Charles Dickens once described Victorian London as the ‘magic lantern’ which fired his imagination. It was a phrase that had stuck in my mind since I’d read it, and one I often recalled when I was clattering through the streets in a hansom, or weaving in and out of the ripe-smelling crowds on the pavements.
I’d always thought of Dickens’ description as a positive, even joyous, one. Yet while it was true that the city was potent, colourful, clamorous, and driven by the twin engines of industry and prosperity, it was only after living here for a while that I began to truly appreciate the irony and darkness behind his words. Because under its brassy, gleaming surface, Victorian London was not just dirty and rundown; it was a stinking, black cesspool, an unbelievable Hell that you had to experience first-hand to truly believe in.
I realised that the real reason why Dickens had used the phrase was not because the city was full of wonders, but because to a writer as skilful and philanthropically minded as he was it was the perfect environment to foment ideas and hone opinions.
The Victorian London I knew was maybe ninety-five per cent poor. And when I say poor, I don’t mean living-on-the-breadline-and-scrimping-to-pay-the-rent poor – I mean dying-from-malnutrition-and-freezing-to-death-in-the-streets poor. From my watchers I’d heard horrific tales about the bodies of children lying in gutters for days on end, being gradually eaten by rats or scrawny, wolfish dogs. I’d heard too, from my police contacts, of the rotting corpses – many of them babies – which washed up in their dozens on the banks of the Thames, day after day. My search for the heart had led me to filthy, reeking hovels in dilapidated rookeries, where I’d seen as many as thirty or forty people living, eating and sleeping in a single room no bigger than the average modern kitchen. In such neighbourhoods privies were often nothing but pits at the ends of narrow alleyways shared by up to four hundred people, where the air was often black with flies and gave off a reek so foul it could stun you into unconsciousness as effectively as a billy club. Or alternatively you might find houses clustered around a yard six inches deep in shit (or ‘night soil’), into which bricks had been tossed as stepping stones.
I was surprised to find myself trailing Willoughby into just such a neighbourhood. Once Clover had slipped away to find a vantage point where she could ‘casually’ and ‘accidentally’ intercept the mourners as they filed from the graveside, I watched the actor writhing in orgasmic glee for a while longer, until eventually his body relaxed, the intensity left his face, and he began to look around sleepily, as if he’d just woken from an afternoon nap and was re-acquainting himself with his surroundings.
Leaving the mourners standing by the graveside, he turned and retraced his steps. Hidden behind my own clump of trees, I waited until he’d passed by and then followed him.
I tailed him all the way to the cemetery gates, then watched from the shelter of a stone angel as he climbed back into his brougham. As soon as he’d closed the door and the carriage had pulled ponderously away, I slipped out of the gates, using the other cab drivers as cover, and sprinted round the corner to where my hansom was waiting. I told the driver to follow Willoughby’s carriage, and then for the next half hour or so we meandered back towards the city, our carriages rattling through the mean streets of Shacklewell, Hackney, and round the western edge of Bethnal Green, before eventually arriving in Spitalfields.
Like much of East London, Spitalfields was a labyrinth of rat-infested alleyways, narrow passages and cobbled yards, its sagging slums crammed with immigrants, sailors and destitute families. Because of its association with the tailoring industry, there were over a hundred thousand Jews here and in Whitechapel, many of whom lived in abject poverty and were shunned, often abused, by the native population. Some of my watchers had told me that during the time of the Ripper murders the Jews had been targeted as scapegoats, as a result of which dozens had been kicked or beaten or hacked to death in the streets. If that was true, then the information had never been officially recorded.
Travelling through Spitalfields now, where the snow piled in the gutters and against the sides of the buildings was so black it looked like mounds of soil, I felt nervous, open to attack. Hansom cabs were an unusual sight here, and as we rattled deeper into the heart of darkness, I became increasingly aware of eyes glinting from the shadows of windows and doorways – though some who watched me pass were more blatant, more visible. A pack of skinny, ragged kids perched on a flight of crumbling stone steps turned their sharp, fox-like features in my direction; a fat woman with a red, bloated face, who was squatting on an upturned tub, shouted something incomprehensible around the short pipe clamped between her remaining teeth; at one point a spindly human scarecrow with long, uncombed hair stepped in front of the hansom and made a series of complex, esoteric gestures with his long, skinny fingers before scuttling back into the darkness from which he’d come.
I wondered whether Willoughby’s brougham was getting the same level of scrutiny, the same kind of treatment. The streets soon became so short and narrow we found ourselves following the sound rather than the sight of it. When its clattering progress up ahead slowed and stopped, I told the driver of my cab to halt too. He did so reluctantly, his eyes darting back and forth, obviously scared of being ambushed. Taking a deep breath to steady my nerves – a bad idea, the air stank of sewage and decay – I disembarked from the hansom and stepped out on to filthy cobbles. I paid the driver, who snatched the money out of my hand and pocketed it in a flash, as if he was afraid the mere smell of it would bring the predators flocking.
