Jack's victims haunted the Ten Bells. Fred was one of them, watching the living from a darkened corner. Dark Annie was there, sometimes crying, sometimes laughing. Fred could see the wall through the hole in her stomach. Whores from every era, and gender, wandered in. Some touted for custom, while the ghosts stood behind them, whispering into ears that ignored the warnings. Pete had been wrong. Fred would never be an old man talking endlessly about the girl that got away. He had failed to save them from Jack's bloody little knife. Now they would never leave him in peace.
Fred had a dream; a rare one that had nothing to do with blood and knives. In that dream, Victoria smiled as she poured his bottle of absinthe onto the ground. He watched himself pleading with her not to, that it was the only thing that kept her close to him, living inside his dreams, but she only she shook her head. Her smile was loving as always, but there was sadness in her eyes, telling him that she was leaving him once more and forever. Fred woke with his face wet with tears, and poured a glass of absinthe.
"So that’s your new year resolution, is it Fred old chum? You’re going to lay off chasing dragons?" Godley laughed and stubbed out his cigarette. "Yes," he muttered," and if you believe that, I have a bridge I’d like to sell you." Abberline stared at the tattered remains of the Ripper's career on the noticeboard. It was long past time to clear it all away. He noticed that the dessicated grape stem's tiny branches looked like veins without skin. He smiled, remembering that there was still the absinthe and a phial of laudanum hidden away in the cupboard at home.
Jack was dead and buried, lying in the cold earth like all his victims. Did he dream in that dark place? The grave's a fine place, as the poet said. Past all hopes and fears and quiet desperation. The inscription on Jack s headstone read a good and loyal servant . The Widow's bloodhound, hunting down and tearing the throats of anyone who threatened Her stability. Even a group of poor unfortunates was not safe from his savagery. Fred turned and walked away from the grave, and he could not say that he pitied poor dead Jack, but that he envied him.
Fred trailed his fingertips over the cold stone of the wall. One pipe of opium too many had caused his eyes to darken and fade. He focused on the feel of the pavement beneath his feet and walked close to the inside, away from the road. For once, he wished that Godley had come storming into the smoky room. He would have welcomed a sharp slap against his face, to bring him back into life again. Whose voice was that, behind him? Whose footsteps, following? Fred stepped closer to the wall and strained to hear into the world around him.
Abberline surfaced from his dream to find the bathwater had cooled. Another dream of Victoria. She had been out in the garden, picking flowers but when she came into the house with them, they had all withered and died. She laid the blackened, shrivelled stems into his arms and smiled. Rose petals, as fine as desiccated skin, crumbled under her feet. The cold water clung to his skin like kisses from a corpse. He shuddered and reached for the bottle of absinthe, only to find that it was empty. Victoria was lost, but only until he could buy some more.
Fred never truly sleeps. Even while he lies in bed, his mind works on the latest problem. Seeing again, the murder or the beating or the single act of cruelty that snuffs out another human life. The bed is too wide for just him alone so he fills up the spaces with the ghosts of corpses. They lift their pale, dead arms and implore him to save them. None of them will sleep until he has found their killers. Some nights the bed is so crowded with the shades that there is no room for him. No room for dreams.
Fred carries Mary's secret, wrapped up tightly inside a letter, deep inside his heart. The bottle of absinthe and the laudanum are secrets that lie lightest on him. The heaviest of all is one that no one knows. Fred told Mary that he never saw his child, that he was only told that it had been a boy. But, in truth, he looked at the baby boy that had been wrenched from within Victoria. And as much as he loved her, he hated this innocent thing, knowing that it was the one murderer that would never be brought to justice.
Fred took a weary step forward into the harsh sunlight. Whatever horrors had occupied the night, had not been earmarked for him as the hours had passed with few visions, despite the amount of opium he had smoked. For a moment, Fred considered the possibility of being an ordinary policeman, relying on facts and witness statements and dogged persistence. Then he remembered how many souls occupied the London streets. Godley stepped out from a carriage and kept pace with Fred. "No rest for the wicked, eh?" he said. "And none for the virtuous either," Fred replied, with a wry grin.