Murder by Sarah Pinborough

despite how hard I had tried. It was the night I had taken the strange opium and seen the
Upir
crawling up over his shoulder. Charles Hebbert had not been there. He had been dining at his club with colleagues.
    The second thing that crawled, dark and uninvited, to the forefront of my thinking was something the priest had said: that Jack was simply a by-product of the
Upir
, part of the mayhem that followed in its wake.
    I turned on a lamp, relishing in the glow of the light that returned the shapes that hulked threateningly in the gloom to simply objects of familiar furniture. I could not allow myself to be sucked back into the way I thought in that time. However real the things I had seen might have appeared to be, I knew that they could not exist. Harrington had been a killer; all else was simply drug-induced madness. There had been no
Upir
, and therefore Charles Hebbert could not have been affected by his proximity to it. The idea was simply absurd. The dawning realisation that I was even considering my old friend to be a Jack suspect made me feel as if I was once again hovering on the precipice of insanity.
    There was only one thing I could do: I must prove to myself that Charles was innocent of these crimes. I would arrange a dinner at his club with him. That would be my first move. I would not think of the priest or the hairdresser or the
Upir
. I would do what I did best: work with the presented facts.

11

London. February, 1897
Edward Kane
    ‘Do you live near a river in New York?’
    ‘Sure I do. The Hudson River runs right around the city – but I’ve never done this in New York, though.’ Edward Kane looked down at the small boy beside him and grinned. ‘And make sure those trousers stay rolled up. We’ll both be in big trouble with your mother if those get ruined.’
    ‘Maybe it’s the same river,’ James said. His cheeks were rosy in the crisp air as he crouched and rummaged in the wet mud revealed by the low tide and pulled out a large black pebble to add to the collection of odds and ends he’d put in his small pail. ‘Maybe it goes all the way from here to there.’
    ‘Maybe it does, son. Maybe it does.’ He took the boy’s hand and they walked further along towards the old steps that led up to the pavement and houses. ‘We need to head back. I’ve got to go for dinner with your grandfather and Dr Bond.’ He looked down at his own rolled-up trouser legs and muddy shoes and winked. ‘And I don’t think they’d like it if I showed up like this, do you?’
    James giggled and shook his head. He sniffed in the breeze. ‘Why doesn’t Mother like the river? Should I not like it too?’
    It was a small question, but so heavily loaded. Kane knew how protective Juliana was over her son. He’d seen enough evidence of it – the home-schooling, the distrust of strangers around him, and most definitely her insistence on keepinghim away from the river. Given how the boy’s father had died, that was no real surprise, but he wondered if she realised how much damage her cosseting could be causing. There were many gifts a parent could give to a child, but their own fears should not be one of them.
    ‘Rivers are beautiful. You know why I have one in my city and you have one in yours?’ The boy’s big blue eyes looked up at him as if he were the font of all knowledge. ‘Because rivers bring life,’ he continued. ‘They link people. Because of the river, products from all over the world can get to London easily. Your family business brings in produce from as far away as the Indies to the very heart of the city. Between the rivers and the oceans, and now the railways, we are bringing the world together.’ He paused, and then bent down and looked James in the eye as he said seriously, ‘But water can be dangerous. There are strong tides and currents that can drag you away. Plants grow on the bottom that can tangle you and pull you down. The thing with rivers is that you have to treat them with