The Dolocher
An Alderman James Mystery/Thriller
By
European P. Douglas
Also by European P. Douglas
Rattleyard
Coming soon in 2016
Shadow of the Dolocher
Copyright © 2014 European P. Douglas
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 1494372819
ISBN-13: 978-149437281
Chapter 1
It was only apt that the hardest rain fell from the blackest clouds when that monster, Thomas Olocher, was brought to the “Black Dog” prison. He had killed three women in the most gruesome fashion, and his trial had been the talk of the city for weeks now. He had finally been found guilty and sentenced to hang. Why he had been sent to the Black Dog (or Newgate, to give it its proper name) was less clear, as this was a well-known debtor’s prison and farther from the hanging place than the usual prison where murderers were held.
The magistrate had sentenced him to death but made no mention of where he was to be kept until the execution. This decision had been made by someone else, but by whom, there were no answers to be found. The rumour mill spread word of an escape bid: that rich and powerful friends of Olocher—the Pinking Dindies, for example—would be better able to free him from a relatively underguarded debtor’s prison than from one of the proper gaols in the city.
For the journey from the courthouse to the gaol, Olocher sat shackled at wrist and ankle; he was flanked by two big soldiers, with two more sitting on the bench facing him, and two more standing on platforms at the back of the cart. Their attitude was that of men used to transporting all kinds of vermin to prison: their eyes not making contact with their cargo, their shoulders set back and straight, ready at a moment’s notice to strike out if need be. To be truthful, they had the look of men who no more wanted to be in Ireland than in the devil’s bed; they didn’t need a reason to strike out.
Olocher himself looked a little worse for wear. His eyes wore the puffy padding of a recent beating, which made it look as though he was arrogantly squinting at the world as he passed by. A face that many a woman feared ever seeing was made all the more grotesque with the blemishes, swelling, and cuts that adorned it now. The escorting soldiers must have had a good go at him every evening after his court appearances—no more than he deserved.
Olocher’s crimes were vicious and frenzied: he had slashed the throats of his victims, but not before he had savaged their bodies with his blades. It was said that he would knock his victim to the ground and then pounce on her, using his weight to hold her down. He would then flail wildly with a long and sharp knife in each hand, slashing into her (often slicing his own legs in the process—a fact that brought about the most astonishment in court when he was asked to display his scarred and knotted thighs to the magistrate). It was said that he would listen to their pitiful crying and watch as they tried to slither away from him, and that he would wait, deathly silent, letting them think they had escaped before grabbing them by the head and whispering something awful to them before slashing their throats. What he actually said to them was a matter of salacious gossip, as the only witness to any of his crimes was a young girl of fourteen called Mary Sommers. She hadn’t heard what Olocher had said as he killed her aunt while Mary hid in a closet, clutching her breath in her throat and trying not to scream out. Olocher never even knew she was there.
When asked in court what he had said to the women, he answered simply, “It wasn’t me who killed them, so I never said anything to those women.”
Witnesses put him at the scenes of all the crimes, and there was no shortage of women who had been on his bad side over the last few years. One, in particular, had nearly been killed when he pounced on her and pounded at her with his fists much in the manner of the later killings; he hadn’t gone as far that time, but the woman remembered that he had hit himself on the knee so hard during the attack that he limped away afterwards. A former workmate from Olocher’s time on the boats told of his having torn holes in his trouser pockets so he could gain quick access to knives strapped to his thighs and how he had seen him fight one time on the docks in Liverpool and swing wildly with knives in both hands. More than a couple of tavernkeepers could tell of his temper and his threats about using those very blades. When presented with all of this and pressed again about what he said to the women before he killed them, he once again answered that it wasn’t him, so he couldn’t have said anything to them.
To most people, there was no doubt that he would have received the death penalty even if he had not irked the magistrate by continuing to deny culpability, but there were still some who thought he could have gotten off lighter with a confession. When the magistrate passed sentence, it was said that Olocher’s face turned a shade darker, and he could be seen reaching for his thighs as though he would take out his blades there and then in the courthouse and launch himself at the magistrate in that frenzy so vividly described by Mary Sommers.
As the blacksmith, Timothy Mullins, watched the cart approach the gates of the prison, he couldn’t help noticing that the pigs that had seemed to fill the streets these last few months didn’t have to be prodded and kicked out of the way; they stepped aside, as though the carriage were carrying royalty.
He was not the only one to notice it, and a man cried out in jest as he pointed to the splitting sea of porcine subjects: “All hail the King of the Swine!” to which there was much laughter and jeering from those who were huddled under the shop awnings to avoid the latest burst of foul weather. Mullins looked at Olocher, who seemed not to notice the insult or any of the cacophony it created. It was possible that there was swelling in his ears as well, Mullins supposed, on seeing the wounded face that reminded him of his own deformity.
