The Oeuvre Read online

  *

  “Bloody cheap-shit bastard-cunt!”

  Rosie Sutcliffe spat as she was shoved into the street. Losing her footing, she tripped over the hem of her skirts and fell, banging her knees. A barrel-chested man filled the doorway she had just fallen from.

  “No need for language like that, Rosie. Deal is the same for you as everyone else. Tuppence more, you can crash ‘ere for the night. What you got at the moment ain’t enough.”

  Getting to her feet, brushing muck from her skirts, she faced him. Her overly-rouged face cracking into a mouldy smile. She picked at the crumbling scabs on her face as she spoke, “How ‘bouts I sucks you off to make up the diff’rence, Des?”

  Des was still for a second, then, he burst out laughing.

  “From a syphilitic old cunt like you? Bollocks, mate. Fuck off.”

  He slammed the door shut. Rosie hammered the door and bellowed obscenities until she had no breath left. Flushed and shaky, she went back onto the street. Inside, she was seething, putting her out on the street for the sake of tuppence. After all she’d done for him, she should have her own spot on the dosshouse rack. It was then she saw him, before her, standing in fog and shadow. The raid had been and gone but everyone was still down in the bloody shelters, scared the Germans might come back. Everyone, except for this john. He said nothing. He kept watching her from where he stood, his arms and legs wreathed in sooty coils of smog.

  “What the fuck’re you looking at, eh?”

  Pervert, she thought, from his bearing, a posh knob too. Should have a bit of money on him then.

  “You after somethin’, luv?”

  He nodded.

  “You after me?”

  He nodded again.

  “Well, it’ll cost. Times’re hard. I’ll let you do me for f’ur-pence. Not a penny less.”

  He’s like a bloody puppet, she thought, as she watched him nod a third time, not that it made much of a difference to Rosie. He could be the Devil himself for all she cared, she would still do him. A paying customer’s a paying customer and she needed her kip. He extended a hand to her with an elegant sweep. She took hold of his hand. She glimpsed an immaculate white cuff beneath the sleeve of his overcoat, a bladed cufflink winked at her.

  “Where we goin’ to, then?”

  He led her on a long walk through the mist-shrouded sewer-alleys, this way and that way, on through the indistinct streets of Whitechapel. His hand was a bony vice around her fingers, telling her without words that she was going to stay with him until he was done. Rosie’s heart started thrumming a heavy rhythm a few streets back. She liked to fuck a john and be done with it.

  Why was this one taking her someplace?

  The ones who liked to make it ‘special’ always worried her. They always had something queer up their sleeves. She didn’t like that she couldn’t see him right either. There was something up with his face. It was a heavy night for the smog but she should be able to see his face, make it out a little bit but she couldn’t. The ever-thickening mist seemed to cling to it, running febrile grey fingers over his features, as if it were moulding him, shaping the skin and the meat beneath. The more she looked, the more indistinct he became. She thought she saw a moustache, a beard, wrinkles, mutton chops, old skin, smooth skin ... and on it went, the fluctuations, the changes.

  It reminded her of a magic lantern she once looked into when she was a child. Dad took her to a fair on one of his rare sober days. Inside the lantern had been all of these images; weird ghosts, monsters and things, naked screaming women. All of them flickering over one another, vanishing, going out, quick as candle flames. One second, there. The next second, gone. This man’s face was like that, all flickery. There were odd moments when she doubted she was even holding hands with him, but that was bloody daft.

  He stopped walking.

  Rosie looked around. She knew this place, grey paint coming off of the walls, the old workshops and decrepit dwelling houses. This was Hanbury Street. The air was dense and she felt cold inside, not feeling like she was breathing air but the pollution and mist itself. She could smell butcher shop odours, almost see them as dim, tainted snakes writhing around the limbs of her john.

  “You want t’do it ‘ere do you, ducks? Behind the houses. Bit of a dingy spot, innit?”

