37

WHEN THE BODY OF ANNIE CHAPMAN WAS FOUND, ON 8 September 1888, the sun hadn’t come up. What few streetlights there were in the Victorian district of Spitalfields couldn’t have reached the small, narrow yard behind 29 Hanbury Street. The walls surrounding the yard and the nearby buildings would have been tall. As John Davis, an elderly porter, stepped out of his lodgings that morning on his way to work, the darkness would have been close to impenetrable.

Joesbury and I weren’t so lucky. Fluorescent strip lighting running along the ceiling of the boat shed saw to that.

I think John Davis must have known, that morning, that something wasn’t right. I think the human race has enough left of its animal instincts to sense the presence of great evil. He reported later that he hadn’t slept well the previous night. When I picture him, he is coming out of the house slowly, something inside him whispering to take great care.

I think he would have known what he was about to find, even as he stood on the back steps. Maybe he smelled something, although I doubt it. The East End was rank with the stench of slaughterhouses and poor sewerage. Perhaps he heard Annie’s last cry. Maybe he even heard the sound of the Ripper’s footsteps, hurrying away down the passage.

Joesbury and I had known, before we entered this shed, that what we were about to find would change us.

Back in 1888, the Ripper took Annie by the neck and half strangled her, before forcing her to the ground. Kneeling behind her head, he cut her throat so deeply he almost severed her head. Then he leaned forward, pulled up her skirts to expose her abdomen and hacked at it. He cut away pieces of skin, pulled out organs and connective tissue, leaving them strung across her body. The uterus he removed completely. He pulled up her legs, expecting to do more, no doubt, but had been disturbed, quite possibly by our friend John Davis opening the back door of the house.

I think Annie would have been conscious for most of the attack. The strangulation disabled but didn’t kill her. I think she would have felt the knife in her throat, have known the panic of being unable to scream. I think she would have lain on the cold, hard flags or wet mud of Hanbury Yard, experiencing the sort of pain the rest of us can only pray we never know, waiting for the darkness in her head to grow and knowing that when her eyes closed, it would be for ever.

Standing in the boat shed, with Joesbury’s hands on my shoulders, wondering how I could go on living as I did before, I realized Annie had had it easy. Because even when it comes to murder, all things are relative.

Annie’s death would have been quick. It probably hadn’t been much more than fifteen or twenty minutes from the first attack to her last breath. She wouldn’t have seen it coming.

This woman’s death hadn’t been quick. This woman had been stripped naked and bound to a work bench in the middle of the shed, the one on which boat repairs would normally be carried out. Her arms had been pulled down beneath the bench and bound at the wrists. Duct tape held her to the table at her neck, beneath her breasts and across her pelvic bone. This woman’s killer had incapacitated his victim to give himself time.

Annie hadn’t had time to scream. If she had, someone in the house would have heard her. No one did.

This woman had been gagged. A bloodstained cloth had been stuffed into her mouth and more duct tape held it in place. This woman had been expected to scream.

‘Lacey, are you OK?’ someone was asking me. I let my head fall and brought it up again. I hadn’t screamed, fainted or thrown up. That must mean I was OK. My shoulders became cooler and I watched Joesbury move up towards the woman’s head and look down at her face.

Her eyes were open, turning milky. I saw movement in the corner of one and realized maggots had hatched already. Flies were buzzing around her nose too and her ears, they always go for the orifices first. And the wounds. They love the smell and taste of blood.

Annie Chapman’s chest had been untouched. Her clothes had protected her, her killer had had so little time.

This woman’s killer had had plenty of time. Her breasts had been cut a dozen or more times. Shallow, narrow incisions, made with a sharp knife. She’d bled a lot. Her chest and the shed floor beneath her were blood-soaked. She’d bled, so she’d been alive. Her right nipple had been sliced in two.

I’d crossed my own arms in front of me, hugging myself, protecting my own chest. Joesbury glanced at me and moved down the body. The damage to her chest wasn’t the worst thing we were looking at.

Almost the worst was her abdomen, where the flesh had been so hacked about and pulled apart I couldn’t be sure what I was looking at. Pools of black gore were glistening on the shed floor, but nothing seemed to bear any relation to what normally lives inside a woman. And the colours were so bright. The clotted blood so very red, the fat globules a soft creamy yellow and the flies, sparkling blue and black like gems. Even that wasn’t the worst.

Back in 1888, Annie Chapman’s legs were drawn up until her feet were together and then her knees splayed apart, revealing her genitalia. It could have been a pose, meant to shock those who found her. It could have been in preparation for what the Ripper had planned next before running out of time.

Our Ripper had had plenty of time.

Most women, once they reach their mid twenties, will have had at least one cervical examination. We lie on an examination table, our legs drawn back so that our knees are broadly level with our chest. Sometimes our feet are held in stirrups; other times, we’re asked to splay our knees. This woman looked almost like a patient waiting for an internal examination. Except that no doctor I’ve ever come across would use duct tape, wrapping above and below the knee, to bend the leg double and hold it in place. This woman would have been unable to move, unable even to scream, when the two-foot-long piece of wood was rammed inside her.

Joesbury was looking down at the piece of wood now. I looked too. Three inches from the point at which it emerged from her body five letters had been carved into it.

ANNIE.

‘Oh, I think we get the point, mate,’ muttered Joesbury. He ran a hand over his face and swallowed hard.