Faith was looking out of the soot-smudged window. ‘As you wish.’
‘We could go down me local, the Queen’s Head. How’s that sound?’
Faith turned to look at her reproachfully. ‘You intend to consume alcohol again?’
Mary shrugged. ‘It’s just a little celebration. We done so well, you an’ me. Just one drink ain’t gonna hurt, is it?’
‘Information: intoxication impairs performance and compromises judgement.’
Mary laughed. ‘Bleedin’ ’eck, Faith. Come on, just one little drink. Ain’t gonna kill me now, is it?’
12.27 A.m., 9 November 1888, whitechapel, London
The pub — The Queen’s Head — turned out to be another useful location for Faith to log faces. Her database of stored images was rapidly increasing in size. She’d spotted, logged, analysed and filed 17,217 faces in London so far. None of them, of course, were the people she was after. But it meant over seventeen thousand humans ruled out.
As she calmly surveyed the florid faces around her, through clouds of acrid pipe smoke, Mary was enjoying herself. One drink had turned into several drinks and she was now in the middle of a noisy muddle of men and women, leading them in singing along to an accordion player, all of them equally inebriated. The innkeeper winced at the racket as he collected the empty tankards. Keen to begin kicking out his patrons for the night.
Faith approved of Mary Kelly. There was an iron strength in the woman: not physically, of course, but in the way she could command the obedience and respect of others. The kind of person who, in another life, in other more favourable circumstances, might have achieved great things. Instead, all she would ever be was a ‘street woman’, a pauper, quite likely destined for an early grave. If she could feel any emotion for Mary, it would be fondness. Instead, the best she could manage was dispassionate approval.
She watched Mary sing tunelessly for a while, a foghorn voice that carried over the other tuneless voices, then turned back to the task at hand: observing the faces around her.
And it was then, as she glanced around once more to check for any new faces, that she caught sight of a dark-haired young man. Just a glimpse of a face on the far side of the public house. Her breath caught in her throat.
Liam O’Connor.
[Information: 85 % identity match]
She started to push her way through the fog of pipe smoke and heaving, sweaty bodies. Florid, bearded faces loomed closely at hers. Men with gap-toothed smiles leered at her as she squeezed her way frantically through.
For a moment she lost sight of the young man. Then re-established visual contact again a few seconds later. Closer now. She could see his face was slim, his nose prominent beneath two thick arched eyebrows.
[Information: 87 % identity match]
She began to feel adrenaline coursing through her body. Her mind determining the best strategy. To kill him right here in this pub? Or better to watch him discreetly and perhaps follow him when he left at the end of the evening in the hope he was going to lead her back to the others.
Closer now. She could see the young man was the same height and build.
[Information: 88 % identity match]
She needed to be closer; to not have clouds of pipe smoke obscuring her view; or red-faced, drunken fools staggering into her, breathing rancid fumes in her face. She could snap any one of these fools’ necks with the slightest flick of her wrist, and perhaps no one would notice in the press and surge of bodies. A man might collapse to the sawdust-covered floor of this pub and they would all assume he’d passed out from too much drink.
But it wasn’t worth the risk of alerting the attention of Liam O’Connor, now just a few yards away from her, laughing at something being said to him by someone else.
Faith reached to pull her bonnet down a little, hoping to disguise her face. Too late. She noticed his brown eyes flicker on to her. Resting on her… and then a smile for her benefit. No alarm. No flicker of recognition and panic.
No. Just a fuzzy-headed, drunken smile.
‘Hoy! All right?’ the young man called across to her. ‘Buy you a drink, love?’
[Information: not Liam O’Connor]
She ground her teeth. Turned on her heels and started to push and squirm her way through the crowd back to where she’d been standing moments ago. Only to discover Mary was no longer there with her newly made drunken friends.
Chapter 68
12.30 a.m., 9 November 1888, Whitechapel, London
Mary guessed Faith had had enough and taken herself back to the room they were sharing off Miller’s Court. It wasn’t so far; just a couple of streets away from the pub.
She staggered down Dorset Street, cursing and muttering as her feet slipped on rain-slicked cobblestones. She’d only intended to have the one drink. After all, it was well-earned. But one had led to two and more, and she’d spent more of that money than she’d really wanted to. Not that she was too worried about that. They could make that money again tomorrow. Easily.
Faith had an alluring way about her. An innocence and beauty that drew men like bees to honey, like moths to candlelight. So distracted were they with trying to chat her up, it was like stealing pennies from a blind man’s cap.
What a splendid pair we are.
Although Faith was a little peculiar. There was an almost doll-like manner to her expressionless face. As if her features were as rigid as porcelain. And an almost mannequin stiffness to her, as if she was always on guard. Like one of them redcoat-’n’-bearskins standing to attention outside Buckingham Palace.
Mary wondered about her. She was such a puzzle.
She turned left off Dorset Street into the dark alleyway that led into Miller’s Court, a cul-de-sac of dosshouses around a small cobblestoned courtyard that always seemed to reek of human faeces.
She staggered in the dark, steadying herself against one greasy brick wall.
‘Blimey,’ she muttered. ‘Bit too much of the blimmin’ laughing juice.’
Faith was probably already back in their room. Tucked up in the one bed they shared, toe to head. Mary did actually wonder if Faith ever slept. She always seemed to be wide awake, staring up at the cracked plaster of the low ceiling. She wondered what thoughts passed through that mind of hers. What wishes and dreams, wants and needs. She seemed to give so little away.
What a pretty puzzle she is.
Mary was in fact so puzzled by her friend that she failed to notice the shadow of a man entering the alleyway behind her, casting a long veil from the faint amber glow of a gas lamp on Dorset Street, all the way down the dark little alleyway into Miller’s Court. Like some impossibly stretched, impossibly tall being. The shadow fell across her back, marking her with darkness… like the ghostly touch of the Grim Reaper, marking her soul for imminent collection as she entered the last few minutes of her life.
Chapter 69
15 December 1888, Holborn Viaduct, London
‘What we’ve got on the Ripper murders isn’t a lot,’ said Maddy. She’d grabbed the information and dumped it into Bob’s head from Wikipedia back in 2001. Which, given that the site had only been running since January, wasn’t a hugely detailed article.
‘The night of the eighth of November… the early hours of the ninth of November is when the last victim, Mary
