Chapter 68

THE HOLE

WHITECHAPEL—5:01 AM, NOVEMBER 9, 1888

Detective Inspector Walter Andrews dragged on the cigarette, drawing the smoke deep into his lungs.

He breathed out. Smoke filled the dark little cell. The smell of tobacco mingled with the smells of damp and piss that saturated the air. He studied his surroundings.

This was the hole, one of five punishment cells that lay deep in the bowels of the building in Whitechapel Place, home to Great Scotland Yard.

As you headed down towards the punishment cells, it grew hotter and hotter. The men joked it was because you got nearer to hell. It was a bad joke. It was bad because some of them thought it was true.

The iron door had no window. There was a gap between the bottom of the door and the stony floor. They slipped your food through the gap. Stale bread and a cup of water. Once a day.

Men went into the hole fat and proud. They came out thin and broken.

If you were confined in the cell, you shat and pissed on the floor. And you lived with the stink till they let you out. That could be three days, it could be thirty. It could be till you died. After they removed a body, or hauled out a hardly-living prisoner, they washed the cell. But it was only a cursory wipe. It didn’t get rid of the odor.

Andrews felt gloomy being here. He’d brought a chair down and was sitting on it. He looked at the other man, who was huddled in the corner, shivering.

Blood covered virtually every inch of the fellow’s body. His clothes were drenched. His hair was matted. His eyes were set white and wide in his blood-dark face.

Andrews dropped his cigarette and crushed it with his shoe.

He asked the question he’d wanted to ask for hours.

“Why?”

The wide, white eyes flickered over to him. But the man in the corner said nothing. Just stared at Andrews.

“Tell me,” he asked.

The man trembled.

“You were a clocksmith before you joined up, weren’t you?” said Andrews.

Again the man failed to respond.

“That’s a delicate trade. Requires dexterity. Skill. Care and attention. Did cutting open those women require dexterity?”

The man stayed quiet.

Andrews said, “We chased him. Mr Troy and myself. Ten others. We cornered him and bound him, cast him down. He failed, my friend. He failed, and so did you.”

Andrews considered the man. Jonas Troy’s words came to mind.

“We all have evil in us, Andrews. The great challenge is to contain it, keep it leashed. Especially if we are called by darkness.”

This man had been unsuccessful. He’d succumbed. He’d weakened. The voice from the pit had whispered in his ear, and he’d been seduced.

But there had been no promises, Andrews knew that. No gifts handed over. No money. No women. No drink. Nothing. There was no need of bribery.

As Troy would say, “Evil is within us. It is part of our nature. All that is required is a trigger. And he, the evil one, knows what that trigger is. He awakens the need in us to be cruel and violent. He unearths it from our deepest, darkest places. He uses it for his own gain. He calls out to the evil, Andrews. He calls out for a ripper. And a Ripper comes.”

And a Ripper comes.

But who would have guessed it would be this man.

When Andrews and a colleague had brought him in nearly four hours earlier, they had to provide a false name and also lied about why they had arrested him. His true identity had to be kept hidden for now. The blood covering him made it difficult for the desk sergeant and other police officers who were milling around to recognize the man. But soon they would know. Before they did, Andrews had to deal with the situation.

“You are a seer,” Troy had told him. “You keep this secret, and you guard it with your life. This is what we do. We hunt this evil, and we deal with its aftermath.”

Andrews had always had visions. When he was a child growing up in Suffolk, his mother would hide things, and he would find them. If he concentrated, the hiding places would appear in his head.

His mother would tell him, “We are special, Walter. We have a gift from God, and we must use it to protect people.”

He joined the Metropolitan Police Force in 1869 and was soon using his gift to solve crimes. Nine years after he joined, he was promoted to Inspector. Two months ago, he’d been sent to Whitechapel to investigate the Ripper killings.

When he arrived, he knew immediately who was truly responsible for the murders.

His visions grew more vivid, more violent. He met Jonas Troy and the others. He learned more about his past, about his calling. He learned that the victims of the Ripper crimes were seers like him.

“They are your family,” Troy told him. “We are blood. We are made by God to do this work.”

Now he thought, What am I going to do with this man?

In reality, he was a murderer. He should hang. It was that simple.

It’s that simple if you don’t know the truth, thought Andrews. And the truth made things more complicated.

“Why didn’t you fight it?” he asked the man, exasperation in his voice.

It was easy for Andrews to say that. Easy for him to fight the evil. He was chosen. He had a gift. He had something inside him that kept evil at bay. Something the evil one claimed from all the victims. Something this blood-soaked man had ripped out of them.

But he still thought, Why don’t they reject the darkness?

Then the man spoke. “I am only human, Andrews.”

“You are a murderer.”

“He made me do it. You know this is true. He told me about you, Andrews. He said I should kill you because you were a seer. You could hunt him. You had . . . you had within something he wanted, something he craved.”

Andrews nodded.

“So you see,” said the man. “You can ward off the evil he speaks, the evil he is. You can parry it away. I cannot. I am merely human.”

“So am I.”

“No, you are more than human. He told me this. You are more.”

They lapsed into silence. Andrews thought about things. After a while he asked, “What shall I do with you?”

“You know I shan’t kill again. Not now that you have contained him. He is no longer in my head.”

“He can get into your head again, my friend. He can reach you from his confines. He can and does. This is how he releases himself. He calls out to the evil in men, and they kill for him. They spill blood. Then he is released, and so begins another hunt, another quest to kill five seers.”

“I am sorry, Andrews,” said the man.

“I know you are. Do you see what would have happened if he had succeeded?”

“I realize now, but . . . but you will never understand what it is like to feel evil within you, feel it corrupting your . . . your soul.”

“The world will die if he is freed from the curse.”

“I know . . . I know.”

“He will destroy everything.”

“Yes, I realize . . . ”

“His influence is already strong in the world. Evil is everywhere. It always has been. But it will be nothing to what will be unleashed if he ever kills five, and this game is concluded. The damned game.”

The man shook his head and wept.

Andrews said, “I don’t know what to do with you.”

The man shuddered and cried.

Andrews spoke again. “Tell me, my friend, what do you say? If you were standing where I am standing, and you had Jack the Ripper in this cell, what would you do?”

Detective Inspector Frederick George Abberline lifted his head and looked Andrews in the eye.