Mary nodded slowly. ‘All right . . . yes. I s’pose I have to know.’
Liz cupped the warm bowl of her pipe in her hand and sucked on the stem. A faint curl of blue smoke twisted into the cool morning air in the yard. ‘Cath tells me yer not stayin’ in yer room in Millers Court no more?’
‘I ain’t paid my rent for a week. So maybe my room’s gone by now.’
‘So where yer livin’ now?’
‘Holland Park.’
‘Holland Park?!’ Liz’s eyes widened. ‘Posh ’ouse, is it?’
Mary shrugged.
‘Want me to come to yours an’ tell yer what I find out?’
She wasn’t sure she wanted to give Liz the exact address.
‘Yes, but . . .’
Liz smiled. ‘I’ll be discreet, love. Knock an’ try an’ sell yer summin’, eh? And maybe there’ll be a note amongst a posy of flowers for yer.’ She winked. ‘Somewhere you an’ me can meet.’
Mary understood. Liz was smart. The only other girl amongst their informal sisterhood, apart from herself, who could actually read and write.
‘All right, then.’
She told Liz the address in Holland Park and stood up to go. Poor John would be wondering where she’d got to and she had still yet to visit the market to buy something for their evening meal.
‘You be careful,’ said Liz. ‘Remember, there’s two girls like us out there been gutted like butcher’s meat by the same mad man. Just you be careful, love.’
CHAPTER 28
31st August 1888, Whitechapel, London
‘I’m scared, Annie. I’m so fuckin’ scared!’
‘Keep yer voice down, Polly!’ hissed Annie. She looked around at the market traders either side of them, busy packing up their wares as the tumbling grey August sky above began to spit greasy drops of rain down on them. The summer, for what it was, had been warm and all too short. Now, autumn seemed impatient to get started, to soak London’s streets and draw a cover over the possibility of seeing a slither of blue sky until the far side of spring.
Polly hastened along beside her, both of them keen to get off the street and inside before the sky opened up fully and drenched them.
‘Someone’s after us, Annie. I’m sure of it.’ Polly tied her dark bonnet under her chin. ‘Bill was—’
‘Bill got in a stupid fight, is all!’ snapped Annie. The big fool had a list of local enemies as long as one of his ape-like arms. She’d warned him of that. Warned him you didn’t swagger around a manor like Whitechapel unless you’re part of a firm, unless you got some back-up. But that’s what Bill liked doing: swaggering, holding himself like some kind of ‘Big I Am’. It was no surprise he ended up being stuck by someone. But the stupid sod might have bloody paid them the rest of their share of that job first. Now there was no chance they were going to see any of that. Neither she nor Polly had any idea who the gentleman client was.
‘I ’ear someone sayin’ he was cut up real bad. Just like the . . .’ She looked at Annie. ‘Just like the French tart he done in.’
Annie stopped in the middle of the thoroughfare, waiting for a young runner to pass by with a basket of foul-smelling fish scraps in his arms. ‘We jus’ need to forget all ’bout that bleedin’ job now. All right? We ain’t gonna see a single ’nother bleeding penny from it, so there’s no point you and me wastin’ no more breath on it either.’
‘But they want this back,’ said Polly, absently gesturing to the fine golden chain around her neck, hidden beneath her thick flannel collar. ‘Bill said it was important, didn’t he? That’s why they was goin’ to pay up so much!’
Annie resumed striding down the walkway between the stalls. ‘Well none of that’s ’appenin’ now, is it? Bill was the job man an’ now the stupid git is done in. So you and me, Poll’, we’re goin’ to have to go back to business as usual and forget all about that now.’
‘We could flog it?’ Polly’s eyes lit up at her own idea. ‘Yeah, take it down the pawn shop an’—’
‘No.’ Annie frowned. Thinking. ‘No. We should ’ang onto it. Maybe there’s some money we can get out of this fuckin’ muddle.’
Polly put a hand on her arm. ‘Annie . . .’
‘What?’
‘The man in that picture.’
Annie looked up and down the walkway and either side at the traders packing their market stalls away into their carts. Probably far too busy to bother listening to two tarts hissing exchanges at each other. Still. Best they kept their voices down.
