15

‘DO I KNOW YOU?’ I ASKED.

The girl was in her early twenties and, whilst I don’t like myself for saying this, not the sort of person it’s easy to look at. Her dyed black hair was slicked back with some greasy-looking substance and she’d tried, and failed, to cover a crop of spots around her chin with too much make-up. I counted six studs in her left ear. She didn’t have a right ear. The burns scars around her lower jaw and the right side of her neck were dreadful.

‘I’m Emma Boston,’ she said, in a voice that might have belonged to an elderly smoker. ‘I’m working on last night’s murder. I’ve got information for you. Can we go inside?’

‘What do you mean, you’re working on the case?’ I asked, trying to remember if I’d seen her at Lewisham or even Southwark.

Boston was wearing large sunglasses, the sort that make it impossible to see the eyes behind them. I wondered if her eyes had suffered fire damage too. ‘You were the one who found her,’ she was saying. ‘I heard she was still alive. Is that true?’

This woman wasn’t a police officer. ‘I’m going to ask you one more time, then I’m going to ask you to get off my step. What exactly are you doing here?’

Boston was about to respond when she broke into a fit of coughing. ‘Did she say anything before she died?’ she managed, when she got her breath back. ‘Do you know who she is yet?’

Light dawned. ‘Are you a reporter?’ I asked.

Her lips hardened. She was used to people not responding well to her. ‘Look, we both have jobs to do,’ she said. ‘I just think we can help each other.’ She looked round the street. ‘Is there somewhere we can talk?’ she went on. ‘I really do have some information.’

‘Detective Inspector Tulloch is heading up the investigation,’ I said. ‘She’s based at Lewisham police station.’

‘OK,’ she said. ‘But I’ve had a letter that could be from the killer, and seeing as how it mentions you by name, I thought you’d be interested. My mistake.’

She pushed past me and walked up the street towards Wandsworth Road. I watched her go, fairly sure she was lying, but …

I caught up with her ten metres from the corner. ‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘It’s been a long day.’

The lips relaxed and she glanced towards the pub on the corner. ‘Want to buy me a drink?’ she asked.

It was Saturday night and the pub was busy, but we went out into the beer garden and found an empty stretch of wall to lean against. Boston pulled a pack of cigarettes out of her pocket and lit one. I sipped my Diet Coke and waited. She coughed again and caught me looking at the packet.

‘I shouldn’t smoke,’ she said, ‘but my lungs are fucked up anyway, so I figure, what’s the difference?’

‘I’m sorry,’ I said. Everything was relative. My life wasn’t much to write home about, but it would be a whole lot worse if I looked like she did.

‘Anything you tell me can be off the record,’ she said, when she’d drawn deeply on her cigarette. ‘I wouldn’t quote you or anything.’

‘I understand,’ I said, knowing officers lost their jobs and their reputations for talking off the record to the press. Emma Boston hadn’t taken out a notepad and I wondered if she was recording the conversation. She’d placed a scuffed canvas bag very close to me. ‘But it sounds like you know more than I do right now,’ I went on. ‘I’m not part of the investigation.’

‘But you found her?’

I nodded.

‘Did she say anything?’

‘You said you had a letter?’ I asked. I couldn’t afford to tell Boston more than I should because I felt sorry for her. ‘A letter that mentioned me,’ I went on. ‘If that was a trick to get me here, I’m going home now.’

She reached into her bag and took out a thin, clear plastic folder with paper inside.

‘No one’s touched it but me,’ she said. ‘I didn’t realize what it was till I pulled it from the envelope, but then I put it in a folder straight away. That was the right thing to do, wasn’t it?’ She seemed to want my approval now.

‘Was it posted?’ I asked.

She shook her head. ‘No. It was pushed through the door of my house sometime last night. I found it this morning.’

‘Can I see it?’

