S walked away from the narrow alley, but his steps slowed when the sound of a creaking door came from one of the small houses on the right. An old man, his body hunched and his face carved with lines of age, stared at him from behind the narrow gap of the door. His gaze was filled with unease, as if he had witnessed something he wished would never return to memory.
"Do you live here? Last night?" S asked, his voice calm, almost a whisper, afraid to startle him.
The old man nodded slowly. "I didn't sleep. I can never truly sleep," he muttered. "Too many sounds… too many shadows."
S stepped closer, stopping just before he seemed threatening. "Did you see someone pass by?"
The old man hesitated before finally opening the door wider. The stench of dampness clung to the air from inside the house. "I… heard footsteps. Very light. Like someone trying to hold their breath while walking." He stared at the ground, then added, "After that, I smelled something like metal. Iron. Blood."
"Did you see his face?" S asked.
The old man shook his head. "Only his back. A long dark cloak. He walked fast, but not in a hurry. Like someone who knew he wouldn't be caught."
Something tugged at S's mind. "His height?"
"Taller than me—perhaps around six feet. But his shoulders were narrow." The old man rubbed his temples. "The strange thing is… he stopped under the street lamp for a moment, but still I couldn't see his face. There was a strange shadow… as if the light refused to touch him."
S fell silent. A shadow that seemed to reject light—those words clung to his thoughts. It might have been just the imagination of a frightened witness. But there could also be a detail worth noting: the killer's body positioning, the angle of the lamp, the fog, or even the hood being long enough to obscure the face.
"Thank you," S finally said. "Your information is valuable."
The old man retreated into his home without another word. The door shut quickly, as if he feared something outside might follow him in.
S exhaled and continued walking. Whitechapel still felt like a dark labyrinth holding rotten stories within its brick walls. The streets were beginning to fill with the sounds of morning vendors even though the sun had not fully risen. Their voices were flat, exhausted, and sounded as though they had already surrendered to tragedy's repetition.
He found Inspector Haryo—listed in his case file as Inspector Harold Evans, though for consistency of our fictional narrative the two identities remain fused—speaking to a woman near a bread cart. The woman was pale, her eyes red, whether from the cold or fear he could not tell.
"S," Haryo called when he saw him. "This is Madam Griffith. She says she saw someone pass before the murder."
The woman rubbed her shivering arms. "I had just come back from the soup kitchen. I saw a man standing right over there…" She pointed to the end of the alley near where the body was found. "He wasn't moving. Just standing, staring toward the main road."
"Uniform or any particular clothing?" S asked.
"Not a uniform. But…" She swallowed. "His clothes were too neat for someone from Whitechapel."
Interesting.
"'Too neat'—what exactly do you mean?"
"While others wear tattered coats or clothes whose colors are barely recognizable, he wore a clean black coat. As if freshly pressed. And a hat—tall, straight, not tilted, not wet. Even though it was drizzling that night." Madam Griffith shook her head, the fear returning to her face. "As if the rain couldn't touch him."
S remembered the victim. Clean cuts. Controlled incisions. The killer likely had medical training—or at least anatomical knowledge. It wasn't impossible he had a stable profession, enough to maintain such neat appearance.
"Did he see you?" S asked.
"I think so. He turned slightly." She massaged the back of her neck. "But what I remember most are his eyes…"
S waited.
"There was no light," she whispered. "Like two black holes. Not pupils… more like…" She waved her hand helplessly. "Ah, I don't know. Perhaps I was simply terrified."
S nodded gently, storing every detail in his mind, then signaled to Haryo that he was done.
When the witness left, Haryo stepped closer. "Do you think they're reliable?"
"They're afraid," S replied. "Fear can make people see things that aren't there. But fear can also bring out truths they don't realize they're revealing."
Haryo looked toward the fog rolling back in. "I don't like the way they described his eyes."
"Neither do I," S said quietly.
They continued toward an old building that looked like a small warehouse. Behind it stood a young man leaning against the wall, smoking quickly. Haryo called out to him.
"This is Robert—the lad who often keeps night watch around here. He said he heard something two nights ago."
Robert exhaled smoke before speaking. "You want to know if I saw the killer? No. I'm not that unlucky." He smirked, but his eyes were empty. "But I heard something before dawn. A sound… like someone sharpening a knife."