  She saw light catch on a long, thin highly-polished surface. It was a single fang, a wicked glinting tooth being bared. She pulled away from him, kicked, trying to free herself. He stepped out of the shadows. Rosie saw his face, his true face.

  How wet and red it was, how it came away, hung from the skull’s bone in so many lolling pieces. How many teeth he had too.

  Teeth without a mouth.

  She opened her mouth to scream.

  The john went for her, knife flashing and slashing.

  Rosie’s head, bodiless, thumped into the gutter.

  A few minutes later, Sydney, an old soak, stopped to have a piss. His breath stank of old fish and gin. He let out a full-throated belch, fiddling with the flies of his grubby trousers. Whistling tunelessly, he sent a hot yellow spray swing from left to right in the dark, a drunken dog marking his territory. The Hanbury Street yard was usually a good quiet spot this time of night.

  A rustling, then weighty breathing in the shadows.

  There was someone else there.

  “Evening there, squire,” Sydney croaked, stumbling over his own feet.

  The man in black said nothing, he was hunched over a dishevelled white shape on the ground. Sydney could hear odd sounds, a clicking and snipping. Tucking his still-leaking pride away, Sydney approached.

  “Y’alright there, mate? Missus taken a tumble ‘as she?”

  A shaft of sickly pale light fell from a window in the house to Sydney’s back and he then saw the blood running in rivers from what had once been a woman. She was torn open, scarlet stains were soaking into the cloth and scored bones were winking at Sydney through reams of masticated flesh. He saw the woman’s head, hanging from the neck, trailing a thin flux of broken vertebrae and ragged spinal cord. Sydney felt his dinner disagreeing with what he was seeing. The man in black lifted his face, revealing it to Sydney. A seething, slippery mass of blood and lactating tissue, and those teeth, those mouthless teeth churning quietly away, clicking, snapping and snipping at the air.

  Sydney felt so very far away.

  Everything went very dark. The night drew breath and something made of moonlight washed over him, making him cry out from the brute cold of its touch.

  He blinked once, the moment was lost and Sydney was alone. Alone with the dead. He heard the leathery sound of wings overhead. Something wet fell onto him. He snatched it out of his hair, dropped it, and watched it squirm away, white, limbless and hairless, into the night’s blackness. He’d pissed himself; warm fluid was cascading down his legs and into his boots. He looked to the dead woman, a string of drool ran out from the corner of his mouth. The dead woman, she was looking at him, accusing him and inviting him. Her legs lay open. Her old cunny was a raw red ruin, thoroughly chewed up. Chewed up by those teeth, those ever-moving teeth.

  Sydney felt his fingers through his hair, grasping at the air, at the crumbling pieces of his mind. There were tears in his eyes. He walked away into London, into the Grey and the night, unsteadily he went on, looking to find a bridge, to take a swim, to find the Thames, cast himself into her dirty depths, to drown, to sleep and forget.

  Chapter Seven

  Dr Spice didn’t want to go inside, not inside the red room. The red room was the bad room, the room of blood. Its dripping walls, its weeping ceiling and the horrible slithery surface of its floor. He didn’t want to go inside but his feet were not listening to him as they went down the stairs. One step at a time, a remorseless pacing towards that door, that door with the glistening rim and the rawly bleeding frame. His hand was on the banister, it caught on wood, a stabbing sensation made him snatch it away. A rivulet of blood trailed wet across his palm from where the splinter had split
the skin.

  Down the stairs, down the stairs, he went.

  The door was closer and it was opening before him, without a sound, sloshing through the rippling, spreading ocean of gore. One foot after the other, in he went, his face creasing as he felt the oily slickness under his soles, stickily clinging between his toes. Turning now, turning he was, not of his own volition, this was at the behest of something else, something he had stupidly buried down deep inside.

  Dr Spice lost his son in 1916. As with so many parents, the Somme Offensive was the one that brought home the true horror of the war. Newspapers filling up with column after column of casualties, everyone knew someone who lost family and friends at the Somme. Dr Spice took the news of his son’s death with traditional British stoicism, not speaking of it. His wife, Virginia, committed suicide. Slashing her wrists open with a cut-throat razor whilst taking her bath.