She handed it over. Inside the plastic was a sheet of fawn-coloured paper, the standard size for personal stationery. It had been folded down the middle lengthways and then twice horizontally. The fold marks were quite distinct. The handwriting was neat and legible. In red ink. There was something disturbingly familiar about it. I read it quickly. Before I was halfway through, I could feel a tingling in my cheeks.

Dear Miss Bosston

I keep on hearing Saucy Jacky is back. How I have laughed. Is it true? If it is, I hope the police are clever and on the right track.

Ask DC Flint for me – did the lady squeal? No time to clip her ears but plenty more time for funny little games.

Yours truly

A f(r)iend

Hope you like the proper red stuff.

I handed it back. ‘It’s gibberish,’ I said. ‘Some nutter’s idea of a joke.’

Boston inclined her head, as though behind the dark sunglasses she was looking at me more closely. ‘Are you sure?’ she asked. ‘You’ve gone very pale.’

I made a mental note that Boston probably shouldn’t be underestimated.

‘Actually, a joke is what I thought at first,’ she went on. ‘But then I found out you were with her when she died and it made me think twice. Not many people would know that.’

I was more bothered than I wanted to admit that my name was being bandied about by people I didn’t know. But not nearly as bothered as I was that I knew I’d seen that letter, or something very like it, before. ‘Well, if you found it out, it can’t have been that hard,’ I said, playing for time.

‘We listen in to police radio transmissions,’ she said, as if daring me to object. ‘My boyfriend made a recording of last night’s activity. Most people don’t have the equipment to do that. But what really rung a bell with me was that reference to Saucy Jacky.’

I took it back and read the first couple of lines again. Dear Miss Bosston, I keep on hearing Saucy Jacky is back. How I have laughed.

‘Who’s Saucy Jacky?’ I asked, as two things happened at once. My mobile beeped, letting me know I had a text message, and I remembered who Saucy Jacky was.

‘Try Googling it,’ Boston was saying. ‘You’ll find thousands of references. Saucy Jacky is one of the nicknames given to—’

‘Jack the Ripper,’ I finished for her. ‘He called himself Saucy Jacky, didn’t he? In letters he sent to the police.’

‘And to the press,’ said Boston, as I realized I was staring at her rather too hard. I pulled my phone out of my bag. The text was from Pete Stenning, letting me know that he and some of the others were heading to the Nag’s Head in Peckham if I wanted to join them. Seeing me twice in twenty-four hours must have made him think of old times. Maybe he’d forgotten I’d never once accepted an invitation to go drinking with him.

‘I know very little about Jack the Ripper,’ I said, not sure why I was lying. ‘Didn’t he kill prostitutes?’

‘Yes, he did,’ Boston replied. ‘A lot of them. Generally speaking, he cut their throats and then mutilated their abdomens. Just like what happened to that woman on Friday night. His first victim, a woman called Polly Nichols, was on 31 August 1888, but there were others after that. I think you might have a copycat on your hands.’

‘Can I keep this?’ I asked, indicating the letter.

‘What can you tell me in return?’ she replied.

I shook my head.

‘No, then,’ she said.

I held the letter out for her to take, and realized my hand was shaking. ‘I’ll look into what you’ve told me,’ I said. ‘I’ll do it tonight. And if I think it stacks up, I’ll arrange for you to meet with DI Tulloch. It’ll be up to her what she tells you, but if you hold off publishing anything until you’ve seen her, she’ll be much more likely to cooperate.’

Boston was carefully putting the plastic folder back into the envelope. ‘I need to meet her tomorrow,’ she said, ‘or I’m running with this.’

‘Do you have access to scanning equipment?’ I asked. When she nodded, I scribbled down my email address at work and gave it to her. I had to hope it would automatically be re-routed to Lewisham. ‘Scan it and send it to me,’ I said. ‘And don’t let anyone else touch the original. Now, how can I get in touch with you tomorrow?’

Boston wrote down her address and phone numbers for me. I took a last sip of Coke and left the pub. I went home, and some dozen years back in time.