‘I ’ope yer not wanting me to await yer return, sir?’ he muttered, his flickering eyes so wide I could see the whites around his pupils.
I shook my head. ‘No, you get along. Thank you – and good luck.’
‘It’s you what’ll need the luck I reckon, sir,’ he said.
Before I could reply, he was hauling on the reins, forcing the horse to drag the cab around in a tight U-turn. I watched him go, but it wasn’t until he’d turned the corner that I felt suddenly profoundly alone.
My hand slipped beneath my coat and closed around the handle of my howdah in its concealed pocket. Even in the daylight, places like Spitalfields, with their narrow streets and high, cramped, leaning buildings, seemed oppressive with shadows. I squared my shoulders and straightened my back to make myself look less of a victim. I thought of Benny Magee, the gangland boss who’d sold me out to the Wolves of London, and tried to channel some of his aggressive self-confidence.
Keeping a watchful eye on every side alley and gaping doorway, I hurried in the direction taken by Willoughby’s brougham. The fact that I hadn’t heard it move off suggested it was still parked no more than a street or two away. I imagined Willoughby engaged in the laborious process – for him – of clambering out and paying the driver. There was always the possibility the carriage might have been waylaid, that Willoughby might have come to harm, but I didn’t think so. If that had happened I’d have heard some sort of commotion – shouts or screams, the sounds of a struggle.
Aware I was within spitting distance of what had once been Dorset Street (now demolished), where only a few years ago Jack the Ripper had murdered and mutilated Mary Kelly in her lodgings, I reached the intersection at the end of the street and peered around the corner. Beyond a soot-blackened, drab-fronted building that had the look of a workhouse or an abandoned factory, Willoughby’s brougham was standing motionless. I could see Willoughby – or at least the dark, uncompromising bulk of him – speaking to the driver. I heard the faint chink of coins and then the brougham moved off, leaving Willoughby standing alone.
Feeling exposed, I drew back behind the corner of the wall, but Willoughby was already turning away. I watched him step on to the kerb and shuffle towards the doorway of a grime-coated tenement with cracked walls and windows so caked with soot (those few that had glass in them) they couldn’t possibly admit more than a glimmer of light. A couple of skinny men in ragged clothes, one wearing a tall, crooked stovepipe hat that made me think of Dr Seuss’s Cat in the Hat, were standing sentinel, one each side of the doorway. I watched with interest as Willoughby waddled towards them.
Even from thirty metres away I could hear Willoughby’s wheezing breath, his cane tapping the ground. What was he doing in this neighbourhood? I wondered. Surely he didn’t live here? The man with the stovepipe hat touched a finger to its brim and stepped back as Willoughby took a key from his overcoat pocket. Clearly then they knew him, were even showing him deference. I watched as the actor unlocked the door of the tenement and went inside.
Maybe he was the landlord, here to collect rent? But if so, why dismiss the brougham? And why come alone – or even at all? Surely men of means employed others to do their dirty work?
Perhaps he was visiting someone then? A friend or relative? Could the two men standing by the door be related to him in some way? It seemed inconceivable. Perhaps they worked for him then? Could they be his enforcers, his bodyguards?
I had plenty of questions, but no answers. And no way of getting answers either without approaching the two men and asking them directly.
I considered doing just that. After all, I had a gun, and it was unlikely that they’d be similarly armed. But what at this point would it achieve? I’d spoken to Willoughby already today. Turning up again here now would only make him more wary of me; it might even scare him off. If he was our killer, and if he was associated with the Wolves of London, then the priority had to be to get him to lead me to the heart and take it from there. Which meant playing it cool, not going in with all guns blazing. With a sigh, I made a mental note of the address and slipped away.
Moving quickly, head down, hand still clutching the howdah in my coat, I followed a meandering course along various side streets and back alleys. In my decent clobber I attracted plenty of scrutiny along the way, some of it clearly hostile, but I wasn’t attacked or even challenged.
Eventually I reached Commercial Street, which was wider and more crowded than those around it, and headed north towards Shoreditch, ignoring the shouts of the doxies, who sounded both plaintive and aggressive as they touted for business. Prostitution was the most common profession among the women in this area, with many girls being put to work by their families as young as eleven or twelve – as a result of which they were more often than not riddled with syphilis by their teenage years.
