The Map of Time (Trilogía Victoriana #1)(58)

The echo of footsteps interrupted his reverie. His heart began beating faster, and he ran to hide round the corner of one of the neighboring flats. He had thought of hiding there from the very beginning because, besides seeming to be the safest place, it was scarcely a dozen yards from Marie’s door, a perfect distance to be able to see clearly enough to shoot the Ripper, in case he was too afraid to get any closer to him. Once safely out of sight, back against the wall, Andrew drew the pistol out of his pocket, listening out for the footsteps as they drew nearer. The steps that had alerted him had an uncontrolled, irregular quality, typical of a drunk or wounded person. He instantly understood that they could only be those of his beloved, and his heart fluttered like a leaf in a sudden gust of wind. That night, like so many others, Marie Kelly was staggering home from the Britannia, only this time his other self was not there to undress her, put her to bed, tuck in her alcoholic dreams. He poked his head slowly round the corner. His eyes were accustomed enough to the dark for him to be able to make out the reeling figure of his beloved pause outside the door to her tiny room. He had to stop himself from running towards her. He felt his eyes grow moist with tears as he watched her straighten up in a drunken effort to regain her balance, adjust her hat, which was in danger of toppling off with the constant swaying of her body, and thrust her arm through the hole in the window, forcing the lock for what seemed like an eternity, until finally she managed to open the door. Then she disappeared inside the room, slamming the door behind her, and a moment later the faint glow from a lamp cleared part of the swirling gloom in front of her door.

Andrew leaned back against the wall. He had scarcely dried his tears, when the sound of more footsteps startled him. Someone else was coming through the entrance into the yard. It took him a few moments to realize this must be the Ripper. His heart froze as he heard the man’s boots crossing the cobblestones with cold deliberation. These were the movements of a practiced, ruthless predator, who knew there was no escape for his quarry.

Andrew poked his head out again and with a shudder of terror saw a huge man calmly approaching his beloved’s room, surveying the place with a penetrating gaze. He felt strangely queasy: he had already read in the newspapers what was happening now before his own eyes. It was like watching a play he knew by heart, and all that remained was for him to judge the quality of the performance. The man paused in front of the door, peering surreptitiously through the hole in the window, as though he intended to reproduce faithfully everything described in the article Andrew had been carrying around in his pocket for eight years, even though it had not yet been written, an article, which, because of his leapfrogging through time, seemed more like a prediction than a description of events. Except that unlike then, he was there ready to change it. Viewed in this light, what he was about to do felt like touching up an already completed painting, like adding a brushstroke to The Three Graces or The Girl with the Pearl Earrings.

After gleefully establishing that his victim was alone, the Ripper cast a final glance around him. He seemed pleased, overjoyed even, at the entrenched calm of the place that would allow him to commit his crime in unexpected, pleasant seclusion. His attitude incensed Andrew, and he stepped brashly out of his hiding place without even considering the possibility of shooting him from there. Suddenly, the act of finishing the Ripper off from a distance thanks to the sanitized intervention of a weapon seemed too cold, impersonal, and dissatisfying. His intense rage required him to take the man’s life in a more intimate way—possibly by strangling him with his bare hands, smashing his skull with the butt of his pistol, or by any other means that would allow him to take more of a part in his demise, to feel his contemptible life gradually ebbing away at a rhythm he himself imposed. But as he strode resolutely towards the monster, Andrew realized that however keen he was to engage in hand-to-hand combat, his opponent’s colossal stature and his own inexperience of that kind of fighting made any strategy that did not involve the use of the weapon inadvisable.

In front of the door to the little room, the Ripper watched him approach with calm curiosity, wondering perhaps where on earth this fellow had sprung from. Andrew stopped prudently about five yards away from him, like a child who fears being mauled by the lion if he gets too close to the cage. He was unable to make out the man’s face in the dark, but perhaps that was just as well. He raised the revolver, and, doing as Charles had suggested, aimed at the man’s chest. Had he fired straight away, in cold blood, giving no thought to what he was doing, as if it were just another step in the wild sequence of events he appeared to be caught up in, everything would have gone according to plan: his action would have been swift and precise, like a surgical intervention. But unfortunately, Andrew did stop to think about what he was doing; it suddenly dawned on him that he was about to shoot a man, not a deer, not a bottle, and the idea that killing someone was such an easy, impulsive act anyone was capable of seemed to overwhelm him. His finger froze in the trigger. The Ripper tilted his head to one side, half surprised, half mocking, and then Andrew watched as his hand clutching the revolver started to shake. This weakened his already feeble resolve, while the Ripper, emboldened by this brief hesitation, swiftly pulled a knife from inside his coat and hurled himself at Andrew in search of his jugular. Ironically, his frenzied charge was what released Andrew’s trigger finger. A sudden, quick, almost abrupt explosion pierced the silence of the night. The bullet hit the man right in the middle of the chest. Still aiming at him, Andrew watched him stagger backwards. He lowered the warm, smoking gun, no less astonished at having used it as he was to find himself still in one piece after fending off that surprise attack. This though was not strictly true, as he soon discovered from the sharp pain in his left shoulder. Without taking his eyes off the Ripper, who was swaying before him like a bear standing on its hind legs, he felt for the source of the pain, and discovered that the knife, although it had missed his main artery, had ripped through the shoulder of his jacket and sliced into his flesh. Despite the blood flowing merrily from the wound, it did not appear very deep. Meanwhile, the Ripper was taking his time to prove whether or not Andrew’s shot had been fatal.