1888 Read online

  1888

  The Infinity Engines: Missions

  Andrew Hastie

  Copyright © Andrew Hastie 2019.

  Published by Here Be Dragons Ltd.

  The right of Andrew Hastie to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Design and Patents Act 1988.

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the Author, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchase.

  All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead is purely coincidental.

  www.infinityengines.com

  5.2

  Contents

  1. Trial

  2. The River

  3. Maddox

  4. Expedition

  5. Morgue

  6. Avery

  7. British Museum

  8. Internship

  9. Whistle

  10. Mary Anne Nichols

  11. Blavatsky

  12. Black Museum

  13. Serial

  14. Annie

  15. Devolution

  16. Scotland Yard

  17. Eddowes and Stride

  18. Lipski

  19. Theosophy

  20. Profiling

  21. The Letters

  22. Inspector Reid

  23. The Fifth Victim

  24. Trial

  25. Sabien

  26. Home

  27. Grandmother's Wardrobe

  28. The locum

  29. Intuit

  30. Taken

  31. Acteon Beetle

  32. Trial

  33. Incubus

  34. Monster Squad

  35. Maddox

  36. Dorset Street

  37. Succubus

  38. Recovery

  39. Xenobiology

  40. Epilogue

  Chimæra

  1. Archangel

  2. Memories

  About the Author

  Acknowledgments

  1

  Trial

  [Star Chamber. Date: 1930]

  The courtroom fell silent. Men and women looked down at him from the public gallery, their eyes filled with fear and hatred.

  ‘Inspector Michael Sabien, you are hereby accused of the murders of Mary Anne Nichols, Annie Chapman, Catherine Eddowes, Elizabeth Stride and Mary Kelly. Do you have anything to say in your defence?’

  Sabien stood alone in the dock, his hands manacled behind his back. He could see that the members of the jury had already made up their minds, there was little chance of a fair trial. His fate was sealed.

  No one knew the truth, what he had sacrificed to save her.

  This was his one chance to tell the real story of what happened. Not that they would believe him, but he had the right at least, to put the record straight.

  To tell them who Jack the Ripper really was.

  2

  The River

  [River Thames, London. Date: 1889]

  Inspector Sabien looked down at the headless body, its pale limbs half submerged in the mud of the Thames. There was no way to tell if it was male or female from his vantage point high up on the riverbank, but his gut told him it was a woman; there was something about the way the hips curved on the bloated corpse.

  He watched the younger constables struggling to free the limp body from the mire, their feet sinking into the black, cloying mud. The wash from a passing barge swept along the river, soaking the legs of those nearest to the waterline. A passing group of mudlarks cackled at the sight of the officers trying to stay upright as they fell over each other in a vain attempt to keep dry.

  It was dawn and the water would be just above freezing, untouched by the rays of the morning sun. The pale watery disc was still struggling to pierce the heavy blanket of smog that hung over the spires of London.

  Feeling the wind rising off the river, Sabien pulled his gabardine overcoat tighter around him. The acrid stench of the tanneries and abattoirs swept over them; a fetid miasma, causing everyone to cover their noses. It was a smell that you never got used to. Even the lightermen on the passing barges would plug their nostrils with wax before entering this part of the Thames.

  The sepia clouds parted and a weak ray of sunlight warmed Sabien’s face. He took out his watch, careful not to let the others see the dials on its face. The casing of the tachyon was designed to look of the period, but it had a series of concentric rings rotating at different speeds around a central clock. It confirmed that it was the correct temporal location, but the wrong geographical one: the victim wasn’t killed here, merely dumped into the river from one of the many bridges upstream and must have slipped its weights as it drifted on the tide.

  The discovery of the body was nothing more than a starting point for his investigation. Sabien had one distinct advantage over the detectives that were clustered around the cart being hauled up the slipway; whilst they would spend the next few days trying to ascertain the identity of the victim and her last known movements, he simply had to touch her and look back into her past.

  3

  Maddox

  [London. Date: Present day]

  Detective Constable Halli Maddox read the email again, just to be sure. Her fingers trembled on the trackpad as she scrolled through the details of the forensic report — the DNA was a positive match.

  Before she joined the murder squad, the investigation had been going for almost twelve months with no sign of a break and yet there it was in perfectly rendered pixels — her first real arrest.

  His victims had both disappeared less than two miles from his house, and the suspect was known to the parents: a social worker who helped to run the local youth club. He was a near-perfect fit for the profile she had developed. He lived alone, had no friends and a history of abuse while in foster care. Not that she had got everything right — there were no children from a previous relationship.