S and Haryo exchanged a sharp glance.
"You're sure?" S asked.
"Yes. The sound repeated. 'Chk… chk… chk…'" He mimicked the motion of sliding metal. "I thought maybe it was a butcher running late. But the sound was too clean. Too… rhythmic." He bit his lip. "And after that, there was another sound. Footsteps. Slow. Very slow."
S timed the sequence in his head. Knife-sharpening before the murder suggested the killer prepared his tool not far from the crime scene. And if rhythmic, the killer might have a professional habit—a doctor or butcher.
"Which direction did the sound come from?" S asked.
Robert pointed toward an old wooden door secured with a lock. "From inside that warehouse."
A small warehouse. Unprotected. Close to the alley where the victim was found.
S approached, examining the door handle. The lock was old and rusty. But there were fresh scrape marks—someone had been going in and out frequently. He pressed his ear against the wood, but heard nothing besides rats scurrying.
"We've already asked for it to be opened," Haryo muttered, "but the owner is nowhere."
S stared at the door for a long moment, silent, before saying, "We need to get inside. One way or another."
He turned toward the fog devouring the alley again. There was a pattern—the killer moved as if he memorized every corner of Whitechapel. He chose specific victims, disappeared at the same hour, appeared in places where light barely existed.
S felt something—an instinctive pull. Not a bad premonition, but a tug, as though something behind that door was waiting to be discovered.
Haryo noticed the shift on his face. "You're thinking something."
S didn't answer immediately. "If the killer is neat, clean, untouched by rain… and the fog seems to follow his steps… it means he knows the exact when and where." He closed his eyes, forming a map of Whitechapel in his mind. "He's not just selective with victims. He's selective with location. And timing."
"And this warehouse…" Haryo added.
"…could be the center of his movements," S finished.
S opened his eyes. The fog was thickening again, swallowing the mouth of the alley and making the gas lamps look like dim yellow eyes watching them.
In that silence, something shifted deep within the fog. S turned his head instinctively—not a person, just a piece of laundry blowing in the wind. But the feeling of being watched from within the fog did not leave.
As if the killer was still near them.
Or…
As if he knew he was being hunted.
---
The fog began to descend more heavily as S and Abberline left the police station to examine the second location marked as significant in the reports: a small street corner near Whitechapel Road, where a night watchman claimed to have seen "the shadow of a man in a hat" at dawn on the morning of the murder. London felt as if it refused to be seen; each lantern swayed slowly, each window shut tight even though the night was not yet late. As if the city itself feared becoming a witness again.
S walked with measured steps, eyes constantly analyzing: building patterns, entry and exit points of alleys, dark corners, and places where someone could hide without being seen. For most people, this was just a grim, impoverished area. For S, it was the map of a murderer's mind.
In front of a bread stall that had already closed, an old man with a thick mustache waited with his arms folded tightly. Abberline greeted him, "Mr. Mizen, are you ready to give your statement again?"
The night watchman nodded tensely. "I… I don't want trouble, sir. People already call me a liar because my story differs from Charles Cross's."
S stepped forward with a gentle tone. "All we need is the truth from the last honest man in a place like this."
Those words made Mizen's breath falter. He looked at S as though searching for something in his face—perhaps a shred of trust. "I really did see someone," he finally said. "Tall, thin, a long dark coat. He didn't look at me. His steps were fast… very fast. And… there was something in his hand." The man swallowed hard. "I thought it was a small case. But… maybe I was mistaken."
S noted it internally. The statement was almost identical to the original report, but the way Mizen said it added one thing: fear. Not fear of the murderer, but fear of the possibility that he truly had seen something he was never meant to see.
"Did he seem in a hurry because he was being followed," S asked, "or because he wanted to escape from something he had just done?"
Mizen fell silent for a long time. "…Escape," he whispered.
There was a tremor in his voice that couldn't be faked.
Once Mizen left, Abberline leaned against the damp brick wall. "We've heard that statement many times, but you looked as if you caught something else."
"His fear is not the fear of a witness," S replied. "It's the fear of someone who has just realized he might have looked into the eyes of the devil, even for a second."
