‘Same height, same build. Hair? Similar enough,’ said Dr Shivershev. ‘By the time we’re finished, those will be the only features by which to identify her. I will ask you again, Susannah, open the fucking trunk.’
Mary let out a whimper and we both looked at her. She had sat in a chair and was staring off into the distance, beyond the tiny confines of the squalid room. For someone in the business of luring innocents to their death, she was a nervous thing.
‘Mary, check the window is covered. We don’t want any prying eyes,’ said Dr Shivershev.
‘I have done it several times already,’ she said.
‘Then you won’t mind doing it again!’
I opened the trunk and unpacked all the linens we had stuffed around Mrs Wiggs. Mary had the job of burning these in the fire. She had to do this slowly, or else the flames crept too high and burned the mantel. She sat staring into the flames, singing that bastard song.
Dr Shivershev and I lifted Mrs Wiggs onto the bed. He took a knife and sliced through her dress, running up her body as if it were an autopsy. He left her chemise underneath, which was a great relief because I did not want to look on her naked. Call me strange, but it would have felt an additional indignity for her. I hated her, but I didn’t want to humiliate her. I passed the clothes to Mary, who took them and burned them, piece by piece.
Mrs Wiggs was a lot stiffer than when we’d packed her, which made the job of taking her out a little easier. Earlier she’d been a ragdoll, but now the blood had sunk to the bottom and settled, making purple and burgundy spots on one side. It was not so hard to reposition a body like that, only a little manipulation was necessary; in all honesty, it was just like removing a dead patient at the hospital, an inanimate object. I made a silent promise that I would reward myself with the luxury of remorse if I survived.
We placed her in the middle of the bed, her shoulders flat, but we had to leave her body inclined to the left, because of how she’d got twisted up inside the trunk. Her head lay on her left cheek.
‘You’re the expert, Susannah,’ said Dr Shivershev, ‘given your extensive interest in the Whitechapel murders. What do you suggest?’
‘It must be vicious, and you must cut the throat first, left to right. That is something he always does,’ I said.
He knelt on the bed and lifted Mrs Wiggs’ upper body so that her back was resting on his legs. He held her face and chin in his left hand, and with his right he slit her throat. Her gaze remained fixed on the wooden partition dividing that room from next door. She had retained her flat-eyed expression and bloated face, but the blood only dribbled out of her neck.
‘The cut needs to be deep, all the way down to her spine,’ I said. ‘There should be more blood.’
‘We will collect blood and spread it by hand. If she were alive, it would spurt out and drain down the side of the bed. We will need to re-create that,’ he said.
He opened her up, ripped her from the stomach upwards. I saw no point being sickened or coming over all faint, it would not help me. I imagined myself back in the hospital, assisting a doctor, as I had many times. I watched as he removed the surface of the abdomen and thighs and emptied the abdominal cavity, adhering carefully to the descriptions I provided of the previous victims as detailed at length in the newspapers.
‘Stop,’ I said. ‘It’s too neat, too much like an operation. The Ripper cuts with venom. He tears, he is in a hurry and he has rage. You must make it… messy and take less care.’
He nodded. ‘Right, then let us really give them something to write about in your precious newspapers.’
When he hacked off the breasts as if he were sawing through meat, my cheeks watered, and I considered singing too. When he dumped them on the nightstand, I recited the Lord’s Prayer in my head, or so I thought.
Dr Shivershev looked up at me, his forearms slathered in blood. ‘What did you say?’
‘Nothing. I’m only praying.’
‘It’s a bit late for that.’
He made jagged wounds in the arms. I described the shapes that I had read about in the papers and felt dizzy. I thought of my grandfather, and wondered if the dizziness was my soul leaving my body along with any goodness that was left from him or if it was just the awful stench of burning clothes as Mary fed the fire.
Dr Shivershev was still too skilful, the work should be rougher, I said. He tutted, then severed the tissues of the neck all the way down to the bone. The blood seeped out, a leak as opposed to a flow. All the while, Mary sat facing the fire, rocking backwards and forwards. The flames jumped and spat and threatened to burn the wall above them. He removed the uterus and kidneys and left these, with one of the breasts, under the head. He threw the other breast by the right foot and placed the liver between the feet, removed the intestines and threw them down on the right side, and the spleen on the left. Mary continued to sing, her weak voice running through me.
‘Do you really have to keep singing that? Surely it will irritate your neighbours, as it irritates me,’ I said.
‘I don’t know what else to do,’ she said.
Dr Shivershev flicked blood so it made lines up the right side of the wall, to imitate the spurt of the artery. He sat down and stared at his bloody hands and forearms, wiped his forehead with a
