26 August 2012
'You dirty bastard! Now get out of my pub, before I bloody well throw you out!'
The door to the Ten Bells swung open, and Inspector Frederick Abberline suddenly found himself in the cold, wet air of the East End of London, in October, 1888.
He'd been in a meeting with police commissioner Sir Charles Warren in the afternoon, a hastily convened meeting that ended abruptly with the removal of Abberline from the Ripper case, and his subsequent demotion to constable. He'd failed to bring one definite suspect to book, and this, coupled with his highly unusual methods of inspecting, had ultimately cost him. Five grotesquely mutilated women, the Illustrated Press and their constant ridiculing, the public unrest. It had all become too much, and Sir Charles Warren had been left with little choice.
He'd been on his way to Scotland Yard to pick up his new uniform when the lure of beer and absinthe had brought him to the Ten Bells. And it was when he was nearly incapable of speech, and had decided to piss up the bar, that he found himself unceremoniously dumped in a puddle outside in the street.
He was drunk, but the cold night air and his soaked trousers sobered him up considerately. What a failure he'd been. He really thought he'd had his man on every unfortunate occasion when a bangtail had been found. But it was just too much. He always managed to stay one step ahead. Either the man was a genius, and had a network of spies in every doorway, or he was just lucky, had gotten fed up with it all and just stopped. Either way, it appeared it was all over for Abberline.
What a shithole, he thought. Maybe it had done him a favour, because he'd become sick of London anyway. The whores, the gangs, rife immigration had meant that any Londoner had been pretty lucky to get employment, the workhouses, the opium dens (oh god! The dragon...) and now this pissing weather... All dimly lit by the ghastly gaslight...
It was normally teeming with the usual low life in Whitechapel, but tonight it was strangely quiet, a fact not lost on the rapidly sobering Abberlne as he rounded the corner into Nicholls Street. In fact, it was even quieter here than he'd ever known it.
He stopped walking, and tried to gather himself. He was freezing cold, winter it seemed, had come a little early, and the wind was blowing the rain directly at him. Then a sudden powerful gust blew all the way up Nicholls Street, extinguishing all the street lights. Bewildered, Abberline looked around himself, but could see or hear nothing.
Until a voice behind him rasped, 'You've been looking for me...'
Gaslight pt.1 • Opuss № I