The Demons of Whitechapel

Chapter 1: White Board-2

It was a miracle the body had been found at all: down in St. Katharine’s docks, entangled in tarp which was wedged securely under an industrial bin. The crime scene unit had erected a little tent over and around the site to protect it from rain and onlookers.

The second Simon stepped inside he felt the growing need to change out of his clothes and into fresh, unsoiled ones—he would, later, because the Rules said so. What lay on the ground, exposed and filthy, partly hidden by Doctor Jones, the pathologist, was an abomination. Feet and hands had been cut up, the skin hung in shreds off flesh and bones. He sensed Ralph Golding’s presence even before the other man muttered, “What in the name of all that’s good and holy!”

Dr. Jones looked up and, recognizing the sergeant, she moved aside to give them a better view. Immediately Simon wished she hadn’t done that. Face and head had been cut up as well. What sat on the top of the victim’s neck was a bloody lump that bore no resemblance to a human head.

“What happened?” asked Ralph. “Apart from the obvious.”

Simon let him proceed. Ralph was probably used to leading investigations after their former DI’s death. It would take getting used to again to step down. Simon was willing to grant him some leniency. At least that was what he told himself while he was trying to block out the feeling that he was glad Ralph was the one talking with Jones, because he wasn’t sure he was able to speak. The horrendously mangled corpse was Simon’s first. The only bodies they had shown them at the academy had been neatly cleaned and seemed more like dolls under the fluorescent lights in the morgue. This one was dirty and bloody; it was wet, it reeked of something, and it looked enough like a real person to twist Simon’s guts into a knot. With an intuition he didn’t know he possessed, Simon knew that this man had been in a lot of pain before he died.

He averted his gaze and concentrated on the tarp that showed surprisingly little blood. His shirt was itching. He felt the dirt penetrating his clothes. Doctor Jones lapsed into explanation mode:

“For now there’s not a lot I can tell you. Victim is in his twenties, skinny to the point of malnutritioned. He didn’t die here, but he’s definitely been dead for a few hours.” She smiled, a smile that had nothing to do with the body on the ground but merely with the acknowledgement that they were all on the same side and had far too little information. “More later.”

Simon couldn’t get out of the tent fast enough.

The witness who had found the atrocity was of little help. A drunk guy who had a boat here and wanted to withdraw rather than go home and explain to his wife the alcohol on his breath after having been sober for three months. He thought he had had an hallucination—thought it couldn’t be right, a body with no face—but he’d called the police anyway, because the part of reality that did penetrate his brain told him that it was the right thing to do when you found the body of a naked, dead man lying around, no matter if he had his face on or not.

“How did you find the body down there in the first place?” Simon wanted to know. So his voice was functioning; good sign.

The man shrugged. “Fell.” He had fallen and couldn’t get up again, so he had decided to simply stay on the ground, wrap himself in a piece of tarp, and sleep off the booze. Until he had realized the tarp was already in use.

While Flemming and Heart stayed in the docks to look for potential witnesses—there was a spot some male prostitutes favoured, perhaps they’d seen something, heard something, unless they were stoned, although even then some of them were still high-functioning—Simon, Ralph, and Pollard went back to the station. It was 4:30 A.M. anyway, almost time for dawn.

“How did you know?” Ralph asked him on their way back to the station. He had offered Simon a ride and seemed to enjoy the deserted city streets. By way of an elaboration Ralph added, “At the station yesterday you said that something was going to happen before sunrise. How did you know?”

Simon watched the rain hit the street in front of them. “It was just a hunch,” he said.

“It’s a very precise hunch.” But when Simon didn’t reply to that, Ralph didn’t push for further explanations. Instead he said, “Was this your first corpse?”

“Yes.” Simon waited for a sarcastic or belittling remark, but Ralph disappointed him by remaining quiet.

“It’s a nasty one, that one,” Ralph eventually said.

“Yes.”

“Will you be alright?”

Surprised, Simon turned to look at his sergeant. “Why do you ask?”

He waited for Ralph to look at him, but the other man kept his eyes on the road even though they were waiting for the traffic light to switch to green.

“You seem like a decent bloke,” he began. “I mean I get that you’re fresh from the academy, and I’ve read your file—you’re Chief Inspector Stark’s son, which means you probably inherited some influential friends. I don’t want to step on anybody’s toes, so don’t get me wrong. But Whitechapel is a wicked place, and the sooner you get used to it the better. And if you can’t live with it, then you should leave before…” He caught himself in time, but Simon knew that the end of this last sentence would have sounded a lot like before you end up like your parents.

“Whitechapel is my home,” Simon simply replied. “I’ll be damned if its demons shall make me turn my back on it.”

Ralph laughed—another reaction that surprised Simon. He wasn’t sure whether his last remark had been funny. Was the sergeant making fun of him?

“You’re a strange one, Simon. I like you. You’ll fit right in with us. And if you have another run-in with Kate, you just let me know and I’ll sort it out. I’m on your side.” As an afterthought he added, “Welcome home.”

* * * *

Back at the station Simon shaved, changed his shirt, and checked that the hand sanitizer was in his pocket. It gave him a clear head under stress. At least that’s what he told himself; the truth was it was another Rule. Then he unwrapped the markers he had bought to go with the whiteboards.

Simon Stark liked order. In fact, order was what ruled his life, it was a beacon of safety and solace in a filthy, anarchic world. He couldn’t clean up crime scenes, he couldn’t make people behave less randomly. The whiteboard was the only thing he had complete control over.

There was a brief moment of panic, almost hysteria, when he didn’t know where to start. The board was so big, the information they had at the beginning of this investigation only a fraction of what was to come. Intel would accumulate, facts would be written down here, questions spelled out. Where to start so it would, in the end, be balanced? How big should the letters be so that there was enough room but no too much white space?

The moment was overcome in the end. It faded into oblivion as the excitement of creating order became louder. Simon decided to begin with the photos of the crime scene they already had and the information they’d found out so far. It would spread from there—lines that connected bits of information, brief memos, short notes on victims, families, friends, enemies. Simon had tried working with different colors once during a course at the academy, but the result had been a horrible clash of color schemes, not orderly at all. Black on white. That was how he liked it. And all pens were the same size. Best not to run any risks.