It wasn’t the prostitutes I was worried about, though, even if a lot of them did carry shivs on the off chance of sticking a rich client and stealing his purse. The real threat came from the gangs, which spilled like rats from the slums of ‘Old Nichol’, not far from here; or even the swarms of feral children known as ‘little Arabs’, who would slash a man to death if they thought there was something useful to be had from him.
I’d turned off Old Street, close to where the railway station would open for business in a few years’ time, and was moving along yet another stinking, high-walled alleyway, when I sensed movement behind me. I turned, my fist tightening on the butt of the howdah – and saw a small, hunched, ragged figure silhouetted in the glimmer of murky light at the end of the alleyway.
I narrowed my eyes, trying to make out the figure more clearly. There was something wrong with the lower half of its face. It appeared almost exaggeratedly lantern-jawed, and above the filthy scarf wrapped around its neck, I detected a dull gleam of metal.
‘Well, well, look who it is,’ rasped a voice behind me. ‘You’re a bit far from ’ome, ain’tcha?’
I whirled round again. A man had appeared at the other end of the alley, more dark figures crowding behind him. In the murky December light they appeared almost simian, their hunched bodies bulked out by the layers of ragged clothing they wore to combat the winter cold.
The man who’d spoken walked forward slowly, his thick, scabby lips stretched wide in a grin that revealed a mouthful of black and rotten teeth. His face was craggy, its deep grooves ingrained with dirt, and one of his eyes was milky and bloodshot. He wore a battered bowler hat pushed back on his head and a long, grey, woollen coat that looked and smelled as if it had been trampled by pigs in a sty.
I knew this man. I’d first encountered him in my own time when he’d stepped from a newly formed cloud of yellow smog on the platform at Bank Tube Station and had cut the throat of the person I’d thought was Clover, but who’d turned out to be a shape-shifter working for the Wolves of London.
‘Mr Hulse,’ I said. ‘I was on my way to see you.’
Hulse’s grin widened. ‘Oh, I knows it. Nothing escapes my notice round these parts. Me and the boys thought we’d come and meet yer, save yer shoe leather. Save yer throat too, more than likely. These are perilous streets fer gentlemen such as yerself. There are some shocking coves about.’
I chuckled. ‘How goes it?’
‘Oh, we has had a bountiful Christmas. Bountiful indeed. Ain’t that right, boys?’
His cronies hooted and chortled.
‘Glad to hear it,’ I said, stepping forward to meet Hulse as he swaggered towards me, his hand outstretched.
The hand in question, scarred and filthy, the fingernails either black or missing entirely, was often to be seen wielding a vicious rusty-bladed knife. It was a hand which I knew had committed murder on more than one occasion – yet I grasped it now without hesitation and gave it a firm shake.
One of my first tasks after recovering from the smoke inhalation which had laid me low after arriving here had been to seek out Hulse and offer him a deal. It was a massive risk, but I’d thought about it a lot, and had spent hours talking it through with Clover and Hawkins, discussing all the angles and pitfalls.
I had a theory, you see; a theory to do with the mutability of time. As I’ve said, when I first encountered Hulse he appeared from a cloud of smog at Bank Tube Station and cut the throat of a shape-shifter which had been impersonating Clover, presumably in the hope of catching me unawares and stealing the obsidian heart. The second time I’d met him had been the first time I’d found myself in Victorian London, immediately after what I’d thought was Clover’s murder. On that occasion I’d sought Hulse out, confronted him on his own turf, and received a beating for my troubles. The third time we’d met had been back in my own time, when Hulse had appeared in a police interview room and slashed DI Jensen’s throat, minutes after I’d been forced to hand the heart over as evidence relating to the inquiry into the murder of its original owner, Barnaby McCallum…
Here was where it got complicated.
What if (I’d thought to myself) my first encounter with Hulse had not been his first encounter with me? What if his first encounter with me was my second encounter with him? I remembered how he’d denied all knowledge of Clover’s murder, how he’d responded to my accusations as though he’d never seen or heard of either of us before. He and his cronies had chased me, and when they’d caught me they’d given me a pounding, and might even have killed me if the heart hadn’t zapped me back to the twenty-first century.
But what if, on that occasion, they’d been acting on impulse rather than carrying out the orders of the Wolves of London? Hulse and his men were thieves and cut-throats, and to them my appearance would have instantly identified me as a fish out of water – and probably a rich one at that.
Perhaps, then, they’d merely seen me as easy pickings, and had acted accordingly. It was only because of ‘Clover’s’ murder that I’d assumed they were working for the Wolves of London – but what if they weren’t? What if the Hulse who had slashed the false Clover’s throat was from a later time period?
And if that was the case, then who was to say that I myself hadn’t sent him forward through time to kill the false Clover before she – or rather, it – could kill me? What if Hulse was my agent? On my payroll? His later murder of DI Jensen was harder to explain, but I had a few theories about that as well.