‘The man in the picture, Poll,’ she uttered quietly, ‘is lucky we went and tidied his dirty little mess up for ’im an’ now ’e can go back to whatever ugly wife ’e has and get on with ’is nice life. Only, first, maybe we can tap him for a bit of—’
‘Listen, Annie . . .’
She looked at Polly’s frightened eyes. ‘What?’
‘I think . . .’ She swallowed anxiously. ‘I think ’e ain’t just a gentleman.’
Annie shrugged.
‘I saw ’is face, Annie.’
That stilled her.
‘I swear it. I saw ’is face. Same face as is in the picture.’
‘Round ’ere?’
Polly shook her head. ‘No. On the front of a newsie.’
Annie looked round at her. ‘Which newspaper?’
‘I dunno. Can’t remember which one.’ Polly’s turn to look up and down the walkway of the market. The rain was coming down a little heavier now, spattering in puddles; a hiss of splashing, the rattle of raindrops tapping on tarpaulins and the clank and bang of tired tradesmen hefting crates of goods, eager to get home for the evening.
‘I think ’e’s in the guvver-ment or summin’, Annie. ’E’s important, I think.’
‘Are you sure it was ’im?’
‘Yeah.’ She looked at Annie. ‘I’m sure I seen ’is face before somewhere else as well. Like a paintin’ or summin’.’
‘A paintin’?’ Annie felt the rain begin to soak through her shawl and chill her neck and shoulders.
They stood in a dampened silence for a moment, both of them considering what that might mean. A painting? A painting famous enough known that even Polly would have seen it?
‘I don’t want to look after this no more,’ said Polly, beginning to fish for the chain under her flannel top.
‘No, you said you’d take it for a while!’
‘I ain’t got lodgings no more! You know that! Me rooms is gone. Me money’s gone. That’s why I got to wear it round me neck, instead of stashed away!’
Annie knew Polly was in some straits. The half of money Bill had paid them up front was already gone for Polly, pissed away on too much mecks. Now she was back to doing business on the streets to pay for a bed night by night. She had been for a couple of weeks now.
Polly cautiously eased the locket out, turning her back on the few tradesmen nearby and inserting a grubby fingernail into the small frame to ease the miniature portrait out. ‘Please, Annie, you ’old onto it for a bit—’
‘It’s your turn!’
‘Then I’ll just throw it away.’ She pulled the small picture out and was about to toss it into a puddle.
‘No!’ Annie reached and snatched it out of her hand. ‘No, stupid! It’s bloody well worth summin’, ain’t it?’ She cursed under her breath. ‘Give it to me, then. I’ll mind it for a bit.’
Annie had no idea what exactly she could do with it except some nebulous notion of selling it to one of the cheap daily papers. They seemed to like their scandals and sordid tales. But if she did do something like that, there was no way she was going to cut the proceeds with Polly. The woman – her so-called partner in crime – had been a complete waste of space on this job. Lost her nerve, so she had. Odd that, after all the other babies they’d ‘farmed’ over the last few years, this last job had rattled her nerves so.
‘What if we tell the slops?’
Annie grabbed one of her arms. ‘Police? You stupid cow! Are you really that stupid?’
br /> ‘I’m scared, Annie!’ From beneath the shadow of her bonnet, tears emerged down florid and pockmarked cheeks. ‘Bill said they really wanted that picture back, so he did! You ’eard, too. And now look; ’e’s stabbed-up an’ dead! We should go to the police with it!’
‘Streuth, Polly! We can’t go to the coppers. What we gonna tell ’em? You an’ me’s both guilty of . . .’ She fumbled for the fancy word Bill had once used. ‘. . . infanticide! They’d bloody ’ang us soon as look at us! Do you understand?’
Polly dabbed at her blotchy cheeks.
‘Do you want to be ’anged? Eh?’
Polly silently shook her head.
Annie sighed. ‘Right. So we ain’t talkin’ to any police, or anyone, about this, all right? Because it’s our blimmin’ secret!’ She softened her tone and leant a little closer, hunkering down slightly to look up into the dark shadows beneath the bonnet where Polly’s frightened eyes glinted. ‘Bill didn’t tell no one else about our job. It was just you an’ me. Bill may have been a stupid prat, but when it came to money, ’e was dead bloody careful. All right, love?’
