ONCE BITTEN

SIXTEEN : KAYLA GREENE

I

Frank Hogbin was an elderly and none too sharp Scotland Yard detective who clung precariously to his position through the generosity of his mother-in-law’s contributions to the Liberal party. Inspector Bitten’s attention became drawn away from his hunt for the Ripper/Werewolf to the question when the Detective Sergeant appeared at his SID office one warm evening.

Hot, out of breath and extremely flustered, he apologized for call at such a late hour, but feared he would lose his job unless Bitten could help him.

Bitten later confessed to Constable Wilk that he had been sorely tempted not to assist. Hogbin’s removal from the front would have helped no end in Scotland Yard’s battle against crime. But Bitten would always be an honourable man and could not bring himself to abandon a colleague in need. With a deep sight, he settled down and asked Hogbin to explain his troubles.

The case appeared to be relatively simple. It concerned the murder of Miss Kayla Greene, a Russian prostitute who had been discovered by her friend Casca Akashova with her throat slashed at 7 a.m. that morning. The police had found two items in her villa. The first had been a jewellery box, the lid of which had been forced open and the contents removed. The second had been a series of letters written by Miss Greene to a certain Walter Sickert from Poland

The letters claimed she was ‘with child’ and that Sickert was the father. The letters were an attempt at blackmail and if he did not pay her £1,000, he had promised, she would write to his wife and bring a suit of paternity against him.

On this evidence, Hogbin concluded, there were two explanations for the murder. Either an act of desperation by a robber caught in the act of stealing Miss Greene’s jewels, or Sickert ensuring his mistress’s silence without having to spend a farthing. Further evidence inclined Hogbin to the latter.

Walter Sickert was well known to Scotland Yard and in turned out, to Dr Loup. Walter Sickert had been made impotent by a series of painful childhood operations for a fistula of the p***s. This impotency had scarred him emotionally and had left him with a pathological hatred of women which, in time, and had been on Bitten’s list of possible suspects when the Ripper first struck in August 1888. Doubts were raised about the possibility of being the Ripper, when Loup pointed out that St Mark's Hospital, where the operations on the young Sickert were supposedly performed, specialized in rectal as opposed to genital fistulas.

It had also been discovered that the evidence suggests that Sickert seemed to be anything but impotent. Indeed, his first wife had divorced him citing his adultery in her petition for divorce. In addition, he is believed to have had several mistresses and is thought to have fathered at least one illegitimate child. So, the case for Sickert's being impotent appears to be non-existent.

There also turned out to be little evidence to suggest that Sickert possessed a pathological hatred of women.

Bitten did have little doubt that Sickert became fascinated by murder and in finding different ways in which to depict the menace of the crime and the criminal. But, to cite this as evidence that he was actually a murderer - and, specifically, the murderer who carried out the Jack the Ripper killings - is hardly definitive proof.

Also, Bitten knew when looking at a particular Jack the Ripper suspect, or any murder suspect for that matter, you need to be able to link your suspect with the crime. For example, he had to be able to place them at the scene of the crime,

Here again the case against Sickert unravels slightly since there is evidence to suggest that he may not even have been in England when the murders were committed. A number of letters from several family members refer to him holidaying in Luxembourg for a period that corresponds with most of the Ripper murders. Although it had been suggested that he might have travelled to London in order to commit the murders and then returned to Luxembourg, no evidence has been produced to suggest that he did so.

Bitten had originally contended that Sickert might be responsible for writing most of the Jack the Ripper correspondence, and frequently uses statements made in those letters to strengthen the case against him.

Bitten and Dr Loup finally shared the opinion that none of the letters - not even the Dear Boss missive that gave him his name - were the work of the killer.  In addition, there is the problem that the style of the letters varies so greatly in grammatical structure, spelling and handwriting that it is almost impossible for a single author to have created all of them.

That didn’t divert from the fact that Sickert, remained a shadowy figure who never stayed in one place long enough for the police to pin anything on him. There were rumours he had a house and a family in Luxembourg, and made huge sums of money dealing with armaments and opium, with one of his major customers being Stephen Coughlin.

How ironic.

