Tim Walker has featured many times on Linda’s Book Bag in posts you’ll find here and today he’s back with an extract from his latest book London Tales.
London Tales was published on 9th November 2023 and is available for purchase here.
London Tales
This collection of eleven tales offers dramatic pinpricks in the rich tapestry of London’s timeline, a city with two thousand years of history. They are glimpses of imagined lives at key moments, starting with a prologue in verse from the point of view of a native Briton tribeswoman absorbing the shock of Roman invasion. The first story is a tense historical adventure set in Roman Londinium in 60 CE from the perspective of terrified legionaries and townsfolk facing the vengeful Iceni queen, Boudica, whose army burnt the fledgling city to the ground.
Further historical dramas take place in 1381 during the Peasant’s Revolt, the Great Fire of London in 1666 and the last ice fair on the frozen Thames in 1814. These are followed by a romance set during the Blitz in 1941, then the swinging Sixties and wide-flared seventies are remembered in the life story of fictional policeman, Brian Smith. Moving on, an East End family get a fright from copycat killings that are a throwback to the 1888 Jack the Ripper murders.
There’s a series of contemporary stories that reference recent events, including the London terrorist bombings of 2005, a literary pub crawl and a daring prison break, building to the imagined death throes of London in a chilling, dystopian vision. These stories are loosely inspired by the author’s personal experiences and reflections on his time living and working in London in the 1980’s and 90’s. Adaptability, resilience, conformity and resolve are recurring themes.
London Tales evokes the city’s rich history and the qualities that were needed by Londoners at various times to survive and prosper – from the base and brutal, devious and inspired, to the refined and civilized.
Available from Amazon in e-book, paperback, Kindle Unlimited and audiobook formats, London Tales is a companion volume to Thames Valley Tales.
An Extract from London Tales
Mac the Ripper
It’s 2016 and East End family, the MacMullens, react in different ways to the news that a copycat Jack the Ripper is on the loose in the streets off Brick Lane…
“Here, love, look at this in The Standard.” Tom’s dad, Billy, looked over the top of his upright tabloid.
“What is it?” Mel drawled, as she dished up the chicken Kievs with oven chips and baked beans.
“Look, there’s been a murder not far from here. ‘Woman Slain in Frenzied Knife Attack’ it says.”
She took the paper off him and read. “Oh yes, and right next to my hairdressers. Wonder if I knew her, poor cow.”
“There won’t be any details for a few days,” Billy offered, as if an expert in these matters.
“The police have got to do their forensics thing and interview any witnesses, and then tell the victim’s family before they go public. I’ll ask around down the bookies tomorrow.”
“Oh, you will, will you? Any excuse to throw our money away! You’d be better off going to the DIY place to buy some shelves and put them up in the spare bedroom. Do something useful on your day off…”
He lifted his newspaper again and tuned out from her nagging. She plonked the plates on the table and gazed out of the kitchen window to their brick-walled yard, as night descended on Whitechapel.
“Makes you wonder who’s out there,” she said as they settled down to eat.
The next morning, Tom went to school, Mel went to work, and Billy wandered off to find out what he could about the brutal murder so close to home. The man behind the counter in the corner shop said he’d heard that it was a young Bangladeshi woman, not from his community, mind, who’d had her throat slashed and body dismembered, in a recreation of the 1888 Jack the Ripper murders. Not only that, but it took place in the same courtyard where one of the original murders had taken place, over a hundred and thirty years ago. He told Billy that the most detailed report was in The Times and sold him a copy with a sly wink to the other man in the shop. Billy reluctantly parted with the money – he’d become used to picking up a free copy of The Standard from outside The Underground.
Billy MacMullen had lived in the East End all his life and had seen a lot of change. The new wave of immigrant settlers were Indians and Bangladeshis, the latter predominantly Muslims. An old Christian church had been converted into a mosque, with a neon-lit minaret now dominating Brick Lane. The Eastern European Jews and French Huguenots had dissipated into the grey, misty air over the years, to be replaced with Irish and Commonwealth settlers. He stopped to look at an estate agent window. The next stage, if the estate agents had their way, would be to gentrify the area and sell tiny flat conversions to eager City workers.
“Progress, they call it,” Billy muttered under his breath. “But with property prices creeping up, I could sell up and join my mates in Essex.” He pushed through the door of the White Hart and ordered his first pint of the day.
It was eleven o’clock and he was the first in. Spreading The Times on the counter, he thumbed straight to the murder story. Tomasz, the young Polish barman, came over to see what he was looking at.
“A young woman has been murdered near here,” Billy said, screwing up his eyes to read the small print size in the posh newspaper.
“Oh yes? Who was she?” Tomasz poured a pint of foaming ale and plonked it on the bar towel in front of him. It was happy hour for pensioners, and Mac Senior had previously shown his bus pass as proof of his qualification to the otherwise unfazed barman. He had stopped work early with bad feet and was sensitive to the fact that he looked a bit young to be retired, his brown hair only just showing signs of giving way to grey.