  Dr Spice found her back then, and here she was again, oh yes, here she was in their cast-iron clawfoot tub. Virginia, sweetheart, my lovely, oh, light of my life, so dead and so cold. Doll white and puppet slack, her wrists hanging open, showing tendons and bone through sliced lengths of steak.

  Spice was sobbing, as always, tears running down his cheeks, dark oily tears that made him blind. Then the shadow of her was shifting itself through the crimson veil over his eyes, the sound of disturbed water, the iron squeaking and creaking as she reached out for him. Those soggy-soft hands squelching hard into his cheeks. He whimpered, knowing what came next, expecting, waiting, wanting it to happen – but this time, it was different. She did not tear his eyes out as she had done before instead she leaned in close, her bloated fish-lips brushing on his earlobe and she spoke three words.

  “Jack is back.”

  *

  It was a nightmare in the Underground station. The platforms were crammed with people sheltering from the raid, the tunnels echoed and the air was thick with smoke. Trains went rumbling in and out of the station. It felt like you were only taking in oxygen with every other breath. There were no toilets in the Underground, those in need relieved themselves over the platform edge. The air grew thicker and fouler as the night wore on, sobs and wails broke out intermittently, the occasional whoop of joy came from children amusing themselves by dodging in and out of train carriages as the doors opened and shut.

  A tremor shook the platform, then there was silence. Dust showered down, a quiet rain. The lights flickered, went out. A young girl with fine blonde hair was pressed up against Liz. Liz could smell the expensive French perfume on her.

  The girl let out a hysterical shriek as darkness fell, it was echoed by others in the crowd, fear spreading, a contagion taking hold. The blonde girl’s cheeks were streaked with tears. Black thunder burst out from the tunnel by the platform. Everyone jumped. It was only a train pulling into the platform.

  Liz could feel the girl beside her trembling.

  “Pull yourself together,” she snapped at the tearful girl.

  “But,” she said, “I thought I was going to die.”

  “I hope you bloody well do. Giving us all a fright like that.”

  Regaining herself somewhat, the blonde girl regarded Liz with an affronted gaze. “We’re all the same down here, you know. We’re all scared.”

  “We’re all scared but we ain’t all the same,” Liz snapped back.

  Turning, she shoved her way through the crowd, leaving the girl behind. Hysterics did no-one any good, and besides, she doubted the girl had it rough, except for taking shelter in the Underground every so often. The girl’s clothes, the soft sheen of her skin, you could tell her stomach was full, her house was well-looked after and that she didn’t have to shoo out the rats with a broom.

  “We’re all the same? Bollocks we are.”

  Absorbed in recriminatory thoughts, Liz did not see the man pushing his way through the crowd towards her.

  *

  Jerry had been spotted. He recognised the face of the man he had beaten earlier, bruises staining one side of his face, his nose coated in blood-snotty bandages. The Redcaps had his scent and they had sight of him. They were not going to let him get away now. A tremor rocked the platform, Jerry fell as the station around him filled with screams. A train came to a halt, brakes screeching loud as the lights died. This was his chance, he could see the stairs.

  Jerry made a dash for them.

  He ran straight into her. Her elbow caught him square in the lungs, driving the breath from his body, he couldn’t breathe. The Redcaps weren’t far away, he was done for now.

  “You should watch where you’re bloody well going, mate.”

  The lights buzzed, blinked and came back on. The world came back into focus. Their eyes met. The world around them seemed to retreat a little. Her face was decorated with lines and crow’s feet. Her lips formed a rough pastry-pale oval. She was no beauty, street-worn, and her cheek bore a broad roseate bruise but her eyes were sad seawater pools. There was something in them, stirring beneath the surface, which made him pause, catch his breath.

  The crowd opened up behind Jerry.

  Sergeant Cutter clamped his hands down on his shoulders.

