Dear Boss [Chapter One]
Title: Dear Boss [Chapter One]
Author: Corleoned (Me XD)
Pairings: John/ Paul, Slight Paul/Ringo
Rating: R for murder, slums, graphic descriptions of violence, and angry mansex. 14-A for this chapter.
Summary: The late August of 1888 bridged the gap between modern violence and Victorian innocence, the idealism of Victorian society shaken to it's core by a sexual sadist and serial killer seemingly running rampant around East-London. No one had seen him, yet no one could forget him. He lived, and still lives, in infamy, as Jack the Ripper.
Author's Notes: This is the first chapter, so no exclusive mansex, much more forensics, but plenty next chapter, don't worry XDD Also, I'm a comment-whore, so if you somehow find my stories acceptable, the next section will probably come faster if you comment, not going to lie |D
Historical Notes: Please excuse any discrepencies, they obviously were not meant.
See prologue for general historical notes.
Disclaimer: I own nothing of The Beatles or Jack the Ripper.
Prologue: community.livejournal.com/beatlesslash/1196402.html#cutid1
Historical Notes:
'The killing was the best part. It was the dying I couldn't take.'
Paul McCartney shook off the forbidding red sky as he made his way into the entrance of number four Whitehall Place, forcing the heavy dark auburn door closed behind him. Having effectively cut off the razor-sharp rain biting into his skin, he turned his thoughts to the situation at hand, wondering why on earth he had been called at 6:00 in the morning to police headquarters. Not that he wasn’t familiar with Scotland Yard, but to be called so early.... They truly must be desperate.
Politely he takes a seat in the front hall of the headquarters, crossing his legs and patiently waiting to be noticed, thinking deeply about the strange events already having taken place that morning. He leans back in the uncomfortably stiff chair, allowing his head to rest slightly upon his fingers, a strangely endearing frown drifting aross the corner of his mouth as the past few hours come flooding back to him, almost as if he was reliving them, his memories were always so vivid....
--------------------------
Paul woke to a sharp knock on the door of his expansive West-London home, eyes opening to a horizon that was painted with blood. Smog congestion, no doubt from the frequent dock fires on the water. Pulling his nude form from the bed, he slowly and unhappily gets dressed, shivering from the cold wet summer winds already nipping through his window.
‘Alright, alright, I’m coming!’ Paul barks impatiently as the knocking increases in both insistency and annoyance. Sighing, he lackadaisically bends one knee after another woodenly down the steps of the impressive grand staircase, pulling his housecoat more tightly around himself before finally addressing the painfully intrusive noise. Sluggishly, he opens the polished white oak of the door to the face of a blue bottle with a shockingly hound-like face, Paul’s expression visibly unimpressed. If some sort of character had to come knocking at his door in desperation at six in the morning, they should at least have the decency to be female….
‘Am I needed?’ Paul asks lethargically, his voice half dull from sleep and rubbing lazily at an eye. He takes one look at the cop’s face before snorts dismissively, nodding.
‘Right, I’m needed,’ Paul replies listlessly to his own question, sleepily shooing the man off and slamming the door to the impaling winds.
Still groggy, he gradually manages to find his way down the cold, decidedly less grand steps of the servants quarters, stumbling down the awkwardly jagged steps, appearing as pumpkin teeth to him in the meagre morning light.
‘S'Cuse,Starkey. Just grabbing ‘the tools,’ He mumbles, stumbling through the darkness and stabbing his foot several times on questionable objects. ’Joy,’ He mutters, noting with some sort of grim satisfaction that his sarcasm was well in place for the day.
Paul drops to his knees, starting to crawl on his hands , finally managing to produce a human skull in addition to a suspiciously odd chart. He unfurled the latter slightly, chuckling contemptuously at it’s full glory before rolling it up again and tucking it under his arm. On the other side of the small enclosure, a sleepy Starkey yawned, his threadbare blanket dangling precariously on top of his head, the tip tickling his considerable nose.
‘What’s all this then?’ He slurs. (Hopefully, Paul prayed, from lack of sleep and not the drink.)
‘Ah, well, today I believe I’m practicing the fine art of phrenology, my dear boy,’ Paul deadpans, tossing the skull lightly in the air before catching it, slightly pleased with his own reflexes and winking at Starkey lightly.