Abberline did not answer. Perhaps because that word—"devil"—felt too fitting to describe the Whitechapel case.
---
After navigating the narrow streets, they returned to Buck's Row. The lanterns remained lit despite the deepening night wind. S crouched again near the spot where Mary Ann Nichols's body had been found. He closed his eyes, replaying the postmortem report he had read: the deep cuts on the throat, almost decapitating; the incisions on the abdomen that were not random but deliberate—precisely targeting certain organs; proof that the killer made the cuts with unnatural speed and calm.
"Not many killers can make clean incisions under dim light like this," S murmured without opening his eyes. "Especially not in such a short time. He knew exactly what he was looking for."
Abberline looked upward, trying to follow S's imagination. "So we're looking for someone with anatomical knowledge?"
S opened his eyes and slowly stood. "Not just knowledge. Hands that are used to it. But…" He stared at the dark brick wall. "…not the hands of a doctor working in a major hospital. The incisions aren't as clean as surgical work. There's hesitation at the end of the cuts—like someone who understands theory but rarely performs formal practice."
Abberline exhaled deeply. "That both narrows and widens our suspect list. Whitechapel is full of butchers, slaughterhouse workers, animal processors."
"Exactly," S said softly. "Among a hundred people who could do it, only one does it this way."
He lifted his gaze toward the street. "And he does it without hesitation."
---
They walked toward the end of another alley, where reports mentioned small blood droplets on the stone pavement. A young constable provided extra light with his lantern. S approached the spot. The wooden fence beside it looked damaged and scratched. Small splinters still clung there.
He touched them again, confirming what he felt earlier. Still soft. Still fresh.
"The victim was restrained here," S repeated. "Her body was almost certainly facing the alley. The killer cut her throat when she couldn't move."
The young constable swallowed. "How do you know her position? The wounds were too severe…"
"If she were attacked from behind," S explained, "blood spray would hit the wall. But there's no spray on the wall. Instead, the faint traces on the ground are strongest—angled diagonally to the lower left. That only happens if the victim's head was held low, facing the ground or alley. And the killer was directly in front."
Abberline slowed his breathing. "So he faced his victim."
"Yes. Allowing her to look at him in her final seconds."
No one spoke for a while. The night wind made the lantern flicker. The sound of a horse's steps in the distance felt like a long echo that barely touched the ground.
---
As they made their way back toward the main road, an old carriage passed slowly. The driver looked at them with an unreadable expression—a mix of curiosity and fear. S studied his face but found nothing unusual.
But he halted when he saw the corner of an old building across the road. There was a small mark on the wall that wasn't mentioned in the official reports. Not blood, not dirt—only a faint smear of fabric, strangely darkened. The color was subtle, as if something had brushed or been dragged against it briefly.
Abberline frowned. "That's not part of the crime scene."
"Not the crime scene," S answered slowly, "but perhaps part of the escape route."
He traced the wall with his gaze. "The killer couldn't have walked far wearing clothes soaked in blood. He needed shadowed alleys like this to slip out of sight."
"And vanish?" Abberline muttered.
S replied with cold certainty: "Not vanish. Blend in."
And somehow, that word felt far more terrifying.
---
On their way back to the police station, Whitechapel grew increasingly unsettling. Chimney smoke mixed with fog made every light appear like dim eyes watching them. A young woman ran past, clutching her coat collar, too afraid to look at anyone. A drunken man from a tavern retched into a gutter, but even his curses sounded quieter than usual—as if fear had muted the entire district.
Abberline glanced at S from the corner of his eye. "Do you feel it?"
"The fear?" S asked.
"Not just fear. Like… the city is holding its breath. Waiting for something worse to happen."
S stopped walking. "When a killer like this appears, he doesn't stop because he's satisfied. He only stops when he is stopped."
Abberline clenched his fists. "Or when he does something we can never forget."
S stared into the fog-choked end of the street. "Trust me. He is not finished. And we haven't even seen the worst of him."
And in the silence that enveloped Whitechapel that night, S's words felt like an omen of something darker—closer—more brutal than they could ever imagine.
