"How did Nies react?"
"Kerridge is his superior officer, after all. What could he do? Nies was
wild with anger, but he released Romaniv and ordered his men to begin
again."
"It would seem that releasing Romaniv, while making his wife happy,
would bring a premature end to Hanston-Smith's joy," Hillier noted.
"Well, of course Mrs. Romaniv felt duty-bound to thank Hanston-Smith in
the manner to which he'd become so accustomed. She slept with him one
last time—wore the poor bloke out until the wee hours of the morning, if
I have the story straight—and then let Romaniv into the house."
Webberly looked up at a sharp knock on the door. "The rest, as they say,
is a bit of bloody history. The pair murdered Hanston-Smith, took
everything they could carry, got to Scarborough, and were out of the
country before dawn."
"And Nies's reaction?"
"Demanded Kerridge's immediate resignation." The knock sounded again.
Webberly ignored it. "He didn't get it, however. But Nies's mouth has
been watering like the devil for it ever since."
"And here we are back with them again, you say."
A third knock, much more insistent. Webberly called entrance to Bertie
Edwards, the Met's head of forensics, who entered the room in his usual
brisk manner, scribbling on his clipboard and speaking to it at the same
time.
To Edwards, the clipboard was as human as most men's secretaries.
"Severe contusion on the right temple," he was announcing happily,
"followed by the main laceration to the carotid artery. No
identification, no money, stripped down to the underclothes. It's the
Railway Ripper, all right." He finished writing with a fl ourish.
Hillier surveyed the little man with profound distaste. "Christ, these
Fleet Street appellations. We're going to be haunted by Whitechapel till
the end of time."
"Is this the Waterloo corpse?" Webberly asked.
Edwards glanced at Hillier, his face an open book in which he considered
whether he should argue the merits of nameless killers being dubbed
something—anything—for the sake of public awareness. He apparently
rejected that line of communication, for he wiped at his forehead with
the sleeve of his lab coat and turned to his immediate superior.
"Waterloo." He nodded. "Number eleven. We've not quite finished Vauxhall
yet. Both are typical of the Ripper victims we've seen. Transient
types. Broken nails. Dirty. Badly cut hair. Body lice as well. King's
Cross is still the only one out of sync, and that's the bloody devil
after all these weeks. No ID. No missing-person's call on him yet. I
can't make it out." He scratched his head with the end of his pen. "Want
the Waterloo snap? I've brought it."
Webberly waved towards the wall on which were already posted the
photographs of the twelve recent murder victims, all of them killed in
an identical manner in or near London train stations. Thirteen murders
now in just over fi ve weeks. The papers were screaming for an arrest.
As if he were oblivious to this, Edwards whistled airily between his
teeth and rooted on Webberly's desk for a drawing pin. He carried the
latest victim to the wall.
"Not a bad shot." He stepped back to admire his work. "Sewed him up quite nice."
"Jesus!" Hillier exploded. "You're a ghoul, man! At least have the
decency to remove that filthy coat when you come here! Have you no sense
at all? We've women on these fl oors!"
Edwards wore the guise of patient attention, but his eyes flicked over
the chief superintendent and lingered longest on the fl eshy neck that
hung over his collar and on the thick hair that Hillier liked to have
called leonine.
Edwards shrugged at Webberly in mutual understanding. "Quite the gent, he is," he commented before leaving the room.
"Sack him!" Hillier shouted as the door shut behind the pathologist.
Webberly laughed. "Have a sherry, David," he said. "It's in the cabinet
behind you. We none of us ought to be here on a Saturday."
Two sherries considerably palliated Hillier's irritation with the
pathologist. He was standing before Webberly's display wall, staring
morosely at the thirteen photographs.
"This is one hell of a mess," he noted sourly. "Victoria, King's Cross,
Waterloo, Liverpool, Blackfriars, Paddington. God damn it, man, why
can't he at least be alphabetical!"
"Maniacs often lack that little organisational touch," Webberly responded placidly.
"Five of these victims don't even have names, for God's sake," Hillier complained.
"ID is always removed, so are money and clothes. If there's no
missing-person report filed, we start with prints. You know how long
something like that takes, David. We're doing our best."
Hillier turned around. The one thing he knew for a certainty was that
Malcolm would always do his absolute best and would quietly remain in
the background when the kudos were given. "Sorry. Was I frothing?"
"A bit."
"As usual. So this new Nies-Kerridge squabble? What's it all about?"
Webberly glanced at his watch. "Another Yorkshire murder being disputed,
no less. They're sending someone down with the data. A priest."
"A priest? Christ—what kind of case is this?"
Webberly shrugged. "Evidently he's the only third party that Nies and Kerridge could agree upon to bring us the information."
"Why's that?"
"Seems he found the body."