‘And a fine art it is…Is that where you lie to them coppers and tell ‘em you’re doing all them monkey stuff but really mixing with all them diddly-bobs?’ Starkey replies, blinking slowly in return and stretching like a cat, kneading the bed lightly with his hands, much to the amusement of Paul.
‘If you mean where I pretend to adhere to the blatant pseudo-science of assessing peoples’ personalities by their head and facial features, while actually solving crimes with perfect mathematical and scientific knowledge, then yes, yes I am ‘mixing with all them diddly-bobs‘,’ He responds affectionately, ruffling his hair as he stands.
‘My little feral child, a human cannot be assessed from their head shape or facial features any more than whore can help spreading her legs…’ He states matter-of-factly. ‘I know from experience. Take for example, my nose. Now, if I pursued this baffling misuse of Darwinian theory, I would be a naive, gentle, hardworking, and slightly simpleminded man with a rather small set of ‘assets‘, which we both know is untrue…’
‘If you say so…’ Starkey mutters with a small grin, turning over to his left hand side to avoid the oncoming playful smack as Paul proceeds past him up the rickety stairs. ‘But if my nose stands for anything, my assets are overwhelming….’
---------------------
‘Ah, Sir Paul,’ A voice finally calls out grandly, the head sergeant heading towards him and eagerly shaking his accidentally extended hand, several coppers following behind like ducks after their mother. ‘Boys, this is Sir Paul McCartney, the Christ Church College Mathematical Lecturer at Oxford University and expert in Phrenology, honestly, such an accomplished man at only twenty-one…... Sir Paul, these are the boys.’
‘Hello, boys,’ Paul deadpans, coughing awkwardly at the use of his full title and achievements, rubbing at the back of his neck with embarrassment. ‘May we then?’
-----------------------------
The white sheet was pulled back when Paul walked in, revealing the mutilated body of a small woman, her clothing still pasted to her skin from the torrential downpour outside, but her wounds still evident beneath the fabric. Paul nearly gags, but manages to hide any insecurities he felt about inspecting death behind a solidly stable mask. Now came the acting.
He sighed, becoming visibly annoyed. ‘I asked you to remove the clothing! My god, do I have to do everything around here? Am I Atlas? Do I have to hold up the world here? I’m certainly not asking for it! The removal of clothing is necessary for the study of phrenology!’ He trills hysterically, wondering if waving his hands in the air was a bit much, although silently proud of his obvious acting skills.
The faces of the policemen remain completely unconvinced, staring at Paul like he’d gone insane. At least their eyes had gotten wider….
‘But, I thought all that was about the head and face…’ One cop finally peeps up meekly, hiding behind the others, taking cover from the sure world of abuse coming his away.
Paul takes a step towards him before slapping him harshly across the face. ‘Must you question me? Do I see the word ‘expert’ in your title? No, I see the word ‘copper’, and lord knows that’s not much of a title at the best of times,’ He snarls, raising a elegantly arched brow as the group of cops quickly scuttle like crabs out the door of the makeshift mortuary. Sighing in relief, Paul quickly shuts the door and turns the key in the lock, swiftly tossing his props to the side and clapping his hands together eagerly.
‘Finally, alone at last,’ He murmurs sarcastically, rubbing his palms with slight nervousness before making his way over to the body, assessing the figure. 5’2, brown eyes, dark complexion. Paul pulls his trousers up slightly to allow him to crouch, taking a strand of wet hair from the rain and rubbing it vigorously between his fingers until it dried at the tip. Brown hair, slightly turning grey. Old, around forty-five.
Taking a hooked utensil from the table, he grimly pulled back her upper lip, revealing or rather, exposing the fact that five of her front teeth were missing, slight discolouration along the gumlines and on the lone diligent soldiers that remained. All the same, small, delicate, almost pixie-like features shone through the grit on her face, high cheekbones paired with clear grey eyes.
She had been pretty once, but not now. Not for a while now. If the monster had not snatched her, the drink certainly would’ve.