Mullins had heard tales of what Olocher had done, but the man in front of him now did not fit with the image he’d formed in his head of the barbarian that would do something like this. It was clear from his bearing that Olocher was from higher stock. He was known to always have money and was always buying rounds in pubs he frequented; Mullins had never been on the receiving end of this generosity, but he had heard of it. It was said that Olocher was of noble blood, but though he still had his money, he worked rough jobs and spent time in taverns to escape the tedium of civilised life. There were rumours that Olocher sometimes tidied himself up and lived as a member of the upper classes he was from, under his real name (which no one ever seemed to know) before sliding back to the unshaven and cravenly debauched Thomas Olocher. Of course, Dublin in 1786 was a place that had no shortage of rumour, and in many cases it was the rumour or the legend, not truth or facts, that held sway over people’s minds.
It was filthily black now, and dull water sloshed down the sides of the street, sploshing mud and animal waste across the uneven and cracking cobblestones and filling the sewer that ran along the side of the prison with new power and energy. There was a smell rising from it that mingled with the wet people huddled together and the smell of the crackling fires inside the nearby building, the result being a putrid amalgamation of everyday life covered in faeces and doused in urine.
The gates of the gaol cracked and rattled from within; there was a loud creak and scraping noise as the gates opened and ran across the uneven stones beneath, their wood splintered and cracked from everyday use and poor maintenance. The gaoler and two guards came out and spoke to one of the soldiers, who handed the gaoler some papers with the seal of the court on them. Mullins could see the unease on the face of the gaoler, and he picked up a couple of words on the wind as the gaoler remonstrated with the soldier: “here?” “not suitable,” and “dangerous” were the ones Mullins could make out, but the tinny voice and the shape of his mouth as he spoke gave a
way all the fears of the gaoler. This was no place for a murderer like Olocher, he must be saying, and Mullins was in full agreement with that. The soldier had a look of boredom, and he pressed the papers to the gaoler’s chest and then pointed to the top of one of the prison’s towers.
“Yeah,” shouted someone from the crowd, which seemed to have grown steadily since Mullins last looked. “Keep him in the tower and hang him from up there!” There were murmurs of agreement.
“No, stick him in the ‘Nunnery,’” another called out, and the crowd swelled with laughter again.
The soldier turned angrily.
“You lot go back about your business!” he shouted at the crowd. No one moved, but the soldier had already turned back to the cart and was telling the others to take Olocher into the gaol.
The springs creaked, and the wood of the cart moaned as the first soldiers got out and stood to one side. Olocher was made to stand then, and the soldiers in the cart pushed him off and into the clutches of the first two soldiers before they too jumped down from the cart.
“These men will be added to your guards for the time being. I suggest that you increase security yourself while he is here,” Mullins heard the lead soldier say, as he cocked his head at Olocher. The gaoler nodded resignedly and pointed inside the gates, and the soldiers ushered Olocher in. The gaoler gave one more rueful look at the people gathered outside before he went in and pulled the gate behind him. The remaining soldier got back into the cart, and it clattered off down the street, back in the direction it had come from, the filth splashing as it did.
The rain began to subside, and the crowd started to disperse. Mullins pulled his hood up over his thick black hair so that only some of his face with its almost-black eyes and his scarred cheek and wide nose were visible in the darkening light.
“There’ll be no one sleeping in there tonight,” a voice said beside him. Mullins turned and saw Cleaves, his friend from the whisky house on Cook Street, not fifty feet from where they stood now.
“I doubt it,” he answered.
“Are you going to the tavern?” Cleaves asked, looking in its direction.
“No, I’m going home.”
Cleaves nodded, his hunched frame lost in a thick coat two or three sizes too big for him. He looked small and decrepit because of his bent-over stance, but his shoulders were wide and his hands large. Cleaves had eyes that were such a pale blue that they elucidated sympathy for him even when he sought none. People had to meet him many times before they were able to make out the creased face and his large, bulbous ears and bent nose. He was not ugly as sin but getting there, though his eyes were hypnotic even to a tough blacksmith like Timothy Mullins.
At this moment, those eyes were trained on the high tower of the gaol, and Mullins followed their gaze; he could see a candle burning in the top room.
“That must be where they are putting him,” Cleaves said.
“He’ll be hard-pressed to escape from up there without killing himself.”
Cleaves nodded in agreement. “I bet there’s a few in there tonight who wished they had paid their debts now, eh, Tim?” Cleaves grinned, nudging his bony elbow into Mullins’s ribs.
“You can be sure of that, Cleaves,” Mullins answered.
Just then, a noise came from within the gaol walls. There was shouting—female shouting—echoing from the basement of the gaol. A male voice rose against them, but the shrill noises continued, and slaps of hands against faces and women screaming filtered out into the street.
“That’ll be the girls in the Nunnery complaining about him being under the same roof,” Cleaves said, without humour this time.
“Who could blame them?” Mullins said, and he patted Cleaves on the shoulder as he began to make his way home.