What if the Jensen who Hulse had killed was not the real Jensen? What if he too was a shape-shifter – or the same shape-shifter? I’d already seen evidence that the shape-shifter could survive the physical death of offshoots of itself without suffering any apparent ill effects. So what if the Jensen who had interviewed me (and the one I’d encountered in Jensen’s office stealing the obsidian heart minutes later) had been an offshoot of the shape-shifter whose task had been to procure the heart? If so, then it was possible that Hulse was following my orders. After all, without his intervention I would have been too late to catch Jensen number two in the act of stealing the heart, and therefore wouldn’t have leaped at him, grappled with him, crashed through the window, and ended up here.
The implications made my head spin, but ultimately it was all about cause and effect. It was also about making what I did know work for me as best I could.
‘So what brings a refined gent like yerself to such a lowly quarter as this?’ Hulse leered. ‘Tired of living, is yer?’
Before I could reply I felt something nudge me from behind. I turned to find the figure that had followed me into the alley had now crept forward and was standing right behind me. He was bent over like a hunchbacked old man, gently bumping his head against my thigh.
Hulse laughed. ‘Likes yer, does little Tom. One of his favourites, you are.’
I smiled and placed my hand on the boy’s shoulder. His bones were as thin as a sparrow’s beneath his ragged clothes.
‘Hello, Tom,’ I said.
Tom wasn’t the name the boy had been given at birth, but it was as good as any. In fact, the boy hadn’t been named at all – not as far as any of us knew. It was Hulse who had started calling him ‘Tom’ after Tom Thumb, on account of him being so scrawny.
Tom never spoke, but when he was happy he made a huffing noise that seemed to come from deep inside his lungs. He was making the noise now, and at the same time tilting his head up in little jerks to peer shyly at me. His eyes were a velvety black beneath his long, matted fringe, and I tried to focus my attention on them, even though my gaze, as always, was drawn to the lower half of his face.
Like Hope, Tom had been one of Tallarian’s experiments – one of only two I’d managed to release from the doctor’s laboratory before the place had gone up in smoke. Tallarian had removed Tom’s lower jaw and replaced it with a large, ugly, hinged contraption inset with jagged metal teeth, like the scoop of a digger. The flesh, where the metal had fused into it, was horribly infected, though the same doctor who I’d employed to treat Hope had done his best – and was still doing his best – to keep the infection at bay.
Personally I would have preferred Tom, like Hope, to have moved permanently into my house in Ranskill Gardens, where it was clean and warm, and where he could have received round-the-clock care. But after finding him – thanks to my watchers – living rough in the East End, we’d tried that and it hadn’t worked. The boy had been so unsettled that he’d refused point-blank to eat and had kept running away, despite the kindness shown him by Mrs Peake and her staff. In fact, he had been so unsettled (though never violent; despite my first encounter with him, Tom was a timid soul) that eventually, reluctantly, I’d had to let him return to the filthy streets of the East End, where he seemed happiest. I couldn’t leave him to fend for himself, though, and so I’d paid Hulse to watch out for him and keep him safe. I’d also insisted he bring Tom to a pre-arranged rendezvous point for regular medical check-ups.
Hulse might not have been the ideal guardian and role model, but Tom seemed to be doing okay. He seemed to be thriving, in fact, despite his skinny frame and the infection eating away at his face. As he nuzzled into me, Hulse said, ‘Scratch him behind the ears, mister. He likes that.’
Perhaps it was the way the men behind Hulse snickered that made me feel a sudden stab of anger. Looking at Hulse, I said coldly, ‘He’s a human being, not a dog.’
Instantly Hulse stiffened and his grin disappeared. Suddenly I was reminded that for all his rough-hewn amiability, this man could be volatile, unpredictable. I might be his current meal ticket, but I always got the impression that I had to tread carefully around him, that he was capable of lashing out on impulse if someone rubbed him up the wrong way.
‘I knows that,’ he said, his voice flat, ‘and we treats him like one. Young Tom does well by us. Don’t you worry yourself about that, mister.’
I raised a hand in apology. ‘I know he does, Mr Hulse. And I’m grateful to you for taking care of him. I worry about him, that’s all. I worry about…’ I briefly patted my own jaw, not wanting Tom to see; I was never sure how much he understood of his condition.
Hulse gave a brief nod, but said. ‘He does very well – don’t you, Tom, my boy?’
Tom huffed happily in response.
Hulse’s one good eye flickered from the boy and fixed its beady attention on me. ‘Now, mister, what say you tells us why you’re wandering these streets like a spring lamb in search of the butcher? Or is you just here to take tea and buttered muffins with your dearest chums?’