Paul stands awkwardly, never knowing exactly what to do when he’s stopped observing a patient. Pulling back, he notices a scar on her forehead, almost faded, probably from some sort of childhood accident, definitely not as a result of this incident. She’d had a home once, that was certain. A few meagre possessions were collected neatly to her left. One, a shard of glass, rare in boarding-houses, which, by the few facts they had managed to gather in such a short time, she had been working to gain admittance to after being thrown out. Not even having the tuppence for standing room, she had drank the money away, but declared she’d be back after earning the money on the corner. She had a new hat, a bonnet, out of place with the rest of her appearance. She had announced that for the first time in a long time, she felt beautiful, before turning the corner and becoming lost in the thick London fog.
That was the last time anyone had seen her alive.
Paul sighs, running a hand through his hair and staring sadly at the face before pulling the sheet back over her face respectfully. He was never one for death, and he still had to do the process in increments. It sometimes was difficult when he remembered these were real women, not simply some soft of case file for him to observe, although the argument could be made….
He quickly stares down at the notes given to him, Mary Ann Nicols, last seen at one thirty in the morning, pronounced dead by a local doctor at 3:30AM.
Spotting what he needed, Paul quickly ducks under the cloth of the camera standing erect in the corner of the room, quickly taking several pictures for his own use before turning off all the lamps. Carefully, he pulls out the Kodak film, pushing up his sleeves as he meticulously dips the nitrate-based film in the designated solution. Ten minutes later, he pulls the film free of the inky darkness, holding it up to the light, smiling slightly as he pins the wet, dark film to the line above him. Photography was a new, expensive, and flammable practice, but no doubt it would revolutionize the art of police work, as would the much newer science of fingerprinting, if the daft bosses would ever get a whiff of it....
Waiting for the film to dry, he leans against the table as he stares down at the report for a final time, reviewing the victim while periodically glancing down at her body.
When it suddenly clicked.
It fit too well. It all just fit too well to be a coincidence, too violent to be the calling card of anyone else. Anyone else but that figure in the fog, the one he‘d almost caught on another job no more than a month ago…
Paul finds his temper pushed. He had gotten away. He lost. Paul hated losing. He knew he wouldn‘t lose this time. He knew his calling cards, he knew them before the police would even catch on to him, lord knows how long that would take. The stomach was sliced from right to left, meaning that the assailant was either left-handed, as he was (He had not allowed his schoolteachers to beat it out of him, they had to suffer with reading his smudged papers), or somehow cunningly switched to his left hand to deter suspicion. It would be awkward to drag a knife against the flow of a man‘s body. He had much more freedom to cut and impale if he performed his deed left-handed, as Paul suspected it occurred.
The bruises on either side of the jaw and the lacerations on the tongue were obviously a sign of a struggle, and choking, just like the other girl.... Even the cuts on the right side of the woman’s neck was a perfect match, once again an indication of ambidextrosity, and skill with a moderately large blade, since the incision was deep. Eight inches, if the good doctor was correct. Completely severing all tissue down to the vertebrae, practically decapitating the poor girl.
He’d never forget picking up that woman’s body, her head rolling off in his hands. And then those eyes, glinting almost mischeviously in the darkness, as if taunting him to come play. Just try to find him in the darkness known as Hell’s Quarter….
Paul’s temper reaches his brink, slamming the report on the table and shakily pulling the sheet back over the woman, ignoring the fact he hadn’t even bothered to look at her lower body. If it was anything like the killer’s last crime, it was a violent stomach wound, several key entrails missing, including the uterus.
‘Definitely a sex crime,’ He murmurs, his anger now pushing him forward as he snatches the dried photograph off the line and quickly makes his way to the homicide files, praying the idiots of the great Scotland Yard had sorted it by month for once.
‘The first crime is usually committed closest to ‘home’,’ Paul mutters, pulling out several files and starting to flip through them anxiously, the door rattling slightly, Paul desperately flipping through a heavy stack before finally finding the unfortunate prize-winning girl.
‘Emma Smith…beggar’s quarter….’ He breathes, grabbing her picture from her files and pocketing it as well as the recently developed photo of Nicols. Quickly he runs to the door, opening it with a raised brow, leaning casually against the frame. ‘Yes?’ He murmurs politely, but honestly tiring of the hound-faced copper’s intrusions. He would kill the messenger, if he this kept going on….
