‘Harlot Hacked To Pieces By Mystery Assailant’. The man in the expensive wool suit sitting in the expensive burgundy leather chair in the expensive oak-panelled office read the front cover of the Daily Morning News, then laid the paper down on his expensive walnut desk. Picking up the Daily Herald and The Chronicle he continued to read aloud the front page headlines. ‘Satanic Streetwalker Slaughterer On The Loose’. ‘Prostitute Disembowelled in Dastardly Disembowelling Attack’. Discarding these papers he smiled a smile that was half a smile of amusement and half a smile of approval. He turned to a smart, tall, distinguished-looking silver-haired gentleman wearing an elegant grey tailcoat.
‘These reports. The handiwork of Jeremy Brunel at the Ministry of Information I assume, Carter?’
The man replied in a refined accent, ‘Yes sir’.
He was about to say something else when there was a timid knock on the door, so timid in fact that it took twelve more knocks of increasing magnitude before it became even slightly audible.
‘Sir’, the silver haired man continued, ‘I believe there is someone at the door’.
‘Is there?’
Both men looked towards the door and listened intently.
‘So there is’. The first man spoke to the door. ‘Come!’
It opened and an attractive but meek-looking woman in her twenties entered carrying a thin folder.
‘Good morning Leader. This is Vera Darling’s updated report’, she said hesitantly. ‘It has just arrived’.
The Leader smiled again. This time however, it wasn’t a smile of amusement or approval. Or even a smile of fulfilment or joy. It was a predatory smile. The sort of smile you’d give a young, attractive and impressionable girl in the knowledge that you were the most powerful person in the country. The sort of smile that implied that if she knew what was good for her, she would pander to his every whim. Then the smile changed into one of whimsy. A smile that reflected on earlier times. After a moment the smile vanished and the Leader sighed, conscious he must concentrate on the job in hand.
‘Come here’ Miss…’
‘Hav… Havering’. The shy girl stammered and diverted her eyes from the Leader’s steely glare.
‘Come now. I won’t bite!’. Despite this assurance, the Leader gave her a look which gave every impression that he was being very economical with the truth.
The girl walked cautiously towards him and stopped when she reached the imposing desk.
‘You’re new aren’t you?’
‘Yes Leader. I started yesterday’. She said, gingerly handing him the folder.
‘Good, good. I’m sure you’ll soon get used to me and my, er, how would you describe my working practices, Carter?’
The words Carter had in mind, but dared not say were, ‘bloody strange’, ‘freakishly abnormal’ or ‘hellishly weird’. Instead he said, diplomatically, ‘Idiosyncratic, sir?’
‘”Idiosyncratic?” Yes. An excellent choice of words, Carter’.
As the Leader took the folder from a very nervous Miss Havering he gently held her chin and tilted her face up so he could look straight into her deep green eyes.
‘That word, “idiosyncratic”, it’s a difficult one to get your tongue around isn’t it? Could you get your tongue around it Miss Havering?’
Miss Havering gulped and nodded. ‘Y-Yes sir’.
‘Splendid!’ said the Leader. His fingers moved from her chin and caressed her smooth, soft cheek just for a moment, but long enough for her to feel very uncomfortable. It was a very flushed-looking Miss Havering who left the office, closing the door behind her.
The Leader turned to his manservant. ‘Carter, when we’re done, tell Miss Havering that I want to see her back here at six o’clock’.
‘Yes sir. And if she asks what for?’
‘I don’t care. Just tell her any old bullshit but make sure she is dressed appropriately’.
Carter raised his eyes and sighed inwardly at the same time as the Leader gently turned a hidden switch located under his desk. With a whirring sound, a piece of the wall panelling slowly and precisely slid upwards revealing a clothes rail which glided smoothly out into the office on castors. When this was fully extended the Leader rose and examined various items hanging there, feeling and smelling them, mentally weighing up their pros and cons.
‘What do you think, Carter? Nurse or ballet dancer. Or maybe the cat woman?’
‘It’s a very personal choice, sir’, Carter answered, shaking his head imperceptively.
‘That it is, Carter. That it is’. The Leader continued to peruse everything on the rail, fingers deftly flicking across hangers. He’d almost examined every single item when his fingers stopped and his eyes lit up.
‘Eureka! I forgot about this one. And it looks like it’s her size’.
The leader removed a garment and looked at it admiringly before placing it in a bag and handing this to Carter.
‘Very good choice, sir’. Carter replied, placing the bag at his feet and wondering how on earth he’d manage to persuade a young and impressionable new member of the Party’s administration staff to meet with the Leader that evening dressed as a milkmaid.
Seated at his desk again, the clothes concealed once more behind the panelling, the Leader flicked though the folder.