She waited for Polly to nod.
‘No one knows ’bout you an’ me,’ said Annie, tucking the small portrait into the inside pocket of her coat. ‘An’ no one knows we got this little picture ’ere.’
Polly nodded, dabbed her cheeks again. ‘I . . . I better go,’ she said unhappily. ‘I ’ave to get some business tonight or I’m sleepin’ in the rain again.’
Annie would have offered her a roof if she could, but the man she was currently sharing a room with was funny about his privacy and had a habit of making himself understood with his fists.
She reached out and squeezed Polly’s shoulder. ‘You go get some business. I’ll see yer t’morra mornin’?’
Polly nodded, turned away and walked quickly into the rain, now hammering down loudly against the awnings either side. Annie watched her go, sidestepping the bigger puddles, and hunched over, trying to keep some of herself dry, little knowing it was the last time she was going to see Polly alive.
CHAPTER 29
31st August 1888, Whitechapel, London
The bells of Christ Church chimed the half hour. ‘Won’t get no more trade tonight, don’t think, Polly,’ said Emily Holland. She sniffed – a constant, irritating habit of hers that came, literally, after her every utterance. ‘An’ it’s pissin’ down. Any bloke with any sense is already gone ’ome, I reckon.’
Polly nodded. It didn’t look good for business. She’d stupidly spent her earnings from earlier this evening on a bottle of cheap rancid wine. Her stupid fault. Now she needed one last trick to pay for a shared flop-room out of the rain. That’s all. Just one more customer.
She’d been edgy earlier this evening, still worried every shadow might contain some knife-wielding man eager to get that locket and that little photograph back. Now she was beginning to realise Annie was probably right. Perhaps she was just jumping at shadows.
Two-thirty in the morning. Polly needed one more bit of business.
‘I’m off,’ Emily said with a sniff. ‘I’m pissin’ cold, wet an’ fed up.’ She glanced at Polly. ‘Comin’ or what?’
‘Ain’t got no money. I need to stay on a bit. There was still boozers in the Crown not so long ago. Might get trade off of one of ’em.’
Emily shrugged before she turned away to walk up Bucks Row. ‘Be careful,’ she called over her shoulder.
Polly watched her go up the road. On one side, a row of two-storey terraced houses, on the other, a warehouse and the edge of Essex Wharf. She watched until the last thing she could see was Emily’s pale frock merging with the gloom. She listened until the clack and scrape of her heels were finally lost beneath the hiss of a steady drizzle, the sputtering water cascading from the roofs and guttering of the row of terraced houses, and faintly, the restless slap of the Thames against the hulls of a row of tethered-up barges.
Just one more. And if he was drunk enough, she might even try and make a grab for his wallet. It didn’t concern her that she would most probably be stealing food from some family’s mouth. Everyone here learned to do without from time to time. It wasn’t uncommon not to have a proper meal for days. You just made do. Or you made enough for a drink or two to forget how empty your tummy was.
She snorted. The best thing about being hungry was that it took less booze to get you so you didn’t have a care in the world. She realised it was the last couple of drinks she’d had that was still keeping her warm now, despite her rain-damp clothes.
‘You look a sort.’
The words sounded dead, muffled in the drizzle. For a moment she thought it might have been her wine-addled mind playing a game with her.
‘You look a sort, you do.’
Polly glanced around. There was some light from the gas lamp nearby, a sick orange halo around it that caught the intermittent flicker of raindrops, and a weak pool of light at the bottom of the lamp post that spilled across slick cobbles and gave in all too quickly to the darkness.
‘Hoy! Who’s ’at, then?’ she said, with a forced playful tone. ‘You after a little bit of the other before you go ’ome, then?’ she asked the darkness. ‘Five pence will do yer. Seven if you wanna go in the back way. Whadya say?’ She had no intention of actually letting anyone take her like that, but in the dark, if he was drunk enough, he’d probably think he was getting what he’d paid for.