‘Excuse me, sir, but I send a new assignment from the sergeant’ He says timidly, his metaphorical tail between his legs.
‘Oh, do you?’ Paul finally snaps in an increasingly shrill falsetto, losing his patience as he slips out of the room, closing the door behind him for modesty’s sake. ‘Am I a student then? I was under the assumption that I was a professor, but apparently I was mistaken! Why don’t I just wear a bloody dunce cap and sit in the corner? Would that suit the sergeant, hmm? Hmm? HMM?’ He hisses callously, completely aware of how melodramatic he was being. Straightening his coat conspicuously and letting out an uncomfortably long sigh, he replaces his scowl with a charmingly disarming smile and give the cop a playful and slightly apologetic wink. ‘Sorry, chum. Fire away.’
‘Well, sir,’ The copper brays, Paul almost letting out a loud cough of ‘Dog‘ but deciding against it. ‘There have been a number of Irish terrorist attacks in the past few weeks, most recently on this very building, but most uncomfortably close to the government buildings, near to Whitechapel in East London. I believe the sergeant was hoping for you to-’
‘Yes, yes, I’m aware, he wants to send his faithful little hounddog-’ He interrupts rudely, cursing his choice of words as he attempts to hold himself together.
‘Right. Well unfortunately, I am assessing a dead woman at the moment, so the Irish-American Fenians and their shenanigans will have to wait….’ He snaps again, putting a hand on the doorknob with full intention of pushing it open, but almost running into it instead, letting off a low stream of curses and explicatives as he realizes he’s locked the key inside.
‘You’ve locked the key inside,’ The copper states unhelpfully, blinking as Paul attempts to rattle the door open. Paul sighs as he realizes it’s no use, distracting himself from his embarrassment and awkwardness by slicking his hair back into place with the aid of a comb from his back pocket.
‘Right. We can keep this embarrassing little incident between us, can‘t we, ol‘ boy?’ Paul attempts with false joviality, laughing lightly but secretly still fuming at his stupidity. He'd show them all. He'd face both cases at once. And he'd solve them both in record time. That meant associating in one place, where both the killer and the Irish Fenians resided….
Whitechapel.
‘If you say so, sir,’ The policeman responses dully, but not without some smugness as he avoids Paul's gaze, desperately in danger of losing his momentary burst of confidence. ‘I’ve never said anything of the incidents in the past. Multiple incidents, I may add. My, the first week you came in, must’ve been six times before it finally connected, if I remember correctly, and of course, the master key only comes in at closing, so you simply had to wait all day before finally entering the room to a decaying, smelly body... Do you remember that, sir?’
Paul’s ears turn slightly red, jaw fixed as he nods, his customary public smile fixed in a painfully saccharine grin.
‘Yes. Yes I do. Give Harold the key-keeper my regards for me, ’ He purrs sweetly, before turning, ’Dogface….' He mutters, before walking out the door and onto the busy London streets, the pair of eyes transfixed in his mind.
He would find him. It was only a matter of time.
It was only a matter of time...
--------------------------------
In some deep remote corner of the Eastern quarter, an auburn-haired man sits in the corner of a dark, noisy pub, business wrecking havoc despite morning's first light having been spotted hours ago over the blood-red horizon. Not that it mattered. Light did not dare to show itself here.
The man smiles slightly in spite of himself, eyes strangely dead despite the dull lamplight flickering some feeble light into them. Chuckling croakingly, the man tips back another ale, somehow possessing the ability to be completely drunk and yet utterly sober at the same moment. He was simply waiting for him. He had burrowed his way into that man's mind like a maggot, squirming deeply into his brain, and no method known to man or death would remove him.
'It's only a matter time, Mr. McCartney,' He grins crazily, mouthing 'I'm quite mad' to several passers-by. 'It's only a matter of time....'
Author: Corleoned (Me XD)
Pairings: John/ Paul, Slight Paul/Ringo
Rating: R for murder, slums, graphic descriptions of violence, and angry mansex. 14-A for this chapter.
Summary: The late August of 1888 bridged the gap between modern violence and Victorian innocence, the idealism of Victorian society shaken to it's core by a sexual sadist and serial killer seemingly running rampant around East-London. No one had seen him, yet no one could forget him. He lived, and still lives, in infamy, as Jack the Ripper.