‘Vera’s found herself a good protégé in this Mr. Brunel. I liked his plan for Jack but the follow-up is even more ingenious — capitalising on all the murders. The public have an insatiable appetite for scandal and gossip and seeding these stories in the media will spread the word like wildfire. The rogue mechanical harlots will soon be destroyed and over-sexed women and men will be too frightened to consider becoming prostitutes or indeed, visiting them. All in all, a terrifically good result, wouldn’t you agree?’
Carter nodded. ‘I would, sir. This Mr. Brunel seems to be quite skilled. It is fortunate that he has come to our attention’.
‘It is indeed’. The Leader put the folder down. This time he frowned. ‘He has demonstrated that he thinks very differently to his colleagues’.
Carter, who had been pondering whether Miss Havering would believe the ‘You’ve been enrolled on a farmyard familiarisation course’ story, was slightly taken aback by the Leader’s tone. ‘Thinking differently?’, Carter asked. ‘Well that’s commendable, isn’t it sir?’.
The Leader stood and looked out of his wide office window high up in the Party headquarters, lord over all he surveyed. He looked down at all the citizens going about their daily routine, a happy, content, but most importantly, controlled, population.
‘I’m not sure. Mr. Brunel worries me slightly. He’s conscientious, efficient and highly intelligent, all attributes the Party can exploit. Despite this, he makes me feel slightly uncomfortable. Something about him keeps irritating me. He’s like a tiny pebble in my shoe’.
The Leader closed his eyes and clenched his fists by his sides. He took a deep breath and shuddered.
‘I can feel… I can feel… a disturbance in the Fabric’.
Carter looked confused. ‘Does sir mean the curtains?’
The Leader sighed. He opened his eyes, sighed again, and turned to face Carter. ‘No. I mean the ‘Fabric’’.
‘As in cushion covers?’, added Carter.
‘No!’, exclaimed the Leader with more than a trace of annoyance in his voice. When I say ‘Fabric’ I mean the fabric of society. I mean I feel a disturbance in the energy that binds everything together in the universe and controls how it all works’.
Carter nodded and asked, ‘You mean like ‘a Force’. Like a ‘disturbance in ‘The Force’?’
The Leader’s eyes instantly widened.
‘Shhhhhhhhhhhh!’, he exclaimed. ‘Don’t use that word!’
‘“Force?”’, asked a confused Carter.
‘I said “don’t say it!”’ This time the Leader shouted.
‘It’s just that I think that talking about a disturbance in the Force is better than talking about a disturbance in the Fabric’, Carter added, quite reasonably. ‘A disturbance in the Fabric could be misconstrued as a flaw in the weave or defective stitching’.
The Leader hit the window hard with his fist before speaking through gritted teeth. ‘I know… but we have to use a different word to…’ He looked conspiratorially from side to side before whispering, ‘Force’.
‘Like “Fabric?”’, Carter proposed.
‘Yes, like “Fabric”’, the Leader agreed, his patience fast wearing out, ‘Because there are certain important legal issues involved, all right!?’.
The Leader had a way with his delivery that made it crystal clear when a matter was closed for discussion. This was one of those instances. Not only was the subject closed, it was boarded up with a sign saying ‘Keep away’ and two more that said ‘Enter at your peril’ and ‘Beware of the dogs’. The Leader continued. ‘Now where was I?’
‘Mr. Brunel and the Fabric, sir’, prompted Carter, with an almost unnoticeable inflection of contempt in his voice when he used the ‘F’ word.
‘Yes, of course’. The Leader said, turning back from the window, ‘I’ve instructed Vera to monitor his progress carefully’.
He studied a photograph of Dick that was fixed to the inside cover of the folder. ‘He is a most interesting fellow who reminds me of someone else though I can’t, for the sake of me, think who it is’.
Before the Leader could think any more about Jeremy Brunel, Carter had pulled a gun from his pocket and pointed it at him. In a flash the Leader almost simultaneously picked up a heavy table lighter from his desk and hurled it at the weapon, while throwing himself into his chair and propelling himself backwards. The lighter struck Carter on the wrist with a sharp ‘crack’. He gave an exclamation of pain and dropped the gun, then in a move that belied his age, hurled himself over the desk straight at the Leader. The chair toppled over, dumping both men unceremoniously on the floor.
Rolling over and over on the thick pile carpet they both fought for supremacy and the chance to inflict serious physical damage on the other. The Leader was younger and more agile but Carter was a larger man and physically stronger. The two men rolled back and forth and would have rolled some more if the Leader’s head hadn’t thumped against the one of the substantial desk legs, causing momentary concussion. Exploiting this moment, Carter used his weight to pin the Leader to the ground, managing to shuffle up his writhing body until he was astride him. Restraining the Leader’s arms with his knees, Carter now had both his own hands free to strangle him and in fact, this was exactly what he did.