  This was her first major result since finishing her probation and it would make a great case study for her PhD.

  Halli peered over her monitor towards her boss’s office. He was standing at the door with a wide grin on his face. There was a nod of appreciation when their eyes met. That was all she would get, but it was more than enough — she had proven her worth.

  Sitting back in her chair, she felt her phone vibrate. There were four new text messages. She smiled at the first two, they were from her mum, who was still having trouble coming to terms with the iPhone Halli had bought her; sending inappropriate emoticons and using LoL as ‘Lots of Love’. The third was a warning from her bank about reaching her overdraft limit and the last just simply read ‘1888 approved’.

  She let out a tiny squeal of delight, her thumb hovering over the message for the longest time before deleting it. This was her first historical assignment since joining the Protectorate, the police department of the Oblivion Order. It was a sign that her probation was over.

  Looking around the empty department she realised it was nearly eight o’clock, the end of their shift. Most of the squad had already clocked off and made for the nearest pub. Detective Inspector Jacobson, the senior officer on the case, was already putting on his jacket and she knew he would expect her to join the rest of the team down at the Britannia.

  Getting hammered after work wasn’t really her thing. She much preferred to wind down at the gym. There was a triathlon in three weeks, and she was still behind her personal best for the swim.

  Another message came in from her mother.

  Do you want dinner love? FFS?

  Fish, Fow
l or Sausages? Maddox translated with a smile. There were definitely benefits to living back at home. She had missed the TLC that she got from her mum, and although there were a hundred other things to do with privacy and personal space that her mother was not so clear on, it was better than spending another second in the flat with Blackstone.

  Halli had made herself a promise when she joined the force, never to date a copper. All the way through the first twenty weeks of foundation training, which she fast-tracked thanks to her degree in Criminology, she had managed to stick to her rule.

  Then Doctor Blackstone turned up with those dark, moody brown eyes and everything changed.

  He was nothing like her usual type. She always tended to go for physical, uncomplicated relationships, ones that didn’t require too much in the way of deep philosophical discussion. It was probably why she grew bored of them so quickly.

  Blackstone was a forensic scientist, so not strictly a breach of her rules. They had met at a crime scene. He was covered from head to foot in a Chemsplash suit and a face mask, but still those dark eyes had captivated her. It was one of those instantaneous attractions, the kind of which you read about in trashy romance novels: nervous hair twiddling, butterflies, the inability to string together a coherent sentence — the works.

  He was a fiercely intelligent man. He had studied forensic psychology at King’s College and impressed her with his views on Zimbardo's Stanford Prison Experiment before they had even got to the main course. They had spent the rest of their first date discussing cognitive dissonance theory and the power of authority. He spoke perfect Italian to the waiter, and she discovered he could speak five other languages, and then later that he was an amazingly attentive lover.

  There was, however, one character flaw that took her over six months to discover.

  He was a textbook sociopath.

  Her old professor would have referred to him as a narcissist. His charm was nothing more than a front. Behind the facade was a very shallow, emotionally stunted, juvenile. It was a shame that she only discovered it after she had moved into his flat.

  At first, she thought the minimalism was just him being uber-cool. The apartment had plain white walls with a complete lack of decoration, single pieces of furniture, no TV: nothing except books and a bed. She should have recognised the signs when he never allowed her to bring anything into the flat other than her clothes. No mementos, no pictures of her family — no real trace of her living there.

  But, she told herself, it was still better than being at home with her mother, and it meant that she could see him every day instead of random moments when their shifts didn’t clash.

  The final wake-up call came when she got sick one day and had to come home early.

  Finding your boyfriend in bed with someone else was bad enough, discovering that it was another guy was just a little too much to bear.

  She had left without a word. It had been over a week ago and most of her clothes were still at his flat — as well as a whole bunch of memories she was quickly trying to forget.

  That was why getting posted to 1888 was exactly what she needed. A break from being reminded of what he had done and a chance to solve the mystery of which her grandmother would never speak.

  4

  Expedition

  [Xanthus, Anatolia. Lycia. Date: 1840]

  Charles Fellows stood amongst the ancient ruins of the forgotten civilisation, staring in wonder at the cyclopean stones of the walls and the great obelisk that towered over them. The inscriptions carved onto the sides of the massive stele were in Ancient Greek, Lycian and another language which he assumed to be an older Anatolian language called Milyan. He had found his own Rosetta Stone.

  This was his second expedition to the ancient city of Xanthus. Two years earlier he had followed the sightings of unusual tombs reported during a naval coastal survey, only to discover the ruins of an entire civilisation hidden in the mountains above Patera.