Author's Notes: This is the first chapter, so no exclusive mansex, much more forensics, but plenty next chapter, don't worry XDD Also, I'm a comment-whore, so if you somehow find my stories acceptable, the next section will probably come faster if you comment, not going to lie |D
Historical Notes: Please excuse any discrepencies, they obviously were not meant.
See prologue for general historical notes.
Disclaimer: I own nothing of The Beatles or Jack the Ripper.
Prologue: community.livejournal.com/beatlesslash/1196402.html#cutid1
Historical Notes:
- Blue-bottle, cop, bosses, copper: Slang terms for policeman.
- Two now standard procedures in forensics; namely, photography and fingerprinting, fingerprinting having only been invented four years before the Ripper murders, and photography only having been taken up this year.
- Film had only been created that year, with nitrate. Therefore, film was obviously flammable and extremely dangerous to store in large quantities. For that reason, most photographic records of crimes were spread erratically around, as to not be a threat.
- Phrenology was a pseudo-science born out of Darwinian thory that the personality traits of a person could be seen in their skull shape and facial structure. It was a pseudo-science because most of the 'defining' traits of a criminal were usually used to inflame racist attitudes in English society. 'Criminal' traits were traits immediately attributed to Jews, homosexuals and people of every color, no matter what they looked like.
- The Irish-American Fenians were the resistance movement of the Irish people at the time, the equivilant of the IRA.
- Agewise, twenty-one was still a considerable age when to become a lecturer at. However, it is not much younger than Lewis Caroll, author of Alice in Wonderland, who became a professor himself at 25.
'The killing was the best part. It was the dying I couldn't take.'
Paul McCartney shook off the forbidding red sky as he made his way into the entrance of number four Whitehall Place, forcing the heavy dark auburn door closed behind him. Having effectively cut off the razor-sharp rain biting into his skin, he turned his thoughts to the situation at hand, wondering why on earth he had been called at 6:00 in the morning to police headquarters. Not that he wasn’t familiar with Scotland Yard, but to be called so early.... They truly must be desperate.
Politely he takes a seat in the front hall of the headquarters, crossing his legs and patiently waiting to be noticed, thinking deeply about the strange events already having taken place that morning. He leans back in the uncomfortably stiff chair, allowing his head to rest slightly upon his fingers, a strangely endearing frown drifting aross the corner of his mouth as the past few hours come flooding back to him, almost as if he was reliving them, his memories were always so vivid....
--------------------------
Paul woke to a sharp knock on the door of his expansive West-London home, eyes opening to a horizon that was painted with blood. Smog congestion, no doubt from the frequent dock fires on the water. Pulling his nude form from the bed, he slowly and unhappily gets dressed, shivering from the cold wet summer winds already nipping through his window.
‘Alright, alright, I’m coming!’ Paul barks impatiently as the knocking increases in both insistency and annoyance. Sighing, he lackadaisically bends one knee after another woodenly down the steps of the impressive grand staircase, pulling his housecoat more tightly around himself before finally addressing the painfully intrusive noise. Sluggishly, he opens the polished white oak of the door to the face of a blue bottle with a shockingly hound-like face, Paul’s expression visibly unimpressed. If some sort of character had to come knocking at his door in desperation at six in the morning, they should at least have the decency to be female….
‘Am I needed?’ Paul asks lethargically, his voice half dull from sleep and rubbing lazily at an eye. He takes one look at the cop’s face before snorts dismissively, nodding.
‘Right, I’m needed,’ Paul replies listlessly to his own question, sleepily shooing the man off and slamming the door to the impaling winds.
Still groggy, he gradually manages to find his way down the cold, decidedly less grand steps of the servants quarters, stumbling down the awkwardly jagged steps, appearing as pumpkin teeth to him in the meagre morning light.
‘S'Cuse,Starkey. Just grabbing ‘the tools,’ He mumbles, stumbling through the darkness and stabbing his foot several times on questionable objects. ’Joy,’ He mutters, noting with some sort of grim satisfaction that his sarcasm was well in place for the day.