“It says she was a young woman from the Indian or Bangladeshi community, wearing a blue, patterned sari. Victim of a sustained and vicious knife attack that has the MO of the original Jack the Ripper murders.”
“What is MO?” Tomasz asked.
“Modus Opera… well, it means how it was done. It’s a copycat murder, in effect.” Billy took a mouthful of ale and wiped the froth from his mouth with the back of his hand.
“What have cats got to do with it?” Tomasz asked.
“It’s just a saying, you know, how we say things. “Copycat” means it’s been copied in the exact same way. You see, in Queen Victoria’s time, there were five horrific murders of women in the streets around here. Grisly murders.
Tomasz raised an eyebrow and asked, “When was that?”
Billy frowned at the small print again. “1888, it says here. In fact, one victim left this very pub just before she met her end in a dark alley.” Billy paused for dramatic effect, but Tomasz had his back to him. “The paper says this latest murder was done in exactly the same way. Get it? Somebody’s pretending to be Jack the Ripper. It could be someone who frequents this very pub.”
Tomasz busied himself, with a concerned look on his face now.
Billy went on, his eyes scrunched over the paper, “And some people think the original killer was a Polish immigrant called Aaron Kosminski, so you’d better get your alibi straight.”
“… Or the artist Walter Sickert.” A hand fell on Billy’s shoulder, which made him jump.
“Oh, it’s you, Don!” Billy said, turning to face his grey-haired friend.
“I saw a TV documentary on the Jack the Ripper suspects and there’s an American artist who painted a picture in 1888 called, Jack the Ripper’s Bedroom. Now there’s this famous novelist, a woman, saying she’s convinced he was yer man,” Don said, pointing to the pump handle of his favourite beer. The hovering barman nodded and proceeded to pull a frothy pint.
“Patricia Cornwell,” said another customer at the bar. “I watched that.”
Don took his place on a barstool next to Billy. “Sounds about right.”
“Well, whoever it was, it seems that his ghost is back and at it again. Have you read this?” Billy showed the newspaper report to his friend and ordered him a drink.
****
Author’s Note:
In 2017 I went on a Jack the Ripper walking tour around the side streets off Whitechapel in London’s East End. The sites of Jack the Ripper’s grisly 1888 murders can all be reached within an hour and a half’s tour. Although Brick Lane is now dominated by Indian and Bangladeshi restaurants, the side streets still have a Victorian feel with the terraced workers cottages lit by period street lamps (see my photo on the Mac the Ripper artwork). Popular with film crews, our guide quipped. Much has been written about the Ripper murders over the past 120-odd years, and there has been plenty of speculation as to the possible identity of ‘Jack’. It remains the most fascinating and high profile unsolved series of murders attributed to one killer in London’s history.
In the days following the tour I composed this short story. I decided to make it a contemporary tale centred on a white working-class family living there, adjusting to the revolving door of new waves of immigrants crowding into relatively low rent accommodation in the streets off Whitechapel and around Brick Lane.
About Tim Walker
Tim Walker is an independent author living near Windsor in the UK. Although born in Hong Kong in the sixties, he grew up in Liverpool where he began his working life as a trainee reporter on a local newspaper. After attaining a degree in Communication Studies he moved to London where he worked in the newspaper publishing industry for ten years before relocating to Zambia where, following a period of voluntary work with VSO, he set up his own marketing and publishing business. He returned to the UK in 2009.
His creative writing journey began in earnest in 2013, as a therapeutic activity whilst recovering from cancer treatment. He began writing an historical fiction series, A Light in the Dark Ages, in 2014, inspired by a visit to the part-excavated site of former Roman town Calleva Atrebatum at Silchester in Hampshire. The series connects the end of Roman Britain to elements of the Arthurian legend and is inspired by historical source material, presenting an imagined historical fiction of Britain in the fifth and early sixth centuries.
The last book in the series, Arthur, Rex Brittonum, was published in June 2020. This is a re-imagining of the story of King Arthur and follows on from 2019’s Arthur Dux Bellorum. Both titles are Coffee Pot Book Club recommended reads. The series starts with Abandoned (second edition, 2018); followed by Ambrosius: Last of the Romans (2017); and book three, Uther’s Destiny (2018). Series book covers are designed by Canadian graphic artist, Cathy Walker.
Tim has also written two books of short stories, Thames Valley Tales (second edition 2023), London Tales (2023); a book of verse, Perverse (2020); a dystopian thriller, Devil Gate Dawn (2016); and three children’s books, co-authored with his daughter, Cathy – The Adventures of Charly Holmes (2017), Charly & the Superheroes (2018) and Charly in Space (2020).
Tim took early retirement on medical grounds and now divides his time between writing and helping out at a Berkshire-based charity, Men’s Matters.
To find out more you can visit Tim’s website. You can follow Tim on Twitter/X @timwalker1666 and you’ll find him on Instagram, Amazon and Facebook.
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