . . you know.”

“The very same,” Hammersmith said. “Went by the name Jack.”

“He’s gone. Dead and gone. Must be. Supposed to be more than a year now since the last time he cut anyone up.”

“No. He’s alive.” Hammersmith looked around the room. The card players had found another deck of Happy Families and were busy at a table by the other end of the counter, well out of earshot. The girl had left, gone to join her coworkers at the curb outside. The old man was still at his post by the door, but he was snoring so loudly that the barman had gone to try to rouse him. Otherwise, Hammersmith and Blackleg were alone. “He was being held prisoner. Jack the Ripper was. Somewhere underground. But now he’s free and he’s back at it.”

Blackleg held up a hand to stop him and motioned at the barman, who trotted over. “Two whiskeys,” Blackleg said. “And one for my friend.” He turned back to Hammersmith. “Tell me about him. What’s happened?”

“There’s a club,” Hammersmith said. “A society of men. I don’t know who they all are. Their membership is secret and closely guarded, as is their mission. They don’t believe criminals can be rehabilitated.”

“Nor do I. A man is who he is and that don’t change unless he gets religion, which is nothin’ but its own kind of prison.”

“These men carry their conviction to its logical but frightening end. They call themselves the Karstphanomen and they specialize in beating the police to their quarry. They capture murderers and rapists and the like, and they do unto them.”

“Kill ’em?”

“No. They torture them. An eye for an eye. They make the man feel whatever it is he’s done to his victims, physically feel it. But they keep him alive, keep hurting him in the same ways, endlessly punishing him.”

“When you say they do everything the man done, you really mean all of it?”

“I mean everything and anything, short of death. My friend Day captured one of them and he told us more than I wanted to know.”

Hammersmith sat back in his chair as the barkeep set three whiskeys in the middle of the table and backed away. Blackleg reached for two of them and pushed the third toward Hammersmith. Hammersmith picked it up and took a small sip. Blackleg downed one of his immediately, slammed the glass down, and cupped his hands around the second whiskey, regarded it as he spoke.

“I think I can guess,” he said. “When these men got hold of Saucy Jack, they cut out his lady parts.”

“As close to it as they could,” Hammersmith said. “They cut him over and over in the same places he cut those women, his victims. They let him heal and then they did it again. And again.”

“He didn’t bleed to death?”

“Indeed,” Hammersmith said. “They took measures to keep him alive. His death would have robbed them of their fun.”

“But then he got free of ’em. Otherwise you wouldn’t be here talkin’ to ol’ Blackleg.”

“Yes. He got free. He ambushed Inspector Day and chained him up in the same place he’d been chained himself.”

“Didn’t kill ’im?”

“Tortured him.”

“Like your secret club done to him in turn.”

“Yes.”

“You sayin’ Day’s one of these club members?”

“No. He stumbled upon what was happening and got swept up.”

“You got him free?”

“He freed himself. But he was badly hurt. Walks with a cane now.”

Blackleg sat back and pursed his lips, looked up at the ceiling, and let out a long breath. “That’s bad news, bluebottle. That’s bad business.”

“He’s killed three men now. At least three.”

Blackleg brought his gaze down from the ceiling and leveled it at Hammersmith. “Men, you say?”

“Two of them were Karstphanomen, we think.”

“Who was the other one?”

“A killer of children named Cinderhouse.”

“I remember him. No real loss there. I’d’ve killed that one myself.”

“No loss at all. But Jack still has to be stopped.”

“What about women? Saucy Jack was always a lady-killer. Sounds wrong to me, him killin’ men.”

“I don’t know. I don’t know whether he’s killing the Karstphanomen in addition to killing prostitutes again, like before, or if he’s changed his intent.”

“Could be he’s out for revenge now.”

“I’m sure he is. But if so he’s got a completely different way of working, of thinking. He’s got different reasons for doing what he does and that’s led to different methods.”

“Which would make him as big a puzzle as ever, wouldn’t it?”

“I think so.”

“But he’s doing the same thing? Cutting ’em up? These men you’re talkin’ about he’s after.”

“Not always. Not so far. He cut both Cinderhouse and a doctor into little pieces, took parts of them away with him. But this latest one . . . this one he choked to death.”

“How do you know it’s him what done it?”

“I don’t know,” Hammersmith said.

“But you think it’s him. Why?”

“It’s a bit complicated, but there’s a clue. The Karstphanomen left signs for each other, right out in plain sight, signs that meant nothing to anybody but them. They used chalk, blue chalk, to draw numbers and arrows. They would hunt their victims using their network of men, pointing each other in the right direction.”

“Where was the chalk? I mean, they drew on buildings? On people?”

“How would you draw on a person?”

“If you killed him first.”

“No, nothing like that. They’d just make their mark on the street in front of a house or on the outside wall of a public bath, that sort of thing. And it wouldn’t mean anything to anyone, except another one of them. Most people wouldn’t even notice such a thing, but these men knew to keep their eyes trained to see them.”

“What does that have to do with himself? With Jack?”

“He’s using it now. The blue chalk. I think maybe it amuses him. It’s some sort of parody of their own game. Two of the murdered men had circles drawn in blue chalk near their bodies. I think the circles are zeroes. The number zero. I think he’s saying that a dead member of the Karstphanomen is zeroed out, gone, nothing. He draws an arrow from the zero to the body. Just to make his point.”

Blackleg drank his second whiskey. He licked his upper lip and motioned for another drink. He stared down at his hands on the table while they waited. “A circle of blue chalk and an arrow,” he said. “That don’t say Jack the Ripper to me. That’s nothin’ like anything he ever done before. You thought at all you might be on the wrong track with this?”

“Of course. But he’s out there. I know that for a fact. Jack the Ripper is out on the streets, wandering around this city. And those men, the men whose bodies we’ve found, were already suspected of being Karstphanomen. One of them, Adrian March, was certainly a member. He was a respected detective inspector of the Yard itself. The other was a prominent doctor.”

“He’s killed a policeman?”

“Former policeman. March was retired and in prison. We found his body this morning.”

The barkeep put down another glass and took the empties away.