Sickert travelled with no servants, rented discreet private apartments by the day when in London, and appeared to be in possession of at least three different passports of different nationalities. He had a weakness for fine food as well as women, being well know in all the capital’s best restaurants, both as a connoisseur of the finest wines and as a leaver of extraordinary generous tips.

Neighbours reported having seen a man fitting Sickert’s description going in and out of Kayla Greene’s villa several times over the past few days. But as the figure wore a hat and a heavy cloak, even in the hottest weather, it turned out impossible to be certain of his identity. He had, however, been noticed leaving the property at 6.30 a.m. that very morning.

As Miss Greene had been dead for no more than an hour when Miss Akashova found her, Hogbin felt it safe to assume the mysterious male visitor would be her killer. And the evidence pointed strongly to that man being Walter Sickert.

ii

Hogbin alerted the force, and at 7.30 p.m. that evening a constable spotted Sickert entering a private apartment near Mayfair. Bitten hurried to the address to confront his suspect and after being dropped off by a Hansom cab.

Above his head, a reef of clouds and lightning raced across the skies from the sea. His hands were shaking, and my mind wasn’t far from behind. Looking up Bitten saw the storm spilling like rivers of blackened blood from the clouds, blotting out the moon and covering the roofs of London in darkness. He tried to speed up, but his thoughts of the case consumed him, and he walked with leaden feet, chased by the rain. Finding brief refuge under the canopy of some trees, he tried to collect his thoughts and decide what to do next. A clap of thunder roared close by. The ground shook under his feet. The night became opaque, impenetrable, as the rain folded London in its shroud.

He ran the final few yards to the apartment block and let himself in.

Sickert’s private apartment had been left unlocked and everywhere inside appeared to be dark. Only streetlights casting a glow inside the room. It continued to rain, but when I kicked the door shut and put my mobile phone down on the counter, a thick blanket of shadow settled around me.

Automatically, he reached for the lights inside the door.

They didn’t come on.

Electricity was fairly new even in these apartments and he initially thought that the lights might be teething problems.

Without gas-lights Bitten had to feel his way around the apartment.

Moving across the kitchen, he glanced out of the window, down towards the street, and could see small dots of colour everywhere: lamp posts standing sentry along street, cabs passing through the town, buildings casting out watery yellow light from their windows and doorways.

Everyone in London had light.

Everyone except Sickert’s apartment.

On the other side of the kitchen was a larder, with two switches on the wall next to it. One for the kitchen, one for the larder.

He tried them both.

They were dead too.

“Walter Sickert”

His voice carried off into the house, the stillness and silence amplifying it, like he was shouting into the mouth of a cave.

Sickert didn’t reply.

Of course, he didn’t. He wasn’t there.

He looked through to the living room. Slowly, as he stood there in the dark, a sense of unease crawled its way through my system, cool in his veins, blooming beneath his ribs, his heart getting faster, as if, somehow, his body confirmed what he already knew.

This was a trap.

Just inside the door of the larder he discovered, leaning against the wall, a collection of walking sticks. He reached into the shadows and lifted one out.

Gripping it, he edged forward, into the living room.

The apartment was new, so the layout didn’t conform to pre-Victorian design. It ran in a kind of spiral: kitchen through to a dining room, past a pair of French windows, with a balcony overlooking and then on to a single, narrow staircase that took you up. He moved across the living room, eyes everywhere, trying to see if anything had moved.

He stood completely still even though his instinct was to run.

But he was paralyzed, his shoes apparently glued to the carpet, his eyes fixed on the window. He had always reasoned that when someone has taken so much of power away, you’ll work with what little you had left.

A sharp tingle of fear, as he composed himself the practicalities presented themselves.

He eased back out into the hallway and paused at hallway that led down to the bedrooms.

Listened.

There was no noise.

Move, he told myself. He breathed in quietly and as he did, the sound seemed immense; every noise amplifying in his ears, every beat of his heart and every blink of his eyes. He expected to be able to hear, something approach if he wasn’t alone in the apartment. Hear something, but the house was silent now. No footsteps. No creaks.

Nothing moved.

Nothing made a sound.

And then a floorboard creaked.