  “You’re fuckin’ nicked, cunt.”

  There was barely concealed glee in his voice. Jerry knew he was going to be on the receiving end of a severe beating, for starters. Liz looked from Jerry to Cutter and to Cutter’s scrawny subordinate, Private Russell.

  She stepped forward. “You take your hands off my husband. What’s your game?”

  “He’s not your husband, woman. He’s a deserter. He’s under arrest and he’s comin’ with us,” said Cutter.

  “Oh, he is, is he?” Liz folded her arms and stepped forward, “over my dead body.”

  Cutter narrowed his eyes, “Get out of the way, cunt.”

  The memory of her Harry leaving was boiling to the surface. Her eyes met those of Cutter. He was not backing down. He gave her a curt, superior look. Dismissing her without words. You’re not important, that’s what his eyes said, just like Harry had been. Something to be used, ruined and then discarded, nothing. Liz lunged, her fingers raking down Cutter’s undamaged cheek. Cutter howled, letting his hold on Jerry go. Clamping one hand to his wounded face, he came at Liz, “My face, cunt. You cut my fuckin’ face.”

  He grabbed her, his hand closing tight over a breast. Liz tore him off, hitting him in the gut, hurting him good. She was shaking inside, scared of him, of this man’s eyes, they were as bright as knives. She shouted loud enough for the crowd to hear over the trains and the bombs, “Where d’you think you just touched me, eh? What d’you think you’re about, you gropin’ bastard!”

  A rumble of discontent went through the crowd, people came clustering in around the two Redcaps, scenting trouble. The atmosphere on the platform became heavy and primal. A train pulled in. No-one got off. They could feel the ugliness hanging in the air, every man had his eyes on Cutter. The Military Police had a reputation that went before them and now one of them had made a woman scream.

  The crowd closed in, waiting, eager, hungry for violence, for blood.

  Cutter backed off, Russell going with him, putting distance between themselves and Liz. The Redcaps headed towards the station exit, departing in disgrace. The crowd settled down, the air cleared and Jerry let out a sigh of relief.

  Liz was looking at him.

  Her hand slipped into his.

  *

  On the surface, Russell sighed, scratching his ear, “What now, Bill?”

  “You go on, Russ. I need a walk.”

  “You should get your face looked at, mate. That’s nasty, what she did to you, could get infected.”

  “I said you go on. I need to blow off some steam. I’ll get it looked at later.”

  Russell half-saluted and went on his way, disappearing into the dingy funeralopolis of Whitechapel’s streets. Cutter watched him until he was out of sight. No need for witnesses after all. He didn’t want Russ seeing what he was about. The Private might be as loya
l and dumb as a dog but it was best not to take a chance. Patting his pocket, Cutter smiled a butcher’s smile as his fingers traced the familiar outline of the buck-knife tucked away in there, he retreated into the shade of a backstreet to wait.

  Chapter Eight

  Dawn decayed into the grey of London’s fog, and with it came the chink-a-chink of Boy Scout bicycles pedalling through the streets. Their tinny bells announcing the All Clear. Cutter listened calmly as he wiped the sweat from his brow, what a sweet memory this one would be. He watched the people milling out of the Underground, waiting patiently for one to take a wrong turn, come his way. He saw Liz and Jerry but let them go, too soon, and there were too many people out there. He needed someone who was alone and in a hurry, not being careful. The blonde girl from the platform obliged him, taking his hiding place as a shortcut down to Bishopsgate.

  His buck-knife was at her throat.

  Keep quiet said its edge.

  Cutter breathed in the heady flowery scent of her Parisian perfume with a bestial huff. He felt her muscles bunching through the fine linen of her dress. Winding his fingers around the base of her neck, he stroked down her shoulders and back up again. She stumbled a little, her breathing was quick, she could feel his tense body, getting excited, scratching his grubby fingernails on her, feeling deep lines rising in their wake. Maybe he’d stop now she was scared, he would let her go.