All the Leader could do was feel Carter’s thick fingers slowly choke the life force out of him. He stared at his would-be assassin, seeing the hate deep in his eyes. He wondered what his own eyes looked like. Did they express pain or hopelessness? Or were they calm, waiting for the inevitable? No! There was still much work for him to do. Summoning a last ounce of strength, with his final gasp the Leader jerked and twisted his body. He heard his spine protest with a loud and unpleasant ‘Click’, but despite the pain, he managed to free one arm. Carter’s strong hands were still gripped firmly around his neck but with his free arm, the Leader groped blindly around on the desk top. He could feel his windpipe slowly being crushed. Breaths were now laboured and infrequent. Then he felt what he’d been looking for and grasped it as if his life depended on it, which in fact, it did. Half a second later Carter felt the cold, sharp blade of the ornate letter opener pressed hard against his sinewy neck. This was the signal, and the persuasion he needed, to instantly remove his hands. Both men lay there panting; Carter from the exertion and the Leader from the fresh breaths that filled his lungs.
Carter got up and helped the Leader to his feet. ‘You did well, sir’, he said, breathing heavily.
‘And you…’. The Leader was now taking in deep, measured breaths. ‘You’re a good bodyguard and an excellent adversary. Your attacks always keep me on my toes’. He picked Carter’s gun up from the floor.
‘Or in this case, on your back, sir’.
‘Very good, Carter. Very good!’. With that, the Leader punched Carter playfully on his arm.
‘I need to be on guard at all times against assassins. They could be anywhere, even people among us right now. For all I know Carter, you could be my assassin!’
The Leader pointed the gun at Carter’s head. If Carter had been alarmed at this action he didn’t show it, not even when the Leader squinted along the barrel and cocked the gun.
‘Sir, I’m not your assassin. You have my word on that as a gentleman’.
The Leader smiled, then un-cocked the weapon and handed it to Carter, handle first. Carter took it and placed it back within his jacket.
‘I know Carter, I trust you. I’m always glad to have you by my side particularly when there’s a disturbance in the Fabric’.
‘Ah yes, sir. The Fabric’. Carter nodded, this time thinking about a linen tablecloth.
Jack’s second victim was a sweet, smiling girl named Harriet. She smiled when she met Jack in bar called the Royal Sovereign on Bethnal Green Road and he offered to buy her a gin. She smiled as they joked and laughed in the corner of the saloon bar, warmed by the flames of a roaring fire and two or three other gins within her. She smiled when he agreed to her proposition and followed her out to the deserted narrow cobbled mews at the back of the bar. She stopped smiling however when Jack plunged his long sharp knife into her abdomen several times in quick succession.
Harriet’s body was found later that evening by two well-to-do gentlemen using the mews as a short cut to Dunbridge Street. Like Elizabeth, Jack had made sure her body was found in what the police would officially call a ‘distressed state’. The tabloid newspapers, fed by ‘anonymous but reliable Party sources’ (AKA Dick) didn’t exercise restraint in their descriptions of the body. The papers’ owners had seen circulations rise after the first crime was committed which is why they took it in their own hands to elaborate on this latest murder to make it even more sensational. Depending on which report you read Harriet’s body had been found with her liver, spleen and kidneys removed and arranged in a neat pile on her chest (or as neatly as you could pile various bodily organs), her pancreas, small intestines and appendix tucked in her jacket pockets, or her nose and heart shoved up her rectum. Or all of the above.
It didn’t really matter which version of events was most widely believed. What was important was that in a very short space of time two harlots had been murdered and mutilated by an anonymous killer. Prostitution was scandalous enough in this puritanical society, but prostitution linked to what seemed like a mentally deranged serial killer ensured the bloody attacks became the talk of the town and the country. Ordinarily, if the prostitutes were real flesh and blood women they’d be absolutely terrified and would stay off the streets until the killings stopped but these man-made women didn’t operate with real logic or emotions. Their programming meant their prime directive was to entice men into having sex with them at any cost. That’s why deaths three, four and five followed later that week. And six and seven the week later.
By this time the deaths were making prime time television news. Dick had drip-fed various reports into the media to promote pro-Party messages. Rumours were rife that the vicious killer was a member of the Resistance, that he was someone who had avoided his monthly injections, a foreigner, a philanderer, an atheist, or a chronic masturbator. Once these stories had been planted speculation spread like wildfire, fanned by the winds of public interest and a circulation frenzy
‘Serial Slasher Slays and Slices Seventh!’ screamed the most recent front page headline. The Leader smiled, placed the paper down on his desk and leaned back in his chair. He’d been reviewing Jack’s progress on a regular basis via Vera’s reports and decided to commend Mr. Brunel on his good work once all the prostitutes had been terminated. He thought that as long as he could manage his unbelievably hectic workload he would try and meet Jeremy in person. As he contemplated this, the Leader shivered and looked around his office. He had that niggling feeling again and his foot was irritating him. If he didn’t know better he would have sworn there was a small pebble in the toe of his shoe.