4. Chapter 4

Chapter four

T hat afternoon, Hugh went out to the morgue behind Scotland Yard. “Just got finished with that boy you found,” Dr. Ledbetter said as he walked in.

“Do we have an identification?” Hugh asked.

Ledbetter shook his head. “Not yet, I’ll let you know if we do.”

“What can you tell me about him then?” Hugh said.

Ledbetter frowned and tapped the end of his pen against his lips. “Late teens or early twenties. Fluid around the rectum, but none on his penis.”

“So, he was probably in a tryst with someone,” Hugh said.

Ledbetter nodded. “Very likely.”

“Similar to Christopher O’Malley.”

Ledbetter hummed a bit. “Similar, yes. Though this young man wasn’t slashed.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, the marks on his throat, or what’s left of it, anyway, are not from claws or a knife. They’re teeth marks.”

“Teeth marks?” Hugh repeated.

Ledbetter nodded again. “Yes. Pretty sharp ones too.”

“So, not human teeth?” Hugh asked with a frown. He couldn’t remember if Spring-Heeled Jack had regular-looking teeth or not, despite his charming smile. It irked him that he couldn’t remember a detail like that.

Ledbetter frowned. “Well, let me show you.” He led Hugh over to one of the far tables, folding the sheet down from the red-haired boy’s face to below his armpits. His brown eyes were still slightly open, staring vacantly at nothing, like sunken glass marbles. “I couldn’t honestly say what made these teeth marks.” He used his pen to point to several holes and indentations in the skin. “The sharpness of them would suggest a carnivorous animal. But you see the shape here?” He swirled his pen in the air above a half-moon of markings. “Animals tend to have more elongated snouts and jaws. Humans are much more snub-nosed than most animals, so our bites are circular. Bites from, say, a large dog, would be more conical.”

Hugh stared at the tattered skin. “So, a human with very sharp teeth made these marks?”

Dr. Ledbetter shrugged. “If I had to guess, that’s what I’d think.”

“Can humans have teeth that sharp and do that much damage?” Hugh asked.

Dr. Ledbetter tapped his pen against his lips again. “That’s what troubles me about it. I’ve seen human bite marks before. I’ve even seen a man take a bite out of another’s neck before. Our necks are surprisingly vulnerable, considering they balance our brains, but there are still a lot of bones, tendons, and tissue to get through. It’s not impossible to do this kind of damage, but it would be difficult. And messy.”

“How messy?” Hugh asked curiously.

Dr. Ledbetter pointed to a spot. “The carotid artery runs through the neck on both sides, as well as a number of smaller veins. There would be a substantial amount of blood coming out of this wound, including some arterial spray, which can travel a fair distance while the heart is still pumping. And the young man was facing his killer when he was bitten. So, your murderer would have quite a bit of blood on him.”

Hugh thought back to Spring-Heeled Jack in the alley. His clothes had been pristine; his white oilcloth and the strange bone-white of his face and horns had been clean too. The only blood on him was on his hand; Hugh had gotten similar stains on his own hand when he moved Christopher O’Malley’s body to check him for signs of life. Had Jack really been telling the truth, that he did not kill the young man?

“Thank you,” he said, giving the older man a grateful nod. “Please let me if you get a positive identification from the detectives.”

“Will do,” Ledbetter said, giving him a salute with his pen before he went back to make some more notes.

Hugh walked through the cool, autumn air from the morgue to the offices. No new information about Christopher O’Malley had landed on his desk, and Hugh was beginning to wonder if the investigation was going anywhere. It had been several days, and yet there was nothing. He steeled his nerves and approached Reardon’s desk. “Sir? I haven’t received any information about the O’Malley case.”

Reardon looked up with his beady ferret-eyes at him and laughed raucously.

“A dead boy whore is hardly a concern for the Metropolitan Police, Danbury.”

Hugh frowned, his lips tightening at the words. “Sir. Christopher O’Malley was murdered. That young man from last night was killed in a similar manner. Finding their killer should be a priority for the police.”

“They probably cheated their johns and got slashed for the trouble,” Reardon said with a shrug. “Happens with that lot all the time.”

“What do you mean, that lot?” Hugh asked, feeling a pit in his stomach.

Reardon sighed, the air ruffling his gray muttonchops a little. “Whores, without even the decency to have proper fannies to fuck.”

“With all due respect, sir,” Hugh said, the respect barely there. “People are not cattle for slaughter. They are human beings. We have a duty to find who did this and bring them to justice.”

Reardon laughed loudly again. “Caring so much for the nancy boys, eh, Danbury? Any particular reason?”

Hugh’s hand curled into a fist, and he exhaled sharply. Hitting his sergeant was not going to help his case. “Sir. Please.”

“I’ll tell you what,” Reardon said with a small smirk. “These mollies mean so much to you, you can investigate it yourself. In fact, these cases can be your sole responsibility. You find out who killed those boy whores and bring them in to face justice.”

Several of the men around him snickered, and Hugh gritted his teeth. His sergeant was setting him up for failure, of that, he was sure. They did not think he would solve the crimes or find the attacker. “I am not an inspector, sir,” he pointed out.

Reardon shrugged. “Consider this your chance to prove that you’re worth more than being on patrol. Otherwise, we might just have to re-evaluate your route.”

Hugh could hear the threat loud and clear. Find the killer, or he was going to be demoted to some of the most dangerous areas in all of London, which would either end with him dead, or injured enough to quit the police force. Neither was appealing, especially when all he was doing was ask Reardon to have the detectives do their job to find a murderer. “Yes, sir,” he said, giving the man a thin-lipped smile. “I will find the killer.”

“I’m sure you will.” Reardon might as well have patted his head like a puppy.

Hugh walked away, not letting his fists clench at his side until he had closed himself in the privacy of the privy. He wasn’t an inspector, but if he was the only one who would care about the young men out on London’s streets, then he would do what he had to do to find out what was happening to them.