‘Yes . . . you’ll do.’ The voice whispered out of the gloom.
‘Come on then, where are yer?’ she called out, still straining to make her voice sound playful and sporting for some fun. It bounced, a little too shrill, off the walls of the row of terraced houses across the narrow street.
She heard the clack of shoe heels and then saw the hazy shape of a figure emerging from the darkness. Moderate height and build, a face partially shadowed from the pallid glow of the gas lamp by the peak of a felt cap.
‘Ah! There you are, love!’
The man drew closer. She could smell pub on him: the thick odour of pipe smoke, the stew of stale beer, the meaty odour of a workman’s sweat. Rain pattered on his cap as he stood perfectly still, his eyes hidden in shadow.
‘So come on then, what’s it to be, dear?’
‘I like it in private,’ said the man. ‘Not out in the street.’
‘Oh, there ain’t no one around, love. We’ll be just fine out ’ere.’
‘Only dogs fuck in the street. It’s undignified.’
His voice didn’t sound like how he looked, how he smelled. He sounded like a bit of class. There was something comforting in that. The educated ones didn’t think with the backs of their hands. They tended to be somewhat bashful, polite even. Paid better, too, if you gave good service.
‘I don’t ’ave any place to go, love. It’s ’ere or nowhere.’
‘Then how about over there,’ he said, pointing towards a wooden gateway. It stood ajar and led into the stable yard of the small quayside warehouse. ‘We might find somewhere sheltered. Dry, even.’
A coarse, leery voice and Polly would have been wary of his suggestion, would have stood her ground and insisted it was out here or not at all. She’d been taken roughly before by drunks who thought she was doing this for fun, not money. Somewhere private was the first thing they asked for. But this one seemed, at the very least, quite polite.
‘I don’t think so.’
‘I’m sorry,’ said the man. He took off his cap, and for the first time she had a glimpse of his face: lean and tanned, dark sideburns and dark hair, coarse and tufty. Under different circumstances, quite an attractive man. He held his cap awkwardly, twisting it between balled fists. She could tell he was feeling uncomfortable about this.
First-timer? Most probably a married man and this was his very first time actually paying for it. She took pity on him. He seemed harmless enough.
‘Go on then,’ she nodded towards the open gate. She reached out and grabbed one of his hands. He flinched nervously at he
r touch.
Polly cackled. ‘I’ll look after yer, love. Treat yer gentle!’
She led him across the road and through the open gate. Beyond, the small stable yard was big enough for only two or three carts side by side. Tonight it was empty, save for a pile of empty canvas sacks in one corner, sodden from the rain. On the far side, padlocked double gates to the stable were overhung by a lip of several feet of roof. It was dry over there.
Polly clacked unsteadily across uneven cobbles until she rested a hand against the dry wood. She turned around to look at the man. He hovered uncertainly a yard from her. She couldn’t see his face now; the gas lamp out on Bucks Row was behind him. He was just a silhouette.
‘Need to come a little closer, love, if you want—’
‘I was watching you earlier,’ said the man gently.
‘Excuse me?’
‘Hours earlier, back in that pub . . . The Rose and Crown.’
‘Oh?’ She laughed. It sounded forced. ‘Like what you saw, then, eh?’
He shared the laugh, insincere and cool. He didn’t sound quite so much like the nervous first-timer now. ‘Oh, yes, you’re a right beauty.’
Polly shrugged at the compliment. It was nice to hear it even if she knew it was a facile attempt at small talk. She was no beauty; that’s why her best trade tended to be at the latter end of an evening.
‘Your name’s Polly,’ he said.
‘Aye, Polly’s the name! Everyone knows me in that pub, one way or the other,’ she said with a chuckle, a hand impatiently reaching out and tugging on his belt buckle. ‘Now then—’
‘Polly Nichols.’
She hesitated. Everyone knew her as Polly, her trade name. But they knew no more than that.
‘Yes,’ said the man, ‘I know your name. And I know something was troubling you.’
She let go of his belt. ‘I . . .’
‘Yes, something playing heavily on your mind, Polly. Your hand – the one not busy holding a cup – was telling me all sorts of things.’
‘Whatcha talkin’ ’bout?’