He didn’t move. Didn’t breathe. He couldn’t risk any noise. His only defence the walking-stick.

He looked down the corridor, into the darkness, every footstep became mapped by a succession of groans. In the blackness, he could make out vague shapes; a long, cylindrical window on the right, cut into the outside wall; then the first of three bedrooms. The tiniest fragments of light coming in through its windows and spilling out on to the corridor.

Nothing else.

Another creaking floorboard and then a sound of sniffing. Like an animal trying to pick up a trail.

He could smell something then. A horrible, degraded odour, like decaying compost, coming from upstairs. He swallowed, felt like he had to, just to try to get the smell out of my throat and nose. But the stench didn’t go away. It was drifting down the corridor like discarded flakes of invisible skin. He swallowed again, and again, and again, but couldn’t get rid of it.

He re-established his grip on the walking-stick. Even in the dark, he could make out his hands: blanched white, like sticks of chalk, veins slithering through from wrists and knuckles.

As he paused there, he heard faint, indistinct noises and he became uncertain as to whether it was coming from inside or outside the house. The wind could easily have been a whisper. The fall of rain on the roof could have been someone softly padding around.

Raising the walking-stick, he slowly started his progress down the corridor.

Even as he tried to rein in the impact of my full weight on the stairs, they groaned and shifted. He kept to the right, his back against the wall, and as he got halfway, he paused at the bathroom. It had all the mod-cons, but looked small: a bath, a toilet, a basin, white enamel, and tiles that reflected back whatever dull glow was seeping in through a thin slice of window.

Then there were the three bedrooms.

One remained empty just a large wardrobe and old carpets. The other was the spare bedroom that looked out over the street.

He edged he edged his way he stopped again. He found another set of switches about a foot to his right. One for the landing, the other for the bathroom.

I reached out. Click. Click.

Nothing.

As he took a couple of steps further, a floorboard shifted beneath him, and he paused waiting for any kind of reaction from any of the rooms. But all that echoed back was more silence. Quickly, he sidestepped into the master bedroom.

Nothing.

iii

It took everything he had not to make another sound. Whatever or whoever roamed this apartment managed to have crawled beneath his skin. Violated him. A bubble of anger worked its way up through his chest, then fear cut across it as he heard another noise.

Closer, this time.

He backed across to the spare bedroom. That’s where it came from. Inside, not visible from where he was, where he nearly fell over a spare bed. Also, two standalone pine wardrobes stood next to the window, old and discoloured chair, brown leather on a wooden base.

Something moved. Faster, more determined this time, as if it suddenly realized where he was.

Then it stopped. Sniffed the air once more. As it breathed out, he could smell it again. Its decay. Its stink. He held my breath, desperate not to swallow. Desperate not to make a noise.

He couldn’t make out what it was. He watched the night absorb its entire body.

His heart started pumping faster. He took two big steps, and he was at the entrance, firming up his grip on the walking-stick, peering through the gap between door and frame. For a moment there was nothing but shadows. But then things began to emerge: the edges of furniture, the wardrobes, and the lights of the village, like the tiniest speck of paint beyond the glass.

It scanned the room, left to right, and one long, snake-like movement. When it was done, it did the same thing again, replicating the action exactly. Finally, it turned and stepped back into the half-light of the landing, pausing, and looking straight at me. He stood motionless, soundless, staring right through the gap between the door and the frame, right into the darkness.

And as his eyesight adjusted, the shape of a very large dog began to form merely a few feet away.

He moved forward with stealth, almost stumbling, into the darkness of the corridor. Heart thrashing in his chest, head thumping, and let everything fall into place around him, like a bough breaking.

The wolf growled. A noise that caused his heart to tighten and his body fill with dread, a feeling that snaked down my back and legs. Eyes unblinking, revealing no fear, a stalking predator. Anticipation of having his throat torn open was enough for him to face the darkness.

The wolf's presence electrified the air, his energy filling the room. He had seldom sensed such a controlled strength of will emanating from anyone, let alone a dog. He shook something deep within him turned to steel. Everything around him amplified as he grew hyper-aware of his surroundings.