Paul drops to his knees, starting to crawl on his hands , finally managing to produce a human skull in addition to a suspiciously odd chart. He unfurled the latter slightly, chuckling contemptuously at it’s full glory before rolling it up again and tucking it under his arm. On the other side of the small enclosure, a sleepy Starkey yawned, his threadbare blanket dangling precariously on top of his head, the tip tickling his considerable nose.
‘What’s all this then?’ He slurs. (Hopefully, Paul prayed, from lack of sleep and not the drink.)
‘Ah, well, today I believe I’m practicing the fine art of phrenology, my dear boy,’ Paul deadpans, tossing the skull lightly in the air before catching it, slightly pleased with his own reflexes and winking at Starkey lightly.
‘And a fine art it is…Is that where you lie to them coppers and tell ‘em you’re doing all them monkey stuff but really mixing with all them diddly-bobs?’ Starkey replies, blinking slowly in return and stretching like a cat, kneading the bed lightly with his hands, much to the amusement of Paul.
‘If you mean where I pretend to adhere to the blatant pseudo-science of assessing peoples’ personalities by their head and facial features, while actually solving crimes with perfect mathematical and scientific knowledge, then yes, yes I am ‘mixing with all them diddly-bobs‘,’ He responds affectionately, ruffling his hair as he stands.
‘My little feral child, a human cannot be assessed from their head shape or facial features any more than whore can help spreading her legs…’ He states matter-of-factly. ‘I know from experience. Take for example, my nose. Now, if I pursued this baffling misuse of Darwinian theory, I would be a naive, gentle, hardworking, and slightly simpleminded man with a rather small set of ‘assets‘, which we both know is untrue…’
‘If you say so…’ Starkey mutters with a small grin, turning over to his left hand side to avoid the oncoming playful smack as Paul proceeds past him up the rickety stairs. ‘But if my nose stands for anything, my assets are overwhelming….’
---------------------
‘Ah, Sir Paul,’ A voice finally calls out grandly, the head sergeant heading towards him and eagerly shaking his accidentally extended hand, several coppers following behind like ducks after their mother. ‘Boys, this is Sir Paul McCartney, the Christ Church College Mathematical Lecturer at Oxford University and expert in Phrenology, honestly, such an accomplished man at only twenty-one…... Sir Paul, these are the boys.’
‘Hello, boys,’ Paul deadpans, coughing awkwardly at the use of his full title and achievements, rubbing at the back of his neck with embarrassment. ‘May we then?’
-----------------------------
The white sheet was pulled back when Paul walked in, revealing the mutilated body of a small woman, her clothing still pasted to her skin from the torrential downpour outside, but her wounds still evident beneath the fabric. Paul nearly gags, but manages to hide any insecurities he felt about inspecting death behind a solidly stable mask. Now came the acting.
He sighed, becoming visibly annoyed. ‘I asked you to remove the clothing! My god, do I have to do everything around here? Am I Atlas? Do I have to hold up the world here? I’m certainly not asking for it! The removal of clothing is necessary for the study of phrenology!’ He trills hysterically, wondering if waving his hands in the air was a bit much, although silently proud of his obvious acting skills.
The faces of the policemen remain completely unconvinced, staring at Paul like he’d gone insane. At least their eyes had gotten wider….
‘But, I thought all that was about the head and face…’ One cop finally peeps up meekly, hiding behind the others, taking cover from the sure world of abuse coming his away.
Paul takes a step towards him before slapping him harshly across the face. ‘Must you question me? Do I see the word ‘expert’ in your title? No, I see the word ‘copper’, and lord knows that’s not much of a title at the best of times,’ He snarls, raising a elegantly arched brow as the group of cops quickly scuttle like crabs out the door of the makeshift mortuary. Sighing in relief, Paul quickly shuts the door and turns the key in the lock, swiftly tossing his props to the side and clapping his hands together eagerly.
‘Finally, alone at last,’ He murmurs sarcastically, rubbing his palms with slight nervousness before making his way over to the body, assessing the figure. 5’2, brown eyes, dark complexion. Paul pulls his trousers up slightly to allow him to crouch, taking a strand of wet hair from the rain and rubbing it vigorously between his fingers until it dried at the tip. Brown hair, slightly turning grey. Old, around forty-five.