  Now, he returned with the blessing of the British Museum, the Royal Geographical Society and a permit from the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire which would allow the removal of the Lycian antiquities.

  Their ship, HMS Beacon, was anchored out in the bay, its Captain ready to transport the treasures back to England. However, the flow of the Xanthus river was such that only small boats could make it up to the excavation site, limiting the size of the objects they could carry.

  It had been a frustrating start to their mission. Pulling a fleet of boats up the river had slowed their progress and now the site was a frenetic hive of activity as men began to carve up the marble edifices into crateable packages.

  The first month had been spent surveying the surrounding area while the Sultan and the British authorities had agreed terms. In that time, Fellows and his topographer, Colonel Leake, had discovered another eleven settlements, bringing their total to twenty four, but none of them compared to Xanthus.

  It was an unspoiled city and, although nature had already reclaimed much of its paved roads and trimmed stones, there were still parts that stood as if the inhabitants had simply stepped away for a moment. The stone tombs and edifices carved into the surrounding hillsides were all that remained of this mysterious society.

  All except one — the men were convinced something was still living in the Harpy Tomb.

  They were suspicious of the strangely carved monument. Rumours had spread through the camp of unusual noises being heard during the night and many had refused to go near it since the excavation began. Fellows had ignored their superstitious misgivings at first, until it had become a problem.

  The Harpy Tomb was known as a pillar tomb, with reliefs of winged harpies carrying strange looking infants on each of its four sides. Each side was seven feet long and three feet high and it stood on top of a seventeen-foot pedestal, with a small hole on one side and was just large enough to inter the body.

  The night watch had reported seeing a strange light emanating from the hole and had convinced themselves that it was haunted.

  Fellows knew how fertile their imaginations could be aboard a ship, which was only made a thousand times worse when surrounded by an abandoned, ruined city, full of tombs.

  * * *

  The following night, he took it upon himself to dispel their doubts by climbing a wooden ladder to the tomb entrance.

  It was eerily quiet as he climbed, carrying a lantern in one hand. A gibbous moon floated overhead in the cloudless night sky and the strong, prevailing winds that had hampered their early mountaineering expeditions had calmed. Colonel Leake stood at the base of the ladder, steadying it, and Fellows found himself taking comfort in having the man’s company.

  He was not a superstitious man, priding himself on his scientific methods, but as he stared up at the solemn edifice, he had to admit to feeling a slight trepidation at the thought of entering it.

  The stone leeched the heat from his palm when he placed a steadying hand upon its surface. A chill ran through his arm and the shiver shook the wooden ladder.

  ‘Everything all right up there old chap?’ asked Leake.

  ‘Fine,’ replied Fellows, placing the lantern through the entrance hole and proceeding to crawl inside.

  * * *

  To his relief, there was no sign of a body inside the cramped chamber. Whichever forgotten prince had commissioned this final resting place had never come to occupy it. The room was hollowed out to create enough headroom for him to stand and shining his lamp around the interior walls of the tomb he saw that every inch had been covered in hieroglyphs and quasi-religious scripture. It looked like the work of a mad man, most likely one of the Stylite monks of the fifth century who sought sainthood by squatting on a pillar for years on end, believing it was a way to salvation.

  ‘No such thing as ghosts,’ he reminded himself with a sigh of relief and moved closer to study the etchings of the hermit.

  What seemed at first to be nothing more than wild ravings began to show some semblance of sanity. The language was Aramaic or
Syriac and was hard to decipher, but the pictograms were clear: the crazy man had drawn a series of winged creatures, each one pregnant or carrying a malformed child. Fellows assumed they were nothing more than copies of the carved reliefs that covered the outer walls. Yet there was something extremely unnerving about the way the man had illustrated them. He had drawn himself lying with them, eating the flesh of their offspring. Not the usual religious motifs by any means, and Fellows shuddered at the thought of what state of mind the man must have been in to draw such things.

  As though caught in a breeze, the lantern flickered, throwing shadows across the walls. Fellows felt the temperature drop in the chamber. There was a scratching sound, like claws on stone and he turned the light towards the centre of the tomb, expecting to see a rat, but instead he found nothing except a small stone jar.

  It was ceramic and canopic in style, like the Egyptian funerary jars illustrated in Fourier’s Description de l'Égypte with the head of some ancient Demi-god for a lid and the sides painted with wings, like the harpies on the bas-relief. The jar was sealed with some form of lead, one that he was glad to see was still intact.