Free Now You See Me by Sharon Bolton Page A

first Whitechapel killing. The death of Polly Nichols that day had been the third murder. The first, that of Emma Smith, had been early in April 1888 and the second, Martha Tabram, on 7 August.
    Something was still bothering me though. Something I couldn’t quite put my finger on. Determined to leave no stone unturned, I checked whether there’d been other murders in London earlier in the year, specifically the first two weeks of April and August. I couldn’t access the Met’s computers from home but I searched the various news sites that cover events in and around the capital.
    Nothing. There’d been a shooting on 5 August but the man in question, a nineteen-year-old of Grenadian origin, was recovering in hospital. Nothing in early April. There was no connection. So why couldn’t I just go to bed?

    Even the similar mode of death meant nothing. The original Ripper hadn’t stuck to one modus operandi, his methods had evolved, even changed completely. There was no copycat. The letter sent to Emma Boston was a daft prank, possibly even the work of Emma herself to get an inside track on the investigation. I’d had it.
    I printed off a couple of pages of summary information that I could use to brief the team the next day, closed the laptop and double-checked the front door. It occurred to me, for the first time, that I probably needed a stronger lock on it. Not something I’d ever worried about before. I picked up the printed sheets, meaning to put them in my bag ready for the morning. I was halfway across the bedroom when I caught site of the sub-heading halfway down the first page. A single word that stopped me in my tracks. Canonical.
    Eleven Whitechapel murders. Few people, if any, believed them all to have been the work of Jack the Ripper. Experts argued endlessly about who had and who hadn’t been a true Ripper victim. Emma Smith, almost certainly not. Martha Tabram, the jury was still out on. Personally, I was inclined to think probably not. Her injuries, multiple stab wounds from some sort of bayonet, were very different to the murders that followed. Polly Nichols, on the other hand, number three, nobody doubted. Killed on the last day of August 1888, she’d been the first victim that just about everyone agreed was a true Ripper killing. She had been the first of the canonical five.
    The bedside clock told me it was three o’clock in the morning. I’ve said already that London is never quiet. It was then. I couldn’t hear a thing. Not the traffic outside, not people in the flats upstairs, not even the sound of my own breathing.
    The 31 August, the night Geraldine Jones had been killed, marked the anniversary of the first, undisputed Ripper murder. I checked the notes. Her injuries were practically identical to those inflicted on Polly Nichols and whoever killed Geraldine had disappeared without a trace.
    I was going to have to wake up Tulloch and Joesbury, probably with the same phone call. Wasn’t that going to make me popular?

18
    Sunday 2 September
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    â€˜W HY DIDN’T YOU MENTION THIS EARLIER?’ ASKED Joesbury. It was an hour later, just coming up for four in the morning, and he was standing behind Tulloch’s desk, leaning over her shoulder, both of them staring down at the letter that Emma, true to her word, had scanned and emailed to me at work.
    â€˜I wanted to be sure,’ I replied, knowing how feeble an excuse it sounded. ‘I needed time to do some reading.’ Feeble as hell, but still a whole lot better than ‘I didn’t want to make an idiot of myself in front of you.’
    Tulloch looked like she was struggling not to yawn. ‘Did you see the original?’ she said.
    I nodded.
    â€˜The handwriting is red?’ she asked. ‘Please tell me it’s somewhere safe.’
    â€˜Emma wouldn’t give it to me,’ I answered. ‘But she seems to be looking after it. She has it in clear plastic.