Taking a hooked utensil from the table, he grimly pulled back her upper lip, revealing or rather, exposing the fact that five of her front teeth were missing, slight discolouration along the gumlines and on the lone diligent soldiers that remained. All the same, small, delicate, almost pixie-like features shone through the grit on her face, high cheekbones paired with clear grey eyes.
She had been pretty once, but not now. Not for a while now. If the monster had not snatched her, the drink certainly would’ve.
Paul stands awkwardly, never knowing exactly what to do when he’s stopped observing a patient. Pulling back, he notices a scar on her forehead, almost faded, probably from some sort of childhood accident, definitely not as a result of this incident. She’d had a home once, that was certain. A few meagre possessions were collected neatly to her left. One, a shard of glass, rare in boarding-houses, which, by the few facts they had managed to gather in such a short time, she had been working to gain admittance to after being thrown out. Not even having the tuppence for standing room, she had drank the money away, but declared she’d be back after earning the money on the corner. She had a new hat, a bonnet, out of place with the rest of her appearance. She had announced that for the first time in a long time, she felt beautiful, before turning the corner and becoming lost in the thick London fog.
That was the last time anyone had seen her alive.
Paul sighs, running a hand through his hair and staring sadly at the face before pulling the sheet back over her face respectfully. He was never one for death, and he still had to do the process in increments. It sometimes was difficult when he remembered these were real women, not simply some soft of case file for him to observe, although the argument could be made….
He quickly stares down at the notes given to him, Mary Ann Nicols, last seen at one thirty in the morning, pronounced dead by a local doctor at 3:30AM.
Spotting what he needed, Paul quickly ducks under the cloth of the camera standing erect in the corner of the room, quickly taking several pictures for his own use before turning off all the lamps. Carefully, he pulls out the Kodak film, pushing up his sleeves as he meticulously dips the nitrate-based film in the designated solution. Ten minutes later, he pulls the film free of the inky darkness, holding it up to the light, smiling slightly as he pins the wet, dark film to the line above him. Photography was a new, expensive, and flammable practice, but no doubt it would revolutionize the art of police work, as would the much newer science of fingerprinting, if the daft bosses would ever get a whiff of it....
Waiting for the film to dry, he leans against the table as he stares down at the report for a final time, reviewing the victim while periodically glancing down at her body.
When it suddenly clicked.
It fit too well. It all just fit too well to be a coincidence, too violent to be the calling card of anyone else. Anyone else but that figure in the fog, the one he‘d almost caught on another job no more than a month ago…
Paul finds his temper pushed. He had gotten away. He lost. Paul hated losing. He knew he wouldn‘t lose this time. He knew his calling cards, he knew them before the police would even catch on to him, lord knows how long that would take. The stomach was sliced from right to left, meaning that the assailant was either left-handed, as he was (He had not allowed his schoolteachers to beat it out of him, they had to suffer with reading his smudged papers), or somehow cunningly switched to his left hand to deter suspicion. It would be awkward to drag a knife against the flow of a man‘s body. He had much more freedom to cut and impale if he performed his deed left-handed, as Paul suspected it occurred.
The bruises on either side of the jaw and the lacerations on the tongue were obviously a sign of a struggle, and choking, just like the other girl.... Even the cuts on the right side of the woman’s neck was a perfect match, once again an indication of ambidextrosity, and skill with a moderately large blade, since the incision was deep. Eight inches, if the good doctor was correct. Completely severing all tissue down to the vertebrae, practically decapitating the poor girl.
He’d never forget picking up that woman’s body, her head rolling off in his hands. And then those eyes, glinting almost mischeviously in the darkness, as if taunting him to come play. Just try to find him in the darkness known as Hell’s Quarter….
Paul’s temper reaches his brink, slamming the report on the table and shakily pulling the sheet back over the woman, ignoring the fact he hadn’t even bothered to look at her lower body. If it was anything like the killer’s last crime, it was a violent stomach wound, several key entrails missing, including the uterus.
‘Definitely a sex crime,’ He murmurs, his anger now pushing him forward as he snatches the dried photograph off the line and quickly makes his way to the homicide files, praying the idiots of the great Scotland Yard had sorted it by month for once.
‘The first crime is usually committed closest to ‘home’,’ Paul mutters, pulling out several files and starting to flip through them anxiously, the door rattling slightly, Paul desperately flipping through a heavy stack before finally finding the unfortunate prize-winning girl.
