63

Wednesday, 3 October

‘THIS THEORY MIGHT SEEM A BIT WILD, BUT IT CERTAINLY isn’t new,’ I said. ‘It was the inspector in charge of the original investigation, a chap called Frederick Abbeline, who first suggested that the Ripper might not actually be a man after all.’

‘On what grounds?’ asked Tulloch.

I glanced over at Joesbury and said, ‘You’ve just heard. When the whole of London was looking for a suspicious male, Abbeline couldn’t understand how a man with bloodstained clothing could make his way around the streets without being spotted.’

Faces around me were a mixture of sceptical and interested. I decided I might as well sit down, I wasn’t going anywhere in a hurry.

‘Abbeline talked it over with colleagues,’ I went on, as I perched on a desk. ‘They came up with the mad-midwife theory. In later years it became known as the Jill-the-Ripper theory.’

Some small sounds that might have been titters.

‘Keep going,’ said Tulloch. All eyes were still on me. Sceptical or not, everyone wanted to hear what I had to say.

‘They asked themselves who could get up and go out in the middle of the night without arousing suspicion in their own households,’ I said. ‘Who wouldn’t attract attention if seen walking the streets in the small hours.’

Heads were starting to nod. Across the room a phone rang.

‘Who could even appear heavily bloodstained without anyone thinking it out of the ordinary,’ I said. ‘The answer they came up with was a midwife. Or an abortionist. Quite a few women were both.’

‘A midwife would have the anatomical knowledge to locate things like the uterus, the kidneys and so on,’ said Mizon. ‘Better than a butcher, at any rate.’

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Joesbury leave the desk he’d been sitting at and approach the TV screen. The phone was still ringing. Tulloch signalled for someone to answer it.

‘That was also part of the argument,’ I said to Mizon. ‘Another thing being that if prostitutes were approached by a woman, especially one they knew to be a midwife, they wouldn’t be alarmed. It would explain why no one heard a scream or a struggle. The women weren’t scared until it was too late.’

‘And it was common practice at the time for midwives to knock their patients unconscious by using pressure points,’ said Joesbury, who’d switched the TV on and was flicking through the list of stored information. ‘A midwife who could do that wouldn’t have much trouble subduing a tired, drunk prostitute,’ he said. ‘Could explain how he, or she, got Elizabeth Stride on the ground.’

I hadn’t realized quite how much reading Joesbury had done on Ripper lore. He’d stopped fiddling with the TV and was watching me again. ‘Seems to me women invariably get nervous if approached by a man they don’t know,’ he said. ‘Completely different story if it’s a woman. As a rule, women don’t fear other women.’

‘Geraldine Jones didn’t scream or run the night she was killed,’ said Barrett. ‘If she had, Lacey would have heard her.’

‘Flint, you’ve been banging on about a height discrepancy,’ said Joesbury. ‘Remember, you pointed out that the chap we saw on CCTV escorting Amanda Weston into Victoria Park didn’t look as tall as the one we chased out of it?’

I nodded.

‘Here we go,’ said Joesbury. ‘This is what the camera on Grove Road picked up on Saturday 8 September, the day before Amanda Weston was killed.’

Joesbury pressed a button and we all watched the recording of a busy London street on a Saturday afternoon. Two people walked into shot and along the pavement before turning into Victoria Park. The woman was wearing a brown coat with polka dots. We hadn’t found the coat, but Daryl Weston had confirmed that his wife had owned one just like it. The woman’s companion was dressed in black and was a little taller than she. Only a little.

‘How tall was Amanda Weston?’ asked Tulloch.

‘Five five,’ replied Mizon, reading from some notes.

‘We need to compare this to the footage from the library,’ said Tulloch. ‘See if the heights are comparable.’

Joesbury was still looking at the picture of Amanda Weston and her killer that he’d frozen on the screen. ‘In the meantime,’ he said, ‘I can’t see anything to suggest that isn’t a woman with her.’

