Sure and Certain Death Read Online Free Page A

and coming from down near the docks . . .’
    ‘But it’s unlikely,’ I said. ‘Nan, the Ripper’s victims were all ladies of easy virtue. There’s no connection.’
    ‘Mmm.’ Nan looked down at the floor while the Duchess stared anxiously across at me. My older sister is tortured by agitation about things like this.
    ‘These two poor ladies died horribly,’ I said as I got up from my chair and began to make my way towards the kitchen door. ‘But there’s nothing supernatural going on, Nancy. There’s no Ripper or . . . There’s some horrible people about, love. That’s all.’
    And then I went off down to the shop to look at the diary for the coming week with Doris.
    Nothing else happened in what had become the very quiet and almost calm streets of West Ham for another two days. Then, a Thursday night it was, I was just about to go to bed when there was a hammering on the front door of the shop. Looking down out of the parlour window, I saw a group of coppers standing outside the shop. When he heard the window open, one of them turned his head up to face me. I knew him.
    Sergeant Hill from Plaistow police station isn’t exactly a friend, but I know him and he and I have quite a bit of time for each other. We’ve helped each other out in the past and there is a respect there in spite of both our various shortcomings. Basically he knows I’m not all I should be sometimes in my head and I know a few things about him he’d rather not talk about too. But this wasn’t a social call.
    ‘Mr H, I won’t beat about the bush,’ Sergeant Hill said after I let him and his lads into my shop. ‘We’ve got a body we want you to look after for us.’
    I frowned. At the height of the bombing, I had taken bodies in from the police and from families bombed out of their houses who couldn’t have the deceased at home. There had been a lot of pressure on mortuary services, and so because I do have a small room where bodies can be stored, it was in constant use during that time. But since the bombing had stopped, the backlog was being dealt with. One of the consequences of this was that my little room was currently empty. I was however puzzled as to why the coppers should suddenly fetch up with a corpse when there was space in the mortuaries. Turning up at night didn’t seem normal either, and I said so.
    ‘I know it’s unusual, Mr H,’ Sergeant Hill replied, ‘and in the normal course of events I wouldn’t be doing it. But this body is . . . well, it’s . . . We think the lady has been murdered. She is to be honest in a bit of a state . . .’
    ‘Sarge, why don’t you just come out and tell him it’s the Ripper!’ Percy Adams was an old copper, a perpetual constable and a bloke incapable of keeping even the most innocent confidence. In peacetime he’d have had his cards years ago, but in these strange days people who do all sorts of jobs are simply the only people who happen to be available. Sergeant Hill shot the old geezer a furious look.
    ‘Constable, we don’t . . .’
    ‘All her insides ripped out of her body!’ Percy Adams looked at me and said, ‘That’s why you have to have her, Mr Hancock. Can’t be at home in the family parlour with half her body in a hessian sack, can she?’
    ‘She’s a shocking state!’ one other, slightly younger constable said while several of the others nodded in agreement.
    ‘Will you button it, Adams!’ Sergeant Hill roared. Then, waving an arm at his little group of coppers, he said, ‘Get out of it, the lot of you! Go on! Get out!’
    They moved quickly for men whose average age was probably fifty. Once they had gone, I pulled the blackout curtain over the shop door once again and looked at Sergeant Hill.
    ‘So there’s been another of these Ripper murders, has there?’ I said as I took a packet of Park Drive fags out of my pocket and offered it to the sergeant.
    He sighed before taking one of my smokes and lighting up. ‘Bloody Adams!’