‘Emma Smith…beggar’s quarter….’ He breathes, grabbing her picture from her files and pocketing it as well as the recently developed photo of Nicols. Quickly he runs to the door, opening it with a raised brow, leaning casually against the frame. ‘Yes?’ He murmurs politely, but honestly tiring of the hound-faced copper’s intrusions. He would kill the messenger, if he this kept going on….
‘Excuse me, sir, but I send a new assignment from the sergeant’ He says timidly, his metaphorical tail between his legs.
‘Oh, do you?’ Paul finally snaps in an increasingly shrill falsetto, losing his patience as he slips out of the room, closing the door behind him for modesty’s sake. ‘Am I a student then? I was under the assumption that I was a professor, but apparently I was mistaken! Why don’t I just wear a bloody dunce cap and sit in the corner? Would that suit the sergeant, hmm? Hmm? HMM?’ He hisses callously, completely aware of how melodramatic he was being. Straightening his coat conspicuously and letting out an uncomfortably long sigh, he replaces his scowl with a charmingly disarming smile and give the cop a playful and slightly apologetic wink. ‘Sorry, chum. Fire away.’
‘Well, sir,’ The copper brays, Paul almost letting out a loud cough of ‘Dog‘ but deciding against it. ‘There have been a number of Irish terrorist attacks in the past few weeks, most recently on this very building, but most uncomfortably close to the government buildings, near to Whitechapel in East London. I believe the sergeant was hoping for you to-’
‘Yes, yes, I’m aware, he wants to send his faithful little hounddog-’ He interrupts rudely, cursing his choice of words as he attempts to hold himself together.
‘Right. Well unfortunately, I am assessing a dead woman at the moment, so the Irish-American Fenians and their shenanigans will have to wait….’ He snaps again, putting a hand on the doorknob with full intention of pushing it open, but almost running into it instead, letting off a low stream of curses and explicatives as he realizes he’s locked the key inside.
‘You’ve locked the key inside,’ The copper states unhelpfully, blinking as Paul attempts to rattle the door open. Paul sighs as he realizes it’s no use, distracting himself from his embarrassment and awkwardness by slicking his hair back into place with the aid of a comb from his back pocket.
‘Right. We can keep this embarrassing little incident between us, can‘t we, ol‘ boy?’ Paul attempts with false joviality, laughing lightly but secretly still fuming at his stupidity. He'd show them all. He'd face both cases at once. And he'd solve them both in record time. That meant associating in one place, where both the killer and the Irish Fenians resided….
Whitechapel.
‘If you say so, sir,’ The policeman responses dully, but not without some smugness as he avoids Paul's gaze, desperately in danger of losing his momentary burst of confidence. ‘I’ve never said anything of the incidents in the past. Multiple incidents, I may add. My, the first week you came in, must’ve been six times before it finally connected, if I remember correctly, and of course, the master key only comes in at closing, so you simply had to wait all day before finally entering the room to a decaying, smelly body... Do you remember that, sir?’
Paul’s ears turn slightly red, jaw fixed as he nods, his customary public smile fixed in a painfully saccharine grin.
‘Yes. Yes I do. Give Harold the key-keeper my regards for me, ’ He purrs sweetly, before turning, ’Dogface….' He mutters, before walking out the door and onto the busy London streets, the pair of eyes transfixed in his mind.
He would find him. It was only a matter of time.
It was only a matter of time...
--------------------------------
In some deep remote corner of the Eastern quarter, an auburn-haired man sits in the corner of a dark, noisy pub, business wrecking havoc despite morning's first light having been spotted hours ago over the blood-red horizon. Not that it mattered. Light did not dare to show itself here.
The man smiles slightly in spite of himself, eyes strangely dead despite the dull lamplight flickering some feeble light into them. Chuckling croakingly, the man tips back another ale, somehow possessing the ability to be completely drunk and yet utterly sober at the same moment. He was simply waiting for him. He had burrowed his way into that man's mind like a maggot, squirming deeply into his brain, and no method known to man or death would remove him.
'It's only a matter time, Mr. McCartney,' He grins crazily, mouthing 'I'm quite mad' to several passers-by. 'It's only a matter of time....'