He tightened the grip on the walking-stick. Holding it more like a baseball bat than a seven iron. He looked into the gloom, taking a breath, cautioning myself not to panic as the dog continued to creep towards him, the haunches high, the head and shoulders low, a brittle kind of tenseness in its manner. He shuffled backwards, as the huge werewolf growled at him.

For such a long time he had only one wish: to find the killers. Now that he found himself standing face-to-face with werewolf, he wanted something else.

He wanted to live.

He stood at the end of the corridor with his back towards the dark void of a window too high up too jump. No escape.

The werewolf inched forward on the floor in front of him, swelling to a frightening size. Tail still, shoulder muscles bunched, haunches quivering, he prepared to launch himself at Bitten.

Bitten held his breath and then the werewolf came at him. Fast and strong. He swung the walking- sit and hit nothing but air. He lost his balance and toppled backwards hitting the back of his head hard and the impact reverberated through his body like a wave.

He had landed with a thud. Coming to rest in a heap, his right ankle gripped by intense pain that for a moment it blinded him, and he crouched there on all fours like a wounded animal, confused and almost sightless with fear. He shook his head, trying to drive away the dazed feeling. Bitten felt blood on his lips and bruising forming along the lines of my jaw, back and legs. He’d landed in one of his own nightmares, which he had dreamt on many occasions, whimpering, and drenched in sweat, the dream where he screamed and screamed where no sound came out.

He got up.

He had lost his bearings. Stumbling, he caught himself with his bad leg he whimpered with pain, went down on his knees. He couldn't go on, but knew he had to. He crawled along the floor in the darkness, blind and scared. He closed his eyes and willed himself to listen.

No sound of movement at all.

He opened my eyes. Slowly, he made out the contours of the wolf moaning in the darkness, winded, and trying to recapture his breath. Through the strains of darkness, the colour of his coat gave him a sinister otherworldly look, like a creature from another planet. A shadow, a mere shadow.

The sight of the werewolf caught him like a punch. He tottered, his leg giving away again, and he fell to the floor.

That damn knee.

He screwed his face up in anguish as he hoisted himself to his feet. He put his hand out in front of him, as he shuffled sideways in the direction of the living room. His back pressed up against the wall. As his fingers brushed the door frame, he dropped down again and listened. The noise of the rain lessened.

A cold shudder ran down his back. Swapping the walking-stick from his right to his left, he quietly traced the wood of the frame.

Bitten kept on staring into the darkness trying to force his eyes to see more. There was no light. Not even a hint of it. There were no edges, no shapes or definition – just the night. Nothing else. As he squeezed his fingers harder against the grip of the walking-stick, he sensed movement from the werewolf.

He could try and make a dash for the garden, but with his bad leg, the werewolf would almost certainly be quicker than him.

Despite how wet he had been from the downpour, sweat rolled down his back, tracing the length of his spine; feel his heart pounding in his chest, its echo in his ears. He swallowed, and in the silence, it felt the noise was immense. he tensed, expecting some kind of reaction.

All he got was silence.

Then a gentle squeak of a floorboard; one tiny moment of sound that seemed to carry along the hallway like a gunshot. Blind in the dark already, he closed my eyes once more, trying to focus his other senses, trying to understand what the werewolf was doing.

Then he realized.

Six feet away. Maybe less.

We’re right next to another.

A terrible sensation rose up from deep within Bitten’s stomach, through his chest and into his throat. Fear, nausea, and a sense of entrapment.

He opened his eyes and staggered backwards into the lounge. The werewolf followed, its movement smooth and fearless.

He wanted to run. Wrench open the front door and race out into the safety of the East London streets.

The werewolf’s eyes were staring not at Bitten but into him. They were extraordinary eyes, hungry, piercing, like red hard stones. The nausea was like bile in Bitten’s mouth. His tongue felt swollen like a cows, huge in his mouth.

And then without warning it came at Bitten once more.

He absorbed the impact and they stumbled sideways, towards the window, unable to stop our momentum, and crashed right through them. Glass shattered. Wood splintered. And then they were flying through the air before crashing together onto the pavement outside.

Rain sheeted down.

Bitten rolled on to his front, to see where the werewolf had ended up.

It had gone.