‘It is a woman,’ I said. ‘Our killer is a woman.’

Everyone turned to me. ‘Go on,’ said Tulloch.

‘Charlotte Benn was being pestered by a woman claiming to be Emma Boston in the days leading up to her death,’ I said. ‘If Emma can prove it wasn’t her …’

‘I think we need her to prove it beyond any doubt,’ said Tulloch. ‘Emma Boston has always been a bit close to this investigation for my liking.’

‘She will be able to prove it,’ I said. ‘I’ve just spoken to her. She didn’t make the phone calls and she didn’t go to the Benns’ house that morning. The killer was using her again. I know I’m right. It’s a woman.’

‘That was Stenning,’ called someone from across the room. ‘He’s stuck in traffic.’

‘Hang on,’ said Anderson. ‘We know Amanda Weston was raped. We found semen – Cooper’s – on her body.’

‘Cooper was living with a woman,’ said Tulloch. ‘Or at least he was according to that street bloke Lacey spoke to. A woman we still haven’t managed to track down. If the two of them had sex, it would be a relatively simple matter for her to save a condom. The pathologist found traces of a spermicide, remember?’

Several heads nodded. We heard another phone ringing.

‘We don’t know for certain Amanda Weston was raped,’ said Mizon. ‘At least, not in the usual sense. We just know someone pushed a piece of wood up inside her. A woman could have done that.’

‘But why go for the mothers?’ said Anderson. ‘That makes no sense.’

Something tight inside me broke loose. ‘Oh, you think?’ I said, turning on him. ‘Because it makes perfect sense to me. If you really pissed me off, and I was a bit of a psychopath, I wouldn’t go for you, that would be too kind. I’d go for someone whose death would tear you apart. Your three-year-old daughter, maybe.’

‘Steady on, Flint,’ Anderson managed, as people around us started to look nervous.

‘Or if you didn’t have a daughter, maybe I’d go for that other relationship men always feel really protective about.’

‘Mothers,’ said Tulloch, looking like she’d swallowed a peach stone.

‘Exactly,’ I said. ‘In fact, I can think of few better ways of getting your revenge on a man than by carving up his mother.’

‘OK, OK.’ Anderson was holding up both hands. ‘All I’m saying is, it seems a bit extreme to me.’

‘Rape changes women,’ I said, and waited to see if anyone wanted to hear what I had to say. Nobody turned away. ‘Rape victims talk about themselves before and after the rape as though they were two different people.’

‘We know people are impacted by trauma,’ said Anderson. ‘But it doesn’t—’

‘I’m not talking about a period of depression or getting a bit edgy,’ I said. ‘Rape victims are very specific in the language they use. They talk about the rape killing the person they were and then having to get used to the new person they’ve become.’

‘Yes, but with all—’

Tulloch put her hand on his arm. ‘Go on, Lacey,’ she said.

‘For most of these women, their life after the rape is governed by fear,’ I said. ‘They become afraid of the dark, of being alone, of strange noises in the night, of meeting strangers, of crowds.’

‘Of everything,’ said Mizon.

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Once a woman has been violently raped, the dominant force in her life, sometimes for years afterwards, becomes fear.’ I stopped, suddenly having no real idea where I was going with this. ‘Sorry,’ I went on, ‘I’m probably not making any sense.’

‘You’re making perfect sense,’ said Joesbury. ‘What you’re not making is a connection.’

I looked at him and saw the connection. ‘Well,’ I said. ‘What if, for one of these Llewellyn sisters, the dominant force in her life afterwards wasn’t fear? What if it was rage?’

For a moment no one spoke.

‘Boss,’ called Barrett from the other side of the room. Tulloch looked up.

‘Pete and Joe are at Karen Curtis’s house,’ said Barrett. ‘Local uniform were waiting for them. They can’t get any reply and it looks like there’s mail behind the door. What do you want them to do?’

Tulloch glanced over at Joesbury. He nodded.

‘Tell them to go in,’ she said.