Chapter 40

MONTAGUE JOHN DRUITT

Faultless asked her, “Are you all right?”

Tash nodded and said it was okay.

He narrowed his eyes, fixing on her.

“You don’t look it.”

“It’s fine. I’ll tell you later.”

“You look pale.”

“I’m all right.”

The briefcase sat on her kitchen table. Time had blemished the brown leather. Time and blood. It was still wet in places. Faultless had wiped it with his hand, and his skin went red. Slime was also draped over the briefcase. The clasps were rusty. There was a brass name tag. It was covered in mud.

“I’m sorry about this,” Faultless had told Tash ten minutes earlier when she’d let him and Hallam into her flat. “He said he had something to show me, something he found where those boys were killed. He wanted to bring it here. I thought it would be . . . ”

“Yeah, fine,” she’d said, her voice filled with panic. She gaped at the briefcase. To Faultless, it looked as if she were staring at an animal that could kill her. She was carefully watching it as it sneaked by. She was hoping it wouldn’t see her and attack.

When they had walked into the living room, Jasmine was sitting up of the sofa, rubbing her eyes.

“Hello, Jasmine,” Hallam had said, and the way he’d said it made Faultless squirm. He thought about something. It reawakened a memory. He tried to dig it up, but it was buried deep.

Tash had suggested Jasmine go to her room, and the girl had tottered off, looking tired.

Now in the kitchen, Charlie kept a close eye on Tash. She looked twitchy. He clocked her problem, or thought he did, and said, “Hallam, you’ve been really helpful, but me and Tash, we need to talk, now.”

Buck stared, his mouth open. The scar under his left eye wiggled.

“I think it’s time you went,” Faultless said.

“But . . . but what about my . . . my case?”

Faultless stared at him. Buck cowered. He reared back.

Faultless said, “You’ve been a great help, Hallam, see you around.”

Buck mumbled.

“You say something?” said Faultless.

“It’s mine.”

“You want me to call the cops, Hallam? You want to say it’s yours to them?”

Buck mumbled again.

“Go on, off you fuck,” said Faultless.

Hallam slipped out of the kitchen. Faultless looked at Tash. She stared at the case, chewing her nails.

“What’s the matter?” he asked.

“I . . . I’ve seen it before, Charlie.”

“This?” he said, pointing at the case.

She nodded and then asked, “What does the name tag say?”

He wiped the dirt away and read. “Montague John Druitt.”

They looked at each other and shrugged—but fifteen minutes later, they were staring at Faultless’s MacBook, both speechless.

“He was a Ripper suspect,” said Faultless, reading from the Web page. “Druitt was one of many suspected of the Whitechapel murders in 1888.”

“What . . . what’s his briefcase doing here?”

Faultless shook his head.

“Did he do it?” she asked.

“No one knows. No one knows who the Ripper was.”

“What happened to him?”

Faultless studied the page. After reading he said, “In November 1888, days before the body of Mary Kelly, the Rippers last victim, was found, Druitt apparently lost his job as a teacher. He was said to have drowned in the Thames. Committed suicide, it says here.”

He stared at the briefcase. Bloody history on Tash’s kitchen table. An artifact worth a fortune to Ripper buffs.

He looked at the page again for a while and then he continued. “Three years later, an MP called Richard Farquharson claimed Jack the Ripper had been ‘the son of a surgeon’ who topped himself the same night as Druitt did. Says here Farquharson lived ten miles from Druitt’s family and knew them. A journalist called George R. Sims wrote a few years later that the Rippers body had been found in the Thames.”

“So it was him?”

“According to this stuff, most of those who are in to this Ripper stuff don’t think there’s any evidence against Druitt.”

Faultless sat back, knitting his fingers behind his head. He gazed at the photo of Druitt on the internet page, a young man resting his head on his hand. Then he said to Tash, “You said you’d seen his case before. How come?”

Her eyes were wide with fear. “I . . . I saw it on a fiery raft.”

“A what?”

She told him, and while she did, he completely rejected her explanation in his head and tried to see reason and logic in this slowly evolving pandemonium.

There was none.