---
The night wind moved like the long breath of a sick city. Whitechapel had turned into a gray labyrinth that trapped anyone daring to walk too far in. S and Abberline approached the police station, but S stopped before entering the yard. He stared back toward the narrow streets they had come from, as if something had been left behind in the darkness.
"Something still bothers you?" Abberline asked.
S didn't answer immediately. He closed his eyes, drew a breath. "There's one thing that unsettles me. Deeply."
Abberline waited.
"The mark on the wall." S opened his eyes. "I saw it twice. First, near the crime scene. Second… in the alley leading to the back door of that small market. Its shape was the same. The height the same. And the direction—"
"Like someone walking fast while holding something?" Abberline guessed.
"No," S muttered. "Like someone trying to hide his body from the lantern light. It's not the pattern of someone passing through. It's the pattern of someone avoiding."
Abberline frowned. "But the killer would've been covered in blood. He couldn't possibly avoid leaving footprints or clear stains."
"Because he wasn't walking openly," S replied coldly. "He pressed himself against the wall. Brushed his shoulder. He knew exactly which areas were the darkest. As if he had done it before."
"Before?" Abberline stared at S. "You're saying this wasn't his first murder?"
S turned his face to the fog-covered street. "Maybe not the first… and definitely not the last."
---
When they finally entered the police station, the atmosphere had changed. Before, it had only looked anxious—now it resembled fear forced to appear professional. Officers piled paperwork, flipping through the same reports without progress. A glass shattered in the next room—someone had dropped it with trembling hands.
The capital of the British Empire, yet that night it felt like an isolated village haunted by a nightmare.
Abberline entered his office, lighting an extra lantern. The yellow glow revealed a large map of the East End, covered in red markers. S stood beside the map, studying the distance between where Mary Ann Nichols had been found and the early reports of a mysterious man wandering at night.
"There's a pattern," S whispered.
Abberline followed his finger. "These areas? These tiny streets barely recorded on the map."
S nodded. "He's choosing the same zones. Almost like a ritual path."
"Path?" Abberline repeated, doubtful, as if the word was too much.
But S remained calm. "Serial killers often return to zones where they feel 'unseen.' Not because the zone is safe… but because it's familiar." He leaned closer to the map. "These three alleys appear far too often in citizen reports about strange shadows at night."
Abberline organized his papers. "But there's no physical evidence supporting that."
"Not yet," S said. "We simply haven't found it."
---
A long silence settled between them. Abberline finally sat, eyeing S's ink-stained hands.
"May I ask you something?" he said abruptly.
S turned. "Go ahead."
"Why did you accept this assignment? Many investigators refused to come to Whitechapel. This case drives people insane. You… are different." Abberline looked deeply at him. "You walk like someone chasing a personal answer."
S clenched his jaw. A shadow of his past brushed the edge of his mind—a face, or maybe a voice, faint like a dream he could never grasp. He turned away as if avoiding being read.
"Some cases will never find their answers," S murmured. "But there are certain cases that… call to us, whether we're ready or not."
He looked into Abberline's eyes.
"And the Jack the Ripper case is the one that calls to me."
Abberline asked nothing more. Perhaps he understood that some people carry wounds that require no questioning—only time.
---
The night grew later when the office door suddenly swung open. A young constable rushed in, face pale.
"Inspector Abberline! A new report from Hanbury Street." His breath trembled. "A woman… has been found. Her condition…"
The room fell into a suffocating silence. Everyone knew what the unfinished sentence meant.
Abberline stood quickly. "When did the report arrive?"
"Just now. Less than five minutes."
S looked at the flickering lantern. The wind outside sounded like a long, cold whisper. A strange pressure filled his chest—not fear, but a powerful premonition that made his skin prickle.
"He's moved again," S said quietly.
Abberline grabbed his coat. "We leave now."
S pulled on his black coat, raising the collar against the cold. "How far is it?"
"Not far," Abberline replied rapidly. "Hanbury Street is five minutes if we hurry."
S clenched his fist.
"If this is true," he muttered, "then we're entering a race we've already lost."
They stepped out into the street, walking fast through the fog. Lanterns swayed as the wind carried a faint metallic scent—the smell of a night hiding a silence darker than before.
And far down the road, as if waiting, the darkness opened its arms to welcome them.
Whitechapel had just birthed its second corpse.
---